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Post by Tout-Perd on Apr 12, 2016 17:03:11 GMT -5
Didn’t bounded to her feet, and raised a hand in greeting to the serpent.
“Hi, Pilli, it’s great to meet you!” She attempted to touch the immense snake. Its glassy eyes went distant for a moment much like Harlock’s had, but it quickly regained focus. Xochipilli reared back, avoiding the girl’s touch. It twisted around Ari’s shoulders, quickly slithering around to put the deckhand between himself and Didn’t.
“Aw, he doesn’t like me...” Didn’t took a step back, crestfallen. She bit her lip, “I mean, you did say he was shy, but maybe he’ll warm up to me?”
Xochipilli, for his part, wound tighter around Ari’s arm, loose enough not to harm their dearest companion, but obviously unsettled. He kept his head level, warily eyeing her as if preparing to flee.
It was then that a nasty grinding crunch came from belowdeck. The entire ship rocked to the starboard, throwing people from their feet and sending boxes scraping across the deck. Didn’t bounced and rolled, slamming into the wooden rail hard. She slumped to the deck with a wheezing gasp, the wind knocked clear out of her.
As the more surefooted of the sailors clambered up from where they’d been flung, they saw a huge shadow beneath the waves, almost as long as the Shahrazad itself. The bulky aquatic beast turned away, plunging deeper beneath the surface. The leviathan flipped its sinuous tail, the fin shining a silvery grey as it broke the surface and doused the deck in a spray of salt water.
A moment later, it had vanished back into the depths, leaving the boat still rocking from the aftershocks of their collision.
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addison
Citizen of the Archipelago
I'm gonna bumble around for a while.
Posts: 24
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Post by addison on Apr 15, 2016 9:58:46 GMT -5
Ari sprung into action, too occupied by the sudden threat to the ship to notice the disturbance between Xochipilli and Didn't.
"Go get the captain, first mate." Though Ari was technically the first mate of the Shahrazad, Pleiades was Ari's first mate, and the nickname had stuck.
While some of the other passengers were still clambering up, Ari was bounding towards the bow of the ship with Pilli winding alongside. They acted almost as one unit. At the front of the ship, Ari had flung open a dry box and was weaving slip knot after slip knot to the ends of five harpoons and corresponding floats. Taking the weapons, Ari climbed up and out onto the Shahrazad's draconic bowsprit. Pilli followed and kept Ari's bare ankles anchored to the ship, and the lines to the floats from tangling.
"I didn't get a good look at the size, and it might have just moved on, but just in case..." Ari's eyes roved the waves, "Plus, I bet we look pretty cool, huh Pilli?" They asked without ever looking up from the ocean.
Putting impressing people aside, Ari's first mission was to keep the Shahrazad and her occupants safe.
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Post by Loogs on May 7, 2016 2:05:17 GMT -5
Hector charged out from below deck, a large harpoon gun decorated with embellishments similar to his Tiamat Blade in his hands, and a coil of rope around his arm. “CAPRICORN!” he shouted as he stormed over and looked over the railing, eyes scanning the water for any sign of the beastly threat.
Pleiades, though a bit startled, nodded and gathered the houseguests and the dog, rushing them toward the hatch. “Come on, we gotta get inside!” Aboard the Shahrazad, ‘Capricorn’ was code for a possible sea creature attack, and it was the cue for Ari and Pleiades to implement safety protocols while Hector went to engage the threat directly.
Hector quickly glanced over his shoulder at Ari. “You’re taking the forecastle?” Ari nodded dutifully. “Cool, I’ll take the quarterdeck then.” He took his position, and tied a safety line for himself around the mizzenmast. Once he was secured to the boat, he lifted his harpoon gun and pointed it at the water, ready to pull the trigger at the slightest splash of a tail.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Aug 4, 2016 15:40:49 GMT -5
Didn’t scrabbled to her feet. She paused to thoughtfully rub at a forming bruise on her lower back, wincing at the touch. Nothing broken, but she would probably be sore for- Well, until she wasn’t? Her musings were interrupted by the ship lurching forward with a loud crunch, like somebody had slammed on the brakes. Didn’t caught herself, taking a sturdy grip of the railing and a wide stance.
”It’s going after the keel!” One of the sailors called out. Hector- No, Sam, maybe? His voice carried a note of panicked protectiveness, like a man whose home was about to burn down.
It seemed like the crew were old hands at dealing with monster attacks, but Didn’t wasn’t going to let their hospitality go unreciprocated. When a sea serpent goes after your host, it was just good manners that you lent a hand. Like helping clean up the dishes after dinner.
“Let’s do this!” Didn’t reached under the back of her swimsuit top, and produced what appeared to be a toy magic wand with a clear sparkly star at its tip. She took the trinket in both hands, and raised it grimly until it was level with her eyes. With a flick of her thumb, Didn’t switched the device on. The star began glowing, and tinny, canned music began playing.
As a rendition of “Bippity-Boppity-Boo” that was just enough notes off to avoid copyright infringement chimed along, Didn’t switched her grip to a single hand, and began twirling the wand. The light from the star seemingly lingered in the air, forming a glowing cerulean wake. She began running along the deck, ducking past Hector and Ari, leaving a contrail behind her. Didn’t drew near the bow, and took a deep breath as she approached… This was going to be risky.
Didn’t bounded up onto the railing with a spin, and stumbled, teetering directly over the jaws of the gigantic fish below her. As she flailed her arms, she managed to grab hold of the trail of light her wand had left, as solid as a rock. Didn’t steadied herself against it, and took a deep breath. Tucking the wand away again, she clambered up onto the luminous platform she’d conjured.
Don’t think about the fact that there’s no boat beneath you, that if you fall, you’re going to get eaten… Didn’t steadied herself on her precarious perch, and looked down at their attacker. It was a mammoth fish, easily longer and thicker than a schoolbus. Instead of the more typical fish anatomy, it had a long sinuous body lined with a single fin, above and below, like a colossal eel. The leviathan’s most distinctive trait however, was the solid bony armor plating that covered its head. The bone formed a cowl, sweeping forward from its gills and forming into a set of jaws resembling nothing more than an organic beartrap. The beast shifted and bit down again with an immense crunch, as the wood began splintering from its assault.
The girl untied her yo-yo with one hand. She closed one eye, then the other, trying to get an exact read on the distance between herself and the sea monster. Didn’t flicked her wrist, the yo-yo zipping down and then snapping back into her grasp.
No need for a shout, it would only take a thought- Didn’t lashed out towards the monster, the yo-yo’s cord far too short.
Overdrive. The whirling cylinder instantly ballooned in size, its string exploding into a thick rope, and the yo-yo itself surging to the size of a millstone. It hit the waves with a hiss, showering the deck in seawater. The immense projectile plowed into the leviathan and sent a visible shockwave through the water.
The fish rolled away, its mask of bone marred with a large crack. It snapped it jaws ferociously, and lashed its tail, circling to find another angle of attack.
“It’s clear! Take the shot!” Didn’t snapped the yo-yo back into her grasp, already having dwindled it back to its normal size.
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Post by Loogs on Aug 5, 2016 2:44:42 GMT -5
Hector was caught off guard by the gargantuan, flail-like weapon striking the leviathan’s armored head. Who could be— He turned around and spotted Didn’t swinging her yo-yo around the boat. She was shouting at him to make an attack, but Hector deferred the attack of opportunity to address the more pressing matter of the child who was now squarely in harm’s way. “Kid, what are you doing out here?! Get back inside, it’s too dangerous for—“
He came to regret taking his eyes off the aquatic beast when its tail slammed into the Shahrazad’s hull and sent him tumbling across the deck and hanging off the side of the boat by his lifeline. A rushing wave of water generated by the assault forced its way into his breathing passages, the salt of the ocean scraping against his throat as he clambered back aboard the ship and hacked out the water from his lungs.
Hector noticed his rope fraying in the middle from the sheer force of him being flung out of the boat. Another attack like that and the Shahrazad might actually capsize, taking everybody down with it. Close call. This is bad. I’m not gonna take any chances. The Tiamat harpoon gun started glowing in his hands, the divine power of the ancient artifact quickly spreading into his body. The blood red aura washed over his skin and lingered for a moment, before crackling violently and causing his skin to erupt and ossify into layered, lustrous crimson scales harder than diamond. Hector felt the changes racking his body and let out a strangled howl as he felt parallel slits carve into either side of his neck, gills forming within them. Fins protruded from his limbs, his back, and the sides of his torso, and his extremities became elongated, a thin membrane of webbing forming between his fingers and toes.
Aaah. I’ve done that for years now, and it never gets any less painful. Just as he regained his composure from the intense transformation, Hector spotted a monstrous dorsal fin slicing through the surface of the water from the corner of his glassy, iridescent eye and trained his weapon on it. “Ari, heads up! It’s skimming the port side!”
Ari dashed over to the left with a harpoon in hand ready to launch. His deckhand was accounted for, but where was… “DIDN’T!” Hector scanned in every direction looking for any sign of the girl, but to his horror, she had vanished without a trace.
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Below the deck, Halley, Lorenna, and Pleiades were huddled together in the shelter of the common room, clinging to the large sofa securely anchored to the ground. They felt an impact and the boat rolled to the side sending books and other objects flying off the shelves. Outside, the roar of the tumultuous waves reverberated in everyone’s ears. “Kiddo, are you sure we’re gonna be alright?” Halley squawked, gripping the armrest tightly and glancing over to Pleiades with a terrified expression on her face. Underneath the table in front of them, Harlock was trembling and whimpering with his paws over his face and his tail tucked firmly in between his legs.
“Yeah, my dad deals with this all the time.” Slightly less fazed, Pleiades pointed at the wall across from where they were seated. Flanked by a framed tempera painting of a fjord landscape (signed Pleiades, August 2013, Tromsø, Norway) and an Icelandic flag, a large orca skull hung stark and intimidating with runes carved into the bone in two straight lines down the center. “He said that skull is a good luck charm from a really powerful wizard and it keeps us safe from monsters.” Well, it was supposed to, at least. For years the talisman had been working as her father had promised it would, but in the heat of the moment Pleiades always feared that this time it wouldn’t be enough to stop the boat from sinking.
They heard a loud banging sound as the leviathan struck the boat again, followed by a cracking sound that made Pleiades’s stomach drop. It was the sound of wood splintering, one she was very familiar with—Dad’s kind of clumsy, he’s always punching holes in the wall accidentally with his elbow or banging his head on tables while retrieving a stray toy from underneath—but this was much louder than her father’s usual maladroit antics. Harlock yelped, barreled out from under the table, and leaped onto Pleiades’s lap. She wrapped her arms tight around the dog and buried her face in his wooly coat of fur. I hope Dad and Ari are going to be okay…
“There’s gotta be something we can do to help!” Halley looked around the room for a weapon or something that could be used as one, but she knew that against a creature of such size and magnitude, she would be more of a liability than anything. Wait a second…! Suddenly struck with an idea, Halley plunged her hands into her messenger bag and began feeling around for something. She first pulled out an ornately carved wooden clock. Nah, that’s not gonna work. She shoved it back into her bag, and swapped it for a very expensive diamond-encrusted bottle of cognac aged several hundreds of years to perfection. Wolfgang’s gonna kill me if anything happens to this thing. Gingerly, Halley returned it to the bag’s bottomless confines and fished out another object. This time, her hand was grasping a palm-sized, polished bronze disc, something resembling a Roman numeral two etched into its surface, attached to a long chain.
The hell? I don’t remember accepting this for a delivery… Halley remained fixated on the trinket for a few seconds. This one of Fascere’s doodads? Did they forget to grab it outta here before they gave me this bag or somethin’? She set it aside inside her pocket and continued her search for something useful to go out and help with. At last she procured, with some difficulty, what appeared to be a very large tranquilizer gun.
“Oh hell yeah, now we’re talkin’.” Halley examined the gun further, to figure out how to fire it. The guys at Ruby Hydra said this thing was for huntin’ BIG big game like dragons and gryphons and shit… Their client’s not gonna be too thrilled when they get their shipment and they realize all the ammo’s gone… Fuck it, I’ll figure somethin’ out later. She pulled out a few tranquilzer darts; the barrel was the size of a tall energy drink can and the needle akin to a rail spike. Halley shook the dart, watching the fluid inside slosh around in the glass tube. It definitely looked like the kind of thing that could kiss a sea serpent goodnight.
She started loading the gun and turned to Pleiades, who had been wondering what exactly Halley had in mind. “I’m goin’ out to lend your pops a hand.”
“Halley, no! You’re gonna d—“ Before Pleiades could stop her, Halley scrambled out the door with the heavy tranquilizer gun slung over her scrawny shoulder. She was about to run after her but instead lost her footing and grabbed the table to catch herself as the boat staggered abruptly. Pleiades heard a dull thud and a clamor from the hallway, accompanied by an “I’M FINE!” and a rapid stomping growing more distant until she could barely hear the sound of the hatch door squeaking open.
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addison
Citizen of the Archipelago
I'm gonna bumble around for a while.
Posts: 24
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Post by addison on Sept 17, 2016 18:21:48 GMT -5
Ari had stood shocked for a moment at Didn’t’s stunt until the captain’s warped commands rose over the Sharhazad’s railings. He must have transformed when he went over. In which case, he would be all right. A splash moments later, told the first mate that Didn’t was, in fact, NOT all right. Unless the child had some other fantastical tricks up her sleeve.
“Shit!” Ari was already on the other side of the ship, “Pilli, get Didn’t.”
There was a hiss of resistance. Xochipilli had not enjoyed his first encounter with the new passenger. She made his head foggy, and interrupted his bond with Ari, who could just as easily sense these thoughts.
‘That's strange... but she hasn’t done us any harm. In fact, she’s only tried to help. She is a passenger of the Sharhazad. Please, go!’ Pilli acquiesced at Ari’s mental urging and parted ways to slip over the side of the ship, and plummet inelegantly into the foaming sea. There was a buzz in Ari’s mind where Pilli’s connection resided as the snake approached Didn't. Very interesting, but there was no time to waste.
That was one thing taken care of.
Ari looked off the port and saw the leviathan flanking the Sharhazad for another strike, just as the Captain had said. It was a formidable creature. The floats were still attached to the harpoon ropes, but Ari wasn’t sure if they would be enough. No time like the present to find out. Ari coiled up and raised the harpoon to strike as the beast swam into range.
They had just begun to feel that frozen moment of calm that settled into their body before the strike when the hatch to below decks slammed open. The tattooed woman came clambering out. Halley was her name, if Ari remembered correctly. It was enough of a distraction for the fish to slam back into the Sharhazad, nearly causing Ari to be bucked over board, and sending Halley onto her side. Something went spinning across the deck from her hands.
There was another ominous creak from the ship that set Ari’s teeth on edge. “Get back below deck! I’m not a damn babysitter!” Ari vented across to the prone Halley.
Ari’s command went ignored as Halley scrambled back up and after whatever it was she had dropped in the collision.
There was a large splash of water about fifteen meters off the port. The fish had circled back out for yet another strike, and Hector was no doubt doing his best out there.
Halley had found whatever it was she was looking for. She stood up holding a strange looking handgun, “Just trying to help!”
It took Ari a moment to realize what the gun truly was. Ari had seen few tranquilizer guns, and never one like that. It didn’t matter, because Halley was right. It was help, and Ari knew exactly what to do, “Stay there!”
Ari slapped a large hook from their belt onto the end of the rope in favor of the harpoon, gave it a couple of powerful preparatory swings and then cast it high into the rigging of the Sharhazad. The hook caught effortlessly on the gaff of the main mast. They coiled up once more, this time into the rope, and launched off across the main deck in a wide arc. They prayed Halley was a decent shot.
Since making it topside, Halley’s emotions had ranged from panicked, to relieved, to confusion, and finally over to disbelief in a matter of moments, but she stayed put, “What are you do-? Oh no! Oh hell no!”
The dismayed courier was swept off of her feet into Ari’s free arm. They were flying back across the deck, “You wanted to help. Get ready to fire that thing.”
Still a tad shocked, Halley fumbled with the tranquilizer, unsure of how to fire it while swinging through the air in someone’s arm.
Ari gripped the railing with their toes to give another mighty push that sent them swinging out over turbulent water. Halley gaped at the monstrous creature that was closing rapidly on the Sharhazad and the mutated Hector clinging madly to it. Missing this thing would be like missing the broad side of a barn. At the apex of their swing, Halley fired at the beast beginning to crest out of the waves while trying not to imagine it jumping and swallowing them out of the air like mosquitos over a pond, or worse yet, hitting Hector with this thing!
The two had no idea whether the tranquilizer had found its mark. They had been sent in an ear ringing wild spin back to the deck the moment Halley had pulled the trigger.
Ari let go of Halley the moment they were back over the deck. The tumble across the deck shattered the numb pricks across her limp firing arm. Halley screamed. It was very much dislocated.
Across the deck Ari had simultaneously skidded and crashed to a stop still clutching the rope. They hauled themself up and ran back over to Halley, "Are you okay?!"
"My shoulder." Halley gritted out
Ari breathed a fraction of relief. Dislocated shoulders was something they could handle. All that time swinging around on ropes, Ari knew all about dislocated shoulders, "Take a deep breath. I'm going to set it quickly."
Halley's eye were wide with fear and pain, but she began to suck in air. There was the sickening sound of bones locking back into place. Halley's consciousness began to fade; the adrenaline fighting with the pain.
Ari continued to keep Halley stabilized, only able to hold their breath and wait for either the fish to strike again, or Xochipilli and Didn't to reappear safely.
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