The Infestation of Canterlot High School

by Bonster

Ten - Hit and Run (1)

The Canterlot High School cafeteria was in utter chaos. Spilled food, broken tables, and snapped chairs littered the ground, and students scrambled around the wreckage in their haste to reach the doors. Changelings flitted about, galloping and hovering towards the Rainbooms, who had broken from their original circle formation as soon as the lasers had started flying.

Sunset and Rainbow fought with each other, covering each other’s backs and laying waste to any changelings that got too close. Pinkie was harassing a dozen changelings at once, assaulting them with various kinds of desserts and party supplies. She moved as a blur around the cafeteria, and not even her friends could pinpoint her. Applejack busied herself ushering students into the relative safety of the halls, and she gripped a large table by the legs, using it as an oversized shield (and occasionally as a battering ram). Fluttershy was sitting in a corner of the cafeteria, sternly lecturing a gaggle of changelings on politeness and personal space, and Rarity was standing near Applejack, taunting the changelings. She had a hand mirror in her grasp, and was bouncing any lasers shot at her back into the changelings that fired them.

“What on Earth are those things?” questioned a confused student.

“Don’t worry about that! Jus’ git out!” Applejack yelled back, grunting as she slammed her table on top of a changeling that had tried to slip past her. “Blasted varmints!”

“Watch your back!” Rarity warned as she deflected an energy beam that had been headed straight for Applejack. It soared through the air towards the changeling that had created it; he jumped out of the way, or would have, had Pinkie not slammed a double decker cake into his face at that exact moment. She flashed Rarity a giddy smile and a thumbs up before vanishing, most likely to restock on confections.

“Nice shot,” Applejack commented.

“Well, I must give Pinkie some of the credit. I—Oof!”

“Sorry, Rares,” said Rainbow Dash, who had just fallen on top of Rarity. She wiped some multicolored blood on her shirt. “These changelings are tougher than they look.”

“Batter up!” called Sunset. She swung her baseball bat into the side of a monster, who tumbled through the air towards Rainbow and Rarity.

“Hiyaa!” Rainbow shouted, kicking the changeling back the way it came, and Sunset drilled it into the floor with her bat. Grinning, Rainbow bounced back onto her feet and ran into the fray once again.

“Glad they’re having fun,” Rarity said, brushing herself off.

“Eat this!” Sunset yelled, concussing a changeling.

“Ha!” Rainbow exclaimed, harshly elbowing another in the ribs.

The pair brawled their way around the cafeteria, sidestepping punches, delivering nasty kicks, jumping from lasers, pumping adrenaline, and ignoring their slowly accumulating injuries. Eventually, their fight took them to where Fluttershy was instructing a small group of changelings on proper table manners.

“Make sure to keep your napkin in your lap—yes, just like that—and then use your utensils to—” She was interrupted by a beaten and broken changeling sliding across the floor to a rest directly in front of her. Her eyes instantly went wide. “Oh, my, are you alright? D-do you want a band aid? I think I have some in my backpack…”

Fluttershy let out a small “Meep!” as warmth crashed through her body, the friendly yellow light of her magic glowing around her.

The changelings she had been teaching had forgotten all about her, and were now hissing at Rainbow Dash and Sunset Shimmer, poised to fight.

“Hey! Is that any way to behave?” chastised Fluttershy, but the changelings weren’t paying her the slightest bit of attention, and no matter how much she Stared, it didn’t matter.

“Hey, Flutters!” called Rainbow. “Mind if I use a bit of that magic?” She unslung the thaumic compressor from her back and ran next to Fluttershy.

“Oh, um, sure, I don’t really mind.”

“Sweet!” Rainbow tapped the trigger, and a purple beam similar to the changelings’ green ones shot from the barrel. It struck a changeling in the flank and left a sizzling starburst on his chitin.

“Awesome!” Rainbow squealed as she mashed the trigger, sending a machine gun volley of lasers towards the crowd of changelings. A few tried to put up shields, but the compressor blew through them like a wrecking ball through balsa wood. Rainbow guessed their magic was just plain better than the changelings. It made sense, considering the contrasting levels of awesomeness.

“Hey, watch it!” Sunset shouted, throwing herself to the ground to escape the crossfire. She winced in pain as a changeling corpse fell on top of her, horn-first. “That’s gonna bruise…”

On the other side of the cafeteria, all the excess students had filtered out, and Applejack twirled around in a circle before releasing her table-shield into an unsuspecting group of changelings. They scattered like crows, but they all managed to get out of the way.

“Did you just throw away your weapon?” hissed Rarity.

“Don’ need it anymore,” Applejack countered, picking up a mangled plastic chair.

Rarity frantically raised her mirror to block an incoming laser. “Gah! Why does there have to be so many of them?”

Applejack bludgeoned one into unconsciousness with her chair, but let out a yelp as a rock-hard hoof dug into her spine. She instinctively spiked her elbow behind her, knocking the changeling straight into… was that a cannon?

“Wheeee!” cheered Pinkie Pie as the changeling shot from the barrel, along with a party supply store’s worth of confetti, bowling over two more on its path to the far wall.

Rarity brought her mirror up just in time to block a laser from colliding with Pinkie, sending it straight into a changeling’s carapace. Her eyes widened as she saw another zipping towards her from the right, but it was too late; it hit her smack dab in the stomach. She doubled over, dropped her mirror, and screeched with pain.

At the same time, Rainbow’s laser barrage came to a stark halt as Fluttershy, her magic exhausted, dropped back onto her feet. Rainbow cursed at the amount of changelings they had yet to defeat; her attack had done a number on them, but it hadn’t been nearly enough.

“I’m not sure if we can beat them all,” Fluttershy muttered under her breath. She leaned on Rainbow for support; she had used more magic than she probably should have.

“We don’t really have a choice,” Sunset said, pulling herself onto her feet and hitting a home run on a poor changeling’s skull.

Her face was dour, her mouth a grim line. “Either we win, or the entire world loses.”

Rhythmic beeps, flashing lights, and whirring machinery faded into the recesses of Twilight’s mind as she placed the final touches on the demanafier. It sat heavily on the workbench, looking like a science project made a day before the competition, which it basically was. It was cylindrical with a domed top, and had several crudely-cut vents about half an inch below where the cap was screwed in. She had put a particularly hungry arcane core in the very top of the machine, which fed into several makeshift mana batteries in the body of the device. The on/off switch and its accompanying electrical work was jury-rigged with what could pass as an entire roll of electrical tape and a slew of bare wires, and Twilight made a mental note not to operate the prototype with bare, conductive hands. The casing was about as polished as the bleachers out by the baseball field, and nearly half of it was held together by patchwork sheet metal.

She doubted it would last the day.

Without warning, the lab door flung open and slammed into a table, vibrating from the impact. “TWILIGHT!” shouted Rarity, who stood in the doorframe, eyes bloodshot and posture battle-ready. “Changelings are attacking the school! We need your help!”

Well, Twilight supposed now was as good a time as any for a test run. She flipped the demanafier on, and the effect was immediate.

“Wha-what are you doing?!” screeched ‘Rarity’ as her body dissolved into green light, leaving a changeling in its wake.

Twilight squeed. “It works! It works!” Giddy, she grabbed a socket wrench from her desk and introduced it to the changeling’s face. He slumped to the ground, and she threw his body next to the large canvas sheet that hid the dead changeling from the day before.

Next, Twilight turned to the demanafier. She switched it off—best to conserve power—and hefted it into her arms. So much for a compact design; she was barely able to see over the thing.

“Urk… Next time, I need to add handles.”

Twilight shuffled out of the laboratory and towards the cafeteria, where she knew her friends would be, leaning back and forth to counterbalance the weight on her front with every carefully-placed step.

Principal Celestia’s breaths came heavy and slow. She shuddered as she felt the changeling’s blood seep into the fabric of her clothing, wet and sticky, and heaved the corpse off of her. They could replace the carpet later.

Above her stood Agent Chrysalis. Her pistol was smoking and she smiled cruelly at the changeling.

“You know, even since Agent SD made her report, I’ve been horribly curious about what these things looked like.” She squatted to the ground and rolled the changeling over. “Sure as hell didn’t disappoint.”

Celestia stuck out her tongue in disgust. “I’d be happier if I’d never seen them.”

“See why we don’t want this to go public?” Luna asked. “The school would be swarmed with reporters, a few students’ lives would probably be ruined, the populace would live in fear of alien invasion, scientists would go crazy, religious groups would go even crazier; it’d be a mess.”

Chrysalis sighed and rolled her eyes. “Preaching to the choir, lady. This mission is more classified than the nuclear launch codes. My entire department doesn’t exist, according to ninety-nine percent of government databases.” She got to her feet and poked Luna in the chest with a pointer finger. “The whole reason I’m here is to cover up your mess.”

“Our mess?” Celestia glowered at the agent. “We had nothing to do with all this! Our school just happened to be caught in the middle!”

Chrysalis turned to her. “Girl turns into a demon, and instead of turning her over to the authorities, you let her stay at the school. This leads to three ancient beings from hell or whatever mind-controlling the whole damn student body to get at this girl and her friends, and after it’s over, you let the targets stay at your school. Then, the whole thing happens again—another girl comes to your school because of the magical students you refuse to get rid of, and she turns into a demon. And not only do you let the magic girls stay, like the whole thing won’t happen a fourth time, but you let the second demon girl transfer to your school. After all of that, when the school is being attacked by monsters once again, you have the gall to claim that none of this is your fault.”

Luna clenched her fist. “Do you think we wanted all of this to happen?”

“No, I just think you two are idiots. I can’t sit by and idly watch you two fuck everything up any longer, so either help me fix your mistakes or go work at a fast food joint or something.”

“UrrrrUNGG!” Luna kicked over Celestia’s chair and ran into her office.

Celestia watched her go. Slowly, very slowly, she turned to Chrysalis. She took a deep breath. And she slapped her clean across the face.

“Listen here, you bitch, before you say something else you’ll regret,” Celestia hissed. “I didn’t see you and your little agent here during the Fall Formal. I didn’t see you fighting back during the Battle of the Bands. I didn’t see you helping during the Friendship Games. Do you know who was there? Do you know who’s sent every single monster we’ve seen packing? Our students, the ones you want us to get rid of like they’re property. It was them, not you, and not the government, so I don’t want you butting into our business and saying you’re the professional here!”

Chrysalis clutched her stinging cheek. Jesus, these principals had issues. “They aren’t professionals. They’re children. Dangerous children.”

“They’ve done a hell of a lot more for us than you have!”

“They’re what caused all of your problems! If we had handled everything, none of this would’ve happened.”

“They’re what solved all of our problems! They’re the only ones who know what the hell’s going on and how to stop it! And maybe they are just children, but if you would shut your arrogant trap and let them work their magic, then we might actually have a shot at living until next week!”