Ponest Dungeon

Chapter 11: Imminent Impact

Week 7, Day 1, Morning

“It takes a big stallion to do something like this, Shining,” Blueblood said, his forehoof on Shining’s withers as they stood in front of the dilapidated Ponyville Sanitarium.

“I’m sorry it came to this, Sir.” Shining looked quite different without his highly polished suit of platemail and his sword. “I just hope they can do something for me. This… need to take things… it’s gone too far. I’ve turned a blind eye to it for too long. I’ve let it take too much of my soul. Plus… I owe it to Amethyst.”

Trying to look as convincing as possible, Blueblood gave Shining his best diplomatic smile. “It may not look like much, but I’ve checked into the place, and they have the best success rate for curing illnesses, physical and mental, in all of Equestria. They must spend all of their bits on updates to their training and quality staff, instead of wasting it on aesthetics; I can probably help them out in that regard by calling in a few of Celestia’s favors.”

“Well,” Shining said, swallowing a lump that had formed in his throat. “Let’s do this, before I lose my nerve.”

The two walked into the facility’s foyer, where they were approached by a white-coated mare with a nurse-cap atop her head.

“I’m Nurse Redheart,” she said. “How can I help you today?” She turned her head to face Shining when Blueblood halted a few hoofsteps behind him.

“I’m here to commit myself for treatment,” Shining said, his voice crisp and clear, though it contained an almost undetectable quaver.

With a grace borne of excessive repetition, Redheart hoofed a clipboard and a pair of pens from a pocket in her lab coat. “Who will be paying for your treatment?”

“That would be me,” Blueblood said, stepping forward.

“Ok,” Redheart said, writing notes on the forms attached to the clipboard. She removed the front several pages and hoofed the clipboard and a pen to Shining. “I need you to fill out these medical history, release, and consent to treatment forms.” She hoofed one of the pages she’d removed to Blueblood and gave him the second pen. “And I need you to sign this to confirm that you understand the cost of treatment and that you will pay us for administering it.”

While Blueblood quickly signed the payment form and gave it back to Redheart, it took Shining several minutes to work through and complete most of his forms. “What’s all this wording under consent to treatment?” he asked.

“Just the standard verbiage,” Redheart said. “Most of it is to make sure you won’t turn around and try to sue us for treating you.”

“Ah,” Shining said, quickly signing the remainder of the forms and hoofing them back to Redheart.

Once she had checked through the forms, Redheart looked up and smiled at them. “Okay, these appear to all be in order. Wait here; I’ll be right back.”

She trotted off through a set of double-doors, which closed behind her, to leave the two stallions standing alone in the foyer.

“Well,” Shining said, nervousness very apparent in his voice, “I guess this is it.”

Blueblood put a comforting forehoof on Shining’s withers again. “I know you’re stressed out, but do try to stop worrying about it; it will help them cure you faster.”

The sound of rolling wheels became audible and Redheart appeared through the double doors pushing a medical stretcher. “Okay, Shining,” she said with a smile, “here’s your ride!” She took one of his forehooves and led him towards the gurney. “From here on out, you’ll be exposed to the most intensive medical treatments available to ponykind. We’ll have you better in no time!”

“Why are there straps?!” Shining looked less than enthusiastic as Nurse Redheart laid him down and buckled his legs to the stretcher. “You don’t need to restrain me, I’m admitting myself!”

Redheart smiled at him. “I know, Shining, but this is standard procedure until the Doctor has seen you and verified that you aren’t a danger to yourself or others.”

“Well, at least I can still use my—”

With a deft motion, Redheart slid an intricate metal band down Shining’s horn, fitting it snugly once it reached the base.

“Wait, what’s that?!”

“Magic nullifier,” Redheart replied in a conversational tone. “Can’t have you hurting yourself or others with your magic either, now can we?”

Shining began to struggle against the restraints. “Hey!” he yelled, a look of building panic quickly consuming his features. “I didn’t agree to that!”

“He seems a bit agitated,” Blueblood said, watching as Shining writhed on the gurney.

“Don’t worry, Prince,” Nurse Redheart said. “We’ll take good care of Shining here.” She hoofed a large syringe from her lab coat. “I’ll just give him something to help calm him down.”

“What?! No!” His thrashing now frantic, Shining strained at the straps, trying to force his body away from the approaching hypodermic. “I don’t like needles! I don’t need to be sedated!”

“I’d better go,” Blueblood said, looking quite uncomfortable at the scene unfolding before him.

“We’ll see you later then, Prince,” she said as she stuck the syringe into the foreleg of the now-screaming Shining Armor and depressed the plunger. “Doctor Horse is really quite amazing. Shining should be ready in a few weeks or so.”

Not really paying attention to the fact that Shining’s shouting and frenzied struggles were slowly abating, Blueblood left the sanitarium with as much haste as he could manage without betraying his calm, cool exterior. Once out the front door, he pulled himself to the side, put a hoof on the wall, and started breathing heavily. “Oh… I do not… envy him… at all,” the wide-eyed Prince managed between gasps for air.

Things like this were the reason he hated sanitariums.

Week 7, Day 2, Afternoon

The drawing room, which normally received a decent amount of natural light during this time of the day, was illuminated primarily by candles. A storm had blown in from the east during the latter half of the day, darkening the skies and filling the air with a hint of ozone. Even indoors, the air felt heavy with electrical charge, almost like a dry winter day. The wind which brought the tempest was audible even with the drawing room windows closed, and threatened to overpower conversation held at a normal volume.

“This is Starlight Glimmer,” Twilight said loudly, indicating the lilac-coated unicorn mare, who was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning. “We’re co-researchers in the field of the occult.”

“Charmed,” Blueblood said after a thunderclap sounded. He steepled his hooves above the drawing room table. “Twilight demonstrated extraordinary prowess in combat against the shambler in the catacombs. Since you two study together, I assume that your abilities are similar to Twilight’s?”

Starlight snorted. “Identical, actually.”

“Identical?” Blueblood asked, nonplussed.

“Yes, identical,” Starlight replied in a sharp tone, punctuated by a flash and crack of thunder. “Nothing drives friends apart faster than differences in ability, so we both strived to be on equal hoofing in each of the disciplines we studied.”

“That,” Blueblood said, “is… fascinating.” His tone and facial expression suggested that it was anything but.

“I know!” Starlight seemed genuinely enthusiastic. “I can’t wait to try and see if we can’t get some of the other recruits to try and strive for equality—”

“Starlight,” Twilight facehoofed as she spoke, “you promised not to push the ‘equality’ thing anymore.”

Starlight harrumphed in time with another of the storm’s rumblings. “Fine, but we’ll see who wants to discuss it when everypony is tearing themselves apart over their differences!”

Turning slightly, Blueblood coughed as he pointed a hoof at the drawing room doors. “Ditzy should still be in the foyer; she will provide you with our now-standard contract, welcome aboard.”

After the two mares left, Blueblood looked around the empty room, sighing when a bolt of lightning struck just outside of town. “You’re a fool to take on all these administrative duties yourself, old colt.” Thunder washed out the end of his statement.

But of whose council could you possibly avail yourself now that your closest advisors are dead, insane, drunk, or jilted?

Knocking his chair over, Blueblood jumped to his hooves. “Auntie?” He turned around, despite knowing that there was nopony in the room with him. His eyes locked on the painting of Celestia that hung behind his chair. “Where are you?” After spinning a few more times, Blueblood stared at the painting with his eye narrowed. “Answer me!”

A bolt of lightning struck directly outside the drawing room window and Blueblood fell, startled back into his chair.

“What is the question?”

The unfamiliar, booming voice was almost as forceful as the splitting of the air which preceded it. The air of command it carried almost had Blueblood scrambling for an answer before he could even formulate a proper response. Instead, he turned to the double doors to the drawing room, which Twilight and Starlight had left open.

To say that the unicorn who stood in the doorway was imposing would be like saying that Cheese Sandwich was “slightly loud,” especially since she was suddenly backlit as another bolt of lightning tore into the estate grounds somewhere outside. With her impressive height, statuesque build, dark plum coat, black-plated armor, and her glaring facial scars—which included a broken horn—the mare’s mere presence exuded a sense of authoritative power.

“Who… are you? Who let you in?” Blueblood rapid fired the questions at the new arrival in an attempt to give himself time to think, and possibly find a weapon in case the pony meant him harm. He eyed a poleaxe wielded by one of the suits of armor flanking the door.

“My name is Tempest Shadow,” she said in a voice as unyielding as the stone from which she appeared to be chiseled, “and I let myself in, right before you hired me.”

“Hired you?” Blueblood struggled to hide the incredulity from his voice. Over the years, of all of the diplomats and nobles he’d faced, most had only but a fraction of the force of personality as this mare. Thankfully, he’d been in more intimidating encounters, especially recently. “I’ll need to see your qualifications first,” he said in a flat tone.

“Of course,” she said, effortlessly slamming a piece of parchment onto the planning desk with enough force to rattle the massive piece of furniture.

Lighting his horn, Blueblood carefully peeled the page from where it had been pressed into the wood grain and began to read. The list of campaigns Tempest had attended was impressive, to say the least. What was more impressive was that he actually recognized some of the actions she’d been a part of, including one in which—

“...You’re the Badlands Butcher,” he said in surprise, looking up from the resumé. “The scarred warrior who appears, typically during a—” Lightning flashed nearby again, followed swiftly by a peak of thunder. He looked out the window at the thunderous gale and then back at Tempest. “—raging thunderstorm…”

The look she gave him could fry a pony’s skin as surely as the wild arcs of electricity dancing about outside.

“They also say you dynamited the eyries of Mount Aris; massacred the hippogriffs, including non-combatants—mothers and hatchlings—” He studied her reactions intently as he spoke; he realized that he may as well have been trying to read the emotions of a rock… a very disapproving rock.

“That’s right,” she said, her tone neither seeking, nor expecting, forgiveness. “I’ve killed just about everything that’s trotted, flown or swum at one time or another. And now I’ve come here, to kill… for you.”

“Why me?” he asked, again gauging for any kind of reaction.

Tempest eyed him as if he were the one being interviewed. “I have always strived to better my abilities, by testing myself against the hardest, strongest opponents,” she said. “When I heard the news, that there was an expedition to the Everfree, and that it had already met with losses, due to inexplicable horrors—”

Blueblood facehooved. His attempts at distributing propaganda to weed out the weak may have gone… a bit too far.

“—the likes of which have not been seen by ponies in this age… I knew that I needed to be part of it.”

Quickly changing the subject, Blueblood came back to something else which had caught his eye; “This says you were a top general for your previous employer,” Blueblood said, tapping the resumé. “You were even given a force of your own to command. Why did you leave the service of this... ‘Storm King?’”

“Because he was dead,” she said flatly.

“Dead?” Blueblood wanted to look at the parchment again, but a sudden feeling in his gut told him that he needed to keep his eye on Tempest. “How? Was he assassinated while you were away on campaign?”

“No,” she said conversationally. “I killed him.”

“Why,” Blueblood asked, cautiously standing to his hooves, “would you kill your employer?”

“He promised me something,” Tempest said. “Equestria was his next invasion target. He needed Celestia’s essence—or some other such nonsense—for an artifact he was creating. When word reached us that the Princess was gone, I asked him what other task I would need to perform to get what was owed.” Her sneer could crack mirrors. “He was upset enough by the setback that he made the mistake of telling me that he had never intended to deliver on his promise—”

Blueblood leaned forwards. “And?”

Tempest’s eyes bulged in their sockets slightly. “I took one of the petrification spheres we had produced for subduing Celestia, and used it on him. Once he had transformed into stone, I bucked him from our airship—we were a mile up at the time.”

“So—” Blueblood slowly seated himself again. “—how do I know you won’t just… up and kill me if the company’s account runs dry and I’m unable to pay you?”

“Because,” she said, “if you fail to give me my due as a result of misfortune or happenstance, I can understand that. I’ve run expeditions of my own; I know that cost overruns and financial disaster strike. What I could not forgive—” The sneer returned to her face. “—was the blatant deception. As long as you do not willingly renege on your promises, you will not find yourself the target of my wrath.”

“You are truly as mercenary as they get, aren’t you?” The rhetorical question received no response from Tempest, other than a continuation of her perpetual glare. Steepling his hooves, Blueblood looked down at his master roster list, lit his horn, and dipped a quill in the inkwell closest to him. “How fortuitous then, that I need ponies as shrewd as you; you may now consider yourself hired. Ditzy will be in the foyer with the necessary contract paperwork and housing arrangements.”

Without another word, Tempest performed a crisp about-face and walked out of the room, leaving Blueblood to make a mental note to refrain from making any promises he couldn’t keep with that one.

Week 7, Day 4, Evening

The fire burned with a healthy yellowish-orange light, illuminating the group and providing them with some warmth against the cold that sunset had brought. More importantly, it kept the baleful greenish light of the comet away from them. In recent nights, the intensity of the comet seemed to have increased. Just being under the malign glow made one’s skin crawl.

“Ok,” Rainbow flipped her good-luck chip high into the air. “It’s late and Blueblood isn’t watching us anymore, so… what do you think, Tempest?”

“I think,” Tempest replied flatly, without sparing the others a glance from where she lay with her back to the fire, “that your predilection for inane banter is quite irritating. You should sleep, or focus on the mission-at-hoof and keep an eye out for the bandits which have been plaguing this road. The four we dispatched earlier cannot be solely responsible for the reports we’ve heard from the locals.”

Rainbow gesticulated wildly. “You mean the one bandit who took three of us to kill and the three who you absolutely wrecked all by yourself? Tartarus, you practically punched a hole through that one mare! And you almost took that stallion’s head clean off when you broke his neck like a twig!”

“You are exaggerating,” Tempest replied in a tone which bled exasperation as surely as the fluid which had leaked out of that mare once Tempest had buried a hoof knee deep in her chest. “Go to sleep.”

“Yeah, you’re no fun.” Catching her chip out of the air with a flick of her wing, Rainbow spun around to face Applejack. “What about you, houndmare?”

“What about me?” Applejack said, keeping her gaze aimed at the fire.

“Oh, come on!” Rainbow proceeded to flick the chip back and forth between her wings rapidly. “Blueblood’s been pretty tight-lipped about Amethyst’s death, so has everypony else that went out with her. What do you think happened?”

Frowning, Applejack turned to Rainbow with a flat expression. “I reckon she got killed, Dash.”

“Eeyup,” agreed Big Mac.

Winona barked.

Taking to the air, Rainbow hovered a few inches off the ground and pulled down on her cheeks with both forehooves. “Well, duh! What I mean is, how do you think it happened?”

“Well,” Applejack said, “I can’t rightly say as I know.”

Rainbow landed and twirled her chip on one of her primaries. “But if it’s something that killed one of our company members, we should know—”

“You claim that this is need-to-know information, Miss Dash,” Tempest said, in a voice which could have silenced a torch-wielding mob. “However, it is my understanding that the reason you were not present to view the incident first-hoof was because you were—how shall I put this?—passed out in the townhouse foyer, drunk off your flank.”

The sky-blue of Rainbow’s face burned red.

“You only lack this information because of your own careless actions, Miss Dash,” Tempest rumbled in a voice as merciless as the knee she’d used to break a bandit’s back earlier in the day. “Besides, given this company’s records, the general level of competence of its members, and the fact that we all know exactly what happened in Froggy Bottom Bog, but not during that mission, the answer to your question is painfully obvious.”

“Oh?” Rainbow said, her voice a mixture of embarrassed and incredulous. “You think you know what happened then?”

Tempest released a sigh which spoke of a level of resignation which one would normally reserve for surrendering an entire nation to their most reviled enemy. “She was killed by the actions or inactions… of either Blueblood himself, or another company member.”

The silence which followed was broken only by the popping and crackling from the fire, and the occasional buzz or chirp of a nighttime insect.

Week 7, Day 4, Night

The viewing window shrank to a pinprick.

If Blueblood had any color to his fur, it would have surely drained away after hearing Tempest’s declaration. “Everypony who knew swore to secrecy; how—”

Her eyes hold the secrets of a hundred campaigns.

“Auntie?” Blueblood started, and then looked slowly around the observatory. “Where are you?” His gaze stopped on the observation enchantment. “You used this thing so much. Are you… attached to it somehow?” He paused for a few moments in thought, then leaned in close to the table. “You’re right, though. Of course Tempest knew. She’s been through enough conflicts that she has to have run into similar situations; I’m not going to be able to get anything past her.”

As Blueblood turned his eye to the faintly glowing pinprick, a shiver ran down his spine. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew I was watching when she said it.” He frowned. “Are you going to be trouble for me, Tempest?”

Only if you cross her.

“Hopefully she doesn’t decide to cross me first,” Blueblood said. “I doubt I’d survive if she did.”

Looking skyward, Blueblood scratched at a sudden itch around his blinded eye. “Auntie… if you really can hear me, tell me about the comet.”

It, as well as what you carry, is a blazing malevolence from beyond the stars—

Week 8, Day 6, Evening

Two bandits, a stallion and mare, screamed as their hooves were pierced completely through by the caltrops Bon Bon had thrown in the wake of their reckless charge.

Grinning like a madmare, Starlight squinted, the illumination from her horn magnifying. A swirling vortex formed in the air next to the hobbled bandits and a cluster of massive tentacles emerged from it. With a blood curdling shriek, the bandits were dragged back through the portal from which the fleshy limbs had emerged.

“Incoming!” Lyra shouted as she grasped a stallion bandit in her monstrous hands and threw him—with a quarter spin—towards Tempest.

Turning around, Tempest kicked out a hind hoof. She struck the stallion’s face forcefully enough that, with a sickening crack, his entire muzzle turned sideways… without the rest of his skull following suit. The broken brigand landed several paces away, writhing in agony until one of Tempest’s knees slammed down and crushed his windpipe.

“Crosscut, NO!” shrieked a mare as she charged, only to be impaled when Tempest swiftly lowered her jagged horn. With neck muscles bulging as if they were threatening to tear themselves from her skin at any moment, Tempest lifted the squirming bandit into the air, and ignited her highly unstable magic. The resulting eruption was reminiscent of a watermelon which had been exposed to an oversized hammer.

“Easy as pie,” Tempest casually remarked as pieces of bandit—which resembled cherry filling far too much for everypony else’s liking—rained down from the dimming sky. With the setting sun beginning to dip below the horizon, the last rays of crimson light crept across their surroundings. The red merged with that of the spattered remains, which appeared to bleed out until everything was covered in ghastly shades of death.

When the last of the daytime illumination faded, all colors slowly changed to the sickly green of the comet overhead.

“That thing is—” Lyra made a beastial sound as she reverted to pony form. “—almost as bright as the moon!”

“Has it always been that bright?” Starlight asked.

Bon Bon removed her helmet. “You don’t get outside much, do you Starlight? It’s been getting steadily brighter for the last two months. We kinda thought you or Twilight, being occult experts and all, would know more about it.”

“Nope,” Starlight said, shaking her head. “But I’ll ask Twilight when we get back.”

Looking over to Tempest, Bon Bon saw that the statuesque mare had her narrowed gaze pointed skyward. “What do you think about the comet, Tempest?”

“We should return at once,” Tempest stated in a tone of voice which made it clear that she was voicing a command, not an opinion.

Week 8, Day 7, Morning

“I’ve brought you all here regarding the comet, which I’m sure you’ve all seen by now,” Blueblood said. He shifted in his seat, looking more perturbed than usual as he addressed the others.

All of the ponies he had hired into the company had gathered at his summons, with the notable exception of Shining Armor, who was still in treatment.

“Was it always visible during the day?” Rainbow’s question and pointed hoof drew the attention of the others to the drawing room windows. Hanging like a gangrenous sore in the sky, the comet was definitely visible, despite the sun bearing down from almost directly overhead, and yesterday’s thunderstorm having dissipated as swiftly and inexplicably as it had formed.

Blueblood shook his head. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it since its appearance two months ago, and, while it has been steadily increasing in size, it was only visible at night until today. I figured I’d fill you all in on the comet so you don’t start spreading insane rumors around town.”

He dropped a stack of sealed envelopes on the table. “Unfortunately, my letters to the Canterlot Astrological Society have all been returned as undeliverable. I didn’t know why until my other inquiries to Canterlot bore some fruit on the matter; apparently every last researcher who’s had a look at the comet through a telescope has met—for lack of a better description—some horrible fate.”

The news earned him some confused and worried glances.

“How could a pony get hurt looking through a telescope?” Lyra’s surprisingly relevant question earned some sympathetic, yet whispered acknowledgments from the others.

Using a hoof to straighten out a piece of parchment, Blueblood’s eye moved back and forth as he read from the page. “Since its appearance, twenty seven members of the Astrological Society have been found dead at their telescopes, their eyes having ruptured. Several guard reports state that it looked like… ‘they had exploded from within.’”

This announcement prompted murmurs of consternation from almost everypony present.

“That’s not all,” Blueblood said, holding up a hoof. “Fifty two members of the Astrological Society have been committed to Canterlot Sanitarium with various debilitating mental ailments, which all presented within the last eight weeks.” He stared at the parchment for a moment, almost as if he didn’t believe what was written on it. “Also, in that time, seventy two members of the Astrological Society were found in their homes… having apparently committed suicide.”

The murmurs turned into gasps. Ditzy may have actually fainted—either that or she slipped on her own tail; Blueblood never could be sure with her.

Finally taking his hoof from the parchment, Blueblood looked up. “The remaining one hundred and forty two registered members of the Astrological Society are… missing.”

Bon Bon raised an eyebrow. “All of them?”

Blueblood nodded.

“Missing?” Rainbow looked unconvinced. “How did they lose track of over a hundred ponies?”

Sighing in exasperation, Blueblood turned to Rainbow. “Because, regardless of what everypony thinks, the Equestrian government is not some all-knowing, constantly-spying-on-its-citizens kind of organization; they can’t even track down a single pony without some kind of concerted effort, much less over a hundred.”

Turning away from Starlight, with whom she’d been whispering, Twilight raised a hoof. Starlight facehoofed.

“Yes, Twilight?” Blueblood prompted.

“Why the sudden increase in the comet’s luminescence?” Twilight asked. “Surely we would have been able to see it before today—if only faintly—but it’s pretty visible all of a sudden… isn’t that odd?”

“It is odd, but I don’t know the cause,” he said. “Without the use of telescopes or other proper instrumentation we can’t get a good enough look at the thing to figure out important information, like size, composition, heading, etcetera.”

“Why is it getting brighter, like, right now?” Rainbow’s question again caused everypony to turn to the window.

Indeed, the comet had become much brighter. Its tail still burned a brilliant green, but had lengthened, and now showed a peculiar smoke-like blackness interwoven with it. Most distressing, was that it seemed to actually be moving across the sky.

“Celestia above, I’m an idiot,” Blueblood said, his blood turning to ice water.

“It’s in the atmosphere,” Twilight said as the color drained from her face. “If we can see it here, and it’s been large enough for us to see without a telescope—” She swallowed loudly. “—we’re probably in the blast radius.”

Blueblood hit his hoof against the table several times in an attempt to quiet the sudden commotion that arose from those assembled.

When the panicked conversations ceased to die down, a sudden, loud impact cut violently through the room as Tempest splintered the surface of the antique table with her hoof. “Be silent,” she said to nopony in particular, her voice promising painful retribution should the command go unheeded.

The quiet which followed was deafening.

“Thank you, Tempest,” Blueblood said, eyeing the irreparable damage she’d done to the table. He looked out the window at the comet, now making very visible progress across the sky. “It will hit any minute now,” he breathed. “There’s nothing to be done but batten down the hatches, everypony shutter as many windows as you can before it lands. If you see or feel the impact, get away from the windows, they're probably all going to blow out when the shockwave hits us.”

“The royal emergency meteor decree,” Twilight said nodding. “Didn’t that replace the old duck and cover—”

Jumping to his hooves, Blueblood started magicking windows open so he could pull the storm shutters closed. “Less talking, more battening, Twilight!” he shouted as the others scrambled from the room to fortify the manor.

Rainbow Dash remained behind, looking ill for a moment—which, for once didn’t seem to have anything to do with a cider hangover—or had less to do with one, at any rate. “What about the townsponies?”

As if in response, Cheese Sandwich could be heard through opened windows as Blueblood continued to shutter them.

“Hear ye, hear ye!”

“Looks like Cheese has it handled,” Blueblood said, looking relieved.

“The sky is falling! Come out into the streets and repent with me! The sky—”

“Damnit,” Blueblood said, his face instantly twisting into a grimace.

Rainbow saluted—“On it!”—and then tore through one of the open windows in a rapid rainbow-colored blur of motion.

“No!” Blueblood called after her. “Stay inside!”

But Rainbow was already long gone.

“Ugh.” Blueblood facehoofed as he continued to magically secure the windows. “She’s going to die.”

Week 8, Day 7, Noon

“Get out of the street, Cheese! And tell everypony to get indoors!” Rainbow could see the comet, now blazing westward across the sky.

“Oh, hello Rainbow,” Cheese said in an upbeat tone. “Fine day for a meteor to wipe us all out, amirite?”

Rainbow crossed her forelegs in agitation as she continued to hover. “First off: everypony said it’s a comet. Second: it’s only going to wipe out ponies who stay outside! If you’re crazy enough to stay out here, at least tell everypony else to get inside!”

Cheese looked at Rainbow like she was the one acting crazy. “Hey, I’m as willing as the next mare to take somepony at their word, but you don’t exactly strike me as an expert on falling meteors.”

Hovering for a moment with her jaw dropped, Rainbow just stared at Cheese with an expression alternating between confusion, disbelief, and frustration. “C’mon, Cheese! It’s like any other natural disaster! The safest place is indoors!”

“Unless it’s an earthquake!” Cheese cheerfully added.

“Right,” Rainbow said slowly, not sure if the speed of her vocalization was for Cheese’s benefit or her own. “But this isn’t an earthqua—” She used a hoof to shield her eyes as a bright flash of light illuminated the sky to the west. Moments later the earth began to shake.

Cheese smiled widely as he looked up at her from his spot on the tremor-wracked ground.

“I hate you,” Rainbow said, just before a wall of condensed air smashed her from the sky.