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// The Rescue 
// Story: The Rescue 
// by Diamond Sparkle 
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Princess Celestia sat upon her throne, having been set free from the changeling pod and cleaned, with several more guards then normal around her, just in case any Changeling had somehow managed to avoid being flung out of Canterlot and remain alive. Even a single Changeling who survived could become a major danger to her little ponies. She sighed as she considered the security measures that would have to be taken to protect them

. Whatever option I can think of is bad. I can send the Royal Guards to destroy every adult changeling and defenceless baby grub that can be found. But that will be expensive, take a long time, the Changelings will take on other shapes and infiltrate or flee, and even after what’s happened, I cannot answer it with genocide. Or I can close the borders and shield them but that will ruin trading and destroy the economy. Or maybe I can hold talks with the Changelings, friendship is magic after all. But can anypony including me trust them after they disrupted my niece’s wedding and attacked the capital city?

There were more screams from outside and she went out to the royal balcony and almost let out a cry of terror of her own. Visible through the glittering pink shield there was a great black crack in the sky. And it was growing by the second. Celestia stood her ground and controlled her fear. I am Princess Celestia; I can control the Sun and the Moon. I’ve faced the chaos of Discord, the rebellion of Nightmare Moon, a Changeling attack and all the small problems of being an autocratic monarch, I can close this thing.  The crack reached the shield and tore it like paper, and Celestia sent a beam from her horn of rainbow light into the crack, using all her power to close it up. But it didn’t work and the crack started to tear the city apart. Celestia spread her wings and turned to flee but the crack swallowed her up.

Blackness.

I can still think. Is this what death is like, able to think but not speak or move? Or have they accidently buried me alive in the Canterlot Noble Graveyard? Are six feet of earth above me? Or have I survived the destruction of my entire universe? I feel cold, and wet. 

A voice broke the silence. “Celestia, open your eyes, you’re safe now.” She opened her eyes and smiled. Royal Guards were with her, drying her with a towel wielded by a unicorn, helping her to her feet. She was in some sort of cave and she blinked a few times and noticed the remains of a sliced open changeling pod at her feet. “Thank you,” she said, and tried to spread her wings. And nothing happened. Looking at her flanks, she opened her mouth in horror. Her fur was still white, but beautiful wings were gone! Not even wing stubs were present. Her sun symbol on her flank was gone, replaced with a book, and she was as small as a partly grown filly. She reached up to her forehead with a hoof expecting to find her horn, but only found a bare forehead instead.

“What happened to me? I’m not an earth pony filly, I’m two thousand years old and I’m Princess Celestia of Equestria. I want to be taken back to the castle at once.”

The guards started at her and frowned. “We know you’ve been through a lot, being kidnapped by Changelings and spending two months hung up in a cocoon to feed the grubs can’t be very pleasant, but you are not an alicorn. Princess Aurora rules this country and has done so for two thousand years, and she takes a dim view of any royal pretenders. A very dim view. If you start telling everyone you’re an alicorn, you’ll either be sent to an asylum for the insane for what could be a lengthy period of time, or you’ll end up decorating the Canterlot Royal Gardens as a stone statue. You are a common earth pony filly, and your parents work on a farm bucking apples. You went out one night to look at the stars and was kidnapped and replaced by a changeling, and nobody found out for months. We are going to take you out of the hive now along with the other victims, and the Princess will see you, and then we’ll take you back home to your family.”

They led her out of the ruined Changeling Hive to join other fillies, colts and fully grown ponies, each of them cut out of a changeling pod, and she stared at the alicorn, Princess Aurora, standing in front of her. The Princess was dressed in the full royal finery, a jewelled crown on head, a breastplate on her body, a golden shoe on each hoof, unlike the now naked Celestia. Celestia blushed for a second and then remembered that nakedness was nothing to be embarrassed about for most ponies. The alicorn spoke sweetly. “My little ponies, you have been freed from the menace of the Changelings, and are now free to go home. My guards will take you home to your families, who I’m sure will be delighted to have you back.” 

Some of them clopped their hooves together and cheered, but by no means all of them. Celestia was one who remained icily silent.

So I never was an immortal alicorn and the past two thousand years of my life was a lie? I’ve gone from being a princess, a goddess, loved by my little ponies, to a little pony myself, an earth pony filly, not even a pegasus or a unicorn. I will never fly again and soar through the sky, never manipulate anything again with the power of my magic horn. When I want to pick anything up it will be with my mouth or perhaps with bracers attached to my legs, for the rest of my life. My immortality is gone; I will live no longer then an average pony, and may well end up bucking apples for the rest of my life as a common labourer. Or I may end up being reduced to pulling carts for a few bits. Why did they have to cut me out of that pod for? I was so happy in there. 

A tear rolled out of her eye as she was ushered into a large wagon with the other victims of the Changelings.

It was a lengthy trip of days to the border of Equestria proper, and Celestia had plenty of time to talk with her fellow ponies. Many had thought themselves alicorns, like her, others had simply enjoyed an idyllic life with their families or lovers with everything they needed provided for them whilst their bodies lay perfectly preserved in the Changeling pods. And now they had all been freed and reintroduced to the real world and by no means all of them, particularly those from poor backgrounds, were happy about it. Some wished they had never been rescued. They were fed adequately on apples and the guards were pleasant to them; they were not prisoners but rescued ponies after all. Soon enough they reached the Equestrian border and a train that took them back and dropped them off at home. The closer she got to her new home, the  more Celestia came to dread what was coming.