The cave was a warm, wonderful nineteen degrees inside. Tarnish wasn’t quite awake yet, he hadn’t slept much, nor would he. Daylight was in short supply and he had to take advantage of it, exploit every moment of it, because daylight was a resource like any other. In the available dim light, Daring Do had a pencil in her lips, and she was adding their new supplies to a checklist. Vinyl was reheating a collection of rocks stored in the edges of the cave.

As for Rainbow, she was unwrapping one of the 4K bars. She gave it a sniff, shrugged, and then crammed it into her mouth. One ear twitched a bit, and then Rainbow’s face looked as though it was imploding. Her cheeks sucked in, her lips vanished into her mouth, and her lower eyelids were tugged down from her eyes. Through it all, she remained very still, conserving her body heat and energy for other things.

“Silly pegasus did not add water, as the package clearly directs,” Daring Do murmured to herself.

Determined, Rainbow did not give up, not now, not after Daring Do had said something. Somehow, she kept going, kept chewing, locked in a grim battle with the dehydrated 4K ration bar that contained everything a pony needed for a day of heavy labour or survival. When Rainbow eyed her cup of water, Daring Do shook her head.

“It’ll only expand in your mouth tenfold, you silly pegasus.”

A very dry sounding whimper escaped Rainbow Dash and she kept chewing, but she put the rest of the 4K ration bar down beside her, tucked away in its shiny foil wrapper. Rainbow’s collapsing muzzle appeared as though it would just vanish up into her ushanka. Daring Do, not entirely heartless, patted Rainbow on the back to encourage her to keep going.

“Vinyl… we need to go and see if we can find those big gun shells from the Endeavour,” Tarnish said to his mute friend.

But it was not Vinyl who responded.

“Do you have an idea that you would like to share, Mister Teapot?” Daring Do was now giving Tarnish her full attention, and she gave Rainbow another encouraging pat on the back as Rainbow tried to choke down a tiny swallow of her dehydrated breakfast.

“Well, Vinyl is skilled at making pyrotechnic devices for concerts,” Tarnish began in a low, somewhat scratchy voice that was an indicator that he needed water and to wake up more. “Those shells, they’re explosive rounds, meant for shooting rogue dragons, sky jellies, and stuff like that. I wanna set up an improvised minefield around our camp to keep out automatons. We gotta hurry though, and strip what we can from the Endeavour. At some point, those mechanoid bastards are going to come and investigate the ship and if we’re there, we’ll be in trouble.” He shivered as he thought of what he found aboard Ol’ Gertie.

“So, you wish to put on a show, I take it.” A cruel smile moved like a glacier over Daring’s muzzle, and she nodded. “I approve. Eat up, Rainbow, we’re going to be draft ponies today, because let’s face it, we’re not good for much else.” She gave Rainbow a hearty whack on the back to help her fellow pegasus keep breathing.

“Vinyl, do you have anything to say? Anything at all? I know how you get during a crisis when you think everypony is too busy to read what you write on your slate.” Tarnish began brewing himself and the others some hot tea. He eyed Vinyl, worried.

The albino mare pulled out her slate, some chalk, and then wrote down a few words in cheerful, yellow letters. I’m not fine, but I’m managing. Thanks for thinking of me.

“Daring, Rainbow, it’s real easy to neglect Vinyl in trying times.” Tarnish turned to look at them both. “What I’m trying to say is, she has the same needs as the rest of us. She wants to talk and be talked to. Don’t take her for granted, or you’ll hear about it from me. Daring, you might technically be in charge, but I’m in charge of Vinyl’s well-being, because I don’t want Octavia and Maud slapping me silly and lecturing me when we get home. If we get home. If we somehow survive this. I’ll have a lot to answer for and those two are higher up in my chain of command than you are.”

“I have to be honest, it completely slipped my mind,” Daring Do confessed, and the pencil hanging from the corner of her lips bobbed up and down with her words. “Very well then, Mister Teapot, from this moment forward, you are the morale officer. The only responsible way to deal with this is to delegate responsibility.”

“I’m fine with that,” Tarnish replied as he added a little boiling water to a bowl full of crumbled 4K ration bar. He stirred it with a small metal spoon, sniffed it, and then wished he hadn’t. It smelled like mushroom soup… but not quite. It was… worse somehow. He sniffed again, trying to identify the odd, musky smell. Recoiling, he held his bowl away from him and shuddered in disgust. “This smells just like semen!”

Smacking her dried, wrinkled lips, Rainbow Dash nodded, and in a very parched-sounding, raspy voice she said, “Tastes like it too. All those years of learning how to swallow without gagging just paid off.”

It was still dark in the valley, and the sun was just now starting to peek over the jagged peaks of the mountains. It hadn’t warmed up yet, the sun had not brought its blessed warmth and light, but they didn’t have the luxury of waiting until it was warm. Daring Do’s compass and thermometer said that it was about sixty degrees below zero.

Vinyl was tucked onto the sledge beside Tarnish, getting a free ride, because every calorie mattered at this point, and there was much to do. The two pegasus ponies leaned into the ropes binding them to the sledge and pulled with all their might to make progress through the crusted, frozen snow.

It was a brutal, bitter, miserable experience. At these temperatures, it wasn’t safe to urinate or defecate outside, as any bare skin exposed to the cold would freeze in seconds. All of that had to be dealt with indoors, inside of their shelter. Tarnish was still recovering from the incident, the unexpected intimacy of it all. One tended not to think about the nuts and bolts of one’s relationships with females or the potential complications involved.

For Tarnish, it was an eye-opening experience unlike any other, and he didn’t know how to cope.

They were stripping everything they could from the wreck of the Endeavour. Daring Do wanted to make one trip, just one, no matter how difficult it might be to pull the sledge. Vinyl had already made the sledge a little larger, and had given it better makeshift runners from the metal deck railing. While she worked on the sledge, Tarnish was responsible for lifting Daring Do and Rainbow Dash into difficult to reach places in the wreck so they could fetch supplies.

The thirty-six millimetre autocannon shells posed a problem, and Tarnish was certain that they would need to make multiple trips, even though Daring was adverse to doing so. The ship’s register showed that they had three hundred and thirty high yield explosive rounds. As he lifted Rainbow and Daring to various decks, he did a little math, or tried to. Each round weighed one and three quarters of a pound, which meant that they had at least—

“Hey, Tarnish, catch!” Rainbow kicked off a crate of canned goods and Tarnish snapped to attention just in the nick of time. The crate of canned goods held sixty four cans and each can held how much? Maud had tried to make him remember stuff like this, and he slacked off because Maud was excellent at remembering this stuff, so he never felt the need to pay much attention. He flogged his brain and demanded an answer while he levitated the crate in his telekinesis.

Each can tended to weigh about ten and a half ounces, with some cans like those for soup or chili tipping in at forteen to sixteen ounces. So the crate he now held had to be a minimum of forty two pounds, and the more that Tarnish did the math, the more he realised that Daring Do had some unreasonable expectations.

She was the pony of action, and she paid little attention to details. Tarnish too, was a pony of action, and he left the little details to Maud most of the time, but she wasn’t here right now. Maud and Octavia both were the ponies who kept track of the little details. It dawned upon Tarnish that now, he was the pony that would have to keep track of the details, and this meant keeping Daring Do’s expectations held in check. The problem with holding Daring Do’s expectations in check was that she became quite snippy when things didn’t go her way and the pony reining her in was bound to suffer.

He did not look forward to disappointing or upsetting his boss. In fact, the whole experience left Tarnish feeling just a little bit whiny and petulant, because he didn’t like being forced into the role of being the responsible one. It didn’t feel very fair, but then again, this whole situation was unfair and extraordinary measures were going to have to be taken to survive all of this.

It still hadn’t occurred to Tarnish that he was going to have to finish growing up at some point.

The sun was over the peaks now, and it had warmed up a bit, but it was still below zero. Daring Do was in an awful mood, because Tarnish had been right, and Tarnish was in an awful mood, for the very same reason. Everypony was already feeling a little weary, but what few precious hours of daylight they had would be spent working, making trips back and forth between their cave and the wreck of the Endeavour.

There was also the matter of drudgery without reward. There would be no hot baths, no showers, no reasons to keep going other than survival. Tarnish began to wonder how they were going to pull through this, because the grim reality was setting in and he knew that he was already having problems.

Just thinking about it made Tarnish want to start bawling like a foal, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t cry, or whine, or bitch about the situation, because whatever he was feeling, the others were feeling too. No more comfort, no more security, no more fun… this was all they had to look forward to now. Drudgery and survival. Every day would be exactly the same, and every night as well.

Tarnish only knew one thing for certain. The end, in whatever form it came, would be a relief.

Author's Notes:

Action! Adventure! Drudgery?