Season 1, Episode 7: Here
Ye Be Pirates
Part 5 of 8
Nick,
Jay, and Emerald had finally boarded the Kraken and were searching for the
control room of the ship. They
eventually came upon a large room, packed with monitoring equipment being
operated by several muscular men dressed as pirates. One man walked around the room and
occasionally glanced at the screens being watched by his subordinates.
Nick
and Jay stood on one side of the doorway, while Emerald stood on the other, as
they peered into the room to observe the surroundings before deciding on a
further plan of action.
Suddenly,
one of the machines beeped, and the pirate sitting behind it typed feverishly
for a few seconds. “SHIP HO!” he
screamed.
“Will
you please stop talking like that
while we’re on the ship?” the head pirate said, hitting the other one over the
head. “You sound like an idiot.”
“Sorry,
sir,” the other pirate said sheepishly, clearing his throat. “There’s a ship approximately half a mile
away, sir. It’s not a cruise ship, but I
really think you should take a look at this one.”
“Is that
a… ferret on their flag?!” the head pirate exclaimed, getting as close to the screen
as he could to view the flag flying from the topmost mast of the ship.
“That’s
what it looks like…” the other pirate replied, typing and clicking again until
the ship was in better view on a bigger screen mounted on the far end of the room.
All of the pirates in the room were now
looking at the larger screen. “It looks
like it’s loaded with some pretty sophisticated weapons.”
The
head pirate nodded. “A ship like that
could really help our operation.”
“Aye,”
another pirate said, “and a ship that fine should be flyin’ the Jolly Roger!” He scoffed. “The captain of that ship must be one
landlubbin’, barnacle-brained sea monkey to be sailin’ under a ferret flag.”
The
head pirate put his head in his hand and sighed, annoyed, once again, with the
pirate-speak. He walked closer to the
big screen and kept his gaze on the ship being watched. “You, you, and you – alert the rest of the
crew that we’re preparing to board another ship, but make sure they don’t load
any torpedoes. This one’s for keeps.”
The
pirates who were pointed to simply nodded and left to alert their crewmates,
while the others remained behind to continue their surveillance. Jay, Emerald, and Nick immediately moved away
from the doors and pretended to be walking by as the pirates approached them.
“Hey,
you three!” one of the pirates called, as the agents began to walk in the
opposite direction. “Gear up, we’re
going topside to raid another ship.” Jay,
Emerald, and Nick nodded and turned around again, walking around the corner and
waiting until the pirates were out of sight.
“You
heard them, we’re going topside…” Jay said, as they once again stood outside
the surveillance room door.
“Finally,
something to do besides sitting around…” Emerald said.
Ten
minutes later, they were standing among the crowd of pirates, waiting for the
Kraken to dock alongside their target ship.
The pirates had armed themselves with swords, antique pistols, and
bayonets. The Kraken jolted slightly as
the tentacles attached to the side of the ship and propelled them upwards until
the mouth of the Kraken was level with the top deck. Emerald looked out one of the large windows
and saw the words THE JOLLY TWITCHES painted in black lettering.
The
door opened with a quiet, mechanical hiss, and the pirates stepped out, ready
to scare and raid the tourists they thought were on board.
What
they found were about two dozen men, also dressed as pirates, also angry, and
also ready to fight. The pirates drew
their swords and raised their pistols, screaming as they charged at the ship’s
crew, who also pulled out weapons and screamed as they fought.
Nick,
Jay, and Emerald, figuring they should probably do something to at least look like they fit in with one side or the
other, joined the fight and swung at, hit, kicked, and stabbed anyone who came
at them.
As
Nick punched a pirate in the face, he realized he recognized some of the men he
was knocking out. He grabbed one of them
by the collar and lifted him up off his feet.
“Hey, I know you! Didn’t we sing
a musical number together at Disney World a few months ago?”
The
scrawny man nodded, and Nick threw him overboard, before charging at another
pirate and kicking him in the stomach.
“Carter!”
Emerald shouted, as she knocked one of the pirates over the head with his own
pistol. “Quit socializing with the
pirates!”
“But
I’m setting up a blind date for you, Em!” Nick replied as he ducked, letting
two pirates collide with each other as they tried to charge at him at the same
time. The scrawny pirate had given Nick
all the confirmation he needed to know that the ship they were on was being
operated by FANS.
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Meanwhile,
Dr. Rough watched the scene from his place on the upper deck at the stern of
the ship. He grinned, his eye twitching
with excitement, while he watched his minions fight the very pirates he’d been
planning to capture.
Although
it looked as though his plan was out of sorts because of this new development,
he couldn’t have been more satisfied with it.
Now his faithful minions would subdue the pirates, and he could not only
take over their ship, but imprison them in his servitude.
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Nick
looked up at the poop deck, where there stood a short, yet fearsome man.
Dr.
Rough.
His
presence meant FANS had come to try to get in on this plan. FANS...
That meant Drums was there.
Nick’s jaw set in determination.
He now knew his next move.
He
had to find Drums.
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±
In
the midst of the mayhem, Agent Jay looked up.
He looked past the crew of aspiring pirates who had swarmed the deck,
brandishing swords, daggers, and cutlasses.
He looked through the legions of FANS minions who had engaged the former
in novice swordplay with weapons of their own.
He looked beyond it all, and his eyes fixed upon the man who was
swaggering down from the poop deck.
The
high heels of the man’s meticulously-polished boots clacked loudly against the
wooden steps, making him appear taller than Jay knew he really was. He wore a flamboyant waistcoat made of purple
velvet and a wide-brimmed hat adorned with an oversized plume, which flopped in
front of his face as he walked.
The
face beneath the hat was familiar to Jay.
It was the face that had stared up at him from the pages of the FANS
file Nick had recovered in
He’d
gone by Howie back then, back when he’d tried to pass off his ever-present eye
twitch as a charming wink before the ladies, and his only other nickname had
been “Sweet D.” Said ladies would have
laughed at the suggestion that there was anything “rough” about their Sweet D.
But
now Jay looked into that face and saw nothing sweet about it. The dark eyes blazed, the left one twitching with
ferocity. The smile was a twisted
sneer. Jay had heard about K’s and
Carter’s encounter with Dr. Rough at Disney World, and now, coming face to face
with the man for the first time in more than six years, he could see that they
had been right about his madness.
He
felt the sudden compulsion to turn and walk in the other direction, to lose
himself in the pirate brawl and leave “Dr. Rough” for someone else to
duel. But he knew he couldn’t turn away. There was going to be a fight, and the fight
was his. He knew Howie’s strengths, his
weaknesses, better than anyone else on the ship. Someone had to stop him. And whether he wanted it to be or not, that
someone had to be him.
Adjusting
the three-cornered hat atop his head, Jay squared his bearded jaw and stepped
forward rather than back. Louder than
the shouts of those running amok around him, louder than the metallic clinging
of swords or the thump of his own boots against the deck, he swore he could
hear his own heart, hammering against his ribs.
Howie
hadn’t spotted him coming yet, had no idea he was even there, and Jay quickened
his pace, hoping he could catch his newfound nemesis off-guard on the steps and
corner him to the upper deck. There,
perhaps, he could negotiate a quick surrender, before someone got filleted with
a sword.
Weaving
vigilantly through pairs of dueling swashbucklers, Jay came to a halt in front
of Howie, just as he’d reached the bottom stair and was about to step down to
the deck. Jay saw his boot hesitate in
mid-air as he paused in surprise, the recognition dawning. With Jay’s feet planted firmly on deck and
Howie’s a step above, they were virtually the same height, and their eyes met
levelly.
Jay
stared into the familiar brown eyes, refusing to blink. Howie didn’t have that option; flustered, his
left eye started to spasm worse than ever.
And still Jay stared, his eyes boring into the other’s, his heart
pounding in his throat now, his mind racing as it recapped all of the crimes this
man had committed and all of the times he’d eluded capture. The takeover of Disney World. The theft of the giant laser in
The
last realization made Jay want to grab him by the throat, collar him against
the deck railing, and scream at him, “Why? Why?!”
But
he didn’t scream. When he did speak, his
voice was amazingly flat and calm, calmer than he felt. He said only, “Hey, Howie.”
Howie
tipped his large hat in a sarcastic mockery of etiquette. Jay saw the blood vessel pulsing visibly in
his forehead, but his reply was just as flat, just as cold.
“AJ.”
A
grim smile flickered at the corners of Jay’s lips. No one called him “AJ” these days; even his
initials had been shortened to a single syllable. But there had been a time when he’d insisted
on it.
“You must be Alexander. Do you go by Alex?”
The guy asking was pretty
dorky-looking. His polo shirt was
patterned with bright, vertical stripes.
He had a poofy haircut and a goofy smile that showed lots of teeth. Big teeth.
But the smile was warm, and he seemed friendly. So AJ smiled back.
“Only if you’re my mom. Call me AJ.”
The guy chuckled. “Sounds familiar. I’ll always be ‘Howard’ to my parents and
their friends. Howie to everyone
else. It’s nice to meet you, AJ.”
He winked as he shook AJ’s
hand.
Looking
at him now, Jay shook his head. It was
hard to believe he was addressing the same person. “Man, what are you doing, Howie? First you’re prancing around Disney World
dressed up like Jafar, and now you’re a pirate?
What’s the deal, dude?”
Howie
was not fazed. “I should have known your
organization would be here. Dressed as
pirates also, I see.” His dark eyes
flickered disdainfully up and down AJ’s costume.
“You
know what they say.” Jay shrugged. “Great minds...”
The
other recoiled, twitching. “Great
minds?” His eyes bulged from their
sockets, and so did the vein in his forehead.
“Great minds? You dare insult my
intelligence by suggesting that my mind is merely of the same caliber of
greatness as yours?”
“I do
apologize.” Jay’s voice was dripping
with the flat sarcasm now. “So, do you
always talk like that now, or is it just the fancy costume?”
“I
wouldn’t expect you to appreciate the eloquence of the English language. You were never an intellectual.” His voice was as condescending as Jay’s was
sarcastic. “But as you and your
organization shall soon learn, brains conquer brawn.”
Jay
smirked. “How come you keep calling it
‘your organization,’ huh? Why can’t you
say its name? Are you afraid to say it
or something? Does it hurt to say
‘Himitsu Takana’?”
The
dark eyes blazed more fiercely. A flush
crept up the neck. The vein throbbed.
Jay
knew he’d hit a nerve.
“Hi-mi-tsu Ta-ka-na?” AJ squinted at the seal on the document in
front of him, sounding out the name aloud.
“You ever heard of this?”
“Sounds Japanese,” was Howie’s
insightful answer.
“Well, thanks, Captain
Obvious, that helps a lot,” snickered AJ.
Howie slid the paper closer to
him, frowning. “Where did you get this?”
“The mail. The envelope actually said ‘For Your Eyes
Only,’ like it’s real top secret stuff or something.” He laughed at the thought.
“And so you’re showing
me?” Howie joined in laughing. “What if it’s like a test? What if there’s, like, a hidden camera or
something rigged up in here to spy on you?
‘Smile, you’re on Candid Camera… aaaand you just failed.’”
“Aww, c’mon, D, I thought we
didn’t have secrets.” AJ offered a big,
cheesy smile, batting his eyelashes. “So
seriously, you don’t know anything about this Himitsu Takana place?”
“Never heard of it. Did you actually read the letter? What does it say?”
“Not a whole lot. It sounds like some sort of secret society,
and whoever signed this – he just signed it with a K, by the way, very
secretive – wrote that he thinks I’ve got what it takes to be in it and wants
me to consider applying. There’s an
application enclosed. Sounds like a
scam, doesn’t it?”
Howie shrugged. “Probably, but who knows? Did you look it up on the internet? They’ve got to have a homepage or something,
don’t they? Most organizations do these
days.”
“Nada. There’s nothing. I put it into WebCrawler, and all I got was
all this Japanese anime stuff.” He snickered. “There were, like, a couple pages with the
actual words ‘Himitsu Takana’ put together, but neither of them would load.”
“Probably because they don’t
want to be found, if it’s really this top secret thing. Sounds kind of interesting. Maybe you should check it out.”
AJ shrugged. “Maybe.”
He
jumped back out of the way as Howie, now “Dr. Rough,” drew his sword,
temporarily forgetting he had one of his own sheathed against his thigh. He was used to his gun, but he had to admit,
a gun wouldn’t do much good against a large saber swinging at his neck. Jay ducked, yanked his own sword out of its
sheath, and raised it just in time to block Dr. Rough’s second strike.
“Brains
may top brawn when you’re out to make it snow in
“Overrated!”
Dr. Rough retorted, as Jay’s sword splintered the banister. “Brawn gets you-” He thrust his own saber down. “… nowhere if you don’t-” Metal clanged as Jay’s sword met his. “… think-”
Cling! “… about what you’re doing!” Clank!
“And
brains!” Jay shouted back, driving his sword toward Dr. Rough with force, “are
worthless-” Clash! “… when you’re
completely fucked-” Clonk! “… in the head!”
Clang! The two blades met again, and behind them,
the former friends glared at each other with mutinous eyes. Finally, Dr. Rough could hold Jay back no
longer, and he stumbled, scrambling up the rest of the steps in a sort of crab
walk before Jay’s blade could come down on him again.
Jay
pursued him back up onto the poop deck, and there, with room for fancy
footwork, their duel intensified.
“HimTak is fucked!” screamed Dr. Rough, swinging his sword wildly. “My organization shall bring yours down! You haven’t been able to stop me yet! Tell Agent K he’ll live just long enough to
regret the day he let Dr. Rough get away!”
Cloing! Their swords crossed, bracing each other with equal force, and
through the X-shape of the two blades, Jay stared at his old friend in
disbelief. “So that’s really it, isn’t
it? That’s what this is all about? Revenge on HimTak for turning you down?”
A
fleeting expression passed over Howie’s face, almost too quickly to be noticed,
but Jay did. He’d seen that look before.
They sat in a nondescript room
with the other hopefuls, waiting. Aside
from Howie, AJ knew no one by name, only by the numbers on their shirts. He felt like he was at an audition, one of
the many he’d gone to for the theater end of his double major. Would someone come out to read off a list of
numbers that had earned callbacks?
No, he quickly realized. This was not like an audition. An audition was public; often times, you
performed your number or read your scene in front of everyone else who was
auditioning, and you learned whether or not you’d been cast in front of
everyone else, too. This process had
been completely different. Very
private. Very secretive.
It had started with a phone
call, nearly a month after he had submitted his application to the enigmatic
organization known as Himitsu Takana. He
had Howie to thank for that; AJ had been hesitant, but his friend had insisted
that he apply. “You’ll never know what
kind of opportunities you may have missed out on if you don’t apply,” Howie had
wisely pointed out.
AJ’s careless reply had been,
“I will if you will.”
The phone call four weeks
later had been to set up a phone interview, and Howie had received one as
well. They had both passed the
preliminary background and reference checks, and they went on to ace their
phone interviews. AJ knew they had
because, two weeks after that, he and Howie were each sent a ticket in the
mail. A plane ticket. A ticket to
Now, on the third day in
He and Howie kept waiting as,
one by one, the other candidates were called by number into a small room hidden
behind a closed door. Though half the
people in the room had been led away by now, none of them had returned. AJ didn’t think they were going to. There must have been another way out of the
small room.
And indeed, there was. AJ turned out to be the last one called from
the otherwise empty waiting room into the small conference room, and when he
finally entered it, he saw that there were not just one, but two more closed
doors, one on each side. The person who
had called him here, a dark-haired, surprisingly young-looking man, who had identified
himself only as “Agent K,” invited AJ to sit down across the table from
him. When they stood up again, barely
ten minutes later, he shook AJ’s hand and directed him to go through the door
to his left. “Tell the others I’ll be in
to talk to the whole group in a few minutes,” Agent K added, as AJ reached for
the doorknob.
On the other side of the door,
AJ found yet another room in which people waited. This time, it was only a small fraction of
the number who had been with him in the first room. Looking around, he felt a jolt in his stomach
when he realized Howie was not among them.
Disappointment neutralized the exhilarated feeling he’d gotten when the
man called K had offered him a position with Himitsu Takana (“conditional, of
course, upon your completion of our rigorous training program,” he’d added
before any words of excitement or gratitude could spill from AJ’s lips). AJ knew what had happened. The others in this room, like him, had been
given the opportunity to stay. The rest
of the candidates had passed through the other door in rejection. Howie, who had gone in before him, had to be
among them.
Taking another look around the
room, he realized that everyone in it was watching him, expectantly. They were all still waiting, waiting to find
out more about what they had gotten themselves into. He had no more answers than any of them. All he could say was, “K said he’d be in here
in a few minutes.” Then, noticing a
second door off to his right, he added, “I’m gonna find a john – guess the damn
nerves got to my bladder.” He offered an
impish grin to the room, earned a few chuckles in response, and slipped through
the other door.
Just as he had hoped, he found
himself in a hallway. He looked around,
not for the men’s room, but for clues to his friend’s whereabouts. Where had Howie and the others gone? Were they already on their way home? He suspected not. And his suspicions proved to be correct.
His answers came quickly, when
a door down the hall opened, and people he recognized from the first waiting
room began to filter out. Some walked
briskly, seeming eager to leave. Others
trudged slowly, heads down in disappointment.
If Howie was still in the building, he had to be with this group.
AJ waited, and sure enough,
there came his friend, the last one out of the room. He hesitated a moment, then, seeing no sign
of K, hurried forward up the hall, hissing, “Howie! Yo, D!”
Howie turned, his left eye
twitching the way it did when he was nervous or flustered. He didn’t smile, hardly reacted to AJ’s
presence at all.
“It’s a no, huh?” AJ asked,
touching Howie’s shoulder in sympathy.
Howie didn’t speak. He shook his head once, a short jerk to the
side that could have passed as merely a spasm, a tic.
“I’m sorry, man,” AJ
offered. “I got offered something… I’m
not really sure what it entails yet, but I’m gonna stick around long enough to
at least find out. Who knows if it’ll be
worth it or not.” He shrugged, trying to
play it off as nothing, to make Howie feel better. He hadn’t realized how much his friend had
wanted this, but the wounded look on his face was one AJ would never forget.
“Where are you headed?” he
asked next.
Howie’s response was
short. “Home.”
AJ nodded, patting his
friend’s shoulder again. “I’ll catch up
with you there then.”
But when AJ finally made it
home to
It
had been six years since then. Six years
since AJ McLean had joined Himitsu Takana, and Howie Dorough had all but
disappeared from the face of the earth.
As Jay had risen through the ranks of HimTak, he had used his pull as a
double-0 agent to search for his old friend, but with no results. Over time, it had become clear that Howie
simply didn’t want to be found.
To
Jay, he’d been something like an old, favorite t-shirt that has fallen from its
hanger and gotten lost at the back of the closet. Jay had known he still existed, somewhere,
but eventually, he’d stopped looking for him, and then he’d stopped thinking
about him altogether. Howie Dorough had
become a memory, a memory stowed away in the far reaches of AJ’s mind, a memory
which resurfaced only from time to time.
Until
he’d seen Howie’s photo in the FANS file some three months ago, Jay hadn’t
thought of his old friend in ages. It was
as if he had died, and the stages of grief had long since passed. But now, seeing that familiar, pained look
flicker across the face of his adversary, Jay knew that Howie wasn’t dead,
wasn’t even missing. He was still there,
hidden deep inside the armor of Dr. Rough.
“Look,
D,” he said, “no offense, but what we’re doing here is ridiculous. Let’s just… let’s just talk about this. Call your men off, and we’ll go somewhere and
talk, just you and me. We can work
through this. I’m… I’ve got some pull at
HimTak now, some authority. I bet we can
work out some kind of deal. Whaddya
say?”
For a
brief few seconds, Dr. Rough’s eyes had slid out of focus, faraway in
reflection. Jay suspected that he, too,
had been reliving memories, memories which, for him, were painful. Then, suddenly, his dark eyes sharpened again
and ignited with fresh hatred and rage.
“Never!”
he howled, whipping his saber up and across.
The gleaming blade nearly missed Jay’s midsection as it slashed the
air. “My minions and I will never
bargain with the likes of Himitsu Takana!”
And
so the duel went on, and, unwillingly, Jay defended himself against the
ruthless sword strokes of a man who had once been his best friend and now acted
as his worst enemy.
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