Mismatched Hearts

by Jordan179

Chapter 2: Two Mares in a Bath

Security Check

As the Courier flies into the Hive, the psychic gestalt that is the Hive Mind reaches out, accesses, identifies and embraces her, recognizing her lifescent as belonging to its own Hive, and hence its possessor as a being with both right and duty to pass. Thus the Warriors at the entry-tunnel quietly and smoothly step aside, allowing the Courier to buzz right past them, going deeper into the Hive. Had the Courier actually been the Pegasus whose Mask she had originally been wearing, or a Changeling from another Hive, the reception accorded her would have been considerably more interesting -- and less friendly.

Checking lifescents is a major security function of the Hive Mind. Double-checking is done directly by the senses of the Warriors, who while no mental giants, are individually more intelligent than the Hive Mind on its best days. The Hive-Mind is about as smart as a sheep-dog, though with its ability to gather together and focus a tiny fraction of the combined intellects of the members of the Hive, it has considerable memory and raw power, available for use by its far smarter generators and masters.

It is thus quite capable, for a being so fundamentally stupid. No ordinary Changeling Infiltrator or Equestrian mage can fool it.

Given just what the Queen is planning, operational security is a paramount consideration.

The attack will only work given complete tactical surprise.

---

2. At the Ponyville Spa

The cold February weather made the Ponyville Spa an even more attractive place for the two mares to take refuge. For Rarity Belle, who had worked all day indoors in her Carousel Boutique, the need for warmth was essentially psychological -- her store was well enough heated, but the view outside her windows was chilly, and she preferred an environment in which she might be pampered and in the presence of a friend. And Rarity was, in any case, a confirmed hedonist. Even if a very hard-working hedonist.

For Fluttershy Wind, who had been out in the Everfree Forest looking after her animal friends, bringing food to those who remained awake in the dead of winter and ensuring that those who hibernated -- especially her dear friend Harry Bear -- were safe and sound in their dens, endangered neither by land sliding or waters rising ... for Fluttershy, the warmth of a hot bath and relaxation of a full-body muscle massage was an even more welcome relief.

Fluttershy was not that much of a hedonist, but she was no ascetic. And she had been raised High Born for at least part of her chaotic childhood, so she especially welcomed her little luxuries.

It was also, of course, for both mares an excuse to lounge around together and talk. They had engaged a private chamber; so the only other Ponies coming by at this time in the afternoon were the proprietors, Aloe and Lotus themselves. The two sisters who owned the Spa hailed from the northwest, from far-off Stalliongrad, where baths like these were originally but a practical way of recovering from the cold winds that blew off the Frozen Wastes, elaborated by traditions inherited from the long-vanished North-Realm -- the legendary Crystal Empire. As part of that ancient tradition, the Spa Ponies did not lightly reveal any information overheard from the conversations of their clients.

So Rarity and Fluttershy felt safe to speak freely, and share their secrets.

They were not, by and large, very terrible secrets. Rarity and Fluttershy were both good and honorable Ponies, with little they felt they needed to hide from one another -- though Rarity enjoyed the game of confidentiality; while Fluttershy, whether from her famous shyness or some deeper cause, was naturally-inclined to conceal herself from the prying gaze of Society, seemingly for the sheer love of privacy.

Rarity had, by some standards, a very rich and active social life, including affairs with members of the opposite sex. Though these affairs always stopped short of actual sex -- Rarity had learned from the terrible events of her early teens -- they sometimes skirted dangerously close to that precipice. These affairs were complicated and dramatic, but also inconclusive. Rarity knew that the reason why she bothered was because her image of a Fabulous and mysterious mare on the rise most definitely included romantic intrigue.

She always, at least at the back of her mind, had the hope that this time, she would find The One -- the handsome, sophisticated, wealthy and slightly-older stallion who would see into the depths of her heart, fathom and appreciate her grandest dreams; look into her eyes, sweep her off her hooves and bear her off to a future of eternal connubial bliss. That would be the Happy Ending she had desired for her love life ever since she had been a small filly: very innocent, but precociously-intelligent, devouring book after book of romantic wonder-tales.

Before she had gotten her Cutie Mark. Before had gone off to the Fillydelphia Fashion Institute. Before -- she shuddered at the memory -- Rush Rocks.

So she kept looking, and hoping, though most of the stallions she met were either nice but rather dim colts by her standards; or sharp fellows on the make, who seemed less interested in exploring into her heart than into quite another portion of her anatomy; the part that she generally kept decently concealed beneath her daringly-styled but expertly-wielded tail; and into which she was not about to admit any stallion with whom she did not feel considerably greater emotional connection than she did with those peepers and nosers. She would not degrade herself by permitting such intimacies in anything other than true love. Such behavior, she told herself, would be very un-Fabulous.

So she slept alone.

Though the truth, which she did not like to tell even Fluttershy in these tete-a-tetes, was that sometimes she got sad and lonely and then she hoped against hope that some stallion would be The One, even when she really should have known better. And then she permitted him perhaps a bit too much intimacy.

But she never permitted them the ultimate intimacy. She never had permitted anypony, since Rush Rocks. Since poor dear dead little Diamond, the foal she had been unable to bear alive. She never wanted to be in that position again: pregnant, with no stallion in sight. She still sometimes relived those terrible weeks, alone in Fillydelphia, barely fourteen, hungry and frightened and ashamed; relived them in her darkest dreams; nightmares from which she awoke gasping in horror, a worse horror because it once had been true.

Rarity much preferred to tell Fluttershy funny little stories about her encounters with rude and pushy dates who attempted various indignities upon her person, but whom she overcame with her usual wit and style, and sometimes a good hard-hoofed strategic shove, which was to say with her Fabulousness. The stories were even true: this was how a depressingly-large number of her dates really did end.

The stories not only had the merits of truth and self-flattery; they also tended to deliciously shock Fluttershy. This Rarity found rather funny, as she knew that Fluttershy had herself long been involved in a serious affaire du coeur with Rainbow Dash; an affair that they had fully-consummated half a year ago, and which had burned torridly between them ever since. In other words, Fluttershy was in some ways much more sexually-experienced than was Rarity; though Rarity had dated many more Ponies than had her shy, yellow-and-pink Pegasus friend.

Eventually, Rarity figured out just what it was about her stories that Fluttershy found so shocking. It was not the sex, which in any case in Rarity's stories never went beyond heavy necking. It was the mutual rudeness being displayed; both by the pushy stallions, and by Rarity herself, in the ways she fended them off.

Rarity sometimes wondered if these were Fluttershy's High Born manners showing. Fluttershy was exquisitely polite, one of the things which had originally-attracted Rarity to Fluttershy as a friend, long before they had met Twilight Sparkle, and their own real lives became transformed into something out of a wonder-tale, with occasional moments of stark screaming terror. But that alone could not have been the case: Blueblood was as High Born as Unicorns came, and he was terribly rude; Cloud Kicker was almost as High Born as was Fluttershy, and her conduct was simply unspeakable.

No, it was something unique to Fluttershy; something which Rarity had never seen displayed by anypony else. It was as if Fluttershy had a much higher threshhold of trust than did other Ponies, but once she did decide to trust one, her trust was utterly-unreserved. Within that orbit of trust were Rainbow Dash, Rarity herself, Twilight Sparkle and the rest of their friends (including dear Spike, she thought warmly), and of course her animals. Fluttershy tried to interact only with those in that magic circle -- and toward those beings, whether Pony or other creature, she displayed a degree of love and kindness which Rarity found phenomenal. She had the complete love and loyalty of her animals; among them, she moved like a queen ...

There was some deep truth here, something implicit in the pattern by which Fluttershy lived her life, something akin to but subtly alien to the emotional patterns of normal Pegasi, just as Fluttershy herself had very clearly never been a normal Pegasus, not even for an eccentric scion of the highest of the High Clans. It was rather as if, to Fluttershy, there was some magic circle, some social definition deeper and stronger than the normal concept of Friendship, and her trust and loyalty to those within that circle was nigh-absolute. As if those within the circle were in a special sort of way her family ...

---

Those who thought Ponies obsessed with Society and Fashion to be naturally silly and shallow and stupid creatures would have found Rarity a revelation. She was highly-intelligent -- not quite on the level of Twilight Sparkle, or (in her very alien way) Pinkie Pie -- but in the top one percent of Ponykind in general. Her mind was diamond-sharp and multi-faceted, able to focus with laser-like intensity on a single problem, or spread her attention out to embrace a whole plethora of tasks. She was one of the most brilliant artists of her day. And she was a very, very good friend of Fluttershy Wind.

Through her friendship with Fluttershy, she had picked up a surprising amount of animal lore. And, of course, the Equestrians understood animals far better than might other Industrial Age civilizations at their level of technosocial development -- they had, for instance, for more than a millennium known about the evolution of species as part of their intellectual heritage from the Age of Wonders, transmitted to them through the Crystal Empire. Rarity had received an excellent general education, and fully-grasped most of it.

The concept that her mind was groping toward as she lay lazily in the bath, enjoying the play of warm water as it caressed the sensitive zones of her neck and the underside of her barrel, was "eusociality." The attribute possessed by some small swarming insects, such as ants and bees ... why were her wandering fancies lighting upon the notion of an ant or bee queen the size, and more importantly the intelligence, of a Pony ...?

Almost, in that moment, Rarity's powerful, pattern-sensitive mind touched upon the truth ...

In that moment, she came closer to it than any Pony who had ever seen Fluttershy, save for two Ponies who were over two and a half millennia old, and had personally known both the Flutter Ponies and the creatures they had become under the lash of the power of their own poor, mad former best friend. And even the Royal Pony Sisters no more than suspected, and suspected but a portion of the truth.

Had she hit upon it at that moment, things might have gone rather differently a few months in the future. History would have been changed. Wars might have been avoided; other wars might have been fought instead.

And, on a lesser scale, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy Wind might have been happier in the years immediately to come.

But she did not see it.

---

Fluttershy broached the subject in her usual indirect manner, by hints and circumlocutions which made it clear to Rarity that there was something troubling the mind of the yellow-and-pink Pegasus, until Rarity had little choice but to worm the truth out of her. It did not bother Rarity to play this game: it was no more or less than they had been doing ever since they first became friends, around a decade ago. Rarity had nowhere better to be, and she was more than willing to advise her best friend on any topic to which she might be able to provide a useful answer.

To describe this dance in detail would be to waste space in this story and the time which it would take you to read it. Suffice it to say that both were experienced and adept at this waltz, and -- in the end -- Rarity got Fluttershy to succinctly ask the question.

"Rarity ... you've been in all sorts of difficult romantic situations ... more than me, anyway ... not to say anything improper about that ..."

"I may safely say that, whether by sad personal experience or knowledge vouchsafed by others, I have some familiarity with the problems that may be presented by l'amour," Rarity replied, smiling roguishly. "Is there any problem on which you seek my advice?"

"Well ..." Fluttershy blushed and almost hid under her mane, then blurted it all out in a single gasped question, "What do you do if you think that somepony isn't really all that attracted to you any more?"

Rarity's eyes widened. "Are you saying that the ardor of Rainbow Dash is cooling toward you?" she asked.

"Eep!" Fluttershy hid back behind her mane. "I didn't say that," came her muffled protest. "I mean it's not necessarily true. But, um ... maybe?"

"Fluttershy ..." Rarity was as close to being at a loss for words as she ever became in a purely social situation, which is to say that she was very briefly deprived of her usual verbal super-fluency. "I am surprised ... I would be shocked ... if Rainbow Dash no longer loved you. For what reasons do you believe that she is losing interest?"

"Oh," Fluttershy said earnestly, "I don't mean to imply that she no longer loves me. Rarity ... Dashie and I have been friends since we were little fillies together. We've always loved each other. We always will love each other. Our mutual affection is not at issue."

"Then what is --?" asked Rarity, momentarily mystified. Then she put two and two together. "Oh," she said. "You are speaking of the more physical aspect of your romantic relationship."

Fluttershy nodded.

Another Pony might have assumed, regarding the shy, gently-reared Pegasus, that Fluttershy meant that Rainbow Dash was being too sexually-demanding. Rarity, however, knew Fluttershy almost as well as did Rainbow Dash -- and probably better, if one excluded the specific sense of carnal knowledge. To be sure, Dashie had known Fluttershy longer, but Rarity had a far deeper understanding of equine character than did their bluff rainbow-maned mutual friend.

Rarity was well aware that Fluttershy's libido was greater even than her own, and far greater than that of Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash, as far as Rarity could tell (she was nowhere nearly as close a friend of Dashie as she was of Fluttershy) regarded sex as something one might do with someone one loved, but not a very important part of life. In contrast, while Fluttershy had to really trust somepony to even touch them, when she warmed to somepony she warmed without much in the way of reservations -- and she had a lifetime of suppressed desire driving her.

It had been Fluttershy who had decided to make Rainbow Dash her lover, and -- as far as Rarity could tell based on the things Fluttershy told her and what she observed of their relationship from the outside -- Fluttershy had always controlled the intensity and pace of the affair. Dashie was a boisterous, boastful athletic warrior in the noblest Pegasus tradition, but Shy? Shy was, in her own strange way, almost a queen; utterly dominant, when she chose to be.

Again, Rarity came close to some sort of realization; so close that she could almost feel her mind tentatively feeling around the completion of the pattern she sensed. It was a rather annoying sensation, and to pursue it would get in the way of helping Fluttershy, so Rarity forced her mind back onto the main topic of discussion.

"I presume," Rarity said slowly, "that you desire physical intimacy on a more frequent, and perhaps intense basis, than does Rainbow Dash?" She watched Fluttershy's expression carefully while she asked the question.

Fluttershy blushed deeper, and nodded vigorously.

"I see,"said Rarity, and she was perhaps starting to understand, though she needed some more information to complete the pattern she was sensing between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. It was not merely what Fluttershy was telling her now; it was the combination of those recent revelations with a whole array of data regarding the two lovers: everything which they had stated or she had observed or extrapolated, which Rarity's mind effortlessly assembled into a network of linked informational nodes, all affecting the others. With two Ponies she knew as well as she did Shy and Dashie, it was almost easy.

"Fluttershy," Rarity asked her, "forgive me for being so blunt, but exactly how do you indicate to Rainbow Dash that you wish to make love to her?"

Fluttershy couldn't possibly blush any more, so she didn't.

"Um, well ..." she began, twirling one loop of her long pink mane between a wing and a forehoof, "Usually I'll just start, um, hugging and kissing and cuddling her, um, rubbing up against her side and leaning into her, you know ...?"

Rarity did know. "And do you say anything to her, in particular?"

"Um, well ..." Fluttershy strove to recall. "We'll be talking about things when I start doing this and I guess we continue talking about things. And sometimes I smile at her and sort of giggle, and give her a look ... um, is that talking?"

"In a sense," affirmed Rarity. "But I mean, rather -- do you say anything to her to make her inclined to return your romantic affections?"

"Well ..." Fluttershy thought about it harder. "Well, I let her know I'm interested. And that I want it. And then she responds -- or, more often now, doesn't respond." Her tone, at that last part, was desolate.

"In what ways does she fail to respond?" asked Rarity, carefully watching Fluttershy's face.

"Um ... well she won't really make love back to me, or she'll only do so really, well, fast and not that well. Sometimes she says she has to go do something else. Or she'll claim she has a headache ... actually, sometimes she does have headaches, especially after she crashes into things ..."

"But sometimes she's just pretending?"

"Yeah," said Fluttershy, ears drooping. "I can tell when she's not really interested ... more than she knows. I'm really sensitive to when somepony really likes me or not ... I can tell that she's saying it just because she doesn't want to ... you know."

"Hmm," Rarity stroked her chin with one hoof. "Does she sometimes still want to ... you know?"

Fluttershy nodded. "But usually now it's when there's something special ... when we have a lot of time before and we've been affectionate with each other for a while. It used to be almost all the time ... now it's just sometimes."

Rarity thought some more about this.

"I think I know your problem," she finally said.

"You do?" asked Fluttershy. "Um ... what is it?"

"The infatuation," said Rarity, soberly. "It has faded."

Fluttershy's face seemed to crumple in on itself. "You mean,"she wailed, "Dashie doesn't love me any more?"

"No, no," Rarity corrected her friend hastily. "Darling -- every love affair begins with infatuation -- but that never lasts more than a few years tops." Rarity was pretty sure of this: it both made sense in context of her social pattern recognition abilities -- and she'd read it in Cosmarepolitan.

"It's only been a bit over one year!" protested Fluttershy.

"Yes, well ... Rainbow Dash not exactly the most romantic mare in the world. You may perhaps have noticed that. A little."

"A little," Fluttershy acknowledged. "Though I think she still really likes me. She just isn't that much into ... you know ... any more."

"Oh," said Rarity, "Rainbow Dash loves you. I doubt that will ever change, no matter how your affair turns out. Whether you break up -- or get married, for that matter. I am not talking about that."

"Um ... I guess that's good," replied Fluttershy. "I mean," she said in a sudden burst, "Dashie's been my best friend since we were both small, so I'd be even more sad if she didn't like me any more!"

"Have no fear," Rarity reassured her. "Rainbow Dash loves you, and she enjoys your company. I've noticed that. What we must do," she continued, "is work out how to get her excited by you again."

And work it out they did, in a long and exceedingly-intimate conversation which made Rarity very glad that Aloe and Lotus, who occasionally came to renew the soaps and bath oils, did not repeat such secrets of their clients as they overheard.

When it was over, Rarity and Fluttershy were physically very clean and refreshed, but emotionally rather exhausted. But it felt like a good sort of exhaustion, to Rarity. The sort of emotional exhaustion that results from doing the right thing, from expressing things which had long needed to be aired.

She had, after all, given of herself to solve her best friend's most pressing problem. She had shown Fluttershy how to better communicate with Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy's shyness sometimes made it hard for her to open up to anypony, but now Fluttershy would be able to be a bit more honest about what bothered her.

From now on, the course of Fluttershy's romance with Rainbow Dash should run smooth.

It was not as if Fluttershy had any really deep, dark secrets after all.

Homecoming

Down, down went the Courier, down along twisting tunnels, lit only by dimly-fluorescing patches of greenish-yellow glowing fungi adhering to the walls, growing in a manner seemingly-random but actually rich with positional and directional information to the rightful denizens of this Hive. Down, down, on, and on the Courier went, now through great concourses where several tunnels met, up and down, down along ramps and along galleries that overlooked great hollow spaces deep within the Hive. Down and on past more Warrior guards, and through the halls where crawled the teeming throngs of the Workers.

To any of the Equestrian Three Kinds -- save for a very few who had been unfortunate enough to be made Captive, but fortunate enough to be trusted with a small degree of freedom within whichever Hive held them -- this would have been an eternally-shadowed world of subterranean gloom, the domain of hideous insectile horrors, whose vague resemblance to the equine form only made them so very much worse. Even most Trustee-Captives only adapted to such a place out of stringent necessity -- and the dark mistress of this Hive rarely allowed Captives to become Trustees.

To the Courier, of course -- and still more to his numerous siblings, half-siblings, and close cousins who never even briefly ventured Outside (for the Hive was, essentially, one gigantic extended family, with the selfish-altruistic bonds of eusociality rarely being strained past second-cousinhood, and most of that family was born, lived and died without ever having to risk themselves beyond its sheltering limits) -- the Hive was purely and simply home. All those things that made it such a terrible place by Equestrian standards, made it a veritable paradise for its rightful inhabitants.

The dim fungal lighting, which would have strained the vision of most Ponies, provided just the right level of illumination for huge Changeling eyes. The hot, humid air was both ideal for Changeling metabolism, and promoted the growth of that and many other beneficial fungi which were part of the Hive's life support systems. What to an Equestrian Pony would have been a reek of alien scents was to its Changeling inhabitants an enticing mélange providing both all sorts of valuable information and a source of emotional comfort. Those smells, and the many warm bodies brushing past and occasionally crawling over each other, and even the Courier, were a reminder that he was not alone, and thus a source of emotional comfort.

This part of the Hive was indeed so pleasant by Changeling standards that the Courier wished that he might linger here longer, mingling with his siblings and cousins, and join with them in rustling dance and chittering, meeping conversation. Indeed, for a moment he wished that he might be once again a nymph, lacking serious social responsibilities beyond a rough requirement to mind his nurses and teachers.

But, of course, such was impossible. The Courier had been sent on a crucial mission. He bore important information. He had a duty to the Hive.

So he continued on to the end of the chamber, to the Warrior-guarded gates, beyond which lay the center of the Hive, the center of his world.

Beyond which lay the throne-chamber of Queen Chrysalis.

Author's Note:

This is Rarity in early YOH 1503, before her feelings for Spike have yet gone beyond strong friendship and protectiveness toward him. To be fair, Spike is as yet only 12 (he turns 13 later that year), while Rarity is 20 going on 21 -- it would indeed be monstrous for her to be sexually attracted to someone who is still a child. Things become more complex later on.

Rarity is the one member of my Mane Six who -- at this point in her life -- "dates" and "fools around" in our own cultural terms. Fluttershy is, obviously, very much in love with Dashie (the subject of this story), but that doesn't take the form of "dating" but rather of far older Pegasus courtship behaviors. Applejack pines after her lost Landscape, though she cries only on the inside. Twilight and Pinkie's sex drives are as yet still unawakened -- both those two are very neotenous mares.

---

Appropriate theme music for the revelation of the interior of Hive Chrysalis:

---

Changelings are eusocial in the Wilsonian-Dawkinsian sense of everyone within a given Hive being close genetic relatives. Pony genetics can't manage the trick that many eusocial insects have of 150% siblinghood (where each sibling is three-quarters biologically-identical to oneself) -- not even Discord could Twist things that far -- and furthermore each normal Changeling hive is multi-Royal, with one Queen and a number of subordinate Princesses producing offspring, a situation which some real species of ants also manage.

Nevertheless, consanguinity can be arranged so that everyling in a small Hive is least a maternal first cousin of everyling else, and even in a large Hive like Hive Chrysalis in the YOH 1503, right before her first invasion of Equestria, noling is more distant kin to anyling else than second cousinship. Changelings being far, far smarter than ants or wasps or bees, their instinctual loyalties can easily stretch that far.

Indeed, in an abstract sense, the smartest Changelings -- such as Chrysalis or the members of her High Council -- can consider all Lingkind part of their extended family. That's part of the problem with Chrysalis, of course -- if she wasn't capable of thinking like that, she never might have formed an ideology based around unifying all Lingkind and making them the mistresses of the world.

But then, Chrysalis isn't a very normal sort of Changeling, even Changeling Queen, now is she?

---

The Hives are pleasant places for the Changelings because the Changelings have bent two and a half millennia of biomantic genengineering and subterranean architectural expertise towards making them such. They are horrible places for members of the Three Kinds because of the Changeling cultural isolation of the Long Hiding: after the Reconciliation ends this isolation, and Changeling and Equestrian cultures merge, they become more pleasant by Pony standards as well.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

It is fascinating to see Rarity's mind at work, crystallizing conclusions out of the information available, sometimes to the point that she has to forcibly redirect that deductive precipitation from one that's already mostly formed. No wonder she loves mystery novels.

Had she hit upon it at that moment, things might have gone rather differently a few months in the future. History would have been changed. Wars might have been avoided; other wars might have been fought instead.

And I can't help but wonder how terrible those other wars might have been, and how they might have interacted with the greater conflict. From a long-term perspective, perhaps it's better that Rarity didn't determine Fluttershy's alien heritage, though I suppose only you can say for certain there.

Meanwhile, Hermes drew closer the Courier approaches his Queen.

[Bloody_Tofu]

Ohhh oh wow I’d forgotten about this absolute gem. Time to reread everything!!!

Glad to see this updated though I can’t comment on much till I refresh my memories.

[TitaniumTao]

It's kinda odd that all of the mane six plus spike are intuitive, yet each in different ways and with different subjects. Rarity with her social patterns, Twilight with magic, Pinkie with probability, Fluttershy with fauna, Rainbow with physical acts, and Applejack with with flora.

Honestly I can still see the deep hives still being uncomfortable for the other kinds, just like cloud cites, unicorn spires, and sea palaces to the others. After all the others are a bit more specialized.