//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15 
// Story: Wet Dreams 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

	“All right you landlubbing scoundrels!  Come forth and offer tribute to King Neptune!”
The six mares and one dragon looked at me suspiciously.  Twilight said, “I’ve never heard of this ritual before.”
“We’ve been over this,” I told her.  “Every time you cross the equator, the junior sailors aboard get hazed.”
“That still doesn’t seem right,” Rarity protested.
And it wasn’t, but damn did I like making excuses to create a good hazing.  I glared at them.  “Do you all want to walk the plank?”
“There ain’t no plank on this new ship,” Applejack reminded me.
“Freaking pirates,” I muttered.  “Can’t build anything right.”
The not-so-good ship Bacon cut through the waves, helped along by a stiff breeze.  All of us aboard were having a reasonably good time, so I had decided to up the ante with a crossing the line ceremony.  It didn’t work out, so now the crew was back to passively disliking me.  At least they had a good reason now.
I went down to the cargo hold.  The pile of gold and gold accessories sitting there was certainly a good trade for the crocodiles that had previously occupied the space.  I shoved a few of the coins into a small bag.
I faintly heard Rainbow call, “Ship sighted!”
Coming up on deck, I grabbed my spyglass and sighted through it.  Sure enough, the multicolored pegasus was awake and doing her job.  Oh, and a ship.
“All hands to battle stations!” I called.
“Why?” asked Pinkie.  Any other pony I probably would have had court-martialed for questioning orders.  Any other pony probably wouldn’t have been able to get away with an insanity plea, though.
“We’ve got a Celestia-issued privateer license,” I reminded her.  “Fighting other ships is our job.”
“We aren’t at war with any country,” Twilight quickly reminded me.
“We’re still pirates,” I said.
“Privateers,” she corrected.
I rolled my eyes.  “Whatever floats your boat.” 
“Root beer floats?” asked Pinkie.  “Oh!  We should invite that other ship over here and have an ice cream root beer social!”
Fight or party, fight or party.  It was honestly a tough decision.  A sudden thought came to me.  “We don’t have any ice cream or root beer.”
“How about we go ask them?” suggested Pinkie.
Hmm.  That would be a perfect excuse to get close without tipping them off to our true intentions.  I grabbed the wheel and steered us in that direction.
As it turned out, the ship was carrying a cargo of ice cream and root beer.  I facehoofed.  “Fluttershy, prepare to receive casualties!”
“I thought we weren’t going to fight!” exclaimed Twilight.
“We aren’t.  We’re going to Pinkie Party.”
“Oh, right.”
We got our ice cream and our root beer and everyone had a pretty swell time.  In fact, between the two ships we consumed the entire cargo, leaving no reason to actually fight.  Even I had to admit it worked out for the best.
“That was great!” exclaimed the other captain.  “I am a little down that we just burned through a really expensive load of confections.  Hey, what are you carrying in your ship?  We shared our cargo with you.”
Instead of answering, I calmly stepped back across the boarding bridge and touched off a broadside barrage of cannons.
“But I thought we weren’t going to fight!” squealed Fluttershy.
“Doesn’t count if they aren’t fighting back,” I replied.  The other ship plunged straight to the bottom, the crew floating free in life boats.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” demanded Twilight.
“Nope.”
“You attacked a merchant ship from the zebra homeland!  They’re going to be really angry!”
“How did you know it was from there?” I asked.
“They were flying a flag that matched the one in Zecora’s passport,” she explained.
“Zecora has a passport?  Huh, I always thought she just kind of hung out in the forest because she couldn’t establish residence due to her illegal alien status.”
“You assume a lot, Valiant.”
“How is that different than what you do?” I asked.
“I read and understand documented data before I made any decisions,” Twilight replied angrily.
“Data documented by others,” I pointed out. 
“They have accreditation!” she screamed.
“Um, hate to break y’all’s argument up,” said Applejack, stepping in, “but the submarine’s doin’ somethin’ funny.”
I glanced over the stern of the ship at where we towed the moose-built sub.  It was wallowing in the water a little, and I soon spotted the reason why.  One of the zebras from the ship we’d sunk was climbing aboard, a cutlass clenched in his teeth.
I grinned.  “I’ll take care of this.”
After carefully climbing down the tow rope, I squared off with the stallion.  I think that’s the proper pronoun for a zebra.  I didn’t have time to contemplate it further because I had a freaking swordfight to start.
The zebra looked at me curiously.  I suppose he’d never seen a pony wielding a cutlass in each hoof.
“How does that even work?” he asked.
From the stern of the ship, Applejack gasped.  “He ain’t rhymin’!”
“It's not a zebra thing, Zecora’s just weird like that,” I said.  “She once told me that some problems had developed in her brain from sniffing all those herbs.”
Turning back to my opponent, I grinned.  “There’s a lot of things that I’ve given up on trying to explain, like how a hoof can hold a cutlass.  Just call it magic and go with it.”
He charged me and we had an epic little duel.
Ching!  Ka-chink!  Clang!
“What the hell is that noise?” I said.  Looking around, I spotted five sharks biting at the hull of the submarine.
The zebra said something that was probably a swear where he came from.  He had good reason to, as one of the sharks lunged out of the water and ate him.
“Oh…dang,” I said.
“Oh dang!” screamed the shark as the zebra’s cutlass slid down his esophagus.  The other sharks paused for a moment and then began trying to eat me.
I dodged their attacks frantically.  I couldn’t even pause to get a slice in with my weapons because another shark would be on me if I did.  The submarine suddenly swung around, knocking me off balance.  I fell down the hatch.
As near as I could figure, the tow rope had broken.  A shark tried to fit down the hatch to bite me and failed because he was too big.  He glared at me from a distance of about three inches.
“Why were you trying to eat me if I could stab you from the inside?” I asked, careful not to move.  
“This is our device!” he shouted.  “We worship it as no others do!”
“Well, technically it was the mooses’, then it went to you, then I claimed salvage rights and took possession.”  I poked him in the nose with a hoof.  “Now are you going to leave peacefully or will I need the bigger boat to come help me kick your ass?”
“Oh, that,” he said.  “It’s sailing away without you.”
I suddenly wondered if the tow rope had broken or been cut.  I sighed.  “Well, that makes things easy.  As soon as I figure out which part of a shark is his ass, I’m going to kick it.”
Fortunately, I was saved the trouble by the shark suddenly remembering he was out of the water and dying.  I shoved him back and closed the hatch.
It was remarkably simple to keep going in the general direction the ship had gone.  The sharks continued to circle around, but with the hatch closed there was nothing they could do.  I hoped they weren’t religiously zealous enough to throw themselves on the propeller in an attempt to stop me.
I reached land a while later, finding the mouth of a freshwater river and heading up it.  All the sharks had to either quit following or suffer over-hydration from the lack of salt in the water.  I cackled deviously.  Science had saved the day once again.
When the water got too shallow, I had to stop.  I pulled up close to shore and tied the sub to a tree.  On one side of the river was a dense jungle.  On the other side was flat grasslands.
I spotted a boat coming down the river.  I hoped that I had gotten to shore before the lifeboats and their angry crew.
Of course I hadn’t, and they threw me in zebra jail.