//------------------------------// // Chapter Four, DLC: Cannot look dumber. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Celestia- “What do you mean she isn’t here?!” This was bad, the sun priest is in danger and I couldn’t do anything to help them. Why were they so hard to keep track of? They were already hard enough to protect as is it when their existence is discovered by the wrong hooves. Said wrong hooves had to of have at least figured it out by now. Jade was probably the only sun priest in this generation, at least she was the only one that I knew of. I just wished she could live a fulfilling life even if she never did anything else as a sun priest. I was even actually going to make an effort to periodically check in on her to make sure she was doing okay and was well protected. “She took an arrow to the chest from a pukwudgie for me and fell into the river in Ponyville during a recent raid. We don’t exactly know where she is.” There was no other option than to believe Fizzle as Pukwudgies had attacked Ponyville recently and she looked quite upset by the event. I turned to the campfire. It was still going, so at least I know that Jade was still alive at least. I tried to use a locator spell, but the location she was at was completely unplottable. I felt a mild bit of panic at that. There were a lot of places Jade could be, some of which were not very pleasant. I hoped she could take care of herself, she was so young and fragile. Zebras? Oh, they had visitors! Seeing the zebra colt made me realize something… I forgot to post a teacher for the school that I had built here. I slowly pulled my right hoof from its shoe and slapped it to my face. -Jade- I had simply ignored the young parrot pirate Celaeno’s presence. I said goodbye to Gallant and Eir, then left to seek out the clothing store I was told about. As long as I didn’t do anything to attract Celaeno’s attention, then nothing horrible would happen. It’s like tiptoeing around a vat of nitroglycerine, you don’t want to make any sudden movements or else everything explodes violently. Jacky followed me to the clothing store and I ignored her insistence that she could help me or the fact that the turtle on my right shoulder was currently eating a lettuce leaf held between its two flippers calmly. I didn’t even care where it got the lettuce from, it could obviously take care of itself. The unicorn at the clothing store was named Stitching Crossbones or Stitch as she preferred to be called. Stitch was an exclusively pirate themed pony clothier. She only made pirate styled clothes, at least she was amiable about my chosen purchases. Though I could hardly get her to make anything normal for me. The clothing I was now wearing now was at least comfortable. I was wearing a green long coat, white shirt and brown pants. The only thing that doesn’t follow Stitch’s rule of only making pirate themed clothing was the underwear. I was so thankful that she could do normal underwear that I bought two extra hats, they were souvenirs for mom and Fizzy. Apparently Stitch didn’t mind cross theming a pirate hat with a witch’s hat nor did she mind putting a firework design above a soda bottle on the hat I was getting for Fizzy. She also modified the pirate hat I had stolen from Gash to have a symbol of a cute smiling cat face on it in my fur color. I will admit that Stitch did really good work and the smiling cat face on my hat was adorable, she was quite surprised when I paid her in full. It’s not like it was my money to begin with, I was paying for this stuff with the booty stolen from good old Captain Gash. It was getting late in the evening as I left the store, I decided I needed a place to rest. I’d attack the three diamond dogs at dawn, I didn’t care to figure out why they were firing cannonballs into the town randomly. “Okay Jacky, you’ve been following me for quite a while now.” Just for the sake of posterity I had to ask. “Will you eventually stop following me around?” “No captain, I’m as loyal as they come!” Ms. Chickadee at least sounded sincere about that. “Know a good place where I can sleep for the night at least?” Well if she was going to keep bothering me, then I may as well ask her for some help. “Sure thing captain!” Before I knew it, Jacky was dragging me along to the nearest inn in town. Was she doing all this just because I refused to do a comedic pratfall? - The next day and a sun salutation later. – I spy with my eyes, a ship with three diamond dogs in the early morning sun. I was sneaking up on the ship to stop them from hitting me with that cannon. Unlike Sekhet, I was not immortal nor did I think myself invincible. You probably wouldn’t know it by the way I threw myself off of high places, Captain Gash’s ship and Canterlot being two notable occasions. They were somewhat smart dogs, they had parked the airship on the nearby beach at the edge of the water. There would have been nothing but open ground between me and the ship had I decided to walk along the beach. Instead I got some help from my little green sea turtle friend and approached the ship from the sea on the back of another large turtle. I had made sure to check my stuff before I set out on this venture, surprisingly Jacky hadn’t tried to rob me blind or do anything untoward to me at all. In fact I didn’t know where she was or what she was doing when I left the inn this morning. I had one chaos candle, seventeen griffon feathers, three phoenix feathers, two vials of fish oil, my fish scale necklace, a quarter of a pepper shaker, a full salt shaker, three bits of leftover wax from modifying the candles and eight pukwudgie arrows. I wanted to save the chaos candle to show to mom and it would have been a bit too destructive to use. I wasn’t about to use the fish oil either, I actually wanted to take the ship intact. The arrows were the least useful thing I had on me at the moment. I could fire one big beam or an inaccurate spray of multiple smaller beams. The damage the big beams dealt would be negligible if it hit clothing, or anything else for that matter, before touching any part of the target itself. The little beams from the cast sustain would do more damage by comparison because each beam would hit something different, but I’d have to get close enough to hit anything with them given how bad the spread was and my ammo supply was quite limited. The bits of wax was the most useful stuff, as I had enough for the diamond dogs. I didn’t know what to do with them once I knocked them out, did I just leave them on the beach? Well I wasn’t about to harm them too much and I was conscious of the current tide. The turtle pulled up next to the ship, my claws came out and I started carefully scaling the side quietly. I didn’t want to be heard by the dogs before I could get a sneak attack off. “Thanks for the lift buddy.” I whispered back to the turtle, it gave me a friendly nod before swimming off. I gripped the edge of the ship and looked around on deck, it appears nobody was up yet. Let sleeping sea dogs lie. I reached up and grabbed the rail to pull myself onboard and looked to the turtle on my shoulder munching on a bit of carrot. Someone had apparently taken advantage of the free salad bar this morning. I swear that was the least pirate thing about the island, aside from the friendly people I’ve met. Who has ever really heard of pirates that eat salads anyway? Well aside from pony pirates when it’s an absolutely necessary dietary need. This island was just a big pirate themed theme park wasn’t it? The cannonball yesterday had certainly been real and dangerous, not to mention the several fights going on in town. I had expected less normalcy than this, but I guess even pirates needed their down time. I was standing on deck and looking about, this ship was of a pretty decent size. Good enough for a small crew of at least fifteen people. Probably about two to four times the size of an average catboat. Catboats are used a lot in Abyssinia for obvious reasons if the pun wasn’t bad enough. Even I knew how to pilot a catboat, but I didn’t know how to fully pilot an airship. I’m sure I could figure it out, it couldn’t be that hard. “What is mangy cat doing on deck?” In answer to your question random diamond dog standing behind me, I was scoping out the real estate with a small hold, likely four rooms, a captain’s cabin and the balloon that wasn’t present despite there being rigging for it. “Looking for a place to ambush some really dumb flea bitten mutts and steal this ship.” Answering it in a conversational tone was probably the best way to go about things. “In the middle of a sentence if I have to.” “Well mangy cat won’t be able to…” I swung around and launched a devastating right hook across his jaw, completed the spin and went back to scoping things out like that didn’t just happen. “That’s what you get for calling me mangy two times. I washed myself quite thoroughly this morning you jerk!” I’m surprised he was actually standing close enough for me to do that. I saved one of my wax casts doing that, because all I heard from him now was his groaning form on the deck at the moment. “At least I take my hygiene seriously.” Looking about after that outburst, I grabbed the diamond dog by his yellow vest and dragged him over to the beach side of the ship and heaved him overboard. I dusted my hands off turned around and jumped back from the clumsy, but quite fast, swing for my head by a smaller diamond dog. I quickly reached into my pants pocket and immediately threw a wax cast directly into his… er… her? Well I cast in its face and then I kicked them hard knocking them on their back. If diamond dogs struggled to win a fight with civilian ponies despite having numbers on their side, then the three salty dogs shouldn’t be hard for me to take down. I think I just wasted my cast on the… was it a female diamond dog? It was hard to tell, they looked so masculine despite the minor feminine features. “Excuse me for asking this, but are you a female dog?” The brown furred diamond dog with floppy ears just gave me a highly confused look. I sighed, it was sad that this was a legitimate question that I had to ask. “Are you a bitch?” “Yes, I am. Why is body hard to move?” Oh good, at least I had confirmation, because her voice was hard to read as well. “Like being in sand, but not!” “That’ll wear off eventually… are you with child by any chance?” She shook her head no as she slowly moved towards me with all her muscles stiffened up. “Oh good, then I can do this with a clear conscience!” I jumped to her right dodging the clumsy grab and tackled her face with my shoulder and knocked her off the side of the ship. I looked over the side to make sure she was okay. It appears that she had landed on her head, so she was definitely fine. I heard a growling noise coming at me from behind and I barely avoided the third diamond dog clawing my face off by rolling backwards, he was slightly bigger than the other two. His clubbed tail looked like a baseball bat just to name something of compensation going on here. At least I know why the other two diamond dogs looked scrawny. This was their alpha and he had a bit more meat on him, he looked like a bulldog species. Growling angrily at me, he charged and I could feel my ears wilting. My cat instincts were kicking in and telling me to run, so I did so on all fours with a barking diamond dog on my tail also running on his four limbs. The next estimated five minutes were spent by me running in aimless circles on the deck with me ducking and jumping around him trying to get his teeth in me. I eventually came to my senses and leapt up onto the beach side rail, tapped my knife for its magical sustain and did a well-timed backflip. I kicked off the back of the diamond dogs head doing another flip while sending him off the side of the ship. “Now all I have to… do... if there were only three diamond dogs, then why is the balloon already inflating?” The balloon was starting to lift the ship from the beach. “Don’t worry captain, I got the ship ready to go while you were dealing with them!” Please, for the love of all that was the holy sun, tell me that wasn't Jacky. I moved towards the center of the ship and saw her behind the wheel. “Let me guess, you got here before me and were waiting on me?” The bird nodded at me cheerfully with a bright smile on her beak as she took the helm. “Okay, I’m beginning to think there’s something horribly wrong with you being around me.” “What makes you say that captain?” I held my hands out to both my sides showing Jacky exhibit A and exhibit B. On one side of me was Captain Gash with four pirate griffons and on the other was Celaeno with four pirate parrots. They were all pointing swords towards me. Why was I suddenly the center of two different pirate groups? “Call it a hunch, but I think you might be a living jinx Black Jack.” My words made Jacky wince a bit and she looked away ruffling her braided feathers. “Did you seriously think I’d let you get away with dropping my ship into the sea lass? We pulled into port last night and we’ve been looking for you!” Well that explains Captain Gash being here, I turned to Celaeno and raised my brow delicately. “I’m here for the ship of course, you haven’t done wrong by me yet.” Celaeno of course chooses now of all times to become an active pirate. “What’s your name anyway?” “I’m Jaded La Perm, rogue sun priest.” I quickly turned to point at Captain Gash. “Parley!” “Damn it all!” Captain Gash screeched angrily, I knew that much of the pirate code jerk ass and your men can’t touch me until we’ve done business. “Some priestess.” Muttered Celaeno sarcastically in my direction while crossing her arms loosely. "Are you sure you're not some talented pirate? You certainly have the look of one."