Guybrush Threepwood is, as usual, in hot water.
The water is shortly to get much hotter, because we find our hero tied to a post in the center of the camp of the vicious cannibal tribe, the Visshywahoos. Beneath his feet is a pile of VERY dry firewood and the cannibal chief just happens to have a lighted torch in hand. It is late night, and the leaping shadows from the fire and the torches gave the entire scene a surreal quality.
Back to the story: The aforementioned cannibal chief leans in close, garishly painted face cast in odd relief from the fire. "Mr. Threepwood...as you well know, you have been caught trying to steal our most precious relic, the Golden Spear of Tiky-wiky. Therefore, we have decided you shall be sacrificed to the Fire Goddesses of Alde--unless you know the one phrase which will call forth the rain and save your life, not so incidentally winning you our eternal devotion and loyalty."
Our hero, inches away from flaming death, nonetheless looks cool and composed.
"You just said all that half an hour ago! Why do you keep repeating yourself like that?"
"Ahh..well...um...because THEY don't know that."
"'They' don't know that...." Guybrush repeats slowly, his tone implying that he is humoring a blithering idiot. He adds with forced brightness, "Oh...well, of course. Can't very well leave 'them' in the dark now, can we?"
The chief senses that he is being mocked but presses on. "So, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"I say...." Guybrush ponders this for a while, stretching the word out to buy time. "I say...LOOK BEHIND YOU! A THREE-HEADED MONKEY!"
"What? Where??" The chief whips around. Nothing. Enraged, he turns back to Guybrush--but Guybrush is not there. The coils of rope hang slack and empty around the post. Not a leaf in the bushes moves to announce whence the clever captive has gone.
"Curse that Threepwood!" yells the cannibal chief.
Guybrush hears that and laughs as he races silently through the woods, the Spear of Tiky-wiky a heavy lump in his voluminous pocket.
Then, suddenly, a red-haired
apparition appears before him out of the forest! Before he can react,
the creature pins him with a cold blue glare and says-
"Guybrush!" Elaine's tone was sufficient to pop his daydream like a soap bubble on a needle. The mighty pirate shook his head clear of his interesting daydream world and tried to focus on the reality, giving Elaine a sheepish grin and saying "Sorry...I guess I was woolgathering." She smiled enigmatically but said nothing in reply, and he changed his focus to the ocean below.
They were standing on the parapets of the fort, watching a strange parade go by. These were the 5th annual Plunder Island Pride Days, which were commemorated by fireworks, a show at the Long John Silver Center for the Performing Arts, and all started-off by an island-wide parade. Puerto Pollo had no long streets, or horses to pull floats, for that matter, so the entire parade was done on the ocean, and the parade route encircled the island. The 'floats' were a tad bit more aptly named this way--decorated boats either self-powered or drawn by smaller rowboats. The Plunder Pride Parade--the entire weekend, in fact--was a bigger draw than Guybrush would ever have supposed--the smallish island was inhabited by denizens from all parts of the Caribbean. Some even had floats themselves. The docks and all the available hotels were crowded with the newcomers, which had some people delighted, such as Guybrush's friends at the Barbery Coast, while others were less than pleased. There was a lot of risk in packing this many people into close quarters.
Speaking of the Barbery Coast trio, their float was coming into view just at that moment. They had a small houseboat made to look like an extraordinarily hairy man (or woman...the face could not be seen). Bill and van Helgen perched on top of this mountain of coiffure, snipping off small pieces of hair and waving all the while, while Haggis, notwithstanding the hot morning sun, towed the whole contraption with a small rowboat. He paused to wave to the two on the fort, who smiled and waved back.
"That reminds me," Elaine muttered, "I need a haircut."
Since Elaine was Governor, it was her privilege to watch the entire parade before she entered her own float. Their own conveyance was right on time, a small boat designed to look like a covered horse-drawn carriage came in to the fort's private dock and was made fast. From here on out, the Governor and her husband were just as much on parade as the rest of the floats.
Elaine put on a professional smile and began her descent to the ground level. Guybrush turned to follow, but a green shape in the corner of his vision caught his eye, and he paused.
A green parrot sat calmly
on the parapet, looking bright-eyed and unafraid. He approached it
slowly, wondering why it was so tame--and then he saw the note it was clutching
in one clawed foot. Carefully he picked the note up and unrolled
the thing--a brief paragraph, maybe three lines long, met his eyes.
Governor Threepwood,
Plunder Island needs
a real Governor, one who won't play favorites and let known criminals escape
unpunished. Do us all a favor and resign before you make things worse.
The note was left unsigned. Angrily, Guybrush glared at the thing, then slowly and deliberately crumpled it in his hand, dropped it on the floor, and systematically ground it into the stones with the heel of his shoe. Fighting to put on a neutral expression, he descended the stairs to meet Elaine, determined to say nothing of the annoying and hateful little message. The parrot, unconcerned, flipped its wings and then fluttered back to its master.
Some time later, several hundred miles north...
"-and if the ordeal by hot steering wheel does not make you talk, you will suffer-"
"Do you guys just keep a post in the center of all your villages, just in case you happen to have a prisoner?" the brown-haired woman tied to the aforementioned post demanded in what sounded like real exasperation.
The resident chief of the savages and the Head Threatener (possibly the same character as in scene 1:1) made an attempt to hide his own irritation behind his fiercest scowl. "Yes. Any more questions?"
She pondered mockingly, an effect slightly spoiled by the fact that she couldn't raise either hand to her chin in deep thought. However, she surprised him by changing her tone into something near sympathy. "How many more of these death-threats do we have yet to go?"
The chief sighed and consulted a small purple book he was holding. "About a dozen. I must say you're better at this than most. You're not even to the Begging and Bargaining stage."
"And, to be honest, I was only faking at the Nervous and Uncertain stage," she added, slipping a hand free and shaking it in an exasperated gesture. "I really wish there was some way to cut through all this red tape."
The chief looked glum. "I don't get it. You took the Death by Chihuahuas threat without a flinch. Water torture, fire torture, mud torture, snake torture...nothing." His tone turned petulant. "What am I doing wrong?"
Chariset looked at him in real sympathy. "It's just that I've been through this so many times over the last few months." She raised her other hand and began counting off on her fingers. "The first was in the Puritain colonies, when they wanted to burn me as a witch. When I got free of them, there was that bounty hunter to deal with, then half a tribe of Tonks, then the rival tribe, the Konks. Then, once those two had finally reconciled, I met up with an old friend of mine-" she smiled a little as she recalled sending Horace fleeing back to the Caribbean, a small horde of venomous goldfish on his tail "-and after that, I ran into you on my way back to my ship. And I don't even want to mention what I'd been through before I came up here."
She shook her head, a gesture that completely distracted him from the fact that she had carefully lifted her right foot over the ropes binding ankle to post. "I'm sorry, but after you've heard death threats for seven or eight months straight, they get a little old."
The chief was close to tears nonetheless. "Ah, it's not your fault. I'm just no good at this whole threats thing. I should have run away and joined the circus, like Mama always said." Face in hands, he scarcely noticed when Chariset moved away from the post and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, but you are. Really. When you said you were going to feed me to your pet badger, I was actually almost frightened. Anyone else would have peed their pants, right there."
He raised a tear-stained face. "Really?"
"Really."
"So if I'd said I was going to cut you into pieces and use you to feed my pet Chilean sea bass, would you have been scared?"
"Oh, absolutely," she said ingenuously.
"And if I'd decided to hang you from a tree as eagle bait-?"
"Now you're getting it!" Her smile was encouraging.
"What if I'd covered you in honey and given you to a bear?"
"I'd probably be too scared to think."
"And if I'd-"
"Oh, yes. Absolutely terrifying," Chari responded quickly.
The chief was feeling considerably brighter. "I had no idea there was so much to threats."
"Do you think you can do it on your own now?" She was the picture of casual curiosity.
"I think so. Can you stay until tomorrow, just in case? I'm interrogating a bunch of Spaniards in search of the Fountain of...something."
"Oh, I'm afraid not. I really should get going tonight--I've got friends waiting for me."
"Oh." Disappointed, he nevertheless tried to be civil. "Well, thank you for all your help. If you're ever in the neighborhood, give us a call."
"I will--and be sure to let me know how it works out."
The chief and the entire
tribe waved cheerful goodbyes to the dark-haired pirate woman, who paused
at the edge of the forest, flashed a brilliant smile and a last wave, and
disappeared into the forest.
It would be two hours later when the chief finally realized what had happened, but by then she was already on her ship and gone. She nevertheless heard the resounding "AAARGH!" ring through the forest, and stifled a smile.
"You did it again, didn't you?" asked Murray with no real curiosity.
Chariset Threepwood just shook her head. "It was almost too easy." The smile threatened, almost broke out, then died at the approach of another thought. "Murray, I know it hasn't been a year yet, but I think we should head back."
"Really?" The former undead demonic skull was almost as incurious as before. "Why?"
"Well, for one, the Horace incident." She and Murray had come to understand each other fairly well over the long months at sea, and they both knew which incident she meant. Still, she felt compelled to add, "We came out here to give the attacks some time to die down-but clearly they haven't. Not if the undead come all this way to try to kill us."
She leaned on the rail and watched the coastline slide by. "But that's not your main reason," Murray prompted after a moment or two of silence.
"No," she sighed, trying to pin down a frustration that was almost as elusive as smoke. "It's just that everything is so....the same here. All the death threats are the same, all the villains are the same, all the forests look the same. Nothing new happens here."
"So what you're saying is, you're bored."
"Yeah." She shook her head. "I never thought I'd say this, but I need to go someplace where I don't have everything figured out. I need adventure. And there's only one place I can find that."
He looked at her and she knew that they were both tired of being so far north, calling nothing but the Sea Cucumber home, tired of never doing much adventuring on solid ground for fear that their ship would be gone when they returned. But all he said was, "You're really different than you were when we left."
"I think we all are," she agreed. "I know this is the last thing I would have wanted a year ago--but maybe I didn't really know what I wanted back then."
"Well, then," he straightened and pushed away from the rail, "you'd better have a look at this." He preceded her into the Captain's cabin and indicated a small pile of notes on top of her tiny desk.
"These were delivered an hour or so ago by one of the Voodoo Lady's spells--something she called a Mailer-Daemon," he informed her as she sorted through the notes. The creature in question was curled up in a corner--a faint green glow--and appeared to be asleep.
Chariset skimmed the
piles of notes. Most of them looked like they'd been rolled tightly
and then unrolled, except for one that remained flat and was in Guybrush's
uncertain handwriting.
Chari,
I really hope this
gets to you-I think I'm in over my head. Someone's been sending me these
notes by parrot, and besides that, Elaine's acting strangely. I'm really
worried about her, sis...
Chariset was frowning by the time she finished her brother's short little note. By the time she had skimmed the rest of the letters, she felt the icy touch of real fear. Without knowing how she knew, she was certain that the undead powers had arisen at last--and this time they were after Elaine and Guybrush.
"That settles it," she told Murray. "A year or no year, we're going back today."
By the time she had
penned her reply to Guybrush, the crew--just as eager to get going--had
cast off. The Sea Cucumber followed the trail of the Mailer-Daemon
back towards the North Caribbean...and possibly adventure.