//------------------------------//
// Chapter 83 
// Story: Don't Bug Me 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Amie glared at Natane, and through her to the queen who watched all the way from Sonoma. In those multifaceted eyes and a face covered in tattoos, she saw no trace of compassion, fear, or even simple concern. There was only cold calculation, acceptance of inevitability.
She didn’t slow down, focusing instead on reaching the exit as quickly as she could. “You’re wrong, Kaya,” she said, focusing on the path ahead. It wasn’t much longer now, a few more turns, and they would reach the former queue line. That area was now an informal center of camp, the only place big enough for large gatherings. A projector pointed at a large display, and many cushions and chairs arranged around them for movie night.
No movie played now, and only a scattered few bugs remained—soldiers with weapons, gathered in a loose bunch around the opposite entrance.
If a trained army gets this far, all these kids are dead. And everyone past them…
“Still you persist?” she said, voice now filled with pity. “Yet you were wise enough not to be on the surface in your true body. Even you could see this truth. Do not deny it.”
Amie transformed in a flash, growing taller and more hardened, with a stark white coat and orange mane. She lost her wings, but flight was no longer as important as magic. She picked the most pathetic-looking of the soldiers, someone with a bow—and levitated it right out of their grip. “You. Quiver, now. Get to your cabin.”
The kid whimpered, offering both with little more resistance. She felt his relief as he galloped away. Only when she was armed again did she turn back to the watching queen, striding back towards the exit. “We don’t have to fight off Equestria, just hold them off long enough for the princess to end the invasion.”
Natane burst out laughing, cruel and loud in the now-empty tunnel. “The princesses of Equestria will do nothing to prevent this slaughter. The compassion of their empire applies only to their own kind. They will sit by during the slaughter and weep for the dead. They will do nothing to intervene. Since the failure of the Erovores, we may no longer hide ourselves in obscurity. We are a hideous blight on their world, the hungering presence that feasts on their helpless, perfect ponies. They were content to starve your tribe in the mountains, Amie Blythe! Do you imagine they were unaware of the consequences? They knew it was a death sentence.”
Hooves pounded on pavement. Shouts echoed in the distance, ordering advance. Not campers, she didn’t have a single “soldier” who could project such anger and bloodthirst. 
“When this ends, you may not have the strength to begin another swarm elsewhere. Perhaps it would be better if you did not—the anomaly is not here—while he lives, an avenue for greater study exists. If you do persist after such a defeat, come to Sonoma. We will find a place for you.”
Gunfire shook the confined space, booming down the hall. That was a shotgun, followed by several shots from smaller weapons. Amie sped up, rounding the corner as quickly as she could.
The surface entrance was collapsed as they had intended. But just as she feared, the damage was far less than they needed to close it completely. Instead, a passage wide enough for a single pony at a time remained open, into the broken wreckage of what had been the gift shop. Small fires now burned back there, probably spreading as time went on.
The destruction of that particular resource was already an inevitability. Despite the damage, soldiers massed in the space behind.
Amie couldn't see very many of them directly, so much as feel their influence. They overflowed with aggression and hostility, along with a decent dosage of fear.
"Stand down your attack!" Tailslide yelled, his voice almost as powerful and confident as the attacking ponies. He now lingered in the entrance, waiting beside the armed soldiers. He still had the spear, otherwise useless at range. But if the invading forces got their way, it soon wouldn't be. "Equestria is negotiating peace with the leader of this faction. She's a guest of the princess right now! Send a message to Canterlot and ask!"
The attackers ignored him. Before her eyes, another group advanced, every single one of them a pegasus. Some held shields, spears or blades. There were no unicorns, or ranged weapons.
Commander Path is so eager to kill us he doesn't even wait to do a proper deployment. He drops shock troops directly, even with the building on fire. Where does he think we'll go?
"Second line, up!" barked a voice, harsh and commanding. Up they came, closing in on the opening with a single heavily-armored pony at the front.
"We don't want to do this!" Albrecht yelled. He now held several rifles at once, all simultaneously balanced in his magic. The old director really was quite talented, when he had more information. "We will defend ourselves! Back away now!"
They didn't back away. Hooves scraped through the dirt, along with the muttering of orders and positions.
“Amie,” the old director whispered. "Get back. The next few minutes… I will not be so lucky the second time. One of us has to live for this camp.”
One of us… She opened her mouth to reply, but was too slow.
“Keep them safe when I’m gone.” Then he shoved--a burst of magic slammed into her, throwing her away from the opening. Amie whimpered, rolled through the air, then smacked against the wall. Just as gunshots rang out through the cavern. She couldn’t see exactly what happened next, but she felt the bursts of pain, heard the screams through the torrential roar of modern firearms, dozens of shots in the same time it to Equestria to fire a handful.
The advance halted, and some of the bloodlust Amie felt turned to pain and terror. Ponies knew projectile weapons, otherwise her camp wouldn't have been reduced to rubble. But they clearly weren't expecting this. 
The first time might've been warning shots. These ponies haven't been shot before.
"Third rank!" demanded another voice, from further back. "Into position! Reserve, remove the wounded! Where are our unicorns?"
"Coming!" someone answered. Someone she couldn't see, just like all the important voices. They were clustered in the collapsed gift-shop, or else standing around outside it.
"You're dying for no reason!" Amie shouted, reaching Tailslide by the soldiers. "Ponies, stop your attack! We want to surrender! Call Commander Path, get a negotiator down here. No one else has to die!"
Those words attracted sudden attention, from both sides. Bugs turned towards her, while the pace of fighting outside slowed. Only the moans of the wounded remained, at least a dozen ponies scattered around the entrance in various states of injury. 
Finally, another voice answered. "May we remove our wounded without fear?Will you strike down the medics?"
"You may!" Amie stepped forward, brushing past Tailslide, then the other soldiers in turn. She pushed their weapons aside with her magic, as she went. Just as well that they would stop— their shotguns held only two shells at a time before needing to be reloaded. "My soldiers will not fire. Please, get a negotiator. No one here wants more ponies dead."
There was no reply at first, just the commands of ponies directing medics in and out in a steady stream. Medics wearing white and red appeared from further in, dragging away the injured on stretchers. Amie felt their shock and surprise as vibrantly as from the soldiers themselves.
Then her own medics rushed forward. They had far less skill than a trained army--really just campers and counselors with a little first aid experience. She wouldn’t put their only nurse anywhere near this hell.
A few seconds later, they returned from the front, dragging several stretchers in her direction. Two had bugs with minor injuries--but not the third.
Albrecht must’ve been shot a dozen times from the vicious insect hemolymph smeared onto his cloth. His body did not move, and she felt no trace of emotion from him.
Yet as the medics covered him with a cloth, Amie couldn’t help but feel as though something was different about him. It must be the light of the cavern that made his shell look so much like stained glass--that, and the blood.
Equestria hadn't expected resistance like this. Changelings were bugs, who fought in a swarm of physical attacks. Heavy armor was the ultimate counter—but chain and thin metal plates did very little at point blank range against firearms.
She had some of her own guilt too, of course. She'd walked in their armory—heard their soldiers preparing for this attack. She saw their weapons, knew their battle strategy. Many of these brave stallions knew Rain Fly, at least incidentally. Not the one commanding them now.
"Sandbags," Amie ordered, gesturing at the opening. "You two. Get the reserves to bring them too. As many as possible."
They hurried off to obey, leaving their weapons behind with eagerness to be somewhere, anywhere else. She could hardly blame them.
That only left three of them at the exit—Amie, Tailslide, and another staff member—the camp tech, now transformed into a bulky, muscular griffon. He looked almost handsome that way—not the form Amie had helped him take, but his bravery. This disaster has forced so many of us to grow beyond what we thought possible.
"Unicorns to the front!" someone yelled—the same officer as before. More ponies shifted, rearranging themselves. Every pegasus with a shield dropped it, removing their spears or other weapons from their sheaths. 
"They'll shield this time." Tailslide drew his own spear, backing towards Amie. "I don't know... I don't know if I can do this. Those stallions and mares aren't killers or invaders. They think they're protecting their homes."
"So are we." Amie drew the arrows from her quiver—all of them. They floated into position behind her into a line, easy to find their place when she fired them. "I don't want to kill those ponies. But I won't let my kids get murdered. What else can we do? How do we stop them?"
"Can the young queen match their barrier with one of her own?" asked another voice. Natane, speaking from just behind her. Like the pony officers, she kept well away from the opening, protecting herself from whatever fire came through it. But she was still here.
You care more than you want me to realize. You could hide in the bottom and wait for this to be over. Instead, you're right here, where your drone will die first. That bug was a person, not just a worker. Wes would be heartbroken if something happened to Natane.
But Wes might have a whole camp's worth of reasons to feel upset, as soon as he completed his journey to... whatever waited up north. There might not be a Stella Lacus left for him to come home to.
"That spell exists in my record, along with many others. I saw her studying while caring for her first eggs. Surely she must have observed some magic of usefulness."
Amie shook her head sharply, lifting the bow a little higher. "I learned some spells. No defenses, only... other things." Her eyes narrowed, focusing on the shifting outlines of unicorns visible in the distance.
The pony formation massed outside the effective range of crossbows, though it wouldn't protect them from marksmen or sharpshooters from within. But Amie didn't have snipers, much less ponies skilled enough to wield them.
She did have a growing barrier of sandbags, clogging up the entrance one sack at a time. They were already at knee level and growing by the second.
"I think ponies died in the first wave," Tailslide whispered. "There was so much blood. It's muddy out there now. Your weapons are... terrible."
Amie nodded weakly. She had seen only a single death, but it was enough to chill her insides. "These were meant for sport shooting. You don’t want to know what real human weapons are like, Tailslide. This would not be a fight if we had them, no matter how many unicorns they brought.”
"Yet you subject yourselves to such violence," Queen Kaya said, through Natane. She sat down against the wall, near the back of the room. Before Amie's eyes, her drone transformed, becoming a soldier pony complete with equestrian armor. That, and wounds—blood glittered from an opening in his armor, though curiously it never moved. It remained there, more like a gel than true blood. It also didn't seem to have an impact on his ability to have a conversation. "You must feel it, Amie. They do not intend to wait. They radiate suspicion and anger. Those ponies want revenge."
Tailslide looked between them, expression increasingly horrified. With every passing second, his face grew paler, sicker. "You will kill to protect your home," he finally said. "And so will we. Many will die."
Amie pushed past him again, magically amplifying her voice. The spell was relatively simple, so simple she could absorb it passively just by watching the drills on Agate grounds. 
"Come no further, Equestrians! We do not want to kill you! But you attacked us—you came to our mountain; you destroyed our home. Now you send soldiers into a shelter filled with terrified children. We won't stand and let you murder our foals! Send a message to Canterlot! Get a negotiator! We will surrender peacefully! Don't do this!"
Maybe it was her desperation—maybe they planned on it every moment.
Whatever the reason, something finally happened. A pony appeared from among the soldiers, flanked by a pair of unicorns in golden armor. Commander Path stepped forward, approaching the entrance with deliberate steps. "You face death at the hooves of my army, insect. Come forward then and speak."
Amie whispered a silent thought to the worker whose body she had borrowed. They might die today during this moment. But if she didn't act, they would still die, along with everyone else.
Tailslide appeared beside her. He set his weapon down, then followed her into the light.