Spies and Griffons

Chapter 2: Flashpowder

Flashpowder: Usage and Discovery, by Sky Sailor

"Flashpowder is a naturally occuring element, easily mined from soft rock at low depths. In its unactivated state, it appears as a soft, silvery powder with a multicolored, oil-like quality. If heated, this metal will glitter and throw off sparks. Recently after its discovery ponies discovered that heating the metal in the absence of oxygen causes it to become highly brittle and combustible. In this activated state, flashpowder will explode violently in the presence of a spark, whether or not there is oxygen around it. This has led to its widespread use in cannons and other large weaponry on both shipping and pirating vessels."

"Wake up, Blue Eyes," Emerald whispered gently. He ruffled the filly's mane. They were currently both cocooned in the netting on the side of the Nevermore.

The carousing on the shore had finished, and the rambunctious snores of the watchmen above the pair echoed throughout the ship. Still, Emerald was afraid. He knew that if he and Blue Eyes were caught trying to escape, they would be killed. The first mate was a sadist and Captain Ransom gave him free rein to do whatever he wished with prisoners. Emerald shivered at the thought of what would happen.

Emerald whispered quickly to Blue Eyes, "If we're going to leave at all, it has to be now. If we're lucky, all of them will be drunk with their shoddy wine and seabeer."

He gently disentangled himself from the netting. The pair was close to the stern on the starboard side of the ship, hanging about twenty feet above the shore. Luckily the captain, first mate, and most of the crew were currently passed out in a temporary tent camp on the port side of the ship.

The netting smelled of salt and had seaweed wrapped around inside it. It provided much-needed camouflage; without it, the two ponies would be as obvious as a flashpowder firework. The griffons could see for miles, even on a moonless night, and currently the moon was more than half full.

The little filly asked, "Are we ready?" Emerald glanced back at her. He had been looking off at the moon, nervously thinking.

"I think so," he said. "Do you have all your stuff packed?" They both smiled at this. Currently, the only worldly possessions they had were the fur on their backs and the strong stench of seaweed they had both picked up.

He knew that their poverty would change if he could just get away from the pirates.

"I'm going to drop down first. Then, I'll hold up both my hooves, and you're gonna jump off. You ready?" This was all spoken in a whisper.

"Yes. I'm ready," said Blue Eyes in an equally quiet voice.

Emerald disengaged himself from the net, and gently floated down on his wings. Oh, how long it had been since he had been able to stretch his wings! The embrace of the air, the feeling of the sea breeze...

He felt like he could just float like this forever, but then he hit the ground and shook his head to clear it.

He looked up, and raised his hooves. Blue Eyes took a breath and plunged quietly down into Emerald's arms. Then, he placed her on his back and started running away from the ship, as silently as he could.

They were around a mile away when they heard the first shout from the ship. The night watch was changing, and the previously sleeping griffon pirate had opened his eyes to see the two fugitives escaping. Suddenly, the entire ship was ablaze with action.

Emerald's heart leaped into his throat. He looked frantically around for a place to hide. To his right were sand dunes sparsely populated with scrub and creepers, and to his left were the waves, crashing mightily on the shore. Suddenly, a plan formed in his mind.  He knew it was a long shot, but he also knew that it was their only hope for survival.

Emerald stopped galloping abruptly. He spoke quickly to Blue Eyes: "You need to go and hide in the dunes. Dig a hole into the sand, and camouflage yourself. Don't come out until I come and get you. Understand?"

"But what will you do?" The filly was obviously afraid, either of abandonment or capture.

"You just need to listen to me. Go!" Her eyes widened; Emerald had never even spoken loudly to her before, much less yelled. Emerald watched to make sure that she was going the right direction, and then turned to face the oncoming griffons. They were flying aggressively, in a ragged "v" formation. Emerald nervously rubbed his hoof against the sand and shook out his wings.

He waited until the pirates were almost above him, and launched himself into the air with rapid wingbeats. "I just hope that they thought I was the only prisoner that escaped," he muttered.

"Let's see what I can do," he said to himself. He shouted in the direction of the griffons, "Awesomest pony in Equestria, right here! Come and get me!"

Even though his situation wasn't exactly the best for relaxing, something clicked into place in Emerald's head once he got higher into the air. Even when he had been a foal, Emerald had been a gifted flyer. He had learned to fly before he had learned to walk.

He flew directly towards the griffons, and rolled away at the last millisecond, still soaring towards the ship. The griffons, with their larger wingspans and bulkier bodies, had a much more difficult time in turning back around to chase him.

"Whats the plan now?" He looked over his shoulder at the flock of griffons. "Well, I can't go back there, so I guess I'll just wing it." Emerald snorted with laughter at his bad pun, even as he flew at quite unreasonable speeds toward the griffon camp.

Far above the aerial chase, the great floating airship of the newly-formed Equestrian Navy hovered silently. As it was almost two miles above the shore, it was nigh-invisible, and nopony was looking that far up. In fact, even if the griffons had looked, the cloaking spells on the airship were advanced enough to make it look like a few scraps of fog.

Two ponies were standing in the enclosed bridge of the airship.

"What is that thing?" the silvery-grey stallion asked incredulously as he looked through a golden spyglass. The stallion was an earth pony with a cutie mark of a ship's wheel on his flank.

"I dunno, Cap'n Spinner. Looks to be a pegasus or somethin'. Notice, though, that he's being tailed by the griffons." The red pegasus who spoke this shook his head in wonder. "Still, he looks to be goin' fast enough to make a Rainboom."

He turned back to the spyglass and watched the chase for another couple seconds. Then, he looked to his first mate. "Well, wait until he gets past the ship, then fire at the griffon camp. I want a clean explosion. Try to keep pirate survivors to a minimum. I don't want to lose crewponies in the mop-up."

The pegasus nodded and looked back down at the beach. Pegasi with that kind of flying talent were few and far between. The first mate hoped that the unknown pegasus wasn't caught in the explosion.

Emerald was beginning to tire. While he was obviously faster than any of his griffon pursuers, his frame was more suited to quick sprints than to endurance flying. He flew in a wide arc over the ocean in order to stay as far ahead as possible.

As he neared the ship, he started to slow. He had figured out a plan, and it involved getting as many griffons to follow him into the air as possible.

When he reached the ship, he whipped in a circle around it, leaning on his side so that the land, ship, and ocean seemed to be hanging off the side of an endless cliff. Then he pumped his wings so that he was level with the ship's rigging. With the griffons right on his tail, he flew directly at the mainmast and pulled away at the last second, going directly through one of the gaps in the rigging.

The gap he went through was perhaps two feet square. He had to completely fold his wings in order to get through. Even with that caution his right wing brushed against the rope at high speed, ripping out some of his primary and tertiary feathers. The of sharp pain felt like thousands of white-hot needles, but Emerald kept on flying.

The drunken sailors behind him were not nearly as lucky. As Emerald streaked down the shore, in the opposite direction of where Blue Eyes was hiding, he looked over his shoulder and saw a large pile-up of bleary-eyed griffons with their wings caught in the netting.

There were no pirates that had yet gotten up to follow Emerald, so he lowered his speed and banked around and up. A bright light caught his eye, a long way above the Nevermore.

"What in Celestia's name is that?" It was far too bright and close to be a shooting star, and it was falling directly towards the Nevermore. He heard screams from the ship as griffons started flying from the camp in all directions.

Emerald quickly turned around and pumped his wings to get as far away from the ship as possible. If the sailors were running, he knew something was very wrong. He looked back just in time to see the glowing fireball collide with the ship in a colossal explosion and flash of light. The great booming sound hit him half-a-second after the heat and the light, and he could see steam billowing up from the ocean.

Emerald looked up slowly with with wide eyes. His ears were pressed back against his skull. He awkwardly kicked at the sand with his green hoof, and said to the sky, "Ummm...If that was you, Celestia? Thanks."

He shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears, and started galloping back towards the ship. It took longer on foot, but his wings ached from the exertion of extended sprinting. His missing primary feathers would have made it painful to fly anyway.

Emerald slowed as he reached the smoking remains of the ship. The Nevermore was completely blown apart. The only things that remained standing were the iron spike and keel and the very lowest planks. The actual area of impact was a depression in the sand, around forty feet across. At the very deepest part, the sand was glowing red hot, and around the edges the hot sand had already fused into crumbling glass. Emerald decided to take a wide berth around that particular feature.

He rolled his tired wings and started running back to where Blue Eyes had hidden. The ocean to his left was beautiful, with the moon on its downward course across the ocean and the stars glittering like faraway candles. There was a slight glowing mist coming into the shore that stopped at the dunes, and as he left the blast site, the waves seemed quieter. The pegasus made a silent prayer to Luna, the moon alicorn. She really knew her stuff.

As he neared the spot where he thought the filly was hidden, he started to slow. "Blue Eyes!" he shouted. He heard nothing, except the soft, repetitive sound of the waves. He shouted again, louder: "Blue Eyes! Where are you?"

He heard a voice from the other side of the dunes and scrubby bushes. A white-and-blue streak shot out of the dunes and collided with Emerald's legs so hard that he had to kneel down. He was surprised to see tears on the unicorn filly's face.

He nuzzled her and asked, "What's wrong?" She sniffed pitifully, and looked down to the ground.

"You left me all alone and I was scared and then the moon fell down and then the ship exploded and I was scared because I thought you had blowed up!" She said all of this in one breath, and then broke down into fresh bouts of tears.

Emerald bent further down and looked into her huge, round, and very blue eyes."Do you really think I would ever leave you? It would take a lot more than a little explosion to keep me from coming back to you, Blue Eyes." He wiped her tears with his hoof, but her sobs still shook her body. "I'm back now, and we're away from the pirates. They're gone, forever."

This obviously surprised the filly. She had been a prisoner to the pirates for almost longer than she could remember. She had been a foal, not even old enough to talk, when her mother had been captured with her. "Gone?" The confusion and disbelief were evident in her voice, and she stared at Emerald with huge, unblinking eyes.

"Gone," he said, and he booped her on the nose. She started giggling uncontrollably, and quickly forgot her tears. Emerald quickly scooped her up and deposited her on his back, between his wings. Her white coat glittered with the bits of sand stuck in it, and her blue mane, as dirty as it was, caught the moonlight.

"What's that?" Emerald turned around. Blue Eyes was pointing into the sky, directly above them. He looked and almost screamed as he saw the long, slender airship looming not one-hundred feet above them.

A muffled cry came from the ship, "Hullo down there!" A shape jumped clumsily off the side, quickly righted itself, and started soaring in circles slowly downward. As the silhouette descended, a light from the ship came on and illuminated an area of sand.

The pegasus landed. He had a dark red coat and a lime green mane, and his cutie mark looked like a cloud being blown by the wind. "Well, you two don' look like much of a threat," he said in a broad accent.

Blue Eyes scowled meanly and said, "We're plenty threatening!" Emerald looked back at her with raised eyebrows. The filly smiled sheepishly and looked down.

The red pegasus laughed. "Well, that's not what I meant at all. I'm sure you could fight real well, miss. I just meant that you two don' appear to be pirates, like the ship down yonder we blowed up." He cocked his head and looked closer at them. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know 'bout that, would ya? I thought I saw a green pegasus bein' chased, and you're about as green as they come."

Emerald narrowed his eyes. "Why do you want to know?" Blue Eyes nodded sharply, and fixed the red sailor with a vicious stare. Emerald turned around and looked at her again, and she stopped scowling.

The red pegasus smiled slightly. "Well, don't get to thinkin' that I mean you folks any harm. This here airship's part of the Equestrian Navy." He closed his eyes in thought for a second, and opened them suddenly. "That's what I've forgotten. I forgot to introduce myself. Mama always said I had terrible manners." He shook his head, and gestured grandly with his hooves. "This here blimp's the Glowing Prospect, of the Equestrian Navy, and I'm its first mate, Wind Storm. You can call me Red, though. 'Cause I'm red."

Blue Eyes poked Emerald in the back of the head with her hoof, and leaned down and whispered in his ear. He turned to Red and asked, "Why'd you blow up the pirate's ship?"

Red said simply, "It was our orders. Why'd you ask? You weren't on the ship, were you?" His eyes widened. "That ain't the right place for a filly and a young stallion to be."

"We were imprisoned on the ship. Both of us. The griffon captain deals in slaves." Red seemed aghast at this information.

"A pony treatin' another pony like property... don' seem right. Not at all," the red pegasus muttered. Suddenly, he perked up. "Well, that means you can come with us!" Without waiting for their reaction, Red let out a piercing whistle. A rope ladder tumbled down from the belly of the ship.

Emerald still wasn't sure if he could trust the pegasus, but the airship had destroyed the pirate's camp. The phrase "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" went through his mind. He looked at the filly sitting on his back. She raised her hooves in an exaggerated shrug.

Emerald didn't think that Red meant any harm, and if the other ponies on the ship weren't so nice, he and Blue Eyes could escape. Plus, there might be food. Neither he nor the filly had eaten a square meal for as long as they could remember.

"Okay. Take us aboard, Red."