//------------------------------// // 15. Back The World // Story: I.D. - That Indestructible Something // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// I.D. INJECTOR DOE That Indestructible Something By Chatoyance ═════════════════════ 15. Back The World "In the fight between you and the world, back the world." - Franz Kafka Gregoria Samson lay covered in cool, freshly dug earth. She lay fully prostrate, as low and flat within the ditch she had bucked out as she could. It was only three feet deep, but there wasn't much time left, not much time at all. Her hooves were half buried in the wall of soil in front of her, and that was what allowed her to 'see' what was going on in the distance. Damon, by her side, could do little else but concentrate on maintaining the wavering bubble that covered them both. He had embedded leaves from the forest floor within his telekinetic barrier, so as to hopefully render the two of them invisible from the air. The thudding of the chopper blades rent the air like not-so-distant drums. They were half a mile from Crown's compound, deep in the forest to the south of it, yet the massive helicopters pounded in their pony ears. They were making no attempt to try to be stealthy, or to not be noticed. Piercing shafts of fulgent light swept the distant Crown compound from high in the midnight sky. Gregoria and Damon were too far to clearly hear the crackling commands and shouts barked from speakers on the copters, but it was likely that commands to 'freeze' and 'assume the position' were still a major topic. No, not long now. Inside her earthpony mind, Gregoria deliberately gave in completely to her Equestrian nature and sent her will fully into her hooves. Dark earth became as water to her inner eye, and around her an upside-down forest of roots and fungus created a twisted mirror of the above-ground forest that sheltered her. Gregoria pushed through the darkness, past tunnels with sleeping creatures, past buried stone and ancient gravel. Further, faster her mind pressed, rippling magically just beneath the alien grass that surrounded the compound, washing through and around the vastly altered vault underneath what had once been the Crown ranch house, out towards the foundations of where the big red barn and the faux Equestrian cottage had stood. Her earthpony awareness tingled, filled with the remnants of a golden, impossibly powerful glow permeating the very earth. The arcane energies filled her with awe and sublime dread. They were disbursing, into the ground, altering it still, albeit very, very slowly now. Gregoria could not sense any living creature on the ground, anywhere now. Either everypony had escaped... or been taken up into the air. But the weight, the terrible weight that had been dropped through the roof of the cottage was still there, and it vibrated, every second, a regular pulse, faint and sharp and distinct. The pulse of a timing mechanism. Gregoria came immediately back to her body, her awareness so carefully stretched forth snapping back like a fantastically powerful rubber band. Her entire essence screamed in agony with the shock of the violence of her return. She screamed into the night, ending in tears and sobbing. "...DOWN! Don't mind her, she can't help it, YES! FLAT ON THE DIRT! NOW!" Damon closed the low, leafy bubble of telekinetic force he was struggling to maintain as the diamond dog entered. Gregoria curled herself into a ball, still whimpering, trying to cope with having been stepped on and brought out of her deep concentration so suddenly. "This won't do! MOVE!" Michel the diamond dog rudely tossed Damon and then Gregoria aside. Damon lost his mental control, and the leaves fluttered down everywhere as his softly glowing field collapsed. He landed on the right side of the ditch, in a spiny bush. Gregoria landed hard, against a tree, which woke her from her state of shock at being violently returned to herself. "What the flying pegasus is..." "It's an air-fuel bomb you shit-for-brain morons!" Michel did not share in the pony mindset. "This won't work!" Michel was digging, digging like a diamond dog, swimming through rock and root and soil as though it were nothing. Dirt and debris blasted out of the tunnel he was creating, the jet of matter ripping branches and bark off of the trees in the way. Finally, deep under the ground, he shouted "GET IN HERE IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!" Damon was standing and peered around the incredibly deep, wide slanting shaft. "Get... IN!" Michel was not in a good mood. Gregoria hobbled to the edge of the entrance, and then suddenly felt herself thrust down the tunnel like a bag of horsemeat. Damon had bucked her, hard, right in the flanks, and she had tumbled poll over hocks down to a pitch black chamber that smelled of dirt and dampness. The chamber was abruptly illuminated in harsh orange-yellow light. Gregoria could see the ends of roots dangling from the ceiling, and the gleam of rocks in the walls embedded in the earth. Blocking some of the light was the hunched-over body of Damon, just in front of her in the small cavern, his horn blazing with effort as he maintained a wall of force to close off the entrance of the open tunnel. Beyond Damon's magical barrier, all was fire, just fire, the very air itself was fire, and if there was a forest beyond that horrifying conflagration, it had become hell itself. The soil began to smell burned around Gregoria, as the ceiling grew increasingly warm. The last thing Gregoria saw before the light was sealed away, was Michel ferociously blocking up the open tunnel, his powerful diamond dog hindlegs packing dirt and crushed stone solidly against Damon's barrier. In the warm, steaming dark, Gregoria's hearing began to return. Her ears were ringing, the high, faint rock-concert sensation that indicated potentially permanent damage. She hadn't even heard the explosion, or else it simply hadn't registered, but, as she sat, her ears hurting, she began to realize she had felt it. Her insides felt bruised, and her bones ached. The air was thick with toasted, hot dust, undoubtedly blasted from the earthen walls during the initial shock. It was hard to breath, but at least none of the flaming atmosphere outside had entered. If it had, she realized, they would all be burning corpses now. A fuel-air bomb. That was what she had sensed, heavy and ticking, placed carefully at ground zero, the Tudor cottage. Gregoria wept, unable to see the muddy streams of her own tears steaming in the dark. ──── ∆ ──── Joanna was showing her how to use the triggers on the controller. "I half lay on my side, like this..." Joanna curled her flanks close to her belly, and stuck out her legs carefully. "Then I pinch the controller between my rear pasterns... these bits here." "I know what pasterns are! I'm not a foal!" Gregoria frowned her hardest frown at the pegasus. Joanna grinned. "But do you know your plot from a hole in the ground?" Gregoria tried to get angry, but ended up grinning back instead. "You are one funny pony. In the head." "Ooh... I'm telling Crown. Not very pony, there." Joanna looked thoughtful for a moment. "Actually, that was kind of Rainbow Dash, come to think of it. Not very good, but pony enough." Joanna returned to her instruction. "Alright, so, with the controller tight against the sides of your rear pasterns, you've got it locked, solid. Use the back edge of your forehoof, the part where the frog starts, the little shelf there? Use that edge to press the triggers. Tapping the bumper buttons doesn't change, just use whatever part, but that edge of your hoof is perfect to catch the triggers." Joanna studied Gregoria's efforts. "No, from above, see? Over the top, you catch the trigger from over the top, not underneath. Yeah, like that." "It's weird doing it like this." Gregoria's leg twitched from strain, and the controller fell from the grip of her hind legs and skidded across the floor. "BISCUITS!" "It's weird being a pony. Use what you got. That's the first rule of disability." Joanna's voice was severe, almost bitter. Gregoria retrieved her controller with her forehooves, then wiggled back so she could see the big flatscreen. "You... I never realized. You don't like being a pony, do you?" Joanna looked afraid, like she had been caught. "I... I wouldn't say that. Exactly. I miss my hands, that's all. Hands are useful. For controllers and stuff. Flying is great. It's a pretty good compensation, to a point." Joanna studied her controller. "Besides, thanks to your roommate's boyfriend, we're all kinda stuck this way, so we don't have any choice... in anything." "It wasn't deliberate, you know. It isn't like he did this to us on purpose. Lots of humans have been injectors, according to Crown. Besides, he paid for it. With his life." Gregoria had been spending a lot of time with Joanna, what with Rachel always off trying to be an alicorn with Crown. Gregoria was coming to the conclusion that Joanna put on a front of being a contented pegasus, but it was seeming more and more false the more time she spent with the mare. Something big was bugging her, That much Gregoria was certain of. Gregoria decided to finally press the issue. "Jo, what really is..." The light was intense, golden, it cast shadows on the walls and glared off the flatscreen television. Suddenly, the power cut off, the screen going dark, the Xbox shutting down, the lights in the ranch house instantly dark. The pulsing, yellow light turned everything into gold edges and dim shadow. Gregoria and Joanna leaped to their hooves and dashed to the window over Rachel's bed. The barn was a silhouette, large and boxy, behind it a pillar of gold shot up like a spear into the heavens. The column of shining, sparkling light began to widen, expanding in all dimensions as it grew. It began to intersect the barn, passing through the barn, devouring it within a golden fog. Wherever it touched the barn, the barn... changed. Half the barn, now easy to see in the intense, day-like blaze of light, had become an accurate vision of Applejack's barn from Friendship Is Magic. The other half, rapidly being converted as the shaft of energy expanded outwards, was still an earthly barn, still the barn they knew. That didn't last long. In seconds, the entire barn was fully Equestrianized, and the swelling pillar of light was still growing in size. Before she left the window, Gregoria noted the ground around the barn was no longer dirt and patches of dried-out grass. It was green, lush, and unearthly, dotted with dinner-plate sized multicolored flowers. It was Equestrian land, Equestrian grass and flowers, and the unearthly zone was coming closer and closer to the ranch house. Gregoria suddenly remembered. "I'm going to get my Celestia stuff and try to magic Chelsea." Fear made Gregoria's pony knees tremble. She ran out of the shared bedroom, heading for the back door, the door that led to the barn. As her hooves skidded around the corner into the large living room that filled the A-Frame portion of the rambling house, she nearly collided with Joanna, who had left the bedroom before her. Joanna was shouting into a cellphone, placed on the floor. It wasn't an iPhone. "...WHAT YOU WARNED ME ABOUT! YES! AN INCURSION!" Gregoria's mouth opened in dawning shock and anger. Joanna stared back, unrepentant. "They have my family!" Gregoria thought, briefly, about bucking Joanna's ugly pegasus muzzle across the room. Instead, she abruptly turned, and ran on, to the back door. The impossible tower of gold light was like a skyscraper now, hundreds of feet in diameter and still expanding. It's height was beyond measure, it rose straight and perfect, shrinking with distance, until it was a needle against the dark velvet of the night. As Gregoria froze at the back door of the ranch house, she could only stare in horror and wonder as the immense circle of daylight crept towards where she stood. It was just before midnight, yet there was a growing, thousand foot circle of daylight sweeping toward her, changing everything within it into the magical land of Equestria. Finally, Gregoria managed to move a hoof. The sight before her was just so overwhelming, so overpowering, that she had felt rooted to the spot. The shock that had trapped her was fading now, and with that she began to reason again, to consider what to do next. Her best friend, Rachel Priss, had to be at the center of the expanding shaft of magical force. She must have released some unimaginable power laying dormant within her Celestia body. Gregoria remembered the 'The Cutie Mark Chronicles' episode of Friendship Is Magic. Filly Twilight Sparkle had lost control of her powers entirely in a flashback within that episode, going Akira with an overload of uncontrollable, godlike power. Was Rachel suffering a similar fate? Her stated goal had been merely to help poor Chelsea, yet the inexorable expansion of the pillar of gold was nearly at the ranch house and showed no sign of stopping. If anything, its transforming powers were picking up speed. Gregoria put a hesitant hoof in the direction of the center of the expanding tower of unimaginable forces. Rachel. Maybe she could talk to her, or, if it was the only way, buck her hard enough to snap her out of it. It was then that Gregoria noticed the barking, mindless terror that had seized Randal the Dragon's boston terrier, Sunny. Sunny kept Randal company, out in his Quonset hut, but sometimes wandered the farm, looking for treats and interacting with the other members of the menagerie. Sunny was a good dog, clever and well behaved, and he often cheered Chelsea up. As the increasingly vast magical storm captured more territory, Gregoria noted Sunny barking furiously, eyes wide and rolling with the whites showing, ears back. Sunny was terrified beyond all doggy rationality. As she watched, the golden-green edge of Equestria-On-Earth nearly to the back steps, something in Sunny finally snapped. He must have been backing up from the moment that the pillar began, now his short bulldog tail was to the ranch house and he was running out of space. Perhaps the presence of Gregoria nearby gave him courage. Whatever the reason, Sunny the Boston terrier rallied and decided to run straight into the golden wall of light, doubtless to save Chelsea and Rachel at the center of it. As Sunny penetrated into the magical golden zone, he rapidly changed. His contours rippled and became out-of-focus, then solidified again. Sunny was no longer a Boston terrier. He had become Winona, Applejack's dog, and instead of being terrified, he sat down and panted, contentedly. All upset was gone from him. He had been completely Equestrianized. He was home, now, a proper vision of the only ordinary canine ever shown on My Little Pony. He was not the same entity that had barked and backed away in abject horror. Gregoria was running, now, galloping, her hooves heedless of tile or carpet. Joanna was gone, but Damon was there. He had been watching from well behind Gregoria, now he watched as she fled past him, her great pony eyes wide in mindless fear. Sunny had been completely changed, personality and identity, everything. It had been too much for Gregoria to process, too much for her to handle. She ran and ran, incapable of stopping herself, every instinct forcing her to flee for her very soul. As Gregoria left the front door of the ranch house, and began running blindly towards the treeline at the edge of Crown's property, she vaguely became aware of Damon running beside her, equally terrified, his eyes also wide. The sight of him beginning to pass her only heightened her horror, and now it was a race to the false protection of the equally helpless forest. There was no sanctuary, because Rachel had apparently somehow unleashed Ponygeddon itself upon the world. As the unicorn and the earthpony pushed themselves to their limits, the sound of helicopters, massive, military helicopters hammered the air. Loud voices barked through speakers while searching shafts of light scanned the distant acres of the farm. In an instant, Gregoria's legs gave out. She crashed to the grass at speed and tumbled like a racecar out of control. The same thing had happened to Damon, he rolled over and over, gasping from the impact with the ground. As Gregoria's mind began to try to make sense of what had just happened, she realized there had been a sound that had not been a sound. It had struck past her ears, straight through her flesh, right into her bones. Somehow the burst of sound from on high had shut off her motor control. A sonic weapon. It must be. She vaguely recalled reading about the military having such things, mostly nonlethal weapons for dealing with large crowds of civilians. Gregoria tried to get up. Her legs felt rubbery and clumsy and difficult to control. Damon seemed to be having the same trouble, he looked drunk, even though he never drank. It was hard to focus her eyes, and her thoughts were muddled. The helicopters, dark masses visible only because of the shine from the gargantuan pillar of golden light, were converging. The pillar was shrinking. It was rapidly contracting, back to its source. The sonic weapon must have been directed at Rachel's location, that it could still affect a pony so far out filled Gregoria with worry for her friend. It must have stopped Rachel's overload, if that was what it was. Perhaps Rachel was unconscious now, in need of help. Gregoria wasn't able to move towards the house, now that she had managed to stand. Damon had her tail in his teeth. "Let me go! Rachel!" Gregoria dug her hooves in, scraping up large divots of grass and soil, trying to tear loose from Damon's grasp. "Unh-Unh!" Damon would not let go. "But Rachel!" Gregoria pleaded, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. Damon had regained his full capacity for thought. He had been an exceptional student under Mr. Crown. Gregoria found herself being pushed by a wall of silvery light that she could not breach. Damon was herding her now, with the field from his horn. "Copters!" He said the word like it explained everything. "I know! Rachel!" Gregoria reared and hammered at the shimmering wall with her forehooves, but the wall only pressed forward, toppling her onto her backside. Still it moved, pushing her along the ground. "It's them! Hundreds of them! With guns." Damon was forced to shift his advancing barrier - Gregoria had found her feet and was trying to move to the left and then the right to get around the magical wall. "I - DON'T - CARE!" Gregoria made a perfectly hopeless effort to leap Damon's expertly mobile wall. Damon fixed Gregoria with his eyes, muzzle to muzzle in the dark. "If you are ALIVE, you can try to rescue her. Alive and UNCAPTURED!" Some of the massive black helicopters had landed already, humans with weapons and helmets swarmed from them like ants. Crown's farm was already utterly lost. Above, more helicopters circled, searching, hunting. Damon put a dirt-encrusted hoof on Gregoria's chest. "They won't hurt her. She's power, and power is what they want. But they can't let this place exist!" The eerily calm words burrowed into Gregoria's reason. They would already have Rachel. The copters were beginning to lift off again, rising above the huge circle of alien land and unearthly buildings that had replaced the barn, the cottage, and the ranch house entirely. Where there had once been a human dwelling, a terrestrial farm, now there was a part of Equestria, and it was clearly visible to the humans. The beams of light from the circling helicopters were all focused on it now, scanning it, now and then converging on the purely Equestrian architecture. There was no perceptual blindness now, not there, not within that impossible zone. They would erase it. They would have to. It was huge, though. Gregoria's mind tried to imagine how such a large change to the world itself could be removed. Whatever it was, it would have to be tremendous. Gregoria imagined fire, explosions - nukes. She didn't know what these humans had, but it would take something terrible and destructive to erase nearly a circular half-mile of alien land from the world. Damon's words returned in her mind. Only if she was alive, and uncaught, could she do anything to help her friend. Instantly she turned and ran again for the forest, Damon right behind her, trying to put as much distance behind them and the farm as they possibly could, before trying to find a place to shelter. Running entirely away would be impossible, they weren't that fast. A pegasus could do it, perhaps, but they were both ground-pounders, earthpony and unicorn. What they needed was a bunker. It was clear from the sound that the helicopters were pulling back, and that meant danger was immanent. Gregoria stopped and began bucking at the dirt with every ounce of her almost endless earthpony strength and power. The countryside was flat, but a berm of earth was better than nothing, a ditch to lay in was better than standing should there be an explosion. ──── ∆ ──── The ceiling beat down upon them with waves of heat. The small chamber was stuffy and felt like an oven and still Damon and Michel would not open the blocked tunnel. "Fuel-air bomb! Bad as a nuke, only no radiation. Worse in some ways - it burns the air itself!" Damon had trouble saying the words, his voice sounded scratchy from the dust and how much coughing he had been doing. "That's... that's why I sealed us in. Gets into everything, through even tiny cracks. Air holes, you're still dead. It's a bunker killer!" Michel panted in the absolute darkness. "Takes... time... for the heat to rise, the air to clear." Gregoria felt sick and on the edge of panic. She felt trapped, buried alive, which she was, and the only thing that kept her laying still was forcing herself to focus on how quickly Michel could move through earth and stone. "I can't breath. I'm... I'm losing it here, guys. Seriously. I don't know how long I can hold on." It was taking every bit of Gregoria's efforts to cling to the image of Michel's diamond dog powers being able to free them all in seconds. The air was hot and musty, it smelled like burned dirt. Gregoria's throat ached, and her lungs were stinging like she had somehow breathed in a mist made of hot sauce. "Hang in there, dammit!" Michel growled between panting. "We're all hurting here, pony!" Pony. Pony - Gregoria sought out her pony brain deliberately, desperately now. Maybe her pony brain could calm her down somehow, maybe some herd instinct or cutsie-poo pony friendship magic could work where her human mind was desperate to start bucking her way to freedom. Trapped in the dark, trapped in a sweltering oven of stale air, underground, made her feel like she was going mad. "Please?" Gregoria was whimpering now. "Please... I can't do this. I can't take much more of this. Please... please..." She began to cry and wiggle as she fought to keep panic at bay. Her barrel and limbs kept pushing and prodding the too-warm bodies of Damon and Michel pressed close against her. "I... I'm losing it too." Damon's voice was shaky. He was not himself. "I think... I'd rather burn alive than... I really can't..." He was shaking now, obviously fighting a complete breakdown. Michel was panting faster and faster. "Alright. Listen. Do your barrier - no, wait! Make your horn glow, find the tunnel, make sure where it is. Then put your barrier up. If it's still fire out there..." The small chamber became visible, illuminated in silver light. The air was foggy and thick. Damon's eyes were wide and shook slightly in their sockets. The sight made Gregoria feel worse herself. Michel was trembling. "There? I'm pretty sure it was there?" Michel wrung his paws in anguish. "Be sure. If it's fire, even a crack, even the tiniest gap..." "I can tell." Gregoria fought to maintain control, but her voice was plaintive and filled with fear. "Earthpony. I can tell." "WHERE?" Damon was just about to break. There was not the slightest doubt of it. "There!" Gregoria tried to point with a hoof, but there wasn't room to turn around. She motioned with her head, instead. Damon immediately projected a wall of force which partially interpenetrated the curve of the earthen chamber. The silver light of the barrier shimmered and made the dust and particles in the air sparkle. "No... to the... right more!" Gregoria began to struggle to get a foreleg over Michel, but it was difficult, and the feeling of being trapped was rapidly destroying her self control. "THAT'S TOO FAR! Go left... no, not that far, a little... AUGHHHH!!!" Damon was yelling back at Gregoria now, both beginning to wildly flail in the small, hot oven of earth and root and rock. Michel was being battered between them, and the roof of the chamber began to drop small chunks and more dust from their thrashing. "STOOOOOOPPPP!" The intensely piercing screech of Michel the diamond dog left Gregoria and Damon's pony ears ringing. They had frozen in shock, stunned by the overwhelming sound. "I... I have a better idea." Michel almost whimpered the words. "W-what?" Damon dissolved his barrier, but kept the glow from his horn constant. Michel panted for a moment. "Greg... oria... you can tell... stuff? Dirt stuff?" Gregoria tried to swallow, but her saliva was muddy. "Y-yeah. I can see through. Through dirt." "Rarity... Dog and Pony Show... look." Michel was panting in short quick breaths now. "Thought you... didn't watch..." Gregoria tried to grin in the dim, dusty light, but her lips stuck to her teeth. "DO IT!" Michel wasn't interested in explaining his secret viewing habits. Gregoria tried to calm down. It wasn't possible. Instead, in terror and desperation, she pushed herself out through her hooves, already half buried in the floor of the burrow, and into the dark space that was her earthpony awareness. The earthen chamber was a bubble in a dark sea of soil. Above was heat, terrible heat, the ocean of earth roiling as if brought to boil. Death awaited above them, as far as Gregoria could tell. The roots she could sense were dead, charcoal, and at the limit of her earthpony senses lay only a surface of sterile, baked desolation. Her powers could not reach into the air, so she had no way to know if fire still burned the very atmosphere, or if the heat was only confined to the ground. Things did not seem hopeful to her, though. Gregoria widened her perceptions, expanding her strange, magical vision of the alluvial realm beneath and surrounding her hooves. Stones and boulders floated in lithic layers, a curving, splitting immobile river of pebbles, the bed of some archaic river long buried ran below and to the side of her. And then she found the hollow. A chamber, astonishingly vast and cylindrical, perhaps a thousand feet deep and half as wide, with gravel at the bottom soaked with water. Water ran down the sides of the subterranean chasm. It was an undiscovered sinkhole, dozens of feet below Crown's farm. It had not collapsed all the way to the surface, but lay as a ticking time bomb that would one day implode to create a deep shaft in the ground. "Chamber! Underground chamber!" Gregoria carefully opened one eye and lifted a hoof, pointing it carefully in the direction of the hollow below and ahead of them. "DIG!" Michel began applying his diamond dog magic, slowly and deliberately by comparison to his previous, violent effort to dig the burrow originally. He moved the earth and rock that shattered at the touch of his claws carefully behind him, always leaving room for Damon and Gregoria to crawl beside, into the new space he created. He compressed the dirt, squeezing out all of the air trapped within it, so that the plug behind them became dense as brick. In time, they had more room in which to feel less trapped, and the air felt marginally fresher from the release of trapped oxygen within the structure of the soil. Below the blasted forest, the earth was cool, and the additional oxygen allowed the three to regain some emotional balance. Damon kept his horn bright, and occasionally Gregoria would shove her forehooves into the walls and suggest course corrections for Michel to make. She had misjudged how far away the undiscovered sinkhole was, but this was tolerated, grudgingly, because at the very least they were not baking or suffocating any longer. "Careful!" Gregoria had her hooves in the dirt, up to her pasterns. "It opens. Just a few feet, and it's a muffin of a drop. Be really, really careful, Michel!" The diamond dog nodded and moved his magically powerful claws with care. A sudden blackness appeared, beyond which Damon's unicorn light simply vanished. The scent of fresh water and cold air filled their nostrils. Michel delicately widened the opening. Utter blackness and cold air was beyond. It was as if the tunnel had opened out into a starless night sky. Gregoria closed her eyes and projected herself through her hooves once more. "We're... um... about halfway up the shaft. It's really big, a drop would be fatal. It's bigger than an apartment building in there. The bottom is pebbles and stones." Gregoria tried to think. They had air now, and lots of it. There was water to drink too - about five hundred feet below them. "Minecraft!" Gregoria heard her voice echo from beyond the black opening. Damon grinned in the silvery light from his horn. "Yeah! Minecraft!" He laughed with delight. "Michel - you think you can dig us a staircase down, following the wall?" Michel grumbled but nodded. "Not a staircase. Too much work. But I can do a slanting tunnel, easy. Same deal." It took over an hour, and twice Michel nearly went over the edge, but with Gregoria's earthpony 'soil-dar' they finally emerged onto what looked like a gravel pit at midnight. In the eerie glow of Damon's horn, they could not tell that they were in a hidden, cylindrical chamber a thousand feet high. They stood on a floor of gravel and boulders, beside a river that ran slowly along. The feeling of being above ground on a starless night was only broken by the strange acoustics, and the utter, tomb-like stillness of the air. "It's probably natural. Karst suffosion." Michel had already drunk his fill of the fresh, underground stream. "Then again, they've been messing with the water table a lot. Too many humans, too much demand. I don't know enough to tell." Gregoria licked her lips, water dripping from her muzzle. "You know more than me. Am I gonna have to learn stuff like that?" Damon finished gargling the last of the dust from his throat. "You're the earthpony. I guess geology is your science, huh?" Michel laughed. "Geology is coolsville, man. I can dig it." The two ponies groaned as the diamond dog howled at the distant ceiling. Damon was resting his horn, so they sat in the darkness. Doing magic made him tired in some way he couldn't explain, and he had been making light for a long time. Gregoria also felt a strange exhaustion, from her forays into lithic awareness. Michel said his paws hurt. Everyone agreed that was only reasonable. They had rested, breathed, coughed the last of the dust out, and drank and peed several times. They were safe, hidden and secure, and they had survived an air-fuel explosion. Whatever had been brought into existence above, whatever patch of Equestria had been created must now be a smoldering crater, lost forever. Gone also was Rachel, Chelsea, and Randal the dragon. Crown and his team were fortunate to have been far away. They would return to a disaster - and probably capture. "How do you think they'll spin it?" Damon yawned, weary from everything that had happened. The sinkhole was surprisingly cold, and all three were huddled together for mutual warmth. "A gas main blowout? Chemical tank explosion? That's what I'm betting, because of how big it had to have been. You wait, Fox will be reporting a chemical tank went up, acres of forest destroyed, millions of dollars lost. CNN too." Gregoria was sobbing, gently to herself. "They're alive." Michel petted Gregoria, and scratched behind her ears - after feeling out where they were. "Your friend, she's a powerful one. That's what they like. As long as she plays ball, of course. They're alive, bet on it. As far as they're concerned, we're weapons, tools, and she's gotta be one of the better ones with that stunt. They saved her, and Chelsea too, I'm betting. Randal - I don't know, but those choppers are huge. They could carry him." Gregoria sniffed. "You really think so?" Michel smiled, invisibly in the dark. "Yeah, I do. I know so. They came quick, didn't they? This was planned. They were gonna do this already, they were just waiting for the time. Probably had us all marked. She's alive. Absolutely, she's alive." "It was Joanna. Joanna called them, I heard her do it. She told me they had her family." Gregoria wiped her nose with her foreleg. "Joanna?" Damon was aghast "I liked Joanna!" "I did too. They had her family. That's what she said." Gregoria wiped her eyes. "Still... to sell us out like that. You really saw her?" Damon seemed personally upset. "Yeah. I did. Heard almost every word, we were together when it happened. She was teaching me how to use a controller with hooves. I was right there." Gregoria blinked, feeling blind in such absolute darkness. "Family. For some, family is everything." Michel yawned, feeling exhausted. Yawns followed from Damon and Gregoria. "She's alive. They all could be alive. You're sure about that, right?" Gregoria yawned again, setting off another round. Michel flexed his diamond dog claws. "They probably'll take 'em to S-4. That's where they take all the weird stuff - UFO's, little gray men, all of it. Nevada. Near Papoose Lake, so I read. 'Course we know there aren't any aliens, it's all just us, the changed, fulfilling some injector's deepest desires. Doesn't matter to them. If a saucer flies, it doesn't matter if it's fake, as long as it's useful. Supposedly the Grays are telepathic. That's their magic. Good for spying." Gregoria's ears lifted up. "Wait - are you saying you know where Rachel is?" "So I hear, yeah. S-4. Super-secret facility, above top secret, actually. Majik-12 Umbra clearance bullshit, not even presidents get filled in on that." Both ponies cringed repeatedly at the diamond dog's ease with human obscenities. "And you think you know where that place is?" Gregoria was very alert now. "Roughly, sure. I mean nobody knows exactly where it is, it's secret! But generally, everybody knows. Well, everybody that is into all the weirdy shit. I love the weirdy shit, man. Love it. Used to watch all the UFO shows." Michel yawned yet again, and lay his head down on his paws and closed his eyes. "Then we get some sleep. When we wake up, we dig our way out of here, it's gotta be cool up top by then. Then we get to business!" Gregoria stretched out, back to Damon, cuddling close for warmth, trying to get comfortable. "Business? What are you talking about, pony?" Michel was already half asleep. "It's all over. We need to find a new gig." "If they're what you say they are, then they'll be waiting for us up there, Michel." Damon snuggled back with Gregoria. "I'm on board. I don't want to be snatched the moment we stick our heads up, or be on the run the rest of my days. Crown promised me food and board for life. He's going to keep that promise." Gregoria felt warmer now, between unicorn and dog. "That's why we get to Crown first, and warn him away. That's the first priority." "What's with all this crap you two are going on about?" Sleep was not happening for Michel with the two ponies jabbering on. "It's over. Your friend is alive, but she's not coming back. Be glad they didn't get you. It's over." Gregoria gave Michel a poke in the back with her hoof. "No, it's just beginning. We're saving Rachel. And Chelsea. And Randal too, if he's there! And you're guiding us, saucer dog!" "THE FUCK?" The ponies cringed, but Gregoria recovered and gave Michel another jab. Michel was not impressed. "I've read about this stuff - they have secret sensors in the ground, cameras in the rocks, laser trip wires, mines, infrared scanners, stuff the public doesn't even know exists! There is no way anyone could possibly even get within ten miles of S-4, even if they could find the goddamn place!" Gregoria smiled in the pitch black. "I... am not just anyone. I am a pony - and ponies, working together, can do anything!" Gregoria's smile turned into a grin. "Powers, remember? Crown said it - they want us because we are either useful, or a threat, and after what just happened, I do not feel the least bit useful." "We're muffin superheroes!" Damon snorted with delight at the thought. They had escaped a fuel air bomb, only because they had powers. "You are fucking insane, is what you are." And with that, Michel the diamond dog made a point to ignore the ponies at his back, and fiercely went to sleep on the gravel covered ground.