"So there I was, mate : just me, my rum, that accursed gun, the clothes on my back and an island devoid of any animals!" Jack continued, his hands and arms moving way too enthusiastically as he told the story. Though, for someone as childlike as Harley, it wasn't really a far stretch. "At first, I'll admit I thought was doomed! Doomed to restlessly wander alone on the island, with no one to fancy for miles and miles around! The gun was my only companion for weeks...er, months!"
"Ooh!" The relatively strange woman gushed and leaned forward from her crossed legged position with an eager grin, her chin in her palm. "So how'd you get off?"
"What?"
"The island. How'd you get off?"
"Oh, right..." He coughed just slight, arms still held out in awkward positions as he revealed the answer. "Well, it wasn't that difficult, mate. I rode a pair of sea turtles and escaped to a nearby ship dock."
Before Harley could even think about clapping to such a truly thrilling and amazing true story, Twilight looked up from her medallion studying to grimace at the Pirate. "Um, that's impossible."
Jack nodded in response, crossing his arms proudly. "Yes, that's true. I did the impossible."
"Ugh, no. I mean, that's impossible for you to do. No one can just ride two sea turtles for that many miles. Let alone find two sea turtles in the same place. Let alone find sea turtles of a proper size for you."
"I was lucky that day."
"...Alright then, lucky guy, you couldn't have held onto their shells very easily. And there's no way you sat on them." The Alicorn's eyes narrowed skeptically. "So how'd you ride them?
Sparrow scoffed and jabbed a thumb behind himself. "Pfft. I used all the hair on my back as a rope to let them pull me."
"Ugh, you're disgusting!" Harley made a gagging face at first, but a crazed grin followed soon after. "Tell me more!"
Footsteps on sand intruded on the conversation, and the three turned to see Daredevil and Rey returning with large armloads of wood and dry grass. They didn't look like the best of friends doing it, but at least they weren't at each other's throats again. Rey let the wood drop from her arms limply into the huge space between Twilight and the humans. "There. We have our firewood. And the sun's getting real low. Since we did all the work in gathering this, one of you can get to work on starting the fire."
"Mmm, not too good at starting a fire, mate. I can, however, arrange your most gracious work in a proper way." Jack gave an insulting curtsy to Rey and daintily picked at the sticks to arrange them in sort of a pyramid. "This one there, that one there..."
"Eh, I've been away from Junior Girl Scouts too long to remember proper fire techniques, Dahlin!" Harley shrugged and flopped backwards into the sand to make a...Sandangel. " But I can make a mean Wilhelm Knot if you gimme some rope. "
Rey rolled her eyes and sat down in a cross-legged fashion, although she winced from the pain in her shin. After grasping two sticks in each hand, the young woman began feverishly rubbing them together. "You're both useless. Entirely useless."
"Easy." Daredevil said softly, walking around to the opposite side of the wood pile to sit as well. "Those sticks are gonna break if you keep rubbing them together like that. Just...use your lightsaber."
"That is not how a lightsaber is used. A lightsaber is a weapon, used to defend yourself and others against dark forces with dark intent." Rey said without hesitation. "It is not to be used like a lighter."
"Well, either way, it won't be necessary. Allow me to start the fire." Twilight gestured to herself with a hoof, her horn's tip turned a bright red. After a few seconds of concentration, the base of the wood pyramid burst into flames and soon consumed the rest of the pyramid. Jack visibly jolted backwards as his fingers nearly caught fire; Twilight smiled sheepishly under his glare. "Oh! Um, sorry!"
Daredevil, seeming to sense her embarrassment, turned his head in her direction. "Did you crack the code on that Medallion?"
The Alicorn shook her head and levitated the object in question. "No...I've been trying the decoding spell for the last hour, but it's only been half translated so far. I guess I'll have to keep working on it for another hour...At least we have a fire."
"The fire is the only thing pleasant that's happened to us." Rey sighed, gazing deep into the rising flames as the others silently agreed. "We have no way off this island other than swimming, we don't know where we are and we don't know how we got here. "
"Aye." Jack offered.
"And I'm hungry." Harley whimpered aloud with pouting lips.
"Well...I'm not so good at detecting things in large bodies of water..." Daredevil angled his head as if he was seeing something no one else could. In a strange way, he was doing just that. "But it looks like there's fish in the ocean. Maybe if we can build some kind of lure and use a fraction of the vine as our fishing line, we could have something to live off of until we know what to do next."
Harley grimaced at his suggestion. "I don't think I'm hungry enough to eat stinky, disgusting fish, thank you."
The man scoffed slightly. "If you wanna starve or go back into the jungle to get fruit, be my guest."
"What's fishing?" Rey asked after a moment of silence. "And for that matter, what are fish?"
"You don't know what fish are?"
"I grew up on a desert. I basically just learned what an ocean is today."
"Well, its food for you four, but not food for me." Twilight explained and stood to her hooves. "Come on. While this thing finishes deciphering, I'll teach you how to make a fishing pole from what I've read in the past. Then I'll find a lure. There has to be some bugs in this jungle, if there's a hyena."
"Wait, if you guys don't eat fish..." Harley asked. "Why do you even have books on fishing?"
Twilight thought over the question and finally came up with an answer in the form of a shrug. "I dunno. For sport, I guess."
The aura of purple magic eagerly tied a good knot around the end of the strong stick, leaving the thin length of the vine to trail along the sand. Rey held the stick carefully with her hands as Twilight worked to apply the crude form of a hook,a piece of rock that had been weathered in a curve and the worm they had discovered in the dirt. "But they don't call themselves...Queens or anything?"
"Nope. " Twilight responded briefly.
"Well, that's a bit odd. There used to be royalty back in the galaxy I came from...not entirely sure what happened to them. I have a few good ideas..." The woman noticed that the hook and lure had been finished, but now a flat piece of bark was tied to the middle. "What's that for?"
"That's the sinker. It'll tell us when the fish are biting by disappearing underwater. Come on, we're ready now."
Uncertain of this, she followed the pony down one small length of the beach from camp and came to a part of the beach that was covered by a shallow part of the sea. The Alicorn waded in enough for the surprisingly warm water to be a few inches below her belly, and looked back at her acquaintance. "Well? The water's not gonna bite."
"Ah, but the sharks will!" Harley called suddenly from the fire, her grin reeking of mischief "If the water doesn't sweep you up first!"
"Shut up." Daredevil deadpanned to the jester, and said jester muttered something rude under her breath.
Twilight stopped glaring daggers at Harley to conjure up a comforting smile for the human standing closer to her. "Don't listen to her. Theres no sharks in here...you don't want to know what that is...and the water won't do a thing to you."
Rey stared at the water as if she thought the opposite, holding the fishing rod in her hands. After a while she set the fishing rod down, removed her odd shoes and waded in with the rod after rolling up her pant legs a bit. Her splint seemed to remain where it was despite the water sloshing at it repeatedly. "I'm not gonna drown going this deep, right?"
"No, of course not...Now, first you need to cast your line' " Twilight pointed her horn out across the open water. "Just use the stick like a whip to toss the end waaay out there."
The human's arm reared back behind her and literarily whipped forward at the horizon; the hook at the end zipped through the air like a flying bird and traveled the twenty five feet of the vine perfectly. Once the limit was reached, the line abruptly jolted and the hook fell into the water, while the bark tied to the vine kept it from sinking too far down. It bobbed on the surface of the water, for the moment undisturbed.
"Huh. Nice arm."
"Jedi training. " Rey stated with a bragging smirk.
"Now comes the most difficult part of fishing," Twilight settled down on her haunches and absentmindedly churned some of the water. "Waiting for the fish to actually--"
"The sinker went underwater!"
"What?!" Twilight's eyes bulged comically when she saw no sign of the bark floating above the surface, but instead a constant ripple that meant something was tugging underneath. Given how much strength Rey had to use to keep the rod from moving out of her hands, it was a big fish. "Geez, that was fast!"
"What do I do now?" Rey asked frantically and worriedly.
Jack gave an exasperated growl and pointed a hand at her fishing rod. "What do you think?! Start reeling it in! Pull! Pull!"
Rey did just that, or she did as best as she could by tugging on the vine itself, while trying not to snap it from her end by accident. She grimaced at the strength of the fish pulling on the other end, and in turn tried pulling back with a greater strength. Even Twilight pitched in with her magical aura , pulling back as hard as they dared for the sake of the vine. The Jedi in training grit her teeth slightly. "Do you think we're actually pulling it in?"
"I'm not sure! " Twilight responded, up to her ribs in water thanks to her wading in to get a proper look at this strong fish. "I don't even see it, its so far d--woah!"
The line suddenly snapped a few inches above Rey's hands and she fell back on her rump into the water with a gasp of shock. The one chance of food for the humans disappeared underneath the surface, leaving only a sparse group of bubbles in the wake of the unseen fish. From the beach, a certain captain nonchalantly clapped for their efforts while his face showed anything but pleasure about it. "Ah, magnificent! Bravo, you two! Costing us our food in style! Very effective! Let's hope you don't touch our water supply."
"Oh, shut up!" Twilight snapped at him, somewhat surprising herself given that she didn't usually shush anyone in that manner.
"You haven't done anything to help, so don't blame everything on them." Daredevil snorted at Jack, who seemed to narrow his eyes right back at him. "What? You want to say something?"
Sparrow glanced down at the sword at his hip and then up at Daredevil again. "Just that, while I may be a tad lazy, I'm not.--per se-- a hypocrite, mate! You act like you've done some work around here too--like you're so high above me! You're sitting here just like me! You haven't done a single thing! So you collected a few twigs! So what? Any fool can carry a few sticks and what not! You're living proof of that!"
"So I guess that does make you lower than me." Daredevil retorted with a wry grin wiping Jack's expression clean off his face and placing it on Harley's face.
"Wow. Devil's got you there, hon!" She giggled into her palm somewhat cruelly, her other hand pointing a finger at the blind man. "Too bad you can't ya can't see the look on his face, Batsy 2.0!"
The man in red didn't seem very phased by her second statement, and scoffed as if it were a minor annoyance to him. "You know, for a clown...you should work more on being funny."
Her smile dropped almost instantly, as if what he said triggered a distant memory deep within her mind. Her eyes narrowed viciously at the vigilante, dropping with malice despite how mirthful they seemed just a few seconds prior to now. "I'm funnier when I'm bashin' skulls, hon. Wanna see that up close?"
Daredevil grinned again. "Try me."
Twilight growled aloud and her horn glowed at the same intensity as the campfire did, causing the humans around said campfire to flinch from the sudden show of power. "I will freeze you all if you don't CALM DOWN. Geez! We'll find another way to get some food, but for now, no one is attacking anyone else! Got it?!"
"Uh, Twilight?"Before anyone could even say anything to that, Rey spoke up from behind her." What's that?" The Alicorn looked out across the surface of the water and spotted a sharp jagged dorsal fin slicing through the water as it neared them. Despite the rocky texture to the fin, her eyes immediately perceived the object as one thing only. "Uh, you can tell me anytime now?"
"S-Shark! Get back to the beach!" Twilight urgently shouted, backpedaling as fast as she could through the deep water. Rey seemed to be having trouble moving fast due to her shin, but Daredevil had somehow zipped over to them fast enough to help her out and Harley was soon yanking Twilight out by her wings. Needless to says she protested against it." HEY! My wings are super sensitive! Don't pull on them like that!"
"Well, we don't want that shark pulling on 'em, do we?" Harley let her go when she felt the horse could move well enough, directing her attention to her wet shorts. "Well shoot! Now they're gonna ride up my backside even more now!"
Jack Sparrow placed his hand above his eyebrows while squinting, even though the sun wasn't out. "I don't mean to alarm any of you, but I don't think sharks have multiple fins on their back. Not unless that shark had a bad bath experience."
Whatever animal it was, showed no signs of stopping or any fear of the bodies standing in a group on the beach. The five beings defensively prepared themselves for a possibility of attack from this creature; Twilight's horn nervously flared, Rey activated her lightsaber, Daredevil flicked his billy clubs into place in his hands, Harley held her bat into a perfect swinging position and Jack hid himself behind everyone. Most of them watched as the animal swam into the shallowest areas of the shore, before it reared up to a height of 3 feet tall.
"What...is that?" Rey scrunched her nose softly.
The beast could be described as a sort of a cross between a grizzly bear and an alligator. Its build seemed to lean towards the stomach and legs being overly muscular while its arms were slightly shorter than a bear's would be. Its powerful, gilled neck held up an elegant head with small but powerful looking jaws. With it's excessively long tail disappearing into the water, the view of all those triangular spikes was somewhat obscured from view, but that was made up for in armoured scales padding the majority of its body. Overall, this dinosaurian bear thing was intimidating to look at even with its size being a foot smaller than Twilight.
The thing flared its nostrils in a huff of breath, which was abnormally loud for something of its size. Its jaws held a single fish that was struggling, gasping for water weakly. Harley blinked rapidly after some time and let her bat drop after some time.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."