//------------------------------//
// Exaway 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

Pinkie bounced up high enough to be pushed to the side by the winds and fall not where she'd jumped from, only to find she could gain little visibility from there. She landed on her tail and softly bounced on it once, then straightened herself and walked her way back towards Fluttershy. The pegasus was still unconscious, still shaking slightly. Still coloured the wrong way in her mane and wings. The two things were probably related, though Pinkie wasn't sure about the details.
They'd tried bringing her to Celestia, but apparently that hadn't worked. Apparently she wasn't really properly sick. Pinkie figured it was more like a rope tied around her compared to a wound. Celestia's powers couldn't untie the rope if they were trying to heal the body. Maybe Luna was undergoing something similar. Not that it was a good time to undergo something like that, but then again the whole reason they were was because of their then and there in the first place and there was little point in complaining about it beyond that.
Pinkie carefully pulled Fluttershy up again and over her back, and she began to walk again. She had a good feeling about that direction, something in her pharynx telling her it was the right one to walk in. A sliver of good feelings in the flood of bad ones the entirety of the place around her had given her since Nightmare Moon had started to screech. It made her shiver all wrong in the worst kinds of ways.
She'd seen Nightmare Moon's magic before. A Nightmare Moon. She'd laughed at it. That was different. Whatever was in the Empire was far more sinister. She would have laughed it in the face still, to humiliate it, to stand against it, to cheer others on, but not on her own. She would have on her own if things got bearing down too hard on her mind, but they weren't yet, and so she didn't. She remained in calm consideration. It wasn't something she felt comfortable laughing about just yet.
It disgusted her, on some level. In ways she didn't fully know for reasons she didn't fully comprehend, what was happening around her made her stomach churn. She hated that Nightmare Moon because of it, despised her because she felt she had reason to, and at times felt like she was about to vomit. At the same time, there was something else. Together with that, but distinct in its own. It brought fear. It was something deeper, stronger. She was scared. Worse, it was the kind of fear she'd learned to respect as justified. Whatever it was causing it, she did not want to get close to it. She did not want to laugh at it, almost out of some weird respect.
She did want to meet back up with other ponies. That was easy enough to follow as a feeling, it was the only positive one. Even covered by everything else, it stood out for being different. So she followed that, taking care to balance Fluttershy on her back properly. She hoped it wouldn't take too long before she met somepony else.