Rarity found the wreckage in the same condition she’d left it the previous day. Not that she’d expected anything to happen to it, but considering how things had gone for her over the past twenty-four hours, she was wary for anything bad happening. The tide could have come in during the night and swept all the wood and debris away, but thankfully, that didn’t happen.
It was an odd feeling, returning to the scene of so much calamity in such a short time. She didn’t truly appreciate how far the debris had spread when the Concordia’s hull slammed into the sand below. Random bits of wood and steel stuck out of the sand like little trees almost five hundred feet away from the epicenter of the wreckage. Rarity kept a careful eye out for glass or other sharp bits of debris hiding in the surface of the sand as she approached the thick of it; the last thing she needed was to slice her hoof open and slow herself down even more.
But soon she was up in the thick of the wreckage, so Rarity turned her eyes to searching for what she needed: planks, panels, rope, and wire. With those, she knew she’d have what she needed to pull off her plan, but whether it would actually work was another thing entirely. If things didn’t play out exactly how she wanted…
There wasn’t any point in worrying about that now, though. If she didn’t find what she needed, whether or not her plan would work was irrelevant. So with that in mind, she started lifting up rubble and sizing things out that she would need. While most of the wood was too big or too splintered for her needs, she did find a loop of rope almost immediately. Tossing that around her neck and grabbing a large metal panel in her teeth, she started accruing a pile in the same undergrowth where she’d hid Gyro the previous day. After all, if that spot had worked for her once, then hopefully it would work again and keep her supplies safe from anypony who might stumble across them until she was ready to move.
As she started ferrying supplies back and forth, however, she took note of the sand higher up along the beach. Numerous sets of hoofprints pockmarked the surface, crisscrossing in many meandering different ways and paths. Though she knew a few sets belonged to her, there were still many more than she expected to see out here. While the pirates could have accounted for some, she still figured there were too many, unless they’d spent time exploring the wreck when she wasn’t around. Did they? Would they even bother? She didn’t know the answers to that.
Frowning, Rarity allowed herself a little break from scavenging to investigate. She knew the general direction of the pirate camp, and some certainly led off in that direction, but others didn’t. She counted three sets emerging from the jungle further to the west instead of the southwest where the pirate camp was, and when she followed them out of curiosity for a little bit, she realized that they didn’t turn to the left at all. Instead, they carefully followed the curve of the shore, making sure to stay just inside of the trees where they couldn’t be seen from the water and the foliage was too dense to see much further inland.
“Who are you?” Rarity murmured to herself. “You’re not pirates, I don’t think…”
She continued to follow the hoofprints across the sand and muck. The ground around them was still moist and raised, so she knew they had to be recent, within the past day at the most. Otherwise, the raised mud would have dried out and settled down. But after following them across the island, she emerged from the trees and found herself at another sandy channel between two island fragments, surrounded by very shallow water. The hoofprints led right into the water, where they disappeared entirely. She couldn’t even see them on the next island fragment over; it was like the ponies had emerged from the ocean for a brief excursion onto the land before returning once more.
No, that wasn’t right, she realized. The more logical explanation was that these ponies were using the shallow channels to mask their movement. Who knew where exactly they slipped into the water? It could’ve been on the other side of this island, or it could be another one entirely. The shallow channels certainly meant that a pony could walk between one island or several without having to step onto land. But why would these ponies need to hide where they were coming from in such a manner?
Rarity thought for a moment. The pirates certainly wouldn’t need to do that, but ponies trying to hide from them would. And if they were trying to hide from the pirates, then that meant they had to be friendly, or at the very least, potential allies. Hopefully they wouldn’t turn out to be similarly hostile, though Rarity didn’t know why they would be. Perhaps another clan of pirates, maybe? But the only pirates in the immediate area were Squall’s, unless there was another pirate ship that had gone down earlier…
But none of that made any more sense than the other ponies being fellow survivors from the Concordia. And if there were more survivors from the Concordia out there, then Rarity needed to meet with them. If they could band together, pool their knowledge and resources, then maybe they’d have a chance at overcoming the heavily armed pirates in the center of the island.
Yet even as much as Rarity wanted to find and meet with those ponies right now, there simply was no way to. Unless she spent a long time trying to track down more hoofprints in the sands of the islands around the channel, then she wasn’t going to find them. For all she knew, they were hiding at the opposite end of this cluster of islands, as far away from the pirates as possible. They could even be underground in a hidden temple or something. Though that was an interesting thought; if the survivors already controlled a temple or religious site or whatever, then that would save them a significant amount of time trying to find the statuette. They might even have it already but have no idea of its importance and significance to get them all home.
Rarity could feel her plan shifting, changing. Not only did she need to free Rainbow, now she needed to attract the attention of the other survivors. Knocking the wreckage of the Concordia’s hull off of the rocky spires had certainly caught their interest, but she hadn’t been around to meet them. Maybe if she did something with all the scrap she was collecting…
An idea took root in Rarity’s mind, and she smiled as she turned away. Though she may have lacked a good way to find the other survivors, she had tools and materials. And with tools and materials, she could create a way to arrange a meeting. She could create art, and though it was dangerous, she knew it’d be the best way to find them.
She just hoped the pirates wouldn’t find it first.