REGINSECTICIDE
An MLP:FIMfanfiction by: RUST
with proofing and editing by his pet cat
Celestia woke up screaming.
Immediately, a warm, viscous fluid rushed down her throat and straight into her lungs. The ivory alicorn, having been sleeping fitfully before, panicked, thrashing out with all her limbs in spastic, desperate motions. She nearly vomited then and there at the sensation of the disgusting goop coating the inside of her esophagus, and only through centuries of accumulated discipline was she able to beat back the instinct to suck in another, heaving, breath.
It was at this point she realized that she wasn't drowning. No, the odd liquid in her lungs, while extremely nauseating, did not seem to cause her much discomfort.
Tentatively, she inhaled the tiniest fraction of the stuff, ready to eject it back out in a heartbeat. Surprisingly, there was little discomfort; it was like breathing a dense, foul tasting air.
The Princess' eyes took it all in. She was surrounded on all sides by a transparent cocoon of some kind, suspended upside-down in the green gunk currently squelching in and out of her lungs. Below her lay the ceremonial hall of Canterlot Castle. Even from this crazy angle, she'd know it anywhere.
That...thing stood triumphant on the dias, flanked by a hypnotized Shining Armor and his fiancee, a struggling Princess Cadance. Chrysalis, was her name? Yes, a changeling. The Queen, no less. The reason she was here in the first place.
"You won't get away with this!" Cadance was saying. "Twilight and her friends will-"
Celestia never got to hear what Twilight and her friends would do, because at that moment, the door to the hall swung open, revealing the Bearers of the Elements themselves, trotting dejectedly to the dais with an escort of changeling drones. Celestia felt her heart sink into her stomach. They had failed, then. Without the Elements, Equestria was doomed.
"You were saying?" purred the Queen, who left Cadance by her husband. "You do realize the reception's been canceled, don't you?" she spat at Twilight and the others. Chrysalis then gestured to the other changelings in the hall. "Go! Feed!" With a buzz of insectile wings, the swarm took flight and raced out the door, which slammed closed behind them.
Chysalis chuckled darkly. "It's funny, really. Twilight here was suspicious of my behavior all along. Too bad the rest of you were too caught up in your wedding planning to realize those suspicions were correct," she taunted.
Inside the pod, Celestia felt a wave of guilt. She had been among those who had merely brushed away her student's misgivings as simple anxiety. The Princess cursed herself. It should have been obvious!
Below, she saw Applejack lay a comforting hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "Sorry, Twi... we shoulda listened to you," she murmured.
"It's not your fault," Twilight said. "She fooled everypony!"
Chrysalis hummed delightedly to herself, making fluttering over to the grand window. "Hmmm, I did, didn't I?" She began to softly sing, though the words were lost to Celestia.
There was a sudden nudging of her cocoon. A flash of midnight blue. She'd know that coat anywhere!
Princess Luna hung upside-down, her horn softly glowing as her hooves remain firmly rooted to the ceiling. She put a hoof up to her lips and then tapped her horn. Celestia understood the gesture at once. The alicorn's horn ignited with her own aura --weakened as it was-- as she activated her magic for the spell.
Luna, time is short. You must flee at once! Take all the citizens of Canterlot with you and evacuate. Celestia's thoughts traveled through the emerald sludge where sound would not. It had been a long time since she'd spoken with Luna this way, though.
Fear not, sister. Luna radiated a sense of tranquility that Celestia desperately wished she could match. As the game is not over yet, and there are players still with cards to play. Look, and see for thyself!
Down on the ground, Twilight had crept up to Cadance while the Queen was busy admiring the devastation that Canterlot had become. She blasted away the pink alicorn's restraints with a zap of magic. "Quick!" she hurriedly whispered. "Go to him while you still can!"
Cadance ripped herself out of the weakened bonds and bound over to her fiancee. The Captain stared blankly back, devoid of any expression. Nevertheless, she lunged, teary-eyed, and wrapped her lover in a tight hug, as if savoring their last moments together.
Celestia felt her heart go out to the poor mare. Luna, I strongly think-
Have patience, sister, and a little faith. I have spent a thousand years cultivating mine. The gentle barb stung, but served its purpose, and Celestia regarded the couple with renewed interest.
A tide of magic surged out of Cadance and into Shining Armor. It was a one-way stream of pure, unadulterated magical power; actual love given form. And then, the stream broke through the dam erected around the Captain's mind.
He staggered, blinking rapidly. "What? Where..? I-is the wedding over?"
A black streak rushed though the air and landed in front of him. Chrysalis reared up to her full height, glaring imperiously down at him. "It's all over!"
"Your spell!" Twilight called desperately. "Perform your spell!"
Celestia knew it well. She had taught it to him herself. Captain Shining Armor had one of the greatest aptitudes for defensive magic she'd seen in eons. He even surpassed the feats of the famed Star Swirl the Bearded, Celestia supposed, at least in that particular field of magic.
"What good would that do?" Chrysalis jeered. "My changelings already roam free!"
Shining Armor looked out the window, at the city he'd failed to protect. "N-no!" The unicorn braced himself and closed his eyes in concentrating, but only succeeded in producing a small purple spark from the tip of his horn. He sank in defeat. "My power is useless now. I don't have the strength to repel them."
Luna... Celestia was growing very, very worried.
Luna merely smiled a small, confident smile and watched the events unfold below.
Cadance wrapped her foreleg around her fiancee's neck and held him close. "My love will give you strength," she solemnly declared.
"Hah! What a lovely, but absolutely ridiculous sentiment," Chyrsalis scoffed, moving away to look out the window.
Shining Armor once more grit his teeth and put every ounce of strength he had had left into the spell. It wasn't enough. In a heartbeat, Cadance was there, touching the tips of their horns together.
Celestia repressed the urge to shiver from the sheer intensity of power that sparked to life from the activated spell. Whorls of light surrounded the two figures on the dais, swirling and whipping around them with increasing violence until the pair was forcibly lifted off the ground and into the air. Celestia had to cover her ears; even in the coffin she found herself in, the audible roar of magic had become almost unbearable.
There was a cataclysmic flash of light and heat and noise.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~!"
And just like that, the Queen of the changelings was rocketing away to parts unknown, courtesy of Air Equestria.
I must leave you now, sister, but we shall return upon the moonrise. Luna's horn glimmered, and Celestia's prison split down the middle. The Princess slid out and flopped onto the ground in an undignified heap. She was quickly surrounded by the concerned faces of her subjects.
Luna, she dazedly thought, where are you going?
On the ceiling, the figure of Princess Luna evaporated into a trail of starry smoke and was whisked away. But her last words with Celestia lingered long within the ivory alicorn's mind.
To deal with the pest problem.
In a peaty bog, miles away from the still-smoking city of Canterlot, a black meteor plunged out of the heavens and slammed into the ground, carving a trench the length of a standard hoofball field and throwing up debris ten stories high.
Through the eerie stillness that followed the thunderous crash, a ragged figure tumbled down over the edge of the crater she'd created, splashing facefirst into a puddle. A few bubbles popped up to the surface before the figure rolled over onto her back, staring blankly at the sky.
It started softly at first, rising into a cacophony of hilarity -- the laughter of one who has truly stared death in the face and survived to tell the tale. Chrysalis giggled madly. She was alive.
A streak of midnight-blue smoke soon descended from the sky, touching down not far from where Chrysalis lay. The changeling eyed it warily, before starting when it began to crackle with energy. The nebulous mass of ether whirled about, condensing down into a recognizable form.
Princess Luna stood above the downed Queen, glaring down at her much like a full predator eyes an injured animal.
"You...you were supposed to have been captured," Chysalis grimaced. "Yet when I personally arrived to take you, there was nothing but a collapsed tower. So many of my best..."
"As it should be," Luna replied. "We dropped it on their foolish heads." The Princess closed the gap between the two, until her icy teal eyes were mere inches away from Chrysalis' multi-hued gaze. "You invaded our home, attacked my sister, and tried to enslave our subjects. Did you seriously not think that we would put up a fight?"
Chysalis bared her teeth, revealing jagged fangs. "Some fight! I still breathe, and my changelings may yet live."
Luna lifted her own lips, revealing her own serrated grin. "For now."
Her horn sparked to life, and Chysalis was abruptly wrenched off the ground, hanging suspended before the dark alicorn.
Chrysalis was about to speak, some scathing retort, most likely, when the breath was stolen out of her by a terrific blast of telekinetic force, launching her straight through the slope of the crater and out the other side, coming to rest at the very center of the depression. Chrysalis' eyes rolled back in their sockets. Never before had she been hit quite that hard.
Something blocked out the sun. Luna's cold gaze was upon her again.
"What do you want?" Chrysalis spat. "Is it not enough to rub my face in my defeat?"
"To quote a certain induvidual: Ee-nope."
This time she was ready for the surge of power. Digging deep into the reserves Shining Armor had unwittingly been stockpiling for the past few months, Chrysalis raised a shield. Just in time. Luna's push slammed into it, and the magic visibly shuddered, but it held.
"Foolish bug. You were doomed to fail from the start." Luna said, "Nopony molests my kingdom without consequence!"
So that's how it was. Chrysalis seethed. It wasn't enough for the silly ponies to blast her into the next tomorrow, no, they had to try and finish the job.
The barrier trembled again, then shattered like glass. Luna's leftover surge carried enough force behind it to send Chrysalis skidding up the side of the crater to the rim. She staggered unsteadily, before a shadow descended behind her. A twist, barely avoiding the buck from Luna's silvershod hooves that would have crushed the back of her head. She wildly lunged, and let loose a flurry of strikes with her jagged, curved horn. The last cut sliced Luna across the cheek.
Luna retreated under the uncoordinated barrage, tactfully rolling onto her back while Chrysalis steamrolled over her. She lashed out with her hind legs into Chrysalis' stomach, and was rewarded with the sound of cracking carapace. The changeling yelped as she was catapulted upwards, followed closely by a midnight-blue thunderbolt of feathers and hooves.
Chysalis rolled mid-air, dodging the swift follow-up. She giggled at the sensation of the breeze on her wings as Luna roared right past her. The insectile wings hummed as the Queen brought them to use, hovering at ease high above the ground. Luna banked, hard, and began to glide. The two circled warily, like two cats sizing each other up.
For the first time, Chrysalis began to feel a twinge of unease. She still had a phenomenal store of power yet to be brought to bear, stuffed fit to burst with that silly Captain's love. No wonder she had been defeated by it -- this stuff was potent.
Luna was not her sister, though, Chrysalis realized. Celestia had been caught off-guard, and had severely misjudged just how strong Chyrsalis had become, paying dearly for it. Luna was raw where Celestia was refined, wrathful when the other was forgiving. Two opposites of the same whole, really. And she was ready, Chrysalis sensed, the entire magical reserve of a goddess prepped and ready for action, humming with tension like a drawn bowstring. And underneath that, she detected...something else. Something that made her very apprehensive. Luna had something up her sleeve. But what?
Chrysalis dug a little deeper, combing through the waves of power radiating from the alicorn. Her changeling intuition had a hunch, and if she was right...ah, there it was!
Oh...oh my.
The Queen's face split into a gleeful smile.
As a changeling, she was endowed with the gifts to detect the emotions of sentient life. It was a paramount ability to her race, as her kind nourished and enhanced themselves from the ambient life magic radiated by creatures, a type of magic that was influenced by emotion. Every feeling tasted different to Chrysalis, and what she was sensing from Luna was like ambrosia, almost too good to be true.
Love was the most powerful of all emotions.
"I shall give you this one chance to retreat, fool." Chrysalis cackled. "Stay, and seal your fate, for you shall not win this battle."
But hate would do in a pinch.
Luna responded by whipping her horn down in a graceful arc, out of which erupted a bolt of lightning that hammered Chrysalis in the chest. The changeling staggered mid-flight, but rapidly recovered. In fact, she looked even better than before.
"I warned yoooou~!' she innocently sang.
With that, she fired the bolt of lightning, now tinged green, on a one-way return trip home. Luna screamed as it lanced right back into her horn, her wings suddenly stiffening and locking up as electricity danced from feather to feather. The alicorn dropped from the sky like a stone, Chrysalis right behind. The second she hit the ground, the changeling slammed her down even further with the force of a runaway carriage. A small shockwave from the impact rippled the ground thirty meters in all directions.
Luna tore herself out of the ground almost instantaneously, retaliating with a ferocious barrage of lightning strikes which the changeling didn't even bother to dodge, letting them strike her with impunity. Every spear of power that entered her was promptly absorbed, and the cracks in her carapace began to heal right before Luna's eyes.
Luna snorted with frustration. "What cheap magic is this, bug? Will you not fight fairly?"
Chrysalis pretended to consider the thought for a moment, then waved her hoof dismissively. "You're asking a changeling to fight fairly. I suspect that last hit I gave you addled your brain!"
The alicorn hissed under her breath. Somehow, her formidable magic spells were doing no harm. In fact, they were reversing the damage her earlier blows had inflicted!
"Figured it out, yet?" Chrysalis taunted her. "You'd think a Princess would be smarter than this!" She fired a volley of green bolts at the alicorn, who evaded with an ungainly squawk. "I feed on emotions, you dolt! And your magic is just oozing with it."
Luna seethed. The witch had a counter to her powerful magic.
She was going to have to go about her business the old-fashioned way.
Luna responded to the taunts by ripping a fully-grown evergreen out of the ground, cocking it over one shoulder in manner of the broadsword. Birds and loose pine needles tumbled out as an entire ecosystem was disturbed in the name of combat.
The changeling giggled. "Ooh, look, you've got yourself a toy."
"Nay, 'tis a flyswatter... all the better to swat the fly with."
Chrysalis' eyes widened as several tons of wood, dirt, and leaf ripped through the air at half the speed of sound. With a shriek, she slammed herself into the ground, wincing as the enormous mass cleaved the space she'd been a heartbeat before.
She rolled, extending her own magical aura outwards, seizing a pair of half-grown birch trees and tearing them upwards. Just in time, too, as the evergreen was coming around for another pass. The saplings came together over her head in an X-shape as it crashed down into the crossing trunks.
The sheer force of the impact sent up a gust of wind into her face and the forest floor behind her, turning up centuries' worth of loam and decaying leaves into the air in an explosion of muted color.
Luna pressed down on the pine, seeking to crush her foe into the dust. Unbelievably, the changeling held her ground, the overhead force actually pressing her holey hooves half a foot into the earth. Her improvised weapon was groaning with every surge of force she sent down the length.
Abruptly, she choked up on the evergreen, gripping the tree by the middle, rather than the base, and the adjustment of fulcrum let her rip it out of the changeling's birches like a twirling baton. Luna resisted the urge to smile -- the Queen never saw the opposite end coming, the heaviest part of the tree clad in severed roots and thick bark.
With a sickening crack, Chrysalis was catapulted skywards, punching a hole through the forest canopy as her saplings were dragged with her.
A single flap of her wings, and Luna was tearing after her, an entire pine tree in tow.
The sudden dimming of the sun was all the warning she had. The changeling had recovered quickly. Chrysalis came down from above, viciously slashing at her. Limbs cracked against her body, splinters flew. She bolted backwards, hefting the pine to batter the improvised clubs away.
They circled again, the alicorn's wings beating much slower this time. Luna was panting heavily, a thin sheen of sweat visible atop the streaks of dirt and various bruises. The cut below her eye was bleeding, a single sliver of red running down her face.
"What's the matter, Auntie Lu-Lu?" crooned Chrysalis. "Running out of steam? Funny, you'd think having a thousand years of free time would have given you a great excuse to stay in shape!"
Luna gritted her teeth, but said nothing. A boiling tide of shame surged within her mind. The words cut deep. In her prime, she had ended far worthier foes in far less time. Her imprisonment had not done her any favors.
"You've let me down," continued Chrysalis, her voice silky and low. "Just like you let down everypony else, all those years ago. How does it feel? To know you failed them. Your friends. Your subjects. And especially... your sister."
"L-leave Celestia out of this, witch!" Luna roared. Despite herself, a wetness was beginning to brew around the corners of her eyes.
Chrysalis was undeterred, licking her lips as she said, "I know her emotions. I spent weeks in Canterlot, fooling all of you. And do you know what she feels? Do you know what shoots through her heart, every time she lays eyes upon you?"
"SILENCE!" the dark alicorn screamed. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP-!"
"It was fear. She's afraid of you, Luna, her own sister... do you know why? Because you fell from your lofty perch, because you gave into to what your heart wanted, and your head denied. Because you're a failure. As a Princess, and a sister. You're tainted, and she'll never see past that."
The Queen watched as the alicorn seemed to shudder in flight. Those feathered wings stilled, and she was hunched over, as if in pain. Chrysalis grinned in delight as her tactful goading provoked the exact kind of response she wished. Those dark energies laying dormant within the Princess had been stirred enough, the emotional catalyst added and the entire mixture set to a simmer. Now the reaction was taking place.
The sky exploded black.
Chrysalis watched as the sun was forcibly torn from the sky and tossed into tomorrow like a foal's toy. The stars punched through the heavens, lighting up brighter than they'd ever been in centuries. An aurora sprang up, whipping back and forth from horizon to horizon in streaks of radiant color.
The moon charged upwards from the east, so fast it blurred, until it jerked to a halt at the ultimate apex. It was so close Chrysalis could see details upon it like never before.
She looked back to Luna.
...Or, what had been Luna.
In her place; a larger alicorn, blacker than sin and armored in metal that glittered like cold ice. Two slitted eyes spewed forth a millennium's worth of pain and suffering. Powerful wings stretched to an unbelievable wingspan, the dark feathers seemingly melting into the night sky.
"RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!"
Nightmare Moon had been reborn.
And she hurled herself at Chrysalis with a rage unlike anything ever seen.
The pine tree, held in a searing telekinetic grip, promptly burst into magical blue flames. It swept through the air in great, sweeping arcs. Almost hypnotically, it moved, a cobra entrancing helpless prey. Though to be lost in the vision would mean braving dire straights.
Chrysalis barely had time to tilt her head back as the entire shaft of the tree rushed past, inches away, seeking to skewer her. In the heat of the moment, she stuck her tongue out and tasted the potent energies burning in the air. Delicious. Her own birches ignited a fel green, and they met the ensuing onslaught with glee.
Back and forth across the sky they danced swirling and whirling about in their deadly dance. The night lit up every time the weapons clashed, magical sparks arcing through the air as the two auras screeched together.
Nightmare Moon fought with the frantic strength of a cornered animal, pouring her very being into a relentless surge of aggression that sought to overwhelm Chrysalis through the sheer power.
Chrysalis, meanwhile, used her two smaller trees effectively, diverting her foe's strikes rather than outright blocking them. One tree would shove the pine away at the very last moment, and the other was quick to counter or whirl into position for the next pass. Every blow threatened to knock her from the air, such was the pure force behind each collision. Yet despite this, the Queen was giggling madly, drinking deeply from Nightmare Moon's aura every time she brought the pine close.
"Come on, is that all you got?" she laughed, feeling on top of the world. "Come on, come on, come on! I know you've got some more juice in there, Luna!"
Nightmare Moon roared something incoherent in reply, flourishing the forest titan above her head before ripping all the remaining limbs off and sending them at the changeling in a storm of splinters, each the size of a fully-grown stallion.
Chrysalis grinned madly, letting them all strike home, smiling wider each time a shaft of wood pierced her chitin, absorbing the furious energy guiding them forth. She threw her head back and yelled in something like ecstasy.
Ooohhh, this power... I must have more!
She flexed, and the splinters erupted out from her in all directions.
Nightmare Moon didn't even flinch as one glanced off her helm.
The two dark beings suddenly lunged forward, meeting in the middle as their weapons thundered to the distant ground. A furious mid-air scuffle broke out as they grappled, all pretenses of noble combat long since abandoned.
They thought each had been giving it their all.
Both were wrong.
Like things possessed, they abandoned every pretense of self-preservation in the name of sheer brutality. This had ceased to be a contest of endurance; now it was a sprint to beat the other into oblivion. They simply laid into each other with absolutely every ounce of strength they had.
Under her coat, Nightmare Moon's muscles strained like cords of iron, wings beating erratically as she clashed. Her eyes narrowed as she shoved her face against Chrysalis'. "I'll squash you like the insect you are," she hissed through serrated teeth.
Chrysalis responded by headbutting Nightmare Moon, before sinking her teeth around the black alicorn's throat. She clamped down, hard, and reveled in the flow of raw magic flowing through the flesh of the goddess. Nightmare Moon screamed, before returning the favor with her own fangs, cracking through the changeling's chitin.
An explosion of magic shoved them apart, Nightmare Moon now rasping with every breath, her furious onslaught spent. Chrysalis was breathing hard too, but not from exhaustion.
Slowly, like tattered leaves, they fluttered down to the ground, in the open field not far from the crater where the Queen had first landed.
Chrysalis began to stalk around the exhausted alicorn. She trembled, her eyes shut in bliss "Give me everything, Luna... I'm going drain you dry. Hehehehee..."
Nightmare Moon bared her fangs.
"You want it all? Then take it."
"With pleasure!"
Chrysalis leapt forward again, mouth wide open...
...And received the entire length of Nightmare Moon's horn down her throat.
"Choke on it."
Every feather, hair, and ethereal strand on the alicorn stood straight out as she poured every ounce of her fury into the changeling...
...Every thought of doubt...
...Every second of every day of every year of the pure solitude of the moon...
...All the failures...
...The disappointments...
...The betrayals...
...The dark, evil thoughts...
Chrysalis seemed to swell, light shining out of her eyes. All wounds healed in an instant, her wings grew longer, her body grew larger, her fangs more ferocious. Yes. Yes. Yes! It felt divine, all this emotion, this delicious, delicious emotion, filling up every cell of her being.
Suddenly, it started to hurt. Chrysalis could feel herself rupturing at the smallest of levels, unable to store or even release the magic faster than it was coming in. The unstoppable flow only increased. She tried to scream, gagging on the horn.
And Nightmare Moon kept pouring herself in, as the darkness inside began to be washed away, leaving the pure core that had always remained...
...Every comforting hug of her sister...
...The adoration in the eyes of innocent foals...
...The pride of shepherding their dreams...
...The fierce beauty of the vast cosmos...
...The cleansing light of Harmony...
...Redemption...
In that instant, Nightmare Moon ceased to exist once more, completely swallowed up by the Queen, who was now painfully bloated.
Princess Luna smiled at her, giving a mischievous wink.
"Somepony appears fit to burst!"
She promptly pivoted on her forelegs, putting the entire rotation of her body into one, bone-shattering kick. It took Chrysalis in her now-spongy gut, causing all the pent up energy to spew up and out her mouth with violent force.
The changeling was propelled into the night sky by the escaping essence of evil, a demented rocket of flesh and bone and magic, screaming ever higher into the heavens until she vanished into the inky blackness high above Equestria. A terrific detonation followed seconds later, painting the heavens with several new stars.
Luna stood still for a moment, scanning the skies in a pensive manner, before turning and kicking dirt over the spot the changeling once stood, like a cat kicking dirt over its leavings. With a final glance over her shoulder, she shook out her tired wings and took flight for home.
Celestia bounced a little as she sipped from a party beverage, tapping her hoof in time with the music. Well, she wouldn't really call it music. Ponies these days had such odd tastes... but it did encourage everypony to "get down and shake their groove thing," so it was hardly something to spurn. The wild-maned DJ at the turntables was laying down some bone-jarring beat or another. Celestia just smiled and enjoyed herself.
The celebration was well underway, by now. A simple garden dance for the marriage had erupted into a city-wide bloc party, and highborn nobles frolicked on the streets with the commoners. The newlyweds themselves were dancing up a storm at the heart of it all, surrounded by their friends, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Twilight.
Her observations were interrupted by midnight-blue shape landing gracefully next to her.
Luna gave her a cheeky grin.
"Hello everypony! What did I miss?"
Author's Note
Big thanks to Mischa, for steppin' all over the fuckin' keyboard and generally being an obnoxious twat.
