//------------------------------//
// Where's the Kaboom? 
// Story: Welcome to Batstralia 
// by Damaged 
//------------------------------//



Language check. All in English. Bonus warning: There is some swearing in this one. Sorry, but these are Aussies in a stressful situation.



Steve O'Shae clenched his hands as best he could. He didn't begrudge the changes that were overtaking him, particularly since he had noticed he was getting quite a bit stronger, but shrinking and messing up his hands he could certainly do without.

The tunnel he was in was mostly dark. His safety light illuminated what he was working on in the deep hole. "Dave! You safe back there?!" His yell carried down the tunnels, echoing back to him, but followed by a reply.

"Yeah! I'm all good. Go live when you are ready."

Dave's reply galvanized Steve. He turned his head one last time to the dark tunnel, and the little yellow cable that headed down it. Attaching the remote unit to the blasting cord, he flicked the unit from safe to live. "Okay, coming now. We are hot."

Grumbling about his feet, Steve started walking back along the tunnel towards Dave and the main shaft. He had no worries about the charge going off early—he had the only key to the blasting controller on the surface—but that didn't make him respect the explosives he had laid any less. 

"We're good?" As soon as they were within earshot, Dave made sure to tilt his head forward a little. With his own safety light cast on the floor, he ensured that Steve wasn't blinded.

"Yeah. Wired up, everything is live. Let's head up top." With the key to the blasting controller in his hand, Steve followed Dave along the tunnel. "Meant to ask, how're things going with Rose and Jen?"

"Don't ask, mate. Jen is worse than ever. She keeps telling me to pack it in and piss off with her and Rosey." Dave O'Brian shrugged his shoulders. "She thinks I would just leave all this, after everythin' I done here. Heck, even Rosey has been helpin' out."

"She wants you to go? What'd you say?" When they reached the main tunnel, Steve turned towards the lift to the surface.

"I lost me temper. Told her to go fuck herself." Dave couldn't keep from laughing at his own joke. "Not that she knows how to keep it in her pants."

"What about Rose? Doesn't seem to fair on her now."

Reaching the lift first, Dave opened the cage door and stepped into it. "It's up to her. I told her—I told her she can stay and work for a living. Bloody hell, she has found thousands of dollars of stones in the tailin's."

"Figured. She's eighteen now, right?" Steve stepped into the cage beside Dave and pulled the gate closed. Hitting a switch on the cage, the two of them started to lift up into a vertical tunnel. There was more light above, and slowly the winch lifted them both up into it.

"Yeah. Eighteen and finishin' school. If Jen drags her off they will likely push her back and make her repeat the year." Waiting for his turn to disembark, Dave reached up and snapped an extra cable to the top of the cage—stopping it from being able to go back down.

"Do you know what she is going to choose? Can't be easy to tell your mum to stuff it." Steve walked along the well lit tunnel, and they were both in the main link between Earth and Equestria.

Dave followed Steve towards the Earth end of the tunnel. "I think she's had enough of Jen's shit too. Kinda sucks for her, but all I can do is give her a place to stay, ya know? Give her a choice."

"Hey man, you don't have to convince me." Steve squinted as the midday sun greeted them. It wasn't a common sight in mid spring, in the sleepy little town, but it seemed to be a lovely day, by Steve's reckoning, to blow a huge hole through some rock. "Okay, head down to the other side and make sure no one comes in. I'll give you half an hour, and if you don't get back to me I am blowing this."

Steve watched Dave walk back into the tunnel, and walked around the edge of the tunnel to a spot where he could keep watch, and be safe from any blast exiting the mine. Checking his watch, he started the timer on it running.

"Hi Steve." Rose, wearing overalls and a pair of safety gloves, walked up to Steve. "About to do the blast?"

"Yeah. Dave's heading through to make sure it's safe, and no ponies have walked in. Shouldn't you be in school?" Steve kept the key in his hand, not wanting it anywhere near the controller until the half hour were up.

"Candela gave us the day off, something about not being able to keep our attention when such excitement is happening." Rose just shrugged. "How is the mine going? Still getting the—the gems?"

"It's going really well." Steve checked his watch. He and Dave both knew that it took about ten minutes to get from one side of the tunnel to the other. "Dave told me about your mum. You got plans?" All the excitement seemed to pour out of Rose, and Steve regretted bringing the topic up.

"She…" Rose began, then stopped with a sigh. "She was only here to use Dave." When waiting for Steve to continue started to get awkward, Rose sighed again and continued. "She is trying to talk him into going, too. But then at the same time she is telling me that we should just leave. Dave said I can stay if I want, but—"

"But she's your mum." Steve checked his watch, it had barely been ten minutes. "If you need somewhere that has nothing to do with either Dave or your mum, I have a spare room." It was just about the biggest concession Steve could make, but he was a sucker for a female in distress, and couldn't stop from offering.

"I think I have made up my mind, I just need to tell Mum and Dave." Rose leaned over to see the counter on Steve's watch when he checked it again. "How much longer?"

"About twenty minutes. Explosives aren't to be rushed or messed with. Half an hour gives Dave plenty of time to find a problem and get back here before the detonation. It's not like I can use a radio to chat with him." Steve was quiet for a while, and watched the timer tick down to just ten minutes remaining. "What's your decision?"

"Just like that?" Rose laughed.

Steve shrugged. "Yeah, just like that. If you need me to be nearby when you tell either of them, just say so. Sometimes you just need to get away from people."

"Thanks, but I have a good friend who is happy to listen to most of my crazy shit." Pulling a gem out of her pocket, Rose started to work it over with her gloved fingers.

"Mike's a nice guy." Of course Steve knew about the pair of teens. "But I am not sure if a boyfriend is the right one to run to."

"That's just it, I don't know if he even is my boyfriend!" Rose jammed the gem back in her pocket. "Every time it seems like we might get closer, it just…" 

Steve's eyebrows rose. "He's just a friend? I could'a sworn I heard about you two going to Traralgon and spending the night—"

"We didn't do anything. That—that was the first time it really happened. We seem to be close, but it just doesn't feel right." Rose sighed again, and looked at Steve's watch. "Five minutes."

"I can see that. Dave will be at the other end, making sure no ponies get in. If I don't see hide nor hair of him, we can pop this thing." Steve couldn't help but feel a little excited, it wasn't every day he got to set off an explosion big enough that they had to warn the town.

Rose's excitement was plain on her face. "Can I do it?" 

"No." Steve held his hand up toward off argument. "Not because I am a bastard, but because if anything goes wrong, it has to be me who pressed the button. You don't want to know how many laws it would break to let you do it."

"Two minutes." Rose pointed to Steve's watch.

Steve smiled at the enthusiasm, and held up the little key. Reaching for the control, Steve put the key in the little red, plastic padlock on the control and turned it. He tapped the menu button until it got to "test," and set the unit to doing a self test. "That takes a minute, which is how much time we have."

Climbing to his feet, Steve cursed briefly at the wobble to his misshapen limbs. "Gotta warn the area." He explained as he did things, watching the controller tick through its tests, one of them telling him it detected a receiver. Walking to his ute, he pulled out a bullhorn and turned it on. "Explosion warning! Live wire!"

Rose was almost trembling at the excitement. She watched as Steve's thumb came down on the little gray button on the controller.

No sound came at first, but then the ground shook. Rose opened her mouth to cheer, and then the main blast rolled up the tunnels and washed away any hope she had of being heard.

Steve grinned; in his estimation, there was nothing as bad as a dud. The rush of excitement took him too, but as the seconds rolled on, he could tell something was wrong. "What—" He didn't get another word out when something happened.

A thrum in the air, as if a god struck a chord on a double bass the size of the world, seemed to vibrate through Steve. He snapped his eyes shut, unable to withstand the twisting, strange feeling that pushed him to the edge of what was almost agony, but not.

"What the fuck?!" 

Rose's voice caused Steve to snap his eyes open, and he looked over at the bat pony standing beside him—where Rose should have been. His eyes widened, and as the strange not-pain faded, Steve tried to reach out to her. "Are you—"

Frozen in place, Steve could see a pony leg and hoof where his arm should have been. Turning in place, he spotted the ute behind him. The vehicle looked much larger than it should have been.

Turning, Steve looked at the mine entrance, but where he looked was strangely indistinct. What he saw, as the dust was clearing, was Dave. But Dave wasn't Dave. Dave looked a lot like Rose—like the pony he had been slowly turning into. "Dave! What the fuck happened?"

Looking up at Steve in confusion, Dave shook his head in panic. "I don't know! I was on the other side and then the blast, and now I got no fuckin' clue!" Dave looked down and shook his head, but when he tried to take a step, he fell over.

"Dave!" Rose moved like the wind, bounding over to Dave. "Are you alright?"

"I turned into a pony!" Dave looked up at Rose, and shook his head. "So I couldn't be fuckin' better. How the hell did you run like that?"

Talk of walking made Steve look down at his legs. Soft green fur, just like had been growing on him, covered his body. A flick of his head was all he needed to work out his red mane and tail had persisted. Looking back up, he caught an odd sense of something as Rose helped Dave to stand up. "Hold on, you both look the same."

Getting to his hooves, Dave looked up at Steve. "What do you mean? Of course we look the bloody same!"

"No, I mean…" Steve fumbled for words. "Candy's little one, she is smaller than Candy, and their faces both look different to yours. Rounded instead of square."

"Yours looks rounded," Rose said, her voice wavering a little. She dipped her head down and looked under her body. "Fuck!"

Steve took a moment to realize what Rose had been looking for, and when he realized Rose's voice was a little deeper he dipped his own head down. Steve swore as loudly as she could.