The Festival of the Dead

Chapter 7: The Day of a Pirate

(Pirate's life: Part 2)

Twilight had just finished what Luna eagerly referred to as 'bilge-rat work' which was basically like doing the absolutely worst parts of every other job. She went to her quarters and found a surprisingly modern and comfy-looking bed waiting for her. Sleep she thought with unnatural levels of enthusiasm. The very thought was enticing enough to almost be considered erotic. What is wrong with me? How do you even feel like that towards sleep? I'm gonna have a word with Avnas over this work. She laid down and immediately fell asleep.

"Well Captain? What be the next part of the plan?"

"Well me beautiful blue buccaneer," Luna still blushed at the name he had started to address her with regularly, usually regardless of who was present, "I be thinkin' it's about time that we got the other team involved."

"When'll they be ready, Captain?"

Avnas broke character for a second. "Oh they're just outside, been ready for the game for hours. I just wanted to see if we could make Twilight have a meltdown or somethin'."

Twilight had been asleep for exactly fifteen minutes before she was woken up and one thing was for sure, Whatever did that will die tonight.

As it turned out, the intruder was a cannon ball that had ripped through the upper-half of her room, causing splinters to rain down all over her fluffy sheets, effectively ruining them. Out of the newly-furnished window peeked the Captain. He took a look at her and said in a soft voice, so as to not worsen the headache caused by a cannon-ball landing ten feet away from her pillow, "Would you like to get back at whoever did that?"

She never thought she could forgive Avnas as quickly as when he said that.

"What's happening out here?!" Yelled Twilight. Another ship, much larger and quickly circling closer to them, was firing dozens of cannons at them every few seconds.

"Pirate battle!" Announced Avnas, drawing a saber that she wasn't sure he should have. "Them yellow cowards found us first and got the drop on us!" Never let it be said that Avnas wasn't a terrific liar.

"What do we do?"

"Pretty much whatever me first mate thinks. She got a mighty fine eye for the cannons!"

Luna was preparing the cannons, prepping several at once with magic while simultaneously grabbing crew-members to man the others. With a strong burst of magic, she gave each of their cannons an extra barrel, effectively doubling their firepower.

"Hey! First-mate Luna!"

"Aye Captain?!"

"The gun has been doubled!"

Luna started laughing, something that almost made all of her cannons fire early and focused once more. "Captain! If we lose this, that'll be just the second worst thing I heard tonight!"

With a grin, Avnas climbed up to the crows nest, over the mast, and dropped down onto the enemy ship, immediately running down into the lower levels to break as many 'important looking things' that he could find.

Back on the ship, Twilight saw her friends doing what they could to help during the battle. All of the enemy crewmen were skeletons, making them much easier to tell apart from the friendlies. Applejack was bucking enemy crewmen before they could get onto the ship, Pinkie was running about, using her pet Gummy as a sort of improvised bludgeon, whether he cared or not, no one knew, Fluttershy was helping the crew load cannons, Rarity was levitating more ammo from lower parts of the ship onto the deck, and Rainbow Dash was flying over the enemies ship, puncturing their sail like a cyan rocket.

"Hey Twi!" Yelled Applejack, slowly growing fatigued. "If'n y'all start feelin' like helpin' I think we'd 'preciate it!"

Twilight jumped into action, if only to help her friends. As more and more of the crew from the enemy ship flooded onto theirs, the crew switched to more defensive tactics, effectively leaving Luna on cannon duty. Unicorns were blasting away the enemy crew almost as fast as they were boarding but no matter how much pressure they put on, the attackers seemed to gain more and more ground.

Everyone seemed to be getting desperate, Twilight was pretty sure that she saw the members of the skeletal band in a small gap during the brawl, swinging at the enemy crew wildly with boards, trying to protect their instruments from harm.

Avnas was quickly growing tired of seeing the same hallway every time he got lost in the enemy ship.

Wait a minute, why do I care about the ship at all? Ain't mine.

New tactic formed, Avnas decided to just start smashing through the walls of all the rooms in his way.

This would still be much, much easier if I knew what was important on a boat.

"That fool probably doesn't even know what he is looking for." Yelled Rarity before backing away from a heavy swing from an enemy crewman's scimitar, imbedding it in the ground long enough for Rarity to blast the owner with a shot of her low-reserve magic. Looking at the curved blade, Rarity decided that it would save more magic to consistently use a sword than firing at the massive horde.

Fluttershy was trying to hide from all of the fighting, choosing to quickly fly-out any of the crew that got injured or collapsed from exhaustion. The most that she could do for those that had collapsed was giving them a room to rest in but even that had it's own problems. Use a room too high and the patient could get hurt from any stray cannon-fire, too low and they could be in danger if they started taking on water. These issues left Fluttershy with an extremely low number of reserve rooms to use, usually needing to put two or three ponies in each room.

Applejack knew that she couldn't keep up her position for very long, all it took was one baddie seeing her kick coming before she could land it and she would be a sitting duck. She knew that if she fell back, the whole line would start to fall back since she was giving the crew valuable time to prep themselves for each charge. She didn't know the most about combat, but she would be bucked before she let herself get beaten by some bad-guys that don't even have muscles anymore.

What is important on a ship?

Avnas was running out of things to break on one of the lower levels of the ship.

The mast? No they're already boarding us! The rudder? Great, maybe they'll have trouble leaving after they wipe the floor with us. THIS IS TOO HARD!

Like a destructive fairy was whispering in his ear, Avnas came up with a plan that, at least to him, was an ingenious piece of ingenuity.

Luna had found herself surrounded after finding that the cannons were having little effect on the ship anymore, with only her manning the guns, she could only focus fire on very small areas which didn't help much when she was trying to take down what seemed to be the size of two galleons on top of each other.

"The day me blueberry-bunned first-mate gives up due to facing overwhelming defeat is the day I find a new right-hand!"

Luna turned around, halfway out of hope, halfway out of annoyance at the rather barefacedly perverse statement directed at her.

Avnas was smashing through the edge of the ship, basically keeping one half of his body inside the ship while he dragged his other half through the thick edge in a matter that would leave a normal body mangled beyond belief, cutting a large swathe through the back of the boat and slowly tracing forward. With a heavily vibrating voice, engorged with joy he announced, "I AM THE GREATEST PIRATE IN THE HISTORY OF EQUESTRIA!"

Even the enemy couldn't help but stare at the odd tactic displayed by the man. He continued forward, pausing in his charge slightly whenever he hit a wall or a flight of stares that he couldn't see inside the ship. At last, he reached the bow and receded back into the ship. The fight had gone silent from watching the spectacle, both sides wanting to see what the odd man would do next. They didn't wait long, as the Captain emerged from below the deck, hat firmly back on his head although now with another hat on top of it, most likely the enemy captain's. "Luna! I'm about to do something really, really stupid so just go with it."

Luna didn't react since his statement at his own stupidity was about as obvious as him announcing that he was, in fact, a mammal.

He ran to the enemy mast and gave it a mighty kick before running back towards his own ship, jumping off of the side before being gently carried back by Luna's magic. The mast cracked and slowly fell into the water near the ship. As he landed, he pointed to his new hat and addressed the pirates in a mocking voice. "I got ye Captain and ye mast. I win."