Season 1, Episode 7: Here
Ye Be Pirates
Part 7 of 8
Nick
groaned when he recognized the four letters painted on the side of the
helicopters. They were the same letters
that had been stamped on the top secret file he’d stolen in
“Shitballs,”
he muttered to himself, casting a wary eye at Drums, who was slumped against
the mast, looking ready to slide off his perch at any moment. He had managed to wrap his gushing stump in
his shirt, one-handed, and was cradling it to his chest. Blood still soaked through the makeshift
tourniquet. Drums’s whole body was
trembling violently, his complexion was the color of fireplace ashes, and he
was weeping and moaning in agony.
Nick
knew he could finish Drums off, once and for all, right here, right now, before
any more of his FANS cronies arrived in the helicopters to rescue him. A mere tap would be enough to topple him off
the yard. The fall would kill him
instantly, and retribution for JC’s death (ironically, also from a fall) would
be served.
But
he couldn’t do it. Staring at his former
ally with a mix of pity, guilt, and revulsion, Nick knew that he could not kill
Drums. Not today, at least. He’d done enough already. The way the stump was bleeding, he might have
killed him already and just didn’t know it yet.
He
looked up and saw the helicopters looming closer, beginning to lose altitude
and circle the ship, and he knew he could not stay here either. He would not kill Drums, but he would also
not stay to be captured himself. Nick
watched as the first helicopter dropped a ladder into the ocean and rose
moments later with Dr. Rough clinging to the bottom, and he had an idea.
With
his sword, he slashed one of the thick ropes tying the sails to the mast. He sheathed his sword, looked once more at
Drums, then grabbed the rope and jumped.
Down, he swung, out and over the deck, while the helicopters descended
upon Drums.
It
was a hard landing, the swinging momentum carrying him forward even once his
feet touched the deck, and he would have fallen flat on his face, had someone
else not been in his way. As it was, he
crashed face-first into another man, their foreheads knocking together, and
ricocheted back to land on his ass.
“Ow!”
moaned Nick, his ass throbbing.
“Ow!”
complained the other, rubbing his forehead.
They
looked at each other then, and Nick found his eyes locked with a pair of
bright, blue eyes that seemed out of place in a dark-complexioned face framed
by shaggy, black hair. “You!” he cried
with surprise. “You’re Aly’s brother.”
The
dark features were instantly guarded.
“How do you know Aly?” he asked suspiciously.
“Doesn’t
matter. What does is that-”
Before
Nick could finish, he was interrupted by the sound of his name. “Carter!
Hey! 00Carter!” He turned, and there was Emerald, running
right through pirate pandemonium to get to him.
By the time she reached him, she was out of breath. “We gotta go.
Now,” she panted, grabbing him roughly by the arm. “Jay’s waiting.”
“What? Well, wait, what about… I mean, don’t we wanna… you know… take some
for questioning?”
“Questioning?” Mendez was now downright cagey. “Whoa, who are you, the cops?”
“Heh,
you wish,” snickered Emerald. “The cops
couldn’t get away with what we’re about to do.”
Nick
stared at her. “What are we about to
do?”
“We’re
about to blow this joint.
Literally.” Now Emerald was
outright giggling. “Let’s go, Carter.”
Nick
looked at Aly’s brother, who seemed poised to run, but not quite ready to
commit to it yet. “You’re comin’ with us,
you got that?” he said roughly. He
reached towards his waist, where his pistol was stowed next to his pirate
sword, not above threatening to get the man to comply.
Mendez
nodded, and he followed Emerald as she led them to the port side of the ship,
Nick covering them from behind. Nick
looked over the rail, and there, bobbing in the water, was Jay in their
inflatable raft. Emerald was already
climbing over the rail.
“Hey,
what happened to your dress, Avril?” Nick asked, noticing how her green dress was
in tatters, showing off the tight little boy shorts she had on underneath. “Trying to go for a more ‘punk’ pirate look?”
“Oh,
just wait. You’ll see,” Emerald replied
with a serene smile. The smile was a
mask, disguising some sort of hidden lunacy that left him mystified. She hoisted herself over the side of the ship
and disappeared, dropping gracefully into the raft beside Jay.
Nick
turned to Mendez. “You’re gonna get into
the raft with us,” he said, slowly but firmly, making sure the other man understood. “They’re going to think we’re detaining
you. When they’re not looking, I’ll slip
you another raft, deflated. You can
inflate it instantly when the time is right.
I dunno what Emerald’s planning, but it sounds like something big, and
when it happens, I want you to treat it like a diversion and bail. You got that?
Bail. Jump out of the raft and
disappear. Wait till you’re alone, till
you’re out of sight, and then blow up the raft and get the hell out of here.”
“What? Are you serious, man?” Mendez was staring at him as if he’d just
grown a second head.
“I
am, but no one is to ever know, you got that?
I promised your sister I’d keep you out of harm’s way, and that’s a
promise I’d like to keep. So do what I
say, and don’t ask questions. When you
get out of here, go back to the States and get a job. A real, honest job. Don’t keep dragging Aly into this shit. Don’t make her worry about you. You understand?”
Mendez
nodded, then shook his head. “No, but…
yeah. I… I dunno who you are or why
you’re doing this, but yeah, man, I’ll go with it, alright?”
“You
do that. Now go.”
Nick
gave him a push, and Aly’s brother followed Emerald off the ship. A few seconds later, Nick splashed into the
raft with them, and Jay started paddling.
“Hurry,”
said Emerald, helping him. “We don’t
have much time.”
They
rowed away from the ship as, on the starboard side, something green and
sinister seemed to slither toward it.
± ± ±
From
his perch in the doorway of the chopper, Dr. Rough oversaw the other
helicopters as they dropped lines down to The Jolly Twitches. While Joey tended to Drums, he watched his
minions fight off pirates as they climbed the ladders, abandoning the great
ship. He hated to surrender, but they
had not been able to overtake the pirates or their mechanical sea monster, and
the fight was not worth losing all the minions in the organization he had built
from the ground up.
All
of a sudden, something in the water caught his eye. From his vantage point, high above the ocean,
it looked like an animal, bobbing among the waves. He narrowed his eyes. It was green, with a long tail which floated
in the water. He could see the whites of
its large eyes, perched cunningly atop its head.
Watching
it make its way toward The Jolly Twitches, he had a sudden flash of a similar
creature, gliding sinisterly through the water toward another pirate ship,
forewarning those on board of its presence with its tick, tock, tick tock…
Dr.
Rough began to hum then, a melody he hadn’t heard since childhood. “Da-da-dum,
dum, dum… da-da-dum, dum, dum… da-da-dum, dum, da-da-da-da-dum, dum, dum…”
All
of a sudden, it clicked, and he sat bolt upright, nearly launching himself out
of the helicopter. “Minions!” he
cried. “Miiiiinions! Climb from the ship! Climb
from the ship!”
Abs,
halfway up the nearest ladder, cocked his head in confusion, and Dr. Rough
pointed frantically. “The croc! The
croc!”
The
crocodile was nearly to The Jolly Twitches now, and Dr. Rough knew what was
about to happen a split second before it did.
He clapped his hand over his face, and as he did, he both heard and felt
the colossal explosion. Peeking down
through his fingers, he shuddered as he watched his beautiful pirate ship
ignite and heard the screams of the men still on board.
± ± ±
Nick
and Jay stared at Emerald in astonishment as they watched the FANS ship go up
in flames, which quickly spread to the nearby Kraken. Then, suddenly, a second blast. The two men ducked instinctively, but Emerald
had made sure they were safely out of range of the flying shrapnel coming from
the Kraken. She sat primly in the raft
in her ragged dress, with that half-crazed, pleased smile on her face again.
“A
bomb?” Nick finally managed to ask.
Emerald
nodded proudly. “I got the idea from our
Disney mission… from Peter Pan. You know the crocodile, with the clock
inside? Yeah, well… this ticking clock
was a bit more deadly.” She snickered.
Nick
blinked. “And your dress?”
“Well,
I had to make it look like a crocodile somehow!” She held up a scrap of her dress, running
the green material through her fingers.
“Purely for effect, you know.”
Nick
and Jay went back to staring at her.
Emerald continued to smile, as the two pirate vessels went down in
flames in the distance.
“Hey,”
she said after a moment, looking around.
“Where’d our felon go?”
± ± ±
Dr.
Rough wept as his ship went down. It was
worse than the end of Titanic. His only consolation, as he watched the
surviving minions climb into the last of his helicopters, was that he had
greater plans ahead. This was the end of
his brief foray into piracy, but not the end of FANS’ reign of terror upon the
world. Oh, no. Not even close to it.
“Are
you ready to head back to the mainland, Dr. Rough?” Joey’s voice asked in his
ears.
“I
suppose,” Dr. Rough replied glumly.
“How’s Drums?”
“Not
good, but I think he’ll make it, if we get him back soon. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Thanks
to that wretched Carter,” grumbled Dr. Rough.
“He shall pay for what he’s done to Drums. For what he’s done to us all. He’s foiled our plans for the last time!”
“We’ll
get ‘im, boss,” Joey agreed.
Dr.
Rough nodded. He started to scoot back,
so that they could close the door of the chopper and fly back to the base in
And
sure enough, there they were. They had
gotten away, and as the helicopter started to move, he looked down on the three
of them, bobbing along in a small life raft.
His eyes narrowed. His nostrils
flared. His eye twitched.
Leaning
out of the chopper door, with tears of fury stinging his eyes, Dr. Rough bellowed,
“I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, CARTER! NEXT
TIME!”
± ± ±
“I’ll
miss you too, Dr. Dough!” Nick shouted back towards the chopper that was now
starting fade in the skyline, Dr. Rough still leaning out of it. It was visible that he was yelling, but none
of his words could be heard by the fellow agents, who were now sailing on their
inflatable raft in the middle of the ocean.
“Isn’t
this a scene to watch?” Emerald sighed slowly, oblivious to her
surroundings. Nick’s eyes drifted
towards her scenery.
“Exploding
ships accompanied by shrieks of wannabe pirates and some freaky minions?” Nick
questioned sarcastically. “Very soothing
indeed. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon.”
“Speaking
of wannabe pirates, where’s our felon?” Emerald darted her eyes from her masterpiece
and questioned Nick again, looking around.
“Couldn’t you keep an eye on only one hostage, 008?”
Nick
cringed at the snide comment. It was
hard to keep his mouth shut while Emerald was clearly mocking him and was
probably thinking that he was still a useless piece of an agent, well… wannabe.
“I
guess I couldn’t, Em,” he said through clenched teeth. The situation was hard on him as it was, and
though millions of answers that he could possibly use as a comeback were
running through his mind, he tried to keep his calm and remind himself that he
was doing it for a friend. For a good
cause.
He
clenched his fists tightly and darted his eyes towards the remaining pieces of
the pirate ship, avoiding making contact with Emerald’s baffled stare. Was it for a good cause, really?
“I
can’t locate the boat.” Agent Jay’s
distressed voice drew Nick’s attention away from his conscience for a
moment. He watched him typing vigorously
on his PDA. Every button Agent Jay
pressed resulted in an annoying beep sound.
“What’s
up with that?” Emerald piped up anxiously.
“The boat’s gonna be around here somewhere, isn’t it?”
“It
must be around here somewhere, and it should already be in our sight, since
I’ve sent out our coordinates to its tracking system-”
“MAGIC
TURTLES!” Nick poked Emerald in the ribs
roughly, pointing out to three, rock-like shapes approaching them in the
water. Seeming out of his recent, odd
behavior, he got up on his feet in the raft, a little bit quicker than he’d
intended to, which caused it to wobble dangerously. “I love
“Whoa,
easy there, big boy!” Emerald held on to
the sides of the raft tightly. “This
ain’t a fucking trampoline! And what the
heck is a magic turtle, anyway?!”
“Magic
turtle is…” Agent Jay got up on his feet and examined the three, sea-turtle-shaped
devices that were now sailing on the calm ocean right next to the raft they
were in. “… a type of device or vehicle
that is controlled through satellite. It
– or in this case, they – follow us on our missions on the sea. Their system is encrypted via the satellite in
our boat, and when the ship is out of order, usually meaning it either goes
down or blows up, system sends out a decode to their software that activates
them and directly connects them to the device that’s been delineated prior to
the mission. In this case, to my PDA. I was hoping we wouldn’t need to use these, but
looks like someone saw the boat and decided to abrogate it so we’d be stranded
out on this mess.”
“Someone
who knew we were here.” Nick eyed the
direction that Dr. Rough’s helicopter had gone furiously. “FANS.”
“Do
you know you sound like a huge dork?” Emerald
was looking at Agent Jay incredulously. Just
when she thought she knew him inside out, he’d emerged with a totally different
side. She let out a soft chuckle. “Let’s cut to the chase and just go home. And more importantly, how are these funny sea turtles supposed to be any kind of a
ride anyway?”
Folding
his arms across his chest, Nick smiled proudly. “Show your magic, Jay.”
“With
pleasure.” Jay engrossed his attention
back to his PDA and typed some more.
In
less than a couple of minutes, Emerald watched three sea turtles morph into
three jets in front of her eyes, all fully set and ready to be ridden.
“
“She
is, indeed.” Agent Jay nodded and moved
forward to get on to the first one. “Let’s
get the hell outta here, people.”
± ± ±