Blood Thicker Than Venom

by theOwtcast

Work and Discipline

By the time Fang and I returned to our camp, the preparations for the new mission were in full swing. Well, Trickster and Morpheus were in full swing with preparations, anyway; they had picked a spot near the entrance to our mining shaft to practice their roles, and were so focused they hadn’t noticed us arrive.

“Sir, do you need me for anything?” Fang said as we approached the clearing near the shaft entrance. “I’d like to go practice my flying if it’s okay with you.”

“Uh-huh, go,” I said absent-mindedly, eyeing the other nearby drones.

He saluted and flew off.

“Okay… one more time…” said Trickster, transforming into a pink mare. “Hi! Are you up for a party? I’m making one for the whole town and I want you to-” She went into a coughing fit.

Morpheus burst out laughing.

“Very funny!” she yelled at him. “You try talking in that crazy squeaky voice all day!”

“Then you better practice, because once we’re off, you’ll have no choice!” he said with a smirk.

“Oh, since you’re so smart, why don’t you do it?”

“I don’t have to!” He transformed into a yellow pegasus, then continued in a whisper. “My assigned pony is so quiet I might as well whisper in my own voice and nopony would notice anything wrong with me!”

He got an exasperated groan in reply.

“There’s more to a role than squeaky voices or whispering,” I stated, attracting their attention. “And repeating phrases isn’t going to be good enough. You have to learn what your assigned ponies are like, get in their heads, understand their mindset. Only when you master predicting how they would respond in any given situation will your disguises be convincing! Physical appearances and tones of voice are the least of it!”

“Yes, Sir, we learned that in basic infiltration course!” Morpheus replied.

“In Fluttershy,” I commanded.

Still wearing the disguise, he relaxed his posture, fixed his eyes to the ground, and fidgeted his hoof.

“Erm… i-i-if you say so, Sir,” he whispered.

“Could be better, but you’re getting there,” I told him, then turned to Trickster. “Now you!”

She leaped into the air and grinned widely. Maybe a little too widely.

“Yessir, Pharynx Sir!” she squeaked loudly.

“Eh, it’s passable, but that grin needs some work. Where are the others?”

“Buzz and Raptor are out hunting, Grim is inside with Acid, Leech, and-”

A loud crash interrupted her.

“-that would be Poison. I think she’s been overdoing her role a little, if I may say so.”

“A little? What does she think she’s supposed to impersonate, a maulwurf?”

But the crash might not have been related to roleplay practising; soon we heard arguing voices echoing from the shaft, and the anger in them seemed to be too genuine for a practice session, not to mention uncharacteristic of their assigned ponies.

What were they doing in there?

I stormed in; whatever was going on sounded like trouble, and changeling fights were known to end badly if allowed to get out of control! And we’d had plenty enough setbacks and complications recently!

Almost immediately, a clearly audible, roaring threat reached my ears and made me realize just how urgently I needed to act or Chrysalis would end up listening to yet another report of the kind she didn’t like to hear:

“Liken me to Thorax once more and I’ll kill you!”

This was followed by an unintelligible grumble, a couple of sounds of transformation spells, Grim shouting “Enough!”, and another transformation sound.

And more crashes and thuds.

And a pained hiss, soon drowned out by the continuing noise.

I finally broke into one of the lower chambers, just in time to see an oversized spiky dragonfly slam an appendage at a just-as-oversized winged scorpion, who fell to the ground next to me and fizzled back into Grim. She quickly shook herself back into focus and charged at the dragonfly undisguised, only for both of them to get tackled by a mantis-like thing that I hadn’t noticed had climbed onto the ceiling in the meantime.

Grim had by then managed to bite the dragonfly, who reverted to Leech’s natural form when the venom started to take effect… but now, the mantis was holding her in its grasp in such a way that she couldn’t bite again and shaking her violently.

And I’d been standing there long enough, even if it had been only a couple of seconds!

Not bothering with a battle disguise, I lunged at the mantis, dodging its attempts to swat me out of the air, and landed on its shoulder and delivered a bite of my own.

The mantis tensed up and crashed back into its normal form of Poison as she fell into unconsciousness.

Not wasting a moment, Grim rushed to the far end of the chamber.

“Darn it,” she muttered just as I noticed the last figure in the room, one I hadn’t bothered to perceive in the commotion: Acid’s motionless body hung impaled on one of Brutus’ spears, blood dripping into an already-impressive puddle on the ground.

“What happened?” I roared at Grim, my patience vanishing from existence.

“The three of them have been at each others’ throats ever since you and Fang left for Manehattan. I’ve done my best to make them behave, but… well, I’m afraid this was inevitable.”

“And the others?”

“They conveniently found someplace they needed to be or something they needed to do every time these three showed signs they might start acting out.” She hung her head. “I’ve failed you, Sir. You left me in charge and I’ve betrayed that trust. I deserve whatever punishment you give me!”

I looked at Acid again. He was clearly beyond help now; even if he was still alive, he wouldn’t be by the time we managed to build a healing cocoon.

“Chrysalis will decide that,” I told Grim, my gaze still fixed on Acid. “This mess is beyond my level of authority.”

She tried to hide a wince.

I went to activate the communicators. Grim followed at a distance, then stood just inside the chamber while waiting for me to establish the link.

Soon enough, Locust’s face appeared in the bubble.

“Get me Chrysalis,” I commanded.

He left without a word, likely noticing in my posture or the sound of my voice that it was better not to ask what had happened, and a few minutes later, I was looking at the Queen’s face.

How was I going to explain this to her? She’d sent me the teams that must have been the most capable of completing the mission by her judgment; I knew they were capable, having picked them for our previous assignment myself! They should have been the prime examples of infiltrators’ efficiency and military discipline, and what had they done? Instead of focusing on the given task and ignoring all distractions, they’d relapsed into recklessness and anarchy! Not only that, they’d killed one of our own! And the others hadn’t even had the guts to try to stop them! Where had it gone so wrong? How had they lost sight of what truly mattered? Did warrior’s honor and the will of the Queen mean nothing to them?

Even before I spoke, I knew what Chrysalis’ judgment was going to be: punishment about as bad as the one Thorax would have gotten if we’d succeeded in capturing him.

...if I hadn’t sabotaged his capture, I corrected myself.

At least Thorax had never killed anyone.

And I’d never thought the day would come when I’d see it as a good thing.

“This better be important,” Chrysalis spoke.

“Your Highness, something has happened and you’re going to be mad.”

“Don’t tell me there’s another mess-up,” she groaned.

I told her.

As I spoke, her frown intensified and she gritted her teeth; by the end, I was surprised that I couldn’t see fury steaming out of her ears and venom spraying from her fangs. She did, however, compensate for that by bellowing a string of threats and curses that even I would have had a hard time coming up with! This went on for a while, long enough that I was beginning to wonder if I’d gotten stuck listening to her for the rest of eternity… until, finally, her outburst ended with a frustrated snort.

“Psycho!” she called out.

“Yes, Your Highness,” he spoke shortly, somewhere out of the communicator’s visual reach.

“Send guards to Foal Mountain to grab Leech and Poison and drag them here,” she commanded. “They had a fight with Acid and killed him.”

“On it!”

He must have started to leave, as Chrysalis then barked, “I’m not finished!”, after which he returned close enough that I could see part of his head displayed in the communicator bubble.

“Are all the hunter teams back yet?”

“No, the ones from Zebrica and Abyssinia are still on the way, expected to return by tomorrow night according to their last report, unless something delays them.”

“Whichever of them reports first, redirect them to Foal Mountain! They’ll have to replace the lost soldiers!”

Even though I’d expected that Leech and Poison would fare no better, it was still jarring to hear how easily she’d written them off. Then again, she’d done the same with Thorax after he left the hive, even if she hadn’t yet gotten her hooves on him; but I knew all too well that she very much would carry out those punishments without a moment’s notice or a hint of hesitation! But what would she do to the others? To me? Surely she would want to punish us all; the others for not interfering, and me for failing to establish my authority in such a way that none of them would have even dared to think of committing such an excess! If sending just one replacement team was any indication, then it was safe to assume she was going to let us live… for now, anyway. Not that I was afraid of dying, and I would have probably deserved it had she deemed such a punishment necessary, but who would protect Thorax if I was gone? The hive had already replaced me as its chief protector, therefore I could safely assume keeping intruders out of our land wasn’t my concern anymore; but no matter how slim the chances were for me to be in a position to make a difference, maybe Thorax could still benefit from my assistance! That, at least, was worth staying alive for!

“Understood,” said Psycho on the other end of the link.

“Dismissed!” Chrysalis turned back to the communicator. “Is that Grim standing behind you?”

Grim stepped forward and I moved aside to let her approach the communicator.

“Maintaining discipline was your task in Pharynx’s absence,” Chrysalis continued. “What excuse do you have for failing this thoroughly?”

“None whatsoever! I should have tried harder, Your Highness,” Grim gave the only reply that Chrysalis was going to accept. “I deserve whatever punishment you give me!”

“Oh, you deserve worse than you’re going to get! Be glad we have an unexpected shortage of soldiers that could take over for you, otherwise you’d be joining Leech and Poison! As it is, I’ll only revoke your egg-laying privilege! But one more mistake and I promise you that I won’t be so understanding next time!”

“I understand.” She bowed and withdrew herself from the communicator.

“I expect you’ll want to punish me too,” I asked upon returning to the communicator.

“You were away so I’ll let it slide for now, but I don’t need to tell you that I won’t tolerate any more mess-ups! We’ve had plenty enough already as it is! But even though you’ll get away with it this time, the rest of your team won’t after they’ve ignored the problem! As an immediate measure, you’ll see to it that every one of them, Grim included, is denied food for a week! You and Fang may eat, but none of the others! And they can all forget about producing eggs for the rest of their lives regardless of how successful this mission turns out! Understood?”

“Perfectly.” The team wasn’t going to like it, but they were going to have to grin and bear it; they should have known better than to throw discipline into the wind, especially on a mission of this magnitude! This ought to teach them a lesson!

Having heard my answer, Chrysalis terminated the link.

I found Grim pacing angrily outside, muttering curses at Leech and Poison, or at least that was what it sounded like. She noticed me, tensed up, and tried to leave, but I halted her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“What does it matter?” she snapped at me. “I’m a failure and a disgrace!”

“And I’m your commanding officer on this mission, and I order you to quit whining and get back to work!”

“You think that’s easy? I spent ten years working night and day, pushing myself past the limit, accepting every single task I’d been given, just so I could earn the privilege to lay eggs, and when I finally do, there aren’t any males with the same privilege readily available, and I don’t mind waiting a little longer after all that time, but guess what? Not a week after earning that privilege, I get sent to hunt down a traitor and then reassigned to another potentially long-lasting mission, and it’s been seven months - no, close to eight by now - and still no sign of the day when I might return to the hive and exercise my privilege, and then this happens and I can forget the eggs! All that effort for nothing! And you’re asking me to just shrug it off and pretend nothing happened?”

“Yeah, yeah, my heart bleeds for you,” I retorted, dripping with sarcasm. “Disappointed or not, you’ve brought it upon yourself, and the sooner you accept it, the better!”

“Easy for you to say when you’ve never lost your life’s work,” she muttered to herself, but loudly enough that I heard every word.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I said through gritted teeth. I was on the brink of throwing myself at her and beating her to a pulp, but managed to restrain myself. I knew it wouldn’t end well, and there’d been enough bloodshed earlier today already! Besides, Chrysalis had been right: we were experiencing a bad shortage of soldiers recently, and while putting Grim out of commission might have relieved some of my anger with the situation, it would only increase the problem. But she’d unknowingly hit a nerve: I too had spent my life trying to achieve something, in my case trying to raise Thorax to be a proper changeling, and I’d earned my rank of First Commander thanks to the ruthlessness and never-give-up attitude I’d developed in the process, only to have it all crumble when he decided to run away! And even then, I hadn’t learned my lesson; I was still trying to protect Thorax despite his actions costing me everything!

At least Grim was being realistic about her future.

I thought I was beginning to understand why she’d acted like a pathetic, spoiled pony on the first day of the traitor-hunting mission: she must have still hoped at the time that the mission would be over quickly and allow her to return to the hive and produce offspring when a chance presented itself, but as the days were passing without any real progress, she must have gradually accepted having to wait longer than anticipated, which might have helped her push the matter out of her mind and focus on the mission, eventually having proven herself trustworthy enough for me to leave her in charge of things in my absence.

If she’d accepted her fate once, she could do it again, I believed. So why couldn’t I? I knew by now that helping Thorax would be near-impossible in my current situation, so why was I still prioritizing it? Why couldn’t I let it go?

Comments

[Teraunce]

If she’d accepted her fate once, she could do it again, I believed. So why couldn’t I? I knew by now that helping Thorax would be near-impossible in my current situation, so why was I still prioritizing it? Why couldn’t I let it go?

because much as you don't like to admit it Pharynx, you love your little brother a lot. The heart does irrational things if you still have one, and you still do and should be proud of it.
Gahhh...I've just got something in my eye.

[Screw]

I wasn't expecting to invest in the sad category. But it should have been pretty obvious from the beginning; it was even protrayed it would lead up to here. I hope Grim is doing alright

[Black--Soul]

Wow... I guess staying alive is the only reason this troops dont pull a Thorax on the Queen... We have at least two executions on our Hoofs...

[Green-Venom]

If she’d accepted her fate once, she could do it again, I believed. So why couldn’t I ? I knew by now that helping Thorax would be near-impossible in my current situation, so why was I still prioritizing it? Why couldn’t I let it go?

It’s because you love him…

[redmar]

Discipline breaking down so badly is surprising even though most of them were never friendly with eachother.