Rainbow Dash felt like her heart was in her throat.  She pushed her wings to their absolute limit, despite the burning ache she was feeling, flying as fast as she possibly could. After she and Twilight had determined the explosion had been caused by Cloudsdale, Dash shot off towards the disaster area lingering only long enough to say “I have to go find my dad!”   She didn’t even hear Twilight calling for her to wait having already broken the rainboom barrier.  

Not that Dash would have waited had she heard, her tendency to act rashly was amplified tenfold when the thought that her dad or the rest of her family might be hurt or worse. He’s ok. She told herself over and over again. He’s ok, and so are Uncle Ice and Aunty Red. They’re too awesome to be… Oh please, let them be ok. Every inch closer to Cloudsdale she got, the pit in her stomach grew more and more.

As she approached the impact site, what she saw did nothing to help stem the fear she was feeling. Wreckage was spread as far as the eye could see, clouds had dissipated leaving only the wood, metal, glass and plastic that made up the buildings and fixtures of the city. There were street lights split completely in half, piles of rubble containing larger pieces of what use to be buildings, and scattered about were small fires.

Dash landed, or rather slammed into the ground next to the first pony she saw wearing guard armor. She didn’t even wait to catch her breath. “Where’s my dad…haha…Rainbow Blaze…ha…has a mah… mane like mine, please you gotta tell me.”

The guard checked his list. “Let’s see, Blaze…Blaze…sorry, no one by that name has checked in.”

Dash had thought that the feeling of dread couldn’t have gotten any worse, she was wrong. The feeling of her heart in her throat was such that she would later swear that there was nothing metaphorical about that saying and that her heart was literally in her throat. “That can’t be right! Check again!” She demanded, her voice was shaky with panic.

She shook the guard roughly causing his voice to wobble as he spoke. “Callllmee doowwnnn miiisss.” Dash let go causing the guard to drop to the ground with a thud.  “There were no reported fatalities, I’m sure it’s just a mistake. Try talking to one of the Pink Cross admins over-” She was gone before he could blink. “-there…” He sighed, “third one in an hour, I’m getting to old for this.”

Rainbow Blaze fought the fatigue as hard as he could. In retrospect, volunteering to help the Pink Cross with sorting which ponies had minor injuries and which needed to see a doctor immediately while running on about three hours sleep might not have been the best idea. Come on, Blaze, he thought to himself, you’ve pulled longer hours on less sleep than this. Remember last spring when the color pallets got swapped?

That had been a long one, the coloring for the rainbows had been in reverse. The rainbows were coming out of the factory as violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red instead of vice versa as normal. It took all night long to completely flush out the pipes and reverse the process. As a result, color blind ponies were no longer assigned to quality control in the rainbow factory.

Tired or not, Rainbow Blaze simply couldn’t sit around doing nothing while his friends and neighbors were in need.  He and his two friends, Ice Mane and Red Ribbon had all offered their services the moment the Pink Cross had arrived. Red had offered to help dress the wounded while Ice was busy building relief tents. Blaze’s job was to take down a pony’s name, assess the nature of their injury and direct them accordingly. Thankfully there weren’t too many serious injuries as for some reason, nearly every pegasus was either walking or flying only a story or so from the ground. Everypony said the same thing, something just felt off about flying that morning.

It was several hours since the incident and the demeanor of the camp had changed quite a bit. At first there was shock followed by a slowly building fear. Fear from families who still had members unaccounted for, fear from others that this was some kind of attack, perhaps retaliation from Tirek.  Now though, as families had been slowly reunited and word spread that, despite all the injuries, no one had died, a new emotion had taken hold, sadness. All around ponies could be seen holding each other, some sniffling, some with no tears but looks of sorrow in their eyes and others were all out bawling, for it was beginning to sink in that they had lost their homes and most, if not all, of what they spent a lifetime accumulating.

After Rainbow Blaze directed the last of the injured ponies, a young magenta pegasus mare with a hold main and a gimp in her leg, to the third tent on the left he sighed, hoping that maybe he could get some rest finally. Something made him pause, he could have sworn he heard a familiar voice on the wind.

”ohmygoshomygoshomygoshomygosh”

As Blaze turned toward the direction the sound was coming from, he was tackled by a blur of sky blue with a rainbow outline. Rolling a several feet, he found himself in a death grip-like hug of his daughter Rainbow Dash. Her face was buried in his chest as they came to a stop and he could feel tears dripping onto his fur.

“Ohmygoshomygosh, you’re alright, I was so worried! We heard the bang from Ponyville and I got here as fast as I could and I was so worried and I got here and I couldn’t find you and no one had seen you and…and…” Dash finally slowed her histerical rant and began sobbing.  The entire flight from Ponyville she had held in her emotions, fighting the fear that she had lost the only family she had left. Now that she saw he was safe, she was able to let her guard down, which meant that all that anxiety was free to pour out of the young mare no matter how ‘un-cool’ she thought it might be. “I thought…I th-thought…”

“It’s alright, Squirt, it’s alright, but do you think you could ease up a bit? You’re kind ‘a strangling your old pops.”

“Huh, oh right, sorry.” Dash loosed her grip and got back to her hooves. She wiped the tears from her eyes and put on a fake smile, it just wouldn’t do to have the most awesome dad in the world see her crying like a baby.

Blaze likewise got to his hooves, and then proceeded to give his daughter a proper hug. To him, the tough girl act was as transparent as air. “How about you? I heard this…whatever it was, happened everywhere else too.”

“Yea it did, Twilight was saying something but I didn’t hear much. Too busy worrying about y…I mean focusing on flying.”

Blaze cracked a grin, that’s my filly, he thought, even when it’s obvious she’s worried she always tries to act all cool. Rather than tease her on it like normal he instead changed the topic. “So, are your friends all here? I suppose they’re with the princesses.”

“Yea, they should be here any time now. Twilight wanted to talk to Princess Celestia about what’s been going on. We even caught a changeling in the middle of Ponyville when it all went down so yea, she needs to deal with that too.” Rainbow finally let go of her dad and tried, unsuccessfully, to mask her sniffling.

“Sounds like you had quite a day as well,” came a voice from behind Rainbow. She turned around and immediately shot forward towards the new comer to give him a hug.

“Uncle Ice Mane! You’re ok!” Ice Mane dodged her hug and proceeded to place Rainbow in a headlock and gave her a gentle noogie. Rainbow laughed as she playfully struggled to free herself.

“Of course I’m ok, lil’ Maverick,” Ice replied, calling Rainbow by the childhood nickname he gave her. Ice Mane and Red Ribbon were not related to Rainbow Dash by blood or marriage but they both helped Blaze raise her.  As far as she was concerned, they were as much her family as her father. Ice was like the cool grown up older brother and Red was the closest thing she had to a mother. She had no memory of her real mother, a pegasus by the name of Rainbow Bright. According to her father, Bright had passed away giving birth. “It takes more than a city falling to get me down.”

Red also joined the group upon seeing Rainbow Dash and she too was given a relieved hug. The four pegasi adjourned to Blaze’s tent shelter to discuss the events of the day; Rainbow was immensely relieved to hear that there had been no fatalities.  Once both sides had shared their experience of the disaster, Dash addressed the topic that the others had been purposefully avoiding.

“So, where are you guys gonna live now? I mean, you’ve kinda lost everything you own.” Anypony else would have thought Dash’s bluntness insensitive but the three middle-aged pegasi, to each of whom she was considered a daughter even if only one could make that claim in truth, knew that she meant no offense.

“To be honest, Squirt, I don’t know,” Blaze said somberly, “I can live off my savings for a while but after that....not to mention there’s a few thousand other ponies that are suddenly without jobs or a home. It’s gonna be hard.”

Red Ribbon and Ice Mane both looked worried as well, the Dash jumped up, a wide smile on her face. “I know, you guys should all move to Ponyville. I can get you jobs on the weather team and you can even stay with me until you get your own places. We’ll get to hang out again like when I was a filly, it’ll be awesome!” Dash was hovering in the air, enjoying that pumped up feeling that had eluded her all day.

“Ah Squirt?” Blaze said, “not that I wouldn’t enjoy that but didn’t you say your house was destroyed too?”

“O…oh, yea.” Dash landed with a soft thud as her wings drooped to her side and her head hung in defeat.

“Hey, cheer up, Sweetheart,” Red said as she placed a wing over Dash, “everything is going to work out. Who knows, maybe if we pull our money we can all buy a nice place in Ponyville, maybe one with I giant net under it.” Dash laughed weakly at the mental image.

“Well, sounds like we got something that might resemble a plan after adding a few details but I wonder what the rest of Cloudsdale’s citizens are going to do.” Ice said as he looked out over the myriad of tents.

“Yea, I have no idea,” Dash answered. “Twilight and the others are over there talking with them, I’ll bet they come up with a plan. Twilight’s such an egghead, I bet she already thought of something. Say, dad?” Dash looked at her father, “Can…can I hang with you guys for a while? Not that I’m worried or anything it’s just….you know…I’m uh…tired, yea that’s it, from flying all the way here so fast. Don’t want to pull a muscle, heh, heh.”

Despite her efforts to hide it, it was obvious to all present that she was still shaken by the thought that she might have lost her family and just wanted to stay with them for a little while longer. “Of course you can stay, Squirt,” Blaze said as he wrapped his little girl in his wing, “if Celestia needs you I’m sure she’ll send a messenger.”

A great weight was lifted off of Rainbow Dash. There were still a number of problems that needed to be sorted out and she would be mortified to have any of her friends see her in such a childish position. Right now though, with her father’s strong wing draped over her back and the smiling faces of the two ponies whom would always be family looking down at her, none of that mattered. For the moment, all was right in the world.

Twilight Sparkle and her four other friends were preparing the hot air balloon to follow Rainbow Dash to Cloudsdale.  “This is humiliating!” Came the voice of the bound and disgruntled changeling, Rep. He as in the basket of the balloon with both front hooves tided to the rim. On his horn was the most infuriatingly bright pink bow he had ever seen.  “The rope I understand but can you please remove this pink bow from my horn? I promise I won’t shape-shift.”

“Sorry, buddy but we ain’t takin’ that chance.” Applejack said as she checked the last of the cables that secured the balloon to the basket.

“Did it have to be pink though? Of all the colors of bows you could’ve magically stuck to my horn you had to pick pink?”

“Sorry, dear, pink and red were the only colors I had on such short notice.” Rarity spoke up as she trotted towards the balloon. Rep saw she was wearing her beige sunhat and magically levitating two luggage cases.

“And you couldn’t give me the red one because…” He asked irritably.

“Your black chitin, darling, red and black together is so gouache”. She said as she moved to put her bags in the basket.

“Land sakes, Rarity, we’re goin’ to a disaster area. What’re ya bringin’ all that stuff for?” Applejack had long since come to expect this sort of thing from her fashion minded friend but she couldn’t help but ask.

“Don’t be silly, AJ, we are going to help those poor ponies, and who would want help from somepony who looked like a ragamuffin? They’d think we were in just as bad a shape as they are.”

“I’d love help from a ragamuffin.” Pinkie chirped as she bounced towards the group. “Unless it was help making muffins, a ragamuffin might not like that. Wait, what’s a ragamuffin?”

“It’s a type of cat, Pinks, and what in tarnation are you bringing?” Applejack saw Pinkie Pie wearing a red clown nose, confetti in her hair and saddle bags filled with heaven only knew what. On her back was the rubber chicken, Boneless, a gift given to her by her good friend and party partner Cheese Sandwich.

“I’m bringing all my cheering up tools. The Cloudsdale ponies just lost their homes and they’re going to be extra sad, so I need all of my most super-duper party props to make them feel better. Now where can I put my party cannon?”

“Sorry, Pinkie, it’s already gonna be a tight fit with the three of us and him.” Applejack motioned towards Rep who rolled his eyes. “Don’t think there’s gonna be any room for your party cannon.”

“Awww…” Pinkie deflated a little at the news. “Oh well, I guess I’ll have to make due.”

“Can’t you just ‘magic’ it there or something?” Rep asked. “I’ve seen you pull things like that out of thin air whenever you want.”

“I can’t just do it whenever I want, silly, only when it’s funny.” Pinkie replied nonchalantly.

While Rep was working out what Pinkie had said, Twilight and Fluttershy arrived. “Everything ready, AJ?” Twilight asked.

“Eyep, just gotta pile on in.” Applejack handed a rope and pair of harnesses to Twilight. “You sure you n’ Shy are up to pullin us all the way to Cloudsdale?”

“I should be able to handle it, how about you Fluttershy?” Twilight asked the timid pegasus.  

“Oh, I can fly all the way, I’m just…not very fast.” She said, looking down. Twilight put a hoof around her neck.

“Don’t worry, Fluttershy, I’m not the best flyer either, we can pace ourselves.”

“Princess,” Rep asked as Twilight and Fluttershy attached themselves to the balloon. “Not that I prefer a dungeon cell or anything but why exactly am I being dragged into this?”

“Because, there’s a standing order to bring any changeling believed to be acting alone directly to either Celestia or Captain Stalwart. You said yourself that you were here on your own.”

Rep winced as she said that, feeling a chill run through him. Twilight didn’t fail to notice his reaction. “Are you ok? Really the princess won’t hurt you, in fact, if you’re telling the truth and you’re no longer with Queen Chrysalis, she may even help you make a better life for yourself.”

“I…I’m fine, I just need a moment.” Rep closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In truth he was far from fine but it wasn’t Celestia that had him worried. His hooves were starting to shake and feel slightly clammy. He knew what this meant, every changeling did. They were the first signs of withdrawal. It’s only been a few hours since the incident, He thought. How is this happening already? I should have at least a day or two… Rep composed himself, I’ll be fine, it’s not that bad yet, I’ll just get some love the first chance I get.

With the balloon packed and its passengers secure the five ponies and their changeling ward made their way to Cloudsdale. With Twilight and Fluttershy pulling, the group arrived after about an hour’s journey. As they came into view of the city ruins, they we’re shocked at the devastation.

“Good heavens!” Rarity exclaimed, “This place is simply a wreck!”

“Oh my, I hope nopony was hurt.” Fluttershy said as she looked below her.

“Look, there’s a bunch of ponies and tents, I bet the princess is somewhere over there.” Twilight pointed her hoof to the hill about a mile away from the wreckage.

“How in tarnation are we supposed to find the princess in all that?”

“Oh, oh, itchy nose, blinking eyes, floppy ears; I know where the princess is!” Pinkie said excitedly. “That’s the combo for when there’s a princess below and slightly to the left!”

The group all looked in the direction Pinkie indicated except for Rep who simply stared dumbfounded. “Can somepony please tell me what in the hive that was?”

“Don’t go down that road, trust me” Twilight said.  

Applejack pulled on the ripcord allowing the balloon to descend. They landed in a clearing beside a large looking white tent with a large image of Celestia’s cutie mark on the side. Twilight and Fluttershy detached themselves from the harness while Pinkie and Rarity climbed out of the basket. Applejack turned to Rep and began untying the rope that bound his front legs. “Now don’t you go tryin’ anything. Remember, ifn’ ya transform, that bow will let us find ya.”

“Don’t remind me.” Rep sighed as he thought about how ridiculous he must look with a bright pink bow on his horn.

As the group approached the tent, a guard greeted them and ushered them inside. Celestia was standing before a wooden table topped with a map that bore hastily written notes on certain parts. Beside her was Captain Stalwart whose helm was being used as a makeshift paper weight for one of the map corners.

"Ah, Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia said as she looked up from the map table. Despite her smile and warm welcoming tone, Twilight could see in her eyes that she was very tired. “I’m glad you and your friends have arrived. We have much to discuss and I’m sure you have many questions.” Celestia paused as she spotted Rep, if she was surprised, she didn’t show it. “I see you also have an…unusual guest.”

Rep wasn’t sure what to make of Celestia’s passive response to his presence. Sure, he’d heard of her mercy and tolerance, it was one of the reasons Chrysalis believed she was weak, but he expected at least some kind of reaction.

“Yes, princess, so much has happened today, I don’t even know where to begin.” Twilight felt a great relief wash over her. Now that they were with Celestia, everything would be alright. Celestia always knew what to do.

“Beggin yer pardon, Princess,” Applejack removed her hat as she spoke. “It sounds like you and Twilight have a lot to talk about so in the mean time we’d like to help however we can.”

“Of course, any help is welcomed.” Celestia motioned for one of the royal guards. “Please escort these four to Lt. Rampart.”

“At once, your Majesty.”

“Rampart is overseeing the relief effort in this area, I’m sure he’ll have need of your assistance.” Celestia said, smiling.

“Thank ya, kindly ma’am.” Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Fluttershy followed the royal guard out of the tent, leaving only Twilight, Celestia, Captain Stalwart and Rep alone in the tent.

“Now then, before we get to the events of today, I’d like to know more about how this changeling came to be in our presence.” Celestia turned to Rep and walked towards him. He maintained his composure but it was difficult. This wasn’t like AJ or Pinkie who were on his level, nor was it like Twilight who, despite her abilities, was still just a child in terms of experience. This was Celestia, the ancient ruler and guardian of Equestria. He tried to remember the words of Chrysalis, that Celestia was just another pony, ageless and powerful perhaps, but a mortal, imperfect pony. However, Rep was having a hard time believing that now that he was actually in her presence, and his withdrawal symptoms weren’t helping matters.

“Changeling,” Celestia spoke with a calm but firm and authoritative voice. “What is your name?”

“Rep, your Grace.”

“Very well, Rep, I would like to hear your story, and how you came to be here.”