Suspicion in the Wasteland
“Wooo-Hooo!”
Two ponies thundered across the hard, dry earth, both hitched to a dilapidated wooden cart piled high with swaying crates and burlap bags stuffed with oddly-shaped items. The stallion who had just shouted was a navy blue earth pony with the round scope symbol as a cutie mark and had both a tattered stetson jammed onto his head and a brown vest covering his barrel. The female, a teal pegasus by the name of Summer Breeze, turned her head to grin at him, but her eyes widened at something behind him.
“Incoming! Another group on the right!” She shouted. As one, the pair swerved to the left as a small herd of unicorns crested a ridge, galloping after them at full tilt and shouting intelligible war cries. Two of them stopped at the hilltop and unslung rifles from their back, firing magic slugs at the retreating cart. Most ricocheted off the ground, but one hit the back corner of the cart, the decay spell woven into the pellet creeping over the already fragile wood and turning it to dust.
A clatter caused the earth pony to glance behind him and gasp. “We’re losing supplies!”
“Well then, fix that, Dusty!" Summer shouted over the noise of the protesting cart and furious mob.
Dusty Canyon nodded, and after jerking his head around and gripping his harness in his teeth, he detached himself from the cart, let it pass him, and leaped through the hole in the back. Summer grunted at the increased weight, but hardly slowed as Dusty began shifting crates to block the hole. Once satisfied with his work, he risked a glance back at the angry mob.
"Argh, they're setting up a beacon!"
A small group had splintered from the rest of the unicorns and stopped in their pursuit while sickly-looking tendrils of magic began to pulse from their crusted horns, lacing together to form a bubble of light around them. Dusty pulled an automatic from the small pile of munitions clattering around in the cart, and without checking to make sure it was loaded, he leveled it at the group by resting it on the wall of the jerking cart. The gun was designed for use mounted on a pony's side and fired by a pegasus’ wings, so while steadying it with his muzzle and one hoof, he used the other to depress the trigger. Not quite the sniper gun he needed for the situation, but it would do. After squinting down the barrel for a moment, he fired, and one of the unicorns collapsed with a cry, the sphere wavering before disappearing in the smoke kicked up by the bullet’s spell. Not taking any chances, Dusty emptied the rest of the clip into the spot where they had been standing before checking the status of their pursuers.
It was not looking good for the duo- the cart was traveling at a slower pace now that Summer was pulling it alone, and the mob was gaining on them. A few at the head of the herd were in range for their magic bolts, and Dusty could spot the telltale rust-colored gleam of spells being prepped in the billows of dust trailing the cart.
Suddenly, the cart jerked sideways, cracking Dusty’s head against the side. “What the- Summer, watch out!” he shouted. A lone unicorn, mane cropped close to its scalp and decked out in more piercings and war paint than was ever necessary had teleported directly into their path, and the pegasus swerving to avoid it was what had jerked the cart. However, in doing so, she had set their course directly towards the edge of a gorge.
“Turn right!”
She veered again, but Dusty was distracted by an ominous thump, followed by a scrabbling noise coming from the side of the cart. He grabbed a hatchet in his teeth right before the same unicorn pulled itself over the edge of the cart, brandishing a wicked-looking knife in its patchy copper magic. The cart was much too small for any kind of hoof-to-hoof combat, so before the grinning unicorn could gather itself, Dusty pivoted around and slammed a buck right in its face, sending it tumbling off its perch. Pain exploded in his head, and he fell to his knees with a cry. Through his blurring vision, he could vaguely make out the bloodied knife lying at his hooves as more and more crimson spots sprayed the wood around him. Summer was shouting something that he could not make out, and when he heaved his head over the railing, the pack of bloodthirsty unicorns seemed almost close enough to touch.
It was at that moment that one of the weapons sliding back and forth across the cart bottom caught his eye. Struggling to concentrate, he dumped an ammo bag and scrabbled through its contents until he found a bright orange bullet, which he promptly smashed against the fuses of the dynamite pack. Instantly, the fire spell ignited them, scorching his hoof in the process, but at this point, additional pain hardly made a difference. He felt the cart change course yet again, but ignored it, hefting the whole pack and eying the angry herd. Timing was critical. He ignored the concussive blasts that were peppering the swaying cart and flicked his eyes back and forth from the fuse to the unicorns. At the last possible second, he chucked it where the bodies were thickest (which, unfortunately, was directly behind the cart) and it immediately exploded. He felt a thrill of exhilaration, followed by a massive jolt, a crunching noise, and then darkness.
One minute earlier...
Summer Breeze swerved past the teleported unicorn and thundered on, parallel to the gorge. She threw her head, flicking her dull yellow mane out of her eyes and tried to focus her jumpy thoughts on the rhythmic thumping of her necklace bouncing against her chest. She would never admit it, but she did not know how much longer she could keep this up without help. Her legs felt like they were on fire, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. She was beginning to regret not having Dusty pull the cart instead- those blasted earth ponies had what it took for mad dashes like this.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she heard a smack followed by her friend’s voice crying out in pain. “Hold on, we’re- Augh!” A unicorn mare had pulled up alongside her, and after flashing her a wicked-looking smile, had rammed her side. Summer gritted her teeth and glanced around, desperately trying to think of something. She trusted Dusty to keep their pursuers off her back, but if they were this close, there was not much he could do that would stack the odds in their favor. There was nothing though. Before her was still a solid five miles to their camp, to her left was the gorge, the unicorn to the right, no doubt trying to push her into the aforementioned gorge to retrieve their supplies after her expiration, and behind her…
Summer glanced to her left. The gorge! It was risky, but not half as risky as what they had done earlier that day. And it was better than being run down by crazed raiders by far.
“Dusty!” she shouted, while giving the unicorn a shove back, and a headbutt for good measure. “I’m jumping the cliff! Sit tight!” If he screeched something about the insanity of her plan she did not hear it, and she angled their path dead at the gorge. She stretched out her wings and began pumping them in beat with her stride, straining to pick up speed as all her muscles screamed at her to stop. The seconds ticked by slowly as she drew nearer and nearer, and then finally threw herself into the air with all her strength. At that very moment, an explosion erupted immediately behind the cart, propelling it even further than it would have flown under her strength alone.
“Whooooooo!” She whooped, pumping her wings as hard as they would go, and straining against the load. She aimed up at a steep angle, and managed to keep the cart airborne for a solid few seconds, but gravity eventually took over and dragged them down. She panicked, but refused to give up. Flapping furiously, she fought for every inch of progress, but ultimately felt the inevitable jolt of the cart making contact with the ground… on the far side of the gorge.
She risked a glance behind her without breaking her stride, and despite the cart blocking most of her vision, she could make out the unicorn’s side crumbling down in a rockslide, no doubt due to the explosion. The unicorns not caught in the blast were crying out in panic as the ground beneath their hooves crumbled and carried them down into the abyss. One tried to teleport out, but his magic backfired on him, the implosion further adding to the rockslide. Well, that would certainly take care of their unicorn problem.
“Yeah! I think we’re… Dusty?” She checked again; he was not in the cart! “Dusty!” She started to loop back towards the gorge, but a groan from the back stopped her. He must have crouched behind one of the crates, out of her field of vision.
“You okay?” No answer. Summer put two and two together and figured the close proximity of the explosion must have knocked him out. She rolled her eyes. Wimp.
Laugh as she might, she knew how dangerous any sort of injury was to survival, and altered her course towards a rocky outcropping squatting in the distance. Mutants tended to avoid flat land, but she figured all the ones that might have claimed the rocks as their own would be drawn towards the action by the gorge, especially if the unicorns had succeeded in setting up the summoning beacon. She snorted; one problem at a time. Cautiously, she circled around to the rock formations furthest from the gorge and made her way through the cover until she found a cave. This would do for now.
She unhitched herself from the cart and stretched, panting. She was covered in a lather of sweat and dust, but at the moment, she was just relieved they had pulled it off without dying. The duo had found the unicorn raiders' encampment, and after scouting it out for a day, they blitzed in and swiped as many supplies as they could. It had started out as just food, munitions, spellkits, first aid sets, clothing and/or blankets; the usual, that is, until Dusty Canyon had caught sight of the leader. Or rather, his hat. Still sore after the last Turned had mistaken his battered fedora for his cranium and had chewed it beyond all recognition, Dusty refused to leave without the cowpony hat that was perched atop the lead raider’s horn. Consequently, nicking the hat clean off the boss had cost them their stealth and alerted the entire band to their presence, and the two were forced to shoot their way out of the ramshackle base and begin their mad dash for freedom. Hopefully the raiders would forget about them in a day or two- unicorns tended to have short memory spans. Summer remembered hearing that before the sanity scourge, unicorns were known for being the most intelligent of the three pony races. Looking at one now, she could not see it; the magic plague had affected them too deeply to give any inkling of what they had once been. As far as the survivors were concerned, there were two pony races: the earth ponies and pegasi. The unicorns were lumped together in the giant category of wasteland threats which could not be receptive to reasoning.
Summer grinned. At any rate, they had enough supplies to last them for months, which might as well be an eternity in these parts. Now all that was left was to patch up the earth pony and head back to their own camp with their new loot. A rusted brace-pistol clattered from the cart and immediately snapped in half. Well, relatively new loot, anyway.
Summer Breeze hopped up into the cart and took stock of their situation. Surprisingly, it looked like not much was lost in the explosion. She pushed a large crate out of her way and instantly jumped to the air with a cry of surprise. She hovered for a few seconds, heart racing before she realized that she was not, in fact, looking at a Turned. Cautiously, she landed, grabbing the broken brace-pistol and slipping it onto her forelimb before flying back above the cart. The whatever-it-was was wearing Dusty's vest, and a quick check confirmed that it was the only creature in the cart. Was it... Dusty? She peered closer. Had the unicorns cursed him somehow? He was completely black, with holes in all four of his legs, two traits which had caused her to think he was a Turned, but there the similarities ended. He was not decaying, and under the grime he looked almost shiny, as if he had no fur. His mane and tail were not made of hair, but as far as she could tell, they were some sort of... fin. Most startling of all was the appearance of a horn smack in the middle of his forehead. She would have to be cautious- if this really was Dusty, she would have to grill him on what had happened as soon as he woke up, and they would have to break the curse as soon as possible before the sanity scourge set in- she did not want to risk losing her friend to the madness.
Cautiously, she landed next to him and shook him gently. She stiffened- his skin was hard, as if he were made of metal instead of flesh and bone. "Dusty?" She asked quietly- if there really were mutants around, she did not want unnecessary noise to attract them. "Dusty, are you okay?"
He did not respond, but her shifting him had tilted his head towards her, and she inhaled sharply at the long gash that ran from his left ear down to his eye. It looked like it had cracked the outer... shell, and what she assumed was strangely colored blood was covering the side of his face.
She sighed, pulled his head and forelimbs over her back, and carried him over to the small cave. He was extremely light- yet another factor which added a few extra butterflies to her stomach. She gingerly laid him onto the stone floor and tried to brush away a piece of trash that had wedged itself under the back of his vest, but it would not come out. And then it twitched.
Summer blinked and shuffled around Dusty to get a better view. Were those... wings? She flicked them with her hoof and they twitched again- they felt papery and thin, too thin to support a pony in the air, unless they flapped them as fast as an insect. Come to think of it, they did look remarkably like bug wings... Bug... Bug pony...
Suddenly everything clicked together. A black carapace, hole-filled legs, both horn and wings... Summer remembered an old legend she overheard Berry Blossom rambling about in her final days before the old nag snapped- the myth of the changelings.
Summer jumped away and began pacing outside the entrance to the cave, nervously fiddling with her polished stone necklace. She did not blame herself for not realizing it sooner- in all her years adrift, she had never had to face a changeling, and so they had taken a low priority to much bigger, very real threats of insane unicorns or the wandering dead. She struggled to remember as much as possible about them. They could look like anypony, that much was the main nugget of lore that always came with the legend, but there was something else about them- did they not eat? No, they ate an emotion or something. The exact one was eluding her grasp at the moment. No matter, the important issue was that a changeling had replaced Dusty Canyon.
Summer Breeze grabbed a coil of rope from the wagon and immediately hog-tied the changeling's legs and wings. She eyed the horn warily before deciding that breaking it would be too risky and left it as it was. Once satisfied that the changeling could not escape, she returned to the cart and proceeded to arm herself. She swapped the broken brace-pistol for a working one, and adjusted the grip. Brace-pistols had a opening at one end which slid over a pony's foreleg like a gauntlet. Once the safety was disengaged by the presence of the hoof, all that was needed was for the pony to bend their leg and the pistol would discharge. This made walking extremely difficult, and as a result, they were not almost never used by earth ponies. Summer preferred them to wing or mouth-triggered guns, however, and slung a few packs of ammunition toward the cave to load once she was finished. While making preparations, she took the opportunity to adjust the harness for her wing blades- a set of daggers carefully concealed behind her feathers and arranged so they moved in sync with her wings without harming her. They were highly effective in any close combat situation, although she usually emerged from fights with a few feathers sliced off.
A roll of gauze fell from a crate as she rummaged through it in search of more firepower, causing her to pause. Should she bandage up the changeling? He would not last long without medical treatment, that much was sure, but why should she help him? He most likely attacked Dusty Canyon, maybe one night while he was keeping guard, and impersonated him, playing her for a fool, betraying her trust, most likely aiming to stab her in the back the moment she dropped her guard, making her think all was well while her best friend- well, at this point her only friend- was lying out there, injured or dead for all she knew. Come to think of it, how recently could he have been replaced? Maybe it was just now, when they raided the raiders. Maybe he had thrown Dusty to the unicorns from the back of the cart, but had been overpowered before he could don his disguise. If so, should she head back to the gorge right now and look for him? She would have to do it sooner rather than later if he did get caught in the rockslide and needed help: the canyon would be swarming with mutants soon. However, she could not leave the changeling unguarded; best to wait until he woke up and steered her in the right direction first.
Maybe it had been yesterday when they were scouting the encampment, or maybe she had never known Dusty Canyon in the first place. What if the Dusty she had met with Pot Shot and Buttercream had already been a changeling?
She entered the cave and stood across from the unconscious form of the changeling, examining him while she loaded her weapon. His wound did look pretty bad... With a growl, she kicked the roll of gauze over towards him. He could treat himself, preferably after she pried Dusty's location out of him. There was no way she would lift a hoof to help the betrayer. Pistol primed, she aimed it at him and waited for him to awaken, steeling herself for the confrontation that was to come.
Dusty awoke slowly, floating in and out of sleep until he eventually moved his head and a sharp throb of pain woke him for real. He groaned and tried to pull himself to a sitting position, but something felt off. He was vaguely aware of Summer's nervousness and anger nearby and he groggily cracked open his eyes to find himself muzzle to muzzle with a gun, a gun pointed at him by Summer Breeze.
He blinked slowly, not comprehending. "Huh? W'appened?"
"Alright changeling, game's up" she snapped tensely. "What did you do with Dusty Canyon."
Instantly, 'Dusty' sat up straight, his eyes wide, fully awake now. A quick glance down at his front hooves confirmed that his disguise was indeed compromised, and he could feel the adrenaline kicking in as his heart started racing. 'Stay calm,' he told himself, 'you knew this might happen, just don't lose your cool'.
He tugged at the ropes binding his hooves together and winced. "Can we go through this later?" he sighed in his real voice instead of Dusty's. "My head's pounding and I don't want to say the wrong thing on accident 'cause I can't think straight."
"NO." Summer narrowed her eyes. "We're going through this now. Now where is Dusty Canyon, changeling? And don't even think of lying to me." she growled, flaring her wings enough for the light to catch her blades.
Cliché. So much for dodging the subject. 'Dusty' tried to settle into a relatively comfortable position. "How much do you know about changelings?" he opened the explanation with a probing question. Best to see what could be glossed over.
"Enough. I know that you kill ponies so you can shapeshift into them and trick everypony they know into thinking that you're them."
"Is that it?"
"And that after lying to everypony, you backstab them when they least expect it."
"Ah." Mimic's face fell "Not much then. With nothing to back up my claims, I guess there's nothing I can do that'll convince you that I'm telling the truth. I'll just leave it up to your best judgement then." He sighed, his words inadvertently mirroring Summers own thoughts. He closed his pupiless blue eyes halfway and imperceptibly lowered his head. "You want the truth? Let's just say there's nothing either of us can do to help Dusty Canyon right now and leave it at that."
Summer shoved the gun closer to his face. "Where. Is. He?"
The changeling sighed and looked away. "He's dead. He has been for almost four months."
"Lies!" Summer barked.
"Denial isn't gonna help you any" he began, but he was interrupted. The tidbit of trivia Summer was trying to recall had suddenly popped into her head.
"Changelings eat love, don't they? Don't they? And you can't go four months without eating, nopony can." She smirked. "Joke's on you- I'm not in love with Dusty. Never was. So you better quit trying to trick me and 'fess up, 'cause I'm getting real tired of repeating myself." She cocked her brace-pistol with her free hoof, keeping her balance with a flap of her wings. "So last time. What did you do with him?"
"That is the truth, and I can prove it. Sort of." He raised his head indignantly. "You're right, I do feed on love, but it doesn't have to be romantic love. Although that kind is the most filling and delicious." He chuckled nervously before Summer's glare caused him to continue. "Um, but in a pinch any kind will do, but it'll take more to fill me up. So with you, well, you don't like being alone- you need to have somepony with you."
"I think I'd manage just fine if I killed you off right now" Summer snarled.
"No, I don't mean you won't be able to fight off the Turned single-hoofed or something like that. You're a very capable pony, and you've lasted this long for a reason. But what I mean is you'd go crazy without anypony with you." He shifted his legs and winced. "I've been keeping tabs on the way your mind works- it's part of my job- and without somepony else keeping you company, you'd eventually give in to despair and lose the will to live, or you'd just go stark raving mad. You need companionship, somepony to give you something else worth living for when everything looks bleakest. I mean, how many times have you been glad you don't have to roam the wasteland alone?"
"Don't try to tell me how my own mind works and just get to the point." Summer was beginning to suspect he was just rambling, trying to lull her into a false sense of security before he struck. She would not fall for it though- she would be ready for him when he attacked.
"The point is I've been feeding off your love of companionship for those four months. Sometimes it's not enough, which is why I try to get us into worse scrapes than we usually do- because you're always most grateful to have somepony else with you when you're fighting for your life. You appreciate your allies more when they're covering you. That's why I stole the hat," he nodded in the direction of the cart which could be seen from the cave entrance. "The unicorns would never have noticed us otherwise and it wouldn't have been as spicy."
"So you've been putting us in danger just so you can feel full?"
"I did what I had to do to survive, and look, we're still alive! That's what matters in the end, isn't it?"
"Dusty isn't." Summer hissed. "Do you think killing him was just another thing that was necessary for your personal survival?" She could feel tears welling up, but she refused to let them fall: there was no chance she was going to show a shred of weakness before the imposter.
"I didn't kill him!" the changeling burst out, then broke eye contact, his ears flattening against his head. "At least, not intentionally."
There was a brief silence. "Well?" Summer prompted impatiently.
The changeling glared at her before staring at the wall. "It was at the Sparklestone Ruins. I had found a small water reservoir and was figuring out my next move when Dusty sniped at me. I guess he mistook me for a mutant and was trying to get rid of me so he could fill his canteen or something. Well, anyway, we started fighting, but I promise the whole time I was trying to tell him to stop. I managed to fly in close to him and keep him off balance with some magic blasts, but then this huge mutant popped up out of blinkin' nowhere and just ripped off his hind leg." Summer inhaled sharply. "Must'ave been a minotaur or something before. I killed it, but by then it was too late for Dusty. He was dying, and there wasn't much I could do to save him, so... So I got information from him about who he was traveling with and where they were and such and I copied him. He died, and I buried him after... making sure he wouldn't Turn."
Summer thought for a few moments, then slowly replied. "The Sparklestone Ruins? I think I might remember that. Dusty mentioned he'd been ambushed by mutants, but I didn't notice anything different about the way he was acting. If the only interaction you had with him was the fight, you wouldn't have been able to mirror his personality and mannerisms to the point where nopony noticed you'd replaced him. I'm not buying it."
"That's because when I said I copied him, I didn't just mean his appearance." 'Dusty' felt he was just digging himself a deeper hole, but he was not sure how else to avoid getting filled with bullets other than explaining himself to Summer as best she could understand. "I copied his personality as well by looking into his mind to get additional information. I couldn't mimic his cutie mark though, which is why I practiced sniping so much. I'm not as good a shot as he was, but I've fudged it as best as I could."
"You broke into his mind?" Summer pulled a face. "How sick are you?"
"Well, he was the first actual pony I'd seen in weeks! I was starving! Of course I'm gonna jump at the first opportunity to join a group of ponies! And why just amble up to them and risk my life if they mistake me for the mutant who killed their buddy when I could become the guy who obviously wasn't going to survive the night? It's not like I chose him; heck, if I had my way, I would have rather replaced you."
"What? Are you trying to be funny? I'm dead serious here!"
The changeling grinned, drawing attention to his sharp fangs. "Well, I'm serious too. You probably didn't even notice, but Dusty Canyon had a massive crush on you. I'd have been much better off as you with that actual love than feeding off somepony's love of companionship."
"W-what?" Summer spluttered and flicked her ears backwards self-consciously, her thoughts screeching to a halt. She never suspected... But that was four months ago... No, the changeling was just messing with her, trying to throw her off, that was it. Why should she believe him? She tried to focus on something else. "What, you'd just become a mare?"
"Well, whatever it takes to not starve to death." The changeling shrugged.
Summer's jaw dropped. "But you're a guy. wouldn't that be weird?"
"All changelings are trained to imitate both males and females from an early age so that they could be assigned to any mission, so no, not really. You can't always pick and choose who to replace, and I'm sure death would be a lot more awkward."
'Dusty' winced. The throbbing in his head was slowly inching higher and higher up the scale from 'unbearably head-splitting' to 'just let me pass out already please'. He glanced past Summer's flabbergasted expression to the roll of gauze he had noticed lying on the cave floor earlier. "Hey, um, do you mind if... He nodded gingerly to the roll.
"Whatever." Summer kicked it toward him but did not move otherwise. 'Dusty' sighed and picked it up in his magic, unwinding it a foot or two before, without warning, his head exploded with pain. A whimper slipped past his defenses as he fought to clear the spots swimming in his vision. "I-" he began, but Summer interrupted him.
"Are you crazy?" She screeched. "Don't do that!"
"Wha-?" he blinked in confusion. Her hoof not encased in the pistol looked like it had his blood smeared on it- that was not there before, was it? Did she just hit his horn? "Don't do magic?" he hazarded a guess.
"Whaddaya think, you moron? Do you want to go crazy?"
He stared at her, blinking slowly through the haze of pain before he understood what she meant. "Oh, you mean the sanity scourge? No, look, my magic's green!" He levitated the roll back over from where it had been flung and set it by his hooves.
"So it hasn't infected you yet, but the more you use magic, the worse it gets until bam! Bonkers."
"No, changeling magic works differently from unicorn magic." He carefully lifted up the gauze in his magic again and started wrapping it around his head while keeping a cautious eye on Summer. "Like, think about it, I have a horn and wings, but I don't consider myself an alicorn. I have magic that's just similar enough to pony magic that I can pass myself off as a pony when I'm disguised, but I can't do any of the fine or advanced stuff. For unicorn magic, the most I can do is levitation and kinetic blasts, I can't do anything fancier than that. Or for an earth pony, I have more endurance than a pegasus or unicorn, but not as much as a real earth pony. Changeling magic's different, so the scourge affects us differently. We're actually a lot less susceptible than a unicorn." He tied off the end of the gauze roll, satisfied with his work as the pain began to subside, and he began working on his burned hoof, careful not to layer it over his bindings. "In fact, I don't think I've heard of a single changeling ever being fully, um, corrupted. They all Turned before it could get rooted."
"What killed them?" Summer asked curiously.
'Dusty' laughed bitterly. "Nothing. Just as the sanity scourge doesn't affect me, I'm super susceptible to Turning. I don't even need to be dead first, if I linger around the Turned, even if I'm still alive, I'll slowly and irreversibly Turn. I'm that fragile. It's what killed off the big hives of changelings years and years ago. The dead we had buried down in the hive crypts rose, and those who spent the longest battling them were the quickest to join them. By the time the queens realized what was happening, it was too late, and most of the hive couldn't be saved. The only reason I survived was because I jumped ship before the infestation reached the upper levels."
"Turning isn't some airborne disease though," Summer cut in. "It doesn't just spread like that, it's the corrupted magic that's triggered when a de-"
"I KNOW it's magic," the changeling burst out angrily. "Everything wrong with the world is magic! Ever since the reality bomb and the magic blight and the... the apocalypse, that's all it's ever been! Infected magic this, tainted magic that, magic saturation, magic putrification, magic magic magic magic!" He closed his eyes after the outburst and continued in a much more subdued voice afterwards. "You might not have noticed, but almost half of the Turned we've come across are changelings. When you're looking out for these things, you notice more. I think... I genuinely think that I'm the last changeling left. Staying in pony form might fend it off for a while or something. I don't know, but when I left there was hardly any of us left, and it has been a good long while... If I wasn't the last before, I'm pretty positive I am now."
He trailed off. An insect outside the cave began to buzz. Summer pricked her ears, but there were still no signs of the mutants returning from the gorge. She'd better get moving soon- they'd been in the cave too long already.
The pegasus looked down at the bound creature. When Summer first realized what he was, she was fully prepared to kill the changeling in her anger at what he had caused her, but now... This guy could be feeding her outright lies for all she knew, but there was always the off chance that he could be telling the truth. She snorted. As if. He knew he was inches from death- literally- and was buttering her up to save his own skin. Er- carapace. Even so, she couldn't help but feel pity for him. After all, if his tale was true, that meant he was just trying to survive, same as she was, and if she were a changeling, she most likely would have done the same herself. Although, she admitted privately, judging by her past actions, if she were in his horseshoes, she probably would have killed Dusty long before the mutant had the chance.
A minute passed. In the silence the changeling had closed his eyes again and was breathing heavily. She sighed. "Look, changeling, do you have a name?"
He looked up at her in surprise. "Oh, uh, Mimic."
Summer grimaced. "Mimic? Really? As in mimic mimic?"
A ghost of a smile fluttered across Mimic's face. "Yes, mimic mimic. I'm afraid my queen was a little preoccupied with the Turned when I hatched and figured naming my clutch after mutant varieties would be good luck." He chuckled wryly. "In her defense, I've never been caught unawares by a mimic."
"Oh, well, Mimic, I'm not gonna pretend that you've convinced me with your emotional excuses, but if you value your measly scrap of a life, you'll listen to what I say." She brandished the gun to drive home the fact that she meant business. To his credit, Mimic focused his attention on her with a serious grimace. "I've decided to be merciful to you, which is really more than you deserve for everything you've done. So here's the deal: you walk away from here alive and disappear. I don't care what happens to you provided I never see your ugly mug again, but if we do cross paths again, I swear on my mother's feathers I will kill you so brutally you'd wish that you'd Turned instead. Got it?"
Mimic felt his heart sink to his stomach. He could tell Summer was not simply bluffing in an attempt to scare him- her anger was too intense. He could feel it filling his senses similar to a thick unpleasant odor drowning out all else. Well, this was it. Time to play his last card. "Well, if you're going to do that, you might as well just kill me now and save yourself the trouble later on." he mumbled and rested his head on the rough stone floor.
"What?" As expected, Summer was visibly confused and frustrated at his vague statement, and in turn, Mimic was all too happy to clarify.
"When was the last time we've come across a group of actual ponies?" he offered.
Summer narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Like, a few weeks ago?"
"Lemme rephrase that. When was the last time we've come across a group of ponies who didn't look like they'd rob each other at gunpoint at the drop of a hat? There's so much negativity everywhere! And I know that sounds like something a loser would spew, but I feed on love! For pony's sake! Forget water or ammo- that's pretty much the rarest resource nowadays. Ponies don't care about making friends, ponies care about survival. About whether they'll live another ten hours. Your group was the only one I've seen these past four months that had even a shred of love between you. Don't you see? I don't have anywhere else to go. You're my last hope! You're the only pony with any sort of love for anypony we've seen in a long while, and I wouldn't have the time to either build up a relationship with anypony else or seek out somepony who does and replace them seamlessly. If you send me away now, I'll have no hope of survival. I can guarantee that I'll starve before I can find a meal, no matter how pitiful, even if I drai-"
Mimic hissed in pain and squeezed his eyes shut as his head began to protest again. He could feel Summer's anger begin to give way to frustration, which at the moment might be all he needed to turn the tables.
"You forget," she growled, "I didn't love Dusty, and I certainly don't love you."
Mimic shook his head. "I already said, you love companionship and the feeling of... comradery in trial. And it might not be much, but it's enough for what I need."
Summer glared at him yet again. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't blow your brains out right now." she demanded. "You don't even know if you'll inexplicably Turn overnight!"
"Well first, would you really want to risk genocide?"
"Do I look like I care about whether your pitiful race survives or not?" she snapped.
"Good point. But besides that, I have nothing to lose. Like I said, at this point I don't even care if I die or not- I might as well give up and keel over if you're bent and determined on this. But we could work together." He continued doggedly, desperate not to fail at this point. "It's not like I'm asking you to fall in love with me, or to pretend that I'm Dusty Canyon when I'm not. Listen, you'll go crazy alone; I'll die alone. I know how to fight well- I've pretty much proved it just by lasting this long, plus I've saved your life and almost everyone else's a bajillion times since I joined you. So you can trust me to watch your back- it's in my best interest after all. If you die, I die. I'm gonna want to keep you alive as long as I possibly can, right? Even if it's only selfish motives, according to Pot Shot, those are the best ones. Or was it most transparent ones? Whatever. The point is ditching me is a bad idea, and I promise that you can trust me to protect you. Maybe even until the day I die. Who knows."
"Trust you? After you-"
"Yes! I get it! You're not happy I replaced Dusty Canyon and spared your posse's feelings after he was so brutally murdered by a mutant. I'd apologize at this point, but like I said, I'm not sorry I did it. The point is I'm not lying to you anymore, and I won't from now on if you just let me stay with you a little longer." Mimic grimaced. "Please."
Summer looked at him for a long minute, neither breaking eye contact. At last she spoke up.
"You promise? That this is the truth? And that you won't turn around and betray me either?"
Mimic nodded furiously, then winced. "I promise."
Summer looked at him for a while longer, then made up her mind. "Fine. I'll tolerate your presence under one condition." She leaned in close and glared menacingly at him. "We're going to Sparklestone Ruins and you're gonna show me Dusty's grave."