//------------------------------//
// Rescue Mission 
// Story: Everfree 
// by Verzeih Turncoat 
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The Everfree Forest is dangerous. Whoever had gone in had never come back out. Who would have thought that this also meant that ponies are unable to teleport out of it? Certainly not Twilight, who was freaking out as her little group found themselves no longer in Zecora´s hut, but in an different part of the forest. In another bright flash all three ponies had repositioned inside the forest. "Twilight..." - Applejack started in one location - "...get it straight, we´re trapped." - And was not finished in the second, before they left that in another beam of magic - "Hit the break so Zecora and Ah can remember the parts of the woods!" A last teleport, then Twilight finally stopped jumping around the place. The forest looked so different with the solid of vines and treetops. It was dark, too. The ground was soft and wet. In front of them was a large body of water. "Ah don´t think Ah recognize anything. How `bout you, Zecor... Twilight where´s Zecora?"








The zebra stood there in the middle of the forest, left behind in one of the dozen panicky executed teleport escapes. "I bet they will assume - that I head back to my room." She trotted pass the trees. "At least that makes more sense - than sitting in the wild without defense."








With stone walls by her side, Celestia walked along the canyon ground after having stood in front of the Tree of Harmony for at least half an hour. She had hoped for some reason that Evefree would appear in front of her. Eventually Celestia had moved on with a sad smile on her muzzle. What had she thought? Evefree had not come when she and Luna were captured by Discord´s vines, why would she now?
It has been a thousand and a hundred years since she had last seen her, around the time she first met Starswirl the Bearded. She remembered this time as the happiest, the time before the world got messed up. The autumn before Discord, before Sombra, before Luna turning to Nightmare Moon.
In her absent minded state a green flash blazed in front of her eyes - Evefree? A changeling? - She was startled for a second before she recognized the scroll. Spike´s flame. Wait, a letter.








"Let me go." demanded Granny Smith, struggling in the vines. Her whole body ached from being bound up against the tree. The green magic snatched a twig from a the black tree and started to plait Granny Smith´s grey mane into a braid around it.

"I can´t let you walk around, yet. There is something I need to take care of first."








Applejack and Twilight ran away from the timberwolves that had suddenly approached them. The poison joke covered up their bad breath and the blue color made them surprisingly harder to spot in the shadow than their wooden bodies in the woods. What it didn´t cover up was their habit of growling before attacking. The sound of cracking twigs, rustle of leaves that could be the flowers on their bodies moving or the wind. Every sound made them anxious, afraid there was another wolf behind the bushes ready to attack them. Twilight had tried to teleport them away, but it had not taken the wolves long to track them down again and again.

"How do they keep finding us?"

"I don´t know..."

Applejack hated it when Twilight said that, her friend's brain always seemed to stop working when she did. So now Applejack had to keep herself and her friend safe while searching for a solution herself. She had encountered timberwolves before, but it felt different how the wolves were acting. Usually those wooden wolves did not try to surround her, they just chased her down. She grabbed a flexible branch. As it snapped back it smacked the head off one. With out the head it crashed into a nearby tree and the loose construct of twigs, branches and poison joke scattered in a big radius. Especially the pellets and petals soared through the air. An unfortunate squirrel, just a few feet to the left of Applejack´s head, got hit by the blue seed corn. The change took place immediately, unlike last time when it took all night to do anything, it turned bright yellow, fell from the branch and it´s limbs had gone missing!
If that had hit one of them it would have been over. The timberwolf she hit had reassembled right away, just like the bigger version Twilight had fought outside so soon it will start chasing them again.
Applejack saw how the "new" timberwolf jumped into the bushes out of her sight. She was not looking forward to seeing it again. Still, with two more of them behind them, it was no time to catch some breath.
One of the timberwolves prepared to jump at the ponies. When it jumped, two more timberwolves showed up in front of them.

"TWILIGHT, TELEPORT!"

Another bright flash, Applejack was getting sick of all that magic transportation. Changing location in an instant was irritating. The whole situation got swapped from one second to the other and you still had to proceed. On one of those teleportations were Twilight had no control over the location they had ended up right behind the wolves that had chased them.
Now, well now Applejack stared into a big white wing as wooden claws ripped bloodstained feathers out of it. A golden horseshoe smashed the wooden rib cage as the other timberwolves got blasted to pieces by the alicorn´s magic. It was not Twilight who had teleported, but Princess Celestia. Fending off the beasts while doing so. The white mare stood over them with a worried look on her face.

"Didn´t I tell you to stay out of this?" she asked, more directed to Twilight than Applejack, with a voice that would have made Twilight feel sorry, but there was something that caused way greater discomfort to the former student. Enough to snap Twilight out of her absent minded state she was in since her magic failed her so many times in a row.

"Pri... Princess Celestia? You´re an earthpony!"

Celestia tried to lift her wings, but they were gone, as well as her horn, but as she inspected her body she reckoned: "More like a saddle arabian mare." This change did not seem to bother her as much as her subjects whom stared at her as she walked unconcernedly over to the timberwolf she had kicked out of the way. "Run to your Master. Tell her I will find her no matter how long it takes... if she is not so kind to show us the way, that is." The last addition surprised not only the ponies but the timberwolves as well. They had already encircled their prey again and were now clearly calculating their options, before they all ran off in a different directions.

"So what´s the plan, Princess. Ah means", Applejack looked at the pure white from top to bottom: "How are ya planning to rescue Granny Smith? Certainly not by blasting in with that magic of yours."

"I am not here to rescue Granny Smith. I am here to ask Evefree to let go..." Princess Celestia said casually, letting Applejack speechless for a moment. If her trust in the Princess would have been made of glass you would have heard it shatter. Twilight was just her friend that she slipped off her trust from time to time was kinda reasonable and no amount of titles could change that Applejack would value her as anything more than just another pony. She was bound to make mistakes from time to time. But Princess Celestia, the ruler of Equestria that had given the Apples their farmland, Granny herself. Okay, her father, but she was there! Princess Celestia, she was the benefactor of the Apple clan and now she...

"WHAT!? Ya hear that Twilight? Ah told ya that she had lost her mind!"