The Evacuation
"What are you doing here, changeling? Don't you have more ponies to kill?" The princess spat. Dash flung off her helmet before Jason could respond, hearing it collide with something across the room. The princess gasped, then narrowed her eyes. "Rainbow Dash, were you and your ally the ones to bring the griffins here? Is that why so many of my little ponies have died today?" Dash spoke up.
"No!!" The princess flinched a little. "All I've done is help your little ponies today! Jason and I here have saved a whole bunch of ponies, and killed the griffins that were about to murder them. He put up that sign that warned you of the attack a day early! You should've been ready!"
"We bolstered the guard and created a group of on-call ponies for the impending attack. We heeded the warning."
Jason butted in. "Clearly not enough! There's a reason why I said that you were militarily retarded, you never had a clue!" He paused. "And about killing ponies, I never did. I came up with new identities! I made them up! Was that so hard for the great, benevolent Princess Celestia to grasp?"
The princess raised an eyebrow, although she didn't move to outright attack him. "What about the stolen love and the foal-napping?" Jason turned to look at Dash, then back to the princess.
"Since we're being honest here, Scootaloo followed us into the Everfree, and we found her after she set off our advance alarm. She also knew that I was a changeling, and she was not taken prisoner, and is currently safe, fed, and warm, all that good stuff. I get love from Dash, I don't steal it, she's always known I'm a changeling. Any more questions?"
"No, that's all I needed to hear."
"Okay the-- Huh?"
"My student already discovered that your identities were false, and forwarded me the information last night. It seems that I was at least partially mistaken about you.
"So then I have your trust, princess?" He asked, prompting a sigh.
"I don't really have any choice at this point now do I? As far as I can see, you've gone out of your way to fight against the griffins; you can't possibly be all evil, and I hope that I was mistaken about you. But know this!" she narrowed her eyes. "If you ever hurt one of my innocent ponies, I will know, and I will end you."
"Okay then, point taken." He shuddered a little. "So I hear all the ponies are being evacuated underground. You coming?" She shook her head.
"My place is here, in the castle. I have to negotiate when we surrender."
"Do not surrender, Princess. That's exactly what they expect you to do. We can still win this." Another building collapsed outside, and Jason turned to the guards, who were still standing awkwardly near the griffins' corpses, one of them poking at one with his spear. "All of you, get to the caves, we aren't going to win today. We may have lost this battle, but we haven't lost the war." They didn't move. "Go!" The guards left in a hurry, moving deeper into the castle and heading for the nearest escape hatch, he assumed.
"Okay then." He turned to Dash "Let's get cracking" The princess cleared her throat.
"Don't prove my trust to be incorrectly placed, changeling." She warned.
"We won't" Said dash. Jason nodded and turned to the door that the guards had gone through followed by Dash. As they wen't through, Jason turned for one last look at the princess before taking his final leave.
Dash turned to Jason. "So did you expect her to actually trust you?"
"Honestly? Not at all. I kinda expected more yelling and an end result of running or capture or something like that." He paused. "I was also kinda surprised that she was the one to renounce her decisions and give me her trust. Apparently she still has a few tricks up her proverbial sleeves. I probably shouldn't have assumed that she would be so hostile to me."
"But why did you say we could win this? They've taken Canterlot, how can we win?"
"Hopefully, there weren't that many casualties, and we should be able to organize a resistance. Considering that everyone around here seems to attack in broad daylight, nighttime raids should be effective. Besides, they've only taken one city of an entire country."
"So we're just somehow going to take control of all of this?"
"I don't know, alright!?!? This whole day has just been improvisation, so we'll either get kicked out or succeed at leading these ponies. I don't even know if I want to lead them, because that would put their blood on my hooves, even if the final result is victory. I'm not sure if I want that." He paused. "It's already going to be hard enough to forget the stuff I saw today, the stuff we both went through..." They both went silent, remembering some of the horrors that they had burned into their memories, from the fallen ponies to the specific griffins that they were forced to assassinate. Dash shuddered.
"Welcome to war is right. I don't know how we could find enough ponies to do that." She sighed. "At least with the princess no longer hostile, we have a chance to get things back to how they were."
"Yeah I guess... whatever normal is for a changeling in Equestria."
"It couldn't be worse than this though." Another pause and sigh. "Although that doesn't really say much. But hey, chin up! After this is all over, you and I are going flying for a few days. I don't mean just regular stuff, we're setting some destination far away, and just taking a few days away from it all." Her expression quickly shifted. "As happy as I am with the chance to get back to my friends though, I'm nervous, to say the least, that they won't consider me their friends anymore."
"I think it's endearing that you care more about what your friends think about you than having to go through whatever else to get back to them. I guess if you do get back, they can't say you aren't loyal."
"You think I still am?"
"Well, yeah, I mean in a roundabout way, you still have their best interests in mind. I just hope they can see that." He looked around, still finding no hints on where the escape hatch was. Dash nudged him and pointed forward hurriedly, gesturing to a shadow that was steadily growing on the wall far in front of them. The shadow took on a more pony-esque shape before they both moved behind pillars to hide themselves from view. The thing's steps started to get louder, until they were close enough to be regarded individually from the echoes. Jason shot Dash a confused look, attempting to figure out who would still be walking around the castle. Dash took control of their obligatory countdown, before they both jumped out from the corner, knives ready to stab the mystery threat. Their faces quickly ran through several emotions before sticking to confused.
"Princess Luna?" Dash exclaimed just before Jason was shoved against the wall by Luna's magic.
"Art thou the changeling that hath ravaged our kingdom?" Luckily she wasn't trying to be as loud as possible, because huge amounts of noise was not what they needed in the middle of a war. Although there were surprisingly few griffins in the castle so far...
"Technically, yes, although I am innocent of murder, impersonation of ponies, and the theft of love." He choked out from behind the pressure of the magical field. Another pony to try to convince. Great. Maybe he should just write the story down, that would save a lot of time. The princess looked to Dash and back to Jason before opening her mouth to speak.
"Art thou innocent, neigh or yay?"
"Yes. I am innocent." As soon as he finished speaking, the magical field dispersed and he was unceremoniously dropped to the ground, leaving a confused Dash and Jason. "Why the sudden change of pace?"
"Our, excuse me, my royal powers include jurisdiction over dreams, in other words the subconscious. Generally I can tell whether or not ponies are lying by looking into their eyes. It hath proved it's usefulness over the years. The fact that you even have a subconscious is surprising enough for a changeling."
"I'm not sure whether to be disturbed that you can tell all that from my eyes or overjoyed that you believe me."
Dash spoke up. "So are you staying here with the Princess Celestia or are you evacuating with the rest of us?"
"We art supposed to be the last one to leave after defeat is ensured. The only one remaining will be Celestia, as per the evacuation orders set up long ago."
"So where is the nearest evacuation hatch?" She pointed a hoof down a hall. "Thanks Princess, I hope to see you down there."
"As do I. This shall be a grand time for you to prove your loyalty, will it not?" Jason and Dash both nodded, and then turned to walk down the corridor.
"Things could be worse I guess," Jason said to Dash.
"If we had known it would be this easy to reconcile with them, we should've done this earlier."
"I think it was more the case of being in the right place at the right time. Who knows what would've happened two days ago. Definitely not anything good." A wave of nervousness suddenly washed over him. "I wonder how Scoots is doing."
Dash sighed. "Good, I hope. I didn't see any griffins attempting to spread out and occupy the surrounding area. She should be fine, I just hope she hasn't done anything stupid."
"Like flying or noise?"
"Yeah, but mostly the flying part. Squirt loves flying almost as much as I do it seems, and with no one to catch her... I'm just worried I guess."
"I'd be surprised if you weren't. I just hope this doesn't go on too long and we can get back to her before she thinks that something has happened to us." He definitely didn't want her having to go through the grief of losing either of them, especially if it was completely un-warrented. He especially didn't want her to decide that she was going to play hero and try to save them. To say that that would be disastrous would be an understatement.
They both lapsed into silence as they walked around, looking for their escape route before finally encountering it in a room labeled maintenance. The door creaked open with a ridiculously loud creak and they both groaned, annoyed that they had been relatively quiet for the last five minutes just to get to a noisy door. They both walked in and creaked the door back into it's closed position, turning to look into the tunnel, which was more of a hole in the floor. The sound of dripping water and a musty stench greeted them, and they took a brief look at each other. Dash spoke up.
"So, do you want to go first, or..."
"Don't like small spaces, huh?"
"Not too much, no. The fact that it's dark doesn't help."
"I can at least light it up with my horn, so we've got that taken care of." A huge crash sounded behind them. "Okay, lets just get going before someone bursts in here." Dash nodded and gulped. "Come on, I'll be right there with you. It'll be fine, I promise." Without another word, Jason jumped into the tunnel, fluttering his wings to keep from falling out of control. He looked back up to see that Dash had reluctantly jumped as well, and was following the light of his horn into the depths. Looking back down, he realized that the ground was fast approaching, and slowed down before coming to a stop on the floor of the sewer, hearing Dash land behind him shortly after. He lit his horn up brighter, and was slightly awed by the girth of the tunnel.
"Wow, you could fly a small plane through here!"
"Yeah, I'm not feeling quite as bad with that claustrophobia anymore."
"How could they possibly think that this would be filled to capacity ever? This couldn't have been designed as a sewer in the first place."
"Well whatever it was, let's just get walking."
"I suppose you're right" Jason shifted his form into Alternis with a horn addition. He was starting to feel sad that he may well never be able to use the form too much anymore, but figured that the Canterlot ponies wouldn't recognize it anyway, unless the elements were there. He doubted that though, they had all apparently left to go back to Ponyville after no immediate sightings turned up. He looked at Dash, who was shaking a little. With all of the armor, he kinda doubted it was due to the cold. He draped one of his wings over her, and she looked over at him, smiling as the shivering lessened slightly.
Time slurred together. For some reason, the constant unchanging environment kept the measurement of time to a minimum. Jason had tried counting, but kept feeling that he was moving through the numbers too quickly or too slowly, and soon gave up entirely. The chill in the tunnel was starting to get to him, which was strange because the temperature itself wasn't uncomfortable, yet he seemed the sewer seemed to chill him to the bone. He tried to warm up, but only succeeded in getting colder as he moved towards their destination. He chalked the cold up to nerves and walked on.
The wing over Dash's back had long since gone from feeling cold on Dash to being his only source of heat. Dash seemed to notice the change in wing temperature and turned to Jason looking worried. "Why does your wing feel as cold as a wet rag?"
"I have no idea, but hopefully it'll get better when I get out of this sewer, because the longer I've been in here, the colder I've gotten." Dash pushed his wing off her back, giggling at his inquisitive expression before putting her wing over his back.
"You probably need this more than I do right now." She giggled again at his blush.
"You're just lucky that I can blush in this form." She poked him in the chest playfully.
"Maybe I just need to try harder when you're a changeling." They shared a brief laugh until Jason shuddered and Dash pulled him closer to her with her wing.
"You know, doesn't that right there look like a light?"
"I dunno, you're the one with the night vision."
"Oh yeah. Let's just hurry up a little and get out of this stupid thing." They both sped up to a trot and hurried their way towards the light, which turned out to be much farther away then Jason had previously thought. Eventually though, the light grew bright enough for Dash to catch sight of it, and soon after grew much larger and brighter until they finally emerged into a huge, hollowed out cave. They looked down over the ledge that they had emerged on, and saw thousands of ponies milling around about fifteen feet below. They were mostly civilians, and Jason caught sight of only a few groups of royal guards to the side of the room that had apparently escaped. Jason cleared his throat, and pulled out a flash-bang. He pulled the pin, and threw it towards the far wall, away from most of the ponies. They both shut their eyes and covered their ears, and...
Nothing happened. "Guess they can't all be winners." Dash said as Jason primed another flash-bang.
"This better work, I don't want to just use up a bunch before we even have to fight anyone." He chucked the second one, both of them taking the same ready positions, preparing for the hopefully inevitable bang.
BANG!!!
The ponies below all went silent, looking around and attempting to find the source of the noise. Jason nodded to Dash, and retreated back from the edge of the ledge and out of view. He nodded to Dash and dropped his disguise as they walked back to the stage.
"Listen up, every pony!!"