(Disclaimer: Don't own Pintel and Ragetti.)
Just the Way it Should Be
Pintel could see the fortress wall just ahead of him. He'd been running for what seemed like ages now, and he felt just about ready to collapse there on the spot; to him, the sight of that stone barrier was nothing short of a sign from heaven. What was more, the wide crevice that led to shore was yawning directly in front of him, greeting the exhausted man and granting him passage. He only had to cross a few more meters…
"Oi! You there! Oi!"
Pintel only glanced back briefly when he heard the voice, then desperately picked up his speed when he realized its shouts were directed to him. He had to try and outrun it. He was almost there, almost out! He couldn't let some slack-jawed fool get the best of him now! That crumbled exit way was just a sprint away—
But his attempt was in vain, and a rough hand seized him by the back of his jacket. Before Pintel could even comprehend what had just happened to him, he was spun around and slammed painfully back against the very wall he'd been trying to reach. There was nothing left for him to do but stare at his capturer, and he did so with utter shock.
It was Winchcomb.
"Where is it?" the old sailor demanded. He didn't seem much in the mood for a fight anymore. "Where's the case?"
"J-Jiminy has it," the shorter pirate stammered in between gaps. Then he added as an afterthought, "But I wouldn't steal it if I was carryin' it!"
The first mate was about to say something else, but his words were silenced by the howl of a man in pain. The two turned in unison and saw a pirate—a local one—topple to the ground in a motionless heap. He'd gotten in the way of a careless neighbor's shot, and now the frozen look of agony would never leave his dead face.
It was clear enough to Winchcomb that his questions could afford to wait, and he and Pintel darted through the giant crevice like a pair of frantic minnows. Then with a final burst of energy, they emerged out onto the rocky beach and gratefully bid farewell to the pirates of Pilón. It was a relief to see the open air again, but both men knew that they weren't out of this mess just yet.
Pintel stumbled once and winced loudly as he hit his knees on the rocks. He was panting and aching terribly, and now the spine-tingling numbness in his legs only made him even slower. Still, he managed to drag himself to the edge of the rocks after Winchcomb and fell with a squeak down the tiny slope of sand to the beachfront. The first mate was already huddled under a large outcropping of rock, shielded from sight and gunfire as he searched his person for another weapon. Pintel frightfully threw himself underneath the pitiful barricade and crouched as he tried to find his breath.
A short distance away, Pellinore had also found his way to the fort wall, and seeing Jiminy struggling to climb the rope with the black case under one arm, he immediately began his own rapid ascent.
"Lad!" the captain shouted, cursing that he didn't know the young man's name. Jiminy whipped his head around to see Pellinore rising towards him, and quickly lifted himself to the top of the wall before fully turning around.
The Englishman pointed a stiff finger at the case. "Don't lose that!" He grunted with effort as he climbed further up. "In fact, give it to me right now!"
Jiminy nodded. "Aye, Captain!" he piped, and held the enemy-attracting object out to his commander a little too enthusiastically. Pellinore practically flew the rest of the way up when his fingers touched that ebony box. As far as he was concerned, the mission had been accomplished.
Back on board the Urchin, Yager and Wood were wrapped up in their own task.
"Alright!" Wood shouted as he jumped away from the end of the cannon barrel. "It's all loaded! Now what?"
Yager peered out the portal. "I say we shoot it to the left that way, over the wall. We don't want to aim too close to the crew."
"Can we even aim one of these things from this far away?" Wood asked.
"We're gonna find out in a minute," his friend answered, wheeling the cannon forward a little more. "Let's light it!"
The bearded man then held up the long wooden taper wand, and as soon as his dreadlocked friend eagerly lit it, he lowered it to the cannon's wick.
BOOM!
The iron ball blasted through the portal with a burst of smoke and light, shooting towards shore with a blinding speed…and collided violently with the guard tower just to the right of the fleeing crew.
Seeing the impact, Jiminy shrieked, and Pellinore's head snapped up in time to see the chunks of broken stone hurtling towards them. They were still at the top of the wall with no other rope to climb down, and so there was only one thing left to do.
"Jump!"
Jiminy instinctively kicked off from the wall, and Pellinore clutched the case to his chest once more as he did likewise. A split second later, stone crashed into stone exactly where they'd been perched, and a dusty cloud rose from the crippled tower beside it. Winded and shaken but unhurt, the captain and his crewman landed heavily in the sand just beyond the rocks where their momentum had carried them. Neither of them lay still for more than a second before they sprang to their feet and lurched towards the rapidly loading rowboats.
Yager and Wood both stared at their results with bulging eyes.
"…Guess that answers your question," Yager said stiffly, still bracing the cannon from its backlash. Wood's fingers remained tightly jammed into his ears as he tried to take in the irony of the situation.
Behind them, Ragetti hastily took advantage of their shock and scurried quietly back to the safety of his powder barrel hideout.
Pintel and Winchcomb had also heard the blast of the cannon, and they felt a sharp tremor from the nearby impact. Both of them reached up to grasp the outcropping over their heads, remaining tense with confusion until the unstable feeling passed. The shorter of the two blinked up towards the source of the noisy vibration.
"…Wot was that?"
The question went ignored. Very much wanting an answer, Pintel turned his attention over to Winchcomb to ask again, but just as his eyes settled on the older man, a much smaller figure crept silently into sight.
It was a crab.
Pintel squinted unpleasantly at the creature, which was sandy gray in color and slightly larger than the palm of his hand. No doubt the little crustacean had been startled out of its hiding place by the blast, and it was slowly and dully making its way down Winchcomb's sleeve in a dazed getaway. The balding pirate frowned and shifted a little to clear an exit for their unwelcome guest. No sooner had he done this, however, than another set of spidery yellow legs and bulging black eyes suddenly crawled up over his own shoulder.
Pintel made a startled gasp and swatted the second crab off of his arm, watching with disgust as it then fell to the ground and scuttled blindly away. It was followed out by a third one a moment later, and then Winchcomb angrily brushed off his own pest when he became aware of their newest predicament. The crabs all scurried out onto the beach in a tiny cluster, completely heedless of the danger behind them…
BANG!
The two cornered pirates both jerked back as the first crab exploded in a burst of broken legs and claws that sent its brothers fleeing. A strange voice shouted a few meters away—the voice of the shooter—and then the sound of more nervous scratching could be heard from behind. Pintel and Winchcomb each turned their heads towards it with a look of dread, anticipating the next onslaught.
Winchcomb was the first one to react as a particularly large crustacean darted over his leg. While the first mate growled impatiently and kicked at the animal, Pintel watched with fright as another few emerged beside him. The shorter man tried to avoid all three of these newest crabs, but he suddenly froze when he felt the tingling sensation of more prickly legs on the back of his neck. The crabs were in a frenzy from this battle now, and their only way out was being blocked by two large and clumsy humans.
Pintel couldn't help but shriek as he feverishly tore the sneaking creature off of his neck. How did this happen to him? Panicked crabs in here, revenge-hungry shooters out there, the rest of their crew starting to row off without them—this was a torture fit for Hell!
"Ahhh!" Winchcomb shouted as one of the eight-legged demons clamped down on his collarbone. He reached up to grasp the wriggling little body and wrenched it free, showing one of its white claws to be spotted with blood. More of the crabs seemed to be emerging from his side of the hideout, and Pintel could see that the old sailor had at least five of them latched onto his struggling body. The first mate snarled again as he ripped off another nebbish critter, then reached for his belt and yanked out his pistol. Pintel yelped and recoiled from the outburst; he was scared to death of Winchcomb as it was, and now the man's unstable temper had gotten the best of him.
But Mother Nature decided to push her sense of humor just one more step further.
Pintel never saw the crab crawl down Winchcomb's shirt, but he realized what'd happened when the first mate roared again and impulsively threw himself forward, revealing the twitching bulge between his shoulder blades. The grizzled buccaneer fell hard into the sand and rolled over wildly, trying to crush his pinching intruder. It was just as he did this that his senses returned, and he realized that he was no longer under the outcropping, but lying in plain sight on the sand in front of it. From the top of the wall, a waiting pirate grinned and took aim.
BANG!
With another gasp, Pintel shrank back even closer to the crab-covered rocks. Winchcomb had just dodged the shot by a hair, and he was making for the rowboats as fast as his stiff legs would allow him. It was too late for him to turn back now.
Pistol shots continued to fire at him, now from more than one shooter. It was still dark out, and the ne'er-do-wells of Pilón had given up trying to target the retreating rowboats. For them, firing away at this hapless rogue meant one more chance to have some sadistic fun.
Winchcomb tried to fire back as he ran, tried to turn and aim his own pistol up at them. The sand was erupting in tiny little clouds around him as the stray shots blasted into the ground, and the deafening sounds of gunfire and battle cries muddled even the thoughts of his anxious spectators. Finally, the old scar-faced pirate pulled his trigger in a final act of defiance, and an instant later, a searing red hole splattered onto his chest and he fell onto the sand like a dropped burlap sack. From the rowboat, Pellinore's pale stunned face was a stark contrast to the darkness around him.
Now Pintel was the only man left on shore, and it looked like he would stay there.
He scooted back and forth fiercely, taking advantage of the sudden extra space as he tried to dodge and scrape off more of the crabs. One had found its way onto the top of his head, but Pintel was forcing himself to ignore it as he tried to pry a larger specimen off from the inside of his jacket. While he was wrestling with this stubborn crustacean, another one suddenly chose to crawl up his left pant leg, and the stocky pirate frantically reached down to shove it back out. All the while, he was whimpering with terror and repulsion.
"Ahh! No! Get off! Get off me!"
He was going to die here. That was the first thought that came to Pintel's mind. He was going to die here. His captain and the rest of the crew would leave him behind, and he would die at the hands of the scalawags two lived here, whether by these crabs flushing him out to meet Winchcomb's fate or by the shooters coming down to shore and yanking him out themselves. They would kill him, and the rest of Pellinore's crew would sail away on the Urchin without so much as a thoughtful memory of him. And Ragetti would be on that ship with them.
Pintel pushed this last thought aside. He didn't even want to imagine what would happen to that stupid lad once he was discovered. Instead, he returned his grim focus to the bustling crabs as they continued to cover him.
And then…
BOOM!
A second ear-splitting blast suddenly interrupted his reflection, and the jolting tremor that followed sent the creatures scattering in another panic. Pintel was thrown face-down into the ground with a look of total shock. This impact had been even closer than the last one—practically right over his head—and the flying rocks that it'd knocked free from the ground were landing heavily in front of him, throwing up sandy clouds. Pintel quickly shielded his head from the stony downpour and huddled closer to the ground. Shouts could be heard from the angry shooters, cursing something awful about a cannonball, and the scream of one of them falling backwards off the wall still hung in the air.
Once the momentary confusion was over, Pintel coughed and lifted his gaping-eyed face. The shock wave had thrown him clear from the outcropping, but not far. The makeshift fortress was still perfectly intact just behind him—he could sneak back under without any problem. But the more hopeful side of his mind realized that he wasn't even being shot at, despite his plainly visible location. The shooting pirates were still recovering from the close hit; they didn't notice him lying there.
That was all he needed to know. The devil knew how, but Pintel managed to stagger to his feet at that moment and took off running down the beach in a lop-sided sprint. He could see the rowboats bobbing just a few meters from shore, still in shallow water, still within reach.
"Wait!" he shouted after them in a hoarse voice, stumbling slightly in his efforts. "Wait fer me! Don't go! Wait!" They were still within reach…
It all became a huge blur after that. Pintel could feel the cold waves rising around him, slowing him down. The sounds of splashing and dunking drowned out his thoughts as he pushed on, and then the next thing he knew, his hands were clutching the wooden rim of the nearest boat and someone was tugging at his shoulder. Rub's scruffy face and long beard flashed in his vision for a second, and then Pintel could feel splintery planks beneath him, telling the exhausted man that he'd made it.
The last memory he had of the port was a fierce bellow, thick with resentment and throbbing with Scottish aggression, ordering the trigger-happy cutthroats to cease wasting their ammunition. Then the sounds of gunfire died away.
They'd made it. Pintel turned his head to wearily observe the five other crewmen seated and slumped alongside him in the boat. They were all as dazed and beaten down as he was, all panting and dripping wet with sweat and sea water, but they had all gotten away. The Glass Urchin's crew had fought bloodthirsty enemies, cleared stony obstacles, and even grappled with the ocean's tiniest beasts, and it was rowing away with no more than two casualties. The crew had escaped from Pilón.
But no man had the energy left with him to celebrate such a stroke of dumb luck.
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A small but triumphant smile appeared on Yager's lips when he finally spotted the rowboats paddling listlessly in the water, and once he saw that they were indeed drawing closer to their mother ship, he released his bracing grip on their lucky cannon. He glanced over at Wood then, smirking more visibly when the younger man turned to meet his eye.
"…And you were afraid you'd miss out on all the action!"
From the other end of the room, Ragetti giggled softly to himself. That Yager was a funny fellow.
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Don't worry folks. Pinters and Rags will be back together in the next chapter! Author's promise. ;-)
