//------------------------------// // Fifteen - Rescue // Story: The Infestation of Canterlot High School // by Bonster //------------------------------// Fifteen - Rescue A large group of ponies—the majority of those that had agreed to accompany Sunset and Discord on their mission—arrived at the opulent front doors of Friendship Castle without seeing so much as the skitter of a mouse. Cloud Kicker, her face already fuming, trotted up to them, several of the other more motivated ponies behind her, and rapped loudly. A few seconds passed before the doors were levitated open from the inside. A changeling stepped out. “Sorry, but Queen Chrysalis isn’t free right now,” it droned robotically. “Could I schedule an appointment?” Before anypony could respond, Bulk Biceps fell on top of changeling from above. He grabbed him in his hooves, and ripped him in two. “RIIIIIIOOOOOT!” The ponies braced themselves as a flood of changelings poured out of the doors, and the battle began. A green towel, decorated with a gray web motif, clung to Chrysalis’s wet carapace as she emerged from Twilight’s Royal Bathroom, which contained, much to her pleasure, a full stock of Extra-Strength Stress Relief Bubble Bath. ‘Wash away the stress of hard day!’ As much as she detested her, Chrysalis could appreciate Twilight’s choice in products; she hadn’t felt more relaxed since… well, she couldn’t remember. Which was exactly her point. In no small part, it was due to the sense of finality that came with destroying that damned mirror portal; it was the last of the loose ends to tie up. Equestria, the most powerful country on the map, belonged to her now, and this time, there really was nopony left to wrest it from her. And a good thing, too—so many of her children had died for this, she couldn’t exactly afford much more contention. Between the takeover of the three active Equestrian castles, as well as the mishap with the monkeys, her soldiers had been cut down to nearly half of what she had started with. Not like it mattered anymore, now that everything was settled. The ponies easily had enough love to keep her empire flourishing for a millennium; even longer, if she economized. The hive would be bigger than ever before, her children would be plenty, the love caches would be bursting at the seams; the era of ponies would fall, and the era of changelings would take its place. “Ooh, I feel a cackle coming on…” But the incessant mental prodding of the hivemind robbed her of her indulgence. What, she thought coarsely. My Queen! Rioters are attacking the castle! Oh, just deal with them. They’ll run back to whatever rabbit holes they’re hiding in soon enough. Roger that, My Queen. Hoofbeats, not mental ones, echoed behind her, and Chrysalis swiveled. Her loyal second-in-command stood there, chitin shining in the magical torchlight. “Ah, Traxx. Is there a problem?” “Oh, no. I’m just stopping by to say hi,” Traxx said dryly. Chrysalis squinted, inspecting Traxx. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you tell a joke before,” she said, genuinely concerned. “Is something wrong?” “Never told a joke? Really? What a boring existence.” Traxx’s body ballooned suddenly, stretching and contracting into a long, vertical, tube-like shape just a tad taller than Chrysalis. His chitin sloughed off of a furry body beneath, like river water flowing around a stone, and a hideous creature stepped out. “Discord.” Chrysalis folded her face into a snarl. “I thought you were stone.” “And I thought you were still licking your wounds and concocting petty revenge plans off in the badlands, but it seems we were both mistaken.” Her snarl deepened. “What do you want? I think I’ve been causing plenty of chaos to satisfy your fetish.” Discord folded his arms and casually leaned backwards against nothing. “Has anyone told you that you’re horribly disagreeable?” “Look,” Chrysalis hissed, “I’ve been having a really great day, and I don’t want you and your nonsensical games ruining it.” Discord snapped his fingers, and the copy of ‘Marenopoly’ he had been holding vanished. Chrysalis grit her fangs. “What. Do you want.” Discord tapped his chin for an aggravatingly long time before saying, “Fun.” Her eyelids drooped halfway. “Leave.” “Where’s your sense of gracious hospitality?” “You can take your sense of gracious hospitality and shove it up your—” “Chrysalis, Chrysalis, Chrysalis. You really need to take a chill pill. I haven’t seen you this ruffled up since your wedding day.” “Do you want me to kill you?” Discord chortled. “Oh, that’s a hoot! You, kill me? Ha! Sorry, but even if you called up your good friends Tirek and Sombra, it’d take a lot more to down this draconequus.” “Then maybe I’ll just turn you to stone instead.” “Good idea. I’m sure Twilight and her friends would love to help you with that.” My Queen! Intruders in the throne room! We can’t— The voice went out like a candle thrown into a swimming pool. Chrysalis repressed a scream. She failed. “ARE YOU WORKING WITH THE PONIES!?” Discord frowned. “Well, you weren’t supposed to figure it out.” He snapped, and a piano appeared over Chrysalis’s head. She angrily levitated it aside before it could fall even a foot. “Gah! Why can’t anything just go right?” Chrysalis shouted, buzzing her wings and taking off into the air, straight for Discord. Sunset, Lyra, and Bon Bon clambered through the throne room window on the line of Bon Bon’s grappling hook. Sunset didn’t know if Chrysalis had put teleportation wards in the castle, but they couldn’t afford to take that chance, so they had relied on old-fashioned breaking and entering. “So, are you Special Agent Sweetie Drops in this world, too?” Sunset asked after Bon Bon pulled her through the window frame. Sunset had already explained about the alternate dimension thing so that ponies wouldn’t try to burn her friends at the stake, but the question still seemed to blindside Bon Bon. “…Retired,” she finally said. “Celestia had to shut us down a few years ago because of an… incident.” She didn’t continue, and Sunset didn’t press her. The throne room was spacious and very, very shiny. The walls were crystal, the floors were crystal, even the thrones and table in the center seemed to be made of some sort of crystal. The roots of a tree hung from the ceiling (Sunset hadn’t the slightest why), along with eight green pods, thick enough that Sunset couldn’t tell who was inside them. “Looks like the distractions worked,” Sunset said, surveying the barren room. “I hope they can hold out and escape.” Sweetie reeled her grappling hook back. “They were awfully nice ponies.” “Who really cares, though?” asked Lyra. “Whether they get out or not, if we beat Chrysalis, we save them, and if we don’t, we’re all bucked.” “Great to see you have confidence in them,” Sunset said. “Hey. Just saying it like it is.” “Right. Well, it’d be great if you could say it like it is over by the door with your marefriend.” Sunset ignored the half-whispered insults from behind her as she reached up with her magic and yanked down the first chrysalis. She began the delicate process of melting the silk with her magic; she had to be careful not to hurt whoever was inside, so the work was aggravatingly slow. Nonetheless, a few minutes later, there was a big enough hole to squeeze Spike through. He mumbled something softly before lazily opening his eyes. “Sunset Shimmer?” he slurred, groggy. “What’s going on?” “Hi, Spike. We’re breaking you out.” “Oh… That’s nice…” He curled up on the floor and went back to sleep. Sunset spared him another second of her attention before starting to slit the second pod. “Trouble!” Bon Bon called from the doorway, followed by a loud thump and a changeling’s whimper. “You’re on your own!” Sunset yelled back. “I’ve got to free the Elements!” “Couldn’t Discord have done that, with, like, a snap of his fingers?” Lyra griped. “I… don’t see why not, but if he could, he would’ve just done it on his own, right?” “What if he’s just bucking with us?” “Then I’ll beat his ass when I next see him.” “He owns an ass? Donkey slavery was outlawed a long time ago.” “…It’s an Earth thing.” “Really? Donkey’s have rights too, you know!” “No, I mean—” “Focus!” Sweetie commanded, punching a hole through a changeling’s neck. Screams and cries and explosions rang in the entrance hall of the castle as pony and changeling clashed. Multicolored lasers flew in all directions, red and green blood stained the crystal in a morbid work of abstract art, and flameless grenades spun through the air. Until the changelings ran, that is. It was sudden and inexplicable: the changelings, in the middle of the battle, froze for a quick quarter second before turning and running up the stairs, into the heart of the castle. “Hey! Get back here!” shouted a yellow unicorn. “Fight like mares!” taunted another. A zealous handful of ponies zipped after them, but a voice called out to wait. “According to the plan, we shouldn’t follow,” Time Turner expounded. “We were a distraction, and they obviously saw through that—they aren’t going to slow down, not even if we chase them all throughout the castle banging pots and pans. We did our part; maybe not as well as we could, but we did our best, and, most definitely, that means we should let our companions do theirs, right? I would bet our best option at this particular point in time would be to return to cave before the changelings think to follow us; after all, I doubt we could all teleport out. In order not to lead the enemy straight to us, I propose a tactical retreat.” “YOU SHOULD TALK LESS,” Bulk Biceps throated, “BUT YOU MAKE GOOD POINT.” He inhaled a chest-full of air and shouted, “RETREAT!” And they did. Chrysalis shot an energy beam at Discord, who caught it, and ate it. She transformed her front legs into swords, but with a snap of his fingers, Discord turned them into toilet plungers. Chrysalis shapeshifted them back into swords, and Discord transmuted them into children’s squeaky hammers. “I don’t get it,” Chrysalis growled as she turned her hooves back into hooves. “You, working with ponies? That’s hardly your style.” Discord summoned six grand pianos above Chrysalis, and not a second later, they were reduced to ashes. “What kind of lord of chaos would I be if I were consistent?” “Have you forgotten about the whole ‘stone’ thing? Don’t you want revenge?” “The ponies and I have buried the hatchet, Chrysalis. Really, you should do the same before all of this comes crashing down on you. Maybe get on their good side. They’re so very welcoming, even to ugly bug queens, and powerful, too.” Chrysalis smiled. “But I have beaten them! Discord, I know we may have gotten off on the wrong hoof, but if it’s power you want, I can give it. We would be great together!” “Hmm… You’re not my type.” Discord snapped his fingers on both claw and paw, turning Chrysalis into a paper clip and trapping her beneath a mountain of even more pianos. A second later, they began to glow a sickening green, and exploded every which way. Discord held out a Chrysalis-themed umbrella against the maelstrom of musical instruments, and they miraculously bounced off of it like rubber balls. “Then but out!” Chrysalis screeched, stomping a hoof and sounding an out-of-tune E flat from a busted keyboard beneath her. “Equestria has fallen! There’s nothing left for you now! Leave me alone!” Chrysalis’s aura flared something nasty, and her eyes filled with dark mana. Her horn sparked, grayscale lightning bolts flashing up and down its length, like static electricity from Tartarus. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Chrysalis.” “Why not?” Chrysalis’s voice had changed—it sounded like a combination between screaming, autotune, and nails on a chalkboard. “You can’t care about ponies that much!” Inky lines of magic shot from her horn, zig zagging towards Discord like snakes made of shadows. They cracked through the air, splitting and multiplying and threatening to penetrate the deepest parts of his being. Face set, Discord reached out, grabbed the nearest one in his paw, and pulled. Chrysalis let out an animal scream as he jerked the entire web of charcoal lines off of her horn with a pop, and dropped it to the ground in a heap. “You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.” Chrysalis raged. “If you love them so much, then maybe I should just kill them!” Chrysalis turned into Rainbow Dash and shot down the hallway. Snap! Chrysalis turned into a lamp. Flash! Chrysalis turned into Rainbow Dash and shot down the hallway some more. Snap! But she was out of sight. Discord frowned. This was not in the pl—in the strategy. Starlight Glimmer woke from her dreamless sleep slowly and reluctantly. When she heard the lasers and the screams, though, she bolted upright. “The changelings! They got into the castle!” A unicorn she didn’t recognize rose an eyebrow at her. “Yeah, you could say that. Um… Who are you exactly?” Starlight stepped from the shell of her melted chrysalis and gave the unicorn a hard look. “Who’s asking?” Sunset sighed. “Name’s Sunset Shimmer. I’m here to rescue you.” “Pleasure. I’m Starlight Glimmer, personal student of Princess Twilight Sparkle.” Sunset had the next chrysalis in front of her, and was already beginning to melt it. “Then you must have some magical ability.” Her voice had a tinge of bitterness to it; subtle, but there. “Mind helping me? We’re on a tight schedule here.” “Nice to meet you too,” Starlight quipped. Sunset said nothing, but clenched her jaw a bit harder than before. They hadn’t been working for thirty seconds when Spike suddenly stood up, and addressed them loudly. “Go! You have to go!” Starlight stumbled. “Spike? What’s going on?” “It’s not Spike, you fools, it’s Discord!” Spike shouted. “Chrysalis realized what we’re doing and she’s coming straight for you! Take Fluttershy and run!” “We don’t have Fluttershy! Or any of the elements!” “Just run, then! They’re not going anywhere, but if you don’t get out soon, you’ll be headed straight for Tarta—” Spike froze for a second, stumbled, caught himself, and asked, “Uh, guys? What’s going on?” Discord’s conscience snapped back to his main body to find himself wreathed in flame, Chrysalis’s laughter echoing around him like something out of a low budget horror film. “Oh, Discord. The ponies really have made you soft. How ironic! The Lord of Chaos, taken down because he was worried about his friends. That’s one for the history books!” “I hate history books,” he mumbled as the flames shrunk around him, pushing him through the floor. “It’s Twilight! This one’s Twilight!” Starlight exclaimed, back in the throne room. “Great!” Sunset said animatedly. “We’ll free her, and then hightail it out of here.” “I could probably stall Chrysalis for long enough to—” “You can’t.” Starlight pursed her lips. Twilight awoke just as Lyra announced Chrysalis’s arrival. “Sunset? What are you doing here?” “No time to explain.” She addressed Starlight. “Do you know Misty Door’s Three-Horned Group Teleport?” She rolled her eyes. “Of course I do! It’s an elementary group tele—” She was interrupted by Sweetie Drops sliding painfully along the ground between them. Without missing a beat, Twilight levitated Spike and teleported Lyra on top of Sweetie, in the center of Sunset, Starlight, and herself, and put a bubble shield around all of them. “Quick!” she shouted, and the three horns lit, beams of white light forming a triangle between them. Chrysalis, working furiously with her horn, disabled the shield spell, and shot a barrage of lasers at the ponies, but by then they were gone. Discord opened his eyes and looked around him. Endless black abyss, horrible smell, uncomfortable and disembodied heat, general air of despair—Tartarus, all right. “Well, drat.”