The tingle of electricity…

The sensation of burning…

Blinding light.

The stuffy air of dry atmosphere…

The cold feeling of hard stone…

Darkness.

~~~~~~~~~

Scootaloo saw nothing. Wherever she was she could only see darkness. She couldn’t feel anything save for her eyelids closing. She blinked again. It was the only thing that triggered any of her senses. She blinked again. She constantly batted her eyes for several minutes, even though it felt like hours. Slowly she felt her heart beating against her chest and could hear air moving in and out of her nostrils. Scootaloo twisted her body dizzily and pawed wildly until her hooves into contact with something.

Okay… so this is down. Scootaloo went to say aloud but nothing came out. She tried to stand up but her legs wobbled and fell out from underneath sending her back to the hard ground. She learned that the ground was stone as her chin came crashing against the hard rock. But that shouldn’t right… she was in a field covered with the wet ashes of dead plants. And it was raining. The ground should be softer than this.

She haphazardly stood up again, almost tripping over again but she was able to prop up against something. It felt hard, so it was likely more rock. Probably a wall. She still couldn’t see though. Scootaloo brought a hoof up to her face and accidently smacked her muzzle. Shrugging it off, she waved the hoof wildly in front of her eyes. She still couldn’t see. Was she blinded by something? Scootaloo rubbed her own face to see if anything was covering it but there wasn’t.

Oh. I can see now. Kind of… Scootaloo thought to herself. She could vaguely make out the sketchy outline of her hoof that was only mere inches from her eyes. It wasn’t much at all. Hanging her head close to the ground, she could begin to make out small cracks and scratches in the uneven floor. She tried to concentrate and analyzed the stone, making out more and more tiny details. The ground was covered in a fine layer of dust, a small crack ran perpendicular to this large one over here, and this small pothole allowed from maybe a millimeter more dust to settle in it than the surrounding area. There’s a darker blob over here, and another here. Wait, that one wasn’t there before.

Even in her barely seeable surroundings, Scootaloo could slightly make out different shades of gray. Another blob appeared next to the other two accompanied by a small splash. Water? Where was it coming from?

Right… It was raining… Scootaloo just realized she was drenched in water. But wherever she was it was dry now so she had to be in somepony’s home or a cave of some sorts. It was probably still night time too. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy probably brought her somewhere for the night. Scootaloo looked up to the sky expecting to see stars but saw nothing, only more rock.

“Hey! I can see!” She blinked. “And I can talk!” Scootaloo was beginning to regain control of her senses. Her field of view was now a couple meters, implying the ceiling was only two or so meters tall. Scootaloo looked around to get a better grasp on her surroundings and noticed two large mounds lying in the middle of the room.

“That mane is unmistakable,” she told herself. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were both sleeping soundly on the ground, covered in just as much water and grime as she was. Wherever they were had to be close by, there’s no way they’d still be wet like that. Scootaloo probably passed out and the two brought them where they are now, and after they fell asleep she soon woke up. But where is “here?”

Stone. Lots of stone. Probably a cave. Scootaloo looked around some more; the depth at which she could see was closely increasing. Continuing her search from her position she noticed a patch that was slightly lighter than the rest of the room. An exit?

Scootaloo moved her body off the wall she had been leaning on and almost tripped again. The ground was so uneven it’s dangerous to even walk. Oh how she wished she could fly and not have to deal with it at all. But they were still juvenile and under developed. She couldn’t do more than take long strides if she jumped and glide back down. She continued her cautious journey through the entryway and down a dark tunnel. Her adventurous side took over as she saw light up ahead around a corner. A built up burden of pressure she didn’t even know she had relieved itself at that point. Immediately she picked up speed and ran towards the opening, her pacing more fluid and with fewer slipups. Scootaloo ran out of the cave into the blinding light of the Equestrian Sun.

…Or not. This is Equestria, right? What happened to the Everfree Forest? Ponyville? Was this even Equestria?

Scootaloo found herself on the edge of a mountain overlooking a flat, dry, and hot desert landscape. Behind her stood more brown mountains that rose high above the cave she emerged from. In every other direction was nothing but sand for as long as the eye can see. Scootaloo kicked a stone from her small perch and watched as it flew through the air, the echoes of it bouncing off rocks sounded like a deafening roar as the stone tumbled its way down the cliff until it eventually came to a rest.

Wait, those blue fumes from the field were from the burnt Poison Joke. Heh, this was probably just a harmless prank the plant was playing on her. Scootaloo smiled in relief at the thought and returned deep within the cave. Now she could hear her hoofsteps clearly as the echoes bounced around with every step she took. She returned to the back of the cave to find the two other pegasus mare sleeping soundly on the stone floor. Scootaloo felt the stuffy atmosphere of the room along with the pressure from before return to her. Was this the way it always was in caves? She sighed at the thought a walked up to Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo smiled at the awkwardly adorable sight of her hero cuddled up in a fetal position. Slowly she bent down and lay alongside Dash, and rejoined her in a deep sleep.

~~~~~~~~~

Fluttershy brought her head up slowly and blinked. Her breathing was calm and smooth much like it’d be on any normal day. But this wasn’t a normal day. There was that terrible storm that the weather ponies fought into the Everfree Forest with, Scootaloo got lost, and there was the cloud of…

“Scootaloo? Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy called but the words came out of her throat as nothing more than a weak whimper. She quickly snapped out of her weak state of mind and scanned the room. But she couldn’t see anything.

Oh no. The Poison Joke made me blind. Fluttershy thought, pouting. Not being able to see wasn’t that big a loss however. Bats are practically blind and it always made her curious how they can maneuver through the air without crashing. Twilight once told her it was something called “echolocation” where the bat makes a bunch of clicking noises and then it can tell where it is. Plus, being blind meant her other senses could become more acute as well. If she could learn echolocation and have her other senses heighten, in comparison to being able to see it would be more beneficial on the end of the scale.

Fluttershy smiled at the thought of learning something other animals could do and tried her best at echolocation. She tried and smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth repeatedly, making wet clicking noise. She brought a hoof up to her muzzle and clicked violently at it in hopes it would somehow work itself out. Slowly but surely, and image started to form in her head.

“Squee!” Fluttershy squeaked in delight and kept up her consistent clicking. The faster she did it, the more defined her hoof became. After about a minute, she could begin to see individual hairs and different shades of black. Being only able to see in black and white wasn’t a bad prospect either. Confusing colors can send the wrong image, and having your vision in grayscale might work well around that. But she was getting exhausted. At the rate she was clicking air was escaping her lungs rather fast so she stopped for a minute to catch her breath.

Fluttershy stopped her clicking, but she still saw her hoof in front of her face. Confused, she moved it around and studied it closely trying to figure out how she could still see it without echolocation.

Oh.

Fluttershy blushed at her own gullibility. She could see with her own eyes! That must not have been echolocation then, She thought, slightly becoming depressed. But… I’m glad I can still see. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t ever see my friends again… their faces, Pinkie’s parties, I wouldn’t be able to read… to see Angel…

Fluttershy slipped into a more depressed state, an oddly warm and thankful smile across her face. She was happy she hadn’t lost her vision. Fluttershy looked around with her slowly adjusting eyes and noticed she was in a stony cave. Off to her left Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo were cuddling together in a deep sleep.

“They looked so cute together,” she told herself. Hey, her voice returned. Fluttershy looked around the cave she was in and saw the ceiling wasn’t that high but it’s doing a fine job at keeping the storm out. The three of them must be really deep inside the cavern for her not to be able to hear it. The smell of wet fur slowly attracted itself to her nose, and Fluttershy realized she was soaking wet. So were Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash, so they must have gotten into the shelter recently. She probably passed out and Rainbow Dash brought her in here. A good thing too, none of them wanted to miss the Summer Sun Celebration. Fluttershy smiled, happy that she was lucky enough to have such great friends. The poor things must be exhausted.

Fluttershy went back to examining the cave and realized just how low the pressure in the room was. It looked like there hadn’t been any sort of creature in this cave for years, or at least this far back anyway. The cave floor was covered in a thin sheet of dust and there was no evidence of any sort of activity with the exception of a couple fresh hoofprints. They were too small to be Dash’s, so she must have flown in with her on her back. There’d be no way Scootaloo could bring her in here.

Fluttershy looked down at the spot where she lay and took notice at the damp floor beneath her. The dirt was sticking to her coat. She’d likely have to take a bath again; they all would. Even in dimly lit dark, Fluttershy could see that Dash’s cyan coat was too dark. Even Scootaloo seemed a bit dusty.

Fluttershy looked around again at her surroundings, but the cavern didn’t look too special. No, it was special in its own way. It was their shelter and she was thankful for knowing that if she ever got lost in the Everfree Forest there was this place to take refuge in.

“Where is this cave anyway?” Fluttershy slowly stood up, almost tripping on the uneven surface. The shakiness of her movements convinced her she should probably fly, but before that she had to do a quick checklist of herself:

“No broken bones? Check. No irregular breathing? With the conditions of the current atmosphere, things are alright. Heartbeat at about eighty beats a minute? Check. No wounds? Check. No bruises? Check. No broken bones? Double check. All five senses are working?”

Fluttershy blinked, tapped the stone floor with a hoof, smelt her mane, and licked her hoof.

“Check, check, check, check, and check. No broken bones? Triple check. No bleeding? Hard to tell in the dark…” She’d have to get into the light to check that. But everything else seemed absolutely fine. Slowly she stretched her wings to get off the ground into a hover, but that plan was quickly thwarted. Her wings reached full wingspan (a little under eight feet wingtip to wingtip) and she was able to touch both of the opposite walls of the room. She hadn’t realized just how claustrophobic it is in here.

Fluttershy sighed and folded in her wings, walking off to where she thought was the exit mindful of where she stepped. The loose rocks on the ground could easily slip out and have her fall. Who knows what kind of injury she could get? And not being able to stretch her wings, she’d likely have to just wait until Rainbow Dash or Scootaloo got up and then they could find help. But she didn’t want to be a burden to them. Fluttershy kept her pace through the narrow tunnel until she noticed some light reflecting around a corner up ahead.

Oh no… she thought. Is it daytime already? What if we missed the Summer… what if there’s another fire? We’d be trapped in here!

Fluttershy’s stopped her careful steps and burst into a full gallop. Rounding the corner, a blinding light shone down on her. She picked up her pace and up through the small opening in the earth where she collapsed onto the stone ground. She hadn’t run like that before in months. The good news, she soon found out, was that there was no fire and the storm had stopped. The bad news is that she’d likely miss the Summer Sun Celebration if she hadn’t already.

Worse news was that she didn’t even think she was in Equestria anymore. This had to be the Poison Joke’s doing. For all she knew she was imagining things.

Fluttershy slowly stood up, trying to calm herself down. She began hyperventilating in fear at the sight the presented itself before her; pure desert. All she could see was sand and it seemed to stretch on forever! She’d never been in a desert like this before, but she knew it was dangerous to be outside unprepared. If you didn’t have a lot of water or were properly clothed, you could die in less than two days. She, and as far as she knew about Dash and Scootaloo, didn’t have either.

She’d been to Appleloosa in the Mild West before, and that was a town in a desert. But they had apple orchards and were thrived. By what she was seeing there wasn’t any sign of civilization out here, except maybe for a speck of green out in the distance. An oasis is what they were called; there’d be plenty of food and water in those. If she was lucky, it would be the Appleloosa orchards she was looking at. That cave must have gone really deep into the mountains for her to immerge on the western border like this. But… she only walked through the cave for maybe a minute. It’s not possible for Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo to have walked the hundred something miles underground to finally rest where they did now. And if she recalled correctly there was only one exit: the one she just emerged from. There also weren’t any mountains overlooking the Mild West either. Fluttershy turned around to examine the towering pile of rocks, tempted to see what was on the other side. But there’s no telling if the mountains or even this desert were real or not, and she just couldn’t leave Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo alone in the cave.

Pulled between the two choices, Fluttershy slowly crawled back underground to regroup with her friends.

~~~~~~~~~

Fluttershy returned to the darkened cavern, her eyes slowly readjusting again to the nearly nonexistent light level. During her absence, Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo awoke. Scootaloo was busy trying to get Dash to calm down.

“I’m telling you, Fluttershy is around here somewhere!” Scootaloo pleaded, trying to keep Rainbow Dash upright.

“Fluttershy!? Where the hay are you!?” Dash knocked Scootaloo aside and ran into a wall. Stumbling back she fell onto her haunches and sneezed, sending particles of dust everywhere.

“I-I’m right here everypony. I was just checking the… outdoors.” Fluttershy winced at the thought. Dash tried to expand her wings but couldn’t get enough room to open them properly and reluctantly pulled them back. Scootaloo looked through the darkness at Fluttershy, a bit of terror in her eyes.

“You saw it too, then.” Fluttershy’s gaze met Scootaloo’s. The two nervously looked to each other in awkward silence while Dash kept fumbling around the room tripping over every possible crevice.

“Hey! I can see now!” She cheered in a deep sigh of relief, her head dizzily darting around the cave they were in. Her groggy stare met Scootaloo’s weary eyes, and then expectantly she looked to Fluttershy. “Where are we?”

Fluttershy felt her heart sink into her stomach again. Why didn’t it just rent a place down there and stop moving back and forth? She thought Rainbow Dash had carried her in here! That meant… no. Scootaloo couldn’t have brought both of them into the cave. Physically, that’d be impossible for the young filly. Scootaloo appeared to be thinking the same thing, or so it was implied by her cold sweat and trembling limbs. Dash cocked a brow in confusion and glanced between them. Slowly, she was able to register that neither of them had any clue.

“So nopony knows where we are then?” She chocked the words out of her mouth. Fluttershy swallowed a large lump that formed in her throat and Scootaloo suddenly smiled.

“I know where we are! We’re in a cave!” She raised a hoof in triumph. Fluttershy smiled at the innocent joke, and even though she protested Rainbow Dash let out a small grin as well.

“We’re somewhere in a desert though. There’s lots of sand outside,” she added. Dash’s smile faded into a stern glare at the orange filly, and then she looked to Fluttershy in the hopes it was just a joke.

“She’s right, Rainbow Dash. Somehow we’re in a desert,” Fluttershy deadpanned. Dash’s expression went from bad to worse with that.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s real,” Fluttershy continued, getting curious looks from the others. “We were breathing in lots of vaporous Poison Joke. This is probably just some harmless prank it’s playing on us. We could still be in the clearing for all I know.”

“Some prank,” Dash scoffed, kicking a small rock across the tiny cavern.

Fluttershy answered her with a lengthy explanation: “Well, Poison Joke’s affects are rather mild with brief contact. I sometimes ground the flower up into very helpful herbal remedies, but even I only put granular amounts into my recipes. Grinding up a single petal releases almost a thousand as much chemicals compared to when you simply touch the surface. If the entire plant was turned into a vapor then it probably released a billion times the compared to simply brushing up against it. And there was an entire field of Poison Joke! The number of plants we inhaled means that the multiplier would be unimaginable! And the fact that we breathed it in means it likely got into our systems easier and in more profound numbers…”

Fluttershy stopped herself and shuddered. Poison Joke is… well, no joke. It is a very dangerous wildflower and there is no telling just how it could affect any given being. The idea of a single creature being affected by an incomprehendable dosage for an unknown amount of time…

Fluttershy fainted onto the stone floor. Even though Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash couldn’t even begin to fathom the situation they were in, they at least understood they were exposed to an unhealthy amount of Poison Joke. Second to shooting the stuff into your blood, breathing it in was probably the worst way to absorb it too.

“So, we’re drugged up on Poison Joke. That’s just great. I guess we’ll just have to let it run its course…” Dash trailed off, weaving a hoof in the air. Scootaloo looked up to her clueless and forlorn. The poor filly didn’t even understand the situation they were in. Not that Dash did either, and Fluttershy was unconscious so they wouldn’t be able to get a dumbed down version soon. Letting out a deep sigh, the cyan pegasus stood back up on the uneven ground only to almost fall over again.

“Scootaloo, wait here with her. I’m going to go see exactly where we are,” she said. Scootaloo gave an obedient nod and walked over to Fluttershy, kneeling beside her. Not exactly sure what to do, she poked Fluttershy’s muzzle to try to get her to wake up.

“Hey Dash?” Scootaloo asked out and looked around the empty cavern. Rainbow Dash had already left.

~~~~~~~~~

Rainbow Dash emerged on the outside of the dirty entrance; the blazing sun high above casting shadows over her. Dash took a minute to take in the scenery, or more accurately the lack thereof. Ignoring the mountains behind her all she saw was desert sand ahead. The rolling hills of rocks and sand dunes were the only prominent features of the landscape. The cave entrance was perched high up and embedded into the mountainside. There was probably a hundred foot drop straight down in front of her, but she had wings so that really wouldn’t matter. Looking up to the sky she saw snow white clouds rolling with the wind against the blue sky.

“Definitely the Everfree Forest…” she muttered under her breath. Not a single pegasus was up there to move the clouds. Dash smiled though, at the vast blue canvas before her. She let her wings expand to their full length, not a single rock wall hindering them. A cool breeze swept its way around the mountain ruffling her coat and tossing her mane into her eyes. Lifting a hoof up to brush it out of the way, she saw just how filthy it was and her coat didn’t seem to fare any better. Both were covered in a mixture of wet dirt, dust, soot, and other unidentifiable foreign bodies. Dash spat into her hoof and rubbed it through a part of her mane, and the vibrant rainbow colors came back to life.

“Rainbow Dash?”

Dash turned around and saw Scootaloo standing behind her. Fluttershy too soon appeared out of the cave and the three of them took in the view together.

“I’ve never been in a desert before,” Scootaloo said in a mixture of curiosity and fear. Fluttershy looked up to the sky at the self-propelled clouds and flinched.

“Do you really think a ton of Poison Joke could do this?” Dash asked her. Fluttershy didn’t respond but hesitantly continued to look around. She slowly opened her wings and let the wind rustle between their feathers.

“I… I don’t know,” she finally answered. “But it’s the only explanation I can think of that would make us hallucinate this.”

“I don’t think it’s a hallucination…” Scootaloo spoke, her voice catching the other two by surprise. She walked up to the edge of the embankment beside Rainbow Dash and looked down. She lifted up a tiny stone in her hoof and threw it over the side. The three of them watched as the stone bounced its way down the mountain several times before it shattered into bits. She rolled a larger stone off the side and they watched that one tumble too, succumbing to a similar fate as its predecessor. Dash solemnly looked down and then back up to the sky.

“Hallucination or not, I think we should take it for what it is.” She spoke and kicked a stone off the side and watched it follow the tracks of the two before it. Fluttershy silently sighed and nodded in agreement. Scootaloo was too busy pushing more stones off the side and watching them fall to their deaths to acknowledge, but still listened in to the conversation.

“I’m going to do some scouting,” Dash added, flapping her wings in the breeze.

“There might be an oasis over there,” Fluttershy pointed to the patch of green far off in the distance. “Scootaloo and I will stay here, but could you check it out? Maybe bring us back some food and if possible some water?”

Rainbow Dash gave the two a loyal nod and her signature overconfident smile. She flapped her wings and took the air in a brilliant burst of acceleration off towards the oasis. Scootaloo and Fluttershy watched her fly away in disbelief; but not by her sudden speed or the fact that she became indistinguishable from the rest of the sky. No, they watched after her almost in confused horror as the cyan pegasi’s familiar rainbow contrail wasn’t trailing behind her.

“Be careful…” Scootaloo and Fluttershy mumbled in unison.

Next Chapter: Chapter 03: Oasis Estimated time remaining: 24 Minutes