Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Family Reunion

Black Flag watched the rest of the survivors slowly come to and celebrate their victory from afar. He and his brother had sat themselves beneath the shade of a cluster of palm trees on the edge of the lagoon. Nopony would disturb them there, and nopony seemed to have any intention of doing so, anyway. Which was good; the last thing Flag really wanted to do was talk with the crippling headache splitting his skull in two. He could feel the welt on the back of his head from the alicorn smashing it against the wall. Without any painkillers out here in the wild, he knew it was only going to get much worse before it got better.

“I can’t believe you let a bitch throttle you around like that,” Jolly Roger said, sitting comfortably by his brother’s side. The normally loud and angry pirate kept his voice uncharacteristically restrained for his brother’s sake. “She wasn’t so tough when I put a bullet through her heart.”

“Way I hear it, you got lucky she was fighting with herself,” Flag muttered. Even the act of talking was painful enough. “She thrashed the rest of us around real good. Apparently, the others were fighting her all night even before she got here.”

“No shit?” Roger scoffed and stretched his wings. “Now I feel even better about smoking the whore. If a bunch of sirens and that rainbow bitch couldn’t take her down, then it sounds like I’m the hero of the fucking world. Wasn’t she gonna do some eternal night bullshit?”

“I think it was something more to the effect of darkness devouring the world,” Flag said. “A lot more hardcore than just eternal night. Speaking of which,” he continued, shooting his brother a look, “where the fuck were you all night?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Roger said, sly smile resting on his face.

“That’s why I’m fucking asking, you jackass.”

“Hungover, mostly,” Roger said. “I flew up to a cloud to take a nap. Spent most of the day up there, and then I started wondering if there really was this fucking barrier around the islands like they were talking about. If there wasn’t, I could have just rode a cloud to land and got help.”

Flag raised an eyebrow at him. “And?”

“I damn near broke my neck on it,” Roger said. “It’s invisible, utterly invisible. Couldn’t see a fucking thing and then wham! Right in the face. I thought it would like, I don’t know, at least shimmer or something.”

“That sounds like too much to ask,” Flag said.

“Yeah, well, somepony had to go and take a look at it.” Roger grunted as he shifted positions, and when he cocked his neck to the side, the vertebrae cracked in rapid succession. “After that, I flew back to the cloud, decided I was still pissed at you, and pushed it around the area. I just wanted to get a feel for the islands, y’know? In case we needed to make a getaway from this one.”

“Glad to see you dropped the idea of killing them,” Flag said, attention turning to the survivors gathered on the beach. “They’re alright when it comes down to it.”

“I still think it’s only a matter of time before somepony snaps, but that won’t be for a while, now. Not after I just murdered a fucking god.”

“Yeah. Right. So, what next?”

Roger fluttered his wings and scratched his back against the tree he leaned against. “Well, I was heading over to the island with all the minotaurs on it, and I saw a whole bunch of canoes rowing out to this island. I decided to follow them to see what they were up to, and that’s when the light show started back on the island where the tomb was. Some shit was going down there; I guess that was those sirens fighting the alicorn bitch.”

“Yeah,” Flag said. “I didn’t see it because I was stuck down in the shrine with the mummies. At least those minotaurs you saw were good for something.”

“And they haven’t killed the rest of you yet, so that’s a start.” Roger shook his head. “Anyway, I guess that rainbow bitch did a rainboom or something and that blasted away the cloud I was using to ride around on. Almost knocked me out of the sky, too; I had to dive below the thing. Thankfully, the island wasn’t too far away, so I just hung out here and kept a low profile since the minotaurs were starting to crawl all over the thing.”

“And the mummies?” Flag asked.

“Oh, they were pretty easy to avoid. You just gotta stay quiet and don’t move, and they can’t see you. Besides, I wasn’t going to fucking make a move while they were all over the place. I waited for the minotaurs to deal with them before I left my hiding space.”

“And then?”

Roger shrugged. “I saw another rainboom over here, so I decided to take a look at what was going on. Saw the alicorn bitch and shot her in the back. It was that simple.”

“Wow.” Flag chuckled and slowly shook his head from side to side. “That is probably the least climactic ending to a battle with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.”

“Shut up,” Jolly grumbled. “I probably did more than you did.”

“That’s true enough.” Flag looked at his brother and offered him a sincere smile. “Listen, I’m sorry about what I said yesterday morning.”

“Mmrrff… yeah, yeah, whatever.” The younger pirate sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ve just had enough of this bullshit,” he said. “We lost our entire crew because Squall was a dickhead. I was practically ready to dig my own grave a few days ago and blow my brains out. I mean, what are the chances we’ll ever get home?”

“Better now than they were a day ago,” Flag said. “That evil alicorn is dead, and there shouldn’t be any more mummies wandering around. Even the minotaurs aren’t attacking us. We’ve got plenty of time to figure out what to do next without having to worry about some damn god’s champion trying to rip our hearts out.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a plus.” Jolly hummed and shifted in place. "Fuck, we should get another bottle of rum to celebrate."

"Let's not do that right now," Flag said. "We'll save that for the party later."

"Hrmm... fair enough."

With some peace and quiet after a long and painful night, it didn't take very long for Flag to fall asleep.

Comments

[Archangel of the Silent]

So he's capable of acknowledging the fact that he did a good thing. A little too capable of it. Maybe there's a little old fashioned"Equestrian Second Chance" going on here?

[Eroraf86]

Hey look, Roger did a thing! Maybe he’s not a completely lost cause after all.

[PonyDragon]

“Wow.” Flag chuckled and slowly shook his head from side to side. “That is probably the least climactic ending to a battle with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.”

Maybe, but it is an ending (with at keast a few survivors), so that's probably fine for most readers here.

[Aurora Dimmet]

9037086

I'm sure his innocent victims might chime in differently. If they could.

[Circut Breaker]

9038528
Luna, Discord, Starlight...

[Lexiebommel10]

Um i see a plothole.. if jolly was on a cloud couldnt soft be able to see him with the whole everything the moon touches is within my power