Food for Thought

by Crispy42

Chapter 1

The changeling woke up alone in an empty barracks. He yawned and looked at all of the perfectly made cots of his squad members. I must have gone back to sleep after the alarm thought the changeling soldier. He heard some commotion outside and poked his head up to look out the window, his whole squad was gathered outside for what looked like a drill. Quickly, the changeling jumped out of his cot throwing the blanket aside as he scurried out the door. He apologetically pushed his way through his squad members to his spot, causing quite the commotion as the changelings he ran into yelled at him for being late. When he finally got to his correct spot he stood upright in the perfect attentive position, like soldiers do. It was just then that the entire squad took of into the air, in formation.

He stood there in the same spot for a moment with a bewildered look on his face before turning his head slowly to the left, and then to the right. Suddenly realizing his situation he took off after his squad.

After a long and tiring flight he finally saw something peculiar appear over the horizon. It was a shining pink magical dome. As he got closer he realized that the dome was covering an important looking city with a large castle that was coming out of the side of a mountain. He had never seen anything like it before. He no longer saw any of his squad members. Being a weaker flier he had fallen behind and could no longer see any of his squad members, but it was obvious that this city was their destination. The changeling landed in a field near the city that was blocked by the giant dome. Reluctantly he moved his front hoof forwards to touch the dome, it was solid. “This must be here to block my squad or any other intruders from getting in. Either they got in and this must be some sort of stealth mission or they turned around and went home, and I am willing to bet on the first option.” thought the changeling. “I have to get in, but how?” He pushed a little harder on the force field and it reacted by sending little squiggles of white light trough the pink dome where he hit it. This made him think, he might be able to push through if he could hit it hard enough.

The first thing he tried doing was bucking it. The changeling walked up to the force field and turned his back to it, he took both of his hind legs off the ground and kicked them back at the dome as hard as he could. Unfortunately he had positioned himself too close to the dome because his back legs bounced right off of the solid barrier and knocked his face down into the dirt using his front hooves as pivots. Next he thought that he would use gravity to his advantage and fly right in to it, hopefully sending him right through. He took off into the air and flew up as high as he comfortably could and began to plummet towards his target one hoof outstretched. As he got closer he picked up more and more speed until a little mach cone began to form. He was going fast, too fast. He lost control right before hitting the dome and ended up slamming into it belly first with all of his hoofs outstretched. He stuck to the dome for a moment before his head leaned backwards and he fell off. The changeling landed on the ground head first, his horn sticking into the dirt. In the near distance he saw a large rock which gave him another idea. The changeling unsheathed his horn from the earth and flew over to the not quite boulder. First he tried lifting the large rock right then, but he soon realized that it was too heavy to carry over to the barrier, so he rolled it over there first. He spat on his hooves and rubbed them together before taking hold of the rock. After some serious struggle (and many different attempted holds on the rock) he managed to get the rock over his head. He smiled and laughed a little, surprised at his own strength. Now he just had to fly up and drop the rock on the dome, but this proved harder than it seemed. Very quickly the rock became too heavy for him to hold and he lost his balance. Slipping backwards, he dropped the rock on his chest with a thud. His legs flailed upwards as he struggled against the rock. He exhaled and his legs dropped to the ground. If brawn can’t get him through to the other side, then maybe his brains can. He spread out his legs a little and got good footing, a green glow began to form on his horn. As he tried harder the glow got larger and larger and began to look like a big ball of green flames bursting from his head. He pointed his horn at the dome and released all of his magic, but all that came out was a little green puff of smoke. Exhausted, he fell over again into the dirt. He gave up. The rock rolled off of him over his face and down the hill, stopping exactly where it had been when he first saw it. The defeated changeling walked over to the force field, flopped frontwards onto it, and banged his front hooves against it lightly. He sighed in defeat and looked down, pressing his forehead against the dome.

In the distance, a pegasus pony noticed the changeling’s troubles and walked over to him from inside the dome. The changeling looked up at the pegasus with his sad eyes pressed up against the surface of the force field like glass. The pegasus walked over to him and touched her front hoof to the dome above his head. The wall in front of his body became lighter and wavy, he fell through face first. He looked up at her from the ground; she was light grey and had a pretty yellow mane and tail. She extended her hoof to him, he grabbed on and she helped him up off of the ground. She extended her hoof again, this time with a muffin in it, she smiled at him. He hadn’t noticed it before but there was something off about this pegasus. Her eyes were looking slightly different directions. He accepted the muffin and ate it graciously. He hadn’t eaten anything since last night. He smiled back at the pegasus and thanked her for letting him in and giving him the muffin, but all she heard was a bunch of screeching and clicking noises. As he left, she waved good-by and said “Bye, bye changeling person.”

As he got closer to the city, he quickly realized that not all ponies are as excepting as the one he first encountered. Many of them screamed and ran. He disguised himself as a unicorn to avoid suspicion from the towns’ folk; all of the screaming was giving him a head ache. He tried to act casual while walking down the streets but ponies kept asking him questions and saying hello. One pony noticed that he looked lost and tried to help him out “Hey, you look lost. I know, ‘cause I get lost a lot.” the pony threw her hoof over his shoulder and leaned on him a little. He looked at her uncomfortably, but she smiled. Her coat was a purple-ish pink color with a magenta main and her words were slurred “So where ya goin’, *hic*, or I guess. Where are we going?” she smiled at him again. He wished he could speak and understand the language she was speaking so he could politely leave, but he didn’t have much of an option. He gently pushed her hoof off of his shoulder and took off into a back ally. Hopefully he could avoid contact here, and still possibly find his other squad members.

After hours of sneakily searching for his comrades he was ready to give up. He was tired, his hooves ached, he was hungry, and he just wanted to go home. He leaned up against a wall. His body burst into green flame as his disguise burned away showing his true self. He buried his face in his hooves. A single tear ran down his face and dripped onto the ground. He heard some one say “Hey, you! What are you doing back here? Shouldn’t you be inside with the others? I was assigned to patrol this area, not you.” it was a member of his squad. Immediately, he stood up straight and saluted his superior, “Yes sir.” it was always easy for him to know who to salute, because everybody was always a rank higher than him. He stood there with his right hoof on his forehead, still saluting his superior. “Well, go back to base.” said the changeling. “The problem with that is… I don’t know where that is.” he smiled nervously and shrugged. The other changeling sighed and said “Follow me.”

He followed the other changeling all the way to what looked to be an abandoned factory of some sort. It was dark in there, and it took him a second for his eyes to adjust to the low lighting. Inside there were a decent amount of other changelings but certainly not his whole squad. Most of them just seemed to be wasting time, waiting for something to happen. “What exactly are we doing?” asked the changeling. “Weren’t you at the briefing?” asked one of the random changelings waiting inside. He shook his head, looked down and said “No.” the entire room filled with laughter immediately. All of the changelings were pointing and laughing at him. A few of them even fell over from laughing so hard. “Maybe I don’t want to go home.” thought the changeling to himself. “That explains why I found him sitting in an ally.” “Yeah, he’s lost and dumb.” The whole crowd laughed a little longer before explaining to him what was going on. “We were assigned to sneak into the city and find out what areas would be more beneficial to destroy.” “Yup, we already did that. The only thing left for us to do is wait until we hear the signal, then go to those areas we found and encourage other troops to land and attack there.” “Attack? Attack who?” asked the changeling. The group burst into laughter again. “Gee, this kid really is stupid. Who do we attack? The ponies of course. Who else would we attack? The flowers?” “Oh, and what is the signal?” asked the changeling. “You’ll know it when you hear it.”

Suddenly there was a very loud smashing noise and the ground began to shake. “Looks like that’s our cue. Come on, everyone to your battle stations.” shouted one of the higher ranking changelings in armor. Everyone dropped what they were doing and ran outside.
Everyone except for the one changeling, the one changeling that always got left behind. Slower, never allowed to catch up, held back by those who were “better” than him. Just to keep him the way he is, behind, not like the others, different, someone to pick on.
He stepped outside; there was chaos at every corner. Ponies were running in every direction; changelings were falling from the sky by the hundreds, pounding holes into the ground where they landed. Some ponies fought back but most were captured, beat up, on the run, or in hiding.
He just stood there letting it happen. It wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t contributing to the terrible things going on so it wasn’t his problem, he just let it happen. Then he realized, it is his problem, he is contributing to the problem by letting it happen, turning a blind eye just because it wasn’t happening to him, because it wasn’t his area to interject. He then realized what he had to do; he had to put a stop to this, because nobody else would.

He flew up high into the air to get a better look at the situation. Hundreds of ponies were being beaten without even fighting back, for no reason other than the fact that they are different and a food source so it doesn’t matter if we beat them and take there stuff. He heard a scream and saw that the pony with the different eyes who had let him in was surrounded, about to be attacked. He had to save her. He landed right outside the circle of changelings; one of them said “Hey look at this stupid one, its eyes are lookin’ different directions.” they laughed as the circle tightened. One of the changelings got in her face and grabbed her chin “Maybe I can fix that.” she flinched and closed her eyes as he brought his face closer to hers. The changeling grabbed the other changeling that was harassing the pony, and threw him back “Not if I can help it.” the other changeling got up from the ground and said “Hey, what’s the big idea? We’re supposed to attack them, not each other.” the other changelings returned their attention to the scared pegasus that was now curled up on the ground in fear.
The changeling stepped in front of her and held the others back. “We shouldn’t even be fighting the ponies. What have they done to us? Nothing. Every pony I have encountered has tried to help me and have only shown me kindness. What have we shown them? Nothing but hostility. Most of the ponies you have been fighting haven’t even fought back. This pony right here helped me into the city after I tried so hard to break through the force field. Another pony tried to help me get where I was going when I was lost, and one more tried to sell me some real estate for a really good deal, apparently. The point is, the ponies are nice to each other so why can’t we be nice to them?” there was silence in the crowd for a moment.
“But the whole reason we’re fighting is for our food. We need to devour love and the ponies are the best source.” “Yeah, what else will we eat, there is no more love anywhere near our kingdom?” he paused and thought for a moment. “Maybe we don’t have to capture the ponies or trick them to devour all of the love energy from them. We could live beside them and feed off their love in bits and pieces, or find a whole new, less violent energy source. We could build a strong kingdom together, changelings and ponies. With our power and their resources and magic we could form a beautiful bond of friendship and loyalty to create a better living environment for both changelings and ponies.”

The whole crowd of changelings stepped down and cheered, they let ponies free and some left to spread the word to other changelings. The changeling turned to the pegasus he was protecting, she was still curled up on the ground. She opened one eye and saw the changeling standing there with his hoof extended to help her up. She grabbed his hoof, got up, wrapped her other hoof around his neck, and gave him a hug. He wrapped his hoof around her neck too. He had never had a hug before, but it didn’t last long. He was forcefully ripped from her gentle embrace by a wave of energy that threw all of the changelings out of the city. The few changelings that had heard his words would soon forget them and all of his efforts would be useless, for now the changelings had a reason to fight the ponies, revenge.

Comments

[fractalman]

Thoughts should be in single quote marks:
for instance:
I must have gone back to sleep after the alarm thought the changeling soldier.
should be:
'I must have gone back to sleep after the alarm' thought the changeling soldier.