//------------------------------// // Nothing Can Stop the Warden! // Story: My Little Pirates: Luffy's Adventures in Equestria // by Fullmetal Pony //------------------------------//         “Hey, it looks like the Captain ran into Straw Hat!” a rotund purple dragon bellowed from beneath his luchador mask. He scratched at the large belt around his waist as he made his way down the recently cleared stairs. An amused gleam twinkled in his eyes from the sight of Blackbeard looming over Luffy.         A griffin with glasses that turned into a scope over his right eye and a bored expression on his face strutted next to the dragon. He shifted the abnormally large rifle across his back and sighed. “It’s fate...”         “After all that trouble Ace went through to...” An emaciated grey unicorn oddly riding atop a pale bear paused to sickly hack into the bear’s thinning coat. The bear didn’t fare much better and the cough looked like it would send the scraggly thing to its knees. “... avoid the Captain running into him.”         A pegasus adorned with a top hat and loop earrings smirked at the ghastly unicorn. His pasty-white coat in addition to his accesories gave him the appearance of an old-timely clown minus the nose. The devious upturn of his lips betrayed a more sinister aura to him. “It’s not like he needs Straw Hat’s head anymore thou—”         Blackbeard flew past his collection of crewmates and shattered part of the stone wall behind them. A steamy imprint of Luffy’s hoof marked his chest. He cried out and clasped the impact zone.         “Well...” the white pegasus mused, “that could’ve gone better.”         Luffy wasted no time and jumped into air over Blackbeard, Gear Two in full effect. He shot his hooves back in preparation to attack. “I won’t let them kill Ace!”         Blackbeard veered his head up. Lightning tinted black arked out of his horn which became encased in shadow. A constricting force pulled down on Luffy and sent him zooming into Blackbead. The horn didn’t impale him, but rather caused him to stick to Blackbeard like a magnet. The steam stopped pouring from his body and his coat regained its normal tone. “Black Vortex!”         “Wh—” A swift smack from one of Blackbeard’s forelegs silenced Luffy and sent him into the ground. There was a small crack and a splash of Luffy’s blood painted the nearby floor. He gave a yelp and clasped the injury.         “Luffy!” Twilight called out from the stone. “What happened? How are you bleeding from a non-puncture or laceration wound?”         Luffy gritted his teeth and jumped back in response. He pumped his legs and steam again emanated from his body. He pushed down and launched himself at Blackbeard, but a blue shape darted between the two of them. Jinbei’s fishtail wrapped around one of Luffy’s hind legs and dangled him upside down. “Stop!” he commanded, tightening his grip around Luffy’s leg. “This is the man that defeated your brother! It’d be a futile effort to fight him now! There are more important things!” “He’s right,” Blackbeard huffed. He rested a hoof against the red throbbing mark from Luffy’s attack. Yet, a disturbing grin was plastered across his face. A hiss from above directed his attention up to Chrysalis. She glared and bared her fangs at him. “And what’s your problem?” “You knocked out a perfectly good meal.” Chrysalis wrinkled her muzzle at him. “And the stink off of you and your group is revolting.” A tinge of green appeared in her horn. “I should eliminate you before you make my hive sick.” “Zehaha, you can try.” Chrysalis’s horn glowed brighter, but a golden hook shot out in front of her. She gnashed her fangs at Crocodile, but he ignored her and kept his sight on Blackbeard. “As much as I’d like to see this pest gone, you’re a bigger issue. Shouldn’t you be at Navy Headquarters?” “All part of the plan,” Blackbeard darkly chuckled. “I don’t really need t—” A thick purple vapor started to coat the floor and drew everyone’s attention. A wave a panicked shouts went up, but the clearest ones carried a message that sent a shiver down the prisoners’ spines. “Magellan is here!” Chaos erupted in the escape group. Everyone stampeded for the stairwell, with Blackbeard and his crew putting up no attempt to stop them. Luffy was now on the ground with Jinbei at his side. He looked at Blackbeard. “I’m gonna rescue Ace.” “Zehaha, I won’t say it’s impossible,” Blackbeard mused. He lifted up a hoof and stared at it. “Especially after what we went through coming here.” He marched past Luffy in the direction all the other prisoners were fleeing from. “Just wait! We’re gonna put on the best show the world has ever seen! Zehahaha!” The stone on Luffy’s leg went pink. “I don’t think that’s the kind of show I’d like to see,” Pinkie shuddered. Back in Canterlot, Twilight stared at Pinkie with a open mouth. “How are you awake?” “Duh...” Pinkie reached out and gave Twilight at nuggie. “You can’t miss the big escape attempt!” She leaned closer to Twilight and the smile receded from her face. “Seriously though, that pony is bad news. Worse than anything else.” “That magic he used definitely had an unnatural feeling to it.” Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin and then placed it on the ground. “Now’s not the time to worry about it though. The Magellan guy is the big issue.” “You got that right,” a voice called out. ~~~         “Surveillance room! Surveillance room! Pick up!” Magellan yelled into his dendenmushi. He slammed the receiver into the snail’s shell with the wing that had held it and galloped forward while his head twisted over to a guard at his side. “Send someone up there to find why communications and video went dead!”         He shook his head back and forth at the latest development in the pandemonic day. “Nothing is going our way.”         A group of figures appeared in front of Magellan and he and his small collection of guards came to a halt. Blackbeard was in the lead and gave a laugh. “So, you’re Magellan.”         “You must be Blackbeard,” Magellan cordially responded. Poison covered his body and instantly formed a hydra head. It opened its synthetic maw and crashed down on Blackbeard and his crew. They all stood frozen for a moment, coated in poison, before Blackbeard hollered in agony and went to his knees. The rest of his crew followed and writhed on the ground.         Magellan trotted through them and the sludge that remained of his attack. The guards took a more cautious route around them to avoid the hazardous area. “I don’t have time to ask why you’re here or what you did to Shiryu,” he grunted.         The stairwell that led up to Level Three was littered with the unconscious bodies of guards and a few prisoners. The jailer beasts’ eyes were open and their muscles twitched, but they still lacked the strength to get up. Sadie had a deathly pale tone, but her torso still weakly rose and fell. Hannyabal was the worst though. The ground around him was massively cratered and cracked. One foreleg and one hindleg were bent in unnatural positions, half of his teeth were knocked out, and both his horns were severely cracked with the tip of the left one completely gone. The blood that coated his body and pooled underneath him solidified the extent of his injuries. “Hannyabal,” Magellan sighed, “you did well holding them as long as you did.” He marched over to the stairwell and stopped at the foot of it. The echo of many hooves rebounded against the walls. He filled his lungs with air and sharpened his eyes at the shadows in the upper parts of the stairwell. “Straw Hat!” he roared. Everything around Magellan reverberated at his volume. It carried all the way up near Level Three and assaulted everyone’s ears. A few prisoners looked back at where the voice was coming from, but most galloped faster. Almost all of them quivered a little. “You’re not setting one hoof outside this prison!” The escape party busted in Level Three and Iva buzzed to the head of the group. “Everyone! Follow me! I’ll take us through the fastest path!” “Sounds like it’s time to go for speed!” Rainbow Dash’s voice called out from the now-blue stone on Luffy’s leg. “Huh?” Luffy continued galloping, but tilted his eyes down to the stone. “I thought you were recovering.” “I was, but I heard... well, dreamt, that a certain princess was worried about you. Then I find out you got wings! Now’s the time to use them.” Luffy glanced up at his balled up wings. “They have worked well as fists.” “Fists?” Dash shouted. “Why would you... nevermind. That guy behind you sounds pretty mad, so you gotta use those wings to get out of there!” “I don’t know how and I don’t think now is the best time!” A shadow appeared behind Luffy. He looked back to see that a massive hydra head now loomed over the Level, advancing on the prisoners and engulfing them in its poison. Luffy shot his wings out and rapidly flapped them, but only managed to push himself forward and trip over his hooves. “No!” said Dash. “Ya gotta lift off the ground first!” “I got a better idea!” Luffy shot out a hoof a clasped a nearby corner. He jumped off the ground and shot forward while flapping his wings. “Gum-Gum Dart!” The technique catapulted Luffy straight to the front of the group. He zipped past Iva and smacked into the large twin doors that connected Levels Two and Three. His head got stuck in the wood, but he managed to free himself by the time the other prisoners reached him. He shook his head to stop his eyes from swimming in their sockets. “Ugh, I don’t think I’m gonna do that again.” “But it was so awesome!” Dash squeed. A fresh wave a screams and the appearance of the hydra ended the conversation. Luffy joined the rest of the prisoners fleeing up the stairs. The Level quickly emptied, but a few figures planted their hooves at the bottom of the stairwell. Iva scratched his chin at the squad of changelings that remained with him and Inazuma. “You really should be going.” The changelings said nothing and kept their compound eyes on the looming hydra. Magellan appeared from behind a corner and they all buzzed into the air. “For the Queen!” They rushed him and deftly dodged the globs of poison coming the hydra. They fell upon his poison covered body and sunk their fangs into him. Acrid smoke arose from their mouths and any other spot where they made contact with him, but they still held on. Magellan growled and the poison around him shifted to his manticore armor, effectively coating the changelings and sending them to the ground. His attention then went to Ivankov. “Inazuma!” Iva called out. Behind him, Inazuma turned his muzzle into a massive pair of scissors far larger than the ones he’d previously used. He gave a simple nod and extended the sharp blades out so that they cut into both sides of the stairwell. He took off, creating two massive gashes where his blades met stone. Soon, the entire structure was cut so that it resembled a giant spring. There was a small tremor and it folded in on itself just like paper.   “Buy all the time you want, Straw Hat will not escape,” said Magellan. “Who said I was buying time?” Iva put a hoof out in front of himself and jettisoned himself at Magellan. He angled his horn and aimed it right at Magellan’s chest. “Don’t be so sure you can beat me!” ~~~         Empty cells filled Luffy’s vision. An odd silence punctuated only by the sound of hooves against the floor filled Level Two. “Where is everyone?”         “It is odd,” Jinbei commented. “I noticed a few poisoned prisoners, but they can’t be all that was on Level Two.”         A shape zoomed out from one of the darkened areas the Level and came to Luffy and Jinbei’s side. Trixie swept her mane away from her eyes and unleashed a held breath. “They aren’t.”         “Hey!” Bon spun forward and jammed his face next to Trixie’s. “How’d you get all the way back up here?”         “Luck,” Trixie huffed and tipped her nose up. “And it was only through Trixie’s good sense to know an air purification spell that anypony here survived and what do they do when Trixie was tired from using that spell for so long? Abandon her!”         “You mean like you did?” Bon said with a drawn out frown.         “We had a clash of differences! You wanted to save Straw Hat and Trixie wanted to escape!”         “All that matters is getting away,” Jinbei interjected. Trixie and Bon nodded and rushed onward to Level One. ~~~         Inazuma waited back at the now-ruined path to Level Three. He’d shooed off the other prisoners and was now alone. A sharp series of cracks drew his attention. He cautiously moved over to the noise. A clear deformation in the ground was forming, rising higher and higher. “Iva...”         A hydra head shot out and devoured Inazuma. Magellan stepped out from his newly created exit and watched Inazuma’s limp form collapse to the ground. “This has gone far enough.”         The hydra head sunk back to Magellan and disappeared into a blob of poison on his back. The blob expanded out and away from Magellan, covering every inch of the floor and walls around him. It lost its transparency and gained what appeared to be multiple sets eyes everywhere and deformed holes that resembled horrifically mutilated mouths. It surged forward, devastating everything in its wake, melting stone, iron, and anything else unfortunate to get in its path. More and more of the corrosive substance spilled into the Level with Magellan at the center of it. “Smooze Poison.”