I stared awkwardly at the griffon and tried to ignore the air of revulsion that slipped through my head from her side of the link.

"Oh... that's better." The bastard spider said, and to my shock I felt the bond with the griffon slip slowly from my understanding. "I'll stop trying to throw you two together..."

Catastrophe looked at me, her right eye twitching spasmodically. "What the fucking hell?" She snarled, stalking over to me. I ducked around her, my hooves clanking against a rusty plate on the floor.

It echoed on and on...

"So... Lover's spat?" Boss asked, walking between us. Her new prosthetic rested on her new sword in almost a warning gesture.

"Probably." Canary finished, standing far to the side near the controls to the ship.

I blinked at both of them and felt my face darken slightly. "Yeah?" I shoved my shock at my embarrassment to a dark corner of my mind to mildew.

"Well, you see, I was trying to get you to pull on a bit of my power and go absolutely insane. But... eh. Things change, someone decided to tie his thread of vengeance to your zebra hide, that kinda thing? I must say, for one who is so... not zebra, he has some wicked ideas on pain!"

I blinked and looked off to the side, almost able to see the tophat wearing spider. "What...?" I mumbled.

Catastrophe growled angrily. "Ivan..." She hissed.

I could practically hear what she didn't say. Why does everything you plan get fucked up?

"Threads of vengeace?" I muttered.

"Oh yes! I got invoked! It was wonderous... Well, you see, I eat souls, right? My job, way back when, was whenever a zebra wanted to kill someone, I'd mark them so that they would be destined to meet and engage in epic combat. Or, at least meet. And then I get to eat the soul of the loser and after the winner died, eat his soul!" He ended with a giggle, making my head pound.

Canary clopped over to Catastrophe and shook his head. "Will you relax? Geez." He paused. "I've been hanging around Ivan too much." He shook his head and rolled his eyes.

"The point is that I wanted to weave your little group closer together with a few threads from your soul. You know, speed up the natural process? Yeah, that is what I meant. Also, we need to dapper you up. You've been walkin' around covered in blood and other things and how are you supposed to attract the chicks?" I hate my life.

Boss shook her head and got between me and Catastrophe. "He's just being weird again. Ignore it and let it pass."

I closed my eyes and shoved the pain away from me, feeling distant. "Right. Right. Change of plans. We need money." I turned away from the edge of the ship and closer to the ambient heat source that kept our ship in the air. My senses momentarily lit up, revealing the slightly charred smell of the ship, though most of it was swallowed in the metallic miasma.

Catastrophe clutched her head in between her talons. "Just..." She scowled and walked over to the control deck, taking us away from Mustang.

Boss nodded. "Yes. We need money. I figure we can go raid a few diamond dog ships or something."

My head shot up and I gave her a level glance. "You do realize that we are only four creatures?" I shook my head slightly.

Boss drew her blade and admired it, a self satisfied smile on her face. "I think we can handle this. Who knows, I might even give them a sporting chance..." Her prosthetic fired off randomly, twitching slightly around the hilt of the blade.

I shook my head again. "Look, last thing we need is to get confident." The world would just summon another dragon or the universe would just call down another fuck you. "At the very least, we need to try and salvage things from Rej eventually."

Catastrophe shook her head. "We could take up bounty hunting. Might pay for the gas the ship uses."

I blinked. I hadn't even thought of that.

A diminishing resource survival game where I would have to weigh risks against returns.

I was always bad at those.

I thought over what we should do for a long time.

The solution occurred to me after a few minutes, perhaps as many as five.

Well, might as well get a stock of just what we had left. "Well, what do we have on board?"

Canary replied for me, his Equestrian having improved substantially. "Enough food and water for all of us and a little more." He stopped and I looked at him.

"That's all?"

"That's about it." He blinked.

"How much fuel do we have left?" I looked over the edge of the ship. I couldn't see the town.

Boss audibly smacked her real paw into her face. "So... any chance we have enough fuel to make it back to town?"

At that very moment in time I realized that the flame was slowly starting to diminish. "Of course not." I grit my teeth. "Because I'm pretty sure someone delights in making us miserable." I pointedly looked away from all of them and flipped the air the proverbial middle finger.

If the world was a cartoon, and indeed that was what it looked like, I hope some guy saw it and turned it into a meme.

Angry zebra don't give a fuck

... about his lack of fingers

might be the caption.

The ship began to lose altitude.

Catastrophe audibly sighed. "Let me guess. You haven't refueled this ship since you've gotten it." She continued steering. "Prepare for a landing."

I shut my eyes and tried not to start freaking out. "Right. Great." I could hear the ship take on a higher velocity as it sped towards the ground. "Do you think if we jump right before we land we won't get hurt?"

Canary shrugged. "Might be worth trying."

Boss looked off the side. "I'd say no."

The pilot nodded. "In short, FUCK YOU IDIOTS." She ditched the controls and took to the skies.

"FUCK YOU!" I screamed, the slow whistle of the boat suddenly audible.

My heart pounded into my ears as yet another ridiculous over the top thing that should've killed me happened, instead of the ship crashing into a few million pieces with us on it and in the process skewering us, we touched down into a lake, literally skipping once against the surface and then drifting across it lazily until it beached itself and broke the entire front half of the ship.

Half of my ship began to crumble to the ground and my body seemed to catch alight with anger. The Scourge.

I calmed down shortly after I heard the rest of the ship start to crack. I looked at the other two on board. "Right. Let's see if we can jump?" I dove off the side of the ship and painfully hit the surface, rolling my eyes and the deck buckled and the rest of the inertia dispersed. My two non flying companions followed after me.

Boss swam easily to the side of the lake within seconds, dragging Canary with her.

"Fuck me." I said, trying to follow after them and finding that I couldn't swim with hooves.

Catastrophe whistled down from over head and dragged me out of the water. "I'd rather not, I prefer my lovers to be a bit smarter."

I didn't respond, instead looking over the ruins of my ship. "I'm just going to go scream." I slowly walked away from them.

Fate...

The laws of comedy were trying to screw with me.

It...

I stopped in the middle of a small group of trees, fed up with myself and everything. My emotions surged out in a display of pure frustration, magic twisting out to manipulate the visible spectrum around me. My vision took on a new clarity as magic pushed out through the optical nerves and transformed them temporarily into direct looks into how things actually were.

Fate. It was fated that I ditch The Scourge.

If this world followed common book plot lines, I'd encounter something that would aid me, or knowing my journey so far, inconvenience me.

I smiled, looking at the trees and laughing.

The threads of fate crystallized, and I saw the true path through a strain of magic empowered reasoning.

And then I collapsed, the encounter with the pure magic leaving me drained and weakened.

And the souls bubbled around me like frantic fish, nibbling at my concentration, all screaming to be known.

I was a puppet for the gods... a sick little play toy.

How the hell else would all the shit in the world happen to me?

I wasn't going to leave my ship.

The souls over took mine and I blanked out, spent on magic and patience.