A third sharkpony charged. Rarity the pirate rebel swung her wood mug, catching the sharkpony squarely in the gills. He gasped, for lack of a better word, like a fish out of water, and flopped to the floor.
Rarity sat back down. She flicked her mane out of her eyes, which just so happened to be the signal for the bartender to pour her another drink.
As a fresh mug arrived, she asked the bartender, “Do you have any celery?”
“No fresh anything, cap’n. We got salt pork, salt bean curd, and saltines.” Seeing the look of distaste on his patron’s face, the bartender added, “I could put the pork and bean curd in between two saltines, kinda like a sandwich.”
Rarity sighed. “Do you have anything that won’t make me bloat like a corpse?”
“Probably not.”
“Ugh. It’s so hard to find good health food options. A mare needs fuel! Get me three more mugs of grog, if you would.”
The bartender nodded, but stopped short of leaving. “Uh. Captain Rarity...”
“Yes? Spit it out.”
“You know grog has calories, right?”
A single wrinkle of concern creased captain Rarity’s brow. “It has what?”
“Uh... calories.”
Her entire mane, and the smoldering wicks of gunpowder decoratively stuffed within, exploded into red-hot flames. “It has what?”
Across the room, a blinding light materialized out of nowhere. Ultradense magical energy ripped a hole in the fabric of reality. The hole widened, spiraling inward to an infinite singularity.
Captain Rarity wheeled around. “What—” Out of the portal tumbled a unicorn mare in a ballgown. “—the fuck.”
The gown was like nothing the captain had ever seen before. For one, it wasn’t poofy like the ones all the mares in Prance were going crazy for. It looked like it had been vacuum-sealed in place, leaving little room for maneuverability and absolutely zero room for the imagination.
Captain Rarity had to admit, though—it did look fabulous. The dress was impractical the same way the carved prow of a ship was superfluous.
By the time the newcomer had time to orient herself, captain Rarity had the tip of her rapier poised an inch away from her neck. “Fancy magic,” the captain proclaimed, “but you’ll be no match for my steel. Surrender now and I might—”
The mare screamed with delight. “It worked! Oh, it’s so good to finally meet you.”
Captain Rarity frowned. She liked having the upper hoof in these sorts of standoffs. She was the one holding the sword—so why did she feel so powerless all of a sudden? “Who are you?”
“Why, I’m you!”
Now that she mentioned it, the portal mare did look an awful lot like captain Rarity. “Are you some second cousin twice removed? I don’t give money to family.”
“Money!” The portal mare laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. Do you see the price tag on this dress?” She wiggled her rump, where a comically long paper tag was attached. “I keep this on to let the false fashionistas with mass-produced summer lines know where they stand.” The mare stood up with effortless grace. Lesser ponies would have cut themselves on captain Rarity’s blade. This mare didn’t so much as trim a single hair on her pure white fur. “Speaking of importing knock-offs, when am I?”
The bartender said, “You’d be in the Salty Saltlick Spitton n’ Saloon, ma’am—”
“Shut up,” captain Rarity barked.
“Thank you,” said the portal mare, “but I’m afraid you misheard me. I didn’t say where. I said when.”
Captain Rarity raised an eyebrow. “This is the year of the sun five hundred and sixty two. Merry month o’ May, as the sailors say.”
“Good! Very good. And I take it by that adorable accent that you’re one of those sailors.”
“I am adorable when I want to be, but right now you’d be wise to refrain from such statements.” Her sword pressed ever closer to the portal mare’s neck. “You’ll address me as captain.”
“Adorable. And quite useful. Worry not, I haven’t come to sully your turf, captain.” She spat the word with such unbridled disdain it made half the male population of the bar faint. “I’m here to retrieve an artifact that’s of great personal importance to me and absolutely zero monetary value whatsoever, so nopony get any wild ideas.”
Captain Rarity’s ears pinned back. “There’s no need to shout.”
“I can pay you in gold to ferry me to the location of this artifact. Half up front, half when the job is done.”
“I think I’d gain more personal satisfaction from killing you where you stand. Honestly, the nerve of you. Leaping through portals, not showing your ID at the door, insulting my stature—do you know how long it took to learn to speak with a Prench accent? My parents are from Tortoisetuga.”
The portal mare produced an entire saddlebag full of bits and dropped it on the floor. Captain Rarity wisely shut up.
“We need to leave right away. The portal magic that brought me here will only be more difficult to resummon the longer I stay.” The portal mare extended her hoof. “My name’s Rarity, by the way.”
The captain didn’t bump it. “Me too,” she growled.
Portal Rarity turned on her hooves. The cosmic aberration from whence she came collapsed with a whoompf. The resulting airburst blasted the windows out of the bar. Patrons went flying. Rarity’s outfit rustled slightly.
When the dust settled, captain Rarity had already slung the saddlebag of gold over her back. “Let’s get going, shall we?” As she followed portal Rarity out, she turned her sword on the bartender. “And as for you, mister, you’re going to stop putting calories in your grog this instant.”
“That’s not—” Rarity’s glare intensified. The bartender gulped. “Yes, captain.”
Captain Rarity’s boat, which also happened to be called The Rarity, was a fine vessel, but it simply wasn’t suited for a voyage of this type. The three-masted ship simply didn’t have room for its forty guns, a crew of seventy, food, supplies, empty treasure stores, and the two Raritys’ egos.
They resolved to take a schooner instead, the Rarity II, which could be crewed by a single skilled unicorn. With captain Rarity manning the sails and portal Rarity manning the puke rail, the two made excellent time over the choppy waters of New Friendship Bay.
“I think we ought to—hrrk—” Rarity made another offering to Neptune. “Slow down.”
“Can’t delay. These are dangerous waters.” Captain Rarity wore a shit-eating grin. “This is a bit of an interesting coincidence. Two Raritys. Two boats named after Rarity. Which one of us do you think is The Rarity, and who’s Rarity II?”
Portal Rarity let out a gurgling groan.
“My thoughts exactly. I’m definitely The Rarity. It just suits me.”
Portal Rarity made a move to protest further, but elected to paint the side of the ship with her lunch instead.
After several hours of sailing, they made it to the coordinates portal Rarity had indicated. Captain Rarity hauled up the sails and looked around, a look of faint annoyance on her face.
“There’s nothing here,” she said. “Where’s the island?”
Portal Rarity slid down the puke rail in a heap. “What island?”
“Oh, for goodness sake.” Captain Rarity shot a spell at portal Rarity’s head. The latter’s mane frizzed. Her face went from deathly pale to its regular shade of pale.
“What did you do to me?”
“I fixed the imbalance in your inner ear. You’ll never get seasick again.”
“Look what you did to my mane!”
“Yes, I fixed that too. It was looking a little out of place.” Before portal Rarity could regain her strength and go on the offensive, captain Rarity added, “Are you sure these are the correct coordinates?”
“Very certain.” Rarity’s horn lit up, conjuring a bubble of recirculating air around her head. In a more muffled voice, she said, “I never said it was on an island. It’s buried under the ocean floor.”
“What?”
“You’ll need to help me hoist it up, by the way.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Oh please! You’re a sailor. Not drowning should be your specialty.”
Captain Rarity grumbled a string of curses before activating her horn. A sound like fine thread tearing filled the air. The fur on the sides of her neck turned red with heat and curled away to nothing. The bare skin opened with a sick squelch. Six slit gills appeared.
“Gross,” remarked portal Rarity.
“You try—” Captain Rarity wheezed. Her face turned blue. She stumbled to the side of the boat and threw herself into the ocean. She resurfaced to the sound of portal Rarity laughing. “I oughta have you keel hauled.”
Portal Rarity did a graceful swan dive into the water. “Let’s get going, shall we?”
The two descended side by side into the depths. Coral reefs and ancient ruins filled with tropical fish gave way to dense rock beds sliding down into darkness at a near vertical angle. They skirted past cursed seapony graveyards and the wrecks of earth pony trawlers, both filled with far too many skeletons for the Raritys’ liking. At twenty meters, the light began to diffuse into a fine haze. The last of the lingering air bubbles rose off their clothes. They floated down into the dark like stone statues.
Portal Rarity broke the alien silence. “In the future, they’ll have these things called showers.”
“Yeah?” Captain Rarity’s voice was meditative. “What are they?”
“They’re heaven. If you live long enough to see one, I highly recommend you try one.”
Captain Rarity nodded. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled.” She paused. “I assume there’s laws against what you can and can’t say when you’re time traveling.”
“Some. Mostly they leave it up to individual discretion.”
“So you can’t tell me who’ll win the island lottery next week?”
“Those records are long gone, my friend.”
Captain Rarity grunted. “So where did a mare like yourself come across all that gold?”
“I’m a businessmare,” portal Rarity replied, puffing her chest out with pride.
Captain Rarity’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell me you were a mercantilist.”
“No, not a mercantilist. A businessmare.”
“Are you one of the scoundrels that trades in pony stock?”
“Heavens, no! I work in the fashion industry. I forged myself into the success I am today with good luck, good instincts, and a lot of hard work.”
“And slaves.”
“There were absolutely no slaves involved.”
Captain Rarity chuckled. “Anytime that many bits are being tossed around, there’s slaves involved. Maybe you just don’t see them.”
“Well, sorry to burst your high and mighty bubble, but with inflation being what it is in the future, a few thousand gold bits isn’t as big of a deal as you think it is.”
Captain Rarity cocked an eyebrow. “Spoken like a true mercantilist.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why I bother. Can we just focus on sinking, please?”
Unfortunately for both of them, focusing on the descent didn’t actually make it go any faster. Only after another hour of uneasy silence did they finally reach the bottom, where the island megastructure gave way to the vast flat wastes of the abyssal plane.
Captain Rarity took a good long look around at the barren flatlands. “Well.” She kicked at the sandy dust. “Looks like your stuff’s not here.”
Portal Rarity’s horn lit up. A shovel poof’d into being beside her. The displacement created a cavitation bubble which left both mares momentarily stunned. Captain Rarity grabbed her gills in pain.
“Amateur,” she muttered.
The silt and debris was heavier than captain Rarity expected. One toilsome shovelful at a time, she scraped a hole into the seafloor. No matter how careful she was, half of every shovelful lingered in the air as a choking haze. She felt it in her eyes and her gills. Portal Rarity, with her magic bubble, seemed unaffected.
After nearly an hour of work, captain Rarity’s shovel struck bedrock.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” she said, the faintest hint of smugness in her voice. “Whatever you’re looking for must not be here yet. I’ll still need the other half of my payment. You of all ponies must understand the value of labor.”
Portal Rarity frowned slightly. She looked up to the surface, closed one eye, and took three big steps to the left.
“Oh,” she said, “you’re right, I was a hair off. It’s actually right here.”
Captain Rarity laughed. “You’re kidding.” A pause. “You’re not kidding.”
“I didn’t get to be the businessmare I am today by being indecisive.”
“You had me dig in the wrong spot for an hour!”
“And now I’m completely, one hundred percent certain that it’s here.”
Captain Rarity shoved the shovel in portal Rarity’s face. “Dig it yourself if you’re so certain.”
Portal Rarity rolled her eyes. “You’re worse than the labor organizers in my factories. Quite pathetic.” She made no move to take the shovel, instead lighting up her horn. The ground around them began to shake. An entire chunk of the seabed lurched into the air and moved to the side with a muffled whump.
Captain Rarity hacked until she thought her gills would fall off. As the dust settled, she saw that Rarity had simply picked up multiple tons of saturated earth and silt and sloughed it to the side.
“I would say something about picking myself up by the bootstraps,” portal Rarity said, “but it appears only one of us is actually cheugy enough to wear bootstraps.”
Captain Rarity muttered a few choice curses under her breath and looked down into the pit to see what they’d uncovered. Something shimmered at the bottom, though in the silty fog that still lingered in the air it was difficult to tell what it was. Captain Rarity leaned over the edge to get a better look.
The object moved. Captain Rarity’s eyes went wide. She flinched and flung herself backwards. A silver-tipped arrow flew through the air where her face had just been.
“Skeletons!” captain Rarity shouted. She tried to grab her hat only to realize it had been skewered by the arrow. “Skeleton pit!”
“Well, I would certainly hope so. Where else am I supposed to get skeleton eyes?”
More arrows flew up from the pit. At the apex of their arc, they froze before sinking gracefully back down to the seabed. Captain Rarity risked a glance over the edge and saw the skeletons preparing ladders. Their eyes were black opals. Their teeth chattered with bloodlust.
“We’re gonna die down here, idiot!” Captain Rarity drew her sword. “The only way you can kill a skeleton is by burning it.”
“We’re not going to kill them, darling.”
“The hay we aren’t!” The first skeleton reached the lip of the pit and thrust a polearm at captain Rarity. She stabbed it in its eye socket, shattering the opal, and threw its head as far as she could. The body lost its grip on the ladder and fell back into the pit.
“Captain, be careful! We need their eyes.” She ran after the loose skeleton head, but as she approached it snapped its teeth at her. “Can you help me get this one?”
The captain was busy leveraging her sword between the seabed and a second ladder. With a mighty roar, she shoved the ladder off, sending half a dozen skeletons tumbling down. “No. We’re leaving. Our business is—” Another arrow whizzed past her head. “Concluded.”
“You can’t just give up! Do you know how valuable these eyes are?”
“Are they as valuable as your life?”
“Not my life.”
Captain Rarity froze. She didn’t even flinch when a third ladder smacked into the lip of the pit just inches away from her front hooves. “Your life?” she said.
“Oh, come on. You’re a pirate. You have a sword and a ship and you probably have a parrot back on your main boat. Isn’t this what you want? Swashbuckling adventure, fighting, swooning mares.”
“I don’t see any mares. Only skeletons and vultures.”
“That was uncalled for. Look, isn’t this what you want?” She gestured to the pit. “I’m not a bad pony. I’m giving you what you want. You want this.”
Captain Rarity turned her attention back to the pit, where another skeleton was climbing within melee range. With a quick, efficient motion, she twisted its head off and kicked the ladder off the edge. She carried the chattering skeleton head over to portal Rarity.
“You’re right,” captain Rarity said in a blithe voice. “I love my job. I love being a wild, brutish, sexy pirate. I love it almost as you love making money. So here you go.” She thrust the skeleton into portal Rarity’s face. “Take it.”
Portal Rarity shrieked. “Get it away!”
“What? I thought you wanted these eyes.”
“I do!”
“Then take them.”
“You take them!”
“I don’t want the eyes. I want to be a swashbuckling pirate. I wanna fight in the pit. Remember?”
Portal Rarity reached a tentative hoof towards the skull. It snapped at her when she got close. She let out another scream and shirked away.
“Better hurry,” Captain Rarity said, “they got another ladder up.”
The sight of more skeletons clambering over the lip of the pit sent portal Rarity into a blind panic. She grabbed the skeleton out of captain Rarity’s hooves and stuffed it into a silty spot in the ground face-down. She let out a very unladylike scream and punched through the back of the skull, shattering it to smithereens. The fragmented jaw quivered, still trying to bite. Portal Rarity started to sob uncontrollably as she sifted through the jagged remains of the skull until she found its two black opal eyes.
Satisfied, captain Rarity grabbed her charge around the waist and dragged her towards the surface. A final volley of skeleton arrows went up behind them, a school of carnivorous silverfinned fish searching for prey. None found their mark. They fell down to rest in the seabed
The trip back to the island was a quiet one. The wind conversed with the waves. Portal Rarity sat in the sheltered rear of the ship. She held one black opal in each hoof. Her eyes stared right through them.
“I can’t stop seeing eyes,” she said.
Captain Rarity hopped down to her. “That’s what they are.”
“No... no, they’re rocks. You don’t get black opals by beating up skeletons. You mine them from the ground.”
“Well, how do you think they got in the ground?”
Portal Rarity tore her eyes away from the opals and looked at her alter ego. “Were they ponies once?”
Captain Rarity nodded. “Sailors lost at sea. The magic and pressure turns their eyes to black opals.” She gestured to the gems. “This is the first time they’ve been out of the water in at least five hundred years.”
“Now you’re just making me feel bad.”
“You said you mined black opals in your world?”
“It’s your world too. It just hasn’t happened yet.”
“Don’t dodge the question.”
Portal Rarity saw the grim sincerity in captain Rarity’s face. “Yes. We mine them.”
“Whatever you’re paying the mine, I’ll get you opals for half the price. As many as you need. No questions asked.”
Portal Rarity nearly fell over, and it wasn’t because of the ship rocking. “Half the price?”
“I’m serious. It’s not dignified to just pull them from the ground. We can at least give those skeletons a warrior’s death.”
Portal Rarity set the gems down and stuck out her hoof. “That’s very honorable of you.”
This time, captain Rarity returned the gesture. “You’ll need to come back and direct me like you did today.”
Portal Rarity chuckled. “Not going to let me off the hook that easy?”
“Not on your life. Working in a mine is foal’s play compared to skeleton pits.”
“Who told you I was using foals for the mine?”
Captain Rarity paused. “That wasn’t... what I meant.” A long, barren silence passed between them. “You don’t seriously use—”
“Mines are cramped and small. It’s much too dangerous to send grown adults down there.” She crossed her hooves over her chest. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Captain Rarity’s boat pulled into its slip at the harbor. She secured the moorings, then double-checked her mane to make sure the wind hadn’t blown it crooked. A nice mug of grog was in order. She deserved it. She was a good captain.
Halfway down the gangplank, she realized she’d forgotten something. She scrambled to the rear of the ship, where a rope had been secured to the aft railing, extending down into the sea.
Captain Rarity hauled the rope up. A soaked, sputtering portal Rarity came up with it.
“See you next month,” said captain Rarity.
“S-s-see you n-next month,” said portal Rarity.