Unexpected Guest Callers - Part 1
Crew mares surged from the galley and Flotsam was carried along in the current.
“We’re under attack!” someone shouted as the lone stallion fought to keep legs beneath him.
Shouts reached them from the deck above. Shanty shouted over the growing din. “Attack? Us? Don’t they know who we are?”
Charming Booty lead the rush, all trace of her earlier weakness vanished. “It has been a something of a dry spell.” She sounded cheery and coy.
There were maybe ten ponies here in all, crammed in but well used to such conditions.
Exhilaration fired up the crew, jumping from mare to mare like a fever. Symptoms included a sudden outbreak of weaponry. A jolt through the planks of the ship left Flotsam reeling off somepony’s flank.
“Don’t lose your pretty head!” the firey-haired Quartermaster shouted. She winked at Flotsam. The glint in her eyes matched very well with the steel of her sword.
“It’s griffons!”
“A sky-frigate full of griffons!”
“More like a can full of chicken soup! Ha!”
“Friggin’ griffons!”
“I said frigate. Fri-Gate!”
“They spilled my coffee!”
“Frigate about it!”
“I will NOT forget about my coffee! That was my first cup of the day! I NEED MY FIX.”
“WE are the ones that raid!”
The shouts bled into one another. Heavily armed and shiny eyed mares rushed past Flotsam and shot out onto the deck.
“Where’s Patches?” he shouted. A hoof yanked his chin. It was Charming.
“She knows what to do for herself. You just keep your head down! Try to relax. Enjoy your first time.” The unicorn half-cackled. She locked her lips to his in a fierce smooch before that hit him like a bombshell. Her hooves grabbing his backside didn’t escape his notice either. “For luck.” The Quartermaster cackled, taking a playful flick at his horn before rushing out into the fray.
An angry squawk turned into desperate wing beats and a feathery slam against the decking. “This is what we do, birdbrains!”
“Bite me, pony!”
“You’re not nearly pretty enough!”
Something of the crew’s wild enthusiasm infected him. He wanted to fling himself wantonly into their high adventure, run with sea-wolves and engage in the witty repartee that all true skirmishes call for.
It was sorely tempting, but that wasn’t Flotsam, not really. His own true calling was to protect. It called him now. Patches. He recalled everything he could of her today. Captain’s Quarters. That’s what Nauticaa had said. She’d send the filly to fetch him after to discuss the future.
Well, now he’d seen the future and it had griffons. Lots and lots of griffons. Griffons were famously strong, were more naturally aggressive than ponies, came equipped with weapons built-in and had the advantage of flight.
The pirates (he had to distinguish these as the ‘not my pirates’ set) battled across the deck. An unlikely duel was perched atop the ship’s wheel, as if some pony (or griffon, or both…) had the insane idea to make log-rolling even more ridiculous and extreme. Pegasi and griffons zoomed, dodged, dived, flitted through ropes and ricocheted off rigging.
The cacophony filtered through Flotsam quickly. The MoM had the advantage on her own decks. In the air the griffons had the advantage: all of them could fly, far lesser so were the ponies that could.
Even the griffon ship was flying.
It was long and slender and was perched in the air some hundred feet or so above them. Sails sprouted like petals from it on all four sides.
Flotsam’s eyes were yanked from the skies – quite literally yanked – by a rough grip on his horn.
Forced off his balance and painfully jarred at an angle, he managed to sidestep enough to keep himself from toppling. Flotsam shook free, cringing as talons raked along his horn, nails on chalkboard style except said board being hard mounted directly onto his head. It was not nice. “Not for grabbing!” he shouted before throwing a punch into the griffon’s face that sent it sprawling. Even as he rushed away he stifled a shudder. “Honestly, don’t grab that,” he muttered, a little bit amazed with his own strength.
He flung the doors open to the Captain’s Quarters, heard the slam of damaged hinges and winced, then doubly berated himself for having singly berated himself about breaking Nauticaa’s doors when griffons were currently storming the ship.
“Patches?” She wasn’t here, lest she had hid herself away behind the curtain near the Captain’s own bed. Thoughts of embarrassing push ups and overly noisy, sweaty exercise rattled his attention.
Something kicked him squarely in the butt. A millisecond later the planks exploded. Flotsam hit the Captain’s floor hard and wood splinters fell about like liberally-applied sprinkles.
Free cannons: just add gravity he thought dizzily. That kick had hurt. And it had saved his figurative donkey.
“Get up,” Captain Nauticaa growled. She spat out a mouthful of feathers and strode over him like so much obstacle and in the same graceful movement flicked her slender blade into the cabinet door. She flicked the latch open. There was a click of metal clasps and suddenly she had two swords, the pommels fixed to the curious spring-and-lever hoofshoe mechanisms Flotsam had seen her wear before. In the resting position, hoof planted squarely to the ground the sword attached rose upwards and outwards, not unlike wings. Rearing up made them flick forwards for slashing and thrusting.
“My ship,” she muttered darkly. “Mine.” Swords splayed like a vengeful alicorn about to knock seven colours of a rainbow out of some fools, she strode for the fray.
Flotsam hurried to his hooves, as much to obey as to just get out of her way. “Where’s Patches?”
That gave Nauticaa pause. “She went looking for you.”
The tone carried more than some accusation. It brokered no argument and that was without the twinned swords shining at him.
Another cannonball crashed into the deck nearby. “I’ll get her,” he promised.
“Do that.”
A second cannonball crashed into the deck nearby. Nauticaa wasn’t mad, which was to say she didn’t raise her voice and her lines of thinking were cool and collected. “I’ll get her,” Flotsam said, shaken and stumbling on his hooves through the impact. His eyes, though; they were sincere and unshaken.
Nauticaa didn’t wait around. She’d taken his measure these last weeks and found him capable. Not very bright – she suspected even restored this would be the case – but his heart she found no fault with. Not natural to a place such as this. Too genuine.
An image of the squall flashed through her mind. A shield spell; turning aside danger. Patches pulled from the storm-tossed water. Flotsam had saved the child. Whatever doubts she had of the stranger were blown out of the water.
“Do that,” she stressed. With any luck the two most inexperienced members of her crew would keep together and their foolishness would cancel one another out.
Not likely, she thought and surged into the fray, bounding over the shiny new gaping hole in her ship’s deck and locking swords with the first griffon she saw. Two more came at her from the sides and none of her crew were near her. This was a good thing: she preferred having room to work. Her mares knew her habits and tended to clear the area.
Nauticaa knew the pirates of these waters. She knew the pirates, the freebooters, the sea dogs, the corsairs and even a steadily increasing number of – rarity of rarities – honest sailors. Pirate crews tended to got along as amicably as cats in a sack, and Nauticaa’s recent career goals hadn’t won her any new friends in that lot. She’d never seen these blue-black, almost crow-looking griffons before. New-comers, then. Silvery steel gauntlets adorned their talons and matching helms gave their beaks a spear’s strength and edge.
Sloppy pirates! Insultingly so. Her mast was a slap job and they weren’t even trying to destroy it. Hop Scotch and some fool griffon were engaged in hilarious and witty repartee sword play atop the wheel, spinning it madly back and forth, but – and this was important – not destroying it. If Nauticaa was theoretically mad – hypothetically furious, then that sort of silliness only stoked it further. Hop Scotch would be getting words from her after this fracas. Nauticaa blocked out the urge to make these newcomer, two-bit griffons take note and do piracy properly.
Her current partner’s beaky thrust out at her right on cue (about time, too, she had her next actions and reactions lined up and considered, it was less than pointless to stand their with locked swords and spit at one another, after all) and ducked her head under his. Jarring upwards, headbutting his chin, Nauticaa pulled herself forwards on her swords. The Captain swung her back legs forwards, planted them squarely in the griffon’s tufty, muscled chest and completed the motion with her standing hindlegs on the grounded foe, the air of his lungs squashed out of him in an ugly hoot. From there it was a simple step to launch herself and become a twirling pinwheel of unpleasantness for the other two.
She spun and nearly took Flotsam’s head off. She jerked hard to pull the strike. Even as it threw her balance she managed to the catch the blade enough; she caught a glimpse of blue hairs falling and the charging stallion rammed headlong into the exposed side of a griffon, lifting her from her talons and carrying through.
That was exactly the kind foolishness that annoyed Nauticaa. She wasn’t going to land on her hooves after that. She might as well adapt her fall into an attack and land on an elbow. Griffon spittle from her conveniently placed landing pad spattered the Captain and she rolled, swords to her sides, under a groping attempt at a bear hug from her last, still standing foe.
Her attempt to lop off a back foot ended with a metallic clang. Earth pony sword-shoes allowed for unparalleled control, but they punished bad handling. A firm enough shock could shatter the mechanism and disarm her, or worse, leave a dangling sharp edge she no longer controlled flailing from her leg.
This hit did neither, but making a mistake was enough to bother her. Forced to roll again she caught a white glimpse; Flotsam, tossing his opponent like she were a hoofball. It was a considerable throw, the floundering griffon hen went out and up and over the side of the ship before dropping out of sight. Nauticaa wanted to cuff the pony upside the head. Griffons fly. He seemed to have forgotten that detail.
That was his problem. The steel-taloned gauntlet driving itself half an inch deep into the planks where the Captain’s head had just been was hers. It reminded her of her younger days.
A wide slash from her was easy to evade. With a gust of air her opponent pulled himself clear of the strike. Room to work with. Exactly what she’d intended to acquire.
Nauticaa rolled to her hooves and rushed him again. You tried to wean a ship off piracy but it had a way of dragging you right back in. You’re having fun though stressed an oft ignored dimension of her thoughts.
Worried about that blood on the sword though, that same, detached part of her mind not concerned with the actual fighting mused. She hadn’t scored hits on any griffons…
It was only a little speckle anyway. She caught the damage to Flotsam with the corner of her eye. It was about time that baby-faced stallion started looking credible anyway.
Flotsam was in the Captain’s Quarters and he had to go find Patches. Everything else could be ignored or avoided. He fixed the premise singularly in his thoughts. Then the captain sped away, from standing to quickness without actually seeming to go through the usual degrees of acceleration between. The shadow of the frigate above made everything dangerous and uncanny. Or at least managed the uncanny element. The marauding griffons handled the ‘dangerous’ aspect.
The Captain knew everything she did and he knew that he knew very little. Flotsam clambered across the chasm of splintered, toothy wood thinking he must check below decks again. He hadn’t seen the filly when he’d come this way, but if he’d come along the port side (or starboard, he didn’t know) and she’d rushed along the opposite (whichever that was)… they could have swapped places without meeting at all.
She couldn’t be mad-fool enough to be anywhere up here.
He made to go, but there was the Captain, trapped between griffons, three on one without any kind of help. He had to save her!
Flotsam was two galloping strides from the griffon on her left when Nauticaa felled Mr. Centre-piece griffon. He felt air gush as the griffon wheezed and then Nauticaa jumped and glittery steel twirled. The air stung sharply but that sensation fell into the others – impact, rolling, wood and feather and smelly griffon smells aplenty.
He should have levelled a simple spell and blasted the griffon. That would have been the smarter option, but Flotsam privately suspected he wasn’t a walking-and-chewing-bubblegum sort of pony. Action tended to preclude thought.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t puzzle things out, merely that he found it a somewhat more challenging when he was neck-deep into griffon plumage. Most of the hen was pinned under him. A clenched fist worked pneumatically against his ribs.
“Ow, ow! OW! Stop it!” He caught the offending limb in magic, then dragged the other forelimb so that they were shackled together. The hen very emphatically and loudly taught Flotsam a few choice descriptor words in her native tongue. He swung his hindquarters away, keeping his belly away from the cat-kicking frenzy of the griffon’s back legs. A member of the crew probably would have stomped the griffon in the gut somewhat, just to quieten her down a bit. Flotsam, however, was not a pragmatic fighter/vicious bastard and his instinct regarding combat might have stunk a little bit of genuinely honourable intentions.
He risked a glance to the Captain, who was not only holding her own but taking a lot of everyone else’s also. His only other thought was to get the pirate off the ship (the afore inferred viciousness-unto-submission thing not really factoring into this concept for him).
So he hefted the hen, balanced her best he could and heaved. The griffon dropped over the side and vanished from sight.
His back was turned when the poofy-with-embarrassment-and-rage hen returned the tackling favour with a vengeance and the both of them went tumbling down through the gaping hole in the deck.
Battle raged the breadth and length of the Mother of Mercy while cannon balls were dropped onto the deck from such a height as to make cannons redundant. The ship lurched forward, swerving left and right and the griffon sky-frigate mirrored her movements like a dance partner.
Harpoon had knocked unconscious two griffons already. Her method was simple and effective. She flew swift and low to the deck and watched the various duels beneath her unfold. When one opened up or the crew-mare there needed some help, Harpoon came spearing down like a thunderbolt, driving the invader into the deck or along it until they slammed together into a gunwale.
It was a bad habit for a griffon to forget that they weren’t the only ones in the skies.
It was getting harder to keep ahead of her pursuers though. She made to dive on Griffon No. 3 only to be yanked painfully from the assault by her tail. Sea and sky blurred around in a huge, fast arc and Harpoon was walloped against the mast of the ship.
Stars flared across her vision. Something heavy and dark rushed past her and punched another hole into the deck. They weren’t even trying to sink the ship, she noticed angrily. Just beating the tar out of it for kicks, it seemed.
The cannonball had forced whatever griffon had caught hold of her tail out of the way. It was almost enough time to get a new breath into herself before another pull sent her flailing around, slamming into the opposite side of the mast. Her vision swam. New stars exploded into being to mingle with the rest.
She was cogent enough to know that she was going to be sent for another spin. That, or let fall onto the deck. Either way was going to hurt bad. Despite herself, she couldn’t bring the presence of mind to do anything about it.
Two hits she remembered roughly. Two hits to daze her like this. These griffons fought mean. Harpoon could respect that.
Magic zipped past her in a burst of bright bolts and feathers that weren’t hers flew up into the air. The tension on her tail was released.
Harpoon spun her head fuzzily about, settled her eyes on the dark shape under her, ponderously raised her two hooves together as if begging divine intercession, then brought the package down wholesale on the griffon’s armoured head. The resonant clang! and distressed squeak therein satisfied her and together they went tumbling down towards the decks.
She knew in a calm, detached sort of way that she would have to flare her wings, pull her chest and angle herself sharp as she could to pull out of a fall like this. She also knew that she hadn’t a hope of pulling any of that off just now. She felt drunk in her movements and very heavy; gravity seemed to agree with her.
Someone shouted Windlass! and Harpoon found herself caught like a sack on the outstretched leg of that giant of a mare.
“Sorry,” Windlass said shyly. The dazed griffon she tucked away behind her. Harpoon was handled gently until she was back on her hooves. The big pony’s lips were puckered with worried thought. “Sorry, ma’am,” the pony stressed.
The ship was erupting with battle, curses, battle-curses and wood splinters, and Windlass was flustered about a lapse in respectful deference. But that was her just her way. Problems that were bigger than her understanding she trusted completely to her higher-ups.
Harpoon nodded dizzily, forcing her hooves to not shake under her. Her role in this battle was over, at least as a combatant. She glanced at her adversary. Tongue lolling, eyes rolled, and tucked discreetly aside by Windlass. It’d do.
The Captain was across the deck, several rolling duels between here and there. Nauticaa was spiralling towards her latest opponent like some dread love-child inheriting the metal unstoppability of a mining bore and the precision of a spinning ballerina. A pair of griffon toes flew up into the air amidst the clamour. A slap with the flat of Nautica's blade knocked them spinning away into the water. A furious griffon screech met the Captain’s advance.
Harpoon had suspected for some time that the Captain liked to show off, just a little bit. She would never voice the thought aloud though.
She’d seen enough. The Captain had things well in hoof for herself and, Harpoon privately surmised, didn’t want to be interrupted in her rare chance at cutting loose. “I’m taking the wheel.”
Then she ducked just in time to not be swept away with Windlass’ tree-trunk of a leg, which whirled past overhead like a comet.
A terror-shrieking pair of griffons were pinned by sheer inertia to the hoof and as Windlass completed the arc they accelerated away, tumbling a trail of feathers through the air as they shot overboard and out of sight. The looming tan earth pony smiled with self-conscious hopefulness, looking to Harpoon for approval.
“That’a girl. Good job.” Harpoon had since learned to work with the tools she was given, and Windlass was the sort of pony that had on her first day aboard pulled up the anchor, chain and all, by hoof because nopony had told her that wasn’t how it was supposed to be done. She paid attention and thought hard about what she was instructed with and once she learned something it stayed learned. And the pony had a thirst for validation, which for the most part was well deserved. Positive reinforcement training, Charming Booty had called it.
“Push through,” Harpoon ordered.
“Aye.” There were numerous small gashes where the griffons had raked at the mare’s leg.
They bulled through the skirmish, friendlies and enemies alike and found the wheel already occupied.
Parrot’s jungle-hued plumage stood on end. Her coat was equally standing on end and her mane was frizzy. Her wings were so stiffly pronounced they might have flown away of their own accord entirely. Presently a griffon’s head was lodged in the spokes of the wheel. By pulling with her body weight behind it she managed to lock the griffon into a choking vice.
“SAY MY NAME!” the teen shrieked. Her pupils were hellish pinpricks in a whirling golden iris reflecting the griffon’s own shocked expression back to himself two-fold. “Say it!”
By the blueness about the griffon’s face, they’d been at this for some time.
Harpoon wasn’t one to enjoy interrupting ponies and avoided doing such where she could, especially when they were so clearly enjoying themselves, but the MoM needed its keel in the grasp of somepony a little less fixated on expressing her feelings just now.
Parrot leapt about with a snarl, blinked rapidly and shrunk noticeably as her various hairs, feathers and extremities lowered themselves back to her body. Her expression softened considerably to one that might have been seen on a housewife who’d just received an unexpected guest caller and wished she’d done more tidying up first. “Oh, First Mate.”
“Keep them off me,” Harpoon stated simply, dragging the gasping griffon clear then giving the wheel a hefty toss that sent the ship pulling them all sideways. Her battered back and sides protested the strain but she ignored it.
Daylight crept over the port gunwale and inched its blazing way back onto the deck. A cannonball veered into open water and vanished with a splash. The instant the light faltered in its advance – the griffons above moved their frigate to match the maneuver – Harpoon sent the wheel rocketing the other way. Ponies and griffons alike lurched across the deck.
For now, it was all she could do to shake loose of as many of the falling cannonballs as she could. A hundred feet overhead griffons shouted and worked to bring their frigate over them again. There were too few pegasi on the crew to make a move on it and the unicorns of the crew lacked the kind of magic power to challenge the ship from here. Harpoon grit her teeth as she fought her best to keep the already mast-hobbled ship out of the bath of falling cannonballs. Windlass and Parrot fended off griffons, but she gave her only thought to the wheel. Her wings promised pain tomorrow, then she flung it hard enough to tilt the ship and send half the combatants staggering about.
Another cannon ball splashed harmless into the ocean. Slowly, with much in the way of distant shouting, the sky-frigate began to come closer...
“That’s right,” the First Mate growled, “that’s right.”
Flotsam and the griffon hen fell through the hole. Flotsam fell in tangle of hair and limbs, some of which weren’t his. His ribs were organizing a protest march against his brain. He blinked against the double twilight of the below-decks. Their new hole let in only enough light to really emphasize the shadows.
He groaned. Wood debris slipped and slurped under his hoof as he made to pick himself up. Weakly he had to scrape it away when it followed with him. Flotsam felt sticky and heavy. The unmistakeable, lung-clogging smell of pitch filled his awareness. A barrel of tar had broken his fall.
More specifically, his fall had broken a barrel of tar. He’d still hit the deck beneath it pretty hard. The griffon’s hens moans behind him suggested that she was a) conscious and b) regretting some very recent life choices. Wood and heavy things rustled behind Flotsam. He needed to take his own hooves before he could even think to turn and look.
It was harder than he liked. He was stunned, with the feebleness that comes of it, and he was drenched in viscous tar. He had enough of his face to see and breath and little else. He felt like gum: the really old, chewed-until-it’s-gray kind that invariably gets stuck to the undersides of seats. It was heavy.
Life seemed very unkind and bizarre until he remembered something of what he’d been doing. “Patches,” the stallion croaked.
It was an idea he could rebuild his dizzy thoughts around, like the first lump of rock that accretes with dust and ice to make a world. “Patches.”
Barrels and crates met his gaze at every turn. The hold, then. It looked very different when one entered it through the ceiling. Did boats have ceilings? Decks? And what separated a boat from a ship anyway?
He was looking for Patches. Patches liked barrels and buckets and jars and things... things that a pony could put other things into. Her remembered the pickles. His stomach was neither forgiving nor forgetting of those. Behind him something slid and fell heavily to crash on the floor and grumbles he didn’t recognize echoed from the mess.
Flotsam’s hoof bumped against cold metal. It was strange to see this of all things just sitting there, embedded in a section of flooring half-caved in. That’s a cannonball he mused dumbly, and more dizzy pieces clipped back together in his head.
“Unicorn...thinks...she can just...beat me!”
“What?”
Some less dazed, less conscious part of Flotsam possibly recalled the recent notes it had taken quite recently on getting tackled from behind. He lurched to the side drunkenly and a charge that should have lifted up his back legs and put his head through a wall instead ended up with him skittering three-legged behind an enraged to almost spherical poofiness blue-black griffon hen jealously bear-hugging his remaining leg.
He kicked to shake her loose of his back leg and found some success in making hoof-to-beak contact. Then something sharp and triangular clamped down on his hoof and a pony equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction made his knees drop out from under him.
This of course brought them both down, which mean he now had everything he had before, now on the ground, now between his legs and with a very recently actualized bite force. With tar on.
It wasn’t a great time to be Flotsam just then. Existentially dreadful and all. On the whole though, dread can be such a catalyst for decisive action.
Flotsam acted. A magical wall shot out from him, peeled the griffon from him and splayed her flat to the far wall in all of a second.
The griffon gave the wheeze-groan of one having had the fight well and truly knocked out of her. He judged her incapacitated and let the spell fall. Whipping his horn with unthinking inspiration he sent the scraps of wood, plank and barrel pieces alike coalescing around the griffon, at first a wooden harness of sorts and then a cage, enough to keep her wings shut and her neck cramped.
The hen only really came back to her senses as the ruined metal rim curled itself around her beak into a muzzle of sorts.
“No, no damnit no! I’ll-” she squawked before it cinched shut. The griffon struggled angrily, but boxed in tight as she was there was no leverage with which to truly bring her strength to bear and tear the impromptu prison apart.
Shadows still flickered with light overhead. The battle wasn’t let up yet. Patches, Flotsam thought sullenly. He hoped the filly was tucked away somewhere snug and quiet, and the fact that, where that the case his whole quest to find her would be redundant he didn’t really care about.
When you went rescuing princesses you weren’t in it for the adventure. At least, you weren’t supposed to be. What mattered was that she was safe, and Flotsam fixed that goal in mind.
Taking a last moment to consider his glaring prisoner, he added an artist’s finishing touches and dropped her, griffon and cage and all into a random barrell and slammed the lid back onto it.
In that moment to breath he noticed to nagging heat in his ear. But he had a lot of bruises-to-be and rushed away on his quest ignoring them all best he knew how and trailing sticky tar behind him.
If he’d stayed for a while – just long enough for the griffon’s tantrum pass – he’d might have heard a young griffon hen exclaim – double-muffled and lisping by way of an improvised metal muzzle – “Food? Fweet!”
But Flotsam didn’t stay, because as heroes went he was of the fairly shiny variety and had ponies to rescue.
Patches did not need rescuing presently.
Her mount, on the other hoof, needed some help about now.
Patches was small with long lanky limbs and very light and favoured equally small and weightless weaponry. These were all disadvantages from a certain and well established point of view, and it was one that Patches was well aware of being predominant in most things in her life. From another point of view, namely Patches’ own – being small and light was an absolute advantage when it came to jumping on a griffon’s back, rodeo-style.
“Stop! Stop! Stop poking me! Ok, I’ll stop! I’ll - OW! WHY?! I SAID I’LL - OW!”
Patches clung like a scarf to the griffon’s neck. Her back legs windmilled wildly and she let them. She hadn’t the leverage to jab particularly hard at the griffon’s back and the feathers were taking most of the blade, but success was just a matter of diligence.
Patches knew that realistically she was supposed to go to one of her quiet spots on the Mother of Mercy and wait this out. But she had some great reasons the Captain would very clearly understand why she done that and was instead out here in the thick of it on the biggest, meanest griffon she could find, if only Patches could put them into words and remember them for later after the adrenaline fell away. These reasons, given word-form for your benefit, humble reader, were:
Reason P - She’d been a little kid before, so of course way back then waiting it out was the right thing to do. But now she was practically grown up. She even had underlings now! One underling. Sort of. Flotsam. But still.
Reason A - Hiding had always been meant for when the crew went and raided other ships. She’d never been told nothing about having to do anything particular if pirates ever stepped onto this one.
Reason T - She was helping, seriously! She’d done this really cool run-up-the-wall and back flip behind the enemy trick, and slashed a rope, and a net had fallen onto some griffons, and pretty miss Charming Booty had said something that sounded like a joke and Hop Scotch had laughed really hard and then both mares had pulled it tight and she’d said “Not with the kid around!” and CB had said “She wouldn’t understand yet anyway,” and shot some magic into the trapped griffons but Patches totally really did understand it and then sulked because they wouldn’t explain to check if they understood it the same way as she did and she wanted to know what the joke was at least until the next griffons came at them.
Reason C - It of course went without saying that repelling invaders was a valuable, neigh, essential experience in her development and learning as a valued and contribution-making member of the crew. In fact, not letting her join the fray would really be the real act of piracy here, it’d be robbing her blind of essential life lessons and education, well and truly it would be. ...although this wasn’t so much a reason of Patches’ as an angle she’d try to spin to the Captain after the fact, if it came to that. She didn’t really understand all the terminology involved but there was a very convincing sound to it.
Reason H (which was essentially the truth buried under Reason C) - She really, really, really wanted to do this.
Reason E - Did she mention the wall-run-backflip-rope-slice-net-drop? It was really cool. Where was Flotsam to gawk when a pony needed him?
and lastly...
Reason S, although this was a private reason and not for sharing, barely even with her own psyche - Filly needed to express some rage.
“Get it off!” The griffon-mount shrieked.
“But it’s just a-”
“NOW!”
Patches was plucked from the blood-prickled back of her target like a flea.
She was given roughly the same degree of empathy. She slammed into the gunwale and dropped with a thud, her short knife clattering loudly beside her.
Then she was picked up by the throat. From the front the griffon she’d first jumped on – the biggest, angriest one she could find, naturally – looked way scarier. The griffon’s eyes swirled with red fury. Two toes were missing from the grip that held her throat. Patches could tell it was a new injury; the warm dribbles falling down onto her chest gave it away.
“Evil...little...thing!” the griffon hissed. Though sheared of two talons, enough remained there to begin crunching down on the filly’s neck.
She squirmed, but against the griffon’s strength her own forelegs were useless.
Patches cried. Not heroically, not defiantly, but hot, blubbery, furiously ashamed tears. She’d been doing really good with all the other crew-mares so far.
Then she planted her other knife an inch deep into the griffon’s foreleg. (Because honestly, who carries just one knife?)
The griffon’s howl of outrage was loud enough to blast through all the other sounds of struggle. Two Toes swatted the small blade away and then Patches was flying, then she was falling, then she was hitting the water hard enough to give the filly whiplash.
Frothy water bubbled over her, direction spun out of her control and then waves spat her back to the surface.
It needs to be known that the ocean looks a whole lot different when you’re actually in it. You don’t see horizons. You just see the next swell, and it’s bigger than you are, and it’s going to roll right through you and so is the next one after that. Not violent, not evil, just apathetic and remorseless and punctual.
Patches went breathless and tumbling through the first. She arose too late to snatch any air for the second. The third only brushed past her legs.
She was halfway back to the Mother when she saw the magical glow surrounding her limbs and connected that dot to the rigidly stiff figure of Charming Booty.
The filly plopped down onto the deck and didn’t do much of anything. She was sopping wet and everything confused her. The Quartermaster pulled her chin to face her.
“You okay?”
Patches regarded Charming Booty. She remembered that she rather liked the flashy pony. She thought about what it was she had asked her. She remembered how to express her answer.
Patches nodded.
“Good,” the unicorn said. She was shuddering and shaky now. Unicorns got like that sometimes, Patches knew. “Shanty! Hop Scotch!” Two more ponies she knew. “Keep her safe. We’re winning the deck back. Go. Captain’s Cabin.”
“Uh, right!”
“Patches, can you walk? Come on!”
Griffons were lifting by ones and twos into the air as they lost ground. Here and there a few tried landing again to rejoin the fight, but the initial rush of their attack was broken.
Charming Booty drew her sword with magic and swished it experimentally. Slow. Sloppy. Tension unfolded between her eyes. But she expected this. Her magic was suited for the soft touch, not at all for what she’d just needed of it. She glared at the rising figure of Two Toes, lifting back towards the frigate that shadowed them still. Other griffons rose and fell as they plucked their comrades from the water.
“Going after children,” Charming muttered darkly. Now was a time of lull in the battle; whether for the griffons to retreat fully or simply regroup, she didn’t know. She expected the latter. Whoever these new-comers to the Coral Coast waters were, they hadn’t learned to play by the rules. Or by any rules at all.
The cannonballs had stopped raining down on them, at least for now. If these griffons had any sense of strategy, though; it was time to redouble their bombardment efforts, now that the decks were clear of their own.
This fight wasn't over. This lull was just a chance for everyone involved to catch their breath.
This chapter is different from the others in several ways, not least of which is that it is considerably longer (and even then is only part 1 of a multi-parter 
) Choosing not to add Dark or Gore tags presently, I don't think we've crossed that bridge just yet and neither are really defining traits of the story.
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Haven't read the new chapter yet but I have to say that's some great cover art.
You know, I think one of the major hindrances you've had regarding exposure to this intriguing adventure has been misleading cover art. People are very visual in making initial judgements, and it really didn't fit. I'd even say it really threw things off with the description, making for a disconnected first page that certainly kept leaving me feel weird about it.
That new one is fantastic. I wouldn't be surprised if you notice a traceable jump in views as a result.
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Harwick does incredible stuff. It elates and flatters (and baffles) me that this fanart happened.
Harwick did a darn fine job on your cover art. It's beautiful, to say the least, and much more story-centric (cause it actually features the characters in it!).
This latest chapter, the whirls and twirls of it all, I originally thought you would be hard-pressed to do a lengthy pirate fight scene without at least a teen rating gore tag (cause, you know, blood is technically not E-rated last I checked) but I have to say, you did well here in this chapter.
The number of similes/metaphors seem to have been doubled (or perhaps it is the increased length that makes it feel that way). Just an observation, not a bad thing.
I caught this though:
If it's a POV thing then completely ignore, but otherwise I'm thinking maybe you are missing a "her" after fall. If that's the character's POV voice talking (or even your own) then totally ignore, but that was something I noticed during a skimback (in an attempt to remember something else weird that I read, but forgot to paste into the comments before reading) that seemed kind of weird. Who knows, that might have even been what I was looking for.
I like the story's progress, I eagerly await part two.
>>Sees new chapter with over 6k words
quickmeme.com/img/38/386a007910aa3434d7b7e4553b36991961d99f452b915a2ad38f8c894f9b8207.jpg
I'm really digging this new chapter.
Action, action, everywhere,
And all the readers did think,
Action, action, everywhere,
This would be a bad time to blink!
Great cover art.
An impressive chapter of rousing battle on the high seas! Or even higher, in the case of the enemy's ship... I love the gusto of the crew as they take to the fight, and the way the action ranges all around, above and within the ship itself. I do hope that poor Flotsam forgot how to think strategically along with everything else, as he does not seem to be displaying the most keen military mind through this encounter. Still, at least he is brave and relatively resourceful... That'll do in a pinch, apparently.
I have to wonder if these griffons are really of a piratical nature or if they happen to be linked to the reason our hero was adrift in the first place. Maybe the prisoner he took can shed some light on that, provided they survive the next chapter afloat long enough to ask.
Great fun! Can't wait for more...
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I'm thrilled people like it... I drew it simply because I enjoyed the premise and thought an afternoon sketching pirate mares would be time well spent. And I'm certainly glad that I could capture Patches with her knife before this chapter.
criarmeme.com.br/meme/meme-550--hahahahaha.jpg
P.S. Coffee. Can't not live without you.
And I thought Shiny would have had some sort of tactical mind...military mind....and military mind don't care about playing fair.
Ahh, so airship yes, Equestrians no. Which is a good thing, probably, Shiny doesn't need to end up fighting his own former comrades.
Interesting. If Nauticaa is trying to go straight and take her crew with her, rescuing and returning Shining might go a long way towards enabling that.
Great chapter, so much entertaining action.
Looks like you to are banking a new griffon character for later.
Each chapter, I start out thinking "there's no way Patches can get any cuter," and each chapter I'm proven wrong.
Huh, that's different. Usually someone is tarred before being feathered.
This longer chapter was good, actually. I wish all your chapters were this long and descriptive, or maybe even just more than a thousand words. Maybe you want it that way? - that's cool and all, but it just doesn't seem like a thousand and something words can fit a writing of this calibre, I want to know more about the story, more of what's going on. You have really beautiful moments of prose. Really, really beautiful stuff. That descriptive work Patches was in the ocean was on par with the best. I was enchanted.
I really want to like this story, and the writing technique is right up my alley and I enjoy it, but as is, I get a few little flashes of things, and it jumps from chapter to chapter and scene to scene without any transition, and I wish I knew more about the story, more about the characters, more about what's going on. It's kind of a letdown, really, because clearly you have so much to offer and it's what prevents this story from being truly great. Kind of the opposite problem of not having enough substance to your millions of words.
Wow, four years in the making
Im still waitiing for CaptainSand-ScarletBlade to continue reading