Those who only had a passing familiarity with ponies in combat situations tended to come to the conclusion that earth pony combat with all about physicality.
It was an easy conclusion to come to. Earth ponies were, pound for pound, the strongest variety of pony, and their tendency to be bigger and broader than other tribes meant that they had even more pounds to throw around. Earth pony skeletons were denser, their hooves harder, and they healed slightly faster, which meant that they also more easily built up muscle. An earth pony charging at anything but the most resilient of targets was going to do serious damage.
But there was so much more to it than that. Because the first tenet of earth pony combat wasn't physical power. It was home field advantage.
Granny Smith offering to hold off the changelings while her grandfoals ran hadn't been empty bravado. The farm had been her land, and when an earth pony had become attuned to their territory, they could turn their home into a fortress or weapon all its own. Some of the rules on what could and couldn't be done could be bent by a steady hoof on familiar land.
Big Macintosh was far from Ponyville, but for the right pony, home field could be a flexible concept. It was all about mindset, and it didn't pay to have too rigid of one.
There were two changelings swooping at him. With the group outnumbered, they hadn't been able to ground all of the drones before they took to the air, and so these two were flexing their supposed advantage by continually diving and snapping at him with their teeth. Trying to herd him and separate him from the others. And he played along with their attempts the whole time, firing off kicks he knew would miss, swinging his head wildly, even rearing once to strike out with his front hooves.
They wanted to exhaust him, demoralize him, and then pounce. That's what Rarity had told him about her own experiences with the swarm. They wore out and frightened their victims, because they only wanted to exert as much physical force as necessary to subdue, and it was so much easier if the pony stopped resisting.
He let them drive him away from the others, and toward the tracks. Tracks that they'd been following for days, that he'd been seeing all the time. Tracks that a certain sort of pony could start to get attached to, even protective of. Some pegasi got attached to a particular view of the sky, and so an earth pony could easily grow to see that a certain feature of the landscape, even a sapient-made one, was theirs.
Big Mac reared, striking out without any intent to hit. Then his hooves came down again, on the tracks.
His was a plant-aligned earth pony, and with an open enough mind, that could mean both plants living and dead.
The wood of the train tracks warped, and the changelings shrieked in the face of a hail of erupting splinters.
Applewood is burning as ponies scream.
She tries to run, but she doesn't know where to run to, not when the sky is dark with thousands of pitch-black bodies. Monsters are swooping from the sky, buzzing like clouds of angry wasps, sharp teeth in disturbingly equine mouths snapping toward manes, tails, anything they can grab hold of or just use to herd everypony. The pegasi are trying to go up, to find the space to fly away, but she can only gallop wildly among her fellow ground-bound, trying to find shelter from the swarm.
She can hear voices of co-workers, clients, friends. Crying out for help, trying to find each other, or just more screams of fear and pain. It's a never-ending tidal wave of sounds that will from then on haunt her nightmares, the sound of her home being devastated and ransacked by creatures like none she's ever seen.
Her entire life is dying around her, being snuffed out in an instant.
As she runs blindly through the streets, she doesn't know that part of her will die today with it.
Three had gone for Fluttershy, but she sensed they were more than a little confused by how the battle was going.
The first instinct for nearly any pegasus was to go up, either to escape a landbound threat or meet an airborne one head-on. And so when she'd opened her wings, the drones had opened theirs, no doubt intending to reach the air before her and try to force her back to ground. It only made sense, as her tribe's domain was the sky, and so keeping her away from it should naturally be the priority. However...
Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Fluttershy can hardly fly...
Her wings opened up right before she slammed one of them into a drone's face.
Most pegasi were at home in the sky, but Fluttershy had spent her entire adult life on the ground. Not out of necessity, but because she'd chosen to go, to shed the clouds to live among the animals who made the land home. She'd learned things, and from more than just Rarity and her insights into fighting changelings. She'd learned from her animals friends that she'd cared for over the years, all the ways that they searched for food, made shelters, and, if need be, defended themselves.
If there's one thing she'd learned from Mr. & Mrs. Swan, it was wings could be weapons.
She didn't like hurting other creatures, but all of the animal caretaking had taught her many ways that creatures could be hurt, including by each other. Wings struck out, at angles meant to maximize their force. Her long tail followed sharp hip motions to strike out like a whip, bowling them over with the sheer weight of thick, voluminous hair. Hooves, front and back, made satisfying cracking sounds against chitin, and one drone drew back with a start when she flat teeth snapped shut inches from their snout.
The worst off was the one who made the mistake of meeting her eyes.
There was no fear in Fluttershy's gaze. They had no doubt seen pony eyes widen with fear more than once, the rising panic of a herd that found themselves surrounded by monsters and would soon devolve into mindless fleeing. Fluttershy's eyes were wide, but the only emotion behind them was a rage and determination that burned to look into. She had a stare that would make a creature do anything, cave to any wish, to just make it stop.
The changeling drone met her eyes, and they were the one to break. Wings buzzed with an uproar of terror, and the jet black body found speeds it had never reached before in a mad dash to get away from the fire in her stare.
And Fluttershy wasn't done yet.
She's lost in the twists and turns, the familiar made alien by smoke, debris, and terror. She can't even see the Applewood sign in the distance, the grounding nature of the iconic landmark gone and leaving her adrift. She doesn't know how long she's been running, doesn't know where it is, and it's too horrifyingly easy to take a wrong turn into a dead end.
"Well well..."
The voice is like poisoned syrup, the dangerously sweet tone rolling off an alien tongue, with a tell-tale buzzing edge like a looming swarm of hornets. The buzzing is purely in the voice, as when she turns, the creature is standing on the ground rather than airborne. The flickering of the flames dance off the armour, illuminating the image of a heart as surely as it reflects off of compound eyes and long fangs.
No escape.
Her sides are heaving with exhausted breaths, her coat soaked with sweat. But she rears up, her front hooves raised in the hope of defending herself.
The monster laughs as she closes in.
Rarity was laughing.
These battles were a grim necessity, just an obstacle between herself and true victory, but there was still something satisfying to showing these changelings that their prey was still dangerous. Anyone they'd ambushed before like this had likely been all the same, frightened creatures scurrying around at the fringes just trying to stay out of sight, quick to break and lose hope when it seemed like they'd join the rest of their kind in captivity.
They had subverted the Royal Guard, had crushed or compromised anypony who'd been trained to put up a fight in the early days of the invasion. They may have forgotten that ponies could fight at all.
Stones, twigs, chunks of dirt, and more whirled around her head, coated in the light of her horn, hurtling into wings, leg-holes, jaws, eyes, anything that would make them draw back and be thrown off-balance. She knew all too well how sturdy they were, and so threw everything she had at them to keep them on their back hooves.
Unicorns would typically try to cast spells when threatened, but those took too much time, and could be interrupted, especially for ponies who hadn't been given the training. Straightforward energy blasts and thrown objects, on the other hoof, were much, much faster. The worst interrupting those would do would throw off her aim, and with three changelings surroundings her, she was bound to still hit something.
They'd long dealt with all the soldiers. They didn't know what to do with a jewel-flanked mare who never ran out of things to throw at them.
Their prey was supposed to be harmless. Helpless.
And Rarity refused to ever be that way.
The hoof presses against her throat, and the fanged beast leans down, a cruel gleam in her eyes. The fight, if one could even call it that, had been over far too fast. After all, what could a pony, with no mark and no training for combat, do against such a creature, covered in armour both natural and artificial, with magic like none she had ever seen? She'd been tossed side with frightening ease, and roughly slammed into the ground.
Soon the buzzing voice pipes up again, directly next to an ear trying to twist away from warm, sickly-sweet breath. "You have spirit, but everyone breaks under the hoof of Queen Chrysalis. And when you're penned together with your friends and neighbours, for us to harvest our fill from... remember that it was General Vixen who put you there."
She'll remember. She will always remember this day, and those words.
And she promises herself that, someday, it'll be her own hoof on Vixen's neck.
Rarity's hoof came down on a drone's throat, and the word hissed its way from between clenched teeth. "Yield."
The changeling squirmed, front legs clawing at the dirt and hind legs kicking out. "When I get my teeth into you, pony--"
Rarity's horn lit, and the drone instinctively flinched away from the light. "I said, yield, unless you'd like this to become all the more unpleasant for you and your friends."
The drone hissed at her, compound eyes glaring up at her defiantly. "Changelings don't have friends."
Her hoof dug that little bit more into the protective chitin, watching thin ears pin back at the grinding sound. "Your cohorts, then. All of you are going to cooperate with us, because we're going to make doing otherwise very hazardous to your health."
The drone moved his head as much as he could, seeing several of his fellows being held down by Big Mac's bulk, while a couple more were being held down by Fluttershy, who had her wings raised in a menacing posture. But he still had some fight in him yet. "We don't yield to food."
Rarity tittered, and she leaned down, bringing her face close to his. "Oh? Food, are we?" She smiled, showing teeth that it was a crime didn't have the sharp points to match the words. "Well then, go ahead and eat. Take your fill. You're no doubt hungry after all of that. What's stopping you?"
Predictably, the mouth opened at the goading, jaw almost seeming to unhinge like a serpent. Then it suddenly snapped shut again, coated in glow, and there was fear in those compound eyes.
Rarity tittered again. "And now we understand each other." She raised her voice, slightly, to address them. "If any of you little dears try to feed, we will retaliate, and ensure that you shan't take a single drop." Her eyes glinted with menace, placing a bit of extra weight on her hoof. "We can stay here all day. Can you? When was the last time any of you ate?"
The drone snarled, the sound muffled by his forced-shut jaws.
"What was that, darling? I certainly hope it was a 'yes, we will answer all of your questions,' for your sakes."
She released the magic, and the drone carefully worked his jaws, before growling, "Fine. What do you want to know, pony?"
"Ah ah ah..." Rarity waved her front leg not occupied with holding him down as she tut-tutted. She then let it drop, the hoof hitting the ground next to his head in a silent threat. "Not 'pony.' You can call me either 'miss,' or 'Rarity,' or 'Miss Rarity.'"
He growled, but when she lit her horn, he relented. "What do you want to know, miss?"
She grinned. "We'll start with the easy questions..."
It's weeks later that she revises her promise, slightly.
She's penned together with a few familiar faces, and mostly strangers. Changelings keep approaching her, opening their mouths, and with each draining, the white-hot core of vengeance in her barrel burns that bit brighter. Love is stripped away bit-by-bit, and where the ponies around her seem to sink further and further into despair, she finds herself scorched by more fury.
General Vixen will pay, but this will be more than petty vengeance. She'll learn to fight back, and she will change this.
They just need to have one slip. Make one mistake. Give her a chance to get away.
And she'll make them regret ever coming here.
For a long while, the only thought in the drone's head was fly.
No changeling wanted to admit to the strength of their flight instinct. They weren't supposed to be afraid of anything--unless that thing was the queen, of course; no changeling was foolish enough to not flee the royal presence post haste after being given orders, because anyone who had been had long been kicked across the continent--because they were what their prey needed to be afraid of. Fearlessness, the willingness to charge at a beast several times their size if that was what the hive required, was a virtue.
None wanted to face down the fact that, on their own and isolated, they were a little bug with the drive to scuttle into the shadows away from what may try to swat them.
By the time that the fog in her mind lifted and the drone slowed to a stop in the air, her entire body felt like it was burning from exertion, and she sank toward the ground as it dawned on her what she'd just done. A pony, nothing but food, had just placed something in her head that made her abandon the others.
She laid on the dusty ground, wings buzzing uncertainly. Should she... go back? It felt like there wasn't much point. If they were okay, they'd probably kick her around for having been a coward. If they weren't, she'd be waltzing back into the gaze of that terrifying pony with no way how to stop from being taken over by it again.
She shivered. Food wasn't supposed to have that kind of power.
She looked around, and it dawned on her that she couldn't see the railway anymore. Even if she wanted to go back, she wasn't sure she knew the way. She was fairly certain that she'd flown in a straight line, but she'd been in such a blind frenzy that she couldn't be sure.
She was... lost.
She looked at the sun overhead. She was supposed go back to the town. That was the point, that she was supposed to alert them to any ponies that were traveling toward it, and hunt for any sign that they were looking for loved ones. But maybe she'd have a better chance getting back to the capitol, and reporting what had happened. Though, if she'd thought the kicking she'd get from her teammates would be bad, the queen would surely be worse.
They'd been out here for days without a single pony. They'd been getting so hungry. And then when a meal had landed on their backs, it'd all gone wrong.
We won.
She went up again, and flew a small circle, trying to spot any landmarks.
We crushed Canterlot. The princess was cast down. We have the ponies of Equestria in the frogs of our hooves.
Eventually, her wings buzzed harder, and she took off toward the mountains in the far distance. The others would be able to alert the town, she was sure. If she tried to find it herself, she'd just get more and more lost.
Or worse, meet the the pegasus's eyes again.
How did that pony make me feel like we're the ones who are doomed?
It was magic. Just magic. The yellow and pink mare had gotten into her head.
Food aren't supposed to have that kind of power.
An anomaly. That's all it was. One strange pony.
She'd return to the queen, and everything would be perfect again.
The ponies huddle together for sleep. A few of them are foals, separated from their parents, and they press to her sides. It doesn't matter that they don't know her, that she's a stranger to them. She's a pony, and that's all that matters right now. An adult who they can shelter near, when they need to feel as though somepony is watching over them. That somepony will protect them, when the monsters come back.
She will. She'll protect them.
No matter what it takes.