Collapse looked to Jump Start as they proceeded towards the Shelter. "I hope that they aren't doing this as some sort of game, finding up with some sort of way we could escape and then hunting us down later to test, and greater gauge our abilities. For as powerful as they are with crossbows, and verbose as the large militaristic one I met, they seem awfully lazy to a highly suspicious degree." Collapse commented.
"Well just keep an eye out at all times. Even during the night. We'll take turns like we did before. Even if they haven't followed us, and even if they are lazy, this still doesn't exclude the fact they now know about us for certain, and know we live *somewhere* nearby." Magloria said as she deposited her stuff inside their home, helping herself to some better tasting food afterwards.
"We should be quick about leaving then. We got everything, we should just go." Jump Start added nervously.
"We might never see what that ring inside those ruins will do, or why everything else around here seems strange at times, but I guess it is for the best." Magloria sighed.
Collapse sighed as well. "I want to explore everything as much as the next pony, but we are only three ponies in a lost land. If there was a full team here then I would want to explore around all the ruins and examine them more in depth, but I suppose we got a taste, so it's not all gone to waste..." she said, unintentionally rhyming there.
"It's best that we just focus on our main objective. Returning home. Everything else is secondary." Collapse said, believing that fully. "Eventually in the future, there will be a proper exploration of this area. Like we would have done." she sighed, and would approach the shelter, hoping that no dangerous creatures took refuge in it while they were gone.
"We have everything we need for the ship, I hope." Collapse added.
"Except the sails. We need something valuable to hand over to the seaponies. That and building the boat itself should be the last thing we need to do." Magloria pointed out.
Jump Start set herself down inside their shelter, once her stuff was off her. "Not noooow though. I want to go to sleep." she whined.
"Of course not now, but as I said already, we're going to have to take turns watching out for panthins. So who's volunteering for first watch?" Magloria asked.
Collapse entered the shelter and gently giggled at Jump Start’s whine. She would walk up to her and give her a gentle pat on the shoulder.
“I will watch the first round if neither of you mind. And if we do see Panthins and they discover us, what do we do? Try to subdue them?” Collapse asked curiously. “But I hope we just avoid them period. Kitties need to stay where they belong.” she smirked.
"If you see one, sure, try and subdue it. Maybe if enough of them are taken down they'll eventually get the message." Magloria shrugged.
She moved over to a corner of the room and plonked herself down. "When you think about a third of the night is over, go ahead and poke one of us until we wake up, then we'll take over. Goodnight." She curled up and closed her eyes.
Jump Start thanked Collapse for the pat, then decided to follow Magloria's example and settle down for the night.
Collapse smiled as she watched the two of them lay down and agreed with Magloria's statements. "Goodnight, you two." she commented casually and watched them lay down. She wanted to lay down next to them and snuggle up to them, but she had a job to do.
She would stand near to the edge of the shelter, being careful to do her best to mask her form against the interior wall, but listening and observing the forest around her carefully to the best of her ability. It would be a shame if she was outside in the open and got shot by those crossbow bolts, so she didn't want to give any potential onlookers the best of chances of getting her.
And so she waited. Hopefully for nothing but until she felt a third of the night was over. All would depend on what happens within that time, of course.
Throughout the night she constantly heard the sounds of creatures around the place. Occasionally sticks would snap somewhere or calls would be heard. The jungle seemed restless tonight.
Then she heard a voice from one of the bushes at the edge of the clearing, somewhere in front of the shelter entrance. "See you."
There was no crossbow bolt follow up, however.
Collapse stayed silent upon hearing the voice. Was it Ash, or was it some sort of parrot talking? Either way she stayed silent and still, waiting for the voice to approach. Hopefully it wasn't the other panthins, as she was already preparing to fight if needed, mentally.
It hadn't sounded like Ash, and it didn't have that annoying squawking accent that the parrots have. Didn't sound like Pebble either and there was no way a seapony would come here, so the only other thing it could have been was a panthin.
They didn't approach either, so it looks like it was going to be a standoff, for now. "Not saying hello? Fair enough." came the reply to her silence.
Collapse walks out into the open suddenly. Collapse had her hoof on her crystal spear, and appeared ready to defend herself. "Being so close to death so many times makes you appreciate life in many ways, and it's exactly *that life* I want to return to. If you want to talk, let's talk - or if you are here to hunt us down for some inane reason, then I am sorry, you won't be returning with your bounty." Collapse sighed.
After she had revealed herself fully, a suspiciously familiar grey panthin in leather strode out of the bushes. They looked over her choice of weapon, nodding in acceptance of it.
"Interesting material, for an interesting creature living in an interesting place." they said.
Collapse looked towards them. “Seems like you are scoping the place out, then. As I thought. Look, we don’t want any trouble with you, What is it you want from us?” Collapse asked the Panthin as they moved closer.
She would quickly slip back into the shelter and proceed to wake up Magloria and Jump Start to tell them about the Panthin who was outside. If they had to fight, Collapse didn’t want to do it alone.
The panthin shook his head. "Want from you? Very little. I simply wanted to see what you did with your time." A pause. "I got really bored, so I tracked you down as you left." he shrugged nonchalantly, watching Collapse as she ducked into the shelter.
Jump Start refused to move, but Magloria was quick to spring to her hooves and grab her spear, bringing it to a readied stance as she made her way back out of the shelter. She aimed it at the panthin and snorted. "Leave. Now." she snapped.
"Why?" was the panthin's response, as if he hadn't just been threatened.
Collapse looked to Magloria. "We can just talk to him. He hasn't done anything to hurt us so I don't see why we should do that to him." she spoke calmly, looking to the two of them. "Why don't we uh, just sit down and have a nice chat? Work things out?" Collapse asked the Panthin and Magloria.
Although she moved closer to Magloria, "If he leaves, he could tell the others. We can probably get him to leave on better terms so he won't see a reason to tell anyone." Collapse whispered calmly, hoping that the Panthin wasn't deceiving them or something.
Magloria huffed and turned her spear away from the panthin. "So be it, though I'm still going to keep an eye on you, just in case." she stated.
"I suppose we're talking then." The panthin nodded, then looked to Collapse. "So that thing that you said about all those things back when you were locked up. Were they actually true, or was it some strange attempt to get us to believe you were... I don't know, a mystic from an unknown land or something?" he asked.
Collapse stepped forward curiously, although not too close - just a gesture of *some* semblance of trust. "All of that is true. I know you probably don't believe it, but our presence here is proof that we aren't from around here. I am hesitant to speak more of it to you, we do not know what you would do with that information. We mean you no harm. All we want is to return back to where we need to be." she said calmly, nodding in approval of Magloria's actions.
"So in that case... you were some sort of scout? Then you found this place, got stuck and want to go back to where you came from..." The panthin began to stroke their chin, clearly coming up with a no-good idea.
"Once you are successful in making a way back, what will you be bringing back with you? Words, clearly, but that would just be a waste to bring only those back, wouldn't it?" he asked.
"We are explorers of sorts. The rest of us died in a crash. There were dozens of us on that ship, and the three of us were fortunate enough to survive." Collapse said in a serious tone. "Magloria here, is the captain." she said with a gesture.
"Well, not only words, I can say that much. Besides, we've seen your maps, we've seen your technology, and I know enough about it to detail nearly every aspect of it. I also know your kind do not like going near water, evidently. You only have a few towns, no ports or ships out to sea, nor any real presence near anything wet." Collapse added.
"Yes well, like I said. Words. You're going to tell them a lot of things, but you aren't going to show them a lot of things are you?" the panthin said as he began to move about the clearing, looking at things seemingly at random.
"And your appear to have a lot of vacancy, given your circumstances." he added.
"Yes, well we are not-" Magloria began to say, but got cut off.
"You wouldn't mind if I came along would you? It sounds a lot more interesting than what I'm doing here."
Collapse gave the Panthin a strange look. "Well, we don't even know your name or who you are, first. I do not believe you understand what that entails, leaving behind everything you know and understand, to a foreign land you have never seen or experienced." Collapse stated.
"You could potentially help us around here, perhaps, but I don't think we are going to take you with us. At least, if you want to do that, you'll have to really prove you are serious about it and can be trusted." she suggested, but didn't really seem inclined to want to take this Panthin along with them, when they didn't even know his name.
"Well in that case, what would it take to prove it to you. I understand what it entails perfectly. I leave here with no promise I return, to go to a place that would be much more interesting than heat and jungle everywhere." he stated.
He seemed to think about what they might ask of him and his muzzle scrunched up in disgust. "Unless you're going to ask me to eat grass or other plants to prove myself I'm like you. Yuck."
"No, that's not what we'd get you to do at all." Magloria said. Since he hadn't given his name yet, she pressed further for an answer to what it was.
"Stanton." he replied.
"Well, nice to meet you, Stanton." Collapse spoke calmly and paused for a minute. "While it may seem like all we do is eat grass and stuff, that's not the case. While a lot of us eat more plant based stuff, there are also a lot of us who eat fish, and other things like that. Myself included. My name is Collapse," she spoke and introduced Magloria and Jump Start to Stanton.
"If you wish to prove yourself to us, we have physical labor that needs to be done. Such as building a ship, deciding how we'll do it, and all that. I think it's unlikely you'd know how to do that, but then again, neither of the three of us have built ships before. I *fix* things, I don't build them most of the time, let alone ships." she commented.
Stanton looked concerned at the requirement that he was given. "So you want me-" he pointed a claw at his chest, "-to build something that I don't know how to make, and you don't either. That seems doomed to fail before I even get started."
Magloria stepped in. "We know *how* to do it, we just haven't done it before." she clarified.
Stanton stopped moving about, setting his paw back down and awkwardly shifted them. "Alright fine then, I suppose I can help with that. No such thing as a free ride." he grumbled.
"You can help us. We are looking to get out of this boring and dangerous jungle as soon as possible. We know the way we need to go back. We know what we have to do. And we already have the materials needed to do it. All we need to do is make official blueprints, and get started." Collapse said to him.
"It will take roughly a week to a few weeks of sailing depending on the conditions. We are a long, **long** way from home. This is the furthest ponies have been, to my knowledge." she also added.
"So I will come back when you are getting started then? Alright, it's something interesting if boring to look forward to at least." Stanton said as he turned around, slowly starting to walk back in the direction of Carocol.
They didn't even say goodbye as they left, but then again it was in the middle of the night and he probably got all that he wanted from this encounter.
"A chance to not be bored is a pretty shallow reason to go head first into an unknown land, don't you think?" Magloria whispered to Collapse.
Collapse stood there, seemingly confused why he would walk away so suddenly like that. Then she looked back to Magloria, "I notice that a lot of them seem rather...absent minded. They don't seem to come up with good reasons for things. That's probably why they aren't more advanced, but then again, we did see a bit at what they were doing underground...but still absent minded." Collapse concluded.
Then she smirked within the dark. "What are the chances do you think he'll come back? If he isn't here, he'll likely not know when we get started after all..." she drifted off in her speech, and yawned.
Collapse wanted to go to sleep, leaving it up to Magloria or Jump Start to decide who's turn it is to take watch. It didn't matter to her who.
"As long as he is absent minded enough to not remember that we look like food to him, then things should go over... well enough. He probably will come back, though we will just have to wait and see *when* exactly that will be. Maybe he'll come back every day, just to have something to do?" Magloria suggested.
After that, she let Collapse go back inside to rest, stating that she would take over the next shift just in case more panthins decided to show up.
Collapse went to sleep next to Jump Start as she waited until morning. Her mind was full of planning for the ship, as she wanted to get out of this jungle as soon as possible. If Stanton really wants to help, then that would be good for them. The ship could be finished slightly faster than intended.
Eventually Collapse woke up sometime after the sun had already risen past the horizon. Jump Start wasn't where she used to be, but Magloria was now asleep somewhere else in the shelter.
Over by the entrance, she could see a somewhat tired looking Jump Start, just watching out at the clearing. She yawned, having forgotten about waking anyone else when it was no longer night time while doing her duty.
Collapse would approach Jump Start quietly and then gave her a pat on the shoulder, then a friendly grin. After a brief greeting, Collapse would proceed to prepare breakfast. Perhaps the smells would waft into the sleeping blue mare's nose, and wake her up.
Jump Start... jumped when she felt the pat. She had been too focused (or oblivious) when doing her job, and hadn't noticed Collapse's approach.
"Uh-heh-huh-good morning Collapse. Uhm... I... did a good job making sure nothing came here." she said, stumbling over her words as she tried to calm herself down.
Some time later once the food was properly warmed up, Magloria came out of the shelter, looking like she could use a cup of coffee and maybe a hairbrush. "Nothing?" she questioned.
"No, nothing came by again." Jump Start replied.
Collapse giggled at Jump Start's reaction, but continued to make their meal. When Magloria came out, Collapse looked to the two of them. "When we were in those pens, I was quite angry...But that reminds me, if Ash wanted to come with us...why didn't she?" she pondered and then smirked. "If she came, we'd be taking two Panthins with us, if the two of them do decide to come, after all." she stated.
"I'd think they are better off here, though. I'd rather take a nice, colorful, and friendly seapony." she smirked ever so slightly. "But, now we should finally do the inevitable. Begin planning, then working on the ship. Let's actually you know...do that this time?" she giggled.
Jump Start shrugged. "I don't know why she didn't come with us. Maybe she got distracted by something else and couldn't find us again?" she suggested uncertainly. "I don't think she would do very well on a ship anyway. Weeks on open water would end badly."
"I don't think seaponies would do very well on a ship either." Magloria added as she brought forth her rough blueprints. "We'll determine the measurements, how much wooden planks we'll need then once that's done, bring it all down to the beach and call in the seaponies to help."
"And the sails?" Jump Start wondered.
"Those can always come later." Magloria said.
Collapse agreed. "Yeah, it's best to not take anyone with us. Perhaps Stanton can help us build the ship and we can give him something in return or something like that, but let us look at the blueprints..." she spoke and looked to them closely, looking over the blueprints and would begin to look at it more in depth, stating various things that could be improved at a first glance, before they'd likely inevitably talk about the specifics of that.
"Stanton is completely different from Ash though..." Jump Start defended. "He would be strong enough to not drown if he went overboard, he'd be able to catch his own fish... maybe. Oh! And he's not scatterbrained either!"
Looking upon the blueprints, Collapse saw a ship blueprint. A very blueprinty ship. With ship-related things that may or may not be able to be improved.
What? I'm not a nautical engineer.
Overall, things just need to be finalized with a couple more details before it was ready to be used.
Collapse proceeded to give a few more details and suggestions for the ship that she felt were needed. They were reasonable, such as various suggestions for the layout of the ship and that sort of thing, really.
It was likely they came to an agreement on the various ideas for the plans and would come up with a finished plan for the ship. Now it was time to well, you know, get to work. At least, provided if they had enough sun left in the day for that to at least get everything good to go for the construction.
Given it was midday, they had plenty of time to get to work on refining the raw materials that they had. Jump Start was their pony generator, constantly cranking the machines so they could split logs into planks.
Whenever they wanted a break from that, they did different things, like collect more food or chop down more trees. All in all it was a very productive day.
Eventually they had a massive pile of planks that they would need to move out to the beach later.
By the time they finished with the planks, Collapse would decide to take a break and would have come back with some more fruits in saddlebags, granting them a good supply of food for the next few days. She was relatively pleased with the amount of work they have done, and would look forward to continuing it more in the days to com
They had spent all their time creating planks, so much that the sun was starting to set. Moving their supplies out would grow more and more risky as the sky darkened and the nocturnal creatures began to awaken.
Nobody else came to their place (yet), so all they had left to do for today was sit around a campfire, eating charred carrot plant thing they found growing in the ground and eventually heading to bed.
By the time they were sitting around the camp fire, Collapse was very pleased with the amount they had gotten today. She didn't talk all that much throughout today, only really focusing on their work. It seems she was someone who was very dedicated to getting jobs completed.
It was at this time when they heard the rustling sound of some nearby bushes. Magloria got ready, but a few seconds later Stanton emerged from the shrubbery, making Magloria drop her stance again.
"Hi, I'm here to do what you wanted me to do." Stanton said, shaking his body to remove some of the leaves and sticks that got caught in his fur.
Collapse looks to Stanton as he walked up. "Well, we already got the first part done. We just need to allocate our resources. We aren't nocturnal and we don't like being out in the jungle at night, really." she mentioned. "So either you come back in the morning while we sleep...or we find something else to do."
Stanton's mood dampened when he was told that information. He sheepishly rubbed one of his paws against a foreleg as he looked away. "Well you were awake at night last time, so I just assumed that you were nocturnal. Interesting..."
"Well in that case then, what could I do? There's got to be something left that you haven't done, yes?" he asked.
"Just a question here - if we take you along on the ship we build, would you be able to catch fish for yourself or something? I don't think we have any fishing rods or anything like that. But hmm, let's think, is there anything he could help us out with at the moment?" she asked Magloria.
Stanton glanced at Magloria's spear resting nearby. "You've got pointy sticks and rope? I've seen others use stuff like that, so I could... probably get fish for myself." he said. He didn't sound confident in that, but it was better than nothing.
Magloria simply pointed a hoof over at the pile of planks nearby.
"Would you want to help us move the planks? I don't really want to go out in the night though, since that was the last time we had an issue with a massive python." Collapse mentioned. "So perhaps we can do it in the morning."