Ponies, cannons, and war

Doing his best to shelter from the heavy rain in the narrow overhang, Seabed took a pull of his cigarette, letting it out. In the rain and wind, it was impossible to see the smoke. He shouldn't be out here, not in this sea state, but it wasn't as if it was a fire risk. Not in this weather, and the chiefs wouldn't let him smoke in the ship anyway.

This whole mission was a crock of bull anyway. The "Ghost of Anvil Island" they were out here chasing? Just more bull, like whatever nonsense they were peddling over at Manehattan. Someone swears a filly hauled her out of the water, walking on it. Or a ghost ship. It was all nonsense. He took another drag, feeling it enter his lungs.

I should really quit, his inner voice reflected. It sounded annoyingly like his younger sister. Shaking his head, he took one last drag, leaning over the railing to flick it into the ocean.

Seabed never saw the wave that the ship rode up, jostling him on the rain-slick deck so he lost his balance. Not then and not after. He was too busy falling into the water, screaming.

By the time a frantic crewmate got the hatch open his screams were gone, the stallion out of sight in the ironclad’s wake.

The filly was sitting on the steps of the automated lighthouse, in what little shelter from the rain she could find, on the breakwater of an island nibbling on a protein bar she'd found discarded unopened. The idea that someone would just throw away perfectly good food was perverse. But it seemed like people… ponies here weren't starving. That was good, certainly, even if nothing seemed to make any sense anymore. Like what she was even doing here, sitting on the steps of a lighthouse eating a scavenged protein bar.

What was a protein bar, anyway? She could read the words but food like this didn't even exist the last she properly recalled. She was more used to rice, fish and pumpkins.

Then she jerked her head up abruptly. Doing her best to keep out of the pounding rain, she had a poncho hauled up over her head to keep her hair dry. Then it was shucked off, thrown somewhere else entirely as she rose to her feet, the electrifying call of a man overboard driving her toward the water. Instead of stopping at the safety railing, she thrust her… hoof out, vaulting over and thrusting off with an easy strength, snowy white hair fluttering behind her in the darkness.

Contrary to what should have happened, she came down in a four-point landing on the water, standing there for a moment as the waves lapped at the heavy rudder-like boots she was wearing. Then the filly broke into a sprint, a heavy metal frame seeming to congeal out of the misty spray itself in her wake. A four-tubed torpedo launcher was rotated to the side on her back while to each flank, articulated metallic holders jutted out, each one mounting a heavy-looking turret. The filly didn't seem to notice the weight, though, slipping into a gliding, skating stride as she picked up speed, cutting her course to starboard to slash past a ferry, her passage rocking the shallow-bottomed boat even as it was trying to turn to assist the search and leaving confusion in her wake.

For her part, the filly didn't want to get involved, she'd been content enough there on her breakwater with her protein bar, and she didn't really mind the rain, but you didn't leave a man in the water. And the name… the name of the ship he'd fallen from? That was impossible… and equally impossible to ignore.

With the weather, sending pegasi to search for the missing stallion was ill-advised at best, and the swells and rain were reflecting searchlights everywhere. There were civilian ships out there, too, bumbling around. The filly mostly ignored them, keeping a watch on her surface search radar and for lights to avoid a collision. She knew where he was going, knew which way the current would pull him. Every now and again, a ship caught sight of something - another ship, low and lean - but they wrote the sighting off as a bad spotting as she went about her business, lookouts and her own silvery-grey eyes peeled for any sign of him.

‘There!’ She thought, seeing him struggling to keep his head above water. She cut power to her screws and changed course, coming up on him from behind.

Seabed never saw what hit him the second time, either. One second, he was nearly drowning, fighting desperately to keep his head above water only to get whacked back under in the midnight swell. A sudden roaring from behind filled him with terror - a steamship, alright, but they weren't going to rescue him. They were going to plow him under. He started screaming in terror, more water coming into his lungs. The next moment, strong, incongruously small hoofs seized him and hauled him up out of the water like he was a cat, his boots slapped by the next wave. Instinctively, Seabed kicked backward, twisting, still trying to swim, only for his hoof to slam into what felt like plate steel.

A feminine-sounding "Oof!" greeted him and the person holding him shook him.

"Stop struggling!" She ordered sharply before wrestling him onto her back and applying steam to her screws. "Just stay still, you'll be easier to carry if you don't fight it."

"W-w-who are you?" Seabed demanded, spitting up water. "Some kind of ghost?"

The filly considered that as she angled her course southeast, heading for the pier at Van… hoover.

"...yes."

Seabed wasn't reassured by the answer, struggling even more in the ghost filly’s grip before she tightened her grip, ordering him to stop again, and he went limp, as much from sheer terror as willful compliance.

‘They have a clinic at Vanhoover, at least according to the paper, and the search is off to port. Easier to get him to safety than at Anvil Island.’

Clearing her thoughts, she announced over the wireless telegraph used to coordinate the search.

"I have the missing man. Taking him to the docks at Vanhoover for treatment." Ignoring the confusion and consternation she'd caused, the filly just applied steam to her screws. "How did you fall in the water?"

Seabed stared at what he could see, a metal box atop a metal arm of sorts. Then it swiveled, revealing miniature cannons aiming at him! No, over him. They were elevated too far to be aimed at him, but what seemed like a pair of little lights gleamed at him. What would a ghost need with cannons? And why was his mind swearing he was surrounded by sailors, hauled somewhere safe inside a ship? Finally, he answered.

"I-I got swept overboard." The mute silence suggested that wasn't good enough and he added, shame-faced. "I was taking a smoke." The sailors he couldn't see, and his mind insisted were right there, glowered at him.

Apparently it didn't impress the ghost filly much, either.

"Those things will kill you." She commented, her voice's very flatness an indictment of his stupidity.

"You sound like my sister." Seabed griped, too far gone in the impossibility to bother denying it. He spit out a bit of saltwater after the spray from a particularly high wave smacked him.

"You should listen to her." The filly answered him, unimpressed and apparently unconcerned with the waves. "I wish my sisters were here to give me good advice."

Seabed stared at the box-like thing looking back at him. Those lights, they had to be eyes. Could ghosts be haunted? "Ghosts have sisters?" He asked numbly.

She ignored him, lowering her speed and coasting through the water as she spotted the long structure jutting out into the water, looking southward. As she came nearer, the filly angled east, heading for the docks, spotlights scanning over the land as she looked for the right place to go.

Doctor Proctor stood next to the ambulance he'd driven down to the pier, summoned at the direction of the harbormaster. He hadn't had much to tell him, just that someone, over Vanhoover’s recently developed wireless telegraph, had reported hauling an EN sailor out of the water and was heading for the docks. The lighting was anything but good as he covered his eyes, looking out into the rainy darkness before a spotlight scanned up the docks. It was impossible to see what was behind it beyond a vague impression of a ship that seemed to vanish into the rain.

"Did you see that?"

Staring out in the darkness, getting soaked through, Nurse Heartgold started to answer him before she pointed.

"There! In the water! There's something moving down there!"

The pair hustled to the side of the pier as the strange figure came closer. In the pier's lights, they could see the shape of a stallion, hefted aboard what looked like some sort of metal contraption. The two paramedics hauled the stallion up. He was dressed in an absolutely soaked sailor's fatigues, dragging him toward the ambulance.

As Proctor busied himself getting the fellow up into the back of the ambulance, Heartgold started to follow before a sound behind her caught her attention. Someone else had clambered up the ladder. Her limbs were ghostly pale in the rainy night, more white fluttering around her head as she moved, but darkness seemed to consume part of her torso before she stepped properly into the streetlight and it glistened like wet steel.

She brushed back her wet, snowy mane with a hoof as pale as death before the two of them locked eyes for a moment. Finally, though, Heartgold reached out, grabbing the filly’s foreleg. Heartgold wracked her brain trying to figure out why the filly was out at sea. The water was anything but freezing.

"Come on, let's get out of the rain!" She called, trying to pull the tall, slender, willowy filly along.
The filly looked at her, just standing there, more not cooperating than actually resisting.

"I should go…" She said, her voice faint and uncertain, a curious accent for such a young face.

"You should get somewhere dry, we all should." Heartgold countered, tugging harder.

This time the filly followed along, staring at the ambulance as if she didn't quite know what to make of it. Having made up her mind, though, she clambered into the passenger seat when Heargold pointed her forward.

"Put on the belt." She said, pointing at the belt as Proctor attached himself to the reins of the ambulance.

For a moment, she just blinked, not comprehending the instruction, then noticed Heartgold had one on and repeated the motion. It was like she'd never seen such a thing before but she managed to snap it shut after a few tries.

It wasn't far to the clinic in the dark, rainy streets and neither one felt like talking. No one else was about, not at this hour, in this weather, but the windows were bright when Itou threw the ambulance into park next to the emergency entrance of the tiny little urgent care clinic. The sailor didn't seem like he was still in mortal danger, still better to get him dried up and examine him rather than drive all the way to the naval base and have one of their own find something like internal bleeding.

However slight she looked, the filly was clearly strong, and she kept the waterlogged sailor from falling when he slipped, whether on the wet pavement or at the sight of her Proctor wasn't sure.

“I'll get him inside. You see to her.” He said to Heartgold.

"Yeah, sure thing." Heartgold jerked her head. "Come on, let's… get you out of that thing." She glanced at what looked for all the world like a steel corset and was that a cape on her back?!