Moonlit Skies

Moonlit Skies

Chapter 1:

The rain was blowing

Lightning cracked...

Verdant Aurora was a strange specimen. He was a bright green pegasus with different hues of green and blue inlaid throughout his feathers. All natural of course. His eyes were an incredibly vibrant blue. He was also one of very few pegasi native to Canterlot rather than Cloudsdale, and was head of the Equestrian Royal Committee of Weather Science. Head, and only member of. He usually didn't mind. That just meant that he got to spend time alone in his personal airship, the Australis, floating through the night skies. He did, however, tend to dislike his lack of co-workers when he was in the middle of being chased by pirates, like he was right now.

"HORSEAPPLES!" He yelled, as another arrow lodged itself in the railing, directly below his head. Most pirates tended to avoid the use of cannons, as they preferred to take ships intact. Verdant on the other hoof, had no qualms about simply blasting the ever-loving buck out of anypony stupid enough to attack his airship. Of course, this was easier said than done when there was only one pony to load, aim, and fire all of the cannons, as well as steer the ship. 'That is it!' He decided, 'If I make it out of this alive, I am hiring a crew.' Making it out alive didn't seem very likely at the moment though. The pirates had taken him by surprise in the dead of night, using the storm that was raging around them as cover for their ambush.

They had come up on his port side without any warning, and immediately began firing their crossbows. Verdant had no time to retaliate, and quickly found himself pinned down behind the railing designed to stop dumbass crewmembers from accidentally falling overboard. They had to reload eventually though, and the moment the rain of arrows let up, Verdant equipped his flight goggles and rolled himself over the railing, into the stormy night sky below. After falling for a good fifty meters until he was below the cloud layer, he spread his wings and flew back into the storm.

As a general rule, pirates were pretty dumb, so when their opponent had gone missing between flashes of lightning, the lower ranking ones started to panic. The higher ranking officers were all either attempting to calm them down, or carefully scanning the skies. One such officer, a unicorn, had anticipated an attack from the port side, and had taken up a position at the automatic crossbow mounted there. Unfortunately for the pirates, Verdant always made sure to target the smarter ones first.

The next time the lightning lit up the deck, none of the pirates noticed that the aforementioned unicorn had suddenly gone missing. 'Eugh...' thought Verdant, as he watched the screaming unicorn's cloudwalking spell backfire when he impacted the clouds below like a brick, staining them with blood and adding droplets of crimson to the rain. 'I would hate to be outside in whatever town we're over right now...'

He flew up onto the deck of the pirate ship and spun the crossbow around to face the crew. "Hey!" Every head onboard turned to look at him. He narrowed his eyes and allowed a small smirk to cross his face. "Get some." Then he opened fire. Pirates fell in droves. Some tried to run at him, others ran away from him, and others stood still in their shock, sometimes getting used as cover by their allies. Then he ran out of ammo. "Uh-oh."

By the time the panicked pirates realized that their enemy was without weapon, he had already dived backwards off the ship, and returned to his own. He removed his goggles from his eyes and placed them back upon his head before swiveling a cannon to aim at the balloon of the hostile ship. Normally, putting a single hole through the balloon of an airship wouldn't do much. That would be true if Verdant was using regular cannon balls. Having realized this after his first encounter with the skypirates of southern Equestria, he had opted to use cannon balls that ignited upon being fired. They tended to work well against flammable gas like that in airship balloons.

*boom* ... ... ... *KA-BOOM!*

Naturally, the noble pirates who were capable of flight helped their flightless comrades from certain doom. Oh wait... No they didn't. They ran like pussies. Leaving their crew-mates to burn, the pegasi and stereotypical one-eyed gryphon captain took to the air... and then flew over to the Australis.  Verdant, now hiding behind a stack of crates, had a single thought. 'Well I'm an idiot.' Honestly, what did he expect to happen? ‘Well at least there’s nothing else that could possibly go wrong.’

At that exact moment, they exited the storm, allowing the moon to light up the entire deck. Oh, and it also fired a mare at them. 'Well, I've been wrong before...' Everypony present, vicious pirate captain included, jumped as the unconscious mare impacted the deck of the ship with a dull *thud*. There were a few seconds of shock, during which the only sound was the thunder of the storm that was slowly shrinking into the distance. The captain took a step forward to examine the strange mare. "Oi! This wench's got bat wings! ... kinky."

It's usually not a good thing when pirate captains take a sexual interest in unconscious mares, so Verdant decided to distract them with the two spring-loaded knives mounted on his fetlocks. Two pegasi fell to the deck, and two more were swiftly cut down by a sudden cutlass-wielding scientist.

Meanwhile, the mare from the moon woke to the sight of a cycloptic gryphon grinning hungrily at her. With a scream, she proceeded to punch him in the face. Then she jumped to her hooves and punched him again, then knocked him backwards with a swift uppercut. She followed up by jumping into the air and bringing both hooves down the the captain's head, forcing him further back until he was stopped by the ship's railing.

While the captain was kept busy, Verdant was locked in a struggle against the last remaining pegasus. Verdant slashed from the left, and the pirate matched him with a slash from the right. When neither could push forwards, they pulled apart once again. They matched each other blow for blow, neither able to land a hit. Eventually, the pirate decided to attempt a powerful downward strike. Verdant deflected the blade right, into the deck of the ship, then swiftly flipped his blade the other way and stabbed his opponent through the neck.

As he shoved the pirate off of his sword with one hoof, he spotted the captain blocking blows from the mare before knocking her to the deck. Time seemed to slow as Verdant pulled his sidearm out of it's holster. It's appearance was similar to a crossbow wrapped in a metal cylinder. The captain yelled in rage, and reared up onto his hind legs. At the same moment, Verdant bit down on his weapon's firing mechanism. The string shot forwards, dragging a small piece of Flint along the steel rail. When the Flint struck the back of the cylinder, the sparks it was trailing lit the powder inside.

With a crack of thunder, the flintlock-bow launched a small metal pellet through the air and into the gryphon's left eye-socket. He froze right before bringing his talons down on the mare beneath him, then slowly fell backwards and over the railing, his limp form falling to the ground hundreds of feet below.

The mare stood and looked at Verdant. For some reason she didn't look very happy. She galloped forwards, murder in her eyes. Verdant started to quickly back away. "No wait! Nononono wait! Wai-" *whack!*