//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16:	Skilaðu til Hesturþorpið.* 
// Story: Rainbow Dash Eats a Kitten 
// by Shark8 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 16:	Skilaðu til Hesturþorpið.
(Or Home again.)

It was another warm, beginning-of-summer day at Ponyville and Rainbow Dash was once again on her way to imbibe and ingest with her intended, her incredible and irresistible intended.
She giggled to herself and blushed when she thought of Nicolas Cage, like a silly little love-struck filly. These past few weeks after returning from their mission to save Fluttershy and Spike, and incidentally summoning Aquaman, had been amazingly quiet, other than the tongue-lashing Big Macintosh gave ‘Piercey Danielle Applejackson’ for being “all reckless like” to ‘take care of’ the squid.
Rainbow Dash found herself laughing, and thinking, ‘I mean “Piercey Danielle Applejackson”, how funny… oh, I’m so going to tease her about it!’
Spotting her human below, waiting at the outdoor café, she swooped in for a landing, deciding to put a quick loop-de-loop on the end.
“Hey Nick!” She said, waving.
“Hi Dash.” Nicolas Cage said, taking a drink from his coffee and pushing away a pile of papers and books that he’d apparently been working on while waiting for her… though she was sure she wasn’t late.
Stealing a look back she cursed the big, old clock on the town hall which hadn’t worked in thirty years, something about being hit by a lightning bolt by a careless weather-pony that was told to all the newbie weather-ponies in Ponyville. Though, to be honest, Rainbow Dash did suspect that there was no real clock there and it was a facade put in place to allow the weather-team to say that to all its new inductees.
“So, what do ya got there?” Dash said eyeing the pile, which reminded her vaguely of Twilight Sparkle, but in a sexy Nick Cage sort of way.
“Oh, I’m just working on consolidating a bunch of stories, you know folklore…” he gestured at the distant Everfree Forest, barely visible from here they were, “Like the old stories about that forest being haunted, or—” he gestured back toward the clock at city-hall, “—that the storm that stopped the clock coincided with the disappearance of several ponies of note, a ‘Twilight Jackson’ and her husband who was described as a ‘odd and somewhat effeminate-looking Minotaur’… but while there’s references, but there’s no pictures of them.”
“That’s so interesting…” Rainbow Dash said, enjoying hearing him talk and staring into his eyes which, despite being so small, were amazingly attractive.


*     *     *


Steve came running out of the newly established hive, what they had found while excavating newly constructed tunnels… well it was incredible.
“My Queen!” He gasped, “We’ve found something.”
“Is it a piece of gum?” Chrysalis asked, like a little kid who was obsessed with the sticky, chewy substance.
Synthia rubbed her temples again, Chrysalis was obviously obsessing about something stupid, again.
“No, it’s not gum.” Synthia growled under her breath.
“Well, what is it?”Chrysalis asked.
“Come and see.” Steve said, beckoning the changeling queen into the hive. “Our scientists have never seen anything like it!”
“Wait, we have scientists?”
“No,” Synthia said, “They’re just two drones who found lab-coats and like to pretend.”
“But if they have the lab-coats they have to be scientists… or doctors!” Chrysalis objected.
“Why’d you have to tell her!?” Steve whispered angrily to Synthia, then to the queen, “Of course they’re scientists! How else would they know what ‘sucrose’, ‘fructose’, ‘lactose’, and ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ are?”
“Hm, you have a point…” Chrysalis nodded while rubbing her chin with a hoof, “If Stevena weren’t such a great Grand Vizier I’d promote you.”
“You should, totally!” Synthia over-enthusiastically shouted, seeing the shadow of hope of passing the ‘honor’ on to someone else.
Chrysalis laughed and dashed her dreams to small splintery bits, “But then I’d miss you too much Stevena!”
Synthia felt like collapsing on the ground and crying, sobbing and cursing the fates that had made Chrysalis the hive’s queen.
“Come, my queen, it is amazing.” Steve said, ushering the queen to the tunnels.
Minutes passed, suspense filling the air, or it would have if the dust in the air would have left room for the suspense to saturate the air. But there, in the wall of the new cavern there stood a giant metallic ring that looked textured, segmented along another inset ring decorated with symbols.
“As you can see, my queen,” one of the drones wearing a lab-coat said, indicating the ring, “there’s thirty-eight symbols along this inner track… we still don’t know what they mean, but we think it might have something to do with these V-shaped protrusions on the outer portion…”
“Yes, I was hoping that you’d let us shoot it with anti-protons.”
“What!?” Steve stared in shock at the suggestion, “Since when do you shoot antimatter at unidentified objects?”
“Since we’re scientists!” The other lab-coat wearing ‘scientist’ said.