"... relax when I'm about to burst at the seams with a brood of—Hey!"
Indignantly, Twilight Sparkle craned her head around to search for the anaesthetist who had just rudely disappeared while she was in the middle of talking to him. She found him anxiously peeking through the theatre doors, along with the rest of the operating team. As the four ponies turned in reaction to the sound of her voice, Twilight prepared to demand to know why they weren't preparing to operate on her, until a puzzled frown contorted her face. Slowly, she turned back to look at her own supine body. Her monstrous abdominal bulge had vanished, leaving only a shaven patch bearing a lengthy, livid, stitched-up scar. "Oh."
Sweetheart approached with a caring smile. "How is our patient feeling?"
"I'll be fine as soon as I——." A sight from the corner of Twilight's eye cut her answer short. She rolled her head to the side of her pillow and cried in dismay when she saw the bed next to her. "Cadance! What happened? Will she be all right? Oww!"
Sweetheart put a gentle but firm hoof onto the shoulder of Twilight, whose frantic attempt to climb out of bed had triggered a sharp pain. "She should be fine. You need to rest, Princess Twilight. You have your own recovery to think of."
That's all I am thinking of, thought Twilight miserably, not daring voice the words.
* * *
"Has nopony taught you better than to keep a princess waiting? I shall be having words with Cadance about this."
The four ponies in the foyer whipped off their caps and masks, revealing their grateful, delighted faces. Shining Armor opened a portal in the forcefield as his companions dropped reverently to their knees. "Luna, you came."
"As soon as I heard. And not just I." Luna flared her right wing. At this apparent signal, dozens of Ponyville's residents approached, in ranks standing shoulder to shoulder. Earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns, stallions and mares, the stronger and more athletic of the town's ponies at the forefront. Spike was there too, proudly pointing the pony ranks out to Twilight's overjoyed friends.
"We're so glad you arrived. The changelings are this way." Shining Armor turned to lead the way. Or rather he tried to but found his hooves cantering pointlessly in mid-air. Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy likewise found themselves suspended, as if by cables, inches above the floor. They looked towards Luna, who had angled her horn towards them.
From within Ponyville's assembled residents, the town's beige-coated, grey-maned mayor emerged. "I'm afraid we've already seen the changelings take your forms. I have no intention of allowing Ponyville's defenders to be led into a trap. So before we can proceed, you must establish your true identities."
Pinkie Pie turned to the unsmiling princess. "But Princess Luna, we were three of the ponies who used the Elements of Harmony to change you back from Nightmare Moon," she cried, her voice a blend of urgency and hurt.
"That is hardly a state secret, whoever you are," replied Luna implacably.
It might be to a batch of changelings fresh out of the oven, thought Applejack, but she felt the extra caution was forgivable. "Come on y'all," she spurred her companions, "we gotta think of some special memories only we 'n' our friends here would know." She turned to a towering, almost horse-sized earth stallion with a red coat and heavy eyelids. "Big Macintosh, 'member when we were foals an' we put that obstacle course together at Sweet Apple Acres?"
Big Macintosh rolled his eyes in thought for a few seconds, before a smile of recognition crossed his weather-beaten muzzle and his deep voice answered his younger sister, "Eeyup".
"An' ah got the bright idea to set up a rope swing over the brambles?"
His smile broadened. "Yup."
"Ah was sure ah'd made that jump long enough." She winced, gently caressing her hindquarters with her tail.
Big Mac's imposing, red body jolted in a silent chuckle. "Nope."
Fluttershy glanced demurely at another prepossessing stallion, a white pegasus, shorter than Big Mac but with forequarters swollen almost to bursting with lovingly-developed muscles. "Um, Bulky? Remember when we were by the river training for the Equestria Games? I got my mane caught in a tree branch and you couldn't untangle it——."
Bulk Biceps' even stare broke into a grin. "Yeah, so I snapped the branch off at the trunk."
Fluttershy blushed at the memory. A tree branch. On her head. With the node pointing outwards! "I had to go all the way to the spa with that silly thing stuck to my head. I might have died of embarrassment if you hadn't been there with me."
"Ooh ooh, Princess Luna," Pinkie Pie babbled excitedly, "remember when you came to Ponyville on Nightmare Night and I dressed as a chicken and Twilight lured me down an alley with a trail of candy and you came out of the shadows and I was like 'buck buck buck braawwwwwk' but then I covered my mouth 'cause I remembered I'd promised Twilight that I wouldn't scream but then Rainbow Dash snuck up behind you and she was dressed as a Shadowbolt and she made this huge thunderclap that made me scream and an egg came out and I——?"
"You guys wanna hurry it up out there? The newborns are starting to wake from their naps, if you know what I mean."
At the sound of Rainbow Dash's rasping, impatient voice, Applejack turned to the princess. "Ring any bells, Yer Highness?"
Luna smiled warmly. "Pinkie Pie, you are a genius."
"No I'm not, I'm a chicken. Braawwwk."
Shining Armor was last. The only ponies here that he knew well were in the operating theatre on the other side of the hospital. Even Luna wasn't very familiar to him. She was the princess of the night: in the brief window between the lifting of her exile and his reassignment from Canterlot to the Crystal Empire, his eventide attentions had been on another princess altogether. As for her royal guards, assigned to the night shift, they were under a different commander. He struggled to think of some memory he shared with somepony ...
Or some dragon.
"Spike?" Shining craned his neck to get a glimpse of the baby dragon. "Remember back in Canterlot when I took you to your first hoofball game? Baltimare were visiting?"
Spike's purple scales glistened in the sunlight outside as he beamed at the memory. "That's right, Baltimare. Oho, they had an awesome team back then. Halter Pastern, Menacing Hedgejump ..."
"We had a little wager on the quiet over which team would score first."
Spike barked out a smug laugh. "I still have that star sapphire, sucker. At least I did until Tirek ... blew up the library." His voice faltered at the memory of the tree-hewn library that he and Twilight Sparkle had called their home since they first moved to Ponyville. Indeed, everypony present had grim recollections of the evil centaur's ruthless bid for power, and mention of his name caused a pall to settle upon the assembled crowd.
Luna quickly snapped back to attention. "There shall be no more misery inflicted upon Ponyville today," she declared, releasing the four ponies from her telekinetic hold. "Lead the way."
* * *
Like a four-legged bird of prey, Rainbow Dash cruised back and forth through the air in the hallway, her keen eyes trained on the fallen changelings. Any sign of movement and she swooped down in a flash to stun them with her hooves. Satisfying though she found this action, it was gradually becoming more frequent, and she felt this game of clobber-a-changeling could eventually reach a point where even her great speed and agility would not be enough to keep the monsters under control. "You guys wanna hurry it up out there? The newborns are starting to wake from their naps, if you know what I mean."
Rarity, meanwhile, was methodically working her way through the changeling heap from the edge nearest the lobby. One by one, she deftly strapped the changelings' wings to their flanks, bound their legs together in taut knots with the dressings passing through the dire holes perforating their limbs, then wrenched their heads back and tied those too, preventing them from aiming their horns at anypony. For good measure, she tied the changelings to each other as well, hampering them even further. Both she and Rainbow had cast aside their caps and masks.
Rainbow Dash glanced unappreciatively at Rarity's steady progress. "Can't you go any faster?"
"What's that, darling? Can I do a sub-optimal job and increase the risk of the changelings escaping, thereby rendering the entire exercise worse than useless? Certainly, if that's what you wish." As she spoke, Rarity stayed focused on the task at hand, preventing her from seeing Rainbow petulantly miming the unicorn's words.
"Yeah, yeah," grumbled Rainbow as she plunged down to strike another changeling.
Rarity magically guided another dressing towards one of the inert changelings and was about to lift the creature's leg when a green, glowing, flame-like pulse burned like a fuse along its body. The pulse left in its wake a long, purple, limbless shape, as thick at its widest as the muzzle-to-dock length of a pony: a ferocious monster from within the changeling's racial memory. The changeling had managed to regain consciousness without stirring, and had lain in wait until Rainbow Dash had moved to the far end of the corridor before making its move.
Balancing on its coiled tail, the worm-like figure reared up to strike, its head just below the ceiling. From the corner of its black, beady eye, the changeling saw Rainbow Dash rocketing towards it. The creature made no attempt to evade the onrushing pegasus. Instead, it opened its jaws to reveal a mouth resembling a huge, pink, three-petalled flower with long, black stamens in the centre.
"For me? You shouldn't have." Rainbow Dash steered towards the creature's throat only to discover, too late, that the undulating dark tendrils were in fact tentacles. The appendages shot elastically from the changeling's mouth, coiling tightly around Rainbow Dash's legs, lashing her wings to her flanks and snaking around her throat, constricting her breathing. Her wild struggles quickly turned to convulsions as her awareness began to fade.