Stroll

by re- Yamsmos

Woe

"Captain! We've got a stowaway!"

Octavia shot awake, the deafening voice bouncing around her breathlessly spinning mind and washing over her like a gargantuan wave. Her heart burst into activity, silencing her inner workings to take over every little bit of her eardrums and quake as hard as was earthly possible. The brain she so constantly conflicted with was awash with ice, muddling up her movements and causing her to simply hyperventilate and sweep her gaze around in an attempt to figure out where she was.

From a long, otherworldly rectangle of white light reaching far into her entrapment, she could squint her eyes and make out old, creaky wooden floorboards and countless barrels and boxes lining the walls in front of her. A violent, absolutely furious storm was raging horribly directly outside, only to very quickly furrow its brow, triangulate her exact position, and begin taking form practically right next to her.

Octavia grit her teeth, shut her eyes tight, and attempted to get onto all four of her hooves.

She barely made contact before collapsing back onto her stomach with a whispered curse that echoed in her skull.

"Shhhit!"

Grinding her teeth together, she cracked open an eyelid to try to glare at her right forehoof.

"Stowaway!" Came the voice again, this time infinitely closer. The storm was now right on top of her.

Octavia whipped her head around and felt her breath catch in her throat.

Immediately, she felt three claws grab at her forelegs and yank her off the ground.

"Son of a bitch!"

"Get her topside!"

"Up, boys!"

Octavia's response was instant.

Opening her mouth as wide as possible, she bared her teeth and bit down on the closest arm she could blindly find.

"Aaaah! Sputnik!"

One of the claws grasping her left foreleg relinquished its iron grip, instead opting on tugging her ear.

"Mother– come on, you Goddamn mudslinger!"

Octavia spit a little collection of white feathers onto the ground trailing quickly behind her, opened her mouth to go in for another devastating run, and suddenly had to turn away as her captors brought her toward the light still streaming in from the middle of the otherwise dark cargo bay.

The griffons let go of her as one, and for a second she believed they were throwing her up into the golden gates of heaven, but she suddenly hit the reality of the cold ground hard with her chin and a loud thump that sounded out twice in succession. The ends of her forelegs burning from heat, her head still swimming like she was enduring ten-foot waves, her mane wispy and blocking her sights, and her cheeks still crusty with salt, Octavia opened her eyes ever so slowly and cringed at the sights that met her gaze.

It was as angelically blue as far as she could see on both her left and her right sides. The open sea and the open sky met at the horizon, their only major difference being the presence of long, jagged, winter white clouds streaking in number overhead. Four tall poles, their blank white sails jostling in the wind, tried their damnedest to reach the sun, completely ignoring its blinding appearance that Octavia now grimaced at. A group of seagulls, cawing indiscernible conversations to one another and the griffon sitting in the crow's nest, circled around the perimeter, gliding here and there to try and impress anyone stupid enough to sit and watch them. The ship, due to its massive figure, bobbed ever so slightly to and fro as it went, creating a particularly nice and stable ground for Octavia to be torn away from yet again.

In the corners of her eyes, a large crowd of clothed griffons turned their heads and watched as two of their companions dragged a lone mare back across the deck, narrowing their eyes in either suspicion or distrust if their frowns and ruffled feathers meant even an ounce of anything to her at the moment.

"We've got a stowaway, Captain!" One of them yelled again, hoping that somehow their incredibly ugly vocal cord invention made a sizable impact amidst the sea of now whispering voices and wide water.

Octavia hung her head, unable to do anything remotely impeding with her forelegs clasped and her hindlegs dragging painfully on the floor behind her. The pulling stopped with no warning, prompting her to drop to her stomach and slam her chin once more onto cold, wet steel. She clenched her eyes shut, hearing nothing but her own breathing inside, the seagulls above, and the low, groaning waves of the ocean crashing against the massive vessel below.

The voices suddenly came as one horrendous rush.

"Who the hell's that?"

"Stowaway!"

"It's a pony!"

"Goddamn pony!"

"Sputnik..."

"Where was she?"

"...can't believe this!"

A claw pulled at her left foreleg, almost chucking her to the unforgiving ground once more. She craned her neck around and gazed upward to find a dark gray, feathered head with green eyes glaring down at her and baring its teeth.

"What's your name, stowaway?" He spat, furiously shaking her leg and consequently her entire body.

The crowd shuffled in the corner of her eyes as a quintet of figures pushed and shoved their ways to the front.

Octavia's heart skipped a beat.

Half a second passed before one of the five suddenly leapt forward without a sound, a clenched fist soaring through the air that obliterated Octavia's holder's face and sent him a whole two feet back with nothing but a low grunt and a flurry of spittle. A trio of noises sounded out in unison, presumably belonging to a group of poor, unsuspecting barrels now needlessly toppled over. Octavia leaned forward, grabbing at her aching wrist as her savior directed his attention to her right, coiled his talons around his new target's beak, raised him off the floor, and thereafter slammed him downward scalp first with a horrible crash. Octavia turned around at the sound of something clicking to find her third captor raising his forelegs up and shaking his head like a dog.

W cocked the hammer back on Candidate, one eye closed and the other gazing down the rifle's barrel.

"Back," the old griffon ordered, shaking the business end of his Magicarm for further, deathly important emphasis.

The pirate backpedaled wordlessly, prompting W to suddenly holster his gun onto his back, turn on the heel, and fall to the floor in front of Octavia. He wasted not a single second before reaching forward and snatching her up in a tight hug that halted her breath. A large, warm arm grazed her spine. Knowing W, there was a joke about to emerge from either his throat or his smirk that was completely inappropriate, and she waited for it with bated breath for a span of five seconds.

His gruff voice broke any kind of tear duct she was hoping to reinforce.

"You're okay. You're okay."

A wave, not unlike the previous one, blasted past her, and she shivered under W's large embrace.

Tender. Like her mother and father after a bad day of school. After a bad test day or a little filly feud.

Octavia clenched her eyes together and felt her eyelids moisten. She clenched her lower lip as hard as she could.

A little, terrified noise escaped from the depths of her gut.

She blinked as W's embrace shifted to two claws on both her shoulders.

The old griffon was staring at her, and only now could she make out the large wrinkles underlying his features and cresting his forehead.

"What happened?" He asked, shaking her a tad. "What..." his sights drew down to the left foreleg she was currently wiping her eyes with, and he let go of one of her shoulders to look at the bottom of it. "...shit, what, Octavia, you're bleeding." He turned around at the waist and hollered, "Lavi! Get over here!"

Lavi wasted no time in sprinting over to the two, grabbing at one of the bags sitting at her hip.

"Her hooves–"

"I gotcha," she interrupted, pulling one of her straps back across her back to better access the kit now lying over her stomach. Octavia suddenly noticed the red plus sign professionally stitched onto its front pouch. "Nurse Lavi to the rescue," Lavi exclaimed under her breath, flinging the pouch open.

"What happened, Octavia?"

"I..." She began, her breath failing to circulate. "I... I, erm..."

W reached over to his side and pulled out an olive green flask. He unscrewed the cap and held it out to her.

Octavia's hooves shakily took hold of it and helped her take a long swig. W took it back as she found her voice again.

"I... I was at a bar..."

Lavi pulled out a little purple bottle and a few white squares of cloth.

"I remembered your hat and... I came back over to the ship to give it back to you."

W sucked in a breath through his nostrils. She could tell that he didn't like hearing that.

"When I..." she paused as Lavi wrapped one of the now apparent bandages around her hoof, then stopped herself from cursing as loud as she could muster at the contact. Her next word came out miles more forced than she would've liked. "When I was looking for you in the cargo bay I... the loading ramp, it..." she stopped, pulling away from Lavi to fan herself with a hoof, "...just shut."

"What have ya done this time, Wake?" A feminine, very much unwanted voice called out amongst the crowd.

"Shut it," W spat, not even looking their way as he grabbed another one of the bandages.

Wake?

A pale orange griffon stepped out from the hybrid depths, a tattered white shirt gracing her upper body and a bandana wrapped tightly around her feathered skull to signify the complete loss of blood flow to her brain.

W returned to Octavia.

"What about your hooves? How did you–"

"Who the hell even is this pony? Some kinda burden you picked up from Equestria?"

"I said shut it."

At that, with one of his claws holding up her left foreleg and the other clutching a roll of gauze, W turned his head and actually hissed.

"She's a friend, you hard-boiled cunt."

The word started up a halt in her head. Not the hard-boiled thing... the, the... friend? Friend. She was W's friend. Because... he'd just said so. Mind, they were obviously friends before, but... were they actually? It wasn't that she was unprepared for the term, but... well, maybe she was. She'd have absolutely loved to be his friend, and his saying so made her slightly happy, even as he betrayed the notion by screwing with her wounds.

"Sorry," he whispered, unraveling his attempt to try again.

"Pretty sure you can do loads better than a Pee Why Tee, Wake."

"Hey, that mare beat the holy hell out of eight ponies by herself way west, and kicked a minotaur's ass in Tall Tale!" came... Valkyrie? Sure enough, the aggressive griffon stomped over to the other mean bird and glared daggers into her head. "The hell did you do this week? Sing shanties and–" she stopped, clenching her fists and moving them up and down in a stack, "–hoist a sail or two?"

The orange one simply brought up a flat claw and pushed Valkyrie a full step and a half back.

"Piss off, Cait," went another voice.

"Thanks Gibbs," Lavi hollered, her volume a little too uncomfortably loud in Octavia's peeled-back ears.

"Sic the player on me, huh? Figures," Cait grumbled, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. "Where the hell is Andy?"

"He's takin' a dump over the back," someone on the stern of the ship shouted back.

"He's–"

"He's takin' a shit."

"Ugh!" Cait squawked, grinding her fists together and storming away. "Damn you idiots. I'll send you all to the Upstairs, one day."

"Are she and Valkyrie related, perhaps?" Octavia found the time to ask as W and Lavi finished wrapping her forelegs up.

"Please," Lavi replied, blowing a raspberry and flailing her newly freed claw, "Val's an only child. A case of Douchebag is just... kind of the norm for griffons."

But not them.

"But not you," Octavia noted softly.

Lavi bunched up a cheek in a smile.

"Not us."

"Can someone help me out with Gabe and Kade?" A pirate asked.

"Yeah, I've got ya." Another answered.

W sat up and turned to Octavia's right. He brought up two talons and snapped at something past her peripherals. "Hey! The hell are you doing?"

"I mean, you beat the hell out of 'em, Wake, they need t' lie down–"

"Leave 'em," he demanded, brow furrowing, "they're already lying down."

"...fine."

"All right, man."

W shifted his gaze back over to Octavia and began reaching into his backpack. "Look, you stay here with Lavi. Answer anything she asks you, unless it's about vaginas."

"Oh f-"

Octavia smirked as W brought out a folded, heavy-looking piece of fabric.

"I'll go to the wheel and tell Andy t' turn 'er around."

Octavia sniffed. "He'll do that?" The very idea of such a monstrous vessel about-facing in the water was more than enough to itch at her skepticism, even if it meant returning home.

W chuckled. "I'll make him." He unfolded the article and revealed to her its massive figure. Throwing it around her, he coughed into a claw, cleared his throat, and rose to all fours. "Just stay here."

She adjusted the griffon-made blanket around her body and searched for words. It was turning into a bit of a hardship as the comforter did its magic and caused her to blink a few times in rapid, undesirable succession.

Finally, she looked up and asked, "Do you think he'll do it?"

Even Lavi, who had taken the time to stuff her gear back into her medic pack, swiveled about to look at him in kind.

W closed his eyes to suck in a breath, then opened them to expel it.

Octavia knew that meaning more than all too well.

"I'll make him."

Octavia flexed her chin.

Lavi, in the corner of her eyes, did the same, dipping her frowning face for a brief second before peering back up.

"We'll get you home, Octavia," W told her.

He breathed in and out through his nostrils again, stood there for awhile, then nodded little nods.

"No matter what. I promise you."

Octavia blinked.

Open seas, which meant they were already at a fair distance from Baltimare. They could still be inside Horseshoe Bay, though, so they could possibly dock at the spits and send her off from there, but she couldn't feel a bit of reassurance about that without having to ask somebody. And the fact that she'd be stopping their voyage to do nothing but leave didn't bring up any good results about going through with such a thing.

They could be within Equestria's reach.

Or they could be already well on their way to Griffonia's waters.

Octavia lifted her gaze.

"Okay."

With that, W turned about and walked back toward the stern, not even turning at the hip to the akimbo arms and waggling eyebrows directed his way.

Octavia sat on her haunches, letting go of the right side of her new blanket to assess an importance of hers.

She looked down and reached a hoof up.

She silently adjusted her bowtie, blew a small fleck of wood off of it, and covered herself once more, her purple eyes glazing over as the sounds of the roaring ocean, the exuberant seagulls, the growing distance, and the newly busying crew onboard rose up once more in clarity.

Comments

[the other sans]

Guess Octavia is gonna probably have an easy out for this new situation that she decided to Wake up in. Though I imagined she should have been more salty than W but then again... You know, I think I'm gonna stowaway those thoughts and do a one-eighty and go back to square one, back to home base.

I can't imagine the monstrous headache Tavi is feeling after tossing and turning like she did though she could have been considered as thrown for a loop... A pity she couldn't technically floor it out of that situation but hey, sometimes you have to sail where the wind blows. We'll sea where though and I suspect it ain't home.

[re- Yamsmos]

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These puns are out of control.