//------------------------------// // Balancing Act // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Gyro’s hooves tingled as Rarity’s magic hoisted her off the ground. For a moment—if only for a moment—her stomach did backflips as she lost contact with the ground, floating in the open air at the behest of an intangible force. Most earth ponies grew uncomfortable when their hooves left the ground, but after a second to breathe, Gyro forced the sensation away. Unlike many of her brethren, she was as perfectly at home in the sky as she was on the ground. Usually, she had something to stand on, though. “That hole right there,” she said, pointing a gray hoof directly upwards. “There’s at least a little bit of something to stand on through it.” “There’s not a whole lot of anything to stand on,” Rarity said, watching from down below. “Most of the rooms are ripped wide open.” “But not all of them,” Gyro insisted, eyeing up the rooms from the lower decks. “Those still are intact. And if any storerooms survived, then there has to be something useful inside of them.” “I suppose it’s worth a look, then.” Rarity’s horn brightened, and Gyro accelerated toward the hole. “Do be careful, though. If you upset the balance of the wreckage too much…” “I’m not that fat,” Gyro quipped. “I’m insulted.” By this point, though, Rarity had grown used to Gyro’s jokes. “I’m sure you are,” she merely muttered. “Whatever you keep telling yourself, there aren’t any scales to judge you here.” Gyro rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Just stay close by so you can get me out of here if I really need to make an escape.” “Right. I’ll be listening.” And then Gyro’s head poked through the hole in the wreckage. She immediately wrinkled her nose at the humidity and stench sitting inside. Cracks in the hull let some sunlight filter into the rooms, giving her enough light to see by. She recognized herself in one of the sturdy maintenance corridors at the bottom of the ship, which managed to survive the crash. It gave her a base to navigate the wreckage, and maybe access some other rooms in the lower hull. “Alright, you can let me go,” Gyro said, reaching out for the edge of the hole. Rarity’s magic gave her a gentle nudge into the interior of the ship, then disappeared entirely. The engineer’s legs flexed as her weight suddenly settled on her hooves, then tensed as the wreckage groaned and shifted. Wood creaked and something shattered against a wall further down the hallway, and Gyro found herself leaning from side to side in time with the rocking of the wreckage. Rarity’s worried voice followed her through the hole moments later. “Are you okay, darling? The wreckage…” “It’s not sliding, is it?” Gyro asked, her legs locked and too tense to move. “Is it stable?” “For the moment, I think…” A beat, and then, “Maybe you should just leave now. If you start moving things inside of it…” “I’ll be careful,” Gyro said. “There’s nothing heavy enough inside the hull that moving it would set it off balance. I just need to move slow and careful to not disturb it.” Swallowing hard, she turned her attention down the dim hallway. “Well, here goes nothing…” Her hooves echoed off the floor… which, given the angle of the wreckage, was the interior wall. Even that wasn’t perfectly level; it rose to Gyro’s right, toward the ceiling, at about a fifteen degree angle. It made walking down the hall slightly irritating, which the creaking and groaning of the wreckage only compounded. A few inches of pooled water sat in the crook between the floor and the wall, stagnant and stale. Insects buzzed around the interior, and Gyro just knew that the water inside the wreckage was quickly becoming a mosquito breeding ground. She stopped at the first door which, given the orientation of the ship, happened to be almost directly above her. Rising up on her hind legs, Gyro gripped the handle in her mouth and turned it. The door wasn’t locked, but she had to jump off the wall to get enough leverage to fling the door open inwards. When she landed on the wall again, the entire wreckage shuddered and swayed. Gyro held still until the hull stopped moving, then managed to rise up and crawl through the door frame. It was one of the maintenance wings, and Gyro immediately recognized it as the spare engine parts room. Most of the containers were still attached to the walls, though a few had broken free and smashed against the interior wall. Gyro simply considered herself lucky that none of them had fallen against the door, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to open it. So, turning her attention to the first container, she forced it open and looked inside. When she saw the collection of gears and small parts, she frowned and sighed. “I wish I brought a sack with me,” she muttered to herself. Thankfully, a cardboard box with only a little water damage sat in the corner of the room, so she careful navigated to it and picked it up. Setting it against the wall, she started dumping whatever she thought would be useful into it: gears, nuts and bolts, some zip ties and wire. Though she didn’t know what she’d do with the gears, everything else would be useful in some way. With those random parts in the box, she moved onto the next container. “Gyro, darling?” Rarity’s faint voice echoed through the wreckage. “How’s it going in there?” “Good!” Gyro said. “I’ve found some parts and stuff. Gonna go through the rest, see what I can find.” “Okay…” The worry in Rarity’s voice was unmistakable, but Gyro pressed on regardless. There wasn’t anything she could do about that now. Moving on to the next container, she forced it open and dumped more parts in the box. In that way, she slowly worked her way through the easier containers. But then there were the containers mounted on the far wall. She remembered that there were tools and metal patches in those larger containers; those would be incredibly useful for her and Rarity and Rainbow. The only problem now was getting to them with them mounted on the wall practically above her. But maybe she could find something that would make it work… The floor was scarred up and splintered, providing a little bit of traction up to the far wall. Though Gyro wasn’t too keen on doing more climbing, the tools inside of those containers would be worth it. So, cracking her neck, she started on the ascent. Her legs ached and screamed in protest, but with effort and determination, she made it within reach of the hanging containers above her. Now all she had to do was open one. She immediately set her eyes on the biggest container; that’d have the most scrap metal in it. Precariously balanced on a plank sticking out of the floor, Gyro reached up and used her mouth to tug on the door. Instead of opening, however, she shouted in alarm and surprise when the entire container broke off of the wall, fell through the open door, and slammed against the hallway wall below her. The wreckage shook, shuddered, and groaned. It swayed back and forth from the force of the blow, and the shift in position was enough to make Gyro lose her grip on the plank of wood and fall down. She screamed in pain as she cracked her back on an open steel container lid behind her, and her hind legs immediately went tingly and numb. Her teeth smashed together and she tasted blood in her mouth as she rolled off the container and through the door frame, slamming chin-first against the container. Groaning and hissing in pain, Gyro tried to stand up, but her hind legs wouldn’t respond to her. And that’s when she heard the splintering of wood, the shrieking of metal, the crumbling of stone. Swallowing hard, Gyro put her hooves against the wall and felt the fifteen degree incline swiftly vanishing. “Oh, fuck me…”