The Infestation of Canterlot High School

by Bonster

Intermission E

Intermission E

Twilight Velvet enjoyed life. She enjoyed stargazing, and Cadance’s patented chocolate chip cookies, baked with love. She enjoyed being a professor, enjoyed her students, enjoyed her studies. She enjoyed watching bad TV shows for hours when she was having a crappy day, the feeling of responsibility that came with going to the gym, hot showers, and ice cream.

But, more than anything else in the world, she enjoyed her husband and her beautiful children.

She very much did not enjoy watching her daughter cry.

So Velvet pushed her worries aside and jogged to where Twilight lay by the wondercolt statue, taking her into her arms.

“Gone,” Twilight muttered between labored breaths.

“Shh, Twilight. It’ll be alright.”

Twilight clutched at her mother’s shirt, and sobbed into her. “No, mom.” She sniffled and her voice broke. “It won’t.”

Velvet didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t even know what had just happened. Instead, she just held Twilight tighter. Twilight didn’t say anything more for a few minutes, and simply let the tears fall.

At length, she spoke, nasally and rough. “Th-they’re gone, and the portal’s closed, and…” She choked. “What do we do?”

“Not sit around and cry, for one.”

Velvet sicced an icy glare on Chrysalis.

“What? It’s not like they’re dead. Probably. I’m sure if they got a portal opened once, they can do it again.” Chrysalis pulled a blackberry from her pocket and started tapping at it. “Meanwhile, we still have work to do. I doubt all the ‘changelings’ are gone; many of them were probably trapped over on this side.”

Bon Bon coughed.

“…And we still have to find the missing students,” Chrysalis amended.

Twilight took a deep breath. In, out. No need to panic. Sunset’s with them. They’ll be fine. Focus on now. Don’t panic. Nothing to panic about. Don’t panic.

She brushed away her tears and started to stand. “Right. Of course.”

“We know you’ve been through a lot these past few days, Twilight,” Celestia said. “If you want to go home with your mother—”

“I’m fine. I’ll help.”

“Are you sure? It’s not healthy to ignore your feelings,” Luna stated.

“I’m fine,” Twilight insisted. Or I will be.

“Took long enough,” Chrysalis said, earning more glares, which she ignored. “First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Ms. Sparkle, out of all of us, you’ve been the most directly involved with the anomalies at this school. Would you mind telling us the story behind all of this?”

“I… don’t know all of it. I’ve only attended this school for a couple months now.”

“Whatever you know is fine,” Sweetie Drops encouraged, cheery as ever.

Twilight adjusted her glasses. “Well, Sunset Shimmer—she’s the one with the leather jacket—is from another dimension called Equestria. There’s a portal in the statue. Or, was.

“Anyway, she came over here, and brought magic with her, I think? Maybe that was later, I’m not too sure. I know that at the Fall Formal, she turned into a demon, and other-Twilight had to stop her.”

Velvet raised an eyebrow. “Other-Twilight?”

“Oh, right! Every person here has a sort of alternate dimension version of themselves in Equestria!” She gestured to Chrysalis. “Like, you’re counterpart is a freaky bug queen bent on world domination, and mine is a magical princess.”

Chrysalis was a split second away from making a nasty comment before Twilight continued animatedly, completely oblivious to her poor phrasing. “It’s a phenomenal discovery! The multiverse theory confirmed! I never thought that’d I’d live to see the day! Though, I’m also studying actual magic, so I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.”

“One more question, Ms. Sparkle,” Chrysalis interjected. “What is that device you have?”

“This?” She lifted her locket. “It’s a multipurpose tool for the study of thaumic energy. It works as a thaumometer, a magical absorption and containment unit, and a crude spellcasting device. I had some problems with the prototypes in the past, but it’s reasonably safe now.”

“Reasonably?” Celestia murmured.

Chrysalis reached out. “Can I…”

“No!” Twilight grabbed the older woman’s wrist, stopping her hand short. “When I say safe, I mean safe for me.”

Chrysalis’s look grew sour. “Excuse me, Ms. Sparkle, but I have leagues more experience than you with magic.”

Twilight swore that every new time Chrysalis said ‘Ms. Sparkle’, it became increasingly condescending. Maybe she would graph the relationship if she found the time.

In the end, it was Luna who stepped in between Chrysalis and Twilight, her short stature doing nothing to diminish her practiced sternness. If she could deal with rowdy teens, she could deal with bitchy government officials.

“Excuse me, Ms. Chrysalis, but you have no idea what you’re doing. Want to know what happened when someone like you last tried to fool around with Twilight’s magic?”

“You think I’m anywhere near as dull as Abacus?” Chrysalis snarled.

“I think you’re damn close to being as selfish as her!”

“Vice-principal, with all due respect, you need to learn when you’re in over your head. You stumbled into this mess like a blind woman; stumble out.”

“It’s our school—”

“It’s not about the school—”

“Oh my god,” Velvet said, shoving a hand over each of their mouths. “Stop. If we have any chance of fixing this mess, we’re going to need to work together.”

Before either of them could respond, Bon Bon cleared her throat and held out a sheet of paper to Chrysalis.

“I wrote down a list of all possible areas that the changelings might be using as headquarters in Canterlot; large, unused properties. I also split us into two groups in order to speed up the process.”

“Very good, Sweetie Drops. You’re always so professional. Some could learn a lot from you.”

Luna huffed.

Chrysalis looked at the paper. “Wait, I’m with them?” She stuck a thumb towards the principals.

“In the event of an encounter with the enemy, this is the best way to split our forces. I’m sure you can handle it.”

“I—”

“Of course she can,” Celestia assured. “We’ll be fine.”

Bon Bon beamed. “Great! Let’s go.”

---

Sweetie Drops ripped off a board on the window with a fierce yank of her crowbar, smashed the glass pane, and shined her flashlight inside the abandoned warehouse.

“Find anything?” Velvet asked from behind.

“Nope. But there are still many more locations to search!” She clicked the microphone on her sleeve. “Special Agent SD reporting. Location eight is a bust. Over.”

“Roger. Same with three. Over,” replied a distorted voice. The communicator turned off with a crackle.

Off to the side, as Sweetie re-gathered her things, Twilight was fiddling around with her locket. It was popped open, and its core glowed brightly, glaring off of Twilight’s miniature screwdriver.

Velvet leaned in. “What are you working on?”

“The original version of the locket was capable of generating dimensional portals, but the process was unreliable and dangerous. I’m working on replicating the effect in a controlled and safe way.”

“You’re not… planning on running off to that other dimension, are you?”

Twilight froze. “Uuuuhhh.”

“Twilight, you can’t! It’s too dangerous!”

“But they’re my friends! I have to help them!”

“Can’t you think of a way to help them that doesn’t involve fighting magical aliens? You’re too young to be throwing your life away like this!”

“Mom, you don’t understand! I have to be there for them!”

“Sweetie, listen to me!”

“Hmm?” Sweetie Drops turned around. “What is it?”

Velvet paused. “I… Um, wasn’t talking to you?”

She cocked her head to the side. “I could’ve sworn I heard you call my name.”

Twilight snickered. Velvet said nothing.

“Nevermind that, though!” Sweetie said. “We’ve got an old subway to explore next!”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Velvet said under her breath, just loud enough for Twilight to hear.

And, from the overgrowth in a nearby alley, six eyes watched them go.

“Aha!” exclaimed Adagio. “That locket is our ticket back to Equestria! Now we just need to get it into our fins…”

“Adagio, we don’t have fins anymore! What are you, crazy?”

“Ugh… with you around, Sonata, I will be soon enough.”

“Couldn’t we just follow them?” Aria droned. “It sounded like she was heading back to Equestria anyway. We can just jump through the portal after her. We don’t always have to play villain.”

Adagio stroked her chin. “You know, for once, that isn’t a terrible idea.”

---

Celestia’s flashlight flitted about the empty office space, but all she found was useless flotsam. She nudged a ruined cardboard box over with her foot, as if she would find anything under it. She didn’t.

A part of her didn’t want to find anything, because that would mean finding the monsters. Another part of her wouldn’t sleep until she did, because finding the monsters meant finding her students. She wasn’t sure which part was the rational one anymore.

She envied Luna, in a sense, and how she could follow her heart so easily. She didn’t think, she just did. And maybe that was a problem—it certainly had been in the past—but at the same time, Celestia thought it had to be easier than over-thinking every little worry constantly.

Deciding not to waste any more time in the dusty hellhole, she turned and left the room, meeting back up with Luna and Celestia at the building’s entrance.

“Nothing?” Chrysalis asked.

“Nothing,” she returned.

“Hopefully the others are having better luck,” Luna said.

Not a second afterwards, Chrysalis buzzed. She brought her wrist up to her face, and clicked a hidden button. A voice played from her sleeve.

“Special Agent SD reporting. Location eight is a bust. Over.”

“Roger. Same with three. Over,” Chrysalis replied, and then, to the principals, “Let’s move on.”

“It has to be at least somewhat close to the school, right?” Celestia asked. “That is where they came from.”

“Right, the portal.” Chrysalis took some time to consider her next words. It was not a common practice for her. “You must understand. I… respect your ideals when it comes to all you’ve done in the face of magical interference, but I—the government—can’t simply ignore a transdimensional portal in the middle of your courtyard. We can’t risk more threats crossing over. My counterpart has a use for keeping the people she captures alive—what if the next one doesn’t? Your students could die.”

Celestia pursed her lips, torn. She made a good point.

Luna, on the other hand, grit her teeth until they hurt, not willing to cede Chrysalis any ground. “We’ll talk about this after the world is saved, alright?”

“Whatever you want. Don’t think I’ll forget, though.”

They walked towards the next location in strained silence. Before they could reach it, however, Chrysalis buzzed once again.

“Special Agent SD reporting. Location nine is red. I repeat, location nine is red. Over.”

“Red?” Celestia asked.

“On our way. Over.”

Chrysalis abruptly changed directions, and nearly collided with Luna. “C’mon. We found the little buggers.”

---

Sweetie Drops crouched at the lip of an old underground subway station, ‘DO NOT ENTER: UNDER CONSTRUCTION’ tape broken at her feet. She quietly relayed her message to Chrysalis, her eyes never leaving the blobs of changeling silk that clung to the walls of the tunnel.

Twilight settled next to her. “What now?”

“Now, we wait.”

And wait they did; Bon Bon keeping an eye on the entrance to the station, Twilight absorbed with her locket, and Velvet attempting to make small talk.

“So, you’re a government spy, right?”

“Yep!”

“But you’re also a high schooler?”

“It’s part of the disguise. If I wasn’t stationed at Canterlot, I wouldn’t be attending high school at all.”

“Oh.” Velvet frowned slightly.

“Though I expect that’s a large part of why Chrysalis assigned this mission to me. As soon as she heard that Sunset Shimmer was both attending high school and in a juvenile detention center, she put me on the case, even against the advice of a lot of other agents. She claimed that my age would help instead of hurt here, because I can blend in naturally. She was right, of course, but I think she also wanted to give me a chance to have an actual life for at least a while.” Bon Bon giggled. “She’d never admit it, but she does care. Sometimes.”

“I think I can relate,” Twilight said. “I never really had friends until I transferred over to Canterlot High, and I’m really enjoying my time here. I don’t think Sunset could have chosen a better school to indirectly send you to.”

Sweetie Drops got a dreamy look in her eye. “Yeah. There’re some real perks.”

Velvet still looked concerned. “But, what were you doing all that time if you weren’t attending school?”

“Training!” Sweetie answered happily. “I learned way more than I would’ve in any academic institution!”

Velvet raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah!” She started to count on her fingers. “Martial arts, anatomy, stealth 101, forensics, weapon training, document forgery, psychology… it goes on. My major was hidden weaponry.” As if to demonstrate, she pulled a pair of handcuffs and a taser out of her left sock.

Velvet looked as if she were about to call child services then and there. “But what about your childhood? What about your parents? What did they have to say about all this?”

Bon Bon’s smile flipped. “They died in the field when I was young. I can’t say anything else about it, and neither could the agency, so they took me in. Less questions that way.”

They waited in unpleasant silence after that.

---

It was only a few more minutes before the other group arrived.

“This is the place?” Chrysalis asked, pulling a revolver out of her suit.

Sweetie nodded. “Changeling silk on the walls. Has to be.

Chrysalis turned to the others. “Give us five minutes to scope out the situation; we’ll call you down after.”

And with that, the two of them delved into the mouth of the tunnel. Their companions looked after them, but the agents were quickly out of sight. A few seconds later, hisses, screams, explosions, gunshots, and bright flashes of light shot back up to the surface.

“They call that scoping out the situation?” Luna mumbled.

Sweetie Drops’ head popped back into view a minute later. “It’s all clear, guys!” she called, wiping a streak of green blood off her cheek.

Twilight led the way down the steps, fingering her locket nervously, with Luna and her sister behind her, and Velvet bringing up the back. The stairs emerged into a fairly large open area that was in a clear state of disrepair. It may have legitimately been under construction at one point in time, but not anywhere close to recently. If it weren’t for the rusty train tracks cutting over the far edge of the platform, Twilight would’ve had trouble distinguishing it as a station. Hefty iron girders supported heftier slabs of crumbling concrete, the remains of what may have once been benches lay in rotting piles against the walls, and the tunnel that the train would hypothetically go through had been bricked close. Even some grasses were starting to pop up between cracks in the ground, living off slivers of sunshine and god knows what else.

There had only been a bit over a half-dozen changelings waiting there, all of them now bloodied and broken on the ground. They had been guarding a huge cluster of chrysalises that hung from the ceiling above the tracks; Sweetie Drops had already started to yank them down one by one with her grappling hook, and Chrysalis was working with one of her knives to cut open the silk. At some point, Celestia and Luna went over to help; Twilight wasn’t really paying attention.

She had almost configured the locket to support a controlled release of basic dimensional magic, which, by both what Sunset had told her and through past experiences, would create a transdimensional portal to the nearest parallel plane: Equestria. Then she could cross over, find her friends, and help them beat the changelings. Simple.

So, maybe she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d go about those last two steps, but damn if she wouldn’t try.

“Bonny!” A voice screamed, and Twilight’s head jerked up.

“Ly-ly! I missed you so much!”

The newly free Lyra and Bon Bon embraced each other with a hug. All of the students were used to their antics, going as far as they could without breaking the rules against public displays of affection that the school enforced.

“I missed you so much!” Lyra countered, shoving her face into Bon Bon’s with blatant disregard for the very large amount of people watching them.

Agent Chrysalis just raised an eyebrow as their embrace deepened. Velvet looked quite taken aback, Luna rolled her eyes, Celestia looked surprised, and the other students either didn’t care, watched with an uncomfortable amount of interest, or yelled at them to get a room.

Twilight stopped watching once Lyra hitched her leg up onto Sweetie’s thigh, and they both fell to the ground, still making out fiercely.

She was so close; she had already checked to make sure the locket would only use a percentage of the stored magic at one time, only cast the spell once, and cast it exactly where Twilight pointed it. All she had to do now was calibrate the mana converter and…

“Aha!” she shouted, holding the locket up and inspecting it. “I should be able to create a portal to Equestria now!”

“Equestria?” asked one student. “What’s that?”

“A portal?” questioned another.

“Is that where you guys get all your creepy horse powers?”

“I heard Sunset Shimmer ruled Equestria with an iron fist before she came here!”

“I heard that Equestria is a jail for evil villains, but they keep escaping to Earth!”

“Isn’t that where Princess Twilight is?” a certain blue-haired boy asked, absentmindedly licking his lips.

Twilight stepped backwards. “Uh…”

“Let’s go somewhere a bit more private,” Luna suggested.

Twilight, her mother, Luna, Celestia, Chrysalis, Sweetie Drops, and Lyra (who had given a murderous glare to anyone who suggested she leave Bon Bon’s side) moved to a secluded part of the subway.

“You got the portals working?” Celestia asked, unsure of how to feel about that.

“Well, I still need to test it,” Twilight said, pointing her locket towards the ground a couple meters in front of her. “You might want to stand back.”

They did, faster than lightning.

“Don’t test it here!” Bon Bon urged. “What if something goes wrong?!”

“Nothing will go wrong!” Twilight said, opening the locket. It shone brilliantly.

Too brilliantly.

“I still think this was a bad idea,” Velvet said.

How did Queen Chrysalis have this much magic?

“Uh oh,” Twilight muttered.

Lyra scowled. “I swear to god, Sparkle, if we die…”

They were blinded by a magnificent flash, and the spell was cast.

Author's Note:

See you in three chapters

Comments

[nighters]

I'm kind of hoping human Chrysalis get a form with the non-hole version like thorax did help different her from the other women imagine those horns and wings and her having a wing tail with those weird rock in her chest she would find it so weird but she not like that ranting villain she way to smart and rational for that. or maybe she get glowing wings?

[Bonster]

7732796

While that would be cool, this story was outlined fully before season 6, and so I can't incorporate the new changeling lore.

[nighters]

7732804 aw hope she doesn't starve and keep that wit of her and not pull what her other self-did so stupidly