//------------------------------// // Twenty Six - Love and War (2) // Story: The Infestation of Canterlot High School // by Bonster //------------------------------// Twenty Six - Love and War (2) “That ain’t in the plan, right?” Applejack said as they watched Lyra run in frantic circles, just barely out of reach of the manticores’ claws. “Yeah, no, not really,” said Sunset. “Uh… Fluttershy, could you try to—” “M-me?” she squeaked. “You do have a way with animals, dear,” Rarity said. “I…” Fluttershy gulped. “I’ll try.” “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Sunset said, sending her off with a pat on her back. As Fluttershy tried to move both quickly and slowly towards Lyra and the manticores, Twilight turned to Sunset. “You really think she’ll be able to handle it?” “Don’t underestimate Fluttershy,” Sunset said simply. She looked towards the group. “Alright. It’s about time we—hold up. Where are Rainbow and Pinkie?” Twilight, Rarity, and Applejack looked around, turned back to Sunset, and nervously shrugged. Sunset dragged a hoof down her face and groaned. Leave it to those two to go off and— “CHRYSALIS! HIIIIII!” Sunset’s head snapped towards the shout: a ways away, on the crest of a hill in the clearing that surrounded the castle, Pinkie Pie was waving towards Chrysalis. Applejack’s eyes were switching between staring at Pinkie and staring at Queen Chrysalis. It was kind of like watching a derailed train about to slam into a orphanage. “What in the fresh hell is she doin’?” Chrysalis snarled and shot a laser the size of a tree trunk at Pinkie. Sunset had to avert her eyes for a second from the glare, but when she looked again, Pinkie had vanished. Twilight gulped. “She didn’t get hit, did she?” “Of course not,” Rarity answered. “It’s Pinkie.” Chrysalis seemed to have come to the same conclusion, for she landed on the hill and began scanning the surrounding area for anything pink. Eventually, her gaze wrapped around to them, and she locked eyes with Sunset. Sunset waved nervously. “She sees us.” “What do we do?” Rarity asked. Applejack stretched out her legs. “We fight.” On cue, the last of Chrysalis’s army started flying towards them. They dropped into battle stances, and the unicorns’ horns lit up. “Are we going to be able to take them?” Twilight asked. “We better be able to,” Sunset answered. Honestly, the changeling rank and file weren’t anything to worry about, not when Chrysalis herself was still a threat. Speaking of Chrysalis, Sunset noticed that she hadn’t followed her army into battle. She wondered what had happened. Rainbow laughed giddily as she felt the air rush through her mane and tail. There was no other word for it: flying was awesome. Pumping her wings as hard as she could, she picked out Chrysalis standing on a hill. She smirked; Pinkie’s distraction had worked perfectly. Her rainbow contrail split the sky as she hurtled towards the Queen. Just before she collided, she flipped her body around, and bucked Chrysalis hard in the chest. It sounded like a gunshot: she channeled the force of her momentum into her kick, sending Chrysalis flying, and the sheer force of the winds released from her sudden stop buffeted Chrysalis further. Sadly, she managed to catch herself before she hit the ground, wings buzzing with fervor. She turned a wrathful glare on Rainbow, and another bolt of energy rocketed from her horn. At that precise moment, Pinkie flew up from below. She had a party cannon in hoof and caught the laser in its barrel, shouting a chipper “Thanks!” before falling back down to the ground. Both Rainbow and Chrysalis watched in confusion as she dropped onto a large trampoline and bounced back up. As her jump peaked once more, her cannon exploded into a shower of confetti, as well as the laser she had caught in it (Rainbow wasn’t going to try to figure out how that worked), which Chrysalis only just managed to roll away from. Chrysalis carefully schooled her expression into one of utter hatred, and pointed her charged horn at Pinkie. “Uhhh,” Pinkie said, cocking her head at the changeling, “sorry?” “Stay together!” Sunset shouted as the changelings closed in. “I can keep you safe if you stay near me!” Rarity bit her lip, focusing on her horn. A white beam shot out towards the changelings; the ones in front threw up shields, but Rarity’s shot snaked between their legs and hit a soldier in the back. “Ha! I meant to do that!” Rarity boasted, charging her horn up for another attack. Before she could fire, though, a pair of green lasers flew at her. She shrieked even as an orange shield materialized in front of her, and the lasers bounced harmlessly off of it. “Oh, thank you—ah!” Rarity jumped back as Applejack launched herself through Sunset’s shield, landing in front of the line of changelings and facing away from them. She bent down and bucked for all she was worth, and the changeling on the receiving end flew backwards, bowling down a few others who were in the flight path. The other changelings lunged for Applejack, but in a bright flash of orange light, she vanished, reappearing at Sunset’s side. The changelings recovered quickly and renewed their attack, but with Sunset’s shields blocking them and Twilight’s locket absorbing them, their lasers failed to connect. Frustrated, they grew swords and axes from their bodies and charged forward on their wings; that was when the fireball came. It dropped from the sky without warning, and exploded onto the first of the changelings, reducing them to smithereens. The changelings, along with Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity, looked up—there, hovering majestically in the sky, was Sunset’s conjured phoenix. “You know, I had almost forgotten about that,” Rarity said. Twilight looked to Sunset. “Can it clear a path? We need to reach Chrysalis.” Sunset bit her lip and cast some spell or another that caused an oncoming changeling to scream and fall over steaming. “Not for too long. We’d need a distraction.” “Leave that t’ us,” Applejack said, grinning as she adjusted her hat. “You an’ Twilight get goin’. We’ll handle the rest of ‘em.” Sunset gave her a long look. “Alright,” she mumbled. “Thank you.” “Well, stop dilly dallying, then!” Rarity urged. “You’ve got a changeling Queen to thrash!” “Y-yeah,” Twilight said, clutching her locket. It hummed with energy. “Yeah.” And with that, they were off. The changelings made to follow them, but stopped as a white laser narrowly missed the muzzle of the changeling in front. “Y’all ain’t runnin’ from a fight, now, are ya?” Applejack taunted, stalking forward. “Honestly,” Rarity said, blowing smoke from her horn. “I know you’re all cretins, but surely you have enough honor to see a fight through?” Applejack smirked. “Less yer too afraid y’all’re gonna lose.” The changelings seemed to debate heatedly for a moment. When a massive stream of fire from the phoenix broke their ranks apart, though, they had no choice but to charge. “Make sure you wait for the tea to cool off,” Fluttershy instructed, pouring some of the brown liquid into each cup. “You don’t want to burn yourself.” The manticores nodded enthusiastically and reached for their respective cups, blowing on the liquid. Fluttershy smiled. “See? Isn’t this much better than scaring some poor, defenseless girl?” She was glad Lyra was long gone by now; no doubt she would’ve reignited the manticores’ tempers after that comment. The beasts all barked their consent, daintily sipping at the beverage, their scorpion tails waving back and forth happily. Suddenly, one of the manticores—he’d said his name was George—dropped his tea to the ground, and began roaring at something behind Fluttershy. She turned to see a fast approaching group of changelings, about ten in total. Fluttershy sighed, set her tea back on her saucer, and got up to face them. “Excuse me,” she snipped, “but what do you think you’re doing, coming here and ruining our tea party?” The changeling in front stopped and cocked his head to the side. “I, uh—” “Don’t you have any manners? Shame on you!” “Look, pony, just surrender already,” the changeling ordered. “Uh! The nerve!” Fluttershy’s eyebrows slanted down in true rage for a second, and then, like flipping a light switch, she looked as if she were about to cry. “AAAAAAAAH! HEEELP!” Fluttershy smiled sweetly and turned back to her tea as the manticores went to work. Chrysalis’s patience was taking a harsh dive throughout her aggravating game of cat and mouse with these stupid ponies. Just as she was about to get one, the other would pop in and ruin it. It was infuriating. The rainbow maned one was charging at her. She had to think—lasers hadn’t worked, shields hadn’t worked… she flung out her telekinesis, grabbing hold of the pegasus. Dash stopped dead in her tracks and struggled against Chrysalis’s hold, but her grip was much too strong. Now all she needed to do was make sure the pink one didn’t interfere—there! Chrysalis spotted Pinkie trotting up behind her. The pony had a spring in her step, and it was grating on Chrysalis’s nerves. She held strong onto her levitation spell as she fired consecutive streams of silk, but Pinkie jumped to and fro, bouncing and cartwheeling around Chrysalis’s attacks. A roar built up in her throat; it felt like fly swatting. Except the flies were deliberately annoying her. Chrysalis concentrated, drawing bucketloads of love into her horn. She was ending this now. And then something wet and sticky fell on her eye, and the roar let loose. “DID YOU SPIT ON ME?!” Rainbow started cackling from within Chrysalis’s grip. “Yeah! Thank Rarity for the inspiration on that one!” Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. “Is this a game to you?!” Rainbow shrugged. “If it is, then we’re winning.” “Boop!” Pinkie said, bopping Chrysalis on the nose. Except it really shouldn’t be considered bopping when there was earth pony strength involved. Chrysalis hissed and clutched her throbbing muzzle, and Rainbow let out a whoop as she shattered the telekinetic hold. Chrysalis let out a desperate magic pulse, but both Pinkie and Rainbow were long gone by then. Chrysalis squeezed her eyelids shut, craned her neck backwards, and screamed at the heavens. “Are you sure they’re going to be alright?” Twilight asked as she and Sunset ran away from the mob of changelings. A good amount had broken off to follow them, but Sunset’s phoenix had landed before them, knocking half of them over with the mere strength it had hitting the ground. “There’s a very slim chance that they won’t be cocooned,” Sunset said. “You mean chrysalised,” Twilight corrected. Then what Sunset had said caught up with her, and her face scrunched up. “Wait, what did you say?” Sunset sighed. “I said they’re going to lose.” “What?! Then why did you let them stay and fight?” “Because I know that if we beat Chrysalis we’ll get them back, and I know that the only way we’re going to beat Chrysalis is if you fight her.” Twilight looked down at her locket and gulped. “But what if I can’t beat her?” “Then neither of them could’ve made a difference.” “B-but Pinkie and Rainbow seem to be doing alright… right?” Sunset shook her head. “They’re a distraction. Dealing with them’s going to take a lot of Chrysalis’s time, but they’re not going to give her anything worse than a rough bruise. Twilight, I’m sorry, but this is on you.” Twilight bit her lower lip. “You have all the magic you need, right?” Sunset asked. “I can give you more right now if you—” Sunset stopped talking abruptly, and began looking around frantically. “Sunset? Sunset, what’s wrong?” Twilight whispered. “Someone—someone hacked my phoenix spell. I had to cancel it.” “Someone hacked your spell?” “Yeah. Basically, if you overflow the spell with your own magic, you can rewrite some of its properties. But the amount magical knowledge that would take, not to mention raw arcane energy…” Twilight gripped Sunset’s shoulder. “Look.” Sunset followed her gaze to a lone changeling walked towards them. He was different from all the rest by nothing other than a pair of small round glasses balanced on his muzzle. His eyes dwarfed the spectacles completely and utterly, so Sunset assumed they were just for show. Guess someone wanted to look intelligent. But perhaps the most alarming quality was his magical presence; Sunset could feel its pulse, even from as far away as she was. “Twilight,” she said, voice slow and steady, “get behind me.” Hot pain spiked through Rarity’s side as one of the changelings’ lasers collided. She staggered onto her knee and threw up a shield against the rest of their attacks, but she was struggling to hold it; her forehead was pounding, her breaths were coming heavy, and the pain made it difficult to concentrate. In her peripheral, she caught glimpses of Applejack, who wasn’t faring too much better: the changelings had gooed one of her legs to the ground, and despite all her flailing and wild punching, she wasn’t doing much damage. Rarity’s focus snapped away from her friend as her shield shattered. The feedback into her horn was nearly as agonizing as the energy beams that slammed into her and sent her sprawling. She pushed herself up onto one hoof, warily eyeing a pack of four changelings that were advancing on her. A group of five was making the final touches on the silk chrysalis surrounding Applejack. The others were either dead or somewhere else, she supposed. Well, if they never made it back to Earth, at least they’d put one hell of a dent in Chrysalis’s army. She shot one last desperate beam of light towards the advancing changelings. The one in the front, stepping over the singed body of one of his comrades, willed it out of existence with a flash of his horn. Another flash, and Rarity’s vision went green. Fluttershy jolted as a bestial scream ripped through the air. She spun around to where the manticores and changelings were fighting just as one of the manticores was thrown from the scuffle, sliding to a stop next to Fluttershy. “Linda! Oh, dear…” Fluttershy scrambled over to her, grimacing at each new injury she uncovered: burns, gashes, bruises, you name it. “Don’t worry, everything will be alright,” she promised, patting the manticore on the head. It let out a groan, and began to lift one paw, but Fluttershy pressed it back down. “Oh, please don’t move. Your wounds are bad enough as it is, and I really wouldn’t want them to—” Linda moved her arm despite the warning, curling all of her claws back but one. She was pointing at something. Fluttershy turned just in time to see a blast of silk shooting towards her. She yelped and shot upwards, but the changeling—and it was only one changeling, the others still occupied with the manticores—followed her into the air. She flew as fast as her wings would carry her and strafed left and right, silk flying past her ears. She ate up the length of the small clearing quickly, aiming for her friends. She could see Rarity and Applejack doing their best to fend off a group of fifteen or so changelings, Pinkie and Rainbow continuing to distract Chrysalis about a hundred feet away, and Sunset and Twilight in the middle, facing off against a single changeling. Making up her mind, she began to carefully lower her altitude as she flew towards Sunset. She opened her mouth to call out her friend’s name just as the silk finally landed. She screamed as she tumbled downwards through the air, one of her wings pinned to her side, but that too was promptly cut off by a second shot of silk on her mouth. A third, and the world vanished from view. Rainbow Dash laughed as she swooped down, whisking Pinkie Pie out of Chrysalis’s line of fire. The laser struck the ground harmlessly, leaving a small smoking crater in its wake. “Batter up!” Rainbow called. She used her wings to push herself into a spin and threw Pinkie with all her might towards Chrysalis. Pinkie laughed brightly as she pierced through the air. Chrysalis’s eyes had never left them, and she simply surrounded herself in a bubble shield that would, ideally, hurt a lot to crash into. Rainbow Dash had taken off as soon as she had thrown Pinkie, wrapping around to Chrysalis’s other side. Pinkie’s bpdy let out a squeak as she bounced off of Chrysalis’s shield. The Queen smirked; surely, the pony had at least a few broken bones after an impact like that. When Pinkie sprang back onto her feet with a dopey smile, Chrysalis almost felt like screaming again. Damn earth ponies! She let her shield drop and charged up her horn; she also leapt straight up, allowing Rainbow Dash, who had planned on a sneak attack, to barrel under her with a whiffing sound. Rainbow cursed and flapped her wings, but her momentum carried her straight into Pinkie. In the time it took for the ponies to untangle and reorient themselves, dark shadows had begun to swirl around Chrysalis’s horn, and her eyes had turned pitch black. A crack of similarly colored lightning struck the ground between Rainbow and Pinkie, and they yelped as a showy claw drew itself up from the ground and snatched them up. It squeezed them painfully (and awkwardly) together, and no matter how much they writhed, its gripped never faltered. Chrysalis landed in front of them, and the hand lowered them until they were eye to eye. “I—urk—didn’t know you were into this kinda thing, bug-face,” Rainbow said, though she couldn’t have sounded very threatening with her lungs being crushed to death. Chrysalis sneered. “Go to Tartarus.” She lifted one foreleg, morphed it into a thin paddle, and slapped Rainbow hard across the face. Then her horn lit up green, and the next second, they were both imprisoned. “They better have some damn tasty memories,” Chrysalis mumbled under her breath. Sunset and the changeling had locked eyes, and both their horns were alaze. The duel was like nothing Twilight had seen thus far: flashes of fire and lightning and energy would shoot from Sunset’s horn, but wouldn’t make it three yards before fizzling out. On the other hand, the changeling was spraying out all sorts of lasers, silk, and whatever else you could think of that Sunset was having to dodge or block (though the latter was fairly difficult when her shields were being taken down nearly as quickly as she could put them up). Twilight helped where she could, but the most she could do was absorb some of the shots into her locket. She couldn’t risk getting close enough to sap the magic from the changeling himself, not unless she wanted to be burnt to a crisp. A shrill scream rang out from behind them, and Twilight whipped her head around to see a changeling capture Fluttershy. She winced; poor Fluttershy. She wished she could’ve done something. As Sunset struggled to outpace how easily the changeling was cancelling her spells, Twilight watched in a daze as the changelings subdued first Applejack and Rarity and then Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. She hoped Sunset would win soon; if she was captured too, then they were as good as dead. She noticed that remnants of the changeling soldiers—about thirty in all—had begun to make their way towards them. She bit her lip; Chrysalis would be on them soon, too, and— Something shot like a missile above their heads, stealing Twilight’s attention. She followed its path as it careened towards the castle; she could make out the forms of two people, two sets of furiously flapping wings, and an unearthly amount of hair as it crashed through the castle’s wall. What the hell? It was only then that she noticed the Moon was out, sitting right next to the Sun. Celestia and Luna… She looked nervously at the hole in the castle and gulped. Before she could properly consider the ramifications, however, Sunset let out a scream. Twilight’s eyes jumped back to the battle: Sunset was clutching at a burn on her shoulder, and a stream of silk cutting through the air was halfway to ending the fight once and for all. But Twilight wasn’t about to let that happen. She steeled herself, made sure she had a clear goal in mind, and unleashed the magic. Sunset grimaced as the stream of silk drew nearer. In the split seconds she had, she wondered if maybe Twilight would run away, would save herself. She hoped so. When the portal opened up in front of her, she had her answer. The oncoming silk fed into the wormhole and out a second one above the changeling, trapping him. Sunset followed the sounds of maniacal laughter and winced as she saw Midnight Sparkle floating there in all her glory. “You think you can just take the pony who can teach me magic?!” With a wave of her hand, a portal swallowed the changeling up, silk prison and all, sending him god knows where. Midnight’s gaze swept past Sunset and stopped on the group of remaining changelings. One portal later, and she was in front of them. Thick cords of purple magic wrapped around her fingers, and she pulled on them, ripping tears in the dimensional film, grinning ever wider. “Do you know how much I could learn from a changeling autopsy?” she said, voice low and dangerous. Sunset furrowed her brow. During the Friendship Games, Midnight was indiscriminate in her destructive quest for knowledge, but she had just saved Sunset. She also seemed to be targeting the changelings. She smiled; Twilight must still be in there, doing as much as she could to curve the influence of the magical overload. As Twilight set to work ripping the changelings a new one, Sunset’s ears twitched, and her face dropped. Distant yet fast approaching, she could pick out an ethereal song that shook her to her core and made her want to run and hide from the raw power in each note. She looked towards Canterlot, and sure enough, Adagio was there in the distance, surrounded in a magical aura so strong that Sunset could see it with her naked eye. She gulped. “Well, crap.”