The closer Twilight got to the library the more ominous the cloud became and by the time she had reached the library it was a churning mass of shimmery dark grey fluff. The center looked to be completely black, judging from the light put off by the numerous arcs of energy that were lashing out to any lightning rod, weather vane, or street lamp in range in a shower of bright sparks. This was a disaster, to be sure, and Twilight's mouth hung open for a second before realization hit her like a buck square to the face.

Spike.

"Spike! SPIKE!" she cried out, glancing up at the bedroom window of the tree house hoping to see some sort of sign he was awake or had already escaped but the window was closed just as she had left it. "Oh no. Ohnoohnoohno-!"

"Twibight?"

Just as she was about to make a beeline for the front door she heard a voice somewhere a short distance behind her. Without a doubt it was her stuffed-up Number One Assistant and when her head whipped around sharply she found him peeking around the stonework of a nearby building waving both arms to get her attention, "Twibight, ober here!"

She had never galloped so fast in her life and the instant she was close enough she was wrapping her hooves around the little dragon, "Oh, Spike! I was so worried about you! Are you okay?" Amid the nuzzles and squeezes she failed to notice his eyes bulging out of their sockets and a slight blue tinge growing in his face from the embrace.

"Twi-*gag* li-*wheeze*" Spike tried to say around the hug but found trying to speak let what little air he had left escape his screaming lungs.

"Easy there, Twilight. Might wanna let the lil' fella come up for some air."

The distinct drawl of another of Twilight's friends brought an end to her almost assaulting-levels of nuzzling against the nearly passed out dragon. "Applejack! I'm so glad you-" she was mid-sentence when she turned to where the farmpony had spoken but the words died in her throat when she saw her friend, her eyes growing to twice their size and her mouth fell open. The most immediately noticeable was a familiar produce cart set next to the wall which was covered in scorch marks, some of which were still smoldering but that, however, had barely drawn any of Twilight's attention as next to the cart was an orange earth pony absolutely covered in apple chunks and dripping with juice to the point it looked like she had taken a quick swim in a pool of apple sauce.

Knowing full well what she looked like AJ gave the unicorn a stink eye so mean even one of the Princesses would think twice before opening their muzzle. "Twilight, if'n you so much as giggle..." Applejack growled through gritted teeth in hopes of getting her message across though she tried not to draw attention to an apple chunk that slowly slid from the brim of her drooping hat and down her mane to land in the street with a wet PLOP!

"BWAAAAHAAHAHA!" the loud guffawing erupted from up near the roof and there was only one pony that laughed like that.

AJ's ear twitched ever so slightly though one could almost hear her quickly-boiling blood like a tea kettle on the range.

A rainbow-maned head poked into Twilight's view over the lip of the roof, confirming that laugh was none other than the brash pegaus'. "I guess what they say is true," she paused so the incoming punchline would hit that much harder, "The Apple family's produce is just BURSTING with flavor! HAAAHAAHAAHAA!"

"Rainbow... Dash..." the orange and quickly turning red farm pony ground her teeth as the pegasus rolled around on the roof laughing uproariously at her own joke, "GET DOWN HERE!"

Twilight attempted to intercede before things got any more out of hoof, "Girls!"

"Hey AJ, let me guess what was in your cart... ZAP apples? AHAAHAAHAA!"

"I'M FITTIN' TO REARRANGE THAT RAINBOW STRIPE OF YOURS!" Applejack was beyond hopping mad and contemplating the possibility of bucking the building to the ground to get at the pegasus and several apple cores that were still in the cart sailed upward in an attempt to dislodge the out-of-reach annoyance, "Get your flank down here so I can kick it!"

"GIRLS!" Twilight tried again, this time gaining their attention though muffled giggles could still be heard from the rooftop and every so often Dash's eyes would dart to the farmpony who was shooting daggers her direction which would prompt the fit of giggles would start again. In the interest of getting to the bottom of things Twilight did her best to ignore it, "What happened here?"

"Beats me, darn cloud came outta nowhere! I saw it swirlin' round your library while I was working my way through town to the market-"

"It was SO cool!" Rainbow Dash excitedly butted in, "First there was this big bang then all the other clouds just kinda disappeared!" She swooped down and hovered at head level, seemingly unaware of just how hard AJ was staring at her and grinding her teeth to keep herself from walloping her now that she was within range. Dash gave zero bucks and turned to point at the cloud above the library, "I was helping the Weather Team get clear of the cloud when I notice Applejack yellin' at Spike to take cover because he was standing in the library door with lightning cracking all around the place. Then she just takes off toward him, cart and all!" She jerked a hoof over at Applejack, who was beginning to calm down ever so slightly because of the praise directed at her, "I'm telling you, AJ must have picked up on some of my awesome moves because she was ducking bolts on her way in - apples exploding all over the place like juicy fireworks - then she tossed Spike in the cart's storage spot and made a beeline back here, dodging bolts the whole way out! That's when you got here."

"Shucks, I wasn't about to leave a friend out there!" Applejack said confidently before jabbing a juice-soaked hoof into Dash's ribs playfully, but still a little harder than normal, "If it had been you, on the other hoof, I woulda had to think about it."

There was one question that rocketed to the front of Twilight's mind, and the same one that she was always afraid of asking when her experimental magic was probably to blame for something happening in Ponyville. "Was anypony hurt?" she asked worriedly and searched her three friends faces for any form of answer though thankfully and much to her relief Spike casually dismissed the question with a wave.

"Na, ebrypony hab scabtered before tha lightbing starteb. Couble bwoken wimbows is all."

"Judgin' by how that cloud's actin' I'd say we're not outta the woods yet," Applejack wrung out her hat before cocking her head to one side to look inquisitively at the unicorn, "Say Twilight, that thing you were talkin' about this mornin'... that got anythin' to do with this?"

Her ears flattening back, Twilight suddenly found it hard to look at her friends. "Oh, um, I can't say with any certainty but m-maybe?" she said meekly with a nervous grin though she couldn't stop her shoulders and head from slumping as she physically shrank under their gaze. I feel absolutely terrible for putting everypony through all of this. Several arcs of lightning striking nearby weather vanes in rapid succession caused Twilight to jump, startling the honest answer out of her, "Yes, probably."

Dash knew Twilight never intended anything like this to happen when she was studying magic and the guilt on her friend's face didn't sit well with her so, casting a glance upwards and with no other idea on how to help, she decided to take initiative, "Hey, don't worry about it! You three sit back and let The Dash handle this!" She was off the ground and airborne before anypony could say anything to the contrary.

Rainbow was halfway to the cloud when something large - larger than the cloud itself - launched out of it with a deafening boom while cones of blue-hot fire spewed out in front of it. It Rainboom'd... without the Rain!? She barely had time to register the revelation before she was hit by the shock-wave and was thrown back onto one of the thatched roofs.

Meanwhile on the ground, Applejack, Twilight, and Spike had all hit the dirt and could only watch as a fire-spewing something barreled by overhead.

------------------------------------------------

The firing of the thrusters caused Titus to whip forward and smash into the console as the shuttle came out of the other side of the anomaly even with the inertial dampeners running well past the maximum safe-operating output. Wherever we are, there's gravity. Titus watched the drops of blood streak down the inside of his visor as proximity alarms blared and view screens that had displayed the empty vastness of space suddenly displayed dark clouds in a blue sky, a large forest behind a hill, and the rapidly-approaching ground.

Got to act fast.

"< Pilot. Power fluctuation detected of one one thousandth of a tick- >"

To his luck the cracked screen of the console in front of him still accepted commands and his gloved hands flew over it for the crash procedure. Emergency shutdown of reactor... done. Redirect everything left in the capacitors to buff slip-space shields. Hydraulic retraction of hull turrets, remotely disarm torpedoes... done! Equalize pressure to exterior levels to avoid explosive decompression... done. Brace for impac- A sudden contact on the exterior of the ship sent it flipping over onto its roof, tossing everything inside around violently.

The human was able to get his arms up to cradle his head and curl-up in his seat as best he could before he was thrown into the edge of his console. His already throbbing head, exacerbated further by the state of being upside-down, exploded in pain as he felt ribs break and if not for the smart-armor in his bodysuit hardening on impact to absorb much of the blow Titus probably would have been looking at something much worse.

The cacophony of straining metal against the whine of shields attempting to hold and the g-forces tugging at his harness as the ship spun on its axis saw him off into unconsciousness.

------------------------------------------------

The thick thatched roof where she had crashed allowed Rainbow to quickly catch her bearings. Good thing this soft roof was here, but sweet sisters, my ears are ringing! Balance is all out-of-whack. Recovering sufficiently, Dash scanned the sky for who - or what - she had nearly collided with though it didn't take much to finding it and she followed its flight down to the ground, cringing as the right side of it smashed into a hill outside of town with enough force to cause a pseudo-earthquake that shook the buildings of Ponyville and knocked several onlooking ponies from their hooves. She lost sight of it as it flipped behind the hill, dirt and debris being flung everywhere in a spectacular fashion though Rainbow lay on the roof for a second longer, awestruck that something that large could have been moving fast enough to perform a Rainboom before she was snapped back to reality by sight of the growing commotion of concerned ponies emerging from their hiding places. Getting to her hooves she made a wobbly glide down to converse with her friends on what to do next.

Twilight's eyes were locked on where the cloud was now dispersing though her gaze shifted to follow a dark vapor trail that led over the hill where a dull roar that grew quieter by the second while Applejack could have probably fit half the farm's apples in her mouth for how far it was hanging open.

"Wab thabt a drabon?!?" Spike, the first to recover from the shock, shouted as he ran over to the pegasus as she struggled to the ground.

The mention of a dragon snapped Twilight out of her trance, "D-Dragon? Did somepony say dragon?!" She'd accidentally summoned dumb beasts before on several occasions but never something like a dragon and the thought of it made her eyes go wide at the prospect. The Princess is going to banish me for sure!

"What?" Dash shouted but was oblivious to her volume because she had seen Spike's mouth moving but it was like he had been whispering. Twilight raised her voice to repeat the question after figuring out the pegasus had been much closer to the Rainboom then they had and was likely experiencing temporary hearing loss. Dash was silent for a moment as she went over her encounter, tapping a hoof to her chin, before she shook her head and shouted again. "Na, I don't think so. It was too fast for a dragon-"

"Well, it sure as hay wasn't a kite, so what else would you call somethin' that big that's flyin’ and breathin' fire?" Applejack interrupted with sound logic as it was the size of some of the lager dragons they had seen in the migration a few months before and overhearing voices in the crowd of ponies around them confirmed that it most certainly was breathing fire.

Twilight shook her head, her denial of what she had seen half born because Rainbow, currently the pony to have gotten the best look at it, was saying it hadn't resembled a dragon. The other half was her absolute desire to not have to explain to the Princess why she needed to leave Canterlot to help stop a rampaging dragon from destroying Ponyville, but this didn't go shared as she took charge, "We shouldn't jump to conclusions but if Rainbow is saying it didn't fly like a dragon I think we should trust her judgment, at least until more evidence comes in."

Shrugging his shoulders, Spike chimed in, "So, if nobt a dwagon whab oes tha leab us wibth?"

Twilight’s eyes followed the vapor trail, “I don’t know Spike, but we need to find out what we’re dealing with.”

“It crashed on the other side of the hill,” Rainbow said loudly and performed a wobbly corkscrew to get above the rooftops to point a hoof in the direction, her flight still affected from the shockwave as was her recovering equilibrium, “The one south of town, toward AJ’s farm.”

“Well I reckon if it’s not a dragon, it still might be some other critter. And even if it is, who better to have on hoof than Fluttershy?”

“Good call, Applejack!” Twilight praised as a plan began to form in her mind. “Dash, you're the fastest so go get Fluttershy and meet us on the road near the hill-” she had barely finished her instruction when the pegasus had shot off in an (almost) straight line for the cottage on the outskirts of town, narrowly dodging flying right into a lamppost but was gone before anypony could stop her. Continuing on with delegating the preparations for her plan Twilight was turning to Spike when she finally noticed the ponies whose expressions ranged from nervous to near-panicked which were turned toward their local heroes and lead her to lean in and instead whisper to her assistant, “Spike, go and find Pinkie Pie. Tell her we need to diffuse this tension, she’ll know what to do.”

With his own task prescribed Spike gave a little salute and turned on his heel to go look for the Party Pony. “Oh, Spike? One more thing,“ the voice over his shoulder said after he had only traveled a few steps, “I need you to send a letter.”

“Ugh…” was all he could manage as he looked visibly sick to his stomach.

----------------------------

It wasn't long before Dash returned to the base of the hill with Fluttershy following right behind her. Twilight briefly explained the situation to her newly-arrived friend, however when she was finished the yellow pegasus stated she had also heard the loud boom and had been dealing with several of her startled animals when Rainbow had nearly crashed through the window. During her explanation Rarity, with Spike on her back, came trotting over the bridge and interrupted.

"Ah, darling, I'm so glad we caught you before you had departed!" Rarity said with a wave of a hoof while Spike hopped down.

"I talked with Pinkie, she's setting up a party and said to leave everythi-"

"SPIKE!" a shocked Twilight interrupted, "You're not all stuffed up anymore!"

"Oh! The poor thing!" Rarity exclaimed, hugging the little dragon close which he clearly didn't mind in the slightest, "I was on my way back to the boutique from the market when I came across my little Spikey-Wikey having a terrible fit of sneezes. Just as any mare would, I offed the gentledragon my hankie and, well..." she looked away, a hoof across her forehead, "It was simply too horrendous to retell."

"Yeah..." Spike sheepishly revealed a somewhat-soggy letter to Twilight.

Had Princess Celestia responded to my letter this quickly? Twilight unrolled the parchment with her magic and read it to herself.

"To my faithful student,

I'm so sorry to hear that Spike is feeling a little under the weather and I hope that the delivery of this letter did not bring him any further discomfort. Please pass along my wishes for his speedy recovery; should you feel that Spike's condition necessitates the delay of your project or his absence puts any strain on you do not hesitate to postpone further experimentation and any reports stemming from it until his full recovery.

Best wishes and warmest regards,
P. C."

Finishing the letter Twilight let out an audible sigh that caused her companions to exchange worried glances because this was never the reaction she had when getting correspondence from her mentor.

Applejack was the first to speak up, trotting over and putting a hoof on Twilight's shoulder "Everythin' okay, sugarcube?"

"Well," Twilight sighed then leaned into AJ's gesture, "No. This letter was sent a few days ago and in it the Princess is telling me I could postpone my research until Spike got better. It... must have gotten clogged... somewhere..." All she could bring herself to do is stare at her hooves as a cloud of guilt slowly built over her, "I'm sorry! This whole situation was avoidable, but because I put my desire to finish a paper before the well-being of a best friend I ended up causing damage to Ponyville and I put my friends in danger. On top of that, whatever just flew over Ponyville may be hurt and lost and scared. And i-it's my fault..." She was trying not to cry, fighting hard to suppress the weariness from working all night as it clawed its way up her throat which was leaving her to speak in small hitches between breaths in what was a losing battle. The letter from the Princess fell into a puddle at her feet when both hooves moved to cradle her face in an attempt to stem the tide of tears that had started rolling down her cheeks, "It's all my fault."

She would have said it a third time but she was smothered in hugs from her friends as they each said something of encouragement.

"There, there, dear. You certainly didn't mean for any of this to happen."
"But you're sorry, and that's what matters."
"Shucks, Twilight, everypony makes mistakes now and again!"
"Yeah, even me! And I'm still this awesome!"
"If anyone's to blame it's me, Twilight. I'm the one who had a letter stuck in his snout."

Twilight still felt she was responsible for all of this but she wanted to show her friends that their support was appreciated so she dried her eyes and did her best to squeeze all of them at once into one hug, "Thanks everypony. I'll be sure to write the Princess with what I've learned when we get back."

"Um, I don't mean to interrupt this..." Fluttershy meekly whispered, shifting from hoof to hoof before breaking from the hug to glance at the hill behind them because just the thought of a hurt creature that was lost or hurt somewhere in the forest was enough to cause the pegasus obvious discomfort, even something as big and imposing as a dragon, "But we really should get going, shouldn't we?"

“Oh dear, I’d love to join you on this little outing but I promised I’d help Pinkie with the cleanup before the party preparations,” Rarity said, starting to head back toward the bridge and secretly glad to have avoided a traipse through the wood which would undoubtedly be a muddy endeavor after the storm.

“Rarity, wait!” Twilight called, trotting a few steps to catch up as the fashionista turned around. Once she was closer her voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Do you think you could take Spike with you? I'm worried we'll find the dragon or whatever it is hurt, or worse, and I don't want that scaring him or him being underhoof if it lashes out at us in pain or fear.”

Spike had overheard the first part of Twilight's conversation and was about to voice his disapproval at missing out on the adventure but the white unicorn spoke first, intentionally cutting off his protests. “Certainly dear, I’m sure the muscles of a big, strong gentledragon such as Spike's will be useful,” she replied, batting her eyelashes at the young dragon as a beckoning for him to follow, "In fact, I will need a personal assistant by my side if this party is to go off without a hitch. Come along, Spikey-Wikey!"

Resistance was futile.

Any objections Spike would have put forward immediately faded as a goofy smile took over his face and his eyes glazed over, the little dragon practically floating behind Rarity like a love-struck balloon as the two returned over the bridge.

Applejack hitched herself back up to her cart in the off chance they needed it and whipped her hat in the air enthusiastically as she hollered, "Alright everypony, let’s get this wagontrain rollin'!"

A group cheer (accompanied by one quiet "yey!") and the hill was stormed by a multitude of technicolor ponies and, unsurprisingly, Rainbow was the first to reach the top even though she was still flying a little wobbly though Applejack came next not far behind, her strong earth pony frame easily bearing the load of the empty cart while Twilight and Fluttershy made up the rear of the procession. At the top of the hill everypony came to a halt and Dash did a wonderful job summing up the group's thoughts in one word.

"Whoa."

Part of the hill in front of them - a part that had not been visible from the bottom - had been completely pulverized away; debris was scattered all over and none of the ponies could readily identify what it could have come from off-hoof though it didn't look like anything that could have come from a dragon, save for one or two large scale-like pieces jutting from the dirt. Following the gouge in the hill down the other side a short distance past the bottom a deep trench cut a line across the grass field and into the tree line of the Everfree Forest where it continued on for a distance until the tree canopies obscured vision of it and in the distance a plum of billowing smoke was rising, serving as a rather unsettling marker of their destination.

Twilight trotted down the hill into the trench, the bottom of which was speckled with puddles as rain from the surrounding earth coalesced. "If we use this as a path-" she stomped a hoof into the dirt with a squelch!, "We can follow it right to, um, whatever it is." Twilight looked up at her friends for approval of her suggestion.

"Except for the mud slowin' us down I reckon it's probably the fastest way. Using the path the dragon made on landing like a makeshift road we won't have to work the cart 'round all those trees an' roots," AJ added, towing the cart behind her as she carefully descended into the wet trench though her words prompted Dash to fly up beside her to start the argument that this wasn't a dragon. Meanwhile Fluttershy wordlessly glided down to walk next to Twilight, her expression clearly worried for what they might find because even a dragon could have a rough landing.

With Rainbow leading the way the group made their way into Everfree Forest.