I sit down to write Tales of the Black Freighter with hints of Rime of the Ancient Mariner and end up with vaguely comedic vaguely fluffy thing with macabre undertones
Why am I like this
Around him, the fish swam and the crabs crawled, going about their business in the dark. He swatted one away when it attempted to pick away at him.
The ocean felt… felt fine. He didn't feel any panicked urge to get to the surface, despite memories…
He gasped, inhaling an additional lungful of brine and a few small sea creatures. It was a lot of work, what with water being so dense, and that did not help his mood at all.
Drowning was not exactly a pleasant way to go, although you could argue how gone he really was.
Well, no reason to neglect his duty just because of a little mortality challenge. A trifle, really. He began to limp across the seabed, searching.
Some refuse of the battle still remained, chunks of metal and wisdom cubes from sundered Siren ships. At the very least the day seemed to be won, before…
Something caught his eye. The mighty curve of a bow, the keel of heavy wood instead of steel. Barnacles and coral sheathed her sides like ramshackle armor, mottled and patchy.
Cannons peeked from her sides, eaten away by the rigors of the sea until barely recognizable as weapons of war. Despite the damage, it was beautiful, almost serene. He was- had been?- a scholar of naval history, after all.
Closer examination revealed it to be anything but serene, though:
The deck writhed with tentacles, thick like tree roots but constantly shifting. For a few moments he attempted to step over them, before realizing he was underwater. Swimming made avoiding them easier, even if they seemed to reach for him.
He headed towards the back, of course, interested in the idea of standing at command of an age-of-sail warship. The masts were like shattered bones as he crept past them.
Eventually, he found the body from which the tentacles sprung. The human-like features seemed to imply a woman, but the tentacles everywhere- sprouting from the back, interweaved with the hair, and curling around the legs- made it clear she was no ordinary human.
At the moment, she was playing with dice, throwing them through the water and catching them with a heavy tentacle. There was not so much as a hint of flush in her cheeks and her clothes were worn; he swore he saw a few old wounds under the torn hose covering her legs, the blood having long turned brown-black.
She saw him in the corner of her eye as he paddled, and a tentacle shot out like a harpoon to wrap around his midriff.
"Who're you?" She didn't exactly talk, but it was as if the words had suddenly pierced his mind, cold as ice.
"Who are you?" He thought back. Said? Let's just go with said.
"You're not exactly in a place to be asking questions, savvy?" The tentacle gave a gentle squeeze.
"Aye aye," he rolled his eyes, "Then call me Lazaro. Commander Lazaro."
"A skipper! I see, I see. That was your little scrap up there?"
"It was."
"I expected more dead, I'll be honest. But I can't complain about company, can I?"
The tentacle loosened slowly, and Lazaro reoriented himself properly, so he was looking at the woman- shipgirl, potentially? Some other unexplained anomaly? Whatever. He was looking at her properly now.
"Am I still not allowed to ask questions?"
"That was a question."
"Are you going to answer it?"
"I suppose, if it isn't a foolish question."
"Who are you?"
"I'm Royal Fortune, and I sailed with the best of 'em." Her brow furrowed. "The best pirates, that is. And yeah, the lawman got me in the end, but it was just bad luck."
Well, a pirate ship was certainly cool.
One of the tentacles tapped at the deck in front of him. "Grab a seat, o' Commander. You'll be here for a while, aye?"
Cautiously, he settled down on the deck, shifting and moving to avoid the worst of the barnacles and general wear. There were very few things that had survived the ages untouched and uncovered: herself and her dice, with the sword damn near eaten through with rust…
He looked at the dice again, their strange shapes and their slightly off-white hue… if he still had his stomach, he might have hurled.
"I can tell you they're not human if you like." She laughed.
"Sounds good," he mumbled. "What were you doing with them, anyways?"
"I hate gambling, but there wasn't much else to do but play hazard." She sighed.
"Hazard?"
"You don't know hazard? Good lord, are you really a sailor at all? First that outfit of yours, now this?"
"What's wrong with my uniform?"
"Little weird, ain't it?"
"A little weird for you." He shot back. "The times have changed."
"Damn right." She muttered, "How long has it been, by the way? Can't really keep track."
"When were you sunk?"
"Early seventeen hundreds."
"Three hundred years, then."
"God's hooks, three hundred years?" She took a few moments to process that, her many tentacles stilling. "Navy's gotta be different, then. Say, are there still pirates?"
"Some hijackers used to work off Somalia, I guess." He said. Well, that was before the Sirens pulled off the Cape-to-Horn offensive, but… reputations still stuck.
"Damned shame," she tsked. "You had some marvelous ships up there. Are your hulls sheathed in steel, or something?"
"They are steel. All the way through."
She smiled. "Now that sounds like a fight."
They fell into silence for a few moments, Royal Fortune suddenly paying a lot more attention to the surface. "There's some blackish stuff up there, looks like. Pitch?"
"Oil."
"Like, olive?"
"No. Would you call it bitumen, maybe?"
"No clue." She shrugged. "What is it, anyway?"
"It's the remains of ancient plants and animals, compressed into a very flammable liquid."
She grinned. "It's dead stuff, then?"
"Very old dead stuff, sure."
"I can work with that." The water around them was stirred by the sudden movement of dozens of tentacles as she felt about. Some reached up, towards the slicks on the surface, while others grabbed for bits and pieces of debris from the battle. "Interesting," she laughed, "very interesting!"
Without their Commander, the Third Fleet was practically decapitated. Sure, things weren't so dependent on one man as to send the entire base screeching to a halt, and there were replacements kept in the wings for exactly this sort of thing, but shipgirls tended to grow attached.
You just wouldn't get the same results with a new Commander. Performance would be pretty abysmal due to grief (unless it was funneled into rage) and it would take months for bonds to re-establish themselves at anywhere near the previous level.
"No," Erebus insisted, "He's not dead. I would have felt him! He's out there!"
"He was thrown off your deck in stormy seas, Erebus. Be reasonable."
"What is reason to my own senses? I know." She insisted.
Normally, they would have asked Erebus' fleetmates to convince her to drop the delusions and fight for the Commander's memory. Unfortunately, she had gotten to them as well, and with that, one of their teams with… 'cohesion' chafed under any new Commander. They were just waiting for the original, apparently, and he was honestly one of the only people who could have led them.
Erebus and her fleet's growing sense of superstition wasn't the only problem that the base's command was facing. They had been experimenting with unmanned drone ships for routine supply deliveries, and while they normally proved quite useful, a bit of a kink had appeared.
One of them had been taken out with incredible swiftness while it was traveling. Logistical problems it caused aside, there was the matter of explaining it. Or rather, how they couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The ship's sensors kept transmitting for a relatively long while, for such an apparently catastrophic attack. Analysis suggested massive crushing, simultaneous collapses across the length of the ship, with many compartments being breached at once.
It was supposed to be fairly routine. A patrol near the port to keep an eye out, so simple that they probably wouldn't need a- a Commander.
Erebus… Erebus trundled. Speed was not one of her blessings, so the entire patrol was slowed. However, they all knew just how much use she had if she got in range. She just filled an unusual niche!
A lesser Commander would have quailed when faced with their motley little crew. A battleship who did her best work without other battleships (or just about anyone, at first) and that used torpedoes; a carrier who thought sending paperwork via bow was a good idea; a vanguard who were…
("Soon, we shall stand triumphant over the world!" Wichita crowed.)
("Sounds like a pain in the ass." Garibaldi grumbled.)
("All the blood and wine in the world?" Vampire smirked…)
Wichita, Vampire, and Garibaldi were all characters. It wasn't that it took a delicate touch, necessarily- Garibaldi was relaxed in a way that drove her sister and many others around the bend, but she wasn't abrasive- just that they were all acquired tastes. Vampire took some particular pleasure in being a bit hard to handle.
They, along with Tirpitz and Wasp, made up their motley little crew. Well, they made up six-sevenths of the crew… None of them were really feeling stellar right now, but a mission served as a fair distraction. You couldn't afford to be lollygagging- it was one of the few times when the Commander wasn't his usual easygoing self.
(And had that seriousness saved him in the end-?)
She shook her head, and tried to focus…
"Mine sonar detects a presence southeasterly, hidden in the depths…" Vampire informed them.
"English, per favore?"
"Submarine," Erebus whispered.
They attempted to prepare depth charges- although Erebus was practically a sitting duck- but the presence moved swiftly, it was hard to track… at least, until the water began to roil before them.
Rising from the bosom of the water was, generously, a ship. Her body was all worn, barnacle-encrusted wood, the gaps covered by piecemeal metal plating or squirming tentacles. A monstrous one curved under the keel, while others pulled cannons from the depths…
One of the tentacles burst, foul blackish blood flying through the air courtesy of an exploding shell. (Erebus' shell, which somehow managed to detonate on the tentacle without screaming straight through.) The ship careened, tentacles scrambling to stop its fall, and she heard a familiar panicked yelp.
A yelp she had last heard in a terribly stormy sea.
Erebus froze, and feeling like something of a fool, cried out. "Commander?"
"Hey! Don't shoot, please!" She recognized that voice, and so did the rest of the fleet. Their guns lowered, the planes turned away from their bombing runs…
And Erebus approached the ship where her Commander waited. The others followed behind, but everyone could tell something… mystical was afoot. This was Erebus' wheelhouse, for all of Vampire's fancy talk.
The ship shifted to accommodate her, a stairwell forming from debris and the tentacles. They had a sickening amount of give as she stepped on them, but she couldn't give up now…
Soon enough, she saw a familiar form, even if it was difficult to see in the dark. The Commander.
"Hey, Erebus. You're looking well."
She hugged him. Proof, proof at last! The slight squish of his waterlogged clothes, the cold flesh she wrapped herself around…
The cold flesh? She froze. "Commander? You're…"
"I've been better." He deadpanned. Perhaps literally…? Up close, she could see he wasn't looking nearly so great.
"Oh, you're one of the lassies he was blabbing on about?" Erebus snapped around to look at this mysterious third voice- one belonging to a ragged-looking shipgirl. She looked the part of a pirate, although she was positively wreathed in tentacles. "I don't appreciate ya blowing one of my tentacles clean off, little miss-"
"She was just scared, that's all." The Commander soothed her. (Erebus didn't like being thought of as some shivering child… but she had fired in a moment of panic.) "Royal, this is Erebus. Erebus, this is Royal Fortune."
"The pirate ship?"
"Aye aye!"
She supposed it made a sort of sense that even a historical ship as old as her could be made into a shipgirl- it's not as if personifying ships was a modern phenomenon.
"Commander, is she… with us?"
He shrugged. "I promised her some adventure for a bit of help."
"And plunder," Royal Fortune reminded him.
"Siren plunder."
"How mercenary, signorina." Giuseppe had arrived. "How was your vacation, Commander?"
"Surprising…" he glanced towards Royal Fortune, who was currently analyzing Giuseppe. "I'm glad to be back."
"You get a week off work and you just want to start back up again. What are we to do with you?"
"Get me home."
"Obbedisco!"
Royal Fortune hummed to herself. "Is she… Genoese?"
"Genoese?"
"Well, I haven't met many Italians, but I just figured…"
"She's Italian. Country got unified in the 1870s." The Commander explained.
"Huh." She blinked. "Well, I suppose politics like that doesn't matter much…. The fighting's still good, ain't it?"
"Oh, we've got all sorts of wonderful toys," Garibaldi confirmed. "How fast can you fire those cannons of yours…?" She and Royal Fortune walked off to the side, talking about weapons or some such, but before Erebus could talk to the Commander, she heard the stomping of boots on wood.
"Commander, your return to my side is long overdue-" She froze upon getting a good look at the Commander. (It was actually quite obvious when he wasn't lurking in the shadows melodramatically.) "You're looking dead, Commander."
"Thanks, Wichita. I figure that's because I am."
"Really?" She smiled fiercely, "Not even death can hold us back now!"
"Cool it a little. I'm not interested in dying again."
"But you got better-"
"I am not feeling better, I'll be honest."
As they talked, someone else crept onto the deck. (Their fleet didn't normally feel this big…) Vampire snuck up to the Commander, curled around him with a practiced motion, and sunk her teeth into the flesh of his neck. For a moment, she drank…
"Ugh!" She cried, pulling back to spit out blackish blood.
"Hello, Vampire. Could you ask permission next time?" She never would, but he still tried.
"Fear not- I doubt there will be a next time."
"Thanks." He deadpanned.
You'd think that the Commander suddenly being a corpse- or at least corpse adjacent- would spook the girls a bit, but their relief at his survival in any form overcame that little hurdle. Why wouldn't they be clingy, after he literally died?
Vampire was a little bummed to have lost her preferred source of blood, and was already trying to smooth-talk Wichita…(Wichita would probably give blood for eternal fealty or something equally melodramatic, but Vampire wouldn't play nicely with that sort of thing.)
Erebus was glad to just soak in his presence as they sailed back home. He was real, he was here, he wasn't lost to the shadow below. Sure, he came on the decks of a strange, strange ship- Royal Fortune, who laughed with Garibaldi and agreed that diplomacy was for chumps- but the Commander was back, in a strange sense.
Tirpitz took her time, but she arrived at the Commander's side, barely saying a thing as she sat down next to him and took his hand in hers. She gave a little squeeze.
"Your hand is… cold."
"Can't help it, Tirpitz."
There was only one of them missing… but Erebus was glad that they weren't all here, getting distracted. The Commander coming back from the dead was certainly something worth getting distracted over, but Wasp keeping watch was certainly reassuring. She could be a bit… odd, but she knew better than most what a surprise attack could do to you.
Fortune was still talking with Garibaldi, but she'd occasionally look up at the skies with confusion.
"A corsair and Corsairs?" Garibaldi chuckled.
"What?"
"Well, you're a corsair, and the planes up there are Corsairs too."
"Those are…" Royal Fortune squinted at the shadows above them, flitting this way and that. "They're not birds?"
"Nope!" Garibaldi popped the 'p', and smiled. "Our friends in the air. Well, these are friendlies."
"I don't think grapeshot would work…" Royal Fortune hummed.
"That's what fleets are for. Someone else can pick up the slack, you know?"
"I suppose so. Do you have articles of agreement or anything like that?"
"What?"
"You know, a pirate's code?"
"We have military regs. Total pain in the ass, of course."
They shared a smirk.
Royal Fortune was, of course, interested in this master of the air who sailed alongside them. She had scrapped across most of the seas that were good for raiding and even observed a few raids on land, but the air? That was new, and she had a certain appreciation for the new. That this Wasp character commanded a wing of Corsairs… well, it was interesting, if nothing else.
Pulling up alongside the carrier was a bit of shock. Good lord, these lassies were big! If size was in fashion for cargo ships… oh, the loot would be unbelievable! And, if Garibaldi was telling the truth, Wasp was the runt of the litter- but even for a runt, she was a monster.
Reaching up with a tentacle- damned useful things, she couldn't believe she had ever lived without 'em- she took hold of something on Wasps' decks. All these modern ships were so… pokey. Lots of metal parts sticking out, pipes and conning towers and supports. Well, she supposed masts and rigging and the whole lot would be pretty confusing for one of these girls…
Unimportant. She hauled herself up to the deck, which was terribly broad. Ships weren't supposed to be like this!
She was so surprised by the scale of it all that she froze. And then there was a shooting pain in one of her tentacles. "Oi!"
"Woops!" Someone, presumably Wasp, laughed. "But didn't someone warn you not to go wandering around on my deck?"
"No! They didn't!"
"Apologies." The woman in question hopped over one of her tentacles at a thinner point and circled around to Royal Fortune. "I'm Wasp, but I hope they told you that, at least?"
"They did. I'm Royal Fortune."
"Oh, I know."
"You do?"
"They told me."
"With… what? It's too dark for flags, and I didn't hear any shouting…"
"Radio. It lets us talk normally from a distance."
Royal Fortune chuckled. "It's a very different ocean, ain't it?"
"Is your… tentacle alright?" Wasp asked, looking at the arrow-shaft sticking out of the tentacle. "You're not supposed to pull out arrows, I know, but this tentacle?"
"Pull it out. Not important, really."
"Thank you." Wasp smiled and retrieved her arrow with a yank, certainly not managing to hide the disgust she felt as slick gore dripped, dripped off. For a moment, she thought to wipe it off, but she didn't exactly have much fabric for that…
She had a quiver attached to her rigging, but the bow… it was remarkable. Royal Fortune was familiar with them, even if they weren't really used much anymore, but this was something new, the ironclad to the early bow's sailing ship. Was there an ounce of wood anywhere?
(New materials, new weapons, new everything.)
"Would you… can you come inside?"
Royal Fortune looked back at her tentacles, and thought about whether or not she really wanted to separate herself from them. From her ship.
"No thanks."
Wasp smiled. "Good. I like it much better out here. The stars, you know?"
"Aye. I suppose it's too much to hope you still navigate by them?"
"No, sadly." Was turned towards her, excitement growing on her face. "Can you teach me?"
"Suppose so… if you help me a little, huh?"
(Royal Fortune did not mooch. It was a fair exchange of goods for a service. Those goods just so happened to be modern sweets.)
The fleet's return was slowed slightly. Royal Fortune was many things, but fast was not one of them. Sure, there was definitely something up with her propulsion- she always, always seemed to have the wind at her back- but sails were sails, and Erebus could, at times, double her pace. In the interest of speed, it was eventually decided that she would cling to the hull of the Wasp like some massive parasite.
Not exactly impressive, but Royal Fortune could appreciate the speed. If she could talk some of the screening ships into piracy- 'convoy raiding' simply didn't have the same romance- then they'd really be cooking…
Of course, the Commander was still off being horrifically sappy with his girls. Royal Fortune thought she had started to get a handle on them: Erebus was broody, but soft and sappy under it; Wasp had her archery and astronomy and very little else; Wichita had high ambition… they were an odd little crew, but better than that a bunch of military hardasses.
They were in touch with other military hardasses, though, ones who were all about rules and regulations and laws. Laws like the dead staying dead, for example. Royal Fortune liked to imagine the expression of the person on the other end when the Commander spoke up, saying he "got better."
Erebus had attempted to ask about that, as had Wichita. How did you do it? Royal Fortune's answer was a truthful "Hell if I know." If her continued survival was the result of someone's work… she'd thank them for the opportunity to sail again. Then slap them upside the head. Three-hundred years!
But those three hundred years bore some spectacular fruit. The port she was pulled into made the little pirate havens she was familiar with seem pathetic. Buildings shimmered with crystal glass and steel, and the docks were full to bursting with ships.
(There were several points where Royal Fortune wondered if she could turn the tables, maybe try to take a prize, and get the hell out before the Commander dragged her into the military. But this… yeah, she'd be cooked.)
There was quite the welcoming party waiting for them upon their return, but unfortunately, this wasn't to facilitate carousing. It took less than a minute for some gal in a nun's habit to run upland spirit them away.
"What happened to you, Commander?"
"Died."
The night was dark. That wouldn't have been enough to scare Erebus- the dark was kind of her thing- but there was a constant, nagging question at the back of her mind. Was this real? Would he disappear like so much vapor?
She just needed to check, to hold a solid hand in hers. It wasn't… strange, or anything!
While the path between their dormitories and the Commander's was familiar to her, the way to the hospital wing was less so. The Commander was something of a medical miracle, after all, and had been stolen away for research.
It was terribly overcast, as if a shroud had been cast over the whole of the island. Other than the winking of aircraft warning lights, the blackness above was total.
When she focused, she could get a few sputtering will o' the wisps going, enough to barely tell the path and the soil apart. She tried to keep from accidentally singing anything, whether the flowers or her hems.
She let them fade as she entered the base's hospital, although they already seemed faint in that bold, artificial light.
"Good evening, Jervis."
"Erebus. Your Commander is fifth on the right. Sleeping like the dead."
Was that…? Jervis didn't seem the sort to make a joke like that. Accidental, then? Erebus nodded appreciatively anyway and went on her way.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of an obstacle in her way. A piractical obstacle.
"Evenin'," she smiled. "Little late, isn't it?"
"I needed to see the Commander. Urgently."
"At this time of night, all by your lonesome?"
"Yes."
Royal Fortune grinned, "I'm afraid he'll be a bit of a dead fish, if you catch my drift…"
"I would never engage in such… licentiousness!"
"No kidding. You just used the word 'licentiousness'." She smirked and gave Erebus a gentle push towards the Commander's door. "Go get him."
If you've ever wondered where "gadzooks" comes from, it's a minced oath version of God's hooks- that is, the nails with which Christ was crucified.
Also, is there any specific reason for Wakatsuki's relation to sparrows/swallow? If there's something concrete I might explore Royal Fortune and this little Japanese Swallow. After all, it was a Swallow who brought Black Bart down.