Sleeping on the roof of a freight car with a few dozen armored stallions wasn't exactly first-class, but Trixie Lulamoon wouldn't have traded it for a chariot full of rose petals right now. Or all the bits jingling in her saddlebags, for that matter.
"What do you MEAN you have no seat available for the Great and Powerful Trixie?". The clerk responded by yanking down a shade over the ticket window that said "CLOSED" as she galloped out of the back for dear life, still being chased by panicked ponies desperate to get out. Time to go hide in the wagon until all this blew over...and this time, no parking it out in the open where some giant bear was going to squash it! That nice,high garage over there. Perfectly safe...
Celestia's traditional alarm clock woke her as the Sun rose over the horizon. The sounds of more than one joyful morning pony welcomed a new day as the rays of warmth managed to penetrate the cloud cover and Trixie's eyelids. Good that Celestia wasn't dead. She COULD have given Trixie another hour. Around her, Guard ponies still slept in their dented and scuffed armor...then again, they'd had a hard day. Munching mindlessly on a stale carrot, she brushed the gunk out of the corners of her vision.
A brief twinkle of colored light broke the endless white stretching to both sides of the train. Trixie squinted and cursed briefly as her eyelids took the opportunity to stick together again, an eyelash breaking off and leaving one of them stinging and watering. She rubbed at the betraying eyeball furiously...
...and the train hit a slight kink in the tracks, wiggling the freight car. With a squall of complaint, Trixie pitched over the side and tumbled into the snow, the chilly white blanket wrapping her in a ball as the unicorn fell down the side of the embankment...
*THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPWHAM!*
...only to find herself ramming tail-first into something at the bottom, the snowball breaking into a pile of fluff.
"Trixie is going to COMPLAIN to that train driver for this kind of treatment, once she...she.....EEEEEEEEE!"
The half-frozen face of Twilight Sparkle poked out of the obstruction that had stopped Trixie's fall- a pile of lifeless ponies under a blanket of snow. The only sign of motion from the Princess was the icicle of yellowing snot that broke off as Trixie screamed in terror at the abominable snowpony.
Still panicking, she pointed her horn to the heavens to send a flaring signal for help...
And stopped.
Scrabbling in her half-open saddlebag, she yanked out a smoke bomb instead. Being found with a dead Twilight Sparkle? They'd banish HER to the Moon, LUNA would banish her to the Moon! And when they were done, they'd banish her to the Sun for another thousand years!
The bomb exploded, sending a colored column of smoke into the air. Trixie turned to flee into the wilderness, resigning herself to a lifetime as a fugitive from misguided justice.
And now, I step into my life of eternal sham-AWK!
She gracelessly tripped over her own outstretched hoof and plunged into the snow. Buried up to her hindlegs, she thrashed madly as the cries of ponies rushing to follow her trail grew louder by the moment. Hooves grabbed her tail and pulled. They'd caught her, she was going to be charged with ponyslaughter, WHY HAD SHE LEFT THE ROCK FARM?
A concerned Guardspony turned her around and smiled broadly at the panic-stricken mare.
"Mistress Lulamoon? We don't know how to thank you enough!"
"Th-thank me? Me? ME?"
"I'm sorry if we pulled your tail a little too hard there, it was all we could get a hoof on." The armored earth pony held up a strand of Trixie's mane, frozen to a snow-covered horseshoe.
"Spotting Princess Sparkle in all this snow, charging down the hill like that, signalling for help while buried that deeply yourself...are you sure your cutie mark isn't in search and rescue? We'd have been the last chance those ponies had to be saved, and nopony saw so much as an ear of this bunch but you!"
A dozen ponies furiously dug the Princess and the chilled pile of her friends she'd been covering from the icy terrain, clad in the red-crossed armor of Guard medics . Princess Luna's head peered wide-eyed over the chaos, looking straight at Trixie.
And smiling.
Trixie decided that was enough for one day, and fainted backwards into the snowpile.
---
Meanwhile in Ponyville, the Cutie Mark Crusader Forest Rescue Team met over a spartan meal of survival rations- having been thwarted in mid-mission by a rather grumpy Y.D. Donkey. It wasn't their fault someone left an empty bucket in the middle of the road. Running into it, Scootaloo getting her head stuck in said empty bucket and ending up driving them through the Donkey's open window and smack dab into their bed? Maybe. A little...but did he have to tow them all back to Sweetie's dad and TELL?
Totally unfair. And nopony believed them about Rainbow Dash! They'd been confined to base- er, bedroom until after breakfast.
"Cloud Kicker even said she wasn't due back for days!"
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle ducked the spray of slightly stale cookie crumbs as Scootaloo punctuated her words with two-day old oatmeal raisin.
"Well, my sister isn't supposed to be home until after tomorrow, and they're with Applejack and SHE isn't home either..."
"But we all saw that, even if nopony believes it!. Who else is gonna be makin like ah rainbow in the dark?"
Scootaloo stood up, finishing the multilated, masticated cookie chunk with a swig of juice.
"WE know it's Rainbow Dash, and if she didn't come back home last night? She's still in the Everfree, and she needs our help!"
"You know we're not supposed to go in the Everfree Forest, Scootaloo.".
"Well, if we jus' look in the edge a little, we ain't IN the forest, right?"
"Right! All in favor of saving Rainbow Dash from certain doom?"
Two and a three-quarters-sorta hoofs up from Sweetie Belle ratified the decision, and the morning was dedicated to heroics and day-savings.
By noon, things had gotten grim. The rations were all gone, and the juicebox reserves were down to a single, lukewarm container- with no sign of a fallen pegasus to be found. Scootaloo's wings barely buzzed as the last of the sugary dregs burned their way out of her hyperactive system, and the wagon crew had twigs tangled in their manes from a near-death encounter with a wild gooseberry bush.
"Y'all think we done enough doom-savin to git fer lunch, Sweetie Belle? Granny's got biscuits and honey on the stove..."
"We COULD do another patrol later once we resupply...flight crew, are you go for lunch break?"
No response.
"Wagon to flight crew, come in Scootaloo?"
Sweetie Belle poked Scootaloo in the back.
The orange pegasus was leaning over her handlebars like a hunting dog, a toy spyglass shaking in her hooves.
"I think I found her! I found her! That's gotta be Rainbow!", passing it back to Sweetie Belle. "Look in the tree, way up there!"
The spyglass showed a blurry pair of blue hooves but little else.
"Maybe she's taking a nap?" was all she managed before the wagon lurched into a high-speed forest insertion.