//------------------------------// // Family Feud // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Black Flag groaned and clutched at his skull. It felt like somepony had snatched a hammer and chisel and was making a desperate attempt to escape. His mouth was dry, his legs hurt, and every breath he took rewarded him with a whiff of something vile and acidic. He cracked a bleary eye open, and the first thing he saw was an empty bottle of rum lying in the sand not too far away. It took him some effort to sit up enough to paw the bottle over to him. A tiny trickle of alcohol ran around in the bottom of the glass, and just the mere sight of it made him grimace. He must’ve had—no, definitely had—way too much to drink last night. But could anypony blame him? He certainly couldn’t blame himself. It’d been too long since he’d had his last drink. Hangover or not, getting shitfaced was worth it in itself. It helped him forget some of the shit he had to deal with out here and passed the time. After all, one way or another, he’d make it back to Equestria faster if he couldn’t remember half of his time here, right? Groaning sounded off through the underbrush from somewhere behind him. Flag turned around, careful not to move his head too much lest he aggravate his hangover, and spotted his brother leaning against a coconut tree, obviously much worse for wear. Sand covered much of Roger’s coat from his chin to the base of his neck, and a few speckles of dried vomit decorated his coat here and there. Flag knew that somewhere there was probably a spot in the sand that he’d puked in the night before, with a not very good chance that they’d actually bothered to cover it up afterwards. Flag slowly moved to a tree where he could sit with his back to the bark and his eyes facing forward. After a moment to shiver through the overwhelming feeling of awful sitting in his gut, he managed to crack a smile at his brother. “Do you think we overdid it last night?” Roger grimaced and grunted. “Not at all,” he said. “I fucking needed that. Fuck the hangover. All this shit, all these fucking moon zombies and shit, fuck. If I didn’t have any of that rum, I was gonna start drinking some of their fucking blood and seeing if I could get trashed off that.” “Well, we’ve got a crate to go through at least. That’ll last us a brief while.” “At the rate we went through that bottle last night, I’d say it’d only last us a little more than a week. How many bottles were in that, you figure?” “Eight, I think I counted. Seven, now that we killed that one.” Flag kicked the empty bottle away from him. “It’s not gonna last all that fucking long.” “A Celestia damned shame.” Jolly groaned and closed his eyes. “Those other bastards better not get into our fucking crate. I’ll kill them if they do, I swear. I don’t care how many of them there are, that’s our fucking booze.” “For once, I’m inclined to agree with you.” Black Flag shook his head, his mind slowly starting to pick up the pieces and fragments of memories from what had happened the night before. “Say, did you hear music last night?” “Music? You sure you’re not still fucked up?” Roger grimaced and attempted to kick sand at his brother, but only succeeded in brushing up a small pile. “I didn’t hear no fucking music.” “I don’t know why I asked you, you weren’t in no fucking position to remember anything last night.” Flag shook his head, but the more he thought about it, the clearer he heard that haunting melody that seemed to drift over the entire island at some point the night prior. He also realized that there was not one but two voices that filled his hazy memories from the night before. “It was a duet.” “A duet?” Roger made some attempt to sit up, using his wings for extra support, but that ended in failure almost as quickly as it started. “Fuck, didn’t that rainbow cunt say that she was bringing sirens back to this island?” “I think so, yeah.” Flag did remember Rainbow Dash saying something about that when she returned from the south yesterday afternoon. Of course, he was already getting drunk at that point, but it did sound familiar. “Think the monsters ate them?” “Wouldn’t that be lucky for us.” Jolly Roger finally managed to sit up, and he started scratching sand out of his coat with his wingtips. “You know it ain’t gonna be that fucking easy.” Flag shrugged. “Then I guess on the bright side, if they’re friendly, that’s good for us.” Roger scowled at his brother. “Good for us? How so? If they’ve got not one but two giant beasties that could snap us up in a bite, then we’re super fucked. We don’t stand a fucking chance against that.” “We never fucking did in the first place,” Flag said. “It’s good for us because now we don’t need to fool ourselves with trying to figure out how to kill them.” “What the fuck do you mean?” Roger growled. “I’m saying that it’s fucking over, dickhead.” Black Flag managed to fling himself onto his hooves, only teetering for a moment as his hangover struck him with a horrible bout of vertigo. “Ever since we joined up with these fucks, you’ve been trying to figure out how to kill them. They don’t fucking trust us, and if anything, it’d be your fault if they decided to murder us right now.” Roger stood up as well and stumbled over until he was nose to nose with his brother. “Forgive me for trying to keep our asses out of the fire, brother,” he said, leering. “If I wasn’t quietly making plans—!” “It’s not fucking quiet because they know you’re up to fucking something.” Flag stomped his hoof in frustration. “And because they know you’re plotting, you’re doing the fucking opposite of saving our lives. You’re putting them in even more danger.” Sighing, he pointed back in the vague direction of the island’s camp. “I tried to humor you because I don’t trust them either. Nopony trusts anypony. But at this point, it’s over. They have sirens now. Either they kill us when we go back to their camp, or they don’t, in which case they don’t plan on killing us. They wouldn’t need us around anyway if that was the only thing keeping us alive, because they’ve got two big and powerful sirens. A couple of pirate noponies don’t mean nothing to them no more.” Roger narrowed his eyes at this brother. “You go back there, it’s your fucking funeral.” “And what the fuck are you going to do? Hide out here? Fly away?” “If I have to, then yeah.” Black Flag growled in frustration and turned away from his brother. “Fucking whatever. You do you, asshole. Me? I’m sick of all this shit. I’m going to get a drink because my mouth’s as dry as the fucking sand, and then I’m going to see what’s going on at the survivors’ camp. If I don’t die, great. If I do, also fucking great. At least it means this experience is done with.” He spared a moment to glare back over his shoulder at his brother. “You can come along and get over yourself or fuck off and run like the bitch you are.” “I’m not a coward for wanting to live,” Roger spat back at him. “You’re a coward for not wanting to try anything other than murder.” Flag looked away and shook his head. “Ma would be so fucking disappointed in you.” “Don’t you fucking bring Ma into this.” “I’m not the one who was too busy to drop everything and go see her on her deathbed.” Their conversation abruptly ended at that remark. Jolly Roger stared at Flag, his eyes drilling into the back of his head, while Flag calmly held his ground but refused to look in his brother’s direction. They stood as still as statues while the birds called and sang around them, neither daring to move or be the first to break the silence. They held that position for what felt like almost a full minute before Flag heard heavy wingbeats from behind him. Sighing, he turned around, but his brother was gone. “And fucking good riddance,” the pirate muttered to himself, before he too vanished through the undergrowth of the island, making his way back to the pond in the center.