• Published 22nd Mar 2022
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Don't Bug Me - Starscribe



Amie was prepared for a difficult season as a camp counselor. She wasn't prepared for her entire summer camp vanishing from Earth, and reappearing in a strange new world. Now they're bugs, in a world that seems to hate them. Survival not guaranteed.

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Chapter 24

It was still dark outside when Amie brought her brother across Agate, and led him up one of several back ways into the Rent-a-Friend building. There were so few other ponies around that there was almost no one to see anything suspicious. Those few who were still up at that late hour wouldn’t see two changelings, just one ordinary earth pony mare and another small pony wrapped in a cloak made from an old shipping cloth.

“I can’t believe you pulled it off,” Wes whispered, following behind her up several flights of metal steps. It looked a lot like climbing a fire-escape, except that they were on the side of a building instead of the front. “After the way they treated us, I kinda expected them to figure you out.”

Amie fished around with the keyring in her satchel. Without a horn, she couldn’t use magic to move it around. But she had weeks of practice using her stupid hooves for basic tasks, so she could manage this one. She got it into the waiting lock, then twisted it.

“My boss didn’t figure it out, I told him. That’s the whole reason he hired me. And gave us this place.”

Technically the werehouse wasn’t part of the Rent-a-Friend building. Instead it was connected by a rickety wooden bridge, which Bud had taken her across a few minutes after hiring her.

She swung the door open, then flicked on the light. The interior was obviously not meant to be a real apartment building—the ceilings were too high, the windows too narrow. This was an old factory, one Bud had bought and converted into living quarters. Rent-a-Friend might be profitable, but it still took space.

Flickering lights illuminated a dozen different doors, made of identical rough wood and numbers on each. “I’m… still struggling to understand what’s going on with all this,” Wes admitted. “We’re trusting ponies with what we are? You’re working at a friendship store? What is all this, exactly?”

“Well this is where we’ll live. Ponies are terrified of us, so he can’t just have us working here out in the open. We’ll be ponies—several ponies, actually. All of these rooms are empty, he hasn’t found staff to fill them yet.”

“But it’s not…” Wes lowered his voice. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to—we can find another way, if that’s what it takes. This isn’t a—”

“No,” she said, loudly. “They really are just friends, Wes. It’s not a euphemism. Ponies are just that desperate for it.”

She reached one door at random near the center of the room, and unlocked it. Technically she had the master key, each one of these rooms locked the same way. Only this one wasn’t totally empty. The door swung open, and she switched on another light.

The room beyond was no cheap motel to rent by the hour—instead, it looked like any other apartment, with mass-produced furniture and boring photos. But it had a real fridge, and a steady thrum of heating kept the space warm. They wouldn’t freeze here, like out in the warehouse.

“This is the one we’ll really live in. Mostly you, probably—I’ll have a busy schedule at first. Bud wants to evaluate me. If it goes badly we might be out on our butts before too long. I convinced him to take a chance on me, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get rid of us just as fast.”

“There’s a military base right in town,” Wes said. “Do you trust this guy not to take advantage? What if he just… tells us we have to work for free? And if we don’t, he calls border patrol? That’s never happened in our world before, it definitely couldn’t happen here.”

Amie clicked the door shut, then locked it. “I can read his emotions, remember? That doesn’t mean Bud couldn’t change his mind… but I think he’s sincere. He’s all kinds of eccentric—but he cares way more about providing a good service to his customers than making the most bits. He could’ve hired way more ponies by now, but he hasn’t, because he only takes the best. He really cares about helping ponies.”

Wes paced through the little living room and kitchen, then nudged open the bedroom door. It was far less impressive than the front of the apartment, barely even big enough for the bed it contained. “Yeah, we won’t do any work there,” she said. “Bedroom’s yours. Actually this whole apartment’s yours. It’s the one where we can be ourselves.”

She made her way to the window, then drew the shutters closed. Finally she relaxed, really relaxed, letting her true body return.

The hideous bug didn’t feel any less hideous after exchanging it for several different ponies during her tryout performance. Instead, it left Amie aching to be one of them for real. There were holes in this body, from the legs all the way up. “They’ll keep the food here stocked. I’m supposed to use it for clients who visit, moving it into the different rooms when I need them.”

Wes made his way over, then opened the fridge. His mouth fell open at the variety. Fresh fruit of all kinds, several pitchers of colored liquids. Tea and fruit juice, though there were several light wines as well.

Wes selected an apple from the fridge, carrying it in faltering levitation over to the table. Even doing that much was an impressive feat from him. “I don’t understand why they would give us all this space,” he said. “Why do you need a whole floor?”

“Because we’re not changelings,” she said. “We’re a whole group of new staff, all hired at once. We can’t live with the others, because he doesn’t know which ones can be trusted not to get upset with a changeling working here. If there are any rumors of that, it ruins his whole reputation. Staying hidden has to come before everything.”

“What about the stairs out in the hall?” He pointed back the way they’d come. “Do those go anywhere?”

She shrugged. “The roof probably, why? This is the top floor, there’s nothing up there.”

He finished the apple, then carefully deposited his saddlebags on the table in front of him. “I know it’s probably a long-shot. But I’ve been thinking about ways to… stay in touch with camp? For you more than me. But with enough metal foil, we could make a dish. Point it back towards the mountain. Sending anything back would be harder, we’d need to improve transmission power somehow. I know Rick was working on different ways to do that, maybe we could do one of them here? Ponies might have electronics stores.”

She chuckled. “I guess they might. From what I saw, it’s nothing like back home. But… we are in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the technology just hasn’t gotten here yet.”

She put one hoof on his shoulder, keeping her voice down. “I know how much we want to help them. But out here, the best thing we can do is find how to send everyone in camp back to Earth. Radios won’t do that, native magic will. Remember the plan? You’re going to find out about magic, and I’m going to earn us enough money to take a trip to the capital and get it.”

Wes rested his head up against her leg, closing his eyes. “Yeah. I know. It’s… overwhelming.”

“It’s not fair that this responsibility is all ours. But what’s the alternative—run away and abandon everyone? Never see Mom and Dad again?”

He didn’t answer for a long while. “I’m glad you’re here, Amie. I think I probably would just run away. But your kids deserve someone better. The camp does too. I’ll try to be as good as you are.”

They spoke for another few hours, until the sun started to rise. Only after Wes went to bed did Amie finally leave that room and cross to the one at the front of the floor. It opened with the same key, into a room that was decorated nothing like the one she’d just left.

“I’ve been looking for the right creature to take this spot,” Bud had explained, when he first showed her the space. Not an apartment so much as a… rec-room? It reminded her of the one in camp, with game tables, shelves of fun books, and snacks in high baskets. This was a smaller scale version of the same thing, the kind of place a teenager with an infinite budget might build.

“There’s a client whose support could really make a difference for the Rent-a-Friend. Daughter of… the most important pony in Agate. She’s had some trouble fitting in since leaving Canterlot, and hasn't made any local friends. Only problem was, the friend her father wants for her doesn’t exist. Good thing with you she doesn’t have to.”

Amie made her way in, where a single sheet of paper sat on the game table. She had glanced at it before, but didn’t take the time to study it until now. It was a mass-copied form, filled out with a meticulous, military penmanship. It wanted a unicorn mare between fifteen and eighteen, with a wide diversity of interests and bizarre skills.

Amie turned it over a few times, playing over what a pony like that would look like. One of her adventure campers, more or less. Someone who wanted to go out into the wilderness to explore—not to find rare metals or gemstones, but just for the joy of seeing something new. At the same time, she needed to hold her own in conversations about politics, military history, and science. She needed to be outgoing when the client wanted her to be, but accept direction when they wanted to take charge.

Bud didn’t want her to work daycare, though that would’ve been easy enough for Amie. Instead, the application suggested an adventure camp counselor, an enterprising young scholar across many fields, and probably more she wasn’t even seeing at first. On the diagram showing each Element of Harmony, Bud’s notes suggested every single one would be needed with this client.

I told him I could do it all. Now we see if I was right. Amie paced back and forth in front of the room’s big mirror. In front of her were several books taken from the shelf—most of these were meant for younger ponies anyway, showing explorers in action-packed poses and dangerous situations.

What would a younger me look like as a unicorn? She wasn’t talented enough to draw, but she could imagine. What if Stella Lacus had come to Equestria during a previous year, and not been monsters? Would she even be a unicorn?

Probably not, the wings were just too cool, and would make getting from one adventure to the next much easier. But that was part of this client’s problem in the first place.

Amie knew the moment her vision was clear enough, because magic flashed around her, briefly filling the dark space. When it faded, the room looked a little bigger, the tables and trail maps a little more inviting.

Amie stared back into the mirror, memorizing what she saw there. If this worked out, she would need to recreate this body many times.

She was lean, but didn’t give up the muscles she’d built with her summers of adventure. She chose several different blues for her coat, not so much because they meant anything as she thought they would look cute together, with a creamy white mane.

She stretched, then jogged back and forth across the room a few times, getting familiar with the smaller body with its strange proportions.

It fit well enough. All she needed was a name. Something to go with that tent cutie mark. “Rain Fly,” she decided, whispering to the mirror. Yes, she could be Rain Fly. She might even enjoy it, depending on the client. Lucky her to get somepony she might’ve been friends with back in her real life.

The only tricky thing was that strange note about politics and history. How could she possibly prepare for that? Amie picked a few of the least interesting books up off the shelf in her magic, carrying them to the bean-bag chair. She had until the afternoon to prepare for her first day of work, she wasn’t going to let a second of that time go to waste.

I’ll protect you, Wes. No matter what it takes.

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