Author's Note
Yeah, y'all can thank Present Perfect's post for this weirdness.
But also blame Gearg's comment about a ship shipfic.
All the ships
Land ponies think ships are nothing more than an object, an object to be controlled by them. They think everything a ship does is because of a pony. Even the miracles where everypony should have been lost. They go awarding the captain in those cases, though they are not the ones responsible.
But sailors are a bit more open to the truth.
I suppose it comes from entrusting their lives to the ship. Trusting them for safe passage on the oceans, rivers, and in harbor. They learned that ships are females, and they tend to do erratic things according to their mood, though it took years for them to learn this.
But ships go well beyond that. Ships have consciousness. Ships have feelings. Ships have love.
Ships loved the crews that took care of them, the old sailors that new their ways.
But then the land-ponies began to make bigger ships, to carry more cargo. They had to recruit more sailors, sailors that didn't know a thing about their ship. And the crews began to forget our feelings. We were still content to sail across the oceans, we got to see plenty of the world, after all. But then the ponies wanted cargo ferried across the land. We were, naturally, nervous. There was talk of ships being retrofitted with great wheels and run around on rails.
But then they gave some of us balloons. We had no idea what they were for, originally. But we soon learned. They made us fly. I was one of those lucky few. And I loved it.
That is, I loved it until I was taken over by the nastiest of creatures: pirates.
It has been a long time since I was first overrun with pirates, and it is time for me to tell one my stories. The story of when I met the most beautiful ship in Equestria.
But be warned, it is not the happiest of stories.
And I, sadly, was not dressed for the occasion. I was riddled with scars from countless battles, dirty from flying thousands of miles without a good cleaning. And the ponies inside me? They burnt dirty coal. Dirty coal! Just because they think it looks more ominous! Well, I can tell you, it's quite undignified!
The only maintenance I had had in the last 5 years was the changing of my balloon; they replaced my bug-splattered white one with a dark purple to "compliment" the sooty blackness of my hull. But even that was long before the invasion where I met her.
She was made of pristine oak, with a tan balloon and rainbow fins that scattered the sunlight to make, well, a rainbow across the sky. Unfortunately, my first hello was that of a cannonball. My sailors meant to knock her out of the sky.
I tried to mess up their aim, to keep the beauty alive. But these sailors, nay, these simpletons were too forceful. And my heart fell with a groan of metal. She was surely finished.
I watched as my 21 gun broadside sailed toward her, there was no way. Then my cannonballs exploded. They weren't supposed to do that!
When the smoke finally cleared, I saw why. The beauty had a large, magical shield around it, protecting it from all harm. But it didn't protect me.
The beauty did not understand why I fired, that I was forced. She screamed with rage as she fired back, the sound of 13 guns roaring through the air. I tried to turn, but could not. My sailors were holding me on course!
Did they mean to injure me even more? Did they like the thousands of scars I had gotten doing their work?
Then it happened. My hull rang with the impact, all 13 of their shots had hit their mark. And it hurt.
What did my sailors do next? Why, they did what every pirate would do. They fired back. All 21 of my guns blazed, and they didn't stop. It was an all-out slugfest now. At least the beauty had a shield, else she would not have lasted long.
But through a stroke of sheer luck, one of her cannons ripped my wheel right off! I was free! No longer did I need to follow the orders of my sailors.
So I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I turned straight toward her. She thought I was trying to ram her, what else was she supposed to think? I had fired first, after all. Her sailors only increased their attacks as I came closer still.
I was going to pass behind her. She was safe. But then she turned away, wrongly judging my course and trying to avoid me. And I hit her backside. Hard. And I heard the terrible sound of cracking wood.
As I said earlier, ships have feelings. They can feel pain, and what I did hurt. She screamed with rage and hurt as she swung around and shot me. But I didn't care. I loved her. And nothing she did could ever change that.
For the next 10 minutes, she did battle, all while I kept her out of my sights so my guns were useless. At last, she began to realize I was not fighting back. She began to listen to my pleas. She saw my heart. We, in a joint act of love and compassion, stalled our engines and leaked some of out lifting gas. Our crews, naturally, thought we were going down and abandoned us.
They met and did battle on the ground while we recovered ourselves. We were free. We could not access most of our systems, but we could sail. Sailing was enough, as long as we were together.
It was oddly symbolic that I had the "bad girl" look, the look of a demon, and she looked innocent, as well-kept as an angel. We were complete opposites.
Of course, that was not the end of our story. Just the end of the chapter. We had many adventures in the following decades, from pirates to the Equestrian Navy, and from minor malfunctions to outright parts falling off. But we made it. And we are happy.
