Laments of the Dimension-Stranded

Rainbow Dash awoke with the sensation that her fur and the entire roof around her were being consumed by fire.

Rainbow leapt up onto her hooves with a yelp like a flame had been spontaneously lit beneath her flanks. The morning sunlight rays had been beating down relentlessly, heating the thin, tin sheet roof to the point where Rainbow felt like the curvature of the corrugated metal had been branded into her side atop her ribs like some sort of ritual tattoo.

"Ow ow ow ow ow!" Rainbow yelped, her cadence resembling that of a ballerina with two broken fetlocks as she hopped across the roof in an effort to escape the hot surface as quickly as physically possible.

Rainbow leapt off of the sheet metal roof, landing onto the solid black pavement hard with a grunt. There was a brief second where she felt relieved she had escaped the heat, before, with a start, she realized the pavement had absorbed much of the heat from the sunlight as well.

Rainbow shot up and immediately dashed towards the emergency exit she had used to exit the auto repair shop the prior evening, but was horrified to discover it was sealed securely. She shoved on the metal door, then tried tugging. The locking mechanism remained intact.

"Vincent!" Rainbow leaned her head back and wailed, prancing in place and lifting her hooves off of the ground one at a time in rapid succession to assure none were scalded by the hot ground. "It's so hot out here! Let me in!"

There was the sound of heavy work boots tapping against the concrete floor inside as Vincent jogged towards the emergency exit, pushing the horizontal metal bar outwards and disengaging the locking mechanism.

Immediately, Rainbow burst inside and flopped onto the floor, letting the heat absorbed by her body soak out into the cold concrete with a satisfied moan. Her clipped wings buzzed happily, and for a brief moment she considered kissing the ground. She resisted the urge.

Rainbow glanced upwards to investigate a suspicious noise. Indeed, her suspicions were correct: her human acquaintence was laughing at her.

Vincent's small chuckles advanced to guffawing. He was bent over, bracing himself by clutching his knees with both hands.

"H - hey!" Rainbow protested, angry.

"Your face...!" Vincent grinned. Much to Rainbow's irritation, he was mocking her predictament.

"You ain't ever touched metal or pavement in direct sunlight in the middle of a summer afternoon? Shit's hot!"

"I know now." Rainbow scrambled onto her hooves and assumed a sitting position. She grumbled, looking away and avoiding eye contact.

"What's wrong?" Vincent wondered aloud. Despite not gazing at him, Rainbow could practically visualize the dopey frown he was sporting.

"I'm still angry at you for cutting my feathers off."

"Never gonna let that go, huh? You hold grudges? You sound like my ex. Besides, I didn't cut your feathers off, I cut some inches off the first row." Rainbow glanced back at her companion to witness him gesticulate, raising a finger into the air in an unknown gesture.

"So what? You said you were gonna eat me. I don't trust you! You're not one of my friends. Stop acting like one!"

Shocked, Vincent withdrew his finger and lowered his arm. "I said I was sorry."

"So what?" Rainbow repeated, crossing her forelegs stubbornly. She glared. "How does that help me now?"

Vincent remained quiet. He didn't reply with a quick-witted, snappy response she had anticipating. Instead, his face contorted into a remorseful frown.

"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't... know you'd be this way. Nothing else here has been able to talk, so I guess I just started seeing everything as food or an obstacle to avoid." He lowered his head shamefully, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

Distressed and unsure how to remedy the situation, Rainbow stood and rotated 180 degrees, intent on leaving.

"Hey, wait!"

Rainbow looked over her shoulder in time to see Vincent reach out as if he were going to attempt to physically stop her from leaving. She jerked away instinctively, then released the tension from her body.

"Look, I just need space, okay?" Stressed, Rainbow lowered her ears flat against her head.

Vincent clearly got the memo. He backed away, thrusting his hands skyward in mock surrender. "Fine, Dash."

Rainbow's facial expression softened when she realized he had remembered her name. He had been listening to her the previous evening.

Rainbow turned and reared up onto her rear legs, placing her forehooves onto the metal bar of the emergency exit door. She shoved it and stepped outside, passing the threshold.

She wanted time alone to think. A walk outside in nature would help ease her mind and allow thoughts to flow. She didn't need an imitation Pinkie Pie babbling incessantly in her ear.

"When you want to come back inside, just knock, okay? I'll be here." Vincent held the emergency exit door open with his body and stood, leaning, in the doorframe.

Rainbow glanced back, waving with a hoof to acknowledge what he had said.

"How do I get down?" Rainbow considered their predicament momentarily. "How do you normally get down from here?"

"Built a ramp that-a-way." Vincent gestured to indicate a direction. North

Rainbow adjusted her course, bearing in mind the directions she had been provided, and began trotting across the hot black pavement. She approached the northern edge of the auto repair shop's parking lot, peeking over the edge. Indeed, there was a ramp that connected flush with the edge of the pavement, sloping downwards towards a tall hill. Vincent had made an intelligent decision by selecting a hill as the starting point to construct the ramp; the length from the apex of the hill to the auto repair shop's parking lot was shorter than from the ground.

The ramp was the result of a disorganized fusion between scrap metal, wood, rope and an extensive supply of nails. It was wider than six broad-shouldered stallions standing side-by-side. Supported by a multitude of weight-bearing pillars from beneath, it looked solid enough, but Rainbow still didn't trust it. Sure, she didn't anticipate the entire thing to crumble to dust as soon as she laid a hoof on it, but maybe she could get a splinter up the sensitive parts of her hooves. Or a nail.

Rainbow stepped carefully onto the ramp, eventually accelerating to a cautious trot.

When she finally reached her destination, she glanced back over one shoulder. The auto repair shop's parking lot suddenly appeared so distant.

The chunk of earth the auto shop was constructed upon was, in fact, not floating in midair. It hadn't ripped from the ground and began floating randomly, it appeared that it had been willed into existence in this world arbitrarily and had descended due to gravity, colliding with and burying itself into the dirt.

Any number of possibilities existed for how the giant mound of earth could have settled in this location. Discord was entirely capable of summoning random objects from thin air using his chaos magic, for example. She didn't trouble herself with worrying about unimportant details, though. She looked forward, examining her surroundings.

The world stretched before her. It much resembled Equestria. Flat plains, gently-sloping hills, green-leaved trees and green-bladed grass.

The air temperature was ever increasing. Rainbow reached with a hoof and brushed a lock of her mane out of her eyes. She was already sweating. She squinted her eyes until they were nearly closed and gazed upwards towards the blue sky.

The sun in the morning sky was probably smaller than Celestia's sun in Equestria, although Rainbow couldn't say for certain. It also appeared orange instead of a pleasant yellow. The greatest difference between Equestria and Fuck All Nowhere was that Nowhere was a planet in a binary star system. It was orbiting two identical suns! Well, it may have only been orbiting one and not the other, but at the moment there were two stars in the sky.

It was fascinating. For a moment, Rainbow considered how excited Twilight would be to behold a dual-star system, then felt a twinge of sadness as she was reminded of the friends in Equestria she had left behind.

Rainbow sighed sadly, returning her gaze to the ground on her level. Her eyes were burning from gazing at the suns and she was seeing splotches, afterimages. She rubbed her eyes with her hooves, then returned them to the dirt.

Flora was sparse in the area around the auto repair shop. Vincent may have harvested most of the flowers to eat, although some remained. Peckish, Rainbow considered sampling the flowers, but resisted the urge. Poisoning herself was not something she ever wanted if she were capable of avoiding it.

Vincent would probably know which plants were safe to eat and which weren't. Rainbow entertained herself with the idea as she began trotting south on a whim, departing from the improvised ramp.

He had been living in Nowhere for an indeterminate amount of time and had presumably constructed the makeshift ramp without unicorn magic using his own two hands. Surely the man knew what plants were safe to eat.

What was he even eating, anyway? A creature of his mass would require more food than a standard pony. Also, he was bulging with muscular biceps and triceps.

Rainbow recalled when Vincent admitted he had considered eating her. She shivered, disconcerted. Maybe he wasn't vegetarian like her after all.

There was a local forest to the south of the auto repair shop. The trees provided sufficient shade no longer, as many had been felled. Rainbow hopped up onto a stump and back down again as she passed by.

Beavers or pony technology hadn't produced the stumps Rainbow was witnessing. The stumps were flat and unnaturally smooth where the trunk had been cut and separated. If a unicorn desired, they could likely utilize magic to slice a tree's trunk so cleanly as to leave such smooth stumps, but most unicorns didn't work in the lumber industry. No, the stumps were probably left by Vincent when he had gathered wood to construct the large ramp.

Beyond the sparse trees of the small forest and a squat hill, the land stretched outwards widely. A lake had formed in a large depression in the earth that had likely resulted from volcanic activity a very long time ago. Pointy rock formations ringed the lake, jutting out from the ground awkwardly.

Rainbow descended downhill towards the lake, cantering. It was an opportunity to go swimming! The morning was too hot for her to lazily sunbathe, so she could do the next best thing.

Momentarily, Rainbow looked around, observing her surroundings. The crater lake was completely deserted of any creatures. Vincent had implied hostile creatures were everywhere and being attacked was imminent if she left the safety of the auto repair shop. That didn't appear to be the case. Maybe the hostile creatures of Nowhere were primarily contained in an exclusion zone, like how most dangerous magical flora and fauna near Ponyville resided in the Everfree Forest.

The crater lake's water was a gorgeous teal, though murky. Its shores were sandy, but it wasn't the type of pure, yellow sand ideal for constructing sand sculptures. Rainbow's hooves crunching on the lake's shore flung up grains of sand and bits of gravel.

Rainbow curiously observed as some large bubbles arose from the depths of the lake and popped once they reached the surface.

She waded into the cool water until her chest and wings were almost submerged and bowed her head, drinking eagerly to replace the water in her body that had been lost in sweat.

Rainbow flung her head backwards to sweep her multicolored mane out of her eyes. She grimaced, resisting the urge to gag. The water didn't quite satisfy her in the way she wanted. It had an off-putting aftertaste of how rotten eggs smelled. Still, it was water, and she was thirsty.

Rainbow began to wade deeper into the lake, intending to swim and wash herself, when a gigantic wave caught her by surprise and swept her underwater.

Rainbow paddled to the surface, coughing as she spat out the foul water. Whatever contaminants polluted the lake water were burning her eyes. She blinked rapidly, attempting to clear her blurry vision.

From the depths of the crater lake had emerged a giant crustacean. It resembled a lobster, with a tiny head and shiny black eyes. It was armored with slate grey-colored plates of chiton and possessed black antennae that dripped with lake water. It had far too many arms ending in sharp claws that snapped in the air threateningly like oversized scissors. Its primary claws were wide enough to cleave a pony in half with one powerful snap.

The monster reared up, revealing a mouth with countless jagged mandibles that quivered hungrily. For a brief moment, Rainbow saw inside the monster's black pit of a mouth. There were rows of tiny, razer-sharp teeth all the way down its throat.

It emitted a series of watery gurgling sounds at her, then began to move. It was almost as large as a train car, and it was scuttling towards her with its countless crab legs fast.

Rainbow cried out in fear, backpedaling in an attempt to escape. She tumbled, somersaulting underwater once before washing onto the shore in a soaked heap. She had a moment to observe another crustacean emerge from the depths before she scrambled onto her hooves and darted away. She dashed quicker than the first monster could snap at her with one of its primary claws. She heard its claw snap shut behind her with a loud clicking sound.

Rainbow galloped uphill towards the line of trees, weaving between them expertly. Unfortunately, probably due to Vincent cutting most of them down, the tiny forest was insufficient at impeding the creatures pursuing her. The closest one had enough mass and momentum to demolish one of the trees with a huge crash and snapping of wood. The creature stumbled, a victim of its own persistence and stupidity, but continued pursuing Rainbow nonetheless, seemingly uninjured.

Rainbow reached the giant chunk of earth below the auto repair shop and attempted to dart to the right and circle around to head for the ramp, but one of the monsters moved to physically block her path.

Trapped between a flat rock wall and two huge armored monsters, Rainbow abandoned her own dignity. The situation was beginning to feel hopeless.

"VINCENT! HELP!"

Rainbow tilted her head back and screamed as loudly as she could into the sky. Having delivered her distress call, she focused on the beasts directly in front of her. Without the ability to fly, she would have to fight to survive. She widened the placement of her hooves and assumed a stance reserved for combat.

Rainbow saw nowhere to buck nor anywhere vulnerable to bite with her teeth. The way the creature's biology worked rendered it surprisingly defensive. Its armor plating looked thick and tough.

Rainbow fluttered her clipped wings uselessly and leapt backwards, expertly dodging a primary claw that came sailing towards her. It snapped directly in front of her face, missing her by mere feet.

Panting gently from exertion, she glanced quickly at the other monster. It tilted one of its primary claws, prepared to snap at her.

A deafening sound like the cracking of a whip erupted dramatically. Rainbow winced, crying out as her sensitive ears rang.

One of the tiny heads of the crustaceans burst in a dramatic explosion of gore. Its body slumped onto the ground with a cacophony of joints snapping and armor plating squelching under their own weight as the entire creature went limp. Rainbow's already-wet mane and torso was splattered with blue blood. Horrified, she blinked several times, motionless. Her sensitive ears lied back against her head from the stress.

The other crustacean hesitated. This gave Rainbow enough time to dash around the first monster's corpse and gallop towards the ramp faster than she ever had before. She was acting almost entirely on instinct.

Rainbow climbed the hill and began ascending the long ramp rapidly, barely registering that Vincent was waiting for her at the top.

"Get behind me!"

Rainbow obeyed his order by instinct, not choice. She slowed to a canter when she reached the relative safety of the auto repair shop's parking lot, then a trot. Finally, she sat back on her haunches behind Vincent and hung her head, panting. Rainbow wasn't physically exhausted from the galloping or the combat—she had experience with both. It was the stress.

Vincent planted one foot in front of the other and crouched on one knee, bracing the buttstock of a long hunting rifle against his shoulder. At the apex of the hill, the crustacean had began scuttling up the ramp. It was traveling slower, utilizing only a portion of its legs to navigate the relatively-narrow platform.

Vincent patiently held his fire until the creature grew nearer, then nearer still. He aligned the rifle's iron sights with the creature's head, positioned his finger over the trigger and squeezed.

Rainbow was struck violently with another explosion of sound as the bullet Vincent fired sailed through the air and connected squarely with the monster's head. No longer balancing itself, its lifeless corpse toppled over the edge of the ramp. It fell for three seconds before colliding with the earth below with a ghastly CRUNCH as all of its joints snapped simultaneously.

"Whoooooo!" Vincent cheered, leaping up onto his feet. He pumped a fist into the air, gripping the rifle around the narrow section of the stock in his other hand. "How do ya like that, ya oversized crab-looking fucks?"

Rainbow didn't participate in the celebration. She gently hyperventilated, rubbing her ears with her hooves. She was partially deafened by an aggressive ringing.

"Ah, shit." The triumphant grin on Vincent's face vanished as he noticed Rainbow sitting dejectedly on the pavement, her eyes downcast. Concern flooded his face as he set the rifle down onto the ground carefully and jogged over.

"Dash, you okay...?" He squatted, placing a hand onto one of her hooves as she rubbed at her ears.

Rainbow avoided his eye contact, turning her head away. She opened her mouth agape to speak, but no words emerged. She sniffled, tears forming in her eyes. Emotion was welling inside of her, threatening to imminently burst.

"I - I'm sorry, I..." She wanted to apologize, but she wasn't sure how, or even why she wanted to in the first place.

Vincent placed a hand on the side of her head, getting blue monster blood between his fingers. If he objected, he didn't visibly react. "I should be the one apologizing. I'm sorry I clipped your feathers off. Almost got you killed. And I'm sorry I've been..." he sighed, frowning. "...a little insensitive. Well, a lot insensitive."

Hearing a voice normally so gruff and flippant transform into one soft and caring for her sake was too much for Rainbow to bear. She abandoned trying to make eye contact with Vincent and clenched her eyes shut, tensing up as she cried softly. Fat tears leaked from her eyes and streaked through the sky blue fur on her face, mixing with the disgusting monster blood.

Sympathetic, Vincent quickly stripped out of his shirt and balled it up, using it as a rag to dab Rainbow's eyes to clean off some of the blood. "Get that shit off you," he murmured softly.

The gentle care and attention made Rainbow sob harder. Her body trembled.

Vincent sighed sadly, patting Rainbow gently on one of her shoulders. "I'm sorry. First few weeks here were tough for me too."

"Y - you told me not to go outside..." Rainbow sputtered, managing to control her breathing enough to speak. "I didn't listen..."

Vincent licked his dry lips, hesitating as he considered what to say to make her feel better. "Well, look... you had no way of knowing those things were in that lake. You did try to swim in that crater lake down south, right?"

Receiving a tiny nod from Rainbow, Vincent continued. "Yeah. I don't blame you for thinkin' that place looked like a nice swimmin' hole. I tried swimmin' there once—them things were snappin' at my pale ass more eagerly than a dog at a mailman." Vincent chuckled as he recalled the memory.

The joke got a weak chuckle out of Rainbow, despite herself. She sighed, blinking. Her eyes were stinging from irritation from crying. After a full day of not eating and a life-threatening encounter with a couple dangerous monsters, Rainbow was deprived of energy and exhausted.

Noticing Rainbow was feeling a little better, Vincent gave her a final pat on the shoulder and slowly stood, his knees popping. He stretched, groaning, then slipped his white shirt back on, now stained with blue monster blood. "Alright Skittles, how 'bout I show you the best swimming hole this side of Nowhere? Get'cha cleaned up a bit. You look like hell."

Rainbow stood up onto all four hooves and reached, brushing a lock of wet and filthy mane away from her eyes. She got a dab of blue blood onto her hoof, which she tried to scrape off onto the pavement.

She seriously considered the prospect of scrubbing herself down, possibly with soap, and removing the sticky, horrible blood and grime. She nodded. "I... could use a break."

"You said it."