“Five. Four. Three.” As the Doctor counted down Starlight readied herself to cast a shield spell when they passed through. “Two. One. Go!” She opened her eyes and started galloping towards the portal, which now appeared as a swirling green and white vortex again. As soon as she passed into it she felt the spinning tumbling sensation again, but it wasn’t as bad when she expected it. Then the world stopped being rainbow colored and became all green and brown.
“What? Where did the alicorn go!”
“Look! More ponies!”
Starlight shook her head and saw a dozen hovering changelings all turn to look at her and Inky. She had lost concentration on her shield! She tried to cast it but the nearest changeling swatted her horn, breaking her concentration again. “None of that! Who are you and how did you get here! I saw you fly out of a tree!” Starlight tried to think of something to say that would give her time to defend them.
“Aaahh!”
“For Equestria!”
Starlight watched in stunned silence as Perfect Timing flew out of a tree screaming and barrelled into two of the changelings, and then Derpy flew backward into four of them, two of whom flew into two more of the changelings.
“Now!” shouted Inky as she fired a bolt at the farthest changeling still in flight and then tackled one into the foliage surrounding them. Starlight blasted the last two changelings in flight with a stun spell and turned to Derpy and Timing. “Guard the portal until everypony’s through. I’ll stop Chrysalis.”
“Aye aye ma’am!” Derpy said before flying into one of the changelings who was getting up.
“Sounds good!” shouted Timing as she put another of the rising changelings in a chokehold.
Starlight turned away and began galloping towards the sounds of battle nearby. When she reached the treeline of the clearing Twilight had spoken of she saw a few dozen ponies fighting hundreds of changelings. In the center she saw a larger changeling standing over a battered and bloody zebra. Figuring these must be Queen Chrysalis and Zecora she raised a partial shield to block any stray blasts from the random changelings. Then she readied the strongest magical beam she could and fired at Chrysalis.
Chrysalis was readying a fatal ray to finish off Zecora when Starlight’s blast caught her in the side. She staggered, but remained upright. “Who did that!” she shouted, spinning in the direction of the attack. She saw Starlight just as she let loose another blast, but this time Chrysalis met it with one of her own. Starlight canceled her attack and levitated five feet up, letting the Queen’s beam continue unopposed into the trees behind her.
Several changelings began to approach Starlight from the air, but then Chrysalis spoke. “Wait. Surround her, but don’t attack. This one looks like a challenge. What do you say! Just you and me!”
“And why would you want that?”
“Because I can beat you myself and I don’t want you hurting my subjects. Besides, it’s been too long since I’ve had a good workout.” She fired another beam at Starlight, who floated to the right, only for Chrysalis to redirect the beam after her. Starlight brought her shield to protect the front just in time for the beam to hit her squarely. She felt her horn tiring at an alarming rate and shifted to a reflective shield, sending the Queen’s beam back at her. She stopped firing at Starlight and fired at the oncoming beam, causing both to dissipate. Starlight shot another beam while Chrysalis was distracted, hitting her again.
“Enough!” Chrysalis shouted. She fired another beam at Starlight, who met it with one of her own. She quickly saw this was a mistake, as Chrysalis’s beam slowly gained ground between them.
Derpy kicked the changeling with her front hooves and they rolled over, but then got up again. “Why won’t you stay down?” she asked. It leaped at her but she brought the spear around and hit it in the head as hard as she could. This time the changeling stayed down.
“Wheee!” Minuette shouted as she and Driver flew out of the tree. Then Derpy saw a changeling with a helmet bearing down on Minuette. She flew to intercept him, but she wasn’t quite fast enough! So Derpy did the only thing she could think of: she thrust her spear all the way towards the helmeted changeling. It pierced the side of the changeling and made it veer off and hit the ground. Then they started crawling away while Derpy pulled her spear back into a ready position and kept an eye out for any more threats.
Starlight knew she couldn’t keep this up long. She decided to try to teleport around behind Chrysalis. She looked across the clearing and started visualizing it when suddenly a changeling wrapped in vines flew into Chrysalis, causing her to falter and Starlight regained some of the ground in their duel. “Drones, find whoever did that!”
Just then a yellow pegasus streaked past and hit Chrysalis in the horn, breaking her concentration and allowing Starlight to hit her with her magic. “Argh! Where do you ponies keep coming from!” There was a loud growling and hissing as big jungle cats leaped out of the undergrowth and started attacking the changelings who had begun to close in on the yellow pegasus. “And cats too‽”
“You made yourself a foe of nature itself when your actions stole the days and seasons! The wilds will not suffer your presence!” Starlight and Chrysalis both turned to see a huge monkey cat thing stalk into the clearing, tossing a changeling back into the trees with a hand on the creature’s tail. Then he leaped at Chrysalis, only for her to fly to one side and then hit him with another blast of her magic. He didn’t even seem to notice, spinning around to face Chrysalis once more. Then Starlight made a bright flash of light right in front of Chrysalis to momentarily blind her. The strange monkey-cat leaped at Chrysalis again, but this time four changelings rammed him in midair, causing him to miss Chrysalis by a hair.
Starlight’s spell was not wasted, however, as two earth ponies ran up to Chrysalis and one leapt atop her while the other slammed a ring onto her twisted black horn. She threw the one on her back off and pointed her horn at him, only for nothing to happen. Then Starlight hit her with a stunning blast and this time she went down. The monkey-cat roared and the changelings scattered.
“Ahuizotl! Daring Do! I thought you were fictional characters! You’re real?” Starlight looked over to see the rest of her team had arrived and Emerald was looking between the monkey cat and the golden pegasus with disbelief written across her features.
The pegasus looked at her. “Yes, I’m real. No, you can’t have an autograph. Those changelings will be back soon, and everypony needs to be gone when they do.”
Starlight looked over at the fallen zebra, and was shocked as she saw that among the many gathered around her was Pinkie, and Fluttershy was helping a brown earth stallion bandage Zecora.
“They’re not all gone!” Everypony looked over to see Derpy being held down by two earth ponies. “This one’s impersonating my sister!” shouted the golden one with an orange mane.
“I am your sister! I think. I used to be your sister? No, that's not right.”
“Wait! We’re not changelings, but we’re not the ponies you might know either,” said Driver. “I know this might sound crazy, but we are from another world.”
Zecora got up with the help of Fluttershy and the brown stallion. She hoofed Fluttershy a brown bowl and Fluttershy flew over to Driver and smeared some green ointment over him. When she had finished he began to glow a dim white. While she moved on to the next of their team Zecora began to speak.
“Of your world I am well aware, you’re not the first ones to come here. Twilight Sparkle knew of our plight, and went to the past to make things right. Since you are here I must assume, something went wrong averting doom.”
“Yes and no.” Starlight rubbed the back of her neck. “She fixed the past and things went back to how they should have been. But it turns out that… the damage was already done. So we're here to help make this world better. We’re not going to try and turn you into a copy of our world, just help with the major problems. Like the changeling invasion.”
“The changelings will be back for Chrysalis soon. We can’t let them take her back. While they have no queen they will be off balance and confused, this is our best chance to defeat them,” said one of the two who had placed the ring on Chrysalis, a brown stallion with a graying mane and beard, in an accent Starlight couldn’t place.
“What if we take her back with us?” asked Perfect Timing. “Put her in a secluded part of Tartarus where nopony will find her and she can’t get up to trouble?”
“I say we kill her. She’s made her position clear,” growled the monkey cat, taking a step towards the downed queen.
“Now Ahuizotl, you know that’s not how we do things,” said the golden pegasus. “If they have access to Tartarus, the inescapable prison for the greatest threats Equestria has ever seen, then they can hold Chrysalis without killing her. We only kill when it’s necessary, not when it’s convenient.”
“Yeah, let’s not jump straight to killing, we’ll just take her off your hooves,” said Starlight.
“When you return here’s where you must go, for there is much more that you should know.” Zecora hoofed Fluttershy, who had finished painting all of them with the salve, a map. She took it to Starlight, who saw a path leading deeper into the jungle. “We should not speak very long here, that’s a place where we need not fear.”
“How long will it take for you to get there?”
“About an hour. Do you plan on stopping by before you take Chrysalis to your Tartarus?” asked the old stallion with the accent.
“We’ll drop Chrysalis off and then meet you there in an hour. We won’t be late,” said Starlight. “Time Ponies form up, let’s head back to the map.”
“Wait, where’s Inky?” said Perfect Timing. Starlight looked and saw that she was right, Inky was nowhere to be seen.
“The last I saw she tackled one of the changelings into the undergrowth, I thought she came back to the portal,” said Starlight.
“I’ll go look for her!” said Derpy.
“Alright.” Derpy took off in the way they had come from and Starlight looked back to the natives, who were packing things up as fast as they could. “Have any of you seen a gray unicorn with a blond mane and tail?” There was a general muttering that sounded negative. Starlight turned to Perfect Timing. “Any ideas what might have happened?”
“No, I… wait, what’s this?” Perfect Timing reached into her vest and pulled out a sheet of paper. She looked over it and said, “She’s not coming back today. She says to go on without her for now, I’ll tell you more back home.”
“Your friend is out here alone‽ Doesn’t she know how dangerous that is?” asked the younger of the two ringers, a light brown stallion with a short dark brown tail and a black hat.
“I hope she knows what she’s doing, but either way our coming now would make things worse. I’m going to have words for her when we find her though,” said Timing.
“Alright, good-bye, we’ll see you all again soon,” said Starlight. They began heading back to the map.
Derpy flew back to where the portal had been, next to a glowing crystal map. On her way she hit a couple branches, but none that gave her trouble. However when she saw the map she saw that two of the changelings were still at the site of the portal. As she flew up to them and landed she realized that they were the two she had hit with her spear. She walked over to the one she had stabbed and laid her head on his chest. He wasn’t breathing! Derpy jerked her head up and felt under the changeling’s jaw to check his pulse, but his heart wasn’t beating either! He was dead! Derpy was getting flustered, but she remembered her training and moved on to the other changeling, who she could see was still breathing.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” There was no response. Derpy looked around. Nopony was looking, she was all alone with the changeling. She picked him up carefully, making sure not to jostle his neck, and dragged him out of the clearing and fifteen feet into the trees. Then she took off her cloak and made a pillow for the injured changeling to keep his head propped in the right way. “Stay here, I’ll figure something out.” Then she trotted back into the clearing, only to see that the others were filing into it.
“Oh, there you are,” said Starlight. “I was just about to call you, Inky isn’t coming back, we’ll talk more back home.” Derpy was torn. On the one hoof she didn’t want to abandon Inky, but she didn’t want the others to find the injured changeling either.
Perfect Timing said “Don’t worry, she’s not gone forever, but we can’t help her now. She left a message I’ll share when we get back.”
“Okay, then we should get going. I’ll guard our retreat.”
“Okay Derpy.” Starlight activated her crystal and the map rippled. “Everypony else, single file. Wait a couple seconds for the last person to clear out. Reverse of our entry.”
The team did as instructed, and before long they were all safely back in Doc’s basement. “My word, is that Chrysalis?” asked Doc.
“Yes. Starlight and the main cast of Daring Do took her down,” Derpy answered.
“Daring Do? I’m fairly certain that is a work of fiction,” said Extra Time.
“That’s what I thought too, but Daring confirmed it and it’d be hard to fake Ahuizotl,” said Emerald.
“Does everypony but me know this story?” asked Starlight.
“In this room? Yes. In Equestria? Doubtful. In Ponyville? I wouldn’t be surprised either way,” said Perfect Pace.
“I can lend you some of the books,” said Emerald.
“Thanks for the offer, but if they’re that popular I’m sure Twilight has them in her library.”
“She does. She’s where I get mine from,” Derpy added.
“Shall I read the letter from Inky?” interjected Perfect Timing.
Doc looked around. “Great whickering stallions! Why isn’t she here with the rest of you?”
“That’s what the letter will tell you, if I can read it?”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
Perfect Timing took a folded letter out of her vest and began to read. “Dear friends. I am sorry to leave you like this, but I feel I can be most useful on the inside, gathering information. Make sure to test my knowledge of our home to check my true identity when we meet again. If I can’t contact you in three months on this side I’ll return to the map.” Perfect sighed. “And that’s all it says. I wish she had talked to me before, rather than running off like that. I’m worried about her.”
“Yeah. We’ve got to stick together in troubles,” said Derpy.