Chapter 8 - Damsals and pirates
Vivli always thought that when you were about to die your life would rush before your eyes then you'd end up in the heavens waiting for judgement. The true experience of death was nothing like this however. Instead of her life flashing before her eyes she found only the back of her eye lids as she shut them tight, head in heads bent over, not a very heroic death pose. As Vivli stood crouched over eyes shut tight the first thing to go through her mind was: 'God this is taking its time.' Then she thought of the possibility of her being dead and at this moment in heaven. Taking this hope she opened her eyes to see something brown and scaly. Looking further up she notice brown hair, which brought her to the conclusion that someone was standing in front of her, most probably the person who had saved her life, that is if she was still alive and not just in the line to be judged. As the towering figure fell backwards onto Vivli she realised this wasn't heaven, she was still on the ship and for some reason some guy with brown scale armour had fallen on her.
"Arrr get them! Kill ever last one of them!" Vivli recognised this as the pirate captain who had boarded their ship.
Noticing the words Kill Vivli decided to get out from under the vertically challenged warrior and help her friends to get rid of the pirates before anyone got hurt. But unbeknownst to Vivli someone had already been hurt, presumed dead. In her daze of her near death experience she had forgotten all about what caused her to be near death in the first place and going on like any other normal battle.
The fight had developed from Bootus punching up the pirate Galka and now had Zinkata and Voldos joining in with Bollo giving some help by giving the pirates something extra to try and defend from. Bootus was still going one on with the Galka, though Bootus' superior hand to hand combat was easily defeating Crows nest, now and again looking like he could actually make a punch but that's just Bootus playing around with him.
The pirate captain having noticed the losing battle decided to take the under handed pirate way of winning battles: Kidnap the girl. The girl being Vivli. So while Vivli was surveying the battle the captain snuck up behind Vivli, put his hand to her mouth and something against her head.
"ALL RIGHT NOBODY MOVE!"
This caused the desired effect as everyone stopped in mid battle to see why the sea captain had stopped their battle.
"Alright now. Me and me crew …" As the captain was speaking Bootus through Crows nest over the edge.
"… Ok me and me crew minus Crows nest …" Taking Bootus's lead Voldos and Zinkata proceeded to through the other pirates, still under the order to not move, over the edge.
" … Fine … I'll be taking the girl back to me ship. Try and stop me and they be a bullet going through the maidens head arrr." The captain finally getting his threat out smiled at the finally still adventurers, who he thought would be conceding.
"I think we should stop him." Bootus wasn't one to follow conventions and decided to take this opportunity to show this.
"I duno. Kinda riskay." Though seemingly previously choreographed Voldos was just putting forward his idea. "Sure we could probably take him down before he shot Vivli, but if we were to make one mistake then she's dead."
"I think that's a risk we should be willing to make."
"So Vivli's life is risk we're willing to make trying to save her life?"
"Pretty much."
"SHUT UP! Be serious about this! Vivli's life is in danger here and you two are making jokes! Just shut up and do what the Captain …"
"Flavio"
"Captain Flavio says and hopefully spare Vivli's life." Zinkata drew the line at Bootus making jokes when someone's life was in mortal danger, especially seeing it was Vivli's life that was in danger, and for the 2nd time in the space of 5 minutes Zinkata had found himself helpless while Vivli was in danger and Bootus's joking wasn't helping.
"Finally someone with some sense around here." Flavio knowing that his escape was now assured slowly edged himself and Vivli closer to his ship.
"Love to say I had fun … but I got no booty and lost my crew … so I didn't. Oh and for compensation for the crew I'm taking the girl." Flavio jumped back onto his ship Vivli on hand.
"Goodbye all. Have a nice day." With those last words Flavio's ship started to float away from the cruise vessel.
"We gotta go after-wafter that ship!"
"Why don't you just shoot it?" Bootus with the violent course of action.
"No good Vivli will sink with them." Zinkata was still thinking about Vivli's well fare
"Yeah but they wont be moving. If we lose them now we'll never get her back."
" … Sink that ship Bollo!"
Bollo sent a lightening bolt for the pirate ship, hitting the sails making them tumble to the deck below, stopping the ship.
" I was expecting it to explode leaving Flavio and Vivli in the water so we can just go collect them … but that's a good way to." Though a bit disappointed Bootus found solace in the outcome.
"Captain! Turn this ship to the right." Next thing to happen was they had to go the immobilised ship and collect Vivli and Flavio.
"No can do sonny. You're not the only ones on this ship and we have a deadline to meet."
Zinkata's jaw dropped at the captains lack of compassion and one tracked mindedness.
"We gotta do something. We wont be able to see them soon."
Picking up Zinkata, Bootus lifted him above his head and through him the few meters to the pirate ship, just getting him to the side of the boat where Zinkata just had to do a bit of climbing to get to the deck.
"Nice arm … but how are they going to get back?" Voldos marvelling at Bootus's plan also noticed what he thought was a flaw.
"They drive the boat stupid."
"It has no sails." And it appeared that he had found a flaw.
" … rowing boat .." But Bootus managed to save his dignity just in time.
Over on the pirate ship Zinkata was ready to face off with Flavio. However Bootus had forgotten one other thing in his quick planning: Flavio had a gun.
"God damn you Bootus!" Zinkata wasn't happy
"Rash and foolish. Just what I'd expect from a Galka. All brawn no brain." Flavio was trying to flaunt his intellect which appeared superior to Bootus's.
"Other than the boarding, planning to kill me, then kidnapping me, this guy isn't too bad." Vivli once more finding her sense of humour, and Flavio having removed his gloved hand from her mouth, decided to throw in a bit of humour to lighten the situation.
"Well at least your alright Vivli." Zinkata still concerned with Vivli's well fare.
"All things considering I'm not doing to badly."
"Enough with the pleasantries. Shiney armour take a bath." Flavio made the universal 'go that way' motion with his gun hinting that he wanted Zinkata to go over the edge of the boat. As Zinkata complied with Flavio's wishes it seemed that Vivli's hope for rescue had ended. Zinkata going off the edge seemed to permanently end her hope for rescue.
With the danger of rescue away Flavio let Vivli go to give her, her first real good look at the Pirate captain. Vivli found him surprisingly quite attractive. Standing quite tall for a hume, wearing a long flowing red coat trimmed with gold, matching hat, brown gloves, white trousers and black high boots all topped off with a hansom face sporting some red stubble.
"You do notice I just need to do is just summon Garudo and your dead, I'm saved and everything ends happily ever after, don't you?" Vivli gained her composure and foolishly told Flavio her best plan to escape.
"I'd shoot you before ye even finished your flashy little summoning. Now sit down, be quite and enjoy the ride."
"Shut up you scurvy ridden homo!" Instead of falling into the sea Zinkata had managed to grab hold of a porthole and then scramble back up, this time waiting for the right time to attack. This was a good time as Zinkata's fist sent Flavio flying off the edge of the ship.
"Nice daring rescue. I suppose this makes you my hero." Giving Zinkata a kiss on the cheek she proceeded to the rowing boat, seemingly she had figured out the best way of escape in her summoning plan. Zinkata was left standing on deck staring blankly at the angry pirate coming toward him brandishing his sword ready to kill Zinkata. But Zin didn't care. He was too caught up on Vivli's kiss. Thankfully for Zinkata Vivli had noticed and had come to Zinkata's rescue by placing her staff in the pirates stomach, causing him to double over with pain.
"Well I've managed to repay my debt earlier than I thought I was going to. Doesn't that make me your hero as well? That mean I get a kiss to?" Flirting down Vivli proceeded to the rowing boat once more leaving poor Zinkata even more stunned than before.
"You coming Zinkata or you going to just stay on this ship going no where fast?" Having brought out of his trance Zinkata proceeded to the rowing boat to hopefully manage to somehow catch up with the other boat and the others.