Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

No News is Good News

Even though Rainbow was tired, hungry, and felt like crap, she couldn’t bring herself to sleep and escape from the world for a little while. For one things, sleep would just seemingly shorten the time she had until Squall beat her again, and for another, she needed to know what happened to Rarity. She didn’t want to be asleep if they brought Rarity back with them. She needed to know as soon as possible what happened out there in the jungle.

In the meanwhile, the one pirate mare the group had left behind returned in short order with the other three pirates Squall had put on watch earlier that evening. Now all gathered back around the fire, they talked to each other and occasionally shot Rainbow dirty looks. Rainbow, for her part, just kept her head down and tried to give them as few excuses as possible to stroll over to her corner of the camp. Now that she’d found the plank of wood with nails in it, her means of escape, she’d become paranoid that the pirates would notice and would take it away from her. If they did that, she had no hope of escape left.

Soon, her ears twitched at the sound of returning hoofsteps. She cautiously raised her head and looked off to the side, where sure enough, the four pirates from earlier returned to their camp and congregated around the fire with the rest of their crew. She immediately tensed when she didn’t see Rarity with them; she didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The one pirate mare, Hayseed, raised an eyebrow at the returning party. “Find the bitch?”

“We found her,” the stallion who led the group out said. “Tracked her across the entire island. We were nearly on top of her before she doubled back across a channel. We lost her after that.”

Rainbow let out an audible sigh of relief. So they didn’t catch Rarity; that made her feel so much better. So long as Rarity and Gyro were both out there, she knew the pirates hadn’t won yet. With a little ingenuity and daredevil foolishness, she knew they’d find a way to best the pirates and find what they were looking for. All they need now was time—time for Rainbow to escape, time to regroup and reorganize, time to find the statuette, time to escape from the island. So much time, but at the moment, they had none of it.

Hayseed spat into the fire and frowned at the other party. “So what the fuck do we tell the captain?”

“Nothing,” the officer replied. “If she asks, we tell her we chased off a scout and killed her in the jungle. The last thing we need is for her to make our lives worse by admitting that we didn’t catch whoever was spying on us.”

“Fuck it, works for me.” Hayseed shrugged, yawned, and stood up. “Fuck, too much excitement for one night. I’m gonna get my sleep before we go hunting more of those fucks in the morning.”

“Yeah, fuck it,” another one of the pirates said. “You know the head bitch is going to be up bright and early to start screaming shit at us. Even without a ship to run, she’s still a huge pain in my flank…”

“At least she’s keeping charge,” another said. “Got us all together and cleaned out a bunch of the competition before they could really set their roots in and band together. It’s the only reason we’re not dead right now.”

“Hopefully it stays that way. You know they’re starting to get bolder now that they’re organized. We’ll have a fight on our hooves soon enough.”

Rainbow furrowed her brow as she eavesdropped on the conversation. There was no way they were talking about her and Rarity and Gyro. Did that mean there were other ponies from the Concordia somewhere on this island cluster? And if there were, where were they hiding? Finding them would be the key to surviving and locating the statuette despite Squall’s ragtag band of armed and dangerous pirates dominating this end of the cluster. And if Rainbow had to take a guess, she figured they’d be camped out on the opposite side of the island cluster, where the numerous channels and small bodies of water would make tracking their movements nearly impossible from the ground.

But of course, getting there would be another problem entirely. While the pirates slowly began retiring for the night, Rainbow knew she’d never be able to get away for the immediate future. Cutting her bindings with the nails in the plank would take time, and she didn’t have that time when there were still several pirates staying awake to keep watch. Plus, she didn’t know how effectively she could move or fly yet. Though most of her dizziness had subsided by now, she still felt nauseous whenever she moved her head too quickly.

It was a plan she’d have to think on and wait for the perfect opportunity. If she rushed her escape, it could cost her her life. For the time being, however, Squall had seen fit to keep her around instead of just killing her immediately like she’d threatened. That was something Rainbow needed to use to her advantage, not squander—however painful it might be.

As for Squall… Rainbow gathered the feeling that the ponies under her command weren’t exactly enthusiastic about their leader. After all, it’d been on her orders that the Concordia and her barge had tried to skirt the edge of the hurricane, and she’d lost them both, along with who knew how many of her crew. She ran them hard, and even they seemed to think she was insane. She had a feeling that their fear of the mare and the retribution she could bring upon her crew if wronged were the only things keeping them in check. Perhaps there was room to take advantage of that somewhere. If she could turn the pirates against their captain… but how? And how could she make sure that didn’t end with them immediately killing her once their captain wasn’t around to keep her alive for her amusement?

All that was too complicated for Rainbow to think about, and she was exhausted. She needed to catch what sleep she could, while she could. So with that, she closed her eyes, and within minutes had slid off into a fitful, troubled rest.

Comments

[PonyDragon]

Other survivors... turning the pirates against each other...
At least the situation isn't entirely hopeless, it seems.

But it is still bad enough, since these are merely possibilities, while the hard facts are... well, facts.

[Aurora Dimmet]

Find a way to make the captain seem less 'together', make her seem even more insane and less capable. Like someone could make a run on her and win. And if they do, set the pirates on each other for who gets to take over as the new big boss. Escape in the murder-frenzy! Also, fly away while claiming that you're Mary Poppins.

[Snowdrifter]

8637972
First, they need to reach the Northern Air Temple... Wait, wrong franchise...

[zaponator]

I suspected something was up when Squall mentioned "another raid" in an earlier chapter.
So there are other ponies about, and they are fighting against the pirates. You know, maybe they wouldn't be so hostile if you hadn't senselessly murdered a bunch of them for no good reason! Goddamn.
I really hope Squall dies.