//------------------------------// // Chapter forty-one, Sandy Situations: Numbers Power. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Neighgrabah, evening, Jacky- I just looked towards the towering flaming twister in the distance and turned to the mare guard at the gate. “That wasn’t my fault, I swear!” Though I may have incidentally sent an hourglass with the wooden portion of it burning rolling in that direction, I was not going to tell these guards that. “I believe you, but I have to ask if this is a common occurrence around you?” The red furred mare guard was staring at me with narrowed eyes. “Kind of, yeah, but I was already on my way to the gate from the… Merchant’s Quarters I believe? I know some people can vouch that they never saw me anywhere near the Noble’s Quarters!” I think this particular mare had it in for me with the way she was sending me a suspicious glance. “Go on through, but don’t come back into the city until tomorrow morning and I’ll decide whether or not to put you on the banned list.” Nodding and acquiescing to her demand that my curse stop destroying the city, I walk away from the gate along the wall towards the corner. Turning said corner to head towards my ship, I found five cloaked guys in the way facing towards me and they were holding daggers, knives and a blade threateningly at me. “I take it the city guard tells you about the people who don’t pay the stupidly exorbitant prices to park safely within the city limits?” There was the conspiracy theory I had burgeoning in my head about the thieves and the guards having something of a complicit business contract to not interfere with each other’s businesses outside the city walls. Being outside said walls, the guard didn’t care about the lawless accosting someone who wasn’t paying a hefty fee every day to do trade in Neighgrabah. The five pony thieves didn’t look particularly threatening, even though Saddle Arabian ponies were always far larger than regular Equestrian ponies. “Even if that were true, it wouldn’t matter in this instance.” The leader of these five these held his saber aloft at me. His cloak and coverings hid his features, all of them were either earth pony Saddle Arabians or pegasus Saddle Arabians with concealed wings. “Your money or your life!” “Heh… you know it’s kind of funny, but do I look like a rich merchant to you? I’m a pirate, which is way different than trying to mug a regular merchant.” The four behind the leader looked at each other and then back to me as I pulled one of my two swords out. I held the sword up high and turned it slightly to bounce the evening sunlight off its slightly polished surface in a given direction. “You obviously don’t know who you’re messing with here.” “Oh? I know of no famous foreigner pirate that has your particular description.” Okay that had me stabbing my sword into the sand and crossing my arms. “That’s because I’m rather infamous in Port Turtle Toga, mostly for sinking almost every ship I’ve ever been on or near. Being a Blackcap doesn’t help my reputation in the slightest.” They tensed when I mentioned that I was a cursed pirate, they should be worried about that. “You make a move for me and my crew fires a cannonball with incredible accuracy at me.” I was bluffing, mostly about the accuracy, but Flotsam did hit a bunch of Clockwork’s golems once upon a time. “I’ll take my chances that they wouldn’t dare fire when one of their crewmates…” At the thief’s words, I simply held up my left thumb claw as I took my sword up in my right hand and then covered my eyes with my forearm. “They don’t care that I’m the captain, they’ll fire anyway.” All their eyes went wide when the sound of a loud explosion was heard coming from our airship. The cannonball was actually coming right for me, I could hear the whistling noise of it clawing at the air to get at me. I sighed and waited for it to get close enough before I reacted to the inevitable impact. A few seconds after the cannonball impacted the ground, I got up bruised and with sand in places I currently wished wasn’t there. I shook a lot of said sand out of my pants legs. Having been at ground zero for multiple cannonball impacts, I knew exactly when to jump and ride the shockwave from the cannonball landing. It had still hurt plenty enough, but I’d be fine after a good night’s rest. The thieves were not so lucky and were laid out on the ground groaning, I walked over to the impact site and calmly rolled the cannonball out of the divot in the sand. I slowly proceeded to rob the thieves of their weapons and money. “My name is Captain Blackcap… you better remember this moment!” I told the leader of the thieves that tried to rob me, suddenly kicking him in the face and breaking his nose was entirely warranted. Picking up the cannonball to carry back towards the ship under my left arm, I noted it was still in fairly good condition and could be fired again. Upon reaching the ship, I only had one thing to say as I dropped the cannonball off next to the cannon. “Nice shot, I got you that book you wanted Flotsam.” Aside from me, Flotsam was definitely going to be a gunner and needed some training in the subject. “Are you sure you’re not supernaturally lucky? Being that close to a cannonball’s impact should have you on the ground in pain like those five are.” Immediately denying Flotsam with a shake of my head, I passed the book to her and turned towards Belfry. “Belfry, insult to their injuries.” The giant butterfly, at my command, spread its wings and flew off towards the downed thieves. He seemed particularly eager to attack them for accosting me and was only waiting to do so on my orders. “No, I’m quite unlucky, given where a lot of that sand ended up… also avoiding the worst of the cannonball’s impact was entirely skill based. I still want to get rid of Belfry, but I think he might actually growing on me.” I opened the door to go below deck and then fell down two flights of stairs… it has been a mostly normal day for me. Thankfully, I wasn’t falling up the stairs this time. -Neighgrabah, Teatime- “So you propose we each work on retrieving a key and we’ll all get what we want, I find that plan most agreeable. I’ll go to the palace and get the key up there. I’ll use my many connections and it’ll be quite simple to get in, I can work my skills in being charming to get an idea of where the key might be.” We would make excellent companions, it’s just too bad that my machines can’t dig their way into something that is protected by a magical dimensional pocket. “I assume that you will be wanting an equally large portion of the treasure as well Caballeron? I haven’t the foggiest if you will want any of it aside from that mystical dark magic ring you’re after Ahuizotl.” “The two of you can have all the treasures you can carry, I care not as long as I can come closer to my goals. Be warned though, I know that Daring Do will try and stop us.” The weird headed fellow with the long face seemed particularly worried about a sassy sounding adventurer, one of which Caballeron knew as well judging by the looks on his face. I was still worried about a parrot pirate that left me high and dry to be lynched by the pirates of Turtle Toga. “She always shows up at the worst times.” “Daring Do wouldn’t happen to be a strange parrot with an odd looking cat with a mane of petals?” Said parrot destroyed my ship, blew up every other ship in the harbor making it hard to get off the island and even had the gall to destroy most of my remaining golems on her way out as well. “No, she’s an annoying pegasus that likes to get in the way of… business.” Ah that was easy to understand Caballeron, you’re quite the mercenary my dear chap and I’m glad my sponsors are paying you quite a sum to get a job done. GODLESS pays you and I get to tap you as a fairly useful resource by being related to them, his work was exemplary among the black market community. “Do we have an agreement my fine fellows, one where we will work together to uncover the secret to getting into the Caves of Intrigue?” I knew GODLESS likely wouldn’t care about you earning some money on the side from a joint venture like what we’re about to embark upon Caballeron. It should be enough incentive for you to side with me if Ahuizotl proves less than trustworthy. “There is a strength in numbers, I doubt any of the thieves here would want to mess with us. Whether we act individually or together given the imposing forces we can bring about.” I eyed that griffon that seemed to curiously sniffing the random alcohol he received, if I were him I’d be wary of it as well. Tea is still the better beverage after all! Boiled flavorful leaves in water and clockwork constructions are my two favorite things in life, next to being rich of course. “I am willing to agree to work with the both of you, but remember that the ‘Ring of Scorchero’ in there is mine.” Ahuizotl growled out as he stared Caballeron and me down. We were clearly unimpressed by his dangerous demeanor. Ahuizotl was a beastly person, but he at least knew what he wanted and how to go about getting it. He was even willing to try different methods to come to reach that conclusion. He was the most muscular of the three of us, even if his intelligence left a little something to be desired. “As long as I can get a decent payout from this, I have no complaints about working with you two.” Caballeron might be rough around the edges, but he paid his goons well enough for them to stick with him despite the dangerous places he drags them into. Caballeron is somewhat honorable at least, though only to those who didn’t deny him what they owed. Otherwise I knew he could be quite ruthless, both in negotiations and combat. He also had a silver tongue and was quite charismatic, but not nearly as much as I was. With my clockwork golems, Ahuizotl’s beastly menagerie of trained felonious felines and Caballeron’s crew full of dapper blokes, we were sure to win any volatile encounter provided we could work together. I’ll prepare something special in case they try to throw me to some wolves. Our working together is only a verbal agreement at best and at worst it’s an open agreement to stab one another when it becomes convenient for us. “Then we have an accord, the other two keys I will simply leave to you two to work out. We shall meet up again in a week or so to get a measure of each other’s progress, we will either do it here or in the bazaar near the entrance. Maybe the main square? We have plenty of options.” I stood up and gave them one last look. “I have business to attend to and some strings to pull for my visit to the palace, ta-ta for now.” I got up and left the run down, broken, filthy, rogue filled establishment with my head held high and was assured that if they tried anything against me… well, I would simply make them pay dearly that’s for sure. It’s only fair when I absolutely knew they’d do the same to me. They would leave soon after I did to go plot the theft of the other keys. -Gene- Griffons thankfully didn’t have ears that moved when listening in on conversations, I kept my body language as still and uninteresting as possible. I should warn Jacky and the others about this, but I couldn’t get up yet and had to eventually leave for a good and logical reason. I’m sure the thieves knew I was listening for something, possibly marks and I wanted to keep them guessing by not leaving early. “The fire tornado is coming this way!” A thief yelled before running off. “Wouldn’t it have been safer in here or any other building for that matter?” I questioned audibly. “Yes.” A lot of the other thieves answered, then one added onto the statement. “Provided that it’s not strong enough to cook us while inside these buildings like an oven, we should be safe here.” I simply shrugged and sniffed the fumes of the alcohol again trying to identify what was in the bottle, Ahuizotl and Caballeron had already left. I had my guesses as to what was in the bottle and corked the bottle back up again. It smelled nice at the very least, it was probably watered down wine. If it wasn’t watered down, then somebody really disliked the guy sleeping on the floor. He was still breathing so he was still alive and it seemed nobody was going to bother to wake him. I got up and went over to the bar, poured a drink for a random thief and then walked out into the evening to head back to the ship. I could hear the thief raising his glass to me, he then drank it and would probably quickly forget who I was now. A few minutes of waiting outside, I didn’t hear him drop dead and it sounded like the wine was quite delectable. I’m bagging this bottle of alcohol in The Ardent Survivor for later, I’ve discerned that it was mostly safe to drink. I’ll use Belfry as a second opinion, Butterflies eat toxic things all the time and I’m sure a drunk butterfly wouldn’t cause too many problems. -Savannah- “This has been a lot of fun!” I shouted to the mare that joined me for some enticing dancing, I hugged her and ran my claws through her wonderfully silky purple mane. These dancing girls knew how to be exciting. “Well you’re quite the exotic sight here and dancing to attract the eyes seems to be within you.” The mare nuzzled me. We’ve been sending each other signals like this for a while now and I’ve earned some money. “How about we do something private together?” I ran a claw along her pink furred back, looking into her wonderful blue eyes. “I propositioned the guards, but they wouldn’t take… apparently I’m too much for them. Bunch of stiffs, even that mare guarding the gate.” “Yes, they can be a bit uptight Savannah.” She said sweetly as she pressed her lips against my cheek. “Hey now, don’t become too attached! I’m aware I’m beautiful, but this is friends with benefits. Can’t be, ‘The Wild’, if I go and get married now can I?” After a moment I decided to ask a question. “What’s your name?” “I am Amira.” She became rather nervous about something as she looked to me. “You- don’t know who I am?” “Am I supposed to?” I waited for Amira’s response. “I think… I will actually be taking you up on your proposition.” We left the establishment smiling.