//------------------------------// // Chapter 8: Showdown, Part II // Story: Back to the Swarm // by PointlessGizmo //------------------------------// With Switcher's command, thirty-six Soldier drones and the four Sentry drones began to race towards their targets. Trixie, Clone and Leech stood firm and readied themselves for the coming battle, with determination in their eyes but trepidation in their hearts. "Never back down!" said Clone quietly, narrowing his eyes. "Never zzsurrender!" agreed Leech, scraping a front hoof on the ground. "Never mind!" cried Trixie, who turned and began to run in the opposite direction. Forty against three? There was no way she was staying around for that! Clone and Leech looked at the fleeing Trixie, and then to each other. Both gave a nod, and also began to flee - Trixie definitely had the right idea on this one! Trixie ran into the increasingly dense woodland, with Leech and Clone not far behind. Fortunately, the sheer number of trees in the area meant that their pursuers also had to run rather than fly, to avoid hitting any of them - this slowed their advance considerably. Switcher, who had stayed back with Aurora, motioned to Vek who had by now finished filling his abdomen. "That half-breed is morphing far more slowly than I had anticipated. I can only presume that this is because of the natural magical energies in her body interfering with the transformation process. Go and give her another dose - the quicker we can fully change her, the quicker I can bring her under my control." he commanded. Vek gave a little nod, and the tiny changeling-hornet hybrid whizzed off through the increasingly dark evening sky to find his target. Due to his diminutive stature, he could easily zip between the trees, allowing him to quickly catch up with and overtake the changelings on the ground. He streaked over the stampeding crowd of Soliders and Sentries and flew ahead. He soon caught up with the three fleeing heroes, and readied his stinger to give Trixie another shot of Necrosia. As the trees began to thin out, Vek flew high above her and went into a steep abdomen-first dive. Unbeknownst to Vek however, High General Clone had spotted him out of the corner of his eye. Judging his moment, Clone waited until Vek was mere feet above Trixie's back, then leapt into the air and held a front leg out over Trixie and directly beneath Vek. Unable to stop himself, Vek's stinger plunged through the relatively thin exoskeleton of Clone's foreleg and gave him a decent-sized dose of Necrosia. Clone quickly pulled his leg back in before he landed, with Vek still struggling to pull his barb out. Clone winced at the tiny changeling's struggles at first, but the pinpricks of pain soon subsided as the Necrosia began to spread through his body. Being a changeling already, the substance had no ill effects on Clone - much the opposite, in fact, since changelings used Necrosia for healing themselves. Clone grinned as he felt the tingling warmth flow up his leg, through his torso and neck until it reached his head. An aura of green appeared around his forehead, as the Necrosia set to work, causing his broken horn to regenerate before his very eyes. As the trees thinned more and gave way to a clearing, he stopped running, and turned around to face his pursuers. Using his newly-healed horn, he pulled Vek out of his leg and held him in front of his face. "Thanks, you creepy little flank-hole!" he laughed, before swatting his miniature foe with a hoof, sending him spiraling through the air into a nearby bush. Leech and Trixie, noticing that Clone had stopped running, turned around and headed back to stand alongside him. "Clone hazz horn!" Leech noted with surprise. "Yep." said Clone proudly. "Now it's a whole new ball game!" As a High General, Clone had been second-in-command in the swarm prior to Aurora's takeover. This had meant he was the second most powerful changeling after Chrysalis herself, which was one of the reasons Switcher had been so keen to get him out of the picture. With his horn now whole once again, he'd easily be able to subdue the Soldier drones, who by now were emerging from the trees and heading towards him. "Well, I hope you know what you're doing!" said Trixie, her horn starting to glow with an increasingly off-purple aura. "Because it looks like it's too late to run again!" "You and me both..." thought Clone. As the baying mob of Soldiers approached, some still running and some taking to the air, Clone channeled his power through his horn, and with considerable effort managed to encapsulate the entire battalion within a pulsating, green force-field. The Soldiers shouted and buzzed around angrily within their glowing prison, attempting to break free. Some charged their own horns and blasted at the luminous energies that held them, but to no avail. Since the Soldiers were merely being misled rather than acting out of their own malice, Clone had wanted to trap them rather than hurt them. Clone concentrated hard as his horn began to glow brighter, sending a steady stream of waves into his force-field - a sleeping spell, which would hopefully sedate the soldiers enough to nullify the threat they posed. Until it took effect, however, he would have to maintain total concentration on the force-field and wouldn't be able to help Trixie and Leech. ---------- Help was certainly something Trixie and Leech could have used, as Switcher's Sentry team circled menacingly above them. They'd managed to avoid being trapped by Clone's force-field and, acting on Switcher's telepathic orders, sought to destroy Leech and take Trixie back to Switcher so her conversion could be completed. Trixie and Leech stood flank-to-flank, their horns glowing, looking up at their would-be assailants. "Remember Trixzzie... ZZSentriezz are juzzt innozzent Ponies really." reminded Leech, knowing that Trixie had a harsh temper. He'd once seen her win an argument with a buffalo over parking their wagon using nothing but a single right hook. "It's OK, Trixie will try not to hurt 'em... too much!" replied Trixie with a slight laugh. She didn't feel so confident inside though - she'd already lost one battle with the Sentry team, and that was before her powers had been reduced by her partial transformation. Her horn, now jet-black and beginning to take on a slight curve, glowed brightly and fired a bolt of energy towards the enemies in the sky above her. It rocketed upward, just missing one of the circling Sentries. Trixie didn't mind, however - that was exactly what she had planned. The energy bolt stopped in the air just above the Sentries and quickly changed into a small, hazy purple cloud. A bolt of lightning shot down from this cloud and struck one of the synthetic drones in the back, causing it to fall from the sky and hit the muddy ground, rolling several meters as it did so. It lay, dazed and surprised, as its fellow Sentries continued their assault. One dived down at the pair, almost ramming into Leech. However, the little changeling dodged to the left with surprising dexterity. As the divebombing drone turned around for another try, Leech turned to face it and was able to produce a blinding flash of light with his horn, a spell he'd learned from Trixie previously. The Sentry, unable to see, careered off-course and slammed into the one that Trixie had downed, who had just managed to get itself back to its hooves. The two went sprawling to the ground, as Leech and Trixie exchanged wicked grins. "Two down, two to go!" exclaimed Trixie, joyously. Her joy was short lived, however. Both of the remaining Sentries dived at the same time, both at Leech. Leech managed to dodge to avoid one of them as before, but moved straight into the path of the other. With a sickening crunch, the Sentry impacted with Leech's side full-on, flinging him across the clearing. He came to rest face-down in a muddy puddle. Clone grimaced as he witnessed this, still unable to intervene due to his job of containing the Soldiers. They'd calmed down a lot and some were becoming quite woozy, but Clone knew if he dropped the force-field now, the sleep spell would wear off too quickly and the Soldiers would rejoin the assault. With Clone having used so much of his power already, he may not be able to stop them a second time. He had to keep the force-field going until all or most of the Soldiers were too sleepy to fight. With Leech out cold on the wet, muddy ground, the two remaining Sentries moved in closer, their horns glowing, ready to administer the killing blow to him. Trixie looked around frantically - her magic was becoming too hard to control thanks to her continuing metamorphosis, so she couldn't produce another stormcloud. She noticed a pine tree nearby, and using what little control of her powers she had left, snapped off a thick branch and quickly ran between the advancing Sentries and Leech. She brought the heavy branch down on the head of one Sentry with a satisfying crunch... ... but nothing happened. The Sentry shrugged off the evergreen-based assault thanks to the thick chitin plating in its head, and continued to solemnly march towards Trixie and Leech. Thinking fast, Trixie tried a new tactic - she turned the branch around so that the freshly-broken end faced the Sentries. Then she swung it back and forth, flinging thick, sticky sap from the weeping wood into the Sentries' faces. As the amber-colored goo splashed into their eyes, the Sentries stopped their advance and began to rub at their faces with their hooves. ---------- Back at the invasion site, Switcher became aware of his underlings' discomfort via his mental link with them. "The half-breed is sapping my Sentries!" he growled crossly to himself. His horn glowed again, as he attempted to establish communication with the two semi-conscious Sentry drones that Leech and Trixie had dispatched earlier. "Get up and help your comrades, you useless hatchlings!" Switcher hissed telepathically. "Forget the traitor and the idiot, just get the half-breed back to me. They'll back down once I have her on my side! We need to start the invasion soon, and we do not have time for this messing about!" Aurora stood behind him, an increasingly impatient look on her face. "What's taking them so long? What has happened to the Soldiers? Where is Vek?" she asked crossly. Switcher shuddered as the angered would-be Queen loomed over him. "I'm sure they'll all be back soon!" he quickly said. "After all, there's only three of them, nothing could have gone wrong!" "For your sake, they better had be." warned Aurora. "My patience grows thin - I allied myself with you so that we could reclaim our species' status as Equestria's most feared and respected predators, with me as their leader. I did not come here to mess about with petty annoyances like those three." Switcher gulped, and hoped that his message to his drones would have its desired effect . ---------- Some distance away, Trixie's branch-flicking strategy still seemed to be working well. Pines contained plenty of sap, so she'd be able to keep the two Sentry drones busy for some time, hopefully long enough for Clone to finish his job so he could help them. Alas, unseen by Trixie, the two Sentries that were downed earlier had struggled back to their hooves, rallied by their General's communique. Clone saw them, but he'd still not managed to render the Soldiers into a state where he could release the forcefield. "Trixie, look out!" he called, desperately. But it was too late. The two recovered drones ran up behind Trixie, and grasped her in their forehooves. The two Sentries she'd been holding off with the branch wiped the sap from their eyes and joined their squadmates in subduing the mare. With all four concentrating their horns on her, they levitated Trixie and took off, flying in a square formation with Trixie floating helplessly in the center. Clone silently cursed himself, before looking at the limp, black shape on the ground some distance away. "Leech!" he cried. "You've got to snap out of it, they've taken Trixie!" Leech lifted his head, and opened his eyes. The world seemed to be spinning around him, as he groggily dragged himself to his hooves. He looked at the side where the Sentry had hit him. A large puncture wound from the Sentry drone's horn greeted his eyes. He grimaced, but resolved to rescue his best friend if it killed him. He knew also, that if his wound wasn't treated soon, that would be exactly what would happen. Putting the pain to one side in his mind, Leech slowly took off and headed over the tops of the trees, back towards the invasion site. He was sure that this was where the Sentries would be taking Trixie. Clone watched him go, and concentrated harder than ever on getting the Soldiers pacified so that he could help. The Sentries touched down in front of Switcher and Aurora, depositing Trixie at Switcher's hooves. Switcher smiled, and gave the Sentries another order. "Now... go and find Vek. We need to begin, and we cannot start without him. I assume he isn't conscious, as my link with him is currently severed. Search the forest floor, and bring him back to me at the double!" he barked. The Sentries dutifully shuffled off, into the woodlands, their eyes scanning the floor for the tiny Vector drone. They last remembered seeing him just before they got to the clearing where the battle had occurred, so headed in that direction. After watching them leave, Switcher and Aurora's attention turned to Trixie. She still looked like a cross between a changeling and a pony; far too pony-like for Switcher's liking. His other test subjects, the Sentries, had fully transformed far more quickly than this. Switcher didn't mind though; he knew exactly what to do. "You've held out pretty well, all things considered." he said to Trixie, trotting over to a bush and snapping off a twig. "But I'm afraid your life as a unicorn is soon to be over, and your new life as one of my squadron begins tonight." he continued, whittling the twig down to a needle-sharp point with his magic. Trixie, who didn't even dare to blink, never mind make a run for it under Aurora's gaze, watched as Switcher levitated the half-empty Necrosia pod that Vek had been filling up from earlier. She felt the rising panic as she saw him come towards her with the pod and the sharpened twig. A silent scream stuck in her throat as he dipped the twig into the olive-green gel and held it in front of her face. "Not the most advanced technique." he said cheerily, a sadistic smile plastered across his face. "But don't worry. It won't hurt a bit... well, it won't hurt me anyway." he cackled, even managing to unnerve Aurora a little with his disturbing enthusiasm. Just as Switcher was about to jab the twig into Trixie's skin, a buzzing black missile came rocketing over the treetops. Switcher dropped the twig and looked upward. "ZZSWITCHER NOT HURT LEECH'ZZ FRIEND!" the aerial blur roared, before crashing into the startled General, sending both Leech and Switcher rolling across the ground and through a nearby bush. Aurora facehoofed. "I'm surrounded by incompetence!" she sighed, as she looked down at the terrified Trixie. "You are nothing but a distraction - I can't have Switcher wasting my time playing with his little toys." Her horn began to glow, ready to evaporate the hybrid Pony that trembled at her hooves. Before she could, however, a voice boomed from the sky. "How about picking on someone your own size?" it bellowed. Aurora's horn stopped glowing as she turned to where the voice had come from. She took an involuntary step back as a fully powered and healed Queen Chrysalis landed nearby. Chrysalis hadn't bought any of the changelings from the hive along to help - she had come alone after being restored to full power by her Generals. This was her fight, and she was going to end this personally. She stared at her nemesis, a mirror image of herself. Aurora stared back, each of the two powerful changelings sizing the other up. As the rain began to fall harder from the darkened night sky, and Trixie took cover behind a tree stump, Chrysalis broke the silence with just two words: "Face me."