"Not in the face!" Flam was shouting.
And for all that AJ wanted nothing more than to stomp that dang mustache now that she had the stinker down on his back in the sand, she lowered her hoof slowly instead and pressed it to the area below his bow tie. "Start talking then," she growled.
His own hoof came shakily up and tapped the forfeit button on her vest, something she'd already done six or eight times. "I don't understand it! This has never happened before!"
They'd only been in this desert for a couple minutes, the sun straight up overhead, but AJ swore she could already feel sweat forming under the brim of her hat. "Like nothing we ever experienced, huh?"
"It's not—! This isn't—!" He was shaking under her. "The machine always takes just the two players in! Always!"
Again not really wanting to, AJ backed off and let him clamber to all fours. "I reckon y'all got a panic button on the machine itself?"
He stopped brushing sand from his sides and snapped his head up. "Yes! The reset switch! All Flim has to do is flip it, and—"
"And since he ain't done it yet, seems a fair bet him and Dash got sucked into some other game." She had to keep fighting down the urge to grab him and shake him. "Don't it?"
Every bit of excitement drained from his face. "But we've never had more than one pair in the system at once! I don't...I wouldn't have thought it possible!"
AJ gave a little snort. "We got all kinds of firsts going on today." Pushing away every other thought—no use crying over spilled cider—she glanced at her right shoulder. The blue arrow was still hovering above the silver circle there, pointing away from her and past Flam off into the low dunes that spread out around them in all directions. "Reckon we better start walking."
"But..." Flam had gone even paler than his usual custard yellow. "If the forfeit button doesn't work, might that also mean—"
"No!" Two big steps brought her snout to snout with him. "That ain't an option, so don't you even say it!"
He shrank away, his usual hair oil smell suddenly sour with fear.
The stink made AJ stop, step back, take a breath, and say in the most reasonable manner she could manage, "Maybe if we get to our goal, that'll snap all of us out. Or maybe if Dash gets to hers. Or maybe it'll take both of us reaching our finish lines. Or maybe somepony back at the fairgrounds'll notice you and your brother ain't in your booth. Or maybe Pinkie's twitches'll tell her something's up." She nodded in the direction the arrow was pointing. "All we can do is follow through to the end."
A couple heartbeats went by, Flam's breathing the only sound she could hear. "My brother," he muttered then, "has such brilliant ideas." He shook himself. "But yes, Ms. Applejack, by all means let's go grasping at straws. And since you have the compass..." Sweeping a hoof toward the horizon, he gave a big, phony grin. "Ladies first."
AJ moved past him. "Stick close, though. Y'all said something 'bout obsticles in here, seems to me."
"Of course." She could hear his teeth grind as he fell in alongside her. "It wouldn't be any fun otherwise, would it?"
The chuckle AJ puffed out was even phonier, she reckoned, than his grin, and they plodded off through the sand. At least it wasn't too loose and shifty and the dunes weren't too steep. The sun seemed a mite warmer than strictly necessary, her mouth getting drier and drier, but the worst part, she discovered quick enough, was the quiet. Usually on the dull parts of adventures—riding trains or walking to get wherever the problem was—she could talk with the girls. Now, though, all she had was this scalawag...
Minute followed slow, plodding minute, and the chuff-chuff-chuff of their hoofsteps finally drove her to ask, "So what's this all about? Resort business too slow for you? Or is Las Pegasus not nearly as exciting as the Ponyville Fun and Frolic Festival?"
He blew air through his nose. "We've been doing marvelously well, thank you. We only came to Ponyville to...uhh..."
When he didn't go on, AJ looked over. Flam was peering upward into the distance ahead. "Is that," he asked, adjusting his hat and narrowing his squint, "something flying?"
"Dash?" Heart surging, AJ spun around, movement definitely visible in the sheer blue sky above the dunes in the direction they were traveling—
But there was more than one of 'em, she could see right away, and none of 'em looked at all like a pegasus. Wrong size, wrong-shaped wings, too many legs... "Looks like bugs to me."
"Bugs?" was all Flam got out before the things swooped past, about a dozen critters longer and thinner than parasprites and coming in three different colors, near as AJ could tell: red ones that had little flames squirting out the front, green ones puffing little clouds of gas out the back that curled her nose like the compost heap at home, and blue ones with little clear packages nearly as big as themselves clutched to their thoraxes.
These last ones dropped their packages into the sand beside her, then followed the others back into the sky and out of sight as quick as they'd appeared. "Are they...eggs?" Flam asked, and AJ found herself wondering if they might hafta fight their way through some sorta bug army.
But the packages just kept lying there, and looking closer, AJ found she couldn't stop an actual laugh. "This machine of yours." She nudged one of the packages with a hoof. "It got a sense of humor?"
"Humor?" Flam sounded like he wasn't sure what the word meant. "I fail to see how—"
"We just had a honest-to-goodness bunch of fire flies go past." AJ waved in the direction the bugs had gone. "Them green stinky ones? Let's call 'em blow flies. And them blue ones?" Wrapping one of the packages in the crook of her fetlock, she flicked it cap open with her other hoof, sniffed the clear liquid inside, and drank it down, the water as pure and refreshing as any she'd ever tasted. "Bottle flies." She rolled a couple of the remaining packages in his direction and tucked the rest into her vest. "Yep. I reckon Dash woulda loved this."