A/N: I've been such a fan if this weird movie for over ten years, yet it's taken until now for me to give it a fanfic. I seriously don't know why.
This picks up right where the movie left off, with the pirates arriving at the Seventh World.
I don't own "The Ice Pirates."
Princess Karina had been raised to spend her entire life anticipating the sight of the blue planet spinning gracefully towards her, yet now she hardly cared. The watery paradise of the Seventh World would be a barely noticeable backdrop for her reunion with her father. She was so excited to see him, alive and well, to see the pride on his face when he learned she'd made it out of the Templars' clutches, across pirate territory, and through the Time Warp.
Jason put his arm around her. "Your father was right."
The planet before Karina blurred under her watering eyes. "I can't wait to see him."
The entire pirate crew was crowded on the bridge, including most of the animals they'd picked up from the desert planet Sweetwater. Roscoe the mechanic, who'd collapsed into the helm with awe at the sight of the legendary planet. Maida, her fierce catlike eyes flaring at the supposedly impossible-to-reach world she'd successfully piloted them to through the Time Warp. Wendon, blinking behind his large glasses, his dumbfounded human face clashing oddly with the gargantuan robot body the pirates had given him (disembodied heads couldn't be choosers). Killjoy laughing, as he set down his saber. Zeno, actually silent for once.
"Look," Nanny, also teary eyed, nudged Percy the serving-robot, and pointed out the window, "how…beautiful that is!"
Percy shivered under his maid cap and bowtie in mechanical agreement.
"All that water," Roscoe breathed from the helm. "You know what this means don't you?"
"What?" Jason said, still mesmerized.
"We're outta' business!" Roscoe leaned back in the pilot's chair, folding his hands behind his head.
In the window's reflection, superimposed over the Seventh World and the stars, Karina saw Wendon give one of the other robots a high-five, while Maida and Killjoy finally kissed. The spotted piglets from Sweetwater trotted around the bridge squealing softly, as if asking what the big fuss was about.
"Still wanna take long, hot baths together?" Maida quietly asked Killjoy.
Karina pressed herself against Jason. "I can't wait to see him," she said again. "I can't wait for you to meet him, Jason."
The pirate captain tightened his hold on her.
Just an hour ago, Jason and Karina had been nothing more than new, casual lovers. But a fifteen minute trip through the Time Warp had made them grow old together, spawn a child, and watch him grow up to defeat the Templar lord Zorn. Of course, Karina realized, now that they were out of the Time Warp, that son had been backtracked to a recently fertilized egg; but since she and Jason knew he was coming, they could start planning for a better family life than fending off Templars aboard a pirate ship for twenty years.
Repaying the experience in the Time Warp through her mind, Karina was struck by a disturbing thought.
"Jason, you do want to meet my father, don't you?"
Jason shifted to look down at her, taken aback. "Of course I do! Even if he wasn't the father of the woman I love, he was a friend of Lanky." His face became somber at the mention of his deceased friend.
Nanny shook her head at the two of them. "What are you two arguing about now? We're at the Seventh World!"
Karina returned Nanny's gesture, giving her head a tiny shake. "It's just," she gazed up at her lover. "Jason, are… are you glad we're having a child? In the Time a Warp, when I first showed him to you..."
"Glad?" Jason's face spread into a smile. "Why wouldn't I be, after seeing him take down those Templars! He just, uh, caught me off guard is all." Jason turned back to the planetoid nearing them. "I haven't had a family since, well, ever. I..." He seemed about to elaborate, then changed his mind. "I mean as long as your dad doesn't mind a grandkid who's half pirate."
"I'm sure he won't mind," Karina assured him.
"The Seventh World has granted us clearance to land," Rosco suddenly announced from the helm. "I told them we had Princess Karina aboard, and they gave me the coordinates for the landing pad on your dad's estate. Apparently he's a powerful monarch here."
"What's is like," Maida breathed, stepping closer to the window. "A planet with oceans, water falling from the sky, entire landscapes covered in ice,"
"We're about to find out," Jason said. "Take the helm Maida. If you don't mind, Roscoe."
The mechanic lifted his hands defensively and surrendered the helm to the pilot.
The crew closed in around the pilot as she took them into the planet's atmosphere. Maida didn't hide her irritation at having her bubble violated, but didn't seem about to blame them or asking them to back off. Eyes widened at the rivers and lakes of the Seventh World, and the dense vegetation surrounding them. The only place Karina had ever seen so many trees growing so closely and erratically together was in the royal greenhouses. She now felt she was looking at a fairytale come to life.
"Look!" Nanny pointed. "Rain!"
"It's like a… giant sprinkler!" Roscoe muttered.
Karina and Jason exchanged a look. They'd experienced an artificial rainstorm not long ago. And the result had saved them all from Zorn.
Everyone caught their breath as Maida took them over an ocean. A few crewmembers fought for a space at the window, resulting in Zeno's hand getting knocked off again. (Eventually, someone would have to tell the little pirate that it was neither practical nor hygienic to keep his severed hand attached to his stump.) The hand wound up landing in Maida's lap. The pilot cringed irritably as Zeno apologetically collected his severed limb and moved out of her way.
Flying closer towards the planet's pole, the crew got their first view if natural ice.
"It's so lumpy," Maida observed.
"It's like one giant block, stretched out," Zeno said with his eyes glued to the window, as he absentmindedly screwed his hand back onto its stump.
People were playing games on the ice, and doing strange, gracefully dances on it. Hokey, the ice sport that, back home, existed only in legends and ancient footage like the tapes Killjoy had been watching just hours before, was being played out right below them.
Maida took them over snowy mountains, and a striking structure came into view. It was a castle, carved—or sculpted—entirely out of ice. Tall crystalline towers with pointed roves glistened in the sunlight, connected by long curving walkways and staircases, across which small figures could be seen making their way or lounging.
"Your dad's got a nice place," Maida said off-handedly to Karina.
Before the castle was a wide flat ice rink, where a few other space ships sat docked. Two small orange lights waved the pirate ship down, and drawing closer, they saw it was a castle guard in chainmail, signaling to them with two neon air traffic directing sticks. More guards were clearing a landing spot for the newcomers, keeping the curious civilians from coming too close. It seemed the pirates were amassing a crowd.
The ship landed, and the pirate crew hesitantly stepped out. None of them were dressed for the weather, but most everyone in the crew found some extra layer to toss on. Karina threw the striped robe she'd worn on Sweetwater over her white gown. Roscoe donned the blue frock coat he'd acquired at Wendon's palace.
Nanny paused as she stepped off the ramp and onto the ice, clutching her dark blue cloak close. "I'm standing on the Seventh World!"
Killjoy nonchalantly strode passed her, still wearing nothing from the waist up but his laced vest, then slipped and landed flat on his back. Maida helped her new boyfriend up, and the two of them shakily made their way across the ice, Maida relying on the spiked heels of her boots like climbing spokes.
The spotted piglets poured out of the ship and flowed in a herd through the group.
The crew got many a strange look from the guards and onlookers as they made their way across the ice, which many of the pirates returned. The guards here looked much like the ones back home, wearing chainmail and armed with swords and blasters. But the general populace was dressed much differently. The majority were humans, though a few aliens could be seen throughout the crowd. They were all beautifully dressed in vibrant colors and furs, but Karina realized there was very little of the metallic ornaments that were all the rage back home. Karina didn't happen to be wearing any of her jewelry or tiara at the moment, but Maida was getting some looks, for the silver eagle that adorned her bandana, and the ornaments poking through it as it began to fall off. Maida reached out to adjust her headdress as she walked.
"Are you a princess?" A little girl from the crowd asked the pirate woman as she strode by.
Maida gave the child a dubious look, and said with a small laugh, "No."
"How come you're all done up in shinny jewelry and a crown?"
"That's all cheap trinkets where we're from," Roscoe explained. "Back in the dry galaxy, it's water 'separates rich from poor."
A figure at the end of the ice rink caught Karina's attention, and her breath. A tall, familiar man in elegant robes, looking at her knowingly. Count Vasco of Aragon.
Karina lifted the skirt of her smock and ran towards her father, ignoring everyone's warning about running in ice. Not surprisingly, she slipped and skidded right into her father. He caught her, and then pulled her into a tight embrace.
"Daddy," Karina sniffed.
"Karina," her father whispered, "I thought I'd lost you."
Karina swallowed, quickly regaining her regal composure, as she'd been trained to by Nanny. "Daddy," she gestured to her lover, who was approaching them almost cautiously. "This is Captain Jason. He helped me—helped all of us—that is…his crew got Nanny and me through the Time Warp. And he also knew Lanky Nibs."
Karina's father smiled at Jason. "Any friend of Lanky Nibs or my daughter is a friend of mine."
Jason and Karina exchanged a long look.
"Actually, Daddy," Karina slowly looked back at her father. "We're a bit more than friends. I'm… pregnant."
The monarch turned to look at Jason with wide eyes.
The pirate responded with a casual shrug.
A guard began to clap, and soon the entire crowd of knights and townsfolk were applauding the announcement. But the cheers quickly died down when everyone noticed the serious look on the count's face, as he looked silently between his daughter and the pirate. Then he gestured for Jason to give him his sword. Jason nervously obliged.
Karina's father spoke, his tone regal and unreadable. "I can't have my daughter seeding offspring with a mere pirate," he said. "You have a last name captain Jason?"
Jason swallowed, as his eyes on his saber in the hand of the man whose daughter he'd just knocked up. The conveyor belt flashed through Jason's mind, and the threat of castration reentered his mind.
"Uh," Jason stammered, "not that I know of."
"Then kneel, Captain Jason."
Jason kneeled on the ice, lowering his face away from the count. So it was just his head that was going to be lopped off, he realized. He could live with that. Hell, Wendon had been a disembodied head for decades, and he'd still enjoyed a full life. But surely Roscoe would design a better body for his best friend than the irritating outcast aristocrat. Maybe he could ask Roscoe for a wheeled robot body. Or one with rocket boosters-
"And rise," the monarch's powerful voice broke Jason out of his frantic thought, tapping each of Jason's shoulders with the blade, "Sir Jason, knight of the Seventh World."
The entire pirate crew was knighted, even Nanny and Wendon, and thus their new lives began.
Seven months later, all Knights of the Seventh World were to attend a banquet in the icy palace's great hall. Sir Zeno, now the royal chef, was in the kitchen hard at work. Sir Roscoe, head of a new robotics business, had designed the cook a mechanical hand that could take the form of any kitchen appliance he needed. Princess Karina and her husband Sir Prince Jason sat at the long elegantly carved ice table, dressed in regal white and gold attire.
"It's a small price to pay," Sir Wendon said, strutting across the hall in a new find body. "Though I do miss my old palace and my pets and my Amazon Brigade, I enjoy being a model for robot bodies far more than ruling a planet!"
"You're the most enthusiastic model I've had yet," Sir Roscoe said, from where he sat between the princess and a monarch in a turban.
Wendon proudly strutted across the icy ballroom in his feminine golden body. He was met with a mixture of strange looks and genuine applause.
Lady Nanny seemed to search fruitlessly for something positive to say, then have up and turned to the princess. "So Karina, have you and Sir Prince Jason decided on a name?"
Katrina's father looked at the couple inquisitively.
"We still aren't sure," the princess folded her hands over her pregnant stomach. "I'd originally called him Jason, but only because I thought Jason the First would probably be killed before reaching the Seventh World. I don't know how I feel now, having two Jasons to keep track of."
"What about..." Jason shrugged, "Lance?" At his wife's baffled expression, he explained, "He can be 'Lanky' for short."
"Lanky's real name was Lance?" Roscoe asked.
"Yep."
Nanny cranes her neck over the table. "It looks like Lady Maida and Sir Killjoy have finally decided to join us."
Maida and Killjoy emerged from the translucent doors that led to the palace hot tub, dripping wet and wearing fuzzy bath robes. From under the towel wrapped around her head, Maida's usual gold heir ornaments dangled.
"We miss anything?" Killjoy asked.
"The banquet," Jason said.
Maida muttered under her breath, "Balls, that was tonight!"
"Under the circumstances," Karina's father said, "formal dress is to be optional."
"Oh god," Wendon gasped, "tonight's the banquet? I though tonight was the hockey game! Oh I've got to get changed!" Before anyone could stop him he hustled his gold curvaceous body out of the room.
Wendon returned when Zeno was serving the dinner, his slick black mechanical hand reforming itself into prongs for serving the pasta, a spoon for the soup, and a fork for steak.
"Wait for me!" Wendon wined, waddling back into the hall in his new Cylon model body.
Zeno beamed as the knights and aristocrats eagerly accepted the food he'd spend so man hours preparing. After a flawless dinner the chef served dessert. Along with the cake and ice cream, Zeno also had a special drink.
"Templar wine, vintage 4321! I've been saving it for a special occasion."
"So you decide to break it out the one time the princess can't drink?" Maida said.
"I was never a big drinker," Karina replied.
"I'll have an extra drink for you," Jason winked.
Zeno held the curling alien bottle up so all the guests could watch him open it. His robotic hand whirled into the shape of a corkscrew. "Note the mist that rises from the initial popping of the cork..."
The chef popped opened the bottle, and screams erupted throughout the icy hall.
Sliding across the elegant ice table, dripping wet with expensive Templar wine, was the Space Herpe.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Zeno's despaired cry echoed through the castle, over Nanny's bloodcurdling scream.
Maida was up in Killjoy's arms again, and Killjoy had leaped up onto the table. Jason drew his sword to defend his wife and unborn son from the putrid monstrosity. Karina's father just watched the tiny creature in bemusement.
"I thought we killed that thing!" Jason screamed, swinging at the alien with his sword and missing.
"That was in the time warp," said Roscoe, whose laser gun vaporized dish after dish as the Herpe outran his blast.
"I was killed there," Killjoy mused, from where he stood on the table holding Maida. "Zeno and the old lady too. But that was reversed when we exited the Time Warp."
A baroness in a double-horned headdress cried frantically, "It's headed for the princess and unborn prince!"
"It's alright," Jason said quickly, "Everyone just stay calm, it can smell fear. Don't make any sudden movements, don't make eye-contact with it,"
Ignoring the safety procedures she knew her husband was making up on the spot, Karina took up her steak knife and, roaring through her teeth, stabbed at the Herpe as it sped by. She missed, burying the blade on the ice table.
Everyone watched as the creature slid up a twisted ice pillar, following its intricately carved designs onto the ceiling and out a window.
"It followed us to the Seventh World," Jason breathed on a mixture of horror and disbelief.
Roscoe muttered, "We've brought disease to paradise."
The chaos was dying down. Percy was attempting to fan a fainted Nanny awake with a gold paper plate. Wendon had changed onto his robot maid body and was vacuuming up the mess.
"...What just happened?" The Katrina's father blinked in confusion.
Grimly, Jason said, "The Seventh World...just got herpes."
FIN