My Life as a Bipedal Quadruped

by Snakeskin Ducttape

The Swashbucklers' Symphony/A Deck Full Of Jokers/All The Right Kinds Of Crazy

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out?”

And now I know what he meant. In the stories, a seemingly insignificant person can undergo a journey of both geography and character, rising from humble origins to become an enemy of evil and save the world. This can go on for months or even years and, through the art of storytelling, also happen within the span of a few hours or less.

There were some likenings to a typical adventure-story from my perspective, but only a few. For starters, there are no montages in real life. And, really, that’s one thing that makes video games the most accurate of all forms of make-believe— in that they include a bit more than a token recognition of the actual journey part of the journey. But… even they don’t capture just how much walking a quest in a magical land entails.

Camping too, but that wasn’t so bad. Perhaps it was just me, but snuggling up to your sweetie by a campfire while having a slow and relaxing meal is quite calming.

I also had to be grateful for Trixie’s house bag, and just how much luggage that meant we could carry with us. This of course included a guitar, which everyone seemed to enjoy me playing around the campfire.

I was propped up against Armor while the rest of our band was looking at me, except Polyus and Polyusa, who alternated between that and keeping an eye on the pan hanging over the fire.

“I shall now be plinking a small tune for thee. It starts off with romance, and happiness free.

It dips in the middle from banality… then wraps up with explosive morality.”

The curiosity of everyone’s expressions slowly gave way to amused smiles as I progressed into the next stanza.

“High in the mountains were two flowers you see. One was a beauty, the other was me.

Two weeks of labor and our house frame was done… but life without plumbing it just isn’t fun.

“After four weeks our home was sturdy and stout… and then two weeks later our romance ran out.

Up in our hut, it was me and my beau... when he didn’t rough it five nights in a row.”

Poly and Armor sniggered at the words, while Evening’s expression started slowly turning uncertain, and Trixie’s head dropped. Sure, this was technically a secret mission. And yes, we had people that might be hunting us down at this very moment. But sometimes… you need to just live in the moment.

So it turns out Polyus and Polyusa were actually pretty good cooks. One doesn’t normally want bugs near their food, but they were really nice-looking bugs who didn’t tickle my repulsion instincts. They were stir-frying some rice with mushrooms we had found with some tasty herbs, and some fire toasted bread on the side. Camping with a luxurious house bag was actually pretty great.

As Poly stirred the pan, they all had begun chuckling from the lyrics about drink, spouses, and explosives, even before I started wrapping the song up.

“... The echo from the blast reached far and reached wide. The air it hung heavy with fumes and burnt hide.

Then I shed a tear ‘neath the roof of the stars, mourning our whiskey in casks and in jars.

“The moral of the story is blunt and short cut. Do not at the mountaintop construct your hut.

Trust not your own judgement when drunk in the night… and do not wave lit lanterns near dynamite.”

Three sets of hooves, four if you included changeling appendages, applauded after the final tone faded away. Poly did so too, but it apparently doesn’t make much sound when changelings clap their hooves together.

“Some romantic ballad that was, Gabe,” Polyusa pointed out with a smile.

“It sure was,” I said, feigning ignorance.

“I wonder what that says about you and Armor,” she continued, making Armor chuckle behind me.

“Wait,” Evening said, pausing from cleaning the gunk out of where he had tried attaching the stun wand to his new prosthesis. “They are together then?”

“You didn’t notice?” Polyusa said, smirking at him.

“Not all of us can smell love,” Evening said. “Besides, even that doesn’t prove anything, but yeah, I thought you two seemed close.”

I leaned into Armor. “Jealous? You should be.”

“Of who?” Armor asked. “You or me?”

“Me, according to me. Me, according to yourself I would say,” I quipped, smirking a bit.

Armor sniggered.

“I didn’t want to say anything at first.” Evening noted. “But you do seem very mature for your age, Gabe.”

“Remember how I said I was originally a human?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“In pony years, Gabe is closer to seventy or eighty,” Armor said.

“Really?” Evening blinked.

“Yeah, that’s what it’s like without magic,” I said.

“Harsh,” Evening said. “Well, It isn’t my place to judge— especially a pony who was passing out limbs when I needed one.”

I chuckled a bit at that.

“It does explain why your love smells so mature,” Polyus said.

“It does seem a little bit strange to see a filly who’s in some ways more mature than the shining example of a coltfriend,” Evening chuckled.

“Well, he’s not just my coltfriend. He’s a bit like my guard dog too.” I took Armor’s foreleg and tail and wrapped them around me, rubbing our hooves together as I hugged his tail. “And like a guard dog, he makes a great cuddler. Hoofsie-woofsie toofsie-too.”

“Speaking of mature,” Polyusa said, chuckling.

“That’s the joke,” Armor said, and rested his head on mine.

“Speaking of scent,” I segued. “Poly, how did you learn to cook? You eat love.”

“Well, variation is good for the soul. Also, don’t want our taste buds to atrophy,” Polyus noted, happily.

“Yep. Sharing a meal is one of the oldest pony bonding rituals,” Polyusa said. “And we’re all about bonding. Besides, two of us means double insight into taste.”

“Makes sense,” I conceded.

“How’s the eye coming along?” Trixie asked.

“It works.” I adjusted my eye patch with a hoof. “It sees. I’m just wearing my eye patch because the enchantment that keeps the eye in my socket doesn’t allow it to move around, so I’m stuck looking straight ahead. I gotta fix that before I start using it.”

“And your backup horn?” Trixie asked. “How did you make that?”

“Well, a wand takes the magic you pour into it and turns that into a specific spell, so I reverse engineered that and made a new type of wand that lets me determine for myself what the form of magic going out of it should be.”

“How did you get the wand to change what type of magic it can cast?”

“A lapis lazuli gel inside a metal vessel,” I said. “It took some work, but it emulates a unicorn horn by rearranging itself in order to shape the magic into spells much like a horn does. It sounds complicated, and I guess it was, but I had a reference close by,” I said, tapping my own horn.

“You’re so great at making things only vaguely understandable,” Armor said, smiling.

“Thank human entertainment for that,” I said. “This sadly means that they’re too advanced to mass produce with the wands I made back in Canterlot, at least for now, but they can be replicated.”

“I can see why Sombra would use you,” Trixie said. “Not many ponies can do what you can.”

“Well…” I started, a bit abashed. “Everyone’s good at something. Sometimes it… some people just happen to create impressive stuff.”

“That’s true,” Trixie said, and smiled at me.

“Dinner’s ready,” Polyus said.

We all started spooning up the slightly mushy mix of flavored rice and mushroom, and got to eating. It was actually good– much better than I expected when half the stuff was found in the wood around us. Foraging might’ve seemed a bit unnecessary while having access to a portable house stocked full with supplies. Trixie said that diversity was important during long expeditions, which made sense to me.

“I guess half the ponies in your Equestria are part metal,” Evening said.

“Not really,” I said. “Our Equestria is a lot… uhm… from what I know, our Equestria is frequently being threatened by outside… well, threats, but overall it seems a lot safer than here.”

“All changelings are half-starved monsters by the sound of it,” Polyusa said.

Evening put his new hoof on his chin and looked of in the middle distance. “So you have more threats, but they’re dealt with faster?”

“It seems so,” Armor said. “Since this world seems morally flipped, at least when it comes to important ponies, the threats in our world are heroes here.”

“What about his majesty? Sombra?” Evening asked.

“He was an ancient, evil king who usurped the throne of the Crystal Empire, before Celestia and Luna sealed him away.”

“And both them and the old Crystal Empire would be good guys,” Evening said, nodding to himself. “I can see how there would be less need for prosthetics then.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Which is not to say that there is no need. Accidents happen.”

“Makes you wonder about other bad guys, like Clover the Conniving,” Trixie said.

“Who?” Armor and I asked.

Trixie shrugged. “Just some unicorn from the gallery of powerful, mad ponies from long ago.”

“And you don’t have a counterpart?” Evening asked me.

“No, that’s what makes me ‘special’,” I said, making hoof quotes in the air.

“You are special,” Armor said, putting a wing around me.

“You’re special,” I retorted, and smiled up at him.

“I consider a genius inventor special,” Evening said.

“You’d be biased though,” I pointed out good-naturedly. “I feel special being the only human I know of who’s turned into a unicorn pony, but I don’t exactly feel larger than life. I like playing the guitar, hanging out with friends, and hanging around in one of those floaty chairs in the pond in Ponyville and eat ice cream. Not something I used to associate with world saving feats.”

The rest around the campfire smiled a bit at the thought of doing something similar.

“Well I’ll help you get back to your world so you can keep doing that,” Evening said. “I feel obliged to.”

I shrugged, smiling at him, before stopping and considering what he said. “Going on a possibly dangerous journey to enable someone to lounge around and play music.”

“Well, you know,” Armor started. “Protecting the citizens of Equestria and their ways of life. That’s what’s being a guard is all about.”

“Hear hear,” Evening, Polyus, and Polyusa said.

I nodded, thinking it sounded noble enough when put like that, and looked up at Armor. “Do you remember Lyra’s roommate, Bon Bon, and her vocal range?”

Armor paused, looking up in the sky with a thinking-face. “Uuh… yes,” he said.

“I’m gonna go back to Ponyville, get Lyra on the lyre, me on the guitar, and her on vocals. We’re gonna be the masters of power ballads, and we’re gonna call ourselves Bon Bon Jovi.”

Everyone stared blankly at Armor and me as we shared a laugh.

He looked at them. “Listen through the music gems that Gabe enchanted and you’ll get it,” he said, smilingly.

—

We spent a few days walking through the wilderness, which I wasn’t very used to.

Ponyville and its surrounding areas was the perfect balance of nature and hamlet-y charm. Walk out from the core of the town, and you’d most likely find yourself in one of those picturesque scenes that nature tends to create on its own accord when left free to do so, be it the gently rolling hills or the serene forests and meadows of White Tail Woods.

Walk a little further, beyond the sight of houses and cabins, and with just a smidge of imagination, you were discovering unexplored lands and stumbling across great adventures with your cutie mark seeking friends.

That wasn’t the landscape we were moving through now. We were walking through older lands. More untouched territories and primeval forests. If there ever had been ponies cultivating these lands, they hadn’t done so in a long time.

A primeval forest sounds foreboding, and in some ways it could’ve been, but the sun was shining through the canopy in pleasant green patterns, birds were singing, and I was in good company, conversing with friends.

Still, I could understand why “woodsmen” were considered capable and respected in medieval fantasy settings, and it didn’t take much to imagine why a dark forest at night could be scary. If I was alone, I could imagine the horror of idly scanning the serene landscape surrounding me, only to suddenly realize that some oh-so-very-harmless-looking detail between a pair of trees was actually a hungry lynx staring at me.

“Wanna ride on my back, Gabe?” Armor asked.

“I think so,” I said. By now, my prostheses were so well aligned to me that they barely drained more magic to use than my physical legs drained stamina. Even so, Armor was bigger than me, and as such had longer legs.

We were walking along a cliffside, wondering if we should continue along it on hoof or just fly down since three fifths of our party had wings.

“Hey, I think that’s the edge of the forest,” I said, pointing towards the sunlit plains in the distance, and noticed that the treeline looked as if it was trimmed by hand. “The woods end very suddenly though.”

“It is,” Trixie said. “And the reason the forest stops so abruptly over there is because that’s the Winsome Wilds.”

She turned to Evening. “Now, who would you rather give you a ride? A strong and brave guard, the lustrously chitinous twins, or me?”

Evening looked taken aback, before smiling and blushing. “Would you mind, madam?”

“I would not,” she said, and bent down to let Evening sit on her back just as I was sitting on Armor’s.

“Let’s go,” she said.

We soared, and buzzed, down to the edge of the forest in the distance, touching down just beyond it.

I lit up my horn and scanned the treeline behind me, as was becoming my habit. We were moving incognito across the land, and so we kept our eyes and other sensors sharp at all times. It was boring and we never found anything, but of course, that's the thing about being alert: it is boring, until it very suddenly stops being so.

“So this is the Winsome Wilds?” I asked, looking at the plains ahead of us as my magical senses slowly swiveled around. “It’s pretty, but I was expecti– whoa!”

I backpedalled into Armor, who put a protective foreleg around me as I magically stared at the phenomenon ahead of me.

“What is it, Gabe?” Armor asked, vigilant and comforting.

“I think she just saw the magic of this place,” Trixie said.

I nodded absentmindedly as I tried processing the magic in front of me.

Equestria was full of magic. It was pervasive and ever-present. I had not encountered nor heard of a place without it. It could be inert of course, in a few places: if I emptied my prostheses of the magical gem dust in them and placed them away from my arcanomorphic form, their insides would be empty of active magic much like a vacuum tube is devoid of physical matter.

It also differed from place to place. The magic in the Everfree Forest felt different from Ponyville much like the air felt different, and a place like Sweet Apple Acres’ magic was subtly different from a patch of wilderness due to the Apple family tending to the land. In the process, they would attune it and themselves to each other. Canterlot and the Crystal Empire were also good examples of different passive magic, the magic that allowed such engineering and architectural marvels having solidified, settled, mutated, influenced, and been influenced by centuries of ponies living there and loving their homes, much like Ponyville also did.

All of that was like sensing moisture in the atmosphere. It was everywhere, and it added up to a lot of water, and if sensing the magic surrounding Celestia when she raised the sun, or when Twilight really put her weight into a spell was like seeing steam from a locomotive. Magically sensing the Winsome Wilds was like seeing fog for the first time, there wasn’t much more than you’d find someplace else, but it was much more active.

“How does it look?” Armor asked, still holding his foreleg around me.

“Uhm… palpable,” I said. “Not in that swirly way when you cast a spell. It looks a bit like… like… thick foliage next to normal magic grassy, bushy plains… or something.”

“... Huh,” Armor said, and relaxed his foreleg. “Does it look… dangerous? Like it’d be difficult to move through?”

“I can’t say for certain,” I said. “It’s like watching strange weather, like sunshine and rain or strange clouds. It looks okay I’d say, knowing that there are plenty of dangerous things that doesn’t look dangerous. What do you think, Trixie? You’ve been here before.”

“No, nothing dangerous in the traditional sense,” she said, shaking her head. “All things dangerous here are in the mind.”

My eye narrowed at that. “That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “Makes me think of eldritch whispers that eat away at your sanity.”

Everyone looked shocked and slightly disgusted by those words. “Nothing that horrific,” Trixie said. “It’s just difficult not being entranced by the beauty of the place.”

“It’s pretty,” Evening admitted, watching a few dandelion tufts drift by. “But I’ve seen prettier.”

“That’s gonna change when we go in there,” Trixie said.

“What will happen?” Polyus said.

“I don’t know,” Trixie admitted. “Everypony I’ve talked to who have gone in there describe it differently.”

“And they’re all okay?” Armor asked, still holding his foreleg around me.

“They’re fine,” Trixie said, nodding. “Still, we should be careful in there.”

“Equipment check then,” I said. “Are all of your communicators working properly?”

Everyone nodded and mumbled in confirmation as they pulled their hair clips with full-duplex walkie talkies out of their manes and silk and switched them on.

“Testing,” I said, as the others nodded in confirmation.

“Testing,” Armor said, and so on.

“How’s your leg holding up, Evening?” I asked. “Everything good? Mine is magically attached so it doesn’t chafe but I haven’t tried Hard and Heavy’s legs so I don’t know about yours.”

“Oh it’s just fine,” he said. “No chafe for me either and I’m getting used to having a full range of motions with less sense of touch.”

I sat down and pulled my stun rod from my holster, then I gripped the lower and upper part of the long handle, pulling it apart and revealing the sword hidden inside the rod much like a sword cane.

“So I didn’t practice with these, but there’s an arcano-disruptive head at the end of this?” I asked.

“Yes,” Evening said, holding his out for inspection as well. “You just squeeze the hilt together and it activates when you hit something with the head. Don’t shock everything you see though, since it uses your own magic reserve.”

“You familiar with these, Armor?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We practiced with sword and staves, but mostly spears back home, but I guess this works like in… you know that movie where the humans are too polite to fight the villain, so they get another human to fight him?”

I looked at him questioningly.

“You know,” he continued. “He kept growling and making that strange pouty expression when he was angry… they froze him in ice.”

“Oh, right,” I said, finally catching on. “Yeah, sounds like that.”

The rest were looking at us with curious expressions, but we just smiled at them and waved their questions away. It felt like it would take a long time to explain what we were talking about and not lead to much anyway.

I pulled my armored scarf and cloak over my head and back and tightened the strings. It functioned properly, as I was armored in less than two breaths just like before, then I lowered it and rolled it up in the scarf again, satisfied.

“Okay, recap,” I said. “We’re going in that very actively magical place to talk to oracles.”

“Yep,” Polyusa confirmed.

“Who are nice,” I said. “But can’t come to us because they’re not entirely in this world.”

“Correct,” Polyus said.

“And we don’t know what will happen in there, just that it has to do with the mind?”

“Primarily,” Trixie said.

I took this in for a moment, nodding my head. “Alright, I’m read– no wait. Can everyone look away, please?”

Everyone turned away, even Armor, whom I reared up and pecked on the side of the muzzle. He blushed slightly and gave me a quick nuzzle in return. Poly shivered excitedly, opening their mouth and tasting the air with their long tongue.

“Alright, now I’m ready,” I said after a few moments.

We advanced to the clear edge, watching the slightly brighter weather and the more lustrous flora on the other side for a moment before stepping through.

At first, it was a bit underwhelming. I felt the magic buzz and tingle around me, and at first I just stood there to try and study the effects. It would’ve taken a more skilled unicorn than me, or at least one with more time, to get anything useful out of it. I could not make head or tails of it as it flowed across me from my head to my tail, then I saw it.

I, like everyone else, tend to start taking things around me for granted. Every once in a while though, I wake up to the good things around me and just how good they really are. The safety and comfort of one’s home, the love you share with those close to you, and the serene charms of Ponyville.

That happened again when I looked around me, only more intensely. I saw a stream of petals flowing by, creating a hypnotising image in the wind. I saw the wonderfully blue sky and the benevolent sun shining its comforting light down on me, and I looked to my side and saw Armor, his mane catching the wind and making it flow around his strong looking, now slightly-shaggy-looking-but-in-a-good-way face, which bore that determined and benevolent expression.

He looked at me and gave me a soft smile.

“Shall we go on?” he asked, and made no effort to proceed.

“... Yeah,” I said, also just standing there.

The rest of our posse also stood still, looking around themselves, utterly enamored with the captivating beauty of the world around them.

–

“We really should get going,” I said, smiling slightly and lying on my back and watching the wind gently make waves across the grass in the distance.

“... Yeah,” Armor tried to agree, lying head-to-head to me.

“Hey, guys,” I called. “You wanna get going?”

“Sure," Trixie said, also smiling as she played with Polyus’ tail, while Polyus was brushing Trixie’s coat.

“Hey, Gabe, Armor,” Polyus said. “Have you noticed that Trixie’s coat is the same color as the sky?”

I lazily rolled over, and saw that her coat did indeed blend nicely with the blue sky above.

“This is ridiculous,” Evening said, trying to sound serious. “We shouldn’t just be sitting here, watching the flowers.”

“Yeah,” Armor agreed. “Though we’re watching the clouds.”

“Yeah? Let me see,” Evening said, and walked up to sit beside us. “Neat.”

We sat there for a while, finding the beauty that nature tends to produce when left to its own devices absolutely captivating.

“I’m gonna take my eyepatch off for this,” I said, doing just that, and revealing my pearly white prosthesis. “I wanna see this with two eyes.”

“Remind us why you don’t have that off all the time,” Evening said, before we all paused to listen to the wind blowing across the field.

“Because it’s pointed forward all the time,” I said. “The enchantment that keeps it from falling out also keeps it pointing straight ahead. There’s something iffy about my normal locomotion enchantment and eyes I’m still trying to figure out.”

“Does it need to move?” Armor asked. “It’s not like there’s a pupil.”

I watched the light play off Armor’s mane before his words registered. “... You are a genius, Armor,” I said, and stretched my neck to kiss him on the cheek.

Armor looked slightly proud as I set to work. I lit up my horn, and before long, eyesight and movement of my field of vision were restored in my right side.

“That went smoothly,” I noted. “I wonder if this place made it easier, or if I could do that easily, and my elation is drowned out by everything else here.”

“I’m guessing the latter,” Trixie noted, as she walked around, feeling the grass underneath her hooves.

Poly came up to us, and sat down beside Armor and me, pulling our heads into their lap.

“I just want a snack,” Polyusa said.

“Go ahead,” Armor said, and he and I relaxed into her, as Poly sniffed the air above us.

“What do you think the oracles will say?” I asked.

“No idea,” Polyus said. “How to send you home I hope.”

Armor and I smiled, and Polyus and Polyusa no doubt thought our reactions tasted great.

“I hope so,” I said. “That would be very important knowledge to us, and they ought to share something like that. It doesn’t feel right visiting oracles who doesn’t have anything pivotal to say.”

The rest simmered in agreement at this.

We stayed as we were for a while, and I lazily moved my foreleg back and forth across the grass, feeling it tickle my frog, and entertaining myself by looking at it with my new eye, which functioned indistinguishable from my normal eye.

“... We’re stuck, aren’t we?” Evening said.

“Seems that way,” Polyus said.

“Yeah,” Armor said.

“Mmm,” from Trixie.

“...”

Often, when you’re sick or tired or have a headache, it feels like your brain is full of mush, which doesn’t feel nice, and while you can clean yourself and eat, more complex things can feel near-impossible to do right.

This was kind of like that, except it was hard to mind this mush. It was nice and pleasant mush, so it was a bit hard to fight it.

“How about moving?” Armor said.

“What about moving?” Evening said. “You put one hoof in front of the other.”

We let out a collective snerk, before Trixie suggested, “Maybe there are even nicer things to watch where the oracles are?”

“Where are they?” Polyusa said.

“Don’t know. We’ll have to look,” Trixie said. “Or find a sign or something.”

“You mean a sign like, uh… a vision sign or a sign by a crossroad?” Armor asked.

“I was thinking vision sign.”

“We’d miss all these nice things,” Polyus complained weakly, gesturing towards the landscape.

“Yeah,” Trixie agreed, and sat down.

‘We need to move, and find the oracles, and find out how to get home,’ I thought to myself, feeling frustrated but in a really lazy way. ‘But it’s all too beautiful… just like that song.

‘Just like that… song.’

I suddenly stopped, then raised my head from Poly’s lap.

“Something going on, Gabe?” Polyusa asked.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I mustered up all the concentration I had, and walked over to Trixie, jumped up on her back, and shoved my head into her mobile apartment.

I lit up my horn, and retrieved my guitar right by the entrance, before emerging with it, and walking over to Armor to sit on his back.

“Oh hey!” Evening said, turning over to look closer at me when he saw what was in my hooves. “Great idea.”

I couldn’t answer. Instead, I just looked back and forth between him, Poly, and Trixie, trying to grasp all that they were doing for Armor and me, and why. They, and Armor, were starting to give me worried looks, as I felt a tear building in the corner of my eye as I climbed up on Armor

I tried thinking of lyrics, before quickly dismissing that and just going with my guts. My hoof gently caressed the strings, and out came a gentle melody, perfectly tuned for a soft, thankful song.

“I lived my days alone and shrouded only, in aching memories of what I had lost.

Then came the magic and closeness and love, and I learned that friendship is worth the cost.”

The worried looks gave way to rapt attention, as they and Armor slowly rose to their hooves.

“Its wholesome ways.

Treasure it always.”

“With my true friends, it upon me shone.”

“Just like with song,

It makes us strong.”

“With true friends, you’re never alone.”

Everyone gave me smiles mixed with sadness and happiness, but mostly the latter, as we began walking across the landscape, the beauty of which seemed to resonate with the song, as I continued singing about the beauty of friendship on Armor’s back.

“Princesses, friends, and magic, and teachers, helped me to help others through what I would learn.

And just as I was given a new life, I would help others get theirs back in turn.”

Our march had become pretty spirited, but even so the landscape was moving by faster than one would normally expect. Not that we noticed as the rest joined in for the refrain.

“Its wholesome ways.

Treasure it always.”

“With my true friends, it upon me shone.”

“Just like with song,

It makes us strong.”

“With true friends, you’re never alone.”

The soothing melodies of a small, string-led arrangement led us on over hills and meadows as my hooves calmly danced across the strings.

During the following solo, Armor turned to smile at me. I smiled back and rose up to hang my guitar over his neck, still playing while rubbing my cheek against his, as I started singing the following verse.

“In my dream I had a teacher, who was kind and giving with creation’s spark,”

Armor joined in for the following part, the joy of the song slightly dimming over the next part.

“But then he appeared draped in shadows, and seeking his lover through a poisoned dark.”.

Our spirits dimmed further from remembering this subject matter, before it raised up again, from reaching the next part of the tale.

“We were cast into this dark reflection, our hope all but lost, alone and astray.

Then we were saved and this is a friendship that we never can, but must try to repay.”

We stopped marching, and Trixie, Poly, and Evening considered us with surprised expressions before they took over the singing.

“Worry not about what you can do to repay us, we are here to help, our courageous friends.”

The grateful smiles on Armor’s and mine’s face grew, as we sang the last part.

“This is beyond the call of true heroes, and we will mourn our companionship’s end.”

We all joined in for one last refrain…

“Its wholesome ways.

Treasure it always.

With our true friends, it upon us shone.

Just like with song,

It makes us strong.

With true friends, we’re never alone.”

The melody slowly died out, and we all stopped to look at each other for a moment, before joining in a group hug. We all wrapped our forelegs and necks over each other in gratitude and support, and I had just enough presence of mind to move my guitar out of the way.

Even after having lived for months among magical ponies, this amount of happy, hug-y affection would’ve felt a little too mushy for me, but at this time, in this place, I didn’t care. I just relished the comforting and supporting presence of my friends, and of course their soft coats (and sleek chitin), as another tear slowly built in my eye.

“Mmhmhmhm,” Polyus chuckled, half in pain, half in delight. “We’re overfed.”

We slowly disengaged, and now that we no longer had the context of a song to sing and dance to, fought down an urge to fidget uncomfortably as an awkward silence loomed, but then we looked around, taking in our new surroundings.

I flicked my ears, seeming to hear something in the distance.

“Where are we?” Evening asked.

The beautiful plains had started accommodating copses of woods, with some outlying trees here and there. One was particularly dense, almost forming a wall of trees, except for an opening between a pair of large cherry trees whose crowns had grown together, making a sort of archway.

Trixie’s eyes lit up. “We’re here, near the oracles’ spring.”

“Let’s go give them a ring,” I said, before narrowing my eyes at my choice of words.

We slowly walked into the grove, taking in the beautiful sights around us, but not being hypnotized by them anymore. Now we could focus again, and what held my attention was the paradisiacal spring we were approaching, and the slowly growing sound in the background.

Bumblebees and small birds flew back and forth inside the grove, with small woodland creatures scurrying between the trees or stopping to look at us in and around the extraordinary healthy-looking flora.

In the center was a spring of sparkling, shimmering water, emitting a gentle and calming light, flowing from some unknown source among the round rock-formations in the center.

“This was a barren place once,” Trixie said in a low, respectful voice. “After Starswirl the Mad banished the oracles, the ponies of old searched for them all over Equestria. But they were trapped in a realm from where they could no longer interact with our world, and this is where ponies managed to create a mirror for them to peer into it.”

“So they’re old then?” I asked, in a low voice, and thought I heard the background tone stutter slightly.

“By pony standards, yes,” said Trixie. “They’re not ponies though.”

“What are they?” Armor asked.

“I don’t know if they’re part of a people or if they’re unique,” Trixie said. “But in your Equestria, you have powers that threaten all that is good, and you have champions and forces of good that help guard it. We do as well, and the oracles are one of those powers of good.”

I was about to ask if we needed to call them somehow, when the strange background note started taking on a comprehensible form:

“...Ooooooh, you flatter us, brave ser knight,” a trio of voices sang from the spring, the light from which suddenly shined brighter, as three shapes, one purple, one teal, and one yellow, shot out from it with nary a ripple in the water, and stopped in front of us, making all of us except Trixie take an alarmed step back..

“... Especially with your own flame shining so bright.”

Before us suddenly floated a trio of large, vaguely equine-shaped beings. They had hooves and muzzles, but scales instead of coats, and fins instead of manes and ears.

Trixie bowed, and so did the rest of us. They certainly struck an image that demanded respect.

“Dazzlings,” Trixie said, as she rose up. “We’ve come to ask you for guidance.”

The Dazzlings smiled, and floated effortlessly through the air. Almost unconsciously, they seemed to make little dance-like motions. “We know, dear friend, we know,” they sang, smiling kindly at Trixie. “The seed of our wisdom we can sow.”

Somehow, whatever they said came out as song, and not aimless sing-song either, but beautiful ballads.

“What can you tell us?” Trixie asked.

The three figures floated up to Trixie, and the yellow one put a hoof to her on her chin. “Walk on fighting and never despair, now tell us why you are here.”

With the singing, the beauty, the entrancement, and how I understood Equestria to work in general, it was pretty obvious what exactly I was seeing: sirens.

‘More Hellenic stuff? What’s next? Hippocampi? Hippogriffs? Is a technodrome built by ponies a hippodrome?’

Trixie turned around slightly and gestured to me and Armor. The sirens’ eyes went wide, and they shot forward to circle us, either in excitement or agitation, it was hard to say.

Armor took a step towards me, as if to stand protectively over me, eyeing the sirens.

Their swimming calmed down, and they floated to a stop in front of us, their eyes fixed on me and Armor.

Suddenly, my guitar floated off from Armor’s back, and began magically playing as the sirens sang, looking up questioningly to the sky above.

“Majesty, in darkness your plans are still wise.”

Their eyes returned to me.

“Hellion, warp and mystify.”

Armor and I looked at the sirens as they started floating in a circle around us, inspecting us with open curiosity.

“Majesty, plans wrapped in a fine disguise.

Hellion, destiny defy.”

“Hellion?” I said, not feeling that was a term fitting for me or Armor. “What do you mean?”

Once again, the sirens floated away from us, and my guitar levitated beside me. I took it in my magical aura, and started playing. I knew what to play, and judging from where I was when I did, there was obviously magic at play here.

It started gentle and relaxed, with a theatrical feel to it. The sirens responded with a song.

“Behind closed eyes of the world we see the force unseen,

from our imprisonment, past and future we can glean.”

“Ponies sail upon in its waves of both hardships and of play.

Soaring far above their waves, your soul dance its own way.”

It wasn’t all becoming clear, but a big pile of answers was raining down around me, I stepped up and sang the next verse myself.

“I was not born in a world of magic, spells, and fey.”

The sirens nodded, and finished.

“And the tunes of destiny and fate, over you they hold no sway.”

I sat plopped down on my behind as I thought about this. This must’ve been what Fluttershy told me Discord had said: that I functioned differently from ponies, that is, the ponies with the souls of ponies.

If these worlds were parallels, with ponies, at least the major players, morally mirrored to each other, to me meant that something or some force should be influencing them to be exactly that. According to Fluttershy, Discord was different from ponies in that he had the capacity to choose whether he was good or bad, and that I was maybe even more different from ponies than he was.

I stood up, and looked at the sirens, bringing the guitar into my magical grasp.

“Tell me what my presence means and what it is you want.

Steering the whole of the world, my dreams such fate would haunt.”

The sirens floated up to me, kind expressions, but with a hint of sadness to them. They held out their hooves and placed them under my chin, which passed partially through them, showing them to be ethereal.

They sang:

“Use your strength, your heart, your values and your wit

Think of what you know and feel and act as you see fit.”

Armor still stood half-huddled around me, eyeing the sirens with a mixture of interest and suspicion. He leaned his head forward to address the floating sirens. It was the very first time I heard him sing solo.

“Across the lands and between the world we wander and we roam.

Where do we go and what do we do, when we want to go home?”

The sirens turned their focus towards Armor, but didn’t match his slightly suspicious demeanor. They instead moved their hooves to his face, and gently gave him an ethereal caress.

“Brave protector, take your charge and all the courage you can bring...”

They disengaged from us, and floated towards the pool in the middle of the clearing, still singing.

“Trust your friends and steel yourself... and stop the dark king.”

The music died down, the shimmer from the ponds settles slightly, and the sirens’ posture relaxed.

They held out their hooves towards my guitar, still floating to the side, and magically brought it to them. They started circling it, weaving invisible patterns in the air around it, and sent it back to me. I took it in my hoof, sensing the magic radiate from it.

“This won’t work often, but when you need to, grab it and sing,” they said, as the purple one’s head suddenly turned to the side, looking at something beyond the treeline with a scowl. “Trust in your strength and cunning, and get going. They are coming!”

Trixie only just threw a glance at the direction where the purple siren had looked, before spreading her wings, drawing our attention to her. “Alright, let’s go,” she said, promptly and unceremoniously, then turned around and ran.

Armor and I looked at each other, then started running with the others towards the opening in the barrier of trees we had entered through, my guitar in my magical grip.

I slowed down and looked back at the sirens. “Thank you!” I called.

“Run!” they shouted back.

We ran out onto the barely forested foothills, and looked around us for any signs of danger, but we didn’t see anything.

“Are they gonna be okay?” I asked.

“They can’t be harmed,” Trixie assured me, as she took my guitar and magiced it into her bag. “But they won’t be able to physically help us either.”

Armor was watching the horizon in the direction that the sirens had looked when they seemed to spot the danger. “I can’t see anything,” he said.

“Me neither,” Evening weighed in.

“Hmm. If they, whoever they are, are heading from there in a straight line here,” Polyus said, pointing to where they were looking. “What say we take our chances moving close to the ground, perpendicular to them, back where we came?”

Armor nodded. “That’s either a good plan or a bad plan depending on how fast they’re moving and how good they are at scouting,” he said.

“There aren’t a lot of hiding places around here though,” Evening said. “Just some boulders and copses, but I don’t have a better idea.”

“What do you say, Gabe?”

I almost blanched at that. “Uh, well I… don’t have a better idea either.”

“Then let’s move,” Trixie said, “and stay close to the ground.”

We started running ahead across the hills, not quite sprinting, but not jogging either, as we looked around us.

I assumed that the most immediate threat when someone is searching for you in Equestria would be airborne pegasi, but Equestria also had tunneling monsters and weather that could be used to corral fearsome creatures, so in my limited experience I really had no idea what to look for.

Trixie’s magic enveloped me and placed me on her back. “No offence, Gabrielle, but I’d like you to save your strength.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, realizing that I had the shortest legs. It also meant I could look around without fear of tripping.

I leaned into Trixie’s neck, luckily I had plenty of experience riding on Armor’s back, so I bounced gently with her.

Every time we rounded a hill, I both breathed a sigh of relief, and felt a sense of unease build up in me from the distant landscape disappearing from view. Initially, I couldn’t see anything when we reached a peak, until a speck was visible on the horizon.

I narrowed my eyes, and while my prosthesis could now see just as well as my normal one, I couldn’t make out what it was, and I promised myself that I would install a zoom function on it as soon as possible.

“What’s that?” I asked. “In the distance.”

We stopped, and looked at the small shape rapidly getting closer.

“It’s an airship,” Armor said, no relief in his voice.

“Military or civilian?” Evening asked.

“... Civilian,” Polyusa said.

“It’s moving fast for a civilian ship,” Evening noted.

We stood in silence for about one second before Trixie narrowed her eyes from realization. “Pirates!” she hissed, and immediately resumed running. “Move, and stay close to the ground! Let’s see if we can put some trees or hills between them and us!”

Our predicament started dawning on me as I craned my head and saw the speck slowly taking the shape of a ship. A ship large enough to fit a small army. Dozens of eyes could be spying from an excellent vantage point, scouts could be sent out and use the ship as a base, they moved fast with minimal effort, and they could be searching in shifts.

We were already at a disadvantage, and if we let that thing overtake us, we would have to resort to hiding, which in this landscape would result in an endurance contest we probably couldn’t win.

After some time of running, the ship had grown steadily bigger, so big that I could make out the sails, but not the crew scurrying on it, which I found comforting.

Trixie looked back at the others, and saw how they were out of breath.

“Let’s head for that copse,” she said, and pointed to a fairly dense collection of trees in a small dale.

When we arrived, we hid in the sparse undergrowth, which would only serve as a hiding place from faraway eyes.

Armor, Evening, and Poly stood on the far side of the trees, panting slightly, and even Trixie was starting to seem a little winded as she climbed a short distance up a tree and observed the ship, which was now beginning to show its side.

“We can’t stay here for long,” Evening said.

“No,” Trixie agreed. “Let’s see where they’re heading.”

Poly, being excellent climbers, joined her in the tree. “They’re doing well for this place,” Polyusa said. “You think they can sing their way across the land too?”

“They would, wouldn’t they?” Armor said.

I looked around, almost in surprise. We were still in The Winsome Wilds, but the beauty of this place didn’t feel overwhelming anymore, and I frankly didn’t have another song in me at that moment.

“Can we hide in your house?” I asked Trixie. “If we camp in that, and camouflage it, we could outlast them.”

Trixie stopped panting as she considered this. “I’m not sure. It’s powerful enough magic that there are several ways to detect it, and… well,” she said, looking a bit exasperated. “I’m betting that Rosen Wreath and Golden Star are on that ship. They know about it, and they’d know what to look for. If they find it with us in it, they’d, frankly, have us in a bag.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“We’ll try and get away, but we have to remain flexible,” Trixie said. “To the west, there are woods they’ll never find us in, and beyond that, or to the south, are military presences that can help us, but–” Trixie’s eyes narrowed “– any number of troopers could be Sombra’s sleeper agents. We should try and get back to Canterlot, or someplace with a lot of changelings.”

“The south sands are pretty far away,” Polyus noted. “And the enclaves are in Canterlot and the other large cities.”

“Then we’ll try and evade them in the wilds,” Evening said.

I had seen the movies. Fleeing from a larger force in the wild is asking to be separated. I reached into my mane and pulled out the small hair clip I kept forgetting to remove as I cleaned my mane, and held it to Armor.

“Take this,” I said.

Armor, knowing what it was, nodded, and placed it in the base of his mane.

“So,” Trixie said. “How do we get from where we are to the woods without being detected?”

“I’ll distract them,” Evening said.

“No,” Trixie and Polyusa said at the same time. “None of that,” Polyusa said.

“What happens if all of us with wings just fly as fast as we can back towards the woods and carries the others?” I asked.

“If we’re not spotted, we’re gonna get there tired and vulnerable to anyone who might have followed or who might be waiting for us there,” Trixie said. “If we are spotted, we can outrun them for a while if we move fast enough, then we’ll be overtaken by a fresh crew.”

I nodded as I considered this. She had a point. It would’ve been the first reaction anyone would have, which would make it very easy for any pursuer to plan for.

“It looks like they’re heading for that… meadow, that the sirens were in,” Armor said.

“Well they don’t have any leverage I know of,” Trixie said, as she climbed down the tree. “Let’s hope they take their time over there. We’ll move, but try and pace ourselves. How are you doing with that leg, Evening?”

“Fine so far, but I haven’t exercised too much in general lately,” he said.

“Climb inside if you need to,” Trixie said, indicating her bag.

“If we don’t sprint, I can keep up,” Evening assured her.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Armor lifted me onto his back instead of Trixie’s, and then we kept going.

–

The afternoon had turned to evening, and evening was turning to night.

We hadn’t seen the ship, or anyone else, since they moved towards the sirens’ meadow, and perhaps we were home free, we couldn’t tell. Remaining vigilant for so long was becoming difficult and frustrating, but that was something any pursuer would be counting on.

“Stop!” Armor hissed, and eyed the sky above the distant ridge with suspicion.

Then he gasped, and dove towards a small outcropping of rocks. “Come on, hide.”

Once everyone was behind the outcropping, Armor and Poly peered out from the rock. “I see them,” Polyus confirmed. “Three pegasi.”

“Can they see us?” I asked.

Armor and Poly were silent for a moment, before they shook their heads. “No, they’re turning.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Let’s go have a look,” Trixie said, and moved towards a hill to our side.

We had tried staying clear of high ground, and yet running between the hills had almost made us run into our pursuers.

We quickly but carefully climbed up the hill, and stayed low as the ground levelled. We lay down and peered into the rapidly darkening landscape.

“There they are,” Evening said, and pointed to a distant hill.

I couldn’t make out the ship, but when I knew where to look, I noticed the small twinkles of lanterns in the distance. The ship had stopped and were staying close to the ground.

“They went around us,” Trixie said. “They’ve anchored. Those three were going in a search pattern, and they’re not going to be the only ones. We have to fall back.”

“We can’t go on like this forever,” Polyusa said.

“They figured out where we were heading, but they clearly don’t know exactly where we are,” Trixie noted. “They’re gonna focus on scouting the edge of the forest, which means less in our direction. If we can outlast them for the night, they might move on and we can slip by as they’re relocating.”

Understandably, I had never thought I’d be sneaking across the landscape with a bunch of soldiers, trying to evade detection. Trixie had dropped her humble demeanor, and the importance of leadership was beginning to dawn on me. I was really out of my element, and I found Trixie’s confidence very comforting.

We retreated through the dales in the darkness, putting several hills between us and the ship.

After about an hour of rapid marching, we managed to find a mound that didn’t stick out too much as a good hiding place, and settled down behind it.

“Alright, everypony bunch up,” Trixie said, and we scooted closer to each other. “We’re going to be resting as well as possible and move before first light. It’s going to be a short night, no campfire, no sleeping in, and everypony has to be ready to move or wake up fighting. Keep your gear on and your stun rods at the ready. We’ll take turns on watch. I’ll take the first one.”

We hadn’t noticed any pursuers, and everyone quietly laid down in a circle, facing outward. I kept my prostheses on, which meant I wouldn’t get very comfortable on that side, and switched my holster with my stun rod and sword over to that side.

Armor put a foreleg around me and pulled me close as always. After fifteen minutes of worried fidgeting, he tightened his grip around me comfortingly.

“If you can’t sleep, just try and get some rest,” he said, quietly.

Trixie, who lay on the mound, spying out beyond it, looked back at me and nodded.

–

I almost snorted from waking up from what felt like someone pinching my flank, and opened my eyes to look around me, wishing I didn't have to sleep in gear that could chafe. I saw Evening up on the mound instead of Trixie. He looked back at the pile of sleeping ponies and changelings when he heard me stir, and relaxed when he noticed it was just me looking up at him, then his eyes widened, and his gaze turned to the side.

That should’ve made me more alert, but strangely, I found myself falling asleep again.

—

“Holy horseapples, this filly’s mane is like a jungle in itself,” I heard an unfamiliar stallion say in a rough voice.

“Tie her up before she wakes up,” another, vaguely familiar voice hissed. “And do it properly. She’s a crafty one.”

I opened my eyes, and saw a blurry outline of a stallion on the side, faintly lit by candlelight against a night sky.

“Who do you think you’re talking to? You’re not long in our business if you can’t tie knots. I’ll get her like a mummy before she realizes anything,” the first voice said, behind me.

As the stallion slowly started coming into focus, I noticed him looking at me. “Oh really? Because she’s waking up,” he said, and gestured invitingly towards something outside of my field of vision. “Please.”

Just as I noticed that the stallion before me was Rosen Wreath, one of the ponies who had almost captured me during the whole business with Braeburn, a puff of smoke flew into my vision, and the voice behind me let out a displeased, “Hey!” before Rosen Wreath gently stepped up to catch me from falling, and I lost consciousness before my situation really registered.

—

I squirmed as I tried reaching that itching in my flank, but to my growing frustration, it didn’t work.

I let out an irritated mewl as consciousness slowly returned to me, and slowly opened my eyes.

“A one-eyed, two-legged foal,” someone scoffed, as I weakly shook my head. “Some threat.”

“You’d be surprised,” someone else noted.

“I think we can handle a little filly,” the first one said.

“There will be no carelessness in guarding her,” the other person ordered, calmly, but determined.

The room I was in was coming into focus, my new eye’s clarity was actually a bit disorienting when waking up like this.

I was lying in a cot behind metal bars in a wooden structure, the only light coming from a set of stairs, and a couple of secured oil lamps on small tables. I didn’t have to be awake for long before I realized where I was. I was in the hold of a ship, inside a bare cage, with another empty cage opposite mine.

A wave of exhaustion washed over me. Not the sleepy kind, but one of dismay. I had hoped that meeting the oracles would’ve filled me with confidence, getting an idea on how to set everything right and return home, but it had been unceremoniously interrupted, and after several hours of worry and uncertainty, I had simply found myself captured.

I looked at myself, and saw ropes snaking back and forth across me, tying my hind legs together, as well as my forelegs. Unsurprisingly, I also felt a weight of a magic blocking ring on my horn. My flank itched, and sported a red mark like from an insect sting. I didn’t even bother trying to activate any of the tools I had installed in my legs, and just let out another sigh.

“Nice to see that you’re awake, Madam Desrochers,” a voice I recognised as belonging to Rosen Wreath said.

I turned around and gave him a look of only mild contempt. He was sitting next to another earth pony, a short one, with a bandana tied around his greasy hair, and a grin showing filthy teeth.

“Where are the others?” I asked, quickly but calmly.

“Left behind, alas. They might have woken up by now, but perhaps not. Don’t worry; we left them unharmed,” Rosen Wreath readily informed me.

“Anything other than words to prove that?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But I would not wish to inflict real harm on an old acquaintance like Madam Lulamoon, and while I don’t know Evening Spark beyond a set of discharge papers, I’d be loath to do anything towards a soldier who served under me.”

I let my head fall against the pillow, staring bitterly into the wooden wall. Rosen struck me as a classy enough person to not lie about that, and after a while of scowling, my expression softened.

“Interesting creations,” Rosen noted.

I turned my head to see him placing my possessions on the table with an oil lamp on it. My armor, my stun rod and sword, and the tools I had in my prostheses as well as their coverings. I still had my eye and my legs, but beside looking through walls, I couldn’t do anything with them.

“What are these things?” he asked.

“... One is a harmonica,” I said.

“Yes indeed,” he said. “And climbing gear, and three sets of clearly enchanted gemstones. What is their function, I wonder.”

“I bet you do,” I said.

“Perhaps it would be safest to destroy them,” he noted.

I let another frustrated sigh, and turned over on the cot to face him. “The first sharp one is a thauma-disruptive stunner, the other sharp one is a prosthetic unicorn horn, and the octahedral one is a music player.”

“How do they work?” he asked, as if we were talking shop.

“You give the horn and the stunner to the one it’s been made for and who have practiced their arcanomorphic field to use them,” I said, in a defiantly bored voice. “The music player can be controlled by touch interface.”

“How?”

I paused.

“Press the side with the three crescents and hold it for a few seconds,” I said.

He did so, seeming fairly interested. “What happens then?”

There was no response from the device. “Hm, must’ve already been on,” I noted. “Press the side with a triangle to continue playing wherever I left off before.”

Rosen did so, and Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean started playing in the middle of the song.

The stallion with the bad teeth grinned, and began bobbing his head up and down to the music, as Rosen Wreath smiled.

“Very amusing,” he said. “How do you turn it off?”

“The side with the square symbol,” I said, making sure there was no hint of a smile in my voice.

Rosen Wreath turned off the music, just as his pegasus colleague, Golden Star, walked down the stairs, holding a bag with one wing.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“Demonstration of some interesting devices made by our honored guest,” Rosen said.

“I see,” Golden said, looking at my tools, before turning back to Rosen. “Skipper wants to talk to you about our destination.”

“Does she now?” Rosen said, sounding a bit irritated, and rose up. “You can handle this by yourself?”

“I’ll be careful,” Golden said.

Rosen nodded, and went up the stairs. Golden turned towards the bad teeth stallion, and said, “Keys.”

The stallion reached behind him from the worn cushion he had settled down in, and tossed a ring of keys to Golden, who caught it with his free wing.

“I’m almost tempted to toss them to her instead, see what would happen,” he noted.

“That would be a very foolish gamble with your future earnings,” Golden said, as he unlocked the door to my cell, and stepped in.

The stallion scoffed.

Golden locked the door behind him, and tossed the keys back to the stallion through the bars.

I raised my eyebrows at that. They were acting as if I was some sort of quarantined monster.

“I’m with Mr Greasy on this one,” I noted.

“I’m sure,” Golden noted, slightly amused, before setting the bag down and opening it to reveal some pears, apples, and peaches. “Breakfast, Gabrielle?”

I looked at my tied legs, and let out a sigh. Golden Star picked up a peach, and walked up to me.

I regarded him with a sort of dispassionate interest. He actually has a very similar demeanor to myself at the moment, although there was a bit of manners to his ways that I’m not sure was disingenuous. He put his hooves around my shoulders, and lifted me up to a sitting position.

“... You slammed me into a train,” I noted.

“And you threw me into a pile of farmhooves,” he noted, with a faint smirk. “And tossed a hooffull of coins, that I gave you, so hard they almost flew through a steel roof right next to me.”

“You started it,” I countered, a bit weakly.

“I did,” he said, evenly, the held up the fruit to me.

I took a bite out of it and started chewing, thinking of how Redheart had first fed me back in my Equestria. Strangely enough, I felt less confused, perhaps even less worried, in this situation than I did back then.

“At least the food is nice enough,” I said, dejectedly, between chews, and looked around the mostly empty hold. “So, where am I?”

“You are onboard the HTV Gentle Winds,” Golden Star said. “Under the command of Captain Tricorn and her crew.”

I took another bite, and turned my attention to the stallion in the corner, who was looking at me with a confused and slightly irritated expression.

“Whu?” I asked, my mouth full of fruit.

“Mr Skink is no doubt curious about you,” Golden noted. “A young filly captured by pirates would normally have a more openly worried demeanor.”

“Fair enough,” I said, shrugging as best as I could with my forelegs bound.

“Not ‘pirates’,” Skink protested. “Independent contractors.”

“As you say, Mr Skink,” Golden Star condeded.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Straight ahead,” Golden Star said, making me grunt in irritation.

“What’s going to happen when we reach our destination?” I asked, not bothering to keep the irritation out of my voice.

“We’ll take you to his majesty, and he’ll tell you what will happen next,” Golden said.

I said nothing after that, just eating my meal as it was fed to me.

I found Rosen Wreath and Golden Star surprisingly forthcoming and seemed very genuine, which was a bit of a mystery in itself, and that I pondered as I ate.

Eventually, the sound of hooves descending the stairs sounded in the hold, and Rosen Wreath walked in. “Everything ship-shape down here?” he asked.

“No disturbances,” Golden said.

“Good, we’re nearing Seaddle. Let’s bring our guest up for some fresh air,” Rosen said.

That seemed a bit strange considering how careful they were around me. “Why the royal treatment?” I asked.

“For your health,” Rosen said. “You’re going to be spending some time tied up in here, and you are to get fresh air and sunlight when possible.”

“Splendid,” I muttered, as Golden took me in a wing and sat me on his back, my legs dangling on his side.

Rosen Wreath opened the cell door for him, and we walked out towards the stairs.

I activated my prosthetic eye’s ability to see magic, and took a look around. Running through the center of the ship, below the deck, was a large metal container, with the volume about the size of the room I was leaving.

I let out a startled cry as Golden walked up the stair, and with my forelegs tied down so that I couldn’t remove the ring from my horn, I couldn’t reach up and grab his mane.

Before I could fall off, he shot out a wing and caught me, before positioning me further up on him, and leaned me against his neck as he held me in place with a wing.

I could’ve tried biting his ear or something else defiant like that, but it would’ve been a useless gesture. Instead, I rested my head against his neck in defeat, missing Armor, whose scent I preferred.

We emerged up into the glaring sunlight, which made me realize just how dark the hold was. I winced with my left eye, but my right eye, the blank, enchanted one, was fine.

Around us, ponies were doing small tasks like swabbing decks or doing something to the riggings, talking to each other, looking out across the landscape, and, of course, pegasi hovering above the deck, shooting wind into the sails.

And the ship did have sails above the deck, rather than a balloon like one might expect an airship to have, so the place was thick with ropes and riggings, especially with the many dinghies hanging off the side.

I couldn’t exactly scamper over to look over the edge, but we were slowly losing altitude while villages in the distance were slowly drifting by.

A lot of the sailors stopped doing what they were doing, and regarded us, me specifically, with open curiosity.

It was a lot like being the new girl in class, only worse, with dozens of eyes, their owners not realizing how base their desires were, analyzing everything about me.

I counter glared, but a defiant questioning of whether they have jobs to do didn’t leave my mouth, and I almost wanted to hide between Rosen Wreath and Golden Star, my twice-attempted, now-once-successful kidnappers, who seemed strangely agreeable compared to the crew of the ship.

“So,” I started in a low voice. “Is this the same deal as with Braeburn? These thugs are hired by you?”

“Correct,” Rosen Wreath said. “A so far much more successful partnership, wouldn’t you agree?”

I don’t know if I was conserving my spirit, but I just hung my head in defeat.

Rosen and Golden looked at me in silence for a moment, before Golden set me down on a pile of rope.

“Yeah we got you, didn’t we, lassie?” Skink, who had also come up out of the hold, said.

“Your ability to speak is a blessing upon us all, Mr Skink,” Rosen commented, looking at Skink with a disapproving expression.

“And you have a lot of respect for a filly that you’re kidnapping,” Skink countered.

“I do,” Rosen said. “What of it?”

“Where does it come from, I wonder?”

“Abilities, orders,” Rosen said. “You should have some as well, considering your job.”

“I have enough,” Skink said, and turned away.

“Yes, make sure you do,” Rosen said, and turned to look out over the landscape.

I wanted to look out over the landscape too, but I wasn’t seated high enough and not in a position to move.

After a few moments of silence, I looked up from the deck. “Respect, huh?” I asked, in a small voice.

“Oh aye,” a new voice, a female one, sounded from behind me. “You’re not to be harmed in any way, no matter what you’d try.”

I turned my head around to look at this new voice. It was a unicorn mare with a cutlass and a tricorn hat, one side of which had been torn away as if from a blast.

“Gabrielle Desrochers, meet Captain Cutlass Tricorn,” Rosen said. “The owner of the Gentle Winds, and the leader of this band of… fortune seekers.”

“Welcome aboard, young miss,” she said, bowing slightly and grinning at me. “I have to say that I’m curious about our cargo.”

“And I’m curious about this type of ship,” I said. “A fluyt for one person? I always thought pirates had small and quick warships, like sloops.”

Captain Cutlass raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises?”

I shrugged as best as I could in the circumstances, my knowledge, gleaned from video games, not extending a lot further than that.

“We’re not pirates though,” Captain Cutlass said. “We’re independent contractors.”

“Armed independent contractors,” I noted, nodding at her sword.

“So were you when you came onboard,” Captain Cutlass countered.

“In the most interesting places,” Rosen Wreath said. “I wonder, how are your legs removed?”

“They can’t be,” I said, looking down at the deck and trying to sound bored.

“Nice try, Gabrielle,” Rosen Wreath said. “You’re not a bad actor, but you’re no Flank Langella.”

“Why don’t you just ask your king?” I said.

“He knows a lot about you,” Rosen said. “But I don’t know how much, and he’s not here for us to ask.”

“I bet I can take ‘em off,” Skink said, and walked up to me.

“Your hooves are filthy,” I noted, and instinctively tried squirming away as he put them on my bare-metal prostheses.

He grabbed my upper foreleg and started pulling, yanking me towards him. Since it was my arcanomorphic field that attached my legs to me, it wasn’t the least bit comfortable to be pulled like this, but I did try and make myself as low as possible, in case I fell over.

“How! Are! These! Stuck!?” he grunted, as he kept yanking me.

I just looked at him with an awkward expression.

“I get the feeling a lecture on that would just bore you,” I noted.

“Yes, we won’t get information out of her that she doesn’t want to share,” Rosen Wreath said.

“Oh yeah?” Skink said. “Why?”

“We have no leverage,” Rosen said. “We're not to injure her, and even if we could, anything we can do to her, she can just unmake later.”

“We’ll see about leverage,” Skink snorted, before walking to the other side of the pile of rope I was sitting on, and emerging again with a crowbar.

My eyes widened, and I tried squirming away, as he advanced with a wide grin. Whether he managed to dislodge my leg, it would probably not be comfortable.

“That’s enough,” Rosen Wreath said, in a stern voice.

Skink stopped, and scowled at Rosen.

“You don’t give orders on my vessel, commander,” Captain Cutlass said, narrowing her eyes at Rosen.

“And none of you get paid without our say-so, captain,” Rosen said calmly.

"Whose side are you on anyway?" Skink said to Rosen Wreath. "You're protecting the filly."

At this, Golden Star calmly stood up and walked over to stand beside Rosen.

"We both are," Rosen said, and I could sense some exasperation creeping into his voice. "Your job is to keep her safe. She is not your enemy, she is your target."

With this point in contention, the crew in the background had automatically started staring at the scene, quietly backing up their captain and their fellow crew member. I looked back and forth between Skink and Captain Cutlass, and Rosen Wreath and Golden Star, who seemed utterly unfazed by the negative attention they were getting.

After a few moments, Captain Cutlass let out a small snort, and turned to her crew.

"Back to work, fillies and gentlecolts," she said, and started walking towards the helm on the other side of the deck.

The rest of the crew went back to their duties, while Skink slunk back into the hold.

Rosen and Golden showed no signs of gloating over this little victory, and instead, Golden just picked me up and put me on his back.

So far, I had been an active combatant in three combat scenarios, three situations of outright danger, and received some training in how to use Equestrian military equipment, but it was becoming clear to me that I was not a ruthless operator. My captors were clearly in two different camps, with very overt tension between them, that a clever person would detect any number of ways to exploit, but right then I had just felt unease and wanted everyone to just stop fighting.

So I breathed out a sigh of relief when everyone went back to their business, and instead I stared out across the landscape far below us, seeing glimpses of a large city growing beyond the edge of the railings.

"You've been on quite the journey, haven't you?" Rosen asked me.

I turned to look at him, not bothering to keep my mental exhaustion off from my face as I went through what had happened to me in my head.

I fell towards Golden's neck, not even feeling like putting the energy into staying upright.

"Three worlds, wolves, dragons, dark wizards," I mumbled, before halfway burying my face in Golden's mane. "I wanna go home."

Rosen stepped forward, with a soft expression on his face, and gently put a hoof on my head, in sharp contrast with his otherwise cold and aloof attitude. "We will not let anything happen to you," he said. "His Majesty will set everything right."

I opened my eye and looked at him. "He's possessed," I said. "The Nightmare possessed Luna in my Equestria and twisted her into a monster. He's not Sombra anymore."

Rosen Wreath nodded, but his expression remained unchanged. "But your Luna was still in there, wasn't she? The Nightmare didn't win, did it?"

"No," I admitted.

"And we trust our king to overcome as well."

"But he's going to smash two worlds into one," I said. "The Nightmare is still evil in both worlds, but other than that, nothing will remain recognizable. Chrysalis is a monster where I come from. Sombra was a slaving dictator."

"He has never once led us astray," Rosen said. "Even when fighting both Luna and Celestia, he managed to keep us safe."

Golden, who normally seemed content to let Rosen do the talking, spoke up as well. "We don't think less of you for not understanding this, but His Majesty has earned our loyalty."

I sighed into Golden's mane. Rosen allowed me sit like that for a few moments, before he put his hooves around me and righted me up into a sitting position.

"Alright, that's enough," he said, and put one of his hooves against my prosthetic one. "The king told us about what you've overcome, and this isn't enough to break your spirit."

I let out a snort, but was almost but not quite apathetic. "You want a more difficult prisoner?" I said, one eyebrow slightly raised.

"Indeed," Captain Cutlass asked, with one eyebrow raised, having reappeared from the side. "Not that I'm worried, but why?"

"King Sombra needs her and her magical skills, and its when she's spirited that she works best," Rosen said, slightly amused.

"Hmph. Anyway, we're coming into Seaddle," Cutlass said.

"Why?" I asked, leaning out slightly over the railings to see the city, as I heard the crew work in the background.

"To resupply," the captain said. "We don't want to use our reserves to reach the Crystal Empire."

"Reserves of what?" I asked, magically looking at the large container I had seen earlier, but not having the time to analyze it.

"Clouds," Cutlass said.

"Clouds stored in containers throughout the hull," Rosen added. "Keeps the ship afloat."

"You keep talking up her abilities," Captain Cutlass noted. "I would've thought she could figure out how the ship works."

"I assumed that the some of the structure of the hull had been made out of lighter-than-air solids," I ventured.

"Out of what?" Captain Cutlass asked.

Rosen and Golden, for once, showed some emotion, smirking slightly at the captain.

"Fine," she muttered, and went on her way.

"That explains why there are no balloons visible on the outside," I noted.

"Indeed," Rosen said. "Now, we're about to set down, and we are going to have to keep you from making a scene and calling the authorities."

"I'm tied up," I noted, wiggling my forelegs as much as I could.

"What he means is that you’re gonna have to go down into the hold again,” Golden said.

I let out a sigh. “Do I have to?” I asked. “The one with the bad teeth, Skink, is down there.”

Rosen and Golden paused and looked at me with critical expressions. “We'll gag you if you start shouting," Rosen said.

"Doesn't seem like shouting would accomplish much," I noted, as we entered the sky harbor, hearing the shouts and calls from dockworkers, bells signalling, the creaks of dozens of ships as their hulls bent and twisted slightly in the wind.

“Right,” Rosen said, and threw a blanket over me, wrapping it around me. “You are going to look like you’re a cold and lost filly who wants some warm chocolate.”

“That doesn’t require a lot of acting,” I noted.

“I’ll remember,” Rosen said. “Now don’t make us do anything to silence you.”

I looked around as we moved into the harbor. Airships were docked, with dockworkers milling about or standing around talking with each other, in that way that blue-collar people do where they exude this air of vague busyness, so that they can huff indignantly back at any supervisor who might huff indignantly about them not doing heavy work at that particular moment.

“How do you refill clouds?” I said.

“There,” Golden said, and pointed towards the stern of another docked ship that was held in place by enormous chains and thick ropes attached to its hull.

A team of pegasi was hauling an enormous hose that had one end connected to a facility on the docks, with two of them waving flags and shouting instructions to make sure that no ship came in and tangled itself into it.

The nozzle at the end had an opening large enough to stick your head into, and the ponies brought it towards the stern of the ship, where two openings were, one on the port and one on the starboard side, currently covered by metal plates.

A pony opened the metal coverings, and signalled to the others that were carrying the hose to insert into the hole on the starboard side, which they did. They checked some gauges, and then turned a valve on the nozzle.

“They start with clearing out the old clouds,” Rosen said, as we watched the pegasi work.

The hose jerked a bit, and out of the hole on the port side a grey cloud, heavy with rain, started spewing out. It also seemed like it had been charging up with lightning for some time. The ponies who worked on the change kept watch to make sure that the old cloud floated down towards an empty patch of muddy land far below and nowhere else, as the ship slowly started sagging into the chains and the ropes.

The grey cloud slowed to a trickle, and then stopped, leaving only some condensation running down the stern in a pattern that quite a few cloud changes like this one had formed. One pony closed the hatch and nodded to the others.

“And now they put in a fresh cloud,” Rosen said, as one of the ponies signalled with a flag to the station where the other end of the hose was connected. There, another pony signalled in confirmation, and started turning levers of his own.

The hose jerked again, and presumably started filling the container in the hull with a fresh cloud. As it did, the ship slowly started regaining its buoyancy, and relieved the chains and ropes holding onto it.

“So… maybe some mechanism inside the hull allows you to compress and decompress the cloud, allowing you to adjust your altitude?” I ventured, looking to Rosen for confirmation.

He nodded at me. “Very good.”

“Lots of lifeboats,” I said, nodding towards the dinghies hanging from the side. “But not enough to carry everyone.”

“The ones with wings are expected to carry unwinged companions,” Golden noted.

I nodded. That made sense to me. “And with a ship, you didn’t have trouble getting anywhere through The Winsome Wilds,” I said. “We had to sing our way through it.”

“Actually, so did we with some help,” Rosen said, and pointed towards the bow, where a zebra sat, looking out over the edge, playing a flute built into her long staff.

An unpleasant pang went through me as I saw the figure. I recognized the stripes, and the golden rings she carried on her.

My head slumped from seeing her. The version of her I knew was one of the people I would’ve liked the most to have on my side right now, but now she was against me. More and more it felt like the whole world was against me.

Rosen put a hoof on my neck. “Everything will be alright,” he said.

I couldn’t even bring myself to protest, so I just sat there, feeling miserable among the noises of rowdy pirates loading cargo.

… Until there was a change in the noise, which Rosen and Golden also noticed.

Rosen took his hoof off from me, and they looked to the far side of the ship, where some of the crew were hauling a large crate up the gangplank. I heard a dull thumping from it, and the crew was laughing amongst themselves, despite the heavy cargo.

“What now?” Golden said.

They tipped the box over the railing, and threw a rope around it, and started pulling it towards the stairs leading down the hold.

“Cap’n!” one of them shouted. “Fetched us a good deal in town!”

Captain Tricorn walked towards them, and the crew stopped pulling the crate a few steps away from us. “What have you got there?”

They looked around, to see if any pegasi from another ship was flying close by. “Treasure,” they said, and kicked the crate lying on the side, revealing a lanky, white pegasus mare.

She looked around, but didn’t seem to notice me, being more concerned by the unwashed ponies around her, grinning down at her.

I recognized her though. It was White Tulip, the mare that had helped us point towards Armor and Braeburn in Hollow Shades. She was gagged and bound, and was looking up at the pirates around her with a frightened expression.

Captain Tricorn looked puzzled at first, before locking eyes with Tulip for a few seconds, then a smile grew on her face. “Treasure indeed.”

Rosen calmly walked up towards them, but with barely suppressed anger. “And what is the meaning of this?” he managed to demand in a polite tone.

“Ransom,” one of them said. “Found ourselves a celebrity.”

“I don’t care if you found the princess of Equestria,” Rosen said, politely on the surface, but underneath, he was spraying spittle over the captain and her crew. “Your job is to take us and our cargo to our destination, not snatch ponies off the street!”

“We will, commander,” Tricorn said, in mocking comfort. “But you can’t forget what we are.”

“Independent contractors as you keep reminding us,” Rosen said, scowling at her. “This is starting to look like piracy. In the middle of Seaddle.”

“We are an independent firm, and we’re going to draw up a contract with whoever has bits for her,” Tricorn said. “Anyway, what do you care?”

“Unless you think you can fight off the entire north-western garrison, the moment the authorities gets even the slightest inclination to search this vessel, the game is over, and you’re playing kidnappers in broad daylight!” Rosen hissed. “You will all be in jail. That is, until his majesty finds out how idiotically you’ve wrecked his plans. Then you’ll all miss jail, I can promise you that.”

“Aaw sheet, it’s da five oh,” I muttered to myself, making Rosen and Golden throw strange glances at me.

Captain Tricorn smirked at the earth pony. “So we really shouldn’t just let her be on her way, now should we?”

Rosen let out a deep breath, and looked at the downed pegasus. “Who is she even?”

“Model, I think,” one the crew said. “Pretty sure I’ve seen her picture around.”

“What are you reading, recognizing mare models?” Another asked.

“Are you saying we should let her go too?”

“... No.”

As they spoke, Rosen and Tulip locked eyes, and Rosen reluctantly relaxed. “Fine. Just keep it quiet, and we’d better be off soon.”

“You have impeccable timing, commander,” Tricorn said, and looked towards the stern to see the cloud refilling completed and the pegasi flying away with the big tube. She walked off to give orders to cast off.

The others grabbed Tulip, and carried her down into the hold, as she struggled weakly.

“And put her in her own cage!” Rosen said after them.

“Are you sure about this?” Golden asked, as Rosen walked back to us.

“No, but they’re right. We can’t exactly let her go now can we?”

“I didn’t recognize her,” Golden said.

“I did, I think,” Rosen said. “Not sure where from though.”

I kept quiet.

“Should we get Gabrielle here below deck?” Golden said. “Prudence sounds like a good idea, with the latest developments.”

“Yes,” Rosen said, nodding, but mostly seeming lost in thought. “Yes, let’s go, before any guards come looking.”

—

I was carried back into the hold and put on my cot gently enough, with Tulip being carried into the cage opposite me, a corridor between them so we couldn’t reach each other.

They pulled off her gag, but otherwise left her tied up just like I was, except having her wings lashed as well, and put her in her cot as well.

She looked confused and scared while the crew walked up again, along with Rosen and Golden, leaving Skink alone with us, reclining in his seat, trying to seem nonchalant and sometimes rifling through my stuff.

“So,” I said to Tulip, winking at her. “In case you’re wondering where you are, you’re on the cargo vessel Gentle Winds, a pirate ship. I think they want to ransom you.”

I mouthed the words “no names” to her, which she picked up on, and nodded slightly before answering.

“How are they gonna do that?” she asked, with a scared shiver in her voice. “I don’t know who’d pay for me.”

“They didn’t share that part with me,” I said, noting that Skink was trying to look at us over his magazine without us noticing. “But they’re professionals, so I’m sure they have ideas, though I recommend you don’t try and convince them you’re not gonna be profitable.”

Skink chuckled in his corner, and I gave him a disapproving look.

“What are they… what are they going to do with you?” she asked.

“They’re not gonna sacrifice me to a dark god, but it kinda feels like it,” I said, trying burrow into the cot and make myself comfortable. “I’m gonna be used to help King Sombra open a portal to a parallel Equestria.”

White Tulip was silent for a moment, before I looked towards her. “It’s a long story,” I said.

“That’s… not what I expected to hear,” she said.

“Yeah, well, this is all beyond me as well,” I said. “It makes my head hurt.”

Tulip was silent again, before I looked up at her again and saw her looking at me with a mournful expression.

“What happened to your legs?” she asked, softly.

“Lost them,” I said. “Don’t worry though, these work just fine when they’re not tied up. Not as strong or fast as normal legs but they get the job done.”

“Nice try,” Skink said from his table. “Soldier colts told us about you, we know what those things can do.”

‘Good job revealing that you know that, genius.’

“Whatever,” I said, and turned back to Tulip. “The ‘soldier colts’ that Mr Skink over there mentioned, were the two displeased gentlemen you saw earlier. The Captain is one Cutlass Tricorn, and now I’m already running out of things that I know.”

“So, are they taking us to the Crystal Empire?” Tulip asked.

“I think so,” I said, “me at least, because that’s where his majesty is. Not sure where they’ll take you though.”

“To whoever has money to pay for her,” Skink interjected.

“Good plan,” I said, nodding approvingly, and turned to Tulip. “It’s comforting to know that we’re dealing with experts isn’t it?”

Skink grumbled and slumped back into his chair with a huff.

Tulip continued looking at me with sadness in her eyes. She could probably see past the facade I was putting up, and how scared and worried I actually was. I let my head fall back onto my pillow again, sighing.

“Desrochers,” she said, kindly. “I know you’re scared, but don’t lose hope.”

I let out another sigh. I wanted Armor, Celestia, Redheart, Twilight, or even the Cutie Mark Crusaders to be here and hold me. Preferably all of them.

“I’m getting really tired though,” I said. “I don’t want to be here. I wanna go home.”

I could have continued about how I wanted to hang out with the crusaders in Sugarcube Corner, hearing stories about all the wacky things happening in Ponyville, being in class with Cheerilee, or make things with Scrap Armor, but not when the sneering Skink was there.

“Don’t worry,” Tulip gently said, after a while. “It’s all going to be okay.”

“Sure it will,” Skink said, grinning to himself. “After we get paid.”

“Get a mask,” I told him over my shoulder.

Skink looked at me, fuming.

I didn’t want to lie in silence, just thinking about what might happen when I was delivered into Sombra’s hooves. I thought about asking Tulip why she’d be a worthy ransoming target, but that could cause trouble considering our company in the hold, who also kept me from bringing up quite a few subjects.

“So what was Sombra like?” I asked, turning to face Tulip.

Tulip’s ears perked up, and she looked surprised for a moment before turning her head towards me. She considered the question for a while, smiling to herself, and I thought I sensed a sort of bitterness there.

“Kind, just, good, intelligent, protective,” she counted. “Relentless, powerful. Always managed to keep Equestria afloat, no matter what… foul threat... tried to bring it down.”

Skink scoffed. “Yeah, a real hero, always kept his little soldiers busy harassing ponies trying to make a bit.”

I was getting really tired of Skink, especially since I could run in circles around him both mentally and physically. “Untie me and I’ll show you harassment,” I snarled at him.

“Careful, girl,” Skink said, looking at me in a way he no doubt thought was threatening, but wasn’t really to someone who had faced packs of timber wolves and dark wizards. “I’m the one holding all the cards here.”

“If you wanna play this game you’re gonna have to get into this cage with me,” I calmly said, and looked at him, bored.

After a few moments, he looked away, scoffing.

We fell silent, with nothing more to say for about twenty minutes, before Skink finally shot up from his chair.

Tulip and I turned to look at him, thinking he might try and do something, when he just froze and looked back and forth between us.

“You knew her name,” a stunned Skink said, to a scared looking Tulip, before his expression hardened, and he turned around and quickly walked up the stairs.

Tulip did let my name slip, I realized, but at that time, it felt like I might as well try out my escape plan.

“Finally, I thought he’d never leave,” I said, as I concentrated, and with just a short moment of struggle, my foreleg separated at the elbow, and my hind leg at the knee.

I wasn’t able to step out of the tight knot with my hooves, but after another short moment, I pushed the lower parts of my prostheses through the loops and had them free.

I glanced at Tulip, who was looking on with wide eyes, and smirked at her. “Recently added feature,” I said, and jiggled my other legs free, getting a good, long piece of rope in the process. “I’ll have you out in a moment, I just need to do something first,” I said, took the rope, and ran over to the door, peeling off the magic suppression ring from my horn in the process.

I gave the door my best shot, which was more than enough. It came loose and swung open into the cage with a loud clang, swinging sadly with one bar bent. I sprinted over to the stairs with the rope, and ran up them.

Taking the rope from around me, I inserted it into the sturdy metal ring that served as a handle, and ran down with the rope again, knocking over Skink’s table with my stuff on it, propping it up against the opening to the stairs, quickly tied the rope tightly around it, anchoring the trapdoor from the inside.

I magicked my things over to me as I walked over to the door to Tulip’s cage. “Hang tight,” I said, and bent the door open, keeping myself low to avoid any potential shrapnel that might come from breaking the lock in this way.

I took my sword from among the things floating after me, pulling it out and starting to cut the ropes that held Tulip bound. Before long, her legs and wings were free. I quickly inserted my stuff into my prostheses, and threw my armor over myself, pocketing the magic suppression ring.

I took a moment to relax. I was unbound, out of that cage, and fully equipped. I didn’t like my odds if I had to use my equipment, potentially facing a crew of pirates, Rosen and Golden whom I knew to be very competent, and of course, the zebra, whom I suspected I knew, and whom I therefore expected to be the biggest threat. Even so, in this moment, I was free. I took a deep breath, and steeled myself.

“Alright, come on,” I said, and walked out of the cage. “We probably don’t have a lot of time.”

“I, how, but… you’re,” Tulip stammered, looking at me with wide eyes.

She struck me as a very strong and collected mare, and I gave her an uncertain look, hoping I hadn’t misjudged her. I walked up to her, reared up and put my forehooves on her withers, and looked her in the eyes, which I realized might’ve been a little unnerving with one of them being milky white.

“Listen, you don’t have to come with me, but I’m gonna try and break out,” I told her. “You can make a run for it, or you know, fly for it, when we can. No hard feelings.”

Her eyes were wide for a moment before she steeled herself. “No, I’m not going to leave you here,” she said, and looked up into the ceiling. “Although I’m not sure how we’re going to get out of this room.”

“Leave that to me,” I said, and stepped away from her, looking at the wall to the far side of the stairs, powering up my eye.

What made magically seeing through the hull complicated was that the whole thing was enchanted, albeit very ruggedly. I stepped up to the wall and ran my hoof over it.

“This whole thing is enchanted to prevent a bunch of chemical reactions from happening,” I noted. “A bunch of oxidation, mostly.”

“Uhm, ship hulls are made to resist fire,” Tulip noted. “If that’s what you mean.”

“Oh… yeah, that’s it. Should have recognized it, it’s almost the same as from Twilight’s kitchen,” I said, and spotted the cloud container above us, built into a reinforced section of the deck, and glowing with other enchantments. It stood out like a flare, and led into a section beyond the wall I was standing by, where the container also sported knobs and wheels, and other mechanisms that could be reached from the next room. That room was also empty of ponies. “Alright, time to get out of here.”

I threw an as hard of a punch as I could with my prosthesis, breaking through the wall with a hole as big as my hoof. I grabbed some planks, and pulled them loose.

After that, it was easy work to widen the hole enough to let me and Tulip through. “Let’s go. The room is empty,” I said.

“H-how can you tell?” a wide-eyed Tulip whispered, before shaking her head, as she crouched and squeezed through the hole, taking care not to scratch herself on the splinters.

“This eye,” I said, pointing at my prosthetic one. “I can see magic with it, which most of the time lets me see through physical objects.”

“And, how, or, uhm, where did you get that thing? Or things?” Tulip asked, pointing at my legs.

I shrugged, chuckling nervously. The situation I found myself in and what I was trying to do catching up with me. “Well, I needed new ones, so I made some,” I said, shrugging.

Tulip nodded, before swallowing and looking around. “Where is everypony?” she asked.

I looked through the deck, seeing the magical auras of ponies flying around and climbing the sails. Though a lot of them looked towards the crowd that was slowly forming around the trapdoor leading to the part of the hold we had just left, where one pony was trying to open it.

“They’re topside, although we don’t have long before they figure out that something’s up,” I said, and looked around. “Hopefully they’ll shout angrily at each other for a few minutes before they get serious.”

This was definitely the engineering room. The cloud tank taking up most of it, with some stairs leading up to a platform where one wall of the cloud tank could be reached, covered in levers and wheels.

Underneath the stairs leading up to the platform, and lining the walls, were supplies for keeping the ship maintained. Barrels and crates of supplies– tar, nails and rivets, carpentry tools, canvas, ropes, grease, metal bands, lantern fuel, and timber crowded the area.

“So…” I said, half-baked parts of a plan slowly forming in my head. “We want to get out of here, and if we can’t keep the entire crew from trying to stop us, keeping most of them from doing so would be a nice second.”

Tulip looked at the platform with the controls for the tank. “I think I see what you mean,” she said. “But… are we gonna sabotage the ship?”

“And distract the crew, steal a dinghy or fly away on our own? Possibly,” I said, and jogged up the stairs to the controls. “Compressing the cloud should draw them here.”

“We don’t need a dinghy if we stick together,“ Tulip said. “And it wouldn’t be hard for them to just come down here and decompress it.”

I looked at the controls, and a big sign reading, “Compression: NONE - chamber opening: SAFE”. I turned the wheel on a sturdy looking service hatch, and opened it. At the end of a short, wide tube, was the familiar sight of an Equestrian cloud. I looked to Tulip. “Then we need something a bit more drastic. Can we get this thing out of here?”

Tulip shook her head. “It’d take hours, or days, to scoop all of that out by wing. If I get into the container I might be able to blow it out, but I don’t see that happening,” she said, and looked around, spotting the barrels of tar. “Perhaps starting a fire?”

“The hull was enchanted to not catch fire though,” I noted, and lit up my magic detection again.

“You made enchanted legs,” Tulip noted. “You’re an enchanter. Can you overrule that?”

“Yes I could,” I said, magically scanning around me. “I can…” I stopped, noting how the anti-oxidation enchantment stopped just short of the edges of the refueling tubes in the stern. With enough pressures, something trying to escape the cloud tank would cause the ship to be propelled forward. My plan was not becoming more thoroughly baked, but it was becoming a little crazy. “... I can… ooh.”

“Desrochers?” Tulip asked after a while, looking at me worriedly.

A manic smile grew on my face. I looked around at the supplies, the lit lanterns, and my prosthetic foreleg, which would last pretty much forever thanks to enchantments preventing it from rusting.

I rushed halfway down the stairs, and magicked a barrel of nails up to the control panel, and started enchanting them all at once.

“Heh. Hehe, hahahah!” I laughed, as I put a reverse version of the enchantment that kept my legs from rusting on the nails, and started dumping them into the tube leading into the container with the cloud. “Get all those barrels and crates up here! As many as you can!”

Tulip recoiled a bit as she looked at me, but after a moment, she obliged, and flew down the stairs, then up again with two barrels held under her own.

I magicked up a barrel of rivets and started enchanting both of them. “More,” I said, and started humming the Captain Pugwash theme as I emptied another barrel into the container.

“What are you doing?” Tulip asked.

“Can’t stop us if they’re busy fixing the ship,” I half-sang. “Can’t fix the ship if there’s no cloud.”

“No cloud?” Tulip asked, and set down the last barrel on the platform. “What do you mean?”

“Simple chemistry,” I said, while enchanting and emptying the barrels into the cloud container. “I enchanted the iron to rust in minutes. More powerful than the enchantment that stops oxidation. Just steal some oxygen from the water that makes up the cloud, and all we’re left with is oxygen and hydrogen.”

“Oxygen and… but that’s explosive!” Tulip protested, her wings flaring as she took a step back.

“It certainly is.” I magicked up another barrel of lantern oil, opened it, and started enchanting that as well. “Hydrocarbon liquids… I know how those work,” I said, and tossed the barrel with its enchanted contents into the container, before noticing Tulip’s expression. “Don’t worry, the enchantment stops it from igniting as long as it’s inside the hull, and I have a plan for how to work with that. Now, more barrels please. Whatever you can get.”

In truth, this was probably the craziest thing I had ever tried, and maybe it had something to do with having thousands of heavy metal songs in my heavy metal limbs, but it just felt right.

I opened the barrels and crates, enchanting them as soon as I identified what they were, and tossed them into the cloud container. “Tar, easy. More iron, hydrogen and oxygen. Rum, ethanol,” I counted, as I threw barrel after barrel into the container. “Kerosene, natch. Grease, wait–” I dipped the tip of my metallic hoof in the stuff “– is this for machines or manes? Whatever, in you go. Ah, I recognise this. Hydrogen peroxide, my old friend, nice to smell you again, and what’s– Oooh jackpot! Calcium carbide! I’m saving you for last...”

After a minute or two of this, the service hatch was exuding an impressive chemical odour. I closed it, cranked the wheel for compressing the “cloud” to max, and heard the container start groaning as the internal compression mechanism started up. “That’s it!” I said, to a worried-looking Tulip, and touched my horn which had started to ache, wincing slightly. “Oooh… Alright, let’s go!”

We turned and ran towards the stairs leading up onto the deck. I held out my hoof just as we were about to step out, and I magically scanned the surroundings, trying to see if anyone would notice us sneaking out. The crowd had finally started making some headway in getting into the hold, and had bent up the trapdoor, and were about to cut the rope with a sword.

Rosen and Golden would’ve been the most keen on making sure I wasn’t out of their sight for long, but they weren’t with the crowd around the trap door. Rosen was stalking along the railing, looking back and forth across the deck and out into the night sky, while Golden was perched up on a sail, similarly scanning all corners of the horizon.

This was also when I noticed just how far up in the sky we were. When we had tried to evade the ship, and when it had docked in port, we had been close to the ground, but now, the buildings of Seaddle would have been small specks on the landscape, if we hadn’t left the city far behind.

“They’re about to get down into the hold,” I whispered. “After that, we don’t have long before they’ll spot us. On my signal, keep low and follow me towards some crates by the stairs on the sterncastle.”

“And then?” Tulip whispered.

“No idea,” I admitted. “Wait for an opportunity I guess. Alright, go!”

I leapt with my rear prosthesis, and only had to take a few steps before I found myself under the stairs and behind a pile of crates and barrels held down with nets. Tulip was right behind me, even more silent thanks to a gliding leap.

No one raised the alarm from seeing us in the low light, but right as I was about to power up my eye and look at what the crew was up to, I heard indistinct shouts and protests coming from the opening to the hold.

“Cap’n!” Skink shouted, before he emerged up the stairs with most of the ponies he had gone down with. “Cap’n! The prisoners are gone!”

“Of course they are,” I heard Rosen mutter. “Golden! Perimeter sweep.”

I saw Golden wordlessly nod in the direction of Rosen’s voice, and took off from his position on the mast to scout the area around the ship.

“So find them!” Captain Tricorn shouted, and paused for a second. “Light the deck up… and somepony tell me why we’re losing altitude!”

As the lanterns and torches on the deck started coming alight, the same protesting shouts that had came from the hold started coming from the cloud control chamber.

“Up on the sterncastle!” I hissed, hopping up towards the railings and scouting for something to hide behind, Tulip right behind me.

The crew would soon notice the hole and what I had done with the controls, and they would be a little too close for comfort when they peeked up from the trapdoor to tell the captain.

“Captain!” I sure enough heard them shout. “The cloud controls! They’ve been sabotaged!”

I ran towards a dinghy, rigged against the side of the ship with its keel pointed portside and mast held against the deck, but before I could reach it, I was yanked back by my tail.

Before I could protest, a colorful, feathered dart embedded itself in the deck in front of me. I whipped my head up, just in time to see a gold ring-clad zebra leap off the aft spar, the flute in her staff catching the wind and whistling on the way down.

She landed on three hooves as Tulip let go of my tail, her staff held out in one foreleg, never taking her eyes off us.

“Cunning fillies from cages climb, but I will catch you a second time,” she said.

I didn’t exactly shake where I stood, but there were hints of cold quiverings in my posture. Fighting a gang of hulking farm hooves was one thing, but fighting Zecora was another.

Even so, it was almost bracing to see the zebra I admired so much, and a strange calm settled in me. ‘Even here, she’s still awesome.’

Maybe I was getting caught up in the moment, with ships and sabres and feathered hats, but I calmly drew my stun baton, and smirked at her.

“Are you gonna show me your moves or are you just gonna rhyme?” I asked.

“There they are!” someone shouted behind us, and I fought down my desire to take my eyes off Zecora.

Tulip turned around from the shout, but followed me as Zecora and I walked in a circle, allowing me to glance out over the deck.

Captain Tricorn and Commander Rosen Wreath were approaching with slow, determined steps up the stairs, but stopped when Skink peeked out of the hatch in the deck.

“Cap’n!” he shouted, panic creeping into his voice. “The cloud! Something’s happened to it! We’re decompressing but the pressure’s rising!”

Captain Tricorn looked at Skink for a second, stunned, before her face hardened, and she turned to face me, her eyes ablaze. “What did you do!?”

I shook my head, and let out a small laugh. “I’m not sure I know, myself.”

Her horn started glowing, and her sabre started leaving her scabbard, when Rosen’s hoof stopped it.

“No swords,” he said, looking at her with as much conviction as she displayed, drawing a stun rod just like mine.

She pressed her face against his, but his expression didn’t falter, then she turned to the crew.

“All of you, keep the ship afloat! I’ll take care of our captive,” Captain Tricorn said, unhooking her scabbard from her belt and drawing the whole package.

The crew scurried off, I took a step back, holding my rod out defensively, keeping Tulip behind me, as Zecora, Tricorn, and Rosen slowly approached. “Keep an eye out for the pegasus, Golden Star,” I told her. “He’s fast.”

“Right,” she breathed, in a low voice.

The three of them rushed me at the same time. I pushed Tulip clear and leapt forward. Tricorn might’ve tried tricking me when she held her sword in her magical aura, but it didn’t work.

She transferred her sword to her hoof, and shot at me with a glowing magical bolt. Like I had plenty of practice doing by now, I blocked it with my prosthesis.

Zecora’s staff came at me from behind, whistling through the air. I lit up my horn and grabbed it before it could strike my legs out from under me, and transferred my stun rod to my left hoof, blocking a smirking Tricorn’s scabbard as it struck at my head.

Rosen was much more cautious, which didn’t help him here. My weapon and the horn on my head were occupied, but not the horn in my prosthesis, which I used to blast both Tricorn and Rosen away with.

“Ah!” Captain Tricorn shouted, as she was pushed over the railing of the aftcastle, onto the main deck. Rosen was more prepared, and caught the railing by the stairs with one hoof.

I turned to face Zecora, just in time for her to strike at me with the other end of her staff, the one I wasn’t magically holding onto.

I blocked the strike with my prosthesis, and tried lifting her staff where I held it to strike her flank, but she was too nimble, and jumped away, making us switch sides.

I shot at her with a stun spell, but she blocked it dishearteningly fast with her staff, and started pushing me back with its superior reach.

I almost stumbled on the mast of the dinghy held against the deck, and decided to try and make my stand, raising my stun rod for an overhead swing.

Zecora blocked it with her staff, and smirked at me, as I pressed down with my stun-rod as she held her staff over her head.

“You know some of my ways and tricks,” she said, a bit of amused curiosity creeping into her tone, and before she could continue I cut her off.

“You don’t know it, but I’ve seen you fight with sticks,” I said, and still maintaining pressure with the rod, drew my sword and cut the ropes holding the dinghy fixed to the ship, then immediately jumped away.

Zecora looked confused for a split second, before realizing what what going on. The dinghy came loose, rising up for embarking, its mast coming up against her barrel.

She jumped and mostly managed to roll with the hit, grabbing onto the quickly unfurling sail and avoiding being launched off the ship, her staff clattering on the deck.

I turned around to see Rosen running towards me, and just as I was about to approach him and gain some ground, I saw something flicker out of the side of my new eye.

I turned around and raised my stun rod to block Golden’s, who had come up beside me, leaving me open to be taken out by Rosen, and I would have, if Tulip hadn’t launched herself into his side, wrestling the unprepared earth pony to the ground.

Golden thrust his stun rod against me again, managing to bypass the sword I was holding in my prosthesis, making me drop it and inserting it into the hollow leg.

I reared up and tried tossing him over my head, but when he was above me, he beat up with his wings, making him crash down into me, pressing me against the deck and holding my flesh foreleg in his own, pinning my weapons to the deck.

“You… are, the most… tenacious… filly… I’ve ever met!” he grunted, as we struggled to gain purchase over each other.

I wish I could say I had something witty to say in response, but I was busy focusing on him not touching me with the end of his stun rod, and instead just swung my prosthetic hind leg up, partially hooking it around his neck, making him look down into the soft glow of my magic stun gun trained at his head.

“Huh!?” was all he managed before a magic blast shot him clear off of me, making him collapse on the deck.

“Golden!” Rosen shouted, as he and Tulip jerkingly rolled around on top of each other a few steps away.

Captain Tricorn had come up the stairs with her sheathed sword in her magical field, floating it high above her and getting ready to strike the distracted Tulip over her head with it.

With some carefully applied arcanokinesis of my own, the sword partially left the scabbard, smacking Tricorn on the back of the head, bending her head forward and launching her hat off her, which sailed over Tulip and Rosen, straight into my hoof.

Captain Tricorn looked on in surprise, which quickly turned into rage when I took the hat and placed it on my head instead, barely managing to squeeze it over my mane.

It was almost a little unreal, how well and swashbuckle-y it felt, but I just got a big grin on my face, then jumped back into the fight.

“Hahaa!” I exclaimed, as I launched my grappling hook at Rosen, hooking it around him without unfolding the sharpened bits, and pulled him off from Tulip, as I used the counter pull to launch myself over him and towards Captain Tricorn, stun rod held high.

Captain Tricorn blocked my swing with her scabbard-clad sword, before I backed away from her counter attack.

“Give me back my hat!” she said, lighting up her horn and trying to grab it.

“No, it’s mine now,” I said, holding onto it with my own magic and smirking at her.

“Argh!” The captain grabbed a flaming torch from a sconce on the railing, holding her sword in her magic and swinging both it and the torch wildly at me as she advanced, pushing me back towards the stern.

I was afraid that I had made a mistake, because despite her anger, her swings had some finesse and accuracy to them, and I was pressed all the way back to the railing overlooking the stern of the ship.

She swung at me with the torch, but I blocked it with my prosthesis. and her sheathed sword with my stun rod. Luckily, she wasn’t trying to use the blade on me, or she’d have a prime opportunity to do so against my neck.

I looked down behind me, and saw the dark landscape far below. I heard the great hissing of the overtaxed hatches trying to keep the rising pressure of hydrogen and oxygen inside the cloud-tank as the gas leaked out from their sides.

“Cap’n, we’re losing altitude!” Skink shouted behind her. “The ship! She’s going down!”

That distracted her long enough for me to charge up my horn, and she finally took a step back when I fired a magic blast against her, then she looked at something off to my side, smirking.

Like an idiot, I fell for it, even though it wasn’t a trick. Just as I looked, Zecora aimed her staff at me from the railing on the side, and blew out a dart.

It would have hit, too, if not for Tulip suddenly zooming between me and Zecora, taking the dart in her flank.

My eyes widened as I froze for a moment. Tricorn and Rosen too focused on Tulip, perhaps catching up with how their plans were derailed. So were mine and Tulip’s in some ways, as she would not be able to fly properly before long. We’d have to use a dinghy.

Tulip pulled the dart out from her flank, and looked at me. “We’d better hurry this up,” she said.

My gaze swept across my surroundings and my ears angled back and forth as I tried coming up with something, before I again noticed the hissing from below me.

“Right,” I said, and magically grabbed Captain Tricorn’s torch from her hoof, then tossing it down into the chemical cocktail leaking out from the tank. “Brace for impact!”

“What?” Captain Tricorn and Rosen said, as I threw myself onto the deck.

A great din seemed to consume the entire world, or so it seemed at the time, as the gasses that were leaking out of the cloud chamber, and were therefore able to react freely, as chemistry intended, and with the help of the torch did so with gleeful enthusiasm.

Igniting inside two large and sturdy tubes, compressed and prevented from spreading towards one direction, the reaction only had one way to escape, and blew the container hatches clean off in order to do so.

Everyone lost their footing as the ship surged forward from the rocket boost and tumbled back into the railing, with Tricorn’s crew yelling in protest ahead of us.

Tulip, with her wings, and I, who had been ready for it, were on our hooves the fastest, and running across the deck of the sterncastle.

A magic blast shot into the deck right by my hooves, and I looked back to see Captain Tricorn glaring at me with murder in her eyes.

“You …!” she growled, and took a deep breath, before turning to the members of the crew that were glancing up over the sterncastle railing in fear and confusion. She raised her head and bellowed, “Abandon ship!”

The crew scampered to action on the still accelerating ship, unhooking the dinghies while struggling a bit to keep their balance, but pausing with unfurling their sails, as the captain dashed past us to join her crew.

“Zecora,” Rosen said, loud and steadily over the din of the fires. “Get the filly.”

Zecora took a glance around her, and shrugged at Rosen. “It seems to me like you cannot pay, so you will not have my help this day,” she said, before jumping overboard, staff held high.

That would’ve been a bit disturbing, if I hadn’t immediately remembered that it was Zecora, and she’d be fine.

“Come on!” I said to Tulip, and ran across Golden Star.

I didn’t face Rosen, instead, I grabbed Golden in my magic and ran over to the dinghy that I had partially cut loose earlier, still moored to the ship.

I dumped the downed pegasus stallion in the small boat, and started undoing the mooring, when Rosen jumped into it with us, holstering his stun rod.

“No more fighting, Gabrielle,” he sternly said, eyes going between me and the wobbly-looking Tulip.

“That’s right,” I said, as pegasi members of the crew airlifted their wingless companions off from the deck, and remaining crewmembers were sailing away from the ship in the escape boats.

I angled the tiller so that we sailed away from the still speeding ship.

Rosen seemed to let out a sigh of relief, before I grabbed the sword from his stun rod, and quickly inserted it into my prosthesis, arcanokinetically pushing him back.

“What!?” he said, before I blasted it into the hull with my grappling hook launcher, trapping the tiller at a sharp angle, before I grabbed Tulip by her barrel, tensing my prosthetic hind leg up and jumping as far as I could back towards the ship, spooling my grappling hook in again.

“Hold on!” I shouted, and the woozy Tuliip closed her wing around me as I shot the grappling hook towards the railing, lifting us back onto the Gentle Winds.

“Gabe!” Rosen shouted, as he helplessly watched from his life boat, sailing further away from us.

I watched him look at me with a mix of pleading and anger. “Get off the ship!”

I simply waved at him calmly, as we left him behind with the still rocket-propelled cargo ship. The ship creaked loudly and the masts groaned worryingly from catching all the wind, thankfully also protecting us from it up on the sterncastle.

“What now?” Tulip asked.

“Simple,” I said, and led her to the other side of the sterncastle. “They left one dinghy for us.”

I magically retrieved my sword that Tulip had dropped on the deck and cut the boat loose, before helping Tulip into it. “Oh,” she said, a bit sheepishly.

I unmoored the boat, and then we were home free.

We floated out into the sky, rapidly slowing down to a sensible speed as we separated from the flaming ship thundering away from us, its crew having abandoned it before we did.

Tulip dragged herself to the edge of the boat, and watched it sail away, flaming into the night.

I quickly glanced around us to make sure that there were no pirates in sight, which there weren’t, as we had left them behind us when they had evacuated first, before I too turned to look at the giant torch slowly becoming smaller…

… Until it slammed right into a cliff and went up in a spectacular explosion that seemed to go on forever.

“Oh, fireworks,” Tulip said, smilingly.

“Yeah, chemistry is fun,” I said, and retrieved my magic boombox from my prosthetic leg, and held it up to me.

“Blue Thunder calling all agents, please respond.”

“Gabe!” Armor’s voice sounded from the gem, making me smile in relief, and Tulip look at it in as much wonder as she could muster. “Are you okay!?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Had a little detour, but I’m heading to Seaddle right now. How are you?”

“We’re fine, been looking for you. We’ll meet you there,” Trixie said.

Tulip heaved herself around to look at me. “Do you do this a lot?” she asked, too groggy to even raise her eyebrow questioningly.

“It’s been happening more and more lately,” I said, breathing out a sigh of relief at it being over for now. “Let’s hope it’s not in space next time.”

“Eheheh,” Tulip chuckled, before nudging the hat still on my head with a primary.

“Souvenir,” I said, as I put my hoof on the tiller, and gently turned us back towards Seaddle, whistling The Sailor’s Hornpipe, the Gentle Winds engulfed in a still-ongoing fireball behind us.

Gaiden

Author's Note:

Finally. I thought I'd never get this done

Sorry for the delay, guys. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as much time.

Now, there's quite a list of people I need to give credit to with this chapter. Thanks to: Admiral Biscuit, The Cyan Recluse, ssokolow, Snuffy, Detsella Morningdew, DragonSpectacles, and all the people who helped on the public google document. If I've missed someone, don't be afraid to tell me, and I'll add your/their names here

Also, as I'm sure you noticed, I had trouble deciding on a name for this chapter. Which one would you vote for?

Unrelated, but I just learned that Katy Perry, whom I understand to be some sort of pop-artist, has a song called California Girls. Is this what the title 'Equestria Girls' is referencing? No joke, up until now I always assumed it was referencing The Beach Boys

Comments

[Viper Pit]

now I remember why i stopped tracking the story the chapters are longer then most completed stories its not the story is bad its just a chore to read it when you only have a limited time to do so

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180422
You don't have to read it all at once though. Glad you thought the story... isn't bad

[keroko]

9180422
9180427
Nuts to that! I'm going to re-read it again for the... I-lost-count-how-many-ith time.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180435
Always happy to hear that the story doesn't bring just joy, but lasting joy

Oh also, thanks to you too. I remember your name among all the ones in the many google documents that this chapter made up

[Opponent]

YAY!

[Viper Pit]

9180435
i just don't have the time to read 20k long chapters

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180441
Glad you approve

[keroko]

9180445
You could keep the site on your phone and read bits and pieces on downtime moments.

[guang]

Is this what the title 'Equestria Girls' is referencing?

Interesting bit of fandom history actually, way back when the show was just picking up steam the hub aired a parody of that Katy Perry song as a commercial. A few years later hasbro must have thought the name was good enough for the spinoff and quietly acquired the rights to the name. It's also(from my personal memory) the first instance the show acknowledged the bronies by it being a lyric in the song.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180461
I would've preferred the Beach Boys song honestly, too much millennial whooping in that song

[Venerable Ro]

Alright! A properly long chapter! One of the reasons I like this story so much, chapters I can get properly invested in.

And may I say, that was a truly magnificent explosion.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180469
Done already? Glad you liked it, and I'm glad you liked the explosion. That's one of the things that kept me for so long, so I'm glad it turned out well

[guang]

9180466
I'm not much a fan of pop myself but I always loved seeing that commercial back then, though admittedly the Beach Boys would've been a pretty rad reference.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180475
I want to say I like pop music, but the thing I'm thinking of just used to be called pop. These days it's called Classic Rock

[Venerable Ro]

9180474
Why do you think I'm so enthusiastic about 20K+ chapters? It's hard to get the proper immersion going when you finish the excerpt in 5-10 minutes or so.

Huh, Gabrielle has invented rocketry, if anyone was paying attention and could figure out what she did. Hopefully none of those mercenaries are feeling inspired...

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180481
Makes sense. I'm not even a speed reader and I too prefer a chapter with some meat on it. I like my chapters like I like my women, I want lots'a woman! *demonstratively holds palms wide apart*
(Joking, kinda )

On the pirates, I'm not sure most of them ever wants to get near a rocket ever again

[Majk]

This chapter was ridiculously fun to read. Being a rather big fan of swashbuckling adventures didn't hurt either.
Somebody needs to draw a picture of Gabe in a captains hat flying away as the ship blows up.

[Majk]

9180445
I'll gladly take 20k chapters over cliffhangers after every,single,damn, 1k chapter.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180524
9180527
Yeah, the amount of scenes I want illustrated are getting up there in number

Glad you like it, and I'm glad you like the length rather than short chapters with cliffhangers. One can see a story as like an understanding between writer and reader, and like certain other understandings, you don't want to leave the other party without a climax

[Syroc]

Is it wrong that now I want Gabe to fight space-pirates?

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180551
Yes, because first we need to have a few chapters where she develops magic interstellar travel

[Wild Wire]

I liked this chapter. Keep up the good work!

[DoctorDerpy]

YESSS
A new chapter of MLABQ always makes my day!

[M127]

Unrelated, but I just learned that Katy Perry, whom I understand to be some sort of pop-artist, has a song called California Girls. Is this what the title 'Equestria Girls' is referencing? No joke, up until now I always assumed it was referencing The Beach Boys

[Snow]

I spent most of the last portion of this chapter laughing my tail off. Thank you.

[Empty Shelf]

As soon as they showed Gabe how the ship worked, I knew she was going to blow it up. Though the way she did it was quite clever. Pinkie would be proud.

[PhycoKrusk]

...

...

... MAN FICTION!

[badninja]

Once again it looks like Gabe’s foal like looks allowed her to be underestimated. Now I wonder just how much McGuyver she watched as a child?

[Asolem2]

“You know,” he continued. “He kept growling and making that strange pouty expression when he was angry… they froze him in ice.”

???????

“This was a barren place once,” Trixie said in a low, respectful voice. “After Starswirl the Mad banished the oracles, the ponies of old searched for them all over Equestria. But they were trapped in a realm from where they could no longer interact with our world, and this is where ponies managed to create a mirror for them to peer into it.”

Wait a minute... banished by Starswirl.... the oracles are the Sirens

The Dazzlings smiled, and floated effortlessly through the air.

AHA i was right

Rosen stepped forward, with a soft expression on his face, and gently put a hoof on my head, in sharp contrast with his otherwise cold and aloof attitude. "We will not let anything happen to you," he said. "His Majesty will set everything right."

.... By smashing two worlds into each other, including everything and everyone in them, leading to probably mass confusion, insanity and death.... and the likely death, insanity or braindeath of the filly you are currently bringing to the stallion that had to brainwashed her to get her to do what he wanted...... no i don't think he'll set everything right, it sounds like what he intends is the opposite of setting everything to right

Rosen put a hoof on my neck. “Everything will be alright,” he said.

Everything will be the complete opposite of alright, she will in all likelyhood die from what your king intends for her, and if she dosen't she will be either braindead or insane

“I don’t care if you found the princess of Equestria,” Rosen said, politely on the surface, but underneath, he was spraying spittle over the captain and her crew.

That's exactly who they found

I opened the barrels and crates, enchanting them as soon as I identified what they were, and tossed them into the cloud container. “Tar, easy. More iron, hydrogen and oxygen. Rum, ethanol,” I counted, as I threw barrel after barrel into the container. “Kerosene, natch. Grease, wait–” I dipped the tip of my metallic hoof in the stuff “– is this for machines or manes? Whatever, in you go. Ah, I recognise this. Hydrogen peroxide, my old friend, nice to smell you again, and what’s– Oooh jackpot! Calcium carbide! I’m saving you for last...”

Careful Gabe, your Mad Scientist is showing

[Greatazuredragon]

But… even they don’t capture just how much walking a quest in a magical land entails.

“You’re so great at making things only vaguely understandable,” Armor said, smiling.

I love when Gabe goes all mad Tinker on us.

I shrugged, smiling at him, before stopping and considering what he said. “Going on a possibly dangerous journey to enable someone to lounge around and play music.”

“And the tunes of destiny and fate, over you they hold no sway.”

And the old tradition of oracles being infuriatingly vague is uphold.

… Until it slammed right into a cliff and went up in a spectacular explosion that seemed to go on forever.
“Oh, fireworks,” Tulip said, smilingly.
“Yeah, chemistry is fun,”

Absolutely loved the chapter, awesome work.

[Schismatism]

Man, that was an excellent chapter. Definitely a wonderful thing to wake up to! And seeing that the pirates had a hold full of... of...

Okay, their airship runs off clouds. Magitech is one thing, but why in the name of all that is good and holy did they have a need for undiluted H₂O₂!? And calcium carbide?! What were they doing, making hoof-polish remover in their spare time? Did they steal fertilizer supplements from passing cloud farms?

I shouldn't complain, I know. Just watch the pretty fireworks...

(Oh yeah. And happy Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day, yar.)

[Neece]

I love Gabe's panache and resourcefulness. Believable enough to be awesome

[Aurora Dimmet]

The mental image of this Adagio-haired filly fighting off four veteran combatants with a pirate hat on her head is somehow fucking adorable.

[FM]

Bravo! Glad to see this continued.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180634
Still wish it was Beach Boys, or hey, David Lee Roth. Didn't he make a cover of California Girls? The 'real' one, that is.

9180652
Thank you. I'm glad you liked it, and I like it when I get a a laugh out of people

9180671
Yeah she's pretty good at chemistry as well, being a baker and all

9180689
I don't remember if he's a canon or fanon character, but no, she'll be rubbing elbows with medical professionals, but she gets her own niche

9180731
Man fiction? As in this is a manly chapter?

9180743
Probably quite a bit, perhaps as an adult as well. I've not seen all episodes myself, but Macguyver is a very comforting presence on the TV I find

[Empty Shelf]

9180949
Ooh, a new recipe! Let's see...3/4 cup of salt peter, 2 tablespoons of sulfur, 7 teaspoons of charcoal...

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9180746

???????

Demolition Man

.... By smashing two worlds into each other, including everything and everyone in them, leading to probably mass confusion, insanity and death.... and the likely death, insanity or braindeath of the filly you are currently bringing to the stallion that had to brainwashed her to get her to do what he wanted...... no i don't think he'll set everything right, it sounds like what he intends is the opposite of setting everything to right

Everything will be the complete opposite of alright, she will in all likelyhood die from what your king intends for her, and if she dosen't she will be either braindead or insane

Ah, the comic wasn't exactly clear on what would happen, but it was clear that evil Celestia would be able to rule if the worlds were joined, and I think Gabe would be alright if he succeeded, except for having her home fundamentally changed forever. Anyway, I'll just have to keep writing so you can see whether their trust in their hero-king was misplaced or not

That's exactly who they found

Shush

Careful Gabe, your Mad Scientist is showing

Sometimes, a mad scientist is just what the doctor ordered

9180751
Glad you liked it, and don't worry, the oracles' words will make sense eventually, I hope

9180769
Yargh, Hhdrogen peroxide, you can use that to clean things, including wounds. You'd want to dilute it first of course, but it might be easier to store concentrated. Calcium Carbide? Well, that is used as fuel for lamps. They might want to weld things together when repairing the ship

Glad you liked the chapter, didn't want to disappoint people after the long wait

9180773
Thank you so much. Always nice when people approve of her

9180873
She is, isn't she? I wish I was better at drawing
There would have been a lot of art of her

9180874
Glad to hear that

9180964
For that fiery flavor

[amiamera]

I can’t quite place why but the capture “scene” didn’t really work for me. It was too abrupt. It felt like, “we’re going to sleep, and how you’re captured” without any proper beats or transition. I guess the capture of the heroine didn’t feel earned? Anyway, an interesting chapter if a bit pointless for most of it, it feels like.

[Eriscordia]

Glad to see a new chapter to my all time favorite story on the site! I also think it's great that a pirate themed chapter was released on talk like a pirate day. Now I can't help but imagine her wearing the pirate hat and starting to talk like a pirate constantly and annoying everypony.

[Asolem2]

9180973

and I think Gabe would be alright if he succeeded, except for having her home fundamentally changed forever.

Would she really be okay being exposed/the conduit for the amount of magic that would be needed for Sombra's goals... the way Celestia, Sombra and Gabe talked/described it earlier made it sound it bit more dangerous for her

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9181063
She'd be a more posh type of pirate I think. Anyway, glad you like it. Also, favorite story on the site? Aaw, thanks

9181067
Ah, but that won't work, since Gabe is no longer on standard Equestria. No, he's got another trick up his sleeve

9181002
That's actually what I was going for. When Zecora sets out to capture you, you won't even know you're being captured. It certainly wasn't the pirates that managed to do it

I guess we'll see how pointless it ends up being. Maybe the Sirens' words ends up being really important? Maybe other stuff that happened in the chapter ends up important?

[Fireeaters]

Lol nice

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9181101
Glad you approve

[JayTheAgent]

9181002
You realize Gabe's captors managed to get close enough to catch all of them unaware with a sleeping gas/powder? Considering the party composition that's an achievement, even if a low blow one. I bet Zecora did the heavy lifting on that op.

[EdBecerra]

Here's the link for the Katy Perry original version with Snoop Doggy Dog as the MC.

https:// www. youtube. com/ watch?v=F57P9C4SAW4

(spoilered for content, just in case.)

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9181304
Yeah, that was all Zecora, they probably would've gotten away if it wasn't for her. First, the pirates sailed to the Dazzlings' meadow, where Zecora found out which way Gabe's party was heading, then she tracked them through the day, while the ship went around them and delayed them. When they rested, Zecora snuck up on them, shot them with tranquilizer darts and snatched up Gabe, spiriting her off to the ship and leaving the rest (that's why Gabe's flank was itching; she was hit with the tranq dart there). That's totally what it would be like to be captured by Zecora; you wouldn't even know you'd been captured

9181308
Here's a cool version of the song I wish was the relevant song
https://youtu.be/rsMW3VSHAKg

[keroko]

Gabe looks like she needs all the late night cuddles and snuggles she has earned with all the crap life has been throwing at her lately. Like a good night's sleep with Mommy Celestia.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9181343
I agree. A good, long snuggle session will calm her life down again

[Koolgy23]

It's finally out!!! I feel like I've been waiting for over a year for this. Great Job! Gabe's sense of humor is hilarious.

[Snakeskin Ducttape]

9181370
Yeah, sorry for taking so long. It's been slow going in general, and songs and chemistry and a whole bunch more proved very difficult to get right. Hopefully the next chapter will be faster, but I don't want to jinx it

Glad you like it though, and it's always a treat when people say they like Gabe