//------------------------------// // Chapter 74 // Story: Away and Afar // by PropsValroa //------------------------------// When she could finally come to her senses without curling up from the pain or feeling like she was going to vomit, she could see that she had been moved to some sort of pen, completely surrounded by high metal fences and padded with straw. Several other pens could be seen nearby. Some of them were empty, others contained creatures they had seen in the jungle, such as birds and monkeys in cages, and a giant snake. Off in a couple cages some distance away from her she could see Magloria, still out for the count, and Jump Start, who was awake but looked like she had been crying for some time. Everything here was surrounded by stone walls that were just as high as the cages, turning it into a courtyard that served as some sort of... animal keeping facility. Some panthins walked around the facility, keeping an eye on the pens and dealing with any of the more rowdy animals. If she looked around her pen, she'd find that none of her things that she brought along were with her, and her horn felt funny for some reason. Seems like they made sure to strip her of anything that could've been a problem. Collapse would awaken slowly to her senses. The first thing she did is she went over to the edge of the pen and vomited. It took a while for her to come to her senses due to the sheer amount of pain and dizziness she was experiencing. Once she did, she'd narrow her eyes and ascertain where she ended up in. Looking off in the distance she noticed the other animals about. But most importantly, she could see Magloria and Jump Start. That was a sight that she didn't want to see - the three of them separated from each other. Her items were gone from her bags. That weas the last of her concern - of most concern was why her horn felt funny. Hopefully they hadn't found a way to disable her magic. She was sure to not make any noise to rouse suspicion or interest from the patrolling panthins. At the very least the three of them appeared to be safe for the moment. They probably thought that three of them were just some animals and not actually intelligent beings. Collapse would just maintain her alertness, while trying to remain in control of her emotions. She wasn't sad, as Jump Start likely was - she felt an insurmountable amount of rage, but there was no will within her to do anything so suddenly. Collapse waited. And waited...and waited...for what? Well, she didn't really know. Probably for Magloria to wake up. If Collapse were to inspect her horn directly, she'd find it to be encased within some sort of hardened resin-like substance. Whatever it was, it was impossible to remove with just her hooves, and any attempt to use her horn directly was restricted by the pressure around it. It probably wasn't anti-magic, but the panthins saw a threat and had dealt with it the best they could, and deal with it they did. Eventually a panthin noticed that she had awoken and took interest, despite her attempts to not draw attention. He moved over to her pen, along with a couple others that had followed behind him. "Well this one is finally awake. Will probably want something to eat and drink. Not sure why we should bother, but the head seemed to want to keep it alive." he said to the others. With a motion of their paw, the others moved away to get the requested food and water, while the one that had spoken simply watched Collapse. She could potentially scrape off the resin with something at some point. Although she would only ever attempt such a thing when she was sure that none of them were looking. At the very least it was not some magical artifact or something else like that restraining her magical use. Collapse would look towards the Panthin as he moved over to her pen. "You speak as if I'm not capable of understanding you. I am not an 'it', for your knowledge. Of course, I cannot blame you for thinking that. You've never seen one of my kind before." she spoke, her voice neutral, her eyes scanning their features carefully. "Would be far more portent if I were to speak with your *head* directly, I am willing to bet. I can give you all sorts of knowledge, and how to acquire said knowledge." her words were calm, careful. Collapse's examination of the panthin told her they were not one to be messed with. Covered completely in dark brown fur, they wore the same studded leather armor as all the others, along with a bolas and a crossbow strapped to their sides. The difference between him and the others was he looked much older and experienced. Several scars could be seen on his hide and face from other battles, and bigger muscles across their entire body made them look more intimidating. He was likely faster too, so their little escape attempt would've ended much sooner if he got involved. The panthin bluntly responded. "Oh we know you are capable of understanding us. Our trackers told us that much about you. And your equipment has shown us plenty about what you can do." "You're treated this way because you're not worth respecting. Theft, property damage, trespassing, threats, assault, use and ownership of unregistered weaponry, bribery just now and... if other reports are to be believed, arson and attempted destruction of industrial buildings." they said, pacing around in front of the pen as they listed each of their crimes. "By all means you should be a meal already, but for some crazy reason you're being allowed to live. You have no voice here, and your demands are meaningless." Looking at him closely, he was definitely a veteran of some sort. Likely some kind of warrior in some sort of war, Collapse would guess. Collapse didn't seem to really react much to the statement of the panthin. She understood all of what they had to say except for unregistered weaponry...when they clearly weren't from this area, so what right would they have to say they weren't registered? There was a bit of silence after the panthin spoke, and then he would hear a chuckle from Collapse. "Kill me, and I'll be too dead to care." she shrugged casually and sat back down, looking to him. ~~"Hey, we know that won't be happening since that'd mean the end of the RP!" Collapse giggled.~~Being at the edge of death has removed most of her fear, of these sorts of things. For such an assertive personality as the Panthin likely was, that was only one more motive for Collapse to simply not care about what he had to say. "Your tough act is just that. An act. We'll find out what purpose you'll serve eventually, as soon as the head has made up their mind." he said, then began to walk away, regardless of Collapse's responses. For a while nothing happened. Magloria at some point had started to shift about, but still seemed too out of it to properly respond to any calls Collapse might've tried to make. Then her food and water arrived. A tray of what looked like grasses and straw, along with a bowl of water was slid in through a gap at the bottom of the fence. The food didn't look all that appetizing, but the other animals didn't seem to mind. Once their job was done, the pair of panthins started talking about her. "Looks kind of cute when she isn't setting stuff on fire, doesn't she?" "It's the giant eyes. It draws you in like a mother to a kitten." "The colours too." "Nah, see how bright her fur is? It's just like those frogs and bugs. It tells us that she's poisonous or something." "But she's too cute to be poisonous. Why would something like this exist if it kills you when you try and nuzzle it?" "Fine, maybe she's not poisonous, but she is definitely dangerous." Collapse stared daggers at the Panthin as he walked off. His presence was something that was deeply undesired by Collapse as he could probably tell. Talking about not worth respecting, well, he certainly isn't worth it in her eyes. But perhaps there is more to him. Probably just in a shitty mood because of doing shitty jobs, yeah, that's probably it. Collapse would have attempted to make calls over to Jump Start and Magloria, but noticed that Magloria was too out of it to really respond and so she stopped trying, for now. Looking to the food that arrived she would proceed to eat it. It didn't look at all pleasing to her, but it was good to at least put something in her stomach. At least they weren't feeding her dead rats and decaying flesh, like she may have been tempted to think. She couldn't help but chuckle in a genuine fashion about what the two pair of Panthins said about her. "Can't blame you for thinking like that. Each of us has something different. Whereas I may be skilled with fire and crafting, another may be skilled in something far more fantastical. You'd probably want my name too. My name's Collapse." she commented casually. At least those two were being reasonable, she thought. Jump Start had looked over when Collapse shouted out to her, but given Collapse was now busy with the panthins in front of her, she couldn't get a word in without interrupting. "Oh, she's got skills in building stuff. That might open doors for her." the first panthin stated. "Not sure what sort of doors though." the second replied. They both then brought their attention back to Collapse. "Well 'Collapse', I probably should not be talking directly with you, but what the heck. My name is Eleseer." she said. A female panthin, covered completely in pitch black fur just a typical panther would. "Might as well throw my name in too. I'm Tycho." added the second. His fur was also completely black, except for a white star on his forehead and at the end of each leg. "You must be absolutely crazy to wander around stealing from us. You don't often see prey thinking it's a good idea to wander into a place filled with predators." Collapse smiled at them calmly. "Nice to meet you, Tyco and Eleseer. We are building a ship to sail across the ocean to return to the other side, where we come from. We all nearly died when our original ship crashed, dozens of our crew died..." she looked off to the right, her eyes wincing just a little bit. "I am the Engineer. The blue one over there," she pointed in Magloria's direction. "Is our Captain. Her name is Magloria. I was responsible for maintaining the Mana drive of the ship. I don't even know if you know, or understand that technology, but it basically is a storage of the natural energies that occur within the world. It is used to propel the ship across the ocean." she spoke, and would begin to explain more in depth details about that. Not too much, but just enough to show she was intelligent in her craft. "If you are wondering how I managed to steal what we needed - it is because I am able to unsummon physical constructs into a non-physical dimensional plain. In essence, I can make things vanish and appear again. It comes in handy, I don't have to carry tool bags with me. I simply make it appear and disappear whenever I please." she also explained. "But, every of our kind has a special mark on our flank." Collapse turned her flank to them, and showed them the golden wheel with three inserted holes in it. "Those are called Brands, some call them Cutie marks, others call them Signs. All the same thing, really. These symbols signify what we are good at - and this signifies how we specialize our lives according to our talents." she stated. "We are probably what you would consider prey, but, Magloria is a predator in many ways. That's why she's our leader." she grinned, with admiration. "We never had any quarrel with you. We simply wish to return to where we are meant to be. We had to take certain steps to avoid confrontation - that is why we stole from you. We didn't know how your kind would act, so we avoided you." Tycho and Eleseer didn't really know what to say about most of what Collapse said. A lot of it was very interesting and some of it was meaningless pleas, probably some sort of attempt to get them to release her. "Well that's a lot of stuff for sure. But something doesn't entirely make sense to me." Eleseer began, looking away while tapping her chin with a paw. "If you've been stealing stuff from us, where have you been taking it to? You can't just be dumping it in the river once you're done with it, correct?" Tycho rose an eyebrow and looked to Eleseer, not sure why she had said that. "I just answered. I make it disappear until we need it to build the ship." she spoke, also confused why Eleseer asked such a thing. Why would they take stuff only to dump it in the river? That didn't make any sense to say. But that was something she noticed with these Panthins - they weren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, were they? She remembered how Ash was. Perhaps that was a possible avenue of exploitation. Eleseer shook her head. "No, not that. You have to go somewhere when you're not here." she replied. Tycho caught on to her words, and nodded his head in agreement. "Yes, we wouldn't want to believe that you were living the entire time in some alleyway here, so where did you go?" he asked. "In the Jungle. We've had a few run ins with the massive pythons there and all sorts of things really. It's not a good place to live, but, gotta make do with what you can get in order to survive." she stated. Eleseer huffed. "Well, the jungle is a pretty big place. We were wondering more about where *exactly* in the jungle you stay. You can't just roam around everywhere and drag the stuff you took from us behind you, right?" she asked. At this point, Collapse could see Jump Start out of the corner of her eye, the pony looking intensely at her. She looked like she wanted to say something, but didn't because of the panthins. "Let's just say it isn't somewhere I'll openly tell you. You are more than welcome to look, but, I won't be telling you." Collapse couldn't help but grin slightly. The pair of panthins looked somewhat disappointed after that, but didn't press any further. It's not like they could be certain that opening up the cage and forcing her to speak would go perfectly. "Hummm... well then, I suppose we should be getting back to feeding the others. Can't be slackers after all." Tycho said and began to wander off. Eleseer gave a brief nod to Collapse as well before she too began to leave. With them no longer blocking her view, she could see that Magloria had finally recovered enough to be coherent again, and had been watching and listening to Collapse's conversation for a while now. She didn't look the happiest, probably had something to do with the amount of stuff that Collapse had just told the panthins without any questioning or persuasion. With how they left and looked over to Magloria, already knowing what Magloria was probably thinking. It was good that they likely didn't understand the most of it, and it's likely they wouldn't care to remember the details. Collapse meanwhile, would look around her pen to look for any weaknesses she could possibly exploit. Her clear actions signaled for Magloria and Jump Start to do the same, she also tapped her horn, and did a motion with her hoof, indicating she wasn't able to use her magic. Seems like Collapse had been given a 'luxury' pen, if you could call it that. There were almost no signs of rust or damage, and the places that had issues were too high for her to reach. Too high for the panthins too, probably. The door out of the pen had both a bolt lock and a key lock, for some reason. Probably to keep the pen extra secure. It was made even worse due to how the locks were positioned on the outside, so she couldn't even kick at the locks to break them open. The door also had hinges, but without a screwdriver she had no real way of loosening them. Jump Start and Magloria didn't appear to have much luck either. Jump Start *probably* could've done enough damage to her cage to bend the bars and escape, but it would definitely be heard and stopped. "If we ever get out of here I'd like to borrow some of their poison for myself. That stuff is really potent, way more than the stuff I've used." Magloria was heard shouting. They couldn't talk about secret stuff, but at least they could still converse with each other. Collapse expected that her pen would be secured well enough for no escape yet. While it quite frankly pissed her off, she couldn't do anything about it currently. Either way, she decided that eventually, there would be justice.~~After all, if she could escape so easily, that would be far too easy.~~ Looking to the other pens they had, she wasn't sure why she had the better pen. If anything she thinks that Magloria deserved it more than her. She would nod to Magloria as she shouted. "Yeah, I definitely would want to borrow that as well. They probably got it from all these different plants we haven't seen before. Would be really good for dealing with the massive pythons, if we ever had to deal with one again." she shouted back to Magloria. "Anyway, I guess we can't do much else but wait for them to decide on things, keep an eye out though, alright? Especially for our stuff." Magloria shouted, breaking off from the conversation. A couple exceedingly boring hours passed. All they could do was walk around their pen, sit down, stand up, neigh, eat straw and for all intents and purposes, do nothing but *be* an animal. Aside from whatever attempts to talk with others that they had. Some panthins then came up to Magloria's pen and began to talk to her about something. Whatever it was, she didn't seem too pleased. Once the conversation was over and the panthins had left, Magloria informed the others. "Thanks to Collapse blabbing about what we can do, they've decided to sell us to the highest bidder, and thanks to the skills they now know we have, it's going to drum up a lot of interest." "And I quote 'we're almost guaranteed to be sold to someone who can sufficiently handle us'. So that is going to be absolutely grand, isn't it?" She shouted, irritation clear in her voice. Collapse waited and waited for time to pass. She did all of those things, really. Except the neighing. Despite that, it was very much like they were being treated like animals. It was nothing but humiliating. "Well at the least they know we are valuable so that is more reason they would keep us alive than just kill us off which would obviously be worse. I had hopes that they would be intrigued enough to let us go. I was an idiot to think that they would." Collapse said back with clear irritation, more so at herself. Collapse winked. She had an idea, but that would have to wait until later on. It may be a while before she could attempt such a thing. It seemed like there was going to be no pony-based auction for today, because before they knew it the sun had started to cast orange rays across the land, and as all the other various animals began to fall asleep, so too did the sun. It was very dark around the facility now. Only a few lights could be seen, mostly inside some of the buildings around the place. And yet, even though every animal appeared to be sleeping, and no panthins were noticeably walking around guarding the place, Collapse could still pick up sounds of something walking among the cages. Even stranger was it sounded like they were tiny. Collapse would watch the sunset. It was symbolic of her feelings in a sense. From going from feeling successful in doing something to something horrible happening in the blink of an eye. Just as fast as the sun sinked below the horizon - so too, did her hope begin to sink. However, she was reminded that the sun would rise again. So too, would they. Looking over to the various animals about the place she was about to get some sleep herself when she heard the small stranger walking about. Only one could fit that definition. Ash. For an annoying little kitty cat as Collapse thought, could their salvation rest in the paws of the Burmesian Small? That is, if Collapse was correct in her thoughts. Maybe. Maybe not. As if her appearance had been foretold by a deity above, the Burmesian Small that Collapse thought about appeared around a corner, marching as if they were on patrol. Upon noticing Collapse's cage, she lit up in recognition. She began to speak, with no intention of stopping. "Hey! You're here! I managed to get rid of every single colourful plant I could find! Some of them were nasty and had thorns, let me tell you!" "Did you also come to get rid of the poisonous colour plants? Is that why you're still colourful? Because the plants got you again, huh?! Well don't worry! I can save you from the plants! Where are they? I can get rid of them again! Point me in the direction and I will go straight to them and stop them from ever poisoning you ever again, and then you will finally not be crazy and can live with me and I'll pet you and feed you and-" Magloria stirred over in her own cage. "Collapse, are you talking to yourself?" she asked. Collapse looked over to Magloria. "No. I am not. Even better, someone familiar is here. Perhaps she can help us?" Collapse asked quietly to Magloria, and then an idea crossed her mind with Ash. "Hey, Ash. Look, we are pretty poisonous, which is why we shouldn't be around your kind. They captured us without knowing how poisonous we are, the only solution is for us to get as far from your kind as possible, since I don't want any of you getting ruined by our craziness and poisonous colors, the others don't realize that." she said, trying to manipulate Ash into letting them go. She moved her hooves over her horn, trying to feel how thick the resin was that was on her horn. If Collapse had her magic, she could easily escape out of her pen by unsummoning the locks. Would possibly draw attention, though...one thing at a time. Ash nodded eagerly. "Oh yes, absolutely! We should get you very very very very far away from this place! No more crazy poison for you! I'm going to do that right now!" She began to paw at the ground, squaring herself up to face against the cage's bars. Then without warning she charged at the bars. Though instead of banging her head and possibly becoming more sane from the trauma, she ended up slipping straight between the bars, due to her size and natural cat flexibility. "Whoops! It looks like these are more elusive than I thought! I'll have to make sure I'm holding them in place first before I break them!" she said, moving back to the bars and planting her paws onto the base of a bar. She smiled victoriously, knowing that the bar now couldn't move out of her next attack. Collapse sighed to Ash. "That's not how you do it. You need to be quiet. The poison gets worse the louder the surroundings are. It's best to remain quiet..." she spoke quietly. "Now, my horn here." she tapped her horn. "Is the only part of my body which is not poisonous. Problem is, they put some kind of resin on it." she spoke. "That resin will increase the amount of poison as time goes on, It needs to come off, if we have any hope of getting out of here, and getting our poison far far far away..." she pointed her horn to Ash. "I am going to need you to get it off for me, or at least try. Scratch it off, or find something you can scrape it off with. Use your claws first, if it doesn't work, then find something sharp enough to scrape it all off. Do not let anyone else know that you are doing this for us, under any circumstances." she smiled calmly. From her previous check, the resin that encased her horn felt like someone had covered it in a thick layer of glue and let it go hard. It definitely wasn't going to expose the horn beneath with just a few scrapes against a bar, though that also meant it was easier to fracture by stabbing into it without risking hurting her. The whole 'quiet' thing didn't seem to register in Ash's mind, but at least half of the other stuff did. "Your horn needs to come off because it's the source of the poison?! Well why didn't you say so! I'll get rid of it right now!" she decided, then leapt at Collapse's face. 20 needle-like claws suddenly sank into her muzzle as the burmesian small latched onto it. She started moving up Collapse's face, sinking her claws into different places as she went. Thankfully she missed Collapse's eyes. She suddenly felt a bit more pressure around the tip of her horn as Ash caught onto the resin around it... with her teeth. The high-pitched growls she was making indicated she was trying her hardest to break through, but the lack of breaking sounds revealed she was unsuccessful. This didn't stop her from continuing though.