"Are you sure you want to do this, Chari?"
"What...Myth Island or going away?"
"Both."
It was the afternoon of the wedding, and Guybrush and Chariset were having a last conversation on the docks of Plunder Island before he and Elaine sailed away for a brief second honeymoon on Blood Island. It would have to be a very short idyll for the two of them since devious forces were still at work, masterminded by some unknown individuals on Phatt Island, and they couldn't be gone too long without losing their authority.
He looked very nice in a decent suit, she reflected. Hard to believe that she wouldn't see him again for a little over a year. "To Myth Island to deliver Wally back to his sister....and I think I should give the other blue stone back to the Greeks." She paused, "And as for me going away completely, you already know why I'm doing that. It's not safe for me to stay here anymore."
He looked glum--she chuckled at him. "I'll be back when Elaine's term of office is over, just like we'd thought about before all this happened. Then we can rout out whoever's behind this nonsense--if you two haven't already taken care of that."
Elaine came up at that moment, wearing a pure white dress and flowers in her hair. He helped her up the rope ladder to the Seahorse's deck (since she was a 'shiftless wanderer' now, Guybrush had insisted Chariset take his pirate vessel, the Sea Cucumber. Chariset didn't mind--they should have the nicer ship, after all), and then climbed up himself. A few stray grains of rice accidentally landed in her hair as the large crowd of well-wishers followed them onto the dock, waving and flinging handfuls of the white projectiles after them. Elaine flung her bouquet high into the air, landing it neatly in the hands of the Voodoo Priestess. The crowd whispered and smirked suggestively at her, though the priestess herself was casting the Necromancer a significant look. Guybrush looked a touch surprised, but his bride concealed a smile behind her hand.
The Seahorse's
crew was half reformed skeleton pirates and half members of Chariset's
original six, and they wasted no time casting off and moving away from
the docks. She stood at the end of the pier and waved at the departing
ship until the Seahorse vanished around the sand-spit at the eastern end
of the island and was lost from her sight.
Her own crew wasted no time getting themselves together--the very next morning they caught the tide and were off to Myth Island. A simple "I have business with your god," accompanied by a fiery blue hand, was sufficient to admit her to the temple grounds, and from there it was a simple matter to enter the temple proper and greet Murray, the Emissary of Death Himself.
He looked up at her with purest surprise. "It's you! I thought you were never coming back."
"Our business is done," she explained. "LeChuck is dead and gone, and we can return one of the sacred gemstones to their rightful owners."
"Oh," the skull muttered to himself. "I'm glad it worked out for you--well, glad in an evil sort of way--but what am I going to do with myself now?"
She grinned. "We're outlaws now..or at least on the run.. We could use someone with your evil expertise around."
He was silent, considering. "Come on..do you want to sit on a pillar for all eternity?" she coaxed.
"It's not that I don't want to come.." he said at last. "I just don't want you to have to carry me around all the time."
"Maybe we wouldn't have to," she replied vaguely.
"What do you mean?"
Chariset hooked a finger in the Amulet's cord and held it out. "Would you like to be human again?" She gave him a contracted version of the vanquishing of LeChuck and his skeletal pirates, concluding with, "So...how about it? You could walk around freely and be your evil self again. I wouldn't even care much what you did afterwards, so long as you left my family alone."
"How do I know it'll give me my body back?" queried the skull suspiciously.
"You don't." She shrugged. "But at least you won't be a talking skull for all eternity."
He debated only very briefly. "Okay. I'll do it."
With careful reverence, she bent down and touched the teardrop to the top of Murray's cranium.
The blue fires shot up. Murray the skull rolled onto the floor, bounced into the air once, twice, then exploded in a flesh-colored ball of arms and legs. He stretched out, reformed, and then--
"Good heavens.." said Chariset faintly, looking up at the man who stood before her. He was hugely muscled but well-formed, with a wild mane of black hair. His chin and forehead were the bold features of a romance novel's hero.
He was also stark-naked. She blushed but managed to say, "You're Murray?"
The man looked at her as if to say, 'What kind of dumb question is that?' "Murray? Of course I'm not Murray," he replied in a booming voice. Then he seemed to fold in on himself--revealing a thinner man with sand-colored hair, a pointed chin, and a narrow nose. He cleared a thin throat and said in his reedy voice, "Hi..I'm Murray."
"You're Murray?" was her inspired response.
"Yes, I'm--" he cleared his throat again and spoke in a lower voice. "I'm Murray."
"But you don't sound anything like Murray!"
"Mwahahahahaha! I am Murray! The evil demonic skull!"
She blinked. He certainly did have the evil accents down. But as for himself, he looked a bit sheepish. "Sorry. I just get a kick out of saying that."
In fact, he looked as harmless as...as Guybrush. "If you really looked like this all this time.." she began, indicating all of him with a flip of her hand, "why did you make us believe you were some kind of evil genius?"
He snorted. "Would you be afraid of a skull who sounded this way?" His voice, though deep, was pleasant to listen to...she had to admit that it probably wouldn't inspire real fear.
"Now, since I happen to know that Nic sailed off with your brother..."
"How do you know that?"
Another snort. "Haven't you been reading the story?"
"Story?"
"Ah, never mind. The author has been pathetically slow about introducing a love-interest for you and, well, I'm here to fix that."
Chariset gave him an odd look. "Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?" He nodded matter-of-factly. "How do I know you're not still evil?"
"Oh, I'll always be evil," he assured her impishly. "But I'd be a really boring character if I weren't a little bit evil."
"How do I know I can trust you?" she persisted, amused despite herself.
He gave her a fine impression of a big-eyed, hurt Basset hound. "How can you not trust a face like this? Is this the face of a man who would hurt you?"
"It's not the face I'm worried about," she countered. Mock-reluctantly, she sighed, "I suppose you'd like to come with us?"
"If you'll have me. I can sail a little."
Interesting phrasing. "Well, all right...but the first sign of trouble out of you, you go overboard."
"I suppose that's only fair," he admitted.
"Then put some clothes on and let's go."
She'd never known a blush could spread that far over a man's body.
It was sunset when two figures crested the central hill--a woman in a loose-sleeved pirate shirt with a vest, black pants, and boots and sash of a matching dark red, and a young man in a Greek toga. At the very top, with the beauty of the entire island spread out before them, they paused and drank in the view of the sea glistening in the golden light. Perhaps all those pirates had had it wrong...there was no treasure hidden in the Caribbean, the Caribbean was the treasure.
And it was all theirs. Everything within view, and many, many things that weren't. The man and woman sighed in near-unison and grinned at each other. Then he offered her his arm with a flourish--she laid her hand upon it with the delicacy of a court-flower--and they disappeared over the crest of the hill. Not long after, the lone ship in the bay raised sail, turned slowly, and pulled away, racing alongside the evening sun, heading north. Whatever stories would follow were as yet unknown, but with such characters as these they were sure to be tales worth telling.