Conversion

by CrutioAstarothChaos

Things go down

Thorax lay outside the orphanage on a deck chair, seemingly enjoying the sunshine. In reality the changeling was far away in his thoughts, dwelling in his memories about the hive. Zaffre reflected their world onto this, having the leisure to relax, which he never had during the infiltrations. During field missions they were required to squeeze as much love out of anypony as they could, and then leave without a trace. This time however, they could only devour as much as they needed to survive, and they barely needed to have much surplus; so Zaffre had a lot of time thinking.
Thinking about things that were not allowed back in the hive. Like their names, and why there was noling that could know the other’s name. They were told it was supposed to keep them from comparing themselves to the others, and thus help to prevent competition among hive members. Earning the right to be called on your own name was a privilege, one that only high ranking cluster members were allowed to have. And also, not having a name helped the infiltrators getting used to calling each other the aliases they took upon.
But all this hid behind the little fact that they were given a name soon after they became full-fledged members of the hive. Why give them a name, if they were not allowed to use it? Was it to flush out the weak-willed? No, it could work without a name as well. Was it somewhat sentimental? But changelings barely ever got sentimental, not to mention where sentimentality would come from, if they were living like this for thousands of years as their queen claimed?
The changeling shifted position in the deckchair, letting the sun shine on his other half as well. He dropped the uneasy questions, and tried to think about something else. Thorax was mostly a listener, and a good one at that. He eavesdropped on his own brothers and sisters just as much as he eavesdropped on any pony he ever saw, so it was a rarity to find a rumor that he never heard of before. Still the most frequently heard rumor, or legend to be more precise, was the story of the Changeling King. A story so dumb that even Thorax never believed it. Because let’s be honest: no one believes the story of a male ruler, in a hive that was ruled by only queens for the past few thousand years.
Still, the dull story mentioned the existence of a changeling, that although may have been weaker in general than the queens, but had abilities that made every queen fear him. Thorax wished this was true, because right now, he suspected that the hive could’ve used a better leader, be it a king or queen. And let’s just say that Zaffre didn’t really think too highly about their own queen after the fiasco at Canterlot.
The shifter climbed off of the deckchair, and headed inside. He still had a lot of errands to run, and what little time he spent philosophizing, he could’ve already used to do the laundry.

Lancet managed to get some rest, in the form of a lunch break. The onslaught of patients, however, never seemed to stop. He already asked the receptionist twice to tell everypony that he was on a break, but when he returned, he found several ponies trying to get into Redheart’s empty office.
The changeling would rather deal with a hungry pack of timberwolves instead of this. The changeling soon learned that fate is a fickle master in point of wishes.
Shiftlight’s day suddenly took an interesting turn, when he heard screaming and shouting from the direction of the main entrance. Lancet immediately ignored everypony else, and rushed to the entry of the hospital. He saw a fuchsia colored earth mare, yelling about the horror that attacked their village.
“Please Ma’am calm down!” He tried to reason with the pony. “What happened?”
“Timberwolves!” She screamed, and fainted. Shiftlight barely paid attention, but he caught the mare in the last second before she fell.
Timberwolves. Shiftlight may have wished for this, but he never intended it to be true. Still, if what the mare said was true, he may have been more help outside than inside, so the changeling took off to see what the commotion was all about.
Little did he know, this was the worst decision he could’ve made.

Buzzer sat behind the counter, with a parchment and a quill in his magical grasp. He started writing a letter as a backup plan, after his continuous nightmares, but he still lacked a method to transport it to the recipient. He never truly had hope in the success of the letter, but during his years he learned that hope and luck always balanced each other out; when there was no hope, luck brought along a miracle. He finished re-reading the letter for the fifth time, when somepony entered through the door.
“Hey there Lime!” the aquamarine mare greeted the changeling. “How are you?”
“Oh, hey there Lyra!” Buzzer replied, getting out from behind the counter. “I’m fine thank you! Can I get you something?”
“Well, maybe. You see, I happened to hurt one of my best friends, and I want to apologize.” She sat down, and scratched the back of her head with a hoof. “I don’t suppose you have a cupcake with the word ‘sorry’ on it, do you?”
“As a matter of fact we have just the thing!” Lime said, disappearing in the kitchen. “I just need to find it.”
“Oh, really? That would be so great!”
“And to whom do you plan on giving it?” the changeling asked, secretly hoping it wouldn’t be a stallion.
“Well, do you know Sea Swirl?” Lyra asked. “She’s the kind of friend I share every secret with. Recently she began to miss some of our regular meetings, and never told an excuse. Well, I got curious, and blame me for thinking there was more to this than just a simple detour to water someone’s plants. Poor girl soon found me spying on her as she talked to flowers!”
“Wow, that’s kind of funny!” Lime giggled, grabbing the cupcake from the platter. Pinkie obviously put it in the place he looked last. “I mean, if you don’t take it seriously.”
“Well, I was worried! You know changeling invasion and all that; I thought she was being brainwashed by one of those bugs!” The mare explained. “Do you know what they did to me?”
“Wait, you personally met a changeling?” Buzzer asked, his heart racing in fright. “How?”
“Well, I was abducted.” Lyra replied. “Turns out by their queen no less! I don’t really remember, but I woke up, with two days missing and they told me I tried to attack Twilight Sparkle and Princess Mi Amora Cadenza!”
“That sounds horrible!” Lime said, frightened. He saw his chances of being with the mare slip away in the matter of a second.
“You know what sounds more horrible?” she asked back, when they heard a scream from the outside. “I wasn’t going to say this but... that does...”
Lime dropped the cupcake on the counter, and they both rushed outside. Ponyville was in the state of panic, ponies running around, some stallions and colts trying to stop wild creatures of the Everfree wreaking havoc. The two friends saw the peaceful landscape being destroyed by timberwolves. Buzzer quickly calculated the risks, and made a risky decision. The changeling grabbed the letter he wrote not so long ago, and showed it to Lyra.
“Look, there is no time for me to explain; I’m needed out there to help,” he said to the mare. “Grab this and try to get to the library! Ask Spike to send this to Princess Luna or Princess Celestia immediately! I promise I’ll give you an explanation, just help me now, all right?”
“I promise I won’t let you down!” she replied with the most beautiful smile Lime ever saw from her. “I’ll be back for that cupcake later!”
Lyra took off to the disordered streets of Ponyville, and Buzzer watched as she disappeared in the library’s direction. The changeling let out a sigh, and left the bakery, heading to the hospital to find his brother.

Stupid earth pony form! Lancet thought. The only way for him to keep the beasts away was to directly buck them in the face. Anything else could’ve exposed him as a changeling, and he didn’t dare to risk that just yet.
He yelled orders to the ponies to move the injured to the hospital, while he worked to keep the wolves away from the easy prey. He never truly got an explanation as of why they attacked the village, but right now he really didn’t care. What mattered is that he keeps his food source safe, and himself along with them.
His hooves met the face of another wooden creature with a loud crack, but in his action he missed a single wolf, who got close enough to him to take the changeling down in one leap. The beast lunged forward, and Shiftlight could closely observe the open mouth of the timberwolf, before a huge boulder smashed it.
“Lancet, am I glad to see you!” The sound of Buzzer met the ears of the tall changeling. “I gave up hope of finding some medical attention in this desperate time!”
“Are you hurt?” Shifhtlight asked, as Lime grabbed him in his magical grasp, and dragged him away. “What is the problem?”
“In case you haven’t happen to have noticed, the problem is a bunch of timbervolves,” the other stated. “And that we need to deal with it.”
“I was just doing that!” Lancet defended himself. “Before you dragged me away into this… abandoned alley?”
“Yes, cliché, yadda yadda yadda, listen!” Buzzer turned serious and dropped the other on his flank. “We can do much more about this than they can! We can fly and we have magic!”
“You’re not suggesting…”
“Oh yes, I’m suggesting!” Lime replied with a grin. “Howl to Zaffre! We’ll need all the help we can get!”
“For the record: this is your worst idea!” Shiftlight replied as Buzzer changed back to his true form and ran out of the alley. “And I mean it!”
“Then see how many ponies you can save in that earth pony form of yours!” the other yelled back.
He has a point. Lancet remarked to himself. A stupid point, but still a valid one.

Zaffre was just hanging the clothes out to dry when he heard the unmistakable howl of another changeling. The howl was usually used to signal other changelings to return to the hive, or to scare them away from possible danger. But Zaffre knew that his brothers would never expose themselves unless they were arrested by the royal guard, or needed help desperately. And the previous one seemed highly unlikely, because then they would’ve been already arresting him too. The changeling looked around, and seeing no one, took off, to find where the howl came from.

Lime became extremely vicious once he was near a fight. Sure he was knocked unconscious by some ponies, but he never expected a fight from a bunch of drunk herbivores. Probably those morons were better off that he was out cold, because he had no mercy for any opponent. Especially not for those who took away his food.
Fly around, land, duck, buck grab, smash, repeat. He recited in his head. The bugpony flew around the head of a wolf, landed in front of him, avoided his sharp teeth, trashed the face of the beast with his hind hooves, grabbed a nearby piece of rubble and collided the stone object with the monster’s head. Ponies were running around him, screaming, but he paid little attention; as long as they were out of harm’s way, he didn’t care.
He took down another timberwolf, the fourth one in a row, while Lancet was still trying to eliminate two at once. The changeling had a wide smirk on his face, while he struggled to keep the ponies safe.
“This is just a joke!” Shiftlight yelled, launching several flaming bolts at the timberwolves. “It must be a joke that I’m putting myself in harm’s way to save ponies!”
“Get used to it!” Lime shouted back, and moved closer to his brother to offer his help. “We have a whole village to secure!”
“Are you two serious?” another voice asked from the sky. “I mean, when did we become the dashing ‘heroes to the rescue’ types?”
The question originated from a third changeling, who hovered just out of the timberwolves’ reach.
“Good to see you brother!” Lime greeted. “I thought you’d miss the party!”
“You and your stupid parties!” Zaffre retorted, and leaped into action, trashing the flank of a beast. “I swear, if you ever throw me a birthday party, I am going to bury you alive!”
The trio of bugs got to work and cleaned up the remains of the pack in front of the hospital quickly. They saw from above that the wolves were already on the run, particularly driven out by six mares. To the suggestion of Buzzer and much to the disapproval of Shiftlight the shifters flew closer to the action, as Buzzer said ‘to prove their harmlessness and will to help’. They planned to land between the ponies and the wolves, and aid the herbivores.
“Show no hostility towards the ponies, or they might think we’re untrustable!” Lime advised to his brothers.
“I still don’t think this is a good idea!” Lancet replied.
“I start to agree with Lancet!” Zaffre added as they got closer to the now dying fight.
“Just trust me, I have a contingency plan if things get out of hand!” Buzzer replied.
The other two nodded hesitantly, and the trio landed on the frontline. Buzzer managed to arrive between a wooden carnivore and a rage-filled charging Twilight. He immediately leapt into action, jumping onto the head of the wolf, and shooting a small flaming blast into the eyes of the beast. The wolf let out a painful howl, as Buzzer continued to sting him with small blasts of his green magic, forcing it to dance around as the changeling wanted it to. Soon enough the wolf hit a building and collapsed, while Twilight was still watching the scene shocked. Lime waved to the pony with a friendly smile, and then flew to another wolf.
Zaffre was shocked when the ponies somewhat accepted his help. Both Applejack and Pinkie worked hard to contain two wolves, who somehow learned to work together against the ponies. So when the changeling entered the scene and with his magic used a nearby rope to tie the two hind legs of the monster together, the two ponies let out a loud cheer.
Well, that was until Applejack realized whom she cheered for. Soon after they took down the other wolf Thorax suddenly felt something constricting him tightly. As he looked down he saw a rope, and the end of it was in the mouth of Applejack. After another microsecond he also noticed Pinkie’s party cannon aimed at his face. Surprisingly, the world turned black after a loud bang.
Lancet barely got the chance to fight, because he unfortunately crossed the flight path of a certain cyan pegasus. After that he was bucked in the thorax, and the head, and he caught himself pleading for a chance to surrender himself.
“Well, that’s that!” Buzzer commented, watching as the last of the still conscious timberwolves ran away its tail between its legs. “I told you guys my plan would work!”
As he turned around he faced more than half the population of a still angry Ponyville, and soon enough his brothers landed next to him, both of them tied up tight. He looked up at the furious ponies with a weak smile, and only managed to blurt out a short sentence.
“I… surrender?”

Author's Note:

Yeah, I'm.... not too good with describing combat. I just wanted to skip this part, but.... that would've been awkward. And I still wouldn't have tried to write down one. So yeah, this is my first fighting scene. Enjoy.

Comments

[Luna Secret Stallion]

That last sentence ha ha ha ha! Oh shit this is bad!

[TheEmperor]

Such suspense! More!!

[Aurafluff]

Moooore!

[Soft Shell]

I love the simplicity of your fight scene, its basicly changelings beat up timberwolves.

[erictheblue]

the first part of this story reminded me of a really nasty changeling society in the story "a buggy game", where low-ranking changelings didn't even GET names, only numbers!

[GleamingKyler111]

Still the most frequently heard rumor, or legend to be more precise, was the story of the Changeling King. A story so dumb that even Thorax never believed it. Because let’s be honest: no one believes the story of a male ruler, in a hive that was ruled by only queens for the past few thousand years.

Well... that's very ironic...

“Are you hurt?” Shifhtlight asked, as Lime grabbed him in his magical grasp, and dragged him away.