"You understand why we won't come in and talk to you?" Shining Armor was talking at the door of the bedroom they locked Bright Flash in. He stole a look at Careful, and got a nod. "We just want to talk and this seemed safer."

Bright was huddled under the covers of the bed, eyes darting around the room again. She didn't even know that there were some rooms in the castle that didn't have windows. When no exits made themselves apparent to her—none that had appeared since the last time she looked around—she slumped into a ball. "All I will give you, is my name, you might be just biding your time to squish me, but my Queen will do much worse."

The door opened, surprising the drone. She blinked and prepared her special tricks. "Bright Flash." Careful stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "We already know your name, Bright." Her snout was hanging open and, after a moment, she pulled it closed.

"Careful? What are you doing here? Was this a test by our Queen?" Bright climbed from the bed and, without realizing what she was doing, rushed to the other drone to hug him. She stopped inches from doing so. "Wait, you… you feel wrong."

"She isn't my queen anymore, Bright." Careful stepped past the mare and climbed up onto the bed, trying to relax, while his brain was expecting her to try something stupid. "That you fear her more than your enemy is correct, if not for the reasons you might think."

"You're not part of the hive…" Bright stared at the other drone as if he was an alien. "How… what happened?" Curiosity got the better of Bright and she climbed up on the bed, too. When Careful had given the orders, their group had done some good work. So she focused on the strange-seeming drone, his difference was like an itch now that she noticed it.

"My Queens happened. Shining Armor, Princess Cadance." Careful still felt a giddy little outpouring whenever he invoked their names like that, he knew he was smiling. "You would do horrible things for your queen, I would do everything, anything, for mine."

"You're mad, a changeling cannot change hives!" Bright stomped a holed hoof into the covers. "It doesn't work like that, once you are born to a hive you can't-" She broke off her tirade, realizing there was proof right in front of her. "How?"

"The same thing that gives us life can give us freedom." Careful gestured with a hoof to the door. "The ponies aren't just food, they are the key to our existence. Haven't you ever been told to do something and just wished you could say 'no'?"

Bright Flash was nodding before she realized it. "Every time I am told to make a pony do something they don't want to. Loving is instinctual for them, they practically give their hearts to me with barely the lightest touch of my gift. But making them do something…" Careful could see the internal war waging, clearly, on the mare's face.

"You have a choice. Princess Celestia is all for sending you home, but my Queens have a much better way, a way that doesn't lead to you having to do things you don't want, or risk getting stomped one day by mistake." Careful lifted a hoof up and booped the mare in the nose. "Chrysalis is the worst queen I know."

"How many queens do you know?" Bright was looking in wonder at Careful, she was sold on trying whatever it was he was 'selling', if only because she would like to look in a mirror and see her own face with that amount of happiness on it. She could almost taste him it was that intense.

"Three now, I like these two a lot better." Careful saw the mare was ready. "No more eye whammy on ponies, not unless they ask you for it, okay?"

Relaxing, Bright felt a calmness pour over her. "Okay… Will this hurt? Does it tear away my hive?" A little fear entered her words, although pain was not something she really feared. "What would my Queen do if she found… can she find out?"

"Did she tell you that I had left?" Careful reached out a hoof to the mare. "And it doesn't hurt… Bright, have you ever not been hungry?" He looked at her, offering his hoof to help her up.

Bright stared at the offered hoof a moment, reaching her own up to it and feeling Careful give a tug. "Well… last night was pretty good, but I wasn't full…" She gained her hooves easily with the help. "Why?"

"Because it feels good." Careful got up and dropped to the floor. "Shining, come in." He turned to Bright. "Be nice to him, he will be one of your queens."

The door opened and Bright watched as the stallion she had been sent to snoop on, walked into the room. She eyed his stature, the fact that he moved not only to Careful's side, but slightly in front of the other changeling. If this was to be her queen, she found herself liking the idea. A sudden shock hit her, she was staring.

"You are ready to talk?" Shining looked directly at the mare, marshaling every ounce of his bravery—he was literally staring down the fears, even though she was a lesser threat, that Chrysalis had given him. "How many of you are in the city?"

Careful blushed. "Uh, Shining, she… she wants to join your hive." He stepped to the side, around his queen.

Bright blushed too, unsure why this was suddenly making her feel strange. "Please, I… If half of what Careful says about you is true, I don't want to be part of Queen Chrysalis' hive anymore… even a quarter…"

With the mare before him looking so sad and broken, Shining's purpose, his very cutie mark, he couldn't stop himself. He pushed forward, past Careful, he put a leg around Bright's shoulders. "Then you won't be. I am surprised you didn't get broken from it last night, honestly."

Protection, comfort, support. Bright could have melted in place, become a cute statue or something, but then he would have had to leave eventually. She reached up to his leg around her shoulder and without thinking nuzzled it. She jerked a little when there was movement at the door. Cadance the Destroyer of Hives. The source of the destructive kick that had booted all of Chrysalis' minions from Canterlot. It was a shock the previous night to find the mare getting drunk, but this.

"Shining, what did you say to her? She looks terrified!" Cadance rushed over and before Bright knew what was happening she was being hugged from both sides at once. "Feel her, she is trembling. Really Shiny, I would have thought you would have more empathy."

The white stallion tried to get a word in, but Shining knew his chances of winning any such argument were as close to zero that it didn't bear thinking about. He looked down at Bright, could see the mare had shed some of her fear. "She is like this a lot, you are best just letting her hug you until you both feel better."

"Shining Armor, are you ignoring me?" Cadance's eyes narrowed, but her mind beat through her wifely instincts enough to see what he was doing; reassuring the changeling. "It was me?" Bright looked up at Cadance, fearing wrath would come. She shrank back a little, leaning a little more into Shining Armor's grip. Then the love came, a hurricane, a firestorm. It left nothing of her hive behind.

Shock, surprise, then, before Bright knew what else to do she started crying. "Are you okay?" Shining leaned down to the changeling mare, a little surprised at how small she seemed.

"She is happy." Careful cut in. "You broke her free," he looked up at Cadance, "remember, my Queen, you defeated every changeling in the hive, all at once. Every drone will fear you, at least a little."

Cadance looked down in shock, she had used love as a weapon that day and the realization that it had instilled fear made her a little sick. But then Bright turned, looked up at her. The tears were of joy, happiness. "My Queen…" The words had burned when Careful had first used them, but Cadance had grown used to the tag, with repeated use. She squeezed the mare a little tighter against her side, letting her love flow.

Bright never even knew when unconsciousness came, but it felt nice.

"I found out the drone who is intercepting messages is a pegasus who wormed into the Royal Messengers." Nimbus was having breakfast, she couldn't help stealing looks at the royal couple, still abed, with a changeling cuddled up right between them. "Seemed to be quite proud of being the pony to deliver all the Crystal Empire messages… and sleeping with nearly every flier in the wing."

Careful's ears perked forward. "Straight Horn, that mare is insatiable, but you have to admit she was a smooth talker." His horn was aglow, writing down notes.

"She can use words almost as well as I can put them into a pony." The voice was new to Nimbus Cloud, but Careful knew it was Bright Flash. "Oh, I need to find Misty Dew…"

"Your mark?" Careful looked over to the bed, seeing his fellow changeling struggling, trapped between two ponies that had apparently pinned her between them quite effectively. "No more of that. Bring her here, we will have to talk."

Bright's struggling woke both the royal couple and both of them squeezed her tighter, quickly overwhelming the drone with more love than she had ever in her life. She blinked, dazed. Vaguely she could remember that she had to do something but just slumping back to the bed was the best course of action now.

"And we lost her. How long has it taken for you to get used to that?" Nimbus gestured to the bed with a wing.

"That? What they just did to her? I don't know if I could have made it any better off. Even here I have to harden myself against it." And Careful had. When the wave of love had rolled from the couple, he imagined himself in a boat. He was going to get wet but not get swamped. "Using magic as much as I can, helps." He gestured with a hoof to the quill working away in his horn's grip.

Nimbus smiled at her close friend, the devotion he held toward Shining and Cadance was understandable, if not a little odd. Nimbus had dated a royal guard before, but even he hadn't been this devoted. "I will try to track down this Misty Dew, if I can find her I will bring her here."

"No, not here. Uh…" Careful tapped his chin with a hoof. "Take her to the royal court, I will go there and we can smuggle her down here after that. I don't want the other changelings to know what we are doing."

"I can be sneaky, you know, it isn't like changelings are the only ponies who can skulk about and… why are you grinning like that?" Nimbus glared at Careful, her hackles raised because of his perceived dismissal of her skills.

"You called changelings 'ponies'." Careful leaned across the table and hugged the mare. It took only a moment for Nimbus to file away her negative emotions and wrap her wings around the stallion who had stolen her heart.

"Stupid colt, of course changelings are ponies, you are just a little different. Different is good." Nimbus felt the little trickle down her spine, the feeling that she was being nibbled. It was a struggle not to grab Careful and take him back to their shared room right then and there.

"Shiny?" Cadance's voice was soft, so soft that only Shining Armor and the completely catatonic Bright could have heard it. "Shiny, look at them." Cadance gestured with a hoof, past the end of the bed and to the table on the other side of the room.

"I can't see as much as you can, Cadie." Shining looked, and could see enough. "But that looks like two ponies in love."

"This is so awesome… what's wrong?" Cadance looked back up to her love and saw the stallion was stricken by something. She didn't think twice, she reached past Bright, hugging Shining to her barrel, effectively making the changeling into a pillow between them.

"Will you still love me if I am not a stallion? You said it yourself, they keep saying it. Queens aren't stallions." Tears came, as they had done a lot of late. Shining was pressed into a loving kiss from his wife.

Bright had lost every faculty she might have had, the swell of love was mostly one-sided, but the intensity was greater than heat from the sun.

"Firstly, we don't know that will happen to you." Cadance broke the kiss to talk, rubbing her cheek against her husband's. "Second, yes, I will still love you." Her words were sincere, neither of them doubted them. "The one thing, Shining Armor, that we can both be sure of is our love. Chrysalis couldn't break it, this won't."

Shining felt his body stir, his subconscious maybe wanting to prove his love to his wife before the possible emasculation happens. Even as he slid from his sheath, he suddenly froze. It wasn't his wife's soft body his belly was pressed against. Looking down, he confirmed that his stallionhood was pressed firmly to Bright's back. Blush was such a small word to describe the red in his cheeks, but it was a start.

"Shiny?" Cadance looked at her husband, then followed his gaze down. She snorted, then giggled. "We have a guest, Shiny, maybe later though…" The words were not just a tease, the stallion knew, they were a promise.

Author's Notes:

Careful blushed, smiling. "My job? I don't have a job. This is my life. Serving their queen, or queens, is everylings' reason to live. Don't look at me like that, this is all true, and what little of my life doesn't belong to them, I share with Nimbus." The blush increased. "An no, before you ask, I don't regret either of those facts one, tiny, bit."

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So I do this "Ask x" thing, x can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and I they will definitely hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories and of course, I They will answer the best question(s) in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer, try and keep it to one answer per post! I They will pick one question per chapter.

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