Exploits of a slave

The morning was crisp and the eastern wind blew, many leagues up in the sky. The captain, passengers, ship, and crew knew, one nasty slip and they'd die! High up in the air the ground gave no respite so best not to-"

"Fluttershy! Not helping!" Exclaimed Twilight.

"Sorry Twilight..." apologized Fluttershy. "Look, don’t get me wrong, it's great you're becoming more open with your creative impulses, but could you wait until we land?"

"Okay Twilight..."

Twilight sighed nervously and went back to reading her book. Twilight had never really had a problem with flight, artificial or otherwise. However, after three to four hours on the small airship, and still not even halfway to their destination, She was getting nervous.

Twilight had accompanied Rarity and Fluttershy below deck to engage in calmer activities, she and Rarity reading as Fluttershy composed. But even being below deck didn't sooth her nerves. Pinkie pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and the Captain, however, were engaged in a game of cards above deck.

“Pinkie, got any Jacks?” Asked Dash. Pinkie silently hoofed over the card, and upon seeing she was in possession of only one card, screamed “UNO!” “Now wait a galdarned minute! Are we, or are we not, playing Black Jack?” “No.” said the captain, who then saw that two three's were stacked one on the other in the discard pile, and slapped it, earning calls of dissent from the other players. This most likely would have ended in a hoof fight, but they were interrupted by a shout.

"PIRATES!" The four ponies all stood up, their previous argument forgotten. "Where sailor!?" The captain bellowed. "Off the port bow!" “TO YOUR STATIONS! MAN THE CANNONS AND FIRE AT WILL! And where do you think you're going?” The captain asked Dash after he had finished bellowing orders.

“Where else? I'm gonna buck some sense into some ponies that think that they can get away with piracy in Equestrian airspace!” The captain sighed in exasperation.

“Miss Dash, I have three, no... four things to tell ya. Firstly, These ain't ponies. If you'll see their flag, they be Gryphons. Secondly, We ain't in Equestrian air, haven’t been for hours. And thirdly, yer a passenger. 'Nuff said. Now get!” He said quickly, motioning her to the hatch leading below.

Rainbow Dash crossed her hooves defiantly. “And four?” She said, hovering so as to look down on him. “Fourthly, I won't tolerate mutinous passengers. So if you don't feel like flyin' home on yer own two wings, get below!” He growled. Rainbow Dash had suddenly gotten the inexplicable urge to guard Fluttershy.

Below the deck itself was chaos. Passengers all trying their very best to stay out of the way while the cannoneers rushed to load and fire their weapons. Above was a flurry of activity. Unicorns were busy emitting a shield around the envelope while pegasi all readied themselves by donning armor and an interesting and diverse amount of weaponry, from pikes to claws to maces.

'They certainly know what they're doing.' Thought Twilight as she watched them gather the items from the hold. The Gryphon ship was getting closer, and the more vigilant of the crew could even hear them yelling at each other.

“Держать судно в вашей достопримечательности! Не позволяйте им уйти!Бутылка рома в anygryph который захватывает один живой!”

Though they couldn't make anything of it, it didn't sound like they wanted to have a picnic. The Pirate ship was getting closer and closer, so much so in fact that Twilight could feel them.

The Gryphons rocketed themselves at the passenger ship, chanting whatever war cry they felt like at the time, changing their minds, and yelling something else. The pegasi waited on the ship for the pirates while the unicorns cast spell after spell in an attempt to slow down/stop the invaders.

The Gryphons landed on the deck and made war. Armed with wing blades and iron talons, they were quite the formidable foe, but the defending ponies were no slouches. The Gryphons quickly took an offensive position and the defenders were very offended. After the Gryphons stopped laughing and the captains exchanged customary insults the battle began in earnest.

Twilight and her friends could hear it all. From the screech of metal on metal to the squelch of metal through bone to the thunk of some moron tripping. That last comment was Applejack's. And while it wasn't very nice, it was honest, that's just what she does.

The other sound they heard which worried them very much was the report of a cannon, one just a little bit farther away than their own.

It wasn't until that day that Twilight truly appreciated floors. But, it is said that you never know what you have until it's gone, and alas, Twilight was now very aware of the floor. Being gone. But she decided not to scream until she was absolutely sure that was a bad thing. Then she fell, and decided to scream.

That scream was accompanied with four others just like it, except the third, which sounded closer to a sigh. Rainbow Dash immediately jumped into action and flew to save the most important of the party. Fluttershy. Which left only four of her other friends screaming bloody murder. However, luck was with them, for she then spotted three pegasi flying down to intercept the land bound missiles of flesh and earsplitting wails, allowing Rainbow Dash to circle around and catch her last friend.

Luck then decided to show everypony that she had brought her closest sister, Alas, for it was then that Rainbow Dash spotted a Gryphon zeroing in on the outside pony. Rainbow Dash vowed to give Luck a buck in the teeth for bringing such an unwanted guest when all this was sorted out. But first, she needed to save Twilight.

Going so fast that she very nearly did a Sonic Rainboom and definitely cemented Fluttershy into a shock induced frozen state, Rainbow Dash quite quickly dropped Fluttershy on the bit of wood that was still connected to the ship, then flew back. She then pretty speedily flew towards Twilight passing the rest of her friends being carried by pegasi on the way.

She flew faster and faster and faster.

But not fast enough.

The gryphon snatched Twilight seconds before Rainbow Dash rocketed by where Twilight wasn't anymore. “NO!” And a string of curses I shall not repeat left Rainbow Dash's mouth. But it didn't do much good for it was snatched away by Wind, the blackguard.

Twilight, on her part, was not aware of her current predicament. Until she looked at her savior and saw not the rugged handsome face of one of the sailors, nor the confident smirk accompanied by a blue face, but a beak.

Now Twilight, you might know already, for all her smarts and brains, didn't work well under pressure. Sure she had just been saved what would have most definitely been a very messy end, but she was still in the middle of a battle. So when she saw that beak, it took her several tries ( a squid? A parrot? A flamingo? A Triceratops?) before realizing that she was looking at the beak of a gryphon.

This didn't sit well with Twilight.

She had however retained enough of her smarts to realize that flailing her legs about would not be in her best interest, so she did the next best thing. She screamed. Loudly.

“RAINBOW DASH! SAVE MEEEEE! THE GRYPHONS ARE GONNA EAT MEEEEE!” Mind you, Twilight was still under a lot of stress.

The whole 'Twilight gets eaten by gryphons' thing didn't sit well with Rainbow Dash either, but she was already going the her fastest she could without blowing the ships from the sky with a sonic rainboom. 'Damnation that gryphon is fast!' she cursed in her head, because cursing out loud would be rude.

So she decided to call him Squishy. Why? She didn't know, it just sort of came to her, like an epiphany from heaven.

She had almost caught up with Squishy, ready to tar and de-feather him, when she got a face full of fist.

A very familiar face full of fist. She quickly recovered from the fall, but when she looked up she saw something that made her blood run cold. “GILDA!?”

Gilda smirked.

“I'm surprised you recognized me. This armor hides me pretty good.”

“How could I not recognized you?! We were best buds in flight camp! And piracy? What the buck?”

Gilda shrugged and started to circle Rainbow Dash, while Rainbow Dash circled her.

“Eh, a job's a job. Plus, I enjoy it. Y'know, after you sent me packing I really got into a funk. monologuing  helped a little, but I could barely keep my job. Then I lost it.”

“You went crazy? Wow, I'm sorry. Now this whole pirate thing totaly makes sense.” interrupted Rainbow Dash. Gilda's eye twitched. “Shut up twirly eyebrow!”

“What?”

Gilda roared and charged Rainbow Dash.

                                                                           -----

Twilight saw the whole exchange and despaired as she and her captor flew farther and farther from Rainbow Dash and closer and closer to the pirate ship. Which meant she was finally getting a good look at Gryphon airshippery. It was big, bigger than the ship Twilight came on. It was black and had twenty cannons and a window in between each one, for archers perhaps, and Twilight could only assume the same was true for the other side. What struck Twilight as odd was that instead of an envelope, it had three wooden masts, and in the place of sails the masts each had four massive propellers, like Pinkie's strange flying device. Twilight had a hard time imagining an engine big enough to power such beasts of science.

She wanted one.

They touched down onto the deck and before anygryph could stop her she had zoomed into a door which she felt would be proper if it went below deck. However, she found out that the Gryphons were complete barbarians, as it led instead to what appeared to be the captain's quarters. Her assumptions were verified when she saw the captain,(She knew he was the captain because he wore a captain hat.) a large black gryphon with an eye patch, behind his desk drawing what appeared to be cartoons for little fillies between the ages of three and twelve that involved little horses.

She didn't give it a second glance as she shot at the captain. He was half way through drawing his sword when she reached him. “Is your engine steam or hoof powered? How did you treat the wood to stay together during flight without magic? Is your hull lined with iron to protect it from cannon balls? How are the propellers rotating without any obvious connection to your engine?” Her face was inches away from the gryphon captain's face when the door burst open and and several burly looking gryphons ran in. The captain quickly hid his drawings. “{WHY IS THERE A PONY IN MY ROOM!?}”

(Translated from it's native Gryphic into Equestrian by TransCo. 'We're multilingual!')

Thundered the captain at the guards as they captured the pony and muffled it, if only slightly. “{Sorry Commander. She is speedy little pony.}” “{Make sure it does not happen again, understood?}” The captain growled. The guard gulped. “{Understood.}” Said the guards as they left the room.

The captain glared so balefully at the door that the guards felt it through the wood. He waited a few minutes to make sure he would not be interrupted, then got out his drawings. “{Now, where... was... I... Ah yes! The Shoggoth called Smooze.}”

                                                                              -----

After Twilight had been so rudely taken away from her new-found, if unwilling, fount of knowledge, she was quite roughly displaced into what appeared to be a brig. But she couldn't be too sure, that

ping-pong table looked very suspicious. And the pinball machine couldn't be trusted either. But what she saw next made her heart melt. An enormous bookcase filled to the brim with books she had never seen in her life.

She was in such a state of pure bliss, and the oddities of this ship (The captain drawing little fillies cartoons? In the middle of a raid?) had so thrown her, that she had completely forgotten all her closest friends were in mortal peril. But she was soon very rudely reminded of this when a cannon ball breached the hull, taking a bit of the floor and the bookcase with it.

The wind rushed in and she could now hear very clearly the battle. She caught a glimpse for just a second of the inside of the hull, filled with springs, wheels, and all manner of Gryphon machinery she had never seen. Then a metal plate slid over the hole, cutting off the wind and allowing Twilight's hair to rest, if in a style somewhat akin to that of a bird's nest.

She stared in awe at the self repairing wall, and was shortly given a few more examples. There had apparently been a break in the Gryphon defenses for two more cannon balls destroyed and utterly obliterated the ping-pong table and the pinball machine, respectively.

So now she was left with hard wood and cold metal. Where she was finally sunk in, why she was here, how she was here, and exactly what she could do about it. Nothing. This realization hit her like a brick. Unicorn magic didn't work outside of Equestria. Nothing. All her friends were out there, in the thick of it. She had seen this ship, there was no way the tiny passenger ship could beat this Gryphon battleship. A pirate battleship. Nothing.

The word echoed, again and again through her head, 'nothing, nothing, nothing.' almost driving her to madness. And then the tears. They fell hot and fast, searing Twilight's cheek and drenching her coat. She felt she was drowning in a boiling ocean wrought of Despair. Chained to a mount named Grief, burning under the sun. Not the loving, kind sun of Equestria, but an alien sun bent upon her destruction. A sun of False Hope. The ground opened and swallowed her. She was falling in nothing, towards nowhere.

She heard a door slam, and she was once again in her cell, She saw no sun and she felt no ocean. She caught herself hyperventilating, and she felt dizzy. Her mind was a tumultuous stew of memories never to be felt again, things never said. And now they never would be. Twilight didn't notice the gryphess until she cleared her throat, calling Twilight's attention. She looked up and saw Gilda, no longer in battle armor, but in loose fitting trousers and a shirt.

“Rainbow Dash sends her regards.” Gilda said. Twilight froze, only the worst scenarios playing through her mind. Gilda chortled. “Don't worry, she very much alive. A few scrapes and scratches.” She turned to walk away. “Wait!” Twilight exclaimed. Gilda didn't even turn. “What?” “W-why can't I understand the crew?” Gilda laughed a short, dead laugh and turned to look at Twilight. “And I thought you were the smart one.” She said, smirking. “W-well...”

“They're speaking Gryphic, I'm not surprised you don't know it. Most ponies like to keep as far away from Gryphons as they can get, including their language.”

Gilda tilted her head to the side, as if listening to something. “I gotta go. We'll be seeing a lot of each other from now on.” And she left. Leaving Twilight to her worries and feverish dreams.

                                                                           -----

Twilight stood on the edge of a precipice, divided by a chasm of immeasurable depth from her friends. “Rainbow Dash! Help me across, I can't do it alone.” But Rainbow Dash turned her back on Twilight. “What would I wanna do with some lame-o egghead? Get over by yourself. Or, better yet, just leave.” Twilight was taken aback by Rainbow's words, and she took an involuntary step back.

“Why... why are you saying that?! You're one of my best friends! Pinkie, please, talk some sense into her!” Twilight said even as tears stung her eyes. “Sense? She's talking the most sense I've heard in my life! Who'd want a party pooper like you around?” Then Pinkie turned and walked away. Then Rarity, and Applejack. One by one until they were all gone.

She turned and saw Gilda. “Where are your friends now?”

Twilight screamed.

                                                                            -----

Jorme had never really asked much from Life. He really didn't. Just a roof over his head and a family to love. And while he had expected a house in the city, a wife and chicks, he wasn't entirely disappointed with being a pirate. After all, he had a roof over his head (sorta), it payed well, kept him fit, and there was even a certain gryphess he had his eye on.

That isn't to say that it was easy. For instance, dealing with a screaming pony at 2:36 in the morning. He just didn't know what to do, was there a protocol for screaming mares? Was this a normal thing? Should he wake her? The walls down here were pretty thick so he had time to think. At last he decided to get a carrot from the kitchen (It wasn't as if anygryph would actually miss it.) and poke the pony with it until she woke, then give her the carrot.

Yes, he thought this was a good idea indeed. Ponies liked carrots, right? Of course they did. It didn't take long for the pony to wake, but the carrot didn't seem to calm it down any, except now the pony was sobbing instead of screaming. And while this would generally be categorized as an improvement, he felt this was more of a step back, as she was now crying on his shoulder.

If you asked anygryph if they understood gryphesses, Jorme would be the first to admit he didn't. And the female in question being of an  entirely different species, Jorme was left doubly unsure what to do. He lifted his hand and started to slowly pat Twilight on the back in what he thought to be a very reassuring way. When he felt her go rigid he knew he was wrong, from the way she started shaking, very wrong.

Jorme squeezed his eyes shut, preparing himself for a verbal lashing only capable by women. But it didn't come. He felt the mare move away, so he opened his eyes to see. Like I said before, Jorme doesn't understand women of any species. What he saw only confirmed this. He saw the mare wiping her eyes and even smiling a little. “Sorry, I had a really bad dream. Thanks for that.”

There were few things Jorme prided himself on, one was the ability the swab the deck by skating on it with scrub brushes, another one them was getting a decent education, which included a scant understanding of the Equestrian language.

“Not worry, color pony. Evil dreams much common.” Twilight took a sharp breath and was once again right in front of him, her nose inches away from his beak. “You can speak Equestrian?!” Jorme started to slowly back away, not sure if women were this way or if this mare was crazy, but he nodded.

Twilight positively beamed. “Oh my Gosh! I have so many questions to ask! My studies have always been limited to Equestrian culture!” Jorme stared in pity at the small mare, and he just didn't have the heart to tell her he couldn't understand half of what she said.

“Okay! Um, um, what is your ruling system?” Jorme didn't have a very good poker face. “Oh... Do, you, have a king?” Twilight said, loudly and slowly, miming a crown on her head. Jorme's face lit up in recognition. “Yes king! King Diamond Beak third.”

Twilight silently let go of his grammatical error, realizing his understanding of the Equestrian language was crude, at best. But otherwise she was thrilled to learn about the Gryphons, though the circumstances could have been better.

The was silence for a few minutes, Jorme sitting, quickly getting bored, while Twilight's mind raced about all the things she wanted to know. But his next words stopped her cold. “Aren't you worried for friends?” He asked, and Twilight froze. “Of, of course I am! They're my best friends in the world! Why wouldn't I be worried?” Twilight sputtered.

Jorme shrugged. “I not know. Just, if I was captured, I would do all in mine own power to escape.” He then pointed in her vague direction. “You not look like you trying all in power.” Twilight laughed a short, humorless laugh. “I don't know if you've noticed, but my power doesn't amount to very much outside of Equestria.”

Jorme mulled this over for some time, Twilight staring at him, still incredulous at his comment. “I guess you really are small pony.” Jorme finally said before leaving. Twilight stared at him as he left, until he was gone. What he said confused her. Not only the fact that he pointed out that she was small, but seemingly his entire character flipped in the second he said that last comment.

That brought her mind to what he said before. 'Aren't you worried for friends?' She didn't even know why she thought about it. They were her best friends, of course she was worried. But, it's not like worrying helped any, right? Of course not. Besides, she saw her friends get rescued, so they didn't fall. So they were safe. Right?

'of course, Twilight. Why wouldn't they be?' Twilight froze. That didn't sound like her head voice. It sounded off, it had a strange warble to it. 'congratulations Twilight, you've gotten close before, but now you've really gone and done it.' “Done what?” She asked the voice. 'Why, you're mad. Crazy, loopy, flipped your lid, off the deep end, special.' Twilight was shocked, to say the least. “I- I'm not crazy! What would give you that idea?!”

'Well, for one, you're talking to yourself. Do you hear my little voice? Only you can.' “I'M NOT CRAZY!” 'Radical mood swings, check.' “That's not a symptom of psychological instability!” 'She yelled at the voice in her head.' Twilight's ears flicked back, cursing herself. “Then why do you sound like Discord?” She accused. 'Well, I guess since I'm you, I should know this one. I'm the side of you you never knew existed, or tried to forget existed, so in your mental breakdown I was given a voice that matched my personification. Your cr-aazy side.'

Twilight was silently fuming at herself. That was just like her, if she was going to have a mental breakdown and hear voices, of course her brain would match them up to ponies she knew. And Discord.

“How do I know your not the real Discord trying to mess with my head?” 'Sorry Twilight, he's completely right. He is the personification of your, uh, crazy side. Sorry.'  Twilight growled in frustration. “Fluttershy, what are you doing in my head?” 'sorry Twilight, I'm, uh, your, your, repressed kind side.' "Fluttershy voice, you are in my head. I can hear you no matter how quite you are. And what do you mean repressed kind side? I'm nice, plenty nice!”

'Twilight, you were a book hermit for the majority of your life, I'm honestly not surprised you have a repressed kind side. And  don't be so mean to Flutterside!' 'Aww, thanks Dizzy.' Twilight's eye twitched and she could feel her mane coming out of place. “No. NO! It's bad enough that I have to deal with voices in my head, You will NOT use pet names!”

'Sorry Twilight.' Twilight groaned and started to rub her head. “I just hope that you're all there are.” She said. 'Well there can't be too many others. I mean, honestly, how many ponies do you know?' Twilight slowly began slamming her head on the wall “Rarity, how could you betray me like this?” She groaned.