Some distance east of Byzuntam, Sucker Pop hummed a gleeful song to herself as she followed her master down the road. The weight on her back felt like a hat to her, which she could've owed to her training and her natural earth pony strength, and to Momma Starlight making sure that she was well fed and hydrated because she liked her. She hummed one of those singing telegram songs that she'd learned in Ponyville, although she'd forgotten the words to it after she was lobotomized. She knew the melodies to a couple other songs as well, one just partially. She was just happy that her master didn't hit her for humming, like her old master did. Beatings conditioned her out of a lot of old penchants, but music was something not even the whip could take from her, since it was the only substitute she had for her true passion: sweets. Master may have been cold and harsh with her, but he was fair and didn't deprive her of this one source of joy; for that, she loved him. She also began to love Momma Starlight as well. After all, she was affectionate, and there was even a sort of kinship with them both being from Equestria, despite her handicap keeping her from even beginning to wrap her head around what that meant. Starlight also promised to fix her brain, which really made her heart sing.

“She really is a pleasant filly,” Starlight said to Master, “so much better than Party Favor. She's sweet and hard-working and doesn't complain at all. Wouldn't you agree, Wanderer?”

“I could not agree more. Given Party Favor's incessant whining and complaining, and his infuriating tendency to ask stupid questions, there really is no comparison. Personally, I would have just let him succumb to the elements, but it was fortuitous that you convinced me not to. The child-princess might have kept him alive and made him a real thorn in our sides, and I would have had to pay a great deal more money for an inferior slave.”

“Why would you have had to pay more money?”

“Simple supply and demand. The Imperial slaver guilds, unlike the smaller independent slavers scattered throughout the Wasteland, can provide quality slaves for a good price.”

“So where'd you get her?”

“I happened to stumble across a traveling merchant from the Imperial town of Sorkrunn, whose specialty lies in discount slaves.”

“You know, for once, I'm kind of glad you decided to go the cheaper route. It would be a bit creepy to have a mindless automaton around all the time. Oh, that reminds me! Did you think about what we were going to do with all the slaves who were lobotomized after we abolished slavery? We can't expect them to adjust well into free life on their own, you know.”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“Well, what did you have in mind?”

“The solution I had in mind was to… how to put this… liquidate the maladjusted demographic.”

“Including...”

“Yes. Even her.”

She chuckled. “Oh, Wanderer. You're terrible.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Just give me some time with a few piles of books on neurology and lobotomization. I think I can find a way to reverse the lobotomization process.”

“How much time would that be, exactly?”

“Shouldn't take more than a few months.”

“A few months? To reverse-engineer a process that has been refined and perfected for centuries? That is very optimistic. Perhaps even... naive.”

“Wanderer, need I remind you that I have a thoroughly advanced knowledge and understanding of exactly this sort of thing?"

"Alteration specialists in Equestria do healing, right?"

Starlight nodded. "Right. I know all about anatomy and how the body works. Not to mention a whole lot of other things. I learned how to remove cutie marks all by myself. I don't see why I can't do the same with cerebral reconstruction. And I can apply that same knowledge of the workings of intelligence and thought to create something to help manage the state bureaucracy as well.”

“That being…”

“Well, it's just a thought, and obviously fixing the damaged brains comes first, but I believe that I would be able to not only fix minds, but possibly create them.”

“Hm. Interesting. How would you apply such a skill?”

“A central mind connected to a great network of assets that keep track of things like industrial output, logistics, resource management, waste management, and whatever else is involved in a modern industrial economy. And not only keep track of it, but even manage it itself with programs that I put into it, so that it can break general state policy down to precise numbers that can be put into execution, and give me exact feedback whenever it's needed. A true artificial intelligence, with neither ability nor incentive to do anything it's not supposed to. Something that would tightly control any bureaucracy, if not replace it entirely.”

“I would assume such a thing would enable us to create a more reliable bodyguard, to replace the old and unreliable Praetorians.”

“That's a good idea! We'll do that, too.”

“It cannot be said that you do not have a colorful imagination. You are full of nice-sounding ideas. I would be awestruck if you succeeded in even half of them. Even more so if you did not bankrupt us first.”

“You'd be surprised how much more wealth gets generated in an industrial economy than in a slave economy. We'll have more coins in the treasury than you'll know what to do with.”

“Arrgh,” interrupted a voice from behind a hill to the near left, “what be that I hear about 'coin'?” The three looked to the hill, and from the crest emerged six suave swashbuckling stallions, outfitted in leather cloaks and pirate hats, and all but one carrying a cutlass in his mouth.

She shut one eye and held up one hoof, curled to resemble a hook.  “Arrgh,” she said mockingly, “we were discussin' matters a' politics an' other worldly matters. What concern it be a' yours, ya bunch a' scalawags?”

“We be pirates, don't ya know. Coin be arrgh forte. Especially coin that ain't arrgh's. Yer lives fer a hundred schillings, ye landlubbers.”

“Ugh, come on,” said Starlight, breaking character. “There isn't an ocean for many, many miles! How can you guys call anyone 'landlubbers'? Seriously.”

“That insult be in the book a' pirate insults. We didn't think it to have any relation to an ocean… arrgh!”

“You are some really shitty pirates.”

“Look, just give us the doubloons, and ye won't have no more trouble from us.”

Starlight held a hoof to her chin. “Hmm. How about instead of a hundred, how about we give you...” she turned to the Wanderer, “how many schillings do we have?”

“Eight-thousand-seventy-seven.”

“Really? We have that much and you're still stingy with buying hotel rooms and slaves.”

“One can never be too conservative with coin.”

She groaned, touching a hoof upon her forehead. “Very well. That's how much we can offer if you let me have a word with your captain,” she said to the pirate.

“Arrgh, and what be keepin' us from leavin' ya fer dead an' takin' it fer ourselves?”

Starlight chuckled. “Because nobody has ever made that threat to us before, right?”

“Well, what's to stop us?”

“This,” the Wanderer replied.

At the glow of the Wanderer's horn, one of the pirates had his cutlass magically snatched out of his mouth and spun around, swung down from the right of his head so that his mouth and muzzle were cut clean off, and he was knocked to the ground, on his side. The blood gushing from the gash made a stream running down the sandy hill, and gargled his screams as he was repeatedly hacked in his midsection by his own weapon. After several strikes, a cut was made deep enough to spill his innards and more blood on the searing hot ground. As he continued to bleed out, his screams weakened gradually until they ceased, and he was reduced to a corpse with a mangled torso. As a last gesture, the Wanderer drove the sword into its flank, levitated its hat up from off the ground, and set it down on Starlight's head.

The Wanderer looked back to the pirate. “It suits her, does it not?”

The pirate looked to his dead comrade with a cringe on his face. His eyes were wide as plates, and his lumbs trembled in hear. After taking a shaky breath, he looked back to the Wanderer. “It be dashin'. Really.” He paused. “You've made yer point, but can ye dig a hole an' bury him, please? Havin' arrgh guys dead in places where merchants can see 'em is bad fer business.”

The Wanderer nodded. “Of course. Step aside, would you?”

“... With pleasure, matey.”

With that, the Wanderer walked up to about a foot from the corpse, and the five pirates walked about ten feet further from it. His horn glowed again, and its tip released a roaring flame of such intense heat that Sucker Pop felt it from several yards away. The fire gave the skull on the Wanderer's bone-faced helmet an orange tint as it burned the carcass and its clothing to ash and cinders.

“Wow,” Sucker Pop said. “Pwetty wites…”

It took some time for the body to be completely cremated. The bones that remained, fragile as they'd become, were levitated and brought close enough to him so that he could pummel them to dust with a hoof, then blow them into the wind. All that was left was the blood stains on the sand, which he covered up by magically dumping piles of clean sand over it.

“Ya didn't have to cremate him, matey, but I suppose it serves the same purpose.”

“So you'll take us to your captain?” Starlight asked.

“Just follow me, lass. Arrgh captain ain't too far away. Just up the hill and north a ways.”

Starlight motioned Sucker Pop to follow her, and they met up with the Wanderer before the pirates beckoned the three in their direction.

“You didn't tell me you could do that,” Starlight said to the Wanderer as they climbed the hill.

“The Wärmacht would not have taught me temperature control magic without giving it any combat application.”

“Oh, and another thing…” Starlight put a hoof to her hat and smiled. “Thanks for the gift.”

“You are not actually going to wear that thing around regularly, are you?”

“Hell, no. I think the filly would like it, though.” She levitated the hat off her head, and drew her gaze to Sucker Pop. “Do you wanna play pirate, sweetie?”

“Yay! I pway piwate. Yo ho ho and a bottw of wum!”

Starlight set the hat down on Sucker Pop's head, which got Sucker Pop giddy with laughter. As they followed the marauders to their camp, Sucker Pop began a cheerful humming of a pirate's tune, with Starlight shortly following suit.

The first thing Starlight noticed about the raiders' camp was the wooden frigate which sat at the top of the hill, having been refurbished to be a large house. She wondered how they got a frigate all the way to this remote spot in the Wasteland, and more bafflingly, why. That is, if it wasn't built to be a headquarters in the first place, which raised its own questions. Looking down the hill further, she saw mud brick huts, which made more sense. The short brick wall didn't obfuscate much; it was just a foot above eye-level in height, but this was compensated for with a moat that was infested with snakes. Leering down into the ditch treated the viewer to a barrage of vivid reds, yellows, and other such colors. The Wanderer had already told her to stay away from brightly colored snakes. They were poisonous, after all, and no place in the Wasteland had any effective treatment for snake venom. This pit of reptiles wrapped almost completely around the camp, with the exception of the entrance, which was just a rusted iron gate door, sealed from the inside with lock and key.

“Ye landlubbers just wait here,” the pirate squad leader said, “someone'll open the gate in just a moment.”

“Hey, Wanderer,” Starlight said, “can you stay out here with the filly? She's carrying the money, after all, and I really don't want to have more prying eyes on it than we have to.”

“Have you decided what you are going to say to the captain?” he replied.

“I think I have a pretty convincing story.”

“And you know what you are to ask of them?”

“Raid Lesbos, give us the mayor's staff. Shouldn't be too hard.”

“Good enough. I am not going to interfere with your negotiations, but I am not going to stand out here like a moron either. As soon as you are finished, make your way to the northwest, atop that hill, where I have a good vantage point. It should be easy for you to signal me should you require my assistance, and the money should be relatively safe.”

“Alright. It shouldn't take me long.” She turned to Sucker Pop. “Mommy's gonna talk to the pirates for a little while, okay? Go follow master and help him set up camp.”

“Yes, mommy.”

With that, Sucker Pop turned to the Wanderer, who was already making his way to the hill, then began following him. After a few steps, she happened to catch a glimpse of a snake in the pit whose scales sparkled like pewter under the sun.

She stopped to ogle at the snakes. “Ooh… shiny…” She leaned in to get a closer look with her good eye, but an armor-clad hoof slammed the side of her chest, knocking the air out of her lungs and making her fumble on her legs. When she looked to the direction of the blow, she saw Master giving her a stern look.

“Stay away from snakes,” he said.

Sucker Pop sighed. “Sowwy mastew.”

Starlight was never a huge fan of adventure novels, but she couldn't help but notice how these brigands seemed to go out of their way to hit every pirate cliché she could think of. Lots of skull-and-crossbones flags, lots of swaggering buccaneers with crudely made stuffed parrots strapped to their backs and cutlasses in their teeth, and lots of rum. The fact that they tried to speak with pirate accents through their native Byzuntonian tongue was also rough on the ears, although this was drowned out by the sound of accordions and pianos used by drunken amateurs to play vaguely pirate-esque music. Occasionally, the sounds of clanging cutlasses could be heard as well. These guys were surprisingly fast and accurate for guys with sharpened steel bars held in their teeth.

The pirate motif was, by far, most prevalent in the captain's quarters. It was the actual inside of a wooden frigate, after all; it's hard to out-pirate that. The captain, himself, was an earth pony who had a peg leg in place of his right foreleg, and wore an eyepatch with a skull and crossbones on it to go along with the rest of his captain's costume. He sat on a wooden chair, flanked on two sides by treasure chests, and had a table sitting in front of it. To the table's left was the captain's sword. There were several things that were unusual about this sword. The first thing was that the grip was shaped to fit a full set of teeth, down to every mound and crevice, and looked like it was made from brown rubber within its small steel frame. In front of this grip was a buckler, which was latched on by steel beams, one just below the crossguard and the other just above the pommel. The blade, itself, had its single edge facing the same way as the buckler, and was top-heavy enough to suggest it was a slashing weapon. This was something Starlight hadn't seen before, although it did make a lot more sense when considering its greater practicality to someone without magic; no magic means holding one's weapon in his teeth, and teeth make poor grappling tools, especially for a weapon that's going to be taking and delivering beatings in combat. To the right of the table was a stack of boring-looking paperwork, and at the center was a hardcover book whose energetic colors popped out at her and grabbed her attention. She looked at the book's cover, and it looked strangely familiar. It featured a certain brown pegasus in an explorer's outfit, having a sword fight with a prototypical pirate captain on a wooden frigate. Was… was that Daring Do? It was! Right there on the title: Daring Do and the Cursed Doubloon. How did a Daring Do novel find its way into the Wasteland? Maybe the pirate captain would satisfy her curiosity.

“Arrgh,” he said as he put down the book, “who be this filly? Did a kind buccaneer buy me a wench?”

“Nay, captain,” replied Starlight's escort, “she wishes to negotiate a trade. Eight thousand doubloons.”

“Did ye try stealin' it?”

The escort shook his head. “Nay, captain. The mare's bodyguard was… very persuasive.”

“I don't see him here.”

Starlight smirked. “You don't see any bags of money here either, do you?”

“Why would ye not bring the money here?”

“Do you think I'm stupid? The money is nice and safe with my bodyguard, who's keeping a close eye over your little playhouse here. If I don't like what's going on here, all I have to do is send a flare up in the sky with my horn, and he'll be over here before you can say 'shiver me timbers'. I mean that literally; he can teleport. He's an elite Imperial legionary, too. You really don't want to piss him off. Now, do you want to talk business, or what?”

“Hmm… aye. Any friend of the Empire is a friend of mine. So, what can I do for ye?”

“I need you to raid a town.”

“Raiding, ye say? What town did ye have in mind?”

“Lesbos.”

“That ain't the most lucrative spot to loot, ye know. Three hundred militia. Our motley crew can't assemble nearly that many. There be maybe six hundred pirates total throughout this whole highway, and I'm sure all those other bands will want a cut of the booty.”

“You can take all the spoils you want from the town. All I want is the mayor's scepter.”

“Ah, now that sounds lucrative. And generous on your part. Perhaps... too generous. What's your stake here?”

“Their mayor's family stole that staff from my family generations ago. I raised all this money to see if they would buy it back, but they won't take it. It's really precious to me, you know. Us Canterlot ponies really love our heirlooms.”

The captain raised an eyebrow and leaned his head forward. “So, an Equestrian, are ye?”

“Yeah.”

A beaming smile showed up on the captain's face, and he laughed with excitement. “An Equestrian! Why, I believe it was an Equestrian who wrote this here book,” he said, tapping on the book with his peg leg. “Do ye know the author?”

“I do!” She paused. “I can get you her autograph if you want.”

“This book is precious to me, ye know. Me daughter loved to take it to bed with her every night. Boy, do I miss her.”

“What happened to her?”

Captain let out a heavy sigh and looked down at the table. “I killed her. Not on purpose, though. Had a bit too much of the red stuff during a caravan raid. I came home to find she'd dropped a bottle of liquor on the kitchen floor. A bad thing for a kid to do, sure, but not something deserving of death...” He had a gloomy moment of silence. Starlight figured it was best to feign sympathy for the guy. After all, she'd just hit the emotional manipulation jackpot.

Starlight sighed and let on a somber expression. “Your family means a lot to you, doesn't it?”

“Aye.”

“I'm sure your daughter was a nice filly. I'm really sorry she's not with you anymore. But my family means a lot to me, too. One sentimental gift for another sounds like a fair deal, doesn't it?”

“Aye. I'd give the world just to hear from the mare who made me child so happy.”

“So eight-thousand schillings, any loot you can plunder, and an autograph from Daring Do. All for just one little staff. Is that fair?”

“More than fair. Generous, in fact. Give me a week to muster all the raiders.”

“How much do you want in advance?”

“I really don't care about the money. That's just a means to an end. All I care about is the autograph.”

“So we'll pay it all after the fact.”

The captain nodded. “Aye.”

“Alright. I think we're done here for now.”

“Aye.” He turned his head to Starlight's escort. “Send the kind mare off, will ye? I… I need some time alone.”

“Aye, captain.”

'Mission successful' Starlight thought to herself. Although she couldn't smile in front of the captain, she was smiling in her mind. This big idiot was eating out of her hooves. 'Oh, the look on his face when I come back with an army instead of an autograph,' she thought. 'It's gonna be priceless.'

She made her way back to the camp that the Wanderer set up. It wasn't hard to find; he'd been considerate enough to start a fire with plenty of smoke going up. When she got there, she found the Wanderer with his visor up, snacking on a bit of hard-tac while watching Sucker Pop draw doodles in the sand with her hoof.

“I'm back!” Starlight said.

“Mommy!” Sucker Pop exclaimed. She galloped to Starlight, then squeezed her in a tight hug.

“Did your talk with Captain Blowhard go well?” the Wanderer asked.

“It went really well,” she replied. “They'll be outnumbering the Lesbos militia two to one, and we'll definitely be getting the staff.”

“Do they have any inkling of the real reason for us wanting it?”

“Not the slightest.”

“What did you tell them was the reason? Just curious.”

“Let me tell you the whole story. You'll love it, I promise.”

And so she told him everything, peppering her anecdote with laughter here and there. She told him about the whole pirate act, about the Daring Do novel, about the autograph, about the dead daughter, everything. This evoked a reaction from the Wanderer that she had never, ever seen before. He did something that she doubted was ever likely to happen, or even was possible. He… chuckled.

“That is humorous,” he said. Next Chapter: Chapter 12 Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 58 Minutes