Sunset Shimmer slapped another mosquito on her neck as she ducked under a tree branch. She had thought that wandering around the forest would make her forget about them eventually, but that wasn’t the case. Each time she got bit, it was almost like someone was sticking a needle into her skin, and she didn’t even want to start about the itching.
They had already been walking through the woods for a good ten minutes now and there was still no sign of Jojo. Wherever he was, riding around the forest, she hoped that he would’ve already at least found something important, perhaps even the location of the geode, though with the low rumble coming from the heart of the forest, she doubted that.
“We’re getting there. Just a little further.” Rainbow waved at her friends furiously to keep up.
By now, Sunset could see the edge of the forest rushing up to meet them. She could no longer see lines of trees ahead, but instead, a drop off. Once they got there, she could see it was quite the steep slope of dirt and rock, leading down towards a cave in the middle of the forest, with hills all around it. Here, the sounds were louder and she was sure it was a drill. Cinch must already be close to getting the Stand Geode. They had to hurry.
“We need to get in there and stop her…” Fluttershy gulped as she thought about what could possibly happen.
“But don’t forgetee spaghetti!” Pinkie Pie swooped from behind tree to tree and kept her eyes out. “Sugarcoat’s still out here! I bet she’ll try to stop us.”
“We’ll be ready for anythin’ she has to throw at us.” Applejack slammed her fists together. “We’ve dealt with worse.”
“We-we don’t know that,” Fluttershy said.
“We’ll handle her just like we handled the rest of her Shadowbolt lackeys!” Rainbow cheered and whooped. “I can’t believe I didn’t want to go through with this! Now I know we’ll never be defeated!”
Her victory dance was cut off as she spun around and dropped to the ground, clutching at her shoulder. Everyone watched her lying there for a few seconds as blood began to ooze from behind her, then a loud bang echoed around the forest and they all ducked behind various trees and kept low.
“Enemy Stand!” Applejacked warned as her hat got hit, flying off her head as she cupped her head under her hands. The bullet was soon followed by the sound of a gunshot. “Where in the Sam Hill is that comin’ from?”
“Rainbow, we need to get Rainbow!” Sunset tried to peek out, only for a bullet to hit her tree and shower bark into her face. She planted her back behind the tree and wiped it from her face.
Judging from the direction, the enemy was somewhere in front of them, likely across the basin. Of course they would be guarding the drill site. They were stupid to think otherwise.
“Hey, how do we know it’s a Stand and not someone with a gun?” Sunset called out to her friends.
“Duh, they’re all Stand users!” Pinkie waved a hand from behind her tree, which almost got taken off by another shot whizzing by, kicking up dirt as it hit the ground. “They won’t just shoot at us when they’ve got Stands!”
“And I-I think they’re far out… The bullets are reaching us b-before the sound. Two different kinds of guns, by t-the sound of it…” Fluttershy trembled as she did her best to compress her body behind her tree.
“You could tell all that?” Sunset wanted to look out and pinpoint their attacker’s location, but it was too risky.
Fluttershy nodded her head slowly. “It’s the wa-way they’ve been hitting the space around us. One hits harder, buries itself deeper. It doesn’t fire as frequently, but um, don’t get hit by it.”
“So we’ve got two guns out there?” Applejack wanted to reach for her hat, but it was too dangerous to leave their cover, even to get Rainbow out of there. “Ah think it’s safe to say we’ve got two shooters.”
“A Stand and the Stand user, then?” Sunset suggested. “Perhaps it’s the Stand with the more powerful gun.”
“We need to move, but if we step out there, we’re as good as gone.” Applejack sent out a copy of Highwayman, which swooped around one tree, then began descending the slope towards the cave. It had only gotten about three feet ahead before it flinched and a bullet blew out the back of its head. “Drat. It ain’t workin’.”
“The enemy has the advantage here.” Sunset grimaced. “All they have to do is keep us here. They don’t even need to put us down here. Once Cinch gets the Stand Geode, we’re as good as dead.”
Applejack cursed as another bullet punched through another of her clones. “Where’s Jojo when ya need him?”
“I can go look!” Pinkie jumped behind her tree, warranting bullets to her position, but she avoided all of them by straightening herself behind her piece of cover. “Golden Ticket and I have a plan. I had a few doors from Crystal Prep stored in its pockets. Just watch. Golden Ticket!”
“Best o’ luck, Pinkie,” Applejack said. “We’ll see what we can do from here.”
Pinkie’s Stand popped out from a door beside the tree and waved one hand around. Pinkie gave them a salute, then held her breath and threw herself down the door. The doorway led down into the dirt, going down a long tunnel, where Pinkie slid her way down behind her Stand.
“Wheeee!” she squealed and then giggled. “Here she comes again! This is fun, we should do this more, Golden Ticket!”
Her Stand gave her a thumbs up, then threw another door at the other end of the dirt tunnel. The door swung open and light filled Pinkie’s eyes as she found herself near the bottom of the slope. Almost as soon as she had stepped out of the entryway, something hit her in the side and Pinkie let out a little cry of surprise before throwing herself behind a huge boulder as another one smacked into it, spraying debris into her poofy hair.
The girl looked down at her side to find it bleeding. The bullet had gone clean through, which was a good thing; the last thing she wanted was to get an infection by leaving it in there.
“Close one, wasn’t it, Golden Ticket?” Pinkie clutched her wound and grinned at her Stand. “But yikes, that really hurts! We need to find Jojo fast. Where do you think he’s gone? He went off ahead of us to find Cinch and we got holed up with Sunny Flare. And he must not be here yet, otherwise he would’ve been attacked by the enemy Stand already.”
Pinkie grabbed a stick off the floor and began tearing bits of it off and wrapped them over each other until she had a human-shaped figurine in her hands. She tucked it out from behind the rock, and in only a second, its head was taken off and Pinkie pulled it back down.
She stared at the figurine, then narrowed her eyes as she moved one hand from its head towards the direction the bullet had come from. The bullet had come from another hill to the north. Fluttershy had said there were two different bullets, which meant there were two different guns, which meant there were two different shooters, and if they were smart, like Pinkie knew they were, they’d be in two different locations.
“Two shooters,” Pinkie said, rubbing her chin. “Bullets can only travel in straight lines, but if there’s two of them, then the bullets can cover two lines, which is significantly harder to dodge…” She looked at her stick person and threw it aside. If she knew how much stopping power that each shooter had, then maybe she could calculate the risks of heading out into the open. And to top it off, these weren’t human snipers; these were probably Stands, and they would be more accurate than any human could be.
“Things aren’t looking good,” Pinkie remarked to nobody in particular.
Pinkie stayed behind her piece of cover a while longer. No more bullets flew at her, which meant that either they were waiting for her to leave her place of safety, or they were scoping down her friends. Neither option was very reassuring at all.
Where was Jojo, Pinkie wondered. He was a smart one, and had gotten them out of scrapes before. If anyone could find where the two snipers were, it was Jojo.
“Looks like we’re going to have to do this on our own. Goldie,” Pinkie said to her Stand. “Bring it on!”
----------JO-JO-----------
Jostle Joyride stopped for the fifth time since leaving the rest of the team behind, placing one foot against the ground as he wiped sweat from his face. He’d already been riding around on White Buffalo for at least three hours and he still hadn’t found anything that looked like a place that could house the Stand Geode. He’d already gone around the outskirts of the Everfree Forest once, and there hadn’t seemed to be anything concrete.
“Perhaps I should’ve just stuck with Sushi and the others…” He took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair. It was hot to the touch. “Maybe they’d already found where the geode is and are already battling Cinch and her remaining Shadowbolts. And here I am, still unable to find my way through his forsaken forest.”
Jojo kept his eyes on the lookout, in case he got jumped by an enemy Stand user. They would still be out there somewhere, hoping to stop them from getting to the geode before Cinch did. Jojo clenched the handlebars of White Buffalo tighter as he thought about the woman behind it all. She had taken Rarity from them. It hadn’t been by her own hand, but it was because of her that Rarity was now gone. He still remembered the kiss they had shared that night and he had to fight to remain poised at this time. They hadn’t had much time together, but Cinch had taken away any possible future with her and for that, she was going to pay dearly. But first, he had to find her.
Sighing, he revved his Stand once more and turned back in the direction he had come. Having already checked the edges of the forest, Jojo decided now to drive straight for the center. Knowing the geography of this forest a little, from their last visit here, he knew there was quite the tall hill and dip near the center of the forest and perhaps there were caves there.
If he were lucky, perhaps he’d also find Sushi and the others along the way, but for now, he had to just focus on getting where he needed to go and watch his back. He had only just jumped over a sizable boulder when he began hearing popping sounds coming from somewhere deeper in the forest. At first, he didn’t think much about them, but they began coming up more frequently and they didn’t sound like any animal call he’d ever heard before, and it was strangely familiar, though at the moment, he couldn’t quite place it.
Jojo stopped White Buffalo again and listened out for the sound. At the moment, it failed to sound out again, but now that his bike had stopped, he realized there was a deep rumbling coming from the earth. He got off his Stand and it vanished into thin air, but he could still feel it.
“I’m close to the source,” he said to himself. “But that means that someone’s already at the Stand Geode’s location, and by the sound of it, this rumble is coming from some heavy machinery. Sushi doesn’t possess such equipment, which only means one thing now… Cinch has already gotten to it. I’ve got to trace it to its source before she unearths the gem and becomes all-powerful.”
Jojo proceeded on foot, following the sounds of the rumbling as he hopped off road and began hiking up a short slope. Another three blasts came from somewhere above, and after hearing it again, this time without his Stand’s engine rumbling on, he knew they were gunshots. Slowing his pace, Jojo continued his ascent, keeping his eyes and ears on full alert; getting shot now was something he hoped to avoid.
“There you are, Jojooooooo!”
The man jumped and almost tripped over a loose rock as he spun around and spread his legs apart and his arms at the ready. He relaxed when he found out it was Pinkie, popping out of a door in the side of the hill.
“Pinkie, it’s just you. How’d you find me?” Jojo cooled himself and straightened his attire.
“Pinkie sense! Duh!” She grinned and waved for him to follow her into the door. “You don’t want to be out in the open! Enemy Stands are about!”
“What are we dealing with?” He followed behind Pinkie as she led him into a tunnel of dirt.
“Not a clue. But they’ve been shooting at us. Sushi and the rest are pinned down above and I’ve been trying to find you so we can devise a way to beat these baddies!” Pinkie shut the door and Golden Ticket peeled it off the wall, before shrinking it and stuffing it in a jacket pocket. “There’s two of them, they have two different guns and from what I’ve been experimenting, they have different powers. One hits harder, but less frequently.”
“An enemy Stand that fires bullets?” Jojo mused. “That must mean we’re dealing with a long range Stand here, if you have yet to locate them. These Stands can go far from their Stand masters and they can also act independently from them. But that would only mean their master would not be there to give them orders. Stands like that might be powerful, but all they would do is seek out their objective.”
“And that would be to defend the drilling in the cave.” Pinkie snapped her fingers. “I got it, didn’t I?”
Jojo gave her a pat on her poofy head. “That you did, Pinkie. Now, we’ll need to locate them to take them out. Have you determined the direction?”
“Yeperroo!” Pinkie giggled and began moving her fingers from where the doorway had been, then behind her back and to her left. “That’a way, north! And the other one’s slightly to the west.”
“I was walking for some time and I hadn’t gotten shot. That would mean we’re safe as long as we don’t get within their line of sight.” Jojo kicked at the dirt wall. “Let’s head back out that way and go around. We’ll take White Buffalo. With its speed, I think they’ll also find it harder to hit their mark.”
Golden Ticket threw a door back into the side of the tunnel and Jojo and Pinkie reemerged back out into the open. Almost immediately, Jojo jumped into the air and White Buffalo appeared below him, smoke pouring from its exhaust and nostrils. Pinkie cartwheeled on behind him and let out a whoop as White Buffalo’s wheels kicked up dirt as they left.
“We should hop around in a zigzag pattern,” Pinkie said to Jojo. “They’ll never hit us if we do that.”
“What are you talking about?” Jojo grunted as he leaned into the wind.
“It’s a classic tactic! I learned it in Return-Hit, you know, that video game that drives people to insanity because of the weapon skins?”
“Right…” Jojo muttered.
“That Ewetuber Cryotailsical made a funny video about it too,” Pinkie blabbered on. “He said- DUCK!”
Jojo barely had time to put his head down before a bullet streaked over his head. It seemed the enemy had relocated. It was only by pure luck the shot had missed, because he hadn’t expected them to be able to hit him from here.
“Hold on.” Jojo kept himself low and sped up.
Fire blazed from the back of White Buffalo and they zipped around rocks and trees as more bullets began to pelt the area around them. The bullet always appeared before the sound of the gunshot, meaning their enemy was further away than he had first expected.
“The zig-zagging, it’s working!” Pinkie began cheering as Jojo piloted his Stand along. “It’s working!”
“Right, now stop bouncing, you’re making it harder to drive.”
One of White Buffalo’s horns snaked out and stabbed into a tree as Jojo swerved hard. Using the momentum, he gunned on the throttle and as the horn retracted, they flew into the air, sailing up the hill and onward. Past the next row of trees, he could see it. Something glinted in the distance, perched atop a pile of rocks at the top of the next hill and he knew enough to know that it must’ve been the reflection of a scope.
Jojo caught a glimpse of a yellow figure behind the weapon before White Buffalo cast up Faster than Fire, blanketing the air in a cloud of fire that flowed all around them.
“Ooh, cool!” Pinkie reached out a hand and touched it, only to recoil and wave it around. “Hot, hot!”
“With Faster than Fire, the enemy won’t have a precise view of our location. We should be able to get closer with this active,” Jojo explained. “I’ve contingency plans for almost everything, and enemy snipers is one of them. Rule number forty-six, always have a plan, should you have to run out under sniper fire.”
“Gee, that’s oddly specific, but that’s just like my family rule number seven thousand and seventy-seven!” Pinkie giggled behind him. “Keep your rocks within your pen at night, or the squid monsters will come and get them.”
“Uh… yeah, okay.” Jojo shrugged. He’d heard weirder.
Bullets began piercing through their cloud of fire, but they couldn’t find their mark and that was just what Jojo wanted. All they had to do was get close enough now and they would be able to take them down, he was sure of it.
“Just a little further…” Jojo gritted his teeth as White Buffalo pivoted around a boulder, then sped up the hill and zig-zagged around two trees.
Suddenly, White Buffalo was tipping to the side and Jojo felt himself and Pinkie slide off as a pain shot through his side. That was when Jojo realized he hadn’t accounted for something, which had slipped his mind completely. If one of the enemy snipers could relocate, then the other one could too.
He had only just gotten to his feet to breathe when something pierced his head and he dropped to the ground.