A New Voyage

                                                                              Darkness.

That was all he could see, but unlike the darkness of the inside of a cave that fills you with uncertainty this darkness was comforting. This was the darkness that dreamless sleep brings about.

He was glad for it, sleep had been alluding him lately and when it did finally come around all it brought were unpleasant dreams.

But when a child very much cared for was in danger that was usually the case for any parent.

It started out dreamless at least but slowly he found himself dreaming of when he first met Ace, back when the young man only had a mind to claim Whitebeard's head not only for the respect such an action would garner but also for a more...personal reason.

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     "Where's this kid who wants to take my head?"

The Whitebeard Pirate's massive flagship "Moby Dick" made its way through the mists surrounding the bay, their mighty captain standing on the bow of the ship,slowly came into view.

The Spade Pirates of whom Ace was the captain, could hardly believe their eyes.

The Whitebeard pirates the ones who were said to have rivaled the legendary strength of the pirate king himself, the ones they had been searching for were right here in front of them and more importantly...

Their captain had disembarked and was making his way towards them...alone.

"As you wish I'll take you on kid" The massive creature approaching them stated with a literal grin on his face.

As for Ace himself well the past five days straight he had been fighting against one of Whitebeard's allies, whose own strength was quite near legendary trying to get information on Whitebeard's location from him.

Ace was tired but could still put up a fight and that was exactly what he intended to do.

As Whitebeard finally stood before the spade pirates in full view he snorted and let loose a single shock wave of his power which was more then enough to send Ace's crew tumbling through the air.

"You guys!!" Ace shouted as he called on his own fire based power and created a dome of flame around both him and the giant.

"Captain!Captain Ace,what are you doing?!" One of his men shouted from outside the barrier.

"Run you guys!!" Ace shouted.

"ehhh...What?...You gonna run away now..?" Whitebeard asked.

"I'm giving my crew a chance to escape! I stand in their place...I refuse to run!" Ace declared gathering his courage to attack the monster in front of him

"heh...What a cheeky little brat you are," The behemoth mused.

Then all of a sudden Ace leap towards the Old man perhaps hoping to have caught him off guard...which he hadn't.

Whitebeard in one quick motion swung his massive bisento at his young attacker, which made contact in an instant.

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That was all he had the chance to dream of when something awoke him from his sleep.

A low and hungry growl.

As he lay with his eyes still shut he admitted to himself that this surprised him a bit.

He hadn't thought that he would be hearing anything considering he was dead...but then he was wondering why he was able to hold conscious thought or even dream..unless of course that talk of hell turned out to be true. In which case the growling made even more sense, if the stories of demons were true too.

In any case he wouldn't just sit there and wonder, he would confront whatever sounded so very angry with him head on as he did everything else in life.

So he opened his eye's and from his position on the ground was greeted with a peculiar sight.

A large bizarre looking creature with lion like features wings and a scorpion tail slowly stalking towards him.

As he raised his head to get a better look at it he realized he was a little bit under eye level with the thing, which called to his memory that he was much larger then most things causing him to laugh that unique laugh his.

"gurarara...You'd think I remember something that obvious"he said to himself as he leaned on his arm to pick himself up.

Which was when he noticed something even stranger then the beast before him.

His hand..had been replaced by a hoof. One covered in white fur.

As he marveled at the sight with the same disinterested look he wore most of the time he shifted to an awkward sitting position and checked his other arm followed by one leg, then the other.

The result was the same each time, one hoof with white fur.

As he was trying to process this he hadn't notice the mismatched creature had closed the distance between them and was about to pounce on its prey...at least him not noticing was the beasts hope.

When it did attack he easily caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and with hardly a turn of his head swung his arm....leg?..in the creatures direction which, timed along with the beasts actions led to a perfect strike along side the things head.

Well he knew it was a strike, if anyone happened to be watching this they would have sworn he just tapped it.

But regardless of appearances it did the job. The poor unsuspecting creature was sent spinning through the air and finally into a tree and from there fell to the ground.

There it simply laid quietly trying to wrap its mind around how a creature usually fine to prey upon just mare-slapped it into a tree.

He gave the downed but still alive monstrosity a quick stare, and then returned his attention to his new found appendages and he examined them, he gave the rest of his body a slow once over confirming his suspicion that his entire body was different. He saw it was now more...equine.

What caught his attention more predominantly was the mark on his new left and right hind legs.

It was his trademark cross shaped jolly roger, which for the longest time had been a tattoo on his back.

But before he could give it much thought another revelation made itself known...his cloths were gone. Even his captain's coat was missing.

"mm....That's..heh"

As awkward as this was he couldn't help but laugh a little at the ordeal and beside's if his guess was right he was now stuck in a horses body, and seeing as they never wore cloths he didn't think people would look at him like a lunatic.

....But it still felt off

At the nearest possible convenience he hoped he'd be able to find some replacements. Assuming hell's people had clothing stores, the thought of which made him laugh again.

He then finally stood up off the ground and even in this new strange body he could tell he still was quite tall, although maybe not as immense as he once was.

His height didn't make that much difference to him but it was comforting to know at least something was the same.

Standing on all fours was a little awkward at first but he quickly got over it and then turned his attention to his attacker, who was still laying on the ground but obviously alive.

"You gonna stay down like a good demon?" Edward asked with a wry grin.

Hearing this the creature slowly opened its eyes and stared at the one who struck it, now a bit taller then itself by easy comparison.

The sight of this intimidated it for a moment, but that feeling was quickly consumed by its anger and outrage.

Realizing the beast wasn't satisfied Edward sighed and then had a thought. Looking down at his han...hoof he focused and tried to call on the power of his devil fruit. And much to his satisfaction it worked.

A familiar sound was heard followed by the forming of a white translucent bubble around his hoof.

Smiling he looked up at the beast who was now in an attacking stance.

"gurarararara....You still goin' for it eh? Don't you demons know who I am?" He said as if expecting it to speak back.

The creature having noticed the strange glow around his hoof looked up and met edwards gaze and saw his smile turn to an determined glare.

"I AM WHITEBEARD !!"

With that bellowing statement the pirate leaped towards the monster catching it off guard and brought his tremor charged hoof down on its skull.

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                                                           Shortly before, in Ponyville

"So girls you are you ready to give it a go?"Twilight asked having finished setting up the various bits of lab equipment just outside the library, primarily centered around seismographic equipment and the like.

"Yeah! cutie mark crusaders geolo....geali...uhhh..." all three fillies stumbled with the word

"Geologists?" Twilight interjected.

"Yeah! cutie mark crusaders...what ever you just said!" Sweetie belle shouted.

"Ah dunno...maybe we should try sumthin...easier to pronounce?" Applebloom wondered.

"Or maybe something with less...science-y stuff involved...this looks kinda complicated.." Scootaloo said directly to Twilight.

"Oh,its not REALLY all that hard to understand. Here I'll show you lets start over here," Twilight said enthusiastically as she trotted over to her seismograph.

When the crusaders had come to her asking for help with their talent search in an area of science the young alicorn was more then happy to help...in fact she may have even been a bit TOO happy if you were to ask the crusaders themselves.

For almost immediately, she had begun a string of mini lectures about various geological discoveries and of geodes and minerals uncovered in the last one thousand years...in excruciating detail.

"uuuuh...whats this thing called again?" Scootaloo asked in a partially nervous tone for fear of causing another avalanche of learning.

"Its a seismograph. Its used to detect any movements in the earth" Twilight chirped "and then it records them here" pointing out the slowly lengthening stretch of paper with shaky but generally straight lines.

"Records?...so its like a movie?" Sweetie belle asked with a slowly growing tone of interest.

"No it doesn't record like THAT ,you see it-" but before Twilight could finish Applebloom burst in

"OH OH maybe we should try bein' movie directers!" she said to her fellow crusaders.

"YEAH!cutie mark crusader movie directors!!" Sweetie and Scootaloo both shouted gleefully with most of the enthusiasm coming from Scootaloo,they then all three turned and started off on their next adventure.

"Wha-bu....WAIT girls?!" Twilight shouted as the crusaders ran off thanking her for the idea as they ran.

After standing dumbfounded for a moment or two she finally sighed "And here I thought I was reaching them.."

She was about to begin collecting her equipment for storage in her lab, when something on the seismograph caught her eye....it was going wild unlike anything she had ever seen.

Her eyes widened as far as they could and a little bit beyond...and then the panic set in.

"OmigoshomigoshOMIGOSH, an earthquake?! NOW?! But we're not even on a fault line and...look at those READINGS!! WE HAVE TO EVACUATE WE-" but her concern quickly turned to confusion followed by annoyance when she realized the true source of the massive disruption.

"Heya Twilight!I've got some BIIIIIG news!" Pinkie stated from on top of the machine, shaking excitedly for some reason smiling the whole time.

Twilight wasn't sure whether to address the pink mare's presence,or first wonder how she hadn't noticed her sitting on the machine in the first place.

She elected the former with a sigh " Hello Pinkie, thanks for the heart attack" she said as she slowly managed a smile for her friend "So? Whats the big news?"

And upon hearing that her pink friend jumped down and took a deep long breath "Well-I-was-just-talking-with-Berry-punch-you-know-Berry?She's-the-pony-whose-basically-Ponyvilles-resident-punch-enthusiast?Well-I-was-talking-to-her-about-a-punch-flavored-cake-I-mean-they-have-pineapple-upside-down-cake-strawberry-shortcake-and-even-cheesecake!So-why-not-a-punch-cake?or-maybe-we-should-call-it-cupcake-of punch?OR-maybe-even-"

"PINKIE!" The alicorn interrupted. Pinkie stopped suddenly but maintained her cheerful expression

"....The big news?" Twilight reminded with just a hint of annoyance.

"....OH YEAH! Well anyway, while I was talking with Berry my eye started a-flutterin' and my knee started a-knockin! You know what that means?!" Pinkie said getting right up in Twilight's face.

"uhhhhhh.." But before Twilight could properly guess Pinkie spoke again

"It means someone NEW is coming to ponyville! And they'll be here SOON! BUuut thats not all...after that I told berry the good news and went to start planning the new ponies party which was going to be kinda difficult, so I decided instead to start looking for the new pony...and THATS when my knee started getting all pinchy and it felt like a real doozy. Then I saw you standing here and thought I should warn you" Pinkie said surprisingly without her smile.

Twilight thought for a moment before she spoke "...Doesn't that mean..." at that very moment the ground began to shake violently enough to cause some of Twilight's heavier equipment to fall over

"SOMETHING SCARY'S GONNA HAPPEN" Shouted Pinkie as she shook more violently then the ground from her own over excitement.

The entire town was feeling the effects of this tremor.

Ponies throughout were struggling to keep their balance and most were beginning to panic. If this was an earthquake, it was unlike any the little town had ever experienced.

But then just as suddenly as it came the shaking stopped.

All through out town the confused populace were picking themselves up and murmuring amongst themselves  while some were nervously looking about.

After taking a few moments to recompose herself Twilight spoke "w-...What in the hoof was THAT?!"

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Edward stood silently for a moment looming over what was once a manticore, or as he thought it was a demon of hell come for his soul.

"....gurararara, May have over done that a bit," Edward mused as the creatures tail, which was the only part of it still solid slumped over with a crack.

"Still though, pretty pathetic for a demon...but then again I may be dead in the afterlife and a horse but I'm still Whitebeard,"

After he said that Edward then wondered just what his new equine face looked like. A quick glance towards his nose had confirmed his wide tusk-like white mustache was still present, but he was still curious.

He had already noticed he was in a forest of some sort, which he didn't let surprise him to much.

He didn't exactly put to much effort into thoughts of the afterlife while alive so hell or wherever he was, quite possibly could have had trees and forests as far as he was concerned. But more importantly if it had those, why not lakes and ponds?

And so he started walking or trotting rather, the hope was he would come across maybe a small body of water to use as a mirror his motivation.

But that mindset produced another thought of curiosity, one which made known verbally.

"hm....I wonder if hell has any good booze."