BridgeWorld

[994AB Day 297]
"Hmm, I suppose that in a world void of magic, utilizing a difficult-to-acquire mineral that has a steep obstacle to counterfeit as a standard for trade could work, but gold and gems are plentiful on our world," Celestia said as she concluded her explanation to Jackie. "As I mentioned before, the real economic standard of currency we rely here on is the PHW."

"'PHW'?" Jackie inquired.

"Pony-Hours Worked," Twilight Sparkle said, speaking up. "Naturally, there are numerous conversion factors that come into play where complex tasks are involved. As an example, like farming, where it's not only the amount of PHW put into the labor of the farmers evenly divided by their crop yield. There are various expenses that might be factored in, such as hiring weather ponies to deliver the right type of sun, temperature, and precipitation, any leans or mortgages they may have on their farms, but there might also be some extra care needed for growing specialized or exotic crops, as well as any potential competitors that might impact the ability to sell their produce at a price they can afford."

"That's not so much different from my world," Jackie said, "except we don't have any sort of weather control. The cost of goods and services are generally based on the amount of labor for production and how many middle-men will get involved. It's just that getting that much gold from just tips for singing a handful of songs would guarantee a very long visit from the not-so-friendly taxman who will have lots and lots of questions for you!" That set Celestia to giggling.

"For your information, as Head of State, I am the taxpony, Jackie," she said, shrugging her wings. "And yes, I do have lots and lots of questions for you, but they're not going to be about your income. I don't want to dredge up any traumatic experiences, but is there anything you can tell us about the places you came from that won't cause you to relive the horrors you have been trying to escape?"

"Well, my home world is pretty mundane," Jackie told them, "and it was a pretty wild ride on that world where we ended up. The real horrors started much later."

She told them of their trip out from Suva and how they got caught in the storm and the vortex that sucked their ship down into the ocean. She and her friends thought they were all going to drown at the bottom of the sea, but instead they ended up on the shore of some strange land on an even stranger planet. Other than having to bury the ship's skipper, their first day and night wasn't very eventful. With the moon as large as it was, the night was nearly as bright as a heavily overcast day, except during the hours of the lunar eclipse, then it was nearly black as pitch, but the stars were fantastic….

[BridgeWorld: Day 2]
They spent that first night (effectively their second day there) doing what they could to secure their home. Willy, Allen, with Patty, Sherry, and Dmitri helping, went through the ship, pulling out any parts that weren't immediately needed but could be repurposed to construct weapons like the three giant compound crossbows which were currently mounted on the side of the Wheelhouse and a little forward and to the rear on the port side. In addition, everyone had been provided a regular-sized compound bow and quivers of arrows, courtesy of their efforts, while the rest of the survivors did what they could to recover and get the refrigerator working again or tried their hand at seeing if this new ocean had any fish that would be interested in learning about a new sport just being introduced to their world.

Their established sleep period had been chosen to start soon after whichever eclipses were finished. Then, just shortly before the second dawn of that strange new world, they were all wide awake for the predawn activity. Jackie watched as Dmitri and Willy worked several of the radios in the yacht's wheelhouse, slowly scanning through the frequencies that they were designed to receive, but all they could pick up for the hour they were listening was static with no discernable signal that would indicate intelligence.

"So, there's no one out there?" Fred Anderson asked.

"Oh, there's definitely someone out there," Dmitri said. "Why we're not getting any signal could be from several factors. It might just be we're trying to listen when they're not broadcasting, they might be using very different frequencies that the radios simply can't pick up, or they might not be using radio to communicate with but rather something else entirely."

"Unfortunately, we can't keep running the radios all day long to listen since we don't have any way of recharging the batteries," Willy added crawling through the door back into the lounge area. "At least until we find a way of pulling out the motor and generator out of the Engine Room and setting them upright again. Even with that, there's the problem we're eventually going to run out of fuel."

"And once the sun comes up, that room is going to magically turn into an oven, so you're not going to want to be in here much longer," Dmitri finished as he also climbed out of the Wheelhouse.

"I think we're pretty lucky that nothing's come by to look for us yet," Allen spoke up.

"Try not to jinx it, dude," Dmitri muttered.

"Agreed," Willy said. "Mr. Anderson and I were able to get the outboard on the longboat working, so we can start trying to explore up and down the coast a bit."

"How far out are we talking about?" Allen asked, having agreed to accompany them for the first foray into the world.

"Up to about midday when the sun gets eclipsed," Fred said, "then we'll turn around and go the same distance down the coast after we get back here. Figuring out when to turn back from there will be a guess, but we aim to be back by sundown or thereabouts."

"Fortunately, our phones are still working, so we should get good pictures and videos of the coastlines," Allen said. "The rest of you do what you can to secure the boat from any unwanted visitors."

"Speaking of which, is there any way that we could, I dunno, maybe, un-tilt the ship?" Patty asked. All of the men blinked in surprise at the question. Willy coughed.

"She's a 22 ton boat, laying pretty solidly on her side!" he exclaimed. "Not that heavy as yachts go, but there's nothing nearby on which to hook the lines with the block and tackle you'll need to shift it" But Dmitri had a thoughtful look on his face.

"Hold on, I think she's onto something," he said. "We're on a relatively sandy beach. If we dug a deep enough trench along the keel, I think we can undermine her enough to entice the ship to roll over on her own, or if we have to, maybe chop down some the trees in the forest to help lever her into it. We just have to be careful to not be caught beneath when she starts to flip."

"But the keel is broken!" Fred Anderson protested. "This ship's never going to sail again!"

"She doesn't have to," Dmitri countered. "We just need to get her upright. And that would take care of needing to haul out the motor and generator. Otherwise, we'll have to dismantle them to get them both out, and I'm leery that we'll be able to get them back together again in working order."

"That'll be a major chore to dig out that much sand," Allen muttered.

"We're not going anywhere soon," Dmitri quipped, shrugging his shoulders. "We've got all the time in the world on this planet."

"Good one!" Sherry snorted. "It certainly won't get done in a day, even this world's day. So, where do we toss the sand?"

"I'd say to the stern," Dmitri said. "We're going to have the sea water to contend with, and we have to have the trench wide enough for us to have enough room to get out before getting squished when it starts to shift."

"Better make it at least ten meters wide, then," Willy stated. "The ship's four meters. Always watch out for overshoot when you're trying to be wild with a ship's motion!"

"How much is that in real measurements?" Jackie asked.

"Call it ten yards and add ten percent," Dmitri replied smiling.

"Show-off!" Jackie growled at him. He shrugged and smirked back at her.

"I'm used to working in metric. I've been around the world for a few more years than you guys," he responded. "You've been traveling out of the States for how long? Five years?"

"Off and on," Cathy confirmed.

"Ten years and twenty thousand leagues in the Navy, then nearly twenty years in the State Department before retiring out here to Fiji."

"We're not in Fiji, anymore. Remember?" Willy said, pointing up.

"You've got your flag planted here, Kimosabe," Dmitri shot back as he pointed his thumb toward rear of the boat, "and you guys keep calling us the 'colonizers'!" he finished, sticking his tongue out at him, and Willy barked in laughter.

"I'm a little concerned with the life of the ship's batteries," Dmitri said just as Willy, Fred, and Allen were about to head out in the longboat. Everybody was equipped with a compound bow and a couple quivers of arrows and keeping them close by now. "But if we switch off the radios to conserve power, and only turning them on every hour or so, we might miss an emergency call from the other."

"Not that either of us can come running to help, if one of us do get in trouble, but it can at least alert the other team about any nasties out here, so they don't blindly run into whatever kills the first group," Willy agreed. "But I checked the charge, and there should be at least five day's worth if we keep it just to the skiff's two-way."

"Roger that," Dmitri replied as he nodded. "We'll keep an ear open then. Good luck out there!"

"Same to you," Willy finished as they shoved off the sandbar and jumped into the longboat. Then Willy started up the motor and the three men were headed east up the coast.

Since they were going to be doing really hard sweaty work, everyone went to their sleeping areas to change from their casual wear and into their swimming outfits. Shortly after, they all assembled near the bow on the keel side of the ship.

They first measured out and marked the digging area, based on the suggestions from Willy, that the final trench would be a ten-meter wide by twenty-meter-long canal. With the ocean lapping at the tail end of the ship, it was determined that the bottom of the trench should be no more than one meter deep below sea level. It was decided that there should also be a gentle slope to allow for people to run for if they needed to move out of the way in a hurry.

"There shouldn't be any problems with the boat shifting while we dig where the sand is dry," Dmitri said, "but once we start hitting the water table, things are going to get hard from the weight of the sand, as well as complicated because we're walking on the wet sand, and start getting hazardous because the weight of the ship is going to want to shift along with the wet sand as we're digging it out."

"So, we're going to have to stay alert to any sudden changes to the dig?" Sherry asked. "Got it!"

"One more factor," Dmitri added. "Our workforce is going to be severely limited with just six of us working at a time."

"Uh—there's eight of us here," Sherry pointed out the obvious.

"You're forgetting," he said, grinning. "We need to keep an eye out for any bug-eyed monsters showing up as well as keep an ear on the radio."

"Fu-u-u—!" Sherry started to curse, facepalming.

"So, we need to be able to shift off and spare each other so people can stand watch as they recover from the work," he explained.

"Plus, we should consider the best pattern to take when we start digging," Patty said, and Dmitri nodded in agreement. "It shouldn't take more than an hour to jot down the figures.

"Any particular area to dump the sand?" Cathy asked.

"Pretty much anywhere over there," Dmitri pointed. "Let's see if we can extend that sandbar out past behind the ship and try hem it in as much as we can from the water to give it some protection in case of storms."

"Oh, let's bury the place where I arrived at on this planet? The very spot that I was going to build a monument on someday in the future?" Sherry spat. Then she shrugged her shoulders as she set down her weapons away from the work area and picked up a shovel. "Works for me!"

Dmitri and Patty worked together on the ship to create the calculations about how long the task was going to take and the best approach to shoot for toward the ship's hull, while the rest shoveled the drier layers of sand and gravel, and they all quickly learned to not overload the buckets!

That crap was heavy! And this was just the dry sand. Once they got into the wet stuff, it was going to be murder! But they had completed leveling out down to the water table by the time Dmitri and Patty came back down. Who was going to take a rest next was decided by lot. Most everyone there was feeling the burn in their muscles since they had never done this sort of intense labor before, well, except for Sherry, who would often compete with Allen about setting up their equipment for the band's gigs.

"Please be sure to do a short radio check with Willy when you get up there," Dmitri told said as the girls went to the rock where all their bows and quivers had been stashed while they worked. "But don't talk too long. We don't want to give the bastards who brought us here any easy clues as to where we are."

"I remember," Jackie assure him.

She and Jessica went to the front of the ship and got onboard by climbing the large rock that had smashed its nose in and walked along the length of its side and entered via the Wheelhouse. Despite the door already being open and the boat's overhead canopy made for the Fijian environment, it was stifling hot in there already from the sun, unlike the shaded area of the beach where they had been working.

"Wow! He wasn't kidding about how freaking hot it was going to get in here!" Jackie muttered as Jessica yelped from the heat and rushed on past and through to the lounge. Jackie pulled the microphone off its hook and pressed the button.

"Drummer to Roadie for a radio check! How is it out there? Over," she said into the mike before releasing the button and there was a short squawk of noise.

"Roadie to Drummer!" came the reply. "Read you loud and clear, just like it was in Budapest. How do you read? Over!"

Oh, so we're playing that game? she thought, smirking. "Drummer to Roadie, reading you loud and clear, too. But you and I remember Budapest very differently. Over and out!" Jackie hung up the mike and quickly got out of the Wheelhouse.

"Toasty in there!" Jackie sighed, getting out of the heat and settling her bow and quivers alongside where Jessica had laid hers and picked up a pair of binoculars to scan the clifftops and over to the beach to the east. She tried to see if she could spot the longboat, but it evidently had gone around the bend of the shoreline. Wish someone had brought a drone that we could send up to get a view and a rough map of this place!

"You guys got out to Budapest!?" Jessica inquired from where she sat to rest up from their work.

"We did several gigs in Europe, but never in Budapest," Jackie replied. "Those were some lines from the Avengers movie. Dmitri and Willy had suggested we all use random pop culture references in the radio checks to make it hard for anyone out there to spoof our calls. If we constantly used the same calls back and forth, an enemy could just record our messages and replay them to make us think they were our guys." She left off the while the enemy captured and tortured our guys part of the conversation that had been told to them earlier. "This way, each of us has to prove we are who we're supposed to be. This is just a fun way for us to get through a terrible reality."

"That sucks!" the teen spat.

"Yes. Yes, it does," Jackie soberly agreed. "We shouldn't be here at all. We should be at your dad's island, giving a demonstration of our band and having a party to celebrate signing a recording deal. Or, we should be at the bottom of the ocean where that whirlpool sucked us down to drown. But we're not in either those places. Instead, we're here. And more importantly, we're alive! On the other hand, the fact that this ship's captain is dead means we're not safe here."

Jessica stared at her in shock.

"Dmitri and Willy were right: whatever brought us here wasn't natural," Jackie continued, sighing. "As much as I and my friends would like it to be otherwise, we all have to face the facts that some bad creatures did this to us. They want us here for a reason. Worse, they don't care whether we live or die in accomplishing their goals, so it's not for a noble cause as to why they did this.

"The girls and I had such dreams when we started our band," Jackie admitted. "We thought that traveling the world would be such a wonderful adventure—well, it did turn out to be an adventure, much like Willy had described it yesterday. 'An adventure is those moments we see in movies that if all that were happening to any of us, would be making our lives a lot like hell!'. Yeah, the 'wonderful' part tended to be rather hit or miss," she laughed. "But—despite the bad times we had, overall, it was wonderful. However, it did force us to grow up a bit. And pretty fast, too. That said, those experiences made us better prepared for whatever the world could throw at us."

"'Anything the world can throw at us'? Like this place!?" Jessica exclaimed incredulous.

"This is definitely new," Jackie agreed grinning. "But, yeah, if this had happened to us when we were just starting out, we'd all be dead in five minutes from the freak-out alone when we woke up yesterday. Like Willy said, somebody's upping their game."

"That was Dmitri who said that," the teen deadpanned.

"Was it?" Jackie asked, thinking back. "Oh, my bad. Well, anyway, I have to agree with him. Someone's cheating where it comes to this game. Yeah, we've been able to handle anything the world could throw at us, so it decided to get help from another world!" Jessica blinked in surprise, then laughed.

"Like the Boss Bitch at school, getting her friends to help bully us!" she said, realizing what Jackie was implied. "Oh, I so get that!" she laughed.

"Oh, you guys have that problem in Fiji, too?" Jackie asked.

"'Too'?" Jessica inquired.

"We have those in the States, growing up," Jackie explained. "I've heard such went on in the UK and Japan, as well. I guess that's a universal problem."

"Huh? I guess so, then," Jessica agreed, nodding.

Jackie took that pause in their conversation to scan the clifftops for anything that might be a threat to the castaways.

"Food is going to be a big concern," Jackie said, changing the subject. "We don't know anything about the fruits and vegetables on this world and we might end up killing the local constabulary if we try hunting game here. Assuming we can find any game."

"At least we've got food to last us a few weeks," Jessica replied. "We always stock up months of canned foods whenever we come out to Suva. While the refrigerator got thrown out when we crashed and ruined most of the food in it, the freezer in the lower hold is still working."

"There is that, at least," Jackie agreed. "But we're going to be here for far more than a coup—OHMYGOD!" she screamed and raised her binoculars to confirm what she thought she saw. It was worse than she initially thought. "Drop the ladder, Jessie! And get on the crossbow up there!" she ordered as she scrambled to climb out of the portside Wheelhouse door.

"EVERYBODY!" she screamed at the others working on the dig, "WE'VE GOT RAPTORS COMING! JURRASIC PARK RAPTORS! RUN!" Then she went to one of the other mounted crossbow contraptions. After quickly ratcheting the line back to its cocking position with the lever they had constructed for it, she loaded one of the thin, ten-foot long conduit pipes that had been scrounged into the groove. She then took aim toward the clifftops that were still filling up with numerous creatures. Arrows stared flying down from them. Fortunately, most flew way short of reaching the ship, but it illustrated one important difference from the Jurrasic Park stars—these things were even more intelligent than those in the movies had been!

"What do we do!?" Jessica asked, fearfully swiveling the weapon back and forth to aim at the clifftops, trying to decide which one to select. Jackie had already settled on one, and after taking care to account for the drop that the bolt would take due to gravity, she launched the ten-foot-long steel pipe. It sailed up with an unearthly hum, to spear one of the creatures and went on through it to nail another. Several of the hapless creatures' nearby companions screamed in outrage as the first one struck fell lifeless over the edge and down to the beach while the other had been knocked well back and out of her view.

The raptors responded with another volley of their own arrows. But despite having a tremendous height advantage, most of their arrows were falling well short, while those that did reach the ship landed a bit more than halfway along the length of the hull. And fortunately, none of the arrows struck the four people who were running full tilt to reach the Wheelhouse.

"Shoot!" she grimly replied as she paused to get over the surprise of her own success. Then she got working on the cocking lever to redraw the steel cable back to its cocking position again. Jessica released hers, but the pipe impacted the cliff face a foot below the top.

"And watch your aim!" Jackie added as she took aim on another cluster and let fly. This time, she cleanly killed another and severely wounded at least two more behind it, but she didn't see what happened with them as she got to work reloading her mounted crossbow.

Dmitri skidded to a halt by the third mounted crossbow and instantly started working to lever the line to its cocking position. Patty stopped alongside and whipped her personal bow from over her shoulder to fire off an arrow back at the creatures. Her first shot missed but it did show that their compound bows had the range to reach the raptors. A second arrow from her scored a hit, but the creature dropped its own weapon and retreated. When Dmitri was finished cocking the large mechanism, she paused to pick up one of the conduit pipes, ready to load it into the groove of his unit.

Sherry joined Jackie at that moment to help load and likewise, and Cathy went to aid Jessica. They each fired but missed this time. Sherry then took over cranking the big bow while Jackie did as Patti had done, pulling up her personal bow to fire back at the raptors. But she only got one shot off before Sherry had finished cocking the big bow, so she loaded the conduit pipe for Sherry.

"Pull up the ladder!" Dmitri called over his shoulder when he confirmed that Mrs. Anderson and Kaylee had finally reached the top and were safely onboard. "And somebody get on the horn to warn the others!" he added as he took aim with his device.

"What do I say!?" Mrs. Anderson screamed as Dmitri fired. Unfortunately, he only struck one of them, and it wasn't a clean kill, but the creature had been knocked off balance and fell to its death anyhow.

"Don't worry about the code!" Dmitri yelled back as he and Patty got busy recranking the crossbow. "Just tell them what's happening! But be sure to say 'over' when you're done talking! And wait for them to say 'over' before you answer them!"

The creatures were clearly upset at their losses with nothing to show for the efforts. Two groups formed from the rest of the raptor archers and began screaming at each other. Jackie perversely smiled and took careful aim and fired again into the center of one group. Dmitri must have had the same idea, because an instant after her bolt when sailing, his was on its way to strike the other group of arguing raptors. Hers ended up skewering two of the creatures, while his managed to nail three this time.

The effect was immediate. Both groups stopped arguing and looked at the ship while the archers all stopped at looked to what remained of the arguing raptors. A moment later, Jessica's bolt zipped by with a loud humming noise just in front of the long snout of one of the archers, yet another miss. Even so, it reminded the creatures that the enemy they had made was still able to shoot back at them, and war was still going on. So, as one, they all broke and ran.

"We—we won!?" Jessica cried.

"We did, indeed!" Jackie cheered.

"We survived! But this is just the start," Dmitri grimly replied.

"We killed at least nine or ten," Jackie pointed out.

"Didn't you see? They used bows and arrows and spears! They're sapients!" Dmitri countered.

"Yes, I did see that!" Jackie argued. "And we hurt them very badly! There were, what—? Like sixty up there?"

"More like seventy or seventy-five," Sherry spoke up.

"So, they know not to fuck with us anymore!" Jackie finished.

"Or they'll be back and know to be a lot more careful next time," Dmitri reminded her. "Lots of civilizations on Earth fell because they dropped their guard, thinking some old, defeated enemy wouldn't ever come back."

"He's got a point," Sherry softly muttered, making Jackie blink in surprise.

Damn, but he does! she morosely thought.

"Good move, shooting what looked to be their officers, though," Dmitri said grinning to her. "I had the same idea when I saw them start arguing among each other. Those were clearly the ones giving the orders."

"So, what do we do now?" Mrs. Anderson asked.

"We have no choice. We finish righting the boat," Dmitri replied. "Before, it was more of a luxury as it was a benefit. But now, it's vital to our survival! We have to make it way harder for them to reach us." He suddenly laughed.

"What's so funny?" Mrs. Anderson demanded.

"What I'm going to use as the code to call the others with," he said, going toward the Wheelhouse.

"Papa Bear to Goldilocks! Papa Bear to Goldilocks! Come in, please. Over!" Dmitri said into the mike. There was a considerable pause before the squawk signaled the incoming signal.

"By all rights that should be reversed, but Goldilocks here, Papa Bear!" Willy answered. "What the hell's going on over there? Over!"

"First it was 'ooh, and ahh'," Dmitri replied. "That's how it always starts. But then comes running. And screaming. Personally, I always thought Goldblum got that backwards. The screaming is always supposed to happen first. Over!"

"So, what was it!?" Willy demanded. Then belatedly, he called back with his, "over!" making Dmitri smile.

"A bunch of JP raptors," Dmitri said. "Only it gets worse. Over," he finished.

"JP raptors, you say!? Let me guess, they had a t-rex with them? Or a Spinosaurus? Over!"

"No, worse than either of those," Dmitri replied. "They had bows and arrows! These fuckers are evolving! Watch yourselves coming back here. They might have stinger missiles and jet aircraft by the time you arrive. Over."

"SERIOUSLY!?" Willy screamed, and Dmitri chuckled. The others laughed, too.

"Seriously, bro," Dmitri said, not waiting for Willy to remember the proper radio protocol. "They might even have nukes by then. Fortunately, no one here got hurt, thanks to the superior weaponry we had today. However, with them evolving, tomorrow is questionable. We managed to kill at least six of them before the others ran off. But we can expect them to come at us again sometime in the future. Hopefully, they won't have a TARDIS with them when they do. Over."

"Fred here," Mr. Anderson cut in. "What's the plan for securing the boat and keep yourselves safe?"

"Keep digging for now and try getting the ship turned over again," Dmitri replied, then winced as he belatedly realized he included the radio keyword in the conversation.

"How much more digging do you have to do?—Over!"

"We've made pretty good progress so far," Dmitri reported. "Assuming no one gets hurt from doing the work or hurt from any more attacks, we should be ready to try shifting the boat in two or three Earth days. How are things with you guy? Over," he finished.

"There are several places where we can try to get into the inland starting about three kilometers up from the ship," Fred continued. "After that, there are plenty of places for beach access. We're about twenty kilometers along. And—we've all agreed to start on back to you to help out with things there! Over!"

"Roger your recall. Unfortunately, those easy accesses you found can be used by the raptors to get to us on the beach, too!" Dmiti said. "They know their home a hell of a lot better than any of us! And we'll still need to know what the lay of the land is to our west, in case that route is a vulnerability to us, too. Over."

"Understood," Fred said after several minutes. "We'll work out any crew changes when we get back, then. Willy says try not to shoot us when we get back there. Over."

"We'll try, but no promises. We've got a lot of jumpy people here with itchy trigger fingers," Dmitri said, grinning. "See you soon. Papa Bear out!"

"That fills me with so much confidence," Willy quipped over the radio.

"Better than filling you with a bunch of holes," Dmitri shot back.

"Roger that. Out!"

"We'd better find a way to recover those pipes," Dmitri muttered as he hung up the mike….

[Equestria: 994AB Day 297]
"And those raptors were only the first of the many disasters we ran into there," Jackie said as she finished her tale.

"'JP raptors'?" Twilight Sparkle inquired. "Can you draw one of them, please?" she asked, levitating over a piece of paper, an ink bottle, and a quill.

"I'll—try," Jackie replied, taking the quill. "Unfortunately, most of my artistic talents went into music and not drawing."

Even so, with her hyper-speed, she was able to begin making marks on the page and successfully stopped herself from making marks that would have messed up the effort. Celestia's eyes widened in alarm at seeing how Jackie perform that task and still hold a normal conversation with Twilight as she worked.

"They were bipedal," Jackie tried to explain. "Their—foot bones—were longer in proportion to their legs than mine are now, the shins were slightly shorter. They had an inner toe claw that was enormous compared to the other toes. Long stiff tail, slim bodies with deep toros. Their arms were really thin, but long, and strong, with three very long, clawed fingers and an opposing thumb to match. The ones from my world's past didn't have thumbs. Long thin necks, and finally saurian-style heads with long snouts and vicious-looking teeth.—"

"What do thumbs have to do for making them special?" Twilight asked.

"These guys were tool makers and users, much like us humans," Jackie told them. "Without thumbs, you can't grasp anything, and you can't build shit without them. You simply can't have a civilization without thumbs."

Hammer and Flitter both noisily cleared their throats at her, and when Jackie looked at them, the earth pony stallion and pegasus mare made a show of holding their eating utensils in their hooves. Jackie paused in her sketching and laid her ears back.

"I—I'm—going to have another freak-out, aren't I?" she quietly muttered with a nervous gulp.

"You're forgetting we ponies are equipped with magic, Jackie," Celestia stepped in. "Holding things in our hooves and wings are second nature to unicorns as we generally rely on our horns to manipulate our environment, but for earth ponies and pegasi, it's their primary skill."

"Don't worry, Jackie. You were just as surprised back when we first met at the restaurant, but you found it a fascinating feature about the ponies." Gandon told her.

"You had me do all sorts of tricks to hold and pick up things for hours that first day," Hammer said, laughing.

"And I bet she's going to ask you do that all over again," Gus added snickering, and Hammer's face fell into a dreadful expression.

"Y—you are—aren't you?" Hammer worriedly asked.

"I—I guess I shouldn't," she replied. "I apologize if it offended you."

"Oh, it was no offense," Hammer quickly said. "It was rather amusing to see that amazed expression of yours as you had me do all those things—for the first couple of hours. After the third or fourth hour, though, it was getting a little tiresome."

"I did that for so long!?" Jackie exclaimed.

"Nyah! I'm just pulling your hoof—paw—foot, whatever," Hammer chuckled. "You came to accept the idea that earth ponies had magic in our hooves in like fifteen minutes! We're all just messing with you!"

"You've got plenty of magic, yourself, Jackie!" Big Joe spoke up. "The way you're able to zip around the room so fast, to anyone here, it's almost as if you're teleporting, which is something that only unicorns can do. The first time you showed up in Manehattan, ponies were frightened because you were appearing and disappearing out of nowhere! You thought we were afraid of you because you're a predatory species. But when you first saw the griffons lining up outside my door, you walked up to them, and nopony even batted an eye at you."

"It's true," Fireplate affirmed.

"We're all just glad you're back with us, safe and sound," Gus assured her.

"Th-thank you," she whispered, smiling at them. She took a few more seconds to work on her drawing, then with a final critical look over it, she nodded in satisfaction.

"Something like this," Jackie said, passing the drawing to the purple unicorn.

Twilight looked at the drawings. One was shown from the side, another from the front, and a third was from the quarter front view holding a drawn bow and arrow.

"They look almost like some kind of land drake," she said.

"No, Twilight, these aren't anything like our dragons, although there is a passing resemblance," Celestia said, taking the drawing into her magic aura to look for herself. "These are—more bird-like, and almost—reptilian. I have seen fossils of creatures like these."

"Wait—you have dragons? Really!?" Jackie exclaimed.

"Don't you remember, Jackie?" Gandon asked. "When you worked at the restaurant, Gus and them would always introduce the music they got from Equestria, the Minotaurs, the Dragonlands, Yakyakistan, as well as the Griffon Empire."

"No, I'm sorry, I don't remember any of that," she replied. "But minotaurs, too? And what are Yakyakies?"

"Yaks," Celestia replied.

"Wow," Jackie muttered in awe. "Your world is just chock full of mythical creatures!"

"Says the creature who is a myth in this world," Celestia quipped, smirking at her.

"Touché," Jackie laughed. "Anyhow, those things were very much like the velociraptors, a species of dinosaurs that used to be on my home world, more than sixty-five million years ago, before an asteroid wiped them out," Jackie explained. "Some differences from those, to be sure, but a strong resemblance. Velociraptor, utahraptor, or dakotaraptor, depending on which person you ask in paleontology. There was a series of old movies made about some nutjob scientists bringing them back to life to make money off of a theme park called 'Jurassic Park', and most of the movies had 'Jurassic Park' in the title. Thus, the label of 'JP raptors' for the real stars of those films. It's ironic that they got the science wrong when they made the first movie. They were supposed to be velociraptors, but the real dinosaurs were only stood as high as Twilight's shoulders. But the creatures made for the movies turned out to be precisely the right size for a couple other species that were found after the first couple of movies were made! Way too late to fix the dialogue referring to them.

"These guys were close to the movie creatures' size, a bit between the velociraptor and utahraptor. They came up to about here on me," she explained, holding her hand up to the top of her chest.

"And they were tool-using beings?" Celestia asked.

"Yes, they were tool-using," Jackie confirmed. "And trap-making, too! Dmitri was right! They were very intelligent, and not in the way that a pet dog or cat can be smart—they were human-level smart! Lethal without even needing to be there!"

"I—see," Celestia said, passing the sketch back to Twilight.

"Well, my little ponies," she continued, then paused at Jackie's startled reaction. "And—my little griffons and cheetah—" Celestia began again, only for Jackie to visibly flinch at that, too. "I'm afraid it is time to finish our meal here. It's past time that we got you examined by a specialist, Jackie, to make sure you're not still infected by Dark Magic, and to make sure you're not being adversely affected by your own speed either," she finished, standing up….