//------------------------------// // Twenty - Crash and Burn (2) // Story: The Infestation of Canterlot High School // by Bonster //------------------------------// Twenty - Crash and Burn (2) “Well, if Bon Bon’s not coming back, then who’s going to complete the pyramid?” “I don’t know!” Spike threw his hands in the air. “We don’t have any more ponies!” “Sure we do!” Minuette snarled. “They just hate fun!” Spoiled Rich scoffed. “If you think for one second that any member of my family would participate in your disgusting shows of idiocy—” “Oh, stuff it!” Sassaflash yelled from the top of the inverted pyramid. “It’s not like you’re doing anything better! Ever since I got here you’ve just been insulting other ponies and trying to look pretty! Add in mooching off of your husband’s success and it’s like we’re back in bucking Ponyville!” “You have no right to be talking to my wife like that! You’re just some ragtag weatherpony!” “I think we all need to stay calm,” Amethyst Star said. “Spike can do it.” “That’s preposterous!” Time Turner protested. “His difference in size would create a horrific asymmetry to our masterpiece. It must be a pony—preferably fully grown—or else the whole thing will be for nothing!” Just then, Sunset walked into the room, the elements closely following. Spike instantly perked up. “Hey, Twilight! What are you guys doing here?” “Oh, nothing,” Twilight said. She spied the pyramid. “Just a bit of bowling, apparently.” “Uh, the bowling alley’s a few doors down—” Spike stopped as Twilight brushed past him, seized one of the forgotten couches in her magic, and hurled it at the center of the tower. The ponies yelped and shrieked as they rained to the ground, and Spike was thankful they had thought to lay out the pillows beforehand. “Twilight, what are you do—Ah!” Spike jumped back from a laser beam fired from… Applejack? “Ch-ch-changelings!” he screamed, pointing a shaky claw at his ‘friends’, and the room erupted into chaos. “The weapons! Get the weapons!” “Where did we put them?” “Look under the couches!” “Who put them under the couches?!” “Time’s flameless fireworks! Grab them!” “Oh, dear, I hadn’t the time to engineer more of them—” “Found the pitchforks!” “Pass me one!” In a matter of seconds, the lounge had become a war zone. Most ponies had taken up arms—knives, spears, sledgehammers and the like—and were rushing the changelings. With a few well-timed flameless firework-bombs, a zealous pony’s luck, a couple well-aimed laser beams, and the bestial presence that was Bulk Biceps, the seven changelings were quickly downed. But before the group of ponies could celebrate, twice as many flooded into the room, hissing and buzzing and shining their horns menacingly. The fighting was disorganized and messy. Ponies and changelings would lock in one-on-one skirmishes until one of them landed a lucky shot or another combatant stepped in. The changelings kept trickling into the room, but despite their lack of numbers, the ponies were managing to hold their own against the invading forces. Spike was implementing the age-old strategy of ‘Running’, ducking and weaving between the changeling ranks as fast as his legs would carry him and generally causing distractions that his allies were quick to capitalize on. Due to the work ethic of Rainbow Dash (more specifically, the lack of it), many of the Ponyville weather ponies were accustomed to chasing her around all the time; seeing as how she was the fastest pony in Equestria, this meant that the Ponyville pegasi were somewhat notorious for having inequine endurance rates. They were easily able to both evade incoming laser beams and drop payloads of flameless fireworks into the crowd. And Bulk Biceps was another story altogether. The changelings had given up firing lasers at him once they quickly realized they were having no effect, and were instead trying their best to stay out of his way. He bellowed as he cleaved through the swarm of changelings, and a small posse of earth ponies toting pointy farming equipment followed in his unstoppable wake, picking off the dazed changelings that dared to get in his way. But the changelings weren’t the only side with casualties. The number of unconscious or imprisoned ponies climbed steadily higher throughout the fight; the pegasi might be fast, the earth ponies might be strong, and the unicorns might know how to point their horns and shoot, but the changelings had strength in numbers; numbers about three times as high as the ponies’, it turned out. Sweetie Drops was in a fight of her own, and was also quite outnumbered. She’d faced worse, though. She had followed Lyra’s scream as best she could, and it had led her to a horde of thirty or so changelings. She stuck to the shadows as she observed them; they were crowding around a freshly-woven chrysalis, and through its shiny new film, Bon Bon could see the mint of Lyra’s coat. Her breathing grew angry and her muscles tensed, and she retrieved Devil’s Tongue, her trusty two-pronged dagger, from its hiding place. She clenched its hilt tightly in her teeth, the familiar metallic taste more comforting than disgusting, and began her approach. In battle, unpredictability kills. Every respectable agent knew this by heart, and it was why Sweetie found herself scaling the cavern wall, carefully locating hoof holds and, when there weren’t any, creating some of her own. Before too long, she was above the conglomerate of changelings, and without making another sound, she shot off of the wall and into the crowd with blinding speed. The changelings had no idea what hit them. Bon Bon landed on the first one with the full force of her dive, and he crumple below her like an aluminum can. But before the changelings next to him could so much as register what had happened, Bon Bon was upon them, swinging her mana-powered hooves straight through their carapace and severing their throats with swift cuts of her blade. She had dealt with a total of seven changelings by the time the group finally reorganized. One of the nastiest things about fighting creatures that operate through a hivemind is their lack of verbal communication. In any other scenario, Sweetie would focus down the leader first in order to throw the platoon into disorganization. Unfortunately, with all changelings looking exactly the same and not one audible order, she had no idea where to start punching once the changelings formed their battle formation. It what a battle formation it was. They whole lot of them took to the skies (an obvious choice against an earth pony); half of them stayed high and back, their horns glistening with love energy, and the other half started rapidly closing in, their limbs transformed into swords, sickles, hammers, axes, maces, and nearly every other weapon you could think of. One of them had even copied her two-pronged blade style, the little toad. Sweetie braced for battle. The spellcasters were going to cause her the most trouble; a one-on-twelve melee was hard enough without having to dodge lasers, and since she didn’t know how powerful the spells would be, it was too risky to try to tough them out with earth pony magic. Unfortunately, their positioning was smart, and Bon Bon would have some trouble reaching them. When the first few energy beams came, she shot out of the way, the stone previously under her hooves exploding in a shower of pebbles. Her dagger cleanly decapitated the changeling with sickled hooves, and she landed on the back of the one with swords. He buzzed violently back and forth, but was unable to shake her; seconds later, a poorly thought out laser beam slammed into his barrel, Sweetie Drops long gone. She reappeared clinging to the cavern wall, behind the ranks of spellcasters. She lunged forward, punching through one changeling’s stomach, and swiftly bucked behind her at another. He managed to put a shield up just in time, however—Sweetie’s hooves hit the energy field with a deafening warble, and she felt the force of her kick spike back into her legs. She grit her teeth and fell to the ground, almost forgetting to brace her body with magic before the impact. The changeling who had cast the shield spell didn’t fare much better, however; Bon Bon’s buck had been meant to paint him against the far wall, and he had underestimated how much energy blocking it would take. His head pounding, he drunkenly fell to the earth beside the pony. A pillar of fire blazed into life beside Bon Bon’s head, and she only barely managed to roll out of the way before a stream of changeling silk splattered against the stone. The changeling attempted to teleport away again before Sweetie’s riposte, but she was too quick; Devil’s Tongue was in and out before the first flames started licking at his hooves. The stunned changeling next to her was finished off in the same second, and as the changelings prepared to attack again, Bon Bon retreated to a more empty part of the cavern. She bit her lip. She needed a plan to down a lot of them at once; maybe if she jumped from the wall to the ceiling and dropped onto— The changelings had all fired up their horns. Sweetie immediately stopped thinking and acted. She leapt straight upwards just as all the remaining changelings fired shot after shot of silk towards her, and when she reached the peak of her jump, pounded her hind legs against the wall, shooting herself blade-first towards the pack of changelings. But luck wasn’t on her side. One of the changelings had fired with astounding accuracy, and even against her speed, the wad of silk hit her left hind leg, knocking her off course. Her momentum carried her into a harsh landing, and the silk thoroughly attached her leg to the cave’s floor. The changelings didn’t waste a second. The ones with augmented limbs buzzed towards her, and the spellcasters waited patiently in the back, hurling laser after laser towards the struggling pony. Bon Bon could feel the silk give every time she pulled. It was strong, definitely, but she was stronger. She had to be. But the going was slow; too slow to escape unscathed. That stunt with the silk had apparently taken a lot out of their firepower, though, because she didn’t die outright. The lasers stung like a bitch and she would certainly feel the burns in the morning (assuming morning ever came to Equestria again), but she was able to shrug off the brunt of it. The meleeing changelings didn’t prove too much of a problem either; even with her limited mobility, she was able to kill three that had gotten too close, at the cost of what felt like a million cuts and bruises that snuck past her earth pony magic. Eventually, though, one of the changelings realized that since she was already stuck, it was the ideal time to get her even more stuck. When Sweetie saw the icky green substance shooting towards her, she knew she had two options: find a way to move again, or say goodbye. Praying that the changelings would lay off the offense for a tiny bit, she poured every ounce of mana she could scrounge up into her imprisoned hoof. The changelings, however, didn’t listen to her prayers, and she had to suppress a scream as one lodged its fangs into her unprotected withers. It was worth it, though. She pulled her hoof up with all her might—the silk didn’t break, no, but the floor did. A sizable chunk of rock was wrenched up along with her hoof, and she front-handspringed out of the silk’s warpath, punching in the skull of the changeling who’d bitten her. In a few more deft moves, the rest of the weapons-for-legs changelings fell to the floor in disgraceful heaps. Snarling, she turned to the spellcasters, who were looking rather concerned at the whole ordeal. A cloud of dust billowed out as Bon Bon rocketed towards them, spinning herself upside-down in the air so her hind legs were facing them. In a series of lighting-quick movements, she wiggled the boulder on her back left leg back and forth and up and down, blocking all the lasers the changelings fired faster than their eyes could follow. Soon, she was on them—a few punches there, a kick there, two swipes of her neck, and a final throw of her knife into the last changeling’s throat, and she fell to the ground, victorious. There was no time to celebrate, though. She hurried to her dagger, grabbed it in her teeth, and galloped to Lyra. The wound on her shoulder throbbed, but she didn’t even, notice, putting all her focus into freeing Lyra. At long last, when she clambered out of the silken shell, Bon Bon threw herself onto her “Lyra!” she exclaimed, breathless. “I’m so glad you’re okay! Come on, we have to help the others to—” Pain erupted in Bon Bon’s stomach. Shakily, she opened her eyes, and looked down. Black blade through her barrel. Alright. Not good. Next item: is Lyra okay? Just before she slipped into unconsciousness, she looked at the changeling she was hugging and guessed no. Sunset approached the group of ponies in the main room. Applejack was saying something about finding Rainbow. “Don’t worry, Applejack,” Sunset said. “Already took care of it.” “Sunset?” “Yo.” Starlight raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, ‘took care of it’?” “I found her captured in the bathroom.” Rarity frowned at her. “Well, that’s nice, dear, but, uh, where is she?” “I teleported her somewhere safe. It’d be great if I could teleport the rest of you there, too. You’re too inexperienced to fight these things.” “Where did you send her?” Twilight asked. Sunset bit her lip. “I’d say, but… any of you could be changelings.” “Well, so could you!” Starlight accused. “Out of all of us, you’re the one acting the most suspicious. How do we know you won’t send them straight to Chrysalis?” “I…” Sunset wanted to argue, but Starlight was right. She smiled nervously. “Trust me?” Applejack narrowed her eyes. “Twilight, there wouldn’t happen to be a spell for revealing changelings, would there?” Fluttershy asked. “There is one I know would decloak a changeling, but it requires overloading their local spell matrices. If this really is Sunset, she wouldn’t be able to use magic again for a few hours, and that would be a huge problem.” Sunset cringed. “Yeah, let’s not use that.” Pinkie Pie leaned forward. “Getting defensive now, are we?” “No, I just—” Sunset was cut off by a swarm of changelings flooding into the room. Sunset, Twilight and Starlight all ignited their horns. Fluttershy started screaming and running in circles. “There’s too many!” Sunset shouted. “We have to get them to safety first!” Twilight grunted, and her horn started dripping shining starbursts. Suddenly, it flashed, sending out a ripple of purple energy. Each changeling it hit froze in place, time-locked within a wavy magical aura. “Go!” They did. The tunnel that led directly to the exit was unfortunately the same one the changelings had come from, and Twilight headed the charge through the masses of frozen monsters. Just as Sunset was about to pass through, however, a sound akin to glass shattering filled the air, and the changelings wrestled free of their arcane prisons. They immediately moved to cover the exit, facing down Sunset, as well as Fluttershy and Applejack behind her. “WE’RE TAKING A DETOUR!” Fluttershy screeched, wrapping her hooves around Sunset and Applejack and flying straight over the walls of changelings faster than any of them thought she could. She flapped through the caves until the changelings were out of sight, and then for what felt like a mile more. When Bulk Biceps went down, the ponies in the lounge knew they’d lost. Defeat came in waves: when they started, they had thought they were doing rather well. Yet, as time wore on, it quickly became apparent that they weren’t nearly strong enough to fend off the changelings. They were, in general, trading one-for-one, with the notable exception of Bulk Biceps, who was racking up a streak in the upper twenties. And in the beginning, that seemed like a good place to be; the changelings were sustaining more casualties than the ponies. But for every changeling shot down, another took its place. Chrysalis’s army was only a fraction of what it had been—but considering the sheer size of ‘what it had been’, that still meant hundreds of changelings, a good third of which were deployed at the caves or on their way. Even a tenth of them would be enough to surmount the numbers of the ponies in the lounge, and each pony that got hit with a laser or blast of silk made their resistance all the more hopeless. Spike was captured early on; he might have been fast, but he wasn’t strong enough to seriously injure any changelings. He had managed to singe a few—but that only made them pissed, and ultimately led to his re-imprisonment. It had taken the collective efforts of ten changelings to down Bulk Biceps, and six of them didn’t live to see it. A shot of silk to his wing grounded him—that changeling was promptly decked—a barrage of laser beams to his face left him dazed—but left the aggressors open to counterattacks from the unicorns—and, finally, a practical waterfall of silk managed to cocoon him for good. After that, the ponies were down to about five of them against four times as many changelings, and, well, they didn’t last very long, to say the least. Meanwhile, on Mount Canterlot “Can’t we take a break?”   “No.” “But why nooot?” “Because we have no time to waste! I don’t know about you idiots, but I don’t want to be in this body any longer than I have to.” “We’d probably already be there by now if you hadn’t shoved me down the fucking mountain.” “Don’t think I won’t do it again if you don’t shut up!” “Oh look! A mountain goat! Aww, look, it’s so cute!” “You’re kidding. That thing’s uglier than Adagio in the mornings.” “Do you want me to push you down again?” “And who are you to judge cuteness? You don’t even like puppies!” “They just slobber all over the place. I don’t know why you think over-salivating is cute.” “Hear that, Adagio? She doesn’t like puppies!” “As much as I loath participating in your worthless arguments, I don’t particularly like them either. Except when kicking them.” “Uh! That’s just cruel!” “Kinda fits the theme.” “You can be a monster without being a monster!” “Ugh, aren’t we there yet? I’m not sure I can take much more of this.” Adagio peeked her head over the next ledge, smirked, and turned to Aria. “Yes, actually.”