Bobby & Emma's Excellent Adventure
Chapter Five: A Piece Of The Action
"You girls get behind me!" I yell, throwing a hard right cross into the face of a skeleton that's got too close to us, my iced-up hand shattering its jaw and spraying rotten teeth everywhere like blackened raindrops, and then using the respite to spray another few dozen layers of ice onto the barricade I'm trying to rebuild before the rest of the skeletons overwhelm us. "Try and get that door open before we get cornered!"
"We are cornered, Drake!" Emma screams, reluctantly using her hardened resin cast as a weapon to knock the skull off the bony neck of another skeleton. Meanwhile, Lisa jams her shoulder into the hatch behind us, pushing against it with every ounce of her strength and coming up short again.
"It won't budge," she gasps. Emma scowls and then narrows her eyes, moving towards the hatch and looking as if she's trying to see through the thin gaps in the wooden hatchway.
"Got you," she says triumphantly, and then the hatch, miraculously, begins to open. As it does so, I can see a drooling pirate, his red shirt stained with food, beer and ropes of spittle, throwing aside the wooden block that had been barring the door. Emma moves quickly towards the door and scrambles up the stairs after Lisa, while I stay down for just another few seconds, making sure that the skeletons are stuck behind the ice-wall for the moment. When the door's shut and securely fastened, Emma folds her arms and gives me a triumphant look. "You didn't say I couldn't get one of them, Bobby. And it made more sense to do that than to go out in a blaze of glory, too." She smirks. "Although I'm sure you'd have preferred to do that, wouldn't you… Ash."
The fact that Emma got the reference makes me proud. Apparently we're rubbing off on each other more than I thought... "Well done, Emma. You've taken your first step into a larger world." Emma raises an eyebrow archly, and then walks away from the trapdoor without saying another word.
"Looks like somebody's in the dog-house," Lisa says with a wry grin. "You guys seem to do this 'angry at each other' thing a lot – what do you see in that woman?"
"She's great at Halo," I reply. "But don't tell her I told you that – she's supposed to be totally above video games." Rubbing my hand against the back of my neck, I continue "Besides, haven't you ever heard the saying 'opposites attract'? That's Emma and me in a nutshell. We don't agree on everything, sure, but that's the fun of it – it keeps the spark alive if we can disagree on a few things now and again, you know?" A smile flutters across my lips then, briefly. "Besides, Emma's very… inventive… in the bedroom. She –"
Lisa makes a face and holds up one long-fingered hand. "Okay, hot-shot, I get the picture. You don't have to go into any more detail."
Taking the hint, I follow quickly in Emma's footsteps and walk down the dingy corridor in front of us, keeping alert and ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Icing up just in case we get caught by surprise seems like a good idea, so I quickly make myself an ice-shell and try to keep myself on my toes. Catching up to Emma, I whisper "We need to get above deck as quickly as possible."
"Good plan," Emma says sourly. "Any more genius ideas up your sleeve?"
I grin despite myself. "A few. But I don't think we have any laser pistols around, so they'll have to wait."
Emma purses her lips. "I see. Remind me never to invest in any of your business ventures, Bobby."
I'm about to say something in reply, but just then, we see a set of stairs leading upwards, with telltale shafts of light coming from above. Moving quickly towards them, I clamber upwards to check the coast is clear (Emma could probably do it from where she's standing, but I figure she's got enough to deal with right now. Besides, it makes this seem more like a fun little holiday if I can do adventurous things like searching out enemies).
"Are we safe?" Lisa asks as she reaches the two us. Looking down at her, I shake my head and then jerk a thumb up towards the open hatch.
"No. There's about five or six guys around above decks – and that's just around the door. Emma, can you disguise us?"
"I can try," Emma replies, before she frowns and waves her hands towards Lisa and me in turn. "All right. The pirates should see each of us as one of their own now. If the illusion slips, leave it to me."
I shrug. "Okay, Emma, but if this goes wrong and we all get killed, don't think I won't spend the rest of eternity bugging the hell out of you."
"I don't doubt it. Now come on, Bobby – time to make a move."
With that, Emma climbs the steps into the upper deck, and the salty breeze hits me in the face as I follow her upwards. Fortunately, the big pirate we saw earlier isn't anywhere in sight, so that's a relief. Maybe he's off throwing his crew to the sharks. Tiptoeing up to one of the crew – the guy holding the wheel, in fact – I try and look as casual as possible, sticking my hands in my pockets and whistling a happy little tune as I do so. "So… where we headed?" I ask him in what I'm hoping is a relaxed tone.
The pirate gives me a disbelieving look out of his one good eye. "Surely ye haven't forgotten we're on a trip to the Spanish Main?" he sneers, before he bellows with laughter and claps me on the shoulder. "I shall never get tired of new crew!" Then he reaches into a pocket and fishes out a lump of something brown and hard, which has small things wriggling at its edges. "Here. Want some?"
"Uh… sure," I say, taking the lump and taking a small bite – and nearly breaking my teeth in the process. The biscuit is harder than concrete, and tastes like it, too. The wriggling things and I don't meet this time, so I hand the biscuit back to the guy before I get bitten. He grins again, his gap-toothed smile thick with black decay, and stuffs the lump back into a pocket, before he spits a thick glob of saliva onto the deck and starts singing a tuneless song to himself.
Charming fella, isn't he? I think in Emma's direction.
Absolutely, Emma replies. It's a wonder I haven't torn off my clothes and offered myself to him before now, actually.
Please don't put images like that in my head, Emma, I tell her, feeling my stomach turn over just at the thought of such a thing. My doctor says I have to avoid puking, not do it ten times in a row…
Sorry, Bobby, Emma chuckles. I forgot you were so sensitive – Just then, I feel a stab of pain lancing across our link, and before I can do anything else, I see the pirate standing next to me take a step backwards as the illusion around me fades away, and I'm revealed as the guy that ought to have been stuck in the bottom of the ship with a bunch of extras from Army Of Darkness. He pulls his cutlass, and I'm ready to start defending myself when Emma arrives at my side and waves her good hand briefly through the air, her face concentrating totally on fixing her lapse in concentration.
"You don't need to do that," she says firmly.
"I don't need to do that," the pirate repeats, a line of brown drool dividing his chin in half.
"We aren't the prisoners you're looking for," Emma continues.
"You aren't the prisoners I'm looking for," follows the pirate.
"We can go about our business."
"You can go about your business."
Emma smiles. "Move along."
"Move along."
The pirate stumbles off then, looking like he's high on something before he collapses in a ragged heap on the other side of the deck. But that's not what I'm really concerned about. What really worries me is that Emma just quoted Star Wars almost word for word. I mean, I'm supposed to be the joker here, and seeing Emma take that role is pretty unnerving.
"What was that all about, Emma?" I ask her, trying not to sound too stunned.
"The Frost can have a strong influence on the weak-minded," Emma chuckles, running her uninjured fingers down my cheek before kissing me gently on the lips. "And besides, who said you had to be the one who had all the fun? You're not the only one who likes movies, you know."
"Yeah, I know, but… Star Wars? You like Star Wars? You?"
"I love Star Wars, Bobby. I know what you're thinking - why didn't I tell you this before?" She wrinkles her nose at me. "You never asked."
I raise my eyebrows as high as they'll go, surprised by the news that Emma and I have something else in common. "Wait a minute, here. So if I asked you to dress up like Princess Leia –"
"– I'd tell you to do it yourself," Emma cuts in. "There's no way you'd get me to dress up in a metal bikini, I can tell you that."
"Too much information," Lisa chimes in, before she points at the wheel of the ship and says "You think maybe we should take the wheel before we go off course?"
"Perhaps we ought to deal with them first," Emma says, and points to the hatch we just came out of. Pirates are flooding out of it with their swords drawn – but they're not what Emma is worried about. Following the pirates are the skeletons I thought we'd managed to leave behind.
"Damn it!" Lisa cries, angrily. "How'd they get loose?"
I shrug. "My guess is, these guys decided to check if we were bone-meal, and their little pets decided to go on a guided tour of this tub." Icing up, I nod towards the knot of pirates and smile faintly. "You guys think we should help them out, or not?"
"Give me a minute," Lisa says, looking down at her long dress and grabbing a handful of fabric. Then, she pulls hard and tears it off so it's above her knees. "Being able to move might help, you know?"
"Good idea," Emma agrees, doing the same to her outfit – although with a bit more difficulty, considering she's only got the one good hand. I stand back even though I want to help her, because I know she'll just shrug me off if I go anywhere near her. Emma's a proud girl, and it pays to remember that if you don't want to end up having to be fed through a tube. The two girls start moving towards the enemy, but I hang back for a second, glancing at what the skeletons are holding in their bony hands – rusty cutlasses, billhooks and cleavers are just a few of the weapons they're using to attack their former masters.
Time to even the score a little…
Holding out one of my hands, I create a hard cylinder of ice that is about nine inches from top to bottom, and then run after the girls. When I'm caught up to them, I see that they've grabbed fallen weapons from a couple of dead pirates and are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of our former captors. Then, standing next to Emma, I grip the ice-cylinder in both hands and wait for the skeletons to reach us.
"Please tell me that's not what I think it is, Bobby," Emma says.
"This is my father's lightsabre," I tell her, and I can already feel her dismay. "This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight: not as clumsy or random as an evil mutant – an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age." Then, holding out the cylinder, I make a sharp blade spring from the top edge, its temperature approaching absolute zero. Anything that it touches will likely get burned so badly from the cold that it'll shatter, which is sort of the effect I was hoping for.
"You're insane, Robert Drake," Emma says, rolling her eyes.
I grin, and ready my blade as the skeletons swarm closer. "Insane, schminsane – I'm a Jedi, like my father before me."
"You're a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder, is what you are," Emma retorts, gripping her own weapon in her good hand.
"Hey, who's scruffy-looking? You didn't say that last night, Emma," I tell her, remembering for a moment that the tiny camera is still buzzing around our heads. If that doesn't pay Emma back for what she said about me earlier, I don't know what will.
Then, thinking is the last thing on my mind, as the skeletons crash against our wall of steel. Metal clangs off metal, the sharp crack of splintering bone coming along with it. I duck out of the way of a brown, pitted blade and hack my ice-sabre through the exposed spine of my attacker. Like I'd suspected, the chill of the weapon freezes and then shatters the bone, making my bony enemy fall in two halves on the deck. Icing up my boot, I hammer it down twice onto the creature's skull, smashing it into a dozen pieces and scattering them all over the deck. Jinking out of the way of another wild slash, I kick out and send the skeleton flying so that it slams into the main mast and has its bones thrown in every direction. That's two for two, I think, satisfied. Good start, Bobby.
Beside me, I can see Lisa twirling her sword expertly, driving it into the eye-socket of one of the few skeletons wearing a rotten, hole-riddled set of clothes and then hooking the skull off its neck, so that it flies through the air and then plummets into the ocean. The body sways for a second or two, and then collapses in a heap. Emma, meanwhile, is doing just as well, avoiding the swipes of swords and axes as best she can before swinging her sword in a wide arc and slicing the ribcages of two skeletons in half. "Good one, Emma!" I call to her encouragingly.
"Thank you, Drake," she shouts back. "Watch out on your left!" I turn to see what she means – just in time to see a jagged, broken dagger blade sweeping down towards me. Icing up to absorb the blow just in case I'm not fast enough, I bring my sword up to counter, but somebody else's sword deflects it.
A sword being held by cybernetic fingers.
"Having fun, screwloose?" Spiral cackles, waving her hands and causing the ship around us to melt away, so that the all-too-familiar static background appears again. This time, she's dressed like a gangster's moll from the Twenties, giving me an uncomfortable feeling about where she's going to send us next.
Taking a moment to get my breath back, and trying not to let my worries come to the surface, I nod. "Yeah, I was, actually… until you turned up."
Spiral makes a clucking noise at the front of her mouth, wagging the forefingers of all her six hands at me. "Naughty, naughty, screwloose – you ought to mind your manners." She narrows her eyes. "Remember where you are. You wouldn't want to end up… cancelled, would you? Being stuck in reruns is no fun at all." She clicks her fingers and the world shimmers around me. When the glow fades, I can see that my pirate clothes are gone, and I'm dressed in a sharp pin-striped suit and spats, with a white shirt and black tie, and Emma and Lisa have been given short dresses complete with shorter haircuts and headdresses.
"What is this?" Emma shrieks angrily, grabbing at her new hairstyle with furious fingers. "What have you done to me!"
Spiral chuckles. "If that's the worst thing that happens to you, Blondie, be grateful. It'll all be fixed by the time we're finished with you anyway, so don't worry." Then she waves her upper right hand and the static fades. "Every time you think you're out, they pull you back in. This is an offer you can't refuse…" Then she vanishes, and we're left to see what we're up against on our own.
Looking around us, I can see that we're outside a busy bar, with lousy piano music tinkling away through the windows. The cars outside the place look like Model T Fords, all of them painted pitch-black with no exceptions. Better find out more about where we are, I think, even if it's just to confirm what I already know. I jerk a thumb towards the bar. "You girls want another drink?" I ask. Emma scowls.
"The last time you ordered a drink, Drake, you got into a fight with Jesse James."
I grin. "Yeah, I know. Wasn't it fun?" Then, walking over to the door and pushing it open a little, I glance indoors at the people inside and whistle in disbelief. "Wow. Talk about your wretched hives of scum and villainy. These guys could make Greedo look like a chartered accountant."
Lisa follows my gaze and sees the smoky interior of the bar for herself. "Maybe I should wait outside. Those guys have guns, and I don't think they'll see me in the same way you guys do. I don't want to end up as a trophy on a wall, you know?"
"Lisa," I begin, "I think the fact that you survived Bluebeard and his pals without anything to hide your face says more than you can imagine. Either Spiral's decided to disguise you, or you're just too bad-ass to let things get on top of you. Which do you think is more likely?"
"A little from Column A, a little from Column B?" Lisa smiles – and not for the first time, I notice that she's got a really pretty smile when she puts her mind to it. Makes me wonder why she's so shy, really.
"Time's a-wasting, Drake," Emma says impatiently, sliding past me through the door of the speakeasy, and leading me to the bar by the hand, as if I'm some kind of badly-behaved child – which I guess I am, in a way. As the bartender arrives to see what we want, Emma holds out a handful of dollar bills that she has dug out of the purse which came with her dress, and says "Three glasses of your best wine, please."
"Sure, lady – comin' right up," the bartender says, and pulls three small glasses off the shelf behind him before pouring some red liquid into them. When he's done, Emma hands two of them to Lisa and me, before taking a sip herself – and nearly choking on the stuff.
"My God," she splutters. "So this is Prohibition – wine that could melt your brain and bars fuller than churches." She smiles sourly. "Don't you just love democracy in action?"
"Oh yeah," I reply, sipping from my own glass and feeling exactly the same way as Emma did a moment before. Just then, though, there's a noise at the door, and several big men wearing suits and carrying violin cases come in from the cold, looking like they could pick a fight with the next guy to tread on their toes accidentally.
The more things change…
The men all walk up to the bar, and the bartender immediately pours them all a glass of beer without having to be asked. They take their glasses and walk over to a table, which is quickly vacated by the people who'd been sitting there only a moment before, and the bar only seems to let out a collective breath when they start talking and laughing amongst themselves.
"Check it out," I whisper. "Looks like these guys are the big movers around here."
"I wouldn't have thought so, Bobby," Emma replies. "They're probably just soldiers for someone else – but these people know that if they cross one of them, then word gets sent up to their boss and then people will start dying."
"That might happen yet," Lisa says, pointing to the entrance of the bar. Another group of sharply dressed men has entered, and the room has gone quiet again. I can see each group of thugs looking at the other like the world's about to end, and I can see the clips on their violin cases being released.
I gulp. "I have a bad feeling about this…"