Changing Ways

by Comma Typer

Foreboding

Surrounded by fields of grass, Easy Keeper was a modest enough town. Well, it used to be a modest enough town until the changelings took over and infected it with their own standards of living which included shapeshifting rocks, changeling eggs, and changeling guards at every corner and intersection, but it was still a town. A town mostly populated by changelings at this point, but still a town.

By a ramshackle café, several guards stood their ground at the entrance, holding spears with their hooves and carrying lancets holstered around their torsos. Their helmets were spiky and pointy, and they snarled at every pony that passed by them in chains, dragged along by fellow changeling buddies who could not wait to have their next meal.

The café itself presented a little history. The checkered floor and the swivel chairs by the sleek counter portrayed a window to the past, to a time when diners were everywhere and nobody got tired of them. Though the kitchens were now staffed by changelings bumbling and stumbling around trying to find cookbooks on how to cook something as easy as a pancake or a waffle, by the side hung dusty old red aprons, complete with name tags of ponies like “Silver Spanner”, “Charity Kindheart,” and “Snapshot”.

Pharynx, sitting on one of the swivel chairs, slammed a cider mug hard on the counter, letting good drops of it fall onto the shiny surface.

“Take it easy, there, sir!” a changeling cook said, holding an unused frying pan up in the air, ready to strike his esteemed customer. “I know you’re stressed about your brother, but I got nothing to do with him!”

Pharynx growled and carried the full mug over the cook's head. “Tell that to my couple!” and pointed at the married unicorn couple sitting beside him in fear and in chains, tied to the counter and hugging each other in a dithering embrace.

The cook wagged a hoof and wiped the surface clean. “What about you go ‘chillax’, like what ponies used to say? With their ‘slang’.”

Gave Pharynx a weird, confused look.

Pharynx bent his own neck, cracked it, bent it to the other side, cracked it.

Glared at the shuddering couple beside him and opened his mouth, sapping the love from them—two airy pink streams of love flowing into his mouth.

The cook continued to wipe the counter free from stains and smudges, not heeding the shouts and screams from the other enslaved ponies watching Pharynx feed with his open mouth consuming those love rivers; instead, he was rather focused on scrubbing off a stubborn coffee stain that was probably a few years' old, though nobody was paying attention to this monumental undertaking in this counter's sanitation. One of the other changelings yelled “Quiet!” to one of those screaming ponies—that pegasus was chained to one of the table’s legs.

Pharynx closed his mouth, licked and smacked his lips. The couple looked drained with flayed manes and bedraggled tails, their coats having lost that shine.

Pharynx clasped his forehooves, gave those lovers a sinister face with his visible fangs and those scarred legs. “You know what? I like you pony folk. When we marry, it’s just about getting it done and over with. With you lovey-dovey ponies, you have this whole ritual dedicated to it—weddings, bachelor parties, engagements, rings, brides and bridegrooms, throwing flowers...." He chuckled, turning a bit to the side. "You really treat it that way, huh?”

The mare nodded slow and sluggish.

“Your tales of love at first sight, knights going around doing adventures for their lovely mares, hugging and kissing near the end, and Hearts and Hooves Day...I’d understand if you just stopped with them altogether, but you still do that against all common sense.”

He smirked, rubbed his forehooves together.

“You two? Don’t know your names, but I thank you for marrying each other." He stopped, looked at the mare first. "Miss, I don’t know what you see in him, and Mister—" turned towards the stallion "—I don’t know what you see in her, but the both of you look gorgeous today and it’s been a pleasure making your lives miserable.”

The mare raised her head, whimpering. “Y-You don’t even hide it!”

Pharynx shrugged his shoulders, gave himself a whirl on the swivel chair. “Why should I? We’re here, you’re there. We’re kings, you’re servants. Should I be sympathetic for you? Why would I?” Let out a laugh. “That love...if I were you, I’d love nopony from now on, since, sooner or later, love will blind you.”

The couple clung to each other, tightening their grip on the other's shoulders. “Not if we can help it!” the stallion yelled, about to weep yet resounding with a hint of grit. “I love my dear Quad High and she loves me, and I’m not gonna let some love-eating monster stop us from being true to ourselves!”

Pharynx laughed, cracked his own hooves. “Is that so?”

Opened his mouth with a fierce roar, drawing off yet more love from the couple.

The cook wiped Pharynx’s half-full mug of cider, cleaning it from any of the dried up trickles it had sustained. He did not mind the second round of screams and shouts.

---

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” another changeling asked Pharynx.

“I’m sure."

They stood on a diverging railroad in the middle of the desert. The hot sun was bearing on those changelings with its considerable heat, baking the sand and soil into a fixed burning mass. Behind them, some paces away, blossomed greener fields and greener pastures. At the junction was an old, decaying wooden sign with two arrows, one pointing left with the words “To Dodge” written on it and the other pointing right with “To Appleloosa”.

Pharynx and his companion stood side-by-side. More changelings were catching up to them, their buzzes swelling into a foreboding hum.

“I’m not completely sold on it,” said Ganglia, enduring the sun in the sky and the dust on the ground. “Disguising yourself as a weaker changeling to fool them into trapping you in a cage while counting on them to not kill you outright? I mean...it’s better than dying, but—“

“I don’t have a good feeling about my brother at all,” Pharynx cut in, shooting a worrisome flash at him. “I trust Ocellus’s word, but Thorax is notorious for ruining a good mission. I have to keep watch on him, even if he doesn’t like it.”

The other changeling held up a clump of dust with a hoof, seeing some of the grains fall back to the desert. “But, what about—“

“I have no time for ‘what about’s’,” Pharynx interrupted, his head restless. “I didn’t go to Chrysalis for nothing. It’s better that we invade as early as possible. There may be hundreds of camps hiding in the Southern Jungles, and if we don’t move fast enough, they’ll gain strongholds in the lands farther down.”

The other changeling let all of the dust fall from his hoof. “If you say so, but I-I don’t like being your replacement—“

“You’ll do more than well,” Pharynx said, opening his wings and hovering over the ground, "and if I have second thoughts, you’ll still do enough.”

He floated straight to Ganglia's face, almost touching his eyes.

“If you move from this spot before the hour’s up, you’re dead.”

Pharynx flew away, following the tracks leading to Appleloosa.

Ganglia was left alone, the patrolling swarm of changelings about to pass him by as their buzzes increased.

---

“I didn’t expect country folk to be this smart,” Star Tracker whispered to Press’s ear as they and several others stood in a line inside a big empty hay-floored room. He could hear the crunch of the hay as the ponies in line shifted their hooves about, waiting.

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” Press said beside him, eyeing the guards occupying the rest of the room. She noticed Flash Sentry there, watching them with a firm face.

The door swung open. Out came Braeburn and Silverstar.

Silverstar kicked the door closed.

Braeburn brought out a clipboard. “I’m sorry for interruptin’ your time, but we’ve got another emergency in our hooves.”

Most of the ponies in line chattered to each other, worried—including Tracker and Press, who whispered words to each other's ears like some of the other suspects in that line.

“I’m afraid there’s been some deep infiltration within our town,” he said, pacing the length of the room, not taking his eyes off of that line. “We’ve been to the storage room, and it’s been filled with somethin’ else. Looks like Zecora’s but it isn’t. I’m afraid we've still got changelins'.”

Everyone gasped. Some continued their whispers to one another, others kept silent and avoided Braeburn's piercing stare.

“Which is why I have to do this,” he went on, quaking in the slightest. “Underground so they can’t fly away, in groups so they can’t disguise themselves in the crowds. Understand?”

Everyone in line became quiet and nodded. Some still shivered in place, looking at the cowpony as if he were on to them as a detective sure of his convictions.

“Now,” Braeburn said, gesturing to Silverstar, “do the honors of rootin’ out the spies.”

Silverstar took out a jar labeled "Fresh" in lousy hoofwriting.

The door swung open. All eyes turned towards the pony gasping and panting, her hair a mess. “Sheriff! We found a changeling just outside town!”

The sheriff dropped the jar and broke it, letting the salve spill over to the hay floor.

Everyone gasped at both the news and the shattered jar.

Braeburn rubbed his head, his lips trembling and his eyes moist. “Alright. Long Shot, accompany the sheriff upstairs. Bring the changelin' down here; he may prove useful.”

Long Shot saluted him from the door. “A-Alright, s-sir!”

With the sheriff beside her, she galloped away.

Tracker scratched his ears. “Did you think they have him bound with ropes?” he blurted out loud.

Braeburn gave him a dirty look. “No idea, an' keep quiet. We don’t want any changelins’ to get wise.”

So they waited, the ponies in line standing under the scrutiny of the guards’ eagle eyes, spears shiny under the slightly yellow glow of the lanterns, feeling and fumbling the dry crumbly hay under their hooves. There was not much of a smell in here other than the abstract trace of hay.

Silence. Everyone looked at each other, exchanged glances with one another. Braeburn keeping a close watch on them, walking up to each of them then scanning their faces and hooves, trying to spot out any anomalies.

Muffled hoofsteps came down. A door swung open.

“We found a bad one!” Silverstar cried out, carrying the upper body of the struggling changeling bound with rope and tape.

Long Shot held on to his tied up hind legs as they shuffled and moved about, trying to go free as the rope bulged and contracted.

Tracker and Press acted surprised, making gasps and more murmurs with their pony friends as they backed to the wall, wanting to be away from that bawling monster.

More silence as they watched the changeling writhe about in his trussed state. Then, grunts and suppressed squalls through the thick tape covering his mouth.

Several guards galloped to him, Flash Sentry eyeing his spear.

“Sir!” Braeburn yelled, spitting on the changeling's face. “State your name!” He ripped off the tape.

“Ow!" His restless head rocked about as he took in his surroundings again. "Could you have it easy?! That thing hurts!”

“You and your kind have been hurting us since day one!” shouted Braeburn. He kicked the changeling on the head. “Tell us if you sense any of your friends here!”

The changeling gulped. He looked at the line of ponies by the wall. “Uh...uh….”

Glanced at Tracker.

Tracker gulped, let down a bit of sweat.

The changeling then turned to the pony next to him.

“I-I say it’s her!” he said, pointing at the mare beside Tracker.

The mare looked flustered. “What? Me?! He’s lying!”

“We’ll see for ourselves, ma’am,” Braeburn said in a low undertone, picking up several gobs of salve from the hay floor. “All we need is this.”

The mare made a small smile. “I’m confident, sir.”

Braeburn looked at him. “Thanks for the tip. We need to save on this, really." He turned to the guards who replied with eyes locked on him. "Now send him to the huge torch outside. Burn him there.”

The changeling erupted into a dozen snivels and whines, scared while flooding his cheeks with quick tears. “No! You can’t send me to the big fire!”

“There’s no mercy for scum like you,” answered Braeburn, turning cold and deep. “How could I ever trus' you to keep quiet? Chrysalis would torture you back into serving her like a min'less drone!”

The changeling moved his legs about, jumbling the rope but without the promised freedom. “No, no!”

“Kill him!”

The guards and Flash took up the body, supporting the changeling’s head. They disappeared through the door and Long Shot locked it shut.

Braeburn sighed, then looked straight at Tracker.

Tracker looked back at him square.

“I don’t know about you,” Braeburn said, nearing the line of ponies and then standing face to face with the stallion himself. “You were the first pony he saw long.”

Tracker gulped. "Ah-heh-heh...."

“A sign of anxiety!” Braeburn rubbed his chin, taking an ever closer look on poor Tracker. “That'd do a lot, but let’s make sure.”

Braeburn slathered the salve over his face.

Tracker shivered, his lips quivering.

And Tracker was still there, closing his eyes.

Braeburn took a step back. “Huh? You really were nervous this whole time. Sorry for scarin’ ya’.”

Tracker smiled, already buried in sweat.

---

Tracker laid on his hay bed again, engulfed in the darkness of those sleeping quarters. Did not see so clearly with his eyes, only seeing vague lines.

Press lay on the bed beside him.

Both of them awake.

“What did you say?” Tracker whispered, placing a pillow over his head. “I still have chills over that drone...who was he?”

Press frowned, looking about with contemplating eyes. “Don’t recognize him...and how would you recognize them, anyway? They’re all the same to me except Chrysalis.”

Tracker let out a little laugh. “Yeah. I must’ve forgot.” A pause. “So...I’m surprised no one’s a changeling. It can’t be that they just left.”

Press smiled. “I have a feeling—just a feeling—“ and leaned closer to his ear “—that someone’s managed to swap out the new batch with fakes just in time. The changelings could still be here!”

Tracker opened his eyes wide. “That’s...not good.”

Press kept on smiling.

Tracker let out a sigh.

A pause. They heard the snores of ponies, dreaming on their scraggy beds.

“I wonder what I’d do if I weren’t here,” Tracker said.

Press arched a brow. In a very low hush: “You mean the real you?”

Tracker nodded. “I would’ve been trapped in one of their hives, and...how long would I stay there? Forever?”

Press tried her best to not chuckle. “Hopefully not.”

They rested on their hay beds in a sea of noisy snores and other hay beds.