Quantum Castaways

by DustTraveller


Chapter Twelve - Expanding

-Runnin' Down A Dream, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers


The night was cold and silent, save for the faint whisper of a chill wind as it blew over the dead earth. Small creatures hunted and fed and mated, and performed all the myriad little manuevers necessitated by the gloriously complex ballet called survival.

A faint vibration caused a few of the more perceptive critters to pause, searching for what threat or food was responsible. There was a rhythm to it, almost sensual, a looping coursing, undefined quality that the ignorant creatures of the desert couldn't, and simply wouldn't, understand.

The vibration became a noise. A faint buzzing sound. Some of the more self preservation oriented critters began to scatter.

Gradually, the faint buzz resolved itself into a thundering roar, shaking the earth in a way the small creatures had no context for, in their small universe. Fleeing suddenly in panic, they scattered from the vibration, which finally resolved itself into-

A scorpion which had paused in confusion became little more than brownish paste as steelbelted, heavy duty off-road tires ground it into the cracked earth in an instant. The stain became a sandy bit of residue which blurred around and around on the tire's surface, before the constant repetitive smashing of the splotch against the desert hardpan wore away the evidence of the brutal anthropodal murder.

"LOOOOOVE OF TWO IS ONE. HEEEEERE BUT NOW THEY'RE GONE." Marshall bawled at the top of his lungs, as the Crimson Maverick blazed through the night, an oasis of light and noise in the otherwise blackout dark desert.

The excellent shocks and offroad tires took the mostly flat, cracked desert hardpan without protest, despite the reckless speed of the, admittedly somewhat rusty, driver. Twilight winced as Marshall hit a particularly sour note in his singalong rendition of Blue Oyster Cult's, Don't Fear the Reaper. It was admittedly out of his vocal range, but what he lacked in vocal acumen, he tried to make up with balls to the wall enthusiasm.

"A BIT MORBID, ISN'T?!" Twilight hollered over the blasting musical accompaniment to Mr. Bailey's Wild Ride.

Marshall blinked, his eyes shifting momentarily over to Twilight, confused at the seeming non-sequitur.

"WHAT?!"

"THE SONG! ISN'T IT A BIT MORBID?"

Marshall grinned. "I KNOW, RIGHT?! B.O.C. IS FUCKING BADASS."

Twilight rolled her eyes and shook her head, looking worriedly over at the speedometer, then out the now somewhat bugspattered windshield at the cone of light ahead of the roaring 4x4. There were very few details to make out, as small variations in the desert surface were simply blurs as they rushed by.

Twilight bit her lip.

Marshall caught the movement of her head in his peripheral vision and grinned softly, then turned down the music just as the Ipod (currently on random) cued up Slow Ride, by Foghat. He bobbed his head slightly in the groove of the music.

"Take it easy, Sparklebutt. I'm doin' about sixty, which by my estimate means we should hit the jungle in about fifteen minutes. Sure beats walkin', yeah?"

She glanced at him wrly. "By "hitting the jungle" I hope you don't mean, at sixty miles per hour."

Marshall gave her an affronted look. "And ding up my new ride?! Check yo' self, foo'. I'm only doin' sixty because I want to make sure we leave the Frank Herbert's Dune reject in the dust, Sparks. Once we get about five minutes out, I'll slow her down to something... marginally survivable. In the meantime, chill, take in the music, and enjoy the climate control."

Dave Peverett's growly voice crooned in her ear, telling her to “slow ride, take it easy.” Whatever the buck that meant. She relaxed against the seat, let out a sigh, and glanced at Marshall. The human was in his element, a wide grin on his face, head bobbing along with the music, leaned back against the headrest with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting idly on the gearshift. He caught her bemused expression and smirked.

“Twi-light.... take it easy.” He sang along with Dave. If the Foghat singer disliked his misquote of the lyrics, he gave no sign.

She smirked.

“Twi-light... take it easy.” He repeated, and this time she joined in, only replacing her own name with “Mar-shall”.

They both chuckled, and some of her apprehension drifted away. The sunglasses had drifted down Marshall's nose a bit, and his pale blue eyes twinkled at her above them in the faint illumination from the dashboard. He pulled the aviators up to rest on the top of his boonie hat, and turned his attention turned back to the road.

“Marshall, how are we going to get this thing back to the encampment?” She asked seriously.

He sighed. “It's gonna be a real bitch, Sparklebutt, make no mistake. No roads, I mean. Thing is, I know a few game trails that might let us squeeze through 'til we hit the foothills. Things widen out a bit once we hit them. I figure we follow the game trails as best we can, muscle through where we can't. This baby can take it.”

He frowned. “Worst comes to worst, you can blast us a path, yeah?”

She sighed. “I CAN... but I'd rather not. These trees are a part of the ecosystem, and I'd rather not start blasting them to flinders.”

Marshall gave her a puppy-dog pouty look that looked ridiculous on him, with his five days worth of beard and peeling cheeks and nose from the sun. She took one look at it and giggled, giving up.

“I guess if the Sky Lights are just going to end up replacing anything I remove anyway, it isn't too much of an issue.”

He grinned and pumped a fist in victory, before resting it back on the gearshift. “That's the spirit. We just have to clear a path, Twi. The alternative is to ditch all this cool stuff. I'd really rather not do that.”

She smirked. “Especially since you went through all the trouble of stripping that Starbucks of anything remotely valuable. Or even just kind of shiny looking.”

He chuckled. “You helped, Sparklebutt. I'm a little amazed at how much damage a little unicorn applied TK can do to a perfectly good Starbucks. I still wish we could have figured out some way to get the A/C unit off the damn roof.”

Twilight sighed. “This again? I told you, Marshall... we could have cut it loose, sure, but with the damage that worm thing did to the structure, there was a very real worry that the building could come down on us.”

He pouted. “Bah. Say that again when you're sweating your balls- er... flank.. off...”

She chuckled again. “Wow, you really butchered that one, Marsh.”

“Put a sock in it, Snarkle.”

The two were silent in the wake of this exchange as the Ipod switched to something with a complex melody that drew Twilight's attention enough that she drifted off a bit on the music. She found that she really LIKED whatever this was. Even Marshall had a slight smile on his face, nodding in tune with the intricate rhythm. Twilight glanced at the Ipod and resolved to remember... Rush, Cygnus X-1 Hemispheres: Prelude, so that she could check it out later.

As Marshall would say, it was pretty “badass”. Although what naughty donkeys had to do with music, Twilight couldn't fathom.

The song changed tempo suddenly and a high pitched male vocalist began singing about bringing truth and understanding, something with which Twilight could relate. Marshall frowned as though something had occured to him, his attention now focused on the illuminated ground ahead of him... well, sort of. He was obviously paying attention to where they were going, but he was also gazing rather distantly, as though focused on something she couldn't see.

Twilight watched him curiously. When whatever thought he was puzzling over was not immediately shared, she cocked her head.

“What is it, Marsh?” She asked.

He blinked, shot her a glance, then turned his attention back to the road. When he spoke, his voice had a bemused quality.

“Just thinkin'. One cargoplane with all hands disappears while on a logistics mission and it's a mystery, maybe becomes part of a Discovery channel Bermuda Triangle kinda entertainment segment, but it ain't gonna raise too many eyebrows. It was a combat zone, folks go missing in one a' those all the time. Conspiracy theorists MIGHT have a bunch a' cockamamey ideas as to what happened, but ultimately, me and my boys 'er just a statistic.”

He let out a sigh. “Nobody back home is gonna give a crap that I disappeared. Leastwise, not enough to raise a stink, I 'spect. Sassy an' her folks didn't get along too well. The other boys, I ain't sure. Point is, one C-130 can disappear and it'll barely make a blip on the radar... er... barely make ripple in the pool.”

She frowned, then nodded at this. “Right...”

“Likewise, I get that there are folks that are going to miss you Sparklebutt, but if you DID go missing, there are any number of perfectly rational reasons you might disappear that don't involve you being kidnapped from your very plane of existence, yeah?”

She sighed. “True.”

He shook his head. “A whole Starbucks though? Just... up and vanished? That just don't HAPPEN. It had to have been durin' business hours, I'm guessin' right in the middle of the day, 'cause it was full a' customers. Maybe early morning, worst case scenario. Then the whole building, including the foundation AND the parking lot just plain disappears. SOMEONE is GOING to notice. Hell, all you'd have to do is go to Google Maps, er... basically a map of the planet constantly being updated by orbital manmade satellites, and do a frame by frame, and you could probably see the exact moment the damn place just vanishes.”

Her head whirling with the idea of a global mapping system and artificial orbital satellites taking pictures of the planet below, all without the aid of magic, Twilight shook her head.

“Where are you going with this?” She asked.

“Well, that's the thing, Twi. How in the HELL can we, I mean, the places we came from, not have noticed this kinda crap before?”

She frowned at this. “You're not thinking big enough, Marsh. We're not talking about one world being sampled here. At the bare minimum, we're talking three. Mine, yours, and where ever that Starbucks came from. You're pretty sure it's not from where you come from, correct?”

Marshall nodded. “Yup. We keep pretty good track of who is and isn't the President of the United States of America, Twi. Like I said, I suppose Timothy could have been playing some kinda obscure joke with those stickers, but I just don't think he was the sort.”

She nodded at this. “Ok, so minimum three worlds, probably more, maybe even at different historical intersections. You said you thought a lot of the wildlife on the island is extinct where you come from, yes?”

Again, Marshall nodded. “Yeah... and I've never seen or heard of anything outside of maybe science fiction or fantasy that matches up with the MB or that sandworm. So unless those things came from your neck of the woods...”

She shook her head, frowning. “I'm pretty sure something like the MB or the sandworm would have been noticed by SOMEPONY. So either that's yet another couple of planets that whatever put us here is sampling from, or these things can take specimens from anywhere, anyWHEN. You and I, and the people we found at the Starbucks, are the only intelligent life that have ended up on the island, at least, that we know about. The Starbucks is the only building, again, that we know of. That's an infinitesimally small subject group, considering the vast number of possible targets that could have been chosen from.”

He blinked. “Actually, yeah. If we're talkin' infinite worlds at infinite temporal intersections, that means infinite target possibilities. Hell, what's here is just a drop in the bucket.” His shoulders slumped.

She sighed, watching as terrain flashed by in the darkness at the edge of the headlights. “Not even a drop in the bucket, Marsh. We're barely... molecules. Atoms.” She smiled, remembering a term he'd discussed idly with her back at the encampment. “Quarks.”

He frowned, his expression moody for a moment as he contemplated this, then he sighed. “I just...”

She smiled sadly. “I know how you feel, Marshall. It FEELS like it should matter more, because while we may have been one out of an infinite number of possible captives, this whole thing has been a very personal ordeal for both of us. To US, it matters more than anything... but really, in the grand scheme of things, we're very small.”

She shivered, slightly. Marshall took his hand off of the gear shift and rubbed the back of her neck comfortingly. She sighed.

“Well, you might be infinitesimally small, Twilight Sparkle, but you're very important to me.” He said fondly.

Twilight found herself blushing slightly at the sentiment. “Marsh...”

“I mean, seriously... you know how much work you save me? TK fucking rocks. I have so much more time to goof off, I can totally focus on the important things, like contemplating how much being stuck on danger island sucks the big donkey dick.”

Twilight grimaced at the mental imagery and shot him a deadpan glare. “Thank you for that sentiment, monkey boy. Celestia knows what I would do without your indiscriminate sense of humor shoving itself into my personal space.”

She smirked. “Honestly, you're lucky that hands are so awesome, or I probably wouldn't have put up with you for this long.”

Marshall grinned, then reached over with one hand and vigorously scratched at the base of her nicked ear. Twilight sagged against the seat and groaned, leaning her head for a better angle. “Oh, you have no idea how-”

BA-BUMP.

Marshall cursed and both hands went to the steering wheel as the Crimson Maverick cleared the foot and a half step between the desert and the rocky lip of the barrier seperating it from the jungle. They flew over the ten feet or so of rock before hitting the vegetation on the other side. Trees flashed by at terrifying speeds and the cursing human somehow avoided them by a combination of luck and skill. Marshall slammed the brakes and the truck skidded a final twenty feet or so on a carpet of crushed vegetation, coming to a halt just as a staggered line of trees suddenly reared up in the headlights.

Twilight discovered suddenly that the improvised seatbelt functioned, but had a bit more give to it than was probably ideal. The lap belt portion suddenly chafed hard against her sensitive belly and the front of her hindlegs before she slipped half way out of it, and she ended up suspended by the shoulder sash and her BDU top with her head somewhere under the glove box in the passenger side leg room area and her flank suspended skyward, her hindlegs kicking feebly, trying to find purchase to right herself. She wiggled frantically, but the position was incredibly awkward, and she couldn't seem to get her forelegs under her at all.

“Shit... shit.” Marshall cursed. “Shit... sorry, Twi, I-” He paused.

“Marshall! Help me up!”

She heard a suspicious sound from the human's direction. Her struggles increased exponentially.

“Stop laughing at me and help me up, you jerk! This lap belt is twisted up and it's cutting into my legs!”

“BA HA HA!” He guffawed, reaching over to try to help her. Her struggles did not make this any easier.

“Oh man... you look like my buddy's kid this one time, when he got flipped around in his kiddie bouncy seat. Never could figure out how the heck the little guy managed to get his little feet up over his head, but he did, and he got all tangled up in it. He was just kinda bobbin' there like a yo-yo. I was like, mark my words, that kid's gonna be a gymnast someday... or you know, one weird specialist in fetish porn.”

“That's very fascinating and all, really Marshall, I'm happy that I could share this trip down memory lane, real- GET ME OUTTA THIS!”

“Ok ok, sheesh, stop squirming.”

She complied and he got her right side up. She glared at him, ears flat. Her expression promised murder.

He raised both hands up defensively. “Hey, hey... I'm sorry, ok? The jungle came up on us a lot more suddenly than I expected. Had to brake like that, or we'd have pancaked our way through the jungle. Come on, Twi. This is probably a good spot to stop for a bit, stretch our legs, see if anything came loose or broke.”

“Break my hoof off in your-” Twilight grumbled just loud enough that he caught it, giving a sharp shake of her head to settle her disheveled mane.

She struggled briefly with the duct tape and BDU blouse straitjacket that Marshall had concocted for her, before finally telekinetically ripping the thing off of herself. She winced as she lost what felt like a strip of hair from the coat on her back where the tape had missed the BDU blouse and adhered to her directly.

Marshall opened the door, grabbed his M4 and quickly stepped out in the humid jungle night. He closed the door behind him, stepped outside of Twilight's sight line around the side of the truck and then doubled over with laughter, hands on his knees, wheezing in mirth.

“I HAVE VERY GOOD HEARING MARSHALL, AND I CAN HEAR YOU LAUGHING! THAT IS EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL, YOU KNOW!” She shouted.

This only made him laugh harder.

Her dignity in tatters, Twilight made the best of it, opening the passenger door telekinetically and hopping down the not inconsiderable drop to the jungle floor. The sauna mugginess of the jungle at night struck her in a palpable wave, and she marveled at how radically different it was from the environment literally less than twenty feet away.

Just one more example of things that the creators of this island had either gotten wrong, or couldn't be bothered to care about hiding.

One more example of immense, but almost negligent power.

She met Marshall around the end of the pickup and the two of them began a careful inspection, her naturally looking low, and him naturally looking high. Every once in a while, Marshall would reach up and test a rope or insure a piece of gear hadn't shifted or come loose. Twilight examined the tires and lower edge of the truck for damage. She seemed to recall a thump as they evaded the sandworm.

Sure enough, there was a small ding in the rear fender belled slightly outward, dripping a nasty smelling viscous orange goo, where a snakehead had come up under the truck and been struck by the inner edge of the rear of the chassis. She pointed it out to Marshall, who grimaced and spit, but said nothing.

Then she noticed something else. She smirked.

“Marshall, it looks like the Crimson Maverick lost something important.”

Marshall scowled and looked where she was looking. “Where? I don't-”

She shook her head mock sadly, a trace of mirth dancing in her eyes. “I'm sorry Marshall... it looks like the Maverick is a gelding now.”

Marshall blinked, then noticed the missing vanity item from the rear of the truck.

The look of mournful sympathy on his face as he removed his boonie hat and held it against his chest was so comical that Twilight burst out in peals of laughter.

After a moment, Marshall joined her. It became another moment of loosening tension.

Marshall frowned and cocked his head at her quizzically. “Wait a minute... how the heck do you know what a gelding is? Isn't that kinda...?”

She blinked. “Well how do your people deal with male rapists, Marsh?”

Marshall paled. “Wow... that's pretty hardcore for a buncha technicolor ponies.”

She snorted. “Yeah it was... over four thousand years ago. The ancient unicorn culture Mesoponytamia led by the great Queen Hammareabi wrote the first codified law structure, and detailed it as the punishment for rapists, but it hasn't been done in a long long time. You don't even want to know what the punishment was for mares.” She shuddered visibly.

She paused. “It really hasn't been necessary since-”

Marshall shook his head, heading off her lecture at the pass. “Well, learn somethin' new every day, I guess.”

She nodded cheerfully. “Isn't ancient history fascinating?!”

He nodded idly, put his hat back on his head and scratched his chin. He considered informing her about the startling coincidences piling up between her world's history and his own, but decided to leave it for later, as this wasn't the place for the comparative discussion this would inevitably invoke.

After a solemn moment, he reached out and patted the deballed truck fondly.

“Well Maverick... it's a cryin' shame, but just so you know... you'll always have huge balls in my heart.”

Twilight winced. “Oh ew....”

Marshall nodded slowly. “Yeah, I probably should have thought that one out a bit better before I blurted it out.”


If Twilight had thought that traveling by vehicle at night in the desert was bad, nothing had prepared her for the jungle. The big truck was designed for offroading, and it could handle the terrain variation with little difficulty, but that certainly didn't make it any less of a harrowing experience for the neophyte. Twilight winced at every massive, jerking bump, and the sounds of foliage crashing or scraping against the exterior certainly didn't help matters. Marshall had the high beams, fog lights, auxillary lights (the extra lights on the rollcage), and the controllable spotlight on to provide as much illumination to the task at hand as possible, which really, was a ridiculous number of lights, when one thought about it.

Marshall's fumbling under the dash had found a nest of extra switches that was truely staggering in scale, and the resultant experimentation had ellicited both crows of amusement from the entertainment starved pilot, and a truely awe inspiring amount of illumination from the Crimson Maverick. This accomplished, he manuevered the big truck through the limited space the jungle provided with consummate skill.

Bumping and rumbling down a game trail, leaves and branches smacking against the exterior on either side, Twilight turned to Marshall and considered him. He was very focused on the task at hand, but he didn't appear worried, his eyes flicking with practiced ease to the side and rear view mirrors to get some gauge of the clearance available to him. He was supremely confident in this marvel of technology that human hands had produced on a world incredibly distant. Twilight considered the mindset that was implied by that supreme confidence. Some might call it hubris, but if it was... it was justified, and hard won. The massive collaborative effort that must have gone into the endless iterations of design necessary to produce something so supremely suited to its task was mind boggling, and perhaps, if she were honest, a little frightening.

She smiled a little, as she considered it. If Marshall was any indication, then humanity was a species that had the determination to thrive in spite of the harshest conditions. There was a great deal to admire in that sort of attitude.

Even if it did make them more stubborn than Applejack.

“How far do you think, Marsh?” She asked curiously.

He sighed. “Well, I can't say as I'm happy with the damage this is probably doin' to the paint job, but I had to bypass the creek and the cliffs, so I swung out a ways. That added about twenty minutes, but we're headed down the backside of the ridge now. You should start to recognize stuff if you look around. I'd estimate, maybe ten minutes? This thing is big enough and scary sounding enough, most of the nastier critters have left us alone, so that's one less thing to worry about.”

She hmm'ed in agreement and watched as several murder turkeys fled ahead of the Crimson Maverick before darting off the trail and into the dense undergrowth.

“It really is amazing, how much smaller the island seems now.” She mused.

“Hmm? What, because of the truck?” He commented idly, eyes flicking over the terrain.

An exposed root bounced them up a bit, but she was used to it by now.

“Yup. That was a journey, that trip through the desert, one that took a week of planning and almost two weeks to carry out. It was exhausting, and it took a toll physically and mentally. Here we are almost back to the camp, and it's been what... two hours? Three at the most?”

“Better part of four, actually.” He mused. “I see your point though. This isn't going to be nearly as useful for short trips in the jungle. Too tangled for that, you understand. Still, you can't beat it for transporting a ton of stuff considerable distances.”

“It reminds me of the first time I saw a train in action. I thought... nothing could beat this.” She mused. “What used to be a week long trip took less than a day. All that metal, and wood, and ponies, just barreling along, propelled only by steam... an application of physics. Breathtaking, you know?” She looked at him for affirmation, and he nodded.

She continued. “But this... this isn't even something sanctioned or maintained by the government. For all intents and purposes, this is just someone's personal conveyance. Almost a toy.”

Marshall grimaced. “It's a work truck, and make no mistake about that, Twi... the guy put a lot of love and care into the Maverick, but you don't put a full load of tools and construction stuff in the back of a truck you only go muddin' with. Still, I see your point. Most folks back home had this, or something similar.”

He paused for a moment, considering the absurdity of that statement. “Well, let's say that most people had some kinda automobile and leave it at that. We all just kinda take it for granted. I know I did.”

Twilight shook her head mutely, unable to come up with a response for this.


Marshall had to drive a bit around their compound's wall, but it was with great relief that the gate came into view, brightly illuminated by the many headlights of the Crimson Maverick. Rather than get out, Twilight simply unbarred and opened the gate with her magic, an act which made Marshall smirk.

“Better than a garage door opener. Unicorns sure are convenient.”

She smirked at this, and he drove the truck into the courtyard of their current habitation. She carefully shut the gate behind them, barring the inside. Marshall put the truck in park, leaned back in his seat and stretched, rubbing his eyes and cracking his neck in a furious cavalcade of pops and crunches. Twilight wrinkled her muzzle in disgust at the noise, then TK'ed off her uncomfortable “seatbelt” and opened the passenger door, dropping down to the ground with a dainty thump of four hooves against the soft dirt.

After a moment, Marshall joined her on the ground, the truck still idling, and the headlights still on. A few insects attracted by the illumination buzzed and bounced off of the headlights, some big enough to make pinging and ticking noises as they careened from the hard plastic.

He sighed. “Good Lord I'm tired. It has been a long day, Twi.”

She nodded. “I hear you, Marsh.”

She frowned, looking at the truck. “Don't you have to turn it off?”

He smiled tiredly. “That's the thing... if I turn it off, and keep the headlights on, we'll run the batteries down quick. Maverick's got two, but while the engine's running, the batteries are recharging even as they're being used. Turn it off, and the charge depletes.”

She nodded, that made sense, and was pretty ingenious. “What do we need the...”

She trailed off as she thought about it for a second, then groaned. “Are you serious?!”

He sighed. “I wanna get as much of the breakable and perishable stuff indoors out of the potential weather as soon as possible. I'm not talking about the stuff we packed IN the truck, not tonight. We have to go through some of that stuff anyway, remember, we didn't bother checking it when we looted the place because it was already loaded in the truck. We do have to move all the stuff ON the truck, though... and the sooner, the better.”

She sighed. “I want to argue with you, but... I can see your point.”

He patted her back companionably. “Come on, Twi. With your “TK-oh-my-gawd-hax” bullshit it won't take too long.”

Twilight shook her head sadly. “I suppose the days of you giving magic the proper amount of gravitas it's due are long gone, huh? Just a month ago you were all google-eyed every time I cast a spell. Now you make fun of it. THAT sure didn't last long.”

Marshall smirked. “Welcome to the Human Experience Express, I'm Marshall, and I'll be your conductor. Keep your hooves and forelegs inside the conveyance at all times, and those of you in the front, a note of caution, you WILL get wet. We at the Express hope that you'll enjoy your stay here, but due to the critical scarcity of fucks given, your experience may vary.”

Twilight blinked.


It took them well into the wee hours of the morning to get everything stowed, but stow they certainly did. Amazingly none of glassware had been damaged in the trip, as they had taken a great deal of care in wrapping anything fragile to protect it. Having accomplished the mind numbing and backbreaking task of stowing all of their booty, Marshall finally cut the engine, turned off the lights, and threw the great blue work tarp over the vehicle, securing it carefully.

Marshall hit the electronic lock fob and the Crimson Maverick honked its horn and flashed its lights once, signaling that it was locked. Twilight, exhausted and not too terribly attentive, started at the unexpected burst of noise. She glared at Marshall with her ears laid back.

“What was that for?!” She asked, irritated.

Marshall blinked. “Uh... sorry, Twi. I wasn't thinkin'. I just locked it is all.”

She stared at him for a moment, baffled at his statement, and too tired to process it fully.

“Lock it from what? Marshall, we're behind a ten foot palisade wall in the middle of an island full of prehistoric alien predators lacking opposable thumbs. If something breaches that wall, we've got bigger problems than murder turkeys taking the truck for a joy ride.”

Marshall shrugged. “Force of habit, Twilight. Besides, that kind of attitude is the sort of thing that leads to last thoughts like, I'll be damned, I wonder how that little fucker managed to reach the gas pedal?”

“You don't think maybe that's a LITTLE paranoid?”

Marshall groaned. “I don't know, Twi... you're the one with the flank steak everything on this island wants a piece of. How paranoid is too paranoid?”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, then scowled, squinting at him in frustration. “It is a testament to how exhausted I am, that I can't think of a witty and scathing response to that.”

Marshall grinned tiredly and staggered off towards the cave. “Come on, Miss Grumpy Pants. It's way past BOTH our bedtimes.”

Twilight sighed and followed him meekly, her hooves dragging just a bit.


Twilight lay on her pallet, staring at the dark ceiling and tried to will herself to sleep.

She had been attempting this for what felt like the better part of an hour, with no success. She couldn't figure out what it was. Tossing and turning, she tried to make herself more comfortable, but she wasn't exactly uncomfortable. It was a tad warmer than was strictly ideal, but not too warm. This was actually not the norm for the jungle; often she and Marshall didn't bother with covers, and it was still usually somewhat stifling in the cave. The human was a vaguely Marshall shaped lump on his canvas hammock style bed, his breathing easy, slow, and even. He wasn't on his back, she could tell because he wasn't snoring. Marshall slept like a lump most nights, rarely moving if ever. She knew this because of their time in the desert.

Twilight groaned and shifted, turning over and staring at the wall. Why couldn't she sleep? She was at least as exhausted as Marshall. Probably more so, magical exertion was tiring, dang it! She couldn't recall a time when she was more exhausted than this. Completely frustrated with her insomnia, she finally slipped to her hooves and created the dimmest light orb she could see by, wandering towards the workroom containing the thaumic field fluctuation detector. Ten minutes of careful telekinetic activity was enough to recharge the battery with the crank from its depleted state. They had forgotten to turn it off when they left for the trip, and it had run completely dry. A check of the display showed a set of coordinate values off from neutral.

She blinked, then nodded to herself. It must have caught a field fluctuation before it finally lost power. Considering the limitations of the device, it might have caught more than one. She diligently recorded the x and y coordinates, and after a moment of deliberation regretfully wrote a question mark in the time recorded block of their log, having no idea when this particular fluctuation was recorded. She made a note to ask Marshall if there was some way to add a calendar function to the detector. After this, she reset the display and checked to make sure that it reset to zero. Verifying that it had, she slipped into the room and went to the improvised whiteboard and set about plotting the new recorded coordinates.

When she finished, she frowned, then checked the log.

Then she checked her math again, cocking her head quizzically, staring at the results.

That was... very peculiar. Her exhausted mental state was a bit slow on the uptake, and so she was completely unable to make heads or tails of the shape beginning to form out of the mathematical gibberish in front of her. Still, the well honed instinct for recognizing patterns was nagging at her. She stared at the board for what felt like an incredibly long time, before with a start she realized that she had been dozing lightly on her hooves. She shook her head, looked longingly at the whiteboard one last time, then chuckled to herself as she imagined Marshall chastising her and put the grease pencil up. She wrinkled her muzzle in disgust as her eyes fell on a particular symbol, but the look in her eyes was one of fond remembrance.

It did NOT look like a monkey having sexual relations with a coconut. Ok, she could see the monkey, and even see the supposed coconut, but why did it have to be fucking? Maybe he was bowling.

Yes, bowling, and not very good at it. It was a big bowling ball after all, too big for the monkey.

She sighed. Nope, that monkey was going to town on that bowling ball... coconut, dang it, and there was no mistake about that.

She slipped out of the room and back to her pallet. Her mind picked at the math of the mystery taking shape on the board behind her, puzzling and teasing at it, but no great revelation came to her, merely the nagging feeling that there was something important there that she was missing. Perhaps with more data, she'd see it. Perhaps in a state not so close to complete mental shutdown, she'd see it.

She wasn't sure when she managed to slip into an uneasy, exhausted slumber, but slip she did.

Her body still twitched and turned even in sleep, her muzzle lifting occasionally, as though questing for something that wasn't there.

It was adorable, but there was no one there to see.


The smell of toasted bagel mixed with the smell of hot metal and the oddly sweet smell of burning rosin flux caught Twilight's sensitive muzzle and she sat up blearily, her notched ear flicking idly as she caught the hissing sound of a soldering iron. Shrugging her makeshift covers loose, she gathered her hooves under her and trotted over to the kitchen table, where Marshall was currently deep in the guts of... something.

He had one of the optima gel batteries from one of the scavenged automobiles, along with a rats nest of wires, part of a fuse box, and various bits and pieces from the Starbucks internal soundsystem, along with what looked like several pieces of one of the other automobiles electrical systems and a dismantled lighter and charger plug in for the Ipod. She stared quizzically at it, before snatching the untouched half of Marshall's partially consumed bagel and taking a bite. Marshall blinked, set the pensized soldering iron down in its little cradle, then looked down at her irritably.

“Mmmm. Strawberry and cream cheese. Nice, Marsh.”

He smirked wryly. “I'm glad you think so, Twi, really.”

She smiled at him, then something occured to her. “You probably shouldn't be eating and soldering at the same time, Marshall. Lead is not a part of this balanced breakfast.”

She took another bite of her purloined bagel and made appreciative noises.

He shook his head in amusement and went back to the job at hand. “I hope I didn't wake you. You looked kinda out of it, Sparklebutt.”

She sighed. “Couldn't sleep last night, for some reason.”

At his incredulous look she chuckled. “I know, right? I don't know what happened. I just couldn't seem to get comfortable.”

He smiled slightly, picked up the iron, wetted it on the sponge, tapped a small dab of solder to the end, then touched it to a connection on the circuit board he was toiling over. A small streamer of smoke released that sweet rosin flux burning smell again, and he set the iron back in its cradle, then set about cleaning the residue from the board with some alcohol and a small brush from the toolkit.

“Happens sometimes, when you radically change environments. We went from the Sahara to the Amazon in less than twenty four hours. Bound to cause a few hiccups with your sleep schedule.”

“It didn't seem to bother you any.” She groused.

He gave her a sardonic look. “Twilight, I was in the military. I can sleep anywhere, any time.”

Shaking this off, Twilight used the table to balance herself on her hindlegs and looked at what he was working on. Marshall gave her an irritated look.

“Hey, watch it, Sparklebutt. I don't wanna short this.”

“Sorry. What is it, Marshall?” She finished off the bagel, careful not to get crumbs on his workspace.

“This, is going to be a sound system for the cave when I'm done with it.” He said proudly.

She stared at him for a moment. “So... you woke up this morning, made yourself breakfast, and then felt a pressing urge to make a stereo? Why?”

He gave her a level look. “Because tunes, Twi. Because tunes.”

She shook her head. “Fair enough. How close is it to done?”

“Oh, I haven't even wired the speakers up for it yet. I figured I'd wait until I was sure it was working, plus I doubted you'd have appreciated me testing it and hanging up speakers while you were asleep. That being said, most of the rewiring is done. Nothing too special, all the stuff I needed was here, I just had to make it workable without a car's internal wiring to support it. Plus I added some “oomph” to it.”

He cleaned and retinned the soldering iron, then connected the battery terminals and plugged the stereo jack into the Ipod. Scanning the list, he eventually selected a song and tapped play. With a considerable amount of background buzz, the sound of Toby Keith and Willie Nelson's “Beer For My Horses” began playing. Marshall got an irritated look on his face at the annoying hum, and his eyes searched over the mess of wires before his expression cleared and he touched the Ipod case to some of the metal on the amp. The hum cleared up a bit, but not entirely.

“Ground loop. Gonna have to isolate that, when I get chance.” He said, by way of explanation. His expression, however, was one of satisfaction, having successfully built it, and then troubleshot a potential problem.

“Hmm.” She acknowledged, smiling fondly. Marshall in his element as an engineer was a captivating sight.

He shut the song off and unplugged the Ipod, stowing it in his pocket. “I can get to that later. Well, enough dickin' around. Since you're up now, let's take stock of what's in the Maverick, shall we?”


“Huh, well that'll come in handy.” Twilight looked over at Marshall from the magazine she'd been paging through. Marshall was currently staring at a box that contained a styrofoam block with numerous little shiny cylindrical items in it.

“More .308 rounds for the hunting rifle, so that's a bonus. Also I haven't given it a good look over yet, but apparently that thing has something called a smartscope, if this owner's manual is any indication, and it's got a calibration app that explains the “Sureshot Scopeplus” icon on Tim's smartphone, so neat.”

Twilight made a noncommittal noise, as she was currently deeply engaged by the magazine.

“Also, I found some kinda .45 caliber handgun in the glovebox, which explains the ridiculous number of .45 ACP in the cab. I have no idea what this thing is, though.”

Twilight glanced up at it, and blinked. “That's a Jericho 941 double action/single action semi-automatic pistol developed by Israeli Weapon Industries. It features a ten round capacity magazine, combined safety/decocker mechanism, a polygonally rifled barrel, and has apparently been “upgunned” from .40 caliber to the venerable but tried and true .45 ACP cartridge.”

Marshall blinked slowly once, with the air of someone who has just been sucker punched in the breadbasket. He cautiously reached over and pinched Twilight on the flank.

“Ouch! Hey, what was that for?!”

Marshall stared at her, and with a faltering, half wondering tone asked. “Are... are you real?”

She glared at him. “Yes, I'm real! I've been reading this gun magazine for the past ten minutes! I couldn't help but notice the article on the Jericho, it's all dog-earred and highlighted.”

Marshall blew a sigh of relief. “Oh thank god. For a second there I thought I was the unicorn.”

She telekinetically passed the magazine to him. “Here, this talks all about it. Be careful though, it's a little sticky.”

Marshall froze in the process taking it in hand. “Ew...”

She glared. “I'm sorry! I was eating a chocolate bar while I was reading it and I got a little on the page.”

Marshall blinked, once again relieved. “Right.”

He scanned the article, his eyes flicking over the contents. Twilight smiled.

“It's pretty informative actually, although there are some cultural references I don't get. What does, it's Israeli made, so it's +5 versus Arabs, mean?”

Marshall's eyes widened comically and he stared at the article in shock. “Whaaaaat?!” He asked in a rising tone.

She blinked. “What-”

Marshall whistled. “Daaaaamn. The military is notoriously un-PC where I come from, and we'd have been burned at the stake if we said something like that where it could be quoted... not to mention being outted as nerds. What kinda fucked up world did he come from where it's ok to say something like that in a reputable gun magazine?”

His expression cleared as he remembered something, and he continued in a flat tone. “Oh yeah, one where they elected Michael Moore as President. I don't know who those other assholes were, but I'll bet they're just as fucking insane.”

Twilight shrugged, not really understanding most of this, but gathered that it likely had something to do with the silly human practice of electing one's leaders. “If you say so.”

Marshall tossed the gun magazine onto the driver's seat and continued his perusal of the contents of the late Mr. Wright's truck cab. The back had yet another small tool box, this one obviously set up to do minor repairs on guns and the like, someone's well stocked “tinkerin'” box. In addition to this were several MREs and a few other odds and ends of the sort of things someone thought they might need if the world suddenly descended into godless anarchy. Survival stuff, mostly. Marshall's eyes passed over a forlorn, seemingly forgotten black can in the back corner of the cab. It caught his attention because it had a red and green ribbon taped to the top of it, as though it were a gift.

He read the label and did a double take. “What the... hell?”

He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. “Tactical bacon?”

Twilight looked over curiously. She squinted at the legend printed under the words tactical bacon. “Smoke flavor added, fully cooked. I firmly believe that bacon has the potential to bring about world peace, Anonymous. What does that mean?”

Marshall slowly turned the can in his hands as though in a dream. It was so strange, even... sort of gift-wrapped, although it was undoubtedly a novelty gift given to Tim as a joke. He stared at the instructions on the back. It had two steps:

1.Open can.

2.Receive bacon.

He stood up and walked numbly back towards the cave without saying a word. Twilight blinked. After a moment, he came back, still in a daze, grabbed the can opener from Timothy's tinkerbox, and walked slowly back into the cave, still without speaking.

“Marshall, are you ok?” She asked. She dropped out of the truck and followed him worriedly.

“I think... I'm better than I have been in a very long time.” Marshall said in a small tremulous voice.

She watched as he carefully opened the can, and unwrapped a piece of what looked like oddly colored hay bacon from the fatty packet contained inside. When he ate a small piece of it, she further watched as a genuinely delighted smile eased onto his face like the dawning of a glorious sunny day.

“It's bacon. It's honest to god fucking real bacon. Timothy Wright, if you weren't dead, and your political leanings didn't likely make you a raging homophobe, I would totally have your manbabies.”

He jerked up excitedly and grabbed his M4 carbine before heading out the door. Twilight followed, somewhat worried again.

“Marshall, where are you going?!”

He looked back excitedly. “We have a ton of stuff that's just going to go bad if we don't use it, Twi. Bread, dairy stuff, that bacon... I'm gonna go out and rustle me up SOMETHIN'S eggs, and then I'm going to have me an honest to god breakfast for once!”

She blinked at this, than a small enthusiastic smile appeared on her face. “It's a little manic, Marshall... but I think I like the idea.”


Considering the ridiculous number of reptilian animals and birds plaguing the island, it didn't take them long to find something appropriately egg-like, although there was a comical misadventure involving something that had the attitude of a honey badger chasing Marshall into a thorn bush, and another beehive for Twilight.

On a positive note however, they now had breakfast dino-steak and fresh honey to add to their late morning feast.

Their various scratches, scrapes, and occasional bee stings aside, Twilight sat happily watching as Marshall cooked her a three egg omelet to order, with all the fixin's. The smell of cheese, toasting bread, and cooking bacon mixed oddly to her sensibilities, but it was not an unpleasant scent, considering its origin. Though there were still occasional bursts of background buzz, Marshall had mostly nailed down the problems with the nascent sound system in the cave, and now a growly voiced singer was cheerfully asking a little girl to come on a magic carpet ride.

Marshall bobbed slightly in tune with the music, obviously happy as a clam, with a huge pile of cooked bacon next to him. He was apparently even saving the grease.

In his own words, because who DOESN'T want the awesome power to make every future meal taste like bacon?

The sound system gave a burst of background hum and he hip checked the table in tune with the song, which made the hum stop. Twilight giggled at this, and Marshall waggled his eyebrows at her, grinning.

The two of them dug into breakfast eagerly, chortling over their sudden largess with almost criminal giddiness. Twilight was aware that this was a one time thing, that this sudden bounty was very very temporary, but Marshall was extremely happy with events, and Twilight found his mood infectous.

Watching him crunch through a rasher of bacon making “om nom nom” noises certainly didn't lower the entertainment value of the breakfast.

“How's the omelet, Twi?”

She smiled happily. “Oh it's amazing! I can't believe how much I missed this... it really is the little things...”

He nodded. “Yup. Music, being able to just go to the store and pick up what you want... you don't realize how much a part of your life it all is, 'til somethin' up and shanghai's your ass.”

She nodded. “So... what's on the itinerary for the day, Marsh?”

He grinned. “Well, since we got all the important stuff packed away last night, I figured we could take the rest of the day off, if you wanted. It's been a hard week, Twi. I think we're due some R n' R.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I'm all for that, Marshall. Do you think we could head down to the pools and clean up? I have dust in places it doesn't bear mentioning.”

He snorted. “Yeah, we're both a little ripe after all that. Alright then, it's a date. When we get back, I'll get that ground loop figured out and hang the speakers. What do you wanna do?”

She smiled. “Oh, I still haven't finished reading the demolitions manual, and I need to make some new entries to my journal. I thought I might take a look at your leg wound while we're getting cleaned up. It's been about eight days, and those stitches will probably need to come out soon. We didn't have any of the absorbable kind the manual talked about.”

Marshall grimaced, but nodded. “Fun. Ok, Twi. Let's go ahead and do this. Grab the stuff for washing up and the medkit.”

She nodded seriously. “I'll grab the manual too, for reference.”

He smirked. “That's probably a good idea. I wouldn't want you to sew my asshole shut.”

She rolled her eyes. “If I was going to sew anything shut, it would be your mouth, doofus.”

He chuckled. “There a difference? They're both talkin' shit.”


Now clean and contented, Marshall and Twilight lounged in the cave, the quiet sounds of Rush's Lakeside Park chugging along in the background. Marshall's wound had indeed healed well enough for the stitches to come out, perhaps a little ahead of schedule, truth be told. Still, she trusted the manual, and the “operation” as it were, had gone without a hitch.

Marshall hadn't even complained about any pain.

True to his word, Marshall had successfully troubleshot whatever issue was causing that annoying buzz in the sound system he'd cobbled together, and now the full might of the Starbuck's speakers had been deployed in their little...

Twilight frowned, an ear flicking as she stared at the words in front of her, not really seeing them. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't think of the cave as “home”. A part of her whispered that to even THINK of it as home was to acknowledge that there was a possibility that she would be staying here permanently.

She just couldn't accept that.

She knew that Marshall never had. Not in his heart.

Having completed his little quality of life improvement project, Marshall was currently reading through the little owner's manual of the smartscope attached to the .308 hunting rifle. Every once in awhile he'd shake his head in amazement at something. From what Twilight could gather, whatever gadgets had been commercially available when Marshall had been abducted, the smartscope wasn't among them.

“Humidity, temperature, windspeed, bullet drop, spin drift, the god damn coriol- this fucking scope is smarter than I am.”

Twilight grinned. “That isn't exactly difficult. I bet it gives me less of a hard time than you do.”

“Ha ha ha ha, fuck you.” He said flatly.

He grinned to show he meant no offense, and by this time, Twilight had given up getting ruffled over the endless obscenities that Marshall graced her with. There just wasn't any point.

“Still, I can't wait to try this thing out. It wouldn't stop a charging Rootscraper, but if it's as accurate as the owner's manual claims, I bet I could kill one that wasn't movin' around a whole lot.”

She frowned. “Not that you'd WANT to...”

He sighed. “Well, I admit to a certain curiousity as to what one would taste like, but that isn't a good enough reason by itself to justify hunting one of the damn things down. That would be a criminal waste of meat for one thing, not to mention dangerous... they're never alone, and for another... I kinda feel like I owe the dumb fuckers. Nope, I was just using them as an example.”

She looked over at the matte black rifle the gun magazine had identified as a Sig Sauer SSG3000, curiously. “Is it really that accurate?”

He grinned and tapped the owner's manual. “According to this thing, it automatically compensates for all variables and puts an augmented reality crosshair on the selected target that can be as accurate as point five MOA, if properly calibrated.”

Even the small amount of reading she'd put into the gun publication familiarized her with the term, MOA. Minute of Angle, or a measurement of deviation from an aim point. As a standard of measurement, an MOA of one was equal to one inch deviation at one hundred yards.

She did a quick conversion in her head, then blinked in amazement. “One and a half inch deviation at three hundred YARDS?!”

He smirked. “Yeah, I find it pretty hard to believe too, but I'm definitely interested to test it out.”

She nodded in mute agreement. She wasn't terribly fond of firearms, but this she had to see.

He frowned. “That is if I can figure out how the damn thing works.”

“You're not going to try that out tonight, are you?” She asked.

He grinned and set the owner's manual down, putting his hands in his pockets. “Naw, no point. Somethin' for later, frankly. I don't plan on-”

He stopped, frowning as though discovering something unexpected. He dug around in his pocket and came up with a plastic packet full of shredded plant matter. He blinked.

“I'll be damned, I completely forgot about you!”

Twilight wrinkled her muzzle. “Isn't that the recreational drug you found in Ted's car?”

Marshall nodded. “Yup. Hey, there's an idea-”

Twilight scowled. “Oh no, leave me out of that.”

Marshall gave her a stricken look. “Oh come on... pot's no fun if you can't share it with your friends! It's harmless, Twi!”

Twilight shook her head. She wasn't entirely opposed to the idea, in principle. If she were perfectly honest, she was even a bit curious. Advanced unicorn magi were known to use some herbs to enhance certain magical rituals, some even claimed to gain insight into advanced magic after such an experience. There were even stories, admittedly largely accepted as apocryphal, that Starswirl the Bearded had experimented with what he'd referred to as “perception enhancing” herbs, and she'd always hoped to perform her own experiments one day.

That, however, would have been in a properly controlled environment, with the proper meditative atmosphere, and her tools and arcane symbology to enhance and guide the resultant trance in the right direction. Not with a plant she wasn't certain wouldn't have adverse effects on her biology. In a cave. With an alien who would be more likely to laugh at her than help her if she got foalish under its influence.

“First of all, you have no idea what, if any, effect it is going to have on me. Secondly, why would you want to give the individual with magic something that in any way impairs her judgement?”

Marshall nodded seriously. “Those are both perfectly logical and rational arguments that I don't care about, Twi. I fail to see how magic and pot mixed together wouldn't equal awesome. Come on... it'll be fun!”

She shook her head resolutely, valiantly attempting to ignore the nagging pangs of thwarted curiousity. “Nope.”

He sighed, but rather than being disappointed, he tried a different angle. Perhaps he was getting good enough to read when her resolve was weakening. “Ok, on your first argument, I grew up in Kentucky, home of the Derby races. There were two farms within walking distance of my house... hell, I had friends who grew up on 'em. If you think a bunch of teenagers didn't try to get a horse high once or twice, you're crazy. They just got a little goofy and uncoordinated is all.”

Twilight frowned. “First of all, I'm not a horse. Second of all, even if we have comparable biologies, they are easily three times my size. It'd take a lot more of the same toxin to cause them problems than it would me.”

Marshall crossed his arms. “I didn't want to have to point this out, but you do owe me.”

She scowled. “How do you figure that, Marshall?”

He stared at her. “Remember the Truth or Dare? Not only did you fail to meet the Dare, you sliced my face up.”

Her mouth dropped open, then she sputtered indignantly. “Slice?! Slice?! T-that was a scratch, AND an accident! I apologized, and you forgave me! You...”

He raised an eyebrow, his arms still crossed. He tilted his head slightly, fixing her with a level look.

She met his gaze and stared at him, stubbornly. “It was just a game, Marshall. It didn't...”

She trailed off, as he continued to stare at her. He was using her own finely developed sense of fair play against her, dang it.

“Come on, Twi... you aren't even curious? Not even a liiittle bit?”

She looked away. He had her there. “Well... we test it first, for obvious toxicity issues... you know, rashes, numb lips, really FOUL taste, and then... only a little bit, and ONLY because you'll be impossible to live with if I don't.”

She tried to remain annoyed with him, but the resultant impromptu victory dance he engaged in, culminating in him spiking the bag of weed on the ground, waggling his legs, and making fake crowd roaring noises was so ridiculous, she couldn't help but giggle at him, helplessly.

She sighed. Twilight had a suspicion that this was probably a mistake, and she was probably going to regret it.

Marshall had a suspicion that this was probably a mistake, and it was going to be hilarious.


Their initial experiments with the plant produced no worrying symptoms, and so, with some small lingering misgivings, Twilight watched as Marshall rolled a small amount of the drug into a tube made of repurposed lens paper. Licking the edge, sealed it and twisted the ends, he inspected the result of his efforts with some satisfaction.

“Wasn't sure if I still had the knack. I haven't had pot since highschool... I wasn't going to play around with the military's zero tolerance policy where drugs were concerned. Less worried about it, now...”

He grinned sadly.

“So... now what?” She asked.

“Now we light it, and smoke it, that's what. What did you think it was, a suppository?”

She rolled her eyes. “We couldn't have burned it in like a brazier or something, breathed in the smoke?”

He stared at her. “Sure, if we were the fucking Oracle of Delphi... this is pot, Twi. If a joint was good enough for Carl Sagan, it's good enough for me.”

“Alright, alright. You first.” She urged.

Marshall grinned, lit the joint with the flame from one of the alcohol lights, took a drag, then held it in, holding out the joint for Twilight to take.

She accepted the joint from him dubiously with her magic, and he finally let out a stream of smoke, with a slight cough at the end. “Dang... that stuff is rank!”

She stared at him, and he made urging motions. “Take a drag, then hold the smoke in your lungs. Your lungs don't want you to put smoke in them, so they're going to try to make it leave. Ignore that, your lungs aren't the boss of you.”

Her first attempt at a drag resulted in a coughing fit as soon as she inhaled, with Marshall fishing the joint up from the ground from where she'd dropped it and patting her back.

“S'ok, it's like I said, the first time is a little rough.”

“Gah! It's like breathing fire from the southern end of a northbound dragon!”

She wasn't sure she wanted to try this again, but Marshall was giving her THAT look, and so she sighed and tried again.

Her second attempt was much more successful, and produced only a muted coughing fit at its conclusion, as the strange smelling smoke drifted away from her.

“Now...” She let out a cough, then continued roughly. “Now what?”

He grinned, turned on the Ipod, and put Jefferson's Airplane's White Rabbit on. “Now it's a bit cliche, but them's the classics for you, and we wait for the fun to begin.”

He took another drag, and passed it back to Twilight. They took turns, waiting for the effects to hit, and finished off the joint.

Being perfectly honest, all Twilight felt was a little nauseous. “I don't think it's working, Marsh.”

He frowned. “Well give it a bit. Some times it takes a little while.”

She shook her head. “I don't think-”

She stopped. Marshall was staring at a point just past her shoulder. She looked in that direction, then back at him quizzically. His expression turned at once confused, then alarmed, then outright horrified.

"Ohhh shiii-" He slurred.

Twilight blinked at this, and the stunned, terrified expression on his face.

“Marshall... what's-”

Then the world rannnnnnn assssss thoooooughhhhh soooomepooneeeyyyy weeeerreeee smeearinngggg theee coooloooor palaaaate....

Nuts.


Marshall found himself on a vast pale pinkish white plane, extending out as far as the eye could see. Towering, strangely flaking and striated purple stalks rose hundreds of feet into the dark sky, tapering into fine points somewhere distantly above. The ground suddenly rolled gently underfoot, and a great vibration he could feel deep in his chest and in his testicles shook the earth, like the warning growl of some inconceivably massive antediluvian crocodile.

Marshall put a hand out and grabbed one of the flaky purple redwood sized stalks, steadying himself, as the tremor ceased.

“What... in the blue fuck?” He whispered.

Something in the dark sky caught his attention, some great pale object at an incredibly massive distance. He squinted. It looked like some oddly shaped, strangely textured moon... where in the hell...

The world rolled and dipped again, and he almost went down this time. With a sudden horrified start, he realized he was staring at an incredibly distant, incredibly massive human face, with eyes the size of seas, a nose that dwarfed mountains... a grand canyon of a mouth, parted slightly in horrified shock, showing teeth like glaciers. A face the size of a moon.

Only it was no moon.

It was Marshall's own face. He could even make out the great trench of a scar on the cheek.

He found himself starting to hyperventilate. He forced himself to knock that shit off.

“That... wasn't marijuana.” He said hoarsely.

“You think, whitebread?” Said a deep, very familiar, dignified voice.

Marshall turned very slowly, blinking, and stared into the calmly amused face of Morgan Freeman.

Marshall decided to lose his shit.


She was a band of color, a purple thread in a twisting, turning, repeating ribbon of fractal chaos extending into infinity. Each individual band distinct, but similar, repeated endlessly.

Branching and rebranching a multitude of times, folding on itself. She was terrifying and incomprehensible, everywhere and nowhere. She was the very essence of harmony itself, a recursive rainbow, both it's entirety and a part of it.

Oh sweet Celestia, she WAS the rainbow! One part of the spectrum, the rest careening through her skull, backfiring its way through her hindbrain like a freight train full of color and...

She was breathtaking.

On the edge of some revelation that would either lift her up or drive her into screaming insanity...

She sneezed.

Just like that, her awareness shattered in an explosion of soundless color and light. She could see everything, everywhere, everywhen, the myriad twisting and turning quantum variations resulting in a webwork of nth dimensional patterns.

She couldn't perceive the math... SHE WAS MATH.

Glorious...


Marshall was doubled over, breathing deeply and evenly, his hands on his knees. He had his eyes squeezed shut.

“Believe it or not, that isn't the first time someone has had that particular reaction to seeing me.” Came that very familiar voice.

“Sorry about that.” Marshall said weakly.

“I'm somewhat surprised at the exact pitch of that shriek, but not the shriek itself.”

Marshall slowly eased up and stared at the age creased and freckled visage of the epitome of African American dignity and sighed.

Morgan Freeman smiled at him, his eyes twinkling with wry good humor.

Marshall smiled back weakly. “So... are you god or something?”

Mr. Freeman chuckled richly. “No son, and again, that's not the first time I've gotten that reaction. I'm Morgan Freeman.”

He held out a hand, which Marshall shook.

“As you pointed out earlier, that was not in fact, marijuana. I'm not sure what neck of the woods you happen to come from, son... but I find it difficult to believe anyone would mistake Salvia Divinorum for marijuana.”

Marshall scowled. “Gimme a break, it's been over fifteen years since I've even SEEN pot, much less smoked it. Also Salvia Whatsawhosit?”

Morgan smiled. “Salvia Divinorum. Diviner's Sage. Ska Maria Pastora. Several cultures view it as a divine plant. It produces visions and hallucinations in its users, and it definitely isn't pot.”

Marshall squinted. “How do I know all of this? If you're a hallucination, how do I KNOW all of this shit, because I've never heard of Salvia in my life.”

Morgan gave him a knowing tilt of the head. “Maybe you read about it once on wikipedia and have since forgotten that you knew. Maybe somewhere out there, there are a billion Marshalls and the law of averages says at least one of them has heard of it before.”

He leaned in. “Or maybe, I know about it, and I'm telling you. What does your gut tell you, Mr. Bailey?”

Marshall shook his head, his expression spooked. “This is fucked up.”

Morgan looked towards the distant Marshall Moon, casually checked his watch, then shrugged.

“Slide.” He said quietly. Then he seemed to glide away, zipping across the vast pale-pink landscape with its fucked up purple forest as though he were on the world's quietest pair of jet assisted rollerskates.

Marshall let him go, but he did cry a little.


The world ran with color, and Twilight found herself staring at her drooling companion. She blinked.

Marshall suddenly flopped and twitched, a brief spasm hitting him as all the muscles in his face jerked in a different direction.

“Titty sprinkles!” He slurred.

"M-Marshall?"

He winced, then raised his hands and tried to balance. "Not so loud, Sparklebutt. You'll make me fall off."

"What?"

"Shhh. I..." He paused. Shook his head as though clearing it.

“Marshall... you didn't mention anything about visions. I thought...”

He shook his head emphatically, then pointed accusingly at the innocuous packet on the table.

"That AIN'T pot. That... is something infinitely more biblical." He stared at the small amount left in the packet as though it were a snake.

"I don't know... I liked it." She said. "Want to-"

"FUCK NO!"

She backed off. “Ok, ok... sheesh. Was it really that bad? What did you see?”

He shook his head. “I think I was on your face. Morgan Freeman gave me shit. I'm pretty sure he's my spirit animal.”

Twilight paused, not sure what to say to that.

Marshall's expression crumpled with sadness for a moment, and he sat down heavily. “I forgot to tell him I loved him in Driving Miss Daisy.”

He looked so distraught, Twilight put a tentative, comforting hoof on his knee. “There there, I'm sure he knows, Marshall.”


It may not have been pot, exactly, but the afterglow of the intense out of body visions the two of them had had was similar enough as to be indistinguishable from it. The only hiccup being when Twilight became convinced something was in the cave with them, only to discover, to Marshall's crippling hilarity, that she had in fact been chasing her own tail. The two were currently in a time honored stoned philosophical discussion, as Pink Floyd played in the background.

“I think that's bullshit.” Marshall said flatly.

“Princess Celestia would totally beat Superman in a fight. It's not even a contest!” Twilight exclaimed.

“He's faster than a speeding bullet.” Marshall ticked off on his finger.

“Teleportation.” Twilight said flatly.

“He can leap tall buildings in a single bound!” Marshall continued.

“She can FLY!” Twilight crowed.

“So can he, and he doesn't even need wings! He's strong enough to punch planets out of orbit, and he has laser eyes!”

Twilight smirked.

“LASER eyes, Twi.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Marshall, I'm just not impressed. Besides, I have irrefutable proof that Celestia would win.”

Marshall stared at her with a stubborn set to his jaw. He crossed his arms, then gestured with a “go on” sort of motion with one hand. “Proceed, madam.”

She paced back and forth as she elaborated, in full on lecture mode. “From your own words, Superman is an alien from planet Krypton, given his godlike powers from Earth's yellow sun, correct?”

He nodded. “You got it so far.”

She nodded. “I freely admit, he's incredibly powerful, completely lives up to his reputation as the man of steel, if the comics were real, all things being equal, he would give any Alicorn a run for her money.”

Marshall nodded, following.

She stopped, and laid out her final proof. “BUT... the problem with your position is exactly this; he gets his powers from the SUN, Marshall...”

She grinned. “And WHAT IS IT that Princess Celestia controls the rising and setting of?”

Marshall opened his mouth to retort, then stopped. His eyes flicked around as though seeking some escape from her ironclad logic.

Her grin widened.

Marshall sighed. “Ok. You got me. Princess Celestia would kick Kal-El's ass.”

Twilight lifted a hoof in triumph. “Son of Jor-El! Kneel before Sparkle!”

She heard a burst of buzzing static and noises seemingly unrelated to the music from the speakers and frowned.

“I thought you fixed that, Marshall.”

He grinned. “Naw, that's just part of the song, Twilight. That's Wish You Were Here. Just listen.”

So she did.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Her breath caught in her throat as the song swelled, a feeling of intense melancholy striking her.

Marshall smiled at the reaction, nodding in understanding.

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a leading role in a cage?

It was so poignantly THEM, for a moment she could picture it. A tear ran unnoticed down her cheek.

How I wish, how I wish you were here...
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year. Runnin'...

She blinked suddenly, a thought flickering on the edge of her awareness. Something...

“Wait, what was that?” She cried.

Marshall blinked. “Huh?”

“Replay that last bit, Marshall.” She said, her expression frantic. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the Salvia, but there was something about that...

He shrugged and fiddled with the Ipod again, looking somewhat confused.

How I wish, how I wish you were here...
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year-

It echoed in her head. Two lost souls...

Swimming in... in...

She shot to her hooves and rushed to the workroom, slamming the door against the wall in her haste to get it open.

Marshall scowled.

“Hey! You probably just threw off the goddamn calibration of the detector, you psycho!”

“Sorry!” She called back distractedly.

Marshall frowned, but didn't really feel like getting up. Actually he was kinda hungry. “Where's the fire, Sparklebutt?”

“Not fire, Marshall. MATH!” She called back, sounding mildly frustrated.

He shrugged, and resolved to enjoy the rest of his night in peace, and damn the OCD unicorns, full speed ahead.


The first day after Twilight had her math related freak out moment during a Pink Floyd song, Marshall was willing to let bygones be bygones. He hadn't heard her go to bed by the time he'd passed out, having eaten the rest of the bacon, even though it was well and truly cold by this time. She'd also apparently woken up before him, and he decided not to bother her, upon seeing how focused she was on... whatever the fuck it was she was doing.

He mostly passed the day with the numerous mind-numbing little chores meant to keep them afloat and relatively comfortable, although the small addition of music when he wanted it did help as a balm against the monotony. Her absence at dinner was somewhat disheartening, but she was deeply engaged in her pursuit of...again, whatever the fuck it was, and he simply left her a plate of food on the workbench without interrupting her in her storm of paper and writing implements, continuing about his business.

He was mildly concerned on the morning of the second day, when he realized that Twilight's bedding was untouched. He decided to wait it out a bit. She missed dinner again, but the previous plate was clean. His efforts to get her to take a break were met with, at first, a distracted, slightly manic glare and muttering, and then an outright GROWL when he became more insistent.

He backed off. Mama Bailey didn't raise no fool.

On the third day, he'd finally had enough. He resolved that if she didn't talk to him by bedtime, then he was going to go in there and do something about it. He was now pretty sure she hadn't slept in three days, and she was starting to look somewhat crazy eyed.

Her ears flicking out of sync with one another was also supremely disturbing, to say nothing of the eye twitch.

When bedtime finally rolled around, Marshall girded his loins, and stalked in there with determination in his step and blood in his eye.

She was just staring at the whiteboard, which was an absolute mess of scribbled out and erased equations, something that looked like a wire frame blob, and a series of ray traces that he couldn't make hide nor hair of.

Especially because they appeared to curve.

She just sat there, staring blankly, with a stub of a grease pencil hovering in midair, staring.

For ten minutes.

He counted.

Finally he'd had enough. Whatever Blue Screen of Death Twilight Sparkle's brain had fallen into, Marshall wrapping arms around her barrel and heaving her up with her legs pointed skyward at the ceiling snapped her out of it.

“Hey...” She protested weakly.

The grease pencil dropped to the ground with a muted tick.

“Alright, I've tolerated this for long enough, and I'm puttin' my foot down. Whatever it is that's got you playing whackamole with the forces of the universe, it can wait until you actually get some sleep.”

“Marshall, put me down! I have to finish this, I'm so close...” It was quite telling how exhausted she was that she apparently didn't even think of teleporting or TK'ing herself loose.

“You were staring at the board without moving a muscle for ten straight minutes, Twi. That is not productive.”

“I was not...”

“You were. You totally were, I was watching you. Not to mention, yesterday, you growled at me.”

She blinked, her expression confused, then it lapsed into sadness. “I... I can't sleep. I've tried. I-1 just...”

He carried her over to his bed and set her down gently. When she tried to scrabble up and get her hooves under her, Marshall slipped into the metal and canvas hammock bed with her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her in close to his chest like a big pony-shaped pillow.

She squirmed.

He put his chin resolutely on the top of her head and began petting her mane.

“Marshallll.” She whined, her voice muffled by his chest.

“Don't make me start singin', Twilight. You are going. To. Sleep.”

She almost squirmed loose by dodging under his armpit, but she was really out of it, and uncoordinated, and he shifted, getting a firmer grip on her. He moved his attack to the base of her ears, scratching gently.

She sighed, and her squirming quieted.

“That is incredibly unfair.” She muttered into his chest again.

“You are absolutely exhausted, and I am fully aware of what it looks like when the hamster done slipped the wheel, Twilight Sparkle. If you think I'm going to sit here and watch as you self destruct, then you're still high.” There was a hint of reproach in his voice, but it was gentle. Even the feel of his voice rumbling against her ear in his chest was lulling her to sleep. It suddenly occured to her, that she'd MISSED this.

She sighed again, but stilled.

“What if I lose it? I really am close...” She said, plaintively.

He squeezed her gently. “Then you'll get it back. I can't guarantee that, Sparklebutt, but I have faith in you. A decent night's sleep will do you absolutely nothing but good, of that, I am absolutely positive. Look at it again tomorrow, with a fresh perspective, and maybe somethin' will shake loose.”

She murmured something unintelligable against him again and stilled, breathing deeply and peacefully. He watched her quietly for a few moments, and then closed his eyes.

He followed soon after.


“HAHAHAHA!”

Marshall jerked into awareness, sat up, and gazed blearily around the room. Twilight was nowhere to be seen, but he could hear her, somewhere, making joyous noises. He shook his head and stood up.

Twilight galloped out the door of the workspace and stared at him excitedly, her sides heaving.

“MARSHALL, COME HERE, I WANT YOU!”

Marshall gave her a blinking, shocked sort of look and opened his mouth. “Wha-?”

He was suddenly enveloped in a purple sparkly field and lifted off of his feet. Twilight galloped back inside the workroom, Marshall floating in tow.

“Now hold on a sec, goddamn it! What's the fuckin'... Twilight, put me down!”

Twilight pranced in place, looking for all the world like she had to pee.

“Walking too slow. Look Marshall, look! LOOK!”

She floated him over to the whiteboard. He stared at it uncomprehendingly.

“Do you see?! Do you see it!?” She crowed.

He squinted. “Man, that monkey is REALLY going to town on that coco-”

She growled at him. “No you... NO! Just NO! ENOUGH WITH THE DANG MONKEY, OK?!”

He glanced at her with an irritated expression. “Twilight Sparkle, put me the fuck down on my own two feet, and then explain to me what you've discovered like a rational goddamn adult, and NOT like a fucking Dalek on Methamphetamines.”

She blinked, then eased him down to his feet and took a deep breath.

“Sorry. I'm just excited.”

“Why, I never would have guessed.” He said dryly.

She shook her head emphatically. “No, you don't get it yet, Marshall. It's still very preliminary, there's a lot of guesswork in it, too many gaps in the data, you understand... but I think... I think... I have the waveform function of the expanding thaumic field that occurs with every sky light incident, and a working model of the metaphysical stress points created by its interaction with realspace!”

He stared at her for a moment, then cocked his head. “Ok... that's... encouraging. That's great, really Twi.”

She shook her head, groaning in frustration. “No no... you still don't get it! Marshall, don't you see? I THINK I KNOW HOW WE CAN GET OFF THE ISLAND!”


Author's Note: The drug scene underwent significant changes, probably more than any other scene. Mostly because I had a minor derp. Having previously researched Cannabis and it's effects on equines (man the silly ass shit I end up researching for this story, the FBI must think I'm a nutball) I was reasonably confident that it would at least have no adverse effects on Twilight, and thus could be used without unduly stressing the willing suspension of disbelief. Then I came across an article, I think it was from the University of Minnesota, which mentioned that Cannabis is in fact a Central Nervous Depressant to both equines and canines, causing nausea, lack of coordination, disorientation, and in some extreme cases, unconsciousness and death. Now let's be clear, what this means is that for horses, marijuana acts more like alcohol than pot... but it was still a bad bit of research on my part. It isn't a very good idea to feed marijuana or blow smoke from a joint into a dog or horses face. They probably won't die from it, that takes a much more massive dose, and it really isn't THAT toxic, but... it IS toxic. So... yeah.

I had pretty much written off the pot scene when a friend of mine suggested an alternative, Salvia Divinorum. After my own research, (online research, sillies) I realized that some of the material I had WANTED to include in the desert was now possible. Early in my planning, there was some discussion before I wrote the Graboid into the desert scene of instead of a Graboid, the creature that menaced them actually being a Shai Halud from Frank Herbert's Dune series. This would have given Twilight access to the spice Melange, which I personally think would have been hilarious, but was cut because a) Sandworms are too big, b) Melange is highly addictive, and c) kills you if you stop taking it. Some of the whacked out vision sequences I had planned were now theoretically possible, and needless to say, I jumped on that bitch like a trampoline. In addition, Salvia is completely safe for dogs and horses, so bonus. It's also mildly addictive, where humans are concerned, but I doubt they have enough of it for it to be an issue.

In case you were wondering, the slight delay in the chapter's release was due to me discovering that Nugar actually had an Omake mostly finished, and so I delayed the release of the chapter so that it could be included. That was my decision, Nugar would have been fine with it not going out, but I thought you guys would appreciate it, as much as I did.


Author's Note: Well, my first impulse was to write a variation of the recreational herb scene above where it really is marijuana and Twilight dies. But Dust seems to think that’d be too ‘dark’ and ‘sad’ and that his readers are all too ‘pussy’ to handle it. So he wouldn’t let me, even when I pointed out Marshall that it was only a little sadder than the sonic rain-splorch. I mean, after the comedy of this chapter and the general hope and feel good, I just thought it needed something a little darker to set it off. Little darker?! LITTLE darker?! Heh, yeah, like comparing a firecracker to the Little Boy and the Fat Man. -Dust

Who doesn’t enjoy dark bitter chocolate after a sweet bit of ice cream? Philistines.

So yeah. Here’s your ‘happy’ ‘feel good’ Omake.


It took Marshall a while to notice. Although he considered himself to be in tune with the natural rhythms of the jungle he spent most of his time in, the island changed too much and had too many different creatures making up its crazy, kludged together ecosystem for there to be any true pattern. So when the first birds and half pound bulbous eyed insect things flew, ran, and hop-glided past his hunting blind, he didn’t think much of it.

The next dozen death-pigeons, tiny, gray-purple bird things with clawed fingers at the bend of their wings and a scaly beak full of needle sharp teeth, that scampered by, flapping their wings for bursts of speed as they ran through like a pack of roadrunners, got a little more attention. And when the ankle-biters, furry chihuahua things that moved like iguanas and multiplied like cats at a post menopausal woman’s house, came charging through his shooting lane hooting distress calls the entire time, he really knew something was up.

He wasn’t quite prepared for the sight of a mildly panicked Rootscraper stampede, though, crashing through the forest, scattering flocks of murder turkeys and bear-pigs and other, larger predators before them. That made him worried. Unfortunately, his decision to climb down out of his makeshift tree stand and hurry back to camp came just a little too late for him to act on it.

The first sound was low, a muffled thump that, while not heavy enough to resonate through his chest the way a big Rootscraper would when it dropped back to all fours, was made all the more alarming when it was immediately followed by a crack of tree limbs and the rustle of a palmtop.

Marshall froze. That had been about two hundred yards away.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered very, very quietly to himself, freezing in place. Dimly, he hoped it had like, movement based vision or something. Or that his digicam was good enough to fool it.

There came another treetop rustle, followed by another ground thump as the unknown critter pushed further through the jungle.

Cold sweat beaded on him. Whatever it was, it had to be at least thirty, maybe even forty feet tall.

Fuuuuuck. Even a herbivore that size would just as soon kill him as look at him. Marshall wasn’t nobody’s fool. Big plant eaters were often meaner than the meat eaters. And if it was a carnivore?

Thump, thump, treetop crash. Crash, rustle, the snap of a tree limb, loud as a gunshot. Another thump.

It was literally coming right for him. None of the trees that shook violently seemed to be falling, but even if it was agile enough to snake between, even a shoulder rub would probably scrape him off his tree like a barnacle.

A squishy, squishy barnacle.

For a moment, the sounds seemed to pause their advance, still happening regularly, but no longer moving towards him. Marshall peered through the trees, trying to get an eye on it. The trees weren’t that dense, you’d think you’d be able to see a 30 foot hellbeast stomping around in them less than a hundred yards away. All he caught was a flash of something, maybe a tree branch falling. It was accompanied by a thump. The final thump. No more loud sounds followed.

Had it scented him? Or saw him? Was it frozen out there, eyeing him, waiting for him to break and run?

As he stared at the treetops, , sweat dripping and eyes straining to see the monster lurking out there, he completely missed the light gray, blonde maned little pony that trotted through the trees, shaking her mildly sore head slightly and muttering to herself.

“Ohhh no. Oh no. Not again. Rapid Delivery told me I’m gonna get fired from the Pony Express if I keep going on transdimensional adventures and missing work. And here I am again, lost in a primeval jungle full of alien plants and animals that don’t want to be friends, like always.” She sighed. “I just don’t know what went wrong.”

Marshall, his eyebrows raised to their fullest physical extend, carefully leaned over and stared down at the talking gray and blonde figure. His pale blue eyes met one enormous wandering amber eye, which widened. Wings, incongruously small for something her size, spread, flapped, and lifted her off the ground, flying over in a second to briefly bounce off the edge of his platform and hover unsteadily in the air.

“Hi! You’re a tool user, right? Are you intelligent?”

“Haaa… what?” Marshall asked, his brain short circuiting.

“Oh good! You speak a similar language to equestrian! Hi! I’m Ditzy Doo, and I seem to be lost. Would you like to be friends?” She held out one front hoof.

Marshall gaped, then slowly nodded, reaching for and gently shaking her hoof. “Y-“ he choked, coughed, then swallowed. “Y-yes. Yes, I would like to be friends.”

“Yay!” Ditzy said happily, grabbing him into a hug. Unfortunately, she was so excited about making a new friend in this hostile alien jungle that she forgot to keep flapping. The resulting fall, dragging Marshall along, of course, gave him the first set of many new bruises he could directly attribute to his wandering eyed new friend.

“Sorry!”


For Marshall, the next few days passed in a blur. A blur of non sequiturs, references to things he didn’t understand, and the occasional pegasus collision with his face. Ditzy was friendly, hard working, and earnestly helpful.

She was also clumsy in a kind of comedic, pratfall sort of way. Falling fifteen feet out of a tree onto gnarled roots should have broke his neck, or at least an arm. Instead it left mildly annoying bruises that faded in a day. Ditzy’s discovery that some sort of wood borer beetle had weakened the rafters of the first external storehouse he’d made, an event followed naturally by her crashing through it, should have resulted in her impalement by shards of wood a dozen times over. Instead she merely smelled like sawdust and fern-tater roots for a day. Later, she’d given him an exuberant hug when he’d casually assured her that he didn’t mind the destruction, especially since he would happily trade everything he had for some companionship. Unfortunately, it proved too much for the back legs of his homemade chair and sent him crashing backwards into a stack of ammo bricks and personal knickknacks, which of course dominoed around the room. Realistically, one of them should have been stabbed by something. Or his lamp should have tipped over and set the whole mess on fire. Instead, he got a mouthful of pegasus fur when she ended up stuck on top of him, and she came out somehow wearing the old keepsake pair of his copilot’s panties on top of her head, each wandering amber eye peering out through the leg holes.

Even though it took hours to clean up, it made him laugh so hard he got a cramp and had to cry for mercy.

He listened to her explain an oft used and not entirely unaffectionate, but also not entirely wanted nickname others had given her.

Derpy.

He totally understood, and explained his own personal nickname of Rainman, which had Ditzy rolling on the floor laughing, her hooves in the air. She was glad he understood. Sometimes, there are nicknames that remind you of embarrassing things, but it’s okay when friends use them. It’s funny, it’s a friend thing to do. But sometimes other people use them, and it turns it from something you kinda like into something that just makes you feel bad. Marshall nodded. He didn’t call her Derpy. She didn’t call him Rainman. But they did relax a bit more around each other, and Marshall gently introduced her to the idea of military humor. He’d been repressing a lot of jokes because he was afraid it’d hurt her feelings.

She had her annoying personal quirks though. Apparently, something like 99% of her life revolved around muffins. Marshall, who hadn’t had a muffin in more than six years, mostly since he honestly wasn’t that fond of them to begin with, was rapidly discovering that he would be willing to donkey punch a nun for one since it was yet another luxury from home he was denied. The only real way to deal with such cravings was to ignore them until they went away, but Ditzy just would not shut up about her muffins.

She was such a nice, well, pony, though. Always cheerful, always optimistic. She was sure her doctor friend would come rescue them, even though Marshall had pointed out the unlikelihood of such an event, she seemed to have complete confidence in him. But that muffin obsession. Her clumsiness he could deal with. She obviously had some sort of visual impairment that caused her problems. She was aware of it, would even joke about it. They had shared jokes over how difficult it would have been for her to get a pilot’s license on earth. They bonded over a shared love of flying and the embarrassment that followed a crash, though she had arguably more experience with the latter than anyone he’d ever even heard of short of Launchpad McQuack.

The resulting discussion of Ducktales and other cartoons really made him wish they could sit on a couch together back on earth and watch TV until they fell asleep.

But the muffins, man. The muffins. He changed his mind. With as much as she talked about them, he was actually coming to the conclusion that being on the island, away from them, was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Fuck muffins.

If he’d brought her constant yammering about muffins, and the unlikely adventures muffins seemed to get up to when not under her watchful if unsteady eyes, up sooner, a lot of pain could have been prevented. But she was so nice, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings over something she obviously cared a lot about.

So he repressed his irritation.

Until he blew up at her and told her to stop talking about her god damned muffins. She flew away after that.


It took him three days of fairly frantic searching to find her, including one rushed and highly inadvisable climb up the mountain. It was only when he finally got suspicious about a tiny cotton ball of a cloud and looked at it through his binoculars that he spotted the dangling blond tail hanging off the edge.

Then he had to pick the tallest tree near it, climb to the top as far as he dared, wrap his legs around the trunk, and yell for her attention.

“Ditzy! I’m sorry!” he yelled. If he hadn’t been looking through the binoculars, he wouldn’t have seen her tail twitch. “Ditzy! Can you please come down here and let’s talk about it?! I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings! I’m a big stupid jerk and you’re right to be angry with me but please! I want to make it up to you!”

But she ignored him.

He pleaded, cajoled, begged, and groveled. But nothing seemed to make her want to talk to him. It almost made him irritated at her again. It was just some stupid muffins. But… she was his friend. Literally his only friend in the world. Maybe they hadn’t know each other very long, but still. If he had to listen to the adventures of the cutest muffin in the world all day and night, forever, it was still worth it to keep the first friend he’d had in five years.

But Ditzy was well and truly not willing to budge.

Finally, a thought hit him.

“Ditzy! If you don’t come down here and let me apologize face to face, I’m gonna go all John Cusack on you!”

That, at least, got a tail twitch.

“Fine! I’m doing it! I'm going Cusack all over you!” Marshall warned. Lacking a boom box, or indeed the appropriate jacket, he had to make do. Holding his binoculars over his head with both arms, he started singing.

“Love I get so lost sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart”

Singing as he was with his binoculars over his head, he couldn’t see the cloud nearly as well, so for a while he wasn’t sure she was listening to even his singing. His singing voice was scratchy and unpracticed, but he put all his apologetic heart into it. He almost lost it when he got to the chorus, having honestly began without much of a plan and he’d forgotten exactly what the song was about.

It was either going to be appropriate as anything, or unforgivably offensive, given the circumstances.

“In your eyes
The light, the heat (in your eyes)
I am complete (in your eyes)
I see the doorway (in your eyes)
To a thousand churches (in your eyes)
The resolution (in your eyes)
Of all the fruitless searches (in your eyes)
Oh, I see the light and the heat (in your eyes)
Oh, I wanna be that complete
I wanna touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes”

He knew he had her when she poked her head over the edge of the cloud and stared at him. Hesitantly, she flew down, and added her sweet voice to his own. He didn’t ask how she somehow knew the lyrics to a Peter Gabriel song. It really wasn’t the time for that kind of thing.

At the end, when they’d finally finished singing and they were both seated on a fairly thick, level branch, he hesitantly put his arm around her and she leaned into his chest and sighed. For a while, he kept his mouth shut and just rubbed her ears gently.

Eventually, however, guilt overwhelmed him and he had to apologize again.

“Listen, Ditzy, I’m really, really sorry. I just… I think I know how much muffins mean to you, and I didn’t want to say something. I just… I’ve been on this island for five years. There’s a lot of foods I want and the only way I can stay sane is to just not think about them. I’m sorry I blew up at you. I really am. And if you want to talk about muffins, I won’t stop you. I missed you. I want to hear you talk about muffins some more.”

Ditzy pulled back from him, both wandering eyes wobbling around to give him a rather fixed and somewhat penetrating stare. It was actually rather intimidating.

“Marshall… I think you misunderstood me. I’m not talking about muffins, though of course I miss those, too. I’ve been talking about MY muffin.”

Marshall looked confused.

Ditzy sighed and put a hoof over her face. “Marshall, I meant my foal. Dinky. She’s my muffin.”

“Oh.” Suddenly a lot of the ‘muffin adventure’ stories made a lot more sense. Marshall kind of felt like the biggest, stupidest asshole in the entire world.

Of course, he was, so it wasn’t an inappropriate feeling.

“Derp,” he said. And fell out of the tree.


vooorp vooorp vooorp vooorp

Marshall didn’t hear that. He also didn’t really see it when the police call box materialized in the middle of his camp. It didn’t seem at all out of place when a light brown earth pony with an hourglass cutie mark walked around, fiddling with some sort of metal stick.

“Doctor!” Ditzy squealed happily. “I’ve been worried about you! You’re usually able to find me quicker than this. Is Dinky okay? I’ve been so worried!”

Marshall dropped the piece of fruit he’d been nibbling on, suddenly actually noticing the big blue phone booth looking thing and the newcomer.

“There you are, Ditzy!” he said in a pleasant British accent. “Oh, you would not believe the trouble I had getting here. The timey wasn’t overly wimey, but the spacey… Dinky is fine. Actually, she’s-“

“Mom! Mom!”

“My muffin!”

Marshall stared as a tiny unicorn foal with the same coloration as Ditzy came charging out the door to a big blue phone booth thing and was swept up to a two legged and two winged hug.

“And don’t worry about your job, there’s…” he trailed off, realizing he was being completely ignored by Ditzy as she focused on her long awaited reunion with her foal. He noticed Marshall, who was quietly tearing up. “Oh my word! A human?”

“What? Oh, er, yes?”

“Oh! Where are my manners. Hello. I’m the Doctor.” He transferred his sonic screwdriver to his mouth and held a hoof out for Marshall.

“Marshall Bailey,” he replied on autopilot, shaking the hoof.

“Oh! A Marshall Bailey! How delightful! I don’t suppose we’ve met yet? No? Well, allow me to be the first of me to greet you!” He pumped Marshall’s hand just a little harder before letting go.

“What?”

“Well, if you’re ready, we should probably go as soon as possible,” he said, turning to Ditzy. “The beings that built this don’t operate on a timeline you would be familiar with, but they… “

“Doctor, we’ve got to take Marshall with us! He’s been trapped here for five years!”

“Trapped? Oh, that makes much more sense. Really, I shall have to have words with… Oh, but of course. Mr. Bailey? If you’d like to come with us, you’re more than welcome. I can drop you off at the world of your choice as soon as we get out, or even… well, as I said, not really the best place or time to have the discussion. If you’ve got any personal items you’re attached to, you should grab them now.”

Marshall looked around. Blinked. “Hold on, I’ll get my sunglasses.” His heart beating faster as he moved, he ducked inside his bedroom, grabbed his aviators and web harness, then slung his M4 over his shoulder as he ducked back out. “I’m ready,” he announced.

Part of him feared they’d already be gone. His fears were unfounded. Ditzy was waiting on him with a wide grin, her foal tucked between her front legs, and the doctor, doctor who he still wasn’t clear on, was waving his tool around and muttering to himself as he made adjustments with it.

“Muffin, I want you to meet my new friend, Marshall Bailey. He helped me when I got lost here.”

Shyly, Dinky crept forward and stared up at him with big watery eyes. “Thank you for helping my mom, Mister Bailey.”

“Hnnng.”

The Doctor eyed Marshall. “Well, if you must bring a gun, I suppose. But mind yourself around Dinky. I’ll not tolerate any irresponsible behavior.”

Marshall gave him an even stare. “I’ve just decided. So long as I live, I will not allow any harm to come to that child.”

After a moment, the Doctor smiled and nodded. “Good enough, I suppose.”

To Ditzy he added, “Dinky and I have already put a batch of muffins in the oven, they should be getting ready any moment now. I’ll be along shortly, this is actually rather difficult to calculate you know…” he went back to his work.

“Muffins!” Ditzy cheered, and began dragging Marshall inside the blue box, Dinky prancing along beside them.

Marshall eyed the brain warping surplus of space inside the open door dubiously. He blinked.

“It's bigger on the inside.” He said dazedly. He didn't know why this kind of shit even surprised him anymore.

The Doctor grinned. “You all say that.”

Marshall shook his head at this, then smirked. “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

“Wrong doctor, I’m afraid,” the Doctor said cheerfully, bringing up the rear. “But you’ve got the right idea.”


Ending song, Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel. Because grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.