"So changelings have special talents too?" Shining looked to Careful, then to the new drone who was shaking like a leaf. "What's your name?"
"Slink, My Queen." Shining had long since gotten used to being called queen, so just nodded to the drone. Getting used to that was almost the fifth most scary thing that had happened so far. The head of the changeling snapped to the side and a beatific expression flooded their features. "My Queen!"
Shining turned his head to the side to see Cadance walking in. She turned heads for a whole new reason now and the stallion couldn't disagree.
"What is going on? I heard another group of drones arrived, is this one of them?" Cadance trotted over to the little changeling her husband had been seeing to, a pink wing curled around the suddenly giggling Slink.
Shining gestured with a black hoof. "Just finding that out myself. Slink, why did you come forward." The words failed to draw the drone's attention away from his wife and Shining had to trot over, closer, and repeat his question. "Why did you come to see me, Slink?"
"Slink is uniquely and amazingly gifted with numbers and sorting, organization runs like ichor in her veins." Careful was fighting every changeling urge to get closer to his queens, if he got as near to them as Slink was he would be doomed to incomprehensible snuggling, just like the little drone. "I think she wanted to help you."
"Help us? Well, it would be useful having another mind focused on this, but how would she-" Shining was cut off as the little drone, her instincts fighting with her mind and losing as she slipped out of the embrace of her two Queens.
"My Queen, I could… please don't come closer…" Slink backed away another step, knowing that if she got trapped by one of those pink wings she wouldn't have the willpower to get free a second time. "I need to help the hive. There are more coming."
"How many?" Cadance folded her wings down at her side but had to struggle with the urge to go and cuddle the drone more. She contemplated a moment on how much more cuddly she had grown during her pregnancy. Most of the changelings didn't mind.
"There was, as of the time I left, nearly five hundred and seventy-three changelings in the hive." Slink's eyelids batted briefly while she recalled the numbers. "I estimate nearly eighty percent will survive the trip-"
"Survive? That is unacceptable!" Shining's hoof came down on the floor. "Where will they be? We need to go and help them… what?" He stopped at the look Cadance gave him, there was a wide grin and… he cheated and leaned on his new changeling senses. Love. Complete and total love.
"You surely don't need to use that to find out I love you?" Cadance had felt the touch of his changeling power, she leaned into her husband. A hoof rubbed along the line, just below his cutie mark where the change was happening. "Seeing you demand to take care of your hive, it was gorgeous."
Fighting free of his wife's coddling, Shining looked to Slink. "How do we go about increasing that percentage?"
Slink's whole manner changed. She had been hoping that their queens were, as the others said, were nice. But this showed care for drones that weren't even technically their hive yet. "You have nearly twenty fighter drones here, along with a dozen infiltrators, send them. The infiltrators can cover the work of your fighters and they can reduce the probability of loss per drone by nearly sixty percent." Shining blinked at the numbers. "That would mean over ninety percent of them will make it."
"And if we send a troop of royal guard, too?" Shining watched the drone's eyes widen further. "What will it take to make that number one hundred?"
"My Queen!" Slink shivered with the intensity of her Queen's question. "I will find out as quickly as I can!"
The train was at least three times longer than any the railway had dealt with before. They had to hook up multiple steam engines to pull it all, but when a princess made a little request, ponies got things done.
Shining and Cadance sat in one of the cars, the train almost completely empty and their carriage certainly was, apart from them. And the drone they both knew as Chitin.
Chrysalis was shaking, she had no idea why the two had sent all the other changelings to prepare in the back-half of the train, but here she was. "My Queens," the words rolled off her tongue far too easily, to Shining she would say them freely, but Cadance still had to work for them, "if you don't have further need of me, I wi-"
"Quiet, please." Cadance looked at the drone, trying to imagine how hard it was for the deposed queen to live in it, to keep in hiding. "You know what we are doing?"
Her mind raced. Chrysalis had been trying to divine the intent of this, but outright asking questions led to a drone being remembered for such. She shook her head, remembering the command. Then she mentally kicked herself for following the command of Cadance.
"It seems we have accidentally bonded an entire changeling hive." Cadance looked out the window, but could see 'Chitin's reaction in the glass. Clearly the queen hadn't realized what a danger she had put her whole hive in. "That is why your numbers have been swelling, the nearest changelings were rushing to join us."
Chrysalis trembled in shock. She reached out toward 'her hive' and felt only the beating presence of the two other occupants of the carriage, with a distant tug of the other drones on the train. Had she really lost her own hive?
"Stop it, Cady." Shining marched up beside the drone that he knew to be Chrysalis. He put one black leg around her and pulled the smaller changeling in against his side.
Cadance sighed and turned back, to see her husband protecting the mare that had hurt him the most. "I thought I could be angry at you, I really wanted to. For his sake." Cadance gestured to her husband. "I steeled my heart, Chrysalis-"
"YOU KNOW?" Chrysalis burned with fire, intending to become her full form but… it only sort of worked. She was certainly bigger than other drones, but she lacked the full stature she had, she lacked her mane, her tail; the mare now sported fins instead of hair. She struggled and fought against the sensation and found, at least, her mane and tail return.
Cadance walked all the way over and reached a hoof out to the mare who had worked so very hard to ruin her wedding and steal her husband. "I did. You feed so much stronger than the others, silly."
A wing draped around Chrysalis and she wanted to fight it, to hate it. She failed on both counts. "I love him…" She looked up at Shining and felt that love burn as bright as ever. A choice came to the changeling, she could keep fighting, possibly regain her stature, or she could take a gamble.
Squeezing the deposed queen, Cadance beamed. "All the changelings in our hive love him." She got a startled look from Chrysalis. "Let's go save your drones."
Chrysalis shook. She needed to make a decision and it would be a life-changing one. The time she had spent in the castle, under the 'care' of Shining and Cadance, had been the best time in her life. Food was plenty, her own drones around her didn't once hesitate to help her, support her, as she got used to her smaller body and the new feelings it brought.
The decision was made easily. Chrysalis' head and heart were both sick of fighting and struggling and the whole reason for her invasion of Canterlot was being solved by the two ponies before her. "Your drones, My Queen." It still felt hard to say, but it was easier now she realized how completely she had been both bested and accepted.
It's really hard not to like those little buggers. They're just so eager to please. It's something I think not enough stories do. After all, what's the easiest way to get love? Being lovable. It really only makes sense enough that they'd be naturally pleasant to be around, when given a chance.
Haha ,Chrysalis just realized she's been had, but finds out it's not that bad!
The invasion is going better than we could ever have dreamed! Practically no opposition!
Keep going! ;)
Well that was dark.
7266338 Dark?
I can with certainty say that I thoroughly enjoy this story, keep it coming!
multiple of their steam engines - multiple of their steam engines
leaned in to her husband - leaned into her husband
of me I wi- - of me, I wi-
easier now she realized - easier now that she realized
*****
Redemption does seem to be a recurring theme in your stories, and I have no problem with that at all. Chrysalis really hasn't done anything to earn that redemption so far. Mostly she's just been the victim of her own bad decisions once again, but this last time Shining and Cadance were there to pick up the pieces.
Still it's a sweet little story and I'm happy to keep reading and see where it all goes.
That's a little precise for a 'nearly' figure. So are there five hundred seventy-two, then?
7266527 All fixed. And yes, she is nervous and not wanting to give inaccurate figures, but also not wanting to be wrong.
7266231 Helpful, kind, enjoyable, and without a doubt useful? That's just a winning combo, but its true. There's a human disposition that is too good to be true that often jades the approach. I loved that this is perhaps the second story ive seen that the drones are trying to be better, with knowing that they can. And the work shows how much better it is for it.
7266400
Albeit comically, the fact that Chrysalis just loses her will and in the process gives up mostly everything that made her herself is really a kind of thing I would wish on none. It's like you like something so much that you forget about yourself: it's physiological darkness. Or grey-ness, she is not that kind of very deep character as portrayed here.
It's not bad story-wise, though.
7267272 She discovered she had mistakenly given up everything she possessed in the world and then, with the power of love, gave up the last thing stopping her from actually enjoying herself. Her hatred.
7267635
I believe the disagreement lies in the eyes of the beholder. I may have a dim perspective of the world, but when you give up things motivated not by volition but by physiological impulse, it kinda taints decision. It does not imply the decision being bad per se, or that the act of surrendering wrongful thoughts is, well, wrong. I just point the facet of alienation. It's cute, but I like for characters to be tempered in most circumstances. In cheap haphazard words, it subtracts value to the 'redeeming'.
I do agree in the qualification of the 'what' but not the 'how'.
I love tragic comedy, but that's not the intended way to read it, isn't it? So I will leave this just saying what I said was a joke.
7267635
7267712
I do kind of agree with the assessment, though. To be so roundly overpowered by a boiling psycho-magical aura instead of coming to her conclusions on her own is kinda...I dunno. Grim, to me. Congratulations, you're now deprived of all you were, your form, your people, your convictions. And you got that way because you got too close to an abomination for whom the portfolio is not madness but love.
Feels like a weird sort of Stockholm Syndrome or brainwashing to me; perhaps too quick, too easy. It's a cute story overall, don't mistake me, but that whole deal did kinda make me quiver a bit.
7268586 Such was not the intent... maybe a rewrite of that scene is in order.
7268586
7267712
I hope the change better carries my feelings of how her internal struggle went. I treated the matter too lightly, it seems, and paid the price for it.
Thank you, both of you, for telling me.
7268692 Glad to be of service. Mind that I can only speak from my perspective and that I'm a frightfully individualistic sort, so that kind of stuff creeps me out really easily. Always take advice with a grain of salt!
7268705 With one reader saying it, I could pass it off as 'somepony not getting it', but when I had two it became an issue. I hope the changes reflect a greater sense of choice for the former queen.
0.8 * 1.6 = 1.28 > 1.
Excellent work, Slink. It looks like the Royal Guard won't be needed at all. In fact, on average, we can probably expect them to be so enamored by our fighters and infiltrators that the new hive members' numbers will grow by 28%!
Go inform the Queens! We'll need a new nursery.
How did you get the cadence emoji?
7269228 yes, do tell.
wow that hade to be hard for Chrysalis to say.
No pun intendet, I guess?
Aaaaand, so, in the end, she's like a smaller version of herself, Princess, so to speak. Nice.
Maybe they can herd, do changelings herd? (I'm stuck on the herd idea again! )
I think Cadence always becomes my favorite when she starts leading changelings. I love this!
9219304 Princess of Food!