Bits could not, for the life that they lived and promised so enticingly to its fortunate beholders, buy happiness. Octavia had been a rather understanding listener on conversations involving the phrase, whether it be by her teachers who led amazing lives despite their low salaries, or her parents themselves whenever she dared whine about not being able to get something at the store. Looking back on it now, she really didn't need that box of cereal, or that nice dress in the window on 4th Street, but something in her still ached and cracked just wishing for them to be in her gray, gray hooves. She guessed that that was one of the things that was wrong with her; a flaw that... probably a lot of ponies shared alongside her. Bits didn't buy happiness, and quite honestly, Octavia understood that. Hell, even big name celebrities competing in the Equestria Games, being huge movie stars, or singing the lead role in a round-the-world famous band told ponies that met them—reporters, paparazzi, or fans—that once you had a lot of bits, true happiness just constantly seemed out of reach.
Sure, they could buy their massage appointments down in Los Pegasus, or their indoor pools with smoking hot mares or stallions constantly serving them bubbly champagne, but the smile on their sunglasses-propped face would be so incredibly dissatisfied and almost plastic in a way that you could tap them with a hammer and shatter them even a hair's breadth of space away. Bits couldn't buy happiness, and Octavia knew that incredibly well. She may not have had access to the appointments, or the pools—not that she really wanted them, to be honest—but there was a reason she surrounded herself with all sorts of fancy and expensive furniture or meals on a daily basis back in Canterlot.
The flooding of money in her bank account would surely never beat the flooding of her tear ducts.
They didn't buy happiness, but they got her a nice bucket of cookies-and-creme ice cream and an equally nice bottle of Caberneigh Sauvignon once in a while, and even through the tears usually streaming down her cheeks, she had to hate herself for admitting that that was good enough for her.
In the solitude of her regrettably fanciful Canterlot apartment, the sounds of self-indulgence and self-pity were drowned out by the talkative ponies marching aimlessly outside her front door.
Her opinions on bits were incredibly skewed and far apart in terms of making any form of sense in the world to either her or the ponies around her, but she could very easily scrunch her eyes, stick out her tongue in concentration, and confirm that it only took a clattering of a hoofful of bits and a sliding of paper on wood for her to feel absolutely pumped with outright glee. Sure, this occurrence could extend to such times as her receiving the ticket to a movie she'd been anticipating, or being handed a receipt with such a low price she could crack a victory grin at, and to be fair, they were very wondrous things to have happen.
This one time, however, proved to be far more legendary than any of the others.
With a crooked smile reaching both her ears, eyes and nose beginning to burn with the beginning of sobs, and her ears twitching almost impatiently, Octavia stared down at the slip of paper in her shaking hooves and might as well have fainted on the spot. For the low price of twenty bits—and the priceless... price of anxious anticipation—Octavia held something infinitely more important than any old movie voucher.
She waggled the paper in her hooves in an attempt to test its validity. It emanated a most refined wibbity.
This pleased her.
She eyed the contents lining its surface and suppressed the urge to sniffle.
Her ticket home.
Octavia looked up at the sound of throat cleansing, and expected the stallion sitting inside the kiosk to be so enormously happy for her, some random mare who simply threw a few coins at him not a minute or two ago. She expected a toothy grin, and a head nod so firm and silent that he could very well have been a Royal Guard who'd just been impressed; a rare sight one never got to see these days. At the very least, a smile would have sufficed, but no, all she received for her tearful recognition was a blank, blunt, blasphemous, "Next."
With her ticket now stuffed behind the lining of her white collar, Octavia turned around.
A line consisting of three mares and a stallion stared back at her, though their looks of impatience were far cries from the obvious annoyance of their seller of the hour. Recollecting her composure—a rather difficult task considering the small tears already on their way down her cheeks—Octavia raised a hoof to her mouth, gave a little cough, and straightened her posture. "My apologies, all."
She expected a few words of understanding in a similar vein to the ticket seller's now apparently absent smile, but let a frown touch her lips when the exact opposite met her eyes. Despite their rather calm and collected expressions, their tapping of hooves and scratching of their necks made its point. One of the mares even brought a foreleg over to her other, tapping it like she had an invisible watch that just so happened to be stuck at that exact moment. Octavia had half a mind—or, admittedly about three-quarters of one—to stick her tongue out and blow a raspberry at them, but such a thing would probably just end up souring her already descending mood. Taking a foreleg and dragging it down her chest from the base of her neck, the mare cleared her throat once more before briskly trotting away.
She felt pairs of eyes cutting into the back of her head, but with a nasally sigh and a shake of her head, she stepped off the green-painted wooden train platform—about tripped because of the sudden elevation loss—and joined the small group that was standing idly on the outskirts of the one kiosk establishment last time she had spoken to them. As she felt sharp gravel meet the bottom of her weary hooves, Octavia looked to her left and found nothing but streetlights, sidewalks, and apartment buildings stretching far down the road before her in a loud, tan and brown parade. A brow flew to the sky, but she needed only look to the other side to find a sight she hadn't prior thought she'd harbor in her head.
W, Lavi, T, and Sesame were currently crowded around a large black machine sitting on the side of the road, a large brick wall behind it tutting at any possible hoppers or hiders looking to get a free train ride. A small amount of white light emanated from the massive box before them—or massive when next to Sesame, at the very least—highlighting each and every single group member's features and showing their looks of... anticipation to the rest of the world. A realization snapped to Octavia, and she only noticed that her purple eyes were darting around manically when they began to spin around in her head. Valkyrie appeared to be missing, and if such a dreadful thing to hear made any attempt at reminding her, this would only lead to hoofcuffs and prison bars. The things that that brutish griffon could do would most likely get Octavia booted from the Symphony just for witnessing them.
As she approached the now clearly lacking group, she began to hear the telltale sounds of absolute... nonsense waft through the hot air and flow toward her poor, poor eardrums.
"God, could you pick anything more lame?" Lavi asked, suddenly leaning forward and jabbing a claw so hard against what sounded like glass that she might have been able to dent it, "There's some candy bars in there..."
Oh great. They were watching someone pick from a vending machine like they were watching the Crystal Games. Hopefully, they didn't bet on Celestia's Sun Chips. Those things never got sold.
"There's some cookies down in that corner," Sesame piped up, scratching at his scruff with a hoof and adjusting its position every millisecond.
"She doesn't really need to get more fat," Lavi quipped.
"Ha ha ha ha," Valkyrie feigned, causing Octavia to look up to the sky and thank the Gods, "eat a dick, man. It's not like I'm Octavia or anything."
The mare of the hour halted a bare foot away from the group's position, her annoyed scuffling on the pavement prompting her oh-so-wonderful squad to perk up and instantly giggle.
Though she felt a gargantuan amount of ice tipping her next unsavory words, Octavia resumed her pace and stepped toward the four now looking her way. Sesame's horn lit up, and a familiar mustard aura surrounded his cigarette box. T, standing next to him, swiftly nudged him with an elbow. The Unicorn frowned, but released his hold on his dear old nicotine to allow W to speak.
"Everything go alright?"
Octavia grinned, and reached into her collar to pull the train ticket out.
Gods, it felt great to do that.
"Good to hear," W said with a smile, "guess you'll be off soon then–"
"Y'know," Valkyrie interrupted, her talons crumpling her newly purchased snack bag, "I'll never understand pony food." Dipping a pair of claws into its plastic confines, she collected a group of chips and proceeded to throw them down her gullet.
Octavia raised an eyebrow. "Aren't they generally the same?"
Valkyrie chuckled. "I mean, like, you guys have these chip bags..." She raised hers up. "...and like half of the bag is just empty space." She continued to feast on her salted, fatty, unhealthy food and, with a shake of her feathered head that looked more like she was firmly disagreeing with herself, finished with a very blunt, "What a loada shit."
"I don't think you can really trust the chip gods," Lavi shot back almost seriously, "they're not nice people."
"Right?" Valkyrie asked in kind, "I don't want your air, you yeeps, I want my chips."
"No," T spoke up unexpectedly, his low voice a perfect fit for the proposed gods of potato crisps. He cracked a smile as his companions let out a few snorting giggles.
"Are you the chip god?" Sesame asked, looking up at the dark griffon with a face that was teetering on wobbly.
T turned his head and, with a lifting of his chin and a very overly dramatic adjustment of his posture, replied, "Yes, my son."
Octavia, having been in the middle of doing this exact thing, suddenly believed she was being mocked. Ears against her head, she deflated her figure and cleared her throat, then realized she was being foolish. "You're still hungry, Valkyrie?" She asked, trying her hardest to shake her previous thoughts out of her head like water off a dishrag. "We just ate a bare hour ago."
"Hour and a half," W corrected.
Octavia faced him and proceeded to—in a very lady-like fashion—stick her tongue out at him.
"Shut up. Bread is boring," Valkyrie responded, the crackling of her snack bag halting any more back-and-forth she and the mare could have had.
As a pregnant pause in the incredibly ridiculous group banter rose up from the ashes, Octavia took the time to realize that one of her hooves was still extended rather oddly outward. Looking down at it, she realized her mistake and swiftly stuffed her ticket back behind the lining of her Symphony collar. She watched as Sesame, eyeing a nice, T-less opportunity, lit his horn and magicked out another cigarette. To his dismay, T spotted his doing so, but simply hummed and allowed the Unicorn to continue. Sesame, whispering a quick of word of thanks, drew a flame to his mouth and began puffing away from the group's position.
Octavia may have thought smoking a bad habit—and rightfully so—and Sesame's engaging in such a thing strikingly worrying, but he at the very least was courteous about it. If he was content on slowly destroying his brain while they were out and about, he could do so. She wasn't one to judge, not at all, but she sure as hell sat somewhere in the jury.
...
She'd really need to try cutting down on the language. As much as she rather liked being able to speak freely, she'd be going home tomorrow, and practicing normal, professional conversation was going to be a bit challenging to get back to in the span of a couple days. Surely, she couldn't very well mill about and curse in front of the aristocrats once she got to Canterlot. Or Trottingham. Where were they having the concert again? It was the island in the mid-point of the ocean between Griffonia and Ponyville, leaning toward the latter's side. She'd not been in a long while, so her memory was a little fuzzy.
No matter. She needed to watch the language. Case closed.
"Hey, Octavia, you mind taking my bags for a bit?"
Octavia looked up, her purple eyes locking with Lavi's brown ones. The rest of the group was a tad farther away than they prior were; it looked like they were about to start walking again. Octavia tilted her head, her smoky mane hanging freely off the back of her head and flowing toward the street. She cocked an eyebrow. Surely, the griffon didn't actually just say what Octavia had thought she'd said. Judging from the terrifyingly large stature of Lavi in her heavy armor, the bags sitting across her back would definitely be too large for the body of a mere pony.
She chuckled.
Mere. Had she really just said that?
Actually, now that she thought about it, Lavi was a tad smaller than the other griffons in W's group, even Valkyrie. And even then, the largest in the group, W, was only about a head and a half or so taller than Octavia. Maybe they weren't huge like she'd prior thought, but it was still a bit imposing having to look up to talk to any of them. Then again, Octavia had always been a bit... shorter than other ponies, a point of ridicule she'd started listening to for hours upon hours on the playgrounds back in grade school. She was but a few inches or so shorter, but yet others treated her like she was diagnosed with dwarfism.
She refocused her attention on Lavi's face after her little bout of inner bitterness, a smile reappearing on her face and her chin lifting up to speak into the griffon's eyes. Lavi, her neck craned back a few inches and her entire head turned slightly to her left, pressed a straight frown against her cheeks and continued her hold on her backpack's straps in a wary silence. Octavia rolled her eyes.
"Sorry. I seem to have zoned out."
"Yeah," Lavi chuckled, "no kidding. Would you, y'know, mind though?" Her eyes darted toward her right as she leaned forward and rubbed at her spine. "My back gives out sometimes; a lot more than W's, I think, too–"
"Shut up, Lavi," W spat from afar, his deep voice like a buttered knife across burnt toast.
Octavia gave a curt nod, but the picture she'd held in her head of the monstrosity she was about to put on her own back almost caused her to faint. She could handle the messenger bag, but a three-hundred-pound military backpack with pouches and pockets wasn't something she could look forward to, even with her double bass-hardened muscles.
Lavi breathed a genuine sigh of relief, almost making Octavia's soon-to-begin encounter with Tartarus that much more worth it. Bending forward like she was situated on an invisible folding chair, Lavi threw both her front claws toward the straps on her shoulders, then wrestled them off with so much finesse, it was as if she was struggling to rid herself of her coat and snow pants to spend a penny in the loo. Octavia had done that a few times when she was a filly, so she... kind of knew what it looked like when one really needed to piss. Pee. Urinate. She meant urinate.
"Thanks, Octavia, you're a life saver." Finally ridding herself of her hulking accessory, Lavi grabbed one of its straps with a claw and raised it toward the mare. "Here, lemme help you put it on."
She, earlier, felt incredibly confident in her ability to put a backpack on her back. She was admittedly a little stubborn—thanks to her father's genes—but, well, there was a reason that ponies used saddlebags, and not the bird-favored backpacks. She bit her lower lip, but sat on her rear and waited as Lavi folded the right strap of the pack onto the zippers and pouches and, observantly, out of the mare's way. Situating the remaining strap over her right foreleg and under her stomach toward her left hindleg, it was like Octavia was wearing the messenger bag again. Sliding the pack across horizontally across Octavia's back, Lavi grinned and said, "Looks good on you. Hope it's not too heavy."
Octavia opened her mouth to give a dry retort, but pursed her lips and shook her back to test the weight. She found it surprisingly comfortable, and very much not heavy in the slightest. Huh. That actually worked. Well, she might as well take the opportunity and not let her ticket collect her sweat. Reaching toward her neck and pulling her salvation voucher out of her collar, Octavia craned her neck around and bit down on one of Lavi's backpack's zippers, opening it just a tad for her to slip her ticket inside. She reminded herself to get it later when it was time to give Lavi her pack back, and zipped it closed. Looking back up at the griffon, Octavia smirked and nodded. "It's actually just fine, thank you. No need to worry."
"Good. Let's go, then."
The two began to trot after the others, who had already began their walk toward... wherever the group decided to head next. Octavia sucked in a breath and turned to Lavi, preparing to ask the question.
"We're heading to the docks next, if that's cool with you."
Oh. "The docks...!" Octavia grit her teeth, but raised her cheeks up when Lavi turned her way. She'd... rather not get the spray of salt across her face, or some absolute plod shoving her into the bay. To be honest, she'd much rather spend the rest of her time waiting to get home inside the relative safety of a nice restaraunt, or a bar, or maybe another hotel room where she could request some wine and a bucket of ice cream and try loathing herself asleep for the night. She'd been on one hayuva ride—she grinned at her save—and there were a lot of chances for it to continue with her remaining outside where another robbery or another group of bandits could suddenly pop up.
Lavi, eyes darting from her left and to her right, giggled. "Yeah, the uh, the docks. We're just gonna go see if our ride home is still there or not. Old Screwby is a little scattered in the head, so we thought it was a good plan to check up on him."
Octavia spotted a familiar face staring her way as Lavi and her continued walking along the sidewalk, and heard the sound of more collective footsteps when they disappeared.
Oh. The others had waited for them to get closer. That was kind of them.
"Yeah..." W trailed off with a satisfied sigh, "Screwby's a bit... salty, I guess you could say." He adjusted his armor for a second before he continued. "He's been going to and from this harbor to Griffonia for twenty years now. He may seem a bit rude at first, but that's just how he greets new people."
"Yeah, I remember when we first started sailing with him a year or two ago," Valkyrie began, "he kept calling me Valerie." The griffon suddenly laughed to herself, and about started jumping in place as she pointed to W. "And– and– and, he kept calling W his brother's name!"
"We look nothing alike. I'm infinitely prettier than my brother," W claimed, shrugged.
"Those wrinkles do wonders, old man– ow!" Lavi sputtered, holding the side of her head as she burst into laughter.
Octavia looked over at W to find him staring crookedly at T, who simply lowered his arm and calmly said, "Just doing it for you, sir."
"I wouldn't have hit that hard..." W replied, eyeing the injured griffon, "but I suppose she kind of deserved it."
"Hey, at least he's my age–" Valkyrie chimed in.
"He is still five years older than you."
Valkyrie glared back at W devilishly. Snaking her neck around, she responded with a very sassy, "Thirty-four is a very sexy number, W."
"You're a Goddamn animal," W replied.
"We're literally all animals, dude," Sesame regarded W.
Lavi and Valkyrie both clucked their tongues and nodded at the Unicorn's actual fact. "That's right, actually. He's right," the former said.
"And you're literally slowly killing yourself with that box of yours," W shot back, leaning his head over almost as if he wanted to whisper it into Sesame's ear.
"You can literally go to hell," Sesame retorted, apparently wanting to get into a little playful banter with the elder griffon.
"I'll get my truck. We'll go together."
"Just a little Unicorn on griffon action," Lavi affirmed with a wink, "how romantic!"
Octavia realized this was beginning to get a little out of hoof. She hoped that Sesame wasn't seriously going to try and continue this. She wouldn't be able to handle the ridiculously uncomfortable back-and-forth that was about to begin–
"Honey, did you reserve our tables by the lava pits?"
For the love of Princess Celestia and her eighteen teats, please kill her.
"Seems Tirek bought them all out, dear," W beamed, his deep voice taking on an attempt at... was he mocking her right now? "I suppose we can shift our honeymoon near Cerberus' cage; I hear the chains make great ambience for love-making."
If she weren't trotting right now, she'd bury her red face in her hooves and crawl into a corner in the fetal position. Gods, why.
Sesame hummed almost too genuinely, like he was actually lovesick for an old bird.
The sound of concrete clacking below her hooves made way for the creaky sway of wood bridges. Octavia looked around and realized they were now walking into the humble beginnings of Sail And Riggings Land. A few Pegasi and some griffons zipped about atop their respective vessels, tying up loose ropes and fastening knots wherever they could. The prior distant sounds of cawing seagulls and splashing waves now beat heavily into her head, accompanying the unwelcome wave of air-riding salt fresh from the depths of the ocean and straight into her face. Shaking her head, Octavia grumbled sweet nothings to herself and adjusted the hat atop her head so that the wind wouldn't take it.
Gods, she barely even realized it was there. It was already becoming too attached to her.
"If I remember correctly," W began, no longer trying his hardest (and failing) to take on an English accent, "Screwby's ship is a few blocks down. I'll ask around and make sure he's still up there."
"Anything I should know?" Octavia asked, rather worried she'd be on the receiving end of a flintlock in a couple minutes or so, "I'd rather not end up on the receiving end of a flintlock in a couple of minutes from now."
T snorted. Apparently, a serving of flint and smoke was something he rather enjoyed watching.
"If you're nice, he'll like you. Don't do what Valkyrie did and make fun of his hat."
"It was a dumb hat," Valkyrie defended as the group took a sharp left and began to head down a new path.
Octavia looked away from the conversation, deciding that she didn't have any major part to play in it, and turned left to—she didn't know—look for fish or something. A pair of stallions hammering away at a ship's side spotted her staring at them, and dropped their tools to wink at her and try striking handsome poses. She frowned and rolled her eyes, then decided that maybe a part in the conversation for her could come up at some point.
"Hope he still has my flashlight. Left it when we got off last time," Lavi admitted, a sense of resignment in her voice.
"I'm sure he does," W quickly replied, patting his subordinate on the shoulder, "old bird doesn't have much use for a flashlight."
"Why not?" Sesame asked.
"He's got an eyepatch that he never takes off, even though both his eyes are good. Says the one is always in the dark, so he adapts quicker to night time," Valkyrie explained. "Load of bull, if I ever knew it."
"Makes sense," W shrugged, "you know that's how that works, right?"
"I went to school, W."
"Could've fooled me–"
A trio of deafening thumps suddenly exploded across the dock. With her heart now racing—and her mind cursing itself for thinking up something that would actually occur—Octavia took a cautious step back from the massive pirate ship in front of her and the others, purple eyes scanning the top of its right side to look for whoever had just dropped a heavy wooden crate near them. Staring straight up into the sun, she watched as a shrouded figure leaned over the edge and shouted at them.
"Avast, ye scuttlebutts! Who goes there?!"
Octavia lowered the hoof she'd placed across her brow and shut her eyes. Oh Gods, not another Tall Tale gate encounter.
W was, just as last time, the one to step forward and wave a talon around. "Is Screwby still around? We need to talk to him!"
The figure looked left and right, as if eyeing something far off in the distance, and shook his head, the tricorne atop his silhouetted head jostling about loosely.
"Ol' Screwby? He 'asn't been seen fer weeks!" Octavia screwed up her face. This guy sounded like he came straight out of an old cheesy pirate movie. It was just so... cliché.
W sighed, his beak audibly clicking as he did so. "Well, who's the captain while he's gone? Can I speak to them?"
The figure chuckled a hearty laugh, and pointed to himself with what looked to be a talon. "I'm the captain of the Scuttlebug, here, so what d'ya want, lad?"
W, frowning, looked over his shoulder and gazed at his companion's expressions. Octavia shrugged at him. He returned the gesture almost half-heartedly, and sucked in a breath before asking, "Who are you, then? Don't think I recognize your voice!"
The figure bellowed once more, then disappeared for a good three seconds. With a loud fwoosh and a giddy cry, he hopped off the side of the ship and grabbed hold of a rope as he descended. Surely gaining third-degree burns, he landed on the docks with a resounding, "Haw!" and wiped his talons like he'd just washed them in a sink. Bringing one up, he adjusted his navy blue tricorne, brushed dust off his likewise navy robes, and reached out for one of W's, singing, "The name's Andy Trout, boyo!" He tipped his hat when he looked at Valkyrie, Lavi, and Octavia, winking. "But you can call me Andy."
"Holy shit, hot," Valkyrie whispered, leaning toward Lavi and Octavia.
Andy looked over expectantly at W, who narrowed his eyes for a brief second before bringing up a claw and shaking Andy's. Nodding vigorously to himself, Andy called, "Good, good! Now, would ya like ta come aboard?"
Valkyrie opened her mouth to say something, but Lavi immediately elbowed her in the armored gut. How she could do such a thing and not grimace in pain was beyond Octavia.
The crew looked over one another, noting the hesitant and cautious expressions on all but–
Valkyrie suddenly unfurled her wings and flew up. Grabbing ahold of the railing, she hoisted herself over the edge without a word and disappeared from sight.
W, T, Lavi, Octavia, and Sesame all stared up at the space that their "beloved" aggressor had previously occupied, their lips against their cheeks and their eyes glazed over. They all turned as one toward Andy, who flinched with an expectant grin.
"Well? Looks like one of ya's excited! Go on! I'll be right behind ya!"
A genuinely saddened Valkyrie cried from above. "Awww!"
T rolled his eyes as he took a few steps forward and followed Valkyrie's example. Lavi, looking Sesame and Octavia over, opened her mouth to say something, shut it, then decided to say something nicer. "Be careful."
Octavia waved as the griffon joined T up top. W, stomping over, leaned forward and asked her and Sesame, "You both want a lift?"
"What, on your back?" Sesame asked.
W blinked at him.
Octavia, sensing a sarcastic remark, lightly bumped Sesame out of the way and politely said, "No thank you."
"I'm good too," Sesame quipped.
"Will you be alright on the ropes, then?"
Octavia turned to the one that Andy had descended down on. It swayed in the wind for a brief second before suddenly coiling up in a heap on the floor in a dead silence. She swiveled about and faced W once more.
"We'll make do."