Thunder Struck

by Synthetic Soul


Chapter 1.

The ringing in your ears is the first of your senses to return, and it’s the only thing you can focus on. It’s like the warning signs of tinnitus amplified by a thousand. It feels as though a gunshot went off right in front of you and you weren’t able to cover your ears in time. It hurts, it hurts in a way you’ve never felt before.

‘What’s going on?’ You think to yourself. You try to massage your ears with your hands, but you can’t tell if you actually accomplished the task or not. Everything is numb, you can’t feel your fingers clenching or unclenching.

You open your eyes with myodesopsias clouding your vision, as if you had stared into the sun for a brief moment. You try to blink away the fog covering your vision. Again you try to raise your hands to rub your eyes but you don’t see the familiar appendages moving into your line of vision.

‘Why aren’t my arms working?’ You think, becoming more alarmed. Had you slept on them wrong? Were they broken? What happened? You can’t remember anything.

Your vision clears enough to see the color blue. It’s all you can see. Is that the sky? Are you lying down outside? You can’t seem to remember why. Had you been watching the clouds and fallen asleep? As you ask yourself these questions, you see a break in the monochromatic sky as new colors enter your field of vision. Yellow…orange…red…green… that’s all you can make out. You keep blinking away, trying to clear your vision. Eventually you can make out a shape. The colors, you can now see make up the mane of…Rainbow Dash.

That’s right, it’s Rainbow Dash, one of your friends. But what are the two of you doing here? Where you watching her perform some of her aerial tricks? You still can’t remember. You remember yesterday. You also remember the day before that. You even remember waking up today, eating breakfast and then going out to run some errands. But that’s where your memory stops, and hits a blank.

When your vision clears even more, you can see the face of your friend much more clearly. She’s looking down at you with annoyance for some reason. Why? Did you do something wrong?

You try to say her name, but with the ringing in your ears you can’t tell if you were able to say anything coherent. You try to sit up, but your body remains stationary. She’s looking less annoyed now, and more concerned. Your vision shakes as she nudges you with her hoof. You can’t feel the touch, and that’s starting to worry you.

You try to speak again when you smell something odd. You take in a brief sniff and smell something…burning. It smells a little like a chicken breast that’s spent too long in the oven. Judging by Rainbows expression it looks like she can smell it too. She leans her head down and takes a sniff, before leaning back and reaching her hoof down to your chest. You can see your shirt moving into your line of vision as it appears Rainbow Dash is inspecting your bare torso.


‘Why is she doing that?’ When she lowers your shirt back down, she looks horrified, like she’s seen a ghost. That’s not good, that’s not good at all! Apparently something on your chest has caused her great alarm. Are you hurt? Did something happen? You wish you could remember. You try to say something as the Rainbow Dash begins to panic. You can see the worry and anxiety spread from her face to her whole body as she starts prancing from side to side. You think she’s speaking, but again you can only hear the ringing in your ears. You’re starting to panic yourself. You have no idea what’s wrong, only that something is indeed very wrong, apparently with YOU. You’re about to try to speak again, but you don’t get the chance as Rainbow looks down to you and says something you can’t make out. Before you respond, she’s gone, having used her incredible speed to fly away.

‘Wait…don’t go!’ You don’t know if you were able to vocalize that or not. Your heart is starting to race, and you don’t want to be alone right now. You try to think, try to remember what had led to this but you still can’t.

You start thinking to yourself. If you’re so injured, why doesn’t it hurt? Maybe it’s for the same reason you can’t move. It’s not easy to think or make sense of the situation at the moment. All you know is that you’re confused, and possibly injured. You hope it isn’t serious. You hope it can be fixed. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad right? Ponies have magic of course, so there’s nothing they can’t fix right? You’ll be fine, you know you will be.

Then again, Rainbow did look extremely alarmed. But you have known ponies to have just a little less resolution than you when it came to things involving blood, and injury. Things weren’t quite as gruesome here in Equestria as they were back on Earth.

There’s a blur and a gust of wind as Rainbow Dash returns, using her wings to hover above you. There’s a lavender burst of light out of your peripheral vision, and a second later you see that Twilight Sparkle has joined the two of you. Her eyes are trained on you as she looks at you with concern. She seems to be speaking to Rainbow Dash, but you still can’t hear what they’re saying. The conversation seems to get heated as Twilight is apparently laying into Rainbow Dash over something. You aren’t sure what though. Rainbow looks like she’s trying to explain herself, but failing.

‘Man, Twilight looks really angry. Is it because of me? Did I do something? Or are they arguing over me? She looks really angry. Please don’t be angry Twilight. You’re scary when you get angry…’

The unicorn repeats the action of the pegasus and lifts your shirt to examine your bare torso. The two looks horrified, and it looks like she’s screaming at Rainbow Dash now. Rainbow makes no attempt to defend herself verbally. Twilights face softens as she leans over you and says something to you that you can’t hear. Her horn glows and in a burst of light, the two of you appear somewhere else. It looks like you’re indoors now, you can see artificial lights above you.

You’re starting to get light headed now, and dizzy as well. You really want to close your eyes and go to sleep. As your eyes start to close, and your mind drifts off, you can see the faces of more ponies looking down on you with concern.

‘Everything will be fine’ you tell yourself.

It always is.