Thunder's eyes opened only to see the face of a panicing changeling.

"We overslept, Thunder! Get up, quickly!" With that, Shade grabbed the still half-asleep Thunder by his hooves and pulled him out of his hammock. Shade showed no mercy, letting Thunder fall to the cold floor. At least now Thunder was actually fully awake.

"Ugh..." He started, rubbing his eyes. "What do you mean we overslept?"

"We are going to be late for the meeting, Thunder!" He said, bending down to Thunder who was still laying on the floor. "Our first appointment with the Queen and we are going to be late!" Shade was beginning to shiver all over his body thinking about Queen Chrysalis's expression to them being late.

Thunder though, didn't seem to be interested much into the appointment. "Yeah, right." He said, rolling over to his side, closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep. "I'll give you a headstart."

Shade's left eye began twitching. Not only were they going to be late but his "student" was rebelling and not interested in this at all. He lost control and grabbed Thunder's head, pulling it towards his face. "Thunder! Listen!" He yelled, pulling his face so close to him that both of their noses made contact with eachother. "This is a very important appointment! Not only for me, or for her, but for you! Now please do me a favor and stop rebelling against me. I not only don't have the time for that right now, but I'm also getting sick of it! Cut it out, alright?"

Thunder's eyes darted from left to right and right to left while he talked, at the end though, he looked Shade in his eyes and nodded. His nod was quickly met with him being falling to the floor again, due to Shade letting go of him and leaving the room. Thunder moaned as he got up from the ground. "I hope this doesn't become a regular thing...", he said to himself. He then trotted outside of his room where Shade was already waiting.

"Alright, let's not waste any time. Let's go." Shade said, turning around from Thunder and opening the wall once again.

"Um..." Thunder said, rubbing his backhead awkwardly while remaining inside. "I'm...kinda hungry though. Can't we-" He was cut off by Shade.

"Sorry, pal. No time for feeding. That'll have to wait for after we're finished with Chrysalis. For now, we need to get to the Throne room as soon as possible." Shade walked outside, waving towards Thunder with a hoof, motioning him to follow. Thunder sighed as he held his belly for a moment, then he followed Shade outside.

Thunder looked after Shade as he crawled into one of the many tunnels. He stared into the dark in which Shade had now disappeared and sighed. "Let's just get this over with quickly..." He thought to himself, crawling into the same tunnel and using his newly-learned night vision.

After a good while, the two changelings finally arrived at the throne room. Shade left the tunnel and turned around to see if Thunder managed to keep up with his relatively fast pace. They were in a hurry after all. As it turns out, Thunder did manage to keep up quite well.

"Are we there yet...?" Thunder asked sarcastically, making Shade roll his eyes. As the two stood in the throne room, they noticed it was empty. Except for the throne there was nothing and noone else in it. Were they too late? Had the queen lost her temper and departed already?
Thunder only looked around the room curiously, mostly focusing on the big throne. Meanwhile, Shade was once again starting to shiver and panic. To his relief though, he soon heard a well-known voice echoing through one of the other tunnels.

"Ugh, I told you we wouldn't make it in time, Amaz! I should have known that Princess Cadance would-" Chrysalis and her advisor Amaz were stopped in their tracks as they arrived at the throne room and saw that they clearly had guests. Thunder's look became serious, seeing as he faced the queen of the changelings in front of him. Shade gave out an inner sigh of relief, seeing as how the queen didn't manage to arrive on time either.

Chrysalis smiled awkwardly, bumping her advisor with her flank to instruct her into doing the same. "Oh, I am terribly sorry. I had to attend to something very important. It seems though, it took longer than we had planned for." Chrysalis stated, giving her advisor an unhappy look. Amaz herself decided to leave the room, seeing as how the following meeting was not meant for her ears.

"It is perfectly fine, my Queen. You two aren't the only ones that...didn't quite make it on time." With that, Shade bowed before his Queen. Thunder though, as expected, refused to bow before Chrysalis. As Shade noticed that his friend didn't bow, he quickly got up again to distract from the awkward occurence. "Anyways, We are here as you wished, my Queen."

Chrysalis's and Thunder's look met for one second before Chrysalis moved on to Shade. "Indeed, and I am happy to see you two made it." Chrysalis then lifted off the ground and flew towards her throne. "Now..." She started as she landed on said throne. "Let us get started, shall we?"

Shade nodded approvingly, then looking back at Thunder. As Thunder looked at Shade, he remembered what he said back at his home. He decided to not try anything stupid. At least not yet. "Sure, let's get started..." Thunder said, just loud enough for Chrysalis to understand.

"Excellent. So. Before we get into anything surrounding the Hivemind and how to use it, I would like a report on how you two are doing so far." Chrysalis said, looking at Shade.

Shade looked fairly surprised, yet at the same time he kind of expected this kind of question. "Well, my Queen, at this current stage my student has already learned how to utilise his night vision and love feeding abilities." Thunder gulped at the word "love feeding".

"Hmm, and how is your student settling down in the Hive so far?" Chrysalis asked, now looking over to Thunder. Thunder still had an untrusting look towards her.

"Oh, well-" Shade started, yet he was quickly cut off by Chrysalis.

"Not you, Shade. I want your lovely student to tell me that himself." She said, now fully focusing on Thunder whose look went from untrusting to confused and surprised. Shade too was more than surprised at this.

"I...uh..." Thunder gave out while starting to shiver. Suddenly, Chrysalis appeared in front of him.

"Let me help you...my child." The latter clearly caused anger in Thunder, yet he managed to contain it. "I won't play around here, I know how this goes. This by far isn't the first time I've done this." Chrysalis said as she walked past Thunder. "I know you currently stand against me, my kingdom and my race. I also know about your very...special connection to the Princesses, especially Princess Luna." Hearing someone like Chrysalis talk about something as private as that infuriated Thunder. As Thunder tried charging at Chrysalis, however, he was thankfully held back by Shade.

"Calm down, Thunder. It's not worth being so mad about. We're just trying to help you." Shade said as he was holding back the struggling Thunder.

"Indeed we are." Chrysalis said as she turned around to face Thunder. "There's no need to be so discret about your "secrets", dear. You must have forgotten who I am and who you are now, too. Changelings. We have the best spies in all of Equestria. Normally our Spies have better things to do than watch over my own subjects though, so I would very much appreciate it if you could remember this: There are no secrets within the Hive."

Thunder managed to calm down a little. His eyes narrowed as Chrysalis leaned over to him. "Why would I ever try to stay in line for you? All you've done is take all I love and hold dear and exchange it with something I hate, don't want or don't understand."

Chrysalis sighed as she took in what he said. "You still seem to misunderstand why I summoned you here today."

"Oh yeah? Well, tell me!" Thunder barked back at her.

"I understand very well how upset you might be." She started, turning away from Thunder. "But there's more to this than the obligatory "evil queen is doing evil things against my will". I am sure I'm allowed to skip most of this though, Shade here should have told you most of it." She explained, looking towards Shade who himself nodded. "Have you ever wondered why exactly I even decided to turn you into one of us? Why I gave you the change to start a new living with us instead of being fed on by us?"

Thunder looked away from Chrysalis, thinking hard about it, yet couldn't come up with an answer. "If I'm honest, no. I never wondered about that."

"I assumed so. You already know about me and my past, same with what my current goals are." She said, making Thunder grumble in disbelief. "But to actually achieve something like that it takes a lot. To help convince the Princesses and other ponies, me and my advisors came up with a rather...special plan to help convince the equestrians. We would send out our infiltrators to capture ponies and replace them. Those ponies were then brought back to the Hive and turned into one of us. After a long time, they would finally come to seeing as not completely and utterly evil. Then, when the time has come, we would show the ponies and Princesses those reformed "changeling ponies". They would tell and show them that changelings aren't evil and that they are only trying to do what is best for their race, that they are trying to somehow create friendship between our two races."

Thunder looked like his brain stopped working halfway through her speech. "S-so...wait...you are saying...that I am...what I am now...because you need me to convince the princesses of how changelings are not evil?"

Chrysalis simply nodded. "Yes, that summarizes it quite nicely."

Thunder inhaled and exhaled deeply, thinking about how to react to this. "I'm honestly not sure if this makes things worse or better."

Unexpectedly, it was Shade who replied to him. "It's better, of course. Trust me, Thunder. Changelings aren't evil. Nowhere near as evil as you think they are right now. I'm not evil, Chrysalis isn't and neither are any of the others."

Chrysalis nodded in agreement. "Indeed. You should consider us as friends, not enemies. It seems that you and Shade have managed to upkeep your friendship throughout all of what has happened, through all your anger. I am sure this can be applied to all of the other changelings too, including me."

Thunder was shocked by how...how friendly Chrysalis reacted towards all of this. Maybe...just maybe...Shade was right...maybe changelings really are good. "I...I'm not sure...yet...I don't really feel too well right now..." Thunder gave out, holding his belly as it gave out a loud grumble.

"I see..." Chrysalis thought for a couple of seconds and then looked over to Shade who was currently trying to assist his friend who wasn't feeling well. "Shade..." The Changeling in question immediatly looked up to her. "Tell me, has your friend gotten to feed yet?"

"Um, not today, no. Last and only time he did was yesterday, and I don't think he really took much love back then. Do you think that's the reason for this?"

The changeling Queen nodded. "Indeed, It seems your friend is starving for more love. You should get him to the nearest food chamber as soon as possible and let him get some rest for the next few hours. We will continue this later." The Queen said, looking at the sick-looking Thunder.

"As you say, my Queen. Thank you for your advice." Shade said as he helped his sick friend into a tunnel.

"Thank you..." Thunder mumbled just loud enough for Chrysalis to hear. As the two disappeared into the tunnel, a small smile appeared on her face.