Starry Field was cleaning. She had decided that if she was going to stay at the castle she would at the very least repay her new friends. The unicorn had to jump to get out of the way as a door flew open. "Gel? I thought you left?"

"Gottogetbackthereissomethingreallybadhappening!" Gel was gone and the last part of his exclamation left the mare confused and watching as he galloped through the castle and out to the railway station.

Do we even want to know? Twinkle sounded just as confused in her head as Starry was herself.

"I am sure we will hear about it later." Starry trotted after the goo changeling, closing the big front doors and then trailing back through the castle closing all the doors he had left open. "Stallions…"

Gel hopped from hoof to hoof, he had a ticket for the train and needed to wait the hour it was going to take for the thing to arrive. "When will this train reach the Crystal Empire?" It was possibly the fifth or maybe fifteenth time he had asked the ticket vendor.

"Well these here one stops every station, you would have been much better off getting the one earlier in the day, it was an express-" The old stallion offered the leaflet with the times on it. Gel glanced at it and noticed that the train wouldn't actually reach the Crystal Empire until well into the night.

Spike felt himself cemented in place by the goop. The loss of his magic was a shock to him but he didn't stop struggling. Beside him, Shining Armor and the non-goo, catatonic Gel were set down as well. Bugs came trundling in, each going to the other ponies in the circle, the ones with their horns pressed… well, thrust, into the bugs. One of the creatures came up to him and started pushing it's abdomen at his lips. The hard, tapered end pushed against his gums and teeth but Spike was adamant, he would have no part of this.

Goop started to smear over his teeth and it made his lips tingle but worse, he felt his jaws weaken. Rolling his eyes, he saw Gel beside him, eyes closed, suckling on one of the bugs with the thing pumping stuff into him. Nope nope nope! Spike fought, his jaw getting more and more weak and he suddenly realized why, the goop it was smearing into his mouth was a muscle relaxant!

Eventually he couldn't struggle anymore and his jaw hinged. The bug didn't seem to want to punish him for his struggle, it leaned back against him and he felt the goop start to spurt out into his mouth. The unicorn's tongue went slack first, but he had to fight to gulp down the stuff before it drowned him. It was sweet as sin and made his throat and mouth feel all tingly, but eventually his belly was quite full. The problem was that the bug didn't stop. Spike gagged and whimpered softly as it kept pumping, and he was forced to fight his urge to refuse to swallow, if that stuff landed in his lungs who knew what it would do!

Just as the former dragon's belly was swollen to the point where he would likely become sick, the flow tapered off and the bug pulled from his face. Spike hiccuped his mouth and jaw slack. He had barely a moment to try and focus his vision out into the dim room when he saw a much larger bug, lining its own abdomen up. But not with his mouth.

Spike's horn was engulfed, the tight passage seeming to grip at every curve, every spiral, drawing him deeper until his head leaned against the thing's entrance. Spike had not the practice that Rarity had, in trying to fight being forcefully milked of magic and so, when the first suck came, his mind sank into the fog, a little part of him enjoying the very strange sensation, equating it to his lover paying careful attention to his stallionhood. His eyes glassed over as the soft glow of the bug before him became all he could think about, the soft pulsing light beating in time to the throbbing in his horn.

Shining had watched Spike, seen the poor unicorn undone. He wanted nothing to do with it. The goop around him was getting hotter and hotter as he tried to raise more and more magic, he would get his friends and all the other ponies out! He closed his eyes as his bloated belly seemed to lurch, devouring the raw sugars in the stuff that had been pumped into him, helping his cause.

The stallion's eyes flew open when something warm pressed down around his long horn, capturing it and sucking it still deeper until a gentle pressure touched his skull. He hadn't even stopped channeling and so, when the bug started to suckle at his magic, rather than a little trickle it got a flood. Shining watched the light in front of him grow brilliantly bright, his drooling mouth smiled a little, it was so pretty…

The colony seemed to be rocked by their queen's pheromones. It was like a wave of reward flowed out from their progenitor, the chemical soup that her scents contained not only rewarding every insect but also boosting them. The new food they had brought in, one in particular, would feed the colony just on its own and the queen found herself flooding the farming chamber with feeding workers to make sure the thing stayed very well fed itself.

The giant female cast a brief thought toward its history, having grown bigger one day, of having found the first of its new 'aphids' to farm. It gave another burst of reward to the hunters who brought in the aphids for her hive, it was nearly time to lay a new queen, a beautiful daughter with gossamer wings who could fly off to start her own hive.

"Where are those silly colts?" Cadance looked around the dinner hall, Gel, Shining and Spike were all missing.

"And where is Rarity, Rainbow and Pinkie?" Twilight added, sounding equally confused. "You don't suppose they got into trouble?"

Fluttershy shank back a little from the delicious broth she had been sampling. "Oh dear, I hope not." Her voice was, as ever, a whisper.

"Now now girls, calm yer heels, ahm sure nothing could possibly slow that wild bunch down." The words relaxed everypony and Applejack smiled and tried some more of the berry-medley she was having as her entree, it might not be apples, but darned if they weren't too bad.

Muffins was in Muffins-heaven. Not only had her entree been her favorite food, but there were two of them! Everypony except, oddly, Fluttershy had recoiled when the mare had started fanging the poor food to death.

"Fascinating…" Fluttershy said with a smile, watching the alicorn half-changeling attack the muffins.

"Your… Your Highness!" A nervous-looking guard had poked his head into the dining room. Two alicorns looked at him directly and he had to look at Cadance. "Um, I think you need to know…"

"I'll be right there." Cadance gave a sigh and turned to her friends. "Excuse me, please, empires don't just run themselves." Her smile was half-forced, unfortunately her statement was all-too-true.

She was outside the dining room when the guard gave a firm salute. "Your Highness, ponies seem to be going missing. We have-"

"How many?" Cadance cut in, she really didn't want to keep her friends without a host for too long.

"About… about a quarter of the city…" The stallion trembled but he saw his message had finally gotten through. "Your Highness?"

Cadance took a deep breath and poked her head back in, running through her options. "Uh, Twilight, Muffins? Is there any chance you could help me with a teensy-tiny matter?" Both mares stood up and started trotting over, leaving Applejack and Fluttershy looking at each other.

It was okay, she wouldn't panic. Twilight and Muffins came out into the hall and Cadance carefully closed the door behind them. "Please tell them."

The guard saluted again. "Almost half the city seems to be… deserted. We began our night-time patrol and… only half the patrols came back and they reported the whole east side seems to be missing."

"Missing?" Muffins blinked and trotted over to a window, the building looked to be there. Her keen changeling night-vision narrowed and she thought she saw movement. "Something is out there… lots of somethings. Should we investigate?"

Twilight beamed. "Let's, there is nothing three alicorn's couldn't take on!"

Somewhere, a nervous goo-changeling was riding the slow train to the Crystal Empire, he got a sudden chill down his spine for no reason he could tell… apart from the obvious.

Cadance let out the breath she had been holding. "Okay girls, lets do this." She trotted out to the nearest balcony and spread her wings. Lifting her larger-than-normal pony body into the air on her huge wings was easy, Cadance circled around while a gray shape and a purple one took to the air behind her. The three tucked their wings a little and swooped down so they were just above the rooftops, making good time for the edge of the city. One of the many little parkways was speeding past under them when the pink alicorn felt something hit her.

Twilight's surprise was brought on when her sister-in-law seemed to get hit with something pink and sticky-looking and she began to tumble from the air into the underbrush. "Down there! Lets get them!"

Muffins was not the best trick-flier, but she knew tricks. When a gob of pink goop came up at her she dropped one wing and tilted the other, rolling tightly as the gob flew by her. Just below her she watched Twilight grab one gob in her magic and deflect it, only to get hit by another and suddenly start to drop. "I'm coming!" Gray wings tucked in tight, only the tips out as she swooped down to where the second princess went down. She had to spread her wings as she reached the ground and was quickly rolling again to avoid another of the goopy projectiles. "Hay! Stop throwing-" Her voice stopped dead. Huge ants had already hit Twilight with more of the gobs of stuff, gluing the alicorn up quite tightly and in her shock Muffins didn't react quickly enough, one of the sticky masses hitting her in the shoulder.

Twilight struggled, she began to channel a huge amount of magic to try and deal with this threat when she suddenly felt heat rise all around her and the ants started dumping more of the goop onto her. She saw a huge ball of the stuff being carried away into the tress, Cadance's head hanging out one side. It took three of the things to carry it.

The more the alicorns struggled the more of the pink goop was piled on them and, soon enough, all three were bundled up in enough of the magic-dampening goop that they couldn't even make a light. The trip back to the ants' hive was bumpy and jostling. "Girls I… I don't know what we can do…" Twilight had given up struggling, she tried to use her head here. What did the ants want and what were they going to do with them? Eating seemed out of the question, the ants seemed to have gone to quite a lot of effort to keep them not only alive but safe.

Carried down into the hive, all three were taken into a high-vaulted cave that already had a lot of ponies in it but, the oddest thing, there were bugs attached to their heads. "Spike! Gel!" Twilight yelled out.

"Shiny!" Cadance spotted her husband on the end, a heavily bloated bug pressed against him in an odd way.

Muffins figured it out first. "They have their horns…" She watched in horror as the bugs seemed to be milking all the unicorns for their magic. "We need to get out of here, if they are using unicorn magic-"

"Then alicorns are going to be the new meal of the day…" Twilight cut in, catching on fast.

The three were placed side by side, the insects adjusting the goop around each mare so that they couldn't move their heads and were oddly comfortable. "What are they going to do to us?" Cadance was fighting not to tremble, in the back of her mind she knew she would likely end up as she had seen her Shiny, but her conscious mind didn't want to acknowledge that.

"They are going to… Cadance… look at me." Muffins had to roll her eyes to look at the pink alicorn. She focused and focused, reaching for her changeling magic. She hoped she could at least use that odd hypno-eye thing but, as she began to bring up the power within herself it was dampened and then, as she watched, a big bug backed up to the Princess of the Crystal Empire and latched itself onto her big horn.

Cadance was almost hyperventilating, her horn felt horrible in the thing's grip and when she felt the first tug on her magic she fought it with all her being. Her eyes focused on the disgusting sight before her and she blocked her magic fiercely. The trembling touch up and down her horn was horrible, it felt like there was a dozen mouths sucking at the appendage. Reaching into her reserves she tried to keep her composure but, slowly, her mind weakened as the creature seemed to be relentless. "Twilight, help-"

Twilight watched as her sister's eyes suddenly went wide and glassy and an immense glow began in the thing latched on to her horn. "Cadance! Please fight it!" Twilight was so focused that she didn't see the thing in front of her until her own horn was sliding down into it. Something tingled in her head, an odd sensation and, caught unawares, the first suckle filled her head with soft fog. Twilight smiled, she was trapped and unable to move, and her subconscious had conjured an image of her lover embracing her. She pushed out her magic when the second suckle came and relaxed into what she thought was her lover's embrace.

Beside the two mares, having just watched two of the most powerful ponies she knew be taken down in seconds, Muffins began to cry as her own horn was captured and she didn't fight, she couldn't, not when so powerful ponies as her friends couldn't. The fog that filled her head crowded out all her thoughts, choking up her mind with softness and weakness. Muffins stared blankly ahead as the pulsing glow filled her vision.

Author's Note

Welp, princesses are down, poop just became real. Call Celestia, she will know what to do!

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