The sound of dry crunching dirt under her newly polished hooves caused Rarity to frown and she pulled the brim of her large, but rather fetching, hat down to better block the sun’s rays from her azure eyes. Slightly distracted by the wardrobe adjustment, one of her hind legs accidentally brushed against a small withered bush; the bur it left on her immaculately groomed light grey coat caused her to let out a soft disapproving tut. With a flick of her well coiffed indigo tail, the unicorn sent the repugnant little seed skipping away across the ground.
“Has anypony seen any signs of the missing students yet?” she asked aloud, but to no pony in particular.
“None here!” Pinkie Pie loudly responded, “Or here! Or here! Or over here!”
Pouting her bottom lip slightly, Rarity watched her energetic pink friend as she seemed to pop in and out of existence from behind various pieces of the landscape.
“Pinkie,” said Applejack, “I dun think it’s a good idea tah be so loud right now.”
“I agree,” Rarity added. “While I have an unspoken truce with the diamond dogs around here and they’ll likely leave us be, we have no such convenience with the changelings dear.”
“But doesn’t Twilight want to talk to Chrisy anyway?” Pinkie asked, her curly hair bobbing as she hopped over to the unicorn.
“I do,” Twilight confirmed, “but I’m not sure if Chrysalis is serious about talking to me. That’s why we should keep a low profile while looking for the students.”
“Oh, I gotcha,” winked Pinkie before she ran her hoof across her lips to mimic the sealing of a zipper, somehow complete with sound.
“I think it might be too late anyway,” said Rainbow Dash from above, with Fluttershy flying alongside her.
The light cerulean mare landed next to Twilight, unintentionally kicking up a little dust, and adjusted her wings against her sides while shaking out her messy windswept mane. In a manner completely opposite of her fellow pegasi, Fluttershy landed on her hooves with the poise of a dancer, making not a sound and disturbing not a pebble. Even the yellow mare’s lengthy mane and tail didn’t have a hair out of place.
“Why is that dear?” Rarity asked and attempted to use her magic to adjust her friend’s multicolored mane. “Did you spot something up there?”
“Yeah, sort of,” Dash answered and made a face while trying to duck away from Rarity’s magical hair styling.
“Sort of?” asked Applejack.
“I keep seeing different pegasi flying overhead,” said Dash.
“I don’t follow ya,” said Applejack.
“Look, they always pass by, two at a time and always heading to or from town,” explained Dash, pointing up to a pair of pegasi heading away from Ponyville and towards the east. “And I keep getting the feeling they are watching us.”
“So yer sayin they might be disguised changelings on a patrol or somthin,” Applejack said.
Twilight rubbed her chin with the back of her hoof and looked up at the pegasi while she thought to herself.
“I wish they would just leave already,” grumbled Featherwing, currently disguised as a tan pegasus stallion.
“Ugh, I know,” agreed Bristletail in the form of a lilac mare. “We’ve had to change shape four times and now my wings are getting tired from flying back and forth so much.”
“Well I say if they haven’t left by our next pass over we just enter the hive anyway,” said Featherwing.
“You know we can’t do that,” Bristletail scolded him.
“Why not?” questioned Featherwing. “It’s obvious they know the hive is here and they want to talk to the queen. You saw the new message on the sign.”
“Yes but her highness wants the meeting on her terms, not theirs,” said Bristletail.
“Oh great, now the one with the rainbow hair is coming this way,” pointed out Featherwing, “Act like you’re my special somepony or something…”
“Ick, I’m your sister,” said Bristletail. “Let me just act like that.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Featherwing hissed and received a ‘sisterly punch’ in the shoulder for his sass.
“Dash is talking to them,” Rarity, now sporting a stylish pair or Neigh-Ban sunglasses, noted aloud as she and her friends watched the interaction taking place above in the clear sky.
“I hope she’s careful,” Fluttershy said softly.
Apparently whatever Dash was saying upset the pair of pegasi and they both began to angrily gesture with their hooves. Their response caused Rainbow Dash to adapt a look of incredulity that ended the discussion. Scowling, the two pegasi soared away and an equally unhappy looking Dash returned to her friends.
“They’re changelings alright,” Rainbow Dash confirmed.
“Did they tell you that or do you just think they are?” Twilight pressed.
“They have to be,” exclaimed the pegasus, “they said Fleetfoot is a better Wonderbolt then me! Can you believe that?! I can fly rings around-”
“Darling,” Rarity interrupted Dash before the mare could go into a long winded explanation of why she was the better Wounderbolt, “what exactly did you say to them?”
“I told them to knock off the act because we knew they were changelings,” said Dash, followed by a collective groan from her friends.
“Wow you really set her off with that Fleetfoot comment,” said Featherwing as he glided alongside Bristletail.
“It’s been a running joke back at the hive that the next ling to run into Rainbow Dash would tell her that,” the mare smirked as the two of them passed over a hill and out of sight from Twilight and her friends. “I’m surprised you never heard us talking about it.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember hearing Tsetse saying something like that before,” said Featherwing as the two of them circled down to the ground.
“Actually she is the one that came up with the idea,” Bristletail said, stretching her back out and popping her joints with satisfaction.
“She might get mad at you for doing it before she could,” warned Featherwing.
“Oh well, her loss,” Bristletail said and clicked her tongue.
“For someling with such a gentle voice you sure have a mean streak,” chuckled Featherwing. “Oh and by the way, um, please don’t hit me again.”
“No promises,” came her retort.
“Anyway, so what do we do now?” Featherwing asked.
“How about we just turn into some birds and slip past them,” Bristletail said, rolling her eyes.
“Why didn’t you suggest that sooner?” snapped Featherwing, “we could have skipped wasting so much time and returned to the hive already!”
“Well why do I have to be the one to think of everything?” frowned Bristletail. “I know your head is mostly empty but you have to have some brains in there.”
“Oh shut up and stop being such a- Ouch!”
At the request of Phasmid, Odonate made his way to the upper tunnels as busy changelings flew past him. When he spotted a small group of them sticking to the shadows near the main entrance he frowned, wondering what was holding them up from the relocation efforts.
Curled up in the sun by the caves mouth rested a large brown snake. When the old guard cleared his throat, it looked back in at him, flickered out its tongue and then slithered back into the darkness. Once the serpent was a sufficient distance from the exit, a green fire surrounded it and Phasmid trotted free from the flames.
“I take it something's wrong,” Odonate said in his gravelly voice.
“We have a few visitors,” answered Phasmid, nodding his head back to the cave entrance. “Twilight Sparkle and her friends.”
“What are they doing?” asked the senior guard.
“Right now it looks like they are searching for something,” said Phasmid, “but they’ve been staying down below the ridge.”
“Alright, let me go have a look,” said Odonate.
Green magic swirled around the scared guard and a large stony grey bat flew up to the mouth of the cave to cling to the ceiling. Despite hanging upside down he was able to study the six mares as they moved along the valley and checked behind the scattered boulders below. After a few moments he was satisfied with what information he could gather and swooped back to land next to Phasmid, back in his natural form.
“It doesn’t look like they have the Elements on them, that's good,” Odonate said and stretched a kink out of a hind leg. “I would hazard a guess that they’re looking for the young intruders.”
Phasmid opened his mouth to say something but then looked past Odonate, back at the cavern exit where two charcoal and rust colored vultures landed. The pair of avian scavengers stretched their wings before tucking them back against their sides and then waddled into the shadows.
“You two are late but I already know why,” the guard said to the birds.
“We’ve been waiting for them to leave,” said the first vulture who shifted its form into Featherwing.
“And they know the hive is here,” the second vulture said softly while changing back into Bristletail. “One of them even tried to interrogate us.”
“Maybe we should just engage them?” suggested Phasmid.
“No, things are complicated enough,” said the old guard, “we won’t attack them unless they try to enter the hive or the queen tells us to go out and get them.”
“Sparkle updated the sign and wants to talk to the queen as soon as possible,” Bristletail informed them.
“Yeah, the rainbow maned one said as much when we talked to her,” added Feathering.
Odonate took a moment to go over the situation in his head and then exhaled with a grumble. He gave the three changelings in front of him a serious face when he peered back up at them.
“Keep an eye on them,” he instructed, “I’ll let the queen know.”
“These look like Yak hoof prints,” Fluttershy pointed out, looking down at a set of tracks in the dirt, “but they just appear here and vanish again a few steps away.”
“Smolder, Gallus and Silverstream must have carried Yona here,” said Twilight, following the short distance the tracks went with her eyes, “then flew away again with her.”
“Twilight, take a peek yonder,” Applejack said, drawing their attention to half a dozen openings along the upper ridge. “There sure are a lot ah caves up on the ridge.”
“Fifty bits says those caves are swarming with changelings,” said Rainbow Dash.
“Um, girls,” said Rarity, calling for their attention. “I wouldn’t make that bet with Rainbow…”
When the five other mares looked over to Rarity their eyes widened in disbelief at what stood just a few dozen hoof-lengths away from the posh unicorn.
“Twilight Sparkle,” said an undisguised changeling, his voice like sandpaper and one side of his face slightly disfigured. “Her highness, Queen Chrysalis, agrees to have an audience with you.”