7. Alliances
7. Alliances
The walls of the room glowed with the same ethereal glow as everything else in the hive, which kept Rose awake. Slowly but surely Rose had gotten accustomed to life within the hive. The almost omnipresent buzz of changeling wings taking flight had grown to be comforting to her as the noise echoed through the otherwise empty tunnels in the cave. As an admirer of the night, she was already used to the dark shadows that appeared as a result of the low lighting. True, she missed the stars and the moon, but she was no stranger to the dark. Even the light from the substance on the walls, which had originally induced fear in the pony, was now seen with charm and elegance. Still, regardless of how harmless the light now felt, light was still light.
Rose turned on her bed, closing her eyes tight trying to get some sleep. This was a futile effort, since the entire room shone with the dim light and because, as she knew deep in her mind, the light was not really what was keeping her awake.
After a few more moments of attempted sleep Rose sat up, opening her eyes and examining her present accommodations.
The room she was in had a simple bed made of rock, dirt, and grass brought in from the outside to make her stay more comfortable. The room also had a bedside table on which her purple bag currently rested. There was nothing else in the room, but by changeling standards this room was extremely luxurious by being far wider and more furnished than anything else in the hive except for the queen’s own chamber. This was the very same room in which she had slept soundlessly for the past two weeks, light and all.
Rose furrowed her brow, thinking back to the day she arrived.
“What kind of agreement do you have in mind?” Rose answered, finally breaking free from her thoughts. The queen eyed her with glee.
“Well, there is something that you obviously want very much,” the queen said. “Something that would be worth leaving your home and family behind, something on which you had given up hope, a hope that my words somehow managed to rekindle. Judging by your appearance and clothes, I think I have a very good idea of what it could be.”
Rose faltered for a second, angry with herself for being predictable. And yet, no negative feelings could get in the way of the longing she suddenly felt.
“Is it possible?” she asked tentatively. “To change me?”
The queen gave it a moment’s thought before answering.
“Changeling magic is ancient and mysterious,” she said. “I must confess that not even I know all of its secrets. I will also confess that such a feat as using our magic to change a pony has not been attempted before. However, we do have the magic to change creatures other than our own selves, since we often have to do so when new subjects are born and unable to transform.”
She gave Rose a smile.
“If I use all my magic and ask my subjects to assist, I know for a fact we have enough magic to complete the feat. The only problem is that, as the spell is untested, it could have side effects.”
At that moment, Rose could not have cared about side effects. She was on the brink of accepting when a thought struck her.
“What do you want in exchange?”
“Excuse me?” the queen said with small surprise.
“You said you wanted to make a deal. What do you want in exchange?” Rose asked, her voice terse.
Chrysalis laughed.
“You worry too much, my dear Rose,” the queen said. “All I ask for is information.”
“About what?”
“Canterlot.”
Rose stumbled for a second with questions rushing through her mind. However, it appeared that confusion qualified as an emotion.
“Oh yes yes, I should probably clarify,” said the queen. Rose merely listened.
“As I told you, changelings survive by feasting on the love of ponies. It sustains us, it feeds us, and it gives us life. We receive love by transforming into and impersonating ponies. Their loved ones then supply all the love that changeling needs to survive. The reason nopony knows of our existence is because of our ability to be discreet and go unnoticed, which we have done for centuries.”
She paused, checking to make sure that Rose understood. Rose nodded.
“You have seen my hive; it is a small thing compared to any pony town population, but large enough that we cannot simply infiltrate any town or city unnoticed.”
Rose’s ears perked up at the word “infiltrate”, but she said nothing.
“My changelings survive by taking the place of a lost or missing pony. That way the family gets their missing loved one back and the changeling gets all the love that comes from them. However, that means that we need to find a town or city large enough in which not only would there be a large number of missing ponies, but where the resurgence of a group of them would not attract too much attention. This is why we chose Canterlot.”
Rose nodded. She estimated that the hive consisted of around twenty changelings not counting the queen, a number large enough that it would be impossible to go unnoticed in Ponyville, but so insignificant when compared to Canterlot’s population that the plan seemed sound.
“What type of information do you need?” Rose asked.
“Any and all,” the queen said. “If my changelings are to pass as ponies that presumably lived in Canterlot for a long period of time before going missing, they are going to need to know things about Canterlot and the society there. Everything from the names of places, the customs, to anything else that would be common knowledge to a resident,” she explained.
“The six ponies that brought you in were my recon squad. Their assignment was to infiltrate the city, find out all the information we would require for a successful assimilation, and bring it back to the hive for us to study. It was supposed to be a simple enough job for them to accomplish, but we miscalculated your importance.”
“My importance?” Rose repeated.
“Indeed,” the queen said. “The changeling posing as you was the first one sent to Canterlot and the leader of the recon squad. He was tasked with the most dangerous mission, passing as a missing pony to find enough information for the rest of the team to go in. This included roadways, houses, locations, and the identities and information of other missing ponies. He heard rumors of a missing pony by the name of Slant Rhyme; he infiltrated the household, managed to convince them of his identity, and was set to begin his mission.”
“What happened?”
“As I said, we did not know how important you would prove to be. His mission depended on his ability to go undetected and to not attract attention, and yet it seemed that attention followed Slant Rhyme wherever he went. The process of finding enough information for the rest of the squad to join him took twice as long as was originally expected,” she said bitterly. “He is also the leader of the squad, meaning that even now he is having trouble coordinating and netting the information that the squad is gathering due to the eyes that are constantly on him. The squad is progressing far too slowly, and meanwhile my subjects starve.”
“And so what you want from me-”
“What we want from you,” the queen interrupted, “Is the information my recon squad should be gathering. The layout of Canterlot, important landmarks and locations that everypony would know, etiquette on how to pass undiscovered in a crowd, and any information that might come up in conversation.”
She stared into Rose’s eyes.
“Essentially, I want any information that will prevent us from being outed.”
Rose faltered. She did not know if the queen had chosen that phrasing on purpose, but it struck a chord with her nonetheless.
Rose turned away from the queen as she thought. On the one hoof, the plan was very well explained, and there was not anything wrong with them replacing ponies that were gone, and probably dead. And yet…
“This is wrong,” she thought to herself. “You cannot help her; you should not help her. You don’t know if you can trust her. Think of how Slant attacked you. That wasn’t him trying to stay hidden. You should try to escape while you have the chance.”
She attempted to move but could not. Her mind screamed at her body to move, to run, to fly, but her body would not obey any of her commands. For a moment she considered the possibility that she had been put in a trance, but she knew that was not the case. This was her decision.
She turned to look at Chrysalis.
“Ok, I will help you.”
“Why did I agree?” Rose asked herself, lying back on her bed for lack of anything better to do.
She had pondered that question ever since her agreement to Chrysalis had left her lips.
There had been such doubt in her mind at the time, all of which had been disregarded. Why? And the doubt had not dissipated after her choice either. Through the last two weeks Rose had spent every waking hour schooling the queen and her changelings on everything she knew about surviving Canterlot. One day she had talked for hours about the castle, the Royal Guard, and the Princesses. On another she had talked about all the nobles of note and how to tell if a noble was worth taking the time to speak to. On yet another, Rose had talked about every important landmark and house in Canterlot, including their location and all relevant information that might come up in a talk around town. Each of these and all other talks had spanned for hours on end each day and through every second of them Rose had felt doubt.
And yet she continued.
Rose thought hard, searching for any explanation.
“I can’t just let them starve, can I?” Rose knew it was a weak argument as soon as she said it, but it was the first thing she could think of and she therefore clung to it.
These creatures were not harming anypony. They were replacing ponies that were gone, giving their family another chance to love them while feeding off that love. The only victims would be the ones that were missing if they ever showed up. Hardly a crime if it means saving an entire hive.
“But what about all she’s holding back?” Rose asked herself. She had been able to tell that the queen had been keeping secrets to herself, not giving out all of the information. Rose sought to justify this as well; she argued that she was an outsider and the changelings were ancient and therefore it should not strike her as weird.
“No,” she thought. “You know that’s not right. You know it’s wrong, so why?”
She thought for a minute but only one word came to her lips.
“Hope.”
She hated to admit it, but Chrysalis had revived a hope she herself had believed dead.
Rose remembered with tears in her eyes the day she discovered that there was no magic able to fix the mistake nature had made with her.
This had been about a year into her existence as Evening Rose. The library had been empty except for Slant Rhyme, sitting at a desk. On the desk were stacks of books, all of them read and in a disorganized pile. The floor was littered with other tomes, thrown and pushed off the desk in the latest of Slant’s tantrums. The book he had been holding was lying next to the bookshelf after having been thrown by its reader. Bitter tears scorched the table as Slant recited the phrase that had appeared at every end of his extensive research.
“Magic to change the physical makeup of a pony is not only dangerous and irresponsible, but impossible. One may add to the pony form with magic and sometimes remove, but the changing of anatomy, even temporarily, is a foal’s errand.”
That was the day hope had died, in a library and with no one to mourn for it save for a broken stallion. And here was the changeling queen, offering on a silver platter the one thing that life had denied her. Normalcy.
“Is it fair, though?” she asked herself. “Can I really trade my suffering for allowing free passage to the changelings onto Canterlot?”
Even if she thought they were not dangerous, the ponies of Canterlot had a right to know, did they not? And who was she to decide for them?
She tried to chastise herself further, but thoughts of a different kind flooded her mind. Memories.
Rose thought back to the day she had found out about the weather team meeting to talk about her “condition” and how the fury she felt had driven her from her home.
She had run into the bitter winds, looking to escape the isolation of her home and the thoughts that followed her into the night. The cold wind had lashed at her face, whipping away the tears.
“Not even the town sees me as a mare. I will always be an other,” she had thought. The rage she felt was only overpowered by her sadness.
Rose’s memories shifted, instead remembering the struggle with the two check boxes and how close she came to destroying her mirror again. She had been trying to fill out a job application when she was asked about her gender.
“Can I really be female when my body is not?” she had asked. That was the day her problems resurfaced, more real than they had ever been. She realized that she would never fit either box, and they had mocked her as her insecurities rose.
“I’m a mistake,” she had said.
Her memories strayed yet again to the conflict in front of the mirror, every conflict. In some she had broken the glass surface, in others she merely sobbed at its feet. In all those instances she had yelled the same things.
“WHY? WHY CAN’T I BE NORMAL?!” she had cried. “WHY AM I SO MESSED UP?”
Her thoughts had been muddled in anguish about the weight she had to endure. The life she never asked for. She had stared at her reflection, the source of her distress, to find a stallion looking back with judging eyes.
“DON’T STARE AT ME!”
She remembered the mirror shattering, as it had done during her first breakdown at her new home, the eyes of the stallion still looking back at her from the fragments. The eyes called her a freak. She called herself a freak.
Then she remembered the isolation she had felt recently; how even the well-meaning citizens of Ponyville constantly reminded her of her “other” status through their shows of support.
She remembered that she would always be the transpony named Evening Rose, and never Evening Rose the mare.
Rose suddenly had difficulty breathing, her chest feeling tight and sore around the spot where her ribcage had fractured as her front left hoof came to rest on her front right leg at the joint. Tears now streamed down her face as she remembered the pain others had brought to her. Her grief intensified when she remembered the pain she had brought to herself.
Chrysalis could make sure she never felt that pain again.
Rose had made her choice; she could deal with the guilt, just not with the pain.
Rose got up from her bed, grabbing her bag and walking towards the queen’s private chamber.
For all her misgivings about the queen, Rose did genuinely enjoy spending time with her. After Rose was done teaching the changelings about pony culture, the queen would make time to talk to Rose about anything that needed to be discussed. Sometimes these were talks about philosophy and history, but more often they were talks about her feelings.
The queen’s natural aptitude at deciphering emotions was a great deal of help in assisting Rose to open up; as such, Rose had spent her time with the queen going through her emotional distress, often asking for advice and always finding comfort and understanding.
The queen had remarkable insight into the feelings of anger, sadness, and despair with her entire species being outcasts of the world, and her motherly nature worked well to calm and reassure the fragile pegasus. Therefore, the mare would often be seen in the queen’s company whenever a harsh dream or heavy thought enveloped her.
The queen had always welcomed her and, on most days, it always seemed like she was expecting Rose’s presence.
Today, however, that was not the case.
As Rose walked to the chamber entrance, she noticed that the queen was talking to a drone.
“Schedule the hive to arrive next week. Despite the original setbacks with intel we have managed to gather all the information required. The invasion will be able to begin on time.”
“And the recon squad?” asked the drone.
“The recon squad has been instructed to remain in their posts and in their disguises throughout the invasion, keeping those families as bargaining chips. Those ponies will do just about anything to avoid the spilling of noble blood.”
“Do you expect any resistance?”
“No, they are completely unaware of our presence and we now possess the proper information to prioritize our attacks while the first wave infiltrates the city and the castle alike. There is one loose end that must be taken care of, but it is of little consequence, as said loose end shall be eliminated by tomorrow’s end." Chrysalis said with mirth, "It is fortunate that she arrived in the manner she did, otherwise we might not have been able to mount our offensive with the haste and efficiency we have demonstrated. I will ensure her end is swift and painless as a show of gratitude.”
Rose stayed rooted on the spot, eyes wide as the realization of what she had done struck her.
“Hold for one moment, commander,” the queen said. “I taste something strange; it tastes like… fear.”
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Damn! I was hoping Rose and Chrysalis would become the best of best friends and take over all of Equestria!
Ok maybe not, but I loved this chapter seeing how it looked into Rose's past, her inner feelings, and truly showing how far she should go. I want to give her a hug! 
2340822
Rose and Chrysalis as roommates and best friends would be a good sitcom though
Chrysalis, you're such a bitch.
Now, I'd like to yell something that I frequently yell at my TV when watching anime:
2340844
You know what they say, self sight is 20/-2400
I like how you handled this section. It had the potential to have Rose cross an ethical line, but the story Chrysalis spun is believable enough that I can definitely see Rose convincing herself that helping her isn't such a big deal. Especially given how much she would want to believe her. That changed what could have been the moment where Rose lost the sympathy of the readers in to a chapter that really served to strengthen just how much Rose wants what Chrysalis is offering.
Also as an aside I think I just realised how difficult it would be to lie to a changeling.
2341089
So she's gonna go all super Sayan and kill Chrysalis now, right?
2348043
Let me ask you to look back at previous fights and tell me what you think.
2348055
....maybe her power level wasn't high enough then....?
2351195
She's not a saiyan!
She doesn't get stronger from being hurt
Fear, regret, betrayal, fury (I'd imagine)...
Nice twist, first time I hear about a pony deciding to help the changelings. I almost bought that the hive could be sort of good in this story, but no, they are evil as usual.
Will read on!
oh shit oh fuck oh boy no no