“The Devil’s Roar, a land left unexplored~”
“Pinkie, I don’t think–”
“The Devil’s Roar, a sea ponies ignored~”
“I’m fairly certain that’s not even how the shanty goes.”
“And mares who praise Celestia~”
“Wouldn’t ‘Summon the Megalodon’ be more appropri–”
“Best remember Equestria~”
“...I have to admit, you’re pretty good on the hurdy-gurdy.”
“Just ask the souls who fell ‘fore us~”
“Oh, you actually brought it back around.”
“Those poor, forgotten ponies.”
Twilight shakes her head as her pink crewmate continues to jam on her hurdy-gurdy. With a sigh, she lifts her spyglass up to her face using telekinesis and resumes her watch from the bow of their sloop, “The Marestream.”
“Yar, what da ya see, Twilight?!”
“Pinkie, I understand that we’re pirates, but speaking like that is wholly unnecessary.”
“Says ye, cabin mare! With that attitude, we’ll NEVER summon her!”
“And can you please stop shouting? The sloop is the smallest vessel type that can survive on the Sea of Thieves, I can hear you just fine even on the opposite side of the boat.”
“Technically, the rowboat is the smallest ship type.” Pinkie’s voice returns to normal as she adjusts her eyepatch (which she does not need whatsoever). “Anyway, what do you see out there?”
“The same thing I saw five minutes ago, and the same thing I saw five minutes before that.”
“Which is?!”
“A few rocks that I keep mistaking for ships and the faint outline of Thieves’ Haven.”
“So… no meg?”
“Not yet, Pinkie. Be patient.”
“But we’ve been out here for HOURS!”
“Yes, we have. If the Shrouded Ghost was easy to find, somepony would have gotten to it before us. Remember, our goal is to be the first crew on the Sea of Thieves to slay it.”
“And then we’ll be ‘Hunters of the Shrouded Ghost,’ right?”
“Exactly. Plus, Sharon over at Port Merrick said she’d make us a custom figurehead if we manage to take it down.”
“Ooooh, that’s so exciting!” Pinkie happily hops around the ship’s sole mast, making Twilight wince at the sight of her poorly secured cutlass bouncing around with her. “I can’t wait! Rainbow is gonna be soooooooo jealous!”
Twilight sighs again as she smiles at her excited friend.
“Why don’t we go through our checklist again? Just to break up the monotony.”
Pinkie zips in front of Twilight so fast she barely has time to register that she moved at all. She salutes with a serious expression, and Twilight chuckles before producing a list out of seemingly nowhere.
“First, cannonballs.”
“We’ve got 86 in the top barrel and a full crate next to the left cannon!”
“Good. Next, food.”
“I’ve got an inventory full of pineapples and you have one full of mangoes!”
“It’d be better if we both had pineapples, but I digress.” Twilight clears her throat. “Wood?”
“Almost two full stacks!”
“Excellent. Emissary flag?”
“Don’t have one, so as to not draw any unwanted attention from Reapers!”
“Oho! You caught on to my trick question. Good job, Pinkie.” Pinkie beams, causing her oversized hat to nearly fall off. “Let’s see… Shark Hunter set? I didn’t write this.”
“I did!”
“Pinkie, you know ship sets have no bearing on meg spawns.”
“That’s what YOU think, but my gut is telling me otherwise!”
“...Fine. It’s not like our ship set matters anyway. Well, except for the sail, of course!”
With a smile on her face, Twilight excitedly runs to the ropes near the back of the sloop. With a strong tug of her magic, the sail unfurls. While this is ordinarily bad practice when anchored, she knows they’re not in any immediate danger. Besides…
“I finally saved up the eight million gold needed to get the Dark Adventurers Sails! Now we can be some of the lucky few who have the only strategically advantageous sails on the… seas…”
“Ohhhhhhhhh. Erm, sorry, Twilight. They changed those sails a few updates ago.”
Sure enough, the inverted ‘V’ shape that made the ludicrously expensive sails more useful by providing greater visibility than any other option was gone, replaced by a silver lining that looks more like duct tape than anything else.
With a defeated groan, Twilight slowly raises the disappointing sails once more.
“Wh-what about world events?” Pinkie asks while looking at her friend with big, apologetic eyes. “Any of those around?”
“Yeah, there’s a Fort of Fortune active, thankfully. That’ll draw attention away from us.”
“Should we be worried about the kraken?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Pinkie sighs.
“So we have to keep waiting?”
“Nopony said this would be fun, Pinkie.”
“Awwwww.”
After hours of quietly observing the horizon through her spyglass, Twilight is interrupted by a sudden drop of water hitting her forehead. Looking up, her fears are immediately confirmed.
“Oh, great. The storm is here.”
“The storm?!” Pinkie asks excitedly. “Wowee, it’s super dark now!”
Sure enough, the skies grow dark as rain begins to fall onto the boat. The calm seas quickly become much more violent, with large waves blocking their line of sight and the sounds of heavy rain and the ringing of the bell hanging from the ship’s mast filling their ears.
Twilight groans again as she slowly walks below deck.
“I’ll start bucketing out the rainwater.”
“What should I do?”
“Put away any metal items you might be holding.”
“Okey dokey lokey!”
With half-lidded eyes and a desire to just get the storm over with, Twilight begins mindlessly bucketing out the water that gradually fills the bottom deck. A few minutes later, she hears Pinkie call out to her.
“Hey, Twilight?”
“Yeah?”
“Does a cutlass count as metal?” Twilight opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted by a massive booming sound coming from the sky followed by a crackling from somewhere above deck. She briefly hears the faint sound of a fire, followed by the sizzle of said fire being extinguished by the rain. Moments later, Pinkie stumbles down the steps, her mane and coat soot-black and frazzled. “Never mind.”
As Twilight continues to stare through her spyglass, she suddenly catches a whiff of something strange. Aside from the seawater and the rats below, she shouldn’t be smelling much of anything. However, that’s the unmistakable scent of… burning?
With only a moment’s hesitation, she rushes below deck, only to be met with pretty much exactly what she was expecting.
“Pinkie, what are you doing?!”
“Cooking some fish.”
“Where did you get those fish?!”
“I got ‘em while it was storming earlier.”
Twilight looks down at the cooking pot sitting in front of Pinkie.
“...Pinkie, that thing is burnt to a crisp. It’s hardly worth anything now.”
“Oh.” Pinkie gives her a sheepish smile. “I, uh, might have burnt a lot of fish, then.”
Twilight sighs as she walks past Pinkie and looks inside their top food barrel. Lo and behold, it’s full of burnt fish. However, something about them seems… fishy (heh).
“...Pinkie Pie?”
“Hm?
“...Did you not only somehow catch, but also burn thirteen Trophy Shadow Stormfish?”
“I suppose?”
“Pinkie.” With wide, unfocused eyes, Twilight places a hoof on her shoulder. “Those are commonly considered the rarest fish in the sea.”
“Uhh… oops?”
Twilight’s eye twitches.
“Hey, Twilight?”
“What is it now, Pinkie?”
“What’s the emissary flag that looks like an hourglass?”
“Those are the Reapers I warned you about.”
“Oh. Then you might want to turn around.”
“Hmm?” Twilight looks up from her spyglass and looks towards the back of the ship just in time to see a galleon flying a Reaper’s Bones emissary flag mere feet away, with their humble little vessel in their crosshairs, before a cannonball smashes the deck below her and launches her off of the sloop. “AHH!”
“W-what do we do?!”
“Raise the anchor!” Twilight shouts as she falls beneath the waves. “Run!”
Pinkie locks eyes with a pirate on the other crew. More specifically, his eye sockets, as he appears to be a solid-gold skeleton.
“Twilight, I don’t think we can run from this one!”
The booming sound of wood splintering fills the space as the humble little sloop is bombarded with cannonballs.
“Then do something!” Twilight shouts as she desperately tries to swim for their ladder.
“Nopony messes with MY crew and gets away with it!” Pinkie climbs onto the back of their boat and begins to suck in air. Across the way, she sees four cannons being loaded, every one pointed right at her. “Gum-gum…” Four cannons go off simultaneously. Four cannonballs launch faster than the eye can see towards her. Four cast-iron balls of death make contact with a comically inflated Pinkie Pie, who stretches like rubber. “Balloon!” Four cannonballs are launched back towards their senders. Four solid-gold skeleton pirates meet their untimely end. “Hah!”
“Pinkie, I don’t know what that was,” the sopping-wet Twilight gasps as she reaches the top of the ladder, “but we need to return fire before the Ferryman sends them back!”
“You’ve got it!”
The two mares quickly get to work raising their anchor, turning the ship in place, and bombarding the galleon with cannonballs.
“Aim for tier three!”
“What?”
“The bottom, aim for the bottom!”
“You’ve got it!”
As cannon fire drowns out all other sounds, a grin makes its way to Twilight’s face. This is what the Sea of Thieves is all about.
Twilight and Pinkie sit back-to-back near the bow of their tiny little ship as they try to catch their breaths. Against all odds, they managed to repel their attackers. They even got a fancy Reaper’s Bones flag to show for it.
“Hey… Pinkie?”
“Yeah?”
“You did good back there.”
“Teehee! Thanks. Though, I might have eaten all of my pineapples in the process.”
“That’s alright.” Twilight holds out her hoof, upon which she holds two mangoes. “Here. You’re better at combat than I am.”
Pinkie stares at the mangoes for a moment before gently smiling and taking them off her hooves.
“Thanks.”
For a few moments, the only sound that can be heard on the little sloop are the gentle waves rocking the battered and poorly patched hull back and forth. In a way, it’s strangely peaceful.
“Hey, Twilight?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m kinda tired.”
“...You know what?” Twilight stands up, catching Pinkie by surprise. “So am I.” She stretches her legs before looking down at Pinkie with a smile. “Let’s go sell this flag and pour some grog, shall we?”
“Heehee! I thought you’d never ask!”
A few moments and a raised capstan later, “The Marestream” begins to sail once more. With the sea’s breeze gently blowing over them, the two mares prepare to end the day’s journey on a high note.
…
“...Pinkie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you hear that?”
“Oh, thank goodness. I thought I was the only one.”
With a quick glow of her horn, Twilight drops the anchor. Pinkie turns to her friend, who looks back at her with wide eyes.
“Pinkie, quick! That’s a 4/4 string ostinato in D minor! Every sailor knows that means death! Raise the sails!”
“I don’t think that’s actually what this song–”
Pinkie is interrupted by the sound of something big breaking the surface of the sea behind them. Slowly, both of them turn around to see a massive fin rapidly approaching their boat.
Twilight gasps.
“Pinkie!”
“What?!”
“That fin is pink! Do you know what that means?!”
“Um… um…!”
“IT’S THE SHROUDED GHOST! OPEN FIRE, PINKIE!”
“Aye aye!”
Using the only cannon on the left side of the sloop, Pinkie loads cannonball after cannonball, launching countless pounds of cast-iron fury towards the massive, ancient megalodon slowly circling the ship. Meanwhile, Twilight turns the steering wheel immediately after the sails and anchor are raised, allowing the sloop to turn in place and giving Pinkie a perfect angle to fire on the dreaded shark.
Suddenly, the monster charges.
“Pinkie, shoot into its open mouth!”
“I’m trying, but the waves are too–”
She’s interrupted by the massive shark biting down on the ship’s hull, throwing her overboard into the dangerous waters.
“Climb back up as soon as you can! I’m going below deck to make repairs before we sink!”
“I’m swimming, I’m swimming!”
Pinkie is bitten by a couple of stray sharks before making it back to the ladder, but she manages to shake them off and board the ship in one piece. She feels herself beginning to faint before she remembers her secret weapon: Twilight’s mangoes! With two quick bites, a cocky grin makes its way to her face.
“Alright, Shrouded Ghost. It’s you and me! YAH!”
As the megalodon passes beneath the ship yet again, Pinkie ignores her cannons, opting instead to leap from the side of the sloop onto the beast’s back. With her cutlass in hoof, she slashes at its tough, revenge-flavored flesh. Again and again her colorful weapon hits its mark as the monster continues circling their boat.
She feels it start to turn as it opens its maw. It picks up speed and begins barreling towards the sloop. A twitch of her ear and tingle in her hoof tells her everything she needs to know: It’s gonna bite down right where Twilight is making repairs.
“Oh no you don’t!”
The meg quickens its pace. In mere seconds, it will bite down on the unsuspecting Twilight. Pinkie straddles the beast with as much force as she can as she raises her front hooves above her head, cutlass pointed down and at the ready.
The shark’s maw begins to bite down, just as Pinkie stabs one final time.
Then, silence.
There is a loud splash as the sloop is knocked back. The meg slams into the hull, but not with enough force to cause any damage. Its mouth closes and its four massive eyes glaze over. Its fins go limp, and as the momentum carrying it forward slowly fades, it begins to float harmlessly atop the waves.
“T-Twilight!”
“What?!” Twilight runs above deck, having just finished her repairs. Looking in the direction of Pinkie’s voice, she sees her standing on the carcass of a dead, defeated megalodon. “Y-you did it!”
“We did it!”
“Oh my gosh! We actually killed the Shrouded Ghost!”
Pinkie literally jumps for joy on the beast’s lifeless body while Twilight excitedly laughs and leans against the mast. It’s been a long, long journey to get here, but finally, they’ve done it.
They’re “Hunters of the Shrouded Ghost.”
“...Hey, Pinkie?”
“Yes, Twilight?”
“Why is its body purple?”
“Is… is the Shrouded Ghost not supposed to be purple?”
“No, it’s supposed to be white with a pink fin.”
As the dead megalodon sinks beneath the waves, the two mares notice a new title being attributed to them.
“Hunter of the Crested Queen.”
“...I hate this stupid game.”
Author's Note
I've given over 1,000 hours of my life to the Sea of Thieves, and not even I have found that elusive shark.
Because it isn't real. 
As always, I appreciate any and all feedback!
