Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Obliviously Oblivious

Rarity froze in place as a strange noise faintly echoed through the trees. She let the magic on her horn die away, silencing the gentle yet crackly humming it produced through its split tip, and immediately letting loose a small sigh of relief as her headache momentarily subsided. Birds cried out through the jungle, and she saw a few feathery shapes flitting through the trees away from the direction of the pirate camp. But after a few seconds, the noises of the island returned to their normal hush and chatter, leaving Rarity unsure if she’d heard anything in the first place.

The creaking of Gyro’s walker came to a stop behind Rarity. “What is it?” the gray mare asked. “Pirates?”

“Did you hear that?” Rarity asked her without looking, her head still on a swivel, eyes cutting through the trees and undergrowth.

“Hear what?” Gyro shifted in place, suddenly on edge. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I thought I heard a gunshot.” Swallowing hard, Rarity cautiously took a few wary steps forward. “A gunshot from the pirate camp.”

Gyro breathed a big sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s good, then. If they’re killing each other, then that makes our job easier. Screw whoever ate that bullet, right?”

“Unless it was Rainbow,” Rarity darkly muttered.

Gyro’s ears fell. “Oh. Yeah, right. I guess there’s that too.” Tittering nervously, she rubbed one hoof against a fetlock. “Would it help if I, uh, said it probably wasn’t Rainbow?”

Rarity turned around and raised an eyebrow at her. “How would you know that?”

“I don’t,” Gyro said. “But I’ll bullshit to you all you want if that’ll help you calm down.”

Rarity frowned and continued marching through the forest. “I am calm,” she flatly stated. “Just… worried.”

Gyro tried to offer her a comforting smile, though to Rarity, it came across more as a grimace than anything. “There’s no reason in getting worried about shit. It’s not like we can do anything about it, right?”

“You don’t sound much better off than I am,” Rarity observed. Still, swallowing the lump in her throat, she lit up her aching horn once more and continued stringing rope and wire between the palm trees, as high up and out of sight as she could place them. “But at least you’re right. Even if that… if that was Rainbow, then we owe it to her to get her body out of the c-camp.”

After a moment, Gyro simply nodded. “Yeah…”

They continued to push on. Thanks to her walker and earth pony strength, Gyro carried the bulk of the noisemakers, which were just metal and wooden panels tied into lengths of rope about fifty feet long. Though Rarity had carried her share earlier, she’d quickly shed them first before taking from Gyro’s stack. After all, the earth pony was more than capable of hauling everything along with only her front two hooves for mobility. Even the weight on her walker pressing the gears deeper into the ground didn’t seem to bother her too much. But then again, Rarity knew Gyro only complained when she was being sarcastic. Otherwise, the engineer quietly sucked it up and dealt with it.

Sometimes Rarity wished she could be as strong as Gyro, both mentally and physically.

Little by little, Rarity added to the growing line of noise makers. Her and Gyro had taken a twisting, turning path through the jungle, trying to construct something that would keep the pirates in pursuit once they heard the noises. Every so often, Rarity tied one end of a noise maker rope off to a tree and moved somewhere else before starting up another one. Thankfully she had so much rope to work with; she even had to venture back to the beach twice to fetch fresh coils of rope, she needed so much. A part of her wondered if maybe there would’ve been a better use for all this rope, but another part reminded her that this was all going toward getting Rainbow back. There wasn’t any better use of the rope compared to that.

As night began to fall and clouds drifted across the sky, the island grew darker and darker. The wind also began to pick up, and some of the chimes and noisemakers Rarity strung along started rattling and clinking on their own. For a moment, Rarity felt dismayed, knowing that a storm was approaching. Rain and wind would make the rescue much more painful and complicated, and if the noise makers started rattling constantly on their own, the pirates might figure out the ruse early. If they did that, Rarity worried she might not have time to raid the pirate camp and get Rainbow out of there before they returned.

But like Gyro said, she shouldn’t worry about what she couldn’t change…

As soon as Rarity heard the sounds of talking and noise through the trees up ahead, she motioned for Gyro to stop. “We don’t want to go much closer,” she said in a low, quiet voice. “There’s a chance the pirates might hear us.”

“But is this close enough?” Gyro asked. “Will they be able to hear it from here?”

“If you pull on it like a madmare then I think they will,” Rarity said. Tying off the last rope, she took several lengths of clean rope and began knotting them to different lines. “These will be the pull ropes. Do keep them organized and remember which ones are attached to which; we want to keep leading the pirates away from the camp, so if they aren’t constantly chasing some noise then it won’t work.”

“Right. Easier said than done.” Gyro eyed the lengths of rope and shook her head. “Celestia, this is the most complicated prank I’ve ever seen.”

“I would’ve figured you’d have seen more going to a trade school filled with stallions,” Rarity mused.

“Yeah, but none with a chance to get us killed if it doesn’t work.” The engineer shook her head. “And I’m gonna be pulling these things blind. How am I going to know when they’re chasing something or not?”

“Hopefully you’ll be able to hear them,” Rarity said. “The jungle is almost dead quiet at night. A troop of angry pirates gallivanting through the undergrowth shouldn’t be that difficult to hear no matter where you are.”

“I guess.” Gyro peered off into the darkness. “I guess we should find a place to hide and get me set up in the meanwhile.”

Rarity nodded. “Agreed. We have to wait until it’s very dark anyway. Otherwise they might see the noise makers, and we can’t have that happen.”

“This plan is so janky,” Gyro muttered. “At least it’ll be a funny story if we survive this whole thing, right?”

“Right,” Rarity agreed. “Hopefully not for the pirates, though.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t that just suck?”

Comments

[zaponator]

Screw whoever ate that bullet, right?

You already did~

[PonyDragon]

Gyro breathed a big sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s good, then. If they’re killing each other, then that makes our job easier. Screw whoever ate that bullet, right?”

: "About that..."

[Flare]

8656900
Ey ey ey, this is no time for crass jokes

[RoboRed]

Screw whoever ate that bullet, right?

:|

[Merula]

“Right,” Rarity agreed. “Hopefully not for the pirates, though.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t that just suck?”

...yep, there weill be one more death before the end of this