Let's Try This Again

by HypernovaBolts11

Chapter V - Caught

He woke up with a pounding head, sat up, and found that he preferred the bubble. A few pieces of metal were attached to his body in some of the most bothersome places. A shackle had been closed around each of his hooves, and a few chains were woven through the holes in his front left leg. There was even a cold metal choker around his neck. He snapped fully awake upon realizing that, and tried to track the chain, finding it firmly rooted to the wall.

He frowned at the thing, and bit his lip. He gave the chain an experimental tug, only to shudder when the rough metal rubbed against the sensitive inner flesh exposed on the walls of the holes. He hated that feeling, and promised himself that, if he ever had the chance, he'd put similar holes in one of Twilight Sparkle's legs before threading a rope through them.

"Do those holes serve any purpose?" a painfully familiar voice asked him.

He narrowed his eyes at Twilight, who was on the other side of the bars that formed the fourth wall in his cell. He watched the candle flame next to her flicker a bit, dancing back and forth on her breath. He bared his fangs and pulled his lips back in a snarl. He tried to melt the bars with his magic, so he could at least see his capture without obstruction, perhaps seduce her, and make himself a delectable meal in the process.

Nothing happened, and he growled at her as he prodded his horn with a hoof, to find a sort of ring attached to it. He maintained his growl, and slowly leaned forward, imagining how good her magic, perhaps her fear, maybe even her pride, would taste to him. He fell forward, and yelped like a hurt dog as the chain in his leg pulled his hoof back.

He sat back up, and considered his leg with scrutiny. He sighed and held up the leg, jangling the chains a bit, cringing at the sensation of cold metal on his soft flesh. "These holes. You see how thick the chitin is at the base of my leg?" he asked the unicorn, glancing at her to check that she was looking.

Twilight nodded slowly, and jotted down notes in a well bound book, with a hard black cover and perfectly aligned pages. She said, "Yes." She gave him a curt nod, seeming to forget —or not care— that he had just growled at her, and, before that, pinned her against the wall.

He continued, "Well, the unfortunate thing about chitin is that it's really heavy. And, rather than needing to lug around so much chitin, there are holes in my legs, which have no chitin at all." He watched her for a moment, a bit intrigued that she was being serious about the question. "Aside from serving as the worst pleasure points ever, they can also be trained to secrete different toxins, a few of which I have learned to make, but not nearly as many as a few soldiers."

Twilight seemed to be completely fascinated by this information, and only looked up from her notes when a sudden realization hit her. "Oh, sorry about that," she lit up her horn, and the chain in his leg thinned, as though squished, then drew itself back between the holes, not touching his inner flesh even once as it went. It bundled itself up, and lay down next to the wall.

The changeling examined his leg for a moment, glancing up at the unicorn a few times, a bit surprised, and searched his memory for that term ponies used. He slipped his tongue between the holes in his leg, cleaning them of dust, which he spat out. "Th-thank you," he said, unsure of himself.

Twilight watched him intently, and said, "No problem." She sat still as the changeling finished cleaning out his leg, then made a few more frantic notes. She waited for him to finish before asking, "So, if you're not a soldier, what are you, exactly?"

He frowned, and admitted, more to himself than her, "Lost." He looked down at the floor, and traced shapes in the dust on it with an idle hoof. He said, "I... I was the Queen's last drone... but the others decided that they'd had enough of monarchy, and chased us out. So now I'm just... lost." After a long pause, his unusually equine ears pricked up, and he muttered, "Though, you probably meant to ask why I have some pony features. I'm not supposed to engage in combat, so I don't need every part of my body to hug my chitin in order to avoid getting sliced off, so my ears can be shaped more like yours."

That was a lie, a logical explanation, but far from the truth. His ears were shaped like those of a pony, and he could move his eyes independently of his head, not because of any advantage, but because his mother had no sense of self preservation when she saw something she wanted, and when she wanted something she couldn't have, she would do crazy and stupid things to get it; drinking a potion, whose most frequent users were interspecies couples who wanted children, for example.

Twilight's quill made an emphatic scratching sound, then the book closed. Twilight stood up, moved a bit closer to the bars of his cell, and asked him, "This has nothing to do with the book, but I feel like I should ask, what's your name?" Her horn just poked into the cell.

He snorted, amused, and looked up at her. He held her gaze for a moment, thinking about how to even answer such a ridiculous question. "Queens and heroes have names, but I don't have one," he said. He thought for a moment, recalling a sort of pet name his mother had used to address him when he'd been little. "Love Bite, that was, I suppose, a sort of name."

Twilight had to be at least a little conscious of how easily he could have darted up to her, placed his horn against hers, and drained her of all of her magic. She was risking so much just by standing there, but he didn't know why.

He lunged forward, and placed his curved horn against hers, attempting to steal her power, only for nothing to happen, save for the unicorn flinching a bit. He blinked, stupefied as to why that hadn't worked. He looked around, trying to see if there was some shield spell between the bars of the cell.

Twilight touched her hoof against the ring on his horn, reminding him.

He winced at his own idiocy. He couldn't even understand how he'd forgotten about the ring. Perhaps taking the form of a pegasus had let him forget what a horn felt like, and a lack of one had become the norm on a subconscious level. But, no, if that had been true, he wouldn't have tried to massage it when it hadn't been there.

Twilight giggled at him, an act that he didn't quite understand her reasoning for. Was she laughing at his mistake? Was she amused by his childhood nickname? She didn't make any sense to him. She seemed to despise him, yet, found him a joy to be around. She sat down at her book and opened it again. She lifted her quill to the page, jotted down a few things, and asked him, "What do you think about love?"

He blinked at her, and tried to figure out what social rule she was exercising that he'd forgotten. He eventually, having come up with nothing, said, "It tastes nice, I suppose." He looked at her, and narrowed his eyes. "Why do you ask? You are a pony. You can feel love, so why bother asking me about it?"

Twilight shrugged, her quill flying over the paper. She said, "It seems like a good question to ask someone who eats it. It's the kind of question most ponies have the same answer for." She looked up at him, and held his gaze for a moment. "Do changelings fall in love?"

He shook his head and said, "Not in the way you're thinking about, no." His eyes pointed at the floor, then wandered aimlessly, until they locked onto the unicorn again, who was busy taking notes, enthralled in her project of sorts. He watched her for a bit, not really watching, but wondering.

"I... When a changeling is summoned to incubate eggs, because the population isn't high enough, it goes to the queen, who produces eggs. The changeling is given eggs, and is fed for three months, until its eggs hatch," he told her.

Twilight looked up at him, and raised an eyebrow at him. She said, "I don't think you should waste your time staring at me like that." She sounded cold, removed, maybe warning, but he couldn't tell why.

"Am I not supposed to look at you?" he asked her. He lay down, crossing his front legs.

"You're staring, that's different," she told him. She folded her front legs in front of her and smiled. It wasn't a cool, wry smile, but a warm, homely one. "Are you sure that changelings don't fall in love?" She seemed smug, knowing, almost too much so. She seemed to be bordering on laughter, but not quite.

He nodded and said, "Yes, I'm positive. Workers are connected by a hive mind for the majority of their lives. They don't have feelings, but feed upon those of prisoners. They can barely think as individuals. It is best they think as a collective. I'm a drone, and I'm barely able to think for myself, much less feel anything."

He cleared his throat, then continued, "I miss my mother. I wish that my father wasn't dead. I suppose that I'd like to see you on the ground, while I sapped your body of magic, but it's not necessary for my survival, so I don't care." He looked her in the eye as she wrote fervidly.

"But I don't feel. I cry. I fear. I fight. I fly. I want. I hurt. I die. But I do not love. The mere thought of such a thing seems ludicrous to me. I am, by all accounts, another animal, a smart animal, maybe even a dangerous animal, but an animal, not a pony," he told her. He slowly lifted a hoof to one of the bars on his cell. "I am a changeling, albeit an odd one, but not a pony."

Twilight's quill scritch-scratched on the paper, paused, dipped into a small container full of ink, and the page turned before it continued. She asked, "What about those infiltrators, don't they separate from the hive mind in order to better fill a role as a pony?"

He shook his head. "There are several hive minds. One for the workers, who go about their lives maintaining the hive, tending to the queen, and reproducing. The soldiers, who will one day become infiltrators or spies, are mostly independent. One for the infiltrators to use between missions, exchanging information with the spies. The spies are always keeping track of targets and relaying information to the infiltrators," he told her.

Twilight nodded slowly. "How are you any different from a worker?" she asked him. She continued taking notes, occasionally glancing up at him, as though, if she didn't, he'd somehow escape. She knew for a fact that her prisoner wasn't going anywhere, not only because he was locked up, but because if he did get out, he'd have nowhere to go.

He said, "I was born, not hatched. I was born as an only child, without any clutchmates. I have never been a part of any hive mind. I have always been nearby to the Queen. She was a constant in my life, until..." He trailed off, trying not to remember the sight of his mother's eyes as they'd rolled closed, having never even said goodbye.

He sniffled a bit, and shook his head. He said, "Perhaps, I, as one so removed from them, can experience basic things, such as sadness, anger, joy, surprise, et cetera. But such a seemingly complex thing as love, I think not. I would appreciate my mother to be still alive, but I don't think I loved her. All of my attachment was likely a direct result of necessity. I needed nourishment, and she gave it to me, so I came to depend on her."

Twilight sat up and waited for her quill to finish with its task. She yawned a bit, and said, "I'm going to bed. It's almost midnight. Good night, Love Bite." She stood, arched her back like a cat, and stretched her legs in front of her. She smiled at the changeling and added, "Maybe tomorrow, I can start removing chains, if you feel as cooperative as you were tonight."

He watched her as she turned around, and stuck his hoof between the bars. "Twilight... You should just pass me to the royal guard. They'll kill me quickly, get it over with, and you'll never have to deal with me again. I'll starve here, and it'll be less than pleasant for both of us, as I'll grow more and more desperate with each passing day," he said.

Twilight looked at him, wiping her eyes with a hoof. She leaned down, blew out the candle, and said, "I won't let you starve. You're too important to wind up pushing up the daisies." She turned back around, and made her way to the back of the room, whereupon she ascended the spiral staircase which traced the inside of the wall.

He caught himself staring at her again, for which he scolded himself. He waited for the wooden door to close, then hissed at himself in his native tongue, "Can changelings fall in love? What a silly question." He looked up at his horn, the ring making a bothersome image in his vision. He sighed, and lifted a hoof over his head. He lined up one of the holes in his leg with his horn, and carefully lowered it over the pointed bone.

He rotated his hoof carefully, so the pointed tip of the horn wouldn't puncture his sensitive flesh. He kept pulling the hoof down, shuddering as the ring bumped against the outer rim of the hole. He snarled in frustration, and willed his body into a few different shapes, widening the hole, until the ring slipped through it.

His leg met his forehead, and he smirked proudly. "Silly unicorn," he chuckled to himself. He closed the hole as tightly as he could, clamping it down on his horn. He grit his teeth as the straight grooves in the bone were filled with soft, slick flesh. He bit his lip and pulled his hoof up, pushing the ring off of his horn, and sending it flying through the air.

The silver ring clattered against the cold stone of the ground, and rolled a bit, then sang as it spun down, and finally came to rest. It lay there, its spell broken, its usefulness expired.

The changeling prince smiled as he felt raw magic flowing through his body, his power restored, freed. He lit his horn, and lifted the quill from its place outside of his cell. He lifted it to the keyhole in one of his shackles, and fiddled with it for a bit. A triumphant glee filled his eyes when the tumbler clicked, and he pulled the shackle open. He repeated this process with the rest of his restraints, each clattering to the floor.

He stretched his hooves out in front of him, and yawned as he arched his achingly unused back. He flitted his wings a few times, and craned his neck, glad to be free of the choker. He walked over to the ring, picked it up in his magic, and turned it over so he could better see it.

He slipped the ring through one of the holes in his leg, which he then tightened around it, so it was hidden. He paced about his cell for a bit, trying to walk normally with the piece of metal in his leg. Once he was satisfied that the unicorn wouldn't suspect his movement, he galloped in circles through his cell.

When he tired, he sat down, lifted the choker back to his neck, and clicked it into place. He shackled himself back up, moved the matter displaced by the ring in his hoof to his horn, and reshaped it so it appeared that he still had a silver ring over his horn, as though he'd never even removed the ring. He lay down, and, a bit uncomfortable, but proud, closed his eyes, allowing sleep to consume his tired mind.

Comments

[herp]

Having searched through almost 10 chapters, I feel I need to remind you that a character tag is for a character that apperas frequently in the story. Chrysalis does not belong there.

[tsaukpaetra]

Funny, Love is providing infinitely more useful as a mole than Chrysalis ever was. Stupid Celestia, you done goofed!