The Twilight of the Crystal Heart

by WanderingPony

Chapter 13: A Troubled Sight

As Twilight Sparkle embarked on saving the world from herself, Scale Balancer began saving herself from the world.

A world full of bug ponies. With green ick. That might have been guards.

Looking down at the dead changeling and the dark legs smashing down her door, she decided she didn't want to know what happened to the guards. Or be the next one.

A crate full of bladderwrack mushed the corpse against the splintering boards. Then another. A table, a few charts fluttering to the deck. A pile of padding blank-

Blueblood squalled as his battered, weed-tangled form was ripped untimely from it's womb as it went to stuffing the hole in the door.

"What are you insane mares DOING? Why is all this disgusting GOOP in this room? I SMELL LIKE A RANCID FISH!"

Scale Balancer just gave him a pitying look. Driving a gaff into the crate (and the perforated changeling leg trying to widen the hole in the door) gave her a moment to reply-

"Your marefriend saved your life, the goop is from the bug ponies outside that apparently want to eat us, and you're on a fishing boat after trying to be fish bait. Oh, and you're WELCOMEEEEEEEEEK!"

Splinters rained down on the mare's neck as Six-Eighty-Five's goon squad began to try to stomp through the ceiling instead, mixed with a few splatters of mucous-laden drool.

"They're in my maaaane! They're IN MY MANE!", Scale screamed as the stream of alien slime dribbled across the back of her head. She shook the disgusting tendril mostly off, letting it fly across the room in an elastic, wobbling path...

...and neatly slapped itself across Blueblood's mouth in mid-pout. Suddenly, the stallion had a disgusting and yet faintly familiar, addicting taste in his mouth. Like a jam sandwich that had been out too long at the tea party...unthinkingly, he smacked his lips instead of spitting the streamer out. Fuzzy, happy place...

...and Scale Balancer retched as she watched Blueblood slurp the rest into his mouth and settle back to the floor with the tranquility mostly associated with lobotomy patients and narcotic overdoses.

"I don't get sick on a boat, I don't get sick on a boat...", she repeated, even though her cutie mark wasn't supposed to help with slime-slurping freaks.

The trampling and definitely unpony-like noises coming from the cabin roof did nothing to ease her stomach cramps.

---

Far to the south, a young greyish earth pony was examining the train tracks, unaware of the changelings. Actually, the tracks were hardly interesting, but the ballast was fascinating. A layer of quartzite underlaid with a rich layer of limestone, in big enough chunks that the telltale diatomaceous maul indicated that the entire load had been hauled clean out from Neigh Orleans.

She'd never been to Neigh Orleans. Ponies told her it was an exciting place. None of them had mentioned what had been dredged from the bottom of Lake Ponychatrain, but clearly this must have been what they meant.

She resolved to take her sister up on the offer for a weekend. Or perhaps a Tuesday. Why a day was "fat", she had no idea, but Pinkie had been delighted at the idea of going on it. As the word "Pinkie" crossed her mental road, a sudden spasm banged Maud's nose against the rails. Hooves rattled and shook, sending stones tumbling off their neat pile and scattering them in a distressingly random shower of unsorted pebbles, chunks, and samples.

"Family trouble on the tracks", Maud's twitchy-twitch-twitches told. An almost imperceptible frown crossed the impassive reach of her cheeks as she looked up, then down the rails. In the distance, a flash of sun on metal. Whatever it was, it didn't like Pies.

Maud detested only a few things. Ponies who couldn't appreciate the sedimentals, and anything that crossed a Pie the wrong way. A faint rumble from the steel told her that the second was coming to cross her.

---

For the umpteenth time, the butt end of a spear poked through the vents in the roof of the dimly-lit rail car. Big Mac took a sidestep from his spot. Again.

The slow burn that had become Macintosh's thoughts briefly bubbled up a thought of grabbing the pole in his teeth and yanking the disguised changeling "guard" around, but that would mean the other end of the spears would come through the next time. And no place to go if they got serious. Somepony might get more than a bump from that.

Reckon he'd wait a mite longer. Across the too-warm and stuffy cage their ride had become, Clyde shared a meaningful stare that spoke volumes, if you were the kinda earth pony to listen and not gabble all day.

For all the trouble up top, they'd gotten along right good. Igneous, that is. They'd gotten to proper names 'stead of the usual nicknames that most townies stuck on ponies near before they'd learnt to trot. Or Pinkie did, for that matter. Weren't bad to be "Big Mac", but his mama had called him Macintosh and two decent stallions were just fine with that. Sides. Felt right havin' Mister Pie call him by the family name. And callin' Igneous by his. Not that the third stallion in the bunch knew better- he was so swelled up on them hoofballs on his flank that "Magnum" was it, even if his real name was Hondo.

The car lurched as outside, the changelings picked up the pace a bit. A buzzy baritone managed to find it's way through down the spot of sunlight to twitch Mac's ear.

"There's some dumb pony on the tracks? Pick it up a bit. No stupid worker is gonna get in the way of a train full of warriors."

---

Whish. Whish. SCREEEEEEEEE CLUNK!.

Six-Seventy-Five watched as another changeling found itself snared by the stupid unicorn, with a fishing pole. The idiotic soldier bug had half a reel of fishing line tangled around one foreleg and frantic attempts to fly away only met with Scale Balancer giving her catch a little play before whipping her catch back against the deck for another bludgeoning. The pony was laughing at him.

He drove a spear through the offending tangle while the dimgrub was thrashing around on solid wood, freeing what had clearly fallen far too many times to the bottom of the breeding pits before molting. The sun was high in the sky. He was tired of stupid ponies. Stupid minions. Stupid boats. He wished he could just drop the entire lot into the lak...

*smek*

"Warriors! Cease and desist!"

Both of the changelings did, not that it helped the one stuck in the door. The back end of the pole neatly popped him between the eyes, leaving him the catch of the day.

"It's just bait....really big bait...what kind of fisherpony can't handle bait?" came from the gap. The voice wasn't exactly rational anymore, but the half-crazed mare had improvised a better defense than the entire contingent of Royal Guard. For that, Six-Seventy-Five would kill her. And the other two. Thoroughly.

"Climb!"

The drone and his lone remaining soldier rose, the boat shrinking to become a plank on the blue as they buzzed for height. The sky was clear. The target was immobile and helpless.

And a changeling on full burn could punch holes into rocks, never mind a shoddy piece of weed-gathering wood.

"Burn!"

The soldier caught with a wavering flame as he turned burning stolen passion into magical heat.

"DIVE!"

The green meteor plunged for the center of the boat, and Six-Seventy-Five followed his living missile down at a slightly more gentle angle to observe the results. Whatever floated back up from the wreckage would be held down with a spear until it stopped floating. Or breathing. Assuming anything survived the impact.

He half-hoped as much. Blind terror was what changeling soldiers fed best on, and it was just in time for lunch. He'd already missed breakfast.

---

Despite the train getting up to a juggernaut of eight stallionpower running at near full gallop, the worker hadn't moved.

The changelings certainly didn't care, save for the potential brief rough patch from trampling said pony underfoot, followed by the three cars turning it into wheel lubricant.

The mare cared even less, considering the furious contortions her tail was making while the equimotive engine rolled ever-closer. The classic battle of immobile rock and unstoppable object. High noon.

Maud whispered to the white-grey stones beneath her hooves, a few words of encouragement as the glittering helms and tossing heads of the train's engine became clearer. They were good rocks, after all. They knew what to do, but you never could go wrong with giving a few compliments to good strata. A final thank-you, and her forehooves blurred briefly as she sent eight well-rounded pieces of quartzite ahead as a welcome.

I mean, those guard helms. Could you ASK for an easier thing to aim for?

The octavian tone of denting metal reduced the dash to a blind, tangled mess of changelings, still being shoved forward by momentum but without a hint of grace, disguise, or much beyond concussions.

Maud calmly stepped off the tracks (being sure not to catch a hoof in the ballast, it was only polite.) and watched the train grind to a halt. Her tail continued to wiggle in it's uniquely Pie code.

"Beware of falling objects?"

The message, alas was not much faster than the power-diving "pegasus" drilling her into the unforgiving earth. The best the earth offered was a mild concussion, which Maud earnestly accepted as two hooves smacked her head into the gravel.

"Toss her in with the rest. A little extra despair adds spice."

---

The plunging meteor neared the point of no return as it rocketed toward the boat.

Two winged changelings went to haul the stunned Maud to join her family for a long ride to Pony Hell.

Twilight Sparkle's gift to the world arrived about three seconds before either succeeded.

FLASH!

---

When interviewed, the few creatures who had actually been the focus of the Elements of Harmony described the experience as many things, but even the "pain" from being purged of centuries of evil wasn't bad. "Like having all of your cramps melt away under a hot bath", or "the bright light that makes you blink before realizing what a glorious morning it was". Indeed, apparently even being petrified was a mildly invigorating experience.

Twilight's Gift was often compared to anything from a good cup of tea to a quintuple espresso from Starbucked on a worldwide level. Of course, some ponies more directly related to the ritual found the experience even MORE stimulating...

---

The disorienting burst of light was enough to send the green arrow awry- and the changeling ended up corkscrewing off-course to skip along the lake like a rock until it ended up tail-up in a sandbar, wriggling uselessly as residual heat left the poor thing half encased in a crackling of glass. Surprisingly, the trauma left the creature entirely intact when bits of bug should have scattered in a nice splatter on impact...

Six-Seventy-Five's response was untranslatable to anything mammalian, but suffice it to say if you happened to be an insect, it'd have made your antennae wilt.

Below him, two of the three unicorns found the world behind their eyelids had gone rainbow-mad. Self-awareness busted down the door of dream-time, demanded everyone get on the floor and WAKE UP RIGHT NOW-

Two sets of cutie marks briefly turned from compass star and two-toned suns to crystalline supernovas, a thousand points of light making the perforated cabin into a maritime disco ball before the light faded away.

Maud Pie's back legs shoved the earth pony up into a forward hoofstand, then all four pistoned her into a neat vertical line.

The two changeling fliers made ballistic arcs over the roof of a train car and tumbled off into the brush with a clatter, guard-skins sloughing off in peels of torn illusion.

While the bruising hit still hurt, the fog had vanished. Maud's hoofstand-kick turned into a cartwheel, and she stood four-footed and sure. Turquoise cabochons flecked with bits of rainbow light tracked across the furious, fluttering foes as the ten remaining false guards formed up to make sure she STAYED down the next time.

The grey stones on Maud's flanks had developed a bit of color, too. Almost as if they'd become a bit metamorphic themselves.

She uttered only a few words as realization struck and her attackers swarmed in:

"I know hoof fu."