//------------------------------// // chapter 1 captured and escape // Story: From a pony to a changeling // by skittle strike //------------------------------// In the city of Dodge Junction a young Pegasus stallion can be seen walking the streets nodding to the ponies he passes on his way to the outskirts of town. His coat is an amber colour and his mane and tail a slight dark blue with green eyes. His cutie mark is an orange and blue ball knocking down pins showing his love for ten pin bowling, The stallions name is skittle strike. He is well known and quite well liked for his fun loving attitude wherever he goes he will always find ponies willing to stop and wave to him or just have a small chat, But today he can be seen walking through town with a scowl on his face. While it is unusual to see him without his signature smile, the reason why he is scowling is because he is in deep thought. For the last few months ponies have been seeing changelings roaming around the city but not many ponies know what their doing but everypony is on edge and it has left some unhappy, afraid of what they may be up to. sighing to himself he gets to the outskirts of town when a voice stops him. " Hey skittles where ya going, you busy" shouted a voice behind him. Turning around he sees his bowling buddy and local guard lance flash "hey lance just going for a walk outside the city and stretch my wings, why you need me for something?" lance is a green coloured unicorn stallion with a purple main and tail. with a dark blue stripe going down the middle and he has blue eyes. The green stallion trotted up to skittles and said. "well I saw you going to the outskirts and I thought I'd be a bit nosey for once." The stallion shrugged. "But anyway, I was just wondering when I've finished my patrol whether you'd wanna go bowling later, have some apple cider. Haven't really done that for a while, so you up for it?" "yeah sounds like fun, when you finish meet me back here, then we can show them all how bowling's done!" skittles replies with a grin. "great, see ya back here in a few hours dude, we're gonna have a blast." Then the green stallion continued on with his patrol with a smile. chuckling to himself skittles continued on, Stretching his wings giving a few flaps he flies off going higher and higher till he's at cloud level and going further away from dodge junction. But unknown to him a few pairs of eyes are watching from a distance and moving in the shadows of a building. After about ten minutes of flying, skittles takes a look around him, he notices he's gone pretty far away from town and closer to the Badlands, where it is a known area of the changelings. Turning around to go back to the town, he see's an earth pony on the ground waving to him, so feeling in a good mood he dives down to the pony to see what their after. "Hey how can I help you?" skittles asked when he got close enough to the ground and landed a few feet away. "Oh not much I was just hoping you might be able to help us with something?" the mare that he now see's asked him, she was a cyan coated earth pony with a black mane and tail. raising an eyebrow at the mare for using 'us' instead of 'me' he just answers with a "yeah sure". The mare just smiles and flutters her eyelashes at him saying "aren't you a gentlecolt, but what we need from you isn't much, we just need you to come with us so you can help us with our problem". After finishing the mare turns around and moves forward so he can follow her. Skittles goes to follow and decides to ask the mare a question he's been meaning to ask after speaking to her. "I hope you don't mind me asking but why do you keep saying 'us' or 'we' is there somepony with you?". Stopping to turn to the stallion behind her she turns around to speak to him. "Well our princess needs a test subject and we decided to grab you for said role". The mare said with a smile. After she finished she was engulfed in blue flames and in her place, Was a changeling with a black carapace with a blue main and tail, a jagged horn on her head and blue insectoid wings on her back. Seeing the mare change skittles goes to take flight but is halted when something strikes him in the back of the head knocking him to the ground, Where he then sees two more changeling move into his line of sight to stand next to the one he followed. He goes to call for help but the mare in the middles horn starts to glow and then he is struck by their magic which knocks the poor stallion unconscious. Seeing that the stallion can't put up any type of struggle they move to tie up his wings in the mishap he wakes up on the way to the hive. And so they start their journey back with their test subject in their magic hold. After carrying him for an hour they arrive at the entrance to the hive in the Badlands, after arriving into a dark room, they put skittles into a blue cocoon and leave to await further orders. 2 HOURS LATER With a groan skittles starts to stir creaking open his eyes he cringes because of his head hurting, He goes to move his hooves to his head when he notices he can't move. Opening his eyes fully he notices that it's got low visibility, what he can see in the room is a single door in front of him. Taking a closer look, it looks like the doors upside down, raising an eyebrow he realizes the door isn't upside down, he is and what he can see from his position is that he's suspended from the ceiling in a strange blue cocoon. He's taken from his inspection from somepony clearing their throat. "Well I can see your finally awake, took you long enough". Trying to look around for the voice but being unable to move makes it pretty difficult trying to speak he finds while he can't move he can still talk inside of his cocoon. "where am I, what do you want with me". He asks quickly his voice coming out shaken from fear. Coming into his line of sight he sees a changeling which is slightly taller than the ones that captured him. "Well you are in our hive of course, and to answer your other question we need you to test our latest pod we have created". she lets out a chuckle near the end of her answer and then moves closer to make eye contact and whispers the next part so only he could hear. "And what the pod your in does is turn you into one of us". After hearing that last statement skittles could only stare wide eyed at the changeling standing in front of him with a big smile on her face, after a minute of silence he could only stutter. "w-what d-d-did y-you just say?". Raising an eyebrow at the upside down stallion still with a smile she repeated her last statement. "we're turning you into one of us changelings isn't that great". After watching him for a little bit longer as the stallion freaks out she starts to leave, but when she gets to the door she turns her head to look over her shoulder and says. "oh and I'm princess Florence and I'll be paying you visits until it's finished looking forward to working with you, bye bye for now". After the changeling now known as princess Florence left, skittles tried to calm himself down and was hoping somepony would notice he's still gone, but the only pony which would realize this would be lance after he finishes his patrol, but seeing as skittles has been unconscious for a uncertain amount of time they could already be searching for him, but whether the changelings that captured him left a trail or not, It was hopeless holding out for a rescue. Later on as promised Florence came back merely to tell him that he doesn't need to worry about eating, the pod was made to keep the captive well nourished for the amount of time they were in there, He also found out that the change was going to take about a week and a half to finish. The first three days were uneventful, princess Florence only stayed a few hours at a time to keep watch on the process, which he found out each part of him that changed was as painful as scraping your hoof on something and leaving a small scratch but overtime it only stung. The process seemed to start from the hooves and go up towards his body. Days four to six were different while princess Florence was there she started conversation and when asked why she wanted to talk she merely stated, "I'm pretty sure your bored so talking might at least make it bearable". While talking he found out there were three hives of changelings, the hive he found himself has changelings with blue carapace and they are apparently the smartest of the three, the green hive are the strongest of the three hives with more changelings, and finally the red hive while the green and blue hives have black carapace with their respective colours, the red hive have white carapace with red highlights but they are deadlier than the other two hives. Days seven to nine the process had changed his hooves and his body, all that was left was his wings and head. On day ten his head had changed and he felt his teeth change as well, some of his teeth had changed into fangs, but when the top of his head was done, there was no sign of a horn like the rest of the changelings. Within those days skittles had begun asking some questions but not many were answered. Although he overheard some things from some of the changeling guards about the green hive planning an attack on Canterlot while a royal wedding was taking place. Day ten it was his wings that changed next and instead of becoming insectoids like the changelings, his wings stayed of that of a Pegasus, keeping his feathers. "It seems the pod hasn't changed you completely, you didn't grow a horn and your wings stayed the same." Humming to herself she circles his small cocoon looking his body over while the majority of his body has changed, Having holes in his hooves and his carapace being the same black as the others his highlights were not blue, but the same amber as his coat and his cutie mark can still be seen. His mane and tail have kept his original blue but he now has a black stripe going through both. "I guess you'll soon be able to feed of emotions next I bet your looking forward to find out what love tastes like aren't you." "Yeah I'm really looking forward to that, how about when I'm out we can go on a romantic flight just the two of us hmm." skittles replied showing as much sarcasm as he could while not being able to move. Just what skittles didn't expect is for princess Florence to giggle at his statement "Well I can tell your being sarcastic." she says rolling her eyes at him. "but you never know I might just hold you to that romantic flight whether you meant it or not, now get some sleep I'm looking forward to when you finish soon and you can stretch yourself, I imagine being cooped up in there for ten days is gonna leave you completely stiff." Then she leaves while giggling to herself. About an hour after she left though there were small tremors going through his pod, since the only place he could look was the door he could see changelings running around frantically shouting things he couldn't quite make out. But there was one thing he heard over the rest of the shouting. "THE GREEN HIVE ARE FALLING OUT OF THE SKY, WHAT IN EQUESTRIA IS GOING ON!!!!!!" Before skittles could think on it anymore, something smashed through the wall behind him bumping into his pond and knocking it too the ground, when it made contact the pod popped in a wave of slime going everywhere. Noticing he's no longer hanging from the ceiling, skittles tries to get to his hooves, without much luck it takes him five minutes of trying to finally stand up but still being very wobbly. Finally able to move his head, he starts looking around and sees a hole in the wall behind him flapping his wings to try and take flight with no success. Doubling his efforts now that he has a real chance to get out of the hive, he manages to flap his wings enough to grab hold of the bottom of the hole and slowly lift himself up and over, When he's high enough he looks out to see he's about 3 stories high from the ground, without the full use of his wings he looks back in he sees two changelings standing in the doorway staring at him, unsure of what to do he just gives a wave and says. "Well I wanna say it's been pleasant, but I don't want to, so I'll be going now cya." Spreading his wings he glides out of the hole towards the ground which makes the changelings come of their stupor. "Quick inform the princess he's attempting to escape, I'll bring him back!!!" Turning his head he can see a single changeling coming after him, and is quickly gaining on him. Just when the changeling is about to be in reach of him a falling changeling hits into him. Watching the changeling get hit he turns his head back around and mutters. "well that was lucky." Finally reaching the ground he stumbles and rolls and then slowly gets back onto his hooves looking back to see if he's still being followed he sees nopony around, breathing a sigh of relief. He finally has a chance to take a good look at himself, but all he can see is his hooves now have holes in them and looking back at himself, he has black carapace with light amber highlights along his body. Moving away from the hive, leaving it behind him only one thing was going through his head. "I'm free I'm free OW!" He then fell flat on his muzzle.