Queen Chrysalis cackled as she led her forces to the flat rocky landscape before them. This was the perfect location; far enough removed from pony civilization to operate unseen, but close enough that it served as a fantastic strategic base of operations. Not to mention there were only a hoof full of ponies on this farm, which meant between her mighty power and the sheer mass of her swarm their conquering of the land was absolutely assured. Sure she had had her setbacks with the invasion of Canterlot, but after all this time she had bolstered up her forces and the hive was ready to establish a satellite base right in this very spot.
The Pies where having their morning breakfast of salt rocks when they started hearing buzzing. Igneous raised his eyes up from the newspaper that had been detailing the birth of a new alicorn over in the crystal empire and languidly looked out his window for the briefest of moments before turning back to the news.
"Cloudy, direct thine eyes to yonder window..."
Igneous's wife Cloudy Quartz raised her eyes from her soup and adjusted her glasses to peer out the window. The blue sky was dimming as the buzzing cloud of changelings began to envelop the sky. Green light started raining down from them as their black forms landed on the ground with a a thud. Cloudy sniffed and languidly looked back to her life mate.
"It appears thine family has unwelcomed guest upon thine steps."
"They better not touch Holders Boulder that's all I've got to say on the matter." Limestone growled as before hastily finishing up her soup to go outside. Maud took out her pet rock from her clothing and looked at it.
"Boulder is asking if one of us or all of us should go out there...He says he's kind of hungry too."
"The Pie family shall greet these unwelcomed guests as one my dear Maud. Come, let us see what this ruckus is about this morn."
Limestone was the first to aggressively open the door, impassively staring at the thousand of hovering and grounded bug things that swarmed about their lands and darkened the sky with their presence -- her eyes were on a particularly large one standing where she shouldn't.
"HEY SWISS CHEESE LEGS, GET THE BUCK OFF OF HOLDERS BOULDER!" The impatient mare roared over at Chrysalis. The queen blinked before busting out into maniacal laughter. She found it so amusing as the earth ponies filed out of their home and didn't even looked in the least bit nervous at their presence. Well most of them anyway, one violently reminded her of the shy yellow pony from back in Canterlot.
"Such lack luster hospitality," she said at length in the most condescending tone she could muster, "And here I thought you ponies were all about friendship and kindness." The queen raised a hoof in mock dramatics, relishing in her victory to come.
"You have 30 seconds to get off our farm." A blank faced one simply stated to her. She had a frock on and the grayest coat the Queen had ever seen. She looked like a living rock and sounded like one too.
"Buck that, they have 10 seconds for touching Holders boulder." Limestone corrected Maud.
The Queen was starting to get irritated. She had them out numbered thousands to one, she had toppled their ruler once with her own magic, and here she was not even being respected in a simple invasion of one rocky looking farm.
"You don't seem to..."
"6 seconds..." Maud interrupted her.
Something about this whole situation was putting the Changeling Queen on edge, which in turn was seeping into her followers who were feeling her unease. They were not standing in formation but looking slightly hesitant now. She screwed up her face ready to yell at them.
"NOW YOU LISTEN..."
"3 seconds.." Igneous Rock Pie intoned over whatever she was going to say.
Chrysalis snarled at the lot of them, not enjoying this invasion in the slightest. "Go my children! Claim these insolent ponies for the hive so we may feed on their....wait where did they..."
All at once before she had finished her speech, the entire group of them seemed to vanish into thin air. These were Earth ponies though, they didn't have magic or wings so where could they have gone. The world seemed to have gone still for the confused Changeling as she tried to figure out what was going on.
The queen narrowly dodged a massive rock that sailed through air at her at blinding speeds. Riding on top of it was none other than the grey maned mare that told her to get off the rock before grinding the rock onto the ground over her followers whom tried to scatter out of the way.
As Chrysalis hovered there above the rock things started falling from the sky in droves around her. To her shock her minions were being knocked unconscious by the dozens. She brought her face up to see Maud and Cloudy Quarts calmly and quickly jumping from one changeling to another, utilizing all four of their hooves in dazzling displays of acrobatics with contrasting impassive expressions as they dispatched the swarming numbers that kept them aloft. They didn't even look like they were exerting themselves, they were just calmly tapping her children as they darted about, bouncing from one changeling to another as they non lethally took them all out.
On the ground while this was going on, Igneous and Limestone vanished and reappeared in random spots, chopping confused changelings on the back of their necks with their fore-hooves or knocking the breath out of them with a tap to the chest, barely giving them time enough to lob a shot off before several dozen of her children were twitching unconscious forms getting covered by their kin that were falling from above.
only a couple seconds had gone by and already a quarter of the army she had come with were unconscious or heavily injured. It wasn't bad enough her kind were getting trounced, they were being treated with light hooves as if her Changeling army were somehow fragile.
"FIRE! LEAVE NONE OF THESE PONIES ALIVE!!!"
Her swarm responded and opened fire with their horns with intent on making the whole land smolder from their power when they were through.
The shy one appeared in the middle of the ground and looked up with her mane covering half her face. She nervously assessed the trajectory of the blasts with her uncovered eye that darted back and forth between the thousands of beams careening towards their farm. While this was only a half second for the Queen, to Marble Pie it was nearly an eternity as she watched the blasts of magic going at a crawling pace towards her home. From this slowed down perspective she could see her family rapping up the dregs in the sky and on the ground that they hadn't managed to get to yet. She didn't want to get into the fighting...
...she didn't know how to hold back on her punches like they did. Heavens forbid she killed one of the poor dears.
So she set about knocking away the magical beams that were coming. One after another she punched them, making sure to direct the punch upward so the shockwave's didn't damage the farm too bad. They still kicked up massive amounts of dust and small bits of debris though. Thousands of beams in her eyes were taking all the time in the world as she nervously darted from one to another, bucking them away from their home and out of existence.
In the Queens eyes, it was a frightful show of speed and strength that nearly churned up winds that ripped the carapace off of her body and blew her changelings beams into the sky like they were nothing. The shockwaves from the amount of times the shy one broke the sound barrier in that half an instant had blown many of her children whom were still untouched tumbling into the distance as surely as the shield from Canterlot had.
There she was...not even ten seconds into an invasion of a rock farm with her legion, and 99% of her forces were either unconscious, too injured to fight, or off over the horizon from the concussive punches from the shy one. What little that was left was hugging onto their queen for dear life and shaking in their exoskeletons.
Maud and Cloudy landed on the ground nimbly and adjusted their clothing in an expressionless manner before going to stand next to the rest of their family.
"Jeese Marble, you nearly wrecked the farm, watch how much force you put into those bucks will ya?" Limestone admonished her younger sister.
"Mmmhmm..." The shy one mumbled apologetically.
"Right....well....Lets call this a draw...I'm going to...take my children and go now..." The changeling queen levitated her unconscious followers and floated away before the same thing was done to her. She had decided in that moment that Ponies were simply far to much trouble to conquer. Not for any particular reason, nothing to do with this instance what so ever. She decided, completely of her own accord and without any outside influence that there were probably plenty of other races on the planet she could try siphoning love from. Ponies were no fun anyway.
"Well...." Limestone said as she stretched out her limbs "...Guess that warmed us up for farming huh?"
"Indeed..." Maud said as she started walking to the fields to begin her morning work with the others. Rock farming had been in their family for generations, and it had made the pie family strong. It will continue to make the Pie family strong for many generations to come as the choosing rock willed it.
May providence remain on their lands forevermore.
Meanwhile Pinkies senses were going haywire on her cutie mark throne before settling back to her usual hyper self again. Twilight looked over at her from over the castle map.
"What did that one mean Pinkie?"
"It was the 'Changelings attacked the Pie family farm but don't worry about it cause they took care of business' twitch." Pinkie rattled off happily.
Twilight's eyes dilated and her mouth fell open. "What? ....What? Pinkie it took everything we had to drive the changelings off!"
"Well my family wasn't there silly! Plus I didn't have enough room to hit them properly at the time without breaking a bunch of buildings or hurting one of you gals. Hey you wanna make some cupcakes?! I wanna see how awesome this castles kitchen is!"
Twiight rubbed her temple and nodded "....you know what, sure...forget I asked anything....but you guys might seriously want to talk to Celestia about being in the military or something."
"Naaah..." Pinkie said as she waved her hoof dismissively "it would have to be something big like Sombra coming back and trying to use an army of brainwashed crystal ponies to take over Equestria to get us to do something like that."
The princess could only blink at that as she followed her, especially since she visited a timeline where that was exactly the case. She really needed to do some research on her family one of these days.
