Author's Note

I intend to give Island Adventure a Go Go it's proper conclusion as soon as I can before stepping away. There isn't much left to tell of it, at least. Just one last chapter and maybe a postlude if I can't fit it in.

They'll come as I finish them rather than how I've been doing it so far.

Island Adventure a Go Go: Part 10

They soon made their way to the high-rise that Sloop sensed the key to the bridge in. He quickly turned back to the group. “We don’t really know what might be in there, so I feel like I should volunteer myself to go in alone.”

Crazy Joe flinched at that, then made a string of serious-toned grunts. Applejack nodded her head and pointed a hoof at their squad’s leader. “I think I get the jist of what he means, and he’s right! This has to be the worst kinda place to go in alone at! Anything that lives in there’s gotta be the best at huntin’ in there!”

Sloop crossed his arms and made a sincere expression. “Exactly! If we all go in there knowing absolutely nothing and get ambushed, we’ll all be gonners, and who knows how everyone else will be able to cope without us! If I only have my own back to worry about, I should be able to maneuver a lot more easily and handle a sneak attack better. What’s more, if I use one of Miss June’s beacons, I should be able to relay anything I learn back to you guys and raise our odds of success however I can.”

Applejack had to (silently) admit that Sloop had a good point. Miss June conjured her archival construct and with a few rapid taps manifested a beacon. She took it in both hands and approached Sloop with it. “You’ll need this if you want to communicate your findings. And if you… Need help.” Sloop stared into his help’s face for a moment. He reached for the beacon, then pulled back after touching Miss June’s hand. The both of them turned away, blushing.

Placing his beacon into his pocket, he turned towards the doorway of the building, summoned his arrowguns to his raised hands, and entered the uncharted territory alone. A couple of minutes later, Miss June’s archival construct let out a noise and Sloop’s voice came through. “Hello? Do you copy?”

Applejack trotted up to Miss June, who lowered her construct with a motion from her hands. “Breaker, breaker, loud and clear, ten-four, roger-wilco.”

Sloop paused for a moment. “Um… What does all that mean?”

Applejack’s eyes widened, then she shook her head before placing a hoof on her temple. “I have no idea… Felt like something came over me for a sec…”

“Well… I just wanted you to know that I’m in the entry hall and nothing seems unusual so far. Big front desk, slate flooring, a few tacky paintings and statues. There’s an elevator right here, I think I can feel the key somewhere on the twentieth floor, roughly.”

The construct let out a ding and then a few minutes of easy-listening music. Then another ding out before the music faded out against the taps of Sloop’s boots. Suddenly, they stopped. “Oh… no…”

Applejack’s eyes widened. “What? What is it, Sloop?”

“It’s… terrible…! Absolutely horrific!”

“What? What is it?”

“It has to be one of the worst sights I’ve ever had to behold!”

“What is it for Celestia’s sake? What?”

“It’s… It’s…

“An office! Full of… cubicles!”

Even Crazy Joe betrayed a shiver at those words. Miss June, meanwhile, was trying her hardest to keep her lunch down as she was beset by a rapid chain of flashbacks from a period in her life she preferred to avoid thinking about. Sloop finished with a series of deep breaths to center himself. “Alright, the key should be about seven rows in at the third nearest cubicle. I’m going in.”

Sloop’s footsteps rang out at an even tempo against an eerily silent background, the observers only able to imagine what might be going on. Suddenly, a ruckus came through along with a grunt from Sloop. Then, the distinctive sound of his arrowguns letting off shots came from the vibrating glass. Applejack extended her neck to get closer to the construct. “What is it? Sloop! Come in!”

Thankfully, they could hear Sloop letting off a heavy breathing. “I… Don’t know. It felt like something came out of nowhere, really fast! Rushed me low, swept me off my feet. I got back up as quick as I could and let out some retaliatory shots, but I didn’t see it or where it went!”

Moments later, after sloop had successfully slowed his breathing, they heard the slow, gingerly taps of his footsteps as he likely advanced while carefully maintaining a cautious vigilance of his surroundings, the image of him with his arrowguns extended evident in the minds of all listeners. As quickly as before, another ruckus rang out followed by some shots from his arrowguns.

“I’m still okay!” Sloop spoke before anyone could prompt him. “This time, I might have something! I heard a rapid, sharp scurrying that could have only come from more than four legs! It’s got to be some kind of bug, another big one like all the others we’ve been finding across the island’s zones! But despite being bigger than any normal bug, it’s definitely got to be small enough to retreat from sight as quickly as it- URK!”

A sharp disturbance following Sloop’s grunt rang out from the construct, then silence. Miss June floated it back up to herself to inspect it, and her aggrieved expression did not ease Applejack or Crazy Joe. “The signal’s gone… Something must have happened to the beacon…!”

Applejack took a drawn-out breath, then with a furrowed brow let out a deep snort. She trotted towards the doors of the building, then turned back to the others. “I’m going in! Sloop needs us, and that’s all I need to know!”

The somewhat impressionable Crazy Joe enthusiastically rang out some tones beating against his chest plate before giving an enthusiastic cry. The mare and man continued to the door, but the woman stood stiffly as they left her behind. Realizing, Applejack craned her neck back with a raised eyebrow, and Miss June cringed under her scrutinizing gaze, turning her face away to avoid it. Applejack’s expression drooped at that, and she let out a tired, if not disappointed sigh before turning back and marching ahead.

The foyer was as Sloop described it. Fancy enough, but only meeting a standard typical to places like this. Applejack stopped in front of one of the elevators and Crazy Joe pushed the call button. Paradoxically after a long boring stretch and before they realized, the duo found themselves in the wide space positively cluttered with thin, fabric walls creating something resembling the labyrinth they’d visited barely a day previously.

At the sight of this, Applejack took a deep shaky breath before proceeding followed by her really large, somewhat silent shadow. “Seven across, three down. Seven across, three down. Seven across, three down. Sweet Celestia, how could anycreature work a day in a place like this? And some ponies spend their whole lives like that… Here?”

Crazy Joe, despite being very on-edge, comprehended and agreed with every word his present company was muttering with his surprisingly refined listening skills. He was glad to delegate most of the responsibility of making calls to somepony else despite his earlier enthusiasm.

In fact, his head snapped to the side the moment he heard some faint but powerful movement in the vicinity. Then, he twisted his whole body the other way when he heard a similar disturbance in another direction, this time getting the attention of Applejack. “What’re y'all…” But with a yelp, Applejack was cut off as something hit her legs as hard as a whiplash, sending her falling onto her side.

Gut instinct kicking in, Crazy Joe smoothly adjusted his footing and assumed a wide, low stance. He felt something hit him low and reflexively kicked outward, absorbing the blow and toppling the would-be assailant instead.

Applejack finally managed to stand herself up and her eyes went wide momentarily at the long, pale creature that briefly squirmed in place on the floor before flipping itself over and dashing out of sight like a bolt of white lightning. “I know that varmint! We always get a barnful of ‘em every corn harvest season! They probably have a fancy-like name Twilight could tell ya’ in a heartbeat, but let's call ‘em silverfish.” Then she looked down and held a hoof to her lower jaw. “But honestly, I don’t get the short name either. They’re a bit more of a tin-can shade to me, and they definitely ain’t fish…”

Suddenly, a loud bang let off deep among the cubicles along with a bright red flash. Applejack stretched her neck out and cocked an ear. “Wasn’t that Sloop’s arrowguns?” Crazy Joe gave a hard nod with an affirmative-sounding grunt before the both of them took off down a row, making a hard turn towards the cubicle where the flash came from.

They stopped when they found Sloop casually sitting on top of a desk at the back of an enclosed cubicle with an arrowgun in hand. Applejack gave a lopsided smile. “Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes! I don’t reckon you’ve found the key to the bridge?”

Uncharacteristically, Sloop gave a forlorn sigh before raising his free hand, making a clink with the key ring around his finger. “Yep. Of all the good it does me now…”

Now, Applejack’s patience and good humor found itself tested at this sudden unfamiliarity with a friend she’d grown very familiar with over the past few days. She stomped and thrust her head at Sloop. “Aw, what of it! Ya’ had all of us worried sick! Thinkin’ some kind of boogin had ya’ll in its jaws, and now we find ya sittin’ and sighin’ with the loot in hand! So what gives?”

At that outburst, Sloop scoffed and rolled his eyes. “From the ruckus I heard, I assume you’ve met the bugs in this place?”

Applejack raised an eyebrow at this, then hacked before spitting to the side. “Just a bunch of lousy silverfish! They’re fast, and they know how to tackle ya’ down, but not much else! So what about the bugs?”

Sloop stared out the corner of his eye and placed his chin in the crux of his thumb and forefinger, clearly ruminating over that new bit of information. “Silverfish, eh? I thought I spotted a glint of a familiar color out of the corner of my eye.” Then he hung his head with a sigh and placed both hands on his knees. “There’d be nothing to this if it were just a bunch of quick and sturdy wormy things.”

Applejack was about to retort with something sarcastic, until Sloop reached down his leg to pull up the leg of his pants, then she recoiled with a dropped jaw. At the side of Sloop’s calf was a wicked-looking gash, with some skin hanging off by a flap. But the real concern was the flesh around this injury. The skin around the circumference had turned a sickly green, and from the wound itself was spreading several visible bright red veins.

Crazy Joe’s eyes went wide and he immediately lumbered forward and bent his face close, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Applejack, with an eye narrowed and a hoof raised, motioned at the wounded warrior. “Poison?” As the seasoned bomb elemental looked back at her and nodded, she composed herself and gulped.

She was about to grab her hat from off her head, but Sloop groaned and waved the thought off. “Don’t waste anything over that! Just listen.” Applejack took her neutral stance and trotted forward. Sloop sighed and craned his gaze upward. “It happened about the third time I was knocked down. Another one followed in succession, but it was clearly different from the others, likely extruding sharp, venomous spines. When I flinched, I flung the beacon hard out of my own grip and it shattered. I managed to limp to the key with reckless abandon and get myself off the ground, but by the time you two made it up here, my whole leg had gone almost completely numb! I’m not sure how many of the poison ones are among them relative to the other silverfish, but I got off lucky! If one gets you in the torso or face while you’re down, it could be deadly!”

Applejack made a breathy groan as she turned her head back to the entrance of the cubicle. “If only I had my spray from the farm…! Not like I’d bet on it working on these super-silver whatsits! Just short of traps, how’re we supposed to attack something that’s gone as soon as we attack where it is? It’s not like we can attack where they will be, right?”

However, at that, Crazy Joe’s eyes went wide and he snapped his fingers. He lumbered past Applejack and took a place at the entrance of the cubicle. He looked around for a second before softly (as he could) stepping out into the row and bending down to the floor. He pressed his palm down and a bright red and pale yellowish half-sphere was left behind before he traced a circle of runes of the same interchanging colors around it. Finally, he let down a doubled length of his chain and rattled it for a minute before quickly pulling back into the cubicle.

A few moments later, the magic mine he placed ignited with a muffled blast as the explosion and all its force seemed to have been concentrated into a pillar-like phenomenon that flashed straight up for a brief moment before fading away as quickly. Another moment after that, the silverfish that triggered the blast fell back down, blackened and letting off smoke.

Sloop gave a smirk and nodded at that. “Some good old fashioned landmines definitely work. And thanks for using that rune array to keep us non-bombers out of the collateral damage! But do you think you could apply one to a bunch of them as we make our way out?”

At this, Crazy Joe’s brow arched. And he shrugged while grunting in the negative. Sloop just sighed and shook his head. “It figures. You’re certainly a magnificent warrior, but you’re still a mid-classer. You’ve still got a long way to go on your journey, not to say I don’t trip and stumble every once and a while on mine…”

Sloop forlornly looked down and gave his hurt leg a nudge, making it swing limply. However, his eyes suddenly went wide as he caught sight of Applejack’s working orange-coated legs. He stared for a moment, mumbling under his breath and fidgeting with his hand. Applejack twisted her mouth after this went on for a few more moments then she liked. She turned her head, looking at Sloop from the side as she crossed her front legs. “I feel bad ‘n all for yellen’ without knowin’ what happened, but I ain’t gonna let that excuse you from bein’ cheeky all of a sudden!”

Sloop scrunched his expression, shaking his head and waving his hand. “No! I think I might have the beginnings of another idea! But what else…” He trailed his gaze throughout the enclosing space surrounding him. Then he stared at Crazy Joe for a moment, then gave a look at the crispy silverfish and snapped his fingers with a smile. “I think I’ve got it!” Held up his arms. “Hey, big guy, would you mind helping me onto our pony friend’s back?” Crazy Joe paused for a moment, sparing a look at Applejack, who nodded.

Crazy Joe lumbered over to Sloop and picked him up with a slightly frightening ease, turning around to set him onto the back of Applejack, who raised an eyebrow at this development. “Okay… Now what?”

Sloop closed his eyes, abruptly took a deep breath and relaxed his body. Then he straightened his posture while tightening his core, clasping his palms together as one hand glowed blue and the other glowed red. Finally, he separated them and fully extended his arms to trace a circle of runes in front of the two of them, before it reoriented itself, floating to a horizontal position encircling the pony and their mounted human.

Applejack swung her head with a curious expression, sternly regarding the luminous symbols surrounding her despite their proven reliability. “I think I’ll just let you explain how this is gonna be different from the last time you used these rune thingums, cause’ aren’t you running on fumes?”

Sloop relaxed more casually as his magic settled into place. “This shouldn’t make that much of a difference, because what I did right before was an exercise in the major fist of wisdom. Whereas Slash’s fist of discipline expressed through his self-restraint enables him to use magic far beyond his capacity but once a day, this technique lets me get the most out of the minimal amount of magic after performing a predetermined routine. Only a shame that I’d never have the opportunity in the heat of an encounter, but an expanded arsenal is an expanded arsenal.”

Sloop’s face fell as he turned his gaze downward. “My loss against Oro finally made me know how much I still have to learn.” Then he raised his head with a more serene expression. “But seeing Kris’s duel against Slash had me understand how much there is for me to learn!” Then, he looked at Crazy Joe before raising an arm and summoning an arrowgun. “Still, there isn’t much that finely-executed creativity can’t beat. And I’ve always had that in droves!”

Crazy Joe flinched as Sloop pointed his weapon at him, knowing its sting firsthand. Sloop let off a shot, but right before Applejack was going to buck off her new rider, injured or not, the bullet stopped in midair right at the threshold created by the ring of runes.

Applejack raised a curious hoof at the frozen bullet. “What in the hey is this all about?”

Sloop finally gave a smile as he raised both his twin weapons. “Master Noxus used to tell me about arrowgun specialists who could do all kinds of crazy stuff with their ammunition, even make their bullets hang in the air until a foe crosses the path it points to! I’ve only recently gotten the knack of using mine in more elaborate ways, so I’m using this rune array to improvise. It’s basically a trap, and in many ways a means of striking first!”

Sloop raised both weapons this time and shot more bullets out at different angles, surrounding himself and his willing mount with a circle of eight. “If any of those bugs get near, one of these should send it back! I’ll keep three loaded just in case.”

Applejack’s expression brightened as she considered this new factor in their situation. She gave a hearty nod with a smile and looked at Crazy Joe, pointing her hoof to the exit. “Sounds to me that we’re ready to move out and regroup with the others! Ready big guy?” Crazy Joe’s eyes brightened and he gave an enthusiastic grunt, Applejack trotting back out into the open office as he followed behind.

Once they were nearly to the end of the rows of cubicles, Applejack and Sloop flinched as a bright flash of one of his bullets went off. Before they knew it, a silverfish had been flung back, its legs weakly twitching. While they were still reeling from this, three more bullets were released from their places, blasting away the same number of silverfish in an instant, with one of the downed creatures having a row of sharp spines across both sides of its narrow body.

Sloop loudly gulped. “That’s… Four gone in less than a minute, pretty much half our defense. This may have been a bad idea. So… run!” Applejack took off in a gallop with Crazy Joe barreling behind as fast as he could.

One more silverfish was blasted before they finally made it to the elevators. Sloop repeatedly mashed on the call button with a pinky extending adjacently from his grip on one of his weapons. “Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on!” Suddenly, the last two of the bullets flew from their place, and the encircling array disappeared. Sloop raised his arrowguns out of anticipation. “That’s it! We’re vulnerable! Stay alert, people!”

Their salvation seemed to come when the bell from one of the elevator doors sounded, but seemed to have been paired with misfortune as this moment of distraction allowed another silverfish to fly across the floor, sweeping Applejack’s feet from under her and causing both of them to hit the ground. When Sloop opened the eyes shut by his cringe response to the fall, he just happened to spy another silverfish looming out from behind a corner desk, one with the poison spines.

It took off right when the doors to their side opened up, but when it was halfway to them a second later, it somehow paused. The oversized wormlike bug spasmed, as if in great pain. Then, it took off again, this time in retreat. As Crazy Joe helped the pony and his fellow warrior back up, he could swear he could hear all of them rushing away from this space, along with something else with a faint ambiance that made his ears itch.

When Applejack and Sloop were still regaining their senses, the closer elevator let out a tone before opening up. Noticing that it was empty, Sloop realized that this was the one they called. Applejack turned slightly and saw that the occupant from the one before was Miss June, who had a handheld version of her archival construct high up with a couple of floating chip-like panes vibrating slightly.

When she noticed all the eyes on her, she timidly looked away and pulled in her arms, the vibrating from her construct ceasing. “Um… When I was alone, I thought about all the dangerous bugs we met here and remembered an old trick I used to do to chase out the roaches from the apartments I lived in….”

Sloop brightened up at that. “Ultrasonic vibrations! Of course! And with an archival construct, it’d be easy to figure out how to adjust for the size!”

Crazy Joe coughed to get everyone’s attention, then started motioning to the elevators repeatedly. Sloop’s eyes went wide with comprehension. “He’s right! That trick might work, but not for long! We have what we came for, now we need to get out of here!” The lot of them were sent scrambling. All crowding into the same elevator, sucking in their guts as the doors closed.