Beneath Your Wings

Sassy alternated between whistling and humming the "Rules of Rarity" as she bustled around the Canterlot Carousel, getting ready to close for the night. She was about halfway done with the inventory when she heard the door chime, albeit nearly drowned out by a gust of wind that slammed the door shut as quickly as it had opened it. Expecting a criminal of some kind, especially after seeing the hooded figure suddenly inside her shop, she tensed up as she whipped around to face it, ready to bolt for the alarm at the counter. Except that when she faced the intruder's location, they weren't there.

"Excuse me." Lightning Dust said from her immediate left (between Sassy and the counter), except her tone made it sound more like a barked command than a request. Sassy was pretty sure she had never jumped so high or so swiftly in her life, and struggled to swallow the lump in her throat that she was pretty sure was her own stopped heart. Though she was prone to, Sassy didn't even scream, having been startled right past that point.

"Oh my sweet bells and buttons, Missy! You right scared half my life out of me!" Sassy whined when she managed something resembling a recovery.

She was really more focused on making sure that the wetness ruining her business gown was only sweat and not anything more dreadful than paying attention to the young mare's activities. Lightning finished galing around the store, ruffling EVERYTHING with a vigorous inspection and within a few seconds returned to look at Sassy like she was an insect and the pegasus was debating whether or not it was worth the trouble of squishing her beneath her hoof, in spite of being less than three-quarters of Sassy's height. The unicorn mare found the situation to be quite surreal.

"Um... Ahem. Can I h-"

"I hear you fashion ponies believe that clothes talk."

"What?" This was random, Sassy thought, where could she possibly be going with this? "Well, in a manner of speaking, no pun intended."

"Great! So do you have some kind of translator, or do I just say something and you make me a dress that says that?"

"It's um... not... quite that simple?" Sassy said, backing toward the door as Lightning followed her and refused to let her break eye contact. "Wh-what would you like it to say?"

"Oh that part's actually very simple," Lightning beamed like a shark. "I want it to be an invitation to butt stuff."

"I beg your PARDON?" the fashionista's vision temporarily doubled and her ability to intonate properly went out the window. She closed her eyes and rubbed her right temple with the corresponding hoof. "I-I-I don't believe I heard you correctly, dear."

"I said, "I want it to be an invitation to butt stuff". I'm guessing maybe something involving a short skirt and high socks. You can handle something that simple, can't you?" Lightning sneered, hoping to have finally verbally pounded Sassy into submission, but instead the manager snapped.

"GET THE HAY OUT OF MY STORE!" Sassy bellowed in a distinctly un-ladylike fashion as her horn glowed brilliantly and the pegasus vanished in a manner not unlike her namesake.

It actually took Sassy a few seconds to register Lightning's sudden absence, and it wasn't until she was nearly finished closing the store about an hour later that it occurred to her that she had teleported the rude "customer" out in a fit of anger without really thinking of a destination. Her eyes widened and her ears drooped as she considered the possibility of having committed a very serious crime because of a tantrum, one possibly made worst by the fact that Sassy didn't really practice teleportation spells, so she was quite certain that she'd grown sloppy, a thought that finished the sudden fright's job of making her absolutely nauseous. Sassy bolted out behind the store to properly lose her dinner and wonder how she was going to explain to Rarity why she utterly failed to finish any of the designs her boss had laid out for her. She didn't think Rarity would believe what had just transpired. Sassy certainly didn't.

* * *

Derpy prepared her and Dinky's usual breakfast of flaked corn with milk and sugar while trying to think of a way to battle the ice that had been forming between them over the past few weeks. As she closed the refrigerator door, she saw that Dinky had posted on it a picture of the two of them on it. As it had been some time since Derpy had last seen the expression on Dinky's face directly, the smile in their picture really warmed her heart. She was really proud of how far she'd come in such a short time, and as the headaches subsided, the deceptively simple therapy seemed to be working its magic in quite short order. That warmth held for as long as it took for the elder mare to finish making breakfast and turn to present it to her daughter, the grimness of whose features were now magnified by an invasively penetrating glare.

"Dinky?" Derpy inquired uneasily as she carefully set the bowl down in front of the her cute carbon copy, wondering what had been bothering her lately. She'd heard of adolescents being moody, but she expected that to come much later than now. "Honey, what is it? What's troubling you?"

"On the one hoof, you were wise to choose my mother," Dinky said slowly, her expression darkening with every word. "After all, I love her very much."

"Dinky, what are you-" Derpy tried to put a reassuring hoof on Dinky's shoulder, but it was slapped away by the latter's wingtip.

"On the other hoof, you were very stupid to take my mother, because I LOVE HER VERY MUCH! And I! Won't! Forgive! YOU!"

Dinky launched herself out of her chair and at Derpy's face, only to crash right through the little chandelier that Derpy had just finished replacing all of the bulbs in last night. It was a little-known fact that Derpy was the fastest filly alive, and that only her vision problems hampered her ability to prove it. Though she was plenty talented in her own right, Dinky couldn't lay a hoof on her, albeit not for a lack of trying. Derpy was torn. On the one hoof, Dinky was tearing up their small house. On the other, her reason for doing so would stir any mother's heart.

"Dinky, stop this! Please!" Derpy said as she evaded one attack after another. "What's gotten into you?"

"Don't try to fool me, Changeling!" Dinky shrieked, shattering her own softball trophy with another failed attempt to tackle this monster that had stolen the most precious pony in her world. "I've already alerted the Guard!"

As if waiting for that cue, a pair of burly pegasi in stunningly-polished gold armor burst in through the front door. Prank calls were vanishingly rare and the fright of the Changeling invasion was still fresh in everypony's mind, so every lead to one's presence was taken absolutely seriously.

"Ladies. We're here about the report received about a possible Changeling presence!" Big Shot declared in a gravelly voice that while quiet, still seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

While the dueling (and crying) mares froze and turned toward the door, his partner whistled at the damage that had been caused. The house was barely holding together. Before Derpy could piece together thoughts to make words, Dinky pointed at her and then at the picture on the fridge door. The two stallions' eyes followed the filly's hoof to the picture, then snapped back to Derpy. In a flash, they'd been able to spot the difference with Derpy looking directly at them, and when they seized their spears, and tensed to prepare an attack, Derpy realized that talking was not going to be an option. In the time it took for the stallion's muscles to uncoil, she had already chosen an escape route and shot out of the chimney like a cannonball. She tore through several layers of some invisible substance before they slowed her from super-sonic speeds to a dead stop, wherein the weird material bound her in a fetal position and turned her to face its owner.

"Nice try, Bug. But you're not taking ANY of that little filly's love to your evil queen, GOT IT?" the smiling unicorn, Stock Home, said as he asphyxiated her just enough to make her pass out. Derpy's last thought was that unicorns were unfairly over-powered. Being unconscious, she didn't see Stock nearly collapse from exhaustion and struggle to wave to his pegasus comrades that he was ready to be towed back to Canterlot.