//------------------------------// // Busy Surviving // Story: The Winds of Change // by AgentSnail //------------------------------// Busy Surviving "But why would the Griffins attack Equestria?" "Oh you mean besides the fertile soil, huge natural wealth and generally weak army? I have no idea." he dropped the sarcasm. "It's in their history though. I stole a book about changelings from Twilight, because I was being chased by the town at that point, and it had some information on Griffin conquests. They conquered most of the southwest, so it's clear that the Griffins are fairly aggressive. Apparently, the changeling hive used to feed off of a different nation of ponies that also existed to the southwest of Equestria. That was conquered by the griffins after some problems between the changelings and the government. History always repeats itself, and that could mean another repeat here, considering the perceived weakness. They showed me a map, and it turns out that Equestria is half surrounded by their kingdom, making it easy to invade. I could be wrong, but considering their history, I'm probably not. The only question is when." "We have to warn the ponies! We can't just stand by and let them get murdered!" "Here's the deal. I agree with you, but we can't literally go in there and warn them, not like they'll believe us. We have to find a way to spell out the message without giving away our position." "We can use clouds..." "We'll have to do it at night, but that sounds like something we can do, especially if we display it off the side of Canterlot. Nevertheless, there's still the chance that they won't take it seriously." He paused. "Now that that's sorted out, we have to get some sort of steady supply of food, and probably some firewood." "Firewood? We're in a tree, we can't have a fire!" "It's fine, we'll only keep it going while we're awake, and keep it real small. I'll build a fire pit for it, and we'll only use it for necessary stuff, like cooking. Besides, maybe we can expand this, build a roof, etcetera." "That sounds alright, I guess, but how are we going to get food?" "Simple. We'll both go out and bring back small amounts of anything that looks remotely edible. I'll test it, and if it's edible, we can take note and gather more. How are we on food, by the way?" "We have enough for at least a few days." She sighed, "and then it's down to Everfree food." Jason noticed that the knives were still in his hooves, and levitated them out, carefully setting them down a ways away. "Hey, come on, it's not that bad, there's lots of stuff that I'm sure you've never had before. Try to look on the bright side." "You're right, I guess this could be a lot worse, and--" Jason shoved a hoof in her mouth, putting the other one up to his mouth and shushing her. He silently walked over to the side of the platform and looked down. He turned his head and mouthed the word 'patrol,' and she seemed to get the concept. Three earth ponies walked by, accompanied by a unicorn. They were all wearing the royal armor, and slowly walked by. Jason held his breath. The patrol was headed towards the cliff, and after they were far enough away, Jason quietly turned to Dash. "You were saying?" "A patrol just went by, and you're acting like nothing happened!" he motioned for her to keep it down. "They didn't find us." He shrugged. "I mean, we should be happy that they went by. It means they aren't going to search this area again for a while, probably." "What is our eventual plan here?" "Well, I dunno exactly, I just figured that we should probably get away first, then figure it out in more depth." "Okay... Well... Yeah I have no ideas." "Well, I'm going to take a short visit to town, I figure I might as well see what's going on, and how much of an issue they think we are." "Ugh... Do you have to do something like that?" "It's not like I need to do it for long, it should take something like ten minutes. I'll get in, walk around, and get out. Is there anything you want me to buy?" "Buy whatever you want, there's nothing I really need, besides some extra food maybe." Green flames covered his body, as he turned into a pegasus that was a few inches shorter than he normally was, with a navy blue mane and a slightly lighter blue body. He waved goodbye and then took off, disappearing over the cliff. Dash watched him until he dropped over, and then turned to the supplies, taking an apple. Stifling a yawn, she realized that she was much more tired than she had previously thought. She briefly wondered if her fatigue was due to missing a few of her normal mid-day naps, or if it was due to the fact that she hadn't slept most of the night and had needed to save Jason from the royal palace and had spent the rest of the day flying around and building a treehouse platform. She quietly laughed. When she thought about it that way, it just seemed like a stupid question. She jumped over to the bed and sprawled out, the midday sun effectively blocked by the multitude of branches, creating an artificial dusk. She sighed contentedly. 'This isn't half bad.' She thought as she drifted off, waking back up for a moment as a pang of fear shot through her about the idea of failure for Jason's crackpot 'Canterlot re-entry' scheme. She sighed and tried her best to push her worries away, deciding that there was really nothing she could do at the moment, and finally found sleep. Much to her displeasure, she was woken in the middle of a particularly interesting dream involving Daring Do by someone shaking her shoulder. "Mhrmhhrmrmrhmhhhrmr" she mumbled, turning away from the thing, and attempting to salvage her dream. The thing came back, the evil, unrelenting thing, and Dash mumbled some curses under her breath before turning back over and opening her eyes. Some random pony looked down at her. She pushed him away, trying to push herself backwards across the bed while she tried to figure out what was going on. Dash could remember that for some reason she was supposed to stay quiet, although her muddled mind couldn't figure out why that was the case or why she seemed to be in a tree. The pony dawned a slight expression of realization, before green flames covered his body and a changeling emerged. Dash calmed down, memories rushing back to her, before she got up and slugged Jason in the shoulder. "For your sake, I hope that you forgot I hadn't seen that form before." "Yeah, it's kinda hard to keep track of what which ponies see anymore. I'm just happy I haven't screwed up yet. Well, at least not majorly. By the way, I would probably only prank you if we weren't in a situation where waking up with foreign people in your face could mean capture. Well more likely capture than normal anyway, I mean, how well meaning could a stranger in your house be? Actually, I'm never going to prank you like that, I take it back." "Okay then, so what went so wrong that you came back with a different form? And what's that on your back?" Jason levitated the saddlebag off of his back, and maneuvered it over to the rest of the food, where he opened the flaps to show off a large quantity of food. "The other pockets have canned food, and a can opener." "I meant, what's that other thing on your back?" "Oh, this thing? Well I knew that you were still a little homesick and stuff, and it's not like I can literally bring your house here, so I bought this cake, and some other stuff from your house." He said, taking the cake off of his back and setting it down. "You went all the way to my house?!?! How long were you gone?" "I got the stuff yesterday." He picked up the unpacked saddlebag, and after pulling out the blankets, pulled out a cylinder of paper and a picture frame. He levitated them over to Dash. "You brought my signed Wonderbolts poster and the picture of me with my friends." She stared at the picture for a few seconds until a tear fell from her eyes, and she shook her head, trying to snap out of it. Jason walked over and laid a hoof on her shoulder, pulling her into a hug. They stood there for a few minutes as Dash regained her composure. "I just miss them so much already. And it's not like I can just go back and say that I'm alright, either. On top of that is the fact that I betrayed them, as the element of loyalty, and they think I'm a traitor." She looked like she was going to break down again. He couldn't really blame her. "Shhh... We'll show them soon enough, all we have to do is prove that we're on their side. All they think I've done is replaced some ponies that don't exist, but they should figure out soon enough that those ponies actually don't exist, which would get rid of the murder and replacement charges. Then all I've done is steal love, which I haven't done. All we need to do is get them in a situation where they'll listen." "Will it really be that easy?" she asked, looking up at Jason with red, puffy eyes. "It could be, but we'll just have to see when we have the chance. The first thing we have to do is warn them about the griffin invasion, and that should either give them the idea that we're on their side, or they might think it's a trick, in which case the Griffins invade, and we get recognized as being right. After that point, I don't really know what's going to happen, but we'll at least be on slightly better standings by that time." "But you haven't even done anything wrong! Why would they even want to go after you?" "I'm a threat. They can't let a changeling walk around without doing something, and given the amount of panic I caused, even though I didn't actually hurt anypony, at least besides Diamond, I'm still feared by the people. I showed up right after the wedding, and that pretty much means that the citizens of Equestria have a kind of mob mentality. It's just a witch hunt, and I'm their witch. I can't argue with words, only sufficiently meaningful actions. That's all that's going to get through to them." "I have to say, the more you talk about this, the more depressed I get." "Hey, it's not hopeless. Never forget that." He sighed. "Now, before the sun gets any lower, not that it's that low yet, we have to get some sort of defense system up and running." "Can't you at least tell me about why you returned in a different form first?" Jason looked at the position of the sun. Deciding he had time, he turned back to Dash. "Fine," he said as he began his story. ____________________________________________________ Jason disappeared over the edge of the cliff, and dove towards Canterlot. He had thought that the city was closer to the top of the cliff, yet now it seemed much further away. He continued to dive, before the city got close enough that he had to slow down. He maneuvered into an alleyway and landed, quickly checking his disguise. Finding nothing wrong, he exited onto a busy street, and started to walk around. Most of the ponies were dressed in fancy clothes and dresses, which was a strange thing to see after being around a society that didn't wear clothes for so long. He trotted on, eventually reaching a square with a huge fountain in the center. There were news boards, like places to stick flyers and notices, placed around the sides of the square, and Jason walked up to one. The first things he noticed were several posters plastered all over the board with a rough sketch of a changeling. The poster said, "Be on the lookout for suspicious activity." Jason chuckled and turned his gaze to a newspaper that had also been pasted to the board. The newspaper headline was, "Rogue Changeling Evades Capture, Continues to Pose High Threat." He read the article and realized just how little information the article actually possessed. It had only mentioned a few vague facts about the loud explosion and some unidentified ponies flying away, along with a few public statements from Celestia. At least they weren't close to being found out. Jason left the board and walked into a nearby bakery. He noticed that the ponies were looking a little shift, but that they in general didn't seem to be too affected by any of the recent events. He walked up to the counter of the shop, and caught the attention of the yellow maned, green earth pony behind the counter. "Can I get you anything, Dearie?" "Sure, I'd like to order a cake, I guess." "What size and flavor would you like?" "I suppose something like the twelve inch diameter chocolate flavored cake. Will that work?" "Coming right up!" She bounded into the back room, and came out moments later with a freshly iced cake. She carefully boxed the cake and handed it to him, and he pulled the necessary bits from the bag he had earned from playing in the restaurant. Apparently Dash had found it on the floor of the hospital waiting room, somehow not stolen, and brought it to her house. "Come again soon," The pony said as Jason left the bakery. He moved to the side of the street and painstakingly secured the cake to his back with some twine that the baker had given him. He walked back through the square, and was about to take off before a rust colored pegasus mare came up to him, looking blisteringly angry. "So that's it eh, I'm just a one night stand type of mare, eh?" The gears in Jason's head ground to a halt. After a few moments of silence and staring, he only managed to get out one word. "Huh?" "What do you mean, 'huh'?!?! I thought you said I was special!!!" She ran over and tried to throw a punch, which Jason caught with his hoof. "You've got the wrong pony, woman!" Other ponies were starting to stop what they were doing and stare. "Women? Was that one of your crappy insults?!?!" She shoved him, and the cake on his back shifted, probably running onto the side of the box. "I just bought this cake, dammit!" "So you got that for your new toy, then?!?! Tired of me already?!?!" Tears were streaming down her face. She pulled her hoof back and took another swipe at Jason. "I don't know anything about your stupid little problems!" Jason couldn't cause this kind of a commotion, that much he knew. It wouldn't be good, even if this was some sort of regular occurrence on the streets of Canterlot. He flew backwards, avoiding another punch, before quickly trotting into an alley. The mare screamed in anger and followed him, galloping at full speed. "Holy shit!" He yelled. She was catching up to him quickly, even though he had sped up considerably. how she was running so fast was beyond him. He took off into the air and quickly changed direction, trying to lose the psycho that was this mare. Expectantly, she took off after him, but didn't seem to have any ridiculous amount of wing power, luckily enough. Jason banked hard, diving into another alleyway, and cut around a corner, where he quickly landed and thought of a new form. The green flames passed over his body, replacing the blues with a white mane and a light green coat. He kept the wings, mostly because he still needed to use them. A horn would be useful, but then he would have to change again before returning. The mare tore around the corner, looking like death incarnate. She blazed past Jason, and pushed through a crowd of ponies in the street. Jason's mane was pushed to the side by the huge wind that the mare had created as she ran by. After Jason had caught his breath slightly, he walked into the street, which appeared to be more produce oriented than the other one. He found a few food stalls, and bought some apples, various lettuces and flowers, and bread for sandwiches. The mare went by again, this time chasing a stallion that looked a lot like Jason had previously. Jason chuckled. Noticing a food stall that sold canned food, he decided to pick up a few cans of mixed vegetables, along with a can opener. He packed the last of the food into his saddlebag and looked up to the top of the cliff, before his thoughts shifted. Somehow the cake was still attached to his back, although slightly ajar. It was probably hopelessly destroyed at this point, but he righted it on his back nonetheless. Deciding he would say that it was actually modeled after modern art, he shrugged and took off. Needless to say, the trip to the top of the mountain was mush harder than the trip down, especially since he was now carrying an unrecognizable blob of cake dough and some food. Jason finally crested the cliff, and landed a little ways inside the forest, in the general vicinity of the platform. He looked around for said platform, but took a good amount of time before finding it's position. They had definitely done a good job disguising it, although it only really took a bit of dumb luck for some moron to see the structure. He sighed and landed, hearing another clunk of movement from the cake. Rolling his eyes, he looked around for Dash. Dash was completely passed out on the cloud bed, with one fore leg hanging off the side. She looked cute like that, he decided, not like it was a very tough decision to make. He had a few D'aww moments before he realized that they still had a lot to do before nightfall, and that they only had a few hours of daylight left. He started shaking her shoulder to try to wake her up, and she just rolled over. Then he shook her again and she rolled back over towards Jason, opening her eyes. Her pupils dilated more than he had thought possible before she tried to push herself away from him as fast as she could, before he realized that she had never seen this disguise before, and he dropped it. ____________________________________________________ "So that's what happened while you were sleeping the day away." "I can't believe that whole thing with the mare! That's too funny!" She started laughing again, luckily less than before, when Jason had been forced to stop and wait for her to finish rolling all over the bed, clutching her sides. He shot her another disapproving glance. "Yeah, well it wasn't all that funny for me, I kinda thought she was actually going to kill me there for a while." She managed to stop giggling, and wiped some tears from her eyes. "So let's see that cake. It can't possibly be that bad, can it?" "I dunno, there was a lot of clunking back there, and honestly, the fact that there would even be a remotely cake shaped object would be a miracle." Jason pulled the cake box over and cringed. The cake was basically spherical at this point, most of the frosting on the walls of the box. Jason smiled sheepishly, and turned to Dash. "Wow, it survived perfectly!!" he exclaimed, "I'm so glad this modern art style cake made it back exactly how it left the bakery. The baker told me that this one represents his struggle against the monotonous 'machine' of everyday life, and--" Dash punched him in the shoulder. She smiled. "You're so full of shit." "I resent that." He paused. "Since when did you start using my swearwords?" "After I decided that they sound a lot more menacing than 'ponyfeathers' and stuff like that." "Can't argue with that logic, I suppose. Here, come on, we have to set up some defenses and stuff now." "But what about the cake?" "It'll still be here when we get back." She managed to tear her gaze from the cake box. "Fine, what do we need?" "Four flash-bangs and some of the twine." she grabbed the necessary supplies and brought them down, where Jason was already waiting, with the axe and some nails. "So I'll pound these into some of the trees, and I want you to tie the twine to the pin and the canister of those. We're making primitive tripwires, as it were." She nodded and started the preliminary preparations, as Jason found suitable trees and pounded in the nails. "Okay, so we're making a square around our base, so one flash-bang goes on each span. You do those two, and I'll do these two." he gestured with a hoof. They went to their tasks, and succeeded in stretching out all four of the wires without any accidents. Jason wiped some sweat from his brow, or maybe it was condensation, it was starting to become colder, after all. Dash turned around, seemingly satisfied with her handiwork, and they both flew back up to the treehouse. "I call first dibs on that cake," Dash yelled as they touched down. "It was for you, so go ahead." Jason carefully floated over one of the knives. His forelegs had become horribly itchy all of a sudden. He tried to scratch at them, but it was no use, really, with all the chitin in the way. The itch lessened, but was still starting to drive Jason crazy already. A cake blob hit him in the face, jolting him from his nightmare. He looked up to see Dash trying to look innocent, and doing an all-around terrible job. He pulled the blob off his face with a hoof and chucked it back at her. She tried to bat it out of the way, before realizing that it was cake a little too late. She ended up with a fairly large cake splotch all over her foreleg. She giggled, licking some of the cake off her arm. "Hey, fly up there." She complied, looking confused. Jason broke off several blobs of cake with his magic, holding them in an array in the air. "Catch." He tossed one at Dash, who promptly dodged the projectile. "Ha, missed me!" "You're supposed to catch it in your mouth, Dash. I meant catch literally." She facehoofed before getting back into a ready position. Jason fired another cake blob at her. She swooped down and caught it. He fired another, and she flew up a ways and caught that one too. "You sure you don't practice this?" "Just coordinated I guess." They continued the game for a while, before Jason realized that they had almost used all the cake. "We should save some of this at least, you might as well not eat it all at once." She nodded and descended, crumbs littering her face. "That was, without a doubt, the most awesome way to eat cake ever!" "Glad you liked it." The sun had descended to the horizon, leaving the Everfree in a somewhat eerie light. "And so we've run out of things to do." "Didn't you bring that guitar pretty much for purposes like this?" She asked, prompting a facehoof from Jason. "Wow. Yes." He dragged out the amp and the overdrive unit, and picked up the guitar, slinging it around his shoulder and sitting on the side of the bed. He plugged the instruments into each other, and turned down the amp, realizing that the volume dial actually went all the way to eleven. He chuckled. He powered the devices, receiving a small amount of feedback. "So you haven't heard me play yet?" "Nope. I've gotta say, I'm excited. If your people have had this type of music for so much longer than it's been around here, it's bound to be good." "Hopefully you'll like it. I'll play a few songs, but they're all going to be different sub-sections of rock, so if you hate one, you might love the rest." Dash's jaw hung open. "I've never even heard anything like that! That was awesome!" "Glad you liked it, because I have a few more up my sleeve. Here goes nothing." He didn't wait for her to respond, and just transitioned in to his next song. As the last chord faded out, Dash barraged him with questions. "Is all music on your world like that? "No, most of the stuff nowadays is untalented shit." He sighed. "But there are still a few bands putting out music like this." "You said before that you would teach me to play some. Would you still do that?" She looked a little overly excited. "Sure, but I'm not sure how much you'd be able to play, seeing as you need magic or fingers, and you have neither. You could still play a fair amount of guitar though, but without most of the chords. You're pretty fast, you could probably play most of the non chord related riffs." "Well I'm definitely looking forward to it." "I've got one more song, and then I'm going to hit the sack. This one pertains nicely to our situation, if I do say so myself." He chuckled. "And that's all I have left in me tonight." Jason declared, prompting a groan from Dash. He let the energy to the amp run out, took off his guitar, setting it down off to the side gently, and fell backwards onto the bed. He pulled himself over to the cloud pillows, and gratefully laid his head to rest. He shivered and levitated the blankets over. Dash rolled into the bed, and laid an arm over Jason. He shifted back into his Alternis form. Dash looked up at him, confused. "Why do you always change?" "Isn't it more comfortable to lay on fur rather than chitin?" "I suppose, but there's nothing wrong with your real form." "If it appeases you, I won't change during the day, unless it's totally necessary." "Good," she purred, re-situating herself among his forelegs. "You never did tell me what happened, that you got all these injuries." She gently prodded his injured foreleg. "Well, Twilight got sorta mad when she ran in and I was healing you, probably because it looked like I was destroying the bones in your wings, and she kinda threw me into the ceiling, and then the floor. That's where I got the arm crack and the cracks on my back." His arm had started to itch again. "Then I got the cracks on my face when they were 'torturing' me, and hit me with a rock or something." "You went through all that?" "It wasn't that big a deal," he shrugged, "it's not like they know how to torture people anyways, or they would've attempted to find someone close to me to torture." "It just makes me feel special that you went through all that just to save my wings." she snuggled up closer. "I couldn't let you lose your wings. It would be pretty much the same as dying, for you anyways. You'd lose your dreams, your passion, I couldn't let that happen to you." He paused, yawning widely. "Now let's get some sleep. I'm dying over here." Jason shut his eyes, and started to nod off. This whole experience seemed like a dream, he sleepily realized. He had been here for what, four days? Five? All this had happened in that short of an amount of time. It seemed so surreal, like he could suddenly wake up at any time. Thus his last conscious thought slowly exited his head as he finally drifted off to slee-- BANG!!! Jason jolted out of bead, wide awake. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me!"