The Zeppos

by Trish Hankins

Chapter 5-Roll Some Dice

Sounds.

That was the first thing Carrot Top registered. She was hearing something.

Voices? Maybe. They definitely didn't sound like anypony she'd ever met. The voices(?) clicked and snapped, as if they'd been shaped by something other than equine lips. "Changelings!" She thought to herself, and immediately struggled to better discern what was being said.

"... it's not my fault! Making me do this is completely unfair!" The voice was light, but it carried a fire of outrage and indignation that burned through every syllable.

"Fairness has nothing to do with it. It's your fault we had to apprehend them in the first place, therefore you shall be the one to stand watch over them." This voice was different, much more resonant. As if made to contrast it's partner, it's words were full of an empty coldness.

"But—" The first voice began, before being interrupted by the second.

"I am your superior on this mission. That means you obey my orders. You will build more pods, and put the prisoners in them. Then you're going to stay here, guarding them until I return. Understand?" The second voice asked. The first voice muttered in response. There was the faint sound of hoofsteps, ten seconds of silence, and then the creak of a door opening and shutting. Afterwards the room was quiet, except for the light breathing of several ponies and the steady, controlled breathing of who Carrot guessed was one of her captors.

"Well," she thought to herself, "no use pretending to be unconscious now." Slowly, Carrot Top opened her eyes and took in her surroundings. The room was underground, as evidenced by the dirt walls. The wooden ceiling, tall ladder leading to a trapdoor, and cobblestone floor led Carrot to guess this was somepony's basement. If so, whoever owned it was negligent on cleaning it. There were boxes, barrels, and various other containers spread around haphazardly on the ground. What really stuck out, however, were the glowing green pods attached to the far wall from where Carrot Top sat.

They looked similar to the cocoon of a butterfly or moth, with the exception that they were larger than a pony and the outer walls were mostly transparent. They seemed to be filled with some sort of liquid or gel, and each one contained a friend. Bon Bon. Lyra. Derpy! It took quite a bit of willpower, but Carrot Top managed to stop freaking out long enough to continue investigating. She was tied up, or at least her forehooves were. A quick look to her side saw that Vinyl and Octavia were tied up in similar ways, and it seemed for the moment that both were unconscious. It took Carrot Top a second to realize the larger problem. Vinyl's glasses were gone. Carrot swore under her breath. The DJ's amazing specs weren't getting them out of another predicament. She sighed. It was all up to her now.

Her train of thought was quickly derailed by an annoyed huff. Her eyes quickly found the source: a changeling. It was...huh. It was at this moment Carrot Top realized that it's hard to describe an individual if you have no clue what the rest of the species looks like. "What are you staring at?" It asked her. It was clear from its voice this was the changeling being chastised by its superior earlier.

Carrot Top cleared her throat, then said, "What am I supposed to look at? I don't know if you noticed, but there's not much in the way of scenery."

The changeling eyelids lowered. Was that supposed to be a glare? "You're not supposed to be looking at anything! You're supposed to be knocked out cold!" It hissed.

"Yeah, well, Earth Pony endurance and all that jazz." She said with a tiny laugh. She focused her eyes on the changeling. "So, what about you? What's your name?"

"Private Thorax of Queen Chrysalis's 13th Swarm." It said automatically.

"Okay, well, are you a male or a female changeling?" Carrot Top asked.

Thorax did...something...with it's compound eyes. "Ugh, ponies. Are all of you still so ignorant of changelings?" From it's tone, Carrot hazarded a guess that the earlier expression was the changeling equivalent of rolling it's eyes. It comforted her somewhat that even among scary invading bug monsters, there were those who appreciated the classics. "Well, if you're that damn curious, changelings are genderless. Our transformative abilities can make us any gender of any species we want."

Carrot Top nodded, filing away the information. She nudged her head towards the glowing cocoons and asked, "Alright then, what are those things?"

There was a pause before Thorax spoke. "My, my, my. What an inquisitive little pony you are. Makes me wonder, 'Why is a civilian asking me so many questions about my race?' The mind boggles."

This, Carrot Top decided, was not good. Things were moving too quickly. She needed to think fast. "Uh," she stammered out, sweat starting to bead on her forehead, "it's this bad habit of mine. When I'm nervous, I try to stay calm by keeping my mind busy, so I ask questions."

Silence reigned. Carrot and Thorax looked at each other, neither speaking. As it continued on and on, Carrot Top became sure she'd been found out. "Well, I guess it won't hurt to answer your little questions. I'd rather my prisoner not freak out." It took all of Carrot Top's willpower not to breathe a sigh of relief. "Those are what we call conversion pods. Using our saliva and any organic materials we can scrounge together, a changeling can build one in about a few hours." She looked around, her eyes now trained on a nearby wooden crate. "Speaking of which, I need to get started on you and your friend's pods. I don't want to give Coxa the excuse to chastise me again."

She smashed the crate into pieces with a chitin hoof, then carried them over to a space beside the pod containing Lyra. "Okay, so, what exactly do conversion pods do?" Carrot Top asked.

Thorax was using her wings to hover near the ceiling, where she then coughed up an odd green oozing fluid. She stuck some to the wall and roof, then used it as an adhesive to stick a large piece of wood. After clearing her throat, she answered. "They're exactly what is says on the tin. We put ponies in pods, and they're converted into changelings."

"..."

Carrot Top was speechless. Thorax's words had completely derailed her train of thought. After sputtering and stammering a few false starts, she managed to say, "Are you saying changelings used to be ponies!?"

Thorax continued working on the pod. "Heh, yeah. Even I'm not exactly sure where we came from originally, but everyling I've ever met used to be a pony." It stopped talking for a second to spew more green fluids on the wall. It then used up the last remains of the first crate, and began looking around to find more materials to use.

"So...what were you like, before you were a changeling?" Carrot asked. This wasn't about the strategic information anymore, now she was just plain curious.

At that question Thorax froze. It stood in place for almost half a minute. Then it continued its task. Just as Carrot thought it was ignoring the questions, Thorax spoke up. "Thread. My name was Thread Weaver, I..." it trailed off. After another long pause, it continued. "I was a mare. I made dresses for a living, in Vanhoover." Her voice seemed almost nostalgic. "That was 60 years ago."

"Sixty years!?" Carrot was thankful she hadn't been drinking anything, she wasn't overly fond of spit-takes. "But you look...okay, granted I don't have a firm grasp of how changelings look as they age, but you sound young!"

Thorax chuckled, but the sound lacked any sense of mirth. "That's probably the best thing about being converted: longer life-spans. I've never bothered to ask if there's a hard limit yet, but I know a few changelings who are over 150 years old." The room was filled with an awkward silence as she worked. After almost a minute, Thorax finally broke it. "Not to sound rude, but could you lay off the personal questions? I'm a changeling now, and I'll be one until I die. Remembering the past is nothing but salt in the wound." Her words stung Carrot Top. Now she couldn't help but imagine that. Being turned into an alien creature, drafted into a new life, and no chance of returning to who you were. Carrot Top pitied the changeling.

Carrot realized that feeling sorry for her enemy wasn't exactly the best thing to focus on, and jumped into a new topic. "Who's Coxa?"

"My superior on this mission," Thorax stated, sounding slightly relieved. She didn't look back from her work as she responded. "Coxa's a Lieutenant. For now, at least."

"What do you mean by that?" Carrot asked.

"Coxa's a bit of an oddity," Thorax said. "Because of our longer lifespans, it takes a while for us to move up the chain of command. It took me 34 years to become a Private." Her last sentence sounded bitter, angry. "But Coxa? Perfect, amazing, precious Coxa? From newly changed to Lieutenant in under a decade." She waved her hole-laden hooves through the air. "I've never heard of anything like it! And there's no way it'll stop at Lieutenant either!"

Carrot Top weighed her options. Thorax sounded like she really had it out for this Coxa. How to tackle it? "That sounds incredibly unfair. You obviously work hard, yet it got promoted so fast. Why would that be?"

Thorax let out a huff before answering, "I don't know. Officially it's due to Coxa's hard work and efficient track record, but that's impossible. Not that Coxa's a bad leader, but they're a lot of changelings who are good at what they do. I heard a rumor once that in a former life, the good lieutenant was a stallion working for ol'Sunbutt's Royal Guard. I don't buy it though, how would that explain the promotions?" Carrot Top gave a silent prayer at Thorax revealing that bit of backstory. Unreliable as it may be, it at least let her give this Coxa guy some mental pronouns.

"So, why do you follow him?" Carrot asked.

Thorax turned to look at her, her eyes...doing something. The species gap was starting to annoy the hell out of Carrot Top. "You're joking, right?" Carrot shook her head in response. "Wow, you really don't get us. You do what your superior says. Period. Sure, usually it's out of admiration, or maybe respect, like I do with Coxa," Thorax said, her eyes becoming harder as she spoke. "But even when your Captain's an idiot or a coward or completely and utterly insane, you do what they say. Because the price for insubordination...is one you can't afford to pay." A smile lacking any sense of humor stretched across her face. "It's a good thing we're having this talk. Once you're part of the Hive, you'll be a step up on your friends here. And in the Hive, you take any advantage you can grab."

It took most of Carrot's effort to stop herself from throwing up. "Once I'm what?! You're, you're gonna turn me into a changeling!?" Thorax rolled her eyes again.

"No, I'm building these pods because I'm bored." She said, sarcasm bleeding into every syllable. Carrot Top took a deep breath.

Once she felt a semblance of calm, she tried talking again. "How long does the process take?"

Thorax shrugged. "Tough question. Considering there isn't a more magically adept changeling working full-time on the process, it should be around 2 or 3 weeks," She said slowly as she worked.

"Okay, I gotta ask," Carrot Top replied. "Why did you kidnap my friends? Why disguise as them?"

Thorax laughed. "You wanna know our plot, little pony? Fine. We're gonna take out the Bearer's of Harmony." Carrot's stunned silence filled the void. A giggle came from the changeling. "It's pretty smart. We took the beige one because of her heart condition." Thorax paused. "Oh, did she not tell you guys? She has a heart problem, and part of her treatment is a nice big bottle of pills. Little did she know the stuff is also a powerful explosive.

"I took and replaced the one with weird eyes because of her job. In order to make the bomb, we needed to import some fancy-shmancy parts from all the way in Canis. There was just one problem. Because of it's, well, very specific uses, the stuff isn't allowed to just be imported into Equestria. Has to be signed off by the right people. Lot's of time, lot's of bits, and lot's of background checks. So we had to smuggle it. Of course, we needed to be sure the pony delivering it wasn't this ditz, didn't want her to muddling things up like we hear she does. So I swapped her out with yours truly.

"The boss already left with the bomb. At midnight, that little library's gonna explode, and the heroes are gonna burn..." Her voice trailed off, then she shook her head before looking at her prisoner. Carrot was smirking. "You...you sneaky little spy." The changeling flew down from the ceiling and towards her. "You've been drilling me for intel this entire time! What, you think you can get out of this mess? How're you..." Thorax stopped about a meter from Carrot Top.

Carrot couldn't keep it in any longer, and burst out laughing. "Wow. I expected you to talk all about the changeling stuff, but spilling your whole secret plan?"

"Ah. I see. Get me all worked up, then I get close enough for you to tackle, and use your freakish Earth Pony strength to knock me out." Thorax said in an acid tone. "You get our secrets and a way out." She smiled. "Clever. But not clever enough."

Carrot let our another giggle. "Wow. For a second I thought you actually might have guessed my plan." She reached to brush away a tear from her eye, only to realize her hooves were still bound. "That idea is way too sloppy. Mine is much simpler."

"Oh yeah," Thorax said through clenched teeth, her eyes narrowed. "And what's tha—" Before she could finish her thought, a large crate enclosed in a grey magical aura whooshed through the air and collided with the large bug. Thorax didn't have time to be flung away, the box pinning against her as they both flew through the air. In less then a second, the changeling smashed against the wall, pinned there by the box.

Without turning her head, Carrot Top said, "Really Vinyl? I think that was a tad overdone." She turned to look at the unicorn, whose maroon eyes stared back.

The DJ let out a bark of laughter and replied, "Oh come on CT, if that wasn't the perfect lead in, I don't know what is!" To their side, Octavia was blinking, her bleary eyes looking around.

"Alright," she mumbled, "Where the bloody hell are we?"

Carrot Top nodded her head towards the crate broken of the unconscious changeling, the holes spilling candy onto the floor. "I'm gonna go with Occalm's Razor and say we're inside Bon Bon's basement." Carrot said, while Vinyl's telekinetic field worked on the ropes.

---

The three mares stretched their legs as they relished their newfound freedom. "Say Vinyl, how did you get so good at tying and untying ropes?" Octavia asked, looking at the newly bound Thorax.

"Ha!" Vinyl laughed. "It's a skill I picked up in High School. Catch me when I'm not sober, and I just might tell the whole tale." She and Octavia shared a laugh, then they moved over to the cocoons. Carrot Top was already working of freeing Derpy. Her hooves where digging into the green substance, and when she hit the inner cavity the clear viscous fluid spilled out of the pod, covering the floor. She grabbed Derpy and dragged her out of the the now empty cocoon. There was a single hushed moment, where all stared at the pegasi's unmoving form.

The silence was broken with a cough, and Derpy's eyes blearily opened. She opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted when all three mares gripped her into a hug like a vice. After a couple seconds, she managed to squeak out, "I...kinda need to breathe..." They immediately released Derpy, and stepped back a few paces, Carrot and Octavia blushing. Derpy shook her body, the clear slime flinging every whichaway out of her coat. Then she banged the side of her head with her hoof, more of the gunk flying our of her ear. As she continued to rigorously clean her body, she smacked her lips a little, then scowled. "Ugh, I hate being put in those things. That goop's taste lingers in your mouth for weeks." Once she had deemed herself clean, she walked up to Carrot Top. "How long was I in that stuff?" she asked.

"Not too long, it's only been a day. Dinky's staying at a friend's house tonight." At Carrot's words, most of the tension dissipated from Derpy's face. The two shared a brief hug, then they turned to see how the others were fairing.

Octavia and Vinyl had dug Lyra and Bon Bon out from their pods, and Lyra was already coughing and asking where she was. It took a few seconds for Carrot realize what was wrong: Bon Bon hadn't moved. She wasn't the only one to notice, as Octavia had her ear against her chest. Her head then moved to just above Bon Bon's mouth, and when she looked up at the others, fear showed in her purple eyes.

"Bon Bon's in trouble. She's barely breathing, and her heartbeat is fairly weak. She needs to get to a hospital, now." Octavia said, her face grim. All eyes turned to Carrot Top.

She took a deep breath then said, "Okay, hospital. She'll need to be carried there. Which of you could do it?" Octavia and Vinyl nodded, but Lyra and Derpy shook their heads. Lyra started to speak, but was cut off by Derpy.

"After being immersed in that stuff as long as we were, neither of us is strong enough to help carry her," Derpy said. Lyra stared at Bon Bon, tears in her eyes.

There was a pause as Carrot thought about how to proceed. "Alright. Either Vinyl or Octavia will carry Bon Bon to the hospital while the other one goes with Derpy, Lyra, and myself to the library to stop Coxa. Any questions before we move out?"

Octavia and Vinyl shook their heads, Lyra mumbled something indistinct, and Derpy asked a question. "Coxa? As in, Commander Coxa?"

"Actually, I think it's Lieutenant," Carrot corrected her. "Why? Do you know him?"

Lyra tried to cut in, her voice weak and soft, "Uh, the..."

"Huh, so this is before he got promoted that far up..." As Derpy talked her right eye started to drift towards the ceiling. "But yeah, I know him. Or rather, I will know him. It's sorta confusing."

Carrot Top narrowed her eyes, then nodded. "So, what can you tell us about him?"

"The thing is..." Lyra said quitely.

"He's dangerous," Derpy said immediately. She paused, then continued. "He might be the most pragmatic pony I've ever met. He abuses what his opponents expect from 'bad guys' to make his plans work more smoothly. Don't assume anything with him." She thought about it a little more before adding, "That's about all I can say right now, without screwing the timeline up too badly."

Carrot Top gritted her teeth, and took a deep breath. "If you can't say more, that's okay. I can work with that. Alright mares, let's head o—"

"I'm not going with you." Lyra said. "I can't go with you. I'm going to the hospital, to help watch over Bon Bon." She looked at Carrot Top, her eyes brimming with tears. "She's in trouble, I need to be there."

Carrot's first instinct was to argue. This mission was going to be dangerous, and pulling it off with four ponies was going to be risky. Trying it with only three was just plain suicidal. But then she looked at Derpy. Would she act any differently, if it was her friend who was in this much danger? No. She let out a long sigh, and said, "Okay. Stay with her, and do your best to make sure she's okay. That's an order." Lyra nodded and flashed a sincere smile. Carrot turned to Octavia and Vinyl. "So, which of you will be taking Bon Bon?"

Octavia stepped forward. "I should do it. Though I rarely make use of it, my Earth Pony strength and endurance should make it possible for me to bear her weight the whole way there."

"Ha!" Vinyl laughed. "No way! My telekinesis can easily carry BB"

Octavia shook her head. "Vinyl, you aren't thinking. You're far more helpful in a situation like this than I am."

"..." Vinyl was silent was a few seconds, which was a definite rarity for any conversation she was in. "How about this. I ask a random pony for a random number, and if that number doubled is odd, I'll go. If it's even, you go." She turned her head towards Derpy. "Derps, give me a number."

"40," she said pausing to think.

Vinyl gave a dramatic sigh. "Crap, that's 80. Looks like you're taking her." She looked over at Carrot Top. "I'll head topside first, check out if there are any guards, maybe find where they stashed our stuff." Vinyl trotted over to the ladder and climbed up quickly. Once she was gone, Carrot looked over at Octavia.

"Isn't any doubled number even?" she asked the cellist.

Octavia nodded with a faint smile on her lips. "Yes, and she knew that. She realized I was right, and caved in without seeming like she gave up. She does it quite often." The smile grew by millimeters. "What an obstinate, thick-skulled, amazing pony she is."

Carrot Top looked at her friends. They were dirty, a little tired, and one was in serious danger. Several others, herself included, weren't likely to live through the night either. She took a deep breath. "Well, let's brush ourselves off. It's time to party."

Author's Note:

It's alive!