Sandbar rescues his friends

Now, the difference between a pirate and a privateer is little more then a scrap of paper that declared the crimes they were carrying out were in fact legal, and then provided they did not carry out attacks on any ships that belonged to the kingdom that had given them the scrap of paper, they could do whatever the hell it was that they wanted.

The ship that Pipsqueak was second mate on was called the Deicide, a blasphemous name considering the fact that Equestria was ruled by two Goddesses, one who controlled the sun and another who controlled the moon. Somehow, it had still managed to get its licence despite this, and now mostly prayed on the griffon and hypogriff ships.

It was a grand sight, one that still blew “Sea Breeze’s mind to this day. He had to remember that he was Sea Breeze, not Sandbar. If anyone knew who he was, they would almost certainly kill him. His disguise talisman did not provide very much in the way of comfort, he was still sure that at any moment they were going to see through it and end him.

The ship was a massive thing however, and getting lost on it would be easy. The “dock” was not in fact the dock, there were now two different docks, one that was on the water, and the one that was for flying ships. This one was the later, and the deicide sure could fly.

It started off looking like a normal boat, only bigger and with less cannons on it. The only obvious difference was the massive balloon that rose in the middle of the ship, inflated by a massive tower that constantly billowed out a flame. Behind it, two propellers hung, preparing to push the ship forward once it got into the air.

It was a very old design without the aid of many of the new modern features, but that also gave it a distinct advantage in the fact that it was basically silent. It could drop out of the clouds at a moments notice, and then be gone again a moment later.

He climbed up onto the ship and tried to ignore all the ponies frantically tending to the different tasks required to keep the ship airborne. He was just another crew member, no need to pay him any mind.

Pipsqueak was going to call in a favour with the Captain, Buckbeard to hopefully get them taken to the black market. Right now the ship was stopping to refuel before it went out on any more raids, so he just hoped the Captain would be kind enough to take them to the black market when he clearly had other important matters to tend to.

A massive bull-chested mare almost ran Sea Breeze over and he had to dive to the side in order to avoid being crushed by her. Everyone was rushing around and doing things, dozens of ponies all wearing different uniforms, battle scared and even now looking worn from the rigours the war had placed upon them.

Ponies were not designed to fight griffons. Griffons had razor sharp talons, wings that allowed them to fly much faster and more agile then most pegasi could, along with generally being tougher.

And yet these ponies fought griffons. They had fought griffons and won. Of course they did not take on war ships, but Sea Breeze still found it amazing. Thinking of griffons naturally made him think back to his friend, Gallus.

Gallus had been a griffon, and because of him, Gallus might be dead.

“Out the fuckin’ way you muppet,” A stallion muttered, currently using a brush to try and clean the deck of the ship. He tried his best to get out of the way and keep out of the way, and thankfully it seemed that he did not have to wait long as soon the chimney in the middle of the ship was roaring loudly, filling up the balloon and attempting to lift the ancient oaken ship into the air.

Pipsqueak moved over and pat softly at his shoulder, “I gtosh. We’re going soon.”

Sandbar still did not know what was happening, this whole thing still felt like some kind of disconnected nightmare. He really did not still fully understand how it was that he had gotten from his bed onto one of the most infamous ships in the whole sky with his extremely drunk best friend.

Ah, in the least his life was exciting. His legs were shaking, fear was starting to tingle through his hooves, race through his heart, and now there was a pony strolling towards him, a pony that he knew all too well.

The Dread Pirate Buckbeard was as terrifying in pony as the stories had made him seem. Clad all in black with simple golden finishing that made the clothing look more defined and threatening. Upon getting closer the sheer size of the stallion became even more apparent. He towered over everything around him, including Sandbar who suddenly felt terribly small and as if he had committed a terrible sin by daring to stand on their ship.

His fur was black, his eyes were a deep gold, the same as his clothing, but somehow, staring into those eyes, he felt like he was able to see into the very pits of hell themselves.

Buckbeard did not say anything, he just marched over to the two of them, stood there for the briefest of moments, then swung one of his massive tree-trunk like hooves straight into Pipsqueak’s face with enough force to send the sound echoing around the ship and send the wall of a pony stumbling back a single step, this from a blow that would have definitely knocked Sandbar out cold.

“No turning up drunk again, you know the rules,” He turned his massive frame slightly to face Sandbar, “And you, our ship isn’t a taxi. Don’t fucking waste my time like this again or I’ll cleave you in two.” The stallion barked sharply before turning and walking away like nothing had even happened.

Pipsqueak wobbled slightly on his hooves, then wiped a drizzle of blood from his nose with a hoof, taking out a hip flask from within his jacket and downing more then a fair mouthful in one smooth movement. “My face hurts. Lets get below deck and find a place to have a seat an’ fuckin’ deal with it.”

Once the ship took off, everything changed. It had seemed on first inspection that all these vagabonds and ponies in tattered clothing would be the sort of ponies to make all kinds of trouble and never be able to effectively run a ship, but the moment the ship got up into the air, there was a complete change in character for almost all the crew. They worked away like the cogs in some great machine, doing their best to keep the ship running perfectly.

And by the Goddess did the ship run. The tech it used might have been a little outdated, but it ran as silent as the wind, and almost as swift, cleaving through the clouds like they were nothing.

It was almost enough to take him off the fact his whole world seemed to be collapsing around him. Fear was firing off through every single one of his nerve endings, making his legs shake with excitement and fear. What was going to come next? What was going to happen, what things awaited him?

He did not know, for the first time he had woke up and not know exactly how his day was going to go. As much as he hoped that his friends were safe he could not deny the fact that this whole situation was so… Exciting.

Sandbar could almost feel that old fire from his youth starting to flare within him.

As the black market came into view, it was everything that “Sea Breeze” Had been expecting and more. You might be wondering how it was that they managed to hide a whole market from view and not get caught in an age of war, spies and espionage.

And the response to that question was because the black market was not a single location. It was a fortress. A flying fortress. As their tiny ship closed in on it, the air became thin and harder to breathe because the market was set way up in the sky, out the reach of all those that did not know its location.

Four massive balloons rose on even side of the great big square, surrounded by wooden walls and towering defense pillars with all kinds of weapons strapped to them, prepared to fire on anything that even thought of coming to attack. It was truly terrifying, a floating city with massive rudders easily the size of the entire ship that Sandbar was currently on, these ones driven by coal, magic and anything else the market could get.

It was basically a giant city. In the middle there was an even larger balloon that looked like it would be able to bloat out the very sun itself. Nobody knew for sure who exactly it was that had built the black market, the legend itself was also shrouded in legend, more myth then fact at this point. The one thing that was known was the fact that the black market had only been attacked by Celestia once, and that she had been forced to call off her forces in the face of the massive flying city.

And that was why the princesses seemed to have a tense understanding that there was no way to get rid of this bloat on their perfect image, and it was best left alone.

Their ship pulled up next to the market, docking on the much larger(And more square) ship like ticks climbing onto a dogs back. The captain had given everyone two hours to enjoy the wares and services of the people on the market, then they had to get back to the ship.

Hopefully that would be enough time to rescue his friends and get out of here.

Surprisingly, the ground beneath his feet was level, the balloons so perfectly engineered that the whole thing did not seven seem to sway as he begin to trot his way across it. There was no other way to describe it, it was a city. A city of corruption and scandal kept in the sky by massive roaring flames that filled balloons with hot air.

The only difference from a real town was the fact that everything was made out of wood or other light material, which of course had been fireproofed by the use of some chemical or magical spell.

Terrifying figures trotted about from place to place, but scattered among them were normal ponies. He even saw some fillies and foals!

“Why the hell are their children in this Celestia forsaken place?” He muttered to Pipsqueak. For some reason he was managing to keep himself calm, not the slightest hint of panic begin to set in even as his hooves clattered across the deck of the most infamous ghost ship in Equestrian history.

Pipsqueak seemed to have sobered up quite a bit, “It’s the war, innit. Nowhere else to go so they hav’ to set up here. The pony who runs this place is actually quite a nice bird, lovely assets if you know what I’m saying.” He chuckled and Sandbar simply tried to process the situation he was currently in.

The area he was currently passing through seemed to be a market of some kind, all kinds of ponies milling around, exchanging wears and other items out in the open rather then in shady back alley deals like he had expected.

All around him wooden houses rose, wooden house that were clearly lived in. People actually lived in the giant flying city, and the thought was still alien to him.

He was soon snapped out of this by the sight of something horrid, something that made his stomach leap up to his throat and almost made him eject bile all over the ground. There was someone who had set up a whole stall, dedicated to the sale of meat. On one of the massive hooks, he was sure he recognised what had once been a pony.
Try not to throw up. Try not to notice. He had heard talk of them selling meat to griffons, and in these trying time they had begun using ponies to meet the demand… But…

No. It didn’t change anything. This place was evil and he had been foolish to forget that. Pipsqueak led him around the market like he knew the place well, and soon, they arrived at what must have been the slave pens.

The horrors of the meat market had been bad enough, that image was going to be burned into his brain until his dying breath, but he was quite sure that this was even worse. Row after row of metal cages spanned for at least two hundred metres, each one containing one or two creatures. There was even a wood gated pen that contained several ponies who seemed too broken to even attempt an escape.

Their glassy eyes all seemed to peer at him, the intelligence that had once burned within them long since extinguished by some great evil. If he could, he would have stpped forward and started trying to free all the creatures he was able, but he did not have the key, and even if he did have the key trying to free all these slaves would only result in him being gunned down by the motley crew of guards armed with rifles stood around and between the row of boxes.

Pipsqueak led him around the twisting maze of boxes, despite his heavy consumption of alcohol, his memory was still astounding, and before long, they were both stood before a massive iron cage that contained his friends.

They looked exactly how he had pictured, only they were not his friends any more. All of them had the same broken look in their eyes that a lot of the slaves had, the look that told him they had been broken in and that any trace of the creature they had once been.

It was like some great big pit had just swallowed up his heart and removed it from existence. It was like the whole world was collapsing around him, threatening to crush the life from out of his delicate body and leave him as nothing more then an empty husk.

Two ponies near by were getting into a rather heated haggling match, and for a while he was not paying attention to their bickering or the conversation that they were having, that was until he realized they were arguing about the two ponies currently within the cage, and suddenly he got the urge to go and stab the pony that had done this to his friends in the eyes.

His whole body was numb and seemed to move on its own, carrying him towards his target with lethal efficiency. Pipsqueak put a hoof on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks before he had chance to stab anyone in the eye.

“Don’t do it, Sea Breeze. I’ve got more then enough bits to buy them, if we get into a fight we’ll get thrown off this ship and then we won’t be able to do anythin’ to help your friends.”

Rage bubbled within him, turning his stomach into a tornado of feelings and emotions that he was not able to make sense of. He still wanted to step over and stab the stallion in the eye, but he contained his rage.

Yona hit home the hardest. Out of all his friends, she had always been the one that he had managed to get closest to. She had a hard outer shell that suggested she was just another dumb yak, but then…

It did not matter what was beneath that anymore. His friends were gone, and he was going to need to fix them up and return them to normal, if he managed that, then returned them, maybe they would be able to turn this whole situation around.

And then his whole life flashed before his eyes. In an instant, everything seemed to go wrong.

The whole city was suddenly ripped into by a massive explosion that seemed to fill everywhere at once, almost loud enough to pop his ear drums without anything else needing to happen.

And then the pony that had been haggling with the bedraggled looking slaver suddenly turned into an insect in a burst of green flame, driving a dagger straight into his throat before making a wild dive for Sandbar with a second dagger ready to end him.

He was sure that in that moment he was dead, his whole brain seemed to stop and trip over itself in a final attempt to make sense of a series of events that had taken place in the span of just a few moments.

Thankfully, Pipsqueak seemed to have been on the ball, all those years of canon fire and battle meant that even the giant explosion did not bother him. He was too slow to draw his sword, and also too slow to try and pull anything fancy to stop the dagger from finding its mark.

Instead he use his hoof to block it, the sharp blade sinking into the tree-trunk like limb and embedding itself there. A moment later, the black bug like creature that there had been no way for Sandbar to make out clearly realised there was no way it was getting its weapon back, and therefore it tried to use the second dagger to finish the job that the first had started.

The poor creature at this point seemed to have accepted that it was hopeless, but Pipsqueak drove the point home when he removed his sabre from its sheath using his free hoof, and with all the effort of an artist making a brush stroke, drove the curved blade cleanly through its neck.

Getting through the hard chitin that covered the bug was hard, but with all the strength driving his hoof forward, Pipsqueak made it about three quarters of the way through the creature, before brutally tearing the weapon free.

Sandbar had once seen a candy dispenser modelled after a pony, with a “head” that flipped up to dispense candies. As the changeling stepped back, he was reminded of that dispenser, and he was sure that if it had been flesh and blood, its head would have almost flopped cleanly off its shoulders.

The hard chitin held its head in place however, and green gunk spurted from out of its neck several times, splattering onto the deck before the poor creature went down in a heap.

Everything was still out of focus for him, it was like some kind of nightmare that had detached him from reality. He was not sure what the hell was going on, the only thing he knew for sure was the fact that the rear engine was gone, it had been taken out by a massive explosion somehow, he could see the massive amounts of smoke rising from off it, but the ship only needed one of the engines to stay mobile, and that propeller was trying its best to try and keep pushing the ship forward.

He did not know what was happening, but the bedraggled corpse of the salespony was still slumped down on the ground, and Pipsqueak wasted no time in doing exactly what it was that pirates do best, taking the key from his corpse and moving to unlock the cage. “Come on Sea’, Guards are all shitiin’ it so now’s our chance to get out of here!”

The key slid into the lock with ease, the pirate ripping open the cage and escorting all the slaves out of it. They all looked broken, and somehow the promise of freedom did not seem to have perked their hopes up in the slightest, even witnessing the death of a changeling right in front of them did not seem to have effected them in the slightest.

Yona was the first one to step out of the cage, followed by Smoulder, Gallus, Silverstream, and finally Ocellus.

The market was going down, one of the engines had been taken out and from above there was a terrible roar as a gigantic ship slipped from out of the clouds and begin to slowly drop towards the market.

The moment he recognised the design of the ship, he knew that they had to run. It was a grand, golden ship that looked more like a palace then an actual ship. Still, it was nothing compared to the size of the black market, but with the panic that was currently happening, the weapons of the market had not yet had chance to unload on it.

He did not have chance to take notice of the other ships coming out of the clouds, of the fact that guards in golden plate-mail using flamethrowers were currently dropping out of the sky and beginning to set fire to everything they were able.

Pipsqueak was running behind him, his leg was bleeding all down the inside of his suit but it did not seem to slow or dissuade him in the slightest, even if it should have at least slowed him down.

The slaves… No, his friends, running between them did not seem to be bothered by any of the things that were happening to them, they seemed… Detached from reality, like this was all some mad fever dream brought on by a drug of some kind.

He really did not want to think about what horrors they had endured to make them like this.