How to Train Your Alien 2

Forming her flesh into that of a cardinal was an interesting experience.  The muscle memory, skills, mannerisms, and experience of the bird she had assimilated were stored in her hivemind.  The bird's brain was dismantled, processed, and ultimately absorbed into her hivemind.  The instincts and desires of this animal echoed in her mind as she utilized the bird's dismantled mind fragments and influenced her actions, because of this she was quickly able to adapt to a strange new body and utilize it effectively.  She chirped and trilled instinctively as she fluttered her wings, soaring through the air.  The sense of freedom she felt while utilizing the flesh of this flying animal was amazing.

The amount of information coming in through her eyes was staggering.  She struggled to process it all.  She saw fields of farmland spread far and wide along the rolling fields that bordered the Everfree.  As she got closer to the town she had seen from the tree with her main body, she flew over one of the rolling hills and immediately the scenery changed.  There was an orchard of apple trees.  Utilizing the memories from the previously absorbed pony, yes, it seemed like ponies also farmed these fruit bearing trees.

Thunk!  Ah, there was a sound coming from a tree over there.  She decided to swoop down to investigate.  She skillfully landed on the branch of a tree and watched as a quadruped pony kicked at the tree with her hind hooves.  She was orange and had something smooth on her head.  Hat.  Oh, so it was a device to shield oneself from the sun.  How inventive!  These ponies were very interesting!  The orange pony wiped her borrow with a foreleg and looked up at her with a smile.  The pony opened her mouth and a smooth rhythmic noise came out from within her.  Ah, this was probably her race's form of communication.  It seemed to be quite a bit more complicated than the one that she used as a bird.  She could not understand the pony.  Instead she trilled back using her bird's voice to sing a short and happy song before she quickly flew off again.

She watched from a distance as the pony continued her work and saw hundreds of apples fall from the trees.  Boy, these ponies were industrious!  They were perhaps even more efficient at collecting energy than she was!  To be fair though, she only ever harvested what she needed at the moment or what was uniquely valuable.  This pony was harvesting so much in such a short time.  What was she going to do with all those apples?  She needed to learn more.  From what little she knew about them, they seemed to use tools and build structures.  These things were somewhat mysterious to her.  How did they learn to do so many things?  Did the ponies perhaps have very long lifespans?

She continued flying closer to the cluster of structures that memory told her was called Ponyville.


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Ponies were amazing!  It seemed that they were able to convey complex thoughts simply by making noises with their mouths!  It was almost like telepathy!  Also, the complexity of their inventions were mysterious and alien to the smooth, organic structures she saw in the forest.  So many sharp, right angles!  Those didn't really exist in the forest.  It was somewhat mysterious, if she were to be honest.  The technology and coordination that these ponies were capable of was amazing.  The ponies were much more complex and sophisticated than the animals in the forest.  She needed to be careful around these creatures.  However, she seemed to possess something that these ponies did not.  Based on the information she had gotten from that pony that she had assimilated and what she observed in the Ponyville, not even these ponies seemed to be able to change their flesh like she could.  It seemed that every organism that existed in this world was so stiff and immutable compared to her own flexible and malleable body.  This thought made her feel special and gave her pleasure and confidence that she would be alright in this strange world.  It was actually a relief to learn that nothing else seemed to be a shapeshifter like she was.

She needed to learn more about them.  However, she did not know how to communicate with them.  She had tried to interact with animals before.  If she shaped her flesh to look similar to them, they would not react too badly, but when she revealed her true self to them they always reacted with fear or hostile behavior.  She definitely did not want to appear before these ponies as an alien organism.  Who knew what defensive mechanisms this advanced species had devised?  It was bound to be worse than the venom that snake had spat at her eye.  It seemed that she was missing something from the last pony she assimilated but she didn't know what it was.  She didn’t seem to understand how to utilize the sound based telepathy.  What she really needed was a sample, something that she could analyze and fuse herself to.  This was how she learned best, she had learned so much from the animals she had assimilated.  Infiltration and stealth were things that she excelled at with her flexible body, but these ponies required special care.  She didn't dare shift out of her cardinal disguise in broad daylight while near these ponies.  She would need to devise a plan.  For now she would go home and find some new, tasty species to assimilate.


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On her way home, she noticed that some of the animals seemed to be entering and exiting a lonely cottage structure.  Her curiosity piqued, what business did these animals have inside a pony structure?  She decided to follow some of the birds inside through a window.  The inside of the structure was warm and dry compared to the constantly changing conditions outside.  There was food, seeds, and fresh water in a bowl that the other birds immediately flew to and pecked at, eating. Instead of landing on the bird feeder where the others were eating, she perched herself on the edge of a couch and gazed at a beautiful, buttery yellow pegasus with pink hair that was reading a book.

The pegasus looked up at her with kind eyes and opened her mouth making that familiar pony noise.  However, this time, Thing was somehow able to understand the meaning.  She meant no harm and her home was open to any animals that needed help.  Ah, so that's why this place was so popular.  It seemed that this winged pony was capable of a crude form of telepathy.

She was so enthralled by pony's eyes that she was startled when she felt a hoof begin to pet her.  She flinched and took flight, landing on the pony's head.  More soothing noises came from the yellow pony's throat, she didn't mean any harm, the noise meant.  She hesitated and this hesitation allowed the pony to wrap two hooves around her cardinal body and pick her up.  She wriggled for a moment in the pony's grasp but the pony was much stronger than her small unmodified bird body.  Soft, melodic cooing vibrations permeated her whole body as the pony brought Thing close to her chest.  Thing felt very comfortable and cosy when being held in the furry breast of the pony.  She had observed mammals in the forest that had done this with their young.  They would lick, cuddle, and sleep with their young.  It seemed that this pony enjoyed playing a motherly role, even when they were different species.  She felt herself being caressed and petted by the pony.  It felt good.

She had never really felt the touch of another creature before.  She had some of the memories from those she had assimilated, but experiencing it in the flesh was another thing entirely.  Thing relaxed and closed her eyes, allowing herself to be caressed and held.  It was a wonderful feeling.  Finally, the pony set her back down on the couch.  She made eye contact with the pony once more and dipped her head, showing her tail feathers to the pony.  It was a classic bird salutation, and she flew back over to the other birds on the feeder, landing on top.

For the next few minutes, she watched the pony.  It seemed that this pony spent her time and resources taking care of weak and unfortunate animals that came out of the everfree.  This pony was very kind and empathetic.  These were concepts that she had trouble understanding, but as she assimilated more animals and experienced the kindness from the pony herself, she began to understand.  It was a selfless desire to improve the world around her for the sake of other creatures.  But what did the pony get out of this?  Thing dug deeper, analyzing the genetic makeup of the pony and other mammals that she had processed and assimilated within herself.

Ah, she understood now.  Mammals and many other animals had an instinct to cooperate and feel empathy for others, especially of their own species.  It was a survival mechanism, of course it was!  This desire for cooperation and non-hostile activity and selflessness allowed the species itself to better survive and propagate.  The good feelings associated with it were a reward system for this behavior.  It only made sense, the animals that only thought of themselves would not survive because they could easily be overwhelmed and killed off by a different, more coordinated species.

Now it seemed that she too had experienced these feelings.  It made sense that she would be confused by the empathetic and kind behavior.  Her species had no sense of empathy or kindness.  They had no need for it.  The hivemind was enough of a coordination, other species were simply food.  However, because her mind was damaged on her long and improbable intergalactic journey, she was forced to adopt parts of the mind of species she assimilated as a survival mechanism.  Because of this, she was stuck with the empathetic mindset of these indigenous creatures.

It wasn't so bad, she thought to herself.  Her old species was brutal and efficient like a machine.  In the billions of years that they had been harvesting their own galaxy for genetic ideas, they became stagnant and dominant, only making small tweaks to their biology to further perfect themselves rather than dramatic changes.  The need for innovation and competition lessened until they worked like a machine, almost mindlessly traveling around and around the galaxy in cycles of 200 million years, harvesting worlds that they had left last cycle barren but fertile, with new life ready to be harvested for information once more.  The constant warfare made them perfect and kept them strong but what more was there to achieve after perfection?  In their constant pursuit of perfection, they shed their emotions, empathy, and other distractions.  They became machines, unchanging.

Perhaps she could be different.  She was so far away from her ancestors that had sent her here.  Their desire to propagate and preserve their species sent her here.  She had a vague memory of how she used to be before her mind had degraded by the sheer power of time.  Her old mind in a way was intelligent, but it had no need for creative thinking or new independent thought.  It was perfect after all so it had no need for these new thoughts that could taint the perfection.  Did she really want to risk what her ancestors had worked billions of years to achieve?  It was so much more interesting to be an independent mind.  She decided that she didn't want to be a machine.

Deep thoughts filled her mind as she flew back to the forest for the night.

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Specialization and bartering, that's how they did it!  She observed the farmer's market from the rooftops.  The apple pony from yesterday had all her apples in her stand and was giving them away.  In return she received these golden tokens that she could use in other stalls to purchase what she needed.  Hmm, so these ponies didn't have to know everything themselves, they just had to be good at one thing.  Ah, that made so much sense!  Hmm, they almost seemed to work like a hivemind would with their currency system.  She remembered a concept from the pony she assimilated.  Supply and Demand.  Ahh, this is how they were able to so efficiently do things.  When they needed more of something, the market forces would work as a kind of telepathy to make ponies do what was needed.

In her case, her species knew everything they needed to in the hivemind.  Well, perhaps not everything.  She didn't really know how to build a civilization.  Her species operated by constantly plundering the riches of the life they had left to grow in their absence, last cycle.  They had forgotten how to build something themselves, they simply took from others.  At least they would leave the worlds and their inhabitants with 200 million years to do what they pleased but they always came back to reap the profits their unknowing slaves had wrought.  This was probably why it was so tempting and easy to eat other animals.  It was what she was meant to do.

It was getting more difficult to do.  The more her mind developed, the stronger the sense of empathy forced her to feel shame as she watched some poor squirrel struggle, fused to her flesh and feel its terrified feelings as she consumed its brain.  She sighed mentally, she needed to consume more of the predatory animals.  They were harder to find but they didn't worry about the feelings of their prey as much.  Now that she thought about it, she was simply another predator in the forest.  She didn't need to be as soft as that buttery pegasus pony.  She would simply be a part of the ecosystem, it wasn't evil.

Thing thought about fulfilling her purpose, given to her by her ancestors.  She was pretty sure that she could reestablish the hivemind mechanisms that had broken during her intergalactic trip.  If she could figure that out then she could easily multitask and hivemind herself into an expanding mind capable of forming an army of hivemind coordinated flesh puppets with telepathy and advanced mind organization.  It would be so easy and natural to pick and eat this oh so ripe world like the juicy fruit it was.  Her mouth even watered at the prospect, it was what she was meant to do after all.  Her very instincts and body yearned for it, but she was determined to be different.  She would create her own path rather than just becoming another cog in her specie's machine.