A soft step into the darkness of the cave rang through the silence.

"Elizabeak..." Fluttershy called softly as she took another step, the darkness engulfing her as she moved on, "A-are you in here?"

A deep rumble seemed to shake the ground. Fluttershy shot up with a squeak, moving faster than she had in weeks. A light breeze carrying a whiff of sulphur filled the cave's mouth. Fluttershy's wings trembled in mid flight, involuntarily edging towards her sides as she fought to stay in flight. She knew that smell well, knew it from her last encounter with her greatest fear. The only thing that kept her from toppling over in shock was the knowledge that would get her killed.

Turning carefully in the air, Fluttershy softly touched down, facing the cave's mouth. Just taking it one step at a time, there was no need for her to think about was just behind her. Another rumble, another breeze. The trembling was hard to quell, only her fear of being caught kept her from giving in to the fear brought by that breeze. That breath.

A flash of white caught her eye, wafting out of the cave on the dredges of the last breath. Fluttershy's breath caught in her throat. A white feather, a chicken feather.

Turning around, she felt a new fear rise inside her, overpowering all else. The fear of losing a friend.

"Hey, does anypony else hear that?" Asked Dash as she looked questioningly up at the sky, her ears pricked.

"Now that you mention it..." Applejack raised a forehoof up to her brow, squinting towards a fast-growing pink spot in the sky, "Doesn't that look sorta like-"

"AAAAAND GOTCHA!" A pink blur shot from the sky, heading straight towards Goku, passing through and skidding a good twenty feet along the mud face first, hooves wrapped around her body as she missed the most bone-crushing hug she'd ever attempted.

"What?"

"Hey, are you alright down there? That looked like it hurt." A hand gripped her head lightly, lifting her out of the mud with a sodden look on her face.

"What?"

"I suppose," she started as Goku placed her back on her freshly untangled hooves, "But you know what would make me more alright? If I hadn't had my mouth open! Bleuch!" She quickly opened her mouth, spat a pile of mud on the forest floor and scraped the rest off of her tongue with her hooves, "Whatever it looks like, mud does not taste like chocolate icing!"

"What?"

"Yes, I think we all know that, Darling," Rarity gingerly trotted towards Pinkie with a hint of green in her cheeks, "Now, let me help with that." A flash of blue magic burst from her horn, hitting Pinkie in the barrel, dispersing into a light blue shockwave that ran across Pinkie's fur. Where it passed, the mud simply fell off as if suddenly repulsed by Pinkie's body.

"What?!"

"Oooh, tickly!" Pinkie let out a giggle as the magic finished, before pointing a hoof at Goku with a challenging look on her face, "And, if breaking out the party cannon didn't work, I'll just come up with a new way to get you next time! I will get you, if it's the last thing I do!"

"WHAT?!" Twilight shouted, mane in disarray and eyes twitching rapidly as she brushed past Spike, ignoring his frantic attempts to calm her down, "WHAT WAS THAT?! SHE JUST WENT THROUGH YOU!" She paused, taking a deep breath along with a hoof gesture as if pushing the stress away. Safely calmed down, she looked over towards where Pinkie landed, saw that there was, in fact, two Gokus and promptly lost all semblance of calm she had scraped up, "That you that's STILL STANDING THERE!"

"Oh that? It's just an after image, nothing to get worked up about. Look, it's not me," Goku walked up to his doppelgänger, stuck an arm through it's chest and waved it around to get rid of it, accidentally causing the trees behind the clone to bend from the gust, "See, nothing that strange. If you want to see strange, just take a look at the multi-form technique. That one was a doozy to get down, and I'm still not as good at is as Tien."

"After... Image..." Twilight's eyes had glazed over, her hair resembling a pile of hay at it's least organised, as she muttered to herself, "Multi... Form..." Some slight twitching in her hears as Spike snapped his claws in front of her face, a sliver of drool coming out of her open mouth, "Must... Tell... Princesses... About... New... Discovery..."

Spike let out a sigh as he shook his head, looking up at Goku, "There's no point trying to talk to her when she's like this. She's in what I call the 'book trance'. Happens when she spends too much time reading something she doesn't quite get. She's just processing."

Goku laughed, pointing to his face with a grin, "But I'm not a book. I'm Goku."

Everyone who could smacked their foreheads.

"So where do you make her out to be now, big guy?" asked Rainbow, hovering about Goku's eye level as the group made it's way through the underbrush. Greenery wasn't as thick as it was before, scorched patches littered the path and surrounding forest at odd intervals. Spike led along a muttering Twilight at the back, staying as close as he could to the rest of the group, who clustered around Goku as if for protection.

"Only a few hundred meters in front of us," Goku tapped his chin in equal parts shock and thought, "Say, do any of you know if she'd have a reason to confront a big lizard-feeling thing?"

"Uhh, 'big lizard-feeling thing'?" Rainbow tapped a hoof to her chin in thought, "You mean like a dragon? No way would Fluttershy go near one unless she needed to, and even then she'd be all flighty about it."

"Well, she's feeling pretty scared, and there's a much larger power level from the lizard. Feels like they're talking, and the lizard is angry."

Author's Note

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE
*cue evil laughter and lightning*