The Ambitious Queen

Chapter 2: The Royal Meeting

To Changelings, Forests were nature's only friend as while it gave them food and water, it also made them feel like they were home. If a Changeling were to ever feel lost or uncomfort, the forest would offer them a feeling of safety. Some even said you could hear the Traveller watching over you. However as of right now this wasn't the case for a certain Queen.

Odonata mumbled incoherently as she approached the small cave where the other Queens were gathering for the biannual meeting implemented by some idiot that possessed the largest Hive and even began to call herself the Queen of Queens.

Odonata: 'For the betterment of our species' my damn flank...

Odonata grumbled as she approached an Earth Pony who was reading a book while seemingly guarding a rundown shack. She herself was disguised as a Unicorn with bright cyan coat, dark blue eyes and a deep blue mane and tail, along with a cutie mark of a cog. It had taken her almost a year to figure out how to shapeshift her apparatuses without damaging them.

Her left eye twitched violently as she finally noticed why the pony had not reacted to her. He was asleep. While holding the book up like he was awake.

With a flare of bright blue magic, she sent a pebble with a bit of force at the pony's head. With a pained grunt, the pony sat up growling after falling over until she dropped her disguise in a blink of an eye. Upon seeing Odonata's large form along with the devices she had across her face was enough to make him swallow nervously while tapping the ground twice.

Odonata: Same disguise as the last meeting again? What does your queen even teach you? Change your damn disguise every meeting so even if a Pony sees you again later, they would ignore you! The coincidence of the same Pony seeing you would be way too high!

She scolded the poorly disguised Changeling muzzle to muzzle while she adjusted the bag slung over her body. Wordlessly glaring at the Changeling, she felt surprisingly refreshed at his worried look.

At least her hive wasn't as incompetent... yet.

Odonata: 'Sigh' mindless idiot...

Descending down a long array of straight stairs down after a wooden/metal trapdoor, she could hear the idle chatter of her fellow Queens half of the way down. Over three dozen Queens resided in Equestria alone and some Queens came from across the seas just to see what the hell is going on. She was just here to present her idea. A design that one of her Drones started and she had recently been working on perfecting it.

As Odonata walked through a solid metal door that opened for her, (how they got it, she'll never know) she sighed in despair at the scene before her. The room was a massive stone amphitheater set in a semicircle with a single large table in the center to where the Queens of larger Hives sat while she and other 'minor' queens were 'coerced' into sitting around in the half circle of the large amphitheater. And in the very center, on a stone throne would sit the 'Queen of All Queens'. Now if she could somehow smuggle in some machine guns, she could easily take over them all.

Odonata hung her head as she threw that particular idea away. It was stupid. She'd most likely cause this 'order' amongst Changeling hives to crumble so that they would once again fight each other over borders and what-nots. This idea of this loosely created 'Order' that settled border disputes, new methods of securing love, and other concerns was nothing short of brilliant, yet it lacked the organized power she had learned from. The ancient beings were organized enough to get to space.

Taking out a small rectangular case from within the bags she had over her barrel, Odonata turned it over in her hooves before placing it before her. She might be young compared to the other Queens and possessing a rather small hive, yet she had long ago decided to make it up with quality. Every other Queen was rather interested in what Odonata was wearing, yet either didn't have the guts to speak to her or already knew.