"No..." Prominence's strained voice is her last attempt at fighting the headache and dizziness but it's just a drip in the ocean and she collapses on her bed in the Canterlot castle infirmary.
The unicorn nurse standing over her gives her a comforting smile and says:
"You worry too much," she cups Prominence's muzzle in her hooves, looking her in the eyes, "Now tell me about the supposedly escaped changelings. I know there are some inside the castle."
"I… mustn't-"
"Shhh," the nurse leans closer and slowly breathes out straight into Prominence's nose, "Do I look as if I was here to harm anypony?"
"Can't tell… " Prominence's willpower is admirable but the words the nurse is saying are worming into her mind and breaking her resistance. If only she was in any fighting shape, she would have scorched whoever the nurse is before it came to this but as she is, limp and defenseless on her, unable to even call for help, she can't-
No, she must hold on. Somepony will come check on her soon, she just needs to hold on-
The nurse kisses her.
The surprise and the soft sweetness make Prominence shudder and she closes her eyes.
"I promised Gem… I can't tell anypony about her… not even Celestia… she can't find-"
"She can't find her where?"
"In Twilight's lab… under Canterlot mountain… old… mines..."
The nurse smiles in victory.
"Don't worry and have a good rest," the nurse breathes out into Prominence's nose again and the unicorn's breathing slows down as she falls asleep, "And forget about this."
"Old mines, eh?" the nurse mutters to herself and leaves the room, unhindered by anyone including the two Hex Guards outside.
Two days later, Unsolved Equation, one of the physicists employed by princess Twilight to do theoretical calculations regarding her secret project, yawns and passes the living quarters.
"Hey, Equation, are you going to join us for dinner?" a unicorn's head peeks out of the door.
"Hmm?" Equations blinks and looks back with a dazed smile, "Not tonight, sorry. I think I'll just have a shower and go to bed early. Working my way around Einhoof's equations is the toughest thing I've ever done and since there's not vacation in sight I think I need more sleep than this."
"What about Hawking's research? That might be a way to bypass the energy requirements," the always eager scientist winks at him.
"Yeah, I might have to but I wish we had an actual griffon scientist here for that. I don't like drawing information from derived work instead of original material. Maybe tomorrow. Enjoy your dinner."
"Good night, Equation," the other scientist returns back to the living quarters.
Unsolved Equation heads deeper into the complex, passes the showers, and stops in front of a different living quarters near that of princess Twilight herself. He swipes his card through the slot on the wall which beeps and after a short delay the door slides open, revealing a suite for two inhabited by only one earth pony with the rest of the room converted into a personal lab.
The earth pony gives Equation a surprised glance before asking:
"Is there a problem?"
"No, I just wanted to have a little chat," Unsolved Equation smirks. The earth pony scientist narrows his eyes as Equation closes the suite door behind him, "Oh don't look at me like that. I consider the fact that you didn't recognize me immediately a win."
"Who are you and what do you want?" asks the earth pony, slowly backing away.
"What I want the most is you to not step on the secret silent alarm tile, it will only make things… unpleasant," Equation's smirk turns into a wide grin when he notices the faintest twitch of the earth pony's eyes, "What I want next is to perform a little evil monologue about how I discovered your whereabouts by interrogating a half-divine, half-corrupted unicorn in the castle and then I infiltrated the best guarded secret facility under the noses of both Luna and Twilight but I see you're getting nervous so, before you do something really stupid," Equation takes a step forward and a green glimmer passes through his coat, burning away the form of the old unicorn scientist and replacing it with a black smoothness of chitin, "I'll just say that both of us can do the impossible, sister, only different kinds."
The earth pony's jaw drops before turning into a wide smile coupled with the hint of tears as the earth pony transforms back into Gem.
"Two? How the hole did you manage to prevent me from identifying you?!"
"Now that's the highest compliment I could have ever received," with a smug smirk, Two rushes over to hug Gem.
"I've got a fresh batch of candy, doc!" Three floats up and puts a small pouch on the table, "Ever since I started making alcohol candy for Mister Raymond, the patrons give me all the head pats and hugs I want and they mean them so I have the love to make these."
"Good job," says Fairfeather, although it doesn't seem to be aimed at Three, rather at Thirteen who has just finished simple re-applying of bandages to all the patients residing in Fairfeather's bedroom transformed into makeshift infirmary.
"Really?" Thirteen stutters, "I- Thank you, I mean."
"You too, Three," Fairfeather gives Three a slow, strained, and shaky talons-up.
Yay, his forelegs are starting to move again!
"Do you need any help?" asks Three.
"No, Thirteen is doing alright," says Fairfeather, "It's more patient care than any emergency so taking it slow works just fine. Her mobility and dexterity is more suited for this work anyway."
"See? I told you you'd do great, Thirteen," Three gives her an encouraging smile which makes her look at the floor and blush.
"If you want to have a chat, you'll have time later," Fairfeather interrupts the moment, "We still have work to do and the griffons here need peace and quiet to rest."
Three nods and whispers:
"See you late, Thirteen. I'll be in the tavern working on the radio."
"Bye," Thirteen waves at him before Fairfeather asks her to push him towards the next bedridden patient.
"Oh dear, sponge bath and some downstairs cleaning here. It's going to stink a bit."
"Got my washcloth and a bucket ready and we changelings don't really mind the smells ponies consider nasty. Griffons too. Besides, I can always turn my nose off."
"You changelings are full of useful talents."
Three leaves them to their business. After a short stroll through Windy he decides to visit Harriet's home and ask her dad if he could have a look through his hoard for some more materials usable to fix the radio. However, as he heads up the hill overlooking windy, he notices lights coming through the small windows next to the entrance to the hilltop cavern.
Is Harriet home?
Curious, he knocks on the door and is greeted by Harriet peeking out.
"Hi, Three. Any trouble in town?"
"Nope, I just wanted to see your dad about some silver or gold to fix the radio. I thought you were in Windy in case of another attack."
"I'll be heading back soon," Harriet nods, "I just remembered that I had something for you here so I wanted to bring it to my new village house. Heh, my house. Hard to get used to that. I got it from Raymond after we came back."
"For me?" Three tilts his head.
"Yup," Harriet returns back inside and calls out, "Come in, I think I put it somewhere in my old room but for the love of the Emperor I can't recall where. Looking for it made me understand why mom kept telling me I was messy."
"Okay," Three walks into the entrance hall and simply sits down. Changelings don't mind hard surfaces like ponies do. Chitin is good like that.
Several minutes of clanking and loud rummaging around coming from a room in the back later, Three hears "HAH!" followed by Harriet walking triumphantly outside, an acoustic guitar hanging on a strap around her neck.
"Ready to continue our guitar lessons?" she beams at Three, "I thought that now that the radio is messed up we could try to do some improv back at Raymond's."
"EEEEEEEEE!" Three darts towards her with a high-pitched happy squeak, shapeshifts both his hooves to claws, and plucks a string at random.
"We'll have to be careful, though. I'm not sure we can get any replacement strings around here," she winks at Three, "Do we store it at my house or in the tavern?"
"Gimme!" Three smiles back, still buzzing with excitement. Harriet hands him the guitar.
"Careful," she says.
Three shoves the entire thing into his beard. Harriet's jaw drops.
"Whuh- whah- whoh- whaaaaat?!" she chokes, eyes bulging, "How?!"
"Some kind of magic. I don't understand it, really," Three shrugs, "Seven enchanted it to be a beard of holding. It worked like that even before but only for me and no one knew why so Seven did it properly."
"That's amazing!"
"Pretty nifty," Three nods, "I've got a few gems and gold pieces in there from your dad already."
"What? You stole them?"
"Of course not, he gave them to me."
"You persuaded a dragon to give you something from his hoard?"
"I just explained what I needed those for."
"Which is?"
"I need some focusing lenses for pew-pews to be able to melt off the gold and silver and purify it. The coins are mixed with materials that aren't so great for conductivity."
"Pew-pews?"
"Energy beam thingies. Repairing today's tech with just hooves is pretty hard but not impossible if you're a changeling. Just gonna need Thirteen's help with some acids."
"You're pretty smart, you know?"
"Heheh," Three scratches his head, "Not really, but I spent a lot of time with Six and he's great with technology. Anyway, let's go see your dad. I need to swap a few of the coins and gems. I goofed up a bit in picking those before."
Thirteen relaxes at the corner table in the tavern. Now that the radio isn't working, the patrons are much more focused on each other so she can just sit down and chill. The friendly atmosphere as well as the work for doctor Fairfeather has been doing wonders to stop her from starving into the "limping with ribs showing" category so while she's always hungry, she's at least seeing straight these days.
From the corner of her eye, she notices someone she hasn't seen before - a griffon wearing similar kind of environment-resistant clothing that Gem prepared for all of them as well as a heavy-looking backpack and a belt with several smaller bags on it. Even to Thirteen's inexperienced eyes he looks like someone used to travelling.
A newcomer to Windy. Maybe a griffon caravan finally arrived from the heartland? Hmmm… probably not. The eastern pony ones always had more ponies come here for a chat so griffons would probably do the same.
Eep, he's coming over here!
After a quick chat with Raymond, the griffon indeed walks directly to Thirteen's table and asks in a rather friendly tone:
"Mind if I sit here?"
"N-No problem, heheh," Thirteen giggles nervously.
The griffon takes his heavy cap off, revealing gold-colored head feathers, bright, piercing blue eyes, and most importantly a friendly smile, something Thirteen definitely wouldn't expect from a griffon newcomer.
He tilts his head, examining her for a few seconds. Not wanting to make a bad impression, Thirteen lets him do so without complaining. Eventually, the griffon looks her in the eyes and says:
"Sorry for that. I haven't seen a changeling with," he taps the top of his head, "a real mane, tail, and all that stuff before. Smooth carapace too, not like those one can occasionally see on the west coast. Looks good, really."
"Oh- I- well- I mean," Thirteen blushes.
Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot!
"T-Thank you," she manages to stutter out in the end, "You look like a traveller."
"Mercenary," he starts taking off his heavy clothes, revealing a grey coat and a wiry, scarred build which sort of reminds Thirteen of Magpie, "I heard there were some concerns with eastern ponies around the border so I'm here to check out any caravans that might pass by."
"Oh no no no," Thirteen shakes her head, "I've seen two caravans already and they're sending help - food and stuff. Corrupted are much more of a problem and I heard of some bandits on the way south trying to ambush the eastern caravans on the way to the south."
"Thanks, I'll remember that," the mercenary, offers his foreleg for a shake, "Name's Manny."
"I'm Thirteen," she shakes it.
"Do you live here?"
"No, I'm just visiting with a friend."
"Pity," Manny frowns.
"How come?"
"One doesn't get many chances to meet a friendly and, frankly, pretty changeling lady in the Empire."
"Lady is a bit of an overstatement, and I had no idea griffons could find natural changelings attractive."
"I worked a lot on the west coast," Manny shrugs, "I know a lot of ponies and changelings but you still surprised me. I mean it, in a good way. Come to think of it… I know a little about your, umm, feeding, and it makes me wonder if we could help each other out."
Is he saying what I think he's saying? Well, I am hungry.
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Manny scratches the back of his head, letting out a nervous chuckle, "Trains don't run much these days and I've been on the road for a loooong time. It can't be easy for you either here since I doubt most eastern griffons- heck, most griffons really, are used to changelings."
He IS saying that! Pretty blunt, to be honest, but kinda practical for both of us. Understandable if he spends a lot of time alone, and he might just have a thing for changelings. Ponies do quite often, Miss Gem said.
"I, well," Thirteen looks down, "I'm not really experienced with that, so-."
"What?" Manny leans backwards, "That's hard to believe but I didn't necessarily mean we should just go for a roll in the hay, Miss Thirteen."
"Huh?"
"How about an evening in a good company? I know that can be enough for some changelings. Being alone for long stretches of time makes one eager for a good chat as well as… the other things you mentioned before. It doesn't take a genius to guess that I might hear a more interesting story from you than from these villagers."
Oh? Oooooh.
"Sure, that sounds nice," Thirteen relaxes and allows herself a small smile, "My friend has got a house here a few streets down and she's away right now. It has a fireplace and some wood Miss Harriet brought from the forest. It's tainted so it doesn't burn all that well but it's better than nothing."
"That sounds absolutely lovely," Manny smiles, "Winter boots or not, my paws are freezing. Just let me grab my things and lead the way, Miss Thirteen."
Wait! What he's saying doesn't match what I'm sensing from him. No love, only a tiny bit of lust. On the other hole, it's not like I'm good at it… among many other things. Let's see where this goes, since he's so polite.
"Juuuust a moment," Manny stacks the tainted logs into the fireplace in the living room, pulls out a small white brick from his backpack, and breaks it into many pieces which he scatters all over the wood with the biggest bits under the kindling at the bottom. Several sparks from a small box taken out of one of the many belt pouches later, light spreads from the fireplace and joins the electric lamp by the couch as a source of warm light, "There we go!"
"Wooow!" Thirteen smiles, "How did you do that? Miss Harriet always has trouble lighting it."
"Just some solid fuel and a mechanical lighter," he taps his backpack and the pouch, "When you're on the road, you can't afford to risk running out of resources so the key is to have as many replenishable tools as possible at your disposal. I have several motion-charged batteries and a pack of normal ones just in case everything else fails."
"That's so cool!" Thirteen shifts nervously as Manny keeps his belt on but puts his backpack down on the floor a safe distance away from the fireplace and joins her on the couch which creaks under him. A small part of her notes how much lighter she must be despite being easily as tall as he is, "My sisters travels a lot on hoof too."
"Is she a mercenary or a caravan guard or something too?" Manny shuffles a little closer to Thirteen.
What am I afraid of?
Something is wrong, all this is wrong. He isn't really interested in me. What would Three think? I like Three!
No, this is just feeding. I'm a changeling, I need to do this.
He isn't interested in YOU!
Shut up, voice! It's just insecurity and fear like always. Doctor Fairfeather said I wasn't bad at my job. Mister Raymond told me I was pretty and he meant it.
I CAN do this.
Thirteen takes a long breath and leans against Manny.
"No, she's not a fighter, I mean physically. She's a pacifist, in fact."
"That must be pretty rough for her these days. Bandits and violence everywhere."
"She's really smart and pretty so she can always find a peaceful way out of trouble. One day, I'd like to be like her," Thirteen sighs, "But I'm so far from it that most days it just feels like a silly, impossible dream."
Manny wraps his foreleg around her shoulders and pulls her closer.
"Come on, someone as pretty as you can always just use her charm to talk her way out of things. Besides, it's not as if you're on your own, right? You said you had friends here. Where are they?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Well, we're just starting to get comfortable and it would be a pity to have such a nice evening interrupted."
"Don't worry," Thirteen relaxes against him and enjoys the heat coming from the strong griffon's body, "Three and Miss Harriet are busy figuring out a way to fix the radio at the tavern and Magpie left several days ago for some big city in the south to see how things are in this part of the Griffon Empire."
"Oh really?" Manny pulls away from Thirteen who gives him a confused look, "Then how about we make ourselves," he grabs Thirteen's shoulders and begins lowering himself on his back while pulling her down on his chest, "a little more comfortable."
Thirteen's heart flutters as she allows herself to be led into a full-body contact.
Are you so starved for physical contact that you'll take a suspicious griffon you know nothing about?
YES! He's nice. How often did anyone do anything nice for me if I didn't count dad or Three?
He's so warm…
Thirteen closes her eyes and buries her nose into Manny's chest feathers.
You're still hungry! Where is the love?
I don't know! I've never done this! Maybe we just need to get to… you know…
Did you need to ride Three's nonexistent d-
Shut up! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
With a determined expression, Thirteen opens her eyes and gives Manny a tight hug. He smiles, taps on her shoulder, and slowly leads her in a spin which leaves him on top of her. Thirteen softens her carapace and Manny notices immediately, running a tight grip of his talons from her lower belly up to her neck, making her close her eyes, breathe out, and shiver.
A click makes Thirteen open her eyes again and she notices him fiddling with his belt. She reaches out to help him take off the belt with many small bags and pouches but he shakes his head and smiles.
"Don't worry, I can do that on my own," he leans down and gives her a soft kiss. Breathing out afterwards, Thirteen closes her eyes, thankful to have someone with any experience in a situation like this. The love and lust will start flowing soon no doubt.
For a brief moment, she smells something extremely sharp and minty but before she can compare her expectations with reality it becomes her whole world, forcefully filling her nose.
Her eyes bulge and before they tear up she can see Manny pressing a thick cloth, the source of the smell, over her nose.
He's strong. He's too strong. Much stronger than he showed at any point before.
She opens her mouth, mainly to breathe but also to ask-
"What are-"
-before Manny moves the cloth down to cover her mouth completely.
"Stupid girl," Manny smirks, "But you can't expect much from a race of predators and fleshlights and, girl, you are no predator."
Her mind becomes hazy and this time not with self-pity. Every time she gasps for air, more of the sharp stench gets into her lungs and robs her of control of her own body.
She has no idea what part of her gives the order because it sure as hole isn't her conscious mind but suddenly she can breathe, barely but she can. It takes her a moment to realize she's grown a blowhole in the back of her neck. Being pressed so hard against the couch is making it difficult but it's still vastly better than breathing whatever chemical the heavy cloth over her nose and mouth is drenched in.
Don't fight it. Pretend.
With strange clarity caused by imminent danger, Thirteen realizes that every choice she consciously made today brought her here. The tiny voice in the back of her head tried to warn her but she didn't listen.
She listens now and her body goes limp.
Manny feels the changeling stop struggling but he keeps the chloroform-infused cloth over her nose a while longer just in case before he gets off of the couch and quickly gathers his things.
Thirteen doesn't move even after she hears the main door slam shut.
Get up!
She slowly sits up like a puppet on strings. Not seeing Manny or his things anywhere around, she starts bawling like a little filly which once again she reminds herself that she is.
"I- I was so- so stupid..." she wipes her eyes ineffectively, "As if- as if anyone could like me..."
Shut up and listen! You're not helping anything.
"I… I just want to go home… and see dad..."
HE PULLED INFO ABOUT EVERYONE OUT OF YOU AND IT CLEARLY WASN'T BECAUSE HE WANTED TO MAKE MORE FRIENDS!
Thirteen freezes with her eyes wide open.
"I… I never thought… he sounded so genuine..."
Because you believed his damn BEAK while you knew from the beginning his feelings didn't match.
"I didn't know-"
You DID know! You may be young but you are a CHANGELING! All the instincts you need are here inside you, good and bad. Trust those instead of the naive little girl who's just now helplessly crying her eyes out.
It takes some time to clear her head. The misery, uncertainty, and self-pity always remain but for once she can sense that behind those there's more… way more. Something cold, calculating…
...and feral.
Now tell me, changeling queen, what do our instincts say?
"...hunt..." growls Thirteen.
