The Chronicles of Swarm: The Equestrian Front

by kildeez

Chapter LV: The True Swarm

The dome rippled and buckled, heaving against itself, its chrome surface strained to contain the terrors within. Where it's edges met the ground, a few visible cracks formed with a low ripping sound, like cardboard being torn by someone’s bare hands. “Oh God,” Webb backed up a few paces, his hands raised over his face, as if that could protect him.

“It’s happening!” Vance screamed. “Michael’s breaking loose!”

Immediately, a dark glare washed over the sisters’ faces. They each assumed a battle-ready stance, wing-tip touching wing-tip, heads lowered, hooves spread out. “Captain, I kindly request that you and your men flee immediately.” Celestia said.

“You’ve all done your part to protect Equestria, now ‘tis our turn.” Luna added.

“Go? Where are we supposed to go!?” Webb screamed. “That’s the apocalypse in there!”

“To your respective worlds,” Celestia stated flatly. “At least there, you will all be safe.”

“Princess,” Vance said. “I hate to break it to ya, but we’re not done here.”

“The enemy is defeated.”

“Defeating the enemy wasn’t our objective here! It was protecting Equestria!”

“IF YOU STAY, YOU’LL DIE! THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO HERE!” She barked, glaring right into his eyes.

“You’re actin’ like we’ve got any choice,” Webb sighed, kneeling on the ground beside the Princess. “We’re just as stuck here as you are.”

“What?” Luna asked, her eyes widening in confusion.

“Swarm was our ride outta here,” Vance explained, hooking a thumb at the dome. “I don’t think he’s in any condition to be givin’ lifts to anybody, do you?”

“Buh-but…your command!” Celestia gasped. “Swarm told me your people had developed their own methods of inter-universal travel!”

“Which have to be activated on their end, and Swarm was our only way to communicate with them.” Vance shrugged nonchalantly. “Without him, we’ll have to wait for the daily check-in, which doesn’t happen for a few more hours.”

“And even then, they won’t even think to look here. They’ll be checking at the original campsite a few miles away.” Webb added helpfully.

“Ah yes, that’s right. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“But there has to be some way! You can’t…” Luna trailed off, looking desperately into each man’s eyes. They both shook their heads at her, slowly, sadly. “You mustn’t! This is…”

“Either we save Equestria, or we die with it,” Webb said simply. “That’s the deal.”

The Princesses looked at them in shock, completely stunned. Behind the four, the dome buckled and strained, a faint buzzing noise escaping from it. Finally, Celestia’s face darkened. “Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay, if that’s the deal…”

“Lieutenant!” Luna barked. Webb immediately stood at attention, saluting out of sheer force of habit. “We wish for you to retrieve the Elements and explain the situation to them. Bring them here: we may need their help to maintain this level of magic.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Webb barked, immediately turning and sprinting back to the hole he knew the six ponies would be waiting in.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Celestia turned to Vance. “Captain, for you I have a special request.”

“Anything, Princess,” the Captain looked her right in the eye, standing ramrod straight.

“Please keep my sister and I occupied,” the sisters’ hooves joined, Luna looking into Celestia’s eyes with concern. “Our magic has already been pushed to its limit today. I fear this task will break those limits…and in the process break our minds.”

“What do you want me to do?” Vance asked, pure determination and manly grit on his face.

“Remember when we were maintaining the barrier to give your men cover, and you helped us remain focused?”

The Captain’s face dropped. “SERIOUSLY!? You want me to do THAT again!?”

“Captain,” Celestia smiled weakly as she sank to her knees, her sister dropping gracefully beside her. “We wouldn’t be asking if it were not important.”

He sighed, hands running through his thinning hair. “If this gets out, I’m ruined.”

“It won’t.”

“Alright,” he sighed, kneeling in a spot between them, his hands gently resting in their manes. “I’m serious, though: if I hear about this among the men, you two are my first targets.”

“Understood,” Luna sighed, touching her horn to Celestia’s. “Captain, you may begin when ready.”

Nodding, his voice rose above the clamor of the dome. Any human over the age of 15 would recognize it immediately: Hootie and the Blowfish. Let Her Cry.

Squeezing one another’s hooves, the sisters closed their eyes. When they opened them again, they filled with white light, pure power circulating through their bodies. Light coalesced around the three, circulating and cycling in tendrils of energy, the Princesses’ magic preparing itself for one final push to save Equestria. And through it all, the Captain’s voice rose, deep, soothing, and blasting like a certain 90’s pop singer’s deep baritone.

The tendrils circulated around one another, forming one massive beam of light that arched high over the battlefield and impacted right on the dome’s summit. The magic quickly spread throughout the structure, its flickering white energy mixing with the dome’s fading silver. The Princesses gasped as the full brunt of containing Michael fell on them, their magic struggling to remain whole as it cascaded along the dome’s surface like a dozen tiny rivers, solidifying into a giant net in an attempt to hold the structure together.

“Oh, it’s like a trillion little mouths trying to devour us!” Luna strained, her voice raised by the sheer force of magic she had to use. The dome wracked and buckled, but held strong with the help of their magic, albeit just barely.

“Oh Maker above, Swarm!? Is this what Discord was talking about…” Celestia moaned, blinking back tears of agony as memories of the lost draconequus surged through her mind. “Was he trying to warn us? Is this what you really are!?”

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Webb ran as fast as he could, feet pumping, breath coming in short, practiced gasps. Slaloming around piles of bodies, he almost tripped right over the ridge when he finally reached the spot he needed, narrowly avoiding a skid down the embankment on his face. What he saw when he caught his breath nearly broke his heart.

The ponies and their remaining human friends laid together in a massive pile at the bottom of the embankment, holding one another in silence. They all looked so tired, just so sick of everything, as if part of each and every one of them wanted to just lie face down in the mud until the lights went out, if only for a bit of rest. God damn us for what we’ve brought here, he thought, cursing himself privately for what he was about to do.

“Excuse me?” He asked. Eight pairs of eyes turned up to him. It was hard to tell which was sadder: pony or human. “I’m real sorry, but the Princesses sent me here to getcha.”

“What’s she need?” Uris rasped. His throat sounded so dry, as if he’d just exhausted every drop of water in his system but didn’t have the energy to go grab a drink.

“Something’s happened with Swarm. Long story short: he’s the one in the dome, and he’s gonna destroy everything if he gets out.”

Twilight nodded, slowly pulling herself from Uris’s grip. “C’mon girls,” she said, plodding up the embankment.

“I must say, a part of me is actually looking forward to this!” Rarity said with a strained smile pasted onto her face.

“Don’t tell me you’re lookin’ forward to this crazy stuff as much as I am,” Dash said with a little half-smile. “You, the pony who’s afraid of getting her hooves dirty on a rainy day?”

“Well, my mane is already destroyed beyond salvation, so why worry?” she shrugged.

“Rares ain’t worried ‘bout her mane,” Applejack chuckled. “Now Ah know we’re in trouble.”

“And hopefully this time we’ll get a proper ending,” Twilight said. “Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was wonderful that the battle ended with less bloodshed, but I thought it felt so…” she trailed off.

“Anticlimactic?” Pinkie snorted. “You and the readers both.”

Webb’s jaw dropped as the ponies trotted past, tired, bedraggled, but still pushing on forward, never letting the world see just how far down they’d been beaten. “When’d they become soldiers!?” He mumbled.

And still, there was one more pony left, clinging to Ramirez. She gazed over his shoulder at Uris with those big, bright, blue eyes. It was obvious she wanted to say something, but every time she looked at the pilot, the words just wouldn’t come out.

“Hey, uh…sport,” the pilot said, trying to break the silence in the most awkward way possible. “Just…uh…be careful out there, okay?”

She nodded. Trying (and failing miserably) to defuse the awkwardness, he shrugged and gave her a quick bro-jab to the shoulder. She immediately started tearing up, squeaking with the hit. “Oh shitshitshitshitshit, Flutters! I didn’t mean…”

“Fluttershah!” Applejack’s voice called down to them. “Y’know we ain’t complete withoutcha.”

“I…um, I hafta go,” she said quickly before swooping out of Ramirez’s arms and launching herself out of the chasm at speeds that impressed even Rainbow Dash.

“Dude,” Ramirez asked. “Did you just give Fluttershy a bro-punch?”

“Shaddup,” Uris groaned.

“You’re absolutely horrible with women, you know that, right?”

“Shut uuuuuuuuuuuupp!” He sighed as Rainbow Dash suddenly rocketed out of the sky and landed at their feet.

“What’s this I hear about you hitting Fluttershy!?” She growled.

The men rolled their eyes. “It’s nothing, Dash, just get going, please.” Uris sighed.

Snorting, the pegasus promptly launched herself at the pilot, landing on his chin and using it as a Launchpad to kick herself off back to her friends. The pilot was sent sprawling over the ground, his companion just shaking his head sadly as he watched. “Just epic levels of fail right now.”

“SHUUUUTTT UUUUUUUUUPPP!” Uris managed around the blood pooling in his mouth, the SEAL laughing his ass off as he helped him up.

“C’mon!” Webb screamed. “Y’all don’t wanna miss the end of everything, do ya!?”

Grinning like madmen, the pair shot up the ridge, joining the paratrooper as they ran towards the big, undulating structure meant to unleash hell upon everything on the planet. It only took a few minutes for the trio to catch up to the ponies, running towards the dome with a certain look of determination on each and every one of their faces.

Twilight gulped as she gazed up at the thing, its surface rippling and undulating like the ocean during a fight between two sea serpents. Uris could tell from the fear in her eyes that she was silently praying to anyone who would listen: Celestia, God, Faust, or whatever it was cartoon ponies worshiped, praying that they would be in time, that her friends would come out okay, that everything would work out in the end, that she could just return to her normal, quiet life with a normal, quiet routine and a normal, quiet list of chores to…

“Dude, stop leering,” Ramirez sneered from just behind him as they ran.

“Wha-I was not! What!? Leering!? Ponies!? Wha-“

“Great, all the guys in this fight I could meet, and it’s a clopper,” the SEAL grumbled.

“I-what!? I-what!? What the fuh…” the pilot cut himself off as a wide grin broke out over the SEAL’s face. A second later, that grin was a chortle, which Uris joined in on. Their laughter rose as they pushed themselves further, passing the ponies as they laughed like maniacs, Uris still limping alongside the SEAL.

“What’s with them!?” Dash gasped as the humans passed on by.

“Humans, man,” Pinkie shrugged.

Comments

[Strythio]

I don't really recognize the song. I'll have to look it up on youtube, else I don't think I'll ever get the gag.

And here we go, I feel the moment of truth about to arrive. Though, if the world isn't going to be destroyed, I wonder what will keep the Nazi's from making headlong starting up a fight again.