‘That could have gone slightly better,’ thought Nigel as he pulled himself up from the remains of the pedestal, the locator beacon thankfully having survived the incident, its solid construction carrying it through the trauma of having three-hundred kilos of armoured biped fall on it. As he stood up he noted that equines, with the exception of the smallest lying prone on the floor, had retreated a couple of paces, no doubt startled by his less-then-graceless entry.

‘Damn, I’m losing it, got to do something, got to do something, gotta do som- ‘ding!’- perfect idea.’ Nigel stood proud, the next words out of his mouth carefully formulated for maximum effectiveness.

“Well,” he started. “At least that ‘trip’ lowered the ‘gravity’ of the situation.”

‘Smooth, Oscar Wild couldn’t have done better himself.’

Others in the room had different opinions, with one of the corporals from squad three even going so far as to raising his left hand and miming shooting himself in the head with his sidearm.

‘Congratulations, you just signed up for every single suicide mission I can think of in the foreseeable future,’ Nigel thought, creating a mental note to make that particular soldier’s life a living hell. Corporal Stevens must have realised what his Commander was thinking, probably due to the fact that he had two blood red helmet lenses staring right at him, seemingly piercing him to his very soul. He quickly returned his hand to the grip of his rifle and took a sudden interest in checking the surrounding area for any threats.

“Hehehe gr- gravity of the situation.”

Nigel turned to look at the source of the chuckle, the smallest equine of the group, clearly the only other being in the room with a decent sense of humour, was currently repeating the joke from its position sprawled out on the floor.

Transfusion finally got his laughter under control. He had to admit, despite this biped’s appearance and un-orthodox introduction; it obviously possessed a highly developed taste of humour. He looked up from the dull grey colouration of the floor and realised that the focus of every single being was on him. Everybeing, from the imposing black bipeds, the slightly less imposing but equally confusing white bipeds, the four soldier class and Queen Chrysalis , who was currently fixing him with a look of utter befuddlement.

‘What?’ he thought. ‘Surely they all got the joke as well?’ Transfusion was puzzled, sure the atmosphere was tense, but from what he could interpret from the bipedal leader’s interrupted greeting and following actions he assumed that they had no intentions of harming any of the changelings in the room at the moment. Plus, judging by the appearance of the black bipeds, which he assumed were soldiers of some kind, as well as what he assumed were deadly weapons possessed by each of them, if the bipeds had wanted to kill them then they would have encountered little resistance from the six malnourished changelings.

Nigel diverted his attention from the equine on the floor to the leader, who he had mentally dubbed as ‘Swissy’, due to the fact the multiple holes in its legs made it look like a large walking piece of Swiss cheese. He wisely decided to avoid voicing this observation as the atmosphere was already fairly tense. Swissy was currently staring at its subordinate in what Nigel assumed was confusion, the bipeds’ presence currently forgotten. This did not last long however, as Swissy directed its gaze back to the Commander, its facial features returning to a look of terror.

Nigel was used to being feared, all-black armour designed to make him look like Death-Incarnate and deep-red helmet optics did not exactly say ‘Hi, I’m a really nice guy, let’s be friends’. Normally this would have been a positive boon, the ISA was known for its love of psychological warfare, but in a delicate situation such as this the effect was detrimental. Nigel was thankful that, judging from the smallest equine’s earlier outburst that the unknown creatures spoke English, the main language of the UIP. This would make the issue of communication much easier. Nigel turned to Swissy, this time making sure that his feet were not moving at all.

“How about we start over. I am Commander Chalmers from the United Imperium of Planets Military Intelligence Department, ISA Division, and I am here regarding the activation of our beacon,” Nigel said as he pointed towards the subspace beacon currently nestled in the crook of a scientist’s arm. The man, the teams Electronics specialist, had previously retrieved the beacon from the remains of the pedestal and was now investigating the object, the fingers of his right hand dancing over the beacons interface. Nigel returned his hand to his side, subconsciously tapping the grip of his sidearm, which he had holstered earlier, and continued. “Any information you could provide us with in regards to our objective would be incredibly useful, and such co-operation would be looked upon favourably.”

Chrysalis stared at the tall biped trying to find the will to voice a response. The biped spoke fluent Equestrian and it had made its demands known, the device obviously immensely important to it, and Chrysalis had a difficult choice to make. Should she lie, and try to convince the bipeds that they had nothing to do with the device, or should she try to explain to them the circumstances surrounding the current dilemma? The bipeds guarding the leader appeared to be heavily armed, and she knew that the wrong choice would likely result in bloodshed. Chrysalis did not place much faith in the four guards in the room with her; they were all still appeared to be in a state of shock, with one even cowering under his hooves. Knowing that her fate would be dictated by what she said, she summoned up the courage to form a reply.

“I-I am Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings, and the device of which you speak of…” Chrysalis trailed off, her courage sapped by the un-wavering stare of the bipedal leader, two embers burning right into her mind. Drawing upon her last reserves of strength, Chrysalis glanced at Transfusion, the Scholar having not moved from his position on the floor, barley two body-lengths away from the biped, before pointing her right foreleg at him and finally mustering a coherent reply. “He did it.”

Transfusion nearly cried like a Newborn Nymph as the imposing biped lowered its burning gaze towards him. He began to shiver as biped began to approach, stooping down on its hind legs as it lowered its face towards his. The biped’s face, a leering bone white skull surrounded by what appeared to be smooth black chitin, was pointed directly at him, and at this distance he could hear what appeared to be a quiet ‘hum’ resonating from the dread figure. The bipeds gaze never wavered, and surely his judgement was sure to begin.

“So,” the biped asked, its unnatural voice echoing around the surrounding area. “You’re the one that activated our emergency beacon, forcing me to leave my comfy chair and come all the way to this god-forsaken galaxy, where in the last ten minutes I’ve already fallen flat on my arse in front of my troops and your ruler, possibly damaging the only chance our Empire had at diplomacy?”

Transfusion compressed his body even more, hoping that by some miracle he could just disappear. “Do you know how important my time is, what precious things I had planned to do before SOMETHING had to go and run my carefully laid plans?” The other bipeds had slowly started to back away from their leader, its tone gaining an icy edge to it, an edge detectible even in the monotone voice it possessed “Do you know,” the biped’s face growing closer to Transfusion’s. “What I’m going to do to you?”

Transfusion shook his head, tears welling up in his blue eyes, terrified of what this biped was going to do. “I’m going to do something I should have done at the start of this conversation” the biped stated, and Transfusion braced himself for inevitable.

“I'm letting you off with a warning!” The biped’s voice having lost all malicious meaning and had returned to its original cheerful tone.

‘What?’ Transfusion thought as he raised his head, the biped having stood back up, it’s attention now focused on Queen Chrysalis, its prior target forgotten. Transfusion wasn’t certain, but he swore that the white bipeds seemed just as shocked as he was with the sudden mood change, although the black bipeds appeared to have not been surprised in the slightest.

“Now,” the biped began joyfully. “Let’s get on with the show, I’m sure you have many questions to ask about our appearance as well as what we plan to do with you and I’m a busy man, so let’s get to it!” The biped clapped its two front claws together as it said this and started walking towards the startled Queen, leaving Transfusion curled up on the floor, wondering just what manner of insane beast had been unleashed upon the planet.