Rainbow Dash didn’t want to wake up.
Only pain was there to greet her when lucidity unfortunately returned to her. Every inch of her body ached from head to hoof, and a deeply set pain centered around her muzzle. Her tongue ran over bloody, chipped teeth, and her entire mouth tasted like copper. Little by little, she once more came to, only to take in her different surroundings.
She’d been tied up since last she was conscious, and she’d been moved somewhere else. A quick glance upwards revealed a ceiling of loose palm fronds in a wooden frame, so she figured she must’ve been moved to one of the lean-tos the pirates were using to keep their supplies dry. At least they’d given her that much courtesy after beating her unconscious earlier, especially since she could smell rain in the air. Come morning, the island would be drowning in rain and deafening thunder.
Her hooves had been bound, so she couldn’t move those, and one of her wings had been tied to the knot around her hooves, preventing her from moving it and keeping it at an uncomfortable angle. At the very least, that left her with one wing free to use and manipulate, so she used that to feel over her face and assess the damage. Every touch sent sharp stabs of pain deep into her skull, however. Squall must’ve left more than bruises; she figured from touch alone that her nose had been shattered, and she was pretty sure she’d swallowed a few teeth. There was a sizable gap in the front left corner of her mouth, and she winced as her tongue slid over the shattered root of a tooth. So much for her perfect celebrity smile.
She wondered what Rarity would think. She simply knew that a crooked smile would be a minor sticking point with a mare obsessed with beauty and perfection. Hopefully she could just be more awesome after she got away from these pirates to make up for it.
Which was going to prove exceptionally difficult, she just knew. Even if she wasn’t bound and tied up like a prize, the flickering and dancing ethereal lights at her periphery reminded her that she was heavily concussed and dizzy. Simply moving without falling over or getting sick was going to be a challenge in itself. And that would be after she somehow managed to undo her bindings when she found it difficult to see straight.
Squinting through the dizziness and mental fog obscuring her vision, Rainbow spied the pirates sitting around a hearty fire in the clearing, roasting coconuts and some kind of shellfish they must’ve hunted in the channels between the islands. Her stomach growled and howled in desperation, but the movement in her gut only made her feel nauseas. Even worse was the dehydration; considering how much blood she’d lost and how much flying she’d done today, her throat felt like sand and her lips were beginning to crack—at least, what parts hadn’t already been split open from Squall’s fury.
But she didn’t want to make a sound while she could still see the red mare sitting around the campfire. The pummeling she’d received from the cruel pirate captain had stricken a fear of being beaten into her core, and she knew that Squall would happily give her more pain without any rhyme or reason. The unicorn was unstable and sick at best; Rainbow didn’t want to think of words to describe her at her worst. Her head hurt too much for it, anyway.
But from where she’d been tossed aside, she started taking observations and getting a feel for the pirate camp. There were six pirates sitting around the fire, and she knew that three had run off earlier to investigate the noise, so there were nine in total, including their captain. Each one of them was armed, though it only looked like Squall and her officers had firearms, and Rainbow didn’t know if their powder was good anyway. The rest had cutlasses or crude spears fashioned from sticks and stones, much like her and Rarity and Gyro. And even though they looked more ragged and thin since she’d seen them on the Concordia, they were far from starving, and the meal they prepared over the fire clued her in that they had plenty of food on the islands to keep their strength up.
So how was she going to get away from all of them?
Hooves trampled some undergrowth off to her right, and Rainbow saw the three pirates Squall had sent out earlier return with irritated looks on their faces. Squall raised her head when she saw them, her salty tricorn hat shifting on her head a little as her ears perked alongside it. “There you are. Took you long enough.”
The mare of the returning group let the corner of her mouth twitch into a disgusted sneer as she sat down by the fire. “Something knocked a big piece of the wreckage off those rocks it was perched on to the northeast.”
“Somepony was nosing around up there?” Squall asked.
“It could’ve been the wind,” one of the returning stallions said. “Just a strong enough gust and bam!”
“There weren’t no fucking wind you fucking dumbass,” the mare of the three scouts said. “And we’ve had bad storms since we ended up here and it hasn’t come down. Somepony has to been up at the wreck to make it fall.”
Rainbow immediately squeezed her eyes shut and tried to look like she was still out cold before Squall’s eyes shifted to her. “I figured as much. I beat that little bitch senseless when she tried to lie to me. Somepony’s gotta teach her some respect. She’s so cocky she thinks she has leverage where she has none.” The mare spat in disgust and Rainbow heard her horn light up. “Somepony go leave her a thing of water and some food to munch on when she wakes up. I don’t want her going rotten on us before we get our money’s worth of fun out of her.”
That sounded foreboding enough that Rainbow shivered. On the one hoof, it meant the pirates weren’t planning on killing her immediately, so there was a chance she could escape. On the other, it meant she only had pain to look forward to for the near future. The many terrifying prospects of what they could do to her almost made her wish that they would just kill her quickly instead of dragging out the pain and misery.
She instinctively shrank back a little when she heard hoofsteps approach her. Cracking open a blackened eye, she saw one of the other pirate mares standing over her. The bedraggled earth pony spat at her as she dropped a coconut and a bottle of water at Rainbow’s hooves, then made Rainbow flinch by quickly raising a hoof into the air. Instead of striking her, however, the pirate just laughed and started walking away. “Little bitch,” she muttered over her shoulder, rejoining her companions.
Squall watched the entire scene with amusement, and Rainbow tried very hard to avoid making eye contact with the pirate captain. Eventually, the blood red mare scoffed and turned to her crew. “In the morning, we’re going to find those other ponies. Our guest said there were only two, though who knows if either died or were injured when they knocked the wreckage over. It should be a fun hunt at least.”
The other pirates murmured their agreement, and Squall stood up. “Powder, Matchlock, Coals, you’ve got watch tonight. We know we’ve got company out there, and I don’t want another raid. They’re getting cocky now, I can just tell.”
The pirates nodded in acknowledgement, and Squall shot Rainbow one more piercing glare before vanishing into her hut. But Rainbow’s mind was wandering down a different train of thought, watching the ash-gray stallion with tinges of yellow and red in his mane.
Could he be…?