The Chronicles of Swarm: The Equestrian Front

by kildeez

Chapter XXIV: The Sisters' Struggle

After nearly half an hour of struggling, Celestia and Luna managed to spit out their gags and wriggle about twenty feet away from where they had started, leaving just three miles for them to go before reaching Coltton. “That dirty little…” Luna started grumbling.

“Luna, please don’t say anything against Discord,” Celestia muttered quietly.

“Why shouldn’t we, sister? He hath betrayed our entire cause for…”

“He hasn’t betrayed anything,” Celestia replied. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Just face facts, sister! We were taken for a ride by the most neglectful, hateful, little…”

“LUNA!” Celestia barked, and this time her sister saw the rage-filled tears welling in her eyes, the way her lips quivered as they continued along. Finally, Luna fell quiet, and for the next ten minutes the princesses worked their way along in silence.

“Celestia,” Luna said, finally breaking the quiet. “I…I’m sorry, I just…we wish to understand what just happened to us.”

After a short pause, Celestia came up with a decent reply: “Discord fooled us in the most incredible way possible. A way I could never see coming.”

“Yes,” Luna nodded. “Okay sister, I will believe…LOOK!”

Celestia craned her neck, peering over the hill they’d just scaled. At the bottom laid a certain Asian humanoid, now clad in his regular business attire and still unconscious. “Finally! I thought we’d never find him!” She exclaimed, rolling down the hill to his side. Luna soon followed, and immediately the sisters started jabbing the man’s sides with their hooves, sticking out ever so slightly from the bundles of USB cables wrapped around their hind legs.

“Swarm! Come now, this is no time for sleep!” Luna yelled.

“He isn’t just sleeping,” Celestia realized aloud as the humanoid remained firmly unconscious. “Whatever Discord did to him has him fully incapacitated. I highly doubt anything short of a magical burst or something to interrupt Discord’s hold would bring him back.”

“Well then,” Luna immediately charged up her horn, filling it with as much dark energy as she could for one massive burst of power. A purple burst of lightning arced from her horn, only to fizzle out before it could even touch Swarm. “Wha-what?”

“It must be these bindings,” Celestia grimaced. “Not only are they immune to magic, but they’re draining what power we do have!”

“Why would Discord do that!?” Luna moaned, slamming herself against the ground in frustration. “He already has us bound and sealed off from the nether-dimension! Why go to the trouble of draining our powers!?”

“Because Swarm might be able to open the portal to the nether again, and then we might interfere.”

“Interfere? Interfere with what!?” Celestia didn’t reply, only peering over her shoulder at the meadow they had just escaped with the saddest look Luna had ever seen on her face. “Right, later,” the Princess of Night said, throwing herself into a renewed struggle with her bonds. Lashing around and bucking this way and that, she barely even noticed when the tip of her hoof scratched against Swarm’s face. The man grimaced and turned over in his sleep.

“Wait a moment…” Celestia said. Rolling over to his side, she reared her bound hooves up and brought them down on the man’s chest as hard as she could. The man groaned before settling in against the grass once more.

“Sister!” Luna gasped. “We know thou must be quite frustrated with our current predicament, but that is no reason to lash out against our bipedal comrade!”

“He can still feel!” Celestia said. “Don’t you see? Whatever sleep spell Discord has him in isn’t as deep as he may like!”

“So we might be able to wake him up!?”

“I doubt it,” Celestia’s eyebrows wrinkled in thought. “But I think we can get his self-defense mechanisms to bring him back to something resembling coherency. Maybe not fully awake, but aware enough to send out a distress signal!”

“Well, if all it shall take is enough pain inflicted upon our comrade,” Luna said, raising a hoof over Swarm’s groin and aiming an apologetic look his way. “Sorry, dearest friend,” she sighed before bringing her hooves down with all her might.

The man gasped, his eyes bugging wide open as a high-pitched tone erupted from his throat, climbing in pitch and volume beyond the sisters’ ability to hear it, but to still feel it. “God above, that’s awful! ‘Tis like a thousand cats being thrown under a steamroller!” Luna moaned, wishing desperately for freed hooves to block her ears.

“You’ve never hit a stallion there, have you sister?” Celestia replied, clenching her teeth in pain. The scream dragged on and on until, all at once, it stopped. The man in the business suit made one last little gasp, not too unlike the sound an air hose makes right when it’s closed off, before collapsing back into unconsciousness.

Their ears ringing, the princesses gazed warily at one another. “Was that the signal?” Luna wondered aloud.

“I do hope so,” Celestia replied.

“Well, darn. That was rather loud, but what do you suppose the odds that anyone even heard it are? Probably not too good, right?”

Celestia noticed something in the corner of her eye, and looked upwards. She smiled at the sight of a small ball of light rocketing out of the clouds towards them. “Oh, I don’t know. I for one like to hope for the best.”

Immediately, the ball landed not twenty yards away from them, sending shockwaves rippling across the valley and messing up the princesses’ manes. A massive cloud of dust punched up into the sky, out of which sprang a man in a leather jacket with jet-black hair and two pistols in his hands: a .38 Peacemaker in one, a Colt M1911 in the other. As they watched, the man tucked and rolled off one shoulder and landed at the sisters’ sides, weapons trained on them.

“Wah-oh! Princesses! My eternal apologies,” Swarm quickly holstered his pistols and bowed. “I just heard a cry from my brother and reacted was all, I didn’t mean any…”

“Swarm, Discord is launching a suicide charge against the enemy and he’s disabled your brother to keep us from interfering.” Celestia interrupted.

Luna gaped at her sister. “What!?” She gasped, horrified.

Swarm grimaced. “Greatest trickster I ever did know,” he mumbled, pressing a hand to his brother’s forehead. After a few moments, his eyes shimmered and the grimace deepened.

“Well?” Celestia asked.

“Discord does have something over him,” Swarm replied. “It might take a few minutes, but I think I can…no, FUCK! C’mon, you slippery little…yes…yes…no…NO…NO YOU LITTLE…”

“Swarm?”

“It’s some sort of virus, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before! It’s emitting a series of mild electromagnetic pulses throughout my brother’s body to keep him incapacitated, but every time I track it down…yes…yes…c’mon…” he grimaced, sweat dripping down his forehead. “…no, NO, FUCK! It keeps jumping to a new component whenever I think I’ve got a grip on it! It’s so damn fast, almost like...”

“Something is guiding it around by hand?” Celestia shook her head, “That wonderfully glorious bastard.”

“I think I can…” suddenly, Swarm looked up at the sky and screamed: “Aw, C’MON! One thing at a time, please!”

“What is it!?” Luna gasped.

“Nothing much,” he replied, raising one hand while keeping the other pressed to his brother’s forehead. “Just another thing to handle, just another thing…” sweat dripped off his eyebrow from sheer concentration. His breathing became labored, as if he was running out of strength to devote to it.

“Perhaps we could…” Luna began.

“NO! No need, ladies,” he said, shooting an exhausted grin their way. “Just put your…hooves up and relax; I’ve got this-is-is-is…”

The princesses watched as for a few seconds, Swarm jerked and repeated the same motion over and over again, not too unlike a record caught in a loop. He quickly returned to his work without even thinking about it. The girls eyed each other warily. “Swarm, are you very sure you’re…”

“Of-of course *bzzt* course! Why-why-why wouldn’t I be? I am the-the-the-the-the-the-the…” he smacked himself. “I am the one everybody turns to when they g-get problems, so how could I have…” He paused mid-announcement. “I-oh, no. Nonononononono…”

“Swarm?”

“I’ll be right back!” He screamed, and suddenly he was gone, even as the sisters screamed for him to be careful.

“Oh dear,” Luna sighed. “We’re really in trouble this time, aren’t we sister?”

Celestia nodded. “The hour has not been this desperate since Chrysalis’s attack on Canterlot.”

They continued eyeing the sky warily, until Luna spoke again: “Sister?”

“Yes, Lulu?”

Taken aback by Celestia’s use of her old nickname, along with the desperation of their situation, Luna completely forgot her question. “N-nevermind,” she said, pausing for a few moments before remembering again.

“Sister?”

“Yes?”

“Dost thou think we should have asked Swarm to free us whilst he was still here?”

“Shit.”