Regrouping
“Rainbow Dash? Rainbow Dash! Wake up!”
“How in the world did she actually sleep through that? It was loud enough to even wake me up!”
Rainbow grumbled and rolled over, covering her ears with her hooves. “Mmmrrfff… go awayyyyyyy,” she groaned, trying to block them out. “Just let me sleeeeeeep.”
She heard annoyed sighs coming from behind her, but she didn’t care. She was so unbelievably tired and she just wanted the voices to go away. “Hey, give me that stick, Champagne. I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Hooves shifted behind Rainbow, and then a sharp sting bit into her flank. Yipping, Rainbow rocketed straight into the air, getting tangled in the palm fronds of the tree above her in the process. Now very much awake, Rainbow glared down at the ground, where she saw Champagne covering her mouth and Stargazer holding a switch between his teeth. Spitting it out, the stallion grinned up at Rainbow. “Now she’s awake!”
“What the friggin’ crap?!” Rainbow thrashed her way free of the palm fronds but didn’t manage to get her wings open in time, so she ended up falling to the ground and landing on her back. Champagne offered her a hoof to stand, which she gladly took, and she started rubbing at her now bruised shoulders while fixing a death glare on Stargazer. “What the hay was that for?! Can’t you let a girl sleep? I need to get my rest before my turn to watch!”
“You seriously didn’t hear that?” Stargazer slapped a hoof to his forehead. “Wow. I’m impressed, really.”
“Hear what?” Rainbow frowned at them. “A full marching band with seventy-six trombones?”
“The siren song,” Stargazer said. When Rainbow blinked in surprise, he shook his head. “Come on. Rarity’s waiting for you.”
“Rarity? What’s she doing here?” Rainbow’s posture straightened as she immediately became much more interested in what was happening on the islands. “I thought she was gonna be at the atoll until, like, tomorrow! Did she find something? What did she say?”
“Nothing, really,” Stargazer said, already taking wing with Champagne following shortly behind. “Just that she’d explain when we were all together.”
“Then what are we waiting for?!” Rainbow exclaimed, rocketing into the sky. “We gotta see her!”
Though she didn’t know exactly what direction Rarity had come to the island from, it didn’t take too much effort of her own to figure that out. All she had to do was fly upwards and scan the beaches until she found Rarity lying on the sand. With a pivot of her wings, Rainbow changed her momentum from flying upwards to flying down and out, and when she finally flared her wings right in front of Rarity’s nose, her sudden appearance caused the siren to rear back her head. “Rainbow?!” Rarity exclaimed in startled surprise. “Goodness, you frightened me!”
With Rarity no longer wildly moving her head about and Champagne and Stargazer arriving on the beach behind her, Rainbow dropped down onto Rarity’s beak. “I didn’t think you’d be here so soon!” Rainbow said. “What happened? What’s going on? Where’s Melody?”
“I’ll get to that in a second,” Rarity said, her eyes crossing at Rainbow. “But first, do you have to perch on my nose?”
Rainbow smirked at her. “It’s my new favorite perch! Can you really blame me?”
Rarity sighed and gently shook her head back and forth to not throw Rainbow from her beak. “I suppose not. I’m simply not a fan of crossing my eyes to look at you.”
Chuckling, Rainbow relented for Rarity’s sake and hopped off of her nose. Catching herself on her wings, Rainbow fluttered back a bit and let a frown seize hold of her features. “So, what’s up? What’s going on that’s so important?”
Rarity sighed, and her tail splashed the water in frustration. “The mummies are on the loose, Rainbow. Whatever you were doing here, it’s pointless.”
Rainbow blinked in surprise, and Champagne and Stargazer glanced at each other. “It’s… pointless?” That couldn’t be right. Rainbow shook her head in denial. “No, no, we blocked the door, see? Nothing came out! There’s no mummies on this island; if there were, I think we’d know by now!”
“There was a mummy or two in the sunken temple at the atoll,” Rarity said. “Sometime last night, they stormed it, collapsed part of the inside, and stole the corpse of their old avatar. I don’t know why or what they need it for, but it can’t be good. If the mummies are out…”
“Then Soft Step must also be loose,” Stargazer said. He turned to Rainbow and fidgeted in the sand. “We’re too late.”
Rainbow just couldn’t believe it. Was it already over? Had they already lost, and they didn’t know it yet? “That’s… oh crap. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. We gotta go! We gotta do something!”
“Do what, Rainbow?” Rarity asked, taken aback by the pegasus’ sudden outburst. “What can we do? I don’t even know what we should do!”
“We need to fly back home!” Rainbow said. “Fly back to the other island and help get ready to defend it! We can’t let Soft Step get to that shrine, otherwise it’s game over for all of us! We gotta rally with the others and stop her, someway, somehow!”
“What if we’re too late, Rainbow?” Champagne asked. “If the mummies hit the sunken temple last night, and they weren’t there tonight, then what if they’re already at the home island? What if they’ve already taken it over?”
“We’re not dead, are we?”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not too late,” Stargazer said. “Maybe they’re having the same problem we are, and they don’t know how to lower the barrier.”
Rainbow frowned at him. “So what, we just sit here with our hooves up our asses and wait?”
“We should at least wait until Melody comes back,” Rarity said. “She went to the home island to see what was happening there. She will be able to let us know what’s happening.”
“And what if she doesn’t come back?” Rainbow asked. “What then?”
Rarity looked down at the sand. “Then I don’t know, Rainbow,” she admitted. “I really, truly, don’t know.”
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Melody should threaten to eat all three pegasi if Soft Step attempts to approach the island.
8962964
There's always Jolly Roger, and if the Moon God can transfer itself to the old avatar's body, Soft Step as well, giving him the two he needs.
Ah caught back up. Missed updates for a week because I was away with my wife...
...on a cruise.
Thankfully no pirates, minotaurs, or zombies were encountered.
Tho it a bit disconcerting how much foul smelling brown matter is all over the place, especially on this fan. Go away for a bit and this is what I have to come back to?
8965707
That still leaves sirens, cheeky macaws, avatars of Elder gods, and surly engine engineers with a penchant for sharing TMI concerning their (lack of) sex life to everyone within earshot...
who wants to bet that melody gets infected and she and rarity duke it out in an epic fight to the death as the ritual is being conducted?