A few days had passed and there was no sign of any strange activity in neither Ponyville, Canterlot, the Crystal Empire or the Everfree since the nest with Chrysalis was destroyed and during this, the two took time to bond with some of the students with Twilight consenting and letting them teach a class mostly on the creature so she can study it more. As they taught the class Ocellus asked

"Um excuse me Mr. Blake?"

"Yes?" Blake replied

"How is the creature's shapeshifting different then ours?"

"The creature uses stealth tactics when seeing someone and the way they shapeshift is by eating them, basically the original victim must be killed in order for them to be copied by the creature."

A bunch of students gave looks of horror and Sandbar said with shock

"That sounds kinda dark and morbid"

"Tell me about it son, any other questions?" Blake responded

Smolder raised her hand and MacReady said

"Yes?"

"How do we know it's the creature in disguise?."

"There were a few ways we knew, for example they can't copy inanimate objects or jewelry, such as necklaces, earrings, rings, piercings or even possibly in a way makeup."

"The second way is doing blood tests, I'll give you an example with Blake here."

The two pulled out an hypo needle and injected it in themselves, the blood then did no reaction. MacReady then did the same to a dead imitation creature in the form of a soldier he kept away from the class as far as possible and the blood exploded, with Blake and MacReady neutralizing it with their incendiary weapons before any harm was caused to them or the class, leaving them shocked.

"Also be cautious, the only way to damage them is with flammable material, such as electrocution, firearms, literal fire or flames and explosives." Blake said

The class gave looks of either shock, horror or even those of astonishment at the dead creature. Gallus then asked with curiosity

"By the way, why do you two call it the "Thing?"

MacReady with a demoralized or disgusted look said "To be honest, we don't know, we gave it that name because of how disgusting, confusing and elusive the creature can act."

Blake added "Plus, it's not even from OUR planet at all, all we know is that it wants to basically rule the world by spreading itself as a viral disease and me and MacReady are the ones that are immune to the virus."

The students gave looks of shock and MacReady said

"Ok final question!"

Yona asked "Yona want to know how it manage to create so many forms!"

Blake answered " To answer that, the creature has to basically in a way take form of any human or in possibly your case pony, or wildlife and use that as a way to make pods and recreate and copy more of its own organisms. In fact, that crash site me and my friend here went to had a Scuttler pod, they are basically creatures that make Scuttlers, spider-like creatures with a human head from mutations and assimilation of other victims, but the upside is it's immobile and vulnerable to flammable weapons like the other creatures."

Soon the bell rang and the class went out of the room, leaving the two alone for a bit. A few hours later, the two were visited by the girls and were asked if they wanted to hang out later. During this, they had decided to accept them as a thanks for helping get rid of the creature and a nemesis of theirs that had crossed to many lines and they agreed but only if they bring their weapons and the group agreed. As they were seen outside having a picnic, Twilight said

"We can't thank you both for keeping our town safe."

MacReady said "No problem, anything to stop that Thing from making more disgusting problems."

As the group began to eat, Spike suddenly appeared scared and ran to the two.

"Guys, the school, there's something wrong!!"

"Spike, what's wrong?!" Twilight said

"There's a large big sticky thing stuck on a wall trying to kill me, it's inside the classroom those two were teaching!"

The 9 rush to the school and ran into the building with a bunch of students holding the door shut as it tried to break out, one student said

"Hurry, it's really angry!"

The two soldiers saw an vent and went up and traveled through the ducts and dropped in the room and saw an large grotesque monster in the rooms walls.

"Shit, here it comes!" Blake shouted

The creature then began to produce Scuttler pods and MacReady used his flamethrower to kill them as Blake was repeatedly firing his SMG at the creature and as he emptied the weapons, it produced an human and eventually a solar guard pony's torso and tentacles.

"Be careful, those tentacles and the arm have a poisonous venom, don't let it touch you!" Blake said

The two used their guns to kill the tentacles on the creature and the tentacles ended up shattering and Blake said upon seeing the creature reveal it's weak spots

"BURN HIM, NOW!"

MacReady pulled out his flamethrower as did Blake and the two began to incinerate the creature and the creature screamed with pain as the fire burned it and as the fires intensity increased, the creatures melted into nothing and fell on the floor, dead and incinerated.

After the creature was killed, the students came in along with the girls and Spike and Starlight and
Twilight asked

"Are you two ok?"

MacReady said "Yeah, but how did that Thing get in here so fast?"

"Me and Starlight saw some of the creatures posing as royal guards in the garden and infect some of the others, we managed to deal with them though and we incinerated them like you said we had to."

"Alright, everyone we are evacuating again, Twilight is everyone still here?" Blake said

"Yes, even the ones that aren't students, their too afraid of that Thing."

"Good, keep the place under lockdown."

The 8 complied and the two humans began to scout the school for any behaviour while the girls did blood tests on the civilians, while doing so, the two didn't find strange activity while the blood tests were once again proven mormal like last time and decided to keep more guards on the area, this time armed with flammable weapons.

The next day, the group was awoken and the girls were seen outside teaching the class, but they were too paranoid to do so out of fear of the creature. Twilight hopes that along the way they find the source, unaware of an young filly planning a heinous plan

Author's Note

Can you guess the filly's name and what episode it's from?

Ps this is between season 8