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==Chapter 21==
"God, where are all these bounty hunters coming from?!"
"I swear, you kill one, and another ten pop up to take their place!"
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bentham did a back flip to avoid the barrage of shots that the pirates had sent his way. Fortunately for him, they were using the old-fashioned types of flintlocks, which could only hold a single bullet at a time and needed to be loaded with gunpowder before every shot.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The bounty hunter used his long, muscular legs to kick over the table that he was hiding underneath, blocking the oncoming tide of bullets and at the same time providing the distraction that he needed. The gamble paid off; his targets were so completely disoriented by the table crashing into them that they never stood a chance.
POW! WHAM! CRACK!
Bentham dusted his hands. A simple chop, punch, and kick, and they had went down like sacks of potatoes. He looked around the deck of the ship, littered with bodies, broken swords, and discarded guns. He had not been the only bounty hunter that chose to attack this ship today, but he was the only one who had made it out alive. Still, the foolhardy hunters served their own purpose: he had written up a fairly complex plan to take down the crew (around twenty people), but once they had shown up, he decided to ditch the entire plan and jump into the fray. By the time that every other hunter was dead, only those three pirates were left standing.
He pulled several yellowed wanted posters out of his coat to check the bounties on his newest targets. The captain was worth about twenty million, and his first mate about ten. The rest of the crew, however, was obviously deemed too weak to even have their own bounties.
Before he turned these lowlifes in, however, a quick peek into their storage would do some good... after all, what the marines didn't know he took wouldn't hurt them, or him, for that matter. The tall bounty hunter wandered around the ship, looking for such a room.
Finally, after a few minutes of searching, he found it... and was massively disappointed. There was only one measly chest in the entire room, surrounded by a haphazard collection of small jewels and coins. All in all, Bentham wouldn't have expected it to exceed a million beli.
He opened the chest and was greeted with the sight of nothing but an (admittedly colorful) bottle. It was lying horizontally, probably because it would have been too tall to fit in the chest if it were stood upright. Perhaps it was filled with rare spices or oils or perfumes or something, Bentham thought idly. Or maybe it was the captain's special supply of wine?
Better than nothing, he thought glumly as he slipped both hands beneath the bottle to lift it out.
CRACK!
The sound so surprised the bounty hunter that he dropped the bottle, which fell with a clatter but did not break, instead rolling a distance away. From its crown-like nozzle, it was spouting a thick blue smoke.
"AHA! I AM FINALLY FREE!!!" a booming voice thundered. Bentham would have fainted on the spot had he not been familiar with the fairy tales concerning genies. Still, the bounty hunter approached cautiously towards the enormous, muscular man that he had just release. The man's skin was blue as the summer sky, and instead of legs, his body below his golden sash ended in long wisps of blue smoke. Upon his back, he wore a long red mantle with a gold trim - something that Bentham was sure that kings could scarcely afford.
The genie looked around for a while before pointing a finger directly at Bentham. "YOU! AS YOU ARE THE HUMAN FOOL- ER, GENEROUS ENOUGH TO FREE ME, YOU MAY HAVE ONE WISH!"
Bentham was a bit confused. One? Most of the stories he had read had stipulated three wishes. On the other hand, he did not wish to anger the genie and possibly stir up a fight. In his present state, he was a bit tired, and the massive saber that the genie was hefting over his shoulder with one hand did not look too inviting, either.
Still, he would have to word his wish carefully. Genies had a tendency to be evil at heart, or simply be too powerful to care about measly humans. Even if they were neither of these, they still tended to be a bit too literal-minded for comfort. Wishing for money certainly would not do; there were about a million and one ways that sort of wish could be corrupted. Wishing for power tended to end up even worse.
Bringing somebody back from the dead? He had no one that he was particularly close to that was living, let alone dead.
Eternal youth and/or immortality? That always came with a drawback, typically in the form of being forced to take the genie's place.
"COME ON NOW!" the genie roared impatiently. "I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY!"
What did he want? What did he need? Was this all a dream? Would he wake up at any minute and go back to getting dirty looks thrown at him and hunting down pirates day after day? Would he be forever looking over his shoulder, never knowing love? Or happiness?
And in that instant, he knew what to wish for.
"I... I wish to know true happiness!"
"HUH! HAVEN'T SEEN ONE OF THOSE WISHES IN A WHILE..." the genie mused. "CONSIDER IT DONE!" he said a moment later, snapping his fingers.
In an instant, Bentham felt his entire body heat up with the fury of a hundred and one suns. The bounty hunter groaned and fell to his knees, praying that this was not what the genie considered to be "true happiness". It seemed to go on for hours before finally subsiding.
Luckily, there was a mirror in the room. Bentham ran to it immediately.
Two seconds later, the room held nothing but a broken mirror.
Bentham ran onto the deck of the ship, screaming a string of incoherent curses as the genie flew into the sky. If there was one thing he knew now, it was that he did NOT look good in makeup.
"OH, DON'T BE SO PICKY, HUMAN! WHAT EASIER PATH TO HAPPINESS IS THERE BESIDES EXPERIENCING LIFE AS BOTH A MAN AND A WOMAN?" the genie shouted back before laughing and disappearing into the clouds.
Bentham groaned. His clothes had been transformed into a frilly pink coat, striped blue ball-shaped skirt, and matching dress shirt. His face was now accentuated with makeup, mascara, and blush that would probably have looked ten times better on a woman.
And suddenly, he felt an urge to dance.
==End of Chapter 21==
No, this one-shot does not star an OC. Can you guess who the main character is?
Anyways... the trope seen here is associated with roughly ninety percent of genies in fiction, who seem to always be looking for a way to screw up wishes as much as they can.
On a vaguely related note, genies were originally portrayed as living in ornate bottles, not oil lamps. They were also much more "mundane", so to speak. They could be controlled by sorcerers and such (who were probably the ones that trapped them inside bottles/lamps in the first place), and the wish thing was originally out of gratitude. Particularly evil genies might just kill whoever releases them.