• Published 16th May 2018
  • 652 Views, 24 Comments

Changing Ways - Comma Typer



Queen Chrysalis and her changeling army sent Equestria galloping in full retreat. Now, with the fall of Camp Ponyville, those that remain try to win in a world where even your best friend could be the enemy in disguise.

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Bankrolling?

Swift, with ruffled feathers, groaned a long sigh. He looked up, saw the beautiful, serene blue sky. Those fluffy clouds, those happy clouds enjoying their time with the sun—

“Move!”

Swift struggled, pulling the cart of apples as hard as he could, straining and gritting his teeth under the pain and weight. His muscles were under high stress; one could see the veins sticking out of his neck.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!”

The changeling kicked him on the leg, bending it into collapse. He mocked him as he spectated Swift crashing to the ground with a thud.

It was a Sunday and ponies like him were milling about on the street, dragged along with their carts, their boxes, their barrels. Several changelings sapped the love of anyone they chose, then laughed at themselves at how easy the town's conquest was and how gullible their enemies were.

Hearing those laughs, churning them inside his head, Swift continued on, pulling the cart against a renewed tirade from his tyrant of an overseer who was indeed occupied with formulating phrases designed to demean him more.


“You see this grand pony invention?!” Pharnyx proclaimed in the room right before the sleeping quarters, pointing at a table of filled cups with steam rising out of them. “Coffee! You must give them credit for their ingenuity, although I wish that coffee was ours!" He took a sip of the publicized beverage from his cup. "Chrysalis wants us to get all the caffeine possible to keep up the work longer, to reduce our sleeping hours so we can bring the whole world under changeling control ASAP! So, toast to every changeling!”

Toast!” shouted back all the changelings in the room, raising their cups of coffee to the air and clinking them against each other's.

Of course, some were clumsy, for a changeling then screamed at the pain of steaming coffee on his face. His friends scrambled to the poor and unfortunate victim to coffee boiled at a dangerous temperature, with one more changeling deciding to chuck the brew to Swift.

It was now the pony's turn to scream at the pain. He covered his face, felt the burning sensation everywhere.

Thorax, standing beside him, wrapped a hoof around his neck. “D-Don’t worry! I’ll get you a cold towel and—“

No!” Swift shouted, and punched Thorax.

Thorax rubbed his cheek. Growling, he punched Swift back, shoving the pony down and forcing Swift to scream louder with twice the burning pain.


Swift River was back down on his hay bed, a cold and damp towel lying beside him.

Thorax sat down beside him.

Everyone else was quiet, both changelings and ponies asleep in the room, though shifting shadows from outside revealed several guards at the doors of the makeshift bedroom. Only walls, only floors, only ceilings and lanterns off; no embellishments.

“Wh...”

Thorax read Swift's face. “You’re saying something?”

Swift looked at him with fatigued eyes. “What’s...y-your name?”

Thorax made a little smile although the fangs still creeped Swift out. “I’m Thorax. Why’d you ask?”

Swift was silent for a while, considering what to say. “I don’t expect to get rescued anytime soon. The pace you’re going, this might as well be your Equestria.”

Thorax said nothing. He gave Swift a pensive look.

“So—" he faked a cough, "I want to...find a way to make you happy, if I cold do nothing else.”

Thorax recoiled. “Wh-Why is that? I’m h-happy you’re my personal food. I don’t have to starve and go hungry all the time." Then, the changeling swayed his foreleg about. "Well, not yet. We still need more ponies.”

Swift let out a sigh, letting himself sink a bit into his hay bed. “If I’m going to be a slave to you for the rest of my life, I might as well make the best out of it and be the number one pony slave in the hive.”

Thorax arched his brow. “You’re kidding me, right?”

For a brief moment, Swift grinned though it was clear that he was only pretending. “I’m serious. I would really like to get out of here, but while I’m still here, I...I don’t want to be down here, b-but—”

“You’ll stay down here whether you like it or not,” Throax said, patting him on the head.

Swift snarled, elbowing the patting hoof away. “You and your fake kindness! You treat me like you’re my best friend, but I know you’ll eat up my love for breakfast tomorrow!”

Thorax nodded. “I know.”

“Why do you bother?!” Swift cried out, sitting up on his bed and facing the changeling down.

Thorax stomped him on the head.

Knocked him unconscious.


The next day, Thorax watched him scrub the road clean of dirt. It was an impossible task, for the road was made of dirt, but Swift worked on with his bag of rags and his bottle of cleaning solution, throwing the dirty rags into another bag on his torso.

The two of them were almost alone since they were near the far end of Appleloosa where a path to the apple farms lay though instead of happy pony farmers pruning and thinning and de-pesting those growing apple trees, they were sad pony farmers driven into overproduction and overtime as too many branches were cut off, all supervised by changelings with crossed forelegs.

“What’s it gonna be?” Swift blurted out in a guttural voice. “Am I going to do you a personal mission or what?" Another grin, this one imitating the obnoxious, overcame his face. "I could work for revenge—you have a rival?”

“Not really," replied Thorax. "My ‘rivals’ are ponies, remember?”

Swift edged his lower lip out. “What motivates you to work this hard for love, huh?”

“Hunger,” Thorax said. “We don’t do this for fun.”

Swift rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Not for fun, I know—or, that's what I think I know. I see your buddies hurting my friends. You don’t hurt carrots, so why are you hurting us?”

“Carrots don’t speak,” Thorax said, feeling more disturbed at the pony's words, “nor do they try to run away from us.”

“Oh, so I’m a person, therefore you have to hit me in the head to keep me in line! You know you’re feeding from a person, right? Love, right?”

“Everyone knows that."

Swift looked at his dirty rag and threw it at his other bag.

Thorax blinked, watching him scrub more dirt off the dirty road, uncovering more soil underneath.

“What plans do you have for tomorrow?” Swift asked. “Are you going to be off for some adventure? What’s next? You’ll raid the next base?”

“McIntosh Hills, to be exact,” Thorax said. “We know some things about the leadership there, how it’s ruled by a Mudbriar. They say he’s smart and that he won’t go down easily.”

Swift nodded, swinging his head up and down like crazy. “Why? Because I hope he will stop you! You’ll have to cross those mountains first to get to the rest of us, and I’ll—“

Thorax hissed and drained a small rivulet of love from him, the pink swishing into this mouth.

Swift buckled down, feeling weakened. He gripped his broom, losing strength to stand.

“Please be quiet,” Thorax said. “You’re going to make lots of trouble.”

“Says the changeling who’s indirectly responsible for the loss of my wife!”

“I thought she was your would-be—“

“I don’t have time to think straight! You just took the emotions from me!”

“Sorry!”

Swift groaned, went back to cleaning the dirt road after pushing past the pain in his joints.


Thorax sat inside the moving train, seeing the landscape whiz by. It was desolate blue under the moonlight. He could feel the wind rush through the open window, cold—cold enough to remind him of shivering out in the open on another night before. Beside him was Swift, downcast and facing the floor.

Thorax noticed his sad demeanor. “What’s going on? Are you depressed?”

Swift glared at him. “Is this the time to ask?”

Thorax looked nervous. “N-No.”

Swift gave him a curious glance, scooting his way across the tacky seat. “Are you...not happy about this?”

Thorax shrugged his shoulders. “I face the risk of being captured like you. I don’t know how long I have to keep up my disguise. I might stay there for days.”

Swift looked the other way, seeing more changelings and their prisoner ponies sitting across the aisle. “Anything...else?”

Thorax looked out the window. “We’re always hungry. No matter how much territory we get, no matter how many ponies and other creatures we take for ourselves, no matter how strong or potent their love is...it’s not enough. There’s some who boast about not being hungry, but that’s because they only hear their stomachs rumble once a month. It’s...it’s like that feeling that you’re hungry but not too hungry.”

Swift kept looking at him. His ears were open.

“It stays in your mind. It bothers you. It’s like the itch you could never scratch but worse.”

The pony let his eyes pass on to the speeding scenery outside the window. “What happens if you’re the only one standing and you’re still hungry?”

Throax touched his own lips with a hoof. “I don’t think that’ll happen. There’d be too much love to pass around and there'd be no one around.”

Swift sighed, eyes still focused outside. “What will you do when you’re done dominating the world? When you’re the big guys?”

“Enjoy it? Relish the victory? It’d be sweet. I’d...I’d finally have the time to get a partner and have a family of my own. A family of...fifty cute grubs.”

Swift huffed, bothered. “I wish I had a family of even just one pony.”

Thorax frowned. “That’s...too bad.”

Both of them looked outside. They caught sight of a deserted warehouse and it was gone.

“Do you...do you have any idea what will I do if you win?”

“You’ll remain my go-to meal,” Thorax said as if reciting a rule from memory. “Someone might try to get you to have a friend so you’ll generate more love—I think it’s hard to resist having a friend when the other choice is being alone, isolated from everyone else.”

“Well, what will I do if I become...I don’t know, a better slave? An obedient servant? A carrot that doesn’t fight back?”

“Didn’t I say you’d end up driving your fellow ponies to obey us more?”

Swift nodded.

“Or, if you don’t like that," Thorax continued, moving his hooves about, "you could try helping us soldier drones. You’re a pony, so they can’t reveal that you’re a changeling. You could be a nice decoy; just follow our instructions and you’ll be fine." He paused. "I don’t know what we’ll give you for a good job, but...we got beetle sushi. My specialty, really.”

Swift flinched. “I don’t like beetles!”

“If you’re lost in a forest or stuck on an island, you should learn how to eat insects. Lots of protein.”

“They’re disgusting.”

“No. They’re delicious.”

“You and your weird tastes!” Swift shouted.

“We’re different species! What do you expect?!”

“I expect you to treat me right!”

“We’re evil changelings! Why do you expect me to treat you right?!”

A voice cried out, “Enough!”

They both turned to the changeling on the aisle.

It was Pharynx, holding a club. “Thorax, who told you you could sympathize with the enemy and call yourself ‘evil’?”

“Isn’t it true?" Thorax asked back, holding his hoof out. "If we’re not evil, we aren’t good either!”

“You’re a changeling, Thorax!” Pharynx said, flying to him and poking him on the chest. “Changelings feed off love! It’s not a decision the queen made. It's how you survive! That’s like saying you don’t want to eat because you want to save up on food!" Pharynx spat on him. "How ridiculous you are so many times!”

Thorax shuddered in his place. He wiped the spit off.

Pharynx turned to Swift. “And you better stay well-behaved! You think you’re so tough? You think you’re going to convince my brother to give you a better chance at life? Well, don’t think because I’m going to be watching you and you’ll be so afraid, you’d stay here for your own good!”

Then, he whacked Swift on the head with the club.

He fell unconscious.

Thorax looked at Pharynx, bewildered. “What was that for?!”

Pharynx pointed the club at him. “To teach him a lesson.”