The Everfree Campaign

As soon as Overwatch came into the entrance hallway, he noticed something. There was a set of six display cases smack at the other end of the room, each on a golden pedestal with some sort of necklace inside. Perplexed as to why the ponies would just leave this valuable-looking display to be ravaged by the armies of Queen Chrysalis, he walked toward them cautiously. The other Changelings followed suit, and soon a procession of the insects was headed down the long hallway. When Overwatch got to the set of display cases, he immediately recognized what was inside from the reports he had gone through the day before. These were, apparently, the weapons of mass destruction wielded by Celestia’s prodige and her motley gang of conscripted lackeys.

He would have taken them, but he wasn’t stupid. They were probably rigged with lightning runes or something, and those things could easily turn him into bug roast faster than he could say ‘oops.’ Either way, the task of keeping the wielders from reaching them had already been assigned to General Chuddy. Interfering in another General’s operation, especially if it was to aid them, was considered the highest form of disrespect. On the other holey hoof, there wasn’t a single Changeling who respected Chuddy anyway, and he was far too inept to survive this battle without an immense amount of luck.

Overwatch came to a decision, and immediately issued his orders to the others.

“Soldiers, guard this room. You too, Swarmers. This is likely the only room with a ceiling high enough for you to fight efficiently. The rest of the Elites and I will go forward.”

As soon as he said this, he noticed parts of the walls start to rise, each section revealing one of the Equestrian Royal Guard, as well as more of the pegasi flying down from a balcony above. This had been a trap.

He should have seen this coming.

He may have previously been busy thinking of his strategy, but if there was one thing Changelings were known for, it was their reflexes. He immediately spun around and began his clicking, which he always used to relay orders, since merely talking could be interpreted by Equestrian translation spells, and besides, it was much faster.

Even before he started his clicking, the other Changelings had already entered the fray. They had reflexes, too. The Elites, as was standard procedure, immediately picked out a target and began all attacking it at once, while the Swarmers rained hornfire down on the guards who weren’t so close to a Changeling that they couldn’t risk missing. The Soldiers immediately charged blindly in a haphazardly disorganized formation, but they began to truly form up when they heard the clicks, as did the Swarmers.

The Equestrians may have had the element of surprise, as useless as it is on a horde of creatures with such a fast reaction time, but they had made one crucial mistake: They were understaffed. They had clearly thought that even if any of the Changelings would come for the weapons, it would be a small, easily overwhelmed group. Instead, they got dozens upon dozens of bloodthirsty insects raining down upon their ranks. In a few minutes, the ponies had been completely wiped out.

“Like I said, guard this room.” Overwatch said. “Elites, form up on me. We’re going hunting.”

As soon as he had emerged from the more crowded areas of the room, the Elites came to him. Like most squads of their breed, the accents on their black armor were color-coded to indicate what role that individual played. Light blue for Combat Flyer (who was abnormally small, but clearly full-grown), orange for Brawler, yellow for Sniper, dark blue for Medic, pink for Heavy, and purple for-

“Wait, where’d your leader go?” Overwatch asked the group.

“He got wasted before you even arrived, sir.” the Combat Flyer said, stepping forward, at attention.

“My condolences. How did he go?”

“The two of us were trying to engage one of the High Guard unicorns at close range.”

“What? You tried to engage one of those without even a full squad?” Overwatch responded, very puzzled at the strikingly poor judgement of the two.

“Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, sir.”

“Why? How? When? What?”

“We were directly behind her and she was distracted with trying to dislodge Gemstone over here.” the Flyer said, nodding his head in the general direction of the sniper.

“Yeah, I can vouch for him on this one, sir.” she said in a sincere, if disgruntled, voice.

Overwatch sighed in disappointment. “Very well, then. Come with me. We’re going to see where those secret passages lead.”

“The barracks?” Gemstone suggested. “You know, that one place crawling with guards?”

“You’re right. Let’s fly on up to that balcony. There ought to be some sort of door up there or something.”

“Yeah, that might be a problem.” the Combat Flyer said, nodding in the general direction of the Brawler.

Overwatch followed his gaze, and his eyes finally landed on the Changeling in question, who turned so he could get a better look of what was being discussed. The Brawler had a wide, bulging purple scar where his left wing should have been.

“Ummm… okay then!” Overwatch said, not wanting to dwell on his disability for fear of alienating him. “Hold on. I have an idea.”

The general spun around to face the wall on the far end of the hallway from the entrance, which strangely enough either had a door cloaked with magic or none at all. His horn and armor lit up, and became brighter and brighter for slightly less than two seconds. After that, a single bolt of magic shot out of his horn and obliterated a good chunk of the wall, revealing another room beyond.

He began to walk through, and silently beckoned his fellow Elites.

Once the squadron got through the hole, they all looked around. They could easily tell that they were in the castle library, mainly because of the books everywhere, though many had been knocked off the shelves by the bombardment above. An old, wrinkly Earth Pony at the front desk saw them and immediately tried to hide behind it, but each of the Changelings knew that they weren’t here to kill civilians. They would be harvested in due time. However, not wanting any interference in the operation, the heavy obliterated the desk that the stallion was hiding behind, and the pony went scurrying away.

“Fan out.” Overwatch ordered. “There could be guards behind any one of these shelves.”

The squad immediately complied, and began checking every corner. The hallways were all over the place, skewed at seemingly random angles in definitely random locations. This was going to be hard.

Gemstone had barely left the front desk when she saw another pony. This one was also a civilian, but it was a unicorn, and you could never be too careful around those. Out of habit, she immediately slinked into the shadows of a relatively unlit corridor to observe the mare’s actions. This particular unicorn had a very light brown coat mostly covered by a black sweater with pink buttons. Her mane was red, with a purple stripe and a light purple stripe, and the part on the front of her scalp was bent back, held in place by a hairpin that looked like it was just a pair of pink spheres. She was also wearing black-framed glasses over her purple eyes.

She was apparently on her way to check out what looked to be an incredibly large pile of books, mostly on magic. Gemstone slid even further back into the corridor, partially out of strategy, but mostly out of fear. She knew that if this unicorn really was studying that much magic, she would be even more of a threat to the squad than the unicorn that killed Shotty, let alone just her, since the others had already gone off to patrol the rest of the library. Hopefully this pony would just go away.

Then Gemstone noticed something.

You see, Changelings can feel how much love is in a pony. They evolved this sense in order to pick and choose their targets more effectively. Eventually, this capability further developed to the point where they could sense any emotion, and even feed off of residual love without harvesting the pony. However, this sense has a downside. If they initiate this connection with a pony consumed with anger, the love stored in their glands will deplete. Sometimes, the anger can be so strong that it can do this without such a connection.

As the pony walked closer to her hiding spot, Gemstone could feel her legs quivering. This pony had no love within her.

This pony was filled with not only anger, but hate.

Fortunately for Gemstone, this pony apparently didn’t even know anything big was going on. She was sort of just strolling along to the front desk-

Oh no.

The pony in question got to the front desk, and noticed that it had been obliterated. Surprisingly, she seemed to take this in stride, examining the scene before her. Finding nothing that she seemed interested in, the peculiar mare simply walked around, apparently looking for the stallion that had worked there. She looked around for what seemed to Gemstone to be hours, if not days, and eventually found him hiding beneath some rubble on the other side of the room.

“Stumpy?” she said, puzzled. “What’s going on here? Why is the front desk in 568,742 pieces? And why are you hiding under 8 of them?”

“M-M-Moondancer!” the old stallion whimpered. “You’re good with magic, right?”

“Well, I’ve been studying my whole life, so I like to think I am. Why?”

“B-Bugs! Big bugs! Kill them!”

Moondancer looked around.

“I don’t see any ‘big bugs’, Stumpy.” she said skeptically, much to Gemstone’s relief.

“B-B-B-B-”

“Okay, calm down. I can think of at least eight species you might be describing, and only two are dangerous. Were these things intelligent?”

Stumpy nodded.

“Were they wearing anything?”

Stumpy nodded again.

“What were the-”

Stumpy pointed his hoof directly at Gemstone.

“Okay,” Moondancer said, walking up to Gemstone and casting a translation spell. “I don’t know who or what you are, but you blew up the front desk, so I’m not inclined to be lenient. Now tell me, little insect, what is your excuse?”

Gemstone didn’t answer for quite a bit. At this point she had foregone all semblance of dignity and curled up on the floor. However, she finally did answer after a good twenty seconds.

“That’s racist.” was her answer.

“Wait, what?”

“Calling us bugs. It’s racist.”

“Okay then, tell me your excuse, mammally challenged life form.”

“We are not ‘mammally challenged’. That implies that we wish we were mammals, or would be somehow better if we were. We do not and would not. We are perfectly happy with what we are and you have no right to revoke that.”

Moondancer sighed in exasperation. “Fine. What do you call yourselves?”

“You mean my breed, species, squad, hive or army”?

“Army? Well, at least now I know you’re hostile.” Moondancer said as her horn began to glow. “Goodbye, little bug.”

As Moondancer said this, Gemstone had finally mustered up the courage to fight. She knew she would not survive, but maybe she could buy her squad some time to run, if they realized what was going on before they became putty. She jumped up, attempting to thrust her horn into Moondancer’s throat, but the pony teleported across the room before that could happen, and shot a steady beam of magic directly at Gemstone. She countered this by simply jumping to the side and letting the beam destroy the door behind her, and activating the cloak spell she had used so many times before. However, this unicorn had clearly been studying magic for a very, very long time, and nullified it with ease. As this was happening, the rest of Gemstone’s squad arrived and entered the fray, having heard the sounds of battle from their individual locations. Gemstone used this opportunity to take up a similar position to one she usually adopted during battle: high up in the shady rafters, carefully firing concentrated bolts of magic down and scampering around in a way so as to not be noticed. Strangely enough, Moondancer seemed to focus all of her attacks on Slick, the squad combat flyer, and conjured up a shield to hold the others at bay.

“Gyaaaah!” Slick shouted as he flew around the room, narrowly dodging hundreds of potentially lethal bolts. “What did I do?”

Of course, Moondancer hadn’t cast any sort of translation spell on him, so all she heard was a series of squawks and chirps, similar to the sound of a bird with mouth herpes. Now, one does not consider it normal to hear a bird with mouth herpes, and so Moondancer’s concentration was broken for about a second as she tried to figure out how Slick was making such a sound.

Coalshard, the squad Brawler, noticed this and took advantage of the opportunity. He ran straight at Moondancer and slammed into her, knocking both of them to the ground. During this scuffle, Moondancer noticed that he did not have one of his wings, and so she took a few hits in order to concentrate enough on a teleportation spell to transport him to the roof of the castle.

Meanwhile, Overwatch was still standing a good distance away from the fight, formulating a strategy. He had already worked out most of it, and now that Coalshard was on the roof, he just had to wait for one more thing…

As if he had read his general’s mind, which, given the telepathic net that all Changeling Elites shared, he probably did, Nielegef, the squad Heavy, fired a burst of five large, flaming bolts of magic from the air above Moondancer, each easily as powerful as the one Overwatch had used to blow a hole in the wall earlier. Moondancer, believing she was taking advantage of his tactical mistake, altered her shield to reflect said bolts directly back at her attacker. As a response, Nielegef dodged out of the way, allowing one of the bolts to blast a hole in the roof, and the rest to fly through it into the air where Overwatch hoped they wouldn’t hit a Swarmer.

Overwatch let out clicks which contained orders relevant to his plan as he flew up through the hole. The rest of the Changelings followed suit, and found themselves on a shingled roof directly next to the castle’s main tower. Moondancer had soon teleported up there with them, and was actually able to gain the element of surprise, given that she teleported directly behind them. The abnormally large sparks flying from her horn proved to be too fast for even a Changeling to dodge, and soon Coalshard was on the ground, with Welder, the squad Medic, standing over him, trying to cast a healing spell. He went down, too, shortly afterwards, from his hind legs being turned into yams.

“Yams? Really?” He said, looking at Moondancer. But she hadn’t cast a translation spell on him, either, so she just heard more mouth herpes.

“Wait, that was you talking?” she replied, disgusted, as she telekinetically flung Slick into a wall.

Gemstone didn’t answer; she didn’t want Moondancer to be able to spot her on a nearby rampart. Her conscious squadmates tried to answer, though. After all, witty banter was considered an important part of combat by most Changelings, and a wave of grating noise rushed over Moondancer, causing her to wince in a similar way to when one hears dragon claws on a chalkboard, causing her to fall to her knees in pain.

Niegelef saw this, and immediately fired the most powerful concussive bolt he could muster. It hit its mark, and Moondancer flew through the air and landed directly in front of a window of the main tower. Both he and Overwatch immediately walked over there to see if she was still conscious. As they did that, they saw what was happening through the window.

Queen Chrysalis herself was standing in the room below, accompanied by a squad of Elites, in front of a Husk, a pink alicorn mare, and a… baby dragon in a tuxedo and a top hat? What? Overwatch snapped back into focus, and took a deep breath. Just watch and listen, Overwatch. It’s what you do he told himself. He was a bit worried about the alicorn, but the Queen was smart enough to have a backup plan in case the mare attacked.

Immediately after that, a squad of infiltrators and soldiers came into the room, having captured six mares. Overwatch grinned. His trap had worked. The prodige had fallen.

For a good minute, Chrysalis had a conversation with the ponies in the room. It was too far away to hear them, but the Queen appeared to be monologuing.

Overwatch sighed. He had never known the Queen to be one to make such a rookie mistake, but at least she had a good amount of guards in case the alicorn or the dragon took advantage of it.

And then Chrysalis did the unthinkable.

She sent her guards away.

In the presence of an alicorn.

“I can’t look.” Niegelef whimpered as he covered his face.

As Chrysalis went on and on with her monologuing, the alicorn distracted her with witty banter, presumably as she made her move. Or was she actually that inexperienced in wartime scenarios?

Then the alicorn did in fact make her move. She walked up to the Husk, her horn began to glow, and - Did she just revive the Husk? That shouldn’t have been possible!

Chrysalis was still standing there, looking directly at the group, clearly aware of what was going on. Strangely enough, the dragon never even moved. Was it some sort of lawn gnome?

The pink alicorn had a brief conversation with the former Husk (as absurd as that was), and soon they began to rise into the air as both their horns began to glow. They appeared to be somehow combining their magic into some form of superweapon. Overwatch looked at the Queen, expecting her to do something to stop it.

She did nothing.

The next thing Overwatch knew, he was waking up in a strange forest amidst a crowd of other Changelings, most of whom had hit the ground far too hard to live.

Suddenly, a collective shiver went up their spines at the same time. It was a strange feeling, but they all knew what it meant.

The Queen was dead.