Within less of a minute’s time, The Perfection’s cannon chambers below deck are bustling with most of the members of Korsan’s crew, all scampering around with torches, cannonballs, and kegs of gunpowder. The captain hears the commotion going on all the way up to the wheel, a clear sign that they’re ready to attack in a few moments.

“I need a full report of the enemy ship now!” He yells out to the unseen ponies at the top of the seven massive masts.

“The thing’s a wreck Captain!” One the male onlookers replies, “A snapped mast, three out of four sails torn, severe damage in the upperparts of the hull, six loose cannons, a missing keel, a malfunctioning rudder, and the bowsprit broken halfway through!”

“Are these mares mad?”

“Course of action, Captain?” A pale stallion loudly asks as he climbs up from below deck and looks towards Korsan.

“Don’t waste your ammunition. Fire one round in the middle of the bow and another in the middle of the quarterdeck. Shoot to disable, not to kill.”

“Yes sir.” Promptly, the stallion hurries back down to relay the message to the gunners below.

Korsan then yells out, “Juliana!” and is immediately greeted by his ice phoenix pet on his right shoulder. “Good girl, get ready for your new job.” Soon, two loud blasts erupt from the downward tilting side of the airship. Korsan observes from afar as two large metal balls soar from his vessel and down towards Twilight’s ship. Three seconds of silence follows just before impact. Then, in a matter of moments, the tiny boat below explodes into a large gush of water, wood and smoke, obscuring Korsan’s view of his rival, though can hear their screams as their ship crumbles to pieces. The brown pegasus turns and looks at his bird friend. “Juliana, perform Artic Wind.” The phoenix replies with a chirp before leaping from Korsan’s arm and flying overboard and into the dark cloud below.

“Captain! Incoming pegasus!”

“Incoming what-” From behind the wall of fog and rain in front of Korsan emerges Rainbow Dash, who charges at the captain and delivers a kick to his face, knocking him backwards a metre or two.

“Give it up Korsan!” Dash proclaims as she charges at him once more. The stallion promptly reacts and rolls away from the dive attack, letting Rainbow miss and circle around for another attempt. He then pulls out his crossbow and aims it at the flying mare as she charges at him again.

“Dodge this.” With a flick of a claw, the crossbow fires a metal bolt at the incoming pony. However, Dash ducks down below the speeding projectile and smashes her body into Korsan’s, sending the two careering overboard and towards the smoke cloud.

“Dodged it!” Two the fighters break from each other in freefall and begin to fight each other again. Korsan rebalances himself in the air first and fires his crossbow at the tumbling pegasus eleven times.

“Get a load of this!” Rainbow recovers as well however. She then quickly uses her wings to create gushes of wind and pushes away the eleven metal rods shot.

“Are you even trying?” Dash teases before flying back to where a lot of lightning has struck and soars into the area for a bit, building up electricity throughout her entire body. As the rainbow maned pony makes her return back towards her nemesis, Korsan puts away his crossbow and pulls out his two cutlasses.

“Let’s find out!” With his swords primed and Dash’s body practically growing from electricity jumping around her body, the two collide together with such powerful force, a small electric shockwave ruptures between Korsan’s blades and Dash’s hooves, blasting any nearby rainwater and fog away.

Meanwhile, on the now destroyed remains of the SS Raindrop, Twilight and the others onboard are gathering at the middle of the deck as both ends of the ship are blazing on fire. Surrounded by smog and a panic-filled atmosphere, Twilight and her crew are looking around for any sign of hope.

“This is the end!” Applebloom and the other fillies cough and scream as smoke starts to fill their lungs.

“Now it’s not!” Applejack retorts before gagging.

“What do we do?” Fluttershy whimpers as she curls herself into a ball next to the center mast.

“There has to be a way out of this!” Pinkie exclaims as she tries to put out the bow fires with her breathe.

“We’re going to have to jump into the water.” Twilight responds with her head snapping to every direction in search of something or another.

“Then what?” Spike asks at the purple mare’s side.

“No idea, wait, is that Rainbow Dash above us?” Quickly, the five mares and Spike look up at where Twilight’s staring at to see Rainbow Dash and Korsan falling towards them, both bathing in electrical sparks as they trade blows. A light blue blur catches Spike’s attention soon after.

“What’s that other thing heading towards us?”

“Wha-” Before Twilight can ask or even get a good look at the ice bird, Juliana begins to rapidly circle above the downed vessel, causing the incoming rain to freeze into spikes of ice and hale. In a matter of moments, the ice rain’s front reaches the crippled vessel and sends the mares and Spike into a scampering frenzy, desperately trying not get impaled by the razor sharp frozen water. Near the edge of the panic and screaming, Korsan and Rainbow Dash finally reach sea level fall into the chaotic waves and deep below underwater. The cold of the icy ocean pulses through the two battling pegasi as they continue to slowly punch and grapple each other in a bloodthirsty fury. During one of Rainbow Dash’s punches towards her rival’s face, Captain Korsan swiftly returns one of his cutlasses into his back and grabs the incoming hoof, digging his claws deep into her skin and releasing any electricity in his body and deep into her. The cyan pony mutely screams as sparks of sharp energy and cold metal pierce into her muscles and bones before a wave of massive exhaustion soon washes over her. After several long seconds of cold water sucking up her bodily heat, fighting against the stormy weather, and being socked in the face and body by metal armour, Dash’s senses have finally caught up to her and came back hard against her mind and will. Succumbing to the pain and tiredness of her aching body, Rainbow Dash falls unconscious and slowly drifts upwards towards the surface, followed by Korsan still holding onto her hoof. Bursting through the water surface, Korsan sees Twilight’s ship, now at the brink of bursting into millions of splinters, and the fallen anchor’s chain several metres ahead. Immediately, the gears in the brown stallion’s head start to spin and a plan soon comes to mind.

He yells out just as a large wave of foaming water strikes his behind, “Juliana!” Hearing her master’s call, the ice phoenix stops her attack and flies down to him. “Iron Head!” The large bird screeches in nod to the command and swiftly flies back up high into the sky before diving back down. He, Twilight, and the others excluding Rainbow Dash watch as Juliana rapidly accelerates downwards and dives into the waves next to the portside of the ship, immediately freezing the surface water around her into solid ice. A second later, the ice bird breaches from the water off of the starboard side, causing all sides of the trapped vessel in stiff ice and freezing the wood of the hull as well. As Juliana flies back upwards into the thick of the rain, Korsan drags his soaking body as well as Rainbow Dash onto the frozen sheet of land before them before gently dropping the pony and running towards the anchor chain ahead. Twilight and the other soon hear the metal hoofsteps on the hard ground and break their glance at the bird to see their frozen friend and Korsan running away.

“Hey!” Twilight screams, “Get back here!” The purple pony jumps off of the bow and soon gives chase to the captain. “You’re going to pay for hurting Dash!” Remembering that Twilight doesn’t know that he’s wasted his ammo on Dash, Korsan turns around and pulls out his crossbow, aiming it right at Twilight’s forehead. Seeing the black metal weapon now poised to fire, Twilight frantically stops only a couple of metres short of her target.

“Don’t take another step and don’t flap another wing.”

“What are you going to do with Rarity and Sweetie Belle?” Twilight asks in a nervous pant.

“You know as well as I do what I plan to do with Rarity. But don’t worry Princess Twilight. I won’t hurt her, nor her sister.”

“Let them go, give us the Diamond Eye, and stop this villainous plot all together now. It may be a longshot, but if you give up now and come with us to Equestria, you could redeem yourself and become a beneficial member to Equestria. You’re a bright stallion, a genius that probably knows things that most scientists can’t even comprehend. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pegasus, a unicorn, and Earth pony, or an alicorn, you can still be special and live a good life. You might even make a few friends and find your special somepony. Please, it’s not too late.”

“Save your boring lectures and rants, I’ve heard it all before. And everytime I hear it coming from somepony that thinks she’s the wiser, it just makes me sick to my stomach. You have no idea of the true torture I and many others will endure in this Tartarus of a world. I’ve given you plenty of chances, but your resilience has forced me to leave you all for dead.” The pirate’s gaze then slowly shifts to over Twilight’s shoulder and to the ship behind. Twilight notices this and looks back as well, just in time to see Juliana return in another dive-bomb and smash into the middle of her boat, causing it to shatter into large bits and small specks of wood and ember. Screams quickly follow as they echo from the ship to the two rivals at the edge of the slowly eroding ice field.

“You monster!” Twilight cries in terror and rage as she turns back towards Korsan, who is now slowly backing up towards the large black chains behind.

“You will not interfere with my quest to end the suffering.”

“You think Rarity won’t after hearing that you killed us? She’ll never join you, and neither will her sister.”

“I’m not going to kill you. It’ll either be the natural elements or your own selves that’ll end up killing you. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Korsan stops his sentence midway as he leaps back into a large chain hole behind, “Adieu. Hoist the anchor manually!”

“You’ll never get away with this!”

“I always do.” With the crossbow still aimed at her, all Twilight can do is watch as Korsan soars into the sky and into his floating ship with Juliana and the anchor soon following out of the water and up into the pirate ship as well. In a matter of seconds, the flying brig realigns itself straight and takes off into the raining night sky. Twilight soon heads back to the wreckage that was once her prized transportation to see the damage. Upon closer inspection, she notices that Dash has been moved from her spot where Korsan dropped her.

“Is anypony okay?”

“We all are!” Spike announces from inside the massive pile of wood.

“Even Rainbow?”

“I think Dash’s coming to!” Applejack calls out from inside the icy wreckage. Relieved to hear her friends’ voices, the princess darts into the wood ruins and sees the other six others huddled around Dash’s laying body on top of a large portion of deck still in one piece. Edging herself into the circle alongside the others Twilight as greeted by a faint gag from the cyan pegasus.

“Rainbow Dash, wake up. Are you okay?” Rainbow responds with a violent cough and warm water spewing from her mouth.

“Please be okay,” Scootaloo nervously yelps.

“I-I’m f-f-fine,” Rainbow finally replies after a quick burp. “It-it’s c-cold.”

“Thank goodness you’re okay!” Fluttershy enthusiastically exclaims as she leaps onto and hugs the waking mare.

“Ouch.”

“Oh, s-sorry,”

“What do we do now?” Applejack uneasily asks Twilight, “Our boat is ruined, we’re in the middle of an intense storm, we’re surrounded by ice, and we’re out of food.”

“Not exactly,” Pinkie Pie replies aimlessly looking around the area, “we have this raft that we’re sitting on, Dashy and Flutter can calm the storm a little, the ice will go away in time, and we have each other.”

“Wait, what do you mean by that last-”

“Pinkie has a point,” Twilight interrupts Applejack, “We can get out of this storm and-”

“And then what?”

“We go after Korsan.”

“Again?! He just destroyed our only means of protection and transportation. Not to mention that he’s disabled you from using magic and our only unicorns that came with us are now on his ship.”

“As long as our friendship, will, and hope stay true, we can do anything.”

“But…”

“Do you have a better idea?” Dash nasally snaps at her orange friend.

“Well, I guess not. But this might take some time.”

“Give or take a few days,” Twilight optimistically retorts, “we’ll do it.”

“I just hope that Rarity and Sweetie Belle don’t get hurt on that scary ship.”

“I don’t even want to know what’s going on up there right now…”