Chapter 27: Induction
Harlequin froze completely still as the guard met her eyes; horror plastered all over her face. They found us. She hadn’t been in this colony one day and Equestria had found them.
This is when we get shut down and we all starve, just like before. It was like the voice said. They weren’t part of a story, so they were destined to lose. Every single thing they tried…
“You, uh… I kind of expected you to be more charming than this, if I’m being honest.” The guard walked slowly up to her, apparently ignoring Codex completely. Or… no, Codex hadn’t climbed in. His head poked briefly through the entrance, then he dropped back down over the surface.
Please don’t fall off, you big idiot.
The pony pressed right up beside her suddenly, a stallion much taller and stronger than she was. “I hear you can be anything I want,” he said, voice low. “Anypony I want, even. Is that true?”
She nodded weakly, realization dawning on her. You’re not attacking. There isn’t even a sword in your belt. This guard was here to give love in exchange for metal. Or… no, that wasn’t quite right. Hydrus’s discussion of “worth” was still a little hard on her brain.
But one glance down the hall told her nopony else was coming. Had they forgotten this guard? “Yeah,” she answered. “I’m… I don’t do the harvesting. I just got here, uh—”
The stallion cut her off, lifting one hoof from below her mouth and closing it gently. “That’s more like it. Helpless, confused, afraid. Now ditch the costume. You’re disgusting like this. How about… a pegasus. Something soft, with lots of fluff up front. Birds make the best sounds when you pull their feathers just right.”
Harlequin tried to back away from him—unsuccessfully. The more she moved, the more forceful he got. “Go on, bug. That’s what you’re good for, right? So long as those soldiers up there keep you all in your prison… might as well get some use out of you.”
Harlequin thought about trying to fight him. He’d made a mistake exposing his neck to her like this—she could probably crush his windpipe and escape with a good kick at just the right angle.
And what happens to the colony if I do? If a guard goes missing down here, we won’t be able to get food anymore. How did you let this happen to me, Hydrus?
She glanced to the door leading down to his office one last time, but still nothing. No help, not even from Thorax. “I’m not one of them,” she said again, her voice a reedy squeak. “Other bugs need the love more than I do. I’m a soldier.”
“That’s cute,” he said, closing her mouth again. “But less amusing the longer you keep it up. I want to see a transformation, or I’m going to get annoyed.”
She changed. She didn’t have a blueprint like her last time, not when he wanted a pegasus. But she’d seen plenty of them in the city while she was a guard, and she could pick one of them. Harlequin got much taller, and her wings transformed into white feathers. Her whole body went white, except for a few darker patches on her underbelly and her face. She wasn’t sure what extra fluff up front meant, but it was a pegasus anyway.
“Well buck me sideways,” the guard said. “It is real. You were wasted as invaders.” He leaned closer to her again, sniffing her, touching her back with his nose. Her wings spread involuntarily, and she squeaked faintly in surprise. “Realistic, too. Just like the real thing.”
He finally let her go, looking around. “Well, where do we go for this? I assume we don’t just… right in the open like this? Do we? I guess there are ponies into that.”
At least this time she had an answer for him, thanks to the tour Thorax had given her. She led him up the stairs to the tiny rooms, and found one with an open door.
There were a few armed changelings in the hallway up there, though they only had clubs, and no armor at all.
“Let me… ask which room…” she muttered, hurrying over to one before the pony could stop her. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I came to meet with Hydrus, I shouldn’t be up here.”
The bug met her eyes without sympathy. “You’re saying you aren’t hungry? He put you at the top of the list. First time clients always give the best.”
Harlequin stopped dead, confused. Everything she’d learned from ponies was horrified by this encounter. But what was she thinking? There was food right behind her. Food that Hydrus had apparently prepared especially for her.
“Just pick one!” said the guard from behind her. “I don’t need the deluxe suite. You’re what I’m really here for.”
The armed bug gave her one last confused look, then pointed with his club towards an open door. “There, sir.”
“What I thought,” he said. “We want wine, too. In twenty… no, an hour.”
This should be good, right? He’s coming to me! But why do I feel so trapped?
Harlequin had never harvested lust before. The pony seemed to enjoy it, though for her she was mostly trying to keep herself from breaking down. When it was done, she felt full—but much less satisfied than she had working with the Guard. It was love, but… hollow, somehow. That pony hadn’t even asked her name, or given his.
When he was gone, she lay on the bed, looking back at her reflection in the magical pony mirror. She hadn’t changed back yet, so she still looked like a pegasus. A blue one this time, with stubby wings. The pony hadn’t been able to make up his mind.
I miss Apple Cinnamon, she thought, finally rising to her hooves.
One of the changeling guards was waiting just outside, with a tiny glass levitated in front of him, with a thin wax top. “Fill this,” he ordered. “The rest is yours.”
Harlequin stared down at the container in disbelief, though only for a few seconds. If she’d been planning on asking whether or not it was possible to put love into an object, obviously it was. She lifted it up to her fangs, then bit down.
Instead of the rewarding feeling of offering love to another bug, and strengthening their bond, she felt only emptiness as she filled the container with glowing magic. Obviously there was some kind of enchantment involved to keep it intact—but that was beyond her power. She held it out, shuddering slightly. The majority of the love she’d just harvested was gone now, a bright green glow in the jar.
“Hydrus wants to see you,” the guard said, once she’d let go of the container. “You can wash down the hall if you like, then go talk to him.”
She nodded, and hurried quickly down the hall in the indicated direction. Getting clean would be good. She was rewarded with a pony-style shower instead of something bugs might use, and she made ample use of hot water, returning to herself and getting all the smells off of her. Why didn’t I enjoy that? Food came right to me. It’s everything a bug would hope for.
It was even easier than what Chrysalis had created in Canterlot, where bugs had to take ponies and force them to obey. It was the perfect hive, and she hated it without even understanding why.
“Harlequin!” Hydrus called from behind his desk, gesturing for her to join him. Codex was already here, apparently not squished to death from a high fall. She could sense the relief when he finally saw her, settling back into his seat. “I have to say, Harlequin, your recruit is more loyal to you than any I’ve ever seen. He was unwilling, yet… he marches in here demanding you get released. He hasn’t left my office.”
“It’s unacceptable,” Codex said, unafraid. A glass of fancy pony liquid sat in front of him, untouched. “Forcing us into that entrance, then not helping you escape.”
“I didn’t force anything,” Hydrus said, exasperated. “This isn’t unusual for recruits, unfortunately. They don’t understand our ways. Even one who studies us specifically is ignorant.”
“It’s not wrong to be worried,” Codex insisted. He rose to meet her, touching her lightly on the side and looking her over. But whatever he was searching for, he didn’t find. “These places shouldn’t exist in a respectable world. Ponies should be better than patronizing you.”
“Should be,” Hydrus said. “Spoken like a pony. We don’t deal in the world as we believe it should or shouldn’t be, pony. We only live in what is. We need love, ponies have it, and they want to come give it to us. This is the tamest colony we’ve ever built. Aside from… missing a queen. But one problem at a time.”
Hydrus gestured to her, more urgently. “Harlequin, you were one of my own bugs. I can see to it that you have a chance to feed once every week… that’s twice as often as many other bugs.”
“I think there are drones not getting enough,” she said, coming out in a sudden rush. “Down in the bottom of the colony, they were clearly starving. Some of those bugs looked like they were going to collapse.”
Hydrus’s good humor vanished, like she’d just let loose a disgusting fart. “Those are drones, Harlequin. That’s always what we’ve used them for. If you give them too much love, they’ll start to think. Then they need more and more, like you did. Look around, we already have enough labor. Besides, most of those drones are damaged from the invasion. Feeding them too much would mean a bug would have to know how broken they were.”
Just like S. She was one of Hydrus’s bugs all along.
A plan formed in her mind before Hydrus even said his next sentence.
“Anyway, more important matters. I used my, uh… extra time with Codex here to learn a little about what you’ve been up to. Apparently you were so good at passing among them you actually got in to guard the prison.” He grinned proudly. “That’s why all those other bugs are in that buzzing prison and I’m here, Harlequin. Eye for talent.”
“It’s true,” she said. “I was part of the Guard. Codex, uh…” Did she want to reveal how she’d ended up here? “I saw Codex in the prison.”
“Whatever.” Hydrus rose. “Do you think you could do it again? I need bugs for that kind of work, and… I don’t know if you’ve seen the louts here, but most of them are pretty clueless. Equestria is keeping all our leaders locked up in the prison, so only the dregs were left to me. You’re one of the smartest bugs I have.”
“I could help her,” Codex said. “Whatever you’re thinking. I was actually a pony; I can pass perfectly. So long as you aren’t doing anything that might be damaging to Equestria…”
Hydrus shook his head. “I need you teaching. I can use my hooves to count all the bugs I have smart enough for that job, and one of them is me. Trouble is…”
He lowered his voice, leaning in. “We’re having clients complain. The guests don’t think we’re real enough. Ponies sometimes want other kinds of love—conversation, friendship, whatever. But when you grew up in a cave, you can’t really hold a conversation with some rich scholar or a frustrated noble wife, can you? I have a list of the best harvesters, and I’m going to need you to train them.” He gestured to the stairs. “Thorax is waiting upstairs, he’ll introduce you. Harlequin and I would come with you, but we have to be somewhere. We’re meeting a pony on the surface.”
Do I really want to be part of this? Harlequin didn’t know yet, but she didn’t argue. She was just a bug, a single part of a complex machine. She followed Hydrus up the stairs and didn’t complain.
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This harvest system doesn't make sense. Canterlot is still recovering from the invasion, yet Hydrus think is ok to let ponies know there is a brothel managed by changelings in the very city, with access to dozens of clients/potential victims?
Well I guess there's not really a choice for her here is there? I trust that harlequin will do what's best, even if she doesn't know what that is yet. Loved the chapter, can't wait for the next one.
9650350
The guard called it a prison, so that's how he's having the ponies think of it?
The conversation issue perfectly encapsulates the failings of Hydrus's leadership. Like Chrysalis, he doesn't really understand what love is, beyond a desirable commodity that ponies have and he doesn't. Getting Harlequin back among ponies may help the changelings... if they haven't upped security since. This is going to get ugly.
9650350
It seems most ponies don't know that changeling feed on love. All they know seems to be that changelings
1. Killed ponies in a military invasion
2. Took ponies prisoner for some reason
3. Can shapeshift into any pony, even one that doesn't exist
4. Are locked away in prison.
With that knowledge, it might not seem so bad to frequent a changeling brothel.
Instinctively, I hate Hydrus and what he’s done here.
But objectively...I’m struggling to think of what I’d do differently if I was a changeling in his position. My first answer is “better prepare the harvesters for what sex is” and “make sure that all harvesters are willing”, but I’m not certain Hydrus really knows or has the full understanding, and I can’t say that if I was a changeling I’d be any less ignorant. My instinct is to say that Harlequin was just raped, but even she observed that this is food. Can human standards of rape really apply? At the very least there should be more informed consent, but again: I don’t think Hydrus has the education to understand that, or even a physiological ability, and nor does Harlequin. Certainly Harlequin doesn’t really react like she was raped. She’s disturbed, but she doesn’t really give off the impression of feeling violated.
It’s very alien. It’s like explaining to ponies that humans can get so hungry that they’d be willing to eat another human. Ponies are literally not physiologically set up to ever truly understand that. They’re herbivores. No pony would ever be so hungry that another pony would look appetizing.
In thinking about changelings, I frequently find myself thinking back to the Formics of Ender’s Game. Why did the Formics fight two wars with Earth prior to the beginning of that novel? Trick question: they didn’t. The Formics did not consider what they were doing war or even any kind of conflict. When two hives meet, their unthinking drones fight. It was their version of shaking hands. It was a normal introductory gesture. It never occurred to the Formics that each individual human was a Queen, each person was a thinking being. When they finally realized their mistake, what they’d done, that they had killed millions of sapient beings, they were completely horrified with themselves and all but allowed humanity to wipe them out in the third bug war, thinking themselves completely deserving of near extinction and leaving their last Queen in humanity’s hands, to save or kill as humanity judged.
It’s just something I’ve kept in mind. Changelings are alien, inhuman in a huge number of ways. And I do like stories like this that prompt me to think about them that way.
At the same time, though...I really hate Hydrus. And shit like this is why I’m not gonna touch the issue of hot changeling-on-pony action with a ten foot pole in my own writing. Or if I ever do it’ll involve complete informed consent between all involved parties.
The lack of obvious consent in what just happened squicked me the hell out.
9650572
Yeah, me too. But at the same time...how much can we reasonably expect Hydrus to understand about all this? How likely is it that even if you tried to explain it to him, or to any changeling, their natural instinct is to view it more like providing a human vegetarian only hamburgers to eat?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just...trying to view things from the changeling perspective.
9650590 Maybe, maybe not. Hydrus is older than the changelings bred for the invasion and has more experience, he demonstrates the ability to think outside the box, and he knows enough about brothels and pony society to set one up on the sly as well as finding clients (including ones that know they're changelings!) to participate.
I'm not going to say he absolutely knows this is weird, but the possibility exists. I'm a bit curious if he himself is participating or all the actual sex work has been delegated out.
The whole brothel thing is a step backwards for Harlequin and Harlequin feels it. Harlequin needs to figure out where the loyalties lie.
9650697
Yeah, that’ll be interesting to find out. Also, see first comment I made. I do think I hate Hydrus now.
9650550Nitpick:
Real life ponies will often happily eat meat if the opportunity presents itself. They generally shouldn't eat too much of it but they'll eat it. Considering their forward facing eyes, Ponies in mlp may, in fact, be even more carnivorously inclined than their real world counterparts...
9650769
True enough, but you understand the point I’m driving at, right?
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Honestly, what else did you think Hydrus had planned for you?
That said, I was actually hoping against hope that Harlequin would be spared this, especially a situation so obviously without consent, but obviously that was too much to hope for.
Many thanks for being tactfully sparse on the details of how that went down, by the way. Just reading this much was difficult, so that alone is more than enough to get the point across. On this subject, that's not something I can trust all writers to know when to leave out details like that.
Also, that guard, whoever the heck he was, is WAAAAAAY more deserving of getting kicked out (and kicked out hard) out of the guard than Azure Sigil ever was. Everything that guy did was not okay.
As for Hydrus...Hydrus I can understand his line of thinking on this--for example, he has a point about the drones, as he can't guarantee enough "love" to meet demand if all of them are "awakened"--but that doesn't mean its anymore right. Be conservative with the supply of resources available to you, sure, but that doesn't mean you're free to treat the changelings like dirt, both drones and more aware changelings like Harlequin alike, just to get the job done.
But good luck getting Hydrus to see it that way. I commented earlier that I didn't think he truly understood the full depth of what he's set up and working with here, and I still think that, now more than ever. But even scarier is that, frankly, he just doesn't care. It's all a means to an end, with him, pawns to play with which to boost his own standing.
I'm starting to see why there were changelings down in the prison who would choose starvation over what Hydrus is offering, in fact. Turns out even changelings have standards, and this crosses the line.
But never mind the brothel now--just what else is Hydrus planning? Admittedly, after this little display of Hydrus's true character, that probably worries me even more.
I'm also worried for Codex. Hydrus's treatment for Harlequin is poor, but at least he has an actual interest in her and her skills. But he's very dismissive of Codex, more just wanting him to shut up and fall in line, meaning that Codex is much more expendable to him than Harlequin. I think Codex is starting to realize that, but nonetheless, he needs to watch his step. Codex may have skills Hydrus can exploit too, and is planning to do so, but one wrong move, and Hydrus will no doubt decide Codex has reached the end of his usefulness.
Either way, methinks Codex and Harlequin are going to have to fight their way out of this, sooner rather than later. They're both aware there's a need, too. In fact, I expect Codex will be the ringleader on this one. Harlequin has already noticed the full extent of the issues after her...experience...but now she's being the blind one, trying to blindly trust that Hydrus knows best, despite her clear discomfort and misgivings. Codex, however, is perfectly aware of what happened and is not okay with it. I think the only reason he's even still playing along is because he doesn't have a clear way out or the full support of Harlequin backing him up yet. And I don't think even Codex would be willing to leave Harlequin behind to face...this.
9650697
Ha! No, I can already guarantee you he's not doing any of the dirty work himself. He thinks himself too above that, I can tell. Besides, he doesn't need to, he can just skim from the top a bit of the collected "love" supply for himself, without doing the "work" to actually get it. Betcha he's taking more than his fair share, too, considering the extravagance of his office. He seems like the sort of guy who'd do that.
9650550
Whatever gets Hydrus the love, he'll probably do it. If changelings can use other emotions, I can seriously imagine him creating some sort of West World analogue due to all the various types that can be harvested.
Which makes me a little worried. What's stopping Hydrus from sacrificing drones so he can collect on the more darker emotions ponies might have?
9650350
I thought this brothel is still mostly in the shadows, mostly known only to the clientele. It isn't hard for the more morally-minded or paranoid to shut this down instantly and bring all sorts of trouble for all those involved.
9650411
Is it really a failing strategy though? It's certainly more successful than the invasion and love is a commodity to them. Its literally food. Whether its sustainable is unknown due to the possibility of interference from Equestrian factions utterly hostile to them but this might be the best case scenario for the majority of the 3000 trapped in the prison.
9650769
Pretty sure those baked goods might have an egg or two in them.
9650731
It's the largest faction, unfortunately. Might be the one she has to work with by virtue of helping the greatest number possible.
9650790
I agree. Codex is kind of an idiot. But, bug or pony, he's also a good person.
9655367
Trials? For ponies changelings are monsters, so they will likey apply the same policy: imprison and forget. Except for sending food once a while.
Well things just got....more complicated.
Poor Harlequin.
“I could help her,” Codex said.
I don't think Codex realizes just how little his help actually helps. It's a substantial negative number.