The Next Step:
Into the Noose?
"Tell me again why they're here," Shaad tiredly asked of Raine, indicating the dozen men working the ship.
"Could you man this ship by yourself," she questioned in return, not bothering to look at Shaad from behind her sunglasses.
"No, but the two of us together could probably manage." Raine pulled down her shades and looked at him as if he'd said the dumbest thing ever. "No; you're right. What was I thinking?" Shaad's voice dripped in exhaustion and sarcasm.
Raine ignored his tone, turning over where she lay and telling Shaad, "Put some lotion on my back."
"Yes, your Highness," he sardonically replied, doing as she told him nonetheless before he resumed speaking. "I'm just saying; they're all looking at me like they wanna kill me. . . and you with something else entirely."
"Oh, stop worrying; it's not a good look. They're harmless, just mad I beat up their captain and claimed the ship for myself." she retorted. "Besides, you're the one who told me to chart a course for the most dangerous island in the West Blue. You realize the people there will do more than just look like they want to kill you?"
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, slightly flustered when she undid her bikini top and let it hang loosely on her shoulders, beckoning him to move his hands up and massage the lotion into her shoulder blades and the sides of her breasts.
Sensing his uneasiness, Raine poked her ass up just a bit, teasing Shaad as her firm cheeks poked out from beneath the skimpy material. "Don't forget my legs," she crooned in that sultry voice of hers. Shaad rubbed the liquid into her soft, supple calves, working his way to her thick, juicy thighs, resisting the overwhelming urge to move his hands further up and take hold of the treasures calling to him. As if sensing his hesitancy and reluctance, Raine stifled a chuckle when Shaad slowly drew his hands back, breaking the beguiling connection before he immediately bounded into the crow's nest almost in a single leap.
The air about the ship was tense to say the least for Shaad, surrounded by a crew that wanted him dead on the one hand and an overly flirtatious succubus that loved to tease him on the other. Raine remained relatively reserved and Shaad was used to sleeping with one eye open, but after about two weeks of stirring in his half-sleep state when one of the crew would come by with plans to slit his throat or stab him in his sleep, he grew tired of giving the potential perpetrators an out and decided to make an example. It also helped that he'd grown weary of the meager rations on the ship; he wanted something new.
'Seafood would be nice,' he thought before a pair of footsteps broke him from his reverie. With the men's cabin out of the question, as was rooming with Raine, Shaad had taken advantage of the great weather and been sleeping in a hammock out on deck. It left him exposed, but allowed him acute awareness of all comings and goings. This time, it was too early for a night watch shift change, and the person - a man judging by the weight and sound of the steps - was trying to be as quiet as possible. Shaad cracked an eye open and saw the man in the crow's nest, thinking Shaad was sleeping and unaware, signal it safe to continue.
Shaad lay in wait as the footsteps became closer and less frequent. He could practically hear the man's heartbeat and had to hold fast to prevent cracking a smirk. After a short while, Shaad felt the man's shallow breathing beside him. As naturally as he could, Shaad rolled his head back, exposing his neck and chest for the man to target, but did nothing to stop the impending attack. Time seemed to slow, each second ticking at an agonizing pace as he waited for the critical moment.
When the man plunged his dagger for Shaad's throat, there was no resistance. The blade ripped past its victim, viciously tearing fibers while its wielder attempted to pull it back. The man was in a panic, his knife stuck and refusing to yield while a pair of fierce heterochromic eyes stared at him with a predatory amusement.
"You look like you're about to piss yourself." Shaad commented snidely, his fingers digging in to the flesh of the man's forearm as he shot upright in the hammock. He then stood up and let the rope threads of the hammock untangle themselves from around the blade, allowing the man to pull back the dagger but not escape Shaad's grip.
Shaad wrenched the man's wrist, a twisted grin on his face, and caught the knife as it dropped from the assailant's grasp before shoving the man against the main mast, crushing the man's throat with his forearm.
The man struggled to breathe, flailing as he attempted to remove Shaad's forearm, while the individual on watch looked on in fear. Shaad increased the pressure and thrust the dagger deep into the man's shoulder, twisting until the blade ran into the wood behind him, crushing the bone and shredding muscle in the process.
Shaad muffled the pained cries with his hand before bashing in the arm opposite the shoulder with his knee. He rammed the pinned limb with such force that it snapped from the shoulder down, shattering the joint and sending new levels of pain surging through the poor man's entire body, such that he nearly bit the inside of Shaad's palm.
Shaad released the beaten man and knocked him unconscious with an elbow across the jaw. He then rapidly ascended the main mast, coming face to face with the man tasked with keeping watch. "That was a message. I'll take over watch for the night, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell the others." Shaad leaned in closer for emphasis and spoke the last sentence slowly. "I wanna see surprise on their faces."
Shaad was awoken by numerous gasps coming from below. The crew was shocked by the sight of one of their own pinned pathetically to the main mast, his entire weight being held up by the dagger through his shoulder while a gag in his mouth kept him quiet. His legs had long since given up trying to hold his weight, and the wound in his shoulder had gone numb to the constant digging pain long ago as gravity pulled against him, digging the blade incrementally deeper into the flesh and adding more of the warm liquid to that which had already coagulated around the wound. Shaad jumped down before any of them got the brilliant idea to remove the sorry looking fellow from the post, a foreboding tone to his expression as he acknowledged them.
"Bet that woke ya'll up, huh? This man here tried to kill me," Shaad explained, though the revelation drew hardly any surprise from the frightened and unnerved crewmen. "Now, I let him off easy because I realize I hadn't given any of you a warning. . . This. . . is that warning. . . Any one of you make an attempt on my life after this. . . Well, I'm sure you can imagine." He then looked at them with an added bit of challenge and seriousness, his eyes relaying that he knew many of them had already made previous such attempts on his life. "Now that that's clear, get to work. The sooner we reach Blackwood, the happier we'll all be."
As the men scurried off to perform their various duties, Raine stood leaning against the door frame of the captain's cabin above them. Still dressed in a sheer pink nighty that left extremely little to the imagination, she strolled seductively down the stairway. Shaad found it difficult to break away from the captivating sight until she was right upon him, looking up and into his wide eyes. "Ooh, I didn't think you actually had it in you. . . Glad to see I was wrong. But, what can you actually do that's so much worse than that?"
With her scent filling his nostrils and her index finger lazily drawing circles on his chest, it took Shaad a moment to find his voice. "I don't know," he answered honestly, quietly enough that the busy crew couldn't hear him. "My dad always taught me, 'man's worst enemy is his own mind.' Took me a while to get that."
Raine just smirked at his answer, taking a step back and raising her voice as she ascended back up the stairs. "Now, clean up that blood. I don't want it leaking into the wood of my ship."
Shaad grumbled to himself about her calling it her ship, but he wasn't about to disobey the command. "Roman, clean up this blood," he called to one of the other men. Meanwhile, he pulled the dagger from the shoulder of his example, spreading copious amounts of new blood across the deck. Throwing the man roughly to the floor, Shaad bound the hands and feet before tying a rope around the bleeding man's waist, dragging him along and throwing him over the rail as he himself took a seat and began fishing with the man as his barely 'live bait'.
The man screamed for mercy from behind the gag, noise bubbling to the surface and shaking the water. Shaad pulled him up and removed the gag, making his pleas audible for all to hear, slapping a thick piece of tape over his mouth in its place. "Ssh; you're scaring the fish," Shaad whispered before throwing him back into the water. While the thick tape all but silenced the screams, it did nothing to stop the man's floundering, but Shaad had no such problem with that. "Yeah; make it look real. Fish love live bait, especially the big ones."
The rest of the crew couldn't believe what Shaad was doing, but were far too frightened to speak up. The next few hours took some patience on Shaad's behalf. He ate breakfast from that spot, holding his first prolonged conversation with his coquettish female companion with only minimal sexual innuendo. He'd long since figured out there was more to the woman than she let on, but he got a brief glimpse up close of the hidden persona during their talk, compelling him even further to truly get to know this mysterious, overly forward, and frighteningly sexy woman.
It was shortly before lunchtime when he finally felt something, other than a few small fish nibbling at his bait, on the line. Specks of disorienting and blinding luminescent light sparkled around the bound man before heading directly toward him. Luckily for Shaad, the man was in good physical condition due to the labor required to work a ship. This meant his muscles were tough and durable, making them harder to rip apart for the aquatic predator after him. Being pulled in opposite directions in such a way, though, made the man want to scream out. Shaad had kept him on the edge of life and death in order to keep the 'live bait' moving, and he'd lost the will to fight hours ago, but the searing pain kicked in his survival instincts. He squirmed and floundered in resistance, but that only prompted the animal to chomp down harder, snapping bone with its massive jaws.
With the rope being pulled further in the water, Shaad could tell he was losing his catch and his bait. Pinning the reel to the deck with his foot, Shaad grabbed some steel wire the ship had available and tied it around the hilt of his black bladed sword. He locked his sights on to where the blood flooding into the water was spawning from and launched his sword for the animal.
Blood poured even more heavily into the sea as the blade impaled its target, wounding it critically without killing it. Now that he had a firm reel and solid stake, reeling in the animal was less a struggle though the creature continued to resist with its remaining energies.
'Why didn't I think of this before?' Shaad thought as he pulled the animal out of the water.
'Cause you're stupid.' the voice in his head retorted derisively.
'Whatever; I got it. That's what matters.' he settled, throwing the animal to the deck before pulling his sword from the beast to deliver the killing blow. "A horned shark; pretty good catch. Can you have it ready by dinner?" Shaad questioned the ship's chef, a portly middle aged man. The chef nodded his head with such nervous vigor that his fat belly jiggled slightly, making Shaad smile. "Good. But, I feel like I'm forgetting something."
"Horned sharks are group hunters. They're totally berserk around blood. That's why they produce that sparkling light - to disorient prey and identify themselves to the rest of their school," one of the more experienced of the crew called out in a panic, the size of a school varied for these predatory beasts and a large enough grouping could cause heaps of trouble for a ship their size.
"That's right," Shaad exclaimed happily, hopping onto the railing in anticipation. Surely enough, he saw a large collection of lights swarming the area. It wasn't clear through the water, but it looked to be a school of five angrily searching out food. "Woah, big fella," the young swordsman called when one of the sharks rammed the ship's hull, almost knocking him into the water.
Shaad jumped back to the deck and tied a bit of steel wire around his second sword before retaking his position on the rail. "We eating good tonight," he cheered as he threw the swords at two sharks. It was an easy enough mark since all of the sharks were clumped together, fighting over the remains of the now dead crewmate, and the blades speared clean through two of the sharks with the black blade ripping into a third, seriously wounding that one.
Shaad focused his energy, wrapping the steel wire around his arms, and pulled. The steel wire dug into his arms, threatening to cause critical lacerations, but with one more call to his stored energy, both sharks came practically flying out of the water, landing with a thud amidst the startled crew and cracking the ship's floorboards. Afterwards, he turned back to the water only to find that the two unharmed sharks had fled the hectic scene, leaving their wounded compatriot trailing slowly behind them. With an underhand throw, Shaad pierced the animal through the skull and dragged its carcass aboard the ship to make a total of four.
"Go wild tonight, chef; we got plenty," Shaad proclaimed with a smile.
"I can't cook that last one."
"And, we won't eat any of them."
Shaad looked puzzled. "You first," he said looking to the ship hands. "I don't much care either way, but it's disrespectful to turn down food your host offers."
"Those beasts devoured our partner. We want no part in eating something that ate a human."
Shaad nodded his head, but responded with brutal honesty. "Over the past three years, I've had to eat animals that ate my friends. It's the natural cycle, and it's hardly rare. . . or fair. Not to mention, how big that first one is, your friend's probably one of the cleaner things he consumed." Shaad let his words marinate while he turned his attention to the chef. "And what's the problem with the last one?"
"You broke one of the artificial jewels. It's highly toxic and the chemicals have spread throughout the animal by now."
Shaad sighed in faint disappointment, and Raine, who had been standing by watching from a distance, handed out orders. "That's fine. You lot, carry the three healthy ones to the kitchen. Chef, don't you dare cook its stomach; I also have no desire to eat predigested human. Also, save the sharks' horns and jewels. They may not make good food, but there's a reason horned sharks are considered 'jewels of the sea'. When you're done, give the same treatment to the other one. It'll be in the hold." Raine's voice was serious and calculating, its typical provocativeness replaced with a harsh and threatening quality.
Shaad kept a satisfied smirk as the men rushed to follow Raine's directives even as she moved next to him, not seeing her extend her baton in the process. With a sharp swing, his head was driven into the deck, creating an indent and wiping the smile from his face. "And, I already told you not to damage my ship." She then crouched down and gently grabbed Shaad's head, stroking his cheek and wiping the blood from his lip with alternating strokes. Her voice was sweet as sugar as she spoke again. "Now do yourself a favor and move that last shark to the hold. In addition to the money for the clothes, you now owe me for one broken jewel." Raine stood up, wiping any dust from her bare legs and straightening her shirt as she looked at Shaad lift himself from the deck, an annoyed expression on his face. "And clean up all this. You do it this time; those guys have no sense of tidiness."
[Days Later]
A bleak outline appeared on the horizon. Whatever it was seemed to be covered by a centralized haze, but as they got closer it was clear to the crew that it was an island. Even as they all cheered, happy to be getting off the ship and returning to land, they each noted that the island's skyline was underwhelming to say the least. But what stood out most was the jagged curvature of the island's coast line. The mountains, cliffs, and ridges surrounding the island were so hauntingly marked and arranged that the foreboding image looked strikingly similar to a noose around the island as a whole.
Everyone got a clear look at just how dilapidated and rundown the city appeared as they brought the ship into port. The unwelcoming faces, beat up buildings, and flea bitten environment almost made the crew opt to stay on the ship. Shaad was the first one off the ship, taking a deep breath of the foul, stale air as Raine walked down behind him, arms raised in embrace and introduction. 'This should work fine.' he thought.
"Everyone. . . welcome to Scoundrels' Noose!"