Once we were done with classes for the day, Rainbow and I got started on our investigation. A quick check on Star’s creepy stalker app confirmed that Blossom was down in the basement, and then we got moving.

The school basement looked ... well, like a basement. Bare concrete walls and floors, with lots of utility pipes on the ceiling. A lot of space was taken up by a bunch of old boxes full of an impressively wide selection of random crap: a couple of old trophies from so far back they weren’t in the display cases anymore, several cardboard boxes full of outdated textbooks, and a battered filing cabinet with broken calculators, protractors, and pencils.

The one odd thing about it was that things weren’t very dusty down here. Which I guess made sense, considering how often Blossom was sneaking around. Plus Rainbow’s own guess that this might be somewhere students would go when they wanted to cut class or get a little privacy.

Rainbow tried the lightswitch, but nothing happend. “Figures,” she grumbled, pulling out her phone and turning on its flashlight. “Well I don’t see any sign of Blossom down here.”

I briefly regretted not tracking down Star and asking for a copy of her stalker app, since it would’ve made finding exactly where Blossom had gotten off to a lot easier. Of course, it also would’ve meant having a copy of the creepy stalker app on my phone, which ... yeah. That’s not the kind of thing I wanted to have on it. If Mom or Dad came across it, there would be a lot of uncomfortable questions.

That just left the old-fashioned way of tracking her down. “She must be in the utility tunnels. Plenty of room to hide down there.”

Rainbow frowned and stared down the long, lightless, cramped corridor. Sure enough, the dust on the floor had been recently disturbed. “Alright, I know I was making fun of Sparkler earlier, but this starting to look a little ... horror movie-y. Maybe we should just wait here and grab her whenever she leaves? I don’t want you getting lost in the tunnels and freaking out on me.”

“We covered navigation in junior cadets,” I reassured her. “It shouldn’t be too hard to follow Blossom’s trail, and if we do get lost we can just follow the old always-turn-right rule.”

“I thought you were supposed to always turn left,” Rainbow countered.

“Either one works.” I assured her.

Rainbow frowned suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” My words came out just a bit terse, so I tried to reign it back in. “Do you wanna argue, or do you want to go find Blossom?”

Rainbow grunted and nodded. “Fine, whatever. But if we get lost because you forget which way we’re supposed to turn, I’m kicking your butt.”

“Fair enough.” I double-checked my phone. “Relax, we’ve still got a signal down here. Not a very good one, but it’s getting through. Worst case, Star can use her creeper app to find out where we are and help us get out.”

“Yeah, that’s reassuring.” Rainbow rolled her eyes, but started leading the way down the hallway, using her phone’s light to show the way.

I followed right behind her, keeping my eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary. The first thing I noticed—well, the second since I was walking right behind Rainbow—was the smell. Damp and musty, which figured since there were water pipes down here. Except it didn’t just smell like water, but like something ... else. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what exactly the smell was, but it definitely didn’t belong.

The old pipes moaned and creaked every once in awhile, whooshing as water ran through or letting out mechanical clanks as ... well, probably valves turning or something. As we walked down the dark corridors I kept spotting shadows moving out of the corners of my eyes. I knew it was probably just on account of us moving by phone flashlights, but it was still hard not to twitch every time I spotted movement in my peripheral vision.

As we traveled deeper and deeper into the bowels of the school, the rest of those sounds started to fade away. Soon all I heard were the dull, echoing sounds of our feet hitting bare concrete and the soft hissing of our own breath. Without any other sounds to drown them out, soon each footstep sounded as loud as a gunshot.

“Ooookay,” I carefully whispered to Rainbow. “Is it just me, or is it starting to get just a little bit spooky down here?”

Rainbow snorted and rolled her eyes. “Please, I've seen scarier stuff in the locker room. Remember that time when Pinkie’s sister...”

Rainbow trailed off, and I was about to make a crack about not looking in the mirror when I felt something give under my foot. We froze in place, that cocky smile forcibly locked onto Rainbow’s lips as we both looked down at our feet. Rainbow had stepped on something … something. It looked like some kind of huge, black vein that ended a few feet behind us; the rest of it snaked down the hall and around a corner, and in the half-light I saw that it wasn’t the only one. Not by a long shot.

More of the vein-things coated the walls and ceiling, splayed out in every direction and all closing in on the hallway. Worse, they all contracted at the same time—then again, and again faintly but unmistakably pulsing like they were connected to some massive, unseen heart further in the school.

Rainbow’s foot didn’t come up easily, though that wasn’t from a lack of effort on her part. The vein-thing she’d broken oozed with some kind of green-white ichor that seeped out a few drops at a time with each pulse. It reminded me of the way my thumb bled when I’d cut it open a couple of years ago.

Oh. Oh, god. It was bleeding.

Did we just wake something up?

Rainbow stared down at her ichor-covered shoe. “Ewww!” She shook her foot several times, not quite managing to get all the goo off. “Okay, I don’t know about you, but I think this is definitely weird enough that we should call for backup.”

“No, really?” I almost managed to keep a nervous squeak out of my voice. I whipped out my phone and made sure I still had a signal, then took a few quick pictures. “So who do we call for something like this? Pretty sure the cops would think it was just some sorta prank.”

“Sunset and the rest of the gang,” Rainbow answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Because I’m pretty sure creepy wall-veins is some kinda magic thing. Gotta get everyone here so we can blast it with rainbow lasers.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed. “But just in case, I’m gonna call Mom and Dad too. They might not have any magical friendship lasers, but...”

“Tell them to bring a flamethrower,” Rainbow suggested.

“We don’t have one of those.”

“Grenade launcher?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Mom and Dad might be in the army, but that doesn’t mean we keep a lot of military ordnance in the house. They don’t let soldiers just walk off base with whatever they want—there’s rules and stuff.”

“And that’s why I didn’t join the Junior Cadets when you did,” Rainbow grumbled. “Army stuff sounds cool, but they have rules against everything. I need to be awesome without all that stuff holding me back.”

“Discipline doesn’t hold anyone back,” I snapped. “And honestly, learning a little more self-control would probably be good for you.”

“Excuse me?” Rainbow jabbed a finger into my chest. “I need to learn self-control? You’re the one who ... y’know ... in the locker room...”

For a moment I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Oh please!” My voice rose several octaves. “You’re the one who started it!”

“I was just trying to get you off!”

I answered with a raised eyebrow. “Well, you certainly did that.”

Rainbow’s cheeks lit up, and she yelped out. “From on top of me! It’s not like I meant to grab your—”

“Well you certainly weren’t in any hurry to let go!”

“It’s not like you asked me to!”

“You never asked me to stop either!”

“Well, duh! That was fun!”

“So what's the problem?!”

“The after-stuff!” Rainbow finally blurted out. “I mean, yeah, at the time it was fun, but things got ... well ... yeah, after that. Y'know?”

I frowned at her, utterly baffled. “Uh, no, not really.”

“It—stupid Kicker, you know what I mean...” Rainbow sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Look, stuff was cool between us. We'd compete, I'd win, and we'd hang out like we always have. Now it's like, are we hanging out together or are we...” She groaned and ran a hand down her face “It’s ... things got weird. With us. Everything’s all weird and awkward and uncomfortable and I don’t like it. C’mon, I know you’ve noticed it too.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Kinda hard not to. It’s kinda hard to do anything around you without thinking about ... er ... you know ... that we banged in the locker room.”

“Exactly.” Rainbow groaned and ran a hand through her hair. “Used to be we could hug and touch each other and stuff and it was no big deal. But now I can’t do any of that without remembering, and ... and it makes things weird. Half the time it freaks me out and makes me wanna get away, and the other half, it...” She trailed off, her cheeks lighting up again.

“Uh ... yeah.” I could feel my own cheeks warming up to match hers. “Me, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

The two of us stood there awkwardly, not quite sure what we should do next. Rainbow shuffled her feet and cleared her throat, while I struggled to come up with something to say that wouldn’t sound completely asinine or banal. I wasn’t having much luck.

Then the awkward silence was broken by a high-pitched screech that didn’t sound like it came from a human throat. “SKREEE!”

As the shriek echoed down the tunnels, I said the first thing that sprang to mind. “What the heck was that?!”

“No idea.” Rainbow shot me the sort of grin that usually presaged her springing a plot that ended with us both in the principal’s office. “Let's go find out!”

I put a restraining hand on her arm before she could go charging off. I swear, only Rainbow would be so eager about going towards the angry screaming monster sounds. “Remember how we were gonna call and wait for backup when things got weird?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Cloud, I'm with you in the basement hunting for Blossomforth, there’s freaky stuff on the walls and floor, and I’m pretty sure some sort of magic monster’s running around and screaming. We are way past weird.”

“I'm just saying, maybe we should not go running towards freaky monster noises until we have your magic buddies or my parents backing us up.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What exactly are we supposed to do after we find whatever’s down here? Do you have any plan?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Rainbow answered.

“That’s not a plan.” I shot back. “That’s not even twenty percent of a plan.”

Rainbow groaned and ran a hand down her face. “Well what if Blossomforth’s in trouble? We know she’s down there, and now there’s something really freaky going on too. You just gonna sit here and wait when she might need help now?”

For a moment I wanted to argue the point, but ... well, she was right. It might be more pragmatic to sit back and wait for reinforcements, but the idea of leaving Blossom down there, alone in the dark with some sort of monster ... no. I couldn’t do it. One of the rules Mom and Dad taught me was that you don’t leave anyone behind. And more importantly, she was my friend. “Alright, fine, but we do this fast, quiet, and careful. Got it?”

“Got it.”

We slipped further down the tunnels. By this point we’d gone so far that I had to wonder if we were still under school, or if we’d moved out into the municipal utility network. I certainly hoped so, since that might mean there was a closer exit. I didn’t want to run all the way back to school through these dark, cramped tunnels while being chased by ... well, whatever was down here.

The darkness started to fade away as we moved onward, careful of any more contact with the growths on the wall. Especially once we realized that they were the source of the eerie green phosphorescent light. At least we’d called Sunset and Mom before going any deeper. Hopefully they could get here before things got completely crazy on us. The veins seemed to be getting thicker as we moved forward, which was almost certainly a sign we were going in the right direction. Well, we were headed towards the center of whatever this was, which for some reason we’d decided was a good idea.

Finally, we emerged into a large circular open chamber. The walls were covered with more of the strange growths and a lot of creepy green goo. And standing right in the middle of it all was Blossomforth. I started towards her, until Rainbow grabbed my arm and pointed to a particularly large glob of goo. I stared at it for a second then recognized someone floating within the cocoon: Blossomforth.

Rainbow pointed to the Blossom standing in the room. “It’s a pod person!”

The fake Blossomforth whirled to face us, and with a flash of green fire she turned into something ... else. The thing was still humanoid, but its entire body was covered in some kind of black, leather-chitin stuff that looked solid enough to stop a knife. That chitin tapered to a fine, keen point on each of its fingers—no, claws. Anything that looked that sharp was definitely a claw. I tried to look away from them, but that only drew my sight to its head; Blossom's mouth had turned into a set of some kind of sideways fang-like mandibles. And above those were its eyes ... a pair of dark, horrifying voids broken only by pinprick-like pupils that glowed green even in the half-light of my phone. I got the feeling that I would be able to see them even in pitch black. And that they would be able to see me, too.

It let another ear-piercing shriek and charged us.

“Cloud, move!” Rainbow shoved me to the side, making sure the bug-monster wouldn’t be able to get both of us at once. I might not have any experience in fighting monsters, but one of the rules Dad had hammered into me during training was that you never wanted to be outnumbered in a fight. Getting a black belt doesn’t give you eyes in the back of your head ... and even if it did I only had a brown belt. As long as Rainbow and I could come at the bug-thing from two different angles we should be able to land some good hits.

The shapeshifter hesitated for a moment, then decided to go for Rainbow instead of me. Big mistake. Rainbow quickly backpedaled to get away from those slashing claws while I closed in on its exposed back. It didn’t even realize I was coming for it until I slammed a fist into its kidney.

Or rather, where the kidney would’ve been on a human. On a bug monster...

The thing twitched a bit and let out a soft hiss when I hit it, but otherwise seemed unharmed. I think I wound up hurting my hand more—exoskeletons are hard. The creature snarled and spun, throwing a backhand claw strike at my face.

I managed to dodge. Mostly. I got my face out of the line of attack, but its claws caught me across the right shoulder instead. The chitinous talons tore right through my shirt, and then it felt like my shoulder was on fire. When I tried to move my arm it sent a fresh wave of pain shooting through my wounds, so I left it hanging limp.

Crap.

“Cloud!” Rainbow rushed forward and delivered a perfect soccer kick right to another set of balls. Or that was the idea. Once again, all we confirmed was that this thing didn’t have anything like normal human anatomy.

The monster still got knocked onto the tips of its toes by Rainbow’s kick, but it recovered pretty quickly and tried to close in on her. Rainbow kicked out again to keep it at bay. “Ugh, you are so gross!” Rainbow tried for a high roundhouse kick to the head, but the thing anticipated the attack and grabbed her leg. She managed to quickly wrench it free, but the monster’s claws still left several long scratches down her calf.

I couldn’t leave Rainbow fighting on her own, but with my main arm out of commission my options were a lot more limited. There wasn’t time to come up with much of a plan, so I stuck with what I’d learned and aimed for another weak spot. This time, instead of trying for organs that might not even exist and had an exoskeleton on them anyway, I went after its knee. Hopefully this thing still had vulnerable joints.

I launched my attack at the same time as Rainbow, and the bug was still focused on her. While it managed to block her kick it didn’t see my strike coming. Its knee, or whatever the bug-monster equivalent was, snapped backwards and the creature fell to the floor with a pained shriek.

I couldn’t help smirking just a bit. I guess bug-monster knees were close enough to human ones. “One of the first things Dad taught me: even the biggest and nastiest guy in the world can’t fight if you take out one of his knees.”

“Nice one, Cloud.” Rainbow warily circled around the monster, looking for an opening. “So what is this thing? Some sort of shapeshifting bug-mutant monster from Equestria?” Rainbow’s eyes started flicking around the chamber, probably looking for something better than her bare hands to use against the creature.

The creature continued hissing in pain, trying and failing to get its wounded leg to support its weight. It turned to me, and for a second I could swear I saw pure hate in its alien compound eyes. It dug its claws into the floor, then came at me on three working limbs, its bad leg trailing uselessly behind it. It also pretty much confirmed Rainbow’s theory that it must be from magical pony land, because the thing was moving surprisingly fast, like it was used to using its forelimbs for propulsion.

“Gyah!” I hopped backwards and kicked out at the creature’s face. I didn’t have my feet properly planted and my bad arm threw my balance off, so it wasn’t a very good kick. The creature took the hit without any noticeable injury, then grabbed my foot and twisted.

Basic laws of physics and human anatomy kicked in, and I went down to the floor. To make things worse, I fell on my wounded shoulder.

Ow.

I tried to get my captured foot out, struggling against the monster’s grip and kicking out with my free leg. Between the incredibly distracting pain in my shoulder and the angle being all wrong, I didn’t manage to land a good hit. To make matters worse, all my struggling made the bug’s talons cut through my shoe, and from there into my foot itself.

Double ow.

There was a loud, meaty thwack, and the pain in my foot suddenly decreased. Rainbow stood over the monster, holding a brick over her head. She brought it down again with a primal shriek. “Get your stinking claws offa my girlfriend!”

Rainbow pounded the thing over and over again. The creature wailed and hissed, but it wasn’t in a good position to do anything to defend itself. It was down on the ground with me, while Rainbow was attacking from above. Blows hammered against it until Rainbow finally smacked it in the head. Green ichor burst out of the wound, and it went limp.

Rainbow stared down at the brick and her arm, which were now covered in the sticky green liquid. “Gross.” She tossed it away, blinked, then rushed over and knelt down next to me. “Cloud! Are you okay?!”

I grimaced and kicked off my shoe to get a look at how bad my foot was. Then instantly regretted that decision. Once I could see straight again, I got a look at the damage. Lots of cuts, but I still had all my toes and everything else. It still moved when I wanted it too, though testing that was ... not fun. “I'll live.” I shot her a weak grin. “So ... ‘girlfriend.’”

Rainbow shot me a flat look. “Really? That's what you're focusing on right now?”

“Sure as heck beats focusing on how much my foot hurts.” I tried putting a bit of weight on my foot to test it out. Really unpleasant, but I could walk on it if I had to. Which ... yeah, I wasn’t too wild about waiting for a rescue while stuck in the middle of this freaky nest, sitting next to a dead bug monster.

Rainbow looked down at my foot and winced. Her eyes darted around the chamber, then she sighed and pulled off her skirt. Before I could ask why she’d done such a thing she started tearing it up, then wrapping the improvised bandages around my foot. Once that was done she tried to get a good look at my shoulder, but my shirt made that a bit hard. She ripped it open where the bug had clawed it, then blushed when the rip went too far.

I shot her a faintly annoyed look. “You’ve seen me naked, Rainbow.” Not to mention that we’d gone well past just seeing. “A bit of sideboob while I’m wearing a bra is nothing.”

“Uh, right.” She shook her head, then wrapped up my shoulder wound. “Try not to move your arm, it’ll probably make things worse.” She grabbed my left hand and helped haul me to my feet.

I groaned and settled onto my feet, keeping as much weight as possible on my uninjured foot. I briefly considered trying to get my shoe back on, but it probably wouldn’t fit with all the improvised bandages, and there wasn’t much left of it anyway. “I’m alright.” My eyes dropped down to Rainbow’s legs, which I could see a lot more of now that her skirt was gone. Normally I might have lamented the fact that she wore shorts under her skirt, but right now my attention was on the scratches the monster had left on her legs. “What about you?”

“Huh?” Rainbow glanced down at her legs and blinked. “Huh. Didn’t even notice those. Well they don’t really hurt and they’re barely even bleeding, so they can’t be that bad.”

I didn’t agree, but with only one working arm I couldn’t really bandage her up anyway. “Alright, I vote for getting Blossom out of that freaky cocoon thing, and then getting the heck outta here.” I glanced down at my wounded arm. “Well, you try to get her out. I’ll call for backup.”

Technically I’d already done that, but Mom and Dad would probably wanna know that the situation had escalated from ‘something weird is going on’ to ‘we’re in a life-and-death fight against bug monsters.’ I couldn’t get a good enough signal for a connection—no surprise when we were underground—so I had to settle for texting them. Hope it got through ... and that they didn’t forget to check their messages. Just to be safe, I sent out a couple more messages to my siblings and cousins. Sparkler and Star both practically had their phones surgically attached to their fingers, so one of them was bound to notice and spread the word.

“Yeah.” Rainbow stepped up to the cocoon, frowning and studying it closely. She poked and prodded it a few times, trying to find some opening or weak point. Then she shrugged, grabbed two handfuls of the material and started pulling. At first it resisted her like rubber, but then there was a loud, wet rip and it tore open. Blossom tumbled out of it, accompanied by a tide of thick green goo. “She okay?” Rainbow paused, glancing down at the goop. “Also, ew.”

I took a close look at her and a tremble passed through my spine. “Rainbow ... she’s not breathing. Is she…?”

Before I could finish the question Blossomforth started twitching. Her eyes snapped open, but they looked fuzzy and unfocused, like she had no idea where she was or what was going on. Her limbs started twitching like she was trying to move, but there was no coordination to her movements. After a few seconds she started trying to rub what was left of the goop from the cocoon off of her face and out of her eyes.

Rainbow snapped her fingers in front of Blossom, trying to get her to focus on the sound. “Damn, she’s really out of it. We gotta get her out of here.”

“Yeah, I'm gonna guess that being locked up in a cocoon wasn't good for her.” I started to bend down to help her up, but a flash of pain reminded me that was a bad idea. “Think you can you carry her? I'm ... probably not in good shape to help.” To heck with helping, I could probably use some help myself. But Blossom needed it more than I did.

“Yeah, I got it.” Rainbow leaned down and grabbed Blossomforth, hauling her up and draping one of Blossom’s arms across her shoulders. “Ugh, she smells like bug goo. Why must being so awesome be such a pain?”

As if in answer to that question, Blossom moaned, coughed a few times, then puked all over Rainbow’s shoes. It mostly looked like the same stuff that had been in the cocoon, and as soon as she was done she took in a massive gasp of air, followed by more coughing and another round of vomiting. I guess she must’ve been breathing whatever was in that cocoon.

Rainbow looked down at her thoroughly soaked shoes and groaned. “Well I’m gonna have to burn these now. Really, Blossomforth? Couldn’t have turned your head just a bit?”

She blinked a couple times, and her eyes finally seemed to focus on us. A couple seconds later her voice came out as a weak, raspy croak. “S-sorry, Rainbow.”

Rainbow let out a long-suffering sigh. “S’alright. I can buy new shoes.”

Blossom turned to me, her eyes on my torn shirt and bandaged shoulder. “Cloud! You’re hurt. What's goin—”

Then she noticed the bug-monster.

Blossom screeched and stumbled backwards, hiding behind Rainbow and trembling like a leaf. I rushed to her side, ignoring the lance of pain that shot through my bad foot with every step I took. “Whoa, easy Blossom! It's dead.” I hesitated a moment, then carefully whispered to Rainbow. “You did make sure it’s dead, right?”

Rainbow hesitated and shot a nervous look at the thing. “Er ... it looked like it to me.”

The creature twitched spasmodically. Blossom let out another shriek, but this time she didn’t sound scared. She charged forward, grabbing the brick Rainbow had discarded and bringing it down on the creature again and again, until there was nothing left of its head but a pool of ichor and some shard of chitin and ... other things.

Rainbow’s face looked green, though that might have just been the light. “Geeze...”

I opted for a bit of gallows humor, since the only alternatives would be screaming in horror and/or crying. “Well, it's definitely dead now.”

Blossom stood over the bug, gasping for breath and staring down at it with wild eyes. “T-that thing...” The brick tumbled out of her grasp. “It—it grabbed me, after school. Then it—then it was me! It ... it pulled me down here and put me in...” Her eyes flicked back to what was left of the cocoon, and she let out a loud sniffle, tears cutting tracks through the goo that still coated her face after her captivity.

I leaned down next to her, ignoring my body’s protests as I wrapped my good arm around her. “Hey ... it's okay girl. We got you out. Everything’s gonna be okay.” Blossom’s chest heaved as she buried her face into my uninjured shoulder, sobbing softly.

Rainbow stood back, her eyes nervously darting around the room. “Uh, guys? I get we’re all probably gonna need therapy after this, but maybe we should stop crying and get the heck outta here before—”

Several distant screeches echoed from one of the other tunnels.

“Yeah, that,” Rainbow finished.

“Aw, crap.” I should’ve known this nest was too big for just one bug-monster.

“Let's get Blossom out of here!” Rainbow shouted, rushing forward to grab her.

“And us.” I started hobbling for the exit as Rainbow helped Blossom get moving. “Let's get us out of here too.”

With that settled we started running as fast as we could. Well, not exactly running. Rainbow had to half-carry Blossom, and I was hobbling along on an injured foot, plus whenever I moved too fast my shoulder started twinging too. So less running, and more a rather quick stagger.

Considering the condition we were in, it was no surprise that the angry screeches of the bugs started getting closer and closer. Part of me hoped it was just the weird acoustics of these underground tunnels, but I knew that was just wishful thinking.

I looked back up the corridor, then down at my wounded foot. There were two inescapable conclusions. The bugs were gaining on us, and I was the slowest member of the group. “Rainbow, get Blossom out of here. I’m gonna try to buy you some time.”

“Huh? What’re you gonna—” Her eyes widened as she figured out what I was planning. “Like hell you are!”

“I'm slowing you two down.”

Rainbow growled and shook her head. “You think you're gonna slow them down? You couldn't slow down a boy scout troop right now!”

I glanced back down the tunnel again. “Gotta try. Better you two make it out than—”

“It. Ain't. Happening,” Rainbow growled at me. “Get your ass in gear before I have to kick it down the hall! All three of us are getting outta here, even if I have to drag you outta here by your ponytail!”

“You're too stubborn for your own good.” I suppose I should’ve known that Miss Loyalty wouldn’t go for my plan. And to be honest, it’s not like I was that upset that she wasn’t approving my plan to nobly sacrifice myself. I like living.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “No, I'm too awesome. Move your butt!”

With that settled there was nothing for it but to keep running. I moved as fast as I could, but the shrieks of the bug-creatures were getting louder and louder. A couple minutes later it sounded like they were right on top of us. “Rainbow!” I gasped out, “Please tell me we’re almost back to the school!”

“I...” Rainbow hesitated, and I knew that was almost certainly a bad sign. “I’ve mostly just been trying to go whichever way the bug noises aren’t coming from.”

“Oh.” To be honest, I’d been so focused on keeping myself moving despite the pain that I hadn’t exactly been paying close attention to exactly which direction we were moving in, or how that related to the route we’d used to get to the bug nest. “Guess this means we just flunked our battlefield navigation test.”

I did actually have a small compass, which could maybe point us in the right direction. Only problem was that it was in my right pocket. Getting anything out of there with my left hand while on the run from a horde of bugs would be ... well, maybe not impossible, but pretty hard. And even then, that would just give us some idea of what direction we were going in. Maybe.

“Any bright ideas on how we’re gonna get out of this one?” I gasped out.

“Working on it,” Dash grumbled, tossing a nervous look down the tunnel. It was dark, but I could swear I saw something moving back there.

If they were that close, we’d pretty much run out of time to come up with a plan. “Uh, Rainbow. Before we ... er, there’s something I wanna say.”

“Cloud, unless you’re about to say you’ve got a giant can of bug spray hidden under your skirt, I think it can wait until after we get outta here.”

“Rainbow, if we don’t make it—”

“We’re gonna make it!” she snapped. “Less talking, more running.”

We kept going, and soon I could clearly hear chitinous talons clicking on the pavement. I was briefly grateful for all the running drills Coach Spitfire put us through during soccer practice, not to mention my work with the Junior Cadets. Without all that training I probably would’ve dropped a long time ago.

After running for what felt like miles on my injured foot, I saw daylight. It took me a second to realize that I shouldn’t be seeing that, being in the basement, but the figure on the stairwell explained a lot. Honest to god, Uncle Typhoon’s sermons came to mind as a figure backlit by the sun stepped down into this hell.

“Get your ass on the ground!”

I never thought an angel would have Mom’s gruff bark, but then again…

I wrapped my good arm around Rainbow’s chest and let my legs go limp, dragging her and Blossom both down to the concrete. We hit a lot harder than I would’ve liked under normal circumstances, and Rainbow squirmed under my arm like she was about to whack me or something—which, again, would’ve been perfectly understandable under normal circumstances. Then Mom’s .45 roared in the hallway, echoes bouncing off of the wall and right into our ears as rounds zipped over us in the dark.

Rainbow and Blossom curled up against me on the floor as high-pitched skrees of pain followed the gunshots, along with angrier-sounding cries from the creatures. I heard the quick, familiar shick-klak of a fresh magazine slamming home, then more gunfire. A round or two echoed off of the walls way back behind us, but most hit home with a wet impact. Mom went through … three, maybe four magazines before the bug-things’ noises died away, and I only peeked up after after their cries started to fade in the distance.

“Can you walk?” The underslung flashlight made it impossible to see her face, but I knew she could see me. I nodded to her, and she grabbed my good hand, hauling me back up. “Get behind me and get out of here. Our exit’s twenty yards back, then a right turn and you should see it.”

I followed her instructions to the letter, and a couple minutes later we stumbled out into the open air. We weren’t under the school anymore—we weren’t even anywhere close to it. I would’ve asked how the heck Mom found us, but then I spotted Star in the backseat of Dad’s car. Guess her stalker app had some non-creepy uses after all.

Rainbow shot me a tired grin. “Told you we’d make it.”

“Yeah,” I grunted as Star opened the door for me, and flopped into the backseat with a groan that turned into a sigh of relief at finally getting off my injured foot. “Wake me when the ambulance gets here."