//------------------------------// // And Then There Were Ten: ACT 3 // Story: Sunny 10 // by CrossOverLord //------------------------------// And Then There Were Ten: ACT 3: “Sunny! Sunny! Where are you!? Are you okay!?”  For the past ten minutes or so, Zipp’d been yelling that and other minor variations of that aloud as loud as she could as she soared over the treetops on the lookout for her apricot-orange pal. Her clip was a relatively slow–by her standards, anyways–two-hundred miles an hour. Speedy enough to be punctual, slow enough that she could hear Sunny and Sunny could hear her. Or so she’d hoped.    Yet her ears, attenuated to the gentle fall of a descending pine needle as they were, caught naught but such faint tumblings most of the time. For the rest of the time, they sensed the same needles as they actually met the earth. She didn’t count the roaring of the forest fires. Or the snapping of twigs, branches, and trunks. Or the sizzling of the nimbostrati of smog as they arose. Or the stormclouds gathering again to thunder and rain once more. Those were so noisy one could listen over her sister’s garrulity about how great she was.           All that to say, the woods were–relatively–quiet concerning her purposes. To paraphrase the old adage, they were much too quiet. She began to wonder if Izzy’s directions were accurate, but dismissed the notion faster than she flew. Weird as her unicorn friend’s… friendship sense… was, she believed in its veracity, even if that meant more than accepting the general spacial state of Sunny. For Izzy had also told her before she’d charged up into the sky that Sunny’s physical and psychological state were, if not in immediate peril, in immense need of a blankie, a recliner, an epsom salt backhoof soak, carrot ginger soup, and a marathon of her favorite cartoon series that could happen only on The Shrub.  That Zipp had dismissed out of hoof as too fantastic.  Yet now, she found herself agreeing more than not, much as she didn’t want to, and her wish to get Sunny out of the conflagrating thicket and soon, already very elephantine, became downright mammoth.         Zipp sighed, crestfallen. Vexed via the rainfall and the sweat produced from her anxiety and the latent heat radiating from the flames below, she wiped both from her face by a brush of a back hoof. With a tilt of her form and for what must’ve been the thousandth circuit completed, she started to loop about the area Izzy’d told her Sunny was supposed to be in again. “This really isn’t funny, Sunny,” Zipp whispered worriedly. “Come on. Talk to me here.”  “AAAAAHHHHH!” Hardly a millisecond had passed after Zipp’d finished saying what she had before a momentous, blaring shriek blitzed through the weald and shook her in the air so strongly that her wings gave out and she span uncontrollably and dipped a good hundred odd feet before righting herself and coming to a float. As said shriek echoed then finally faded into the aether, she gazed as far deep into the epicenter of the blaze as its flames and smog did permit, for it was where the awful yet unmistakably familiar feminine sonance had emanated.  It was where Sunny was, for that had been her voice shrieking in such terror and ensconcing such terror into the hearts of all who listened, Zipp very much included in that column.    Yet despite this and the lingering ringing in her ears, she let out an alleviated breath, her greatest fears having been allayed by revelation. Enough that, with no small sense of humor in her tone, she said, “Well okie-dokie-lokie then.” She swiped the recent sweat brought on by the shriek, pulled the fur over her forelegs up like sleeves, and called out into the burning yet tenebrous mass beneath, “Don’t worry Sunny! Help’s on the way on the wind!” Then, Zipp dived headfirst into trouble.  10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10 “AAAAAHHHHH!” Hitch Trailblazer was having a very bad time.  The difficulties he felt were many fold. For one, he had to lug around Pipp’s wackily weighty saddlebag after being verbally obliged by her to dig it up from what once was the cave they’d camped in for the night. For two, the hyetal weather had gifted an encore and ladened his mane over his eyes which, in league with his galloping gait, had made it a chore to see five feet in front without having to shake his head every five seconds. For three, despite being able to run rings ‘round Izzy and Pipp, he had to keep pace with them because the former was the guide who alone knew the way and simply so that nopony ended up lost and caused even more problems to trot on in.  He’d figured he’d performed in his typical fashion at first. That is to say, with great hair, witty aplomb, awesome and awesomely expensive sunglasses, a winning smile, and a victorious attitude. Or in another, less loquacious sentence, as any shining Sheriff should.  Yet at the moment, he was anything other than shining. He was absolutely abysmal, his spirit overcast by storm and smoke clouds as the eventine sky.  Downcast as that… that… that shriek had seemed to make the forest entire as he, Izzy, and Pipp skid to a sudden stop at such horrendous noise.  Hitch felt sick, stomach switched to cement, heart sinking to the depths.  That shriek had been in Sunny’s voice. Had belonged to Sunny. Was Sunny. Crying out in abject fright. That shriek was his fault.  “We’re not lost, we’re just slowing down. Living life unplugged,” he’d said earlier when they’d first settled into the cave after totally getting them all lost like he was when trying to figure out the electric mixer for the first time in ever in home ec with Mrs. Cloverfield when he was a colt.  He’d just wanted to show everypony the secret spot he’d found when he was that young, the rainbow crystal caverns. His humble home away from home when he needed a little staycation away, yet not too far away, from Maretime Bay, the office, and his responsibilites. Something he’d never spoken of with anypony, even his best friend, yet that he felt was finally time to share after that fateful day Izzy waltzed right into the town and the months of amicable–often a tad chaotic–aftermath that followed. He should’ve made a map.  He should’ve brought that map. He should’ve kept that map in a steel hooflocker yoked to his neck like, well, a yoke.  Simple, easy, straightforward due diligence and redundancy and not relying on his rickety memory of a path to a place he hadn’t been to in the longest, and he could’ve avoided all this. He wouldn’t have had to hear Sunny, his bestest and oldest friend, shriek like… like… like that. Somewhere in an arboreal catastrophe of flame and smog.   All alone.  “Su… Sunny?” Pipp stuttered after several tense moments, appearing incomprehensibly petrified. “She… she… she sounded completely…”  “Terrified,” Hitch finished for her, mirroring her. “Like nothing I’ve ever heard.”         “She is,” Izzy interjected, countenance looking like everyone else. “My friendship sense is telling me her scared-o-meter’s off the charts.”     Hitch fought with himself in a manner the usually markedly decisive stallion was most unaccustomed to at that. The pros and cons of bolting into the black and orange-red rested heavily upon his troubled brow for ten entire seconds before, as a pony of action par excellence, he could stand standing idly by in despair no longer. “Iz, Pip, under no, absolutely no, circumstances do you lose track of each other, alright?” Hitch said, brow furrowing in tenacious determination in the direction Sunny undoubtedly was. “I’m gonna gallop on up fast as my hooves can carry!”            Not lending them enough time to accept or take issue with his words, Hitch leaned back onto his backlegs, kicked the air in front of him with his forehooves like he was practicing his boxing skills with his speed bag back in his home gym, and landed on all fours again, blowing out a veritable cirrus of steam from his nostrils. Hitch hardly made his first stride forwards before somepony put their hoof down onto his tail, causing him to yelp out at a pitch much too great for someone of his stature and to fall onto his stomach with a thud.    When he craned his head back and up, he found Izzy shaking her own head from side to side, teeth grit and eyes wide in an expression as fearstruck as it was awestruck.  He was about to ask her what the reasoning behind halting him so abruptly was exactly when Izzy extended her free hoof towards the ebon evening yonder. Turning his eyes frontward and upward, Hitch’s jaw immediately hit the forest floor. Quite like the new meteorite he saw, encompassed in an ample, flaming aura of orange-red.  Bearing. Down. Upon them.  “Well that’s just okie-dokie-lokie,” he heard Pipp mutter, sounding more annoyed than afraid, yet still plenty of the latter.  “Yesh. Yesh eet eesh,” Hitch concurred, communicating best he could considering he didn’t close his mouth at all while talking.  10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10  “I’M ON FIRE! I’M ON FIRE! BUAAAAHHHH!” Sunny Starscout was not okay. Sunny Starscout was the most not okay she’d ever be that night. Sunny Starscout was now some creature whose head was on fire. She acted accordingly, screaming via said head and running all the way round the crater as well she could with her new, bipedal gait and accompanying legs while swinging her new arms randomly. Eventually, she remembered an old proverb, an ancient and secret technique first taught to her in pre-k, and carried it out perfectly. “Stop, drop, and roll! Stop, drop, and roll! Stop, drop, and roll!” she shouted, sporadically ending her sprint for a bit to stop, drop, and roll for dozens of feet before resuming her sprint for hundreds of feet and rinse, wash, repeat. Now Sunny was a bright mare, despite some over-emotional tendencies. Bright in the sense of possessing a–usually–sunny disposition. Bright in the sense of literally being quite illuminant in her current, fiery form. And of course, bright in the sense of being at least above averagely cerebral. Though it took her a disconcerting quantity of time by her standards, soon enough, discernment emerged, and she became keenly and quickly conscious of the fact that although her head was indeed aflame, she didn’t feel as though anything burned. Much as she had upon transforming, she felt fine. Better than fine. Fantastic, even. If there was even a tinge of discomfort, it was not agony, but of fatigue. A tiny amount of that, brought on because of her ongoing mental breakdown and–figuratively–losing her cool. In ten seconds, after trundling to a halt after her last and half-hearted stop, drop, and roll, Sunny lay on her rocklike, ovenlike back and gazed up into what admittedly precious little she could see outside the crater between the sugar pine, smoke, and latent firelight from above blocking her view. She huffed, not because she was tired enough to–she wasn’t, and strangely enough because it felt like she didn’t need to breathe at all–but rather due to it being such a familiar thing to do whenever she was done losing her mind that it’d feel weird if she didn’t. More weird, definitely, than her present predicament.  “Huh.”  Squinting in curiosity restored from before, when she’d noticed the Princess Sparkle cutiemark, and like a foal first met by the sudden epiphany that she had hooves, Sunny raised her unusual hands in front of her unusual eyes and began to pat her unusual face. As she’d expected, the torch-esque mane of flame radiating around her head felt warm yet not way too warm as it would've been if she were a normal pony at the moment. Most unforeseen was that the brick red rock comprising her visage was suave to the touch despite appearing rather rough at the glance she’d taken at her reflection in the larger pod just prior to behaving as though the sky let fall more such pods. Beyond her capacity to control, she recalled quickly tales of dragons imparted to her, typically at bedtime but here and there and elsewhere too, and how they were also so resistant to extremes of heat that they routinely swam through magma and lava with the same ease a pony could through water. Plus, how even the most jagged and craggy looking of their scales were actually quite smooth… assuming you contacted them gently and didn’t, say, accidentally gallop into them because you were in such a hurry you weren’t watching where you were going. Something that apparently occured to the Elements of Harmony and those they knew more than they cared to count, and when it did, was akin to running into a wall of steel.  Sunny further remembered how dragons were, surprise surprise, able to project great–and sometimes not so great–deluges of flame from their breaths. She began to wonder if… whatever she was… held any kind of pyrokinetic ability like that or close enough. Even though this whole entire scenario still stood as super scary to her, she had to admit that it’d be terrifically cool if that were the case. Terrifically both in the sense of the word’s original etymology, in which it was synonymous with terrifyingly, yet more importantly in its more modern parlance of being another way to say really, REALLY rad.  Because it’d be really, REALLY rad if she did have fire or fire adjacent powers of a sort.  Olden daydreams and olden ordinary dreams and schoolyard flights of fantastic fancy spent picturing herself as a member of those mysterious, fire spewing saurians flitted past her psyche such that she felt she lay before a silver movie screen observing the recollections as they came and went.  Oh if all the seconds of all the minutes of all the hours of all the days of all the weeks of all the fortnights of all the months gone by imagining she was a giant dragoness or diminutive drake crafting the equivalent of balloontwists or specialty fireworks but with fire–or rather, fire alone–to the jolly jumping enjoyment of crowds of ponies could be tallied up and presented back to her as a gift, the sum total’d be a year, easy.  Maybe even a little more.      With an allotment of time towering so monumentally, Sunny’d finally be able to enact all the smoothie experiments she required to perfect her new line of marvelous flavors she’d had the idea to create since forever that nopony in the history of smoothiedom had ever before experienced.    Smoothie experiments she’d be able to share with–and test on till they were categorically done with the concept of pureed fruit and other things blended together altogether–her friends to their jolly jumping enjoyment. After their stomachs stopped being so upset, but still.    Smoothie experiments she’d be able to share with her fam– Sunny suddenly sniffled and realized that orangey-yellow, almost golden, effulgent tears’d tumbled out when she heard them sizzle against the ground on either side of her face and traced back the trail with her fingers to her eyes. Blazing orbs which were wet with lachryma despite the intense heat.     She balled her hands into fists and bumped her thumbs and forefingers upon her forehead over and again.   “Now why’d you have to go and trot on down that same, exact memory lane, Sunny?” she whispered to herself. “Come on. Stay sunny, Sunny. Stay sunny. Not the time or place for an introspective retrospective.”  A few more forced huffs through her luminous mouth and nose, and she recovered her precedent tranquility, short as it was. A bit more billowy breathing, and she even managed to conjure back to her mind her thoughts before this teeny detour, tilting her head left and down then right and down to find her teardrops still scorching a tiny trench into the earth beneath.   “So… looks like I’ve got some combustible potential after all. Well okie-dokie-lokie then.” She massaged her chin with a hand and scratched her brow with the other, all in deep contemplation. “But if my prospects as a pyromancer are even better than scalding crying, how’d I go about testing that out?”  Sunny acquired her answer far swifter than she saw on the approach, though most certainly not in the manner she’d anticipated.    “Don’t worry Sunny! Help’s on the way on the wind!” “BuAh!”  Sunny yelped out in stupendous startlement at Zipp’s familiar voice colliding with her ears then. So taken aback was she that as she looked up and threw her arms up in surprised impulse, via a mechanism she knew not of, she somehow managed to let fly a formidable fireball from her hands. A fireball that struck the burning sugar pine above in less than a second with such force and in such an area that it tore in twine, the entire top half of the portion of the conflagrated tree covering the crater speeding towards her in a sparking downward spiral.       “BUAH!” she yelped again, except louder, of course.  Throwing her hands into the air before her in rapid repetition in far greater surprised impulse like she was back to being a three yearling playing hyper-competitive patty-cake, Sunny somehow summoned forth a flurry of yet more fireballs. Lesser in size though they were, quick work did they make of the flaming log, rendering it into smoldering shards of cinders, embers, and ash each no grander than a bit. Smoldering shards blasted away by the power of each impact such that between this and the simple force of wind resistance, what little actually landed on her had all the kinetic energy of somepony dropping a beach bucket of sawdust on her from that height. A mild annoyance, yet nothing more “Whoa,” Sunny yelled as loudly as one could with a whisper. She hadn’t long to further speculate on this insight and all its super cool and super scary possibilities when Zipp unknowingly mimicked her own initial, one word response.  “Whoa!” Sunny heard the pegasus shout out. “What was all that racket about just now!?” Sunny! Is that you!?”  Sunny shook her head to help her focus on more critical matters at hoof, and shouted back, “Yeah, Zipp! It is! It’s me! Sunny! In the crater! Beneath the–” she paused. “By the tree!” she corrected herself. “Or what’s left of it, anyways!”  “You mean the crater with the tree lying against it that looks like it got snapped in half like a big twig!?”  “Are there any other craters nearby!?”  “No!”  “Then yes!”  “Then I’m staring right at it!” “Good!”  “Are you okay!?”  Sunny made to speak, yet caught herself at the last moment. “That’s… that’s kind of a complicated question right now!” “I meant: are you hurt!?” Zipp replied, sounding nearer than earlier. “Equally as complicated, more or less!”   “What!? How!? Are you or aren’t you hurt!?” Zipp asked, audibly a lot closer than before.  Sunny stammered, attempting to deduce a decent way to convey what’d transpired. Yet fastly figuring there existed no such passage, and prompted by the hoofsteps she could now hear approaching the crater, indicating Zipp was definitely nigh, she said instead, “Just… just promise me you won’t overreact, alright?” As an afterthought, yet one she believed would carry the gravity of her request, she expeditiously added, “Pinkie promise!”  Zipp, the smog so proximate to the crash site proving so malefic to her breath, coughed sans control as she asked, “Pinkie–” *Ahem, ahem* “--promise!? Why do you–” *Ahem, ahem* “--think I’ll–” *Ahem, ahem* “--overreact so–” *Ahem, ahem* “--much that I’d–” *Ahem, ahem* “--need to–” *Ahem, AHEM* “--Pinkie promise so I–” *AHEM, AHEM* “--don’t!?” Sunny couldn’t rightly respond. Didn’t have the time she thought she did. She was still busy building the basic blueprint when she saw the crown pegasus princess tread into view, squinching down into the crater. Her friend then dropped the hoof she held over her mouth like a stone, stopped her coughing along with any noticeable in or out take of breath whatsoever, and her eyes simultaneously went broad as a blanket and thin as a thread.   "Hi." Sunny weakly and worriedly waved with both hands, hoping to prevent Zipp from getting lost in the massive onset astonishment she doubtlessly felt at the moment. "So... uh... I know it's been a while since we've gone over it... so... just in case, let me give you... uh... you know... a quick refresher." Sunny ceased her waving, pretend-cleared her throat into one of her fists in anxiety, and started to perform the promise and its movements. "Cross my heart, and hope to--"     Sunny stopped, however, when she noticed Zipp’d finally resumed respiration in preparation for what was sure to be a shriek to rival her own from when she’d first seen her fiery face if the ponderous patterns of the pegasus's breathing was any indication.  "Oh, here we go."  10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10 “Everypony: DISPERSE!” Hitch shrieked after grabbing his jaw with a hoof and putting it back into–mostly–proper alignment.   “What does that mean, I don’t even!?” Pipp replied, taking fright such that she didn’t even bother keeping her sentence coherent.     “To get away from each other and scram fast as you can!” Hitch shouted, hopping back to his hooves.   “Can confirm!” Izzy affirmed, taking her hoof off Hitch's tail and nodding like a bobblehead in an earthquake.    Without any more words, the trio about snouted and galloped as speedily as their hooves could propel them in disparate directions. The sheriff was all too keenly aware of the other two's terrified shouts and despite himself, struggled not to join in their chorus of scaredness even though he knew if he did he'd be wasting precious air better conserved towards sprinting like he was in competition with them for a fantabulous prize: particularly, a new car. He never had a car before. His folks found them to be kinda cool for their capabilities but kinda pointless by that same token and Hitch himself had a lot more obligations and hobbies to absorb his time, energy, and resources broadened by a bazillion after humbly accepting THE MANTLE OF JUSTICE! Thankfully, he didn't have to focus on imagining himself in such a race to keep quiet as he could for much longer. Because ten seconds upon everypony splitting up and proceeding on their own path at rapid pace, the meteorite responsible for this turn of events in the first place made planetfall. Then, as Hitch was hoisted dozens of feet into the aether via the shockwave many, multiple feet per second, he'd little choice left in the matter.  “AHHHHHHHHH!” he screamed, all four limbs swinging around uncontrollably, unable to hear himself or the screams his friends were surely casting into the night in concert with him over the astounding, discordant, groundrending din.   A tree, big leaf maple if its characteristic namesakes he saw just before impact were any indication, was the only thing that kept his impromptu flight from continuing. Unfortunately, he ended up making a bark angel in its trunk. Front first.       “Ow,” was all Hitch could rightly say in such gigantic agony, face still rattling like a maraca.    At least until Izzy intervened.  “Don’t… worry… Hitch…” the unicorn suddenly announced someplace beyond the bark a few moments later, sounding as exhausted as Hitch felt. “I’ll get you… down from… there… with my… awesome… blossom… magic…”  “Iz…” Pipp abruptly spoke up, voice just as full of fatigue. “Iz… wait… I don’t think… that’s such a… good idea… now… You need… some more… time to… rest … first…”   “Nonsense…” Izzy denied. “I feel like… I could… juggle… bajillions of… oranges… right now… All with the… power of… my… mind… My very… clear… in-no-way-reeling-from-that-big-hit-to-the-head-I-took-striking-this-branch-here… mind…”  “Iz… please… don’t–” “Too… late!”  Truly it was.  Hitch felt the unmistakably warm and fuzzy sensation of arcane, telekinetic force surround him. It was actually kind of cozy, soothing even. Yet then this same magic tried parting him from the maple very, very, very roughly and unevenly. He was thus swiftly shifted into being far more mindful of precisely the degree to which the rest of him hurt and not merely his mien. A mindfulness he shared graciously with any and everypony within ear-shot. “Ah! Oooh! Ow! Iz! Izzy! Stop! Stop it! Please! You’re just! Piling on! The pain! The pronounced! Protracted! Painful! Painful! PAIN!” “Iz! Listen! You’re hurting him!” Pipp yelled, having recovered energy enough to protest against her unicorn friend’s actions without any winded breaks between words.  “It’s… almost… done!” Izzy responded, sounding like she did so through gnashed teeth. “He’ll be… out in… no time… maybe two… three… four… five no times… I… guarantee!”  All the while as this spoken exchange took place and immediately afterwards, Hitch continued to give voice to his vast disapproval. And anguish. His great, grand, grievous anguish. Eventually, and gratefully, a calm in the aching hovered over him as Izzy finally succeeded in plucking him from the bark-angel and made him hover over open space. None too steady, true, but it was a world of difference comparing and contrasting progressing up and diving down like he was riding slow wavelets not far from shore on a nice, normal, sunny day to… whatever analogy befit whatever it was the unicorn was making him undergo.  What it was like to be super crispy grains at the bottom of a rice-cooker being scraped off by a giant, jagged edged, steel spoon?  Who knew?  What Hitch did know was that floating in mid-air felt infinitely preferable–perfectly sufficient to have him huff and puff in relief.  “See? What’d I say?” Izzy declared as rhetorically as she did contently somewhere below and to Hitch’s left. “Everything's a-okay!”  “That’s bene, Izzy. Molto bene,” Pipp replied, sighing in a similar sort of solace as the sheriff, also someplace beneath him and to his left. “Now if you could just safely and carefully lower him, that’d be definitively fantastico.”  “You got it! Freshly freed sheriff dropping by for a magnificently soft landing!”  “Just please be sure he doesn’t just plain drop.”  “Wilco!”  Hitch felt himself descend ten or so feet, his form draped on its back like soaked laundry over a tree branch. He groaned out for a bit at how the rough, hard surface aggravated his pain compared to being held aloft in a purple glow before tilting his head to the left and finding Izzy halfway between him and the arboreal limb’s end and Pipp almost at said end.  “Hi, Hitch!” the unicorn greeted sans any lack of elan despite contemporary happenstances as far as the sheriff could tell, waving friendily as she was want to do.  “Hey,” Hitch responded weakly with an equally weak wave of his own.  “Just so you know–” Pipp chimed in out of nowhere, “I tried to stop her, but Izzy–” “Is Izzy,” Hitch interrupted as he exhaled, exasperated. “It’s cool. If I were in your horseshoes, I couldn’t convince her either.” “Ummm, excusez-moi, but what do you mean, ‘Izzy is Izzy’? Am I supposed to be somepony else? Someone so uncool that she didn’t get her friend totally literally out of a jam as fast as ponily possible?” “Two minutes, Iz. Just two, mere, itsy-bitsy minutes and we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation because you would’ve been using your tk on him after recuperating from meeting the branch head-on and not during your recuperation.” “Awww, don’t be like that, Pipp! It all worked itself out!” “Somehow, I doubt he sees it that–”  “Wait. Did you–Ah!” Hitch began before he felt a cluster of splinters prickle against his tongue and took a brief breather to swipe them thoroughly away with a hoof. “Sahwwy.” Realizing his tongue still stuck out, he spooled it back in and restated what he’d just said. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “What I was about to ask is: did you just get done saying that Izzy got knocked on the head? Because if that’s the case, I think I heard her mention it too right before she tried pulling me from the ersatz knothole I carved up there,” he said, pointing above to the aforementioned, him-shaped, colossal cookie-cutter-esque depression in the trunk. “E’yup!” Izzy interposed, pointing at the bumpy bruise Hitch then noticed for the first time she had on her forehead. “And I gotta say: was not good times.”  “Ditto,” agreed Pipp, directing a hoof towards the swollen lump on her forehead.  Hitch winced audibly and cringed visibly.  “Being honest, though,” the pegasus continued, “after getting a good look at you, we walked away lucky.”  Hitch was set to ask what she meant when Izzy stepped in to fill in the blanks in her own patented style. “Yeah!” she giggled. “Your whole face is like a blackberry! A bluish-black one, but still very much of the-edible-fruit-produced-by-many-species-in-the-genus-Rubus-in-the-family-Rosaceae-commonly-referred-to-as–” she stopped for a moment to catch her breath, “Blackberry.”  As Pipp spun her eyes at this with sarcastic force as swift as if they were in a washing machine–were each a washing machine–the sheriff appeared perplexed and raised a tentative hoof to his countenance. Urgent was his regret, prompt was his pain, and hasty was his holler. “WAHOWWW THAT STINGS!” Upon his physical misery levels returning to normal–or at least the new normal given all the bruising–he clicked his tongue and said, “And here I was thinking we were going to have to use up all the pain ointment here–” he shifted the saddlebag, which’d somehow miraculously remained strapped to his back despite everything, to and fro for emphasis, “on you two when I saw the shape y'all were in.”     “Pain ointment?” Pipp lifted a brow.  “Well, yeah. Pain ointment,” Hitch reiterated.  “From where?” “From the… saddlebag,” Hitch started, brow of his own lifted, stalling between the second and third words. “Well, more like the first aid kit clattering around in there, but I think you get the–”  “You didn’t pack a first aid kit, did you Pipp?” Izzy suddenly and rhetorically asked.  “Well, no. I mean, why would I?” the pegasus replied, shrugging her shoulders. “What!?” Hitch yelled, forelegs catapulted skyward. “Are you telling me–why would you!? Why wouldn’t you bring a first aid kit!? We were going hiking! Don’t tell me this freight car I’ve been carrying for all this stretch and all this time just had half your chifferobe in it!”   “No!” Pipp observably and vocally bristled at the accusation like a vainglorious kid reprimanded by an older brother. Slanting her nose high and folding her frontlegs over her chest, she added, “FYI, I brought lots of water, snacks, AND clothes! A near even split! Well… more like thirty percent, thirty percent, and then forty… but close enough!” Hitch grunted in frustration and was a third of an inch from facehoofing before remembering how awful a notion that was and just grunting some more.  “Wow, Pipp. And both you guys said my ways were weird earlier.” Izzy giggled again.  “Aw, come on you two! We weren’t gonna trek up a mountain–that I knew of–or something! We were just following Hitch to a super secret special spot somewhere between the plains and this forest! A spot he lost and got us lost trying to find, ya know.”  “It’s LITERALLY a basic, essential, fundamental principle when hoofing it through the great outdoors for extended periods to always, ALWAYS have a first aid kit on standby!” Hitch riposted, powering past Pipp’s attempt at reproach like it wasn’t even there with unending wags of his hoof–Izzy nodding in accord and wagging her hoof in tandem–for more stupendous and just plain stupefying was the pegasus’ oversight. “It’s AT LEAST as important as bringing your phone or other means of communication with you!”  “Yeah, well, I didn’t, so… tough tulips,” Pipp replied with an overtly theatrical and dismissive wave. “Anyhoof,” she said precisely as somepony desperately seeking to change the subject would, “shouldn’t we all shelf all the hoof pointing for later and get down to the ground to focus on finding and saving Sunny ASAP?”   Hitch gasped. “Sunny!” Like a molehill in the type of rain presently pouring on the three of them, his discontent concerning Pipp’s deficit of proper nature excursion etiquette–and pain ointment–did disintegrate. In its stead stood despair replenished, and the radiant responsibility he bore to ensure everypony possible was as far removed from danger as the rainbow crystal caverns were from both danger and his pathfinding abilities apparently.  Friends quite included. Without thought, Hitch leapt off the big leaf maple. It was over halfway into his plummet though, and mostly because of Pipp’s and Izzy’s scared screams, that he realized this was a horrible idea and that he really should’ve asked the latter to at least use her magic to soften his fall before jumping. Providentially, as he joined in on their frightened ensemble, Izzy quickly accomplished exactly that, the sheriff hitting terra firma more akin to as if he’d tripped over the curb of sidewalk rather than as if he’d nosedived from over a hundred feet like what’d actually happened. It wasn’t painless, especially not since the persistent soreness rendered things just seventy-seven bajillion times worse than it would’ve been otherwise, but hey, at least it was just par for the course at this point and not par for a completely separate course a million miles in the other direction. Raising his head from his face-shaped imprint he left in the forest floor, and dusting and spitting away as much of the dirt on his mien and within his maw as he could, he turned his attention up to the branch and at the purple mare in particular, and waved while saying, “Thanks a bunch, Iz! You’re a peach!”  “I prefer persimmons but I completely comprehend and appreciate the sentiment anyhoof!” the unicorn cried and waved back. “I hear ya! I’ll keep it in mind next time I owe you one!”  “While you’re at it, next time, would you please mind giving us a heads-up before you go trying to pull a reckless stunt like that again!?” Pipp called down.  “Can do!” he responded with a prodigious salute. “Just promise me you’ll try and keep up when you can and under no circumstances find yourself going adrift!” “Kind of hard to do when I’m literally right next to the metal detector for friends here!” Pipp pointed at Izzy, who still hadn’t ceased to wave since Hitch’d granted her gratitude.  “Good! Glad we’re on the same page! See ya soon!” Hitch faced forwards, shut his eyes, and after a ton of scowling and squeaking, stood. Upon taking a few experimental steps to establish how bad it’d hurt, he believed he’d be able to hoofle it, flipped his rain inundated mane back, exhausted steam via his nose, and built up to a galloping gait prior to reopening his eyes–totally determined that this time for sure, nothing, nought, not anything, would prevent him from protecting his eldest, most predominant pal. Even if a third meteorite came down from the black to block his way again. Well, it certainly wasn’t another bit of space rubble that diverted his path once more, at any rate.  Yet it was about as abrupt and unanticipated.  Upon reflection, he probably should’ve noticed something was amiss, askew, and askance much sooner. Likely, he would’ve if not for being flung as a slingshot’s shot into the side of such towering timber as he’d been and the predictably ensuing consequences.  The first hint of the strange and unusual was the fact that although the impact of the second meteorite was authentically dramatic, he’d further describe it as rather less, well, warm than expected. So absent of heat was it, that it’d extinguished the flames in the woods in the immediate proximity for as far as Hitch’s eyes could see so thoroughly that even lingering smog was hard to find.       The second hint was that despite much broken, snapped, and strewn about debris, the affected area of devastation seemed a lot smaller than it should’ve been when factoring the size and velocity last time he’d looked at it, the resultant crater being merely double its diameter and depth from what he could tell as he moved to go around it to the right.  All in all, if Hitch didn’t know any better, it was almost as if the meteorite had somehow slowed significantly just before touchdown. Which lead to the third and and most important hint. Something he well and truly and verily should’ve been able to see from all the way up into the tree as he was with such a great, commanding vantage point. Something his friends, not nearly as taxed by the shockwave, should’ve honestly witnessed and pointed out to him. The fact that what lay in the center of the crater was not crafted from rock, but made of metal. Orange metal. Two shades. One lighter, one heavier, but both dark in their own way.  Hitch’d hardly went past an inch of the side of the crater when out from it rose something he honestly didn’t expect to see when slammed the door to his house shut behind him almost a day ago. It was only then that he learned that the meteorite was not round in the traditional, immediate-to-the-mind sense as, say, an apple. More like a peanut. More cylindrical. More capsule shaped. For it was then when, like some humongous redwood sapling that’d forgotten to grow and rapidly tried to compensate for lost time, it sprouted out the ground to a height of what must’ve been forty feet. From three panels close to the bottom extended three spindly metal legs of mostly steel grayish standard except for the pointed, dark orange feet. In concert, two similar arms expanded from two panels near the top, the key difference being the four dark gray claws that likewise stretched out from the end of each hand. Just as concurrently, up top and from the center unfurled a head with a neck of steel gray cabling and wiring, a forehead with a flat, sloping protrusion that arched back into a downward facing point, and most prominently, two big, compound, unmistakably insectoid eyes. Crimson red. Looking. Down. Right. At. Him.  If Hitch wasn’t far too petrified with fright for words, far too scared to even blink or gulp or drop his jaw, he might’ve said something, might’ve shrieked as he’d heard Sunny minutes prior, to indicate vocally just how unbelievably terror-stricken he was. Such as things were, for the moment, he left that matter in Pipp’s more than capable hooves. “MUH-MUH-MUH-MONSTERRRR!” 10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10  “MUH-MUH-MUH-MONSTERRRR!”  After Zipp had finished the shriek, Sunny was fast to speedily oscillate her hoo–hands–in front of her in a desperate wave, just as desperately yelling, “No, wait! I’m not a monster! I’m your friend! It’s me, Sunn–”  But then, what felt suspiciously like another, second impact crater being formed shook the area, scaring Sunny so much that she never got to finish her sentence and, more pressingly, causing the ground around where Zipp stood to crumble, bringing the elder princess tumbling down faster than she could react given the evident fragility of her present mental state.  Before the pegasus could get back to her hooves, Sunny got back to her own hoo–feet–and made a dash towards her friend, crying out, “Zipp!” Oh no! Are you okay!?”  Not only was Zipp okay, but she was more than okay enough to look at her with abounding alarm anew, shout, “Stay back!” and raise her fronthooves to the air and draw in from the thunder roaring over their heads, a bolt of lightning. A lightning bolt that then surrounded her in what could only be called a chain-link like wall or fence of blue,  brightly glowing, enchanted electrons.  Skidding quickly to a halt, almost losing what little balance she had in her contemporary, unfamiliar form in the process, Sunny swiftly remembered she needed to be very diplomatic to keep the situation from spiraling any more out of control than it already was. Giving her friend a breather of ten whole, tense seconds, she chanced a tentative step forward and said, “Look, I’m not–” “I said stay back!”  And then, Zipp threw her hooves, and two streams of electricity, forwards towards Sunny.  They struck her in the chest with such force that she was knocked off her feet, knocked into the larger pod, and knocked into the aether by her angle of deflection from the initial impact.  “WAAAAAAAAA!” she shouted as she tumbled up, flapping her arms slapdashedly around like they were wings in an attempt to stabilize her from all the out of control spinning. Sunny didn’t have to worry about this for long, however. Because then, Zipp raised her forehooves again, another passing lightning bolt arcing groundwards, except not at the pegasus, but onto Sunny. Specifically, her back. Hard enough that she was brought back down onto the larger pod belly first, and bounced away from it to the right with loud, metallic clang. After rolling away a ways on the floor, she hardly had a moment to clutch her stomach and groan before she noticed a looming shadow obscure her form and the surrounding area in a three-foot radius, and looked up to find Zipp hovering ten feet above, holding the larger pod over her head, brow sweating and teeth grit from the strain, but managing to remain airborne all the same.  “Where’s my friend, monster!? You better get to talkin’ or else I’m gonna get to chuckin’!”  Sunny’s eyes widened as far as they could–or at least as far as she knew her current form could–and the flat of her palms hit the top of her head in an expression that could only be interpreted as extreme dismay.   “Zipp! Stop! Please! It’s–”  With a mighty heave, Zipp tossed the larger pod five feet up and spiked it down at Sunny like some oversized, shining volleyball. Though it hit with the energy the transformed mare expected, planting her firmly into the earth like some strange, fluorescent flower, the collision kept such elasticity that it bounded all the way back up into the pegasus’s awaiting hooves where she caught it and lifted it back over her head again.  “How do you know my name!?”  Sunny massaged her aching cranium and grunted her pain as she spat out ounces of dirt from her mouth before opening it to dazedly say, “Zipp… it’s me… I’m not–”  Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her and caught it again.  “What’d I say, monster!? WHAT DID I SAY!?” “Zipp–”  Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her and caught it again for the third time.  “Stop–”  Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her and caught it again for the fourth time.  “Please.”  Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her and caught it again for the fifth time.  “I–”  Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her and caught it again for the sixth time.  “Said–”  Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her and caught it again for the seventh time. “PLEASE!” For the eight time, Zipp spiked the larger pod down at her.  Sunny, however, was absolutely at her boiling point by this point. Most literally as, via what felt like an innate, irate reaction to such duress, the moment she saw the larger pod propelled her way, she stuck both her hands out in front of her, open as could be, and unleashed a totally titanic torrent of flame that collided with it and sent it soaring somewhere into the night sky, almost striking Zipp in the chin if not for the pegasus’s swift reflexes permitting her to flip back in time in her place in the air. Digging herself out of the soil, the transformed mare couldn’t help but observe how her friend’s expression switched from being as open mounted and wide-eyed as one would expect to as teeth gnashed and narrow-eyed as you could get in less than ten milliseconds flat.  Sunny’s wrath fleetly flying far out into the stars, she was frozen briefly by fresh fear and, when she was finished burrowing herself fully back above ground, she got to her feet and, making absolutely sure to keep her hands pointed down, hurriedly said, shaking her head, “WAH! Wait! I’m sorry! I’M SORRY! I didn’t mean to–” Lightning sparked across Zipp’s eyes, literally, and Sunny gasped, knowing precisely what was about to happen. She’d seen it occur and almost occur plenty of times before in the top room of the Brighthouse ever since magic’s return throughout the land, hearing way too many arguments than she cared to admit between the pegasus sisters about whether or not the younger one snored swirling cold fronts into being.  She wasn’t a second too late in her evasive roll to the right, for then, twin beams of straight, linear lightning blitzed forth from the pegasus’s occuli and struck the spot she’d been standing at. Sunny couldn’t rest though, and had to continue dodging every which way possible to not be zapped by Zipp’s lightning vision she was shooting at her in steady, staccato, calculated bursts. Much like what’d transpired prior when she’d been placed under pressure, the transformed mare also found herself intuitively firing, well, fire, back up at the electrokinetic princess when she saw an opportune shot. Particularly, fireballs. The spheres of flame were not as grand as the first, basketball diameter, one she’d ever fashioned, and were slight stacked even against most of the ones launched at the falling sugar pine detritus, which were more akin to baseballs in overall dimension. They were rather more reminiscent of golf balls in size. This meant they were easier to generate and lob snappily where she wanted, which was always just sufficient to make the pegasus move and either stop blasting or throw off her aim. After all, this most unwelcome and harrowing misunderstanding notwithstanding, Zipp was still her friend, and in the spirit of amity, she did not wish to hurl her harm.       Sunny carried out these avoidant and defensive tasks surprisingly well given the stress and her lack of familiarity with her fiery form. Likely thanks to the former, in part. Yet even so, she could only keep up this jeopardous game of projectile tag–or pseudo tag where she was concerned, at least–for so long before all her awkward motions and the pegasus’s adjustments caught up.  Inevitably, Sunny was hit in her heel while hopscotching aside, which caused her to tumble onto her side in shock–both in the surprised and stunned by an electric current sense–which made her a bigger target which left her open to being buffeted by a bunch of smaller but faster lightning vision beams that sent her wiggling in agony, going, “ZZZZZZZZZH!” once she hit the dirt again.  To worsen matters, she’d hardly gotten over her pained twitching when Zipp decided to strike at her with regular, slower, yet more thickset with energy, lightning vision beams since Sunny obviously wasn’t going anywhere. The pegasus then switched from bursts to two, continuous, unbroken streams of voluminous voltage after ten seconds and then finished her withering assault by calling down another thunderbolt from the sky for good measure ten more seconds later.  By the end of it all, Sunny was rendered so staggered she couldn’t even mutter out a simple, ‘Ouch’. “HAD ENOUGH, MONSTER!?” Zipp shouted down.  ‘Yes’, Sunny thought, yet was utmostly unable to utter in her neoteric state. ‘Not that I was really even trying to fight you in the first place, but in any case, you win. I surrender. I seriously, SERIOUSLY surrender’. Zipp, of course, couldn’t listen in on her mind, however, and yelled, “I. SAID. DID. YOU. HAVE. ENOUGH!?” ‘EEP!’ Sunny said in her head, despite her sparse recovery an instant before for fear that the tiniest displacement on her part would be misinterpreted as an act of aggression, and of the resulting agony.  She had to get away.  She had to get away, yesterday.  Yet Zipp was faster than her–much faster–so Sunny clearly couldn’t get up and run away like the price tag of running her smoothie business whenever there was an unhappy harvest. Due to this, and the fact that her palms rested on the ground, facing it–meaning it’d take extra time to aim them in her friend’s general direction–she likewise wasn’t fond of her prospects for escape there, either.  She needed a distraction. She needed a distraction, now.  Yet how? Zipp’s entire attention was squarely on her. Even if Sunny could do something surprising to take her friend off guard such as shooting fire from her eyes as the pegasus did electricity–which she didn’t even know was possible in the first place–she galloped into the same issue which she’d have if she fired her flames normally of being unable to avoid telegraphing her intent too much.  No decent option in sight, Sunny did what anypony would do. She offered up a silent, mental prayer to Faust, wriggled her fingers to ensure that was enough feeling in them, and steeled her resolve to attempt and flee regardless. Her nervous system too.  She could’ve failed disastrously, but she figured she should at least make the effort and try.  Sunny would always try.  Shockingly however, being shocked wasn’t in her immediate future. A most hopeful fortuity dictated otherwise.  A rumbling, a tremor, an earthquake steadily sounded throughout the woods, said continuous nature being the only thing about it Sunny could determine distinguished it from yet another something or other from space crashing into the face of equis.  Though the pegasus was unsusceptible to the more tremendous physical effects all the way up there in the air, like all the shaking that couldn’t be evaded by the transformed mare, even from her elevation, she could hear it despite being unable to feel it.  Twirling around in the direction from which the temblor emanated, Pipp said, “Whoa! What’s that all about!?”  Sunny knew not the cause of the quake, and honestly, didn’t really care.  It provided the perfect opening need though, that much she was aware.  While Pipp’s proverbial spotlight was preoccupied otherwise, Sunny slowly, noiselessly as practicable, lifted herself from the imprint the last thunderbolt had made her impress upon the ground, got to her feet, about faced, and balancing herself carefully as she could, silently tip-toed away from her friend. If she were capable of sweating presently she would’ve she was so concerned with being caught. Innumerable it seemed to her were the moments she found herself glancing beyond her shoulder back up at her friend to ensure she hadn’t noticed her in sneak-mode. Nearly as numerous were all the times she almost tripped on account of her already clumsy control of her current form alloyed with all the rock rocking in the vicinity.  Yet providentially, she made it to one of the walls of the crater quicker than expected, only then letting out the breath she’d held within for the duration of her exiguous yet dangerous jaunt.  It was then though that yet another predicament was presented to Sunny.  How, just how, was she going to climb all the way out without constantly falling or, more importantly, quietly and quickly enough that Zipp wouldn’t turn around and get back to zappin’ and strikin’ her ad infinitum again? Promptly, she realized that it was simply out of her hooves. That no matter what, even if she’d a method of vamoosing nimbly, the pegasus would grow cognizant of her departure and pursue posthaste. Her lone chance, then, was that whatever the manner of leaving she chose, had to be expeditive indeed.     Yet again, however, how? How was she to accomplish even this far more meager feat?  “Come on! COME ON! Think, Sunny! THINK!” she whispered loudly to herself, rapping her knuckles against her temples all the while as the land thankfully continued to sway.  On the tenth such tap against her candle-like head, epiphany finally did dawn, and she lowered her hands before her eyes, which were wide as though she were staring right at the answers to her quandaries.  For she was.  “Adoi, Sunny!” she said to herself, facepalming at how obvious this solution was and how she’d still failed to see it until now.  The transformed mare carefully yet energetically clapped her hands together once, and with all the mastery over her fiery form she could muster, began to forge the single largest fireball she’d had till then–much bigger than the first she’d fabricated. Where that one was a basketball in extent, this one’s proportions were comparable to a beach ball’s. Expressly, one of those vast, seasonal, gimmicky ones Canterlogic always sold at the outset of summer and throughout, measuring some twelve feet from pole to pole. In a mere three seconds, it’d completed ballooning, Sunny holding it above her head to prevent it from slipping out of her grasp. Muttering up to the Almighty another prayer in her mind, she sighed out in a low voice. Her moment of supplication having passed, she then whispered, “Here goes nothing.”      At that precise point, the earth quaked not, and she shut her eyes and winced, daring not to look back towards Zipp as she more voluminously whispered, “Or maybe everything!”     Sunny Starscout soon after chucked the colossal beach ball of flame at the floor before her feet with all her might.