It was almost over. Today was finally the day that Shining Armor and Pinkzilla were going to be wed, and we could go back to being a normal city with a normal castle that wasn’t the hottest tourist attraction in Equestria.
I couldn’t wait. My job had been exhausting with all of the extra work from the looky-loos. That and the Royal Guard service hours I’d had to do as punishment for biting that major… and breaking a window… and destroying a hedge… and the other things they pinned on me. I’m pretty sure that ice cream was already gone when I got in there.
On the plus side, Soarin and I were seeing each other again when I was free, which wasn’t often due to the whole drunk Sunny incident. Still, when we were together, it was nice. He was less focused on our future and more on his future as a Wonderbolt.
Trixie had left on her tour, which meant my apartment was just mine again. That was a delight. I would miss her, but she was always a pony that was better in small doses. Hopefully she’d make a name for herself on the road!
Dolly was grateful, too, because the Mare Contraire was now back to just being a bar for mares that wanted to find mares. Things were looking up. We just had to get past this stupid, overblown, ridiculous, wedding. Now all that I had to—
Twilight Sparkle darted out into the courtyard from a random palace service entrance. She’d been rushing around like that for the last two days, rapidly losing her mind. At least, that was what it looked like from my spot on the wall.
She was clearly upset for some reason, and that gave me endless amusement. The moment she’d arrived, the craziness started and she’d been in a snit. According to her, nopony had informed her about Shining Armor’s wedding. For a pony as smart as she was alleged to be, she’d have to be pretty dense not to notice all of the advertisement, celebrations, and merchandise.
Living in Ponyville was no excuse. The wedding planner had literally hung a huge banner off the side of Alicorn Spire that could be seen for kilometers.
No, Little Miss Perfect had just kept her nose in a book. She had no right to be mad at her brother and Cadence Clearly-Mean-Not-Good-Pony.
There was a soft pushing at my snout.
“Hey, hey, Lieutenant. Hello?” Ice Blossom said as she continued to press her armored hoof against my face.
I swatted it away. “What!”
Her nose wrinkled as she giggled. “You’ve been standing here staring at that purple mare bouncing to and from various places for too long. Don’t you have, like, work to do? I mean, there is a royal wedding going on today. Shouldn’t you be ordering us around?”
“Sergeant Blossom, you’re being entirely too familiar,” I said before turning to face her. “I suppose I should do some work, though. I’m going to go fill out the log.”
“Yes, ma’am, you do that!” she chimed happily as I turned to go do exactly that.
I settled at the shared desk and started going through our contacts and other happenings. Admittedly, things had been easier since more guards had started showing up. That, combined with the shield bubble, really put a damper on out-of-town tourism. As a result, things were more than manageable. We weren’t back to normal but at least some ponies had been deterred.
Command had given me two additional squads for my area. They were drawn from the City Guard, but they were more than capable of helping us do our jobs. I’d stationed one squad in and around the gift shop and set the other on the wall.
That left me free wall guards to man the net throwers. We hadn’t had to use them, but I’d decided I wanted them ready to go. All I needed was some crazy pegasus swooping over my portion of the wall and somehow crashing the wedding.
“Not happening,” I muttered to myself.
As I flipped through the log from the morning shift, I caught a note about some sort of large bug bouncing off the shield. That was odd, sure, but didn’t seem to be any cause for real alarm. Odd things had been coming out of the Everfree Forest lately, and Canterlot wasn’t that far from it.
The log was normal otherwise. Other than a higher than pre-wedding announcement but lower than post-wedding announcement amount of contacts. That was our new normal. Hopefully, after today, everything would go back to the old normal.
Shining Armor and Lady Cadence would be gone on their honeymoon and, with any luck, he wouldn’t get her pregnant immediately. A royal foal would probably be worse than a royal wedding.
The office door opened, and Ice Blossom stuck her head in. “Hey, uh, LT, you might want to come out here.”
I got up and put my helmet on. “What now?”
“I’m not sure what,” she replied.
That was never a good sign. I trotted out and looked around. Everything was normal and quiet. Nothing seemed out of place… except the fact that every guard around me was looking straight up, gawking.
I followed their gaze and did the same. The barrier was being bombarded by hundreds of large bugs. Black, carapace-covered bugs with fluttering translucent wings.
“Lieutenant, what in Equestria are those?” Ice Blossom asked.
“I don’t know. In fact, I don’t have the slightest idea,” I replied as I narrowed my eyes. Focus, Sunny. Focus. There wasn’t any miasma anywhere, was there? No, at least not any that I could see.
“What do we do?” Ice Blossom whispered.
What do we do? Why was she asking me? Oh, right, I was the officer in charge of this section of the wall. “Arm the net throwers immediately, get the crossbows, and somepony find a big fly swatter!” I ordered loudly. “I don’t know what these things are, but if they happen to get in, we’ll be ready for them.”
That seemed to snap everypony out of the haze of confusion. All around the castle grounds, I heard other officers starting to call out orders.
Ice Blossom was busy loading her crossbow when she looked over at me. I could see it in her eyes: she was afraid. This was not normal. This was not normal at all. Hundreds of bugs swarming the palace?
“We’ll be fine. Everything is going to be okay as long as the barrier ho—Oh, f—”
The barrier suddenly shattered into a million shards of magical energy. The second it did, the bugs rained down on us.
I wasn’t sure if they actually had the intent to do harm, but I wasn’t going to find out. They were flying at us aggressively.
“Fire! Fire right now!” I shouted.
Ice Blossom squawked in surprise and dropped her crossbow off the side of the wall. A few nets burst from the towers, catching several bugs and sending them tumbling to the ground.
Beyond that, an uncoordinated array of bolts flew up to greet them. Most seemed to clatter off the carapace. Those that hit wings did knock the bugs from the sky.
A second after that, they were all over us. It was sudden, it was violent, and it was terrifying.
One of the bugs landed on Ice Blossom and grabbed her around the waist.
“Oh no you don’t!” I shouted before drawing in magical energy and focusing it at my horn. The first blast was meant to be a warning, but when it struck the creature, it was enough to singe him and send him packing.
The instant that bug was gone, two more were in his place, flying right at me. I zapped the one on the left before taking a clumsy swing of my hoof at the one on the right. He collided with me and knocked me onto my rump.
Ice Blossom appeared behind him and started hitting him in the back with her helmet.
“Where is your sword!” I shouted at her.
The bug hissed and turned to look back. When he did, I punched him right in the jaw. He fell off me and, before he could get up, Blossom knocked him unconscious with her helmet.
She looked down at him defiantly and shouted, “I forgot it at home!” Then she thrust her hoof out to me.
I took it and she pulled me up. When I looked around, the battle was not going well for our side. The bugs were everywhere, and I could see that many windows into the palace were broken.
“Secure the towers! Keep the nets going!” I ordered before pulling the office door open. “Get in there and get my spear,” I told Blossom before drawing my sword.
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied before putting her helmet on and skittering in.
Just as she did, one of the bugs came swooping after her. I slammed the door and let him crash into it. He flopped onto the wall, dazed. “You’re going to have a horrible morning tomorrow,” I told him before smashing his head with the hilt of my sword.
“Where is that giant flyswatter!” I shouted as confidently as I could. From there, I jumped up onto the battlement and started firing heat lances at the endless swarm of invaders.
We weren’t making any dent in their numbers. All around the courtyard, I could see guards and palace staff trapped in some kind of webbing. At least, I hoped it was webbing.
Blossom burst out of the office, tripped over the unconscious bug, and promptly threw my spear over the wall into the courtyard.
“You are so fired if we survive this!”
“If!” she squeaked before taking her helmet off and using it to bludgeon another bug.
“When!” I quickly corrected before ducking my head and zapping another bug that was flying towards one of my towers.
“Lieutenant, we need some kind of plan here! We’re just sitting ducks,” one of my other sergeants yelled from further down the wall before he bucked one of the bugs off it.
He was right. We weren’t acting like a section. We were all just doing what it took to stay upright. This was an ambush. The enemy was relying wholly on the element of surprise, but they hadn’t taken us down in the initial assault. We could shift this.
“Everypony listen up! Help your squad mates and fall back to the towers. Get inside, bar the door, and engage from the safety of the machicolations and arrow loops,” I ordered before starting to move to the nearest tower.
My section started acting together at that point. Sergeants were regaining control and starting to move their ponies into a fighting retreat.
The bugs seemed to react to that and were trying to get between my ponies and the doors. That was proving unsuccessful. When they got close, crossbow bolts, nets, and magic bolts burst out of the protected windows of the tower.
We were doing it. We were getting the upper hoof! If I could just get to the tower, we’d be fine. They didn’t have any kind of siege equipment.
“Lieutenant, help!” somepony shouted and I turned to follow the voice.
It had come from one of the city guards. A mare I barely knew. She was standing between two of the bugs. I turned to blast one but just as I charged up, its form burst into green flames and suddenly I was looking at two of the mares.
Then a third, all yelling for help
“What!”
All around us, they were transforming into ponies. Not just any ponies, my ponies!
“Close the tower doors! Close them now!” I ordered. Another surprise. Another ambush! “Everypony else out here, we’re on our own.”
“Uh, Lieutenant, what now?” Ice Blossom asked.
“Yeah what now?” a second Ice Blossom asked.
The fighting had slowed down. The bugs were taking advantage of the confusion to get closer to us. We’d be assaulted by our friends.
“You have two seconds to convince me you’re the real Ice Blossom before I heat lance you both,” I growled.
“Lieutenant! Please don’t blast me!” the first one said.
“I like wang!” the second one shouted, so I blasted the first one.
The real Ice Blossom hurried over and pressed herself up against me. “Okay, that is only going to work once. From now on, I’m going to get lewder and lewder until they don’t even know what I’m talking about. Have you ever heard of a Phillydephia Frisking?”
“No, do I want to?” I asked before charging my horn and blasting a bug that hadn’t changed yet. The moment I did it, my vision briefly went blurry. I wasn’t going to be able to keep expending magical energy.
Ice Blossom shook her head. “You totally do not. Seriously, though, what do we do? I’m scared.”
She was scared? I was scared! “We back ourselves up against the tower door and stay put until we get either orders or until…”
“Until what?” she asked.
With our flanks pressed together, we started backing up. I held my sword out and swished it in the general direction of the bugs. Until what, Sunny? Until somepony that was better at this took care of it! Who would that be?
“The Army!” I squeaked suddenly.
“What?” Ice Blossom asked.
“We just have to hold out until the Army arrives. This is a full-scale attack. Those ponies will see it, come up here, and put a hurt on these things,” I lied. “Army ponies fight for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We just have to hold on for a little while longer.”
I didn’t know where the nearest Army unit was. I didn’t know if anypony knew we were under attack. All I knew was that I had to keep hope alive.
For the moment, the bugs were keeping away from us as we bumped into the tower. All of my towers were continuing to dole out punishment to anything foolish enough to get close. It was at that moment I finally realized the alarm bells were ringing.
Those would be heard up and down the spire. We might actually be lucky enough to receive some help from the Army after all.
“Lieutenant?” a voice said from the other side of the door.
“Yeah?” I replied.
“Should we let you in?”
“Probably not. I could be one of those bugs.”
The voice on the other side fell silent. After a minute, it called back, “But wouldn’t saying that mean you’re not a bug?”
“Would you stop analyzing this and just follow the order!” I snapped. “Keep the door shut and barred. Protect us as best you can, but don’t let those things in under any circumstance.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Ice Blossom nodded. “You tell them, LT. Of course, you just doomed us, but I’m quite motivated by your fierce attitude.”
“You’re not helping,” I muttered as I tried to figure out what we would do next. Several ponies that looked like guards started approaching us. None of them were duplicates, but their expressions told me they weren’t friendly.
“What do we do?” Blossom whispered.
I forced magical energy into my horn as I drew it in from the world around me. “It’s us or them today, Blossom, and I can promise you, it won’t be us.”