//------------------------------//
// Welcome Party 
// Story: A Change of Pace 
// by Votederpycausemufins 
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	Something tried to nudge Cicada to wake her up. “Give me a few more minutes Nymph.”
There was another nudge, and this time Cicada felt claws scratch her as well. She tried to brush the point where she was scratched with her hoof. “You know I like to sleep in Lila.”
“Wake up! Twilight wants to talk with you!”
Cicada was instantly up. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was. Spike had tried to wake her up, not her sister or Lila. After a second more, she remembered which Twilight they were talking about. As she got up, Spike asked if there was anything she could think of that she might like for breakfast.
“Normally I’ll just have a piece of toast or something. Sometimes I can even get butter on it! There was even that one time someling managed to get a few jars of jam. Best breakfast ever. But yeah, toast would be fine.”
“What kind of jam do you want?”
Cicada stopped working on folding up the blanket she had used. “Wait?! You actually have jam?! You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not. We’ve mostly got apple since Applejack’s family makes that. I think we might even have a little bit of zap apple jam left.”
“Do you have any raspberry? That’s the kind I once had.”
“I think so, but it might be blackberry. If it is, do you want to try?”
“Yes please!”
Spike left Cicada to finish folding the blanket. She left Spike’s room to find her own and opened the door to be greeted with a blue blur flying into her. The changeling found herself on the ground with Lila on top of her squawking at her owner.
“Alright! I’m sorry I left you last night. I was just having trouble sleeping so I went somewhere else. I wrote on my note to you that I didn’t want to wake you up since you had already fallen asleep.”
Lila still seemed angry at her, so Cicada tried something else. “Hey, I hear they’ve not only got toast, but they’ve got jam too!”
That got the phoenix to lighten up. “Alright, let’s go down to where we’ll be eating.”
Before Cicada could reach where she would be eating, she was distracted by the sound of music coming from another room. The changeling changed her mind about going for breakfast and decided to find out where the music was coming from instead. She walked off in the direction of the music to eventually coming to a large door. Cicada pushed the door open, making the music get louder for her.
Before she could even get a good look inside, something exploded in Cicada’s face. Out of instinct, she fired a rapid succession of magic bolts followed by a small bubble shield around her. When she finally opened her eyes. In the room of the door she had just opened was what seemed to be the remains of a party.
“Surprise?” came a voice from one of the few ponies in the room.
Cicada looked around and saw Pinkie Pie with the cannon she had fired when Cicada had opened the door. “Ah! Oh, I’m sorry! I mean, I got scared when you fired the cannon. I thought I was being attacked! Is anyling hurt?”
“Nah, I think you mostly hit the decorations, though you did manage to hit Derpy’s tail.”
Cicada looked to see a grey pegasus with a blond mane and tail with her tail looking a bit charred. The only strange part is that a little bit of it had even caught fire, and it seemed like the mare hadn’t noticed anything had ever happened in the first place. Another mare, this one a unicorn and mainly blue, put her friend out with some water. 
Cicada looked around some more and noticed how the party was made entirely of ponies. She started to get nervous and tried to back away from the room. Before she could get far, Pinkie got behind her and started to push her into the room. Despite trying to use her front hooves to push back, the changeling soon found herself standing in the middle of the room with everypony staring at her.
Cicada looked around, hoping to find something to get attention off of her when she spotted a figure in the corner of the room reading a book. As the other ponies in the room slowly went back to what they had been doing, she made her way over the figure and find out why they were being so reclusive.
As she neared them, Cicada could read the title of the book. ‘Daring Do and the Ring of Destiny’ On the cover were two pegasus mares, one looking like Ambassador Rainbow when she would be out looking for changelings, the other looking like a grey and gold version of her.
Cicada was about to Leave the reader alone when she saw their horn poking up above the cover of the book. Unlike most unicorns, this horn was curved and very pointed. Cicada, surprised by that, pulled the book away to reveal to very blue eyes looking at her.
“Y-you’re a changeling!”
The changeling nodded, then went back to his book.
“Wait! What’s your name? Why are you here? Why are you in your base form?”
The changeling didn’t respond and just kept reading his book. At this point Pinkie came over, nearly scaring Cicada to death.
“Sorry about that.” Pinkie apologised. “But this is Scout. After the invasion of changelings we had in Canterlot a while ago, he got knocked out while reading some Daring Do books when the changeling shield went up. He kind of went in a coma for a while, but Fluttershy took care of him. He came to the wedding we had in Ponyville recently. Some of the younger ponies were scared of him, and the older ponies still are nervous around him, but I’m hoping maybe you two can be friends!”
“I-I guess I can try. But it doesn’t seem like he wants to talk right now.” Cicada told Pinkie.
“Well that’s alright. Hey! Why don’t you try the pinata! Oh, or pin the tail on the pony! There’s also some of the pies I made for you!”
“You were able to make pie?” Cicada asked the pony.
“Yeah! I mean, I wasn’t sure exactly how to make rhubarb pie at first, but I figured it out and also got the pear pie you wanted.”
“How did you get all the ingredients?”
“We had them in the kitchen at Sugarcube Corner. ‘Cept the rhubarb, which I had to buy.”
Cicada walked over to the food table and took a slice of each pie. “I haven’t had pie since I was twelve.”
The queen took a bit of each before gobbling them both down. “They’re just as good as I remember!”
“That’s good! What do you want to do next?” Pinkie asked, hoping to help Cicada have fun.
“Uh, what are those ponies doing over there?” Cicada pointed to an area of the room where ponies were moving around while music was playing nearby.
“Oh, you want to go dance with them?”
“How do I dance? It looks fun.”
“You don’t know how to dance?!” Pinkie exclaimed, aghast at this statement. “Vinyl! Play track 47!”
Cicada saw a white unicorn mare with an electric blue mane and wearing glasses change the record they were listening to and put on a new one.
“Alright, just follow what the words of the song say and you can look at other ponies if you’re confused.” Pinkie explained to Cicada as she brought her over to the dance floor.
The music started up, and at first the changeling wasn’t sure why none of the ponies were moving. When the lyrics started up, she listened like Pinkie had told her. After a line or two that seemed to sort of introduce the song, the lyrics shifted to tell the dancers which way to move. Slowly but surely, the song got faster. There were times Cicada messed up, but she quickly got back in motion with the other ponies.
When the music ended, Cicada asked to do another one. When another one didn’t come up, she went looking for Pinkie. However, before she could, she saw another familiar face.
“Twilight! Look at this party! It’s so much fun!”
“That’s a Pinkie party for you.” She responded. “But we have to go! The train for Canterlot is leaving soon!
“Oh, do we have to leave now?” Cicada asked, wanting to stay a little bit longer.
“Yes. I tried to tell Pinkie last night that she should wait until after we went to Canterlot, but she insisted with this morning. I’ve already told her to head for the train since Celestia wrote back to me saying she wanted all of us when you came.”
“Alright… let me call Lila. Lila!”
The nightshade phoenix looked up from her small slice of pie before seeing Cicada. She took one last pear from the slice before flying over and landing on her owner’s back.
“Alright, now we can go!”
“Good, follow me to the train.”
Before she left the room, Cicada looked back toward Scout and called out a goodbye to him. As the room went out of view, she saw the changeling wave back in reply from behind his book.