> Shape-Shifting101 for Changelings.
>  by FluffyDoom
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chap1: Welcome Class!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter 1: Welcome Class!


Tippy like all changelings had a wonderful name that ponies could never respect. That was one reason the treaty was going down horribly with them, but oh well, this story isn’t about the treaty that happened 5 years after the invasion of Canterlot. It is about Tippy attempting to teach some younglings about morphing.

“Welcome class, please settle down!” Tippy barged into the classroom of excited hatchlings. In one holed hoof he held a suitcase, and upon his neck was a white and red striped tie. Like many changelings when they were home in the hive, he had morphed something on him to stand out. Sadly, it was the fashion crimed white and red striped tie.
“Who are you?” A young hatchling demanded.
“You new teacher in the wondrous fields of changing and morphing! Mr.Tippy!” He tried for the dramatic introduction.
“What happened to the old bat- I mean, uh, Miss Grizzle?” The same one asked. Tippy knew this changeling, as he knew every single changeling in the hive. All four thousand two hundred and 5 of them.
“Well, Jiggles, she is retired and now scolding younglings worse than ever- I mean giving them pats on the back!” He gave a slightly nervous grin. No one talked bad about Miss Grizzle, for if she found out... Everypony shuddered to think.
“How do you know my name!” Jiggles demanded.
“Mind powers.” Tippy said sarcastically.
“Woah…” Sadly, Jiggles believed him. “Oh, oh! What am I thinking about now!” He demanded.
“I don’t care about your thoughts, because they obviously aren’t on morphing!” Tippy snapped.
“He’s right!” Jiggle screeched.
“Shut up!” Tippy yelled once more. “There will be no screaming in my class, it gives me a headache.” Clearing his throat once more he wrote in horrible handwriting, for many changelings couldn’t even read and write well, ‘Mr.Tipeh’ on the blackboard.
The irony was, to become a teacher one of the tests was to know how to spell your name correctly.
“So, lets begin.” Tippy grinned.

As Mr.Tippy began what was probably a long boring lecture, Jiggles and his friend, Trip, began to focus very hard on screaming inside their heads.
“I don’t think this is working, Jig.” Trip whispered.
“You’re right! He must be blocking us out so he can concentrate on teaching better. We must scream louder in our thoughts!” Jiggles whispered back.
“No, I mean, what if he was jo-”
“What are you two younglings doing?” Mr.Tippy demanded as the two hatchlings whispered back and forth with scrunched up faces and hooves on their heads as they concentrated.
“Why don’t you tell us, mind-reader?” Jiggles demanded in a serious voice. He had to test the power of Mr.Tippy again.
Mr.Tippy’s face dropped and he face-hoofed. “Don’t tell me… You are really trying to give me a headache with your minds? I was just jo-” He was cut off by a rather girly scream from Jiggles.
“Aiiiieee! He read my mind!” Jiggles screeched and passed out.
“What is wrong with that hatchling?” Mr.Tippy growled. Sadly though, it was no longer just that one changeling who believed Mr.Tippy could read their thoughts, it was now half the class. “So. if any of you were listening, we are now going to try to grow some manes!”
With a puff of green fire Mr.Tippy grew a long female mane.
“I thought only mares wore their hair like that.” A female changeling commented.
“We are changelings, who cares?” Mr.Tippy demanded. “I mean, we can change gender anyway.”
“How do you change gender? How do you tell genders?” Another one asked.
He blushed slightly. “That is for later, like, years later. For now lets just focus on growing some fabulous manes, hmm?”
The class cheered and sprouted all sorts of hair, but not all of it was on their heads.
“MR.TIPPY THERE IS HAIR ON MY STOMACH!” Bumble yelled in panic. “HELP! IT TICKLES!”
“Calm down, calm down!” Mr.Tippy rushed to her side. and looked down in fear.
Indeed, all over the younglings belly was brown fur that continued to grow longer by the second. Somehow this hatchling had managed to conjure up an ever-growing mane, but on her belly! Accidentally bashing her head against his in the attempt to get their horns to touch, he managed to get rid of her stomach hair and she let out a sigh of relief, but just as he was done with that crisis, another soon appeared.
“MY MANE IS MADE UP OF FLOWERS! I AM ALLERGIC TO GIRLY STUFF!” A bunch of fake sneezes followed.
Mr.Tippy walked over and waked the hatchling on the back of the head. “Don’t be sexist, honestly with us being able to change gender and our leader being a mare, you would think we were past those things by now.” He glanced at you, breaking the fourth wall. “Oh, oops!” He said and the story resumed.
“Just turn the flowers into hair!” Mr.Tipsy said and walked off to help another crying youngling, too bad it was a bit more than morphing problems.
The youngling was a mare who had successfully made a cute short black mane that slowly turned blue at the tips.
“What’s wrong, you did it perfectly!” Mr.Tippy gasped. A hatchling had actually done something without his help!
“I-I know!” She bawled. “But why do we have to change, am I ugly?” She cried. “Is it because I look like a bug?” She stared at him with circular blue eyes.
He bit his lip. “What, no! You are perfectly fine looking. We all are, just, this is an easier way to feed off of ponies!” He said, awkwardly patting her shoulder.
She sniffled. “Th-thanks Mr.Tippy, you knew exactly what to say… It is actually kind of creepy, I needed to hear those exact words too…” She glanced at him, no longer crying and snotting. “You knew what to say! Ohmigosh,youreadmymind!” She loudly hyperventilated. Her words were so loud the rest of the class heard and stopped giggling at their mane choices.
Trip shot up, his tiny wings flapping and struggling to keep him aloft. “MINDREADER!” He screeched and followed in his friends hoofsteps and passed out.

> Chap2: Ye who causes the most chaos
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter 2: Ye who causes the most chaos.


Swiftly Mr.Tippy coached them through the process of reverting to their original forms, which was bald.
Frisky, a boy who was named for his love of kittens, was having a particularly hard time.
“Come on Frisky, you can do it. Just imagine yourself in your mind, and change!” Mr.Tippy encouraged him.
The youngling was at the end of his patience. “Well… Maybe I don’t want to shift back! MAYBE I LIKE HAVING A MULLET!”
Mr.Tippy face-hoofed. “Oh come on, no one likes mullets.” He said loudly. “Now just ch-”
“HE READ MY MIND! I HATE MULLETS!” Another screech went up from the back of the classroom and he groaned.
“If one more hatchling faints I am going to have to get a nurse, and I don’t think I should leave you guys alone…”
“He knows we plan to cause chaos if he spontaneously leaves!” Another hatchling, Drift, yelled.
Some of the class looked at, and a few in the crowd muttered things like, “Well that wasn’t my plan but it sounds good,” and, “Huh, good idea, wish I thought of it.”
Mr.Tippy stomped his foot to gain attention. “No one is causing chaos because I am not leaving! Now Frisky remove the horrible fashion crime from your head!”
“Your tie is a fashion crime!” The youngling exploded.
He narrowed his eyes and touched his horn to Frisky’s and the mullet disappeared, but only to be replaced with a dunce cap. One that wouldn’t disappear until the five-minute charm wore off.
“You don’t say mean things in my class.” He sniffled, stroking his tie. Shaking his head he regained his professional look and walked up to his desk in the front.
“Ok everypony! Who still has a mane?” He demanded. Two hooves went up. “Ok then, while I help those two, the rest of you can talk quietly.” He stressed the word.
To bad they were mere younglings and didn’t know the meaning of quite.
Immediate laughs and yells went up around the room as he took the two strugglers aside. One had a long mane, while the other had one that looked like a zebras mane.
“What is the problem?” He asked kindly.
“My mane grows longer each time I try to remove it.” Whined the one with a long mane.
“Can I keep mine like this? I like it.” The second one grinned.
“I dunno, Grub, can you remove it first?” Mr.Tippy asked the zebra mane one.
Grub smirked and removed it, then made it reappear again. “Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”
“Ok, you can keep it, now go back to your seat.” He turned back to Squeak. “Ok Squeak, let me see why that is happening.”
He touched her horn with his and found what he expected. She had accidentally put a common trick on herself. Sometimes hatchlings would goof like that, and instead of casting a normal shift, they casted a trick-shift, which could do anything from what was happening to her, to making it stay for a certain amount of time.
Removing the trick he nodded his head. “Try now.” He said.
She scrunched up her face and the mane disappeared and she let out a sharp-toothed grin. “Thanks Mr.Tippy! How did ya do it, did ya use your mind powers on me?”
He made a face. “No, I used my changeling powers. Now back to your seat.”

He made his way up to the front and sighed. He knew he would get annoyed, but not like that. Why were they all so convinced he had mind-reading powers? Well, whatever, he did admit to himself that he was having fun teaching them.
“Ok my little changelings, to wrap up class we are going to do a little exercise so you can know each others names, as I know all of yours.”
A hoof went up.
“Yes?”
“Tell me my name! Prove it!” She demanded.
“First off, it is, please prove it, be polite ok? Second off, your name is Boo. Why?”
“HE READ MY MIND! HIS POWERS ARE TRUE!” Boo yelled and two of her classmates fainted.
“Why is everypony fainting?” He yelled. “Now I have to get the nurse because you all barely know your way around the hive and you can’t fetch her!”
“Yaaaaaaaay!” The class yelled and he gulped.
Rushing from the crazy room, Tippy speed down the hallway.

As soon as the teacher left many started to giggle and one youngling jumped on his desk to get their attention.
“My fellow changelings!” He began. “Listen to my words of fun! We need to gather our passed out classmates and draw on their faces!”
They cheered and dragged the passed out bodies in the front of the room.
“Okay, who has a marker?”
No one raised a hoof.
“Oh yeah, the hive is low on supplies again. Ok, someone go see if our teacher has anything other than chalk!”
They rummaged through his desk, and checked all his drawers. Not a marker to be found, only a brand new pencil and some paper.
“Nothing!” Squeak squeaked.
Ebie sighed and thought of something else. “I guess I have to think up all the cool ideas.” He sauntered over to the blackboard and grabbed all the chalk he could carry and set it on the ground.
“We can still cover them in chalk powder, and we never run out of chalk so we won’t get into too much trouble!” He grinned.
The others nodded and began to roll them in the chalk, covering them in its powers and making them sneeze in their sleep. One sneezed so hard he woke up, it was Jiggles.
“Wha, huh, why?” He looked around confused.
“Oh geez! You woke up, now we can’t laugh at you!” Ebie complained. “No, wait! We still can! Buhahahahahaha!”
He looked at Ebie crossly. “Shut it Eb, what’s going on?”
“The teacher left and we are trying to cover you guys in chalk, so shut up and help us!” Frisky rolled his eyes.
“Lamest. Prank. Ever.” Jiggles declared.
“You got anything better?”
“Yeah I do!” Jiggles grinned, took a chalk piece, and stuck it up one of their nostrils and giggled.
The others laughed and began to find other things around the classroom.

Tippy panted as he finally reached the nurses office. Why did it have to be so far away from his class? He burst in noisily and looked around for the changeling nurse.
“Nurse! Please, quickly!”
“Yeah yeah, hold on. Did some changeling get a paper cut?” A voice floated lazily from the back of her office.
“No! Four changelings passed out because they think I have mind powers, and these just aren’t any changelings. These are younglings, straight from the pods!”
“WHAT!” Her voice screeched and she was next to him in a second. “Why are we waiting? Those guys are second to Discord with the chaos they can cause!” She picked up a bag that was titled, Youngling emergencies, and sprinted from the room faster than he had gotten there.

It had taken the mere ten minutes he was gone for the room to be thrown into a sea of trouble. The two flower pots in there were broken, while Frisky ran around with a mullet on his head, forcing his classmates to suffer by looking at his fashion crime. Four surrounded the passed out younglings and tried to see how many chalk sticks they could fit up their noses. A few others had stolen the paper from Mr.Tippy and were making paper airplanes zoom around the room, and the rest were trying to see if they could break more stuff. So far they had broken: A desk, what pencils were in the room, a broom, the two flower pots, and they had cracked the blackboard. They were on the move and breaking more things.
Just as one of the younglings got a bloody nose from head butting his fellow youngling the nurse broke in, but instead of looking like a changeling, she had turned into a bear.
A loud roar rocked the room and all attention turned towards the nurse and a very out of breath Mr.Tippy. The nurse changed back and glared at them all with a steely eye. “Sit down in your seats.” She commanded, and all fearful of the bear-nurse did so.
She walked up to the ones who had passed out, and were still somehow sleeping, and emptied their nostrils of chalk. She then placed them in their seats and grabbed a plant from her bag. She waved it under their noses and they woke up, noses wrinkled in disgust.
As the nurse went around taking care of those who may have been hurt, Mr.Tippy surveyed his class with a sinking heart. It was a mess, a horrible horrible mess! Two desks were broken, his flowers deflowered, his paper and pencils missing, all his chalk was snot-covered, and his blackboard was broke! Not to mention suspicious blood stains on the floor.
“Ok, who bleed in here?” He demanded as the nurse left.
Weakly Drift raised his hoof. “The blackboard punched me…”
“More like your face punched it!” He snorted. “You all need to be taught a lesson! Except for those who passed out because they were asleep. DETENTION FOR-”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiing! The bell noisily announced the end of class, and before Tippy could utter the next word, they all fled.
“All?” He whimpered as he looked at his now empty classroom.
> Chap3: Teachers Comparison (and a little extra side thing)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter 3: Teachers comparision.


Changelings didn’t have the best education, or the greatest education system, this fact was well known throughout not only the hive, but Equestria too. So often during lunch, teachers would try to compare what they knew in an effort to “smarter” themselves.
Tippy grabbed his two love crystals that were for lunch and walked leisurely into the teacher lounge. It was a cozy little room that could fit every single teacher in the hive into the room, all 17 of them.
“So, that little hatchling thought that she knew math better than I did!” The math teacher, Celio, complained. “I told her, two plus two doesn’t equal four, it equals five!”
Tippy cleared his throat awkwardly, considering he was the new teacher he didn’t have as much authority. Still though, he needed to correct this changeling! “Um, that little hatchling was right. Two plus two is four. Not five.”
Celio glared. “Big difference, one number.” He growled.
Tippy sat down and put a love crystal to his horn to feed, and said, “Actually, the difference is big! If we want to become smarter we can’t say things like that anymore. We have to stop such thoughts if we want our hive to excel!” Just then he jumped up and struck a heroic pose.
“Stop being so dramatic!” One teacher called out and the rest got back to lunch.
Letting out a breath he sat down and ate the rest of his love. Negative and uncaring bunch they were!
Lunch carried on as teachers compared teaching methods and the grades of their students. The grades of the hive were as low as ever, with little to no improvement from the past few years, and grades dropping in classes that miss Miss Grizzle no longer teached. All except his because today was his first day teaching.
After the older teachers were done comparing it was his turn.
“So, Tipster, you heard how our classes have dropped any grades.” Duff smirked. “Well, except for those that Grizzle teached, but was an exceptional teacher. Why do you think we need to change our way of teaching, huh?”
He stood up and sucked in his breath, just to let it all out in one long speech. “Ok, don’t call me “Tipster”, and yes, Miss Grizzle was an exceptional teacher! She was the only teacher to have ‘lings in general improve their grades, and you wanna know how she did that? She used her brain!” He hit his head to emphasize it. “She used this fantastic muscle, that you all seem to be ignoring and not using! All you guys are doing is following the same drab path, while she was unique, and thought outside the box!”
“What box?” One teacher murmured in the background.
“The metaphorical box of ideas!” Tippy exclaimed. “So should we! All you guys do is follow a plan, but I don’t plan on following that rode. I want to help these younglings improve, I want to help them excel, I want to help them become the confident changelings of the future!”
Celio stood up and snorted. “The future is just that though, the future. We must think about the now.” He argued. “Because we are living in the now!”
Tippy was not about to back down, he was ready to use his brain! “And soon we will be living in the future.” He challenged. “And the present will be in the past. We must stop thinking like this, it wont help us improve, it can only bring us lower. To prove my point, I am going to make a wager.”
“Ohhhh!” A teacher squeaked, much like a young changeling. “I love those things!”
Celio smirked again. “I am interested.”
Tippy looked him straight in the eyes. “Celio, if I can’t improve my changelings grades from the standard grades, then I will kiss a pig! If you lose though, you have to retake the teachers course, and convince Grizzle to teach you.”
The crowd oohed. Celio grumbled. “Fine, but that pig you kissed has to have just rolled around in mud and eaten.”
The two shook on it and all the teachers left the lounge.

Tippy was walking back to class when he spotted the nurse attempting to get his attention.
“Oh, hi!” He greeted her, noticing she was wearing a pretty flower tucked next to her ear. It added charm to her he felt, and when he sniffed, he figured it must have been a real flower from the smell.
“Hey Tippy, how are you?” She greeted him casually.
“Oh, good, um sorry about my class earlier.” He awkwardly rubbed his neck with his hoof.
She waved a dismissive hole filled hoof. “Think nothing of it, those guys let you off easy. Listen, by now the whole hive has heard of your bet, annnnd, I wanna help you with it!”
He stood there, dumbstruck. “R-really? But you are just a nurse!” He stuttered.
“And you should know, mister teacher, that there are only 50 nurses out of 4,205 changeling in this hive.” She said. “I want to see if I can recruit a few younglings, see if they are interested at all. Our healing techniques are mediocre at best, and if I can pass on my knowledge early, maybe they can learn more later?”
He grinned gently. “You know, I like you more than all the teacher combined because of that there speech. So few out of all the changelings are open to any change, despite the fact we need it!”
She nodded. “Yeah, it kind of stinks that their have been little to no improvements in any fields except teaching, and even then that was only one changeling. One grumpy, mean, old, terrifying, granny of a changeling… I mean Miss Grizzle is so kind and sweet! Just like pie.”
“Just like pie indeed!” He agreed swiftly.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiing! The bell went off and he sighed.
“I better get back to class, considering we only have one whole day out of the week to teach our subjects I need to make the best of it, and pray those younglings like me enough to spare me of that bet…” He shuddered and walked off.

Thankfully they had not heard of the bet, yet. As he walked into class the only chatter he could hear was them talking about the death of a recent celebrity, apparently he had died while they were taking lunch.
“He… He was my favorite!” Jiggles sniffled. “I will sure miss Robert Willy.”
Tippy had heard a bit about it, but had not paid it any mind. Suddenly his heart went out to the grieving young ones. They all looked miserable, and some had tears in their eyes. An idea sparked in his mind.
“Attention class.” He began slowly. “It has come to my attention that beloved comedian and actor, Robert Willy’s, has died. To honor his memory, I would like you all to take out a piece of chalk, and draw a flower on the corner of your desk. Hopefully he can smell them from his resting place in the Up.”
“Bu-but they are just chalk flowers!” One bawled. “How can he smell them?”
He looked at her sadly. “A spirit is not like living creatures. They love thoughts, because good thoughts make good spirits stronger, good spirits like him. And the flowers you draw are going to be filled with thoughts of love for him, thoughts and feelings. Think of him as you draw these flowers, and he will smell them, he will smell the love.”
Slowly each changeling drew their flowers on the desks. Many were wobbly, while a few savants managed to draw exceptional blooms. As they drew, Tippy went over in his head what he knew about the actor.
Robert Willy was 63, a bit wacky, and loved to make jokes. He was also the only good hive actor for a long time, and generously led a class to help others excel at the acting arts. He sounded like a good changeling, and even the queen will miss him.