Black Flag leisurely scaled the south hill, sticking to the shade provided by the palm trees to keep the blistering sun off of his black coat. There wasn’t much to do around the camp while the rest of the survivors waited for Rainbow Dash to return from her expedition to the south, and as such, he’d quickly grown bored of sitting around in the sand. At least for the next short while, he could entertain himself by exploring this new island, but even that, too, he knew would come to an end.
A part of him wished that the moon mummies would attack them again just to give him something to do. At the very least, they would kill him and end all the waiting… the insufferable waiting. He fully expected to die on these islands, especially after everything that had happened at the tomb. As much as he hated Squall, as much as that crazed bitch had frightened him, everything had gone to shit when she died. Sure, her stubbornness might have been the reason they all got into this mess in the first place, but after they ended up on the islands, her merciless aggression and terrifying presence had kept the survivors at bay and the crew together. Once she had fallen, the pirate crew dwindled to two and the idiotic survivors had remained unmolested enough to open a tomb and unleash a curse that would eventually kill them all.
But there was no sense in thinking about what went wrong and what could have been. Right now, he and his brother were the only two survivors of Squall’s crew, not counting Hot Coals. Flag couldn’t even believe the unicorn was still alive. The engineer still clung to life somehow, and Flag realized he hadn’t given him enough credit for how tough he was. He may have been pressed into service on Squall’s ship long ago, but it definitely took a stallion of harder stuff to survive that for years while secretly hoping to go free.
Flag wondered if he should just kill the bastard while everypony was asleep. His survival when so many other good shipmates had died was like an insult to him, an insult to their memory. But he knew he couldn’t get away with it without the others figuring it out, and besides, he was already spending a lot of time and effort to keep his brother in line and make sure he didn’t do something stupid. The last thing he needed was Jolly stirring up some more conflict between them and the survivors, especially when they were heavily outnumbered as they were.
Soon, the pirate found himself on top of the south hill, looking out over the lagoon below him. The crystal-clear waters ebbing and flowing against the beach reminded him of glass, and the chattering of the birds and the wildlife roared all around him. Of course, there were annoying green flies that bit at his coat, perhaps even worse than on the archipelago he’d come from, but there wasn’t much he could do about that other than try to swat them away. But, given that there wasn’t any fighting going on, or even any other ponies in sight, Flag truly felt like he was on some kind of island getaway.
Of course, the presence of his often insufferable brother quickly shattered that illusion. Jolly Roger swooped down from the sky and splashed into the lagoon, his eyes locked on something below the surface. Flag watched him from afar, squinting as he tried to make out what exactly his brother was doing. He saw the pegasus flick his wings into the water and carefully pick something up between his wingtips, looking it over before trotting out of the water with it. It was then that Flag saw he’d collected a little pile of black somethings on the sand, and he added the one he’d taken out of the water to the pile. After carefully looking his feathers over and brushing off any sand on them, Roger once more stalked back into the water, looking for another.
As the older of the two brothers, Flag immediately knew that whatever Roger was up to was no good. Sighing, he stomped down the side of the mountain, arriving at the edge of the lagoon in a few minutes. From there, he walked around the edge, trying to see what Roger was up to until he finally got close enough to the pile to figure out what was inside. As he approached, Roger returned from the water to dump another one of the spiny balls off on the sand, and proudly turned to Flag. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy doing what?” Flag asked, looking over Jolly’s hard work. “Why are you collecting urchins?”
“Because they might be useful to us.” Jolly pointed at the pile of spiky balls, which slowly shifted as the urchins tried to crawl back to the water. “I heard the bitch with the broken back talking to their doctor about them. They’re apparently really poisonous. That rainbow mare we had with us got stung by seven spines at once and nearly died.”
Flag frowned at the urchins. “And you think collecting venomous urchins will help us how?”
“In case we need to do a little quiet killing,” Roger said. “We stick some of the venom in somepony’s food, they’ll probably get really sick and die. The rest of them will just think it’s food poisoning. Fuck, if we throw a couple of these urchins into a pot when they’re making food, it’ll probably poison the whole meal and we can wipe them all out in one go.”
Black Flag let his eyebrow raise a bit. “If they don’t notice us messing with the food,” he said. “Besides, I don’t think we need to worry about them for the time being.”
“That’s what you keep saying,” Roger said, “but it’s fucking obvious that they don’t trust us. They don’t want us really getting involved in their affairs and they treat us like outcasts. Way I see it, they’re only a few steps away from killing us while we sleep. You know one of them is always watching us while we’re resting?”
“Because one of us is always watching them,” Flag said. “Nopony trusts each other. It’s still their group and us.”
“And their group has more. A lot more.” Roger growled in frustration and sat down on the sand. “Tell me you’re at least keeping this shit in mind, too,” he said. “Sooner or later, this shit’s gonna come to a head. If we’re not acting on the front hoof, we’ll be caught dead trying to defend on the back hoof. If we’re going to end up in a fight, our only way to stay alive is to strike first. If we wait until they decide that they don’t want us around anymore, then we’re already dead.”
Flag thought for a moment, his eyes wandering over the urchins. “The poison won’t preserve if they die,” he said. “Put them back in the water for now. We know where to find them if we need them. If we need them. Let’s not start something we can’t undo unless we really mean it.”
Roger rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. At least they’re here.” Grumbling, he picked one of the urchins up between his wingtips, where the spines could only touch his feathers, and started trotting back to the water. “Be careful, though. If those moon zombies don’t show up any time soon, and Rainbow and Champagne come back with Rarity, then they’re really going to start to wonder why they’re even keeping us around anymore. Right now would be the best time to strike. Let’s not waste it.”
“Noted.” Flag watched Roger fling the urchin back into the water, then took a few steps back. “Just keep your head down and your eyes peeled. If we decide to do something—and right now that’s a big if—then I’ll be the one to pull the trigger. Okay?”
“Whatever.” Roger sneered and picked up another urchin. “Just don’t sit on your ass until they’re already murdering us.”
Flag shook his head and walked away. There was a smart way and a dumb way to go about this. One way would get them leaving the islands alive, and the other would end with their deaths.
Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know whose way was right and whose way was wrong.