-Floating Continent, destroyed temple entrance, Gene-
“So… that happened.” Yep, I could see that it certainly did with the bee currently carrying a struggling Jacky off into the distance. To think it happened just after Flotsam got finished destroying the way to reach that large crystal. Eventually someone would drill their way down to it, but that someone else’s problem in the, hopefully, distant future. “Come on, let’s get back to The Ardent Survivor.”
“What? Aren’t we going to save her?!” Flotsam seemed to be misunderstanding my intentions.
“Mr. Eric?” Even Nefer was giving me a big eyed watery look, wow was I ever not good at expressing my anger.
“It is better that we offload our loot first, then go rescue Jacky using The Ardent Survivor… unless you want to run away from a horde of giant bees on foot while carrying all this heavy treasure.” I decided to add incentive to take the actions I’m thinking of. “Mind you one of their stingers doesn’t have to poison you, when they can kill you by just puncturing clear through you. So it is better that we plan things out ahead of time. Jacky should be fine until we go after her and we will definitely be going after her, trust me on that.”
“What makes you think that she will be okay after being nabbed by a giant bee?” Flotsam queried while placing her hooves on what passes for her hips.
“Didn’t you notice? It wanted her alive and conscious for some reason, if it wanted to eat her or bring her to the hive for others to eat, then it wouldn’t have wanted her alive at all.” I turned a pointed look to Nefer to stop his incoming complaints, then we started back for The Ardent Survivor. “I’m going to tell you both something important so listen up. While I know how to fly the ship, I don’t know how to navigate like Jacky can. I’d possibly be able to find Port Turtle Toga, but that would be it and we really don’t want to go back to Turtle Toga at the moment until the heat dies down from Jacky destroying all those ships.”
“How are we going to find Captain Blackcap?” Nefer asked as the bee that had grabbed Jacky was already clearly out of sight.
“That’s easy, you and the butterfly will scout for where the beehive is. You are small enough that the butterfly can carry you around without tiring.” I noted said butterfly was whining, but it was still following us around.
The giant butterfly was more scared of the bees, but it obviously thought that we were safer to be with as it didn’t want to get stabbed to death by a bunch of bees trying to save Jacky. It was at least smart enough to know it was better off following us around, which was a good thing as it was still carrying a portion of the loot that we loaded onto its back.
We continued on our way past the giant spider web, again being entirely wary of it, through the field the two large beetles had been fighting in and on our way back to The Ardent Survivor without much trouble.
“This may be a problem and I don’t think Flotsam is well enough to do any fighting.” I stated blandly.
Trouble reared its ugly head when we finally reached The Ardent Survivor itself. Considering we found it completely surrounded by an army of giant ants.
Flotsam had been well enough to at least bring down the temple’s entrance and the walkways leading to that large crystal. That was some light demolition for the good of this continent and it was in a relaxed no combat setting, she couldn’t take any hits like she was right now until she healed up.
“What do you mean? I think I’m alright!” Despite Flotsam’s protest, I noticed her left hoof went to her head and she seemed to wobble dizzily on her tail for a moment. “Mostly… my head is still hurting a bit, but it’s been feeling a lot better.”
“Mostly, being the key word here. You’ve been blacking out constantly for a while now, you took a nasty head injury during that fight with that bombardier beetle. We’re glad and lucky enough that you’re strong enough to move around on your own and are even able to stay awake again.” To me, it meant Flotsam wasn’t as bad as we thought she might have been after we found her embedded in that pillar. It also meant that she was kind of stubborn about staying down even if she couldn’t take too much more punishment without plenty of rest. “I don’t think you’re quite ready to fight an army of ants.”
“What do you think all those giant ants are doing around the ship anyway?” Nefer asked while curiously watching as they congregated around our mode of transportation aimlessly, some of them appeared to be bowing to it and others just seemed to be just acting lazy. There were a few picking up food nearby and walking off with it, which was natural food gathering. “Do you think they’re after my petals?!”
Nefer clutched protectively at his blue petals and I sighed and rolled my eyes at him.
“It’ll be fine Nefer, they are not after your petals and some of them seem to be just worshipping our airship. Maybe we can just walk up to the ship slowly and they won’t immediately get aggressive.” Without our captain around, I thought we had a good chance of sneaking or just walking back onto the ship safely. Jacky’s luck wasn’t anywhere close to us at the moment, so we had better odds of nothing going wrong. “We cannot afford a fight with our conditions. I’m burnt and can hardly fly, Flotsam needs rest to heal her bruised body and… well… you’re very small and not exactly a battle hardened warrior Nefer.”
It is safe to say that Nefer, the trident tailed plant cat, would never be anything relatively close to a combat powerhouse. That is not to say he couldn’t be useful, he at least kept Flotsam from drowning and even helped out with the horsefly, despite how dangerous it was to even jump on a bloodsucking monstrosity like that. There’s also the whole capable of reading ancient writing and being adorable thing.
Nefer would actually make for a pretty good mascot if Jacky wasn’t already one by virtue of being our captain and ‘The Blackcap’, the one who sets the correct tone for our whole crew as being both nuts and adventurous.
I’m pretty sure other pirates would have turned away at the first signs of a floating continent covered in giant insects, most of which were potentially dangerous or even carnivorous.
“So… any suggestions for how to get by all those ants surrounding the ship?” Flotsam decided to ask and the one to answer the issue in front of us was the one we paid the least attention to.
The giant butterfly motioned for us to follow it, we all looked to one another and started to follow behind it carefully towards the ants.
One of the ants moved forward and started to waggle its antenna at the giant butterfly. Our giant butterfly companion started to emit a very faint mist in the ant’s direction. The ant didn’t seem to notice the glimmering mist and even seemed to become relaxed as our butterfly companion approached it.
The large butterfly then waggled its antenna back at the ant and before we knew it they were slapping their antenna in a pattern. The antenna pattern ended with them giving each other a high slap, then the ant moved over to the side and motioned us to move on.
“What just happened?” Flotsam asked as she started to move forward sticking close to the butterfly, admittedly I too wanted to stick near it after it displayed a mysterious method of bypassing the ants.
“I don’t know big sis, but apparently the ants aren’t going to attack us and they seem pretty docile.” Even then, Nefer kept close to us as we trailed after the butterfly. He kept sending his blue petals protective looks and all the large ants around us fearful ones.
We reached The Ardent Survivor completely undisturbed by all the ants around us, not a single one of them seemed to think our presence odd or our closeness to the ship interesting.
I just need to flap my wings a few times to get onto the ship and lowered the gangplank for everyone else to climb up. I quickly retracted said plank after everyone was aboard and, being first mate, took charge of the situation.
“I think I might know what’s going on, but first we might want to quickly offload stuff and prepare the balloon to be filled up later on.” There was something I remembered about weird biology involving ants and butterflies. “Hopefully the ants will stay duped by our butterfly friend until tomorrow morning.”
I think it was that Butterflies had the ability to hit ants with a chemical scent that made it seem like they were just another ant and part of the colony, they then tended to make ants babysit their young for them. It was somewhat fascinating, but I didn’t think I’d ever be an entomologist… especially not after all we’ve been through today.
“Offload your stuff, let’s get some rest and then we’ll set out to rescue Jacky some time tomorrow.” It was too late to mount a rescue this evening and we were too exhausted.
“Do you think Captain Blackcap will be okay Mr. Eric?” Ruffling the fur on Nefer’s head, I decided to be completely honest with him.
“Given how bad Jacky’s luck is, I feel sorry for the bees already.” I showed Flotsam and Nefer where to dump their stuff and even helped the butterfly get the large load off of its back. We’d have plenty of money for supplies with this stuff, might even buy some ammunition for the cannons. “Also I have a pretty good reason for wanting to go early in the morning.”
“Is it because a portion of the hive will be out and about?” Nodding to Flotsam, we would be dealing with less bees and we may be able to sneak out with Jacky without too much trouble. Provided that we can find her upon getting into the hive wherever it was located, but I had no doubt that we’d find her alive.
“Don’t worry Captain Blackcap, we’ll come for you!” Nefer really wanted to save Jacky, he wasn’t the only one. I too wanted to rescue Jacky, my girlfriend and the captain of my heart. “Just as soon as we…”
Nefer yawned and was immediately mewling in his sleep curled up in the corridor. I sighed and picked him up to carry him to a hammock. I followed all this up by setting up the balloon for filling and takeoff tomorrow.
-Beehive, Jacky-
So… kidnapped by giant bees.
That was a first for me.
What did the bees even want with me? They clearly wanted me alive at least.
I tried to leave the honeycomb I was forced into, this made a bee come over to hover in front of it to glare at me. It did so until I moved a few steps backwards and sat down.
When a giant bee comes to glare at you like that, you should obviously know better than to step a talon out of place.
The accommodations weren’t exactly up there in comfort, but hey, there was free honey here and I recently filled an empty jar full of the stuff! This was the super sweet tasting, need to brush my beak for a week straight, honey. The stuff was ridiculously rich, especially coming from giant bees in such a concentrated form.
I just know my crew would come to save me, Gene wasn’t one to take me being taken by bees lying down. Watching what was going on beyond the honeycomb I was put into and not seeing much happening, I rested my back against the honeycombs wall.
“I hope you guys come for me soon...” I would eventually fall asleep even if it wasn’t exactly comfortable, at least the smell was pretty good with all the honey around here.
-The Ardent Survivor, late evening, Flotsam-
“That’s how you set up an airship’s balloon? I guess I learned something today.” I was learning quite a bit from Gene, he and Jacky were both airship aficionados. Jacky was actually a pirate level engineer and that was interesting. “Question, I heard there were airships that didn’t need balloons… is that true?”
“Yes, but they are really hard to make and are some of the fastest airships in the sky.” You didn’t sound like other griffons Gene, despite having a name like ‘Generic’. “They are all ridiculously hard to maintain from what hear, ships like this one are far simpler to take care of. This one is a bit special to Jacky.”
Oh I can imagine, the only ship to survive Jacky’s curse that didn’t fall apart immediately. It would be a treasure all its own that she could even pilot one and keep it working as well as this one did.
I would have thought Gene would talk about fast things excitedly, be greedy for gold or would have been trying to impress Jacky constantly in some form of 'one up' competition. None of those things were what Generic was about, all of them being griffon things in general.
His emotions were seemingly flat all the time, he was strong, he took time to think things through and I can definitely see what Jacky sees in him despite his peculiarities. There was also one other thing about him…
“Jacky’s worried that you don’t think you have things to live for.” Gene could pick up emotional cues from just about anyone better than most and that statement made me wince. “I want to know where that kind of attitude comes from, because Jacky really wants to have a long talk with you about it. She wants to help you to not be so... grim, that’s the word I want to use. If you’re going to continue going on adventures with us, you need to open up a bit. I’m not as apathetic as I sound and Jacky cares about you both as a friend and crew member already.”
“Yes, and I’m coming to realize that fact more than ever.” I rubbed at the bandages wrapped over my left leg. Despite how tired Jacky was at the time, she cared enough to save me in multiple situations even if it require hurting me. “Given she absolutely refused to let me go.”
“Come on in and talk to me.” He went into his room, sat down on a hammock and patted a spot next to himself, I slithered over and took up a position next to him.
“I guess my attitude stems from the fact that my mother is a sea pony pirate, I could never really connect with her for fairly obvious reasons.” I had a ton of emotional baggage to get off my shoulders. “My father was a really nice earth pony, but he really couldn’t help with what I was going through. There’s how I even discovered that I had a whitecap ability in the first place... and being captured by those slavers really didn’t help my mentality.”