**Rainbow Dash**
After a commendably short period of sitting there laughing at her, the big alien had leaned over and given Rainbow a hoof - or, more accurately, a hand - with the sticky situation she'd gotten herself into with the soggy remains of the salt block.
"I am so glad nopony saw that," she said to herself, still pushing a hoof through her mane to try and get it to sit right. The gooey salt residue was mostly gone, but the front part of her mane still looked a little like there was hair gel in it. Blowing a puff of air up at the dangling forelock in resignation, Rainbow decided to just leave it for the time being.
As her attention roved away from her hair, Rainbow noticed that the alien was looking at her. More sort of staring, really.
"What?" she asked, looking down at herself and twisting from side to side. "Do I still have some on me?"
Her search didn't turn up any more sticky spots, and by the time she looked up again her companion's interest was elsewhere. Briefly Rainbow thought another bipedal figure had wandered into their little rest spot without her noticing, but then she realised the newcomer was faintly transparent. It also seemed to be floating a little bit off the floor. It wasn't until a few seconds after that that Rainbow realised the thing's obviously ghostly appearance, but for some reason she knew it wasn't anything like that. It didn't seem to be triggering any nervousness or fear in her at all. Plus, it was having a conversation with ~BraveStarr~ and he wasn't freaking out or anything, so it couldn't be anything dangerous.
After exchanging a few more words with ~BraveStarr~, the apparition turned its attention on her. It looked a bit like her travelling companion, but smaller. Based on the wrinkled face, Rainbow guessed it was older. The partially see-through image raised a hand in greeting, and then held it out flat. Two little red lightning bolts appeared over its palm, circling each other. They looked just like her cutie mark, or the Element of Loyalty - one a mirror of the other.
The sight made her feel strange. Seen, known, whole and in part. Understood and appreciated. It would have been invasively intimate if it didn't feel so familiar. Slightly at a loss for what to do, Rainbow waved a hoof back. The creature smiled at her, and disappeared.
Then Rainbow started upright as a little voice in the back of her head said, At least someone pays me the proper respect.
For a moment her mind almost caught a trace of something, then it was gone. All it left behind was a fading sensation of smug superiority and satisfaction.
Okay, this is happening way too often to be imaginary, Rainbow thought, gritting her teeth as a brief flicker of annoyance cut off the prickling chill racing up her spine. I need to figure out what this is and get rid of it.
As ~BraveStarr~ stood up, seemingly preparing to move on, Rainbow Dash couldn't quite shake the feeling that somewhere, something was laughing at her.
**???**
"We're going to have to move the plan forward."
"I can try and get the shifts changed again, but I don't—"
"They're doing it tomorrow morning."
"Then... this is going to look extremely suspicious. If anypony checks this out, we're as good as caught."
"There won't be another chance like this. She's vulnerable now, and that's our timetable. If we succeed, it won't be checked. If we fail, she'll kill us all. Either way it won't matter."
"Then I guess that's all there is to it."
"Get it done, then get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."
**Thirty-Thirty**
"I'm not gonna just leave 'er here while we go wanderin' off someplace else."
Of all the things to suggest. He'd left Sara up against the blue-painted wall while they'd been in here as a peaceable gesture, but there was no way he was going to up and walk off without her.
"But you won't need it," Twilight said. "You're inside Canterlot Castle for pony's sake, there are guards all over the place. And it's not like you're in any danger in any case."
Thirty tried not to get too frustrated, but it wasn't like this was complicated. "If I won't need to use her then there ain't no harm in me carryin' her neither."
The orange one with the hat - Applejack, his memory prompted after a second - tilted her head a little, then said, "He's got ya there, Twi."
"No he hasn't, that doesn't even—" Twilight's head swung round towards the other pony. "Hey, why are you on his side all of a sudden?"
"I ain't takin' sides, sugarcube. I just wanna get wherever you wanna go so we can get down to figurin' out what we're gonna do for Dash. Less time we spend arguin' about this, the better."
"I only want to go down the hall to the library so there's a table to sit round, and handy reference material," Twilight said, a little tension creeping into her tone. "I don't see why we need to bring the pet cannon thingy with us, unless someone's afraid they might get jumped by a wild thesaurus."
"Pssst, Twilight," whispered Pinkie, loudly enough for everyone else in the room to hear, "dinosaurs are extinct. That's not gonna be a problem."
"Pinkie Pie, what are you even talking about?" Twilight asked, her train of thought quite neatly derailed.
Seemingly ignoring Twilight entirely, the pink pony turned to the rear of their small herd. "Hey, Fluttershy, whaddaya call a dinosaur in a library?"
Thirty-Thirty couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed himself as the winged yellow pony bounced between confusion and fear at being singled out. "Oh my," Fluttershy stammered, still half-hiding behind Rarity. "Um..."
"Come on," Pinkie pleaded, "your dad loves this one. I know he does."
"Oh!" Fluttershy exclaimed, smiling. "A thesaurus."
"See?" Pinkie looked back at Twilight as she pointed her hooves at Fluttershy.
"Oh my word that's awful," Rarity commented, failing to conceal half a smile behind a raised forehoof. "I didn't know you were into dad jokes, Pinkie."
"You would be surprised what I'm into," Pinkie replied. "And if you ever become a dad, Rarity, I'll share all my best ones. All you need to do is ask."
Rarity rolled her eyes. "And now we're heading for the innuendo."
"In your end-o."
"Oh, really," Rarity said, wrinkling her muzzle in distaste, "come on, you can do so much better than that."
"Not while we're rated 'E for Everyone' I can't." Pinkie said morosely, before leaning in closer to whisper, "I'll explain when you're older."
"Can we... can we just," Twilight pleaded, waving her hooves around in half-hearted gestures before opting for a hopeful, "Us. Library. That way. Please?"
"Okay, okay, that's enough horsin' around," Applejack said, raising her voice a little. "All y'all get on your way now, go on." She gave Twilight a prompting push towards the door, before turning a surprisingly stern green-eyed gaze on Thirty-Thirty. "You gonna be startin' trouble if you bring that thing along?"
Against all reason, there was something in that look that gave the stallion pause. Not that he would have gone looking for trouble anyway, but he found he actually meant it when he replied, "Nope."
"Then grab your gear and let's git. Daylight's burnin'."
"Y'know, I think this place is actually makin' less sense the longer I'm here," Thirty-Thirty said, mostly to himself, as he picked up Sara-Jane from where she sat resting against the wall. He turned to find Applejack looking over her shoulder at him from the doorway.
"Ya think you got it hard," the small orange mare said, smiling, "I live here."
That drew an amused snort from the stallion as he slipped his weapon safe and sound over his shoulder. Steeling himself to ignore whatever the little bat-winged guard outside the door might have in store for him, Thirty-Thirty followed Applejack out into the corridor.
What he hadn't been expecting, however, was for the grey-furred, purple-armoured pony outside the door to greet him with a cheerful "Hi, how ya doin'?" in a voice that was a little high-pitched, but quite obviously male. Thirty was at least reassured that he wasn't alone in being caught unawares by the sudden change when Applejack took a startled hop sideways, before turning to look.
The only thing Thirty-Thirty's brain would provide for immediate consideration was, "Didn't you used to be a girl?"
The guard tilted his head to the side, one catlike eye narrowing. "No?" he said, sounding honestly curious.
Right about the same time Thirty realised he was wearing an intact helmet over the top of an un-punched face, Applejack found her voice. "What happened to th'other one?"
It took a moment of glancing back and forth between the two of them before the guard's eyes widened in understanding. "Oh, right. That. Um..." His armour rustled as he shifted uncomfortably. "'Shade got recalled for, well, disciplinary reasons. And she needs a new helmet. Again."
"That was fast," Applejack said. "We were only in there for a couple o'minutes."
Thirty watched as the little guard ignored Applejack and instead looked up at him. "We, I mean, I, uh..." The guard blinked rapidly a few times before gaining a little more control over his sentence. "Princess Luna is really sorry about that. Please don't be mad at us, okay? Last night was pretty rough on all of us, and 'Shade's still pretty on-edge. I don't think she's slept in two days now. She's usually really nice."
"I'll take your word for it," Thirty-Thirty said, not really trying to keep the growl out of his voice. He turned his attention back down the corridor and started to move after the other ponies, who had noticed something was delaying the tailing members of their group and stopped to wait. He could hear two sets of hooves following him, one of them moving faster than the other.
The bat-pony reappeared in his peripheral vision, trotting alongside him. "I'm Starchaser, by the way," the smaller stallion said, the cheeriness of his initial greeting already back in his voice. "I know we didn't exactly get off on the right hoof, but we— I mean, I'd still like to be friends. If that's, you know, all right with you."
Thirty more felt than heard a faint creaking of metal under tension. It wasn't until he looked down at himself that he realised his left hand was balled into a tight fist, still straining as if trying to crush some non-existent object held within. It took a deliberate effort to relax the limb, faint numbness in his palm turning into four fingertip-shaped points of pain as he forced his hand open.
"I don't think there's much chance o'that happenin' in the next couple hours," Thirty said, mostly addressing the corridor in front of him rather than the pony to his right, "but it's a free galaxy."
Watching out of the corner of his eye as disappointment and resigned acceptance crushed the hopeful smile on the guard's face was almost enough to make him feel bad. Almost.
An irritated snort from behind him caused Thirty to slow a little and glance back. Applejack was aiming a disapproving glare up at him from under the brim of her hat.
"I don't know who taught you manners," she said, "but I reckon they need a hoof upside the noggin almost as much as you do."
Thirty almost snapped a retort back at the pint-sized mare, but something in his brain cut his mouth off. The little orange pony had been almost friendly to him just a moment ago.
The gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach intensified, and Thirty felt his face heat up. But he didn't have anything to be ashamed of. She didn't know what had been done to him, what that guard—
The realisation hit him like a brick between the eyes. That was exactly the point. Even if Applejack didn't know what exactly Luna had done to tick him off, she was right. The Princess' guards hadn't done anything wrong - except maybe the shouty one from a minute ago. She'd had it coming after what she said. Hadn't she?
"If they ain't involved, I'm not gonna let this spill on them."
His own voice; treacherously bubbling up from his memory. He'd given his word that he wouldn't hold it against anyone else, and here he was vindictively taking his anger out on anything that looked vaguely like a target. He'd even hauled off and hit someone, and as strong as he was that wasn't something he could allow himself to do on a whim.
Even as that thought crossed his mind, Thirty-Thirty caught himself balling a metal hand into a fist as he once again fought the rising urge to hit something. A wall. The floor. Anything.
"Damnit," he breathed, before glancing up to find Starchaser eyeing him warily from a few feet away. At some point, Thirty realised, he'd stopped walking, and the little guard had stopped with him. As their eyes met, Starchaser's weight shifted backward and his wings lifted just barely free of his sides - not quite jumping back and spreading his wings in full flight, but certainly thinking about it. Thirty steeled himself and forced the words past the frozen air in his throat before he thought about it too hard.
"Sorry. I shouldn'a done that. Promised I wouldn't, but I'm–" Thirty caught himself, pausing. "And I'm makin' excuses for myself, too. Shouldn't have treated ya like that anyhow, whether I promised that or not."
Starchaser shifted his hooves a little, failing to hide a momentary flash of white from an exposed fang as he caught one side of his bottom lip between his teeth. "It's fine," he said, tail flicking sporadically. "You're, uh, still pretty mad, huh?"
"Now that's a bit more like it," Applejack interjected. "I got an inklin' of what went on from talkin' to the Princess earlier, but I don't really have any of the facts. Either o'you gonna tell me what exactly is goin' on to cause somethin' like that?"
Starchaser opened his mouth, then quickly shut it again when Thirty-Thirty said, "Nope".
The last thing Thirty wanted to do right now was explain that. He wasn't completely sure he could get through saying it all out loud anyway, and it wasn't like it was any of her business. Applejack swung her head from one to the other of them several times, but neither he nor the guard said anything more. Eventually Applejack let out a short breath and resumed walking down the corridor past the two stallions.
"Well," she grumbled, "least ya ain't tryin' to lie about it. I can't force ya to say nothin'."
Thirty-Thirty watched Applejack head towards the waiting group of ponies a few doors down the passageway. Coloured light from the high stained glass windows placed at regular intervals down the left wall played across her as she moved, bars of shade marking the spaces between.
"So," he said quietly, without looking down towards the guard at his side, "did ya really mean that about tryin' to be friends, or were ya just bein' polite?"
"I meant it." The smaller stallion's higher-pitched voice was similarly hushed, but unwavering.
"Still do?"
Thirty heard a soft scrape of armour plates as the guard nodded. "Uh-huh."
He wasn't exactly sure why, but Thirty-Thirty felt that he was the wrong shape for the situation. He turned his mind inward for a moment and focused on the right side of his chest, directly opposite his biological heart. With a motion born of countless years of practice, he took a mental hold of the transformation cog within and pulled.
For some reason, going this way was always faster. Without much undue ceremony, Thirty-Thirty dropped down onto all four hooves once more as his limbs settled back into a more familiar configuration. Sara-Jane disappeared along with her holster on his back, folding back inside his torso to be replaced once more by a red saddle rig. Only after the fact did Thirty recall that he was supposed to be avoiding placing any undue stress on his injured shoulder, and the dull bar of discomfort embedded in the joint sprang back to a pulsating red heat.
Trying to ignore the resurgent pain, Thirty finally turned to the guard beside him and offered a raised hoof. "Thanks."
Starchaser put one small, purple-armoured boot up against the offered limb, fangs on full display in a genuinely happy smile. "Sure thing, buddy."
After a moment's fiddling with the loosened bandage wrap still around his shoulder, and the subsequent discovery that his wound was no longer bleeding, Thirty-Thirty decided to just yank the whole bandage off and deposit it in one of the small pouches attached to his saddle. As he and Starchaser caught up with the group and moved through the heavy wooden double doors into the library, the rest of the little ponies' attempts to hide their curiosity regarding his altered form met with varying levels of success. Of all of them, only the pink one seemed to be completely uninterested; Thirty-Thirty was beginning to think that she was a little too disconnected from reality for her own good. The others were all quite blatantly curious, but none of them actually challenged him about it.
The castle library proved to be quite impressive, both architecturally and in the sheer size of the collection. A huge domed glass roof dominated the center of the chamber, forming an open cylindrical light-well surrounded by several floors of encircling balconies. A pair of criss-crossing stairways on either side of the entrance connected the various floors, each one packed to bursting with shelf after dark wooden shelf of both traditionally bound books and more anachronistic parchment rolls held fast by ribbons. Tables between sets of shelves formed dozens of small work areas scattered throughout the library, but the group's only practical choice would be the ones on the ground floor in the center beneath the glass dome. Given Thirty-Thirty's size, there was no way he could really negotiate the staircases or the narrow gaps between stacks on the balconies.
As he entered the expansive chamber, Thirty-Thirty found himself immersed in an atmosphere he hadn't encountered since his earliest years. He hadn't needed paper records himself, but some of the others had kept them in the old halls. The still air, slightly cooler and drier than outside the room, was heavy with the scent of both ink and paper along with a hint of polished wood. The quiet peacefulness of the place felt more comforting than oppressive, thanks mostly to the dominating skylight letting the morning sun cast a few slanting rays across one half of the upper levels. Once the sun was a little higher above the horizon there would be no need for artificial lighting at all, but as it was a few small lamps scattered across the various tables between the shelves were still giving off a faint glow.
Securing a table proved easy enough for the group - early in the morning the library was almost entirely empty - but it seemed like that wasn't the only thing that was required. At first Twilight retrieved a small pile of books, a parchment roll and, to Thirty-Thirty's incredulous amusement, an actual feather quill and ink pot that she really did seem to be intending to use for writing with. He kept his questions to himself as the initial small book pile was reinforced by a steady stream of additional material, each tome floating its way across the room between and around the shelves encased in a pinkish aura. It wasn't until the table gave its second rather ominous wooden groan that the flow stopped, leaving what seemed to be the contents of an entire shelving unit both atop the table's surface and in meticulously straightened and ordered stacks on the floor.
"Ya got enough books there?" he asked from the far end of the table. It had been readily apparent that he'd never fit into one of the provided chairs, so Thirty had simply sat down on the floor. He was still large enough to look down on the table and the rest of the group even from there.
To his surprise, the winged unicorn opposite him seemed to take the question seriously. "Probably not," Twilight said uncertainly, head still turning back and forth as her attention roved up, down and around between levels and sections of shelving, "but I think we have enough to make a start at least." Leaning over to one side, Twilight grabbed a hefty tome from the top of the closest stack in her hooves and placed it in front of her. Seemingly without her paying it any attention, the quill started scratching its way across the top of the parchment roll occupying the only space on the table near Twilight that didn't contain a book.
"Okay," Twilight exhaled, "so, let's summarise. In," she glanced up at the clock above the library's door, "twenty-three hours, we're sending Thirty-Thirty back home. All I can say right now is that Princess Celestia has planned it out, and the "how" is a secret. You'll all see tomorrow, and afterwards it stays between us. At the same time, all of us are going along with him." Twilight blinked and looked at Starchaser, apparently noticing the guard sat at the table for the first time. "Except for you. Uh, who are you?"
The bat-winged pony hopped out of his seat and saluted Twilight, still grinning. "Starchaser, Princess Twilight. Luna wanted one of us guarding our visitor here during his stay with us. You can just pretend I'm not here. Or give me stuff to do, I don't mind. As long as it doesn't interfere with my duties I'm happy to help!"
"It is far too early in the morning for anypony to be that chipper," Twilight grumbled.
"Luna thinks it's endearing," Starchaser replied, tiny fangs revealed by his expanding grin. "Most of the time, anyway. Occasionally she wakes up in a bad mood and throws things at my head, but I know she doesn't mean it really. I'm way too adorable for anypony to hate me."
Giving the guard a rather skeptical sidelong glance, Twilight decided to just move on. "We're going to be staying there for as long as it takes to find Rainbow Dash, and we're bringing her back home with us. I know it's asking a lot to drag everypony away from their lives for even longer than we'd planned, but I think we all know what Rainbow would do if one of us was out there instead of her. Which means," she said, looking at the books and ponies around her before her gaze finally settled on Thirty-Thirty, "we've got less than a day to learn as much as we can about your world and what we're likely to encounter there."
*
"That don't make any sense at all," Applejack said, shaking her head slowly.
Thirty-Thirty was fairly certain that he wasn't going to make it to the end of the day. The last hour had been torturous, and there didn't seem to be much prospect of the situation improving given the vast depth of what these ponies simply didn't understand. It didn't help that he wasn't exactly educated himself - their persistent questioning on several issues was running up against the gaps in his own knowledge, which was only serving to irritate everyone. They were even getting hung up on things as basic as mechanical life which, if their claims were to be believed, didn't even exist in their world.
"Ya can't make somethin' that's alive outta gears and wires and bits o' metal," Applejack persisted. "They ain't got life in 'em, they can't hold a soul."
Thirty-Thirty shifted on the floor, exasperated. "And they'd say the same thing about puttin' a Spark in a wet sack of protein goo, too. Don't mean they, or you, stop existin'." Then his runaway mouth capitalised on his frustration and added, "You're sittin' here talkin' to me, ain't ya?"
He regretted it as soon as it was out of his mouth. Applejack didn't seem to notice, preoccupied by her own confusion over his response, but she wasn't the only one present. Twilight's eyes lit up as her attention was pulled from her note-taking, and he knew she'd put something together.
The little alicorn was just opening her mouth when he interrupted her. "Yes, I'm both," he growled, "and no, that ain't normal. Anything you see is gonna be one or the other, if it looks like both it's just a biological with some spare parts hangin' off it. And no, I ain't gonna talk about it."
"The important part of all this," Thirty-Thirty pushed on in a more normal tone, "is that you might run into Sand Spiders or, worse, Sand Crabs out in the desert and you've gotta be ready for 'em. Sand Spiders are easy, they only live in valleys and canyons so you only gotta worry about 'em there. They spend most of their time camouflaged like a little rock, so you're probably not gonna spot them right away. Takes a while to learn. Basically, if you hear a sorta angry metal chitterin' noise, stop what you're doin' and don't make a sound. They go for loud noises, so all you gotta do is back up quiet and find another way 'round. If ya do manage to piss 'em off, you'll have a whole lot of lasers to deal with. On the upside, they ain't exactly crack shots and they don't like to move much, so you can just..."
Thirty-Thirty tailed off as everyone, himself included, turned to look at Pinkie Pie - or, rather, the place where she had been. A brief look around revealed no sign of her, until Rarity ducked her head beneath the table and found Pinkie had apparently dropped to the floor and huddled beneath her own chair with her hooves over her head.
"Pinkie, what are you doing down there?" Rarity asked, sounding a little more confused than affronted or concerned.
Slowly unfolding from her prone position, Pinkie poked her head back above the edge of the table and glanced around nervously, ears twitching. After a few moments she seemed to relax, hopping back up onto her chair. "Nevermind, looks like..." Pinkie turned her gaze back onto Thirty-Thirty. "How did you get away with saying- eh, I'll figure it out later. Nevermind," she said airily, before a mischievous grin flashed across her muzzle. "So, you've got crabs?"
Thirty slowly drew in a breath, held it, and then let it out.
"Ooh, you do that too?" Twilight said, looking up from her note-taking. "I've always wanted to ask somepony else, did it actually help?"
"No."
"Yeah," Twilight replied despondently, "me neither."
**BraveStarr**
"Finally," BraveStarr said to himself as he caught his first faint glimpse of reflected sunlight coming around the next turn in the shaft. While it was pleasantly cool inside the mine, it was also very slow going. Even with Tex and his crew delayed by the Sand Spiders in the canyon, if he and his companion spent too long working their way out to the minehead it would be all to easy for Tex to figure out what he'd done and get ahead of them. Once they were back on the flats, however, it would only be a short sprint to Fort Kerium - and if Tex was stupid enough to follow them there he'd get an abrupt reminder of exactly what the town's Fortress Mode defense system was capable of.
The little winged creature trotting along beside him looked up as he spoke for the first time in an hour or more, ears perking and expression curious. Shutting off his own light, BraveStarr plucked the lantern from its resting place on the pony's back, pointing ahead up the tunnel before covering the lantern's aperture with his free hand. What had been just a faint glow in torchlight was made clearly visible by the darkness, highlights gleaming along the tops of the metal cart rails. BraveStarr found himself taken a little by surprise as the pony let out a loud whoop before rearing up and galloping noisily forward ahead of him. It spread its wings as it rounded the corner, somehow managing to both take off and drop the X-Kerium chunk from beneath one wing into its forehooves in a single smooth motion as it headed for the light at the end of the tunnel.
The Marshal hurried to catch up, breaking into a run as he got the sinking feeling he'd probably be playing catch-up fairly often in the near future. At least the brief conversation he'd had with Shaman had allayed his fears about the spirit creature suffering any lingering ill effects from its high-speed crash earlier. Or, more accurately, her high-speed crash, BraveStarr reminded himself again. He hadn't really considered that the spirit creature might have a gender until Shaman had mentioned it, but BraveStarr had to admit it was rather obvious now that it had been pointed out to him. Not that that had been the only surprise for him in that conversation; it seemed that they weren't actually dealing with a single spirit, but a pair. The second one was dormant - more of a passenger, really - but that was probably for the best given its nature. Nevertheless it too had a part to play in maintaining balance in the world. It didn't really change his primary goal of getting them both back where they belonged, but it certainly raised the stakes a little higher.
After letting his eyes adjust for a moment as he emerged into the desert sun, BraveStarr couldn't help but smile as he watched the small creature playing happily in the sky; its winged form trailing a brightly-coloured tail through the air against a backdrop of three rising suns. She certainly seemed at home there despite her mostly equine nature, looping and rolling in the hot breeze with the X-Kerium shard clutched in her front legs.
Turning his eyes back to ground level, BraveStarr couldn't help but notice the faint shimmering of the dusty red-brown mesas on the horizon. The heat-haze would only get worse as the day wore on, and although it was harmless in itself, the rising temperature it betrayed was likely to be their worst enemy in the coming hours. No time to be fooling around, he told himself, we haven't got long left before the heat starts to become unbearable out here.
Raising his fingers to his lips, BraveStarr let out a piercing whistle to attract the pony's attention before waving up at her. "Come on," he called out, motioning off to the southwest with his head, "we need to get moving."
The filly swooped in fast and landed hard next to him, almost slamming down onto the sand with her knees slightly bent, tucking the X-Kerium fragment beneath a wing once more. Turning her head to look up at him, the little spirit creature's grin turned eager, and perhaps a little predatory, as it scratched a line into the dirt in front of them with one hoof.
"Really?" BraveStarr asked, not sure whether he should be amused or annoyed by the display as the colourful pony tensed into a ready position behind her starting line. "You don't even know where we're going. And you're just going to overheat and dehydrate yourself before we get home."
The pony tossed her head once before looking back at him again expectantly, accompanied by a few unintelligible words.
"If you tire yourself out and collapse, I'm not carrying you," BraveStarr muttered to himself as he slowly took up a position beside her. She gave him a brief puzzled look when he got down into a proper starting crouch, on all fours with hands spread just behind the line, before turning her focus forward again.
He didn't understand the words, but BraveStarr had spent enough time helping take care of the town's schoolchildren that he wasn't caught entirely by surprise by the rather typical schoolyard tactic that followed. With what could only be a single rapid-fire yell of "ReadySetGO!" as her only warning, the filly shot forward off the line, kicking up a cloud of dust and grit as she went. Even half-expecting the jump-start, it took BraveStarr a few moments to fight down the coughing and the urge to sneeze - and by then the little pony was galloping full-tilt into the distance.
"Oh, it's on now!" he shouted after her, fighting off both the urge to cough and a suppressed chuckle. "Get back here!"
**Rainbow Dash**
Chest heaving and legs burning, Rainbow Dash slowed into a canter before almost stumbling to a stop in the lee of a large boulder, desperate for any hint of shade. "Ohmygosh, why," she panted, straining to suck in lungfuls of furnace-hot air, "Why is it so freakin' hot out here?"
Her wings were still a mess and, looking back over one shoulder, Rainbow realised her coat was now too. She'd only been going for maybe half an hour and already she was drenched in lather, and the dust her hooves had kicked up from the ground meant that she was also covered up to her hocks and elbows in a layer of sticky grit. It was even starting to saturate her tail, the end of which was now looking rather more sandy brown than rainbow-hued.
Gingerly folding her protesting legs, Rainbow slowly settled down onto her belly in the little patch of shadow. She barely registered that her oversized companion had caught up to her at first, and even when she did she couldn't really muster the strength to care all that much.
"Hey," she said, limply waving a hoof in his direction as he sat down next to her. "Second place. Not too shabby, considering who you're up against." Rainbow had absolutely no idea how he was coping with the heat wearing all those clothes on top of everything, but somehow he seemed less troubled by it than she was. "Why aren't you hot?" she complained. "It's, like, a million degrees out here. Or ninety-six, but that's practically a million. It's like the inside of an oven." Dropping her head onto her outstretched legs, Rainbow closed her eyes, muttering "So unfair," under her breath.
Note to self. Do not go running when it's way too hot and you haven't had anything to drink. Running a sandpaper tongue across her dry lips only served as a pointed reminder of just how much fluid she was losing to the heat and exertion. Also this place sucks. Comic books promised me hot aliens, and apparently reality has a really, really sick sense of humour.
Opening her eyes again, Rainbow gazed out across the dry and blasted ground in front of her. She couldn't see all that far with her head on the floor, but there wasn't really much to look at anyway. A few scattered rocks, ranging from hoof-sized to massive boulders like the one she was presently using for shade, and covering a whole amazing range of colours from yellowish-brown to reddish-brown, littered the cracked and dusty surface. The occasional larger pillar of more resistant rock poked up out of the flat ground, each of them wind-worn and sandblasted into undulating, smooth forms over what must have been year upon year of slow weathering. The earth itself seemed like it hadn't seen water in years, split apart into dusty little islands separated by meandering cracks, as if the whole surface had shrivelled up and dried out. Even the sky was bare and desolate in a way - clear blue and almost perfectly featureless, not a single wisp of cloud in sight. The only things to break the monotony were the too-hot trio of alien suns currently hidden behind her rocky shelter, with their overbearing brightness and strange colours.
Rainbow was pulled back from her contemplation of the empty sky to more immediate concerns by a soft thump in front of her, as her large companion deposited a silvery tube at the end of her muzzle. "Okay," she said, lethargically pushing herself up into a sitting position. "What's this thing?"
After a brief examination of the relatively heavy metal cylinder, it turned out to be a big flask full of water - which, to Rainbow's delight and amazement, was almost ice cold in spite of the heat. She did manage to resist the urge to just upend the thing over her head, but had less success paying attention to the part of her brain telling her to drink it slowly.
Gulping down the vessel's contents in one long draw, Rainbow slowly lifted the container and tilted it up over her head as she drank, tipping her head back until the last of the liquid within drained out. Dropping the exhausted container with a clatter, Rainbow Dash let herself tip all the way over onto her back as she sucked in a long-overdue breath of air.
Letting the breath go in a happy sigh - and then a rather large belch - Rainbow looked over at the visibly amused alien sat beside her, and said "You have no idea how much I needed that. Thanks."
Rainbow was disappointed, but not entirely surprised, when her companion stood back up and motioned forward with his head. She'd only just lain down, and had been hoping for at least a moment to rest.
"Do I have to?" she asked. "Come on, gimme five minutes here."
~BraveStarr~ reached down and offered a limb. Rolling her eyes, Rainbow reached up and took it, allowing him to pull her up and over onto her hooves again. After standing her up, he gestured at the desert around them - first back the way they had come, before holding his arms spaced wide apart; then up ahead before holding his arms much closer together.
Dragging her hooves, Rainbow started to trudge onward. "Okay, okay, I get it. It's not much further," she grumbled, squinting against the glare as she moved back out of the shade. "Not that I even know where we're going or why we're going there anyway."