Author's Note

Sorry for the late publication/post. My insomnia's gotten into a bad state again, and once I get into an unwanted rhythm, there's no telling when or how it'll go away.

Island Adventure a Go Go: Part 1

Applebloom licked the scarlet juices from around her lips. “This one tastes like grape jelly, but it’s got a texture like a marshmallow!”

Scootaloo took a bite and made a Mmm! Sound before leaping upward and hovering for a second and a half. “That one tasted sweet, tangy, spicey, and a bit dry all at once despite being so juicy!”

Sweetie Belle floated a whole bunch in her mouth and chewed for a moment. “Zhiss uhn taes like hauw I thing saffirrz taes fer drwagunz!”

While she was carefully floating a fresh piece of fruit in a crate after tossing three rotten ones in their pile, Rarity’s eyes went wide and she pointed a hoof at her sister with a furrowed brow. “What have I told you about talking with your mouth full?”

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes and gulped. “I think after about five-hundred times of saying the same thing over and over, you just told me that I could do it all I wanted if I just didn’t do it around you.”

At that, Rarity made a deliberate, self-satisfied nod. “Ex-actly!” Applejack, carrying a basket of freshly-bucked fruit on her back, rolled her eyes and gave a glance at Percival going the other way with an empty basket, the both of them sharing a giggle. Meanwhile, Sloop wheeled some full and marked crates on a hand truck up a wider, longer gangplank on the island’s beach up to the deck and towards the open hatch in the back leading directly to the cargo hold. Sloop got a catcall out of Crazy Jane as he passed her and her lounge chair sitting on the deck at the bow, then she extended her arm to the edge of the bow and rattled the ice at Miss June. After capturing some images of some new types of fruit and logging the fillies’ takes on their tastes and textures, Miss June sighed and banished her archival construct before marching back into the cabin to get her another cola out of the cooler in the pantry.

Just over an hour later, everybody was back in the cabin with the equipment stored back in the hold. Sloop, at the internal helm behind the paned windows with the more elaborate controls and meters, flipped a few switches. With a hard but slow pull on a big lever, he brought up the anchor and shoved off, getting some momentum accelerating parallel to the coast before making a big but gentle turn back towards open sea. Checking a smaller chart of the local area, he corrected his course and adjusted his speed, then threw a switch to lock the heading in and turned back to descend the ladder down to the cabin proper.

The crew and passengers lie either sitting on the sea-green padded seats against the long pear-white walls of the room or on the floor between, lined with solid-blue waterproof carpeting with a pale-yellow design in the center: A spoked tiller with the design of a compass in the inner ring and a line stretching below before expanding into the curving hooks of an anchor. The portholes lined up above provided light for the various activities each person aboard adopted.

Rarity was using a set of implements to clean the sand from her hooves while Applejack was using an abacus and pencil in her jaws likely to tally the expenses for her percentage for her labor, Percival in her form looking over the documents to proofread. Crazy Joe was using a whetstone to maintain the spikes on his unnatuned meteor hammer while his elder sister sat bored, her sunglasses on her forehead as she read a magazine.

After putting away a board game upon deciding they couldn’t agree on which pieces went where after the swaying of the boat tipped them off, the Cutie Mark Crusaders laughed as they played what was no doubt an advanced-level game of jacks provided by the present conditions. Roux sat on the other side practicing his yo-yo with a sour expression. After Scootaloo failed to coax him to join the other youths, Sweetie Belle had absentmindedly called him Crazy Roux, only for him to snarl at her and roughly utter “IT’S. JUST. ROUX.” Thankfully, Apple Bloom deescalated that debacle and both parties quickly agreed to leave one-another alone.

Sloop took point and got everybody’s attention with a single clap of his hands, then eagerly rubbed them together. “Ladies and gentlemen, It pleases me to say for more reasons than one that our expedition has proven very fruitful!”

He made a short laugh at his own joke, followed by a giggle from Percival and an eye rolling from his current twin. “We’ve managed to save room in the cargo hold by storing only three crates of any specific species of fruit we’ve found, and thanks to our unexpected team of taste testers, we’ve loaded up on five crates of any species that stands out from the rest!

“I feel I should reiterate that our end-goal isn’t to build up a bulk supply, but rather introduce a sampling to build up a demand for a clientele that’ll pay for contracts for bulk supply! In turn, this should attract investments in futures to pay for infrastructure for shipping and cultivating! And I want to assure all parties that any of you who assist in this preparatory endeavor shall receive shares in addition to their percentages expected to grow manyfold over time!”

At that, Applejack rapidly began doing some more numbers to account for this, while the Cutie Mark Crusaders made exaggerated looks of incomprehension at one-another before giggling. Crazy Joe turned to look at his sister, who made an indifferent expression and a dismissive hand waving before returning to her magazine.

With an enthusiastic nod, Sloop decided to continue his speech in his boardroom voice regardless of a lack of expected input. “We should make it to the next island by sunset, where we’ll make camp for the night before resuming work bright and early. Halfway to evening from there, we’ll start sailing back to Silver Shoals and repeat the process on another island before heading homeward in earnest. So if anyone would like to go back up on deck for the view, I’d suggest you take the opportunity now! I myself will be at the bow to get a feel for the wind and waves before manning the external helm. Remember the third law of the sea: Use the Buddy System! Never go to any remote point on a boat alone!”

About an hour later, Sloop was leaning against the port bow gunwale. The smile he was wearing for such a long time was gone as he gazed out into the distance with a look of deep contemplation. He was so deep in thought that he didn’t even notice the rather large figure come up behind him until they were already facing them leaning on the stern bow gunwale. “Hey…”

Sloop flinched, then briefly shook his head before adopting a more confident posture and expression, leaning back on the gunwale with an extended elbow. “Miss Jane! I didn’t even see you there!”

Crazy Jane made a relaxed chuckle at that routine. “Oh, drop the act, Navy Boy! You ain’t foolin’ anyone here!”

Sloop just silently held his posture and expression for an uncomfortable few moments, then he sighed and went back to his natural manner. “Was it really that obvious?”

Crazy Jane made a nonchalant laugh and waved her hand dismissively. “Of course not! But you can’t beat my woman's intuition!” Then she turned to place both hands on the gunwale but turned her head to keep looking at Sloop. “But even I’m not impertinent enough to tell you to just drop it and be real from here on.”

Sloop lowered his head, but turned it to Crazy Jane and gave her a more relaxed and sentimental smile. “I suppose I don’t need to mention how I’ve pretty much been doing that my whole life as the first son of a proud but decadent family of aristocrats?”

“Family, huh? I admit that I had to become the person I am now having to raise my younger brothers at least somewhat. But I definitely think that I would have become as tough and sharp as I am regardless.”

“I’ve stopped thinking of it as pretending or faking a long time ago. ‘Fake it until you make it’ definitely has some negatives attached to it, but people generally desire to change for the better. Nobody wants to think about how to do just that, because it definitely isn’t an inevitability even with believing it's possible. If you try to be the person you want to be for the genuine sake of self-betterment, you can become that person from the inside-out.”

Crazy Jane then gazed out into the sea with her own sentimental look. “Elemental spiritualism, now? Become the vessel and then become? ‘Water is the element of change. It can take any shape and reach any destination with the slightest of ease. If poured into a vessel, it becomes the same shape as the vessel. If it meets an obstacle, it takes the path of least resistance, either circumventing it or wearing it down over time to go through.’ You really are Kris’s brother. Your strength is his strength, and your trials are his trials.”

That speech gave Sloop a tremendous wave of sentiment. He stared out into the horizon, lost in nostalgia. He thought about how Master Noxus strove to make all of them feel as not special as possible, and how he didn’t come to appreciate that until a very, very long time later. But he began to understand early on as he picked up on the strain of the burden of all those compliments and praise placed upon one of his closest friends.

Sloop sighed again, then craned his neck upwards to the bright blue sky. “She never even tried to pretend. But she didn’t let things like perfection and greatness tie her down either. Nothing could ever slow her down. How did she literally do it all without losing the wind in her sails?”

Suddenly, Sloop’s eyes went wide and he straightened his posture. He started sniffing the air, swinging his head hither and about with deep nasal inhalations. At that display, Crazy Jane turned back towards him with a raised eyebrow. “What’re you doing now? Did you catch the scent of more fruit in the wind?”

Sloop closed his eyes with his nose held high for one last deep inhalation. Then he looked directly at Crazy Jane. “I don’t know. But something’s different now. Very different. Can you go into the cabin and tell Percival to release the control lock?”

Crazy Jane stopped leaning on the gunwale and turned around. “Well… Aye aye Captain, I guess.” She strode back into the open hatch to the cabin.

After climbing into the external helm on top of the cabin, Sloop was dreading the fact that his worries were not unfounded. The waves had quickly become much more choppy and tumultuous. The wind had also picked up much more noticeably, requiring him to take off his hat and tuck it inside his jacket. However, he didn’t accept the fact that they were in trouble until the clouds started rolling in. Like an oil stain on a white sheet, they seemed to fluidly yet quickly creep out and amass from beyond the horizon. Sloop quickly took his hat out of his jacket to keep the rain out of his eyes, clamping it on his head with a free hand.

Taking a few brief moments to make a full three hundred and sixty degree look at the surrounding ocean, he heaved on the helm and attempted to sail directly into the direction of the waves. Though the boat didn’t lean to the side nearly as much, every lift against the hill-like waves ended in a crashing fall back against the surface of the sea that Sloop felt in every bone in his body.

Tightly shutting his eyes for a moment upon realizing what he had to do, he flipped open the speaking tube to the side of the helm. “Percival! Tell everybody to get their life vests on! Then come out on deck with Rarity and Applejack in your battle form!”

Percival quickly cranked the hatch shut once he and the requested ponies made it out on deck. The vested mares and amorphous Percival raced back on the open bowside deck looking up expectantly at their captain, Applejack holding onto her hat with a hoof and Rarity bracing against the extra drag her mane and tail put on her in the wind.

Sloop tucked his hat back in his coat to gesture at the trio and shouted as loud as he could against the howling wind and pouring rain. “DUMP THE CARGO OVERBOARD! DON’T KEEP THE HATCH OPEN FOR LONGER THAN YOU HAVE TO!”

At first, Applejack doubted her ears heard amid the storm. “WHAT IN TARNATION? WE NEED ALL THAT, OR ALL OUR HARD WORK WILL BE FOR NOTHIN’!”

Sloop shook his head as vigorously as he could with accompanying gestures. “WE HAVE TO SLOW THE BOAT DOWN OR WE’LL CAPSIZE! WE CAN’T DIVE OR THE CURRENTS WILL SMASH US AGAINST A ROCK OUTCROP! THE ONLY THING WE CAN DO TO SLOW DOWN IS TO KILL OUR MOMENTUM! THE CONTROLS WON’T HELP US, THE ONLY WAY TO SLOW DOWN IS TO LIGHTEN THE LOAD!”

Seeing what she did in Sloop’s expression, Rarity suddenly narrowed her brow and raced to the stern side deck along with Percival and a now only half-reluctant Applejack. She shot a beam of magic and erected an elegant semi-transparent awning tied firmly down on the surrounding cleats over the cargo hatch, then the trio raced down into the opening.

Rarity came out floating four crates of fruit and released her magic to lob them over the edge before turning back. Next, Percival came up carrying one crate in each of the six arms he formed and with a full-body lashing motion flung them into the drink. After he went back in, Applejack came sternside with three crates on her back and with a spring flung them up to kick them all overboard in rapid sequence.

Slowly, Sloop could feel the boat’s movements ease ever so. Even after being lifted on top of an oncoming swell, she managed to slide much more gently back to a level position rather than be flung up and smack down like before.

Right when Sloop was starting to feel at ease, he felt something else in the atmosphere. Suddenly, the wind shifted, pulling everything in the same direction with a slight upward draft. Then, he saw it in the distance: A dark spot on the water’s surface with bands of dark water and white foamy spray. As time went on, the motions started throwing a spray of the sea water outward. Finally, he saw it come down from above: A funnel cloud began descending as if the sky itself were taking a curious poke at the very surface of the world.

Moments after it touched down, the waterspout whipped up the wind and waves to a whole new magnitude. Sloop could barely keep himself secured to his position, much less steer the boat to safety. Meanwhile, after ejecting some of the last of the fruit, Rarity found herself flung outward along with her crate. Applejack sprung to grab her tail in her own jaws, but the wind carried her even further outward towards the water. Percival lashed himself hooking and looping through the drainage grate on the amidship side of the gunwale, then stretched his other arm to grab onto Applejack to keep them all secure.

As a last resort, Sloop hit his palm against the metal ring encircling him and cried out. “North!” But before he could cast the complimentary aura effect on himself, a lightning bolt came down and forked in two, furiously shocking both Sloop and the now lightning rod-like Percival. Both pairs of warriors and mares were left paralyzed and sent out of sorts as they lost their grip on the boat, cast out into the dark briny deep while leaving the passengers in the cabin at the mercy of the wind and waves.