Blyskawica

by nikolai60

Doing Research

Blyskawica, Blys to her friends (or anyling who couldn't pronounce her name), happily trotted along the suburbs surrounding Manehatten. Her Changeling hive had recently relocated from Griffin territory to avoid suspicion, and as a result quite a few rookies were getting a chance at their first collection, not to mention their first good look at society beyond the hive.

It was a common thing. Rookie collectors were often sent, with overseer help of course, as part of the early deployments because they hadn't yet become accustomed to a set culture. As such they were the fastest to adapt and blend in, while the previous groups spent time relearning mannerisms to avoid risking getting confused.

Blys, of course, intended to ensure she proved herself. Poor performance would see her reassigned back to her old duties helping tend to the hive. While there was still room for advancement, she didn't like the thought of being confined to the hive. Sure, she loved her home, but the adventure and experience of the outside world had always kept her dreaming, and few Changelings held the same kind of respect as the collectors did.

The description of the job was simple and easy: Blend in, gather ambient emotional energy, don't get caught. Of course, actually achieving those goals was another story. Blending in on its own was a challenge, rapidly absorbing another culture and pretending to have always been a part of it. This was compounded by the second part. While nearly all sentient creatures gave off emotional energy, it dissipated quickly and was best gathered when directed directly at the collector. This meant either pretending to be another pony, or endearing yourself in disguise. Considering how long the second could take, it was often the first. Since Blys' hive didn't approve of ponynapping, this meant finding an opening, slipping in for a few hours, and getting out. Not easy in the least.

And all of this, of course, meant not getting caught was never easy. Of course, that was when the most productive method was used.

Rookies rarely attempted replacement, and Blys wasn't so overconfident to try.

She was currently disguised as an unassuming grey on grey mare, young but unremarkable. The plan was to blend in and learn, then when she got an opening, shift to a separate, more 'appropriate', disguise of her own design based on the situation, and move on from there. These tactics often resulted in either friendship or lust, depending on the situation, and while friendship was the more desirable of the two, for several reasons, early encounters usually generated fairly weak amounts of energy, as opposed to the stronger, but less desirable, lust.

She froze and quickly stepped off to the side of the sidewalk as she felt the slow creep of depression nearby. Looking around she spotted an earth pony stallion with a white coat and dusty grey mane slowly walking on the sidewalk across from her. The grey made him appear a little older at a glance, but any further inspection showed he was actually rather young, if a tad thin for the average stallion.

And something was eating at him. Not literally of course, but while it wasn't the spiraling depression of a life falling apart, something bad had happened. Something that, perhaps, he would be grateful to have some help with. Doing her best to continue to remain unnoticed, Blys turned around and followed the stallion, careful to keep behind his field of vision as she watched him continue down the street, and turn into a bar she had passed earlier.

Well, while some alcohol might muddle the emotions a little, it would help nudge him in the direction she hoped he'd go...

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Silver Rain walked into the bar and headed towards a booth near the back. It’d been a bad couple of weeks, and didn’t seem to be getting any better. Getting dumped a couple days ago had just been the topper.

Silver wasn’t normally one for getting drunk, but after everything, he found the harder drinks too tempting to resist. Ordering a Cider, he settled into his seat to try to forget things for a while.

As he settled in, he failed to notice the grey mare taking a seat in the booth behind him.

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Blys took her seat back to back with the stallion she followed in, and from listening into his conversation with the server managed to determine that he’d had a serious run of bad luck lately. While she couldn’t catch everything, the two major events she could latch onto were that things had started with two weeks of extra hours without pay at his work, and the most recent event had apparently been a very bad breakup a couple days ago.

Well, this she could work with. She felt a little bad about taking advantage of this, but it wasn’t anything unusual, and on the bright side, however she handles this could very well cheer him up to.

With this she ordered a plain old cider to sip on while she waited, and was surprised at how good it was, and the little bit of love she got out of it. She made a mental note to tell someling to have a look at this ‘Sweet Apple Acres’, wherever that was. Finally cast a simple spell to make this Silver pony a bit more suggestible without realizing he’s talking to her, and began nudging him towards ‘mumbling to himself’ about what was wrong.

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Blys did her best to hide her embarrassment as she followed Silver home. She had nudged him on as he drank to try to make it easier to keep getting information, but in the process had accidentally gotten him quite drunk. But as a plus, she had managed to find out quite a bit about him and right now was holding a full on conversation with him without him realizing he’s not talking to himself.

Once Blys saw they were the only two in view, she moved on with her plan. There wasn’t much she could do but offer sympathy mostly, but, she could at least try to distract him from his loneliness.

With this in mind she decided on a pony from out of town, passing through for a day or two, and started questioning him about his perfect mare. It took a bit of encouragement, but she finally managed to get it out of him.

Changing form she took a second to adjust to the changes, and looked at her reflection in a window to make sure everything was in place. She wasn’t familiar enough with ponies to be sure, but she felt that her new look would certainly be an eye catcher.

Trotting quietly to catch back up, she watched him turn towards the steps of what she assumed was his home, and watched him fumble to try to get the door open. Giggling at his antics, she slid up beside him and put a wing over his shoulders to help support him.

Silver looked up, staring at her wide eyed for a moment, managing to get out a single word.

“Who…?”

Tossing him her best cute smile, she leaned close and whispered, “call me Autumn Bliss, here, let me help you with that.”

Using her magic, she opened the door and guided him in.

Author's Note:

Yet another story to keep me busy. Comments welcome as always ^_^

Comments

[Durnstaros]

Whoops. Interesting twist, just curious if this hive really doesn't know who and what the princesses are?

[nikolai60]

7735488 I just posted the next chapter, which should provide an explanation or two. But the short explanation is to keep in mind they moved over from the Griffon Empire.

Glad you're finding things interesting, thanks for commenting ^_^