• Published 22nd May 2012
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Quantum Castaways - DustTraveller



Twilight wakes up to a deadly game of survival on an enigmatic island, and she's not alone...

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Chapter Eight - Sustenance

-Civilian, Wye Oak


The daylight leaked from the island quickly, and the grey, oppressive sky hid the traitorous false moon completely from view. In the clearing, surrounded by the protective but hardly comforting bulk of the rootscraper herd, Twilight Sparkle strained desperately to pick out some detail in the rapidly darkening jungle.

Her ears flicked nervously, which stung, and she found herself pawing the mud and stopped, scowling slightly.

She hated this. Twilight Sparkle was a proactive pony. A pony of forethought, and careful planning. She avoided situations like this precisely BECAUSE she hated feeling powerless.

Being powerless meant being out of control. Being out of control of a situation meant reacting to changing conditions on the fly. Being forced to react meant making split second decisions, and too many of those turned out, in hindsight, to be mistakes. So here she was, completely stymied, unable to so much as create an orb of light to improve visibility for fear that the use of her magic would draw that thing close.

Draw it towards her, but also towards Marshall, alone out there, in the dark.

She grit her teeth and stood, pacing, her thoughts circling furiously. Admittedly, this current situation was partly her fault. She was willing to admit that much, but the way he'd reacted... He had gone completely overboard, and now he was out there, and angry, and worse, he had a tendency to get reckless when he was angry.

She stopped and looked back towards the jungle, but she could make out only vague shapes now.

Tepid moisture splattered her muzzle and she blinked, going cross-eyed to stare at it.

This was all the warning that was forthcoming. Seconds later she was in the middle of one of those torrential downpours that strike the rainforest so often. The rootscrapers, covered in thick feathers and no doubt optimized for this type of weather, didn't even move. Her mane plastered against her head and neck, she blew some of the sodden mass out of her eyes with an irritated whoosh of breath, then went back to her cycle of annoyance.

And anger.

And worry.

She did this for several hours, pace pace stop, scan the treeline, pace pace stop. She continued long after there was any sort of decent visibility, which didn't take long, with the fall of night and rain respectively, simply for lack of anything better to DO. She had a wealth of options with her magic, but she didn't dare exercise any of them for fear that it might make the situation WORSE. She had just about reached her limit before a wave of dizziness struck her with no warning, like a freight train. Her forelegs slid forward out from under her, resulting in a muddy faceplant. After several aborted tries she managed to right herself, twisting about frantically.

"No no no.... not now.." She moaned.

The telltale blue lightning that fell what felt like approximately fifteen to twenty minutes later was close, probably no further than the primordial palm forest they'd left behind on their first passage through the herd, and it struck several times in quick succession, almost mechanically precise in its interval. The world was suddenly visible in patches, like a strobe light at one of DJ-PON3's shows, but without the deep bass rumble that would accompany such a show. If there was any other need for an indicator that this was not normal lightning, the complete lack of thunder would have been enough.

She gritted her teeth and considered her options. It was time to stop sitting on her flank and DO something, Celestia damn it. He could be hurt, he could be-

"Wow... that's a lot of sky lights-"

Twilight jumped about three feet in the air, turned and flailed wildly with her hooves in an amazing display of involuntary mid-air acrobatics, and let out a yelp of startlement. Marshall, startled at her reaction, stepped backward, dropped his pack and her saddlebags with a splash before slipping on the rainslickened mud and going down on his rump. He had obviously grabbed his rain gear from his pack, as the downpour pattered on the waterproof camo poncho he had put on over the rest of his gear.

Why, exactly, those unknown soldiers had packed raingear going into the desert was a question best left to equipment loadout planning groups.

"Jesus, Twilight! You scared the-"

She was in his face before he could finish the sentence. "YOU!"

He paled and jerked his head back from her furious countenance. She reacted by stepping up onto his chest with her forehooves, driving him further onto his back. He squelched into the mud, and the sound the rain made on his poncho was a frantic drumbeat in furious counterpoint to the still active flashing of soundless alien lightning. She leaned down to glare at him eye to eye.

He started to speak and she narrowed her eyes and bared her gritted teeth. Little wisps of vapor began to curl from her mane.

Deciding keeping his mouth shut was the better part of not being immolated, he shut his trap.

Twilight was horribly conflicted. On the one hoof, she was genuinely relieved to see him, so relieved, in fact, that she felt a little light headed. On the other hoof, she was also so furious with him that if she had had hands, she would probably be strangling him right now.

She elected instead to continue staring at him. To his credit, not only was he not stupid enough to try saying anything, he also looked honestly terrified.

They sat frozen like that for several minutes, her standing half on him with her sides heaving, him pressed with his back in the mud, hat askew, staring up at her in the rain, his face illuminated in still images of blue illumination. After several beats, she snorted.

"I don't know, what that was..." she said, slowly, filling each word with deadly sarcasm. "But you cannot freak out in this place, Marshall. Not like that. Not ever."

He winced as she threw his own words into his face, and started to open his mouth.

Her glare intensified.

"Every decision you make here... everything you do has to be considered." She stepped backwards deliberately, and sat on her haunches, watching him. Her furious visage had banked to a slightly colder fury.

He closed his mouth, sat up wincing, and looked downward, sheepishly.

She cocked her head slightly. "Well?"

He shifted his gaze to look at her through the matted, sodden tangle of his hair and nodded.

"I'm-"

She shook her head. "I don't want to hear it, right now. I am so... I really don't have the words, Marshall. This was the most inconsiderate thing you've ever done."

He jerked his head up. "Oh for crying out loud! I admit, it was stupid, but it's not like-"

She blazed up again, almost literally, though she was a bit too damp to really catch flame, and stepped right up to him once more.

"You are all I HAVE." She hissed.

He started, blinking, shocked right out of his indignation.

She met him eye to eye, willing him to understand.

"I was always... different, Marshall. It wasn't obvious at first. Little things. I was speaking in full sentences at the age of three. Reading at a college level at age five. Then one day, I saw Princess Celestia raise the sun at the Summer Sun Celebration and I knew... I KNEW what I was meant to do."

"It may have escaped your notice, but I am not the most socially adept pony in Equestria. I suppose, in retrospect, it was that my intellect developed so much faster than my emotional maturity. The only friends I had growing up was my brother and my foalsitter, Princess Cadence... and just before I joined Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Young Unicorns, he was busy with guard training. I didn't see Princess Cadence much after joining the academy."

She scowled. "I went through life thinking I didn't need anypony. That most ponies were a waste of time. The only things I cared about were magic, and learning, and making Princess Celestia proud of me."

At some point that neither of them were in the frame of mind to notice, the sky lights had ceased their regular beat. The rain had lightened up slightly, becoming a gentle shushing sound in the background. The clouds above parted slightly, allowing the traitor moon to peak her face through them and give the island below a quiet, gentle sort of illumination. Marshall watched her quietly, his expression somewhere between confusion and embarassment.

"I was SO wrong, Marshall. It took a near disaster to teach me differently, but I eventually learned that everypony needs somepony. In the course of learning that lesson, I made five of the best friends to ever exist. I love them, Marshall. We were like family. A big, dopey, funny, occasionally schizophrenic, and absolutely AMAZING family. I thought it would last forever."

She sniffed, and her head drooped downward. If she was crying, the rain and the darkness made it impossible to tell.

"Then in one morning, I lost all of it. My friends, my books, my place in the world, my WORLD. All of it. For, as near as I can tell, no reason at all."

She looked up at the sky, considering that nearly impenetrable murk of night and cloud and the distant false moon. Stared as though she could gaze a hole through the monstrosity between them, through the impenetrable, invisible barrier that separated her from... all of it.

"I have to face reality, Marshall. It's the kind of pony I am. I will NEVER, NEVER give up looking for a way home, but if we are on another world... if we are in another universe, I may never find my way there. Regardless of whether I do or not, I doubt it will be a quick process."

She advanced a step, looking him in the eyes. The naked need for his understanding made him lock gazes with her, frozen.

"I may have survived my first week here without you, I may not have. Regardless, you took a bewildered, disoriented mess of a pony in without even the slightest hesitation, and you showed her how you do it. How you get through every day in this miserable place. How you manage to laugh, even... even after all of THIS." She gestured with a hoof.

"I may have survived without you to help me, but I can't survive without you, now. This island has taken everything from me, everything but my magic, and my intellect."

She gazed at him intently. "And you."

She broke the intense stare and sat back on her haunches again, now emotionally drained and so very tired. It had been a long day.

"So yes. Inconsiderate. You ran out there into the night because you were angry, and you did it without CONSIDERING for a SECOND how I would feel if something HAPPENED to you!"

He seemed to deflate slightly at this, and she could tell that what she'd said had hurt him, at least. Maybe he was listening.

"I don't know what it is you think you're responsible for, what makes you throw yourself at danger without a care for your own safety, and I don't CARE. We are a team, Marshall. It's you and me, and we either get through this together, or we don't get through it at all."

Marshall looked pained. "But-"

She glared. "Don't you say you aren't that important. Don't you dare."

"Twilight-" He started.

"You have to promise me you won't pull something like this again. You are important to me! If you have any feelings at all for me, whatsoever, you will PROMISE me that whatever else we do, if its reckless, or dangerous, we will DO IT TOGETHER."

He sighed. "Twilight-"

She stepped right up again and put a hoof on his knee. "You bucking promise me, Marshall!"

"Goddamn it, you stubborn mare, will you let me get a fucking word in edgewise?!"

She blinked, then gestured with her hoof for him to go on.

He glared at her sullenly for a moment, his jaw set in that stubborn way of his that made her want to smack him, then his expression softened and he sighed.

"I'm just not used to it, ok? Five years is a long time, Twilight. I've taken so many risks, so many insane risks, that it just doesn't register sometimes that what I'm doing may be... somewhat ill-advised."

At her disbelieving look at his understatement he waved her off irritably. Then his expression softened.

"When I only had myself to look after that was ok. No one would be hurt but me if I fucked up and got myself killed."

He sighed. "I get what you're saying, I do. For what it's worth, I don't think I could deal with losing... anyone else."

He put a hand on the hoof she still held on his knee. "So I get it, Twilight. I'm sorry. To be honest, I was sorry almost immediately after I hit the treeline, but..."

He looked sheepish. "I kinda... got turned around in the dark. Stumbled on that broken palm tree more by smell than any real woodcraft, got our stuff, then wandered around in the wet and dark and kickin' myself in the ass, 'til those sky lights started up."

He rolled his eyes and cocked his head slightly. "The whole time I was thinkin', damn, she's right, this is fucking stupid, but, well... you know me."

She stared at him for a long moment, then sighed and grinned tiredly. "Oh believe me, Marshall, I am rapidly becoming a subject matter expert on the complex patterns of human idiocy."

Her expression hardened again. "You still haven't promised me, Marshall."

He sighed and gave her as sincere a look as he could manage in the dark and wet. "I promise, Twilight, no more stupid, unnecessary risks."

She glared. "And?"

"And if a risk is stupid, but necessary, we do it together."

She continued to stare at him. He fidgeted, then rolled his eyes again.

"Pinkie Promise." He said, morosely.

She relented and cocked her head, slightly. "Are we cool?"

He grinned tiredly. "Yeah, we're cool."


Despite the tension earlier, the two wayward castaways had managed to settle into something approaching comfort, with the inclusion of a second poncho for Twilight. Adapted from another soldier's gear, it was a little long, but it worked for their purposes. Marshall thought it looked pretty hilarious, but he kept his mouth shut about it, managing to restrain himself to a few odd grins when she wasn't looking. Eventually the rain tapered off to the occasional splatter and the night grew relatively clear. Huddling together for warmth, they shared the contents of her packed fruit bag.

The improvised saddlebags had not held up under the downpour as well as she'd hoped, and she cringed to think about what the precious books inside might look like. She sighed and dug through looking for them, but not finding them, she sat back munching disconsolately on a piece of star fruit.

She frowned. "That's funny."

Marshall, who had been steadily easing towards a light doze blinked, then looked in her direction and, upon seeing her staring glumly at a piece of star fruit, smirked lazily. "Twilight, considering the fact that star fruit has been a part of your balanced diet for nearly every meal since we've met, I wouldn't use the word funny to describe the situation."

He looked skyward at the dismal clouds, then sniffed. "Fucking tragic comes to mind..."

She rolled her eyes balefully in his direction. "I didn't mean the fruit, you nut. I meant the books. I was expecting to find them ruined after all that water, but I can't seem to find them at all."

He snapped his fingers. "Right! You tore me a new asshole so fast it completely slipped my mind!"

She smirked. "Marshall, just as you can't put a new donut hole into a donut hole, you cannot put a new asshole in a-"

He chuckled. "HA! Bite me. No, what I meant was, I moved your books into my pack when I found the bags. I figured it might be a good idea considering how rainfall is around here. Check my pack."

She blinked, then opened up his much better put together pack and found the explosives manual and her new journal safe and sound on the very top. She turned to him, somewhat embarassed by how touched she was by his gesture.

Then she recalled how he'd done it in the middle of being inconsiderate and had a perplexed moment where she couldn't figure out whether she should be happy or angry again.

He snorted. "You can't figure out whether to be pissed or grateful, can you?"

She flicked her good ear at him in response and he chuckled. "Pony or human, you mares are all the same."

She rolled her eyes. "I had noticed some distressing similarities between you human males and stallions as well."

He gave her a disdainful look. "Neigh."

They stared at each other seriously for several seconds, then both burst out laughing in quick succession, Twilight, then Marshall after her mirth got the better of him. They laughed together on and off like this for several minutes. One or the other would stop for a moment, then they'd look at each other and start up again. Before long, tears streaming down their cheeks. At some point during this Marshall impulsively hugged her, and after a beat she hugged him in return. If there was a hint of fierceness in that gesture, even a bit of desperation, on both their parts, it still felt good. Perhaps even helped to heal part of the rift between them.

It felt good to laugh again.


The two of them had gone into what was left of the night with the intent of sleeping in shifts, but this had proven absolutely futile, as several hours of exhausting activity had left them both... well, exhausted.

Marshall lay peacefully on his back, his head supported by their combined packs, his hat pulled low over his eyes. Twilight had simply slumped with her head on his chest, and in repose he'd rested a hand on her neck. The first to awaken, Twilight opened her eyes to stare blearily at him. She'd fallen asleep with her face turned in his direction, and not particularly in a hurry she stared at him, unwilling to disturb him by moving around.

She contemplated her state of being as she gazed at him. Her friendship with Marshall Bailey was a strange one, and she wondered if that was because he was human, if it was who he was, or if it was their situation. Probably a bit of all three, she decided. She'd never have imagined a friend like this back in Equestria. For one thing, anyone who heard them talk to one another for more than five minutes might assume that they didn't like each other very much.

She shuddered to think what would have happened if Fluttershy instead of Twilight had been foalnapped. 'Shy was just... too emotionally fragile, too thin-skinned for someone with Marshall's sense of humor. Rarity would have found him rather uncouth... worse, he was smart enough to know that his behavior would get under her skin, and demented enough to think it was funny.

That might actually make the contrary human WORSE.

Applejack and Dash probably would have gotten along with him ok. He was guileless by nature, tending to evade questions he didn't want to answer or flat out reject lines of inquiry rather than outright lie, and hardworking. If he and Applejack had butted heads, it would have been out of sheer stubbornness. As for Rainbow Dash, they had flight in common, and were both on the reckless side. They definitely shared a love of practical jokes, as well. Inevitably though, he and Dash would have clashed at times. Dash had a tendency to jump to conclusions and a sort of bravado that Marshall would have found impossible not to mess with.

Twilight had given up trying to predict what Pinkie Pie would do in any given situation.

Twilight frowned as she realized that her friendship with Marshall couldn't really be categorized in the same way as her relationship with her other friends. She didn't quite know what made it different... aside from the casual verbal abuse, of course.

Was that it? Were they only friends out of adversity? She'd said things to Marshall that would have absolutely devastated some of her other friends, and she'd said it to be FUNNY. More importantly, he'd done the same to her, and if she had to guess, she'd imagine that the growing fondness with which she viewed such bickering was the same for him.

Was that healthy?

More importantly, was it really friendship?

If it wasn't friendship... what was it, exactly?

Twilight Sparkle didn't like being confused.

"Twilight, I can assure you that no matter how long you stare at me, I am not going to get any prettier than I already am. It just isn't physically possible."

She started, jerked back to the now by his voice, and found Marshall gazing at her from below the brim of his shapeless booney hat with a lopsided grin on his face. She snorted.

"The multitudes of human females must mark the day of your disappearance with wailing and gnashing of teeth." She said dryly.

“Naw. Know a couple that might throw a party, though.”

She smirked. “Why do I have absolutely NO problem believing that, do you think?”

He let out a rumbling chuckle that she felt through his chest and sat up, brushing his hat back onto its proper place. She raised her head and gazed up at the morning sky.

It was clear for once.

Marshall stood, groaned, stretched with numerous cracks and pops, and let out a voluminous series of curses so foul that Twilight's ears involuntarily flattened.

He finished the string of invective with a yawn.

“Well... everytime I think I've hit rock bottom, this island sets the bar a little lower. A night of sleeping in the mud, in off and on showers, and freakish monster summoning blue lightning, in the middle of a herd of dinosaurs, while a creature out of Clash of the Titans stalks my ass all night? You can't BUY suck like this... and believe me, I've been to Thailand, I've TRIED!”

She gave him a disgusted expression and shook her head. “I'm not sure what most of that sentence means, but something about it makes me want to kick you.”

He didn't respond to this, instead pulling out his binoculars and scanning the treeline. She watched him, fidgeting slightly for several seconds, before he lowered them and passed the binoculars quietly to her.

She looked up at him and after an awkward, confused hesitation he remembered that she was trying not to use magic at the moment. He helped her adjust the strap around her neck, then she sat back awkwardly on her haunches and used her forehooves to mimic him.

“Did you see it?”

He shook his head. “No, but I want a second opinion.”

She began her own surveillance, frowning slightly in concentration. Marshall, meanwhile, removed his poncho, whacked it several times against his leg to break the dried mud off of it, then folded it and put it in his pack. As she turned to scan the opposite treeline he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his BDU top due to the heat and went off a ways away to do his business. She continued her scan of the treeline studiously until the sounds of urination finished, then lowered the binos and cocked her head at him.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

She frowned. “I didn't see it either, but that makes no sense. Why would it dog us all night, then just... give up? What changed?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Seems unlikely after the epic ass-whooping it waded through just to keep close by, though. Think it's a trick?”

She shook her head. “Honestly, I don't think it's that smart.” She shuddered. “Maybe whatever came through in that last round of sky lights scared it off.”

He frowned. “That's... discouraging. Also, it doesn't strike me as the scareable type.”

They mused this over for several seconds before Marshall slapped his fist into his hand.

“Countermeasures!”

Twilight blinked, then cocked her head at him curiously. “What?”

“Ok, this is gonna take some explanation, so bear with me. I told you about anti-aircraft weaponry, right?”

She frowned, but nodded. War was not unheard of in Equestrian history, but it had been a very long time since Equestria had had anything approaching an armed conflict, and they had NEVER had one on the scale that humans tended to. It took a certain amount of mental juggling to reconcile this with certain accepted notions in Equestrian social sciences, namely, that a society had to be largely peaceful to enjoy any sort of technological advancement worth the name.

Such experts often pointed to the differences between griffon, pony, and diamond dog tech levels as proof of these notions, and while these modes of thought were cautiously accepted by the Equestrian scientific community at large, they had always struck Twilight as somewhat condescendingly pony-centric.

Considering the massively more advanced state of human technology, it would appear that humanity blew those theories completely out of the water. With the evidence that she'd gathered on this island, she could probably have written a score of mind blowing papers on the subject.

She shrugged off the thought for later analysis and turned her attention back to Marshall.

“One of the types of anti-aircraft weaponry is called a heat-seeking missile. You already know that heat is a form of radiant energy, but what you might not be aware of is that most of that radiated heat is actually a form of light.”

She frowned. “Ok... so if it's light why can't we see it?”

He raised a finger. “Light has properties of both a particle and a wave. I could get into it, and by your expression I see I'm going to have to later, but the jist of it is that the wavelength of light determines what color it is, or even if we can see it at all. Heat radiates in the infrared spectrum, and the heat that most aircraft generates from engines and the like is specifically the mid-IR. Heat-seeking missiles look for that signature, lock on to it, and follow it to the target.”

She nodded, following, and completely fascinated.

“So anyway, obviously nobody likes the idea of a weapon they can't evade, so they developed countermeasures. At first, these were decoy flares that radiated heat. Essentially, they fooled the missile into thinking it was tracking the target, when in actuality it was just chasing a flare.”

He paused, and at her nod, continued. “So that worked for awhile, but as heat-seekers got more and more sophisticated that method got less and less effective. Eventually, a company called Northrop-Grumman came up with another solution. They invented a countermeasure that shot a focused, multi-wavelength beam of mid-IR light from a turret that contained a sensor that detected missile launches, called a Directed Infrared Countermeasure, or Nemesis defense system. Basically, instead of giving the missile a decoy to follow, it blinded the sensor the missile used to track in the exact wavelength of light that it was looking for.”

She frowned. “So...”

He snapped his fingers, excited. “Come on, genius! So what I'm saying is, you don't see by magic, or hunt by it, but every time those sky lights hit, it knocks you for a loop. You said it felt like the magic thauma-thingie flexed when it happened and that made you dizzy.”

Her eyes widened. “Right.... so if this thing is even MORE sensitive to magic than I am because it hunts by it...”

He grinned. “Then when those sky lights hit it was like the thing was a cat left in a tumble dryer for twenty minutes or so. Combine that with how dark and rainy it was last night, and the fact that you've avoided doing anything magical since we saw it...”

She beamed at him. “You know... I honestly think you're on to something here. It's a sound hypothesis.”

He grimaced. “Only one way to test it, though.”

She frowned. “Yeah. We can't stay here forever. I say we go for it.”

He nodded seriously. “And... that doesn't factor in whatever those sky lights just landed on our backyard. They were close by, and RIGHT in the direction we have to go.”

She sighed. “That's true whether we leave now or later. Best we do it while we have the best possibility of evading that magic hunter thing.”

He nodded. “Agreed. Like the mare said, a stupid risk, but a necessary one. Let's eat breakfast then make tracks.”

Twilight grabbed a star fruit from the bag with her hoof and looked at it glumly. Marshall gave her that evil grin of his that always preceded a comment that she wasn't going to like.

“There are alternatives... just make that noise again, I'm sure one of the rootscrapers will-”

She threw the fruit at him, which caught him by surprise, as he wasn't aware that hooves could do that. Luna wasn't the only one good at spider tosses. It hit him in the inner thigh and left a painful bruise.

He called it a mark of tragedy.


Leaving the herd was much easier now that it had been several hours since the “Magnificent Bastard” had been spotted, as Marshall had taken to calling it. Despite her initial rejection of the sobriquet, she was not above just calling it “MB” for short, because they had to call it something, and before long both of them were doing it.

Trudging warily through the woods, every sense on alert, Marshall and Twilight made their way through the primordial palm forest. Every unexpected noise or snap of a branch brought them both to instant, tense stillness, Marshall's hand drifting to his knife.

Both of them KNEW something was wrong, something was out of place, but neither of them could put a finger (or hoof) on it.

Twilight was the first to spot it, when it came right down to it, and that was mostly because she literally stumbled over it.

“Ouch!” She exclaimed cutely, as she tripped and half tumbled into a palm tree. She had been so focused on her surroundings that she hadn't paid attention to where she was putting her hooves. She glanced down at what she'd stumbled over and froze.

Then looked up consideringly at the palm tree.

Marshall, who had gotten a bit ahead of her but turned when she exclaimed, gave her a confused look.

“What is it, Twilight?” He asked, concernedly.

Twilight, looked around one more time, then a slow wondering grin broke over her face. “Of course...” she said quietly.

Marshall frowned.

“Marshall, it all makes sense now! I'm telling you, it makes SENSE!” She whooped, then started running around him in a giddy little circle.

He followed her motion, bemused. “Did you hit your head or something?”

“No no! I get it now! Something that's been bothering me all this time is finally clear! The rootscrapers, Marshall, how are they still alive?!”

He frowned. “Because they're too damn big and ornery for anyone to take down?”

She grinned. “Exactly, but you're missing the point. That herd is huge... it represents a combined tonnage of well over 300 tons. Something about them has been bothering me all this time, and I finally get it! The closest land animal in my world that matches it for size and feeding habits is a form of elephant, and adults get to around six to twelve tons and eat close to... eight hundred pounds of food a day.”

He put a hand out and stopped her giddy victory lap, as it was starting to make him dizzy. She turned, excited and happy, her cheek against his palm.

“Ok, so...?”

“So taking into account that these are birdlike, and appear to have a crop, so they probably have a slightly more efficient metabolism, they STILL eat pretty much ALL day, and they eat a very specific part of one type of plant. You said so yourself.”

She met his gaze squarely. “So as a rough estimate, say an adult rootscraper needs close to six hundred pounds of food a day. That's probably an underestimate, but it will do for our purposes. Do the math, Marshall! Six hundred pounds, times thirty adult animals, equals eighteen thousand pounds of palm heart a day! That's nine tons! Now granted these are huge palm trees, that still around two palm trees per animal per day...”

He blinked, then looked around at the forest, and considering look on his face. “Sixty trees per day... four hundred twenty trees per week... there shouldn't even be a forest here right now...”

She nodded eagerly. “But there IS.... why?”

He looked at the rootscraper dig marks she'd tripped over. The dig marks that went right up to a palm tree...

That was absolutely pristine.

“Because whatever is causing those sky lights is replacing them.” He finished, awed.

She turned eagerly from him and gazed around them. “The scale of it! It's...”

Marshall shook his head, mutely, for once awed into silence.

“Figure that before I showed up, unless you actually SAW the sky lights happen, you would have been completely unaware of them. Now factor in that if I'm asleep, or lying down, I wouldn't be aware that I was dizzy...”

He frowned thoughtfully. “You think the sky lights happen a lot more often than we're even aware of?”

She nodded. “I think it's pretty obvious. Something is ACTIVELY maintaining this biome, Marshall. In addition to yanking random ponies from their beds and thrusting them into the middle of this...”

She gestured with a hoof. “Something recognizes that this is a closed system with an unsustainable ecology... and it's fixing it ON THE SLY!”

He nodded seriously. “Ok... so how do we exploit this?”

She paced furiously, thinking. “Well... again, we need to run a few experiments when we get back to the camp. I'll need your help with those... and...”

She looked up at him. “I need as close to a bird's eyeview of the island as I can get. We need to get to the top of that mountain.”

He frowned. “Why? I've already surveyed...”

She shook her head. “That's just it, Marshall, you haven't! You searched the island when you were under the assumption that the only thing the sky lights mean is new predators, but we have evidence that more than just that is being transported here all the time, and that it probably happens way more often than we're aware...”

He sighed, looked away, set his jaw and crossed his arms, then nodded finally and turned back to her. “Ok... so how do we get you to the top of the mountain, genius? It's too far for you to teleport. It's surrounded by flying predators. There are at least four or five sections that are almost perfect vertical climbs, and you have no hands!”

She grinned wickedly at him. “Oh ye of little faith. Fear not, monkey. I have... a plan.”

He blinked, then narrowed his eyes at her. “You know, it kinda ruins the effect if you blush while you do that.”

She blushed harder.


A/N: And now for your viewing pleasure, one of my good friends and colleagues Nugar has written a scene for you folks. It's good enough that you could consider it canon Quantum Castaways if you wish, and probably takes place some time during the three weeks or so that Twilight is acclimitizing to her situation on the island. I doubt this will be the LAST one of these, and I will post them as I receive them at the end of each new chapter.

So, without further adieu, Quantum Castaways presents, QC Omake Theater.


Musical Murder, by Nugar

“Murder turkey, you’re the one… you make breakfast, so much fun…murder turkey, I’m awfully glad I shot you.”

Twilight’s ears twitched as she slowly turned to see her human companion cooking breakfast in his makeshift fryer, humming a random tune beneath his breath. He broke off and sucked his finger for a moment when he got some hot grease on it, and when he resumed poking the charring flesh with a knife, his absentminded tune had changed.

“Murder turkey murder turkey… come join my murder day feast… murder turkey murder turkey… everybody have a piece…”

“Marshal!” she snapped. “That’s one of my favorite songs! Do you have to pervert it into something so… so human?!” He froze, giving her a startled look, completely unaware as to what she was referring to.

“What?” he asked in complete confusion.

Twilight sighed. “Oh, nevermind. But if you’re going to sing, can it be about something besides killing animals?”

He blinked, then got a faint blush as he realized what he’d been doing. “Oh! Oh, uh, sorry. It’s just… you know, murder turkey is actually a pretty fun thing to say.”

“Sometimes, you’re like a big, uncouth Pinkie, you know that?”

“…No?”

“If you want something funny to say, just say pickle barrel kumquat, and show some respect to to that poor thing you’re eating.” She glared at him sternly.

“Okay?” He paused. “Pickle barrel… kumquat?”

Twilight nodded, satisfied. “Much better. Also, you’re burning your murder turkey.”

“Dammit!” After hurriedly rescuing his breakfast from the coals, he sat down with a sigh. “You know, it’s just too goddamn early for this island’s special brand of what the fuck.”