The circle of friends and guinea pigs left the bar hours later. As they all trotted out the door, Vic magically took hold of the leash wrapped around Tailchaser’s cannon.
“I will take care of Sixteen for now. You have been saddled with it for two weeks already”, he said. It was mostly for show, to make the few remaining passers-by feel rightly at ease.
“See ya ‘round, guys” Jennie said as she gave Tailchaser and Powder each a friendly hug. Then, she turned around to walk with her coltfriend and drinking buddy.
As the trio made their way home, a not insignificant amount of unicorns they passed reacted to their presence with disgust, fear, anger, or a vague combination of the three.
“Vicky”, Jennie softly asked, “why do they all look like we’re dangerous criminals? This happens all the time!”
Vic released a short throaty hum and looked at his companions. The changeling walking between them seemed ill at ease.
“Though the disgust could maybe be due to you being an earth pony in a unicorn city, which would be a very sorry state of affairs on their part, I am afraid it is clear who the brunt of it all is directed towards”, he explained in half a whisper. Sixteen shivered, popping and resettling its wings with a soft but rapid buzz.
“Why don’t you just disguise yourself?” Jennie asked. Sixteen walked a little closer to Jennie so it could be heard.
“Cos they’d still be afraid of me. Not of whoever I become. It changes nothing.”
“No offense little buddy, but that was remarkably deep”, Vic remarked.
“If I’m to be accepted, I want ponies to accept the real me”, Sixteen elaborated at an increasingly audible volume. “Not just… I dunno, Cinnamon Breeze or whatever, but me, Sixteen!”
“That’s… not even your real name, pally”, Jennie remarked.
By then, Sixteen had all but forgotten the effect its typical voice had on ponies and was almost shouting. “It’s my number, that’s good enough. 16-7-52-FUCKING ONE! And even then, what have I ever done to these ponies to deserve being looked at as if I killed somepony?”
As Sixteen sat down on the street and pouted, Vic gave it a thoughtful look.
“You do not know?”
Sixteen harrumphed in reply.
“How about I show you exactly why?” Vic asked as he took a recall beacon from Jennie’s bag and set it up in an alley. “Stay with Jennie and you will wake up tomorrow morning to face the same hardships as always.”
He took off his glasses and exchanged them for a pair of shades. “Or you come with me, and I will show you exactly how deep this rabbit hole goes.”
For his effort at cheesiness, Vic had a rubber chicken thrown at his face.
“Ow.”
Sixteen sat and pondered the offer. It knew what the beacon meant – what Vic had meant… It stood up and walked into the alley. Vic nodded at his marefriend. He would’ve told her to go on ahead without them, but recall didn’t work that way.
When Sixteen opened it eyes again, it was standing in the same alley, but only in the spatial sense. Before it could step out into the street, Vic pulled it back.
“You might want to take back what you said earlier and get a disguise going, friend”, he explained in a whisper. “This is just before the wedding of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Guard Captain Shining Armor. You might have heard of it.”
Sixteen stood and pondered. “The invasion?”
“If you look the right way you could maybe see the swarm coming. The queen is already here, disguised as the princess.”
“But the only disguises I’ve ever used were the forms of other ponies”, Sixteen argued. “What if somepony recognizes me?”
“Then we are rightly boned. You will want something reasonably unique.”
Vic sat down opposite of Sixteen and put a hoof to his chin in thought.
“We are all… bros here, are we not? Powder, Chase, you, and me… What if you pretended to be my little brother? Or perhaps sister? What are you anyway?”
“I’m a changeling. It doesn’t matter much for the common drone, so even I never gave much thought to it.”
“I see. How about you just go with what feels natural to you, then?”
Sixteen nodded and walked deeper into the alley as Vic stood and positioned himself to block the view. In a thus less visible green flaming flash, Sixteen had taken the form of a youngish unicorn mare who could indeed pass as Vic’s little sister.
Hell broke loose just hours after. As an instinctive actress, Sixteen had little difficulty playing the part of a distressed filly, hiding behind Vic whenever one of her brethren crashed into the pavement nearby. For his part, Vic navigated through all the chaos towards various vantage points, narrating the events as the two went.
About an hour later, they spotted a bright pink light emanated from one of the larger rooms in the castle. When the expanding shell of weaponized love appeared, Vic knew he had only seconds to trigger the recall beacon. He held tightly onto Sixteen as the shell came closer.
Three seconds later, the two were thrown out of the alley they started from and tumbled into the streets of Canterlot – their Canterlot.
Jennie was confused when she first saw the unknown filly tightly holding onto what was by all means her coltfriend. The confusion was quickly dispelled when the filly stood up and changed back to her natural form.
“How’d it go, guys?” she asked.
“It was terrible. Suddenly I understand why your queen wouldn’t go by that title all this time.”
As Jennie and Sixteen discussed the invasion and how it affected the reputation of changelings as a whole, and Vic brushed off his jacket, he caught sight of a little foal watching them. She had seen Sixteen change and turned tail, running blindly towards the edge of the platform. Canterlot being built on the side of a mountain, it consisted of several interconnected levels and large balconies. The bar was on one of the lower levels, but even there were a few balconies. One of them was, in fact, quite close. The balconies had railings, of course, but whoever had designed this particular one had underestimated the maneuverability of a frightened filly.
Before anypony knew what happened, she had gone over the literal edge.
Vic and Sixteen needed but a glance and a nod. It was hero time, and the changeling had to prove herself. She took a running start towards the edge where the filly had fallen off, galloping like a bug possessed, and jumped down after her.
Hanging with a scientist with a penchant for physics had its perks. Sixteen was well acquainted with gravity from Vic’s studies of pegasus flight, and laid her limbs straight along her body to increase aerodynamics, as opposed to the wildly flailing filly. With a few quick bursts from her wings, Sixteen caught up with her target, matched speed, and grabbed the filly. Carefully, she spent the last few precious seconds pumping her wings in the opposite direction, knowing full well from Vic’s monologues that it wasn’t the fall that killed you. Tapping a single back hoof to the cobblestone below, Sixteen triumphantly blasted off, back to the balcony she had jumped from, holding a pleasantly thrilled little filly in her forearms.
She was 16-7-52-1, and she had shown that not all changelings were monsters.