"It's beautiful," he said under his breath.
"Yay!" cheered the ponies, who had evidently heard his murmured praise. They started gamboling about, kicking up their heels. "Come with us to Paradise Estate!"
Lex followed the exuberant ponies down a long, grassy, flower-studded slope. Soon he saw a big, comfortable-looking house with a few smaller outbuildings spread out below them. Beyond the buildings and their attendant grain fields and apple orchards, the blue glint of ocean could be seen at the horizon.
"Paradise Estate?" Lex grumbled. "Sounds like a land swindle." This time, none of the ponies seemed to hear.
More ponies came rushing out to greet them as they approached the buildings. There were some baby ponies among them, and Lex wondered how they managed that, since all the adults seemed to be females. His ruminations on parthenogenesis were interrupted by an intelligent-sounding white pony.
"I'm Windwhistler. Can you help us build a space ship? The sea ponies said we need to leave the planet."
"Lex Luthor." He automatically reached out to shake hands, realized that wouldn't work, and awkwardly turned the gesture into a pat on the head. Windwhistler seemed fine with that. "I don't really think a space ship is your best option. Even in my own world, people have never gotten any farther away than the moon, and you can't live there for any length of time." Hordes of ponies looked at him inquisitively. "There's no air," he explained.
"Then what can we do?" Windwhistler wailed. "I've been reading about this C'thulhu ever since we heard he's waking up, and it turns out that he is very, very bad! I can't think of any way to stop him!"
Lex patted her on the head again, reassuringly. "I think we can put him back to sleep again. Custom narcotics used to be quite a hobby of mine."
