By the time Spleens arrived at the caravan, Near just managed to pick her jaw off the ground when she realized something. "Spleens, do changelings just eat emotions, or do you need food and water too?" She asked.

"Well," Spleens began, "To just survive we need emotions and water, but to make any of the changeling goops, I'd need to eat something. That said, most changelings like food, even if we don't get much out of it beyond flavor and goop if we need it. I've found that I really like spicy food."

"So are we gonna need to bang for you to get love, or what?" Long Shot said, still lying on her back where Near had left her.

"Um, I mean," Spleens sputtered, "That would work, but most changelings just hug while thinking about how much they appreciate each other."

Near let out a sigh of relief, very glad about that particular awkwardness bomb being defused. With a flick of her horn, she brought out their map and spread it out on the ground. "Ok, so we're here," She explained pointing with her hoof, "And this is Ponyville, about 1400 kilotrots away. The route there is pretty straightforward except for here," Near pointed at a branching of the route, where it split for a while before rejoining. "We'll have to decide whether to take the northern route along Gallifrey Gorge, or the southern route through Wren's Anomaly. The Gallifrey Gorge route overlooks the Gallifrey ruins, ancient ruins of a pre-equestrian civilization, and the route itself is supposedly narrow and treacherous. The southern route goes straight through the center of Wren's Anomaly, a place where magic doesn't work for some reason, and it's not just unicorn magic, pegasus, earth pony, and even changeling magic all get weaker as you approach the anomaly, and magic stops working altogether about a dozen kilotrots from the center of the anomaly. That said, we have several hundred kilotrots before we get to the fork in the road, so we don't have to decide right now."

"Either way," said Long as she rolled onto her belly, "We should get going if we want to make any progress today." With that, the bat pone flew onto the roof of the caravan, where she promptly slid down to her belly, hind legs dangling on either side of the rooftop and front legs hanging off the front of the roof, pulling her trademark sunglasses out of nowhere as she settled into her perch. Meanwhile Near had shown Spleens how the caravan's harness worked, and once she was hooked up, the three of them were off.

It was around three hours later when Long spotted several contrails in tight formation just above the horizon ahead of them. A minute or so later, when it was obvious that the four contrails were headed right for them, Long announced, "Girls, we've got company."

Near and Spleens looked up from their conversation just in time to see the formation landing in front of the caravan. Once they had landed, the flight leader, a yellow mare with flaming orange hair, stepped forward. "Excuse me, we've been tasked with investigating possible rogue changelings in the area. Do any of you know of any rogue changelings in the area?"

Near raised a hoof before answering, "We just left Jackie's Holes, and the mayor there warned us about a rogue changeling attack nearby. Mayor Ner would be able to give you the rest of the details."

"Thank you very much," The lead wonderbolt told Near before addressing her flight, "Well, you heard the mare, we need to be in Jackie's Holes on the double."

Near face-hoofed as the wonderbolts took off.

Author's Note

Should they go north or south? I've got something planned for both options, but what do you think?