Jungle Boogie
“Gyro’s paralyzed?!”
Rainbow’s jaw hung agape. She’d managed to survive her two days of suffering and torture in Squall’s camp on the hope that Rarity and Gyro were alright and looking for her. She hadn’t expected that they too had their share of terrible mishaps since making landfall. The possibility hadn’t even crossed her mind, but as soon as Rarity had said it, she knew the mare wasn’t playing some sort of joke on her. Rarity wouldn’t ever joke about something like that, despite how much Rainbow presently wished she did.
“We were trying to explore the piece of the hull you’d found on your flight over here,” Rarity explained. “We went looking for you when you didn’t return, and while we were there, Gyro suggested that we explore it for salvage. While she was inside, she knocked it off balance and broke her back in the fall. I’m sure you heard the loud boom when it hit the ground yesterday.”
Rainbow sat down and rubbed at her eyes with her wingtips. “Crap,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “I just can’t… she can’t walk or anything?”
“She can use her forelegs, but nothing below her waist,” Rarity said. The unicorn used her magic to pull open another canvas bag of supplies in her continuing hunt for a needle, thread, and first aid materials. “I had to carry her around the island to get her back to safety. She was all but incapable of moving on her own.”
“And you just left her out in the jungle to distract pirates while she can’t move?” Rainbow was dumbstruck. Surely this wasn’t as bad as all the signs seemed to be pointing to.
“What else could we do?” Rarity said, her voice rising in growing frustration. “We were desperate to find you because you wandered off somewhere without telling us, and when I figured out you were here last night, we put this plan together to rescue you before Squall decided torturing you had run its course! Celestia, I didn’t even know if you were still alive when I came here tonight!” Swallowing down her anger, Rarity tossed a sack back onto the sand and moved onto the next one. “And she’s not entirely immobile and defenseless. We built her a crude walker to support her hindquarters. It at least allows her some locomotion, even if it’s far from perfect.”
“Unless she can gallop away from pirates at top speed, I don’t think it’ll help her at all.” Groaning in frustration, Rainbow kicked a crate and roughly shook out her wings. “Friggin’ damn it, I don’t want to lose her and Coals in one night! Did you find something to make stitches with yet?”
Rarity shook her head. “There’s nothing. Thread is easy enough to improvise; tail hair will do well enough, so long as it’s clean. The needle is the hard part.”
“I doubt any of the pirates had a sewing kit on them,” Rainbow grumbled. Snatching an empty sack in her teeth, she started looting the lean-tos for useful supplies. “If there’s nothing we can do for him, then we’ve just gotta hope for the best. Let’s steal all the useful stuff from the pirates and get out of here before they get back.” Sighing, she added, “I just hope Gyro’s still in one piece…”
Rarity swallowed hard. “I don’t think I could forgive myself if she isn’t…”
-----
Gyro panted and panted beneath some large, overhanging ferns. She’d managed to move herself away from the control rig for the noisemakers and into some thicker cover before the pirates arrived to find her. It hadn’t been easy with her walker trying to bury itself in the mud behind her, but desperation was as good a steroid as any. She’d barely slipped into cover about twenty feet away before the pirates crossed the distance and discovered her command center.
“What the fuck is this?” one of the pirates shouted. She heard a distant rattle of metal panels and the hissing sound of a rope sliding through palm fronds. “Are these attached to those ropes with the metal on them?”
“The actual shit?” a mare growled. “Somepony was yanking on these things. Look, there’s some hoofprints in the mud.”
“So we were led on a wild goose chase,” another concluded. “Fuck, they must’ve just been trying to get us away from the camp. We need to go back!”
“Or we could find whoever was out here and I can tear their head off with my magic! Nopony gets to make us look like dumbasses two nights in a row!”
“You think it was the same mare from last night?”
“Who else could it have been? The other assholes haven’t tried anything like this before. They’ve been too content to hide in that fucking tomb.”
“Well, let’s take a look. Whatever they’re trying to do at the camp, Squall can handle it. I’ve seen that psycho kill five ponies in seconds.”
“We all have. That was during the engagement with that royal corvette. We would’ve been dead if she hadn’t cut down all their officers immediately.”
Gyro swallowed hard and tried to make sure she was as tucked in under the foliage as she could be. If Squall was still at the pirate camp and Rarity had to contend with her…
Mud squelched beneath hooves as the pirates began exploring the area around her. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, making it easier to see and hear beneath the trees. Gyro held her breath and put both hooves over her muzzle as she saw shadows move in her periphery. Hopefully they would pass her by, assuming that she’d fled deeper into the jungle as soon as the pirates had discovered her ruse. For a moment, she hoped she might even be right; the pirates started walking past her, prowling deeper through the forest.
Then there was a yelp, and the harness around Gyro's shoulders and waist shook. One of the pirates fell to the ground, splattering mud everywhere, before standing up and glaring back in Gyro’s direction. A horn surrounded in the glow of magic lit up the night, and Gyro cried out as she was suddenly ripped out of her cover.
“The fuck do we have here?” the stallion growled at her, lifting Gyro off the ground as she struggled and flailed with her forelegs. “A wannabe cyborg? What is this shit?”
His magic tore the walker off of Gyro’s body and he dropped the mare into the mud and sand. Panting, Gyro lifted the front half of her body with her forelegs and tried to crawl away, for all the good it would do her. But she could hardly move at all with her dead and limp hind legs dragging through the muck behind her. The pirate laughed and tossed the harness aside, waving over his comrades and pointing to Gyro. “Look! We’ve got a cripple to play with!”
The rest of the pirates returned one by one, and soon Gyro found herself in the center of a terrifying ring of marauders and reavers. Swallowing hard, she put on a nervous smile. “So, uh, I don’t suppose you five are the kind who like to talk things out, right?”
One of the pirate mares grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up in the air with her magic. “It’s not what you say, but what you do that matters, right?”
Gyro clutched at the fingers of magic around her neck. “So… gah… that means you’re… gonna let me go… that’s cool… I’d be down for that…”
The mare sneered and slammed the mechanic back into the mud. Coughing and sputtering, Gyro looked up only to see a stallion looming over her, already setting his weapons aside. “It’s been too long since I’ve gotten any,” he said with a dark smile on his face. “Squall wouldn’t let us touch the other bitch, but I don’t think she’ll mind if we fuck a cripple.”
Swallowing hard, Gyro tried to back away, which was easier said than done without her back legs. “Just because I can’t feel my plot doesn’t mean I’m okay with you using it.”
“Good,” another said. “I like it when they struggle.”
Gyro broke out in a cold sweat as the ring of pirates converged on her. There was no way out of this. There was nothing she could do. If she’d been a pegasus or a unicorn, she might have had some means of escape, but not as a simple earth pony. Her only strength had been taken for her and there was nothing she could do.
A rustling in the leaves put pause into the pirates. “What was that?” one of them asked. He got his answer when several cries broke the stormy calm of the night, and Gyro caught glimpses of figures moving behind the pirates’ legs.
“It’s a trap!” another pirate screamed, and they dispersed around Gyro to grab their weapons. Bodies collided all around her, and Gyro buried her head under her hooves, feeling very small and weak in the middle of a cacophony of noise exploding around her. Ponies fought and yelled, and a pistol even discharged into the night.
“Back!” a pirate screamed somewhere ahead of Gyro. “Back! Regroup at the camp! Come on!”
There was the drumming of hooves, a cry of valor… and then near silence.
Gyro’s ears perked up, and she looked around. A bloody mare’s face stared back at her, several holes and gashes torn through her neck, and Gyro shrieked and tried to scramble away. Three or four bodies lied around her, but four ponies still stood. One of them saw her and immediately scrambled to her side. “Celestia, are you hurt? We heard you and—Gyro?”
Gyro blinked and looked the stallion in the eyes, immediately recognizing the bandana he wore around his neck. “Ratchet? You’re… holy crap, you’re alive? I thought all the other mechanics died in the crash!”
Ratchet smiled at her and knelt across from her. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later. We need to get back to our camp before the pirates rally and come back.” He held a hoof out. “Can you walk?”
Gyro grimaced and looked at her hind legs. “I’d love to say yes, but…”
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Well, turns out there were other survivors after all!
Yay, Gyro is saved! Barely, but still! Let's hope they stay long enough for Rainbow and Rarity to find them first.
Okay, I haven't read this story and don't plan on reading it, but I just came here to say one thing:
I hate you for that title.
Because, every time I see it in the updated feed, I get excited, before I realize its just that story again.
I hate you for making me feel every time I see this.
Oh well... maybe one day someone will write a story with the one, TRUE sand island in it...
8679812
Wow such contribution, very nice
Well, that ratchets the character count up a bit. Which is good, as we managed to at least kill one of them off with a well deserved round.
Holy shit that was some suspense right there. This seems like it's wrapping up, but it's not quite over yet.
Coals is still in a bad way, and if I remember correctly Squall had a pretty nasty first mate who may cause problems yet.
Goddamn, that was something else.
8679812
You're... uneducated ruffian. TRUE Sand Island is a crescent shaped island surrounded by small islands , part of Hawaii. protagonists were washed up to Equus analog of that archipelago. Sand is just its name, though author goes lengths to play with that in different ways
The harness around Squall’s shoulders? eep!