“…That’s why nopony wants to race Fleetfoot anymore. Not even me. It’s just… ugh.” Rainbow shook her head. “She’s a good mare and all, probably one of my favorite on the team, but she can get like that when her pride’s on the line.”
“I’m sure that sounds familiar,” Gyro said. “I feel like I’ve met a pony like that.”
“Who?” Rainbow asked, smirking and brushing her hoof against her chest. “I’m the definition of humble.”
Gyro chuckled, but it was strained. Rainbow didn’t miss the way the mare’s eyes were slightly wider than normal, or the way she drew in shaky, shallow breaths, or how her neck twitched and quivered as she fought the urge to look behind her. She was scared, and the Wonderbolt didn’t blame her. It didn’t help that every so often something would drip against the sand, and the smell of copper filled the hut.
Rainbow swallowed hard and kept her eyes fixed on Gyro’s, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t see things in her peripheral vision or occasionally pick up the low murmurs between Rarity and Doctor Gauze. The two unicorns were fetlock deep in Gyro’s back, and both of their white coats were smeared with blood. While Gauze remained calm and patient as he walked Rarity through the procedure, Rarity looked white as a sheet—an impressive feat given her ivory coat. She noticed her marefriend stagger and stumble a few times during the procedure, but somehow she managed to keep her eyes open and magic focused on the surgery. Once again, Rarity’s ability to persevere when other ponies depended on her was simply astounding to Rainbow.
Gyro’s gray throat bobbed and her ears pointed back in the unicorns’ direction. “It’s going okay there, right? I’m… feeling a little lightheaded.”
“That’s just your nerves,” Gauze flatly told her. “Your blood loss is well within what I expected, given our lack of modern equipment. Everything is proceeding smoothly.”
“Okay… okay. Cool. That’s good… real good.”
“Quite.” Gauze turned his attention back to Rarity and gestured with his hoof. “Place the scalpel in here and make an incision barely wider than the length of the blade. That should help us start freeing the nerves.”
The scalpel moved and Rarity looked like she was on the verge of vomiting. “This is… sweet Celestia, this is what’s causing her paralysis?”
“Yes, and it should be easy to see why.”
“I’ll say. That’s… that’s disgusting!”
Gyro noisily cleared her throat and put desperate eyes back to Rainbow. “So, uh, speaking of Wonderbolts derbies, how many have you done? Win any? I hear you need more than speed to win them, right?”
“Oh, yeah, derbies are tough, because it’s not just how fast you go, but how long you can keep that up.” Rainbow proudly flexed her wings. “Me? I’m a sprinter, and I’m really good at it. But I suck at endurance flying. Like, honestly, one of the worst on the team. So my derby strat is to just try and build as big of a lead as I can and hold it through the derby. It works… sometimes.”
Rainbow relaxed a bit when she saw Gyro start to relax as well. So long as she was doing her job and keeping Gyro distracted, then she started to feel more comfortable as well. But with the pace Rarity and Gauze were moving at, she didn’t know how much longer she could keep it up.
She just hoped it would be long enough.
-----
Black Flag sat next to the ruins of Squall’s hut with his cutlass resting in his lap. He’d spent the day sharpening it and preparing his weapons for the night, knowing that he was about to get into the fight of his life. For all he knew, it could be the final fight of his life. He didn’t expect the survivors from the Concordia to cut his tiny crew any slack now that the tables were turned, and he knew he’d have to be brutal and vicious if him and Hayseed and Jolly Roger were to have any chance of beating them.
His two surviving crew members had similarly kept themselves busy throughout the day. They didn’t have much in the way of weapons and supplies, so Hayseed had spent much of the day checking the surrounding area for anything she could find, while Jolly Roger readied his pistols with what little powder and shot the thieves had left them when they’d cleaned the camp. By his count, the pegasus had ten shots in total for his two pistols, but Flag didn’t know if that would be enough. He didn’t have a good estimate on how many survivors there were, but there were probably somewhere around ten. If Jolly got lucky, he had exactly enough bullets to take them all out.
But things had been anything but lucky for them as of late.
Flag’s eyes wandered over to the raised mound of sand off to the side of their camp where they’d buried Squall that morning. He still couldn’t believe the red mare was dead. For so many years, for so many raids, she’d seemed invincible. But in the course of a single night, all that changed, and she’d gone down, at least not without a fight. As for what happened to Matchlock and Scabbard, Flag had no idea. They likely would’ve been involved in the fight alongside Squall, but their bodies or weapons weren’t anywhere to be seen. Did the survivors kill them, too? Did they simply desert the crew? Or, perhaps worst of all, did they mutiny on Squall and help the survivors kill her before joining them? He had no idea, and Hayseed hadn’t seen any trace of them all day. Whatever hoofprints they might have left were long since destroyed by the heavy rain that night.
Speaking of the rain, the clouds started to rumble again in the distance. With the sun swiftly vanishing in the west and drenching the island in shadow, the incoming thunderstorm only hastened the total blackness starting to take root over the island. It was bound to be another wet and dark night, which suited him just fine, apart from the inconvenience and nuisance it would be. If the survivors had managed to wreak so much havoc on his crew the night before, he could hardly imagine how much more pain and misery he would repay them tonight and for as many nights to come as he could manage. The survivors may have had numbers, but through harassing guerilla tactics, he could wear them down until they were on even terms.
Then he’d snuff them out like a light.
He climbed to his hooves, shaking sand from his body. Both Hayseed and Jolly Roger saw him stand, and he nodded to them. “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to scout out their defenses and find where they’re hiding. If they’re still at the tomb, then we’ll need to find a good place to approach. If not, we’ll have to find where they went.”
“I doubt they’re still at the tomb,” Hayseed said, spinning a pistol around in her magic. “After all that freaky shit we saw? No way.”
“Freaky shit or not, we still have to check it out,” Flag insisted. “Swarms of bats and owls in the middle of a storm don’t mean anything. It’s just coincidence.”
“It’s an omen,” Roger insisted. “A bad one. We shouldn’t go anywhere near that tomb. Those survivors have already done enough damage camping out on it and defiling it.”
Black Flag strode over and smacked the other stallion. “Get over yourself, brother. I always knew you were afraid of the dark.”
Jolly Roger rubbed his cheek and frowned at Flag but didn’t say anything more.
With that matter settled, Flag nodded to Hayseed. “You have everything you need?”
“Everything except some heads to slice off,” she said, and her magic twirled a pair of cutlasses around before she slid them into cuts in her fraying clothes like makeshift scabbards. “Tonight’s gonna be fun.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Readying his own weapons, Black Flag walked past the two of them and began the trek into the jungle. “Come on. And keep your ears open for any odd noises in the night. We can’t let them jump on us, and if we manage to find one of their patrols by itself, we can even the odds a little bit.”
It was time to exact some revenge.