Scootaloo paused, cocking her head and squinting at the trees in the darkness that loomed ahead on either side, only visible due to the silvery glow that still emanated from atop her head. "Why is this taking so long? I could've sworn I only followed you for like a minute away from the water hole thing, and now it's been at least fifteen minutes and it's nowhere in sight."

"Dilation, my dear," the beetle in her mane buzzed quietly, almost so quiet that she couldn't hear it over the crunch of her hooves on leaves below. "I may have employed some space dilation, just to get us out of there as soon as possible. It's imperative that you get to the palace and collect the Kardia Amulet as soon as possible, you know."

Scootaloo blinked. "...Dilation? What do you mean?"

"Please, keep walking—we can't afford to stop. I'll explain, I promise, but the sooner we get back to your companions, the better."

"Hrmph. Fine." Scootaloo took another few steps forward, pushing through an annoying fern that just so happened to be in her way. "There, I'm moving. Now tell me."

Grey coughed—or at least made the closest noise that a beetle could make to a cough. "Well, it's as I said; I used spatial dilation. I merely shrunk the distance in front of us temporarily, so we could get away quicker. Not that much, mind you, because some pretty awful things can result from that, but enough so that it'll be another few minutes or so until we get back to that pond."

"It's not a pond, it's a mudhole... creek... thing," Scootaloo grumbled. "Also, that sounds totally fake."

"Hm?"

"You know, dia-whatever. The shrinking space thing. That's, like, impossible."

Scootaloo couldn't see Grey's insectoid face—not that he had much of an identifiable face in that form, regardless—but she could almost hear how hard he was grinning. "That's what magic is for, though—making the impossible possible."

In response, Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "You sound like friggin' Twilight or someone. Aren't there, like, fancy magic rules though or something? You can't just do anything?"

"Perhaps. It depends on how many of those rules you're willing to break, and if you know how to break them without messing anything up too badly in the process."

"Okay, prove it then," Scootaloo said, a sly expression creeping across her face.

"Prove what?"

"Prove you can do this... dilation thing. Dilate it up so we can get back to the group A.S.A.P."

It was a moment until Grey replied, and his voice was tense. "Scootaloo... while I just did it to help us leave, it wouldn't be prudent to do as much right now when less is at stake. As I said, if I do it too much, seriously bad things can happen."

"Uh, like what? You might set a bush on fire?" Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "I promise, I'm good at putting out fires. Working in Twilight's lab for a few months gets you surprisingly well-prepared for that sort of thing."

"Try magical-induced dimensional instability, which can tear a hole in the fabric of space. Or, as they're colloquially known around these parts, a 'black hole'." Grey's tone was grim. "I've... seen it happen before. A long time ago. It's not pretty."

Scootaloo exhaled. "So if you do the dilation thing again, it's for sure gonna make a black hole and we're gonna get sucked up and torn to ribbons?"

"...Well, no. Only if I keep doing it more after that."

Scootaloo facehoofed. "Look, I'm already getting tired of walking and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to do more walking after this, 'cause we're not getting any closer to the stupid palace, so could you please just use a teensy bit of magic to speed this up?" she pleaded.

Grey sighed. "Well, if you put it that way..."

There was a bout of silence as Scootaloo kept walking. Finally, she paused for a second. "Uh, are you gonna do the thing?"

"What thing?" It wasn't Grey's voice that replied; rather, as Scootaloo turned her head to the left, she found herself face to face with a butter-yellow filly. "Oh, hey, Scootaloo! Later, I found her!"

"Thank the stars," Later's voice called out, muffled, from some metres away in the trees. "Ask her where she's been, and admonish her for disappearing like that."

"I can hear you, ya know!" Scootaloo said, amused.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Later said, emerging from a bush. "Oh, cool. Good to see ya, kid."