Beep. Beep. Beep.

At the sound of the familiar beeping, Scootaloo looked up from the notebook that she had just been writing in, showing Kevin how his alphabet corresponded with hers. Kevin didn't seem to notice; he just kept looking down at the notebook. But Scootaloo knew the beeping, and could see a distinctive red light flashing in the corner of her eye. A different one than that first time, but a light blinking all the same.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Scootaloo leaned off of the pilot’s seat towards the dashboard, holding her torso up with her forelegs on its metal edge. Her eyes scanned the rows of controls, eventually settling on the one protruding diode that shone the flashing red light on her face, illuminating her muzzle and forehead from below. She then looked at the label underneath, which read “Danger: Approaching object”.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

For a moment, the filly was confused. Was there an asteroid on one of the sides? Was the system malfunctioning? But then she had a realisation and looked up from the dashboard, out the window ahead.

The green round mass that was the Kindred planet loomed large in the window, almost completely blocking out any of the inky blackness out outer space. What’s more, the planet was getting larger and larger by the second. The light and—

Beep. Beep. Beep.

—of the dashboard was right; if one of them didn’t take control of the ship soon and swerve away, they’d be sent straight into the ground and explode in a marvellous display of fireworks and shrapnel. Which wasn’t what Scootaloo wanted, so her hooves immediately jumped to the steering wheel.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“What are you—whoa!” Kevin exclaimed before and then after he looked up, eyes wide as they processed the body of his home planet coming closer and closer. “Crud!”

“Crud is right! C’mon! Hurry! Do something!” Scootaloo cried out as she swerved the steering wheel left as far as she could. The beeping immediately stopped, and the light switched to a more neutral yellow. Still cautionary, but not extreme danger.

“What do you want me to do?!” Kevin asked, the words spilling frantically out of his mouth.

“I dunno! Check the controls to see—wait, that won’t work if you can’t read them! Hold the wheel while I check the controls!” Scootaloo replied, jumping aside to allow Kevin to reach forward and he did, hooves gripping the wheel.

As Scootaloo leaned forward to check the dashboard, Kevin gazed ahead and suddenly he had a realisation and immediately spun the wheel in the opposite direction. “Wrong way, Butterfinger! You had us going straight towards a city!”

“I don’t know what I’m doing any more than you do! You’ve been here before! Get us going the right way!”

“Already doing that!” Kevin shouted in response but Scootaloo could barely register his voice—let alone glean any meaning from it—as she read each of the labels on the dashboard, under lights, switches, and knobs. Finally, she found the one she had been looking for; its label read proudly “Cloaking shields”. Above the engraved metal label lay a switch flicked downwards, towards her; with a hoof, Scootaloo flicked the switch upwards. A light above it flickered on and the verdant light shone back on Scootaloo’s face.

“Cloaking shields on!” Scootaloo cried; even though there was really no noise around them besides the normal engine hum of the ship, their panicked state induced louder voices in the space ponies.

“Alright, awesome! Hang on!”

Scootaloo clung as hard as she could to the arm of the pilot’s seat with one foreleg and grabbed onto Kevin’s foreleg with her other. The pegasus filly held on for her life as she felt the ship rumbling around them, entering the atmosphere, barreling down to the planet’s surface and slowly veering leftward, Kevin pulling with all his might as if he could somehow push the wheel further in that direction...