Soft Step fluffed up her wings and tried to stay warm and calm. With all the rain the past few nights, the temperature had dropped a little bit more than she’d grown used to since ending up here. While she could hardly call it cold, and it’d even be a stretch to say it was cool, the night was definitely not as warm as they had been. If this was already growing uncomfortable for her, she could only imagine how awful temperate Equestria would be for her when she returned.
She’d positioned herself near the shrine with the obsidian altar, where the ruins gave her some cover from her surroundings and a clear view of the night sky. Thanks to Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom, there weren’t any clouds in sight, and she doubted she’d see any anytime soon. Still, she knew that everypony on the islands had seen it, so she kept a wary eye out for approaching pirates.
Or rather, Champagne did. The Prench mare had been circling the skies for the past half hour, trying to spot anything moving through the dark jungle below now that she had moonlight to aid her night vision. Since Champagne was the only pegasus they had who could maintain her flight, Soft Step and Blow Off relied on her to be their early warning pony. Watching the moonlight was easy and could be done from the ground, but keeping an eye out for pirates sneaking up on the temple from any direction was much harder. Thankfully, Soft Step knew that Champagne had sharp eyesight, and she wouldn’t let them down.
The masseuse started going through the feathers on her wings, starting to preen them back into place while she had some downtime. Her green feathers were all disheveled from the frantic and exhausting flying she’d been doing earlier. Between the injury to her own wing and the wind from the storm making it difficult to fly, her feathers were an absolute mess. She’d already amassed a little pile on the stones in front of her of the ones that she’d pulled out.
Hooves trudging across the stones warned the mare that she was about to have company. Nostrils flaring with a silent sigh, she put her wing down and looked across the temple ruins to see the gray and white dappled earth pony making his way over to her. Even though she didn’t really like Blow Off all that much (none of the mares did), her training still overrode her instincts and she found herself smiling at his approach. “What’s going on?” she asked him. “Anything new?”
Blow Off shook his head and sighed, leaning against a stone pillar across from Soft Step. “Nothing new. Just more boring waiting.”
Soft Step nodded once. “That’s what I figured it would be. Honestly, I’ll take the boring waiting over having to creep around that spooky tomb down there. I can’t stand it; it makes my skin crawl.”
“I’d rather take the tomb over this,” Blow Off said. “They should’ve taken me with them. I’m not claustrophobic; I’d actually be useful to them down there.”
Soft Step’s feathers briefly puffed out in silent irritation at the blunted barb thrown her way. “I’m sorry that they gave you the more important task of keeping watch. It’s up to us to make sure they don’t get trapped in there or attacked by pirates.”
“A thankless job if there ever was one.” Groaning, Blow Off sat down against the column, much to Soft Step’s dismay. “I still don’t even understand how they think these statuette things they’re looking for are going to help us get home. I think it’s wishful thinking at best.”
“They have a good point, though,” Soft Step insisted. “Princess Luna would’ve tried to find them in their dreams as soon as the Concordia was reported missing. They could’ve just told the Princess where they were and we all would’ve been rescued a month ago. But that never happened, so the only conclusion that makes sense is that she couldn’t find their dreams.”
“So much for being best friends with royalty,” Blow Off said, shaking his head. “I bet we wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for them.”
Soft Step raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because they gave that dumb pirate bitch dreams of grandeur,” he said. “As soon as she saw them, she figured she’d get the ransom of a lifetime and live like a queen. She was so worried about getting them to her hideout as quickly as possible that she tried to run a storm to do it. And now we’re all stuck here.”
“And that’s different from them not being on the ship because…?”
“Then she would’ve simply bypassed the storm and ransomed us off at the Equestrian embassy in the Confederacy or something. The two of them were worth more than all of us on the Concordia, so she did stupid things to try and secure her payday. She wasn’t going to risk hanging out in the travel lanes to avoid the storm and running into a navy corvette or something sent to rescue them.” He scowled and kicked at the dirt. “This is all their fault.”
“It’s Squall’s fault and nopony else’s,” Soft Step insisted. “And Rarity and Rainbow Dash are trying to get us home. They’ve already done more than the rest of us in that regard. They managed to raid the home island of the minotaurs and get away safely. Not only that, but they rescued Gyro!”
Blow Off scoffed and shook his head. “Because that makes it so much better. Now I have to work with that bitch if I want to get anything done around here. Too bad the minotaurs didn’t eat her.”
Soft Step gasped. “You are unbelievable!” she shouted at him. “She’s a shipmate!”
“A selfish bitch of one, sure. I was going to transfer to another ship after this flight, I couldn’t stand being near her.”
“Because she rejected you?” Soft Step asked. Whatever friendliness she’d managed to cling onto as a masseuse had finally vanished. “Get over yourself, jackass. Just because she’s not interested doesn’t mean you can call her a selfish bitch.”
“Then maybe she shouldn’t complain about how she’s not getting tail constantly,” Blow Off snapped back. “I was only trying to do her a favor to get her to shut up. I had to spend every single day below decks with her and her whiny mouth for two years. She’s lucky I didn’t club her over the head and throw her in the boiler. That would’ve solved a lot of problems.”
“Hey, you little—!” Soft Step stopped herself before she could stand up and lunge at him. She closed her eyes and drew down as deep a breath as she could. “You two need to forget about that,” she said. “We all have to work together now if we’re ever going to get back home. We can’t be at each other’s throats like this.”
Blow Off laughed at her. “We’re never going to get home, Soft Step,” he said. “This statue quest is just an exercise in futility. Face it, we’re going to be stuck spending the rest of our lives on these islands, however short that may be. We might as well get comfortable. Besides, we’ve got a nice enough mix to make everypony happy.”
“What are you even talking about?” Soft Step asked him.
“I’m talking about mares and stallions,” Blow Off said. “There’s six stallions and six mares now that we have Rainbow and Rarity and Gyro. That’s good enough, isn’t it?”
It suddenly dawned on Soft Step what exactly the engineer was talking about. This time she actually scrambled to her hooves and took a disgusted step back. “Absolutely not! You’re disgusting!”
“I’m being practical,” Blow Off objected. “We can get our own community going here. Do you want to die out here alone, or do you want to have children and grandchildren to watch over you when you do?”
“I’d rather just go home!” Soft Step shouted back. “That’s all I want! To go home!”
Blow Off shrugged. “When another six months pass and we’re still stuck out here, I think you’ll see it my way,” he said. “We’re not going home. We’re never going to go home. Just face it and accept it.”
Before Soft Step could bark a retort at him, wings fluttered between the two ponies and Champagne touched down. Her worried look on her face told Soft Step exactly what was going on before the Prench mare even said anything. “We have a problem,” she said, glancing at the two ponies.
“What is it?” Blow Off asked, casually discarding the conversation he was on before her arrival.
“What do you think it is?” Soft Step asked him, still fuming at him.
“Pirates,” Champagne said. “They’re here.”