Shedding

by Cyning Horsa

Plans

"Are you clear on the plan, Coxa?" asked Trochanter as he resumed his guise as a purple pegasus with a flash of magical green flame. Coxa nodded surely as he lowered the silencing spell on the room and opened the windows of his apartment to the well-lit nightly city. 'Grapevine' immediately cheered up, the seriousness of his voice and his visage lifted.

"Thanks, Rustic," he said in a well-practiced voice of relief and thanks. "I'll see you later. I'm going to go hit the club, if you'd like to join me." Any other night and 'Rustic' would have happily gone with him to sip the cool, sweet milkshakes and bask in Banana Cream's lovely voice, but tonight was no other night.

"No, thank you, Grapevine," he answered, his voice light enough to be encouraging and apologetic yet firm enough to make his position clear.

"Your loss. See ya later and thanks again buddy," said 'Grapevine' as he left and closed the door behind him, his voice growing softer towards the end. With Trochanter out of the room, Coxa now had time to process the events of the evening.

Never in his life had Coxa ever thought about betraying the Hive. The Hive was all he knew. It provided for him, gave him a home, gave him his very life. And the idea that Thorax of all changelings would be the one courageous enough to do such a deed.... Courageous was the last word Coxa would have used to describe Thorax. He was easily-frightened, never fought back when other changelings picked on him, was submissive to a fault as a result of it all, and wasn't even aggressive enough to be a harvester like he had been intended to be. By every measure of a changeling's worth, Thorax was worthless. And somehow he now ruled in the Queen's place. The idea was inconceivable!

Coxa went over to his icebox and got a small carton of grape juice and then sat on one of his leather chairs, staring out the window, deep in thought.

Trochanter's plan made sense. Although Captain Pharynx was Thorax's brother, he had always been loyal to the Queen above all else. It was doubtful that he had gone along with Thorax's overtaking wholeheartedly; the Captain of Patrol was an aggressive and defense-minded individual, something Thorax was bound not to be. With the high amount of respect the Hive all had for Pharynx, if Coxa and Trochanter could persuade Pharynx of the folly of Thorax's reign, the whole of the Hive would support him. The Queen would be back in her rightful place within less than a month and all would be right with the world.

But Coxa still had his doubts.

Taking a sip from the carton, Coxa mulled over the situation. For Thorax to have been in power for even this long, there had to be something supporting him. None of the changelings had had any respect for Thorax in the past so if Thorax had led a coup and not been immediately ousted afterwards, something was amiss. Not to mention Thorax's complete lack of anything resembling leader qualities. Thorax had always been a follower, not a leader; he couldn't be skilled enough to reign as king for so long.

"Perhaps I'm just worrying to much," Coxa said to himself after a moment. "If Thorax has something helping him, than if we can take whatever that is out, it'll be that much easier." Seeming satisfied with his answer, Coxa sucked up the last of the juice from the carton and smacked his lips.

"Whelp, time for bed!" And to bed he went.

If Coxa had any idea that Trochanter had wanted him up so early in the morning to get going, he might have had a few reservations about the whole affair. One of the advantages to being an infiltrator like Coxa was that he had no regimented schedule. For most days out of the year, he was simply Rustic Rumor, the ventriloquist from just north of Canterlot. Only during the two-weekly visits from envoys when they checked on him and picked up his stored supply of love did he have to contribute to changeling society at all. Trochanter was an entirely different story.

As an envoy, his goal was to report the happenings of the infiltrators he was assigned to and take the love back to the Hive; his life was very regimented. And it was this regimentation that annoyed Coxa to no end.

"Can we stop for some donuts, Grape? I know that we need to get your stuff from your old house and all, but did we," Coxa paused to yawn, "have to head off so early in the morning?"

Trochanter gave an annoyed sigh, his ears flopping against his head as he rolled his eyes. "Rustic, we're on a train. Go to the food car and get something. And yes we needed to get started early! Manehattan's on the other side of the country!"

The two changelings currently sat in a passenger car on the early-morning train from Las Pegasus on the Southwestern Rail Line, heading north towards the White Tail Woods. Coxa, or rather 'Rustic Rumor,' was bored. The tired changeling-in-disguise turned his head to the chilly window. The cold nightly winds of the San Palomino Desert just south of Las Pegasus had blown north and chilled the window of the train as it had sat in the station, fogging it up minorly. Through the fog, Coxa's heavy eyes came to rest on the Applewood mountains standing tall and stoic some hundred miles in the distance, their snowy caps brightened by the eastern Sun. As he rested his sleepy head on the glass, Coxa remembered the day he had scaled them.

It had been a guided tour on a hot air balloon all the way to the top. Coxa recalled with some glee the awe of viewing the busy city of Las Pegasus from their snowy, chilled tops, the vast San Palomino Desert seeable far into the horizon. He had spoken up there, and how he had giggled like a filly when he heard his voice echo ever so gently through the mountains. Ever since then, Coxa had liked to imagine how Banana Cream's lovely voice would have sounded as it reverberated through the lonely frozen caps and possibly down onto the city below. Coxa huffed a faint huff of amusement before closing his heavy eyes and falling to sleep.

Trochanter looked across the isle at Coxa, who had fallen asleep against the window. He rolled his eyes and wordlessly cursed infiltrators and their easy lives.

Coxa had not been Trochanter's first choice. Infiltrators were known for their tendency to take to their guises too much to the point of forgetting that they are in Equestria to serve a purpose: feeding the Hive. While some took to it worse than others, every infiltration group had one who took it a little too far and Coxa was the one in the Las Pegasus infiltration group.

But, sadly, Coxa's willingness to enjoy his double life as a pony meant that he was also better at keeping himself uncaught than any of his groupmates, all of whom, Trochanter had found out to his dismay, had been captured since the Canterlot Invasion some years ago. Coxa was quite truly the only one he had left.

Trochanter sighed heavily and laid his head back against the booth he sat in. Retaking the Hive for the Queen was going to be a tough job, especially with Coxa's laid-back attitude, but Trochanter was willing to take it for his Queen and his Hive.

The purple pegasus-disguised changeling opted, to past the time, to look out the window and plan their strategy. They would arrive at the White Tail Way Station tomorrow, where he and Coxa would disappear and make their way in pegasus form towards the Hive in what the ponies called the Undiscovered West. Even in such forms, the roughly 800 miles between the Woods and the Hive would take a few days, during which time, Trochanter decided, he'd plan exactly how he would persuade Captain Pharynx.

With a plan for the next day in mind, Trochanter grabbed a magazine and settled to relax for the day-long voyage.

Author's Note:

Longest chapter yet. Hope to be doing more!

Comments

[Jphyper]

This story is nice and well-written. I like the idea and your writing shows a great amount of skill. I wish more newbie writers wrote as well as you do. There's just one problem: the pacing. These first three chapters feel like they should be one single chapter. There's not enough time for a reader to get drawn in before having to click a link to read more. It's a very common issue.

As you gain more experience, you'll start to get a better feel for when it's appropriate to end a chapter.

[Cyning Horsa]

jphyper: Yeah, I have trouble with pacing. The three were originally going to be one, but then I felt it would have been too long. Thanks for the feedback!