“Are we there yet?” Kevin asked. The green-grey colt stood up at the front behind Cotton Fluff, leaning with his forelegs over the side-railing so that the wind whipping by ruffled through his mane.

“Kevin, the answer the last forty times you asked was no,” Cotton Fluff droned. “Why would you think that it would've changed?”

“Uh, because we're moving?” Kevin replied with a shrug. “We'll have to almost be there eventually.”

Cotton Fluff blinked. “Point taken, I suppose. But I really don't know where we're going, specifically; I've never been to Ferretfall before.”

Mochi, who had been leaning over the other edge, turned at this. “Then how d'you know where ta go?”

“Heh... I don't,” Cotton Fluff replied nervously. “If I end up taking us just a few degrees too many east or west, we could fly past it completely and not know it until we're out of the woods.”

“Gee willikers,” Mochi remarked. “Now wouldn't that be fun...”

“Yeah... here's hoping we'll make it, though. I know the town is fairly wide and has several paths to the east and west, so we can just go along one of those if we miss it.”

Mochi said something in reply, but Kevin ignored it as he detached himself from the railing and sauntered off to the other side of the ship, where Flight and Scootaloo sat side-by-side on the floor. Between them lay Scootaloo's journal, open to a page on which the orange filly was scribbling with her graphick. Flight's eyes were trained downward towards the page, watching as Scootaloo drew... something. Or somepony? Kevin couldn't quite figure out what he was looking at.

“...and that's when he ran off, crying, all because Sue had accidentally thrown away the rest of his Hallows' Eve candy,” Flight finished. “It was pretty sad, actually.”

Scootaloo laughed. “Yeah, I bet. We had a holiday like that called Nightmare Night, and one year I got super upset because Rainbow Dash said she'd dress up like a Wonderbolt with me and then forgot and went to a Wonderbolts show in Manehattan.”

“Oof, yeah, that sounds pretty bad,” Flight replied. “Though, I have to ask, what in Aureate's name is a Wonderbolt?”

“'The Wonderbolts are an aerial stunts team,'” Kevin recited. Both Scootaloo and Flight looked up, surprised.

Scootaloo was the first to speak. “Oh, hey, Kevin—didn't see ya there. How's it going?”

“Did Cotton Fluff say when she thought we'd get there?” Flight asked.

“I'm fine, thanks, and no,” Kevin replied, shaking his head dejectedly. “She doesn't even really know where she's going—I think she's hoping that we'll either just stumble upon it randomly or that we run into a path that leads there.”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“If only I didn't have to turn off the GPS on my comlink,” Flight remarked. “Then I could just look up where we are and where we need to go.”

“No use complaining about what we can't do or have,” Scootaloo said matter-of-factly. “Just gotta... take things as they are.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Kevin said absentmindedly. “Say, what's that there that you're drawing?”

“Oh, this?” Scootaloo leaned back and spun the journal around, revealing a sketched outline of a wide-trunked tree. However, unlike most trees, this one had a door in the centre and windows to the sides. “This is the Golden Oaks Library, where my friend Twilight used to live. It got burned down when this giant monster Tirek attacked Ponyville, though.”

“Huh, interesting,” Kevin said, looking at its shape. “I wonder if the buildings in Ferretfall are anything like that.”

“I hadn't thought of that, but now that you mention it, they totally could be,” Scootaloo said as she flipped the journal back to face her. “Guess we'll just have to wait and see.” After a moment of looking back down at her own drawing, the filly went back to work at sketching out the interior branches and leaves.

Then, up ahead, a loud voice boomed from nowhere: “Halt!”

Kevin could hear Cotton Fluff gasp as he turned around and, before he could get a look at whoever had shouted the word, the hovercraft ground instantly to a halt and Kevin was flung forward off his hooves, crashing violently into Mochi and Cotton Fluff like a bowling ball before collapsing into a fuzzy pile of ponies. He attempted to frantically pull himself upward, but it was a struggle to plant his hooves down without crushing somepony's limbs or head in the process.

“Unghhh...” Kevin moaned as he finally pushed off of the limp bodies of Mochi and Cotton Fluff, coming to a stand. “What's going on...?”

“In the name of the stars above, stop where you are.” It was the same voice as before and still very much a command, though much less loud and forceful. Kevin glanced around at the trees as the ship hovered there midair with a quiet hum, but he couldn't see anything. Until he could.

Directly in front of the ship, standing in plain sight atop a slight incline, was a group of five or so ponies amongst the bushes that all were trained intently towards the hovercraft. As they stepped forward, Kevin gulped and blanched.