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| Buddy Vs. Bluespeaker {Story} | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:25 am (233 Views) | |
| Buddy | Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:25 am Post #1 |
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There was nobody on the gribbles who wasn't laughing like a madman. It was the good sort of mad laughing, though. it was the kind of laughing which was often reserved for when somebody had just done something impossibly stupid, where the only result should have been a slow and unnecessarily painful death, yet somehow still managed to escape from such a horror unscathed. To put the crew's laughter into an even greater light of why they were such crazed with glee and vast amounts of behavior-inhibiting alcohol is to describe the ship, for the ship could only be equated to a large gathering of driftwood, which in and of itself was an insult to driftwood everywhere for even they were not so riddled with holes and decay as the Gribbles was. Indeed, there was no explainable reason for the Gribbles' continued existence sailing upon the high and low seas other than it simply wished to remain alive so long as it could be useful. It was not a pretty ship, it was not a stable ship, it was not a strong ship, but no matter what the wide and wonderful world of Chaon threw at it, the Gribbles survived. The ship was its own entity, or so its captain had come to believe, and it would never give up and never give in so long as it had a crew to care for. So long as the crew needed the ship, it could only remain as legendary as the captain would shortly be. Now, for the reason of why the crew of such a horrible ship was celebrating despite their circumstances one would only need to look to the events of the previous day, for the day before they had truly done the impossible. The ship like an insult to driftwood had just managed to successfully be led, along with its crew, at the command of a surely insane captain against one of the greatest and most heavily armed vessels that dared to travel the Moonsea. The ship which was defeated was as large as a city, crafted from thick metal, had no sails and an army of soldiers on its deck to protect its cargo. The ship was known far and wide for its nightmarish reputation against pirates of all kinds and calibers, but they never expected something in so shoddy of a vessel to ever come close to doing what the Gribbles had done. Despite the Fearless' best effort, (Fearless being the name of the mighty vessel which was conquered and left to sail,) Captain Buddy Holly out-thought the entire enemy crew and single-handed-ly lead a crew of men of easily questioned amounts of courage in the face of certain death to victory. So it was that the crew knew in a month's time, at most, their names would be known far and wide throughout Chaon for such a deed, and so long as they stayed with the Gribbles then they would stay famous along with it and its captain. Sure, any of the crew could easily claim credit for the events that conspired on that fateful night, but all of any knowledge would know that it was, instead, the captain of such a ship and such a crew of men that pulled off such an impossible raid. The cargo belonged to the Fearless, the crew would be rich once they sold the goods, and so they spent the following night celebrating as much as they possibly could before the sun rose. It was their right, after what they had been through, and they all knew that they were lucky to be alive and even luckier to be filthy stinking rich. While the majority of the crew sang and drank and danced and tried desperately not to fall off of the side of their ship, the captain simply sat in his cabin examining his equipment, his riches, and his prized possession. Every so often the crew would knock on his quarters' door, trying to convince him to join the celebration, but his own way of enjoying the festivities was to sit back, relax and let his mind wander while he got to pet his faithful feline companion, a black bob-tailed cat by the name of Zangetsu, on the head. He didn't need much, and really the whole "pirate captain" thing was lovely, but it didn't change that he preferred to do as little as possible, even if it was in reference to partying on a rickety old ship. One pale hand stroked his cat's back as it laid upon his chest while his other hand held up a bracer in the direction of the candlelight in his room. The ems and runes etched into its pale golden form almost seemed to glow, and his mind raced with the thoughts of what its presence could mean. Clearly the previous owner had not a single clue what they possessed, so truly such an artifact had been liberated to be owned by one who knew its true value beyond that of a coin. His mind brought up stories from his home, things he had heard from sailors who stopped by to visit and resupply on their way to one of the bigger port cities or villages. Buddy's favorite as a child were those of mystical artifacts from far and wide, and this bracer was something of which he dreamed about for many nights. Perhaps it was fate for him to own it, but seeing as there was no clear way of contacting Fate, Holly simply left his mind to explore and hope that his hopes were true. The captain's mind wasn't allowed to wander for very long by the world, though. The ship rocked, his candle fell and its flame threatened to snuff but flickered back to life within an instant while the wax began to pool on the floor around it. Buddy, shaken but not overly jumpy thanks to the seas and the world of which he resided, sat up abruptly and held his cat close against his chest with his blue eyes wide open. "Don't suppose that was something normal, would you?" Buddy asked his friend without even looking down and was met with a response of his cat trying to climb out of his arms, "Didn't think so, either." Again, the ship rumbled, this time rolling his candle with each shake before the captain lept to his feet to set it right back upon his desk. Somebody, or more likely something, was rocking his ship against his will or want. If it actually managed to turn out to be a member of the crew then he was going to throw them overboard. If it turned out to be some sort of sea monster then he was going to throw overboard whoever had lured such a beast to his ship. If it turned out that nobody from his drunken crew had anything to do with the fact that there was an over-sized fish attacking Buddy's ship, then he could figure out what to do afterwards. The crew outside of his quarters' door were screaming as loud as they could while his first mate, Gregor, shouted orders on Buddy's behalf. The crew was surely sobered now, and those who weren't were surely going to be when they were presented with an angry, blonde captain. Holly grabbed his equipment: his glowing white bow, his twin fighting knives from Arda, and a new blade which he had liberated from the Fearless, and set off onto the deck of the Gribbles by slamming his old door open and letting the recoil from his force slam it shut behind him. Zangetsu chose to remain inside, given the currently unfortunate circumstances befalling the ship. "Who in shining silver Shavarath is rocking my damned ship!?" He shouted out, his face trying desperately to warp into something horrifying but falling just short due to his soft, clean-shaven features. "Bloody big beast under the bilge, your Alliteracy!" Gregor called down from the upper deck to his captain, gaining a quick nod of approval from his captain for such a quickly conceived and clever response. The ship rocked again, but this time Buddy didn't allow it to budge him even a slight bit, even as his face was slapped with icy cold water from the boat's rocking. The rest of the crew tried to do the same, but were forced to hold onto something to try and imitate their captain's flawless balancing act. "You had better have commanded ballistae towards the water, Gregor! Otherwise I'm throwing you to whatever's down there!" The captain shouted back to his first mate, though an idle threat, as he rushed to the aft of his vessel, trying to peer through the inky waters and down to see where the beast assaulting his favorite, and only, ship on the sea. Unfortunately he couldn't see anything, and simply was forced to wait and pay attention to where the ramming was going to come from. All of a sudden the side of the ship he was on rose high into the air, putting the captain well above his crew for a moment as he looked down to the waters on the opposite side. Whatever was down there was desperately trying to flip the ship, and he wasn't about to allow that to happen while he was still alive! The thought in mind, Buddy let go of the side of the ship he was clinging to and let himself slide to the middle and right in front of the stairs descending to the lower levels before the Gribbles righted itself. "Ready the Ballistae, pay attention to where I aim, then fire when I do!" He shouted as he entered what he so graciously called the "Weapons Floor" and rushed to a ballista on the port side, quickly recited an incantation to electrify the weapon, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Fire!" As he did so, the twin ballistae fired their bolts into the water and the entire crew of the ship watched the depths with anticipation as their captain raced to the deck above. Within a moment there was a low, echoing roar from beneath them, from beneath the waves that pierced the air around them like a thousand arrows. With another moment the water began to part before them, growing closer to the hull of the Gribbles before it tilted the ship and began lifting it from the water, incidentally distancing the crew from whatever creature was rising from the Moonsea on the moonlit night. Buddy held on with a single hand, calmly watching as the beast rose from the depths. His crew were not so cool in the sudden shifting beneath their feet, as they were still drunk and easily prone to tumbling down the deck. Luckily no crew were lost, unluckily Buddy knew exactly what he was staring at as it turned its massive head to face them. "We could never have been prepared for this." He said beneath his breath as the ship finally began to settle back down upon the restless waves, allowing the crew of the ship to pick themselves back from the old wood and to their feet, only so that they may join their captain and share in his terror. "Insolent pests!" The beast roared in the common tongue, completely ignorant toe the fact it still had gallons of water pouring from its scaly hide, "You dare harm me?" It towered over the Gribbles, which was by no means small, but even the Fearless would appear as a plaything before the dragon before them. Yet despite the immense scale of the beast, Buddy could not help but be overcome by a sudden annoyance with the creature. A few words out of the beak of such a creature and he was. . . cocky? Even he didn't understand it, yet still he felt it rather than fear. "Dare?" He parroted under his breath, failing to even look away from the dragon's black eyes as its tail whipped above the surface of the water off the starboard of the Gribbles, shattering the waves like glass. "To not feign ignorance, fool!" It roared once more, finally allowing the captain to place its tone as that of a nobleman, "I was to play with your bundle of sticks before snacking upon it and the creatures on it!" Each word from its mouth was spat, each breath steamed from its nostrils and corners of its beak as the syllables rolled from its tongue. This was an ancient beast who had a long time to grow and stir within the water, something which would take armies to face, but Buddy still didn't feel as he should have. Still, he could not help but feel angry as he looked upon the god-like being before him, even as his crew froze and locked with fear. "Feign?" He said, parroting the dragon once more but louder this time, almost as if he was trying to get his mind around the word, trying to understand just what it meant, for surely it couldn't have possibly meant what he had thought it meant. "Your twigs string me, stung what would have been a pleasurable experience!" The dragon spoke, rearing its head back, its dark orbs glaring down upon the crew as if trying to impale them all with a mere gaze, "Yet you choose to quicken your deaths with this affront? Fine! I shall grant your wish!" "Who the hell are you!?" Buddy shouted at the top of his lungs, though he felt as if he immediately regretted it. On the plus side, he seemed to have gained at least a moment more of life as the dragon ceased its charge at the audacity of such a puny creature daring to take a tone like that with it, to dare not know who it was. After a moment of Buddy faking his way through courage, the dragon pulled its head back, craning its neck so that its head would be in front of the moon, so that its shadow would cast over them and most importantly their captain. "In your "common tongue" I am Lord Bluespeaker the Many-Horned." It said, surprisingly calm as it addressed itself with a full title, clearly not wanting to handle its own name with nearly the disrespect that these mere pirates might use. Yet somehow that only seemed to annoy the captain even more. A lord? In the sea? "Lord Bluespeaker? Is that because you talk so much?" He was hating himself. At this point, if he could have any control over what he could only assume was fear, he would have gladly made a deal where he would kill himself simply so that his crew could get away safe and alive. Maybe he wouldn't live to enjoy the fame, but they sure as hell could! Unfortunately, that didn't seem like anything that was going to happen any time soon. The dragon growled, but before it could speak, Buddy interjected once more. "No! Really! Since you've appeared, bullying our ship because clearly you are incapable of picking on anything close to your own size, you haven't shut up!" Holly wasn't sure where he was going with any of this, and his crew, including his first mate, desperately tried to reason with the dragon and convince it that they could go ahead and eat Holly alone. unfortunately, the dragon was tuning them out, luckily so was Buddy as the two being locked eyes. "Insolent little pest!" Bluespeaker roared before spitting out at the ship. Rather than fire came a large globule which clumsily fell through the air towards the deck. given its composition, the crew had plenty of time to duck out of the way and behind cover before the warning shot splattered against the deck. Buddy had dived to the side and tackled Gregor before turning to watch the result of the spit-up. What he saw shook him to the core, finally fear overcame him as he watched the globule of spit begin to come alive and clumsily begin moving in separate bits towards him, like sentient slime. "Sacred Heart! Cut these things apart!" Buddy shouted, finally with words that he chose, rather than some deep-seated problems with pompous personalities. He then turned to Gregor, "Don't question me, just go get my little ballista. Hurry!" he whispered, already trying to formulate a plan before he scrambled to his feet and made his way up to the wheel, safe from the slimes as his crew reluctantly began cutting at them with their own blades. "Spitting at me because you don't like to hear the truth, blue-never-shuts-up?" Buddy shouted, reluctantly this time but trying to keep his composure. Before he was just acting out of some sort of base instinct that he was loathing, but the more he thought about it the more he realized how much of a blessing his uncontrollable tongue had become. If he hadn't spoken up, then the dragon would not doubt have felt what seemed like an overwhelming need to strike fear into his next meal before swallowing it whole. That was fine by the captain, it meant that they got more time to work on trying to find a way to escape this hellish situation. That's all that Buddy really wanted to try and figure out how they could possible escape the situation. Once more, the mighty dragon growled low, letting the vibrations of its rage resonate in the crewmembers, but they were too focused on surviving against the slimes to take any particular notice, meaning that it was singled out to Buddy to try and keep his composure. Luckily Holly's bladder had already been emptied earlier in the night, otherwise it wouldn't just be seawater that was wetting his trousers, although none would truly blame him, seeing as how his boat already reeked of the stench thanks to the crew's drunken fright at such a sight as Bluespeaker. "Growl all you want!" Buddy called out again, averting his gaze from the dragon and to the slimes which tried to crawl up the steps to their targeted meal. Buddy tried to figure out what the possible point of such things as a breath weapon could be, but the shock of the situation wasn't allowing his mind to think too much on the details of what was transpiring. All that his mind cared to take note of was the fact that they were trying to attack him, which was by no means a friendly thing Buddy drew his new blade, crackling with dark, smoldering energy as it was, and began his own battle against the smallish pests. As he cut trough them, they multiplied, not exactly making the task easy for him until he had the wonderful idea of adding additional charge to his sword and managed the pleasure of watching them give small explosions upon their death. Unfortunately their explosive demise led to Buddy's person getting splashed, forcing him to scream out in pain as it seared at his face, forcing him to dab at it with his sleeve. "Acid? Bloody hell, that makes sense!" He growled, pasuing for a moment to examine himself. Luckily hsi face got the worst of the damage, burning a bit while his clothes just lost some of their color, making way to show the less tinted flesh beneath the surface of his leather. "Bloody hell, that's brilliant." Buddy muttered again beneath his breath as Gregor made his way to his captain, ballista and quiver both in hand, which Holly took without so much as a thanks, though given the circumstances one could hardly blame him for not taking time with pleasantries. "Now go get the bow and start heading below deck." Buddy commanded, quickly examining the ballista and giving a moment of thought to cutting his first mate off before adding, "I'll explain when you get there. Hurry!" He tried to force his mind to work despite the fear, to think about every little thing he knew about this dragon as quickly as he could so that he could minimize the risk of death as much as he possibly could. Never before had his mind dared work to such an extent, and he couldn't dare imagine that it would ever need to work so hard again. Compared to Bluespeaker, the Fearless was a piece of cake, or more accurately a crumbling of a cookie. With the Fearless Buddy had time to think and to plan, to plot and to reexamine. With Bluespeaker everything was being made up on the spot, nothing but spit and wishes to guide his thoughts. The captain stopped considering and thinking for a moment as he heard a cracking call out across the ship. His blue eyes darted to the source and watched with fear as the old, rotted mast began to splinter and fall over, stripping the rigging from their places and whipping it about like the tentacles of a giant squid. Buddy ducked beneath the few ropes as they lashed out at him, and he worried that they might not have near enough time to act as he would have hoped, but they needed to try. Once Holly believed he had a halfway decent plan, he slipped through the thin cracks in the deck's beaten surface and dropped down and below into one of the crew's room before bursting out to where the weapons were. There stood his crew, surprised and filled clearly with fear, praying their captain had the answer. Little did they know that he was praying the same thing silently, even as he pretended to be tough and strnog in the face of utter annihilation. "So I figure we had three options, right?" Buddy asked, rhetorically as the crew could tell, but none dared speak up against his ill-timed comments, "We die to something we don't know, we die to something we do know, or we escape alive. Right? Right?" The crew all spoke up and agreed, though clearly reluctantly and utterly confused. "Right!" Buddy answered, as well, "Because there's no way we're killing this thing, right?" The crew answered quicker the second time, though clearly far more worried about where this was headed. "Right!" Buddy once more confirmed, giving a nod to his crew in silent reward of their quick thinking, "So I think I have a plan, right? If it doesn't work, then we're as dead as we were going into this. If it does work, we're going to pray we can get very far away from here without sails, okay?" he crew went silent, clearly not having known that they had lost the sails in the attack by Bluespeaker. "The answer is "Yes, Captain Buddy! We love and trust you with our lives so we're going to do everything we say and worry about pesky things like our lost mast later! We know you'd never steer us wrong! After all, you came up with the plan to beat the Fearless and its crew!" Then I say, "Oh, pish-posh, all I did was--" "Hiding will not save you, little plankton!" Bluespeaker called out, unknowingly interrupting the Captain in the middle of his speech. Buddy, annoyed as he was, made his way to the porthole and shouted back at the dragon, "Shut up! I'm in the middle of encouraging my crew to shoot you!" before turning around to his crew and reconfirming what he had just said, "So yes, my plan is to shoot the giant water dragon outside. Sound good? Good." He didn't let his crew answer, knowing that they wouldn't have the capacity to answer after such a shock. "Now, arm the ballistae before I throw you to big Blue out there, myself!" The crew of the Gribbles wasted no more time as they manned the ballistae, simply awaiting Buddy's command to fire. The captain readied his own, smaller ballista and lokoed over to Gregor with a quick nod before lowering the ballista once more. The plan was being made up as Buddy went along, but he had just gotten a truly brilliant idea. "Left Ballista, you will fire first, aim for the head and close the porthole before its spit gets here!" He said aloud before rushing to the siege weapon and reciting a quick incantation, charging its harpoon with electricity before moving to the next, "Right Ballista, you will fire next, aim for the torso!" Once more he charged the weapon before turning to Gregor and charging the bow, as well, "Try aiming high, we'll fire at the same time through the secondary porthole." Once all weapons were charged, Buddy stumbled, exhausted from his overuse of magic, and looked out at the mighty dragon, "Ready to die in a rain on pain?" He didn't wait for a response, diving back inside and calling on just a bit more of the little bit of magic he knew, summoning dark clouds overhead that began raining agony down upon everything within a mile. Now the Captian was beginning to develop a debilitating migraine which made him feel as if though his head was ruptured and bleeding, though no fluid flowed from his body. Now it was time to see if he was just dreaming, or if this mad plan could actually do anything other than quicken their demise, not as though they could possibly escape given their opponent. "Alright, ready? Too bad! Fire!" And at Holly's command, the first ballista fired, charged with electricity, but far too obvious. Bluespeaker shot down the missile with ease, but the porthole it fired from closed before its users' could be splattered by the dragon's living spit. The second ballista then fired, sinking its missile into the dragon's scale, charging the water on its scale to agonizing amounts, though but a small sting to such a giant. Fine, it didn't matter. Gregor was the next to fire, pulling back on the string of Buddy's bow, summoning the moonlight arrow and letting it fly loose to sink into the dragon's mighty dark scales. This shot was more powerful, much more equatable to a wasp's sting than a bee's, sinking into Bluespeaker's hide with both electrical and star energy. Finally it was Buddy's turn. The captain peeled himself from the wooden walls as the dragon roared out in fury and the next ballista was loaded and readied to fire. Things were agonizing and dizzying, but with a target so large even Buddy couldn't miss. With a bout of energy summoned up from the depths of his want for survival, Buddy Holly let loose the missile and found himself utterly surprised as it sunk deep into the mighty foe's left eye, forcing him to begin screaming out in agony. The wounds and the acidic rain, even to a creature whose scales were no doubt resistant could not help but writhe in pain when it began to enter in open wounds, especially now that it was half blinded. Utterly infuriated by the pests that assaulted it, Bluespeaker began to sink down into the water and disappeared to the depths. The crew began to cheer, but Buddy silenced them quickly with labored breath. "He's big, pompous and we just hurt him. Do you really think he's just going to leave us alone?" The crew went completely silent, their expressions dropping as the members at the stairwell fought off the last of the acidic spit slimes. Holly, though exhausted to an ungodly extreme did not let it stop him from stumblign like a hammered sailor to and up the stairs to the deck, his weary eyes watching the un-living spit boil and bubble through the deck. None other from the crew followed him above, none other were as equipped as he was for such harsh conditions. The painful rain simply splashed itself against his captain's clothing, leaving him relatively unaffected as he lokoed out to the rocking waves that surrounded the Gribbles. He knew that the beast was going to come from below, he could feel it in the depths of his soul, but he had no idea just how Bluespeaker might go about retaliation. Dragons were notorious for being intelligent, for knowing magic, but few were as big as this one. Perhaps it would simply wish to crush the old ship with its own claws, watch the captain scream for mercy. "No! I will not die here! Not today! Not after everything I've been through!" The captain yelled out, despite the absence of the dragon, "I am Buddy Holly, a damned captain of the worst ship on the Moonsea! I beat the Fearless with this ship! I've survived stealing from warlocks! I watched my entire world crumble away!" The captain of the ship drew his new blade once more, his fingers gripping its handle tightly as he turned about, this way and that while he looked for his enemy, as if he somehow expected to take it on in a duel, "I have gone through far too much to be killed by an oversized fish! You want my life! Come and try to take it, but I will scar you! I'll rip your scales from your body with my bare hands if I have to! You hear my, Big Bad Blue Bully Boaster? I am not going to let myself go down without a fight!" Almost as if on cue with Buddy's rant, a set of four claws, each as large as the gribbles, at least, rose up from the black waters around the ship and began coiling around it. Buddy simply watched for a moment in shock, awe-stricken for a mere moment before the scaly dark claws began clenching down upon the hull of his ship, which only sent him further into fury as he sidestepped the massive digit. "You want to sink this ship? Sink into this, then!" With a roar fit for a warrior, Buddy drove the crackling blade beneath one of the scales of the dragon and shoved it as far as it would go. For a moment the hand trembled, and at the pinprick of damage the hand loosened the ship and released it, receding into the depths with haste, once more leaving the captain's jaw dropped in utter surprise, "It was just a prick. . ." He paused, looking to his sword and wondering what the hell had just happened. Such a thing shouldn't have been too painful for Bluespeaker, so why had it gone just at that? Perhaps an unanswerable question, but Buddy knew what was coming next. As fast as he could, the captain rushed below deck and began spouting orders. Orders for the crew to shut every opening and to find something to cling to for dear life. It took a moment after the crew was secured, after a moment of long and eerie silence, but as Buddy expected the ship began to rock and heave violently. None could see what was going on outside, but the rocking continued on for several moments, with the crew of the Gribbles calling out in fear. Holly knew what was happening without looking, knowing from the fact that they could still feel the world shaking beneath them. Bluespeaker was enraged, no longer wanting to play with its tough meal. The dragon had just swallowed them whole, ship and all, and they were on the long ride to its stomach to begin being processed for nutrients. The ride lasted far longer than any of the Gribbles' crew would have preferred, but at long last it was over, and somehow the the ship had stopped right-side-up. The crew lit torches from the store room, found blindly and by sheer luck, and the majority moved to a lower level of the vessel, but Buddy's first thought was to his quarters, and more importantly to the feline within them. The captain jumped over spit and splinters to reach his room, which he found to be a wreck, btu miraculously he found Zangetsu to be uninjured by the turmoil, though certainly panicked as he immediately clawed his way up buddy's front-side, taking care to avoid the spit which, as he had discovered from what leaked into the captain's quarters, was acidic in nature. Fortunately, none that was currently left on the ship was alive, or at least it was not trying to attack anything. Thanks to whoever is for small favors, right? As holly exited his quarters he was confronted by a small band of torches, held by men who had their swords drawn, led by none other than the least faithful of the crew, a long-haired man by the name of Jacobs, pest he was even when loyal. Holly simply nodded his head, understanding what was occurring before Gregor had a chance to warn. "Really?" He spoke first, not allowing Jacobs or his men the pleasure, "Now is when you want to do this?" "When else, Buddy?" Jacobs spat, though admittedly right to be furious given their ever-worsening situation, "We have just survived the most nightmarish of ordeals, surviving only by sheer luck in the ugly face of your planning. I mean-- a fight against a dragon?" "Mm-hmm." Buddy simply nodded and pet Zangetsu's head calmly to try and calm him, not bothering to look up at the mutineers any longer, wanting to see how long they carried through with the rant. "Now what? You can't even speak up? I'm right, then! You're not fit to be the captain of this ship, Holly!" Jacobs growled, getting a nice chorus of agreements from the fools who followed him. Gregor tried to speak up at Buddy's side, but the captain silenced him to allow Jacobs to continue, "First the Fearless, now a dragon. Clearly you've gone suicidal! We survive by the skin of our teeth, and I ain't gonna let that happen any more! The Gribbles is ours now, Buddy! And the crew is mine!" The dozen mutineers cheered for Jacobs' speech, raising their weapons and torches high above their heads, and still failing to get a response from buddy. After a moment of awkward, joy-killing silence, Jacobs added with a roar of victory, "What? Nothing to say to that?! I knew it! Even you can't deny I'm right." Buddy simply sighed and handed Zangetsu over to his first mate, a man who the cat did indeed trust, though not so much as the captain. While Gregor began petting the bob-tailed cat, Buddy rested his own hands upon his hips and looked up to the starless sky. "Jacobs." He said, "You're a smart man, aren't you?" "Of course I am!" Jacobs growled at the captain. "Then tell me. . ." The captain pointed up towards the sky, his dark glove barely illuminated by the torchlight from Jacobs' men and Buddy's room, "If the rain's stopped, then where is the sky?" The mutinous leader looked up, as if such a question was utterly ridiculous and then looked back down to buddy, "Hidden by the clouds from your spell." "No. . ." Buddy said, drawing it out like Jacobs was missing something utterly obvious, "When my spell is finished, the clouds go with the rain." "Clearly there were clouds already overhead!" Jacobs answered, trying to seem smarter than he actually was, but still trying to keep balance on the rocking ship. "No. . ." Buddy said again, in the same manner as before, "There were no clouds until I cast my spell, no rain for days to come, and none that we would have encountered on our course. So once more I ask you: where is the sky?" Jacobs looked up once more, as if looking for something he missed, but still not understanding, "Where then?" "Outside." Buddy said, lowering his hand to his side. "Outside?" Jacobs parroted, "What in the world do you mean by that?" It was beginning to sink in, the fear of what was happening. "Bluespeaker ate us. He swallowed us whole." Buddy finally answered, "We're inside of his stomach." The expressions of the present crew fell quickly at the sudden realization of their predicament. They thought for all of a moment that such a thing was impossible, and then they remembered the size of the water dragon. They were inside of Bluespeaker. Despite their best efforts, they were going to die. They lost. "Don't worry, we haven't lost, yet!" Buddy said cheerfully before leaping over the acid-chewed hole in the deck so that he might place his hands on Jacobs' shoulders with a wide toothy grin, "Because I have a plan!" "What is it?" Jacobs asked, surprised at the turn of events but having forfeited his bravery to the situation, at the realization that they were so small to the dragon that they could be so easily swallowed. Much to his surprise, and much to Gregor's surprise, and much to the rest of the present crew's surprise, the answer lied in Buddy taking his sword from its scabbard and bringing its edge across Jacobs' chest with a single slash. For a moment Jacobs was simply embraced by panic, but once that instant was gone, he was overtaken by utter fear, the kind which sent him falling back and onto his rear end in panic as he backed away from Buddy's blade. Gregor would have said something to the matter, but he knew better. By the laws of any ship, especially those of pirates, mutiny was punishable by death, no matter how well justified. Another mutineer tried to charge at the captain, but was met with a slash that sunk into his right arm, courtesy of Holly's lightning fast reflexes shortly before he made another shallow cut into Jacobs' flesh at his shoulder after easily deflecting his blade. It was about then that Buddy noticed the pirate muttering something. "Oh, Jess. No. . . No. . ." The captain simply watched, blade resting in mid-air, questioning whether or not he should make another cut or simply leave things as they were. It was in that moment of self-deliberation that Jacobs rose to his feet and grabbed Buddy by the coat, screaming into his face, "You bastard! You bastard! What have you done with Jess!? You sadistic bastard!" Buddy, face neutral in response despite a blade at his throat, simply met Jacobs' eyes, met the fear for a moment before in turn grabbing his attacker, spinning around and dropping him to the deck below, just missing the acidic saliva which had pooled on the floor by inches. Buddy sighed a sigh of relief, knowing that Jacobs didn't fall in the puddle. As much of an ass as Jacobs may have been, he didn't deserve a slow death by dragon spit, and Buddy could think of very few people in all of Chaon who deserved such a wretchedly awful fate. "So. . ." Buddy said, sheathing his blade and clapping his hands together as he turned to the mutineers, "If anybody doesn't mind being the food that goes back up, I think I just might have a plan for us all to survive this absolutely horrifying ordeal! If nobody wants to leave this overgrown eel-with-legs' gut, then I suggest continuing on with this pointless mutiny idea." The mutineers looked between one another, save for the one still trembling on the deck, and then back to Buddy with a nod of confirmation. Easily swayed fools, but they were no doubt helpful in the raid against the Fearless. Would they betray Buddy again one day? Most likely, but that thought was still a pleasant one as it indicated there would be a future day in which they would have the chance to try and mutiny against him once again. "Great! Now if we can just get one of the harpoons on fire, we can start getting to work on the plan!" The pirates above didn't question the captain's orders, doing such a thing would only prove to cause more trouble for them and even they could realize that. As such, they also felt inclined to warn Buddy when they saw their mutinous leader below-deck, having managed to wheel one of the loaded ballistae through the acidic spit and aim it at the captain while he was distracted. Holly turned, he ducked, and avoided the missile that was intended for his own body all-together. From the shadows behind Jacobs came three men, pirates still loyal to the captain who wrestled him to the ground. Buddy took a swallow of relief, thanked the previously mutinous members of his crew, and instructed those below on his plans. Of course they would need to work quickly if they had any intention of escaping before the imitation ocean comprised of stomach acids gnawed away at their ship and then them. "Load that ballista again! Set fire to the harpoon on the other and then shoot that one into the shadows!" He commanded after recovering from the shock of almost being skewered, "Then light that one's and fire it through the hole again! Quickly now, before the acid wears away at it!" The crew gave hearty, "Aye-aye, captain!" And did as commanded. Within moments, two flaming missiles set off in either direction, looking desperately in the dark for the inner lining of Bluspeaker's stomach. The one fired from the port found only darkness and a quick death, the one fired through the hole in the deck lit the pink wall of the organ and made the stomach rumble with irritation. Was Bluespeaker even aware that the crew was still alive? Or would this all come as a shock to the beast when they rode its stomach's fluids out through its throat and back to freedom? Holly chuckled a bit at the thought before continuing on. "Alright, men! Tie this to a grappling harpoon and splice some rope together!" He called as he tossed the blade, scabbard and all, to his crew down below, "I don't want to lose that just so we can escape! May prove even more useful in the days to come, alright?" Again the crew below called out, "Aye-aye, captain!" and did as commanded. Either they were just completely given up on being afraid of the fact that they were going to die, or they truly held faith in the captain, which was far more than Buddy had for himself. Within a moment the plan was set in motion, within another the blade shot through the air, visible only by its crackling purple energy, and lodged itself in the lining of the wall on the first go. The stomach heaved, the acids grew in waves, but still they were in there. It didn't work. "Damn!" Buddy cursed, looking down to the deck below as he began rethinking his plan. However, the more he waited, the more the waves grew. They were nearly to the ceiling before he realized what was happening and gave the command to start reeling his blade back in and for the crew to begin taking cover shortly after once more. This wasn't going to be any more fun, but he saw no alternatives if they truly sought to survive. He chuckled a bit at the thought of what was going to occur before letting out a nervous chuckle. They were probably going to die, but at least they'd make sure that the mighty dragon didn't have a good meal of them despite it. As the waves grew, and as Buddy waited in his messy quarters with his feline companion, sword still out there as it had become lodged within the wall, he wondered about it. Was that the actual reason why the Fearless had so many to protect the sparse supplies? Enchanted weapons? It made sense, but Buddy hadn't been expecting that. He smiled to himself and scratched a bit more behind Zangetsu's ears as they rose and sank on the turbulent fluids. "Pray we're above water, Zan." He said with a solemn tone, "Else we're going to be even more disgusting." Zangetsu did not find this humorous. In took a few more moments, but finally gravity gave way to force. For a moment everything had become intense, everything felt even heavier as the ship rose through the mighty dragon's massive throat. It lasted too long for Buddy's tastes, even longer more for Zan's, but then gravity gave way to weightlessness. Holly wondered for a moment about just how many gave way in this moment, letting the weightlessness of their zenith of arcing let them float about, completely unaware of how short-lived it would be. He smiled for a moment, holding onto his nailed-down bed for dear life before the gravity returned, pushing everything against the ceiling as the ship fell. It fell, and it fell, and it fell before crashing onto the waters below. It came like a punch against the bottom of the ship, but as soon as it was, Buddy was on his feet and out the door, looking around quickly for any sign of the dragon against the night sky. The first thing he noticed was that the sky was clear, the stars and the moon shined brightly but they were nowhere near the rain he had called down. They were relatively safe in that regards, but what mattered most was the dragon, Bluespeaker. A moment of looking and Buddy found the creature at the end of its own trail of vomit, looking both sickly and annoyed, glaring down at him. He did it. The impossible, twice in one week. He had defeated the Fearless and escaped the belly of the beast! He would have cheered if the dragon wasn't staring at him. For a moment he even considered gloating, but he simply resigned to staring at it, waiting to see what it would do, waiting to see how it would react. The beak of the dragon opened wide, it let out a fearsome roar that made the captain of the Gribbles think it was about to attack once more, perhaps spit more of its living, acidic slime upon his hull, into his decks, but instead it sunk below the surface of the water. He waited longer. He waited, and he waited, and he waited some more. The crew began to come above deck, expecting the same thing as they looked about, looking for any signs of the dragon. The longer they waited, the more intense it seemed, but after a while Buddy finally realized something. He did it. He beat a dragon! Barely, and with an insane amount of luck, but he did it! The dragon could easily have crushed the Gribbles, could have coated it with more of the vicious slime, but it didn't! It must have figured that such a measly snack wasn't worth the effort and the pain it was going through! Buddy let a smile creep onto his face, illuminated by the light of two full moons before he cried out in victory. "We did it! We're alive!" And shortly after, the crew joined him. They were conquerors of massive vessels, annoyances to dragons, there was truly nothing on the Moonsea that could compete, and even though they knew that below the surface was far worse, they cheered anyway! The Sacred Heart Pirates, their legends were just beginning to be told, despite the fact that it might only be Buddy's and Gregor's names in history, the entirety of the crew cheered because they would have lives to live! What greater reward could there be than that? "Captain!" Said a pirate below deck, the only one to stop and examine the damage to the ballistae before allowing himself to cheer, "You may want to take a look at this!" Buddy's face dropped as he rushed to the hole in the deck, looking down to his subordinate before his blue eyes settled on what he was called for, and then he smiled once more. They chipped one of the dragon's teeth on their way out. Edited by Buddy, Sat Mar 30, 2013 1:15 am.
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7:32 PM Jul 11

