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// Changeling In The Street 
// Story: It's A Wonderful Case 
// by Winged Cat 
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It was high noon in Canterlot as Prince Blueblood sauntered down the street toward the market district, white-and-blonde fur a near-monochrome contrast to the grey stone of the street.  The self-maintaining path felt as natural and solid as it reportedly had when first laid centuries ago, and certainly as long as he could remember.  The names and shops might change, but the paths of the city remained a familiar home, so familiar that he sometimes imagined his sense of them was almost as good as an earth pony's.  Two blocks down this way, one block that way, and here was the market district, ponies out and about in the usual lunch rush.  As he pondered what he was in the mood for, he felt a tremor: something had landed hard a few blocks to the left, perhaps hard enough that the road might need some time to recover.  But checking on that was a job for the earth ponies, so he ignored it and instead looked up at the partially cloudy sky.

For Canterlot, "partially cloudy" meant there were any clouds in the sky at all.  Living on the side of a mountain so close to the seat of power, the residents claimed to love to bask in the sunlight (and moonlight, both when that had been Celestia's domain and now that Luna was seen as rehabilitated), so the job of the pegasi was to keep the skies clear when they could.  But even Canterlot needed occasional rain to wash things out, and some days needed to be cooler than others to match the more extreme seasonal fluctuations in the rest of Equestria, so there were days with clouds in the sky.  Blueblood did not think ill of the necessity, preferring instead to find relief in occasional shadow, and he knew the pegasi had more uses for the things.  Just then, he thought he saw a yellow pegasus playing around one large cloud, hovering above it then punching through to peek at the ground, but she was too far away to make out details.  He tore his gaze away before envy could show.

And he did envy their freedom.  Sometimes he wished he could live anywhere but Canterlot, anywhere but in the shadow of his distant blood relative who had long ruled Equestria alone, and only recently began to share power with a very select few.  But no, for one like him, Canterlot was the only community he fit in.  The unicorn aristocracy accepted him without question, and he in turn was privy to all manner of confessions and secrets that occasionally turned into actual lawsuits.  So it was that among the duties he accepted was lawyer, usually prosecutor, having put away some of Equestria's worst criminals over the years.  It was one more thing that shackled him to Canterlot, though less literally than the changeling that suddenly hugged his rear right ankle, snapping him out of his drifting thoughts.

Blueblood looked away, then looked back.  The changeling stubbornly refused to be a trick of the light.  Shiny black chitinous skin, solid sky-blue eyes, fanged mouth, bug-like wings the same color as the eyes...and a piteous expression, body sprawled on the ground as if the changeling had crawled to him, forelegs clinging to his leg like a life preserver.  He wondered briefly how one could tell the males from the females, until the changeling spoke in feminine voice.

"Please, help me," she pleaded quietly.

"Please, let go," he deadpanned as he shook his leg to no avail.  He could not actually feel any taint creeping up from her, and hoped she was no more filthy than a common pony.

"You've gotta save me!"  She clung tighter, causing her body to be limply dragged to and fro as he continued to try to shake her off.

He frowned.  "From what?"  While his great (many times over) aunt Celestia hoped there were changeling hives out there who might want to peacefully integrate with Equestria, the one everypony had heard of belonged to Queen Chrysalis, which had declared themselves as much of a standing enemy as Equestria had.  It helped that they could hide, and their animosity was mainly limited to seeing ponies as a food source.  More conventional enemies that steadfastly refused diplomacy tended to end up as flat patches of land, an outcome regretted for the loss of potential friends and allies, with any survivors either converted to the pony way of thinking or willing to continue surviving and let live.  All of which meant the notion of him saving a changeling struck him as faintly ridiculous, even if this particular one seemed less "enemy of all Equestria" and more "common gutter trash".

Before she could answer, a small mob of unicorns boiled out of an alley from his left, anger etched on their faces.  "There she is!  And she's attacking Prince Blueblood!"  They warily trotted into a loose circle around him and his passenger, not immediately resorting to physical contact but clearly deploying to prevent the changeling's escape.  "Are you alright?"

He snorted, surveying at the mob while not letting the changeling out of his peripheral vision.  It was going to be one of those days.  "I am inconvenienced.  What is going on?"

"That changeling," declared the mob's apparent leader, a pink-and-sky-with-purple-frills unicorn he took a moment to identify as Royal Ribbon, "has been devaluing, degrading, and defacing the stores of the good citizens of Canterlot!  As if just being a changeling isn't bad enough!"

"No I haven't," the changeling protested.  "I...think?"

Blueblood frowned at his ankle's unwanted passenger.  "You think?"

"I don't know!  I just woke up a few minutes ago, in the street, hurting all over, then they started yelling and chasing me."  She gathered herself into a ball, making a poor impression of a limpet on Blueblood's leg.  To Blueblood's dismay, he saw smears of red blood on the street under the changeling, though no visible wounds.  A few drops even marred his pristine white fur.

"Hmph.  Well."  He turned to face the mob.  "Far be it from me to defend one of these degenerates, but it seems to me she needs medical attention more than a lynching.  If you want her arrested, summon the guards.  That is their job."

"She's a changeling," Royal Ribbon snarled.  "Pony laws don't apply to her."

Blueblood scowled, just a bit.  Changelings were one thing, but misrepresenting Celestia's governance would not do.  "This is Equestria," he reminded her.  "The same law applies to all who live within our borders under my great aunt's sun.  Now, what specific things is she accused of?  Tell me and I shall drag her to the guard myself, since she is so determined to have me decide her fate."

"PRINCE BLUEBLOOD!  DON'T LET HER GET AWAY!"  Two pegasi, a white-and-blue royal guard in golden armor and a yellow-and-fire pegasi he soon recognized as Spitfire, zoomed up the alley the mob had come from.  "SHE KILLED RAINBOW DASH!"  Barely-constrained rage so inundated Spitfire's voice that the mob flinched and looked ready to break as the pegasi sped closer.

"There, see?"  Bluebood quickly sat, pinning the changeling's forelegs even as she let go and weakly tried to push away, repressing his distaste for getting more blood on his fur.  "Murder is a proper charge to arrest somepony, or someling, on."