//------------------------------// // Let's Plan This Out // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// After some more time to cuddle on the bed with Rarity, Rainbow soon realized that she was incredibly hungry, and the smell of seafood wafting in from the large chamber certainly didn’t help. Unlike Rarity, Rainbow had few problems eating seafood, and was able to stomach the raw fish that Melody had left just sitting on the stones by the water. Seafood was an important staple of pegasus culture, as the protein helped her race retain energy and build muscle to ease their constant flying, and Rainbow had no complaints about sinking her teeth into some fresh fish, pulled from the ocean not even more than an hour or two ago. She did, however, have some seaweed as well, mostly to help calm Rarity’s revulsion at how naturally Rainbow chewed into the fish. It was at once both slimy and stringy, and she definitely did not enjoy it as much as she did the fish. Seaweed wasn’t even a plant; it was just a bunch of algae pretending to be a plant or something. Rainbow didn’t really know for sure, but she thought she might have been half-paying attention at Twilight’s once when she started rambling about it unprompted. “I still don’t understand how you can stomach that, darling,” Rarity said, her face in a constant state of disgust that only worsened when Rainbow turned to look at her with a bit of tuna hanging out of her mouth. “It’s not natural.” “For unicorns, maybe,” Rainbow said, slurping up the bit of fish and swallowing it. “Ancient pegasi couldn’t farm for crap, so we ate a lot of seafood to stay strong. You guys were lucky you had earth ponies to do your farming for you; we were stuck on the other side of the sea for the longest time.” She bit into the fish again and swallowed another meaty chunk. “It’s also why we got some pointy teeth and you don’t. We were meant to eat fish alongside plants.” “That still doesn’t make it natural,” Rarity grumbled through her grimace. Rainbow rolled her eyes. “‘Natural’ isn’t defined by what unicorns say and do, Rares. Pegasi matter too.” “What about earth ponies?” “Eh…” Rainbow shrugged. “Apples or something.” The water in the chamber rippled and bubbled, and soon Melody reappeared. Streams of liquid poured down her fins and face as she breached the surface, and the gill slits on her neck momentarily fluttered before they sealed off and her nostrils began to draw air. She looked around the cavern for a few moments before her surprised eyes fell on Rainbow and Rarity, who were staring up at her from the ground. “You’re still here?” she asked. “Did you even move?” “We moved quite a fair bit, I would say,” Rarity said, glancing at Rainbow. “We simply cannot leave without your assistance, if you recall.” “Not all of us can breathe underwater,” Rainbow added. “That’s a shame,” Melody said, once more slipping back down into the water until her large head was on a closer level with the two ponies. “Being able to switch between air and water is great. I don’t know how you all live without it.” “Not many of us make our livings down by the shore,” Rarity said. “And even then, we don’t live in the water all the time.” “I guess that’s fair.” The siren blinked, and her scaly lips quirked around in an awkward smile. “So…” Rainbow shook her head. “We need to get rid of this barrier, Melody,” she said, launching straight to the heart of the matter. “If we don’t, we’re going to die. All of us. You included.” Melody sighed and sank down into the water some. “I… I know. It’s just… this is literally the worst case scenario just all of a sudden happening without warning.” She shook her head. “But if that thing gets out, then everything’s gonna die. Not just us.” “It’s not like the moon god wouldn’t be able to find the statuettes on his own,” Rainbow insisted. “He’s got an alicorn and an army of mummies. He’d be able to scour this island no matter how long it took and find them all, then just lower the barrier himself.” “Unless we’re proactive and remove the barrier ourselves, we’re only delaying the inevitable,” Rarity said. She shuffled closer to the water’s edge and tried to reassure Melody with a smile. “Listen, Melody, I know you’ve been trapped here for a long time, but Equestria can handle whatever this is, I’m sure of it. Rainbow and myself have helped save it numerous times now. Granted, we had our friends with us, but if we remove the barrier, we can go and enlist their help, and even the help of Equestria’s alicorn princesses. Whatever shade of a dark god this spirit might be, it won’t be able to stand up to all of them if we can summon them all here.” Melody still looked hesitant. “I’m not sure,” she said, her head and upper torso nervously shifting a bit. “The ponies who lived here made it sound very clear that if this spirit ever escaped, it would destroy the world.” “We’ve already fought an evil pony who wanted to shroud the world in darkness,” Rainbow said, waving her hoof. “It wasn’t even that big of a deal. Two, even, if you count Nightmare Moon.” The siren shook her head. “Not just shroud the world in darkness. Destroy it. Wipe it clean. Everything would die if it got out.” Rainbow blinked. “Oh. Well, that’s a little more serious, I guess.” “Only a little?” Rarity fidgeted in place. “How reliable would the Ponynesians be with this, though? Perhaps it’s all just hyperbole?” “Would you want to run that risk?” Melody asked. “Well, we can’t just sit around doing nothing!” Rainbow said. “The barrier’s coming down, one way or another. The only difference is if we do it now while we can, or if this dark spirit kills us all and then lowers it to destroy the world and stuff. And I don’t want to sound like me and Rares are the only ones who have a real chance of stopping it, but me and Rares are the best shot any of us have at containing this thing! Once we get the other girls and the princesses with us, it won't stand a chance!” “And what if you fail? What if this really is a bad idea?” Melody sighed. “Forgive me if I seem unconvinced, but I’m worried that you’re just… assuming you’ll be able to defeat this thing without knowing how dangerous it is. What if it’s worse than you think?” Rainbow blinked, shifted in place, and ultimately looked away. “Well… then at least we went down fighting.” “There has to be a better way than this,” Rarity said. “Some sort of middle ground. Maybe we can stop this spirit from fully reincarnating on our world and dooming us all?” “We’d need to defeat its avatar,” Melody said. “If it loses its avatar, it can’t do anything more.” “Easy!” Rainbow exclaimed, fluttering a few feet above the stone. “The Ponynesians killed it once or something, right? And we’ve got a siren on our side! You can go crush that alicorn with your big pointy teeth and stuff and all our troubles are over!” “The alicorn that’s actually Soft Step?” Rarity asked. Rainbow deflated and winced at the question. “Well… I mean, what can we even hope to do for her, Rares? Change her back? How?” Melody nodded once. “The life of one twisted and corrupted mare would be well worth saving the world, I would think.” “Believe me, I don’t want to do bad things to her,” Rainbow said. “But if I was forced to choose between her life and the lives of all our friends, of you, Rarity…” “Right… let’s just drop it, then,” Rarity said with an emphatic shake of her head. “So, what we seem to be coming to an agreement on is that if we can stop the alicorn avatar of the evil moon god or whatever, then we won’t destroy the world when we lower the barrier. Is that correct?” Rainbow and Melody looked at each other and shrugged. “I guess?” Melody said. “It’s certainly possible…” “It’s a better idea than what we have so far,” Rainbow said. “But we shouldn’t just sit on our flanks all day. We should get the last statuettes so that we can get out of here as soon as possible. Heck, maybe even summon some reinforcements for fighting off the evil alicorn!” “I agree wholeheartedly,” Rarity said. Then, turning to Melody, she sweetly smiled up at the siren. “So, Melody, you’ve been living here for eighty years. What do we have to do to go home?”