Twilight's Rose

Chapter 5: Descent

Twilight’s hoofsteps thudded past the door while the alarm blared. Domino slammed the button with a hoof and stuck his head out the door in time to hear Twilight shout, “Guys?”

Domino hollered, “What happened?”

Twilight skidded to a stop and turned around, then galloped back to the open door and jumped inside. “The outer seal on airlock B just blew out!”

“Airlock B?” Long Shot said. “We came in through that airlock!”

“Yeah!” Twilight replied with a snarl. “That’s probably why it happened!” She sat down and squeezed her eyes shut, then held out a hoof toward the old stallion. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little upset that my ship is falling apart right now. I know it’s not your fault. I mean, it kinda is, but it’s not like you did it on purpose.”

All three stallions stared at her. She blinked back at them. “It’s a piece of rubber that’s been drying out for how many centuries? It was fine until you opened it. The seal probably didn’t rebound to its original size, and didn’t seat properly when you closed the airlock. You’re all lucky you made it into the ship before it blew!”

“Actually,” Luminov said with one shaggy hoof in the air, “we still had suits on at the time. Would have been simple to go back into our own ship.”

“I…” Twilight stuck out her lower lip and nodded with her eyebrows raised. “Okay, yeah, I see that.”

“But we still can’t get out through airlock B,” Long Shot said. “How are we gonna get back to our own ship?”

Twilight forced a smile and tossed her mane back. “You don’t have to worry about that right now, do you? I mean, we’ve got work to do, and it’s not like your ship is going anywhere, right? We can all calm down, and relax, and worry about it later.”

She looked at the trio of stallions. Long Shot was sweating, Domino was hyperventilating, and Luminov looked like a statue. Twilight took a step backward. “I… I think the alarm is making you uncomfortable. I’m just gonna go turn that off and slap some sealant on the inner airlock door just in case. I’ll be back in just a minute.” She turned to the door as it slid open, then paused and looked back. “It’ll be okay guys. I promise.”

Domino stuck his head out the door and watched Twilight disappear down the hallway before retreating back into the room and bumping into Long Shot. He turned around and looked at his captain for several rapid breaths, then swallowed hard and stammered, “Y-you look scared, sir.”

“Hell, I ain’t in no navy. Some law against lookin skeer’d?”

“I just, I mean, you guys have been around, right? You’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. Right?”

Luminov inhaled, then let out something between a sigh and a hum. “No. Airlock is overbuilt. Strongest part of ship. Is a lot of preventive maintenance on airlocks. Ponies live and die by airlocks for nearly a thousand years. Is not something that goes wrong nowadays.”

The dark parts of Domino’s face got paler. “So, what do we do then? How do we get back?”

“There’s only one thing we can do,” murmured Long Shot as he adjusted his hat. “We go out another airlock, and EVA back.”

Domino’s voice got higher in pitch. “And what if that one blows, too?”

Luminov chuckled. “That one is easy. We replace seal on our way out. Preventive maintenance.”

“Still, though,” Domino said, gripping his head between his hooves, “the nearest airlock is a full thirty kilometers away. That’s an entire day of walking, and waaaaaaay longer to EVA back. Our suits don’t have the air for a tenth of that.”

Long Shot grunted, then glanced toward the ceiling as the klaxon abruptly stopped its wailing. “You think I don’t know that, kid? I’ve been tryin’ to figure it out. I’m sure there’s oxygen bottles on this ship, but I’m sure their plumbing don’t match our plumbing, so we can’t grab a bunch of oxygen and go. Twilight might have a solution, but I don’t trust her as far as I could throw her.”

Luminov stepped toward Long Shot and put a hoof on his shoulder, then nodded and said, “But she has wings. You could probably throw her very far if she glide.”

Both stallions looked at Luminov. He shrugged.

Domino rolled his eyes. “Even if we manage to EVA all the way back to the ship, there’s no way we’re gonna carry enough salable goods to refuel, much less buy the equipment to drag this thing back. We’ll have to move Ain’t Home to the other airlock, and come back aboard.”

“For that matter,” Luminov asked in a low voice, “how do we explain to her why are we taking things? She gives us ship on condition we bring it to planet. If she knows we take things, it seems like we break deal.”

“Whelp,” Long Shot said with a devious grin, “we just need a distraction. Maybe Boots here can bed her. That should buy us at least thirty seconds.”

Luminov and Long Shot laughed while Domino sputtered and blinked rapidly. Finally, Long Shot punched Domino in the ribs and sighed. “D’worry ‘bout it, kid. I think she’s a tease anyway.”

“Seriously, guys.” Domino rubbed his side and blew the bangs out of his eyes. “She’s going to be back any minute, and we need to have this figured out.”

“He is right,” Luminov said. “We cannot take things without her notice. We maybe not can even leave before we install fake drive. And if we install it, she will know then that it does not work. There only is one way to do this. We must tell her the truth. At least then, she will know that we will return for her.”

Long Shot raised one bushy eyebrow. “You mean Boots is gonna have to tell her the truth?”

Domino sighed and regarded Long Shot from the corner of his eyes. “Because she likes me.”

“Exactly. Just make sure she knows that we’re not going to abandon her. I think that would be the single worst thing we could do.”

The door whooshed open and Twilight stuck her head in. “You guys still in here? Good. I slathered enough sealant on the inner airlock door to keep it from blowing out, too. We should be good now. You guys wanna get this drive installed?”

The crew of Ain’t Home looked from one to another silently until both Long Shot and Luminov ended up both staring at Domino. The younger stallion rubbed his muzzle with a white hoof and looked at the floor. He reached up and pulled the rose from behind his ear, holding it in his hooves while he took a deep breath. “Twilight, we need to talk.” He turned to his crewmates and said, “Can you guys give us some space?”

Luminov and Long Shot retreated to a far corner of the office and sat near a leafless potted plant. As the two of them began a quiet conversation, Luminov coughed quietly, a cough Domino recognized as noise to cover the surreptitious drawing of a pistol.

Twilight frowned and pinched her eyebrows together. “What’s going on?”

Domino sat next to her and fiddled with the rose in his hooves for a moment, then looked up at her. “Twilight, I like you. I’m very glad that we met, and I’m happy to be your friend.”

Twilight sat down and bent over, looking up at Domino from under her bangs. “Buuuuut…”

He tilted his head and let out his breath in a quiet huff, then inhaled again. “I have bad news about your FTL drive.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“It doesn’t work. It can’t work. And… And you know. Or, at least, you did, when you made these installation manuals and filled that chalkboard. You covered up the problem, so you had to know it was there.” He licked his lips and forced a smile. “I don’t think you intended to deceive us.”

“It… It doesn’t work?” Twilight bit her lip as her eyes darted around the floor. “And I already knew?”

Domino nodded.

“Is it the timelike oscillator? I feel like… Like I remember that. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—” Twilight cringed and grabbed her head in her hooves “—I remember… Ponies came and I showed them my drive. Sometimes we installed it. Sometimes we were even underway. But always, they disappeared. I would turn around, a-and they would be dead. Stuffed, like the ponies you saw.” She looked up and pulled her hooves to her chest. “I came up with the whole thing just as… as a game? I was playing pretend the whole time?”

“I’m sorry, but you needed to know.”

Twilight sniffled and rubbed tears off her cheeks, then reached out and grabbed Domino, touching his face, his mane, his hooves. Domino wrapped a foreleg around her and held her gently, cradling the rose in his other hoof. He whispered, “I’m real. We’re real.”

“Don’t leave me,” Twilight murmured, then lifted her head and looked Domino in the eyes. She took the rose from him and tucked it back behind his ear. “Don’t disappear. Don’t. Please.”

“Twilight, we can’t dash your ship anywhere. We’re going to have to go get some equipment and come back—”

Twilight jumped to her hooves and screamed, “No. NO! You can’t leave me! Please, please don’t leave me!”

Domino stood up and reached out a hoof toward Twilight. “Of course not, Twilight! I said ‘we’ will have to leave to get equipment. You’re coming with us. We’ve got food, a fresh bed for you, and everything. We can sleep in shifts, so one of us will be with you all the time. You don’t have to be alone any more, Twilight.”

Twilight turned her head and let her ears droop.

Domino continued, “But we’ll need money for fuel and equipment, so we’re going to have to take some things to sell. And it’ll take some time to get everything together. It’ll be about three years before we get back.”

Twilight shook her head. “I can’t leave. This is my mission. I can’t abandon these ponies, not after what they gave up for the mission. What they gave up for me.” She made eye contact with Domino, then returned her gaze to the floor. “I can’t leave. It’s out of the question.”

“The only way for you to complete your mission is for us to go get this equipment. I don’t want to leave you, Twilight, any more than you want us to leave. I think these ponies would understand if you stepped out for a bit to get what you need to complete your mission.”

“Out of the question,” Twilight murmured without looking up.

“The only way to complete your mission is for us to go get those supplies. And to do that, we need to get back to our ship. Twilight, we need to get to another airlock, and we have to figure out how to get back once we’re outside. Our suits don’t have enough air to make the trip. You’re the smartest pony I’ve ever met, and we need your help. We’re not going to leave you, but we need to get back to our ship to help you with your mission.”

“No,” Twilight said, her head buried in her hooves. “You’re going to leave me.”

Long Shot stepped up behind Domino and put a hoof on his shoulder. “Maybe you can stay here with her while we go get the stuff. We can make port without you, and leave a beacon so we can find you again.”

Domino sighed. “There’s no life support. The air in here wouldn’t last three years, not with two of us breathing. It’s a miracle there’s any air right now, with just Twilight breathing.”

“Don’t leave,” Twilight whimpered as she began rocking forward and back.

Domino squatted next to her. “We’re not leaving.”

“Yes, you are!”

“You’re going to need the navigation system and starmaps from Ain’t Home if you’re going to get your ship to a planet. How about we worry about one problem at a time? After we reestablish access to our ship, we can talk about making sure that you’re not left alone. We’re all smart ponies, I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” He gently rubbed Twilight’s back and leaned closer to her. “How about an engineering problem to help you get out of your head?”

Twilight looked up and pouted, glaring at Domino through narrowed eyes. “Don’t treat me like a foal. You can’t just fix everything by trying to make me forget everything that’s going wrong.”

Long Shot snorted. “The whole booze industry would say otherwise.”

Domino ignored his captain and sat down. “Okay, Twilight. Here’s the deal. We’ve got to get back to our ship, but the airlock it’s connected to is busted, and there’s a looooooong stretch of vacuum between the next airlock and our objective. Our suits don’t have enough air to travel that distance, and there’s no hoofholds left on the outside of your ship anyway. Can you think of any way to get us there safely?”

“This isn’t fair,” Twilight said as she sniffled and wiped her cheeks with her hooves. She gave a halfhearted grin. “You’re using my smarts against me. How much air do your suits have, and do they have any sort of propulsion?”

[scene break image]

“So, this is what we’ve figured out,” Twilight said as she stood next to Domino and gestured toward an array of materials on the floor in front of them. “You’ve got about sixty minutes of air in your suits, and a distance of about thirty kilometers to cover in that time, plus two corners. The air tanks I have won’t fit your suits, but they don’t have to. Because we’re using them for propulsion!”

Long Shot scratched his chin. “I’m listening.”

Domino pointed at a yellow air cylinder and some metal bits. “You just screw this half of a regulator onto the bottle, then attach some cable here and here. It’s both a rocket nozzle AND an attachment point for the cables. The center of thrust is ahead of the center of mass, so it’s self-correcting. Any minor course corrections can be made with our suit thrusters. One tank should be enough to accelerate the three of us up to speed in just a few minutes, and then we just let go. That gives us time to attach cables to the other tank that we’ll use to slow us down when we get there. We should be able to cover the distance in less than forty minutes. Meanwhile, Twilight dons a suit and replaces the seal on the outer airlock, so that one won’t blow out when we get back. Oh, and the best part is, we don’t have to carry the bottles on the hike, because they’re standard equipment in all four airlocks.”

Luminov clapped. Long Shod nodded and tipped his hat. “Great job, kids. Twilight, thank you for helping.”

“Well,” Twilight said with a blush, “I have to say you were right. It really did help get my mind off things. It was a fun little hypothetical exercise.”

All three stallions froze, then turned to face Twilight. Domino pursed his lips and squinted at her. “What do you mean, ‘hypothetical?’”

Twilight looked at the floor. “We can’t actually get to any of the other airlocks.”

Domino chewed his lip for a moment, then asked, “Why not? Our scans showed no hull breaches, and full oh-two everywhere.”

“It’s… It’s just too dangerous. The habitat isn’t in good shape. There are… It’s not safe. I locked the doors a long time ago.”

Luminov began picking up pieces of the rocket harness and stuffing them in his belt pouches. “Maybe you can tell us story while we walk to the mall.” He coiled up the lengths of cable, slipping them over his head like a necklace before reaching out a hoof to Twilight.

Twilight took his hoof and stood up, then shuffled alongside them as they walked. She spoke without lifting her eyes from her hooves. “The entire ship was left empty for ponies to build homes and businesses in. I made sure there was enough of everything we needed, but I mostly let it grow naturally. Once the ship was full, a completely functional and self-contained city, we departed.

“It looked like Ponyville, or Canterlot, or any other city from Equestria. There were farms and bakeries, rivers and forests. We had dozens of schools, shops, and all the business and industry that a successful city needs. And all the ponies.

“When the life support started to run out, everyone realized that there were too many bodies using up too much air. At first, it was grandparents and such volunteering to… to stop breathing, to save air for their family. Ponies really came together and it was wonderful to see how much love there was…

“Until it got desparate. There were murders. Can you imagine a nice, sweet mare killing a dozen ponies, just so her foals could breathe for a few more days? I had to put her down. She was breathing, and she didn’t deserve to.

“No, that’s not right. She wasn’t a bad pony, you know. She just wanted to protect the ones she loved. I can understand that, only, I loved all of them. I couldn’t choose who would live and who would die.” Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She took a trembling breath and continued walking. “But then I had to. I had to make those choices. I had to put her down. That was my choice. But it wasn’t long before suspicion and mistrust started taking more lives than the air.

“Then, one day, it happened. The whole hab was a war zone. Farmers with pitchforks and axes, unicorns blasting magic or teleporting each other into walls. Pegasi throwing tornados at entire buildings. It was terrible, but… as we watched from one of the engineering control rooms, seeing one pony die after another, all we could see was an oxygen gage ticking upward in our heads, more days on the clock for each of us with every life lost.

“Not that there was anything we could have done to stop a riot on that scale, but each of us felt guilty for feeling… relieved. By the time the violence had died down, I was ashamed to be a pony.

“There was nopony left alive. Not a single one.” Twilight cringed and stopped walking. “Well, I’m sure there were. A few survivors here and there, huddled in a basement with weapons at the ready. We sealed it off, and redirected all the life support to the engineering sections, where we lived until…”

Long Shot glanced at the mall entrance where they had left their effects in lockers. He looked to Domino and gestured toward Twilight, tilting his head and mouthing the words, “Keep her talking.”

Domino nodded silently and put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. He started walking, prompting Twilight to join him, and asked, “And you’ve been in the engineering section ever since? You haven’t gone back into the habitat at all?”

“A couple of times,” Twilight said. “Just for curiosity, or to get a part from one of the other engineering sections. I never went far before I turned back. I just made do with whatever I could scrounge in this section.”

“But you have wings,” Domino said as he stopped beside his crewmates and watched them open their lockers. “I get that there’s a lot of rubble and ruin or whatever, but couldn’t you just fly over it?”

Twilight glanced down the length of the mall, then turned back to where Long Shot and Luminov were stepping into their space suits. She sighed. “You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you? I guess you’ll see.”

[scene break image]

“Please, please don’t go in there!” Twilight pleaded, standing in front of a massive two-story door that spanned the entire width of the road. “I like you guys. It’s dangerous, and you don’t have to go. You can stay here, with me!”

Long Shot stepped forward and put a suited hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Miss Twilight, we can’t stay here. For one, we can’t help you complete your mission unless we get to our ship. But, and this’n is pretty important to me personally, we’ll die if we stay here. There’s no life support, and I don’t even want to imagine what you been eating. We can’t stay here.”

Tears shone in the corners of Twilight’s eyes as she turned and shuffled aside. Long Shot stepped forward and pressed a button on the control panel mounted near the center of the door, then stepped back as a deep rumble shook the ship. The door split in the middle and began rolling to both sides.

There was no daylight on the other side of the door. The wide road’s well-set cobblestones turned to irregular piles of smooth rocks, and a smell of pervasive damp came pouring out of the gap. Twilight stepped up to the growing crack in the door and gestured to the others as she glanced inside. “We should get through and close it behind us. We don’t want the door open any longer than it has to be.”

Luminov drew his gun and approached the door. Long Shot followed Twilight’s gaze, then turned to her and asked, “I thought you didn’t want us going in?”

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” Twilight growled, “and if you’re gonna go anyway, I’d better be there to protect you.” She stuck her head through the door and glanced both ways, then up into the sky before turning back to her companions and nervously stamping her hooves. “Come on!”

With a grunt, Luminov stepped through the opening and kept his gun at the low ready, swiveling his head back and forth as Long Shot walked up beside him. Domino took one last look at the bright blue skies and picket fences. The doors went quiet for an instant as they stopped and reversed direction. Long Shot called out, “Hey, kid! Get in here.”

Domino hopped over the threshold as the doors rumbled back towards each other. The pool of light from the engineering section grew narrower as the doors closed, until the they shut completely with a deep thud and the four ponies were left in a dusky gloom.

Although the doors had gone silent, a muted roar still filled the air, punctuated with regular wet slapping noises. Twilight leaned against Domino as their eyes adjusted to the half-light. Domino whispered loud enough for everypony to hear, “Is it some kind of simulated nighttime in here, or…”

“No,” Twilight replied quietly. “The skypaint glows permanently. We couldn’t figure out a way to turn it on and off. Best solution we came up with was for the weather team to move a really thick cloud around. The kind you’d use to build a house out of. It got dark enough for ponies to sleep, and for plants like tomatoes to grow.”

“The hell is a tomato?” Long Shot drawled as he squinted up into the sky. “I can kinda see a glow up there. It looks… dirty?”

Twilight squinted into the gloom. “Decades without air killed all the animals, even the bugs. The only things to survive were fungi and some of the simpler plants. I’m guessing that’s moss growing on the skypaint. And the fungus, well…”

Domino raised an eyebrow. “What fungus?”

A distant splash echoed off the monolithic wall. All four ponies turned to look out into the habitat. The road stood above swampy mires on both sides, its smooth, lumpy stones disappearing into the darkness ahead. The sky above was splotchy and uneven, tinged with green, and completely black in some spots.

Luminov clicked on a flashlight. Every surface reflected a moist sheen, from the polished cobblestones to the rubble spilling onto the road from what must have been a building that had since sank into the bog. He swung the beam to his right, panning across a soggy landscape of brightly-colored mushrooms and fuzzy black slime interspersed with tar-black ponds that jiggled when bubbles broke on their surfaces.

At the far reaches of the beam’s throw, a strange shape manifested, visible at first only by the specks of reflection on the hundreds of shiny bubbles on its surface. As they stared at it, they could see that it was like an inverted funnel, easily larger than a house, rising upward. Luminov raised the beam, catching light from more and more of the spherical bubbles as the mass narrowed and stretched into the sky. Soon, the beam was unable to illuminate the higher reaches of the pillar, but it’s dark shape was visible against the diffuse light filtering through the fog behind it. The column rose all the way to the ceiling, where it met one of the dark patches on the skypaint.

“Oh,” Domino said. “That fungus. There’s another one over there!”

Luminov swung his flashlight toward where Domino was pointing, his beam sweeping across a network of what looked like shaggy ropes, some of which hung low enough that the stallions ducked when they were suddenly revealed. Long Shot pulled out his flashlight and traced one of the ropes to another pillar on their left. The entire sky was full of these strands, trailing from one pillar to another, with raggedy black tatters hanging from them in irregular intervals.

“Well,” Long Shot said, “I wouldn’t want to fly through this either.”

Luminov cleared his throat. “We should now be going. Domino, where is next airlock?”

“We’re in one corner of a square. We can follow the wall to our left or our right, then EVA back.”

Long Shot trotted to the edge of the road and sunk a hoof into the muck up to his first joint. “Good luck with that,” he said with a grunt.

Twilight gestured up the road. “The capitol city, Blossom, is up ahead. All roads lead there, eventually. We just left engineering section B, which we called the city of Buck. To our right, under the swamp, is Generosa, and past that the engineering city Centifolia. Engineering city Alba is on our left, on the other side of Floribunda. That’s the five-bit tour. Any questions?”

Domino held up a hoof. “There’s a road from here to the center. Isn’t there a road from Buck along the wall toward, uh, whatever you called engineering sections A or C?”

Twilight took a deep breath and tilted her head. “There… are. But they’re under so much mud you can’t even open the the door. Well, you can, but you’d spend weeks digging out enough mud to shut the doors again. Guess how I figured that one out.”

“So,” Long Shot said, swinging his flashlight back to the road, “the only way to get to the next airlock is to follow this here road to the city in the center, then go back along another road.”

Luminov growled. “Assuming road does not disappear into swamp between here and there.”

Twilight turned to Luminov and looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Like. I. Said. This place is dangerous. We might not even make it to Blossom. We can still go back. The door’s right here.”

Domino walked up to Twilight and put a hoof on her shoulder, looking her in the eyes. “Twilight, if we stay here, we’ll asphyxiate. You’ll have to watch us die, and you won’t be able to complete your mission. The things you’re doing are contrary to what you say you want. Do you understand what that means?”

Twilight swallowed hard and nodded. “I’m acting irrationally.”

“So, let’s take some action that aligns with your goals.”

Long Shot rolled his eyes. “Are we done talking about feelings, now?”

Luminov chuckled as he watched Domino and Twilight begin to pick their way through the hoof-sized rocks. He turned to Long Shot. “Maybe you could learn from kid.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Heh. Kid has made more progress with mare than you ever have.”

Long Shot snorted. “You know I been married, right? Twice.”

Luminov smirked. “I know.” He started walking.

[scene break image]

Twilight lifted her head at the increased volume of the roaring noise. A stiff breeze whipped at her mane and tail as she turned back to the others. “We should find shelter before the rain gets here.”

“Rain?” Domino asked.

“Shelter?” said Long Shot. “We been hiking for hours, and we ain’t seen more than a pile of worn-down bricks.”

“The habitat is large enough that there’s a significant gradient in both temperature and humidity between the ground and the ceiling, or between Alba and Buck. That means wind, and rain. As to shelter, we built those at regular intervals in case of catastrophic hull breach. They were airtight, and made of the same metal as the ship. Hopefully, some of them are still standing.” She picked up her pace, carefully navigating between the hoof-sized stones. “And hopefully we can get there before the rain starts.”

Domino glanced skyward. “W-what’s wrong with the rain? Is it acid, or something?”

Twilight turned around and squinted at him with one eyebrow raised. “Your suit’s got a big open collar. It’ll fill up with rain. I know I sure wouldn’t want to spend two days hiking in a space suit full of water. Let’s hurry up, and try not to sprain a fetlock.”

“You know,” Domino said as he hurried after Twilight, stepping as quickly as he dared in the three bouncing flashlight beams, “us mortals… living on normal-sized spaceships… don’t get a lot of exercise.”

Long Shot trotted past Domino, puffing his cheeks out with each breath. “You’re welcome to stay back here, kid, but I plan to be dry and warm till the storm’s passed.”

Luminov trotted past both of them. “Neither of you noticed our ship has gym?”

Domino rolled his eyes and trotted faster.

The wind picked up, blowing a sticky fog across the road and carrying with it a nutty odor of decay. The saturated air threw the flashlight beams back in the ponies’ faces. They turned off their flashlights and ran with their heads down, each pony focusing only one step in front of their own hooves as they followed the sound of hooves in front of them.

The wind whistled louder through the strands overhead, changing tone as they rippled and bounced. The effect was not unlike some alien symphony

They see a giant mushroom, think it’s a house, but twilight tells them to steer clear as the winds cause tendrils to whip out with a crack and stick to things with globs of glue. They reach a shelter, the size of a large room, still sealed. They go inside, and it’s mostly dry. A dead earth pony and foal are inside, their corpses rotted away, leaving nothing but brown stained bones. They clearly didn’t die of violence.

Domino takes off his suit, the others envy him for being able to get in and out of it so quickly. Because it takes so much time, they leave their suits on in case they have to leave quickly. They eat some fruity oaty bars, then decide to get some sleep. Twilight cuddles with Domino and they fall asleep while Long Shot takes first watch.

When the storm is over, they go outside and see the cobblestones having been washed around, and standing water everywhere. Long black fronds stand out of the water like grass, waving gently in the breeze.

As they're climbing over collapsed houses and creaky roofs, Long Shot slips and falls. He's injured, and his suit is torn. They need a first aid kit and a suit patch. But Twilight doesn’t want them wandering off alone, so they decide to stick together until they get to a more structurally-sound area (houses were built lightweight like actual houses, but the government areas were sturdier and airtight, to be used as emergency shelters), then split up to find the supplies.

After they split up, Domino heads toward an infirmary while Twilight looks for a suit patch, and Luminov sneaks off toward what looks like a big town hall. Luminov finds a large, opulent bedroom. With a dozen corpses, propped up with wires, surrounding a giant bed, upon which lays the corpse of a purple alicorn.

As he turns to leave Twilight's bedroom, her voice comes over the intercom. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.”