One of the most reassuring things to a ground-pounding Guard pony is to see a patrol flight of pegasi circling above without a care in the world. Watchful, like having Celestia's own wings covering your cutie marks from any surprises. The eight stallions pulling a very special delivery to Ponyville knew that sure as the rising dawn was kissing their tails, nothing was getting past the watchful eyes of those pegasi circling above the tracks that crossed Saddle Lake.
Six-Seventy-Five, wearing a feathered skin watched as three flights of changeling warriors plunged out of the rising sun and smashed the blissful looking lovesacks like so many beanbags. Some of them didn't even get a chance to scream, having found themselves in a hoof-enforced naptime from direct hits to the shiny, easily targeted helms the pony-soldiers wore. Seriously, could you ASK for a better bombing marker?
The only pony on the train that managed to even try anything was a white unicorn in a straw hat, but the stupid drone only managed one hastily-choked off cry as two changelings clonked him hard enough to leave the woven bit of grass tangling their feet. The pair slapped the roof hatch shut and threw the locking bars across with practiced efficiency. Slam. *SLAM* *SLAM* *SLAM*
The train's doors were locked. From the outside. Stunned and battered soldiers were efficiently glued to the underside of the tracks with mucous and cocooned, drained for a quick pick-me-up, and mirrored by their captors. In under ten minutes, the three cars were under way once more, silent white stallions pulling their well-secured cargo off the bridge and southbound. Above them, a watchful flight of faux-pegasi glided on the warm winds of morning.
Ponyville was off the list of stops. Six-Seventy-Five hadn't had to lift a hoof to help, a fact which pleased the changeling drone greatly. Whoever was on the boat, however was going to have to go. Nobody to run back to their little nests and get their stingers all a-shaking, after all! He looked forward to breakfast after watching all that feeding going on. Looking properly officious, the changeling pegasus knocked on the door to the crew cabin to make introductions.
---
Blueblood snorted in the near-coma the noblepony generally defined as "early morning nap". Given, most of Blueblood's late mornings were followed by breakfast in bed and six hoofservants primping him to the epitome of stallionhood a prince must maintain at all times in public, but even after last night the instinctual revulsion against getting up any time near Auntie Tia going to work held strong. Nearly drowning didn't help any pretensions of early-birding it, of course. He dreamed of a horrible night, surely Auntie Luna tweaking him- plunging down a waterfall, cold water streaming into his nostrils, a strangely cute-looking unicorn thrashing him like a crocodile as they tried to keep from sinking...
A rapping on wood penetrated the dazed dandy's mental landscape. He resolved to have the offending servant either fired or given a raise, depending on whether they had anything for this truly horrid hangover. This dream couldn't get out of his head soon enough!
The young mare next to him was equally oblivious, gripped in her own personal bad dreams. Celestia stood over Sunset Shimmer, spread-eagled across a black stone table. A strangely familiar pegasi guard fetched a cloth and a large bucket of water.
"You've been a very bad pony", the monarch sneered as the cloth wrapped itself across Shimmer's face.
"Confess."
Water cascaded across the covering, and Shimmer convulsed against the harsh ropes tying her hooves to the slab, gagging as the liquid flowed over her nose and mouth. Terror knifed through the mare's already exhausted mind, spurring it to rise in spite of an already horrid ordeal...
---
Scale Balancer made her way from the cargo bay to the crew cabin as the knocking grew louder.
"Hold your hock, you! I've had enough of a night as it is!"
The grumpy fisherpony yanked open the door to reveal the quartet of Guard pegasi who'd come to visit, one of which had the gilded armor of a flight officer.
Six-Seventy-Five gave breakfast his best smile and remembered not to let his fangs show.
"May we come in?"
The unicorn's tired eyes opened wide. "Search and rescue? I haven't even gotten a chance to ask- yes, yes! I've got two ponies here that would love nothing more!". Standing aside, she let the first of the disguised changeling soldiers in.
Behind her, a gurgling, thrashing cry rose from the mound of padded sheets and with a whistling *TWHOCK*, a scaling knife found itself buried halfway to the handle in the eye of her new guest. Sparks of opaline magic shot from the end as Sunset Shimmer shoved the knife into her victim until *SNAP*, the short blade snapped off inside the skull.
A screeching squeal no pegasi could ever make erupted from the changeling's throat as agony drove a herd of fire-colored unicorns against the burning lance that had replaced it's eye. Green flames raced over the body as the monster's brain before the shapeshifter's true form collapsed to the ground in a puddle of slimy ichor, spraying from the ruined socket.
Six-Seventy-Five jumped backwards as a blizzard of objects were horn-flung through the door, a random piece of debris drawing a thin scratch across the false skin and scoring the true-skin beneath. Shimmer's hysterical surge finally trickled out as she slammed the door shut, and the mare slumped back down into the tangle of cloth she'd been wrapped in, rolling across the other lump in the sheets. Other than the trickle of drool that occasionally twitched at the end of a lolling tongue and the heaving of her chest, the unicorn had begun a long journey to the dreamy lands of a less frightening Princess.
Scale looked down at the dead changeling. She looked at the door, slightly ajar. As if someone hadn't just butchered a changeling in front of her, she pushed it shut with a hoof and locked it. The reassuring *click* of the lock set off a sympathetic vibration in her lip.
The dead changeling twitched one last time, a slippery chitinous hoof brushing against her foreleg to foul the clean fur with the horror of it's rapidly cooling juices.
Blueblood awoke to one mare anchoring him to the floor, a second one screaming her lungs out, and green gunk EVERYWHERE as the cacophany introduced him to a lovely summer morning getaway from the troubles of Canterlot.
---
"Change of plans. I don't think there's much love in there for breakfast. Break the door down and kill them all.". The masks fell away from the surviving trio of changelings and black-armored hooves began to batter their way through the thin door. Even with the first crash against the cabin, wood splintered away from the frame. Very shortly, they'd have two ponies to "cry" over and a third ready for their final accidental drowning...