Downed and Daring

by 8thekhip

Chapter 1: Downed, But Not Out

A man lay on the ground, oblivious to the cacophony of the jungle around him as its inhabitants all struggled to make themselves heard, croaking, cawing, buzzing and screeching all at once.

Of course, his uncaring slumber couldn’t go on forever, and soon the man found himself upon the precipice of consciousness. He hesitated there, looking out over that terrifying drop to lucidity. Must he really go back? Must he really remember?

He knew that at the bottom of that fall there would be pain, anguish beyond imagination. He knew that if he went back now, he may never again return to this peaceful place. He could just give up here. Turn away from the edge and be at peace forever.

The man frowned. What the heck was he thinking? Peace? He couldn’t care less about peace, because he knew, as well he should, that peace was inseparable from boredom. So, with nary another thought, he leapt from the edge, rushing down, down down….

The man’s eyes opened. The man then screamed in agony, as the pain he was currently experiencing was akin to having been mauled by a gorilla for eight hours straight. After he had let out a satisfactory amount of air, startling many of the animals that were in close proximity to him, he began to hyperventilate.

Erik Herris, age twenty-four, was currently lost and wounded somewhere in what he believed to be the Amazon Rainforest. He was, quite understandably, freaking the heck out.

Okay, Erik, he thought to himself, struggling to slow his rapid puffing and get his mind to work, You’re in the Amazon Rainforest. With no food. Or water. Or a pocket knife. Or really any supplies of any kind.

His breathing, rather than doing anything even akin to slowing down, began to speed up rapidly. Apparently, thinking about how likely he was to die out here really wasn’t the best tactic for calming himself down. A pity, truly, as it was a sure thing that people in survival situations such as this would be in a perpetual state of calm if it were.

So, doing as any good optimist would, he began to think instead of what he did have going for him.

I’m… not dead. That’s good. I also seem to be breathing. Which makes sense when coupled with the fact that I’m not dead. Yeah, it would be pretty weird if I was dead but still breathing. I think that’s called a coma, though. But people wake up from those sometimes, so they’re not really dead, and…

Unfortunately, that tactic failed too, being instead interrupted by a plight that had often plagued him throughout his life: a short attention span.

It took his train of thought a while to circle back around to reality, though its passengers certainly did get a very scenic ride along the way, as Erik found himself thinking about everything from coma patients, to iguanas, to asparagus, to his own train of thought. That last one was pretty silly, though. Who spent time thinking about their own train of thought?

Either way, once he came to his senses he found himself suitably calmed down, though still in a great deal of pain. With his first goal accomplished, though through rather roundabout means, Erik decided to assess the current state of his body.

He began with a rather rudimentary check, just to make sure that his appendages were all still attached. Fortunately, he hadn’t lost a single finger or toe—though to be honest, he wouldn’t have overly minded losing his pinkie toes. Those things were useless. Despite this initial victory, a closer examination revealed a rather troubling fact. That fact being that his favorite pants were completely ruined. And also that he had a huge gash running all the way up the length of his left leg.

He examined the wound more closely, and found that, while it was long and sent searing waves of agony through his body when he touched it, it was in truth quite shallow, and had already begun to scab up.

Even more fortunate was the fact that he didn’t seem to have any other injuries of note, aside from thousands of tiny lacerations running all up and down his body, which burned with the mighty fire of a thousand suns.

But dangit, he was Erik Herris, fantastically handsome explorer extraordinaire! Or, well, fantastically handsome cameraman, but he was filming a nature documentary, so he figured it counted. Erik wasn’t about to let mere pain get the better of him! Oh no, he was going to stand right up and walk—

Erik’s inspiring internal monologue came to an abrupt end when he collapsed back to the ground, sending lances of pain all up and down his body. He whimpered softly.

Well, he still wouldn’t give up! He would walk out of this situation. He just needed some kind of crutch, or walking stick or something. He lifted his head from the ground and began questing with his eyes in search for something he could use for such a purpose. There! He thought to himself as he spotted a tall stick lying about three meters to his right, partially obscured by the thick jungle underbrush. Now all he needed to do was get to it.

So, in a rather laborious and painful manner, he began to drag himself through the brush so as to reach what he was now affectionately referring to as “The Stick of Salvation,” or SoS for short. After a few moments of this, he reached his hand out and wrapped his fingers around the stick, which was surely the most beautifully crafted piece of dead wood that nature had ever conceived.

With his salvation firmly in hand, he began to pull himself back onto his feet, leaning heavily on the SoS. It took a while, and a few collapses, but Erik never gave up hope, and soon came through the ordeal no worse for wear, having conquered the ground and its foul schemes to claim him.

With his most immediate problems out of the way, Erik allowed himself a brief moment to recall how, exactly, he had come to be in his current predicament. He remembered… being in a plane. Yes! He was getting some aerial shots in that beat up old rented plane. Or, well, the plane wasn’t rented per se, as they had hired the pilot who owned the plane, but it was easier to say that it was rented, so dangit, he was going to say that it was rented!

The plane’s ownership aside, he remembered that there had only been three people in it while he was filming. The pilot and himself were, of course, the first two, but then there was also… oh no. Marge had been on that plane. He gritted his teeth at the thought. Marge, his best friend since childhood, had been a researcher, and as such, she had no true reason to be on that plane. He cursed himself for letting her on that rickety death trap. But she had insisted, hadn’t she?

Of course she had. She’d been that way since they were kids, always wanting to experience everything. She had been—no. She was his best friend, and she was still alive out there somewhere.

He began to stumble off in a random direction. He needed to find her. He needed to help her. What if she was hurt? He began to curse incessantly in his mind, for no other reason than to distract him from the images assaulting him. Of her dead, bleeding out on the ground. Or maybe of her, alone in the rainforest with that pilot….

Now, despite what it might seem like, Erik was absolutely sure that he was not attracted in any way to Marge. No, it was more like a brother/sister relationship—which was kind of fitting, as neither of them had any actual siblings, and they had known each other almost from birth. As such, he was just concerned that the pilot might hurt her, as any big brother worth his french toast would. And Erik made the best french toast around.

He shook himself. Stupid attention span! He thought angrily to himself. He clenched his teeth and began to trudge on, not knowing if he was even going in the right direction, not knowing if he was actually just getting farther away from her as she lay face down somew—

He once more had to physically shake himself to stop thinking such unwelcome thoughts. She’s fine, he thought to himself, if I find her, she’ll already have base camp set up. No reason to worry. Marge was always on top of things, nothing could slow her down. Yeah. It would all be fine.

Erik repeated those words to himself over and over in his mind, until it became an almost unconscious action. He began to wander aimlessly, probably doing nothing but going in circles, as he grew more numb to his pain, his thirst, and how terribly hot he was. He only came to his senses again when he began coughing so hard that he doubled over.

He felt like he had a nail being shoved through both of his temples, and thirst was the hammer. He looked around himself, realizing that he had made a grave error. Water! He cursed himself for his own stupidity, It’s the first thing that you’re supposed to do! Find water. Dangit! I got so caught up in looking for Marge that I forgot.

He paused briefly in indecision. Could he really abandon his search for Marge? He snorted. Of course he could. Marge was fine. She already had base camp set up, remember? He chuckled softly. She would never stand for him refusing to take care of himself for her sake. Water it is, he thought.

He strained his ears, hoping to hear the telltale sound of flowing water over the near deafening cries of the wildlife. There! He heard it somewhere off to his… right?

Hoping that he wasn’t making a terrible judgement of the water’s direction, Erik turned right and began his shambling pace once more. It was then that he stopped dead in his tracks, realizing that he had made another horrendous oversight. Snakes. There were a plethora of deadly snakes in the Amazon. More than a plethora. There were, like, a million different snakes that all wanted to bite you, strangle you, swallow you whole, or all of those things at once in the Amazon. How a snake could manage to do all of those things at the same time, he didn’t know, but he most certainly didn’t want to find out.

So, deciding that he really hadn’t been nearly as cautious as one should be when lost in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, he decided to be as attentive as humanly possible from this point on. As for the snakes, he assumed that they would strike out at sudden movement, so he figured that if he took off his shoe he could throw in front of him, and if any snakes bit it, he could get the heck out of there.

Figuring that this was either a solid plan that could never go wrong, or possibly the stupidest plan that had ever been conceived by man, he took off his right shoe—after several tries while balancing heavily on The Stick of Salvation, of course. He then threw the shoe out in front of him. After no vicious snakes leapt from the undergrowth to devour the unwitting footwear, he decided that it was safe to move forward.

The process was slow and tiring, but he figured that it worked, because no snakes ate him by the time he reached the source of that wonderful life giving substance. It appeared to be a small, fast moving stream. He hobbled over to it, dropped the SoS, and collapsed down in front of it before thirstily shoving his entire face under the surface.

Now, he knew as well as anyone that it wasn’t safe to drink water directly from the source—especially rainforest water that, for all he knew, poison dart frogs were taking a bath in—but it looked clear enough, and besides, if you’ve ever hiked through a hot and humid rainforest for half the day, bearing thousands of cuts and bug bites, you know that it’s rather difficult to resist getting your fill.

And get his fill he did, and then some. After that, he took off his other shoe and his socks and put his feet in the stream, then he took off his dirty shirt bandage to inspect his wound. It didn’t look too good. He knew that he ran a serious risk of infection out here, and he hadn’t watched enough Survivorman to know which sap could be used as antiseptic if it did get infected. He just had to hope that it would be fine. But it was rather dirty, and his built up sweat stung the countless lacerations that he bore, so he decided, against his better judgement, to wash himself off in the stream. He accomplished this by washing off one of his now filthy socks, then wiping himself down with it, making extra sure to clean up the gash on his leg.

It felt so nice at that point that he figured that he would either die from dirty water or he wouldn’t, it was just too heavenly to care. After that, he wrapped his leg back up, put his arms behind his head, and looked up at the jungle canopy in contentment, despite his predicament. Just this morning he had been soaring above that canopy, filming the trees passing by below. It had been glorious; no rain, no low hanging clouds, just this gentle mist curling up around the canopy, and the occasional hint of movement from within the jungle’s mysterious depths.

And then everything had gone wrong. It had just seemed like turbulence at first, and he had tried to keep the camera steady by absorbing the shock with his legs, as he had long trained himself to do, but things got out of hand and out of proportion almost immediately after that. All he could remember was a huge noise, followed by intense jostling. He had lost his footing, the door had somehow been torn from its rusty old hinges, then… nothing. He frowned at his memory, or, more appropriately, lack thereof. The best he could guess was that something had hit him in the head and caused him to black out. Maybe the camera?

Erik immediately felt a pang at the loss of the faithful device. It had long kept him company through his career, and even before then, when filming nature had just been a hobby of his.

Either way, that would explain his pounding headache—which had lessened only somewhat after partaking in the stream’s heavenly nectar—as well as the lump that he was now feeling at the base of his skull. How he hadn’t noticed that sooner was anybody’s guess.

It was then that he realized how dark it was getting. Crap, he thought to himself as the jungle around him began to plunge rapidly into darkness. Crap, crap, crap! He frantically looked around for anything that he could use as a shelter, but found nothing. Crap, crap, crap crap crap crap TREE! Aha! An answer to his plight. Nearby was a tree with a low hanging branch that he could perhaps climb onto. It was far from ideal, but it would have to do for the night. He scrambled to his feet, making sure to gather up his scant possessions—namely: The Stick of Salvation, his sock, which as a testament to how hot it was, was now dry, as well as both his shoes. He shoved his socks and shoes on, tucked SoS under his arm, finding that he could now stand without its assistance, though it did hurt like heck, and attempted clamor onto the branch, which was higher up than he had expected. His traitorous muscles protested quite heavily as he did so, showing their true colors as he lost his grip and fell back to the earth, groaning.

It took several tries and some rather colorful language, but eventually he managed to pull himself up onto the branch, the Stick of Salvation clenched in his teeth. Fortunately, it was a fairly thick limb, allowing him to lie down across its length fairly easily. Despite this, he was most certain that he would roll over in his sleep and fall to the very painful looking ground. Thinking fast, he could think of only one solution to this problem: to tie himself to the tree. How exactly would he be able to do that?

He sighed, unwrapped his bandage, and took off his pants before reapplying it. It looked as if his pants were the only available material. He brought one pant leg around the underside of the branch, then grabbed it and pulled it up. After that, he tied the two legs together around his stomach in the only knot that he knew how to tie: the square knot. Of course, it could just as well have been a granny knot, in which case it would come undone the moment he needed it most, sending him to a painful dem—well, not demise, he hoped, but certainly a painful landing.

With his pants securely in place, he yawned and closed his eyes, hugging SoS like a teddy bear, and let sleep take him. As he lay there, he struggled to dispel his worries about Marge. The nightmares he had that night made it rather hard to do so.

***

A pegasus slept soundly within her cabin, sucking her hoof in a most adorable manner, her pith helmet covering her closed eyes. However, one mustn’t allow themselves to be fooled by this display, for this pony was actually one of the most feared inhabitants of the Tenochtitlan Basin, one whose very name inspired fear within the hearts of even the most stout hearted villains. That name, whose very utterance is considered treasonous when spoken within hearing distance of a certain blue cat-monkey, was elegant in its simplicity.

Daring Do.

In truth, this seemingly cute pony was actually a hardened adventurer, whose skills were honed to the point of pure instinct. As such, she was up in a flash the very moment the explosive crash resounded throughout the jungle outside her cabin. She allowed herself only a brief moment of confusion as she paused briefly to wipe her wet hoof on the bed sheets. That done, she sped out of the cabin. While she didn’t really know what had caused the explosion, she had a sneaking suspicion that it had been the doing of her arch-nemesis, Ahuizotl. He always seemed to be behind everything that went wrong, and he had been disturbingly quiet lately.

Upon exiting her home, she immediately took to the sky to see what the cause of the disturbance could be. It was easy enough to spot from above the canopy—thick plumes of smoke were, after all, generally rather hard to miss. Never the one for excessive caution, Daring raced towards the dark pillar, fully expecting Ahuizotl to be waiting for her there.

Once she arrived, however, she noticed a distinct lack of arch-nemeses. She descended, wary of potential threats. After a quick scan of the forest failed to uncover any hidden ambushes, she turned her attention towards the source of the smoke, tilting her head in curiosity.

As far as Daring could tell, it had been some kind of machine, though what purpose it could have served was lost on her. It was made out of metal, and it was in poor shape. Some of what seemed to be its back-end was actually located up in the canopy, and it was bent, dented, and gouged all across its length, not to mention the fact that the entire thing seemed to be rusting. The smoke itself was billowing out of protrusions that were affixed to the sides of the machine. She frowned, moving in closer to get a better look, coughing as she inhaled a bit of wayward smoke. What she saw made her freeze in place. Bodies.

She couldn’t tell exactly what they were, but one thing that was for certain was that they weren’t ponies. She couldn’t tell much due to the obscuring smoke, coupled with how terribly mangled the bodies themselves were, but they seemed distinctly apelike in appearance. Yes, there was a head, a torso, two legs, and two arms. And attached to the end of those arms were… hands. Daring shuddered involuntarily as her eyes fell on the rare appendages. She couldn’t help but think of Ahuizotl when she saw them; couldn’t help imagining them reaching for her from the smoke. She shook her head to clear it of the fantasy, then she turned away from the bodies.

Daring frowned to herself as she began walking away. She didn’t know who or what these creatures had been, but she was sure that they had lives just as real as any pony. And she was equally sure that their deaths were the fault of Ahuizotl. She felt a primal rage creep into her heart at the thought. It was the same rage that had spurred her to thwart Ahuizotl in every action that he decided to take, a righteous anger at the callous actions of a monster.

She assumed that Ahuizotl would be on his way, or at the very least not too far off. Daring decided that if he was, she certainly didn’t want to be the one caught unawares. That decided, she flew up to a nearby tree and perched on one of its branches, lying in wait.

Daring had learned over the years the benefits of patience. She had learned to stay attentive and vigilant for hours on end, watching, waiting for her prey like a hawk. She had also learned, however, when to stop waiting. She decided after precisely three hours and twenty-two minutes that Ahuizotl was, in fact, not coming.

She sighed, rubbing her eyes, her prior rage having dwindled during the long and anticlimactic wait. Despite how much action she put into her books, half of her job was actually just sitting and waiting—often fruitlessly. So, figuring that it was high time to try another tactic, she decided that if Ahuizotl wasn’t going to come to her, she was just going to have to go to him. And even if she did fail to find him, Daring wasn’t overly concerned—Ahuizotl had a tendency to show up at just the wrong time, so she knew she wouldn’t have to wait too long.

That decided, she took to the air, her sharp pegasus eyes discerning as she looked over the nearby area. She cursed to herself. If only she could find his hideout! Then it would only be a matter of sneaking in. As it was, she resigned herself to her search.

--

As it turned out, searching proved fruitless, too. It was a tired and frustrated pegasus that settled down on the upper limbs of a tree that evening, listening to the calming sounds of a stream below her while she watched the sun set. She inhaled deeply, then let her breath out.
What a wasted day. She stomped her hoof in frustration. While much of her job did involve fruitless waiting and searching, it was a rare thing indeed for her to spend an entire day without discovering anything. She was practically seething in anger. Stupid Ahuizotl, she thought to herself. Stupid machine, stupid creatures, stupid unanswered questions. She heard a noise from below—a stick falling to the ground. And stupid trees with their stupid branches!

Daring Do, adventurer extraordinaire, savior of the Tenochtitlan valley countless times over, master of ancient crypts, temples and ruins, was about to end a day with more questions than answers. She was rather upset at the prospect.

In fact, she was so upset that she didn’t hear the various noises sounding below—thumping, grunting, cursing, and other sounds that one might expect from a wounded simian attempting to climb a tree. In fact, it wasn’t until said simian had made it up and fallen asleep that she noticed it, thanks to the fact that she spared a glance downwards.

At first, she merely froze in place when she saw it. It was most assuredly one of the creatures from the destroyed machine, minus being horribly broken and, well, dead. Daring, brash and hungry for answers as always, seized this opportunity to swoop down from her perch and yell at it.

“Hey! You owe me some answers!”

The poor creature awoke to a rather terrifying sight and was, as one might assume, rather startled. In fact, it was so startled that it instinctively tried to scramble away—which didn’t work out well for it, as it was tied to a branch. Rather than escaping as it had planned, it managed only to slide off the side of the branch, where it hung for a moment, saved by its pants, before said pants released it, sending it plummeting to the hard ground below.

It landed with a thump, then lay there for a moment, unmoving. Daring, somewhat concerned for the well being of the creature—though mostly because she couldn’t get any answers out of a corpse—approached it carefully, then nudged it with a hoof.

“Are… you okay?”

The creature’s response to this query was rather tactful, considering the circumstances.

“…Ow.”

And with that, it promptly passed out.

Author's Note:

Okay, then. For those of you who didn't read the whole description, this is a rewrite. As such, the first few comments don't really apply to it. I'm not going to delete them unless someone asks, though, because I personally find it annoying when the comments section is clogged up with deleted comments.

Now that that's out of the way, I just want to say that I always appreciate it when people point out my mistakes or offer criticism. Now, I'd appreciate if such comments weren't hateful, but I'll take what I can get. I want to make this story as good as it can be, and I can't fix it if I don't know what's broken.

Hope that you guys enjoyed the first chapter of the rewrite!

Comments

[NotShadowLotus488]

though to be honest, he wouldn’t have overly minded losing his pinkie toes. Those things were useless

They're absolutely necessary to function as a human bean. How else will you find where all the furniture is in a dark room? Banging your forehead against the tables? Yeah, didn't think so.