//------------------------------// // Enter: Always an Adventure // Story: Always an Adventure // by Ginger pone //------------------------------// A stiff wind blew across the great blue horizon. Small waves gently formed and traveled a few meters, before their tiny white caps dissolved, returning to the deep waters of the ocean. Skimming lightly along the surface, catching the wind at just the right angle, was a peculiar sailing ship. The hull was painted a banana yellow and the exposed wood on the deck and railings were stained a deep maroon red. The ship's two, junk rigged sails were a rather odd sight. Each sail was made up of several large rectangular sections, each in turn separated by a spar and ending off with a large boom at the bottom. Ropes were spread around, suspending the sails, and, in addition to providing structural support, allowed for full control of the vessel. Together, the ropes drew triangles all over the ship. Near the stern, the name Dragonfly was emblazoned, finishing off the unique look of the ship. The Dragonfly sped towards its home port after a long shipping run.   Captain Nilcoar Scaggs stood at the helm of his beloved vessel. Its deck hummed beneath his hooves, and the wheel was alive in his hooves. He was a tall teal stallion with a short, creamy white mane and tail. The brisk ocean air rushed past his face causing the large white feather on his equally large and flamboyant red hat to flap in the wind.  "I'm hungry for some tater tots!" He shouted to his crew.  -- Loose Embargo sat at his desk, idly spinning a coin on the dark mahogany. The past few hours had been slow, heck the past few days had been slow. There had been virtually no traffic in or out of the port all day, and hardly any throughout the week. Being a Harbormaster could sure be boring sometimes. In addition to charging fees associated with docking and maintenance, his job was to check the cargo entering and leaving the port, keeping records, and ensuring no contraband was being transported under the table (or above it for that matter). Unfortunately, that meant that when there were no ships entering or leaving the port, he had virtually nothing to do. All his pending paperwork was already finished and his office was clean as could be. The light grey stallion sat there, wishing for something, anything, to break the monotony and quell his boredom. As if on cue, a rather unkempt and skinny looking guard opened the door to his office.  "Sir there's a ship approaching"  The mare stated, matter of fact. Loose Embargo jumped to his hooves and trotted to the door "finally," he thought.  The guard was a young mare with a mostly white coat that had a few splotches of grey near her flank. Her hair was a silvery grey, as was her namesake: Silver Mint "Show me what we're working with Minty'' said Embargo with a sense of relief in his voice. The guard blushed slightly at the nickname before speaking as they walked out of the customs house and towards the pier. "She's a Ketch junk rig sir" Embargo stopped in his tracks and looked out to the ocean. "Sir?" Said the guard with concern There was only one vessel that could be. The Dragonfly. Embargo hated dealing with the Dragonfly, his encounters with the eccentric captain of the ship were interesting, he had to admit, but nearly every time, he found some sort of contraband hidden aboard the vessel beneath boxes of exotic fruit. Likewise, almost every time, the captain found some completely unexpected way out of the situation. Sometimes, Embargo just let them go to save himself the headache and more importantly, the paperwork. "You're kidding right?" Said Embargo, but deep down he knew that the mare was telling the truth. "No sir, I would never kid with you sir." "When can I stop telling you to please stop calling me sir. This isn't the military." "Sir yes- er- of course…uh" the mare tried to think of something else to call him, but Embargo spoke before she got the chance. "You're dismissed, go… go eat a donut or something okay?" Embargo hoped he could at least save her the headache of dealing with the Dragonfly. "Aye harbormaster" the guard opted to use Embargo's official title. "Go on, get out of here for a little while" The guard gave a lopsided salute before trotting off. Embargo watched the thin mare go and mumbled under his breath "That poor kid needs a sandwich" -- Back on board the Dragonfly, spurred by Nilcoar's comment on tater tots, the crew was now discussing the different foods they hoped to have in port with much gusto in anticipation of the deliciousness- at least, delicious compared to the rations they'd been eating for the past month. "Look, you guys keep bringing up tater tots, but hear me out, what you want is a good hash brown casserole"  "No no no, you've got it all wrong, what they want is hashbrown pancakes, not casserole" "But with casserole you still get the goodness of the potato, and you also get tons of other yummy ingredients, anything you can think of really- carrots, tomatoes, ooh, and cheese, and also…" Hiri went on listing potential casserole ingredients as he bickered with his twin, Simi. Or was it Simi bickering with his twin Hiri? An outside viewer wouldn't be able to tell that Hiri was the one listing off ingredients as both twins looked nearly identical. Both had a light tan coat with a short brown mane and tail. They constantly bickered, assuming they had nothing better to do. That being either: A. Trimming the sails to get the most speed out of the ship, or B. Causing any amount of devious trouble. Despite their mischievous nature, the twins had an indescribable synergy that made them expert sail trimmers, an indispensable asset to the crew. Unfortunately, that same synergy carried over to causing trouble.  "I stand by the tater tots idea, good casserole is something you can only get in a rare hole in the wall kind of pub, or if you cook it yourself, tater tots on the other hand, are hard for any restaurant to mess up. Plus, you can still put cheese on them" Said Grif, a lanky colt, the shortest of the crew. Although he was at an intersection of age where he could potentially be called a stallion, to the crew, he'd always be a colt. Vissnir grunted in agreement with Grif "If I can swallow it, it's probably good enough anyways" Vissnir stated matter of fact in his deep voice. His voice carried far despite how low he seemed to be speaking. His statement was somewhat ironic considering how good of a cook he was. Vissnir was a large- even huge- stallion with a reddish brown coat and a thick dark brown mane that hung down covering most of his eyes. All of a sudden, Nilcoar's face lit up as if struck by genius. "If prench fries are fried potato… what if we tried fried banana!"   "I'm pretty sure that already exists, I've seen it at some ice cream place before" Simi called back to Nilcoar, who's face lit up even more at this news. "Please tell me more! I'll take the whole crew there and we can all try fried banana!" He cried triumphantly.  "Uhhh… something… bees? I think? That's all I remember" Simi didn't sound confident in his answer and looked to Hiri for help, who only shrugged in response. "Something to do with skin..." Simi mused deep in thought. "That's it!" Hiri chimed in "Leather- err uh, Leathery Bees?" "Interesting… Leathery Bees… what a terrible name for an ice cream parlor" Nilcoar said in thought. He drew the sword strapped to his side and pointed it forward purposefully. "We shall go to this Leathery-bees and acquire fried bananas or so help me Gort!" He cried in a loud commanding tone. "You're uh… you're doing the thing again" Grif warned Nilcoar "Right, I got ahead of myself" he looked at his sword lovingly "You be good now Jerry, time to rest" he sheathed his sword. "Until we get said fried banana and potato of… various cooking methods, these should keep your hunger at bay" The entire crew knew exactly what was coming next. Nilcoar reached into his hat and retrieved several yellow bananas; more than could reasonably have fit inside his hat, and tossed one to each of the four crew members before biting into his own. -- "Prepare to dock!" Nilcoar called out, even though the small crew probably didn't need to be given the order in the first place. The stallions scuttled around the deck as the Dragonfly pulled into port. Simi and Hiri raised the sails, Vissnir lobbed wicker buoys over the side of the ship, and Grif prepared to toss lines across to the waiting deckhand on the dock. Loose Embargo stood on the dock ready to greet the captain, but Nilcoar beat him to it.  "Hey, Loosey goosey, how are you?" Nilcoar called out to Embargo like they were old friends. Embargo sighed, preparing himself for the inevitable headache. "I'm fine, Nilcoar, will you show me your shipping receipts." Embargo said unenthused. The sentence was more of a command than a question.  Nilcaor pranced forward with his akward sailors gait, jumping down onto the warped and sun beaten planks of the dock. "Aw come on, always all business. Have some fun every once in a while eh?" Nilcoar threw a hoof around Embargo's shoulders. The rest of the crew began unloading crates from the ship and onto a cart sitting at the end of the dock.  "Please Nilcoar, I don't have time for this" He did actually, have more than enough time for this, but Nilcoar didn't know that. "There's always time for bananas my friend, you'll understand when you're older" Nilcoar waved his hoof in the air wistfully "I'm at least fifteen years older than you." Embargo said with an exasperated sigh. Nilcoar didn't seem to hear him. "Look, I brought back a new special banana just for you!" Nilcoar produced a short, blue banana from under his hat and held it out to Embargo. "They call it blue Java, or more self explanatory, ice cream bananas!" Embargo pushed the banana away. "Thanks Nilcoar, your banana collection is all well and good, but please, I have a job to do here." "Oh of course! Why didn't you just say so?" Nilcoar fished around under his hat and produced a stained cocktail napkin with a poorly drawn fish on it. "Oh, sorry, wrong piece of paper, here hold this" before Embargo could refuse, Nilcoar had placed the napkin in his hoof. Embargo sighed again and looked down at the napkin while Nilcoar continued to fish around under his hat. Beneath the fish drawing a single word was scribbled in a different color of ink: "Gort" Embargo didn't want to bother questioning it, he had learned all too well that questioning Nilcoar generally led to a worse headache. Finally Nilcoar produced a large scroll from his hat and snapped it so that it unrolled completely on the dock. Embargo stared dumbfounded at the parchment, the scroll had to be at least 10 feet long. He resisted the urge to ask how Nilcoar had even fit the scroll in his hat. Embargo had seen him pull strange things from his hat, but never anything this large… It was then that Embargo realized the scroll was completely blank. He followed the scroll with his eyes until he got to the top where Nilcoar was holding it up. There were two lines of text written in incredibly fine print on the scroll.  "Here you are, the entire contents of the cargo hold, just for you" Embargo squinted to try and make out the text, reading it aloud. "Bananas… 60 ca- caboo-dles? What's a caboodle?" Embargo realized his mistake too late, he had questioned the captain.  "A caboodle? Well that's simple! It's a part of the measuring system I devised myself, I really think it could catch on, the total number of caboodles is equal to ten percent of however many crates you have plus the weight of the combined shipment, then multiply that by ten, and subtract ten times the weight" Embargo was lost very quickly "how… how many crates is that?" Embargo asked. Nilcor looked up in thought, then dumped a few bananas out of his hat and began counting them, shuffling them around, then counting them again, presumably in order to calculate the number of crates 60 caboodles was equal to. Finally he looked up "That's 60 crates of bananas" Nilcoar answered proudly.  Embargo placed a hoof on his temple. He already felt the headache coming on. He thought about what Nilcoar's formula was before slowly realizing that it did in fact lead to the same exact value you start with. He shook his head "whatever you say" Embargo droned before looking back at the parchment to read the second line. "pineapples… 15… oodles… Just tell me how many crates that is… please" Embargo sounded desperate. "Oh, for sure, 15 crates of pineapples, I just felt like writing oodles, there's no conversion for it" Nilcoar said happily. "Thank Celestia" muttered Embargo. He began walking to where the crates were being unloaded. "Alright you know the drill, I have to make sure what's on the receipt is what's in the hold, and yes I'm aware of your 'no questions asked policy' but again, I have different rules to follow, so yes, I have to inspect your crates even if you have never even opened them." Embargo tried to preemptively avoid any protest from the smuggler. "All I know is that I ship fruit, you know that." Nilcoar assured Embargo.  Embargo took a deep breath and tried to relax. "Alright, open them up" Embargo gestured to a few of the crates. Simi and Hiri each had a crowbar in their mouth. They dutifully began prying up the wooden lids of the crates. Embargo waited patiently, thankful that Nilcoar's crew seemed to be more punctual than the captain himself. Once one was completely open he took a look inside. Sure enough it was filled to the brim with various states of unripe green and yellow bananas. Embargo began rummaging around the crate, checking for a false bottom. When he felt the bottom of the crate with his hoof he was satisfied and pleasantly surprised. His expression quickly changed from surprise to pain as he felt a sharp piercing pain in his leg. He let out a scream and promptly pulled his leg out of the crate with a bright orange and yellow snake attached to it. "MOTHER OF LUNA" Embargo yowled through the excruciating pain. Grif immediately ran over to try and pull the snake off of his leg. Several other snakes began slithering out of the wooden box. "So it was snakes this time," remarked Simi thoughtfully. Nilcoar jumped on the cart and frantically tried pushing the snakes back in, prodding them with a banana. "Time to go!" He exclaimed. Vissnir hitched himself to the cart and began muscling it forwards immediately. Nilcoar was still on the cart dancing around the snakes. Simi and Hiri ran over, setting their shoulders on the cart and pushing with all they had. Grif finally managed to wrestle the snake off of Embargo, who cradled his leg In pain. "I'm sorry Mr. Embargo, I hope your leg heals!" Grif called back as he ran to catch up with the rest of the crew. Embargo yelped when he realized the snake was priming itself to strike again. He limped away as fast as he could, shaking his hoof at the captain, who failed to notice him in the midst of his frantic dance with the snakes.  "Later, Loosey Goosey!" Hiri Shouted back, using the Nilcoar’s nickname for the harbormaster. Embargo grumbled. "What in tartarus am I supposed to do with them…"