Notes1: It's a couple days late, and I apologize for that, but I've had work and, in between feeling wiped after the shift and trying to climb the ladder doing ranked matches in Heroes of the Storm, I had been putting off uploading this. I was also considering adding in another scene where Risky's just kicking back in the cabin with a bottle of whiskey while thinking of her life and the stakes at hand, but that point's already been hammered home. There's no need to reiterate it even more. So if by any chance the story feels like it's ended too abruptly, that's why.
Notes2: I've never played the Shantae games outside of watching playthoughs of all three games on YouTube (although I would much like to if they should ever go on sale), and while canonically Shantae herself would never do the sort of thing she's implied to have done here, the thought alone was too good to pass up on.
She should've known something like this would happen.
The possibility was always there, lingering at the back of her mind and holding on tight like a leech to skin. The magic had to be reclaimed and then taken advantage of once the Pirate Master awoke—something only the last known genie had (regardless of heritage). Were circumstances different, they would have seen him destroyed and moved on to purify Scuttle Touch of the befouled influence he had left in his wake.
She stepped off the gangplank and paused, staring at the Tinkerbats individually, her expression withdrawn save for the thin line of her lips pressed together. They stopped what they were doing, drank the sight of her and gauged the lack of emotion on her face, studied the way she carried herself: shoulders stiff and squared back, fists loosely clenched at her sides, the muscles in her legs drawn up firmly as cocoons encased in amber. They let go of the ropes hoisting the sails, put down the crates containing fish and fruits and salted meats, set aside their sharpening tools and caskets of gunpowder and periscopes and cutlasses, and waited.
They blinked. They stared. Some scratched their bellies. Others adjusted their bandannas, tapped their fingers together and the tips of their pointed shoes against the floor. Their faces were completely black, obscuring the mouths hiding underneath.
She wondered if they understood what had just transpired out there on the parapets, wondered if they felt the full weight of the consequences that would not only affect this motley crew but the world at large. How damned they were all going to be, how utterly doomed every man, woman, and child living and undead were once the Pirate Master spun the wheel of fate into motion.
She wondered if the Tinkerbats could sense the taint exuding from her gear seeping into her skin and through her veins, gaining ground little by little, curling around her brain and her heart, building impenetrable cages from the foundations of her thoughts and emotions.
One of the crew emerged from the assembled cluster and stopped in front of her. It raised a tentative hand, paused, flicked its gaze up at her. She didn't say a word. The Tinkerbat blinked and clasped her hand in both of its own, looked back at her, eyes asking silently.
"Yes, I'm alright," she told it, "for the time being." Its eyes widened a fraction, its grip clamping down harder. The other Tinkerbats exchanged worrying glances, shuffled their feet and twiddled their fingers more quickly. "You can feel it, don't you? You can see it in my eyes, too, even if I can't. It'll be awhile yet before it consumes me, and when that time comes you'll know what to do…don't you?" She leveled a stare at the deckhand.
The reaction was expectant and unsurprising: eyes growing bigger and pupils dilating until they were mere pinpricks, and it was reflected on every other face. The Tinkerbat shook its head wildly, disbelievingly. The pressure on her hand was in a vice now, as though trapped in the jaws of a fearsome beast. She tried to yank it back, but it would not budge. "You don't have a choice! It's either that or let the curse run its course!" The Tinkerbat trembled, stared pleadingly. "If you value your lives so much, then you'll do it! Do you hear me?"
The Tinkerbat released her and sank to its knees, holding its head. In the gloom of the night, heedless of the downpour batting down on them, its eyes were two bright gold discs radiating a primal despair she hadn't thought it capable of possessing. The moment startled her, once again brought her back to the battle not even an hour ago—the Pirate Master slipping in and out of the shadows, lobbing shot after shot of dark magic, summoning gargantuan bones from beasts long since passed out of time to hinder their movements. How he had drawn forth more and empowered the shell of his body held together by the anger of her betrayal felt in his dying moments, grew to leviathan proportions and threatened the ant-sized half-genie below him and taunted her parentage, swore to take his weapons back by force and deliver to her the same fate he gave to the women that gave their lives to seal him away in that lonely seaward grave.
He had hardly taken a beating when he made the proposition: Give up the dark magic stored in the lamp, or Risky would be killed. Shantae was a good girl; she just could not ignore a person in need, not even a mutinous scourge like Risky Boots, now could she? Truly she was her mother's daughter. The outcome was so simple.
In reality, the outcome was not what neither the Master nor Risky saw coming. She had demanded Shantae not to listen to his 'lies', worded it in a way that the kid would rebuff her with that disgusting kindness of hers and uncork the lamp anyway so as to harness it for herself. It was her magic, after all, and taking it in would finally make her whole again.
The dead-eyed look Shantae had given her, holding the lamp aloft as if it were some common child's toy, as though she was seriously considering her options while the fate of the world was hanging in the balance and right in front of them, the manner in which she made her decision then and there…Risky would be damned if that wasn't seared into her memory by now, and with a violent jolt she was dropped back into reality, seeing the Tinkerbat for the very first time.
Red rage rose like bile, and in two steps she had the deckhand lifted off the ground by the scruff of its neckerchief and the saber pressed against its throat. This time it did make a noise—a high-pitched, bat-like keen as it beheld the light from the glow-lamps playing off the sharp, nicked edge. It did not struggle, did not instinctively grab her wrists and try to move the blade away, and inwardly she was glad it had enough intelligence to not push its boundaries. "You'll do it, goddammit! You're going to kill me and then you'll move on, do you understand? You will, or I'll start right now and slaughter every single one of you that dares defy me!"
The Tinkerbat screeched again, a siren call rang in her ears and beat twin muffled tattoos in her forehead and the base of her neck. It whipped its head left and right, right and left, back and forth, tears welling up in its eyes. Purple blood beaded from the cut and pooled onto the blade. The sight alone reminded Risky of her, her actions, her words.
She had all the magic at her disposal. The opportunity was right there.
She didn't take it.
She didn't take it, and seeing that little ounce of blood reminded her there was one less person in the world that could fix this mess.
Risky huffed, the anger dissipating and leaving her feeling more drained than she had ever felt before. She drew back the saber and let go of the Tinkerbat, to which it fell with an unceremonious thump and clutched its throat, wheezing for air. Stepping away, she lifted her chin and looked past the rest of the crew, towards the horizon. Scuttle Town, Sunburn Island, the Nightmare Woods, Saliva Island…the Master's reach was far, and with his weapons returned and the full might of Shantae's magic corrupted and at his disposal it would extend beyond Sequin Land. How fast would he be? How much time did they have?
Did Shantae ever stop to think that the conclusion she had come to in that moment (whether or not it was during the battle or from many moons back, when her own magic had been ripped out by the very person who intended to be rid of her and would later become desperate enough to call upon her aid) would have such disastrous repercussions? Did she ever consider that it would not be just the two of them who would bear the full brunt of it?
Risky thought she probably did. She probably did and just didn't care anymore. This was her revenge, and fates be damned she got it.
She got it, and Risky was appalled and indignant the runt would do such a thing, but a small, niggling part tucked away deep inside was impressed she had a nasty bone in that body and had the brass balls to go through with it.
None of that mattered anymore.
She huffed, sheathed the blade, and held out a hand. "Come on," she told the Tinkerbat. "Get up. There's work to be done." She waited while the Tinkerbat considered the possibilities of what would happen if it should take it. When it realized that its captain wasn't going to threaten bodily harm the tension in its shoulders seeped away. It nodded and grabbed her hand, allowed to be pulled to its feet.
"The rest of you!" she hailed the others, and they scrambled to attention. "Don't just stand there! Pull up the anchor! Unfurl the sails and chart a course to the islands nearest here! Wherever the Master is, I want us to be on his ass as much as possible! Living or undead, he won't run forever. We will make certain of that."
The Tinkerbats chattered and broke apart, resuming their previous activities and moving on to performing their new orders. The deckhand made to join its brethren, then stopped and looked at Risky over its shoulder. It was hard to tell what a Tinkerbat was feeling when its face was black as midnight, but she saw how less rounded the eyes were, the less yellow and shrunken the sclera and pupils appeared now that it had calmed. Still she could see the concern there, the hunchbacked posture instead of the militaristic straightness all others were drilled from recruitment to bear.
Normally she would demand for it to buck up and move, move before she decided to put a boot up its ass and make it, quash those feelings and focus on the mission. Unchecked emotions would cloud its judgment and hinder its abilities.
Instead she sniffed and waved it off. "I told you, I'm fine. Now go. Help the others. That's an order." The Tinkerbat began to turn back to her, but at the hard glare she sent its way it thought better. With great reluctance, it joined the crew.
It didn't look back.