Storm chaser

“Black skull island, huh?” Tempest says with sarcasm dripping of the last word as she speaks with capper.

“Yeah, I’m sure of it trust me,” cappers says with one leg placed on top of a crate as he placing a paw on his chest “They talked a hole lot about needing to coming here.” Capper confidently announces.

“Why?” Tempest says menacingly.

“Because they, they n-needed t-to... um,” capper stammers trying to remember or completely fabricate a reason.

Tempests eye twitches in annoyance, she is about to say something when you suddenly step in, with your right hand you hilt back wrist and the pole ejects out and from the side, sharp to the touch blades pop out the sides, but it doesn’t launch out like the one on you lift arm does, it instead stays attached to your wrist. You grab the base of your wrist sword and come up behind capper and place the sword to his throat. Capper sharply inhales as his body stiffness and raises his paws in the air.

“Why are they going to black skull island?” You ask with an angry tone, just wanting to go home and stop fighting in some army you have no idea still if they’re good or bad, “tell us, if you care if your head stays attached to your shoulder that is.” You say threateningly, pressing the sword a little harder to his throat to emphasize your point.

“OK-OK-OK!” Capper blurts out in a panic “Th-they’re going there to f-find someone that can help them stop the storm king!” Which wasn’t a lie, you could tell, and tempest seemed to believe him too.

You hilt back your wrist and retract the sword in front of cappers face. In doing so his body loosens up and his paws lower letting out a breath of relief. In truth you weren’t gonna kill him, you killed the mole, who you found out was named verko, sure, he’s dead now but that was an accident. You’ve never killed anything before, except for insects, sure but they were in you house, the insects were the ones breaking in entry. deers, you could probably bring yourself to kill or hunt. dogs, you could kill but only as a last resort if they were attacking you. But another intelligent being like you? That’s different, it can plead for its life, it had a life, friend and family, not that those other animals didn’t, but it becomes more prevalent when the other person can beg for mercy. The only and you mean ONLY way you could EVER bring yourself to kill some one like capper or tempests guard is if they were attacking you to kill you, or they have pissed you off to the highest extent.

“Who are they meeting?” Tempest asks capper.

“No clue.” Capper says with a shrug.

“What?” Tempest says in confusion “wha... WHAT THE FUCK DO MEAN ‘no clue!” She screams with fire in her eyes causing capper to step back in fear. “ they where in your damn house for a fucking hour and they never said who the fuck they were meeting ONCE?!”

“Honest, they wouldn’t share that with me!” Capper says trying not to be physically harmed by tempest.

Tempests broken horn starts to spark violently, looking like she’s about to attack capper. Suddenly though, tempests horn stops and just storms off “fucking useless” she mutters under her breath. You fell like you should go calm her down, but Grubber starts running towards tempests side so you assume he’s got this, and turn back to edge of the deck and look out amongst the clouds. It’s a Beautiful site to take in, you’ll be staring at this site for a while, considering how long the trip to black skull island was said to be, and you still gotta deliver the pony princess named twilight sparkle back to another country. Needless to say, you hate this you just wanna, get out of this mess you got yourself in, if you just told tempest where twilight was initially none of this would have happened. You have to ask tempest later what the deal is, after all this is done, will she let you fend for yourself, or will you be indebted to the storm king and have to be apart of his army until you either die or retire?

“NO, Grubber!”

“B-but tempest you need to calm down,”

“Yeah, and your spiny ass is NOT helping! Now, fuck off already!”

You look over to see tempest slam the door to the captains quarters behind her and leaving grubber outside on the deck.

“Ok, I’ll be out here waiting for you then!” Grubber shouts at the door to try and let tempest know what his plan is, you can tell she doesn’t care. Well this also means you can have some alone time with her at least, just not right now.

it’s been seven minutes, she’s gotta have cool off by now. You walk up to the door and knock a couple of time.

“Hey tempest, it’s anon, came we talk?” You ask.

There’s a moment of silence as you wait for her answer. Then just as you’re about to walk away, the door opens up just a crack, you open up the door fully and get a look of tempests captain quarters, which also seemed to double as her bedroom it seems. In the back of the room the was a bed up against the wall, on the wall to the left is a banner that covers most of the wall with that forked lightning bolt logo on it. To the right of you, next to the door against the wall is a desk, with a knife stuck in it, with many other knife stab wounds in the desk. On the right wall of the room is some shelves with, what looks like... toys of the storm king? Ok, odd, anyways, tempest was walking back underneath the shelves to a desk with a map on it with red X’s, arrows, pins and circles laid out on different points on the map, and from what it looks like, they’re laid on civilization. You walk up to tempest at her desk and look over her shoulder at what she’s doing. She look up at you out of the corner of her eye.

“Can I help you?” Tempest says slightly annoyed at you intrusion to her personal space. You get the message and back up slightly.

“I just wanted to ask you a few questions, ya know, pick apart your brain.” You tell her, as she raises an eyebrow and narrows her eyes at you.

“About what?” Tempest asks.

“Just a lot of things that have been on my mind since I got here.” You answer.

Tempest looks at you for bit thinking of an answer, you Decide to add to you statement by saying, “and maybe know a little more about you too.”

That makes tempests eyes widen slightly in fear, causing her to look away “I don’t think so.”

“shit, now she’s shutting down, gotta get her to open back up“ you say internally as you try to think of some way to get her to open up. You think of getting some alcohol in her system could work, one problem, you don’t know if there’s any on the ship, and if there is some where it would be kept.

“Hey hey wait a minute,” you say trying to grad tempests attention again “would, uh... alcohol make you more willing to talk?” You ask hoping she doesn’t get angry at how forward that question was... she did, tempest squints at you angrily then turns to you wearing an offended expression on her face.

“What’s you deal, buddy?” She says angrily at you “are you trying to get me wasted so you bed me?! Is that it?! HUH!?!” She yells with an accusatory tone, rising from her seat, staring dagger into your soul.

“NO-NO-NO!” You say waving your hand side to side in front of you body “I’m just trying to get to know you better!” You say tensing incase she punches you, inside you see her face soften. “I just want to know some thing about, this land, you, and... if you feel like it, ask me a few questions as well.” You say, calming down yourself.

Tempests expression softened some more “oh,” she says as she slumped back in her chair and stays silent for what in reality was maybe five seconds, but it felt like you were frozen in time. “I’m... I’m sorry I just get so angry and don’t know how to filter it and-“

“Tempest hey,” you interrupt her from her unnecessary apology “it’s fine you don’t need to apologize,” you say as you place on tempests shoulder causing her to look up at you with glossy eyes “now how about those drinks?” You say trying to lighten the mood a bit, smiling warmly at tempest, causing her to blush a bit once she caught herself staring a bit longer that she should’ve been. She then chuckles and brushes your hand off her shoulder.

“Yeah, now that you say it, I could go for a drink, go down one floor and in the back of the storage floor should be a black chest with a gold lock on it with the storm kings logo on it,” she says before pointing her hoof at your right O.T.W “there should be a key tool on that one that opens any thing with the storm kings logo on it, use that to open the chest.” She explained.

Well that explains what the key does at least, so that’s one less question already “ok, on it.” You say as you head for the door then stop and turn back to tempest “what does the storm kings logo look like?” You ask.

“it’s that.” Tempest says, pointing at the wall with the big symbol draped over it.

Well that’s another question answered “ok, thanks.” You say as you exit her room and make your way down one flight of stairs and down one level and start to search the Storage room. You eventually find a chest that matches tempests description. You press the button under the key on your O.T.W and the key pops out, you then stick the key into the key hole while it’s still attached to your wrist and turn it. Soon enough you hear a metallic clank and see the lock has opened, you pull the key out and press the button under the key again causing the key to retract, cool. You then reach into the chest a pull out two bottles of, what looks like whiskey with the storm kings logo on it, you take them back up to the main deck, push open her door causing tempest to look up at you and smile a little seeing you with the whiskey.

“Good choice.” Tempest says as you place the bottles on the desk and grab another chair and sit next to her.

“How strong is it?” You ask, wanting to be prepared.

Tempest looks at you little weird, almost concerned for some reason “pretty strong, I’ve had stronger though.” She says still looking at you, now this staring at you is getting concerning.

“What, is it? Is something on my face?” You ask tempest.

“No, it IS your face, are you ok?” Tempest asks genuinely concerned in you well being.

“What? What about my-oh shit.” You say as you realize that your face is severely sunburnt, so much so that it’s hot to the Touch, and you would guess that your face is bright red and looks awful.

“No, I don’t think I’m ok, this sunburn is gonna start stinging after awhile.” You say, not looking forward to your sunburns pain, on your face of all places too. To your surprise tempest hops off her chair and heads for the desk next to her door, opens one of the drawers in with her mouth pulls out some type of cream like substance contained in a bottle, you assume it’s to help with your sunburn.

“Here,” She says still with the bottle in her mouth, you take it from her and open it up. “That should help with that sunburn of yours.” She says genuinely. It’s kinda cute if your gonna be honest.

“Thanks, but I don’t know where it all is on my face.” You say telling the truth.

Tempest rolls her eye in annoyance and with her left hoof takes off her right, well horseshoe you guess is the best way to describe it, it wasn’t a normal horseshoe though, it covered her entire bottom of her hoof and trailed up her the front of her foreleg. It falls to the floor with a metallic clank, and she does the same with her left hoof. She then gestures to you to come closer, you oblige and scoot Close enough for her to touch you. She then pours a bit of the contents of the bottle onto her right hoof and rubs it on your face. It’s oddly gentle, for someone one like tempest shadow that is, you’d expect her to be tough and rough around the edges but, right now at least, she’s being very sweet, kind, considerate and gentle. It would make any war hardened badass’s heart melt. You open one eye and look at tempest, she’s got a look of consecration as she rubs that cream over your face, she notices you staring and blushes heavily and rubs her hoof over your eye to smear the cream over it and force you to shut your eye. You chuckle at that adorable move she pulled and continue to let her aid you.

Once she’s done she wipes her hoof off on a cloth underneath her map desk, and you start to feel better already. Just as you think that a bright white light emits from your face, for a moment and you go and touch your face and notice that there’s no remnants of a sunburn on your face.

“How did-“

“Magic.” Tempest interrupts, as she grabs the bottle and puts it away. “You gonna pour me a drink or what?” She says teasing you, carrying over two small cups, slightly larger that the average shot glass and places them in on the map table. With that you uncork the whiskey and pour the drinks for you two.

you and tempest have been drinking for what felt like an hour or so, and from the question you ask you’ve learned a lot of things like, the storm king is a tyrannical ruler that owns a large quantity of land, from here to someone he just Concord call equestria. Speaking of equestria, it’s main inhabitants are pony’s like tempest, that’s where those 6 pony’s and small dragon came from, why tempest wants Princess twilight sparkle but not her friends is because her having wings and a horn makes twilight something called an alicorn, which there are only four in existence, and immensely powerful and the storm king ordered tempest to capture there magic and harness it for himself, tempest already captured the other three, princess of the sun, celestia, princess of the night, Luna, and princess of love, Mi Amore Cadenza. With knowing that they were temporarily turned to stone, and further knowledge that celestia moved the sun, it now makes sense as to why the sun hasn’t moved in so long. You also understand how this O.T.W works more, you’ve already figured out that when you hilt your wrist back the left one launches a sword, and the right one just ejects one, on that right one on the back is a metal disk, that works like a magical satellite working with a few buttons on the back of you left one acting as a magical radio. But you still have one question left,

“Why are you doing all this for the storm king, anyways?” You ask tempest, fighting your natural urge to slur your words.

“What... What do you mean?” Tempest says the liquor affecting her ability to comprehend simple questions.

“Like,” you say, your drunken mind trying to figure out how to say what you want to say “ like, why doesn’t the storm king, go and, do it his own damn self... why are you doing it, ya know?” You say, causing tempest face to grow somber as she spoke her next words.

“He promised me my horn back,” She said her eyes getting glossy. You were about to say something but tempest continues “I’ve been without my h-horn since I was a f-f-filly,” she continue starting to choke on her words, as tears are building up “I just want to be able use magic again.” She says before leaning into your chest and crying into it, you place down your drink and hug her close to you and let her cry her eyes out.

Now it makes sense, she’s desperate, while you don’t agree with what she’s doing to get it, you can get behind her thinking. She was found at her lowest, the storm king made her feel worth something without the horn. But she never felt complete, sure she as an army waiting at her every Beck and call, she still wants her horn back. She want the one thing that made her unique, The one thing she never learned how to master because it was taken away from her at a young age, the ability to use magic. Sure the earth pony race is basically what she is now and she functions well without it, but what hurts the most is that she can still use magic, It comes out as sparks of unstable lightning, but Still, it’s not like it doesn’t work anymore, it’s still does and that’s what pisses her off, it’s What has made her stoop to a point so low that she’ll work for a tyrannical ruler that rules by fear, and betray her own pony kind in order to get her horn back.

She cried into you chest for a few minutes, you let her get it out of her system, stroking her back and scratching the back of her neck all the while. You feel bad for her, seeing such an, at first glance, tough, secluded, intimidating and badass army commander at her most vulnerable and weak state makes your heart ache. You’ve made up your mind, your not going to just stand next to her like those, dumb as brick, drone, guards she has follow her every order, you’re going to help her get what she wants, you can tell it means a lot to her, and you going to try and Make sure she get her end of the deal Met, no matter how long it takes.

you and tempest have sobered up somewhat, you’re both a little tipsy still, but you told tempest you going to help her no matter what, and judging by the hug she gave you, she Appreciates that sentiment. Right now you’re traveling through dense clouds, grubber is hanging on the steering wheel, capper is leaning on one of the chains holding the balloon and deck together. You and tempest sit together as she asks you questions for a change on what you are, she was quite surprised to find out that you weren’t of this world, she found all that Interesting and it cleared some things up for her like, why you where asking what is basically common knowledge to her. You and her continue to talk when off in the distance you see a flash of light, and then a perfectly circular rainbow Surrounding an airship. The rainbow pushed away the clouds around it and your heart almost skipped a beat when you saw it, you jumped out of a sitting position and was about to tell tempest to look when the shockwave got to you with a loud,

*FABOOM*

“HOLY SHIT!” Tempests screams and looks around Frantically to try and find the source of the noise. When she’s sees it grubber did as well.

“Look at that rainbow! Look at that rainbow! Wow, that’s so cool!” Grubber says in astonishment.

“Yeah,” tempest says with a smirk “ very cool of them to alert us. funny though, they don’t seem to be heading to black skull island.” Tempest says to capper giving capper a death glare, with acid in her voice.

Capper tenses in fear “like ‘haha’ funny, or ha haa,” capper says dropping the statement, scared for his life.

You could not be any more mad, he purposely mislead you and tempest, you’re about ready shove a sword through that fucking face of his. You back hand slap grubber off the steering wheel as hard as you could and rip the steering wheel to the direction the rainbow is at, tempest pushes a switch forwards and the hole ship kicks into top speed and barrels towards the airship with Reasonable suspicion that ship is stowing twilight on it.

“Pull that switch on your right back!” Tempest orders you, as you use your foot to pull the switch back, causing the front of the ship to split open and launch a giant grappling hook at the airship crashing into the side of the ship with such Force it tilts the hole ship to one side. The hook then tightens and starts to gentle reel your airship in.

You walk to the front of the ship and wait to be reeled in. Once you were, tempest, grubber, and one guard jump the gap, another guard comes up behind you and picks you up and jumps with you in his hands, then lets you go when the guards on the other ship. The crew of this airship where anthropomorphic bird pirates from there Accessories and wardrobe. The only female there Wore a big pirate hat with a big red feather in it and walked on a green peg leg, with one large gold hoop earring. The largest one had a gold hook for a hand and a red bandanna. The fattest and shortest one, possibly the ship’s cook, wore an old tattered apron, and looks Like he’s molted most, if not all of his feathers except for the large green feathers on his head. The most muscular one had an eye patch on his right eye, and had a black bandanna on his head with his large red feathers sticking out. The last one had two eyes facing Opposite directions, a pair of goggles resting on his head and an orange life raft on his neck and a prosthetic replacement for the end of his beak. All four of the male birds consisted of different shades of green feathers, but the captain had mostly white feathers with a green tail and head feathers.

“Where is the pony princess.” Tempest says walking down the line of birds.

“Princess?” The captain said walking over to a clipboard and started to look at what’s written on it. “Princess? Princess? Princess? nope! All we’re hauling is storm king merchandise.” The captain says.

“What is your name ma’am?” You ask walking up to her not buying anything she’s saying.

“Captain celaeno.” The bird captain says, you nod and smirk trying to mask the fact you wanna ram your O.T.W sword through her skull for trying to hide the fact they obviously have them. You eject your right hand sword and it comes just underneath her neck, she flinches and drops the clipboard. You look out the corner of you eye at tempest who is smiling Maniacally.

“You do realize, if you were to shelter fugitives,” tempest warns them walking up to you as she speaks “the storm king would be quit... explosive.” She threatens has you both look at captain celaeno, who gulps in terror. Tempest nudges your leg, you get the message and back away from celaeno still with your sword out.

“Now, I’m gonna give you till the count of three to tell me wear they are,” tempest threatens again “or else your ship is going down... with all of you with it.” She says as you, tempest and two guards close in on the pirate crew.

“One,” tempest starts the count down, as the crew looks at each other.

“Two,” tempest says as celaeno grips her sword, you do as well and tempest get down in a pouncing stance.

“Three!” Tempest yells, but as soon as she says that a clank and screams that die off in the distance are heard from behind every one turns around and realizes what just happened.

“No.” Tempest grumbled.

You rush over to the edge of the deck and see crates and other objects along with 7 colorful pony body’s free falling. You turn back to tempest with an angry expression meeting her hopeful one, which slowly morphs to a scowl seeing your expression. You are so pissed off right now.

“This close,” you say, putting away your sword. “This... FUCKING CLOSE!” You scream in rage, and shoot your left sword at the pirate crew piercing the most muscular ones head, launching out the back of his head, you steer it with you left hand until it’s connected to you again, all before the body hit the ground. This shocked everyone, the crew mostly, tempest slightly, and you, you killed someone else, this time on purpose, out of pure anger.

“Get capper over here, now.” You command as the guards oblige and jump back onto tempest ship to get capper. “Grubber, go down stairs and find any pony or anything that might be useful.” You order as grubber solutes and rush’s for the stairs. Tempest is shock at you sudden rise to action, and gets a bit hot in the face.

Capper soon is thrown onto celaeno’s ship with a hard thud on the ground. You grab him by the scruff of his coat and hoist him to his feet and shove him into the pirates who are scared shitless, Grubber soon returns with a message.

“There’s no pony’s, but I found this.” Grubber says holding up a cupcake “and this.” Holding up a rolled up peace of paper that resembled a map. He hands it over to tempest, who hands it over to you to hold open. It indeed was a map that had a dotted line leading up to a mountain that had a stick drawing of the pink pony and hearts next to the mountain.

“Looks like they’re heading to mount aris.” Tempest exclaims staring daggers at capper.

“What?” Capper says in obvious face surprise “I didn’t-well I-haha I’m sorry, that’s thats my bad, mount aris?i’m sorry, that’s my bad.” capper says shuffling back as tempest stars at him blankly.

“Now,” tempest says, stepping up to capper and the pirates with her horn immiding sparks “about your betrayal.” She says menacingly, and takes aim at the group and launches an intense and large amount of lighting from her shattered horn colliding with box’s on the ship cause a massive explosion that engulfs the hole ship. shortly after you all jump back the tempests ship and uncouple from the ship, it catch fire and continue to explode and fall from the sky. Tempest takes back control of the steering wheel and your all on your way to mount aris.