~~~Chesapeake~~~
"For the last time Christopher, I didn't kill and devour Jessica! Why would I want to do that in the first place?"
Christopher refused to believe me, just as he had the last dozen times I'd tried to explain myself to the simpleton. "That's just what you want us to think! You'll be after my brother next, but it won't work. I'm wise to your tricks!"
"I don't want to kill you or your brother. Look, my crew has located Jessica and they'll drag her out any minute now. Calm down."
Christopher grabbed United States and gave her a small shake. "Can't you see? She's stalling for time!"
My sister leveled her eyes at the arms holding her. "Unhand me, or I'll do it myself. You have three seconds."
Christopher's arms retracted. He turned towards Constellation, but she scooted out of reach. Lacking any other alternatives, he turned and grabbed his brother. "Why isn't anyone listening to me?" He screamed as he shook Arthur like a rag doll. "We're all going to die!"
"HEY!" Called a familiar voice from atop my head.
As Constellation held a hand up to the top of my head, I sighed in relief. Jessica was back and everything would be fine. We could yell at her for doing something so reckless and stupid, Christopher would calm down, and everything would be fine. Everything was going to be fine.
That relief turned to horror when I realized that Jessica, now garbed in a white toga, was not returning to her usual size. She seemed to realize this as well and started cursing up a storm.
"You… you've killed her! You've killed her and her spirit stands before us robed in white!" Christopher cried hysterically. "She must have had such a small and pure soul! Listen, she even speaks in tongues!"
I quirked my lips. "Just because she has a foul mouth doesn't mean the words coming out of it aren't English."
"She's just repeating the same word over and over. Is it a prophecy? Is it madness? What secrets are hidden in her message?"
"And lo," Jessica began, projecting her voice imperiously, "whence the time came for the ritual of de-shrinking, the lovely Jessica descended from atop fair Chesapeake's head. But whence the lovely Jessica tried to perform the ritual of de-shrinking, she realized she didn't fucking know how to do it and was now stuck! Why aren't I tall again?"
"Um, Chesapeake, what have you done?" Arthur asked softly. "Jessica is two inches tall and only saying the word 'hey'."
I glared at him. "What have I done? I did nothing! This is all her fault for deciding to enter me in ways I didn't know were possible!"
Arthur turned red. "Ph-ph-phrasing."
Oh. I blushed. "That's not what I meant and you know it! I didn't ask her to come inside me!"
Arthur passed out.
I grabbed my hair. "Ugh! Christopher, Arthur, shut up, the adults are talking."
"Make me!" Cried Christopher.
I let out a wordless cry of rage. I couldn't just let that challenge go unanswered! As much as I hated the coal burning within me, for once I was in complete agreement with the feelings it pushed my way. I reached behind me, grabbed one of my marine's muskets, and leveled it at Christopher.
"I can perform gunboat diplomacy if you wish. It wouldn't be my first time doing so." I said, my voice level and cold. Who did this impudent whelp think he was speaking to? I was a frigate, a warship of two great navies! Did this idiotic landlubber not know anything about what I was?
"Chesapeake!" Constellation yelled as she grabbed my weapon, wrenching it to point upwards. "What are you doing?"
"Making a point." I growled. "This is one of the lowest levels of violence I can threaten. I could level twenty cannons at him with barely a thought."
I wanted to do so so badly, but some part of me recognized that that might just be going a little bit too far. You only needed a single cannon loaded with canister shot after all.
"You're disgracing yourself by pointing that weapon at him." United States said coldly. "He can't possibly be a threat to you. You're a 1200 ton warship, act like it sailor!"
"It's more like 1500 tons now." I muttered. My crew didn't have the plans for comparison, but I suspected I now had my original design from before Josiah Fox had made his 'alterations'. It was something I planned on looking into once we reached the United States, assuming they still even had any of our design plans.
"I don't care how much weight you've put on! I don't ever want to see you pointing a weapon at him again. Even if he's insulted your honor." My sister ordered.
I sighed and put away the musket. "It wasn't even loaded." I muttered.
"That's not the point." United States and Constellation said in unison. I scowled.
We sat in silence for a moment, before Jessica spoke up. "So, anyways, I know that this is a bad time, but there's never a good time to learn that you have Abyssal cancer. Congratulations Chesapeake, you have Abyssal cancer."
I froze. I could dimly hear my sisters shouting something, and could feel one of my crew emerge to scream, "Gently break it to her! We said gently!"
"I know we don't have access to modern doctors and their bountiful cornucopia of drugs, surgeries, and radiation treatments," Jessica barreled on, "but you have something even better! Your crew has assembled a bucket and garden tool brigade to fight the cancerous menace. They're totally on top of it. They're even going to use a cannon to kill the tumor."
My eyes widened. "That's not how you perform surgery, right?" I turned to United States, who had lived the longest of us. "They don't do surgery with cannons, right? They don't blow poor ships open from the inside, right?"
United States grit her teeth. "No, they don't. Jessica, what the hell did you do to convince Chesapeake's crew to operate with a cannon?"
Jessica's hands fluttered in front of her. "That totally wasn't me, it was all their idea! Captain 1's in fact!"
"Captain 1?" United States narrowed her eyes. "That sounds very suspicious. Captain 1 implies that there is a Captain 2."
"Actually, I do have a second captain aboard." I said, looking down at my feet. "I've still got some of my Royal Navy crew. You're not mad, are you?"
Having two nationalities on board was odd. I had served both the United States Navy and the Royal Navy, but the second had been for a shorter period after my capture. There didn't seem to be any of the tension between the two nationalities I would expect, but I wondered what would happen when I finally reached the United States. There the British portion of my crew would likely have a chance to leave and rejoin their own navy.
"Mad, why would I be mad? I've still got two of those Confederate traitors in my own hull. I hope yours didn't have to be confined to the brig."
I shook my head. The brig? I wondered what those two had done to deserve that.
"Focus!" Constellation cried. " We can't just leave Jessica like this forever!"
"I don't know…" Said United States with a smirk as she bent down and poked a finger at Jessica. "I kind of like her like this. You look so cute and adorable and tiny. Aww, who's a cute little Jessica?"
Quick as a flash, Jessica darted forward and latched onto the finger. My sister yelped and pulled her hand back. "Ow! She bit me! Why would you do that?"
"Don't treat me like a baby!"
"Fine! I'll treat you like a fly!"
"EVERYONE, CALM DOWN!" Constellation screamed. We all paused and looked at her.
"Thank you. Now can we concentrate on the task at hand? We need to figure out how we can get Jessica back to her normal size."
I thought about it. "I managed to bring one of my casks of fresh water to full size yesterday. I also did it a moment ago with that musket. Maybe if I did something like that again and had Jessica hold onto it, she'd be changed in size as well?"
"It's worth a shot." Jessica said. "Let's do it."
Constellation lifted Jessica back up to my head, and I felt her descend through a hatch on the back of my neck. She reappeared a minute later, and I hesitantly lifted my hand to the side of my head. One impact of a tiny person later, I held my palm up to my face and saw that Jessica was carrying a round of solid shot. I moved to place her on the ground, trying not to think about it too much in the process. With a dull thud, a full-sized 12-pounder cannonball landed on the floor of the longboat.
The cannonball promptly started rolling towards Jessica, who was still only a few inches tall. She screamed and dove out of the way, just narrowly avoiding being crushed. Constellation hurriedly picked up the cannonball and handed it to me, and I sheepishly passed it off to my crewmen.
Jessica stomped her foot, face set in an expression of pure outrage. It looked adorable. "Okay, we tried Chesapeake's way and it nearly killed me in a poor rendition of Raiders of the Lost Ark. This time we're going to do it Jessica's way. She got herself shrunk, she can totally get herself unshrunk! I'll just climb back inside of Chesapeake, who then puts on her big girl pants and goes full boat. Then I'll either vanish into nonexistence, or grow back to normal size and leave the way I came aboard in the first place."
"Vanish into nonexistence? Any plan is terrible if it has a chance of causing you to vanish into nonexistence!" Constellation objected.
Jessica put on a determined face. "I'm like, 95% sure that won't happen to me, and if it does I'm like 99% sure I'd just pop back into existence with the rest of Chesapeake's crew once she went back to human size."
"What about the other 1%?" I wondered.
"We enter into an existential crisis worthy of the fridge horror interpretation of Star Trek transporters."
Damn it Jessica! Can't you be serious for more than ten seconds at a time? "What does any of that mean?"
"It means that I'd already be dead anyways, so don't worry about it. Now, are you ready to become Chesapeake the big black and white boat again?"
I shook my head. That muscle ached. "I can't do that right now. Maybe later today, or maybe tomorrow, but not right now."
Jessica shrugged. "Then I guess I'll just have to wait until then."
