Queen of the Bay

1.1:

Trent 1-A

Brockton Bay
3 November 2016

It had not been easy to be black for the past few years in Brockton Bay. And that was even before the fucking Queen had taken over. Between the fucking racist Nazis on one side led by a Hitler wannabe, the fucking Asian kamikaze nutjobs led by a goddamn rage dragon on the other, and the fucking druggie scumbuckets led by even worse scumbuckets—Trent Halloway had somehow managed to navigate the ever treacherous and ever shifting shitscape of the Bay without getting himself lynched, beaten, and forcibly turned into a drug addict. Somehow.

Of course, not even he could escape the fucking capes. As luck would have it, Trent had fallen into the more saner groups. And considering that his employers cosplayed as video game characters—that was saying something.

As it was, Trent just told himself it was a job—true the hours were a bit odd and so were the uniforms; but Trent decided it wasn't that much worse that the graveyard shift at some fast food joint. And on the whole, Uber and L33t actually treated him and the boys decent. The pay sometimes fluctuated erratically but they weren't racist assholes, didn't deal drugs, and weren't the types to stick a bomb in your skull—which made them fucking saints compared the rest of the fucking capes in the Bay.

Things had improved somewhat. Lung was gone and the ABB had splintered up and the Nazi wannabes were a pale shadow of their former selves. The Merchies were still lurking under some convenient slime molds but weren't quite as aggressive as they used to be ever since this new bunch of fuckers had risen to prominence and were now calling the shots in the Bay and were busy snapping up all of the warm bodies they could.

Not only was the pay a fuck ton better than Uber and L33t's but the way that they were gobbling up land, there was a good chance you could find yourself running a sizeable territory, being not a henchman but well a lieutenant or maybe something more. Two of his long-time friends and fellow henchies, Nixon and Johnny J. had bailed and jumped onto the Warlords' ship. Nix had already been promoted to some sort of manager post and had already offered Trent a cushy slot with a regular salary and free medical. Trent had said no.

Part of it was that he wasn't interested in being a lieutenant or whatever crap. Another part was the fact that Uber and L33t had been good to him when the going was rough, they hadn't bailed on him. Sure they were a bit goofy at times and loved their video gaming way too much, but they didn't scare him as some of the other fucking capes did.

And they wouldn't fucking kill you if some shit happened and the caper was blown. The worst that Uber and L33t had done was break Veeko's legs and threw him out of the gang. And since Veek had been ripping off all of them by skimming, Trent wouldn't say that he didn't have it fucking coming.

Shit, Trent had heard one skinhead had tried ripping off Kaiser and Kaiser had the idiot crucified and got to watch as the friend who recommended him to the E88 and the poor fucker's family members got slowly flayed alive before Kaiser got around to finally ritually disemboweling the guy. Trent usually didn't have much pity for Nazis, but that was some seriously twisted crap. And that was nothing compared to what Marquis used to do according to some of stories told by the old timers.

About the only good thing about the fact that Nix and Johnny J. leaving was that it left more for the rest for Trent and the others to split. But even that well was drying up and Uber and L33t were running out work and cash with the Warlords in charge of the Bay now.

But this? Trent couldn't believe that they were fucking running security. Maybe instead of criminal henchmen, he should go apply to be a night watchman or some shit. He hefted the laser rifle and tried not to stare at the duct tape holding the piece of shit plastic housing together. L33t had sworn that it wouldn't blow up on him, but still … this was L33t. He quietly prayed he wouldn't have to actually use the fucking deathray … and that it wouldn't do anything like irradiate his nuts and make him fucking sterile like Manny.

He also didn't like the fact that they were working for the Merchies. More like he fucking hated it. Trent loathed druggies. His mother became a fucking cokehead and he had seen first hand just what the fucking drugs did to her as a kid. Days when she didn't even know who the fuck he was, days when she was shrieking and clawing at her skin 'cause she was withdrawing, weeks where she fucking vanished, finding their stuff missing because she had to sell it to get her next fix, or finding out she was selling herself for another hit. They hadn't heard from her for over a year before his old man finally got a call from the fucking coroner that she had finally killed herself by OD'ing. Neither he nor Trent could even ID the corpse as the cops hadn't found her decaying body until a month after she had croaked.

Trent had a number of vices. He liked greasy food, played poker a little too much, lost a bundle on the ponies, stolen goods, aided and abetted, and even visited a few ladies of affordable affections. But one vice he lacked was doing drugs. Hell, he didn't even smoke or drink heavily.

Any desire to experiment or indulge had been pretty much sapped out of him thanks to dear ol' Mom. So in some fucked up way, she did something right.

To alleviate his annoyance and boredom, he strode down the dock, his eyes tracking back and forth over the brackish black waters of the Bay as he gingerly carried L33t's weapon as far as he could from his body. It was fucking awkward but he vowed to use the thing only as a weapon of last resort. His headset crackled with static and Uber's voice came on. "Heads up people. Cap'n Crab's here."

Trent heard a bunch of acknowledgments even as he saw out in the black waters of the Bay, something bubbling and frothing before a huge spike erupted from the water. Followed by other spiny protrusions as the gigantic thing sluiced up from under the water. It was some unholy amalgamation between a lobster and a submarine which meant some fucking weird cape shit; Trent felt his skin crawling as it trundled forward through the water, settling up against the dock. He tightened his grip on his now comforting laser rifle as a section of hull peeled off, revealing some sort of fleshy inside with pulsing veins even as a gangplank extended itself.

Up until that point, the strange watercraft had been the weirdest thing around. Then he came looming out of the insides.

Trent had seen a lot of weird shit but he had to admit that Cap'n Crab ranked right up there. It wasn't his name—Uber had warned all of them against calling the man-crustacean thing that—but it sure did fucking fit him. Lord, he looked like the fucking love child between a crab and a brick wall.

Nearly seven feet tall, he was tatted up as a fucking pirate complete with a hat tilted a jaunty angle although instead of a hook for a replacement left hand—he had a giant claw. A real crab's claw. That wasn't even counting the dull red scaly carapace that was visible instead of plain skin and a pair of eyestalks that wiggled independently of one another, and a set of mandibles instead of lips. Barbs and spiny protrusions studded his face in a bizarre mockery of human hair. He was built too. Well, Trent wasn't sure if it was muscles or armored shell or what—but the closest thing he had ever seen to Cap'n Crab was one of those Wards, Browbeat who made bodybuilders look wimpy with his bizarre, grossly over muscled body that looked like the kid had been overusing steroids.

He shambled forward, his eyestalks rotated around and his mandibles clicked open and shut.

"Uber. L33t," he growled in a profound accented bass at Trent's rapidly approaching bosses. He idly wondered if the accent was a result of Crab's country of origin or if the weird-ass transformation into this humanoid crustacean had altered his vocal cords.

"Where are de Merchants?" the giant crab-thing demanded, his left claw flexing open and closed clearly angered.

"Ah, Commodore Jones!" Uber said cheerfully and tried diplomacy, "A minor delay—"

"Those fuckin' dopeheads are wasted aren't dey!" the self-titled Commodore Davy Jones roared, spittle flying from his mandibles and he slammed his clawed hand on a piece of piling that instantly splintered into pulp.

"I'm sure that it was some sort unavoidable—" Uber tried to soothe.

"BULLSHIT!" Jones bellowed.

Trent had to admit that he was probably right. Junkies tended to have a fairly elastic sense of time. He tuned back to the conversation which had continued without him.

"—wastin' me bloody time!" Jones continued to rant. "I'm not going to hang out in dis miserable pissant of a town for the likes of Skidmark and his whores to come outta of their druggie coma! Should dump his fuckin' cargo into the Bay!"

Jones continued to shout and curse while Uber did his level best to soothe the grouchy crustacean. It was a little over half an hour later before the Merchants finally came chugging up in their monster truck hauling a gigantic enclosed trailer with a gigantic crane attached to it as an afterthought. Fortunately it was before Davy Jones could make good on his threat to reenact the Boston Tea Party with whatever vile concoctions with the Merchies had shipped in and turn the surviving sealife of the Bay into drug addicts.

Jones broke off cursing out Uber with a growl, refocusing his ire on the tardy Merchants.

Uber sagged in relief. "So not getting paid enough for this shit," Trent heard him mutter.

Skidmark and Mush came swaggering up. I winced as Mush passed my position by a good couple of feet and the overpowering stench hit me like a good shot to my nose. It was an effort not to gag as I tried to breathe through my mouth and will my nostrils to shut down rather than openly pinching my nose shut to ward off the stink. I could swear my nose hairs were shriveling up and dying.

Ironically, for all of his barely human body shape; Davy Jones actually smelled better than Skidmark and his posse who were not only human garbage—were about as fragrant too. It helped that Jones' clothing was stain free, unripped, and probably he either changed or washed it on a regular basis; unlike the shining examples of 'humanity' that the Merchies represented.

It said something—and nothing too impressive that if Trent were given a choice between hanging out with Jones and the Merchies, Davy Jones would win hands—er, claws down every single time.

Skidmark beamed, "Admiral! What's happenin' my brother?" he barked out cheerfully boisterous.

"Yer late." Davy Jones sneered, his claw flexing as he seemed to be giving Skidmark's neck the beady eyeball. Trent got the impression that Jones was contemplating using his claw to pop off the head of the human excrement like a can of Mountain Dew.

"Hadda take a quick detour 'round some cops your Admiralship. Didn't want nuthin' screwing up our meet ya'know," Skidmark said with a leer and a wink. It sounded reasonable. Could even be the truth. Not that Trent really believed it.

Something that Jones shared as he made a dismissive grunt that sounded that he believed Skidmark as much as he believed pigs flew with little teeny tiny wings.

The gigantic lobster-marine unfolded its rear carapace, revealing stacks and stacks of cubes swathed in thick plastic held in it's back cargo hold.

"Hurry up and unload yer damn cargo. I'm runnin' behind schedule," Jones snapped as he pulled out something like a pocketwatch attached to a chain, snapping it open to study it. Whatever it was displaying however was not a bunch of numbers, but rather some sort of tidal chart if Trent was any judge.

Skids shrugged and began yelling for his crew to begin offloading his precious drugs. For a bunch of strung out addicts, Trent had to admit that they were fairly quick as they used a combination of the crane and human labor. Not that efficient though, he had seen the Dockworkers Union working a couple of times—and the cursing crane operator was obviously a novice with it's constant fits of starts and stops and jerking; but the Merchants threw a lot of manpower at the job by forming a human chain gang to ferry off their cargo. Probably because they would be getting a free sample, Trent thought sourly.

Trent winced a bit as Davy Jones strode up and took a position practically next to him, clearly bored and idly watching the Merchant scum offload the cargo from his ship. He eyed Jones out of the corner of his eye as the half-crab man played with his tidal pocketwatch, snapping it open and closed like a nervous tick. Every now and then, he would examine the changing icons and shake his head in disgust. "Fuckin' late crackheads. Shoulda charged 'em more," he muttered, tapping the glass face of the watch with the tip of his claw.

It was nearly an hour later and Trent estimated that they were about 80 percent finished when he heard static pop on his earpiece. "SHIT! Cape incoming!"

Trent stiffened, feeling his hands tightening around his laser rifle as he heard a high-pitched drone that seemed to vibrate into his very bones. Jones reacted at the same time, his non-claw hand pulling out some sort of bizarre pistol that looked half-flintlock and half-clam. "Whut's that!" he snarled, glaring at Trent suspiciously and clearly suspecting him of some sort of double-cross.

Since Davy Jones was close enough to reach out and squeeze (literally) some answers out of him, Trent hastily shifted his rifle so it's barrel wasn't aimed anywhere near Jones and hastily reported, "Inbound cape!"

He struggled to parse through the sudden chaos of voices over the comm channel. The thrumming sound increasing in pitch and intensity and he heard others beginning to panic over the comms and the Merchants were dawning to the audible threat as well, starting to run around in fear and confusion. The sound was rather familiar to Brockton natives and not a good one to hear.

The Queen, his mind gibbered in stark terror. Not the Queen. Please not the First and Fiercest of the Warlords. Not the most terrifying of them all. Oh God, not her! Anyone BUT her!

TO BE CONTINUED…

A/N: Trent Halloway and Davy Jones are completely OC characters by the way. I admit that I got a bit of inspiration for the good Commodore from Bill Nighy and his performance of the legendary sea pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.