The heart of the sunburnt country. A land of sand oceans and baked trees. Out where the river broke, with the bloodwood and the desert oak. Holden wrecks and boiling diesels, steamed in forty five degree heat. Out here, nothing changes. Not in a hurry anyway.

The endless plains stretched to the horizon. Loneliness, for a thousand kilometres in every direction.

A single, dusty Holden ute tore down a wide dirt road. The faded white, paint job was caked with red dust around the wheel arches. A long crack ran through the windscreen and the open tray wasn’t far off being a sandpit.

The sheer remoteness of the location allowed the car’s single occupant to blare music through a rolled down window. He sung loudly to himself, not that anyone was there to hear him.

“You know they don’t have a chooooice! Boys will be boys!” Andrew sang, as the faithful ute roared down the barren road.

The solitary human had been given a work vehicle to drive into the dead centre of the country. He worked as a prospector for a huge mining firm. The company mainly dealt with iron ore, but were now interested in the absolutely massive uranium deposits scattered all over the red centre. Andrew had been sent out to meet with fellow colleagues to discuss where the most cost effective location would be.

After much debate, it had been decided that a forgotten dirt road called Warrego road, that branched off the stuart highway, straight through the country’s middle was the best place.

While good for mining, it was impossibly boring driving for hours on end. The trip was only made interesting when the huge road trains careened past the small ute in the opposite direction. The first time he’d seen one, he’d very nearly drove under it.

While working for the mines was good pay, great pay in fact,the downside was that the hours were long. Sometimes, the human would go days without seeing home, and in turn, his soon to be wife and their daughter.

It wasn’t so bad since his fiancee was on maternity leave to look after little Jessica, but when she got older, Andrew was seriously going to have to consider other employment.

But for the moment, getting them financially secure was top priority. Mortgages didn’t pay themselves.

Eventually, the abused ute pulled up to a small shack on the side of the road. The loose rocks and dirt crunched under the car’s tyres as it slowed to a halt.

Andrew stepped out, stretching his back as the car ticked in the heat behind him. The sun was starting to go down and the company didn’t want him driving on a dark road by himself.

They needed the car afterall.

As a result, a small hut had been purchased off the side of the highway for his use. He was nowhere near his destination yet, and there were no motels for hundreds of kilometres in all directions.

Sighing, the lonely human walked up to the ramshackle building. It wasn’t much, a single room with an old fashioned outhouse some metres behind it. The heavy, faded wooden door groaned open. The quality of the house showing as one corner dragged along the unsanded hardwood floors, that more or less resembled railway sleepers than actual flooring.

Strangely, it was nicely furnished. Nicely for the outback anyway. The standard wall decor of rusty rabbit traps and old dual saws were bolted to the walls. An old cooktop that look like it had been ripped straight from last century sat in the corner collecting dust.

A rusted, rounded edge fridge, bearing the letters SMEG along the freezer door filled the space in the other corner. While charmingly rustic, Andrew knew better than to open it. All sorts of diseases could be caught from ancient fridges.

Opposite the ‘kitchen’ was a single, scratched dresser, desperately in need of a varnish, and an old iron bed, complete with a lumpy mattress. Its only saving grace was that of a slightly browned sheep’s skin that was draped over it.

Andrew briefly considered taking it with him for use in his own house, but decided it would be more needed here.

Kicking off his steel toed caps, he walked over to the bed, and unceremoniously fell into it. A cloud of red dust puffed up around him, earning a groan from the man.

‘That’s going to stain isn’t it?’ he asked himself, wondering how much of the dust filled bed he was laying in would find its way into his hair while he slept.

Turning over to get the dust out of his nostrils, he looked up at the ceiling. To his joy, he realized that there was infact no ceiling, and could see straight through the rafters to the rusted corrugated iron roof.

A rather large gap in between two sheets of the roof, gave way to the quickly darkening sky above him. The view would be pleasant, as long as it didn’t rain.

Having done the slightly illegal act of eating and drinking at the wheel on the way, there was no reason to try and cook anything. The fact that the cooker looked about as safe as playing chicken with a propeller plane deterred him even more.

Andrew let himself space out as he lay there, staring out through the hole in the roof. Occasionally debating to himself on going back to the car, however it being a ute, meant the seats couldn’t fold flat, which wouldn’t be any more comfortable than his current situation.

Still, it could be worse. He was only here for one night, then he would be on his way. Driving huge distances was not as common as one would think in Australia, so thankfully Andrew did not have to do this often.

“Just a few more days,” he mumbled to himself.

Andrew woke with a snort. The small shack was shuddering around him. The sound of rolling thunder and gusting wind echoed around the hut. In his just awoken state, he very nearly chalked it up to a passing train.

That was until he remembered that the closest railway line was hundreds of kilometres to the west, and abandoned.

The shuddering intensified, cancelling the notion that it might have been a passing truck. A few forks on the top of the kitchen countertop began to jump around, before clattering to the floor.

Andrew jumped out of bed, a quick glance upwards caused him to let out a grunt of pain and bring an arm up to shield his eyes from a blinding light that pierced through the ceiling. The shaking grew by magnitudes, nearly taking the man down.

The light above him moved around and began to engulf the sides of the shack. The strange light then began to pierce through the gaps in the timber walls. Andrew’s breathing quickened. If there was one thing he didn’t like, it was not knowing what was going on.

A particularly strong quake finally toppled the human. A floorboard on the opposite end of the room snapped in half and poked upwards. The light became more invasive through the cracks in the walls.

The noise had changed into a strange, deafening hum. Fear struck Andrew. He’d seen close encounters of the third kind, and he was not keen on probing,especially when it could be happening to him soon.

Glancing over to the front door, he noticed it was but a few feet away. He’d fallen asleep with the keys in his pocket, hopefully the car was still outside.

Just as he reached for them, the light exploded into the room. A deafening crack rung through the night air. It was as if a million whips and lighting strikes had hit the same point.

The shockwave blasted across the outback, a ring of dust expanding from where a small wooden shack had once stood.

Ponyville was in chaos.

Despite Discord being out of town, he would have been very proud to see the utter shambles that it was in right now. Ponies were rapidly, and fiercely nailing heavy planks of woods over their small thatched roofed cottages windows. All the local stores had been ransacked in the blink of an eye. Freak storms weren't unheard of in Equestria, but they certainly weren't common, and Ponyville was one of the only towns with experience.

A war raged in the sky above them, dozens upon dozens of tiny multicolour dots fighting a much larger, more threatening wall of black storm clouds. Punch after punch and countless kicks battered and assaulted the encroaching storm, but for every piece of cloud the pegasi busted another five would loom out of the thunder in its place.

A losing battle. But one Rainbow Dash was determined to win. She'd beat clouds into submission even before she could flap her wings in synch, but this storm was testing her.

"Take that!" she growled as she delivered a flying roundhouse kick into the wall, to which her hoof simply poofed through the cloud. The spongey mass of the cloud quickly grabbed at the ponies hoof, the sudden stop doing her no favours.

"Ouch," she hissed, pulling her leg out. This cloud front wasn't only doing battle with her physically, but it was also tearing her brain apart. She'd fought countless rouge storms that drifted in from the Everfree, but this one was different.

Different in the fact that, while it had all the ferocity of a wild Everfree storm, it didn't actually come from anywhere near the cursed forest.

And the size too. No storm, not even the largest, Monsoon class storms pumped out by the weather factory were this big. This storm was otherworldly.

The fur along Rainbow's back suddenly tingled before standing ramrod stiff. A telltale of an incoming lightning strike no doubt. Every pegasus knew what that was. And by the way her fur was buzzing she could tell that this was gonna be one big motherbucker.

Instincts took over and a flood of pegasi suddenly dived towards the terrain. The lightning was building. Thunder grumbled deeply within the cloud as the smaller lightning arced all over. Then, in a sudden chilling moment, everything went quite.

The light was intense. Even behind closed eyelids the light still invaded the ponies eyes. It was as if the sun itself was born out of that storm.

And the noise. Unlike any thunderclap, this was deafening. The sound akin to a glacier cracking along with the noise of a million trains slamming into each other echoed around the country. The sound echoed across the fields and shuddered the mountains that Canterlot stood upon, the noise trampled over trees and shook windows with the anger of tornado. A great gust of wind kicked ponies down, leaving them breathless, when in reality it wasn't the wind but the sheer force of the soundwave alone.

And then, nothing.

The huge cloud front that had gathered began to quickly dissipate even faster than it had materialized. Within a few minutes, the sun was back to shining and the only remaining evidence was all the shook up trees and fortified houses.

That and the crater left by the mother of all lightning strikes. Trees and grass for almost one hundred meters around it were charred, thankfully it contacted in a field to the north of any properties. The crater itself wasn't much. A small dugout about ten body lengths across, the dirt in its walls a charred black smooth rock.

Glass.

And finally, in the centre was the most remarkable thing. Among a twisted half of an old bed frame, some rotting untreated timbers and part of a woollen rug, was one bizarre creature, knocked out cold.

Still clutching onto a ring of keys.

Author's Note

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