Rainbow Dash slept soundly, if not necessarily peacefully. Wraiths of pain and fear haunted her dreams, and she stirred several times throughout the night in cold sweats and rubbing her injured muzzle. She had a pretty big goose egg on the back of her head from where she’d been struck originally, and between the two of them, she found it difficult to put her head in a good sleeping position. She couldn’t rest on her chin or cheeks because of the injuries to her muzzle, and she couldn’t lie on her back because of the lump on her head. The best she could do was lie on one foreleg and try to balance her head around where her throat met her head, the only part she could feel that wasn’t bruised or sore at Squall’s hooves.
But when she finally did manage to sleep, it didn’t last too long. It only felt like minutes before a literal kick in the crotch sent her crashing out of her dreamless rest. Wheezing, shaking, and with tears streaming out of her eyes, Rainbow looked up at the red mare standing over her even as she fought for breath and tried to suppress the unimaginable pain between her hind legs through sheer willpower alone.
“Wakey wakey, little rainbow birdie,” Squall sang, pacing back in forth in front of the lean-to while Rainbow just tried to catch her breath. “Getting a good night’s rest is essential for keeping one’s mind sharp and quick, so I figured I should wake you up before you got one. I prefer it when my prisoners are dumb and slow, they’re less troublesome that way.” She stopped and smirked at Rainbow, her tricorn hat slightly askew atop her sandy mane. “Of course, it’s not like I wasn’t already dealing with the dumbest of the Element Bearers.”
Rainbow managed to find her voice and the strength to sit up, even though her marehood ached like nothing else. “H-Hey,” she wheezed, “I am not the dumbest of my friends!”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Squall’s horn flared to life, and Rainbow yelped as a red magical aura dragged her out from under the lean-to and into the cool morning sand. There, Squall leered down at Rainbow, nose to nose. “Everything about you tells me you’re a moron, an idiot, a fool who thinks only by what her wings tell her to do. You’re impulsive and don’t stop to consider your actions before you do them. It disgusts me. And that’s why I know you’ll never be a competent leader, either among your friends or with the Wonderbolts one day.”
Rainbow winced and rubbed at her flanks where the sand had dug into her skin. “Yeah, you’re not doing so hot yourself, either.”
Squall’s eyes narrowed, and Rainbow knew she was going to immediately regret what she just said. “You think you have me that figured out, do you?” Squall asked. Once more, her horn flared to life, and once more, Rainbow felt an intangible hand of magic clamp down on her throat. Squall leaned in, and her voice carried venom in its malevolent hiss. “I can rip you in half with a thought, you gay punk, and you know I’ve got the horn to prove it. Unless you’ve got a death wish, I whole-heartedly recommend you watch your tongue around me.” There was a spark in her eyes, and Rainbow squeaked in terror of what that meant. Suddenly, Squall’s magic shifted from Rainbow’s throat to her mouth, and Rainbow began to mewl and shout as the red aura dragged her tongue out between her teeth. “On second thought, maybe I should just cut this out,” she said, and a knife floated out of her arsenal and flitted along the edge of Rainbow’s lips. “How does that sound?”
Rainbow’s eyes shrank to pinpricks, yet she scooted closer to Squall nonetheless because of the magic stretching out her tongue. Though she weakly struggled and protested in incomprehensible noises, she didn’t dare try anything risky or act too out of line, nothing that would give Squall an excuse to cut out her tongue.
Ultimately, Squall winked at Rainbow and twisted the knife down, scoring a painful cut across Rainbow’s lower lip that immediately began to bleed. In the same instant, she let go of Rainbow’s tongue, and the pegasus fell back to the ground and whimpered as crimson vitality started to stain her chin. The blade of the knife buried itself into the sand at Squall’s behest, and the pirate captain knelt down in front of Rainbow and once more venomously smiled at her. “Why did you come to this island?” Squall asked. “Why would you of all ponies fly here instead of staying wherever you’d been hiding out this entire time? Was it simple curiosity, or something more?”
When Rainbow refused to answer, Squall twisted the blade in the sand for further dramatic effect. “Don’t try my patience, filly,” Squall warned her. “You know exactly what will happen if you do.”
The steel of the blade peeked out of the sand just a little bit, and Rainbow’s ruby eyes immediately honed in on it. At a loss for what to do and with no options presented to her that would provide her with a quick escape, Rainbow swallowed, parted her lips…
…and told her everything.