"Fortress of the Pirate Queen"
"Well, Jim, will you at least permit me to finish this fine glass of oh-jay?" I asked as I raised the glass to him, as if in a toast.
The blind assassin grinned. "Nice try, Coughlan. I know you're stalling."
I sighed. "Then you have orders to kill me?"
"No," said Jim. "We have orders to overkill you." He shouted to the sea of bounty hunters surrounding me, weapons at the ready. "Take aim!"
I defiantly downed my glass of orange juice and winked at the guild-ridden Captain Rum. "Don't worry, mate. Some day we'll look back on this and laugh."
Jamaican Jim grinned at me again and I could feel his deadly gaze even through both his eyepatches. "Don't even bother planning something, Coughlan. You're doomed." He raised his free hand to signal his fellow mercenaries.
Now it was my turn to grin. "You should know by now, Jim…"
"F--"
"I'M AT MY BEST WHEN I DON'T PLAN!"
Before Jim could get to the "ire" in "fire", I crushed the empty glass in my hand with such force that shards of it shot in every direction at supersonic speeds, piercing the closest members of my firing squad in their black hearts.
Jim himself bought it in the arm, but he went down hard nonetheless, buying me precious time. There were still bounty hunters from the back row to deal with.
"Rum, down!" I commanded my old, blackmailed friend.
He ducked, and I used his back to launch myself into the air. The bounty hunters took aim again and fired, just as I reached the apex of my jump. I dropped and their bullets all collided with each other in the space I had just vacated, ricocheting off each other back along their trajectories and into the guns that had fired them, causing them to explode in the wielders' hands, taking everyone out the game.
Except Jamaican Jim.
I ran deep into the marketplace even as I heard his shots ring out over my head. I needed to end this -- fast.
I expertly used innocent bystanders as human shields, but Jim was a fast bastard, using that crazy parkour, freerunning shit that all blind people secretly know; running up walls and bouncing off roofs.
But I was no slouch either. Like Jim had alluded to earlier, these fruit vendors and souvenir sellers weren't the only stalls in town. Heh. I was grabbing an assortment of objects off stands as I ran past -- a tacky gold dinner plate, an oil lamp and a novelty lighter -- preparing for the inevitable confrontation with my pursuer.
Sure enough, I reached a dead end. The acrobatic assassin landed behind me, audibly cocking his pistol.
"I knew those guys would just be cannon fodder to you, Coughlan," said Jim. "I wanted this prize for myself."
"Oh yeah?" I said. "What's Nasty Ann paying you? I guarantee you her fee is just one small portion of the lie-buffet she's serving up."
"Ha!" Jim scoffed. "As if that matters to me. I'll take pleasure in your death, scum, for what you did to my eyes."
Thanks to said missing eyes, I was going about my machinations unseen. I had opened up the oil lamp and was dousing the dinner plate in its contents.
"If you're so confident in your abilities, how about a good old-fashioned showdown?" I said.
Jim just laughed again. "Even if you were armed, you'd be no match. I am the greatest marksman in the Seven Seas!"
"Yeah? Well we're on dry land now, motherfucker!"
I ignited the oil-soaked plate with the lighter and frisbeed it hard at Jim while ducking to avoid the bullet he fired impulsively at the same time. The flaming death-disc caught him in his midsection and sent him hurtling backwards into some convenient oil drums, causing a huge explosion.
I munched on some Haribo as I watched the tower of fire calm itself from bestial inferno to gentle embers and plumes of melancholy smoke, people's screams of panic subsiding with it.
"Didn't see that coming, did ya?"
***
I found Rum where I left him; cowering under the cafe table, surrounded by dead bounty hunters. He looked up at me with remorse.
"John, please forgive me, I--"
"It's alright, Rum. You thought you were protecting your wife. But I must tell you, it's very unlikely that, if Ann indeed has her, she is still alive."
He nodded in resignation. "I suspected as much. I just--"
"You just had to try. Of course," I said. "I bear you no malice, old chum. But there is still something you must do for me."
"Name it!"
"Tell me where Nasty Ann is."
***
I've seen a lot of crazy shit in my time… but when I heard what Rum told me, even I had trouble believing it.
Out of fears that I'd find her, coupled with a unquenchable greed, Ann had retreated to the very centre of the mighty empire of piracy she had built around herself over the last year. She had become a near-fabled Pirate Queen and few ever saw her, but many claimed to be in her employ.
Her cunning and ruthlessness kept her captains in service at the cost of 50% of their treasure. Only those most trusted ever laid eyes upon Ann anymore, but Rum knew where to find her.
And that was the unbelievable bit.
I stood on the bow of Rum's ship, The Pig's Breakfast, and gazed at the unholy sight before me: Ann had built herself a fortress in the Indian Ocean constructed entirely out of pirate ships.
The mighty tower rose up ahead like a jagged tree of wooded hulls -- a castle of once-proud sea vessels remade as nothing more than her protection from a deserved fate.
I would gladly tear it down.
"We part ways here, Captain," I told Rum. "I don't want her to see you coming."
"Good luck to ye, sir," said Rum, shaking my hand. "All our lives hang on you returning that head full of souls to its rightful place."
"I shan't fail you. Thanks for everything, old chum."
I took one of the Breakfast's rowboats and, instead of rowing, punched the water until I was close enough to the ship-fortress.
Scaling the walls of Ann's stronghold was tough and slippery, but I reached the decks of one of the lowermost ships in the structure; intending to fight my way up to where, presumably, Ann resided.
As I planted myself on-deck, I came face-to-skull with a crew of animated skeletons. This explained some of Ann's power.
"Ah-ha!" I cried as if I had been expecting this, and launched into some pretty fierce Saturday night jujitsu with the ghoulish swordsmen.
Their bony bodies and steel blades were no match for my bitchin' moves, and I soon ploughed my way through them.
Climbing to the top of that ship's mast, I was able to reach the next level, and continued in this fashion for, like, an hour. Wave after wave of skeleton henchmen followed by arduous climbing. If the fate of the world (and my reputation) wasn't at stake, I would have almost certainly packed it in.
The uppermost ship, placed atop the others like an ornament, was made entirely of gold and shone like Ann's own ego. There was, of course, more skeletons there too.
Tired, dirty and mad as all Hell, I could have torn through them with my sight alone. "Alright, you bastards, let's see what you're made of."
"No need, Coughlan," said a voice that turned my hatred into fury.
It was Nasty Ann. She emerged from her chambers dressed regally, but her features had been tempered by opulence. More alarmingly, she held in her hand the head of Captain Hellfist, which I so eagerly required.
"You're full of an awful lotta shit that needs kicked outta ya, missy," I said, "but before we even ask 'Your place or mine?' I'm gonna take that head you got there. Then I'm gonna take Captain Hellfist's head."
"Crude wit, as always, Coughlan," Ann sneered. "And out of the question. See, I know all about the head's power…"
"Then you know we must return it before the eclipse -- which is very soon -- or the world will be destroyed! Here, I have an amulet--"
"I think not!" said Ann. "I intend to keep this head so that when the Aztec gods come looking for it, I can strike a deal with them -- for ultimate power!"
"That's laser-guided insanity, woman! The gods won't even lower themselves to our level to tell you to fuck off, let alone negotiate."
Ann was unaffected by my heart-shredding prophecies of horror. "Possession of the head -- and its souls -- has already granted me control over the supernatural to a small degree." She indicated the skeletons. "And the power to manipulate lesser men."
"Like a slut in a nightclub," I quipped.
"But for you," said Ann, once again ignoring me, "I shall require a different approach. Oh, Ronald?"
The deck shook with extremely heavy footsteps and I suddenly felt dread once again remind me my rent was due.
A shadow fell over me as Ronald emerged, looking markedly different from our last encounter. Now he was ten feet tall and covered in spikes.
"As you can see," said Ann, "I've also made some changes to Ronald.
"Ronald, dear? Kill Mr. Coughlan!"
To be continued…
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