Kevin had a headache. He could feel his head throbbing as he regained consciousness. The pain wasn't just there, too; his entire torso ached, and his muzzle in particular was sore.

Upon opening his eyes, he noticed that he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the ship. He could see that reflection staring back at him with those blue eyes. The face he saw in the reflection was weird—as always, something about it seemed off. It didn't look quite right. He frowned, and the reflection frowned right back. Kevin let out a sigh and, upon hearing it, noticed that the ship's engine was no longer making any noise whatsoever, that he could hear. Strange.

Although he was reluctant to move, Kevin decided that he should probably get up at some point in order to figure out what was going on. Maybe even find the orange filly.

He made an effort to lift up his torso as if he were doing a sit-up, and immediately he groaned and lay back down. His body was sore. So damn sore. What happened? He remembered trying to lower the ship, but not much else beyond that.

Kevin made another attempt at sitting up, this time going slowly. As soon as it hurt, he stopped, but didn't lay back down. Then, centimetre by centimetre, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, wincing from the soreness. Once he got himself sitting up, it was just a few more minutes of pain until Kevin stood on all fours.

He was between the pilot's seat and the dashboard, where the brake and gas pedals were. In fact, he stood atop the brake pedal. It did not descend. A quick look around the cockpit and down the hall proved that he was in the same ship, and little in the interior had changed.

But the orange filly was nowhere in sight. He tried to tell himself not to worry, that she was probably downstairs, but he worried all the same.

Casting that train of thought aside for the moment, Kevin hopped up onto the pilot's seat to get a better view of where they were. Perhaps he could still land this ship, he thought... until he took a look out the window.

The trunks of trees were visible ahead, all but surrounding the ship. He could only just make out the leafy green of the treetops above, with patches of green at the forest floor as well. Somewhat conveniently, the trees opened up into a wide, dark-brown path ahead of the ship; it appeared that they had crash-landed onto one of the surface roads.

Kevin groaned again. Without the advantage of a bird's eye view, he was just as clueless as that filly in trying to navigate the planet. Hopefully they had stayed on course with the crash... he might have to walk a little further than he'd hoped, but the road ahead probably led to where he wanted to go.

Having gleaned enough information from the front window as he could, Kevin jumped down from the seat and landed with a thud and a wheeze on the cockpit floor. His whole body hurt. He was used to uncomfortable situations—sneaking around, being hungry, getting a little bruised—but this was just ridiculous.

With the clanging of hoofsteps on the metal floor, Kevin slowly walked across the cockpit and down the hallway. He passed the ladder, instead deciding to check the bunks first.

At first glance, the bedroom was as empty as it ever was. Kevin's bunk was unkempt and unoccupied, and the filly's upper bunk appeared unoccupied as well. Just to be sure, Kevin mustered up whatever strength he had to cast a levitation spell, lifting himself upward in his verdant magical aura briefly so that he could get a better look. As the bunk had appeared from below, it was completely empty. He reached out a hoof to check the sheets before the enchantment wore off, and they were cold to the touch. Evidently nopony had been there for quite some time. Kevin descended softly onto the ground. It was a struggle to even move his limbs at this point; that spell had probably been a bad idea. But still he kept going.

Before he went back to the hallway, however, something below the bunkbed caught his eye. He stumbled back over to the edge of the bunk and reached underneath with a foreleg, fishing around for whatever he had seen. His hoof was met with a hard corner; he dragged the thing out, and it lay in front of him on the ground.

It was a book. The front was unremarkable; there was a blue ocean photo on the front and a few words in that filly's alien script. He suddenly found himself wishing for her notebook that translated her script to his, but it hadn't been in the cockpit where he woke up. He presumed that the filly had it.

Casually, he opened the front cover and flipped to a random page. It looked like any other book, but all the words inside, as he'd suspected, were in the filly's script. He flipped open to a few more pages; he was greeted with the same results. Sighing, he closed the volume. He took a few steps in the direction of the hallway, out of the room, but turned his head over his shoulder to look at the thing. He stood there a moment, pondering. Then, he magically summoned it to his side and levitated it along as he left the room.

The colt stumbled back down the hallway but this time stopped at the top of the ladder. Breathing out an irritated sigh, he turned his weary body around and began to descend slowly backwards. With some effort, he managed to climb down the ladder; every so often, a hoof would slip out of one of the rungs and he had to swing it back to take hold. It wasn't until he found all four hooves down on solid metal that his heart stopped beating so hard.

Oddly enough, the light down in the pantry was off. Kevin couldn't remember having turned it off, so the filly must have. He flicked on the light switch. And, once again, groaned.

Pretty much every single one of the drawers and cupboards was left open, looking haphazardly opened in search of... something. What's more, Kevin could see the shiny metal surface of the bottom of these drawers, revealing that they were empty. There was nary a crumb left.

"What the hay happened?" Kevin mumbled to himself. "Did she just run off by herself? Did she use me?"

Kevin checked the bathroom too, just to be sure, but the filly wasn't there either. Then he walked down the last hall. The cargo hold was still as mysteriously shut as ever, and he punched in a few codes just for kicks. No dice.

With little other choice, Kevin walked back down the hall and turned right to the exterior door. He pressed the red plastic button with a foreleg and the door slid open with a whoosh.

Book in tow, the unicorn colt walked out of the ship onto the surface of the Kindred planet.