Perspective: Winter Solstice

"Cassa lo cez, fir tanko."

I looked up from the pile of bricks I was using to entertain myself. When you wanted to make little houses and you lacked little wooden blocks and triangles, actual building material made for good... well, building material. I was somewhat proud of my small tower, though I probably would've been prouder if this wasn't the fourteenth time that day I had made it after tearing it down a few minutes prior.

Not my fault there wasn't much to do here. Pony-made prisons aren't usually made as entertainment centers. Changeling-made ones attempted even less. As long as there were sturdy walls and doors, and food was eventually provided at least once a day, when it came to what the prisoners did, the guards couldn't give a crap if they were force fed laxatives. I was more used to being on the other side of these walls, but I had my reasons for being here, sitting in a corner on a surprisingly comfy spot of dirt in the main yard, playing with bricks that had fallen out of the walls over the decades.

Wait, what was going on?

"Cassa lo cez, fir tanko!"

Oh, right. This guy.

Being one of only three ponies in a primarily changeling-populated prison, in the changeling homelands at that, made me stand out. Even worse with my comparatively bright colors. Royal blue coat, yellow mane and tail with brown streaks, green eyes, gold shield cutie mark with a snowflake on it. Next to all these dark gray creatures in a prison made of dirt and cement, I probably looked like a rainbow, and that made me a target. I didn't like being made a target. I made sure they knew that.

The changeling drone standing over me was... well, he looked like all the others, more or less. Does that make me racist if I can't tell the difference? Maybe I just didn't spend enough time researching them. Anyway, there was one somewhat outstanding feature about this guy. Well, two, actually. The first being a bruise on the left side of his face that looked suspiciously to be in the shape of my hoof. (Hey, in my defense, he threw the first six punches. I just threw the seventh.)

The second being the five or six or twenty friends backing him up.

"Cassa lo cez, fir tanko!" he said a third time. He spoke a bit fast for my brain to translate properly, but I gathered that he was combining an insult with an order to apologize.

Rather than formulate a response in either my language or his, I just blinked blankly at him. He stared back, until he apparently seemed to get the idea. Growling, he turned to one of his friends, and the two of them exchanged words for a while, trying to figure out if any of their group spoke Equestrian. I held back a smirk as several others in the crowd started to wander off, apparently bored once they realized this pony supposedly didn't even understand them. The ones that stuck around either glared daggers at me or listened intently to their apparent leader, either way seemingly awaiting orders.

I returned my attention to my bricks. It wouldn't be long before I was out of here; if all went well, it'd be only a few hours. Frankly, I didn't even belong here. I could've easily avoided getting caught in the first place if I wanted.

But I needed something. Specifically, someone. And they were inside the walls, not outside.

My name is Winter Solstice. I'm the captain of the Ponyville royal guard. Or rather, I was, until that little section was more or less disbanded and replaced with more common police. I'm not bitter, especially since the higher-ups decided neither I nor my fellow guards were useless. We had skills, and we had chemistry, and they wanted that. So they offered me a new leadership role as the head of a special military division.

Equinox.

We're a specialized force, in that we're specialized in everything. By this point, we've done it all. Infiltration, negotiation, stealth, strategy, assassination, electrical work. Available for weddings. We take jobs that the regular guards or police are too ill-equipped, busy, or incompetent to handle, which is a disturbingly large amount of them. We often have to travel for them, but rarely do we travel outside Equestria, like we have been for the last two weeks or so.

Remember how I said there were three ponies in this prison? I was one, of course. The second was one of my fellow Equinox members, sent in to back me up (or for me to back her up, whichever was necessary). The third was Hoof Burns, a psychopath whose claims to fame included blowing up an apartment building and attempting to assassinate our own Princess Luna. As you can likely tell, he's near the top of our "seriously get him already" list.

Changelings don't care much for Equestrian crimes. They had him locked up because he trespassed in their territory, but frankly there was no way he'd be stuck any longer than six months. Then he'd be back out in the wild again. By Equestrian law, he was to be killed or arrested, and if it was the latter he'd end up the former within days. Deciding to take our chance while we could, myself and my companion Chloroform got ourselves captured. It almost pained me to be so blatantly obvious with my trespassing rather than sneaking in quietly, but it worked. More or less.

Of course, they searched us. We kept some stock items on us. Bits of food, a knife, a torn map of changeling territory that was horrendously outdated. Enough to make us easily pass for random wanderers thinking we could waltz right in on their home turf. Due to us both being unicorns, they stuck some standard issue magic deterrent rings on our horns, not that we had a problem with that. We didn't plan on needing magic, and even if we did, my horn had a unique curve and thickness that kept the ring from sliding on all the way. I could at least do minor things if necessary, not that they knew that.

All that was left was to get just a few moments alone with Burns. He didn't seem to recognize us, nor did he want to socialize. He picked some fights, and the guards responded by breaking them up and tossing him in solitary confinement for a while. The rest of the time, he wandered around aimlessly. Occasionally into good areas to pick him off, but never when no one was watching.

Chloroform had a plan, though. Oh, sorry, Chloe had a plan. She's pretty insistent about using that weird short version of her name rather than her full one, so sorry about that. Anyway, she came up with a plan, and had been working at it for a couple days. Partially thanks to being a not-bad-looking female in a prison otherwise consisting entirely of males - literally; don't ask how I know - she had made herself out as a decently friendly face from which these changelings could get a bit of a... "love meal". And hey, if it helps us reach our goal, I can't judge the methods. Next time Burns wandered into a good spot, she'd start advertising her services, the prisoners would come flocking, and next thing you know, I'd have a nice dark alley to finish him off in without any witnesses. Then it'd just be a matter of pulling off a pre-planned escape before his body's found. Simple enough, at least on paper.

Of course, with these morons standing around staring me down, I doubted I'd be able to sneak off so easily when the time came. I needed to get away from them.

I casually stood up and started to walk away, as though I didn't even think the group hanging around me even cared. Of course, three of them stepped in front of me to block me from leaving. I gave them a look, and they returned it, along with some words. "You're not going anywhere."

Oh hey, one of them speaks Equestrian. I smiled at him in the least friendly way you can suitably imagine before giving my reply. "Unless you want to end up even worse off than your friend over there, yes, I am."

He didn't like that. Suddenly my throat was being grabbed by a surprisingly strong hole-filled hoof, and I was being shoved up against the wall. "It won't be that easy this time."

The pressure on my throat wasn't unfamiliar, but it wasn't welcome either. I felt my air being cut off, and quickly pushed down the frantic messages from my brain telling me to squirm and flail. Instead, I glanced over as the remaining crowd all started to watch, some grinning gleefully and others continuing to scowl. Yeah, figured none of them would be jumping in to help me.

My hooves had instinctively gone to my throat, so as to push away his foreleg as much as I could to prevent total suffocation, and I didn't think moving them would give way to much progress at the moment. Deciding to finally give up my ace in the hole, I activated my magic. The base of my horn started glowing right up to the ring, and I slowly started lifting one of the bricks from my little house.

Before any of them could catch on to what was happening, I flung the brick at the head of the changeling holding me by the neck. The collision had the desired result of knocking him to the side in a daze as he gave a yelp of surprise, managing to not send him sprawling to the ground. His foreleg released its grip on my throat, but I quickly grabbed it back now that my hooves weren't occupied anymore. Tugging him toward me, I quickly slammed my forehead into his. Not one of the most recommended close combat tactics, but it worked, finally sending him crumpling to the ground out cold and leaving me with just a small migraine.

Unfortunately, me knocking out one of their own just so happened to be the signal for the rest of the crowd to start their own attack. I was worried for about half a second before remembering that these were prison thugs with little sense of organization. Somehow they found themselves unable to move the five feet over to me, due to pushing against each other and tripping over their own hooves. I even saw a few punches being thrown at one another, probably because all the shoving led to some touching and bumping they weren't fond of. Suddenly all the changelings who previously wanted my head on a plate were more focused on punching and pushing each other than the unicorn watching them with clear amusement.

Mr. Bruised Face was the only one who managed to get out of the ensuing mess and run at me. I quickly held up a hoof to block the simple punch he threw, then ducked before he threw another one. Pretty much all standard jocks and thugs had the same opening attack pattern, like some sort of old video game. Before he could switch it up, I grabbed the side of his head with my hoof and slammed it against the wall. It didn't put him down, but it certainly dazed him, and hopefully would help him get the point.

I threw him backwards into the group struggle, watched for a moment to make sure he wasn't coming back at me instantly, then turned and walked off. I had no problem letting the guards sort out that little scuffle when the dust settled, but I didn't plan on being right nearby when it happened.