A Dance With/Of/For Destiny
To say it was a beautiful day in the Crystal Empire was to imply that there was some conceivable point at which it was not beautiful, which was an abstract impossibility in a town constructed of and populated by glittering crystal. Even when Sombra was in his heyday it had merely become a dark beauty, twisted and sinister yet strangely tempting. Such was merely the nature of the Crystal Empire.
Cadance, Empress of all she surveyed (so long as she didn't stand atop the tallest castle tower which offered a splendid view beyond the edges of her one-city-big-Empire), agreed with this assessment. There was nothing in her lands which was not a paragon of beauty.
The city was beautiful, the crystal ponies were beautiful, she was beautiful (though a few awkward moments in high school had taught her not to say such things aloud. Or at least not in public). From the beautiful sweeping architecture to her beautiful hellion of a toddler, all was beautiful and all was good.
Incidentally, all was apparently not good, unless some of her citizens had decided that they were so beautiful that their only recourse was to scream about it. In most cases, screaming was not an indicator of excessive beauty.
With a push of magic, she rolled across to the balcony (Flurry Heart's latest obsession, bless her heart, was wheels and she had taken to transmuting them onto anything her horn could reach, two-thousand-year-old royal thrones included) and checked in on the chaos.
Fire.
Fires dotted her city like freckles on the face of one of her sister-in-law's less attractive friends. A line of flames like a green river ran down the main boulevard, cut back across a couple side streets, hopped over a block of municipal buildings, and worked its way towards the palace itself until it came too close for her to bend her neck and see.
"Well." She weighed her words with utmost care, considering every iota of information, every scrap of strategy, and every page of emergency plans that her grand and well-educated intellect could bring to bear. "That doesn't look good."
Such was the wisdom of an alicorn.
"Fah!" exclaimed the exceedingly smaller alicorn that clung to her head like a bloated parasite in a frilly jumper. This was either a declaration of war spoken in the millennia-lost tongue of the ancient ponies of the Zo'an steppes, or the closest she could come to pronouncing 'fire' with only half of her teeth.
"Yes, that is fire," Cadance cooed as she lifted her young one off her face and placed her into a more dignified riding position on the back of her neck. "But it's not the right color for fire. Do you know why that might be?"
Flurry considered this. The clockwork mechanisms that composed her mind spun and whirred and clicked with such intensity that it was nearly visible through her features as they scrunched in concentration. After a span of deep judgement and analysis, she arrived at an answer. "Ma'ic?"
"Good! It's magic fire. And magic fire means we need to head to the bunker. Can you say 'bunker'?
"Bun'ba." Flurry intoned with a solemnity worthy of such a dire situation.
With a few magical nudges, the throne reversed course, soon abandoning the vaunted ceilings of the throne room for a quieter, secluded stretch of service corridor. Between the perfectly polished crystal floors, the hall's abandonment by the staff, and the throne's new wheels, they ate up the distance like a princess in a pie factory. Until they reached the stairs.
Sombra had always been obsessed with stairs, much to future historians' confusion. Very few could claim to understand the fathomless depths of that madstallion's mind, let alone his motivations, and most of those that said they could were lying. After all, this was the tyrant that had frogmarched his citizens into the crystal mines when he was fully capable of—and quite well known for—magically manifesting towering pillars of the stuff at will. With bonkers achievements like that under his belt, his decision to install a thoroughly excessive and in most cases completely unnecessary number of staircases in the palace had seemed barely a footnote in his reign of madness. Suffice to say, one could rarely travel more than a single hallway in the Crystal Palace without encountering a staircase.
Cadance and her charge abandoned the throne at the head of the stairs, the elder shuffling down as quickly as the sharply turning spiral allowed. Crystal-shod hoofbeats rang in the silent halls like the pealing of bells calling out to warn others of the emergency. Not a soul remained in these upper floors; of all modern teachings she'd tried to drill into her anachronistic citizens, the value of proper evacuation plans had been the knowledge to sink in.
She pulled a hairpin turn around a corner, her wings acting as an airbrake and counterweight, only to come to a dead stop at an unexpected obstruction.
"Cadance."
A shadow stood before her, blocking the road forward as solidly as any wall. It was a monster, a villain. The great stain on Cadance's perfect life that plagued her Empire, her pride, and her dreams.
Down the hall, past the portraits of bygone royals, was a figure as thin as sin itself. Barely more than a skeleton, its bones burned black by the smoldering coals of hatred and bound together with anger. Holes bored through its legs and body like the rotted teeth of an old fishwife, bringing to bear the same sense of nausea and unease. Its name was known—spoken of in silent whispers between frightened foals and bandied through ghost stories and nightmares nearly as frequently as Sombra. Cadance knew it all too well.
"Chrysalis."
The Changeling Queen—Mistress of Shapechangers and recurring root of Luna's nightly battles in the Dream Realm—sneered in response. "I see you're taking to leadership well. At the first sign of trouble every single pony under you runs like a dog with its tail between its legs. How distinctly... pony."
Cadance's will was like an iron wall, stalwart and unyielding. "What do you want?"
"Only what I have always wanted." Her eyes flashed a hideous green not unlike a toddler's face just before they throw up over the freshly reupholstered chariot seats. "Revenge. And today I shall have it!"
With a stride like a lion prowling, she approached the cornered Princess, confidence bursting from her seams. Cadance's resolve flickered for a moment, but the feeling of her daughter shifting on her back quickly hardened it. She would not fall here. She would stand her ground.
"You've out-thought the greatest of my plans," Chrysalis continued as she slunk closer, "over-powered the strongest of my spells, and overwhelmed the masses of my armies. After all this, you've left me with only my most powerful trump card. An ancient technique, forbidden from use even by my own ancestors for fear of its magnificently addicting power. I suppose congratulations are in order for having driven me this far: they shall be the last you ever receive."
Stopping a few lengths away, Chrysalis lowered her body, joints popping and cracking like sappy firewood tossed onto the hearth as she bent further and farther than an equine body had any right to. Knees or elbows or wholly new joints that Cadance lacked names for thrust into the air above her like obsidian spires, all holes and ridged edges. Her mane, long and wet like swamp grass, draped along either side of her face till it nearly dragged on the floor. Wholly, it looked rather uncomfortable.
"Behold! The dance of my people!"
Chrysalis began to sway. She picked up speed like a charging dynamo as she got into a rhythm, joints thrusting out to either side like spears or pistons. And then came the music. Air rushing through her holes created notes that hung and whistled longer than any sound should have naturally, blending together into a hypnotic melody. Hair blocked holes seemingly at random as she swung, making the tune change and twist unexpectedly even as the underlying theme remained the same. Even after only a few moments Cadance could feel it pulling at her mind, tugging at the strings of thought like a cat picking apart a yarn ball.
She fought it, fought back against the music and the mesmerizing swaying. Chrysalis had been right—it was addicting. Better than wine, better than rich food, better even than the fantasy of catching her husband in a scandalous affair. Colors seemed to blur and shift with the dance, creating afterimages that quintupled the amounts of Chrysalis in the room— something that would have sent her into a frenzy of rapid-fire spellcasting only a few minutes ago, yet now felt fine.
Had it been only a few minutes? To her it felt like hours, days. Had there ever been a time when she was not watching The Dance? In highschool? At her wedding? While birthing Flurry-
The thought snapped Cadance back to her senses. Flurry Heart. She was there too! And unprotected!
She reached for her child, but her hoof met only air.
"Flurry no!"
But it was too late. The child had seen everything.
Though she lacked the correct number of joints and those she did have lacked the proper range, little Flurry Heart was still crouching down in front of Chrysalis, knees bent and body bobbing side to side in a childish imitation of The Dance, only a half-step out of time.
She'd been stickbugged.
Chrysalis cackled. "Look! See how easily I have corrupted your Youth! Soon you too shall know my greatness! And I will—"
In a move that put Horseibal, Naponyleon, and Salad Dinner to shame, Flurry Heart giggled, her horn crackling with arcane might, and transmuted the Changeling Queen's hooves into wheels.
The Dance transformed into a second, even more intense stage with deeper bends and wilder movements. That, or Chrysalis had lost all control of her body and was struggling to merely stand upright. She lit her charged up her horn to dispel the enchantment, but Flurry turned her horn into a wheel as well.
The littlest alicorn jumped and landed in a hug on Chrysalis' face, no doubt eager to start climbing over her new ebony jungle gym (foals truly have no concept of fear). Her dexterous climbing— for once the numerous holes served a functional purpose!— only made the Queen flail about even further as the unexpected weight made her center of mass shift about uncontrollably.
"Get off me you gremlin!" Chrysalis cried to a giggly response. She slid backward.
Cadance, in a moment of purely mundane foresight borne of parental instincts, realized what the immediate future held and grabbed her daughter off the invader with a wash of magic. Chrysalis regained her composure respectably quickly, even as she continued to roll backwards.
"None can defeat me! Get—Yipe!!"
This was either a pledge of undying loyalty in the apparently-not-as-forgotten-as-some-seem-to-think-it-is language of the ancient steppes, or the sound a changeling makes when her back legs roll off the top ledge of a truly enormous staircase and she finds that her momentum has suddenly picked up rather quickly. The following yelps and screams solidified the probability that it was the latter.
Cadance peered down the stairs. It was one of Sombra's personal pet projects. Chocked full of spells that warped space so the top connected to the bottom seamlessly. Cries of pain already echoed from both below and above her. She closed the door.
"Excellent technique," she praised as she tousled her foal's mane. "With a talent like that, you'll be cleaning up actual big-league villains in no time."
Flurry giggled and whistled, the notes oddly reminiscent of a particular stickbug's dance.
Get stickbugged lol
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I saw this video on YouTube,
Get Stick-Bugged LOL
I...wow. There are few words that can describe the rage at reading this utterly beautiful interpretation of the meme and such. This was comedic, yet still insightful and with a depth of lore that I was not expecting by any means. I am reluctantly impressed, horrified, and infuriated at how good this was
While this is a comedy, I can't help but take great inspiration and offer immense commendation to this description! Wow, and it serves to set up the intensity of the character, how serious she is, and then morph this image into one to be laughed at. Incredible, both technically and comedically!
Drider, You've made me laugh several times with this fic. And as someone who's also written a stick bug fic on the same day, I feel obligated to cast yours in the greater light. The turning of everything into wheels by Flurry was quirky and indeed funny. The way everything in the story read like it was cartoonish, while also grounding itself in the incredible descriptions, was nothing short of outstanding! And the end where Chryssi was sent down the borderline-infinite stairs had me cracking up hard. As a comedy story, it sticks an incredible landing with the spotlight on it, and as a regular story accomplishes the same. Seriously great stuff here!
Me reading:
Ok, very descriptive...
...lol Cadance...
....oh hey it's bugqueen...
...what?
oh.
I got f'ing stick-bugged.
Get changelinged lol
Pure memery at its finest.
"Flurryyy!"
"It is too late, mother. I have seen everything."
10388240
Thats two Stick Bug meme crackfics that have made their way into the feature box!
Soon, there will be nothing but Stick Bug fics! Clopfics, more crackfics, adventure fics, EVERY fic will soon be about Stick Bugs! Evil laughter
I'm a bit annoyed that this crackfic has better descriptive prose than everything I've ever written combined. Like... seriously. How?
Lmao finally someone make fic about that video...
The fact you managed to beautifully input two Chekhov’s guns into a 2k word crackfic astounds me.
Two wonderful stickbug stories in the featured at the same time.
...
God damn, I love this fandom.
This shitpost has no right being this well written, my god.
It's beautiful.
EDIT:
Oh now isn't that a nice ponified name
Okay.
I see.
Ok.
Truly, we are witnessing the dawn of a new meme.
And it is glorious.
To be fair, she is 100% correct...
Chrysalis: "I am an actual villain, you know."
Cadance: "Well..."
Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.
Also, it seems Trixie had been proven right again about not trusting wheels...
I still hope that we will sometime have an story of this video by the samer artist:
You were able to form a story on a beautiful artwork about a glorious meme, and for that I really wanna award you about like 45 cakes right about now because of how brilliant you wrote this! Just everything, mmm PERFECT! I hope ya didn't mind, but I made a little reading on this memey story of yours!
Audio Linky!: https://youtu.be/bM34sIMtVQY
(I don't mean to offend anyone with this comment!)
I saw the cover, watched the video then read this. Oh my, this is gold!
If this meme sticks around, it's going to wheely bug me.
Yes.
10389369
Oh wow, neat! Thanks! I look forward to seeing it when it premiers.
You turned a minute and a half meme video into a masterpiece. Your description of Chrysalis made me forget this was a comedy.
And I see Sombra took inspiration from Tevye. 'There could be one long staircase just going up, and one even longer coming down, and one more going nowhere, just for show.'
That title can't fool me, this is another stickbug meme!
PRICELESS video
Clear like 
This story is as amazing as the video that inspired it. Good work, and get stickbugged LOL.
I LAUGHED SO HARD
🤣🤣🤣
Mind if I do an amateur reading if this?
10391772
Have at it!
Yooooo, when's the part two??
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/964/358/cab.png
(Seriously, though, I hate and love this story. Good job, I guess. Now never write anything based on a meme again. Or do. Whichever.)
Flurry Heart has been ruined. RUINED I SAY!
Stickbugging replaces the Macarena...
10389369 I AM OFFENDED BY YOU TRYING NOT TO OFFEND ME!!!
(REEEEEEing comes full circle...)
10391888
When I got to the bit where she thought that screams and beauty didn’t often pair I had to wonder just how little time Cadence has spent with Rarity.
10391888
Here you go, one amateur reading! I definitely didn't do it justice, but hopefully it gives someone a pleasant listen. XD;
https://soundcloud.com/riverreadsstuff/some-clever-title-that-doesnt-make-it-obvious-this-is-just-another-stickbug-meme-thedriferpony
I love it!
There is definitely a story behind that.
Wheels are indeed the one and only correct way to defeat any villain.
The movie edition of the Chrysalis Stickbug thing came out some time ago. Sequel of story but with that?
Thanks, I hate it. Liked and faved.
So much for the dance of her people. Better luck next time, Chrysalis!
Although coughing up blood is typically seen as "very not good", my coughed up blood is merely an indicator of the mirth this story has inspired within me.
I couldn't stop laughing. I gotta read this for YouTube
she did 😊
Hey,beats getting stinkbugged.
The Empire is also well-prepared for any Great and Powerful incursions.