Ow, lots of pain, pain everywhere. and mud. Lots of that too. Sweet Novo! Mud! Which means land, which means the ship was wrecked. I shook my head, sitting up. Where was I? Rubbing the dirt out of my eyes I looked around. This shoreline looked nothing like the warm, sandy beaches back home. Instead, it consisted mainly of swampland with small streams intersecting it. There was junk everywhere. Cans, metal piping, and Parts of buildings that had been slowly washed down the river.

There was also lots of newer debris. Bullet casings, corpses in shredded barding, and bits of the Peregrine. Fortunately, none of the bodies around me were hippogriffs. just ponies, with a few gryphons and zebras mixed in. For some reason, I was not disturbed by all this death, I felt strangely detached from it all as if looking at a picture rather than real life. I needed to get up. Find the rest of the crew and find a way home.

Standing up proved to be an issue since I had a large gash on my left hind leg. I was no good at healing magic like Ashaa, so I used the remains of my combat vest I bandaged it as best I could. There was a town to the north of me. should I go there? Or look for my friends along the shore? Just sitting here probably wasn’t a good idea, so I hobbled along the boggy shore, hoping to find a member of the crew or better yet, my family.

After taking a more careful look around, I saw Erikka lying in the mud. I ran towards her, yelling her name. Only after I had reached her did I notice the red-stained sewage surrounding her, and the piece of rebar sticking out of her chest. I screamed, backing away as fast as possible. Her eyes were still open, blankly staring at the cloud covered sky as if she couldn’t believe what had happened. I took some deep breaths, then slowly walked over and closed her eyes. She had been a good friend of mine, we had gone to flight camp together. I didn’t want to see if any more of my friends had died. So I turned around and started towards the town.

Said town was impossible to reach by foot because of my injured leg, as well as all of that damn mud! Every time I took a step my talons sunk almost to my elbows! I flew for at least a half-hour before I found semi-stable ground to walk on, my injured leg still making me quite slow. I sat down with a gasp of pain. Using my magic to summon a water bottle, I drank greedily, needing fluids to help the bloodloss from my leg. Oh, I should probably explain hippogriff magic, shouldn’t I?

Hippogriff magic works a little like unicorn magic, meaning just about every hippogryph can levitate objects, create light, and whole bunch of other party tricks. The only real difference is we cast our spells with our talons instead of horns. Hippogriffs were the main supplier of talismans and other powerful devices for Equestria. In return, the ponies would give us vital resources that we couldn’t produce on our own, since we live on an island with limited space. Also, each hippogriff has access to their own "sub-dimension", I like to call mine my Inventory. It's a place where you can stow away your stuff so you don’t have to carry it all around with you. There were rules to what you can put in it, like nothing alive, or anything bigger than yourself. It's like having a backpack with infinite space that only you can open. If you die, your closest relative will gain access to your SD.
Since I couldn’t open Ashaa's or Father's I could with relative certainty say they were still alive, which gave me the hope to stand up and continued walking.

Eventually, I made it to the outskirts of the city and read the sign by the road: CITY LIMITS. WELCOME TO NEIGH ORLEANS, THE CITY OF WHIPCRASS. I tilted my head in confusion, city of what now? The sign was very dirty and hard to read. For all I knew it said "Witchcraft" or something crazy like that.

Further in I came across a small encampment stuck in between a pub and an old BurgerMare with a few haggard-looking ponies surrounding a big box, wait, not a box but a CAGE! With other ponies inside wearing strange black collars on their necks. I watched as a line of sullen earth ponies were lead towards the cage. One mare took one glance at the cage and tried to bolt towards me. A guard pressed a button on a thingy strapped to his foreleg. The desperate mare looked me straight in the eyes before I heard a loud crak! and everything above her chest turned into a fine red mist!

Holy shit! I’m glad I didn’t just walk up and say hi, they probably would have slapped one of those collars on me. I had a feeling these guys were slavers. Since there were no large farms on Mount Eris or on any of the surrounding islands us hippogriffs didn't need slaves. My next thought surprised me. I need to free those poor souls.

But how? I had a few weapons in my inventory, but no guns. While those bastards looked ill and underfed they still had the superior arsenal. If I attacked they might just blow up their captives and run. Easy, just get the detonator from the one guy’s arm. Then take out the other slavers. Well, the idea sounded easy, but how would I execute it? I checked my inventory for anything useful: Five throwing knives, one hatchet, a pocketknife, and my battle scythe. Hmm. What to do?

First of all, I had to get out of the open. As a hippogriff, I had way better eyesight than them, but one of their gryphons might spot me. I saw a shack off to my left and scurried towards it. (As well as one can scurry when one has a big hole in their leg.) The shack was a two-story building, inside was just rubble and long-dead ponies. Situated in the left wall was a terminal, On Mount Eris, we didn’t have very many of these things, but my family had been in the Queen's good graces since Queen Novo's time. If we had wanted to, we could have been aristocrats. Anyways, being this popular with the Queen meant we had a terminal at home. I used it fairly often, and prided myself on being the resident tech expert in our household. I hacked into it with relative ease and found an audio file. Having no time to listen to it now I downloaded it onto my recorder.

Climbing up to the second floor, I summoned a pair of binoculars and looked out across the field. I spotted three unicorns, one of which had the detonator, five earth ponies, and one, no two gryphons. All with rifles. If I could sneak around back I could disable the lead stallion with the detonator as he was more removed from the other slavers, closer to the cage. Then I could engage the others without fear that they would use the slaves as leverage. Every hippogriff is required to have at least three years of combat training. And last January I had finished my seventh year. As a merchant, I had to be able to defend the ship from monsters, pirates, and various other dangers of the sea. I knew I could take these underfed crooks without much trouble.
Do I aim to kill or to knock out?

Kill. I wasn't leaving a single one of these bastards to roam free and slap more bomb collars on people, no one should have to die like that mare.

As I was staggering down the stairs to enact my glorious battle plan I noticed one of the floorboards wasn’t nailed down. Prying it open revealed a small chest. Using my magic to unlock it I found a large bag filled with bottlecaps? Strange. Why would anyone hide a bunch of junk? I put it in my Inventory anyways, I had no clue what they were for, but they might be useful.

The sneaking around the back part of the plan went flawlessly. Even with an injured hind leg, these guys were nearsighted and deaf as rocks. Once I reached the far end of their camp I silently crept towards the cage. One of the gryphons noticed me and was about to shout when a blue mare nudged her and whispered in her ear. Soon the whole group of slaves knew I was here, and they were trying very hard not to give me away. I smiled at them reassuringly as I snuck up behind Detonator Guy. Summoning one of my throwing knives I came up behind him and slit his throat. Dragging him behind a wall I turned my attention towards the device on his foreleg.

In some ways, it was like my recorder. It contained a screen with a few buttons below it. I found a command file labelled "Bomb collars". By each number, there was one button labelled simply "BOOM." At the top of the file was a second button, "UNLOCK ALL". I tapped it and watched as every collar made a Click! noise and fell off. Unfortunately, Everyone heard the loud CLANK as they hit the ground. Shit on a stick! I thought, What now?

I quickly detached the detonator from the guy's arm and tried to creep around behind the slavers as they rushed towards the cage yelling. I peeked out from behind a building to see they had all crowded around the bars trying to figure out how to get the collars back on. Wait, hadn’t I seen TWO gryphons? I looked around frantically to see where that other gryphon had gone. Suddenly I felt the touch of cold metal press itself against the back of my head. "Not another step, little, uh whatever you are." Oh, found him.

For my next move to work, I had to hope That Gryphon anatomy was similar to a hippogryph's. I spun around and kicked him in the throat before he could fire a shot. He went down with a wheeze. I then put my throwing knife through where his heart should be. I picked up his gun, a Pistol carbine by the looks of it. I checked the magazine, ten rounds. Eight enemies. Let's do this. Jumping out from behind the emaciated building I took aim and put neat little holes in the heads of the two unicorns and the last gryphon before the others saw me and started shooting. I rolled to the side where I found cover inside a broken skywagon and peeked over through the broken windshield and plugged two more of them as their bullets whizzed over me. Then the shooting stopped... And I saw a metal apple land right in my talons. Damn... I made it out just before the apple exploded with a loud BANG as the skywagon is filled with shrapnel and fire. Ducking behind a concrete barrier I saw one of the Slavers had belt covered in those metal apples. Instead of aiming for his head, I went for the belt of apples. I hit one and the remaining three go up in a ball of fire.

With my ears ringing, I hobbled over to the cage and undid the lock. Most of them quickly scamper off, obviously scared of me. One, however, a Brown, ragged, older stallion with a red shaggy mane trotted over to me, a thankful expression on his face.

"Ah thank ye kindly fer what you done fer us. As a thank you, I can attach that there pipbuck to yer leg." The stallion said, pointing at the detonator still in my talons.

"Pip-what? Doesn’t this thing just activate those collars?" He chuckled, shaking his head.

"No no, That slaver just programmed it to do that. you can use it to sort your saddlebags, play music, and it has S.A.T.S, a targeting spell to help you aim better." Hmm, I wonder if it can access my Inventory?

"Ok, hook it up"

While he worked he told me more about where I was and what to look out for. Apparently, this place was a tourist attraction during the war, mainly because of all the supposed "witchcraft" the residents performed. Afterwards, I thanked him for the pipbuck and headed deeper into the city.

Footnote:

New area unlocked: Neigh Orleans.

New perk unlocked: Nade Man. You are now 15% more efficient in using and making grenades.

Author's Note

Whew, writing is hard. Hopefully as I continue writing it will get better. anyways, I'd like to thank Kkat and Somber for inspiring me, and all a ya'll out there for giving this story a chance.

Again, if anypony is willing I'd like some help with this story. there is always something to improve.

also an extra Thank you to

Brasta Septim

for helping me make this chapter more believable and detailed.