Queen Catalyst stood on the balcony of Blue's Caretaker spire, a hoof draped over the side while another held her chin as she looked out to the frantic movement below her. Tunnelers zipped back and forth from the base of the spire towards what remained of the Cheyenne Mountain complex bringing rock, debris and metal with every trip and returning with enough love to do it all over again. From what Catalyst overheard, the Terrans were planning to excavate their old mountain fortress piece by piece in order to rebuild it with the help of Blue Sun's drones. A lance of jealousy ran through the orange queen's body, causing her wings to chitter with anger. Blue Sun, in all her innocence and idiocy had her own hive. She had a number of drones that followed her will without question and enough love to expand a bit more, should she wish it.
Before Chrysalis, Queen Catalyst was ruler of her own hive. She too had hundreds of drones under her direct command, and none were without the embrace of her hive mind. Now, however, she was alone. Her mind was silent, completely absent the thoughts and observations of her drones in their daily skittering. No more could she witness infiltrators far away winning over their unwitting spouses, gaining their affection in order to feed the hive. No more could she enjoy the successes of her warriors in defending the hive from curious adventurers or occasional beasts.
No, she was left only with the deafening silence of her own thoughts.
Her lips turned into a scowl at the blissful interactions between Blue Sun and her hosts, her friends as she called them. Just as gullible as the ponies had been but with more than a hundred times the emotional power. Just three of them had been enough for Blue Sun and her entire hive while she, Queen Catalyst, sat like a vagrant in the hive of another. Even that plague, the defective, was allowed love. Somehow it had yet to devour the entire hive despite needing more love to sustain itself; the leech often remaining near the love storage at all times.
Pulling herself away from the cheerfulness of Blue Sun, the orange queen walked into the center of the Caretaker's spire. Sure enough, the defective paced back and forth next to the storage, their eyes hungry and impatient. She had warned Blue Sun and the Terrans countless times about the dangers of that thing, but her efforts fell on deaf ears and blind eyes.
A disaster waiting to strike, Catalyst mused. I should have killed you when I had the chance, defective wretch. One day your hunger will get the better of you, and all your hive mates will suffer for your queen's incompetence. Unless...
Catalyst's eyes narrowed in predatory thought at the defective. I could get rid of the defective. Eliminate the threat before it is able to act on its own need for love. A malicious grin spread across Catalyst's face, her sharp teeth visible in stark contrast to her darkened carapace and glowing chitin. The defective is a Caretaker, by the looks of them. A weak body.
The Queen's wishful thinking was soon stamped out the moment another thought struck. The Terrans, Catalyst realized, her expression turning sour. Any action I take against Blue Sun and or her drones, and the Terrans will surely see to my execution. If I am unable to solve the problem directly, there must be another way to remove it.
Catalyst stood up and moved to the inner wall of the spire deep in thought, her vision moving in and out of focus as ideas shifted into place and were discarded at a blinding speed of thought. Finding a place to sit down and allowing herself a spot of calm and relative quiet, she went further into her hive mind of one to brainstorm ideas. Thought after thought was thrown into the void with only silence answering back.
Her drones were gone. Stolen from her. Her mind was gone thanks to Queen Chrysalis.
It was so difficult to think for Queen Catalyst, her frustration mounting at her own inability to perform at the level she had become accustomed to for hundreds of years. Surely she would have discovered some master plan to deal with this defective, but her mind returned only blank answers and wisps of recognition. Thought after thought, plan after plan was lost to the void of her empty hive mind once again, only increasing her hatred of Chrysalis. Even a single drone would help, Catalyst fumed, A single drone with a single voice could provide an approach I would never have considered.
The sound of buzzing wings was faintly recognized by the distracted Queen, her emotions growing more volatile by the minute. Catalyst was lost in her own mind, thoughts of murder and brutality coming to the surface more and more as her plans were thwarted left and right by a lack of input. Mental parts of herself that were now missing because of Queen Chrysalis.
A light touch of her shoulder caused Catalyst to jump out of shock, her vision flooding back into focus in order to shout at who ever had dared to interrupt her. The white face and blue eyes of the defective were staring back, causing Catalyst's heart to skip a beat.
"Um, sorry!" The defective apologized, its hoof lowering to the ground as it looked sheepishly to Catalyst. "I didn't mean to startle you, Queen Catalyst."
Catalyst pressed slightly against the dursine walls of the Spire in order to gain some amount of space from the defective, radiating fear and revulsion from being so close to the white drone. "What do you want?" She buzzed with anger.
"Well, I could sense you being upset all the way down at the bottom of the spire. Are you alright?" The defective wondered earnestly, searching the Queen's eyes for any hint of connection they could share. "You don't seem like you're feeling well..."
"Get away from me, defective. You're a plague upon your own hive and there is no reason to include me as well in its eventual destruction," Catalyst growled, standing up to move even further away from the pale caretaker.
"I've been doing very well," The drone countered with a pleasant chittering and smile, "The longer I remain near the love of the hive and the friends of Blue Sun, the less hungry I feel!"
Catalyst's lips twitched with irritation. "You have been feeding non-stop for days, defective. Nothing will fully sate your hunger, and the moment a drought of love arises those around you will perish in your all consuming hunger. I do not intended to fall with your hive and your idiotic queen."
The drone's feelings seemed hurt by that comment, their frown deepening. "You shouldn't say that about Queen Blue Sun. She's the best queen ever!"
Catalyst scowled at the defective, moving to the ledge overlooking the pool of stored love beneath them. The drone followed suit, standing beside the orange queen despite her revulsion. An idea flashed into Catalyst's mind. It was idiotic, but if she acted now perhaps the hive would be spared in the future. Her right hoof curled around the shoulders of the defective, Catalyst's revulsion spiking fiercely as she did so.
"Do you want your hive to prosper, defective?" Catalyst asked ominously.
The white drone looked up with a confused expression, studying Catalyst. "What are you doing?"
The Queen looked deep into the pool of love beneath her, vague thoughts dancing across her vision unable to be brought into focus. I could break the chitin between the defective's wings. Throw it into the pool and watch as it drowned. Would it drown? Would it simply consume the entire storage of love in an attempt to heal its wounds? What would Blue Sun's reaction be? I've been doing everything possible to help this hive flourish, but I only see the faces of my own drones in those that fly around. I'm reminded of all that I lost to Chrysalis. Is there point of saving Blue Sun's hive, only to see it fall apart as well? What should I do!?
"Queen Catalyst?" The drone chittered lightly, "You're not feeling well, at all..."
Catalyst scowled as her attention was brought to the present. She retracted her hoof and remained silent, her thoughts too turbulent to act upon.
"Do you need more love?" The defective asked, "There's a whole pool of it down there if you do."
The silence grew between the two as Catalyst's glowing eyes flickered, looking around the room as she became more emotionally unstable. The defective could sense the inner turmoil of the queen, but had no idea what the cause of it was. The queen's eyes began to droop and she sat down abruptly, part of her insectoid wings becoming trapped beneath her.
"Queen Catalyst?"
"What is the point of more love, defective?" Catalyst asked in a slow chitter, her wing fixing itself from the vibration as she laid down on the ground fully. "Were I to take more love from your hive, what would I do with it? If you were to take more love, do you even know what you would do? You are no queen, you have no eggs to lay, no hive to create. What do you need it for?"
The defective was now alarmed by this shift in Catalyst's tone. She had become accustomed to the shouting and scowling, but seeing her so suddenly defeated like this set off alarm bells in her mind. "Are you sick? Do you need help?"
The queen looked out at the drones moving around, her eyes watering. "I need my hive... caretaker," Catalyst sighed pitifully, "I need my drones. I need to hear their voices, their chittering and scratching along the walls. I need to see their thoughts, their experiences and their troubles with my own eyes again. I need to hold new grubs in my hooves and assure them of a wonderful life. I need to see the pride in my warrior's face when he reports a new capture, the elation in my infiltrator's disguise being flawlessly accepted, the chittering and cooing of a caretaker to a tunneler that has lost their closest hive mate. I am not complete without them, and I fear my actions in their absence. I am alone, without another voice to resonate in my thoughts; to know how I feel without asking. I am lost without my hive, and while I wait here in this spire surrounded by the happy drones of another I am reminded of all that was taken from me so suddenly."
The immense sadness coming from Queen Catalyst had been drawing a crowd of caretakers from their other tasks to investigate. The orange queen rested on the floor, her head nestled between her forehooves that dug into the spire's resin. Her eyes were shut as she spoke, her mouth quivering as her wings communicated for her. "I am sick, Caretaker. I need my hive back. I am nothing without them."
The spire stood in stunned silence for a long while, the sound of sloshing love beneath them remaining as the only noise. Drones looked between each other, quietly chittering ideas about what to do and if they should bring this event to Blue Sun's attention. The defective reached out their hoof and lifted the chin of the broken queen, causing her eyes to open.
"How much love do you need for your own hive, Queen Catalyst?" The defective asked.
Revulsion and fear were gone from the orange queen, replaced with a void of emptiness. Her eyes seemed to have gone dim, her chitin no longer glowing. The queen heaved a sigh and refused to answer, her heavy head forcing the defective to set it down once again.
The defective knew this look. Deep in their being, they felt a glimmer of this state before and the other caretakers began recognizing it as well. The Queen had given up. Her once glowing body was steadily becoming dim and the pink tendrils of love were seeping from her mouth.
"Get our queen!" A caretaker drone chittered in panic, several of them taking flight from the spire through the nearby balcony window. "Bring Queen Catalyst to the pool!" Another buzzed.
The defective along with several caretakers hoisted the queen into the air, slowly lowering themselves down toward the pool of love beneath them. Other drones observed with confusion as to what was going on, but they too soon recognized the symptoms. A queen without a hive is a queen without purpose.
Catalyst vaguely noticed the irony in her situation. She had become just like Chrysalis. Broken and weak with another hive caring for her health after the loss of her hive. She would not steal this hive, however. She would never become like her.
"It's going to be alright, Queen Catalyst. We're going to help you!" The defective chittered reassuringly, attempting to lift the Queen's face again or open one of her eyes.
"Do what you will, Caretaker," Catalyst buzzed weakly. Her senses began to deafen and blur along with the flurry of movement around her. She remained awake enough to notice a few Terran shaped things enter the room before losing consciousness entirely.
Recording File 335, Research Voice Log
Dr. Vahlen's report on Changeling Biology, Addendum."Well, it appears I have learned what happens to a changeling deprived of love. Our team along with Queen Blue Sun were alerted to the critical state of Queen Catalyst, who has been largely overlooked until this point in time. Physically the Queen is still alive, however her current activity is closer to being comatose than anything else."
"The white drone, commonly referred to as a 'Defective' was first at the scene. It was assumed that the drone had drained the Queen of love, yet multiple accounts from Blue Sun's caretakers reported an altogether more interesting development."
"Without the ability to maintain or create a hive, more specifically laying eggs and beginning one, a Queen is likely to die off rather than continue living until starvation."
"What triggered this reaction in the queen is unknown at the time, but we may have to find more volunteers to administer whatever chemicals or 'love' these changelings require, lest we lose valuable research data and knowledge through neglect."
"I will inform Colonel Bunker of these developments. It is ultimately her decision if it will be forwarded."
"End log."
And Catalyst died... and there was much rejoicing. (Yayyyy!)
It's sad. And it explains why she held for so long on to her anger. Without her anger to distract her, she had to face the reality of the situation...
Catalysts heart was fully in the old world. And so, to her heart she returned?
Poor Catalyst.
Sounds like someone needs an infusion of Hope, stat!
We had hoped the distractions would have lasted long enough for the problem to get noticed sooner, but busy busy...
Keep going! ;)
They need to sell Catalyst to an allied power.
Nuuuuu, save the bitchy queen. She may be a jerk, but she means well. She just misses her hive.
Homesickness is LITERALLY killing her. Poor thing.
Awwwwwww...poor Catalyst. Send her loves! SEND HER LOTS OF LOVES! She needs grub babies~!
8423081
o.O... why?
Short term, Catalyst needs enough love to lay some new eggs; long term, the Government needs to find her a suitable location to reestablish her hive. Cheyenne Mountain wasn't properly suited to supporting a hive inside the complex anyways without some serious reconstruction; but the Army has plenty of bases with sizable wilderness training areas that could easily be used to safely cite a new hive within convenient but safe distance of the base itself.
This knowledge needs to be forwarded to all the other governments, urgently; every stranded Queen they've taken in is at risk of dying.
8423165
Yes, the US has a lot of space and a lot of resources.
Catalyst has received none of that space or resources.
She has been allowed to sit idle and waste away. A valuable military asset has almost been allowed to starve to death.
This is because all of the US command structure has been preoccupied with the first changeling Queen as well as the changeling incursions happening elsewere.
Handing her to say Russia who wouldn't be adverse to commanding ten thousand of it's citizens to assemble in a stadium and adore her for a few hours a day would be simply a more effective use of her.
8423232
The Russians are already sitting on a whole pile of hiveless queens (i suspect they where the same group the allied Advisors back in Equestria had talked about having tried and failed to keep safe).
And rounding up a stadium full of people and ordering them to feel a certain way about something wont work for this; if the emotions aren't real, then their wont be anything for a Changeling to feed from. besides, that's the sort of half baked plan i would expect the North Koreans to try, but not the Russian Federation.
The defective is colorless. It can join her as her hive.
8423245
Not saying you would get a good conversion off of the 10k. But a 1% transfer would get her a 33.3x what Blue is getting.
8423248
The Defective Caretaker Advisor is not colourless; her shell and and eyes are the same blue as her hive mates; its her chitin that's bone white instead of the dark gray typical of her fellow Caretakers.
I'm starting to see how this story might turn... And I'm guessing Blue Sun is going to end up with a very large and powerful hive indeed.
The most interesting part of this chapter for me was how Queen Catalyst stopped calling the white changeling "defective" and started calling her "caretaker."
8423473
Well, the "Defective" Caretaker is showing her concern and sympathy, even as she hit absolute rock bottom; also it may or may not be relevant, but i happen to know from the Author that Catalyst was herself a Caretaker Drone before she became a Queen.
Apparently it is common for Queens ascended from Caretakers to develop a Hive Mind as a feature of their hive.
Catalyst needs some friendship.
8423526
Spoiler tag some of that? Anyone reading comments risks spoilers for what they're reading, but that's outside information not obtained from the chapter you're commenting on.
8423593
It's not much more than some vaguely relevant trivia, tbh; but sure i'll apply some spoiler tags.
8423602
Thanks.
That's true, but unless you're absolutely sure it will never come up in the story, it's potential spoiler. It didn't bother me personally, but I'm sure some people would like to be surprised with that info in story.
Catalyst seems more in need of a good old-fashioned bright slap than a dose of love. Perhaps Colonel bunker can come up in there and just do some smacking: " get a hold of yourself!"
So, Catalyst gave up. How ironic that the one who she despised so much actually cared for her enough to be there for her when she needed it, even if she had no idea.
Also, it would seem like that the 'defective' is really not a defective - this was hinted before, but it was visible now. Feeling better, and (probably) not that big of a drain on the love storage anymore. Possibly the only 'ling in current existence that can have its craving for love sated? We'll see.
So, time to nurse Catalyst back to health, or at least give her something to live for. No pressure.
well shit Queen Catalyst need's a reason.
it is time she lay's a clutch.
Nice fill on chapter! I was wonder what happened to her.
Tasty!
I have to say for the longest time I was put off from reading this story due to the title but recently gave in and found it to be a wonderful piece of work.
Great job so far and I cannot wait to see more.
Also, Snake Changeling Best Changeling, next to Blue.
8426580
Yeah, the whole "Book by its cover" thingy.
Glad you like it! You can join the discord as well if you're interested. Tons of shenanigans :3
https://discord.gg/GbD4AXT
8426663
It was the pet thing that threw me for the longest time.
Amazing story so far! Please, tell me there is more to come??
Keep up your wonderful writing!!
Poor Catalyst...while she can be a pain in the butt at times, you can’t help but to feel sorry for her. Here’s hoping she get a second chance, and who know, maybe even see that friendship is not a bad thing.
On another note, it seems the ‘defective’ is doing better than Catalyst might believe. And the fact that she is so concern for the poor queen definitely helps point her case to that direction. I got a feeling she may end up proving Catalyst wrong about a lot of things.
C&Cs will be PM.
8452155 *gives you a drink* It's totally not latex solvent. I promise! Trussssssssst meeeee!
I kinda want to see Catalyst merge into BlueButt's hive and form an allied hive, kinda like in LAP's stories. That would be interesting to say the least.
I feel bad for Catalyst. She may be strict and overall unfriendly, but she was not evil and she certainly didn't deserve that fate.
8461952
I concur...
So there's clearly something Catalyst doesn't know about defectives. I'm wondering if they're the hive's occasional natural attempts at a super-ling, and no hive till now has had good enough relations to support it.
Oh. Fuck.
8531754
Sombra referred to it as a gift... a guiding light out of the darkness perhaps? Or a more powerful breed of 'ling... either way, I look forward to the reveal.