Shining Armor took a big bite of the burger he had ordered. It looked appetizing and delicious but something was off with the flavor. Chewing it a few times he realized that Twilight was staring at him, a scroll at her side scratching away, taking notes. "Warff?"

"You have fangs, real fangs." Twilight's eyes were bright, her thoughts chasing around each other before latching on to another detail. "And your mane has some green in it."

Coughing, Shining tried to look to the sides, his armor clanging each time he did. Gulping down the mouthful, he regretted the action immediately. "Oh… oh no…"

"Your Highness," Gilt lit her horn and reached for her queen. "You can't just eat food like that, we can't… it doesn't work for us. Oh," she snuffed her horn out and leaned back, "you should go to the bathroom, fast."

"Now all of you looks green." Twilight leaned closer to the disguised drone at her side. "Do all uh… well, do you all turn green like that? Is it a pre-moult thing?"

"Nope," Gilt started getting up, her horn flashing bright green as she hefted Shining Armor from his seat. "Coming through!" Off at a gallop, the changeling saved her queen from a very messy demonstration of changeling digestive systems, or a lack thereof, by mere moments.

"I guess normal food doesn't agree with Shiny anymore." Cadance lifted out her own notebook and started making an entry. "What about you, Twilight? I thought you loved Hayburgers, you haven't even touched yours." It was more than obvious that Twilight was just too tied up in her investigation of her brother to really eat. "We have a long train ride ahead of us, you should eat something. You can take more notes then."

Deprived of her subject Twilight surrendered to the popular notion of eating. "You're right, but it is just so interesting. He even seemed to have more than just the two prominent fangs, how many sharp teeth does he have?" She floated a burger up and took a "stallion sized" bite from it.

"They are all like that now. Honestly I don't know why changelings even have them. What do they use the fangs for?" Cadance took a markedly smaller nibble of her burger, able to chew it daintily and swallow before Twilight even got partway through chewing her own. "I will have to ask them. How are your studies going?"

If there was a single way to distract Twilight Sparkle from anything, it was asking her about learning. Chewing rapidly and gulping, Twilight got the mouthful down. "Really good! Just yesterday Discord was here and-"

"Discord?" Cadance blinked in surprise. She still felt a slight grudge against the chaos spirit, if for nothing else than having attacked her favorite sister. "I told Auntie that he really wasn't worth the effort…"

"Who wasn't worth the effort?" Shining looked a lot less green as he rejoined his wife and sister. "Okay Gilt, we have to test this. I need to at least pretend to eat."

"Pretend?" Twilight and Cadance both completely forgot their conversation at mention of their science experiment and husband, respectively.

"Pretend." Gilt slid into the booth beside Twilight and Shining too Cadance's side. It meant the poor stallion would have ease of access to evacuate quickly. "Put the food in your mouth, chew it a little, then use a shot of magic to put it somewhere else."

"That is clever!" Twilight set her burger down and her notepaper returned. "So where do you send it?" Her quill was poised, ready for the attack of knowledge she knew was about to come.

"Uh, well…" Gilt Wings blushed a little as she picked her burger back up. "You will be able to tell if a ch-" she froze and looked to her Queens, "somepony like me, is eating; they will visit the bathroom before taking a bite."

Twilight caught on first and nodded eagerly. "A good idea, nopony would notice you putting a few mouthfuls down the drain." Her quill was attacking the paper with ruthless efficiency. "So, BBBFF, let's see you try it."

Three sets of eyes were focused on Shining; the stallion gave a sigh. "Really, you are all going to stare at me?" Cadance and Twilight nodded, and seeing them nod so too did Gilt. "Well, I guess it means I can practice it without showing what I am doing. Here goes." He lifted up the burger, taking a moderate bite from it. The flavor was muted still, but he went through the motions of chewing.

"You work it into a ball, push it together with your tongue." Gilt watched her Queen doing a seemingly normal task. There was a green flash and suddenly Shining Armor was gone. "Maybe a little too much power…"

"Shiny?" Cadance turned her head toward the bathroom, looking back at the stallion reemerging, his helmeted head looking a little damp. "Oh Shiny, you have so much power now, you need to be more careful!"

Shining Armor stared right at Gilt. "I order you not to laugh." He took his seat, using the weakest drying spell he could to try to remove the moisture.

"Ignore him dear, you can laugh." Cadance poked her husband in the shoulder. "No ordering our new guard to do that, you know Gilt takes orders very seriously. Your soldiers might laugh and ignore such a command, but she wouldn't." Cadance turned to the changeling. "Would you?"

"Of course not!" Gilt looked between her two queens, a little of panic setting in. "I would never disobey an order from my Queen." In her haste and panic, the drone had dropped her ponyisms.

Realizing just what he had done, Shining reached a hoof across the table toward the mare. "Whoa, sorry Gilt." I am so going to have to be more careful. "You can always laugh, always speak your mind."

The confusion and tension in the drone evaporated, furthermore she realized how much her queens thought about and felt for her. "Yes Sir." She couldn't hold back the happy little chirp from her voice; it had been a very long time since Gilt had really believed the queen of her hive really cared for her.

Focusing on his food, Shining took a new bite and started chewing.

"You can do it Shiny."

"My Queen, less energy, just a trickle."

Twilight just stared, her quill poised like a guillotine, prepared to give a flurry of motion at the right signal.

Fighting his urge to swallow, Shining gave the slightest flick with his magic, focusing on what he wanted to happen. The draw of energy was so low it didn't even light his horn; his mouth was empty. "I did it!"

A cheer went up from the three mares and three fillies from the next table. Gilt, Shining, and Cadance all froze at the intense looks from the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

"Oh, I didn't see you there girls!" Twilight was a terrible liar, and she knew it. "Poor Shining has been-"

"Turned into a," Sweetie Belle pointed at Gilt, "somepony like her." Two little hooves gave obvious air quotes for the second half of her statement. "What is like her?"

"Can't you tell? She is a guard!" Scootaloo cut in, interrupting any possible attempt to derail the fillies. "And look at Twilight's big brother, he is a guard too. Remember at the wedding?"

"That's right!" Apple Bloom pushed her head forward, peeking at Twilight's notes. "What's an esophagus?"

"Maybe we should go, I am sure Shiny needs to practice more 'guard stuff'." Cadance poked her husband with a hoof, trying to get him moving. "And we have to catch the train a long, long way away from here, don't we, darling?" She gave her husband what Shining—and indeed most ponies who loved their willful wives most devoutly—called, "The Look."

Like many ponies before him, Shining Armor picked what times were right to argue a point with his wife and right now was certainly not one of them. "Oh, of course, Empire to 'emp' and all that!" He slipped from the booth and was quickly joined by Cadance, Twilight, and Gilt; the latter of which trotted quickly to hold the door.

"But how're we going to find out what the mystery is if y'all are leavin'?" Apple Bloom sounded heartbroken. "We need to find out what is going on. Cutie Mark Crusaders, Mystery Solvers!" All three fillies put their hooves up and got a resounding clop as they came together.

"We need to go, now. How fast can we get to the station?" Twilight was herding her family—and their guard—out. "If those fillies are given more than five minutes with a problem they will either solve it or lose interest, the latter only works if they don't think they can get a cutie mark on the subject."

"Why are they so fixated on cutie marks?" Gilt let the door close behind the last of their group.

Twilight half-smirked. "Imagine if you had no queen, but everypony around you had a queen." She regretted the analogy the moment she saw the disguised changeling's ears tuck back and her tail swish up and close to her back legs. "Or maybe not that bad. But still, it is an emptiness and those three feel that anything that might fill it is worth throwing all their attention at."

"I…" Gilt lifted her head a little, her posture improving, "I understand how they feel. When Princess Cadance and Shining Armor severed my ties to… her, I felt so lost and angry. I didn't want to feel what they were offering, I just wanted my hive back. I was blinded by the emptiness."

"I really do think that might be a little more than just being without a cutie mark… or maybe it isn't. Either way we need to get on a train out of here as fast as possible." Twilight smiled to Gilt, finding herself liking the changeling more and more. She pulled out her notes and started writing down her observations.

The warmth of Gilt's hive was right beside her, she literally couldn't ignore how it made her feel. "I really wish I could help those fillies…"

Cadance took notice of her guard's distraction. "You want to help them?"

"They just want to belong. I already belong, I belong to you, to all the other drones in your hive. They need somepony, or something, to belong to, to dedicate everything to." Gilt gave a slight prance as she trotted ahead of her queens. "I hope they find it!"

Grinning like a loon, Cadance spread her wing and pulled a little closer to her husband. "Changelings really are just ponies." She nuzzled Shining Armor's cheek a little. "To think that old Stalker-butt crashed our wedding and used them as cannon fodder. I almost feel bad about doing what I did."

"Cady, you did what you felt you had to. That wasn't the time to pull punches, Chrysalis had defeated Princess Celestia, there was no telling what she might do." Shining nuzzled back.

"Oh, I know what the plans were." Gilt led the way up the steps onto the platform at Ponyville Station. "Everypony with above average power was to be stuffed in pods, the rest would be mind controlled where needed. Then she was going to put something in the water to make everypony love everypony else a lot more…" She trailed off as she continued the plans, looking around the town. "It was a terrible plan. So many ponies would have been hurt."

Twilight rushed to her new friend's side. "She didn't, and now you don't have to do what she says anymore."

Gilt blinked at the mare, unsure how "The Destroyer of Changelings" had become her friend. "Thank you. I… I don't like that any of my siblings—even the not nice ones—are still under her hoof."

Shining set a heavy hoof on Gilt's shoulders, the changeling feeling not just the physical weight of the limb, but the intensity of the touch of her queen. "Gilt, I promise we will free as many as we can; won't we Cady?"

Cadance blinked at her husband in surprise. She saw steel in his eyes, determination that she rarely witnessed in most ponies. A glance at Gilt revealed hope, raw and unbridled. "Of course we will, I will promise too-" She got no further, she had a disguised changeling hugging her so tightly that she wondered if Gilt was using magic.

Gilt's eyes were damp. "My Queen… Queens, thank you!"

"All aboard! Next stop, Canterlot!"

Author's Notes:

Cadance blinked at the little card. "Wax on and wax off? OH! Shiny's shell. Well, I think once he has a full covering of chitin it would be remiss of us not to have him looking his best. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a white coat clean when a particular stallion insists on running the guard's obstacle course with all the recruits? I will tell you how hard, four bottles of shampoo hard."

~~~~~+++++~~~~~

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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