"Hi," Three waves at Magpie as he enters his office without knocking. The griffon stops fiddling with his notes and a holographic map, and forces whatever constitutes for him as a smile.
"How are you?"
"Eh..." Three sighs, "Was a lot better for the past two days when I was in the lab, focusing only on chemistry."
"I'd drink something strong in your situation but you changelings and alcohol..."
Three shakes his head and hops onto the comfortable armchair near the fireplace.
"I just need to work harder, that's all."
"How's the research anyway?" Magpie happily takes the change in the subject.
"Surprisingly good, actually. The first batch made corruption withdraw a bit. Unfortunately, it leaves behind only black sludge that's neither soil nor grass. We made a tree melt, that was kinda fun..." says the changeling flatly.
Magpie leans back in his chair, slowly breathing out in amazement.
"Three, that's fantastic. I know it doesn't help with… Thirteen but in two days you've managed something the Empire chemists failed to do since the first bomb. You might be able to save Bloodstone," when that doesn't seem to cheer Three up, Magpie thinks up another reason, "This could save the Empire from ending like Equestria. And if griffons learn that a changeling is behind it, it could be the catalyst for eventually stopping all those centuries of fear and hatred."
Three forces a smile.
"I just want to help," he curls up, staring into the flames, "You're celebrating too early, though. I'm working with what little is in my hive mind from when we fixed the black alicorn lady with Mister Bucket, Mister Cromach, Miss Gem, and everyone else. I don't remember all the processes and details but, you know, you have some really smart griffons here."
"Bloodstone isn't some village or just any city, Three. We're pretty much second only to the Holy City itself, which means we have industry, research, trade, everything rolled into one. Well, we used to before everything went to shit. And you, you are now instrumental to unshitting it. Not bad for a changeling drone, hmm? Still not sure your king picked the right changeling for the job?"
"I got Thirteen… corrupted."
"Well, didn't you just say that you're working with memories once used to restore an alicorn, specifically one who was lost a lot longer? Corrupted are heavily territorial, so it's not as if Thirteen is going to go anywhere. We just need to figure out a way to protect ourselves out there and get a stasis cage to catch her. Then you can work your magic."
The corner of Three's mouth curls up.
"Thank you for trying to cheer me up..."
"No problem. Just do your best, I'm not used to being the positive one and I have no idea how long I can keep it up before all the goodness makes me dissolve into a pile of rainbows. That's your schtick."
Three chuckles a little.
"How is the foreleg?"
"Mostly numb so it doesn't hurt too much. Everything else around does, though. It's not healing, it's not getting worse. I'd have a surgeon cut it off but right now I don't have the tech or griffon power to make me a custom prosthesis that'd be more than a decorative walking stick. Say, how good are your dwarves with artificial limbs?" he adds in the end, mostly as a joke.
"Those? Completely common. Mining and engineering accidents used to happen on a daily basis. Some dwarves even had mechanical limbs made in advance when they knew they'd be stationed somewhere dangerous. As they said - it's better to have a fetlock cleanly cut off by a surgeon and connected to an artificial limb beforehoof then have it crushed by a loose boulder you missed and then fight for your entire leg."
"I was kidding, Three."
The drone shrugs.
"I wasn't. We'd need Six to make a really good prosthesis, like one that shoots energy beams or is super strong, but I think I can recall some more basic but useful kinds. With a good engineer we could build it in a few days. I spent a lot of time inside Brauheim hospitals. Dwarves liked having someone to talk to when their loved ones couldn't be there or when they didn't have anyone left. It helped them pass time… or pass on..."
"You chose to be in situations where you couldn't do anything other than sit there? I hate being helpless. That's pretty much why I hate being here and doing all this."
"Well, sometimes it turned out that it was exactly the right thing to do," Three shrugs, although this time with a small smile, "I couldn't save everyone but that didn't mean I couldn't help anyone."
Not a single bad atom in his body.
Magpie looks away.
"I could ask someone to bring you a cot or a real bed if you want to take a nap here."
Three shakes his head and hops off of the armchair.
"I've been sitting around, remembering, and thinking all day so my head aches a lot but I'm not really tired. I think I'll go down to the armory to do some exercise, that might help."
It creeps through the darkness until it sees lights, until it senses blotches of warmth ahead. Its pitch black eyes with the faintest hint of amber in them narrow as it hisses:
"...no..."
There are buildings ahead, the tall ones with more specks of warmth atop them - creatures, mates or food.
In complete silence, it easily crawls up the wall of a three-story house and peeks over the edge of the roof.
"I'm getting something on the motion tracker," whispers one of the two creatur- griffons patrolling around. Its senses easily identify both as males, so easy to breed and feed from.
It waits until the griffon's patrol route brings him closer before pulling itself over the edge with shocking strength and speed and pouncing at the griffon in one jerky motion, knocking him down.
"Aaah!" yells the griffon before tentacles fill his beak, probing deep into his throat.
"What?" the other griffon turns around, sees what's going on, and raises his voice, "Checkpoint twenty-one! Got a single contact!" he fires his rifle into the air to draw the creature's attention.
"...no..." hisses the Corrupted, withdraws its tentacle tongues out of the stunned griffon's beak, quickly glances at the other soldier who aims his rifle its way, and zig-zags towards him with such unpredictability, always moving a fraction of a second later or earlier than expected, that he can't hit a single of the three bursts he manages to fire.
It lands on him, tentacles unfurling out of its hoof and ripping the rifle out of the griffon's grasp with force that shocks the trained GIL soldier. It grabs his head, opens its mouth filled with sharp teeth, sniffs him, and hisses:
"...breed..."
As its tentacle tail splits into many smaller ones which reach for the griffon's privates, the creature freezes and its eyes bulge.
Wrong wrong wrong! No!
"...wrong..." it hisses, looks around, and its amber pupils dilate as its eyes stop on a massive building in the distance easily overshadowing everything else in the city.
Somehow it knows that what it wants is there.
With that knowledge secured in its primitive mind, it jumps off of the building and its sleek, pitch-black form quickly disappears into the shadows of Bloodstone.
"This early?" Magpie grits his beak, "Freaking damn it! I thought we had at least a few weeks."
The intercom replies:
"It was still a single one and it didn't kill the soldiers."
"A griffon Corrupted didn't kill something in its way? That could be the first..."
"The soldiers said it looked more like a pony, sir."
"Doesn't matter, Castor. Get them here immediately, put them in a cell, and keep an eye on them no matter what! A single Corrupted in a civilian population today can mean that there are hundreds of them tomorrow."
"What do we do, sir?"
"Send out aerial patrols, only aerial," stresses Magpie, "Corrupted can't deal with heights, no matter what species they're based on. They're going to need lights and armor-piercing bullets or at least something of decent caliber. It might be a fresh Corrupted but standard pistol ammo isn't going to do squat unless you hit an eye or mouth."
"On it, sir!"
"Keep me informed, Castor."
"Of course, sir. Should we inform the citizenry over the loudspeaker system?"
"No. Everyone is already sitting at home and no amount of preparation can help them in case a Corrupted gets in. Panic is the last thing we need."
"Understood."
Once the intercom shuts off, Magpie slams his healthy fist against the table which results in a short coughing fit.
"I'm literally the one with the most experience at fighting those things and I can barely walk."
When Three opens the door to the armory, the squelching noise he's been picking up for a moment already stops. He steps on the wet floor, scrunches his muzzle, and looks around.
"Oh, hi!" he says as he notices Dust Pan next to a trolley with cleaning supplies, watching him and holding a wet mop, "Sorry, I didn't know you were busy here. I'll come later so that I don't ruin the clean floor."
Dust Pan shakes her head and beckons him inside.
The wide open shooting range in the back is dry already, and Three heads across it towards the storage area to set up the training sentry turret. About a third of the way through, he stops, looks at Dust Pan who is still watching him with curiosity, and asks:
"Umm, are you busy?"
Shake, shake.
"Would you like to play a bit? The turret I've been using up to now is good but not exactly smart."
Dust Pan tilts her head, clearly puzzled. Three trots over and pulls his beard out of nowhere which makes the earth pony take sharp breath. Then he reaches in and reveals the bouncy ball from Magpie's torture outside. Dust Pan's jaw drops.
"Don't think about it too much. I dunno how it works either. Magic, I guess," Three shrugs and throws the ball towards the mare who drops her mop and catches it with both forelegs, balancing on her haunches, "Nice! So, I've got this shield thingy that makes things stop where they are. You try to hit me without hitting it, how about that?"
Dust Pan nods, tossing the ball up and down with one foreleg for good measure before standing up on three legs. Three puts the shield generator on, sets it on low, which creates a circular shield covering roughly a third of him, walks a short way away between training dummies, stops, and says:
"Just hit me now for practice, I won't move."
Dust Pan throws the ball slowly with a small curve which Three simply stops by raising his shield. As the ball hits it, it immediately loses all its momentum and drops on the floor despite its bounciness.
"Alright, you can go harder if you're comfortable," Three tosses her the ball back. She narrows her eyes, and throws it with considerable strength in a straight line at Three's uncovered side.
However, even for a changeling like Three, such speed isn't a massive deal and he barely feels a tap as he easily blocks the ball and the generator converts most of the kinetic energy into its own power.
"Neat," Three throws the ball back, "We can do it differently too if hitting me is too hard. The shield is pretty big. You can throw the ball away and I'll try to catch it. Good running and jumping practice."
Dust Pan shakes her head with a smirk, cocks her foreleg, and throws. This time Three has to jump upwards as the ball bounces off where his uncovered hind foreleg would have been.
"Woo, good one! That was close," he runs off to fetch the ball and throws it to Dust Pan again.
He gets into position. Dust Pan purses her lips, bounces the ball against the floor, catches it again, and lobs it hard...
...but at a strange angle. Three quickly realizes it won't hit him so he doesn't move. He opens his mouth to reassure her that next time she'll hit for sure.
"Don-" the smack to the back of his head makes him bite his tongue, "Oww oww oww oww! Whuh happhend?"
Dust Pan rushes over with eyes wide and starts examining Three's muzzle. Her ears droop as she touches the thin trickle of blood dripping out of his mouth.
"Huh?" Three licks his muzzle, "Heh, I bit myselph pretty harf. Mah bad."
The mare hangs her head low and stares at the floor, waiting for her judgement. Three looks around, his head following the trail the thrown ball must have taken.
"Phat waf-" he scrunches his muzzle, smacks his lips a few times, and tries again, "Did you just bounce the ball off of that target dummy, that crate, and the wall behind me?"
Dust Pan carefully looks up before very slowly nodding.
"That was awesome!" admits Three, "You took me completely by surprise," he smiles at the confused and still visibly nervous mare and hugs her, "Don't worry, I'm not mad or anyth-"
The familiar feeling of his love gently, almost imperceptibly, trickling away makes the corner of his mouth curl up.
"-anything," he finishes the sentence.
Dust Pan breaks the hug and jumps away the instant a loud crack announces one wing of the heavy double door of the armory being kicked off of its hinges.
Three's eyes go wide, his jaw drops, and he takes a step towards what with zero doubts must be corrupted Thirteen, hissing:
"...Threeeeee..."
Her chitin is pitch black and instead of narrow cracks between its plates it looks almost like one suit made of living oil. Her mouth is cracked open again from ear to ear just like in her feral form, showing off far too many teeth as well as three tentacle tongues hanging out of it. In preparation for a pounce, her hoof unfurls not into claws like in her monster form before but into a clump of tentacles.
In the time she readies herself for a jump, Dust Pan appears in front of Three with a mop. He only blinks, having no idea how she got there or when in the holes did she have the time to get the implement.
Seeing that, Thirteen's slit eyes focus.
"MINE!"
Three can barely make out what happens next. Corrupted Thirteen is fast but still within the realm of changeling senses. Dust Pan, though, breaks off the end of the mop and drives the sharp piece of reinforced plastic in the tiny crack in Thirteen's chest where the plates of her carapace used to touch all the while guiding her wild pounce with the stick so that she ends with her back on the floor.
"DON'T!" screams Three.
Dust Pan pulls the mop out and stabs downwards again, this time to ram the end through Thirteen's eye and brain.
"I'll tell everyone that you're a changeling!" Three blurts out as quickly as he can.
Dust Pan presses the spike against the back of Thirteen's mouth instead, standing on her while she twitches as if fighting the urge to bite down and swipe at the "earth pony".
"Please, I beg you!" Three tears up, "I don't know who you really are but you're clearly strong enough to hold her down so don't kill her! She just got caught in some corrupting explosion two days ago. I've helped save someone who was lost for much longer. We can help her. We must help her! Thirteen is an amazing changeling who would never hurt a fly if she was herself. Just give me time and I'll fix her, please!"
Dust Pan throws the mop away and at the same moment Thirteen thrusts her mouth forward to bite her.
A flash of orange fire later, she finds her mouth closed in a grip of claws on the end of a hole-y leg of a black changeling.
From her general shape, Three can estimate that she's a warrior. Having no mane or tail points to her being a fairly low rank but the ability to stop corrupted Thirteen with no trouble at all says otherwise. She has "normal", dark blue eyes, though, definitely something low ranks don't use because they don't need the more complex structure for digging, basic fighting, or carrying things around. The only really unusual thing Three can see is that there are tiny, barely visible veins of orange color criss-crossing her carapace which is black but to Three's eyes it sports a faint, dark blue hue. He has no idea what those could mean or be for.
She quickly glances at him.
"Please," repeats Three.
Dust Pan's short horn flashes and the mental blast turns Three off like a light.
When he wakes up with a pounding headache, neither of the two are anywhere to be found.
Thirteen finds herself in the darkness of the hive mind, lying on the ground and gasping for air as the usually calm, cold air of a mine shaft feels so sticky and oppressive that it's crushing her lungs like a rock.
"Help..." she croaks, "Someone help..."
"I can't… I can't do this… alone..." she grits her teeth and forces herself to look up.
A shadowy, featureless equine is standing over her, watching.
"Who…?"
"Knock knock," the familiar voice of the instinct rings from behind her. She groans and the instinct adds in a disappointed tone, "You're supposed to say - who's there?"
"I… what happened…?" despite nausea and a splitting headache, she pushes herself on all fours after a while, "I recall seeing Three… and the janitor… Dust Pan."
"And your partially corrupted and, may I add, extremely jealous ass wanted to breed with the changeling you love, yes," instinct chuckles, "Luckily for both of them, she turned out to be a changeling so completely out of your league that her mind blast knocked you out so hard you ended up here. I'm pretty sure that just the echo knocked out Three too. What's going on now is tough to say but you're definitely not turning Three into a Corrupted. Holes know how that would end. With all those tentacles… hugs for days."
"Hugs… for days…?"
"Hugs for days."
"Why am I here…? Why... am I… sane?" asks Thirteen.
"Your changeling immune system is trying to fight the corruption off. It's failing but it's doing its best. As for your mind, that's her doing," the instinct nods towards the black silhouette, "Remember how you almost killed your dad in your 'queenly' fit of rage? The same block keeping you- me- us in check is stopping the corruption from taking over everything. Someone as young, imbalanced, and downright horny as you would be humping everything if left unprotected."
"I want my head..." says Thirteen slowly.
"Yeeeeah, how about no?"
"You are my instincts! You are responsible for me attacking my dad! You-"
"I am you," replies the instinct calmly, "Or a part of you. We are not separate entities, one good and one bad. You're just presenting us like that because you're not able to accept your nature and guilt."
"I JUST WANT TO BE MYSELF! I WANT TO BE WITH THREE! I DON'T WANT TO HURT ANYONE! GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
Her frustrated scream sends out a shockwave which disintegrates the instinct and knocks the shadow down on the ground, dispersing the darkness around it.
It's Gem, looking up at sitting Thirteen with a sad smile.
"Sister?" Thirteen shuffles over to her.
"Heya," Gem coughs, "Dad needed a mental block strong enough so that you wouldn't go crazy and hurt anyone until you're older and stronger. I was the only one who could do something so complex without harming you. Unfortunately, unlike many times before, you picked exactly the wrong time to try to gain full control, and almost succeed..." the mental image of Gem closes its eyes and slowly disintegrates into silvery ash flying away on a nonexistent breeze.
A wave of cold hits Thirteen as the slightly shimmering floor of the hive mind shatters like glass and black tentacles thicker than her barrel burst through from below everywhere around.
She panics and screams as they swarm her.
"Dad will kill me! That, or he'll stop talking to me. I'm not sure what's worse. And mom will kill me afterwards anyway!"
Inside the laboratory complex under Canterlot, Gem finds herself once again absolutely horrified by the depths of Two's… dedication? Deviousness? Borderline insanity?
"Alright, think of it in a different way," Two crosses her forelegs on her chest, "If I use someone not as good as you and I fail. How will they react when they find out that you refused to help me."
"You- I- We-"
"Pronouns much?" smirks Two, somewhat proud of herself for completely stunning Gem by her plan.
"This is crazy!"
"Oh pleeeease. Comfort did it on her first try and you're waaay better than she was at the time, both at physical self-control as well as mental."
"Yes, but that was her jumping into me, another living and breathing infiltrator. What you're proposing… no one has ever done it. All the queens wanted to but not a single one thought herself desperate enough to even attempt it after the first failure and you want to do it… basically for no reason?"
"Making sure you and Six can save the world is a hella good reason."
"No, it's not about that, is it?" Gem looks Two in the eyes, "And don't try to lie to yourself, Two. If it was just about that, there would be unbelievably safer ways with only a slightly lower chance of success involved," she sighs, "Alright, I'll do it, if only because I know that if I refuse you'll find someone else to do the same thing and you'll one hundred percent die-"
"Yesss!" Two punches the air.
"Under two conditions, both non-negotiable."
"Okaaay?"
"Condition one - you stop lying to me and, most of all, to yourself about why you're doing it."
"As I said, I want to make sure you have the best chance to save the world."
"Strike one," is all Gem says.
Two closes her eyes and grits her teeth, then she takes a long breath.
"I want to know if I can do it. I want to know if it's really possible and, if so, I want to learn to do it right so that I'm not forced to do some patchwork version of it like Comfort did."
"You want to do it more than once?!"
"No, I want to do it once but I want to learn to do it properly in case I have to do it again."
Gem nods.
"Condition two."
"I'm listening."
"I decide when you're ready."
"Ehhh-"
"I promise I won't use the condition to stop you or anything. I just..." Gem sighs, "You don't know how many single-digit ranked changelings died trying to do this on their queen's orders. I do, I have a lot of Comfort's memories. The best warriors and infiltrators of their time. I don't want you to join them."
They stare at each other in silence for several minutes.
"I agree with both conditions," says Two.
