//------------------------------//
// 7 - Deeper Into The Jungle 
// Story: The Lost Ponies: Jurassic Park 
// by CompactDisc 
//------------------------------//

Levine and Harding were sat in the cabin as the ferry pushed on through the rough weather. For the most part they sat in silence: neither found much to say to one another. Levine was cradling a half-empty wine glass as he stared out of the window into the morning gloom.

He took a sip, closing his eyes. A glass of wine always did help to steady his thoughts and he certainly needed that. Conditions outside had improved marginally but remained grey and rainy, far from the idyllic weather forecast three days from now. The day when they were scheduled to be undertaking this expedition. They were meant to be travelling to Isla Sorna to study live dinosauria – to undertake pioneering research.

But of course, as Levine saw it, there were serious complications. Another party was hot on the case of Site B, themselves leeching information from Levine’s own investigations. They had spied on him. They had broken numerous laws just to get what they needed. And now, they had kidnapped Twilight and her friend. Nobody could have predicted that the two ponies would have been captured. That was certainly out of Levine’s own hands, let alone anyone else’s. And yet he felt that Malcolm pinned the blame entirely on him – still, Ian Malcolm was a stubborn, pessimistic individual who needed black and white in his life. He needed only science and reason. If something happened, he needed to understand why, what caused it, and whose fault it was.

Levine sighed. That man could do with opening his mind...

“Hey. What you thinking?” Harding had dragged Levine from his thoughts.

“Uh... Not much, in honesty.” He let the false remark hang, just long enough for him to come clean. “Sarah...” He took another drink. “All this – er, the developments of the past few days, shall we say – is this really my fault? Is Ian right?”

Harding pursed her lips, drawing a breath. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” she began. “You see, Ian is a very... particular... kinda man. He has set ways of thinking. Hell, sometimes I think that if left alone, he’d approach everything through chaos theory!” She chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s not one-dimensional, far from it. But he is a world-class academic, so it’s only natural he think like that. It’s not really a good way to tackle everyday life. Sometimes, stuff happens, and rather than work out all the theory behind it, you deal with it. It doesn’t need to be clinical, or scientific, just... That’s how it is. When Flutters and Twilight wound up in trouble, that wasn’t ‘chaos theory’ or anyone’s fault, as such, that’s just how it’s all developed.”

Levine nodded, taking a drink. “That’s how I see it.”

“I think Ian blames you because of how important these two ponies are. And to be honest, you could have gotten involved with less important Equestrians. But – much though I hate to say this – Twilight and Fluttershy put themselves in danger by choosing to follow the men back to their apartment. They didn’t have to do that, but they chose to. Much in the same way that Twilight chose to go with you, and Flutters would have gone too, if she’d known Twilight was there.”

 “Right.”

Harding noted how much more humble and grounded Levine seemed. The journey had mellowed him out, his academic pomp having seemed to disappear.

“Regardless of whoever’s right, wrong, whatever. We need to make sure those two are okay and I think that’s something we all need to remember.” Harding poured herself a water. “I know you and Ian don’t always see eye-to-eye, but you can’t let your disagreements get in the way when we’re risking our lives to rescue those two.”

Levine nodded. “That’s very true. I, er... I can’t help but feel responsible somewhat, regardless. I need to make sure they’re okay.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” she agreed. “But we’ll be okay, so long as we work as one. Find them, get them away from those whackos that took them, get them back safely.”

“Avoid dinosaurs.”

“Yeah.”

The cabin fell into an awkward silence. The concept of live dinosaurs was beginning to set in.

“So,” Levine said finally, attempting to steer the conversation. “Who kidnapped them? Do we have any idea?”

“Not entirely sure but Ian said the main culprit is one Lewis Dodgson, whoever he might be. You know him?”

“I do,” Levine said, his mood picking up. “Dodgson, Director of Research at BioSyn. He tried to steal as much of InGen’s intellectual property, so he’d be a likely candidate, for certain.” His demeanour changed. “We need to stop him as we rescue the young mares. I don’t know what he might have planned but he’ll more than likely be a threat to the animals.”

“For sure,” Harding said nodding. “We can do that.”

At that point the cabin door creaked open and a soaking Thorne stepped inside. He fought the driving wind and forced the door shut. “Looks like we’re nearly there,” he said removing his coat, hanging it up. “Been told you guys need to get your stuff together.” He huffed. “Christ it’s damp out there. Still pretty shit. And Eddie still insists we do equipment checks...”

“Terrible conditions for what we’re about to do,” Levine muttered.

“Say that again,” Thorne agreed.

“Mmm – Say what again?” The murmur from the far side of the cabin drew everyone’s attention. It was Malcolm; he had fallen asleep some time ago, Harding having just woken him up. “Say that – we’re...” He let out a yawn. “We’re all going to be eaten?”

“Enough of that,” Harding tutted as she handed him a glass of water. As she did so the cabin door opened once again, Carr stepping in.

“The crew are preparing to dock,” he said. “I thought I’d wait in here.”

“Makes a change. I thought you’d be lying underneath the RV checking the armour was intact.”

“You can’t be too sure, Jack...”

From out of the windows, a steep cliff face came into view. Everyone peered outside. The cliffs rose sharply and looked to be fifty feet high, a thick jungle visible at the top. At their base, jagged rocks rose from the surf as waves crashed against them. The ferry, unsettlingly, looked to be heading straight for the cliffs.

“The, uh... The captain knows what he’s doing, right?”

“I should think so Ian,” Levine answered.

The group watched as the ferry began to fight a particularly rough patch of sea as they neared the cliff face. It was being buffeted to and fro and from upstairs on the bridge they heard the crew yelling. Then the ferry began to shudder; they felt the engines revving up. There were more cries from the bridge as the craft began to rotate and from outside, the group watched as a particularly large rock passed closely by.

Levine paled.

The great engines increased power and the ferry lurched forward, riding the crest of a wave. They passed by more jagged rocks and then, seemingly from nowhere, the cliffs closed in on either side. There was a matter of feet to spare. The bridge had gone silent.

Then the cliffs receded, and the seas calmed; the ferry had made its way into a sheltered cove. Everyone in the cabin let out a collective sigh of relief that they hadn’t realised they were holding.

“That was tight,” Thorne whistled. “There can’t have been much room for manoeuvre there.”

“Indeed,” Levine said. He downed his wine. As he set his glass down, a crewmember appeared from upstairs.

“We are docking here,” he said as everyone turned to him. “There is a small beach, and it is safer here.”

Carr looked outside, then back to the man. “There’s no dock here. There has to be a port on this island somewhere – can’t we dock there?”

“No, senor,” the crewman said. “It is too dangerous in these conditions. We must dock now.”

Carr looked over at Thorne. “Well?” he said. “What now? Unloading’s gonna be hard...”

Thorne shrugged. “Well, yeah. But better we unload here rather than risk going to the port and smash into a cliff. We gotta do what we gotta do, Eddie.”

Carr remained silent.

“We will anchor the ship now,” the crewman continued. “Please, get ready to unload.”

Levine nodded, standing. “Let’s do it.”


* * * *





Twilight found herself too exhausted to move for quite some time. Physically she was weak; the stress of the recent events combined with the energy exerted teleporting had sapped her strength. Emotionally, she was drained. Nestled against Fluttershy she had cried, and when there were no more tears she laid there, numb. When the weather had worsened she made no efforts to find shelter and the pair lay out in the rain, their manes and coats soaking through.

Princess Celestia was right to worry, she had thought. She was right to warn me. Of course, she never doubted her mentor but she’d honestly felt that she could handle this. Twilight had approached the concept of Levine’s expedition with confidence but now that was in tatters. Her kidnapping had shaken her, and hanging over her conscience was a horrible guilt: Fluttershy had been dragged into this mess as well. And that, above all else, hurt her the most.

In time she was able to get to her hooves. Allowing a moment she stood still, listening to her body: her head was still throbbing, her legs ached, and her stomach hurt. She ignored the pain with a grimace. Twilight noted that the duo were still closer to the exposed dirt track than she wanted them to be, opting to head deeper into the jungle. With difficulty, she was able to slip Fluttershy onto her back, hissing as the added weight only worsened her soreness, and slowly pushed onwards into the trees. After what felt like an eternity – in actuality only a few hundred yards – she came across a small slope. At the bottom was a stream with some low-lying shrubbery enveloping it: finally she could grab a drink and find some shelter beneath the larger foliage.

Twilight shifted Fluttershy about on her back, ensuring she was as secure as she could possibly be, and carefully made her way down the hillside. The ground was treacherous from all the rain and she was careful not to slip on her way down. Once at the bottom, she carefully lay Fluttershy under a thick shrub to rest and scanned the horizon for any potential danger – after today’s attack, she was taking no chances. She couldn’t see any signs of activity, though, and she relaxed slightly as she moved towards the stream and took on water. The stream was refreshing and Twilight realised at that point just how thirsty she had become. She stood for a moment, savouring the cooling drink, but it was then that something across the stream caught her eye.

Twilight immediately felt very alert, holding quite still as she peered closer. It didn’t take long to work out what she was looking at – in the soft bank opposite her were three-toed footprints. The closer she looked, the more she could see. There were ten, twenty... They looked to be about twenty centimetres long, and fresh.

Twilight quickly put a stop to a panic she felt brewing within her. She had a fairly good idea of what left those footprints and she certainly didn’t want to be here much longer, in case they came back. With haste she swung her head around the undergrowth looking for any more signs of activity, but thankfully she couldn’t make anything out.

At that point, she picked up on a soft, quiet noise. It was barely audible through the sounds of the jungle but when she first heard it she tensed, holding her breath.

She quickly came to realise, though, that the noise was one she was thankful to hear.

“...Twilight?” Fluttershy had said groggily. She was waking up.

In an instant Twilight was next to her, her forehooves supporting her head. “Relax,” she said softly. “Don’t try and stand up just yet, save your energy.”

Clearly still dazed, Fluttershy went to sit but fell back with a yelp, Twilight cradling her. “It’s okay, just take it slow for a moment.”

“My – my wing.” The words escaped her in a breath, her voice weak. “It hurts...”

Twilight did her best not to sound panicked or flustered as she spoke. “Can you move it at all?” She pursed her features as she watched Fluttershy open the injured wing up as best she could, hissing through an obvious pain.

“It’ll be okay, I think,” came her soft reply. Fluttershy took a deep breath, expelling an equally deep sigh. “I – I don’t think it’s broken, but it feels bruised.”

“Do you want to rest here for a moment?”

There was a pause as Fluttershy took steadying breaths, slowly coming round. The tranquiliser was wearing off.

“Where are we? What... happened? I – oh...” Fluttershy trailed off, leaving a large pause. “I remember they... killed that poor dinosaur...”

Twilight sighed heavily. She could empathise completely.

“They didn’t need to kill it,” Fluttershy croaked. “They could have just avoided it. They even had tranquilisers...”

“I think we’ve learnt something through all this,” Twilight said with a scowl. “Some humans are horrible.” She shocked herself as she spoke – her statement was much more venomous than she’d anticipated it being.

 “Those men certainly are. I... I know some dinosaurs are scary, but they’re still animals!” Fluttershy was working herself up. “Some ponies find bears scary, but I know they’re not. I’m sure some of the dinosaurs here are lovely, and the ones that aren’t, well...” She trailed off, taking some steadying breaths. “I still feel a little fuzzy. Are we... safe here?”

“I think so, for a minute. I don’t want to stay here too long though...”

A pause.

“How did we get here?”

“When they tranquilised you, we were attacked again—”

“Oh, my. By another...?” She trailed off.

Twilight nodded. “They must have been hunting together.”

“Oh, Celestia...” Fluttershy said breathlessly. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

“No... It broke cover and charged towards us, and the men fled. I tried to move you but it was coming too quickly...” Twilight began to well up. “I grabbed you and we teleported away. We appeared up there, and after a little time I brought you down here...”

“Twilight...”

“It was horrible,” she said, her voice cracking. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I was by myself but I’ve gotten you involved in all of this, and it’s all gone horribly wrong, and I just wish—”

Fluttershy had risen to her hooves, working through the pain her wing was giving her, and scooped Twilight up in a hug. “It’s okay,” she cooed softly. “We’ll be okay. We’ll work something out.”

“T-Thank you,” Twilight whispered. “I’m so sorry about this...”

“Don’t be. We’re here now and we’ll be okay, as long as we stick together.”

“Y-Yes, you’re right... You’re right. This whole thing has shaken me up more than I thought it had.” Twilight looked up at her friend. “I really don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here right now.” She smiled, and the pair shared a hug.

“How did you teleport us?” Fluttershy asked as they pulled apart. “I thought Princess Celestia said Unicorns can’t control magic on Earth.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said. Apparently we can’t, but I did, somehow. I’ve never had to focus so hard in my life...”

“That’s brilliant. Once we get home, you’ll have to tell the Princess!” Fluttershy beamed. “How are you feeling?”

“My stomach is certainly more settled,” she grimaced, thinking back to earlier. “How are you?”

 “A little woozy and tired, but... okay. I think the tranquiliser’s wearing off. Let me just have a drink from the stream and then I think we should go.”

Fluttershy took on water, and the pair readied themselves. Both of them knew animals tended to stay fairly close to water sources and the jungle had thinned somewhat around the stream – big enough for larger carnivores to pass through. It wasn’t smart to stay in one place for too long.

“So, um, now where do we go?”

“I’m not sure. I remember Richard saying he thought there was a compound somewhere in the island’s north... We should probably go there. We might be able to contact somepony! Though, finding our way there could be tricky. I don’t have a compass, and there’s no chance of us using the sun to work out where we are with these rains...”

 “There looks like there’s another trail over there, across the stream.” Fluttershy gestured with her hoof.

The pair made their way towards the trail. It was wide, vegetation and shrubbery crushed. On closer inspection, bark on many of the trees had been roughly stripped off at around seven feet from the ground. It was all rather obvious that something used this trail, and used it quite regularly – a fact that Twilight was quick to pick up on.

“What do you think? Should we follow it?”

“Um...” Fluttershy hesitated. “I think the road would get us to this compound quicker but there’s no way we can just walk along it. It’s much too exposed.”

“That’s our decision made for us then,” Twilight concluded. She turned to Fluttershy. “You ready for this?”

“I... Yes, I think so. Let’s do it,” she said.

With little hesitation the two friends began to trot along the trail, unsure of where exactly they were headed. They both knew they had to head north, and they both knew they had to keep moving: Isla Sorna had already proven to them just how dangerous it could be.


* * * *





“Jesus fucking Christ,” Thorne said as he slammed the door on the mobile lab. “That was more effort than it should have been... Still, I guess we’re off of that damn boat now.” He made his way towards the cockpit of the RV, occupying the driver’s seat. Malcolm was sat in the passenger seat, admiring the impressive dashboard before him.

“Looks a little – a little overcomplicated,” he said emptily. “You know what all of this does?”

“Don’t you worry about that for now Ian,” Thorne replied. “Just don’t touch anything unless I ask you to – oh, as you’re here pick up that radio and see if Eddie’s on the line. He should be on this frequency.”

Malcolm grabbed the radio set. “Eddie, you there? Doc’s wondering if you can hear us.”

“Yeah, I got you,” came Eddie’s voice through the crackly receiver. “Ask him how all the systems are in the lab.”

“I heard him,” Thorne said. “You can tell him that Richard’s checking everything over with Sarah... Y’know what, pass me the radio.” Malcolm handed him the radio. “Eddie, it’s me. Gonna be a long list... Okay. Richard and Sarah are checking the lab equipment. The rest of the systems look to be okay, or so the dashboard tells me... Smoke defence systems primed, electrical emergency deterrent seems to be working... I’ll keep that one off for now... The accordion connector between this RV and the trailer looks to be holding up well. Good job on that one.  Computer system online, GPS online... How’s the jeep?”

“Yeah, okay,” came Carr’s reply. “I’m just hoping the vehicles don’t short in this rain, but I think it’ll be an easy fix if they do. There’s a whole emergency repair toolkit in the RV’s trailer should we need it.”

“Brilliant. Okay, hold tight here for a minute, I need to chat to Richard before we think about making tracks.”

“Gotcha.” The radio crackled.

“And there you have it,” Thorne said as he replaced the radio. “Eddie Carr, the world’s most nervous technician, in need of yet another status update on his trucks.”

“I can’t blame him right now,” Malcolm muttered. “But – hey – this thing sounds pretty well-defended. I gotta say, when Richard first mentioned a custom-built RV I wasn’t convinced, but... well. Wow. What do all those systems actually do?”

“Glad you’re impressed, Ian. In short, they keep us alive – or that’s the intention, anyway. Our first line of defence is a perimeter system that needs manually setting up once we park. It’s a motion sensor system; it’ll alert us if there’s any movement nearby. Second, that smoke system I mentioned? Can be manually or automatically triggered. On all sides of the RV are these little chutes, and it emits a non-lethal gas concoction. It’ll make you cough, but it won’t kill you. They use it in Africa to deter animals that might stray too close – it’ll almost definitely deter a dinosaur. And the last major defence line is the ten thousand volts running across every exterior surface of this thing. Needless to say, that’s switched off for the time being.” Thorne gestured to the dashboard. “Those three buttons there – the ones that go green to red, left to right. Those activate each tier of defence. So your green button activates the motion sensors, the amber one will fire the smoke system, and the red one activates the electricity.”

“Woah,” Harding said from behind – at some point she’d tuned in to Thorne’s description. “We’re set then!”

“Well, I’m not sure about ‘set’ but we’re certainly more defended than I first thought we would be,” Malcolm interjected. Though still far from feeling safe, he felt much more comfortable inside the RV.

Thorne smirked. “I’d say armed to the teeth. Bear in mind we’ve got tranquiliser guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, pistols, flare guns, even an RPG—”

“I’d rather we stray from the lethal weaponry,” Levine interrupted. “We are here to study, not to hunt.”

“Primarily we’re here to rescue some kidnapped mares, are we not?” Thorne turned to Levine. “Okay Richard, we’d better get this show on the road. This RV has an inbuilt computer system that matches a lot of military technology and a goddamn reliable GPS system. You know if this island has its own systems up and running?”

“Hmm, give me a minute...” Levine grabbed his files, flicking through the InGen notes. “I, er, suppose there ought to be some sort of mainframe here on this—Ah, of course!” In his excitement he grabbed the InGen laptop and logged in. “Yes. This laptop belonged to an InGen employee by the name of Jophery, who had ‘level 01’ access to the ‘Site A’ and ‘Site B’ mainframes. Now, we know that Sorna itself is Site B, so...” Levine turned to the computer interface, itself nestled behind the driver seat.

“So...what?”

 “Well, some time ago a computer-literate friend of mine helped me to bypass many of the systems on this laptop and I was able to gather a lot of information. Now, I have a feeling that the same processes we used would work on Sorna’s mainframe, and we might find something of use there. The only issue here is that I don’t know how to get this computer to find said mainframe and connect to it—”

“No problem,” Thorne said as he picked up the radio. “Eddie, get your ass back in the RV for a minute. We need you to work some technical wonders here.”

“Right,” he replied as the radio crackled. Within seconds he was inside, and after a short while, he and Levine had tapped into the system.

“You’re in,” he said. “I’m gonna head back to the jeep, give me the heads-up when we’re ready to go.”

“Will do,” Thorne said as Carr stepped out of the RV. He turned back to Levine. “Right. So where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” he replied blankly. “I thought we were looking for Twilight and Fluttershy.”

“Well, yeah. But how do we find them? Come on, there’s gotta be something in that damn system that’ll help us out here.”

“I’m really not sure right now, Jack,” Levine bit back, annoyed. “Okay. Look, there’s a compound on the northeast of the island, not too far from the volcano. Looks to be InGen’s main site on the island here. Let’s head there, we might get some more clues about this place.”

“Sounds like a solid enough plan to me.” Thorne tapped a screen on the dashboard; it displayed the GPS readout. “There’s a road not too far from here that’ll take us directly there, but it looks like we’ll need to cut through some thick jungle beforehand... That’s a job for the jeep – it’s got an interchangeable winch and saw system that can be attached on its front.” He turned to the team. “One of you okay to ride with Eddie? He’ll need a hand if he’s gonna pull that off.”

“I’m staying in here,” Malcolm answered briskly. “There’s no way I’m riding in that thing.”

“I guess I could do it—”

“I’ll go,” Harding interrupted, cutting Levine off. “It’ll be nice.”

“Nice? Sarah, honey, are you mad—”

“Don’t start all this again. We got this out of our system back at the Institute.” Harding leaned over, planting a kiss on Malcolm’s cheek. “I’ll be fine.” And with that, she exited the RV and joined Carr in the jeep.

“Are we all ready?” Thorne asked the two academics.

“Ready,” Levine answered.

“I guess,” Malcolm replied.

“Okay.” Thorne picked up the radio. “Eddie, let’s make tracks.”

“Sure thing,” he replied, as the convoy moved away from the cove and into the jungle. The rescue mission had begun.