Tales from a Con

by Admiral Biscuit

176 Breaking Rudders

Breaking Rudders

You usually stay down around Seaquestria. It’s dangerous near the surface, and there’s everything that you could want under the sea. Food, friends, frivolity—your home is down there.

Sometimes you do swim up into shallower water, to where you can clearly see the color of the sun and feel the oscillations from the undersides of waves. Sunrises and sunsets paint the ocean with reds and oranges, and the moon gives a harsh light, while sunlight is bluer and more appealing.

You know that you were once a creature of the air, before everygriff fled the Storm King, and you understand why your parents sometimes wistfully looked to the sky, sometimes even sticking their heads up above the water. It holds no real interest for you; there’s no reward for the risk.

A mountain that could be soared around? You can do the same underwater.

Maybe the Storm King isn’t real. Maybe hippogriffs never lived above the sea, maybe it’s just a legend, a fairy-tale for children.

Unlike your belief in Santa Claws, the magical red crab that offers Midwinter presents, time would prove that hippogriffs did once live above the ocean and could again. Some took to the skies when the opportunity was offered, re-settling old towns on Mount Aris, while others remained behind, either because they enjoyed the aquatic life, or because it was all that they knew.

You’d flopped out on land, you’d felt the weight of the air pushing you down onto the sandy soil, and decided you wanted nothing to do with it. You’d seen a few hippogriffs transform and try to walk or fly again—or for the first time.

And you weren’t alone in that. The city had gotten smaller, but there was still a strong contingent sticking to the old ways.

Change came all the same; the threat of the Storm King had passed, but now you had bigger boats passing overhead, ones powered with screws instead of sails. Their vibrations would travel all the way down to the bottom.

You’d swum up to the surface once, just to investigate the noise. The dark shadow of a hull crept over the surface, rocking you with currents as its bow passed over.

By the time the stern arrived, the noise was almost unbearable. The screw sent confused currents in every direction, with a strong jet of water behind it. It wasn’t anything like the sailing ships that glided by overhead every so often.

There wasn’t really anything you could do about it, though, short of giving up and going to live on land, and that was something you just weren’t ready to do.

•••

One day, you watched as Princess Skystar headed out of the palace, a teenage seapony following along. Sea Poppy—you were classmates in school, and of course you’ve seen her around Seaquestria.

Curious, you follow along. You can hear another approaching boat, its screw and engines already making an unpleasant throbbing in the water. It’s to the north, which is the direction they’re heading.

Part of Seaquestria’s economy has been trading with the air-breathers, but they don’t have anything with them to trade. You stroke your tail faster, gaining on them.

As you close in, Sea Poppy finally notices your approach. The boat is getting closer and it’s getting hard to hear—as bad as it is on the bottom, it’s ten times worse near the surface. Fish are scattering, all but the minnows who are really stupid.

“Where are you going?”

Princess Skystar answers. “We’re going to the boat.”

“Why?”

“To break its rudder.”

“What would that accomplish?”

Sea Poppy answers. “Maybe if we break enough they won’t want to sail over here anymore.”

“You want to learn how? I’ve been teaching everyone,” Skystar says.

---

[CHOICE]

Help break the rudder (chaos)
Use diplomacy instead (hero)

---

[CHOICE A: Chaos]

You nod. They are annoying, and discouraging them would make things a lot more peaceful.

“You have to be really careful of the screw,” Princess Skystar explains. “If it catches you, it’ll cut you up, and it can suck you in if you’re in front of it. If you stay off to the side, though, it’s pretty safe.”

“All you really need is a couple pieces of rope,” Sea Poppy adds. “One of them goes around the bottom gudgeon and you toss the loose end into the screw, and once it’s pulled that out, you wrap a piece around the rudder and throw that into the screw.”

“We’ll show you.” They’re almost shouting now; the noise of the boat is nearly unbearable. The three of you get pushed down by the bow wave and watch as the hull passes overhead, blotting out the sun.

The two of them have practiced their technique; Sea Poppy loops the bottom rope a couple times around the rudder stanchion and then swims forward, letting the free end of the rope drop into the screw.

The rope tangles into the blades and you watch in fascination as the bottom of the rudder buckles and then pulls free of its bracket.

Princess Skystar has the second rope, which she uses to lasso the broad, flat surface of the rudder. It, too, gets tossed into the screw, which starts pulling the rudder over as the rope tightens. Without its bottom support, the rudder starts to bend over at an angle; at the same time, you can feel and hear the screw slowing down as the ship tears its own rudder off.

It doesn’t break all the way; once it’s bent over far enough, the rope finally sides off the bottom and wraps the rest of the way around the shaft.

“Easy,” Princess Skystar says. “Let’s head home before somepony gets in the water and tries to figure out what’s happened.”

As the three of you start swimming back to Seaquestria, you take one last look at the ship. By now, they’ve stopped the engine.

“If the rope’s really strong,” Sea Poppy says, “Or the boat’s really weak, you can pull the screw off, too.”

---

[CHOICE B: Hero]

“Isn’t there a less destructive way to stop the ships?” you ask. “I don’t like them either, but that’s no reason to try and break them.”

“They’re invading Seaquestria,” Sea Poppy says. “And we have to defend it.”

“”The ocean is really big.” You don’t know how big, you’ve never been all the way to the edges of it. “They could sail somewhere else if they knew we were down below them.”

“Mom always said that we’d have to defend ourselves from surface invaders,” Princess Skystar tells you. “She’s who taught me how to tear off rudders—it’s even easier on ships with engines, because they tear off their own rudders.”

“We’re not at war with the surface ponies,” you remind her. “Not any more. We could just tell some of the hippogriffs who went to live on land, and they could get the ships to stop sailing overhead.”

Princess Skystar and Sea Poppy exchange a look. Clearly, this idea had never occurred to them.

“Okay, fine, we’ll try that. I can talk to Mom—don’t tell her I was telling other seaponies to break ships.”

“My lips are sealed,” you promise.

Comments

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

Posted in
Admiral Biscuit's Fleet (group)
Contest Entries (folder)

[Admiral Biscuit]

11757898
That was fast . . . I was just about to add it to the group myself

[Janicethelight]

I would choose hero here. Breaking things on purpose is wrong.

[Cerulean Blue]

Definitely Hero to start with, then Chaos if the ships don't change their ways.

[Admiral Biscuit]

11758558
That's a fair point. Especially since they aren't at war with the surface-dwellers anymore.

[Admiral Biscuit]

11758988
And then the 'more chaos' option if they still don't--poke holes in the bottoms of the ships.