The state of shock Jack was in was completely indescribable. Dealing with one of the most dangerous villains Equestria has known was enough, but having to deal with two different villains at once?
“Uhh… Umm… Err…” Jack stumbled, hoping to find something to break the awkward silence, but instead just ended up attracting himself more attention from the changelings.
While he had escaped from the original danger he had encountered, now he was dealing with additional trouble. With Discords irregular body blocking the only small exit within a reachable distance, Jack slowly began backing up. His heart was beating fast, his eyes were jumping from one place to another, and his legs were twitching nervously. Every time he did something to escape, run away, or just acted on impulse, things rarely worked out in his favor. Instead of just running away, Jack was going to fight his way out. But Discord had a different plan.
“My, my! What might this little changeling be trying to do, escape his own colony?” Discord boomed to ensure the entire audience was able to hear.
Discord’s booming voice echoed several times in the dome-sealed town, each time, however, it said something slightly different.
“Run away from his colony”
“Escape his colony”
“Escape his queen”
“Escape his fate”
‘Fate?’ Jack thought, ‘What does ‘fate’ have to do with any of this? Was I destined to come to Equestria all along…?’
Despite Chrysalis being a great distance away from Jack, she was still able to lock on and identify his emotionally wracked thoughts. The grin she sported caused many of the surrounded ponies to back into their changeling captors, causing multiple violent reactions, which eventually broke into a surprise brawl in the midst of the silent town. Discord, who was still analyzing his greatest threat, broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and began to cry a river. Literally.
The river which had been created broke a line through the changeling forces and began working its way towards Chrysalis. Not expecting to be mauled by a large force of water, Chrysalis was caught off guard and got sent several feet backwards before rolling out of the freshly created stream.
“I see you pulled the first move…” Chrysalis snarled, “Not quite what I was expecting, and not nearly as effective as I expected…”
“Sorry, what was that Chrissy? Are we in a fight again?” Discord said in a whiny voice.
After a quick spin around, Discord was now wearing a tuxedo as well as holding a posy of flowers. He tossed the flowers to the ground and while sporting a completely unbelievable pouting face began pointing and yelling at Chrysalis.
“I try to keep you happy, but all you ever do is complain!” Discord exclaimed, “It’s over! We’re over! I’m moving out, and I want the china!”
The changeling queen knew that Discord was a being of chaos, and she had no idea what his next move might have been. In order to get the upper hoof, she initiated an attack of her own, causing a large building nearby to have the roof quickly torn off and thrown towards him. Surprised by the sudden change of the queen’s attitude, Discord ducked, and the flowers on the ground exploded into a cloud of smoke. Less than a second later, Chrysalis found the draconequus just behind her, resting a paw on her back.
“Oh common, Chrissy!” Discord said in a playful voice, “You at least have to tell me to… Duck!”
With that being said, the changeling queen now sported a yellow beak on her face, and Discord broke into another fit of laughter. Chrysalis was not amused with Discord’s antics, and was disappointed that he refused to fight back. Either he would fight her, or she would have a significant advantage in his destruction. Knowing that Discord was distracted by her new beak, Chrysalis charged the draconequus, tackling him to the ground and slamming her new facial feature into his chest.
Discord let out a solid “Ooomph” as the air escaped his lungs, and felt a warm liquid seeping out of his chest. In a roar of frustration, Discord shoved the changeling off of him and rose to his feet.
“You!” He boomed, as lightning struck from a freshly created cloud in the sky, “Have just crossed the line!”
After quickly drawling a line with his paw, he pointed downwards and continued.
“That line right there, you see? You just crossed it. And now you’ll have to pay.”
-Meanwhile-
Jack had more than enough problems as is, and with an entire horde of changelings charging towards him, all he could do was try to remain calm. He knew he was no good at magic, and he also knew that he had practiced no physical combat while in the Equine form. So he just winged it. And by winged it, he took off and began flying around the dome-like shield. In the sky, Jack knew the basics of flying, and he could at least try to use some of the basic magic he knew.
‘I think two basics can beat one… As long as they don’t have the same idea as me…’ Jack thought.
Luckily for Jack, the changelings were apparently terrible at multi-tasking. As he bombarded his followers with weak bolts of magic, they attempted to do the same, yet many of them fell as a result from poor coordination, being hit by one of Jack's bolts, or being hit by an ally's bolt.
‘Well, I guess it’s hard to fly, use magic, and avoid assault all at the same time…’ Jack thought, ‘But at least I don’t have to worry about anything in front of me.’
It would have been completely ironic if an oncoming changeling decided to cut him off from the front, but instead he was cut off by a cyan blur, causing him to ricochet into a nearby tree.
“Don’t worry, I’m here to help!” Rainbow exclaimed, pausing dramatically for a moment before she decided to charge directly into the oncoming changeling forces.
Jack, now tangled up in a series of tree branches, attempted to wriggle himself free. As a result he ended up collapsing onto the ground, where the changelings were fighting… each other? Of course they weren't actually fighting each other, the rogue changelings that had attempted to help Jack had just conveniently ended up within his vicinity, fighting the changelings attempting to take them back to the queen. Barely able to tell which ones were on his team, he decided that it would be best to fight with the side with fewer numbers, because odds have it he would at least be able to ask some of the changelings basic questions to determine which side they were on. By the time he had risen to his feet, he was granted with an important piece of information regarding which team he was on.
“How nice of you… To join us…” One of the changelings hissed.
Since the changeling sounded a lot like Lyra, he instantly jumped the changeling that was flanking her and began pounding on it with his hooves. For a brief moment, Jack felt like he was in power. He could taste the fear of the changeling beneath his body, and was feeding off its demise.
The power began to go to his head, and he failed to notice several changelings behind him, or the friendly changelings yelling at him to ‘Watch out!’, ‘Look behind you!’, or ‘Duck!’. After being tackled and piled on by several changelings, Jack was knocked completely out of breath, and for a moment he thought he was dying. Then he realized the combined weight of the changelings was preventing him from breathing; he was suffocating.
>---<
Discord was now much less talkative now that the fight between him and Chrysalis had actually begun. As Chrysalis shot several damage building pieces in his direction, he counter attacked by creating a small tornado and whirling it in her direction. Not only did the tornado pick up each of the wrecked building parts, but it also caused her to receive a massive blow to her face by few bricks. Knocked to the ground, Chrysalis landed into a roll to rise back up onto her hooves.
“You put up a good fight, Discord,” Chrysalis hissed, “But you still don’t know what tricks I have up my sleeve!”
“You’re right, I don’t” Discord giggled, pulling something out of his tuxedo sleeve, “But you don’t know what I have up my sleeve either!”
Without time to react, Chrysalis felt a sharp pain in her chest, and moments later looked down to see a playing card roughly an inch deep. Somehow, a paper card had pierced through a rock hard chitin and was now causing her to bleed profusely from the tiny cut.
“Now we’re even. Do you want to continue?”
Strangely enough, a small two-dimensional menu popped up just in front of Chrysalis’ face in a very low resolution with a ‘Yes/No’ option. In a distasteful growl, she ran through the illusion and ordered her changelings to attack the draconequus. Taking to the air, Chrysalis summoned sickly-green chains to grab Discord’s legs, which Discord then tore out of the ground and smacked the nearby changelings with a full 360 degree spin attack.
‘Comon… Lyra… Need… Air…’ Chrysalis heard a familiar yet irritating voice.
Technically she didn't hear the voice at all, but the emotions formed such exact shapes they were identified as something almost identical to alphabetical spelling forming shapes (or words).
Being well aware of who had just thought that statement, she thought of an interesting strategy she could use to manipulate the others to help her against the battle with Discord. Speaking of Discord, he was busy fending off her lesser minions, thus Chrysalis decided to dart over towards the pile of changelings on top of Jack. She looked down and smiled an almost seductive smile towards the crushed changeling.
“Such a pity, really, I expected more of a fight from you four.” Chrysalis stated, looking at the rogue changelings fighting against her almost endless forces.
Encompassed in a thick green aura, Jack felt himself being pulled free from the mass of changelings by a powerful magical force.
“Oh… Finally… Air…” Jack panted, “Uh… Oh…”
Being face to face with Chrysalis while on bad terms on her was not going to go in his favor, and Chrysalis simply pulled him away with her and flew to the top of a nearby building.
“Every living thing, eyes on me!” Chrysalis bellowed.
The fighting stopped, as Discord ducked under one last changeling diving towards him, and then creating a nice beak on him as well. Chrysalis, now having the entire town quiet and staring at her once more, quickly dispelled the beak spell on herself and began to speak.
“I have the one known as ‘Jack’ right here. If you know what’s good for yourselves, and you want to keep him alive, surrender yourselves now!” She boomed.
The small crowd of ponies, exhausted from dealing with more than three changelings at a time each, broke out into a series of whispers. Then, one of them simply bowed down to the queen, followed by another, then another. Eventually, all ponies and changeling rebels were bowing down in a wave like fashion, and Chrysalis gave another evil grin.
“That doesn’t mean I have to stop, does it?” Discord asked, “I don’t care about that changeling anyways!”
Surprisingly enough, Discord broke into another fight with the changelings, his fists to bash the changelings out of the air and his feet to keep them a distance away. However, with the remainder of the changelings now being freed of their pony competitors, the mass of changelings was enough to overwhelm the draconequus, who was eventually taken to the ground. Taking Jack with her, Chrysalis flew over and cast some sort of magic over Discord’s restrained body.
“Chaos isn’t everything. Sometimes you just need allies, my dear Discord.” Chrysalis snarled sarcastically.
Jack, who was still suspended in the air, felt himself being filled with an overwhelming amount of anger. The source of the anger was unknown to him; more than likely it was the combined emotions of the draconequus and the ponies around him, but he felt like he was going to explode, and when he did, he was going to take the entire town with him. Slowly encompassing himself in a lighter green aura than that of Chrysalis, Jack felt the magic flowing freely from himself and into the surroundings around him. His horn began releasing tiny sparks, and Jack felt a strange malignant aura fill his body. When a sudden multicolored blur tackled the changeling queen in front of him, the surprise caused Jack to lose focus, and he felt the magical energy escape his grasp.
>---<
The force released felt as if Jack had just pushed his body from the inside out. He felt as though limbs were stretching far beyond normal reach, as if organs were shifting, as if his blood had been replaced with a strong acid. The flow of energy was burning him from the inside and outside as the magical energy was transferred from one medium to another, a slow and agonizing process which typically occurred in young unicorns unable to fully control their magical output.
Jack was in a state that one would experience right before falling asleep. Being aware of the surroundings, sounds, feelings, but in such a state that that he practically doesn’t react at all. As the energy dissipated from his body, a large sphere now encompassed him, and he collapsed onto the bottom of the sphere. Glowing with massive amounts of wild energy, everypony, including Discord (whom the changelings dismounted after the magical outburst became obvious) and Chrysalis, all slowly backed away. Unstable magic was exceptionally rare, and nopony dared touch anything that had been tainted by something so wild. The only known occurrence of such magic was in the Everfree forest, and that was one of the few reasons that everypony was so fearful.
“Well then…” Discord said, while brushing off some dirt from his bloody chest, “What do we do with him?”
Without a single noise to be made, Chrysalis knew exactly what she wanted to do. Of course what she was going to do was completely insane and could endanger everypony there, but she could care less. Ponies were nothing more than meat sacks, a source of food for her, and she knew that the changelings she had left behind would be able to rebuild the colony should anything happen to her. With a wicked grin spread across her face, Chrysalis took a small step forward and smashed her hoof into the green sphere.