//------------------------------// // Antipodes- Chapter 2 // Story: Antipodes // by PK //------------------------------// Antipodes Chapter Two By PK The sphere crashed into the water below. Water poured into the room through the wrap-around viewport, buffeting Tiptoe and Jigsaw. The creature outside was flitting around the sphere, slamming into the walls, attempting to get at the prey inside. The blows shook and deformed the sphere, causing objects to fly off the walls and into the rapidly rising water below. A jet of water shot out of the viewport, slamming into the two ponies and knocking them off their hooves. Tiptoe hurtled hear over heels in the water. Struggling against the current, she extended her wings out flat, and her tumble stopped. She flapped furiously and managed to prevent herself from slamming into the wall on other side. She swam up to the level of the water and broke the surface. “Jigsaw!” She yelled. “Jigsaw, where are you?” The only response came in the form of the roar of the sea serpent outside, which had now managed to wedge it’s head into the viewport and was glaring down at Tiptoe with it’s milky white eyes. Tiptoe took a deep breath and dived under. She saw Jigsaw down near the bottom of the sphere, floating near the main control console. He looked unconscious. She paddled down to him and grabbed his neck in her mouth, then began pumping her wings. The beat of the pony’s wings shot them upwards until they broke the surface of the water. Tiptoe gasped. The sea serpent had managed to pry the veiwport open long enough for it to slink it’s head inside. The triangular nostrils flared as it caught the scent of the ponies, and its head turned in their direction. It shot down towards the two ponies, its jaw open wide. Tiptoe dropped under the water and the serpent slammed into the wall behind them. The serpent’s body went limp, and Tiptoe began flapping her wings to attempt to fly up and over the water- but her poor wings were soaking wet, and the extra weight of Jigsaw was simply too much. Tiptoe instead beat her wings under the water and began forcing her way up the torrent of water towards the viewport. The sea serpent stirred. It reared its head up at the pegasus that was swimming up the current and opened its mouth wide. Tiptoe saw the serpent’s mouth open and braced herself, expecting it to strike. It didn’t. Instead, she saw a white pinprick of light appear in the depths of the serpent’s throat. She stopped beating her wings and tumbled backwards, just in time to miss getting hit by a beam of intense white light that shot out of the serpent’s mouth and punched a hole in the side of the sphere. There was a strong gush of water, then everything was still. The sphere was now filled to the top with water, and Tiptoe could escape! Unconscious Jigsaw still in mouth, she shot out of the sphere and upward. She looked down to see something that she hadn’t expected- the serpent was trapped! It couldn’t pull it’s neck out of the opening it had made in the viewport! As she swam up, she watched with a certain satisfaction as the sphere sank deeper and the tail of the serpent whipped past her and out of sight. The satisfaction was short lived, however, as she looked up and realized there was a rock wall above her. The sphere had been pulled and tossed around underwater by the serpent’s attacks and had slipped under a stone overhang. Tiptoe began to panic. She hadn’t exactly had time to take a deep breath before swimming out, and she didn’t know if Jigsaw was breathing. The terror and chaos in the sphere had kept her from realizing the true gravity of the situation. Their lives were in danger! She stopped flapping her wings and desperately looked around for any way through or around the overhang. Her wings were aching from the exertion of flapping underwater. She saw a small crack in the rock ceiling and made for it, her wings screaming in pain with every flap. She was getting desperate for a breath, and the swimming wasn’t helping matters. They broke the surface in a small room directly above the crack in the stone. Tiptoe flew out of the water and tumbled onto the ground, coughing and gasping for air. The only light in the room came from fluorescent mushrooms that grew along the walls. She dropped Jigsaw and began checking if he was breathing. He wasn’t. Tiptoe had no idea what to do. She hadn’t been trained in this before; how could she have been? The only liquid water that wasn’t in pipes was in the reservoir, and nopony would ever be crazy enough to try to swim in that. She did the only thing she could think of: She took a deep breath, leaned over him, and began blowing air into his lungs. Immediately, Jigsaw convulsed and rolled onto his side. He spit up water and began coughing. Tiptoe let out a sigh of relief and collapsed on the cave floor, exhausted. Several hours later, Tiptoe awoke to find Jigsaw was awake and sitting up, his horn lit, staring intensely at the pool of water. “What are you doing?” she asked. Jigsaw jumped. “Oh! You’re awake.” he pawed at the ground. “I’m making sure that thing doesn’t come back.” “It won’t. I saw it go down with the control room.” Tiptoe said. “Oh. Well... thank you. For saving me.” Tiptoe blushed. “What else could I do?” Tiptoe began examining the room. It was very small- maybe 2 ponies high.There was a group of bioluminescent fungi in the corner, though their light was drowned out by the blue light from Jigsaw’s horn. There was a tunnel that led off into the darkness in the wall behind her. “What’s going to happen to the tribe?” Tiptoe asked. “What will the control station going down do to the water?” “Without the controls, it will just keep flowing as it always did. We just won’t be able to control it.” “But... but what happens if there’s a leak in an area we can’t fix? What happens if the pressure drops?” “Then... then we can’t do anything about it here, can we?” Jigsaw looked up at Tiptoe and sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about it here. Can you walk?” “Of course I can walk.” Tiptoe said. She began to stand up and a sharp pain shot through her flank. Her wings felt as though somepony had tried to pull them off. She attempted to spread them out. She let out a cry of pain and retracted the wing back to her side. “Don’t move.” Jigsaw said. “Let me take a look at it.” He walked over to Tiptoe and his horn suddenly flared with a blue light. He touched it to the spot where the wing connected to the flank. Tiptoe felt a tingle spread out and into her wings. It helped to take the pain away. “How did you do that?” Tiptoe said, her eyes wide. “My special talent is finding out how things work. That includes biology.” He turned his flank to show her his cutie mark- two gears meshed together. “It’s sprained, by the way.” Jigsaw said. “You pushed yourself way too hard back there. How did you even hurt your wings, anyway? Weren’t we underwater?” Tiptoe quickly recounted what happened in the sphere. “You managed to move quickly enough to escape the serpent while carrying me?” Jigsaw said, an eyebrow raised. “I’m impressed.” Tiptoe smiled sadly. “But now I can’t use my wings at all. That’s pretty much all I have.” Jigsaw shot her a skeptical glance. “You took charge back there. Better than I ever have. You saved my life. You’re more than the sum of your parts.” He began to walk towards the entrance to the tunnel. Tiptoe’s face flushed with color. Nopony had ever complimented her like that- she was a pegasus! Mostly ponies just looked down on her with pity. Some even disliked her just because of her wings. She’d never even flown before, not really. The most she had ever flown was hovering in the main chamber- and that was only so she didn’t forget how. She still remembered the moment she stood in the cavern for the first time, seeing so much empty space above her. She couldn’t see how she’d ever get back there. She didn’t see how she would ever get to fly. But Jigsaw’s words had stimulated something deep inside her. She imagined this was how it would feel to soar. She trotted gingerly over to the mouth of the tunnel. Jigsaw glanced over his should to see the pegasus standing behind him. “We should follow this. I don’t know that we have any other options.” He paused and added “I’m scared, Tiptoe.” Tiptoe cantered up and stood beside Jigsaw. “What else can we do?” she said. Together, they trotted off into the unknown.