//------------------------------//
// Chapter 33: ...Go Awry 
// Story: Of Men and Insects 
// by VeganSpyro97 
//------------------------------//

They had planned for Changelings. They could fend off Changelings. They could deal with Changelings. They hadn’t counted on Humans. 
A hailstorm of bullets ripped the air apart with the sound of a million, angry hornets and a drum beat so fast the sound never seemed to stop. The bus drivers slammed their feet down on the accelerators as hard as possible, until their feet were completely flat on the floor. 
The ponies were forced to press themselves as flat to the roof as they could manage in order to avoid the gunfire, and there were screams and shouts from inside, followed by the sounds of gunfire being returned from inside. 
The bullets impacted hard on a small group of vacant eyed people a few paces from the road, who had been using an upturned car as cover, and the men and women dropped like stones. Even though the modifications Twilight had made had turned the rounds non-lethal, Allan could not avoid the sudden image of blood spraying everywhere from a skull being caved in by a climbing axe, and nearly vomited. 
He’d thought he’d gotten over that, but now it seemed so fresh in his mind, in a way that it just hadn’t been before now. He knew why too. The fights he’d been in until now had either been practice, with magic swords, or in dreams, where he could keep his emotions and memories in check with magic, even subconsciously. The only other fight had been the car chase, but that had been with the swords again. Now though, this was real, and seeing guns used for real, after watching all those TV shows and movies where a single bullet sent up sprays of gore….. His brain was making unwanted connections between two similar things, and he was paying the price. 
He clapped his hoof over his mouth and forced himself to move, readying his own gun and aiming for the next group of armed people. 
Three quick squeezes. Three loud retorts, and two of the three men fell over, limply, unconscious. 
The image came again, followed by the same urge to vomit as before. He fought through it. Another squeeze. The last one fell.
There had been over fifty people in this one street, waiting for them. 
They had known. 
Chrysalis had known. 
“Rainbow!! Get your tail down here! It’s a trap! She knew we were coming!” He screamed into his radio, before firing off more shots at the more distant people. He missed them all. 
“I’M A LITTLE BUSY RIGHT NOW!!” Rainbow screamed back. A bolt of lightning flashed overhead, and a rainbow streak tore through a cloud at high speed, before careening out of sight, a group of thirty six changelings pursuing her. 
“Split the buses up!” Came a call from somewhere inside the bus. 
Alan's eyes widened. If Chrysalis knew their plans, then she knew they planned to split up in order to divide attention. She’d know exactly where to go.
“BELAY THAT ORDER!” He yelled, slamming into the roof again, just in time for a bullet to graze his shoulder, leaving a deep gouge in his armour. “WE’VE BEEN MADE!”
It was too late. He watched in horror as Twilight’s bus turned away from his at the next intersection, carrying his parents and friends away from him and out of sight. 
He didn’t have time to even consider going after them, because more gunfire rang out, this time accompanied by magic bolts that burned scorch marks into the bus wherever they struck. 
He brought his rifle to bear, only to be slammed into by a Changeling and pinned against the roof. He had to focus, but with a Changeling trying to bite his face off, that wasn’t exactly an option. 
He twisted to avoid it’s first attempt to rip his throat out, and rammed his hind leg knee into it’s stomach, before ramming forward with a head-butt, that sent a jolt of pain through his unicorn-like horn. 
His opponent reared back, and he seized his chance, drawing his sword and plunging it into the Changeling’s abdomen. The insidious magic of the Nightmare blade knocked it out cold, without leaving even the faintest mark. 
Kicking the body off of himself and sending it falling to the road below, he took the opportunity to breathe, and focus. 
Time slowed. His pulse quickened. Every sense fed him information. The sound of Rarity’s sword clashing against a magic shield as she fended off an attacker. The twang of Fluttershy’s bowstring as she dropped a human who had been about to shoot her. The enchantments on her bow offered the same abilities to her as his Nightmare magic did. The approaching sound of buzzing wings of two Changelings, one from behind. One from the left. 
The left Changeling was closest. 
Allan opened his eyes, and moved. 
His blade deflected a punch with the flat edge, before twisting into a reverse strike that sliced through the Changeling’s foreleg. Had he struck it’s body or head, it would have been knocked out like the others. But he had only gotten a slice on it’s leg, instantly, but temporarily, numbing the limb to the point of being useless. 
The lack of sensation threw his opponent off balance, giving him time to spin around and meet the second Changeling. 
He darted to the side of its charge, rearing onto his hind legs and reaching out with his left foreleg, allowing its own momentum to slam itself into his arm and send it sprawling in a daze, before he gave it a quick jab in the chest with his blade. 	
He didn’t get time to celebrate. 
His senses were good, but sometimes, he could still miss things. 
A third changeling jumped him from above, knocking him to the ground and biting down hard on his gauntlet, stopping him from swinging his sword. He felt its hoof impact against his side painfully several times, and tried to hit him with his head by throwing it back as hard as possible, but he only managed to hit it’s own hoof. 
He was about to try something else when the Changeling went limp. It fell off of him, revealing the magical, silvery-tipped arrow stuck in it’s back. 
He nodded his thanks to Fluttershy, before he willed the Nightmare blade to slide free of its gauntlet. It obliged, becoming a regular, unattached sword and falling free. With a practiced motion, he caught it in his hoof, and, in a not so practiced motion, flung it at a Changeling that had appeared behind his marefriend. The blade sailed end over end, until it slammed into the Changeling….pommel first, and it dropped to the floor in a heap. While not his intent, the result was the same. 
The bus squealed around the next corner, nearly tipping itself over as it did. The ponies and Changelings who had managed to find hoof-holds stopped fighting to cling on, grimly, while anyone unfortunate enough was flung into the air. Fluttershy let out a surprised shriek as a Changeling pulled her over the side, but Allan and Rarity both flung themselves after her. 
She had managed to avoid the barbed wire, while the Changeling hadn’t, getting all tangled up in the horrible material. She was holding onto one of the welded metal plates, legs kicking  frantically to find a good grip, just beneath the Changeling. 
Allan reached her first, but Rarity was able to help him haul her back onto the roof, where they collapsed in a heap. Allan didn’t stay down for long, getting up and giving the tangled up changeling a jab with his sword, so that Chrysalis couldn’t use it to figure out where they were. 
Surprisingly, it looked as if they had managed to get through the ambush, and that they had managed to deal with all of the Changelings. All they needed to do now was go under the half fallen skyscraper Allan had seen when they first arrived, and they would be on the home stretch.
The sense of relief that emanated from below was rejuvenating, at least a little, and Allan breathed an easy sigh. Hopefully Twilight and the others had managed to get through alright as well. He took a brief moment to find his rifle, which had somehow gotten tangled in the barbed wire too. He took the time to untangle it with his magic, and ease it out. He checked the ammunition count, and reloaded the clip, before sliding it back inside and loaded the next bullet into the chamber.
Maybe they could do this after all. 
The bus suddenly jerked to the side, rising up on two wheels, before Allan felt himself go flying, slamming into a wall, and dropping to the floor before he could even begin to compensate. 
Groaning, he tried to stand. What had hit them? He hadn’t felt an impact. Everything had been fine….unless….. Allan's eyes went wide, and he tried desperately to call out to Kathy. To Fluttershy. To anyone.  
Chrysalis’s informant was on the bus. 


*********************


Kathy moaned as she clutched her head, which ached and throbbed nastily from where she had been slammed into the side of the bus. Her ears were ringing, and her muscles trembled weakly as she tried to stand. 
She coughed violently, retching pitifully as she lost the contents of her lunch to the bus floor. She noticed the growing, black splotches in the bile and her eyes went wide. That wasn’t normal.
Something was wrong. She felt sick. Incredibly sick. As if something was eating away at her insides while playing hockey, with her skull for a puck. She wretched again, and was rewarded with a putrid smelling ooze that seemed quite content to devour light. 
She tried to stand, but her legs felt like jello, sending her sprawling through the piles of groaning bodies. Buses should really come with seatbelts. 
She heard footsteps approach her, but her brain refused to obey her command to look up, forcing her to cough up more gunk instead. 
Rough hands seized her, hauled her to her feet, before dragging her towards the door. 
They must have broken through some kind of structure, because the air outside was thick with concrete dust, and the ground was uneven under her feet, forcing her to stumble at her saviours guidance. She kept going, stomach trying to purge itself of every tainted cell inside of it. The bile clung to her lips, and her breathing came in ragged, shallow gasps. 
She walked in a daze, not knowing for sure where they were going, just that they were going away, and that that apparently meant a lot of stairs. She could hear something distant, but it was hazy and indistinct background noise, and she struggled to muster up the energy to listen to that something. 
It was a voice, familiar, and reassuring, yet full of panic and anger. 
She heard the squeal of something metal moving, and was led through that something soon after. Her lethargy was starting to drift  away now, though she still felt weak. 
Wind whipped past her now, biting and cold, and she desperately wanted to go back, to the warmer place before. She raised her head, to look her savior in the eye and request this of them. 
Only to feel her gut wrench, and not from the bile this time. 
Connor Murphy, with a sick, twisted grin, stood in front of her. 
She heard that familiar voice getting closer, and the world started to fade back into a cohesive vision once again. Connor had grabbed the wheel and crashed the bus. Connor had hurt so many people doing it. Connor had pulled her out of that crash. Connor had led her here, away from them. Connor, who had long had a desire to see her be “his”. Connor, the bully. Connor, the coward. Connor. The traitor. 
Kate stumbled free of his grip, falling to the  steeply angled ground, and started trying to crawl away from him, back up the slope, but she couldn’t get the traction fast enough to get away. 
“What’s the matter, Katie? Don’t you wanna live? I’m trying to save you!” Connor sounded angry, furious even. “Come with me and we can live together in Chrysalis’s new world, and never have to worry about any of this crap ever again!”
Kate did what Kate was best known for in the resistance. Fighting back.
She raised her leg, and kicked. 
It was a weak kick, but on a slope this angled, it was enough to send him careening backwards, and he barely managed to stop himself from going over the edge of the roof. 
The voice was getting very close now. 
Kate scrambled up the slope of the roof as quickly as she could, skinning her hands and knees in her efforts, leaving smears of fresh blood on the concrete. 
It still wasn’t enough. 
Connor was suddenly on top of her, pinning her down by her arms and yelling into her face. “YOU ARE GONNA DIE IF YOU STAY WITH THEM!”
“Better to die with them than to live with you.” 
Kate’s eyes went wide, and she twisted her head to look up at the door, and the figure standing in it. 
The human being holding the sword was no different in her eyes, than the Changeling underneath that image, but the sight left a tear of joy in her eye nonetheless. “Allan…” 


**************************


Allan stepped through the doorway and into the sunlight, sword held ready in his hand. He was covered in scrapes and abrasions, and he had been forced to use two pieces of rebar and some cloth splint his left hind leg….which translated to his left human leg, since the impact with the wall had snapped his ankle. 
He had followed Connor up through the empty remains of a ruined skyscraper, the one that had fallen across the street, to lean against its counterpart on the other side of the road. He had fought through the pain and anger to go after the school bully who had once tormented him so much. 
Gritting his teeth, he walked forward, brandishing his sword. 
“You couldn’t just die, could you?” Connor sneered. “You couldn’t just make this easier for me.”
“As if I’d let you get away with anything scott free, jerk.” Allan shot back. “Especially when it involves my sister, and your bullying, arrogant ass.”
“Puh-lease. The only reason she never went out with me is because you told her not to.” Connor grinned. “We’d have been a great couple. Just imagine the kind of things we’d get up to…”
Allan growled, eyes flashing a brighter blue for a moment. “You aren’t even going to think about touching a hair on her head, or I swear, I’ll make sure you die in agony, you treacherous fuck!”
“Is it really so wrong that I want to live? That I want her to live?”
“When the cost is everyone else’s free will, the yes! Yes it fucking is, you sick fuck!” Allan's scorn ran deep, and he felt the old hatred he had held for Connor back in school start to fester and boil underneath the surface. He fought it down. There was already enough reason to despise the man. No need to add more. “All the people in this city- in the world! You’d just give them to her, for the chance that she’ll be lenient?! Are you out of your mind?! She’ll turn on you the moment you stop being useful! Mark my words, Connor Murphy, if you survive today, Chrysalis will chew you up and spit you out, and she won’t give two fucks about how much or how little you helped her get what she wanted! You’re just a tool for her to use.”
“I think I prefer the term, “willing pet”.” Connor smirked. 
Allan blanched. “You are a sad, strange little man, and you have none of my pity.”
Connor shrugged, before hauling Katie to her feet, and  spinning her around to face Allan. “Well? Go on, sweetcheeks. Tell him to save you. To make everything better. Tell him to be the hero.” 
Allan stiffened. Hero. That word. Why that word? 
Because Chrysalis was taunting him.
“I’m not a hero.” Allan growled. “I’m not the cool action hero who swoops in and gets the girl. I’m not the fantasy hero who slays the dragon and frees the Princess. Heroes do what’s right. And right now, looking at you? I know that whatever happens next….the things I’ll do to you for what you did…..?  They will most definitely be wrong.”


	***************************


Kate watched as Allan came at Connor, sword swinging in a broad, but precise stroke that forced the other man to back away, down the slope. The two of them fought like dogs, but it was clear which was rabid, and which was experienced and intelligent. 
Connor flailed and made clumsy, yet powerful attacks that would cleave Allan in two, if Connor was using a sword. The piece of rebar he had managed to grab was not the best substitute, but it was enough to keep Connor in the fight when Allan's leg was factored in. 
Connor lunged forward with a clumsy swipe at Allan's shoulder, but Allan grimaced, lurching partially out of the way and flicking his own blade out on an intercept course with Connor’s rebar in order to throw Connor’s balance off.
Connor fell backwards, nearly losing his balance on the precarious slope entirely. He avoided the cold embrace of death through sheer chance, managing to regain his footing just seconds before he would have plummeted to his death. 
Allan joined him on the edge of the roof, sword swinging methodically in his hands…..but then he was swinging it from his hooves, a flare of light being all that gave hint he had even transformed, but he was a Changeling again nonetheless. 
He fought on his hind legs, still with a splint wrapped around his left hind leg and blood dribbling down the shiny, metallic chitin. 
Katherine was still staring at him. She could see her brother in the Changeling, and she could see that the Changeling had always been there, even when he was a boy. She forgot the distinction between Allan the Human, and Allan the Changeling. It didn’t matter. He was Allan. Her brother. Fighting to protect her from those that would hurt her. 
Katherine lurched to her feet, still unsteady and weak, but determined. 
Allan felt his leg buckle as he stepped back from one of Connor’s wild swings. He couldn’t take much more of a beating than he already had. He felt fit to drop as it was. 
Connor noticed the pain on Allans face, and pressed the advantage. 
“What’s the matter, bug-breath?” He sneered, as blade clashed against rebar. The weapons locked, crossed over each other as the two combatants fought for dominance. Connor easily overpowered Allan with his weakened leg, and threw the Changeling wide open by twisting Alan's sword out and pushing it away from him. He took the opportunity to smash his rebar club into Allan's foreleg, being rewarded with a crunching sound. 
Allan cried out in pain, clutching the crippled leg closer to his body while bringing his sword back across to protect himself from the next blow. 
Kate staggered closer. 
Allan gritted his teeth and accepted a heavy attack on his right side, before clamping his foreleg down on Connor’s arm and slamming his forehead into the human’s, splitting the weaker skin and drawing blood. 
“I’M GONNA KILL BOTH OF YOU!!!” Connor howled in anger.
“The only ones who’re dying are you and Chrysalis!” Allan spat, lashing out with his blade again as Connor jerked away from his hold. 
Connor howled in absolute rage, half blinded by his own blood, and started swinging even more wildly. 
He swung over and over, and Allan only barely managed to block each strike before it could connect, but as Connor’s rampage became more and more unstable, his feet were becoming unsteady as he toed the edge of oblivion with seeming obliviousness. 
Katherine made her move. As Connor made one last wild, overhead swing, to try and cave in Allan's skull, she lunged, colliding with his shoulder. 
Had he been on flat ground, it would have barely moved him. Had he been standing with both feet firmly on the ground, he likely would have laughed at her. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t standing on an uneven surface. He wasn’t standing with both feet planted on the floor. He was reaching up, to get more power behind his swing. He was unbalanced, and standing on the edge of a half fallen building, with a large gap behind him. A few meters to his left, and he could have simply put out his arm to steady himself against the building, which the one they were standing on, was leaning against. 
But none of that mattered. Because in that moment, when he had been about to achieve victory, he was blindsided. The tackle was weak and clumsy, but it was more than enough.
With a terrified scream, Connor toppled over the edge, and fell.
The Ryder siblings staggered to the edge, just in time to see a Changeling swoop down and catch Connor, before carrying him away across the rooftops, still crying in terror.
Allan did not watch him go. Instead, he turned to Katherine. “Are you…..are you okay?”
Kathy could barely even catch her breath enough to answer, as another wave of bile spewed up from her guts. “Guh…..I’m…..I feel like…..like shit…..”
Allan made his way, painfully, over to his sister, and let her use him as a support, so that she could stand. “Come on. We gotta get moving. Chrysalis will have her drones all over this place soon.”
“What abo-” Kathy broke into another hacking and coughing fit, sputtering up black gunk. “-Bus?” She finished meekly. 
“Rarity and I got it back upright and they’re already one their way to the Skytrain. I said we’d meet them there. Can you walk?”
Kate attempted to take several steps, but collapsed before she got to three, skinning her knee on the hard roof. “No. You go.” She wiped away some of the tar like drool clinging to her lips. “Get…..safe.”
“Not without you. I’ll carry you if I have to.”
Kate’s trembling finger pointed to his splinted leg.
“Not to worry. I have other ways of getting around now.”


*****************************


Allan's wings pumped with a fury unlike any he could muster as a Changeling. As a Pegasus though, he could put far more power into his flight, outracing Chrysalis’s children like an aeroplane outraces a housefly. The frantic beating of his wings was more than enough to jostle his passenger, where she lay between his shoulder blades, draped unceremoniously over his back like a discarded rag doll. 
He knew where to go,  but dodging Changelings forced him to keep twisting and turning, altering his route to be as unpredictable as possible, and avoid getting into a firefight. Kate wouldn’t make it through one if it came to that. 
There was black gunk matting his fur, but Allan paid it little mind, instead, he focused entirely on trying to get to his destination, only pausing to extend his sword and send an unavoidable Changeling spiraling downward in the embrace of sleep. 
He took a detour through the ruined remains of the top floors of one skyscraper, hearing the difference in air pressure as he sped between the building’s supports, which were blackened and charred from the fire that had consumed this building’s upper floors. Was this the hotel that Kate had mentioned? He was flying out the other side before he even had chance to truly consider that sobering thought, and he immediately folded his wings into a dive, glad he had thought to use her jacket to tie her to him…. He hoped she wouldn’t be too mad he’d torn it up to do so.
The dive brought him back down to the height of a seven story building before he pulled up slightly, angling his wings to take him between two buildings that were joined by a corridor that stretched over the road between them. 
He quickly tried to recall which direction he should go to get to the Skytrain station, but a Changeling appeared out of nowhere and made his choice for him. 
He banked right, feeling the hot air created by a spell blast rocketing by his right hip, singing his fur. Chrysalis’s aim was getting better. 
His flight was forced even further away from the city center, and from the station as well, heading north instead, weaving between buildings and climbing higher and diving lower in order to keep the Changeling’s off his back. 
It wasn’t going to be enough. No matter where he turned, a Changeling was there, a spell ready to fry him and Kate, only to be narrowly avoided at the last second. His wings ached, the muscles screaming for relief, much like the rest of his body. 
He tried to call on his magic, to at least give himself a horn to cast back with, but even as he tried to shift shape, the blue flames he was so used to seeing rush past his vision sputtered and died, nothing more than a few embers being whipped away by the intense speed he was going at. 
He recognized the neighborhood he was soaring through in a sudden moment of clarity, as he soared past the window of his own apartment, time seeming to slow as he saw his reflection in  the window. His charred fur, his exhausted expression, his limp hind leg, his shaky foreleg. His sister, clinging on to life as she rode on his back. 
He was so busy staring that he didn’t even realize that amid the slow passage of time, the space behind the window was glowing, a bright green that pulsed and swelled, until-
The spell burst through his apartment window, and struck him full in the side, the concussive beam punching him right where his shape-shifted ribs were. He felt them crack.
His form dissipated in burst of fire, and blood sprayed from the hole in his side. His broken ribs became shattered chitin. His buzzing wings stopped, the last of the magic in his body ripped away with that last blow, leaving him helpless. He fell. He and Katy both fell.
He hardly felt the impact, already dazed and confused, unable to focus on anything that was more than a hoof in front of him. There was grass under his cheek, and he was resting against something made of stone, with Kate lying not far away from him, the barest hint of life in her eyes. 
He crawled over to her, trying to reach her.
A black, hole filled carapace filled his vision. 
Twisting his neck, he looked upward, a pitiable, pathetic mess of a Changeling, staring up at the face of the Queen.
Chrysalis sneered at him, her horn glowing as she savored the moment. 
“I want you to know something, Ryder.” She smirked. “After I’m done burning you to ashes, I’m going to kill all of those useless ponies you call “friends”. I’ll do it nice, and slow, and painful. In all the ways they fear most. All because you brought them here. You should have done the smart thing, and shut down the portal for good, and never come back. Then I could rule over this miserable little world, with my children, in peace. Farewell, Allan Ryder, and good riddance, you waste of space.”
Her horn flared, but then, a brighter light shone from somewhere behind her, and she turned, before her eyes went wide. 
Allan turned his head to look to look too. At first, his vision was still too unfocused and blurry to make out anything further away than Chrysalis, showing three coloured blobs standing not too far away, white, blue and pink. But as he peered at them, squinting as he tried to make his eyes work again, those blurs became definite, equine shapes, with flowing manes, long, slender horns, and powerful wings. 
“No…..not yet! It’s too soon!” Chrysalis seethed, staring at them. “You just can’t let me have my fun, can you?!”
“I think you should let him go, Chrysalis.” Celestia said, calmly, her face an emotionless mask. A blade of burning sunlight hovered before her, turning her golden armour red.
“Yes. Release my student, this instance, fiend!” Luna snarled, drawing a scythe of shimmering moonlight, and another of glistening shadows, from nowhere. 
Cadence stepped forward, an ornate, yet obviously battle-ready spear leveled in Chrysalis’s direction, it’s heart covered form doing nothing to conceal its violent, intended use. “Surrender now, and we’ll only lock you in the deepest pit in Tartarus.”
Chrysalis snarled, a hoof coming down hard on Allan's neck, leaving him choking and gasping for breath, and trying to stay conscious. 
“Fine. I’ll kill him after I’m done with you.” She drew a green blade from nowhere, her magic producing it from some magical, pocket dimension. It was inelegant, crude, and forged of Changeling gel, but it was most certainly not an instrument to be mocked. It was at least twice the length of Chrysalis’s own foreleg, and was wide enough to cleave a pony in two with one swing. “This won’t take long.”
“I’m afraid that it will be.” Celestia stated, her emotionless mask not wavering for a moment. “You see, we have a dragon.”
It was at that moment that the water from the portal burst upward, and a great, scaly mass soared overhead, before slamming into Chrysalis from behind, his green spines flashing, and his jaws filled with fire. 
Spike had grown again. A lot. He was as tall as Celestia, and twice as muscular, with armour plating covering his most exposed and soft scales, such as between his shoulders and on the back of every joint. 
Chrysalis teleported away, but she hadn’t gotten out unscathed, clutching her now bleeding foreleg to her chest, before she span around. “Delay them!” She screamed to her children, who immediately began to swarm at the Alicorns and their Dragon companion. “I’ll get to you soon! Don’t you worry, ponies. I’ll get to you very soon!”
Allan felt his head hit the floor then, the last thing he saw being the rulers of Equestria, and Spike, fiercely battling the many dark forms of over three hundred Changelings...	

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