Her two campers stared back, as relieved as they were confused. Not that Beth and Rick didn't want to leave. They had already done it once, and neither wanted to return. They hadn't said so, but Amie could... feel it.
How did I not notice this when I was still living in camp? How has no one noticed?
"Can you do that?" Rick asked. "I thought you said ponies wanted to kill us. If they caught us, they'd... they'd think we were invaders, and they were justified."
"They would," she said, rising from her hooves. "But you won't look like bugs. You're going to be ponies too." She closed her eyes, then let the magic wash over her. The transformation was even easier than usual, such a small amount of magic that Amie barely noticed it. Before she was well-fed, now she was just spoiled.
Only when she was Rain Fly again did she sit down in front of them, now a little closer to their size. "You aren't limited to just one, either. But it's probably easier if you pick one to start. It's easier to explain one new pony that no one's met than a whole crowd."
Beth sighed, exaggeratedly. "Yeah, Miss Amie. That would be such a great power to use. If only any of us but you could use it. After your message... some bugs in camp can lift things. A few of us can fly. But no one can shapeshift. That's just... impossible."
"We know it isn't," Rick added. "I mean, obviously. Seeing you. It's possible. But if no one can make it work for them, then it might as well be."
Wes took over a month. Amie thought over the same lectures she'd given him, coaching through a discovery she'd made by accident. But if they had to wait months to smuggle her campers out, Albrecht might've starved them by then.
Amie could not wait that long. No matter how much magic she might've gathered, it wasn't enough to march back into camp and take over. She could personally feed a few, maybe, but not a thousand. Just like the mountain itself wasn't enough.
"There is a relief party coming. They have food... but it won't last. And it won't keep coming if negotiations don't go well. I'm doing what I can on the outside... but more help would be better.”
"We'd love to help," Rick said. "We even tried to help the camp, though half the bugs there seem to hate us. You were a... really easy person to blame for everything bad that happened after you left. We all knew it was BS, but lots of people didn't know you. I hoped getting a signal back and forth might let you... send updates, convince people. Maybe you could talk Albrecht out of his plans."
"How does it work?" Beth prompted. "The magic you're doing. I'm a good listener... and whatever was in that medicine, I feel fantastic! Like I could fly all around the world."
She was a good listener. Amie felt her eagerness, and the sincerity underneath. This was far from Wes's half-assed attempts to copy her in the beginning, not believing it was even necessary. Until they discovered just how unfriendly ponies could be.
Amie wasn't exactly sure what happened next. She fixed her attention on Beth, reading her thoughts and feelings more clearly than she'd ever done for another creature before. This was one of her campers, someone she would fight to protect. Someone who looked up to her like she might to a mom, thanks to her desperate, homesick state.
Amie's campers were all that way, even the ones who resented her for running away to protect Wes. But saving someone's life cemented that bond in a way more powerful than helping them through some hard times.
Her vision blurred, stretched, and suddenly Amie was looking at... herself. She felt different—much smaller, her body still aching all over from hunger. She was healing now, but deep fear persisted beneath it all. If Amie left, would she ever eat again?
"Beth?" Rick nudged her shoulder with his wing, nervous. "Sorry Amie, I think she spaced out."
"I didn't," Amie said—except it wasn't her who said it. The words came, and she didn't know exactly how. Her lips moved, and she spoke in Beth's voice. "Something's... happening. I don't... Amie, what are you doing?"
Amie didn't know. She could've panicked, ripped her concentration away before this strange new sensation got completely out of hand. But if she focused, she could lift only Beth's foreleg. "I don't know," she said, from Beth's lips, in Beth's voice. "But I..."
She knew how to use this. Amie picked a pony that fit Beth. Given she'd taken to flying, a pegasus was obvious. A coat the same yellows of the pajamas she always wore when she snuck into the counselor’s cabin for comfort. A greenish tail and mane to help her blend in a little better, and a grinning sunflower as a cutie mark.
Magic flashed from her—but not her own magic. It came from another's stomach this time, and changed another's body.
The shock was finally great enough to tear Amie's mind away. Her double vision vanished, and suddenly she was looking across the dying fire at a frightened pegasus girl.
Beth squeaked in surprise, fluttering her wings in confusion and embarrassment. "H-how? Miss Amie, did you just…?"
She nodded. "I don't know... what. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It just cost magic, and I'm practically drowning in it right now."
Rick eyed her. His mind raced through a dozen different things, the only real way to stop Amie from reading them. She could hardly make sense of his mind when even he didn't know what he was thinking.
Then Beth's body flashed with magic, and she was a bug again. She beamed, spreading both wings. "I... I knew how to do that! After you showed me..."
She concentrated a moment, then came another burst of magic. The exact pony she'd been a moment before returned, down to the smallest detail. "Why didn't you say you could teach like that, Miss Amie? I can change."
"Careful," she cautioned. "It takes magic when you do that—the same stuff we eat. While you're changed, you'll go through it a little faster. But in my experience, you always gain a lot more than you spend, since ponies are so friendly. Most of them, anyway. If they don't think you're a monster."
Rick nudged her. "What you just did—I want you to do it to me too. Show me how to make a disguise."
It took her a little longer. Maybe it was that Rick hadn't been as badly off, or maybe their personalities were just a little less alike. But just like Beth with the transformation, Amie had already done it once. It was much easier to rediscover than to invoke the first time.
All Amie really had to do was focus her attention on the other bug, until she was literally watching out of his eyes, and feeling the warmth of his sleeping bag and all his pent-up nervousness. There was more he'd kept buried even deeper than that, so deep that Amie hadn't realized until that moment. He had started with a crush on Beth. But seeing how hard she fought over the last two months, and how determined she was to keep going in the face of so much opposition... he'd hoped for things that Amie had no desire to see.
Amie turned her attention away from his deeper thoughts, and instead focused on other things. She stood up in Rick's body, then walked away, until she was looking out into the darkness. Focusing on two perspectives at once was incredibly challenging for her. The longer she kept the strange magic going, the clearer Rick's vision became, and the less she saw from her own. She barely even heard Beth ask what she was doing.
"An experiment," she announced. Rick thought that was a good idea as well—he wanted to understand the limits of everything they could do, hoping there was some clue to their salvation hidden in plain sight. He didn't believe that Amie's pony friend would help them, though he'd been polite enough not to say so.
"It's not like... it's more than just controlling," she whispered. Using just her own body took immense concentration, like making two distinct motions with both arms at the same time. Only this time her arms were separated by real distance, and she had to deal with two bodies worth of sensory information. "He's still... awake. I think he could fight me off."
"I don't want to fight," Rick said. As before, she felt her lips moving without the associated desire to speak. "Show me how to change first. A guy, please."
"I knew that," she answered. Then she changed him. She already had a body picked out—he needed to be a pegasus too, or else he couldn't fly anywhere with Beth. But he'd be thinner and scrawnier than most stallions, and probably need glasses. He would have a soldering iron for his cutie mark, since he usually had one in his hand anyway.
This time, Amie knew the magic was coming, and it didn't tear her away. She felt Rick's procession of shock, then curiosity for the new body. As in her own experience, he quickly found it easier to understand than the bug he'd been stuck as for the last months. Ponies were familiar mammals, with everything more or less the way you expected it.
Rick hurried back over to the fire, grinning. "You're right, Beth! I can... see how she did it. The power to change has been right there all along!"
Amie let go, settling back onto her haunches. They'd all been so distracted that the fire was burning down to embers now. But their conversation had also gone on long enough that distant sunlight was growing on the horizon.
For a second, Amie didn't move, relaxing into the simplicity of having only her own eyes to look through, and no foreign thoughts in her head. The others were close if she wanted them—their appreciation, their excitement, and of course their loyalty. She'd given them something tonight, more than just saving their lives.
"What will we do now?" Beth asked. "Now that we can... except I don't think I could teach this. I can't even... explain what you did. I'm just copying exactly how you did it."
"Don't go back to camp," she said. "Not yet. I'm going to get my kids out, every single goddamn one of you. But we have to do it smart. Rick, get your transmitter working. Then you're going to fly off this hill, and lay low until afternoon. After that, there's a building..."
After controlling them, Amie barely even had to spend any effort at all on what came next. She imagined the Rent-a-Friend warehouse, pictured it perfectly in her mind—and sent it to them, exactly as she remembered it.
That was far simpler than changing for them, and used far less magic. "Fly there, but not after sundown. The city locks up when the sun goes down. If anypony asks, you're miners from Motherlode, hoping to work for the Rent-a-Friend. Wes or I will meet you on the roof. There's somewhere for you to live. If I can convince my boss, there might be work too... we'll see."
"You're the best, Amie." Beth hugged her. "Saving us... who taught you all this?"
Rick wasn't quite that brave, and just pawed at the ground nearby, nodding his agreement. "Camp would be so screwed without you."
Amie had no answer for Beth, of course. She wasn't sure how she knew anything she was doing. But telling them she was figuring things out on the fly would probably not give them the confidence they needed to obey. "I'll be waiting," she promised. "I'll fix this. Somehow."