Note: This ship section we have been on and are still on is my favorite, so you'd BETTER enjoy it while it lasts!
WARNING! As the title indicates, this chapter involves some nasty descriptions involving bodily functions (excrement). Feel free to vomit whenever you want. So, now that it is clear you have permission...go ahead and read.
Chapter 8 In Which Events Take a Very Nasty Turn While Remaining on the Ship
Okay, so Yesah was getting a little excited, realizing that his treasure may yet be saved. And he hadn't been the one to break the rules. It looked like this extra mass was worth something besides a lilting ship.
Oops…it seems we have forgotten an important factor. A very dangerous factor. In fact, he hasn't been mentioned for quite a long time. And I don't think he is just standing around waiting for this conversation to take place as all the pirates, sailors, and rest of the group were doing. Nope, you'd never find Blaydelot doing something so boring.
He had taken it on his shoulder to have at his own series of stupidity-er, heroics, of course.
So, what exactly does that entail?
Whatever was the most dangerous, ludicrous plan ever sprung up from somewhere in the body as long as it was not anywhere near the actual brain. There is no way those kinds of plans come from the brain. Not even Axel's brain. I wouldn't even accuse "lower" life forms of coming up with these plans.
So, Blaydelot, having decided to do what he always does, that being take command and save the day, did the first thing that came from somewhere. He was, right at that moment, dangling in the crap hole.
Whoa, you're wondering why's there a crap hole on a ship? There's plenty of water all around! And being guys, well, you know…
As a matter of fact, I do know that guys have to do #2 as well, and I doubt they want to perch on the edge of the boat in plain sight of everyone else. I mean, what if someone were timing you?
So, there was a bathroom. And Yesah, having gotten the same spiel that Put'oh had just muttered a moment ago, had finally stopped polluting the ocean with feces and urine and had his brother install a very nice toilet. And, since Muggy had been the one to ask on Yesah's account…Oh yes, warmed seat and everything. Put'oh was such a nice guy! Well, except that there was no running water. To have that was to just waste too much of the precious liquid.
Still, this toilet was very large. Well, some people come larger. How was Sama-san-dono supposed to make use of something made for human-sized people? You could almost say Put'oh had had a premonition of the giant himself, for the toilet he had put in was large enough to fit a person inside the chute.
Now, what we'd all like to know is what Blaydelot is doing in there without his helmet to even help block the smell. Is there any possible reason, any miniscule degree of hope that anything worthwhile will come of this?
Well, we'll have to get inside the character's mind to find that out because I honestly have no idea.
Okay, his hair is coming closer, closer, you can now see individual strands and exactly how less frequently the knight has bathed than is good health. The smooth, oily feeling from the hair is pressed right against you, and now…this might hurt just a bit (him or us?)… We're in!
Squishy, wet, literally pounding with electronic waves. Am I supposed to draw out some meaning from the brain's foreign language? Okay, we'll just head to the storehouse of short-term memory (hippocampus) and get our answer there. (Remember, this idea could not have been hatched in the brain, but it is now being stored there.)
Oh my. The view of a castle being invaded from the toilets is a very prominent scene. Balydelot! This isn't a castle! You don't need to get in from outside of it! So, is there any other reason he is where he is?
Well, it seems there is. Thank goodness. Wow, even ingenious if you ask me. Yeah, yeah, the king and queen had found him to be the brains, but I never trusted them anyway.
There had been a hollow sound when this knight walked across a certain part of the ship, and later, as the waves rocked the ship harder, a small splashing sound, much like the stomach when you are rocking in a chair after having drunk the advised six glasses of water and are moaning on how you will ever manage to get your full servings of food in as well. The toilet emptied into a compartment for storage—none of this would have been possible were it not for the conservative measures of Put'oh—that was directly under where the pirates were conferring now. By a simple act of crashing the floor, they all would land amidst a squishy, smelly, vile substance extremely slippery. From there, Blaydelot was planning on attacking them all.
I'm impressed.
All right, out of the brain and back into the toilet hole with Blaydelot. Very soon, he made it to the compartment and began crawling through the excrement until he reached the end of the low compartment. Then, he drew his sword, held it slantwise, and thrust it through the wood. Meanwhile, all the waves continued to splash around the lumpy bits and thoroughly douse Blaydelot. Remember his not-so-clean hair? Yeah, it's worse now. He used to be a brunette-blonde…
&&
Back above board. Egomaniac had been thinking of taking over the world, and Sama-san-dono was getting very angry because saving the world was his one thing in life. And that meant Egomaniac had to leave.
At precisely the moment Blaydelot prodded his sword through the wood, the giant had taken a step. And his step managed, through unconceivable fortune, to land exactly where the blade had burst through. Giving a yell, Sama-san-dono grabbed his foot, hopped on the other one, lost his balance, and promptly fell.
His weight from hopping shattered the wood above the outhouse hold, and as he fell backward, the tear from his foot left a hole large enough for at least one pirate to slip through. And, because the pirate closest to Sama-san-dono was Egomaniac, he was the one who slipped to the ground and cascaded into the waste.
The undead pirate had already been reeking badly, but now it was quintupled with the rising rank scent of feces. So Yesah hadn't had it emptied in awhile? It's not likepeople rushed to volunteer for the job.
The Sir Prince Axel was by this time back on the right ship and rushing to his new friends.
Muttering angrily, pirates were drawing weapons in order to deal some justice for what their captain was going through. The Earl de Vlin and Tanner screamed as they saw the knives pointing in their direction, but from behind them came Axel waving his stick. Several sailors were fighting back as well.
And Put'oh? You can guess what he was saying: "Muggy, I want you to get below docks where it is safe."
And you ought to guess just how well Muggy was taking this order.
Tanner, slightly calmer now that Axel was a shield before him, looked with surprise at Put'oh urging his brother below decks.
"I am a great poet, and I have seen rumors of you memorialized in print. Why do you not do your Glare of Death and finish these pirates off?"
At the words that carried—trained as a minstrel, after all—the pirates paused in their antics, forcing the others to remain dignified and cease as well.
Yesah glanced worriedly over at his brother whose eyes were flicking from face to expectant face. Muggy appeared just as worried, and now you should know there was something wrong.
"I don't do the Glare of Death,"Put'oh muttered quietly.
Hold it! Did I not say in the first chapter that the monarchs were terrified of the Gruff with his Indestructible Glare—looks-could-kill-Gruff? And what about those screaming people that went silent when Put'oh Gruff came knocking on the castle door? Well, it's too bad none of those characters are here to confront Put'oh right now. One tip: I never said those silenced people actually died. But as to the other question, I'll make do.
"A picture once I saw, and you it was: face, eyes, and jaw."
Tanner was nodding in rhythm with de Vlin. "Yeah, I'm sure it was you. I heard the same story and saw the same painting."
Put'oh obviously was not going to explain himself and he obviously wanted none of his brothers to, either. But Muggy never seemed to learn that some things are private.
"Well, my brother has a twin, you know! Identical. He can do the Glare. Put'oh just pretends he can to help keep me safe and ward off people." There was a groan from Put'oh himself, and he averted his eyes that were far too kind and wide to ever to the Death Glare however he acted and tried.
There was a brief moment of silence, but then the pirates began guffawing and roaring with amusement. Quite a sordid and rude bunch in more ways than one. After all, not one had gone after their leader to see if he were drowning in the excrement.
Egomaniac was at that moment involved in a type of mud battle with Blaydelot. Mud battles…getting greased up with brown slime and slipping all over the place, mistakenly gathering some in your eyes or nose or mouth…But this wasn't mud. It was anything and everything that came out of the body. I'm sure a few passengers had gotten seasick and rushed here to vomit instead of the moving edge of the boat.
Completely lathered and wondering just what flavor was in his mouth, Egomaniac rested lying down. Almost, he could pretend he was in a bath. Almost. If he had had a bath anytime within the last century he might have remembered what they were like, but he didn't think ripe chunks were part of it.
Panting above him, sword coated with slime—how he kept grip, I don't know—Sir Blaydelot grinned with white teeth offset by the yellow-brown mixture sprinkled with bits of greens and reds.
"Dost thou yield?"
All right, Egomaniac was old, but he didn't think he was so old this stripling had to use such language on him! The nerve of today's youth…
Snarling, about to spring up, he gave a compulsive jerk and clutched his throat. A chunk did not just go down, a chunk did not just go down, achunkdidnotjustgodown…
As rotting as he was, the implication of what has just been inhaled was too much. Turning to the side and clutching his throat, Egomaniac wretched, not caring if parts of his intestines were coughed up as well. It wasn't like he used them.
Blaydelot looked down on him with a glare. It wasn't polite of him to draw out this moment of victory.
"Are you finished?" he snapped.
Egomaniac was still clutching his throat and gagging, but nothing more was coming up. Breathlessly, he nodded.
"Good." And he raised his sword prepared to slice off the pirate captain's head.
Remember all those clone sailors from Captain Yesah's ship? I just thought now would be a good time to bring them back up. So, these guys that all look the same have a story behind them, of course. They are a lot like clones, aren't they? Right at that moment, all lined up as they were, the similarities would havemade people stare if any people had been looking at them and not at the hole or at the disappointedly too kind Put'oh. It just so happens that Yesah "found" them all in his brother's…I get the feeling you're not listening to me. You want to go back? Back to where? Back to drowned Barelyo? Just to Egomaniac. Fine, we'll do things your way.
There was a swishing sound as the blade whipped toward his neck, but the gray-haired laugher was doing just that, having caught his breath without gagging on chunks.
