A few scant hours before dawn, the residents of an unassuming, multi-family apartment building in Canterlot was jolted awake by a sudden burst of magic that swept through the structure, leaving all of their hooves tingling and their heads feeling a bit light, that was followed by the loudest and most horrible thud of an object against the building’s front door they had ever heard. The door held, but for how long was a different matter entirely; whole families, each one of them neighbors, raced into the halls and lobby outside their flats just in time to hear a second collision, the reinforcing enchantments on the door glowing a dangerous, angry red.
“Oh, for crying out loud!”
The neighbors looked down the hall as gasped: Stalking, or more likely stumbling towards them, was a changeling! And he looked very angry and at least a little bit nauseous.
A third collision sounded, and the door looked angrier than ever, itself.
“Yes, yes, good work, Royal Guard!” shouted the changeling as it (he?) trotted towards the door with an absolutely irritated if slightly off-kilter gait, “You found the big, bad changeling trying to get some shut eye. Now, beat it! Ponies are trying to sleep!”
The neighbors all shied away and pressed against the wall cowering when the changeling passed — even if it paid them no mind — and they all had the thought to look in the direction it came form to see the door at the end of the hall ajar, and one of their number missing; the fiend had replaced the kind-hearted if somewhat eccentric Kudzu! The earth pony deserved better than to be replaced by a giant bug!
But Kudzu had moved in only two weeks prior; hardly enough time to make a changeling want to replace him over someone that had lived there much longer. Then again, he’d always been very helpful; watching their apartments when they couldn’t, feeding their pets on a few occasions when they had to work late, even helping some of the foals with their homework once. Maybe he’d always been a changeling. Who would’ve guessed that changelings could be so neighborly, and also good at math?
Besides, with the tone and topic of his shouting, he seemed much, much more interested in getting back to bed than in draining them of their love.
“Your tricks won’t work, changeling!” hollered a pony from the other side of the door, likely the patrol commander. Thankfully, they had stopped trying to break down the door, and it was beginning to return to a more normal color. “Surrender peacefully, and you will not be harmed.”
“Sirs, I am very sorry to hear that you are on fire.”
That stretched out a long moment of silence from not just the neighbors, but from the ponies outside as well. “We’re not, we’re not on fire,” the patrol commander, “Why would you even think that?”
“Yes, you are,” the changeling — or Kudzu, really — replied, “When I open this door, all of you will be on fire. All of you are on fire, and the good folks in this building are the only ones in all of Equestria who can douse the flames and save you, because that is the only conceivable reason that you would be hammering on the front door, with a battering ram, AT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING!”
There was silence from the other side of the door, mimicked by silence inside the building. But unlike the ponies outside, who were somewhat perplexed and unsure of how to proceed, the neighbors inside began to huff and don expressions of irritation, annoyance, and anger. Kudzu was absolutely right, darnit. They were loyal, taxpaying, Equestrian citizens. They didn’t have to take this!
“Open the door, changeling. You have twenty seconds to comply.”
“Just find out what they want and send them away!” shouted one of the neighbors; it didn’t really matter who, “I’ve got work in three hours!”
“Don’t rush me! You’re always rushing me!” Kudzu shouted back before returning his attention to the door, “You hear that, you clods? Ponies got work in a few hours! Foals got school! I hope you’re proud of yourselves!” Horn shimmering with acid green magic, Kudzu disengaged the latch on the door. “Now, I’m going to open this door, and we’re going to put out the flames, and then you’re all going to apologize to the nice ponies in here for being such a nuisance at this sun- and moon-forsaken hour.”
The door opened, and on the other side stood not less than six ponies, although it was a bit difficult to tell since it seemed like there should have been more, adorned in golden armor. Four of them had, as Kudzu had predicted, a battering ram affixed to their backs. Two more stood to either side of the door, one of them wearing the stripes of a sergeant.
“I see you’ve decided to give up,” the patrol commander said with disdain.
“I notice that none of you are on fire,” Kudzu said with eerie calm.
“No more games, changeling. Step outside and come quietly.”
Kudzu, naturally, did not do that. Instead, he shut the door and reengaged the lock. “Back to bed, everypony,” he said as he turned towards his door, “I’ll file a harassment complaint in the morning.”
“And that, Your Majesty,” said a bandaged Kudzu, standing in the Royal Court with one leg in a cast and one eye nearly swelled shut, to a baffled Princess Luna, “Is when your brute squad broke down the door, socked me in the eye, fractured my leg, split the chitin on my head and scared the stuffing right out of the foals they rudely woke up for no good reason, before dragging me off and throwing me in a kennel. A kennel! So, in addition to that harassment complaint, you can expect to hear from my lawyer regarding my unlawful arrest, the excessive force used during my unlawful arrest, and the inhumane conditions of my unlawful imprisonment.” He regarded the sharply dressed stallion to his right — another of the neighbors — with a smile. That smile was happily returned, and since that stallion had tested negative for changeling influence, there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Luna sighed wearily. Once Celestia returned from wherever she’d absconded to with Applejack, the revenge pranking would begin in earnest.