//------------------------------// // The Dying Gull // Story: Over the Edge and Over Again // by Perpetual Motion //------------------------------// Over the Edge and Over Again: Chapter 24 The Dying Gull “Now… how best to improve you?” Discord held in his paw a classic, mint condition Captain Hector Barbossa™, complete with sword swinging action and a variety of colourful phrases should you pull the right strings. Fresh out of the box too, as any good toy should be. As a series one, mint condition Captain Hector Barbossa™ however, it was just that; first in a series of many that came after. Mundane. It did not have all the extra features that came with the relevant upgrades. For anyone with even the tiniest glimmer of imagination, it was a shamble. It was hardly worth the trademark, really. Two legs? Two? How many creatures in all of Equestria had only two legs? And how many of those had anything close to a starring role? Two legs did not a main character make. This Captain Hector Barbossa™, complete with sword swinging action and a variety of colourful phrases should you pull the right strings needed to have some punch. It needed oodles of bounce, pizazz. It needed- “Springs!” Discord proudly proclaimed. Within a single instant, the Captain Hector Barbossa™ that formerly came complete with sword swinging action and a variety of colourful phrases should you pull the right strings had no legs. Instead, a singular large spring crafted from coiled metal came into existence beneath his coat. A novelty pair of boxing gloves grew out from his hands, much too big a size for their intended user. In all fairness though, the gloves were mostly aesthetic. Toys weren’t meant to be designed with realism in mind. That was just common sense. “There you go, my little friend,” Discord cheerfully added as he dropped the series seventeen Captain Knockback Barbossa™ with spring loaded knock-back action from his paw. It fell fast from Discord, falling until it collided hard with the ground below. “Be free. Be merry!” Before it snapped straight back up again. Then going straight back down. Then up again! Discord sighed the sort of sigh you only found yourself sighing at the end of a job well done. Those sighs best saved for the end of a working day at a job you especially enjoyed. Leaning back into his throne for the briefest of moments, he took in the air around him. He breathed it in deep. Seconds before the complete lack of oxygen in the air began to bother those who actually needed to use it, old fashioned as it was, he let it all go. “Right, next!” He leaned over his throne, reaching down to nowhere in particular and plucked out a barbossa from wherever it had been previously. It might have been near, it might have been far. It may have been in the middle of something very important, such as tax returns or the birth of his first child. Regardless, he was in Discord’s claw now and it seemed nary the least bit bothered by this fact. “I’m thinking… tentacles!” His will be done, the barbossa had tentacles for arms. For legs. Most importantly, for his head. The hat that had formerly sat proudly atop the barbossa’s head fell free without a true head to sit on, flipping off to the side as the tentacle squirmed this way and that... but Discord let it go. Small sacrifices. He pursed his lips and focused on the body on front of him, “I like it, but I don’t love it. There’s something… missing here.” The thing that had once been a classic Captain Hector Barbossa™ gurgled, a further three tentacles slipping out from beneath the confines of his jacket. Slime trickled from where a mouth might have been, spluttering incomprehensible words. Discord agreed. “Of course! You’re absolutely right. How silly of me.” With a snap of his paw, the bottom-most tentacles were replaced by the form of a fully-grown tiger. Purple, of course. Discord set this new series eighteen Captain Tentigal Barbossa™ down as it took its first tiger-steps, balancing itself with its steadily growing number of tentacles. It gurgled a new, joyous gurgle before pouncing off into the distance. Against his better judgement, Discord shed a tear. It formed the exact shape of a shed on the edge of his claw before her tore it in half and let the pieces float away in the wind. “They grow up so fast.” As such, the next barbossa he reached down for was made bigger. Larger. Massive, even. It stood at eight stories tall, a mountain of a man. With a snap of his talons the Barbossa was made from solid granite, his insides littered with gorgeous geodes for the lucky pony who could defeat it in glorious combat. Being made from stone, however, the barbossa did not move and, as such, merely stayed in place. It tried to walk, but said walking broke it in far too many places than anyone would care to count. Crunching, grinding rock fell together until the whole mess of a monster fell harshly into the grass below in a colourful mess of glittering light and grey. “Perhaps a more flexible material, next time,” Discord glumly mused. “Taffy, I think. Oh, or maybe-” A slight whistle shifted through the wind. Only just loud enough for Discord to hear and quite possibly too quiet for anything not as sublime as him to hear it. The sheer flow of amazing ideas quickly halted. With his almighty brain centred on this one, new found anomaly in his ever-changing world, Discord took a single step to his right. Mere atoms separated his own body from that of Rainbow Dash as she roared past him, pulling with her the full force of the almighty wind. Despite seemingly missing her target, she swerved elegantly in the air before she turned to face Discord and began her assault once more. In mere moments she would make contact with Discord. Quite rightly, he turned his back to her and hmphed. The wind grew cold. Water crystallised. Rainbow felt the heat in her body gathered from her flight vanished as ice formed over her wings, coming over her in flakes and scales until she simply fell to the ground. Despite her best protests, her body couldn’t move. Frozen in a growing layer of ice, she managed to look up at Discord. Talk about the cold shoulder. Despite the rather deserved chilly reception, Discord leaned casually onto her form. Pulling out a can, he promptly sprayed her with it. “Ugh, I do not understand how the locals can stand the wildlife around here.” Despite the green hue to the spray, it dyed the ice crystals a deep colour that wasn’t really a colour. The sort of impossible colour that hurt your eyes because, well, it was impossible. “There’s Pegasi buzzing everywhere around this place.” He sprayed her a second time. “It’s a tad unhygienic.” Speaking of the locals, Discord could only marvel at how good a deed he had done for Equestria. The local barbossa population had been on the verge of extinction when had been freed. It was sad to think that only one had been left a few days ago. Now look at them! They were a staple species. Plenty of variation in there too, so you knew they were going to survive for a few hundred years at least. If ponies could last as long with only a few variants, then just think how long the barbossas were going to be around! They couldn’t exactly breed but with the pirate ships supplying a steady influx of new-borns then it all amounted to the same thing. More or less. ... “But let’s get back to you, Rainbow Dash.” Without the cold shoulder to keep her suitably chilled, it wasn’t all that surprising to see her up and about. Her mane dripped wet with flaking frost that continued to persist against her coat. The water glistened in the midnight sunshine. “I don’t suppose that panned out quite as well for you as you expected.” Rainbow scoffed. “You don’t know what I was planning.” “Well, from the looks of it you tried to connect your little old hoof with my little old face. “Little hoof? You think I can’t pack a punch?” she replied, wincing slightly on her back leg. From what Discord could tell, she’d either had a rather nasty run in with a series one barbossa or… well, no. That was the only likely scenario. “It took you long enough to notice me.” “But I did notice you. There was very little hitting involved.” None, in fact. “If I got a good swing, I bet I could hit you into next week.” That deserved a good laugh. Discord allowed the laughter to utterly wash over and consume him as he fell onto his back, clutching his side. “Me? You think you could hurt me? Grand Chaos Meister Discord?” “Totally” “Okay. Okay, I’ll bite.” He wiped away another tear, this one not shaped like a shed. “This should be good.” He pulled at the wind and let it materialise into a blindfold. Wrapping it around his eyes, he stood tall with his arms crossed over his chest. “Let’s go then. Give me your best shot.” It was at this precise moment that a slightly smaller than average Black Pearl marooned itself straight into Discord’s face. ☠ Splinter. Crunch. Rarity watched in awe as the bow of the ship connected with Discord’s face and didn’t even attempt to stop. The wooden structure compacted in on itself as it scraped against the discouragingly hard whites of Discord’s teeth. Yet, all the motion succeeded in do was pushing him down; both ship and monster crashed to the ground, the latter forced into the crumbling earth by the former. Dust and blue grass and the scent of whispering pineapples rose into the air until all things settled. For a brief moment, all was quiet in the Royal Gardens. At least, as quiet as the world under Discord’s rule could have been. Up on deck stood many things. Barbossa and his humans stood taller than all others, holding firm at the ships wheel. Ponies struggled on deck, halfway between the uncomfortable floor and their hooves. While the plan had certainly been to fly the ship into Discord, his face had never been a definite target. Nor had Rarity supposed Discord would pose quite so solid an obstruction to a pirate ship. All things considered, he was a denser beast than his skinny frame suggested. He should have gone down like a damp old sock. Then again… Discord. Rarity contemplated moving in that lone moment. Running over to the carnage and rummaging around for anything she could find that would prove successful to their mission. A sheared eyebrow, perhaps? A broken feather if she was so lucky. She doubted she would get her chance at a tooth, given how little effect a whole pirate ship had on his entire body. That said, the chance to buck out that insufferably large tooth from Discord jaw would satisfy her on many spiritual levels. Ponies peered over the edge of the ship, seemingly at the edge of wonder whether there was any battle to fight at this point. How lucky it would be just to find Discord squished beneath a boat they had stolen. From her lowly position on the ground, Rarity could just about make out Barbossa and Fluttershy at the wheel. Neither was quite so steady on their legs, but they were just as curious. But the moment in which Rarity contemplated all these things was just that; a moment. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and this end was announced by an especially tired grimace. A claw eased its way up from underneath the pirate ship. “Okay, that? That was a good one,” it said, yapping up and down like a griffon’s talon forming a mouth and throwing a voice. “Pirate ship to the face? Priceless. If I ever get around to creating a museum, you can bet your cutie marks this will going right in there.” Speech done, the claw stretched back until the tip of one finger tapped against the hull of the ship. Without celebration, or any effect worthy of such magic, the ship began to drastically shrink in size. Those on top of the ship were not, however. As every nail, splinter and speck of dirt began to grow smaller by the second, you might perhaps have supposed that those on board were in fact getting bigger. One grew smaller as the other did not. Then Discord simply stood up, the shrinking ship held in his grasp. Even he seemed to grow larger as the ship grew small. Except he did not. He actually did. Discord grew in size as the ship grew small, holding the blasted thing as one might a foal’s toy. A large toy, granted but a toy all the same. “But I’m rather afraid that little stunt is going to be hard to repeat when I’m bigger than all of the ships.” As if emphasise, he held the ship to his face, looking down the bow to all the occupants within. This did not seem to bother Hector in the slightest. Just as the ship became slightly too small and slightly too crowded for being so small, he pulled out his sword. He raised it high. “Now!” All at once, several ponies pushed hard with their hind legs and leapt free from the ship. They all stuck their landings, grasping and biting and pulling at Discord. At his fur, his feathers and his scales, clinging to him like hungry toddlers. On the ground, Rarity watched as a dozen or so more ponies clambered up Discord’s legs, jumping up from the ground and around his neck. His arms. All those horrible little places that foals tried to grab when you were too big for them. Much like children, they bit at him. Pulling at his mane and yanking at the feathers of his wings. It likely made for an altogether irritating experience. Rarity certainly hoped so; with an almighty leap from the grass beneath her, she bit her teeth down hard onto the fur of his leg. “Aah! Eeeh!” Discord squealed. “What are you doing?!” There was another pull at his mane. Reaching up, he took hold of a little blue pony and tossed her to the side. “I was joking about the insect thing. It was a joke! Why do you ponies always take things too far?” Sadly, Rarity was promptly yanked off his leg as well. Discord held up her hind leg with his talon, stared blankly into her before dropping her unceremoniously to the ground beneath him. Even sadder a fact was that this continued. Seconds ticked by and as Discord plucked ponies from his body, it became increasingly obvious that their attack was not going to go as well as had been hoped. Not at all. Discord simply floated there with a bored look plastered on his face. Or rather, it had been plastered. His face was so long with boredom that it had begun to drip from his chin. Less like a parent with children, he was now a toffee apple covered in flies. A very bored apple. Barbossa had said to swarm but Rarity feared that to do so literally was not saving them any effort. To Discord, they might as well be flies. If anypony – anybody, she should say – was truly close to stealing something from Discord then it wasn’t announced. Or implied. Just more ponies being pulled from Discord as he, quite hurriedly, continued to pull at each living thing that tried to crawl up him. Vinyl was thrown into a throne. Fluttershy was bowled into a bowl. Ragetti was tossed into a salad. Several other were taken and flicked into an equally entertaining situation, at least when spelled out in one’s head. That was until even Discord seemed to find the entire ordeal as boring as it sounded, pulling the same ponies from his body again and again and again- “Ugh! Fine!” His hands went up in the air in exasperation, devoid of humour or novel effect. “You want to act like little pests?” His hands came back down, and, with a distinct popping sound, he was gone. Those formerly attached to him held in space for the briefest of moments before they fell hard to the ground. There was no further popping but Discord was already back at the pirate ship, holding it firmly within his grasp. He tipped the whole thing upside down. Barbossa’s fell out from within, all of them uniform in size and shape; no taller than a pony and definitely not to the scale they had been in previous encounters. Rarity was sure she might have called the situation cute, had they not been duplicates of Hector. Or involved within the current situation at all. With the clones constantly birthing from the ships, one new man for each removed, it seemed simple enough to just lock them inside. With them all inside, the ship was free to control. Discord tipping the entire thing upside-down instead resolved it into a factory. “Let’s add some more pests into the mix!” Barbossas stood up by the dozens, more still tumbling from the ever-shrinking pirate ship. At some point prior, Discord had stopped even holding it; it shook up and down all on its own. Getting ever smaller, spitting out teenier and tinier pirates. The thought of utterly miniscule pirates getting caught in her mane or worse, small enough to hide within her coat gave rise to a shiver so repulsive that Rarity decided to rethink every other moment of disgust she had ever felt in her life. Discord flicked at a few of them and insectoid wings sprouted from within their jackets. Antennae sprouted from their heads as some were overcome with stripes and other a carapace. “See those little ponies,” he said, motioning to the group. “They’re on your patch. They want all of your treasure. You’re not going to take that, are you?” It seemed they were not. The barbossas fluttered into the air, inelegant moths more so than any sort of butterfly. One pulled out a sword, its hand already as black as any beetle Rarity had ever seen. The shell grew upon and over the face. Soon even the hats were consumed, a part of the body. The bugbossa let out an unholy screech, shifting into uneasy flight as every other variation followed on behind. Very suddenly, getting to Discord was much harder than it once was. The Lord of Chaos seemed to relax into himself, reclining into the air as he watched his little fantasy play out. Barbossas stormed forward, swiping at Rarity with quick little swishes of their blades. In growing small, however, they became bearable, almost incidental. No longer did they loom overhead with an advantage of height. Now they were no better or worse than a clumsy pegasus with a sword held in their jaw. Especially when Rarity managed to kick one very firmly in the face. One barbossa was easy enough to deal with, assuming you knew how to tolerate it. Several more ganging up on you proved to be a slight bigger problem. Steps back, jumps to the side. Blasts of mundane magic to push back. It was all that could be done without a weapon at hoof, yet Rarity found herself accomplished in not getting hit. As loathe as she was to admit and despite the sheer scope of her past adventures, doing merry battle with pirates was not something that came to her easily. Her fighting prowess was limited, certainly less than the likes of Applejack or Rainbow Dash. Other ponies that Rarity supposed were better suited to physicality served better in battle. The bakers tossed pies whilst Rainbow continued her aerial assaults, coming down fast on enemies before rising back up into the air. No pony held a candle to Hector Barbossa. Hector Barbossa flourished on the battlefield. Whilst the clones may not have been his exact equal in the past, now he treated them as something undoubtedly less; mere cockroaches crushed beneath his boot. Not literally, of course. Spare for the odd tiny bugbossa that did indeed push its luck that little bit too far. The ease with which he dominated them in a fight was clear. They were imperfect copies. Similar in method but certainly not in practise. At least, that was the case for the more mundane barbossas. Rarity wished they were all that needed to be dealt with. Winged barbossas would holler and swoop from above, stabbing quickly as they passed until they went back up into the air. A monstrous amalgamation of tentacles and tiger-parts lurched over most other combatants, striking with limbs that stretched with an unnatural squelch. Relics of something massive groaned loudly from the ground, shifting inches at a time when someone dared to wander past. The giant, stone Barbossa that Discord had crafted before did not do much to fight but it proved a hazard for those who did not watch where they stepped. Creatures with claws and heads for hands. Heads for hands and springs for legs. The sheer variety more than made up for imperfect strategy and Rarity did not know where the battle would ultimately lead. Ponies were managing to fight back a small army and Barbossa himself dealt with the tougher foes. Both of those events did nothing to further their end goal. Hector, for the flaws Rarity saw in him, seemed to think on this as well. A pirate made from flowers and glass shattered under the pinpoint pressure of his blade and without losing a second, Barbossa shifted on his heels. “Fire!” His pistol fired. As belated as the reaction to his command was, several ponies launched an attack at Discord of their own. Pies and paint and wafts of magical aura fired alongside two more shots from Pintel and Ragetti. Rarity could see to her immense dissatisfaction that Discord considered these attacks irritants. At best. She couldn’t see where the bullets disappeared to but anything else remotely physically either avoided Discord complete or turned to… mist? Candy floss? It didn’t matter. Irritants often required the irritated deal with them directly. In the past, Discord had said to Celestia that he never turned ponies to stone. That much was clear to Rarity, now that something closer to a full assault against him was beginning. In her mind, if she had such colossal power at her the tips of her claws, she would do just that; immobilise and stop her enemies in their tracks. She would make everything so easy, simple. She would utterly destroy the mere mortals before there was any chance of retaliation. Retaliation meant action, however. This seemed to be the aspect of battle Discord took the most enjoyment from. Baker pony, for Rarity had not the time to truly catch her name, launched another pie through the air. It spun through the air like a Frisbee gone mad. Discord managed to catch it perfectly. “Oh, pie! I love pi!” he proclaimed before launching three more back in its place. Then another. Then four more. “One! Five!” Discord did not live to cause pain. He caused the chaos he did because he enjoyed the reaction, no more or less than every petulant school bully than Rarity had ever come across during her life. Something very suddenly sheared into her side, dipping into her flesh by the tiniest of measurements before reflexes pulled her away. The very tip of a tiny sword claimed drops of her blood as a barbossa no higher than her thigh attempted to jump onto her back. When it only seemed like it would succeed, she bucked her hind legs and sent the little thug flying. She watched it land near the true Hector Barbossa. His own assault continued amidst the carnage as the occasional swipe of his sword was accompanied by the boom of pistol fire. Between that and refilling the shots, his viciousness never wavered. In the meantime, several single ponies had fled from the battle. Not surprising, she supposed, given their enemy. Applejack, Rainbow and even Fluttershy stayed nearby doing their own for the cause. Rainbow dived for one more attack on Discord’s head before she was stopped in her tracks. All motion and sense of physics ceased as Discord simply grabbed her head and pulled her out of her dive. “You’ve been trying that a lot,” Discord said. “And I’ll keep trying until it works!” “I couldn’t convince you to just stop?” “No!” “Suit yourself.” Suddenly decked out in a grey, three-piece suit – one that Rarity sorely had to admit had a gorgeous, spectral trim – Rainbow continued her assault… completely being rebounded by Discord at each turn. Without any creatures in the air to get at him, Rainbow became his only obstacle. One he seemed all too pleased to swat and flick away. If nothing else however, Rainbow was persistent. Even in the face of direct failure. His request, it seemed for now, would go denied. All remaining fighters had about as much effect as the baker and Rainbow Dash. Their attacks were dissolved into puns at best or complete failures at worst. Each direct hit they might achieve in battle turned into nothing more than a light joke. At least, that was the case when one considered them separate assaults. Together, each joke came just that little bit too fast. Each new projectile too soon. A bad comedy routine more than anything else. Bucking a Barbossa decked out in a cowpony outfit to the side, she watched as Barbossa fired his next shot. He raised his pistol moments after, calling to the crowds. “Keep up the assault! Show him no quarter!” “You call this an assault?” Discord guffawed, shifting quickly as something flew past him. Taking a bullet out of the air, he gave it a harsh shake until it began raining down an immense quantity of speckled black power. “Let’s see how you like my apepper!” Each punchline came at the deficit of another. One joke needed sacrificing if he was to make one at all. Discord growled as a pie splatted against his side. Pulling his eyes from Barbossa, he lifted the baked good and merely threw it back. “Do you mind? I am talking to the pirate!” With a snap, the baker pony was no more a baker pony but a baker rat. “Pie rat! Now just-” A blast of rocks courtesy of Rarity herself this time. A futile attack, she would admit. But an attack all the same. “You are really starting to get on my-” A bullet went through his torso and clean out through the other side. Literally clean; no blood or gore to speak of. Or pain, it seemed. Barbossa was again the centre of Discord’s attention. “Do you really need to continue with this?” Discord flicked away Rainbow as she dived for him once more. “I thought you went home? We resolved your part of the story!” “My story is not finished. Not so long as you still stand.” Rubbing his claw and paw into the sockets of his eyes, Discord let out a long, undignified groan of dismay. “I can’t stand any more of this. And I’m sitting down! You want to be a thorn in my side?” he lowered himself right down to eye-level with Barbossa, his entire head in line with Barbossa's height. “Fine. You can be a thorn.” To his credit, Barbossa went for Discord’s beard. Discord removed it as the sword came in and replaced it when the blade has passed. “Let’s bring out the clippers!” There was another snap of Discord’s claw, louder than the previous snaps. An eager snap that was utterly excited to be snapped. Behind Barbossa, a large, misshapen stone statue fell into the dirt. Far enough away that no one could have been caught beneath it… but close enough for the pirate to wonder if he might have been. When Barbossa turned to see the statue of the creature that had once been the Moonlight’s Torment, his jaw went slack, and his burrow grew a muddled frown. “What?” ☠ Unrecognisable though the creature was, the appearance with hard to argue against. Before Barbossa sat a statue, haphazardly placed upon the ground. It stood as if already a part of their battle, one arm raised with a heavy mace within its mighty grasp. Where the head of a man had once been, a monstrous angler fish now roared silently back, blistered with an age spent beneath the sea. Tattered clothes, worn boots and a tiredness that could only come from a servitude no mortal was fit to serve. Part of the ship. Part of the crew. It was such a common sight now, so memorable that Barbossa felt almost dizzy at the sight of it. However familiar a sight it might have been was only outclassed by how much it did not belong in Equestria. For his own sanity or the ponies both, Davy Jones did not need presence there. “Rarity?” he asked, unsure to her exact position, but knowing fully she was nearby. “I’ve enough questions te ask but not the time fer answers. What is this doing here?” “Now, I know this looks bad,” she began. He had to agree. “But-” Rubbing his paw and claw together once more, Discord let a static charge gather before he daintily pressed a finger to the forehead of the crewman. All at once, the stone chipped away. Sacred light leaked from within, forming cracks that seemed to grow outward like a flowering flame. Then all at the once the thing moved. The mace continued whatever path it had originally been swung upon and the spiked ball carved into the ground. “Short answer!” Barbossa urged. “Celestia said she turned him to stone a thousand years ago because he ate ponies and was too scared to go back where he came from!” “Perfect!” Barbossa swore, taking an eager step back as the creature swing his mace out in an unsteady circle. A moment later and his chest might have become as mangled as his state of mind. “Just. Bloody. Perfect!” What else? Davy Jones himself was the estranged brother of Discord? Celestia owned popular tavern on the bays of Tortuga? Was God going to turn up? The baby Jesus? His entire week had been one ill-timed joke after another and returning to Equestria was becoming a larger pain in his arse the longer he experienced it. A self-inflicted pain in the arse, granted. But a royal pain all the same! Discord all but forgotten for the time being, Barbossa waited with baited breath as the next move was decided. A new foe meant a new strategy. A new strategy meant new information was required. With the length of the mace that had struck the ground, he didn’t fancy the chances the back of his head had against it. Curse or no curse, his head would do him no favours if it was scrambled against a spiked clod of metal. Rage had faded from the crewman, however. In the moments since his attack had landed, the features had softened to a confused state, almost struggling. Barbossa was reminded of a child lost in a crowd, wary of strangers and searching for its mother. “Celestia?” it asked, turning on the spot. Despite a size comparable to Barbossa himself, the footsteps were heavy and with effort. “Celestia!” Its voice broken. “Do not test me!” It turned back to face Barbossa, and the confusion was, too, gone. Anything childlike was lost to the face of a man that had long since lost the last of his human kindness. The eye of an angler fish was black, faded like glass. The human eye found Discord’s, as high as it was behind Barbossa. “Where is Celestia?!” “Now, I understand that you’ve been out of commission for a while,” Discord began, nonchalant, “but you will be very glad to hear that she’s no longer in charge around here.” Sure to keep an eye on both of his enemies, Barbossa angled his head to see Discord once more. The beast was resting on some throne, satanic and grey with horns. He sat like a greedy king, legs crossed and eyes looming down upon all below. His paw waved idly at his side, summoning the magical mirror to move closer. From within, Barbossa could see Celestia and Twilight. The crewman was likely no different. “And unlike Princess Celestia, I would be more than glad to let you stay in Equestria. Forever, if you so desired.” His paw and claw balanced into a neat triangle. “Just get rid of that pirate right there and we’ll call it even.” Barbossa quickly met eyes with the crewman. The crewman stared into him, as if he was the brightest star. “Are you real?” he asked. The question caught Barbossa off-guard, but he answered all the same. “A-aye, real as can be.” It reached out to touch his face, but Barbossa took a step back. “What is your name?” it asked. He asked. Barbossa could no longer tell. Yet, he still replied. “Hector Barossa.” Eggshells. Delicate eggshells. “Ye?” Broken eggshells, it seemed. The creature struggled, concentrating harder than any man should for such a simple question. “I… I have a na- had. A name. I had a name. Once. Or somewhere. Somewhere, before the water. Before I…” Discord seemed eager to chime in. “In recent chats, Celestia called you the Moonlight’s Torment. A little harsh, given all you’ve been through. Wouldn’t you say?” The Torment took a step towards Barbossa, hand reaching back out. “If I kill you, I can stay?” Barbossa backed away once more. “I-” “I can’t go back. I can’t,” it whined… roared. “I’m free, here. Part- everything is beautiful.” Barbossa could not honestly tell. It was a broken thing, tormented by that which Barbossa hoped would never torment him. “Part of the crew...” More steps back. “Now wait a minute, yer missin’ important details of-” It swung the mace and it once again landed far too close for comfort. “I will not go back!” And another. “I’m not making ye go back, ye simple fool. Stay here; I insist! Make yersel’ at home.” The mace once more landed close to home, cracking the dirt to reveal creamed cheese to be lurking beneath. “Live in th’ forest with the ducks and mice. It’s a rare treat.” Carefully, Barbossa raised his hands in the air. “Killin’ me won’t make it happen any faster. Just settle down. We can talk about-” The Torment turned to Discord. “If I kill him, I can stay?” “I find killing to be a tad excessive.” Discord clapped. The sun shot down beyond the horizon… and the moon shot up faster than Barbossa would ever believe unless he had seen it. “Break his legs.” Moonlight bathed the land in totality, regardless of natural shade and where shadows ought to be cast. “He won’t feel a thing.” With that it raised the mace back into the air and began to swing once more. “Then I will stay!” Without enough of a warning to move in one direction over another, the mace came in from the right and hit with its fullest force against is chest. True to the word, he did not feel any pain. That was not a surprise at this point. The surprise was how far back he was thrown back. Opening his drying eyes, his skin well enough decomposed from the moonlight, Barbossa had at least a little longer to recognise that the crewman was now charging towards him. Hole in his chest be damned, he stood up and began to run. Contrary to his fears, his body stayed together. Whatever remained of his chest stayed suitably in his chest and for that he was relieved, the slack chunks of his ribcage and innards notwithstanding. With several feet on his opponent, Barbossa turned to attack. Sadly, he realised his sword was quite far away, laying on the ground where he had first been hit. His pistol was currently empty. To make matters all the worse, Discord was smiling at his from his throne, waving gallantly. The Moonlight’s Torment was now, impossibly (yet also entirely possible given the circumstances) twice the size it had been. The hunched man now appeared a hulking beast, a mace the size of Barbossa’s head. “I will stay!” it roared. “Bugger.” ☠ Pintel did not like ponies. They hadn’t help him when he had been tied up. Pintel did not like the new barbossas. They hadn’t helped much by being the ones to tie him up. Out of the two, he appeared to not be on the winning side. The ponies knew magic, were magic. It was as insane a picture as any drawing a child could conjure up on the floor of their home. But the ponies were not fighters. They were certainly not pirates. Ragetti and he were also not the best pirates, granted. But they were faring a lot better against the barbossa army. They had known since before this battle that the copies were not nearly as proficient with a sword as the true captain. They were clumsy, rash and quick to swipe without seeing where the blade would actually land. This left them open to easy attacks, especially around the gut and below the waist. Even the clones that were smaller than the average man, and those even smaller still, could be beaten with a similar tactic. It was not those barbossas that posed a problem, however. It was… the queerer ones. Some had beetle wings; they were awkward. You could swipe at the same places you could any barbossa, yet the advantage of verticality and sheer flight set you at a disadvantage. That they could simply swoop down, slash and go back into the air again proved difficult to counter. One was made from rock; that was awkward. It was scattered along the ground, in a hundred pieces that would roll around and ram into your foot so that you might fall over. This misstep then gave a chance for the beetle barbossas to get another hit in. Attacking a rock with a sword wasn’t exactly a boon of an idea either, assuming you wished to keep the sword. One was half tiger and half squid; that one just made Pintel insides squirm. The beast Discord, for all they were trying to get at him, was hardly a part of the fight at all; he sat upon his demonic throne as if everything below was a merry game. Not since the battle’s start had anyone even been close to him. Ragetti was not doing much better, battling against as many foes as Pintel without reprieve. The white pony with the blazing blue mane – something Scratch? – stood low to his side, screaming into a small device that blasted the sounds from a contraption on her back. It did not do much to harm but sent very loud sounds towards them. The kind of sounds so loud that your ears began to ache. These guided sound attacks disorientated those in the way, allowing others to attack. That was as far as anyone was getting. Pintel caught eyes with his nephew and both seemed to share the exact same thought. “No worries!” Pintel wheezed, his old lungs getting the better of him. He thrust his sword into the chest of a cat barbossa with twelve eyes. “Captain’s gotta be making some headway.” A glance towards Barbossa confirmed that he was not. For some reason that Pintel could not comprehend, a member of Davy Jones’ crew was doing battle with the good Captain. It stood as tall as two men, a brutish thing with the head of a fish that Pintel knew to exist but without a name he could place. This creature was chasing Barbossa through the battlefield, taking down individual copies as it passed without so much as a glance in their direction. If not for the voracity with which it followed the real Barbossa, Pintel would assume it an ally. But as it swung again and caught Barbossa by the legs, it could be guessed that it was very much not an ally. With that, Pintel fired his pistol towards it. It caught the creature in the head. Dead centre. Perfect. The best shot Pintel would likely make from now until the day he died. Most likely from an equally as grand shot… courtesy of someone else. The shot was made especially perfect now that the creature was staring straight at him. Despite the distance, the large size offered a very clear look into the monster’s very human eye. “Why?! Leave-” The distraction was long enough for Barbossa to reach out to the ground around him and a sword that should rightly have been called a dagger, given its small size. Barbossa plunged it deep into the monster’s thigh. The crewman roared, falling to one knee and dropping the heavy mace. Barbossa went in for another strike, the tides turning- As the beast grasped Barbossa’s jacket in its mighty hand and tossed him away. If not for the sad state of affairs, it might have almost been comical. Leaving the mace on the ground, the monster reach around its back, into the baggy clothing it wore and pulled out something not unlike a pistol. It took Pintel several seconds to place the weapon before it fired. “Harpoon!” he cried. A splayed spike shot out towards him, hitting several copies in the process before it finally ran its course. It was followed by a thin chain, one that rattled with each movement sacrificed to it. The shot fulfilled, the crewman raised the weapon and the chain began to reverse. Barbossa sat glumly with his tiny sword, eyes fixed upon the mighty harpoon. In that moment, Pintel swore he could see nothing but sheer inferiority in his captain’s face. “There we go!” Discord cried, voice louder than it rightly should have been at such a casual tone. “Isn’t this nice? I daresay everything has worked out for the better,” he added, turning to face the magical mirror. Pintel begged to differ, but he was busy enough with more pressing matters as it was. Discord caught Pintel looking. The draconequus simply shrugged. “Look at me like that all you want. You all put in a lot of effort; really, the costumes were great and production value was marvellous. But it was a very poor show as far as payback is concerned. At least Twilight Sparkle and her friends had the Elements of Harmony last time.” Pintel was not sure if he was meant to know those words, as magical as they sounded. “You don’t quite live up to their standard. I mean, what do you have?” “Something way better!” Both Pintel and Discord followed the shrill voice. Their eyes landed on Pinkie Pie, poised triumphantly at the entrance to the very royal gardens in which they stood. She wore a blue bandana around her head and an intense look within her eyes. ☠ “You want me to wait here for two minutes?” “Aye. Exactly two minutes. We have a hard battle coming up, no matter what needs to be done. And I would very much like to have a second plan in reserve should we fail.” This got her excited. “I’m plan B! Does this make me first mate?” … Sure. Why not? “Indeed, it does. There’s not a pony in this whole world I trust more.” “Yay! Two minutes; I can wait here for two minutes.” “Ye need to do more than wait. When the two minutes are up, and I know ye can count that down inside yer head, yer going bring some of my… friends into Equestria.” “Won’t that mess up the space-time continuum or something? Like, if time is different than it is there then everyone is going to get there, like, several minutes apart-” “Aye, well, it seems if we’re all joined together, it all happens neatly as can be. That’s yer important part of the mission; get everyone through at the same time.” Somehow. Pinkie was impossible at the best of time. Hopefully she was equally as so during the worst of them. “Does it still count if I bring them in through the medium of song and dance?” … Sure. Again, why the hell not? “Ye can do whatever ye want wi’ the crew. Just so long as you can do it. Ye up te the challenge?” “Aye aye, Captain!” … One hundred and two. One hundred and three. We’re so close! One hundred and four! One hundred and five! A hundred and a five, six, seven, eight! With that, Pinkie Pie blew a whistle. On the tone of that whistle, under direct order from the mare herself at the threat of death or something super-seriously-scary and horrible, each pirate gripped their arms tight around each other, all stood in a perfect line. At Pinkie Pie’s command, they began to dance. The once fearsome bunch of humans was swiftly reduced to a skipping line of puppets at Pinkie’s beck and call. She loved every moment. She loved those moments so much that when the clock inside her head hit exactly one hundred and twenty seconds, she led the first of the dancing pirates through the portal. Lou, Lou skip to my Lou, Doing what the Captain said to do! Skipping in line ‘till we all go through, Skip to my Lou my darling! As great as she was at organisation, Pinkie was not one for explanations. Near the back of the line, skipping between two of his comrades, one of the Chinese pirates had no earthly idea what was going on. “我們為什麼跳舞？” ☠ “Party pony Pinkie Pie’s prancing posse of precarious pistol pointing pirates!” There were no prancing pirates to be seen but from behind Pinkie Pie came a storm of humans, all garbed in the drab greys and browns that Rarity had come to expect from friends of Captain Hector Barbossa. Also, in line with what she expected of people who knew Hector Barbossa, were weapons. Plenty of weapons. They absolutely stormed through the copious amount of captain copies. “No! No, no don’t you dare!” Discord yelled. He rose, looming up over his throne. “Go back to where you came from or so help me-” Several shots fired towards him. All passed through, leaving a hole or not but the draconequus seemed surprised that it had happened at all. That somepony or something had once again dared to act over him. “You know what, fine!” You want more pirates?” He reached out to the battlefield, grasping at the air. All at once, the clones seemed to… shake. Shift and grow blurry until each one pirate had split harshly into two. Each half then grew a new half to complete each whole. “Take them!” What had been a battle before… well, it was now something all the more hectic. People danced all around, swinging their weapons this way and that as tiny explosions surrounded the Royal Gardens. Copies went down with each one, sometimes a pony or a person disappeared amid the smaller fights taking place all around. Everything was movement and noise. Barbossa himself, he was useful with a sword. His two bumbling cohorts… less so, to put it kindly. But even they could handle the clones without too much of a bother if given enough of a chance to do so. When multiplied by the sheer numbers the new humans brought, the copies did not stand a chance. Copies they were; inferior duplicates without the effort that went into the original. Each of the pirates, for however many years old they were and whatever their lives had beheld, managed to take them down. Casualties were bound to have occurred. Rarity was sure there would be mourning and sadness for them in the minutes after everything had grown to a calm but, selfish as it might have been, she could not find it in herself to focus on that moment yet. The tide was shifting and in their favour. ☠ Barbossa found laughter digging itself up from his throat. Once began, he couldn’t stop it. He doubted he’d ever feel so pleased to hear Pinkie Pie’s shrill, little voice. “Party time!” he roared, pulling himself up from the ground. Pushing himself back onto his feet, he was faced with a spiralling chain missing his face by mere inches. The harpoon and chain rattled past his head, loading into a tree somewhere behind. The Torment limped towards him, still reeling from the sword stabbed into his leg. He seemed wholly unbothered by the shrinking bullet wound to his head, however. “-th’ ship. Part of… part of the ship’s crew, part of the ship-“ Broken had not been the correct word, Barbossa realised. A broken man sat alone on the street, devoid of home and family. A broken man prayed to the Lord and his Church in the hopes of salvation, willing for any and all help to come his way. “I want to stay.” This creature that had once been a part of Jones’ crew was an altogether sadder beast. But no less dangerous. “Ye ready te talk?” he asked, wary. The harpoon began to retract, tightening for a mere moment before it burst free, littering splinters all around Barbossa’s feet. “I can see ye must have been a pirate of considerable repute; why else would ye be so adept wi’ weapons and blind te magic.” No answer. The harpoon arrived back in the Torment’s hands. “Why don’t ye just run away?” he tried. It was a reasonable thought. He hoped. “Discord doesn’t care. He doesn’t hold anything over ye. Celestia is imprisoned for God’s sake-” With one final shot, the gun fired. The harpoon shot clean through Barbossa’s stomach, lodging well into the ground behind him. The chain followed, rattling through until it eventually founding itself hanging by the hole in his body. In the moonlight, he could feel no pain. But he could remember the pain of being shot through the heart. If they compared at all, he would be glad for this injury to heal over. “Celestia is imprisoned…” the beast repeated. “She is gone?” Finally! It wasn’t as dull as Barbossa had supposed. “Dead and buried, by all accounts!” For now. “Discord is the Lord of this land now. And believe me, he does not give a single flying feather over whether ye stay here or not.” Pain or no, a chain pierced through his chest was very much an inconvenience. As he moved to run once more, he felt it pull his body back into place. Tugging out it from within his chest, he felt the harpoon itself free from the ground. If only he could as skilfully remove the rest of it. Talking seemed as good a distraction as any. “I am but a simple man, as keen to see Jones dead as you surely do. Help us defeat Discord and yer freedom is all but assured.” “Celestia cannot hurt me.” “Not at all!” “But to kill Discord… is to kill her jailer.” Ah. Slight oversight. “Believe me, she will-” “She will do terrible things,” it said. “She will hunt me down. I have heard the stories.” Barbossa didn’t rightly care. This was a land with as long as history as England and its mighty Empire. So what if there were stories? Everywhere had stories! No rightful ruler could ever rule for thousands of years without having stories! “She will make me leave.” Well, Barbossa supposed that was a likely outcome, now that they had a way home for him to return home. But he wasn’t going to mention that. He kept pulling at the chain. “I am on the best of terms with the princess. She owes me many a favour and ye can rest assured that I will speak for ye. I shall find ye a home! Somewhere neither she nor Jones can touch ye.” But the Torment seemed neither inclined to listen or with the sanity enough to comprehend such an offer. Barbossa was picked up by the lapels of his coat and brought to eye-level. It flicked a mechanism on the gun, reeling in the chain as it had done before and pulling him closer. And closer. Until the harpoon pulled into his back and dragged him closer still. Too close, in fact. Chest to chest, the Torment was a giant. As the harpoon was yanked free from Barbossa’s body, his jacket was once again gripped tight by giant hands, his legs left dangling. “I will stay here.” Its breath was as putrid as its face. A sordid mix of the sea and the dead from within it. “I will be happy! I will-” So Barbossa kicked the creature right in the boons. Hard. The monster was not so happy after that. It yelped in a gurgled agony, somehow more broken that it was only moments before. It dropped Barbossa before falling dizzily to its knees. Standing up, Barbossa simply found himself nodding. “I’m… glad that worked.” More importantly, he now had access to a very large harpoon gun. Wary of the Torment as it squirmed on the floor, Barbossa lifted the weapon. His arms struggled to hold it evenly as he gave the thing a once over. Nothing more than an augmented crossbow, truth be told. Heavy, stable enough to fire a shot. The chain was thin, wrapped around a tight barrel but surely not infinite. Range. Enough range to reach Pintel, more than several lengths away. Eying up Discord, Barbossa cradled the harpoon gun in both arms and fell into a run. Chaos had lessened in the most recent minutes and he used that to his advantage. No longer was his every step marred by a copy getting in his way or a monster with sights sets on his legs. Or stomach, as it were. Now, he was ready. Before even he had time to consider what his actions would achieve, or the repercussion they might have, Barbossa pulled the gun from his back and aimed to straight for Discord’s head. “Right, you miserable cretin…” he whispered, searching. Aiming. Discord was distracted, looming over his creations with the frustration of a child that could not get a clockwork toy to work properly. The beast swatted away bullets and ponies and pies. As powerful as he was, his limited attention remained an important factor. Alone or in a group, he could strike you down. But if Discord wanted something to remain within his definition of entertaining, as many as possible needed individual attention. Barbossa fired. Discord caught it between his paw. Inches from his eyes but caught all the same “Yes,” Discord drolly stated, “because I didn’t see you lugging around the big harpoon or hear you firing it.” He then pulled on the chain, yanking the weapon from Barbossa’s hands. Still flicking and swatting at pests beneath him, Discord snapped the harpoon entirely, somehow leaving neatly tied ribbon in its wake. “Oh, dearie me. You finally got a shiny new weapon and you wasted your shot,” he added with a smugness that became all the sweeter in the seconds after. For the umpteenth time in so few minutes, Rainbow came charging back down on Discord’s head. All time seemed to slow as Barbossa saw Rainbow’s hoof connect with Discord’s cheek, forcing his entire form into the grass beneath. “He didn’t waste it!” And if the surge of bodies scurrying over Discord before had been a swarm then this new attack was something all the more frantic. Ponies and people both were jumping hold, climbing and pulled on his hair and feathers. Several of the Chinese men were quick, orchestrating a small team onto his back whilst Pintel hugged at Discord’s side like a weening infant. Words were shared between both groups, but the resulting din amounted to nothing more than a cacophony of pure noise. Friends shouting advice and comrades screaming orders, both became the same. Except for Marty. Marty was by far the shortest member of Barbossa’s crew. As the only dwarf pirate, this was not a surprise in the slightest. It was all the more impressive, then, that he was kicking Discord in the eyes and pulling at his eyebrows. He was the first ‘pest’ to be grabbed by Discord the moment senses seemed to return to him. Marty was left begging a short lived, “Wait, wait! No no no no-”, before getting flicked lazily to the side. Ponies and people were pulled off with each new second that past, yelping and screaming as they did so. Attempts were made to climb back on but that only seemed to push Discord harder as more pirates were flung to further corner of the Royal Garden. Discord then blow on the thumb of his claw. Several spouts appeared around his body and blasts of steam forced unfortunate souls away. One such Chinese pirate was left muttering “羽毛？...” before the steam cleared from his head. “我有一個羽毛!” “That. Is. It!” Then everything went bright. Then… a little less bright. Then bright again, as reality came back and flashing lights erupted all over the skyline. The moon was no longer a moon. Nor was it a sun; it was now a broken ball of fragmented mirrors reflecting… what should have been the sun. Discord was sporting a sizable afro and a white suit. He was evidently not wearing all the creatures he had been wearing before. A sizable area around Discord had been cleared, now home to a large square platform decorated with ever changing lights in every different colour. Another pair of those… black spectacles was covering his eyes too. He danced a dance that Barbossa had never seen danced before, swinging his hips whilst pointing up in the air and down to the ground. Barbossa confused. Barbossa was frustrated. Barbossa was done. He wanted an end to this- “I got some hair!” Pintel screamed. Just… just a little bit too loudly. The tubby pirate seemed to become aware of this fact all on his own as Discord left his garishly bright fever dream behind and zeroed in. The vile beast squirmed in the air above Pintel, a wild water snake spying a drowning fly. “That you do; well done,” Discord congratulated. He fell in closer, snout barely a moment from Pintel’s as he gracefully picked the hairs from the poor man’s hand. “Ah, how nice. For me? You shouldn’t have.” He ate them. “But why would you want a little thing like this?” Discord then seemed to think a moment longer, his eyes shifting curiously to everybody else strewn about the ground. “And so desperately.” Barbossa would curse Pintel to high heaven and back if he had not already run out of time. The groups of ponies and pirates were getting back to their feet, attempting once again to get close to Discord, but the beast was having none of it. He rose higher into the air, beyond the reach of everyone spare Rainbow Dash. And as Discord floated there, Barbossa could see ideas forming behind those wild yellow eyes. Connections were being made and precautions were soon going to be underway. Pintel might have cost them everything. Barbossa was having none of that. Not this day, or any other. But what the hell was he meant to do? He scanned the area, frantically eyeing everyone and everything that could possibly be off use. Jack the monkey was slapping a tiny Barbossa, completely indifferent to the tensions hanging over the gardens. Rarity was stock still, as were Fluttershy and Applejack. Rainbow, growling. Pinkie Pie… scared. Too still for her own good. His pirates weren’t much better. Most were sitting, dumbstruck like the buffoons they were. Many Chinese men well already retreating towards the castle in a scared rush and many ponies were following suit. The numbers were breaking- Breaking. Pulling out his pistol once more and loading it as quickly as he had ever in his life, Barbossa stood abruptly to his feet, ran several steps before firing a single shot towards the magic mirror. He waited eagerly for the satisfying shatter or shining glass, but it never came. Which seemed about right for magic glass, he supposed. There was a crack, make no mistake about that. But a crack so short-lived that it may as well have been a pebble falling into quiet water. Nonetheless, the ordeal was enough to catch the attention of Discord. That attention quickly spun into a dawn of understanding. “Oh. Oh, I see.” Barbossa took half a step, prepping to refill his pistol but Discord was already upon him. The weapon was grabbed from his hand and forcibly mutated into a rotten banana. Barbossa attempted a punch, but in return found his body drenched in a mixture of fruity liquids and alcohol before the lapels of his coat were grabbed by an angry talon. “No, you can’t break the glass,” Discord said, lifting Barbossa into the air. “And no, I’m afraid your distraction didn’t work out very well either.” The ponies remaining were stepping up, galloping towards Discord and pirates of varying degrees of intellect were firing pistols towards Discord. A couple of them even aiming for the mirror. That same dissatisfaction with life from before reared itself onto Discord’s face. Bubbles swiftly materialised around the pair, blasting outwards into the gardens and forcing each and every one of those attackers back to the ground. Devoid of comic-timing or any particularly dubious effects, Barbossa swallowed the gathering panic at the back of his throat. “You should have just left with your little friends, you know” Discord sighed. “Everything was perfect. I had Equestria. I was even kind enough to let you go home. We both had everything we ever wanted out of this place. All coming back has done is give the ponies false hope and I don’t think that’s very nice of you.” “I wouldn’t call leaving me cursed te be a very profound kindness.” “Oh, you should have said.” With his lion paw, Discord merely prodded at Barbossa heart, pulling away something close to a black mist before it simply stopped being. Evaporated by the wind. In what was surely not a coincidence, the moon suddenly came into full view and bathed Barbossa in its light. He breathed a sigh as his body refused to change. Even more so when there was no pain from any injury beneath his shirt. The sigh dropped into his shoes as he looked up into the bright, burning eyes of Discord. “Now I have a chance to fill you with something much, much worse.” Struggling did not help. Despite holding onto his jacket, Discord’s grip seemed to render the coat hard as steel. “How about… a toad? Or a flea. A harmless little flea. It would be a terrible shame if one of your new pony friends stepped on you or swatted at you with their tails.” Same with the trousers. His undershirt. He could not move a muscle for his clothes and as he began to smell of strawberry, a grim look at his possible future swelled within him. Torture most foul and left to the hands of a madman with reality under is paw. Plus, he really didn’t want to smell like strawberries for the rest of his mortal life “You know, I don’t really understand what you hoped to achieve. I think we’ll just hit the randomize button, don’t you? Make it a surprise for all of us.” Discord snapped his paw. Barbosa clenched his eyes shut. …Nothing happened. Risking that whatever he saw could well be his eternal torment come to life, Barbossa only saw Discord, in the same position as before. Holding him in place. His eyes, though. The beast looked sick. “Barbossa!” With movement enough to just about swivel his neck, Barbossa saw Tia Dalma. She stood under one of the many arches of the castle, alongside several of the ponies he had seen fleeing earlier. As well as a few of the Chinese pirates that had been with them. The next thing Barbossa knew, he was falling to the ground. Along with Discord himself. Before he could even begin to decide which swears were best fitting for the occasion, he was relieved to feel a weight beneath as Rainbow caught him before the ground did. His descent slowed until his entire body, metal clothes and all were dropped onto the grass. Discord, however, fell slack like a piece of thick rope. His head hit the ground with a dead thud as his body and tail caught up to him. The draconequus tiredly pushed himself, blinking away the grog and searching the ground around him for…something. Seeming the entire time ready to wretch out his own lungs- A vibrant flash of tartan light erupted from within his throat. The energy hit the grass, turning it to diamond and cheese and ice before splashing up into the air at delirious speed. It all ended at Calypso, pouring and zapping into the nine items gathered. With a casualness that defied the situation, Calypso dropped the bowl to the ground. Like a magnet glued to metal, everything refused to part as the items vibrated like insect wings against one another. Discord cracked his neck, attempting to the force the flow of horrid light to his own will. “Wha- No! You can’t-” He raised his claw out towards the bowl, pull at it through the air. Discord screamed as the fire only burned brighter, forcing more light from his body. Out of denial, or perhaps pure desperation, the draconequus tried once more. His body was forcibly flung back against the wall of Canterlot Castle as even more essence was simply yanked from his being. What this ‘light’ was, Barbossa could only guess. But he assumed… magic. Raw cosmic phenomenal power and the magic that made Discord who he was. The world around them crackled along with Discord. Clouds burst in the sky, dissipating from colourful abominations into white puffs before vanishing entirely in the breeze. Copies of Barbossa shivered into mere blurs of colour until they reverted to… well himself. Extra limbs vanished, eldritched powers crumbled away. Barbossa’s own clothes once again feel like cloth. Hills became green, yet some did not. Patterns and frivolity from the landscape and buildings and roads reclaimed some semblance of normality… yet some did not. The effect seemed random to Barbossa, as adverse to correlation as Discord himself. Whole patches of the sky become beautiful and blue whilst others had whole squares and broken shapes remain as they were. Pirate ships falls from the sky, crushing whatever lay waiting beneath them. Some didn’t fall at all. Some bounced. The glass of the magic mirror simply vanished, leaving only a floating frame with a faux world inside. Everything came to a stop. The nine pieces of eight sit calmly inside the bowl, no worse for wear and holding no hint to the power they now contain. All was silent, save for the heavy breathing from Discord. His eyes are glazed over, only vaguely aware of the world all around him. As if he were now blind, or deaf. A sense lost to him. In a flash of panic, Discord snapped his talons. Barbossa waited. Nothing happened. Not even the pieces of eight reacted to him now. Discord was bound. In the moments after, Celestia’s hoof attempted to tap at the empty air outside the mirror before she peeked her head out of the opening. Her horn aglow, she seemingly began shifting around the frame before heaving a worried frown. “We might have to build around this…” The mass panic over, Barbossa looked down at what had once been an overly ripe banana. His pistol was back normal as well. He picked it up. Finishing where he left off, he completed his ritual and prepared the pistol to fire. He fires once into Discord’s torso. The scream the rang through the air was an odd one. Barbossa would have more readily said it was a fright of surprise more than that of physical pain, but he would take it. As before, the bullet passed all the way through. Unlike before, however, there was something not unlike blood in the aftermath. It seeped slowly, like tar and had no single colour that Barbossa could truly perceive. A rainbow that changed with each perception. But it was there, and it represented something important. “Wha-” Discord prodded at the space the bullet had been, his teeth seething. The liquid that wasn’t-quite blood lingered on his paw. “Is… is this what pain feels like? How can you be born with this inside your bodies?!” With some careful steps forward, Barbossa refills his pistol again. “Wait!” Discord suddenly yelped “Wait, don’t you dare!” Barbossa fired again. The reaction was much the same, the bullet chipping at the wall behind Discord and leaving a very real injury in its wake. Barbossa eyed a lonely sword on the ground as he passed it by. He picked it up and swiped freely at the beast. The hit was parried by Discord’s talons. Apparently, they were at least as strong as the steel of a sword. Stronger, most likely. Or maybe his powers remained in there, buried deep down. Much like Calypso’s own magic, he supposed. The second swipe was also parried as Discord attempted to grab at the sword. But the third strike back revealed the strength to be no more than that. The draconequus had no skill at fighting back against a blade. And thus, Barbossa held his blade up to Discord’s throat. There was a new scream, then. Not from Discord, though. From Fluttershy. “Stop! Please!” “Give me a good reason and I might agree,” Barbossa replied swiftly. “If Discord did not stop when asked, then why should I?” He pushes down. That liquid began to seep, ever so slightly. The wounds from before had already begun to heal over and Barbossa wondered how long he could stretch out this torture. Discord himself seemed to have lost all his previous vim and vigoro. No theatrics. No jokes or quips. An unmoving dread took over him, leaving him as good as trapped in stone. So scared of a single false move. “Because you’re nice!” Fluttershy pleaded back. “You are better than this.” Debatable, Barbossa thought. He would certainly enjoy every moment of this. “You can say you came back for revenge all you want, but I know there was more to it than just that. You can’t hide how you feel, Hector. You saw something wrong and you wanted to make things right.” “I agree,” Rarity stated. “We have been through Tartarus and back and you have shown us that we were wrong. You are not a monster.” She motioned to the shambling barbossas still roaming the odds speck of land. “Those things that Discord made, they are monsters. I cannot deny that you want this.” Good to see they were not entirely naïve. “But you’re better than that.” Or so they claimed. Were they correct? … Barbossa did not feel the desire to answer. From the outskirts of his vision, Twilight Sparkle readied to just step forward. To stop him, no doubt. Tell him off for breaking the rules. But Celestia was quick to raise a hoof in front of her, merely shaking her head with some words shared he could not hear. Something about ‘his choice’ this or ‘friendship’ that, he mused. He continued to muse. “They’re right,” Barbossa decided “I very much want this. I would enjoy every last minute of seein' you gutted and made into carpet.” He almost pushed the blade right through Discord’s flesh. Almost. “But yer no longer the god you once were. Yer not even a god. Yer a pet that can be held beneath an’ iron lock and key.” Barbossa raised his sword and struck down one final time. The blade embedded into the ground. “That’s a worser fate that any death I could provide.”