//------------------------------// // Pirates and Zombies and Castaways, Oh My! // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// “You did what?” Champagne flinched back from Gyro’s harsh outburst. “I… I-I…” “We can’t trust them!” Gyro shouted, ignoring the knives in her back to try and rise up on her forelegs and meet the concierge eye to eye. “What are you, crazy?!” “More importantly, you led them here,” Ratchet said, his voice grave. “Our safety lied solely in our ability to hide from them. Now that’s gone, too. Explain yourself, Champagne, because I really want to know why you’d endanger all of us like this.” Champagne took a nervous step back and swallowed hard. “We can’t keep fighting each other if any of us are going to walk out of this alive,” she said. “Whatever’s happening at the temple affects all of us. The pirates lost two of their crew to whatever evil magic is coming from the temple, and so have we. If we’re too busy fighting each other instead of fighting that…” “And what’s to say they won’t just wipe us out when we’ve dealt with whatever’s happening at the temple?” Gyro asked. She frowned at Champagne, the sand beneath her hooves sliding a bit as they carried her weight. “They’re ruthless and bloodthirsty bastards. They have no reason to work with us once that’s done and over.” “There are only three of them,” Champagne said. “Their captain admitted it to me himself. They aren’t in a position to fight us, especially now that we have their weapons, too.” “Did it occur to you that their captain could be lying?” Ratchet asked. “If they were, they would’ve killed me when I met with them.” Champagne shivered and let her wings twitch several times at her sides. “One of them really wanted to, but their captain stopped her. If they had numbers, wouldn’t they just kill me and make the odds a little more even?” “Or they could be just trying to lure us into a trap,” Ratchet said. “I don’t trust it and I don’t trust them. Working with them is going to be a mistake.” “We need everypony we can get!” Champagne insisted. “We don’t have the luxury of choosing who to work with anymore! It’s not survivors and pirates anymore, it’s the sane and the moonstruck! And if we don’t work together, we’ll all be moonstruck like Soft Step and Blow Off!” Gyro didn’t like it, but she could see the logic behind Champagne’s reasoning. She of course still didn’t trust the pirates, but a part of her felt bad for starting to argue with the Prench mare after all she’d suffered through tonight. Ratchet must’ve thought the same thing, because he didn’t immediately counter with a retort. Instead, it was the level and disinterested voice of Doctor Gauze that spoke up behind Gyro. “Dealing with these moon zombies or however Champagne described them should be priority number one,” he said, striding forward and joining the small knot of ponies. “If what she’s saying is the truth, then they’re more pressing than the pirates. Best case scenario, the pirates get wiped out trying to help us with whatever’s happening at the temple.” “And the worst case scenario?” Gyro asked. “We’ll lose more ponies at the temple than they do and we get put on equal hoofing with them,” Ratchet said. “If we lose our numbers advantage on them, they’ll kill us all. Easily.” “If we don’t work with them we’ll all be moon zombies,” Champagne said. “Whatever’s happening at the temple, we need to stop it as soon as we can.” “Yeah,” Gyro said. “Rainbow and Rarity are still down there. They’re our only hope at getting back to Equestria. We can’t afford to lose them!” After several seconds of deep thought, Ratchet ultimately yielded and nodded. “Okay. We’ll work with the pirates for now. But I want everypony to keep an eye on them. I don’t trust them to keep to their word and help us out if they see an opportunity to off us all. But we don’t have any other choice, do we?” Champagne seemed relieved by that confession. “They’re waiting in the jungles near the channel,” she said. “We should meet up with them when we move out.” “We will. We just have to make sure they don’t shoot us.” Ratchet turned around as the rest of his crew began to assemble around him, and he offered Gyro a nod. “We’ll find your friends and our crew and bring them back safely. You can count on us.” “Good,” Gyro said. “Because you owe me a drink or something if you come back as a moon zombie.” ----- Rainbow Dash grunted and heaved against the colossal stone door in front of her. She had thought getting the locks open would be the hard part, but apparently that designation had been saved for the door itself. Centuries of weathering and disuse had almost welded the doors together, and trying to push them open and slide them across the ground was nearly impossible. If the hinges the doors used to pivot on were made of iron, it was probably so horribly rusted by now that it couldn’t move. For all their efforts, the team of four had barely managed to crack the door open a few inches. It was hardly enough to see inside, and the lights Rarity casted through the door merely illuminated a large chamber and a far wall on the other side. The chamber was similarly filled with water, and it seemed like every inch of the wall had been carved with runes and glyphs. At the very least, nothing moved or made noise behind the door, apart from the usual dripping of water and occasional splash of a little cave fish. But that still didn’t give them much to go off of. As far as Rainbow figured, the doors had to be blocked by something on the other side, like fallen rubble. There wasn’t any chance that pushing them more was going to get them to part any wider. Everypony was exhausted, even the unicorns, after struggling against the door for so long. “Friggin… Stupid door!” Rainbow cursed, striking the stone with her hoof. “Why won’t you open, huh? Why do you have to be like that? You’re driving me nuts!” “It’s driving me tired,” Stargazer said, sitting against the other door. “How the ancient ponies who built this place opened it is beyond me.” “Kind of makes you think we’re not supposed to open it,” Ball Bearings said. “Uh, it’s a door, and doors are meant to be opened,” Rainbow said. “If they didn’t want anypony to open it, they would’ve just, like, sealed it off completely.” “Isn’t that what they tried to do?” Bearings pointed at the locks on either side of the doorframe. “They had this thing locked up pretty tight, and now here we are opening it.” Rainbow frowned down the length of her muzzle. “Yeah, well, like, whatever. We need what’s on the other side of this door, Ponynesians be damned.” “That’s racist,” Stargazer commented. “Your face is racist!” Rainbow yelled back in mounting frustration. Ultimately, however, she hung her head with a groan. “Whatever. We need a new idea. We aren’t getting through this with brute force alone.” “You two got any magic you can work on this?” Stargazer asked. “Because us simple pegasi can only get so far.” “Maybe I should fly at it at rainboom speeds,” Rainbow said. “I blew up AJ’s barn once doing that. That was fun.” “I don’t think you’ll get very far with that here,” Bearings said. “A stone door is a little sturdier than a barn, I’d think.” “You never know…” Shaking her head, Rainbow glanced at Rarity, who’d been immersed in deep thought. “Hey, Rares, you’re being awfully quiet over there. Got any ideas?” Rarity slowly shook her head. “No ideas,” she said, her eyes watching the ripples in the water. “Or, at least, good ones.” “Hey, there’s no such thing as a bad idea, only stupid ones,” Rainbow said. “Forgive me if I fail to see the difference.” “What is it, though?” Stargazer asked. “We need something.” Sighing, Rarity glanced at the tiny gap in the doors. “I could try to teleport inside and see what the problem is.” Rainbow blinked. “You can teleport? Since when?” “A few days ago,” Rarity said. “I accidentally teleported myself away from the wreckage of the Concordia when it fell off its spire. I don’t know how, but I did, and it’s probably the reason I’m still alive and not gravely hurt like Gyro was.” “Teleporting could work,” Bearings said. “We’ve opened the doors enough for you to see inside.” “Which is what I was thinking.” Her ivory legs waded through the water until she stood right in front of the split in the doors. “I only need to move myself a few feet through this gap. That shouldn’t be too difficult, right?” “You’re asking the wrong girl, girl,” Rainbow said. “I don’t know how unicorn magic works. It’s too complicated.” “I don’t know how to teleport either,” Bearings said. “It’s not something they teach you when you’re training to become a steam technician.” “Really?” Stargazer asked. “I’d imagine the ability to teleport around an engine room and get to hard to reach places would be useful.” “Nah, because you could end up teleporting yourself halfway through a boiler or something. I’ve heard that’s a really awful way to go.” “Exactly what I want to hear right now,” Rarity said. “But what do the rest of you think? Should I try it, or is it just going to make things worse?” “I mean, you can teleport back if you need to, right?” Rainbow asked. “You could just jump inside, grab the statuette, and jump back out. Easy as cake!” “Pie?” Bearings asked. “Ew. No.” “You lot are going to drive me crazy,” Rarity grumbled. Then, frowning through the crack in the door some more, she rolled her shoulders and took a step back. “I’m going to try it.” “Are you sure?” Bearings asked. “We can probably find another way instead of sending you in alone.” “Especially if you’ve only teleported once on accident before!” Rainbow exclaimed. “Who knows if you can do it again? What if something bad happens when you try it again?” Rarity offered the pegasus an encouraging smile. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. Hopefully I’ve at least learned something from hanging out with Starlight and Twilight… even if only through proximity to them performing actual magic.” To further reassure her worried marefriend, Rarity quickly kissed Rainbow and grinned. “I’ll be fine. I promise.” “Okay…” Rainbow didn’t exactly return the smile, but she didn’t exactly frown either. “Just… be careful.” “I will.” Then pivoting to face the door, Rarity furrowed her brow in concentration. Mana built on her horn, glowing brighter as she tried to shape it into a spell that would do what she wanted. After several seconds, Rarity closed her eyes, puffed out her cheeks, squeaked once in exertion—