What is Love?
Then she noticed it. If it weren’t for the hundreds of contracts and agreements she’d signed in the last few days, she would have never noticed. In the crowd of Rainbow Dashes was a single black, holed leg. Applejack followed her eyes and also saw the single flaw.
“There!” She pulled out her lasso and threw it. The flawed changeling tried to hide, but the rope already hit. “Easy there!” The other Rainbow Dashes stepped aside. The arrogant smiles they had all transformed with fell to frowns as the flawed changeling was dragged to the main group.
“Looks like some pony didn’t do their homework!” Pinkie Pie announced as the real ponies crowded the partly formed Rainbow Dash.
“What’s the big idea?” Rainbow scolded. The changeling cowered.
“I thought the transformation was perfect!” Rarity said while holding up a confused Rainbow Dash in her magic. “The color patterns are the right hue, their wings are all the same size with the same number of feathers, and this one even has her bed head perfected!”
“Hey! I’m the real deal!” Rainbow yelled while fighting out of Rarity’s levitation. “And my mane is just fine!”
Cadence approached the changeling with caution. Until this point, the changelings had obeyed her order. Why now, when the Elements of Harmony were here, would they attempt to ambush them?
“Maybe it’s a traitor?” Twilight suggested.
“I knew couldn’t trust ‘em!” Applejack said with a stomp of her hoof.
“Is this the only one, or are there others?” Shining Armor asked outloud. The Rainbow Dashes tensed up. Shining galloped into the crowd with determination to find any other defects.
“I’ll help too!” Rainbow said. “They don’t deserve to be me if they aren’t loyal!” She zoomed over the crowd diligently.
The failed Rainbow Dash changeling quivered fearfully as all eyes were back on it. All except two, kind blue ones. Fluttershy ran between the accusing glares and the changeling.
“Wait!” She cried. When every pony looked at her, she shrunk and hid behind her mane. “…please?” Fluttershy got back on her feet and gave her attention to the malformed Rainbow Dash. “I don’t think you’re a traitor.” Fluttershy’s voice shifted from adult pony to baby bunny caretaker. The changeling looked pleadingly at his only hope of survival. “I think you’re just misunderstood! Isn’t that right?” Fluttershy hugged it with a compassionate embrace much like a foal. She pet Rainbow’s forelock and smiled as she released. “Why don’t you tell us why you can’t be Rainbow Dash, huh?” The changeling looked to his queen.
“What?” She looked around. “Yes, um, you have permission to speak.”
“My greatest apologizes my queen and friend of queen,” its voice was a perfect replica of Rainbow’s. It was a strange thing to hear it talk so lowly and humble rather than bold and arrogant. “None of us have eaten since Chrysalis executed phase one of the Canterlot Invasion.” Twilight’s eyes moved to the crowd of Rainbows. They were all looking away in shame as their fellow changeling spoke.
“Oh goodness!” Fluttershy hugged it again. “How awful! You must all be starving!” The false Rainbow Dash bit his tongue and pushed away the yellow pony. She shuttered.
“Please do not.” Rainbow said, shivering as though Windigoes were passing through.
“Here are the other ones that don’t change,” Shining announced. Behind him were ten partially transformed changelings all looking fearful and nervous.
“I found this one with this big bag!” The real Rainbow said. Behind her was a sad looking Rainbow Dash imposter with a large bag in her mouth. It dragged on the floor.
Cadence looked at the ten changeling hybrids and Rainbow Dash with the bag. They all expressed fear and a degree of pain to their queen. Being the Princess of Love, she could not allow such sadness to continue. These poor Rainbow Dash hybrids needed her.
“Rainbow Dashes,” Every changeling stood at attention. Cadence froze at all the faces looking at her with the resolution of a soldier. “Please…wait out here,”
“How shall we-?”
“I don’t care!” Cadence yelled. “Just…just relax and don’t cause trouble!” The princess nudged Twilight. “Twilight, I want you and the Elements of Harmony to watch over the rest of the changelings while I talk to the others.”
“Of course,”
Cadence opened the door to her office.
“You ten who could not change and you with the bag, please come in,” They obeyed with low heads. Shining Armor went in next and Cadence soon behind. A purple hoof stopped her.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Twilight asked. The princess herself did not notice, but she was shaking and looking quite pale.
“I’ll be alright. I’m the Princess of the Crystal Empire. I’m more concerned about you and your friends.” They looked over at the herd of Rainbows. They were either napping, standing, sitting, or watching the pink one assault one of their fellow changelings.
“I’m Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie Pie said while holding up a fake Rainbow Dash’s wings. “Watch me do a Sonic Rainboom! Raaaaaaaaaain!” She cried while shaking the poor creature’s tail and blowing on its head to simulate wind. “BOOM!!”
“I don’t think they will be a problem,” Twilight grinned at her friend’s antics. “You’re the queen, they have to listen to what you say.” Cadence shuddered.
“Don’t remind me…” She said sadly and went into her office.
The eleven misfit changelings sat in a neat row in front of the princess’s desk. Cadence sat at said desk with her husband next to her.
“Tell me, what happened after the Changeling Invasion?” Cadence asked. They looked around. She decided to point at one who had a changeling eye on one side and a pony eye on the other.
“After we buried the previous queen and said our good byes to our dead brethren, we trekked from the Badlands to here in the Frozen North to find you.” The fake Rainbow explained.
“How?” Shining asked with furrowed brows. “You would have to go through Equestria to get from the Badlands to the Frozen North.” The changeling looked at his queen. She nodded so it proceeded.
“We went through the forests,” The two royal ponies’ jaws dropped. “Is that an indication more detail is necessary?” They nodded. “We went through all the various forests of Equestria without being seen. The former queen had kept a map of the land so we followed it.”
“A whole herd of changeling ran through Equestria and no pony noticed?!” Shining exclaimed. It nodded.
“We were not noticed by ponies.” It said. Cadence looked at the changeling carefully. It was a soldier’s stance, but its eyes were still those of a being with emotion and a heart. When it said ‘ponies’, its eyes moved for just a moment.
“You said no pony noticed you?”
“Yes, we were not noticed by any ponies,” the same movement occurred. Cadence grimaced.
“If you weren’t noticed by ponies, what were you noticed by on the way here?” The other changelings flinched and looked nervous. A normal pony may not see through the ‘perfect soldier’ façade, but Cadence had learned how to pick up small indications of emotion through body movement. The lead Rainbow gulped.
“We…we were noticed by various…monsters, predators, and demons on our trip.” The changeling tried to act without emotion, but the stress turned its other eye back to a solid, teal green. “There were more of us at the beginning of the trip, your highness,” Cadence’s eyes widened in absolute shock.
“But you must have had the advantage of numbers!” Shining said. Cadence nodded for it to continue.
“Perhaps, but we were brought here on instinct alone. When predators…came, we had no leader to guide us. We had to learn from…mistakes in order to defeat the enemy. More often than not, we ran from them. But…” The changeling finally let its guard down. It turned away and accidentally turned Rainbow’s feathered wings into insect-like changeling wings. “You can’t… you can’t out run a hungry Ursa Major.” Cadence looked at the bag the Rainbow on the far side held. She gulped. Were their fallen comrades…collected?
“My queen,” The Rainbow bowed, “You are looking at my bag, yes? Did you wish to see what was in it?” Cadence didn’t move. She didn’t want corpses of the vile creatures in her office! While the fake pony let the bag out of her mouth, a lump moved.
“AAAAAHHHHH!!!” She screamed. The lump continued to move until it was out in the open. It was a miniature changeling but with bigger, childish eyes, no wings, and fewer, smaller holes on its legs. Her pupils enlarged at the sight. The Rainbow Dash responsible for the bag became nervous.
“Please have mercy on this nymph, my queen!” The adult stood in front of the youth. “She did not know you did not wish to see her!”
“But Annie, I’m hungry,” The little changeling whined. The child looked at Cadence. “Are you the new queen? Please, may we have something to eat? I’m so hungry and you have all that love-” The older changeling covered her mouth with her hoof.
“Silence! I told you we must respect our queen!” The fake Rainbow hissed. The nymph nodded and ‘Annie’ released her mouth.
Through changeling eyes…
The nymph stared at her new queen. There was so much love radiating off her it filled the room! The smell was intoxicating him. The older changelings had told stories of the most delicious and savory love called unconditional love. This love she almost seemed to be made of had to be it! However, it took all of her strength not to take a quick sample of the delicacy that sat in the room as it just sat in the air so temptingly.
Cadence could not help but stare at the drool coming off the child’s fangs and the longing desire of food in its eyes. It was pretty gross and the thing would not stop staring. She put on a fake smile.
“Is there something…wrong, little changeling?” Cadence asked through her teeth. The foal looked to ‘Annie’. She nodded.
“Can I have some of your love please? Just a little bit?” It asked. Cadence would have screamed in horror at such a request, but it seemed changeling children could effectively use puppy eyes as well.
“Um…” Cadence thought for a moment. She never actually saw love being taken. Chrysalis had her husband under a mind control spell, but she never saw a love stealing spell. A hoof touched her shoulder.
“Don’t do it,” Shining warned, “Don’t forget about all the migraines I got after Chrysalis’s spell,” Cadence moved his hoof.
“But that was the mind control spell. Do you remember what the love stealing spell felt like?” She asked.
“Well…” Shining thought back. After the incident, Cadence told him when she was abducted. His fiancée had been in the shower when Chrysalis stole her from the bathroom window. The fake Cadence cuddled on the couch next to him like nothing was wrong. That was when he felt a tingling sensation. “…it tingled?”
“Permission to speak, my queen?” Annie asked.
“Yes,” Cadence said.
“Unless a pony is low on magic, the process should not be painful at all. As your guard said, victims will only feel a tingle.” She said.
What was she supposed to do? If she denied the child’s request, it would give her awful puppy-dog eyes. If she allowed the child’s request, she risked having all her love and magic taken from her! Cadence looked around nervously. Her husband looked firm on protecting her. The false Rainbow Dashes looked pleadingly at her. Annie seemed to try and assure her nothing bad would happen. And the child had little tears in its eyes.
“Um…okay-”
“Yay!” The child’s horn glowed green. Cadence felt a tingling sensation in her body. It was no more of a disturbance than a fly landing on her. “Thank you, my queen! May she be praised!”
“May she be praised!” The other changelings in the room echoed. They all bowed. Cadence looked at her hooves.
“It just…tingled…” she said to herself. The monsters she feared just ate her love…and almost nothing happened. She quickly looked back over at the bowing changelings. “Is it this easy to feed you?” She pointed to Annie.
“Yes,”
“Are you all hungry?”
“Yes,” Annie answered on behalf of her fellow changelings. “None of us have eaten since our quest to seek the new queen,”
“Not once?” Shining asked. Just as before, Annie waited for her queen to nod.
“Not love, at least. We had to rely on basic foods like grass, hay, leaves, and wild fruits. It is up to the queen to find food for her subjects.”
And as queen of the changelings, it is up to me to find food for my subjects.
Chrysalis’s voice echoed in her head. Cadence was the queen now. Without her, the changelings would starve.
“Can’t you live on physical foods? You did before,” Shining suggested. And again, Cadence signaled her to speak.
“No, not forever. We could gorge ourselves on various meals, but without love, our bodies cannot process the food itself. It will sit in our bodies and do nothing. Cells will no longer be able to create energy and without energy, we will not be able to perform the simplest transformations.” Annie pointed to the misfit Rainbow Dashes. Upon further inspection, their disguises were getting worse. One had holes in his blue furred legs. Another had his fangs showing. “First, the body attempts to make up for the lack of nutrition by absorbing portions of the flesh itself creating holes. Second, the ability to change deteriorates until it is lost completely. Third, the body will purge all materials in the digestive system to further conserve love energy. Finally, often a few days after the purge, the changeling will lie down, become still, and never move again.” The changelings all bowed their heads and lowered their ears.
The princess stomped her hoof into her desk catching everyone’s attention.
“I am Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. I am the Princess of Love so as such, I refuse to let any creature go unloved as long as I can help it!”
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- airbournesquid · 72k words · 452 12 · 5.4k views
- Digital Ghost · 2.8k words · 471 5 · 8.9k views
- H123G · 120k words · 415 7 · 6.7k views
- Thorax · 12k words · 239 5 · 3k views
- Lirg · 51k words · 361 21 · 8.6k views
- Mayhew Cullen · 6.8k words · 893 18 · 11k views
- FaelaArts · 30k words · 108 9 · 2.9k views
- canonkiller · 4k words · 343 15 · 3.8k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.35 seconds
Total duration
913 users online
332,591 hits today, 2,139,894 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Nice to see she got over her initial panic, and is now living up to her Aspect as well as her royal rank.
So the holes in the limbs are signs of starvation? Neat.
Also, given Cadence is the Princess of Love - which logically means her magic is linked to love directly, much as Tia's is to the sun and Luna's to the moon - she probably has a limitless supply of love energy to feed the Changelings with.
Go Cadence go!
Love them like an overbearing mother!
Love them like a neckbeard to a fedora!
Love them like The_Parasprite loves
hatereview blogs!Buffet time!
Oh good the buffet is starting, this'll be interesting. They could probably get alot from flutters as well.
whoa i thought this died! nice, so cadance is gonna start taking care of them. im proud of her. i bet nymphs are even more adorable then a pony!
Had to be done, I'm so sorry
Glad I am not the only one who thought the idea of the holes in the legs being a sign of starvation; it kinda makes sense when I think about it.
4523732 but the love has to come from somewhere (law of equivalent exchange).....perhaps the love they take from her is actually a little from every living thing?
Tis good. rightith more please.
Good chapter, loved that last line!
I wonder if they could feed from the Crystal Heart directly, skipping the step of having to find volunteers to be fed from.
4524216
If that's true, then there would be no major consequence as new beings are born every day. Love is a constant, never ending and given that shining if fine after all he went through, it's clear that it does replenish over time.
4523865
Why wyould you be? You just fed all changelings
4524204
*nod* I first ran across it in The Foal in the Basket and that still feels like the most polished use of that explanation.
The other explanations I've seen are in Integration (sharp-edged for harvesting fungus and providing access to various useful glands within their legs) and various ones related to mass.
(Most of the mass-related ones involve "too heavy to fly otherwise" but the most clever mass-related example being one fic (I forget the name) where their body volume is constant and the holes are what allow them to take on smaller forms.)
Oh what a beautiful chapter!
Cadences are learning to govern the people of the shapeshifter, for sure she is starting to win this for fear of the people of creatures that in addition to the queen have lost some of their members.
Of course now we are learning about the political, military, religious and family of these creatures.
Does everyone see the picture for this story? That is how I felt when I opened my computer this morning. I felt really...
then I felt...
looks like I got my work cut out for me!
Thank you everyone who has Watched, Favorited, Liked, Commented, and just Read. Like seriously, THANK YOU
Good job with this chapter. I think it was neat having Cadence accept the changlings. It was a brilliant idea to have the nymph the one of the key deciding factors on accepting the hive and to be their queen.
Cadence Stamp!
This story is still going pretty good, just needs more updates.
SMOTHER THEM!
4526139 I concure!
Love this story thus far! Chapters could be a little longer, But I find that as long as they stay at least at 1,000 words they are long enough to read and still be entertaining....
You are doing a really good job with writing this story, I'd love to see another update soon because this seams to be a very intersting story as of this moment.
It will be intersting to see what Cadance will do next now that she knows the Changelings are starving to death. And how they kinda work up to a point.
Yay candance to the rescue!
And the baby chageling idea seems to be going around a bit lol
The thing with the holes reminds me of The Foal in the Basket by Pony Blue, though that fic also attributed the black color to malnutrition.
.... Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more!
4528767 I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect that when I titled the chapter
I can't wait for the next chapter so as means of motivation, get off you butt and get to typing! And also have a nice day!
4529061
Yup.
But this magnificent motherfucker wins by a long shot:4523865
Praise the Sun wins.
The child speaks out the most but the adults don't? Is this because they were taught differently and she's young or is the nymph special?
4529276 She's just young. It's kinda like picking your nose in public. Children don't know any better or not to do it in public, but adults have learned not to do it or at least not in public
Wow, this stuff is awesome. Please continue it.
Doing all of the above. Now off to make an egg sanvich.
4531023
Okay, so they have a hive mind but also able separate individual personalities as well. Can they shut off the hive mind, keep certain thoughts to themselves?
4533571 In this story, the main function of the hive mind is to specify thoughts. For example, Cadence asked all the changelings to transform into a pony. But what kind of pony? What color? Height? Weight? And so on
If Cadence had access to the hive mind, these questions would be answered before they could even become questions. Like, think of a bird. What kind of bird did you think of? I bet it wasn't the kind I thought of. If you and I had the hive mind and I asked you to change into a bird, you would know what kind of bird I meant (ostrich) 
It isn't so much mind control or forcing images into one's head, but more of a way to quickly clarify things between the queen and her subjects 
That help?
4533914
Yes, and I was imagining a beautiful peacock, silver and white flying majestically over the everfree forest.
Little confused as to why the malformed rainbow dash didn't like being hugged by Fluttershy, guessing he smelled her love and didn't want to feed without permission. I wonder if the changelings can feed on love that is willingly given to them without using a love stealing spell, since one cannot steal what is given.
4531023 I reject maturity! *Alondro picks his nose on online forums!*
This has allowed me to live to 963 and still feel like I'm only 749!
4534316 pretty much on the Fluttershy part
And though it's called a love stealing spell, it's more like a love eating spell. The spell just lets changelings absorb love from the air just as my hands allow me to take stuff. It could be theft or receiving a gift 
4534407
Yay I was right. Now I want Fluttershy to smoosh that changeling with luv XD
I see... That also makes sense. :)
4529276 I think it is because she's just a little kid and may not know any better.
4537930 .........oops
Deprived of love, the Dash disguises became worse and worse until...
sp1.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.607999367351764121&pid=15.1
Nice to see Cadence stepping up to take the lead. Also, the young one seems to be the only one who think on her own.
Also, I wonder how long Cadence will last under assault of endless questions from her new subjects. Maybe it will even beat Pinkie "Chimi-Cherry-Changa" in level of annoyance.
Adorable baby changelings! MOAR.
Baby changelings!!!
Love is like Insulin!
Wow an awesome start, cannot wait to read more!
These upload dates are really far apart
Crystal Ponies + Changelings = Win
4543117 So insulin is their source of food?