A magical bolt of lightning soared from the clouds and across a violent sky, ramming into the alien mast of one of Tatanga's triremes. The vessel was tossed onto a surf, sending it crashing into the rocky coast. Syrup and Cractus were content to let the others scurry for cover. Those two rushed to bear witness to watch as the Gods play. Rudy the Clown stabbed the sky with thunderbolts, the clown God howled, bullied and he battered Luigi's sea with hurricane wind.
Cractus joined Syrup on her warship with his men as they stood at the edge of the warship, watching as one after another, Tatanga's fleet was smashed to kindling. Below, another bolt of magical lightning briefly illuminated the faces of the countless drowning slave oarsmen gasping for breath among the splintered timbers of Tatanga's armada.
Syrup knew that now Kalypso rose, rudely awakened, furious, her surf clawed at the stars. Rain pounded against Cractus' shield like war drums as he drunk in the carnage below. Behind Syrup, her men laughed. Cries jubilation could be heard among the sailboats. The men embraced and Cractus raised his fist in victory as another massive ship of Tatanga's exploded onto the rocks and again the surf surged, made viscous by flesh and wood. There was laughter among the pirates and soon song and praise for the Gods that such viciousness would continue to the next day's dawn.
Then, another flash of lightning as the men behind Syrup danced in ecstasy of jubilation with time practically suspended. Yet the captain's jaw was set, her face cold, stern and motionless. She found herself unable to say anything. This was not the first maelstrom that she had witnessed. Slowly, she removed her hat, allowing the rain to run down his unmoving face.
Thunder mixed with laughter and the pounding sea. The distant cries of a host of drowning raiders prompted Syrup to lift her chin to the rain and close her eyes. She breathed in the salty sea air and turned back through her men to her quarters.
Only a handful of pirates led by Cractus moved silently through the mists of destruction at a pace impossibly fast for the seeming lack of sound. They had no helmets and no shields. Falshes of red and steel between the broken and battered sailboats and frigates all around them. One pirate pointed to the edge of a broken ship just in front of them, the rest of Tatanga's fleet was silhouetted by the bright sky, allowing them to send a signal telling Cractus they had reached the end of all that which the storm had destroyed of the alien.
Cractus swam all on his belly until he was next to the pirates who waded at the mist's edge looking onwards at the enemy's full fleet. Cractus' breath caught in his throat as terror gripped him staring down on the camp of his enemy. It was the greatest gathering of men and animals that Sarasaland had ever seen to occur on its seas, for the open sea before them was almost endless but the near millions of seaboats formed a city of tents on water. There were floating boardwalks created that acted as roads with people and hordes and creatures none of their eyes had ever seen before. At the complete edge, thousands of ships were being unloaded and tended to as the entire structure moved forth at a breakneck pace. Vast legions of sailboats went one way or another as smoke from the warships created a cloud of black that drifted and clung over the nearby mountains.
"We saw their fleet being smashed on the rocks, how can this be?" gasped Cractus.
"We saw but a fraction of the monster that is Tatanga's army," breathed a pirate, shaking his head at the sheer spectacle.
"We are doomed," said Cractus. "There can be no victory here. This is not Lord Crump we face. Why do you smile?"
"Oh, my lord, I have fought countless times…," said the pirate. "Yet I never fought against Rool or Cump and so I have never met an adversary who could offer me a beautiful death. I can only hope with all the universe and its timeline's warriors gathered against us that there might be one down there who is up to the task." With that, Cractus slapped a hand on the pirate's back and laughed.
Far away on his own sailboat was a form, half-man and half-unknown that had followed Syrup and her pirates off of Kitchen Island. His hunched back, gruesome and abstract, face rutted and worn leather marked the being as Wormwould. He moved with a broken gait, a mouth shaped like a gunshot wound, eyes uneven and yet wild with determination. Rumor had it that the being was born during a pregnancy during which the woman had been devolved. "Honoured Rudy… smile down upon me from your place of rest. This is the day your servant will prove himself." His oar trambled over the wild seaweed withile the withered wood was sheathed in soaked dust. "I will show you that you were not wrong to protect me. I will show you that I am worthy." He stopped at the edge of a barren stretch of sea, cupping his misshapen hand towards his face, inhaling deeply, smelling, questioning the salty air itself. "Bastards."
He heard the sound of troops sailing in the distance and in that distance, the mighty Tatanga himself was carried atop a golden throne, surrounded by bodyguards. He whipped his slaves and pushed them on. "Alien bastards! We'll kill all of you," Wormwould told himself. "Us pirates will destroy you." Yet, Wormwould was not taken by his full courage yet and continued sailing behind the pirates all night.
In the morning, Syrup leaned on her sword, watching as a summer wind blowed cold off of the sea. The rest of the pirates had their bodies straight for their morning calisthenics, with their teeth clenched at the zenith of a military push up. They held that pose. On each of their backs stood another pirate with a shield, helmet, gun and cape. Muscles shook and quivered under over two hundred pounds of men and armour.
Cractus rushed onto Syrup's warship, prompting Syrup to turn from her men. She was calm, almost pleasant. "Cractus, you're up early," she observed. He was scared and pointed in the direction of Tatanga's fleet.
"One of the alien's general's approaches," he told her. "You should come and speak to him. It is our one chance for survival." Syrup nodded slowly at the man. "You are the commanding captain. Your men are ill prepared for the delicate matters of the state. I fear the welcome this ambassador will receive and the message it sends to Tatanga." At that, Syrup just smiled.
"No, on second thought, I am busy," said Daisy. "My boys will meet him at the wall and I think you will find them quite prepared to show him a proper pirate welcome."
Tatanga's raiders advanced up the primitive tributary, the only known way into Twygz that circumvented Rogueport. In truth, Syrup's forces were lucky to have reached it before Tatanga's forces. Now that they had reached it, they could block it off, block of the way to Dinohattan and any other possible waterways. Syrup hoped that the now inevitable battle between the pirates and raiders would wake up the armies of Dinohattan. Between the raiders' sailboats there was a golden litter, carried by twelve slaves, which suddenly slowed. Fear gripped the alien slaves who carried the general. They were more afraid of what they saw than what they carried. The pirates hoped that Tatanga sent his general to negotiate their surrender. If the pirates knew the truth, then perhaps Syrup would not have been as hasty as to send Anonster, for if she knew the truth, then she would know the game she was playing.
As the raiders neared the end of the waterway, they were greeted by two dozen dead alien scouts. Each was impaled by a spear so that it protruded form their mouth. The shafts of the spears inside their bodies caused them to sit upright. The dead scouts adorned the rock and dirt mounds sprouting up from the sea, a signpost to whatever general was in the litter that he was headed in the right direction. His handful of bodyguards and soldiers were frozen as they stared at the gruesome display. Wherever or whenever they had come from, clearly they were not used to such savagery. Yet the litter was quiet only for a second before the laughter and cooing of women returned to it.
Wormwould watched from the distance, aware of who the litter truly carried as the column of sailboats faded into the distance. "Destroy them," he crazily muttered, "right up their camel calloused backsides." He spun and thrusted the sky with his spear in mock battle. "Blessed pirates! The boldest of men. The finest warriors in all Sarasaland!" He turned and opened his rowing across the cold water. "They will accept. They must accept me. Rudy! Beloved Clown! You will see that you were right to protect me." And now the creature sailed. The waterway was strange and solemn. Among the rocks were ferns and maybe even mountain oaks, granite shelves and ragged escarpments of stone and earth braced by the hands of the Gods themselves. The creature ran to warn the pirates.
It was not one of Tatanga's generals who exited the litter with concubines by each side, half-standing out of an ornate chair borne on the shoulder of bleeding slaves. Rather, to better see who among his enemies were gathered at the sea wall now acting as a barrier, funneling the would be attackers into Rogueport, was none other than Tatanga himself. A large group of pirates worked at putting the final touches to the wall and Anonster put a large rock in place at the top of the wall. Already sweating hard, he glanced at the approaching alien and nearly fell off when he realized that the purple being, clad in black kevlar armour, was no general.
"You there!" roared Tatanga, his red patches around his elbows and knees. His alien fangs stuck out of his mouth and his women looked adoringly above at him. His goblinish ears pointed upward as the look of blood came ot his face. "Who commands here?" Anonster stared down in fear at him, then to the water below. He took a breath and leapt fifty feet to the water below, regaining his confidence in seconds. His form was perfect, but Tatanga watched with disinterest as he hit the water headfirst with barely a splash. He looked at the men as they worked on the wall. Despite his presence, none had stopped. He stood, frustrated, on a platform supported by slaves and again called to the men working on the wall. "I am the emissary of the ruler of all Sarasaland, merchant of corruption, the king of the timeline and I demand by the authority of Wario that you show me your commander."
One or two of the pirates under Cractus' command looked over their shoulders at Tatanga, a bit taken by the alien's words. Had they heard right? Had the fearsome alien general who led the terrifying army before them admitted that he himself had a master? They knew the name Wario well, for even they had heard of the WarioWare stores. "Listen and learn, pirates. I am tired of your petulance," said Tatanga, his teeth busy. Anonster climbed the rocks face up out of the salt water. He leaned against it and began sharpening his sword with a found stone. "Do you think that the paltry dozen you slew scares us or means anything to us? They are nothing to the great Wario. Why, these hills swarm with my scouts. They watch us even now. They move like shadows." The men still worked, moving the rocks, handing them to one another, ignoring the alien invader, who laughed a onebreath laugh and looked to his nervous men. He then pointed to the seawall. "Do you think your pathetic wall will do anything except fall like a heap of dry leaves in the face of my army?"
His words almost seemed to catch in his throat when he saw that the seawall before them was not just built out of stone. Jammed between the boulders and rocks were the heads and limbs of countless scouts brought from his home planet. Even their mounts had not been spared. Their faces in grim crimson abd black clotted blood against the gray of stones. Many of them were likely even Tatanga's own children, bastards sired with the concubines of this world and his own. Tatanga and his horrified bodyguards scanned the wall which loomed before them. It was a monument to death.
Anonster lowered his chin, glided his sharpening stone one last time down the length of his blade, which ringed with sparks and the song of iron on stone. Tatanga almost struggled for something to say. "A king built this wall using ancient stones stolen from the bosom of Sarasaland herself," said Anonster to the monster, "and, with a little pirate help, you aliens supplied the mortar."
"You will pay for your barbarism," promised Tatanga and with that, he loaded his blaster to shoot. Anonster, without hesitation, closed the distance to the alien in a heartbeat. Rising in a powerful spider-like leap, his freshly sharpened sword flashed through the alien's shoulder. His litter crashed to the ground, his slaves dived for the protection of nearby rocks. Anonster stood over the alien as his concubines grabbed his shoulder, the green blood pumping between his fingers. Each of his bodyguards were frozen at spear point by the now agitated pirates. "My shoulder!"
"It's not yours anymore," said Anonster. "Go now. Run along and tell your Wario he faces free men here. Not slaves. Do it quickly before we decide to make this wall just a little bit bigger." Tatanga breathed a laboured breath, swallowed hard ad narrowed his brow.
"Not slaves, no," he smiled. "Your women will be slaves, though. Your sons and daughters and elders will be slaves. But not you. So soon you will be dead men." Anonster was unmoved by the alien's speech. "One hundred planets of Wario's empire descend upon you." Tatanga was helped back to his golden perch and his slaves once again shouldered his weight. He turned one last time, to the massive wall, to the men that built it and the butcher that took his arm. "My arrows will blot out the sun."
Anonster never changed his expression. His eyes were as cold as the bracing priate who crashed relentlessly on the cliffs below. "Then we will fight in the shade."