Air Pirates!

"Indeed. THE Lord Henry Masillion. Will you take us then?" I asked, playing innocent to their reactions. I knew the answer would be yes. We agreed upon the terms of our travel and headed out to the ship. Gauntlet was practically drooling over the ship as he stepped on board. I was still unhappy about his excuse for coming.

I pulled Tetra aside.
"Look," I said, "that was not a very good choice by me. But trust me, it could've been a lot worse. Trust me, I've said some really stupid things..." My voice trailed off at the end.

"I know that. Just think for a moment though, where do you think we'll be staying?" I paused and let him think that through his eyes widened when he realized what I was getting at. "I'm going to go tell Sterman that you lied. Next time, let me do all the explaining, please."

Well, there it goes. The start of the downward spiral. First she tells him that I lied, then he doesn't trust us, then he calls the empire, then we go to jail, then we have to bust out of jail, then we get caught by the empire again, and I have to sacrifice myself to keep everyone alive. Or, well, that's how it goes in my head, at least.

I knocked on Captain Sterman's door. When he opened it, I entered and explained to him that Gauntlet had lied, but I told him that it was for my protection because my real husband had died a few years back. He understood and excused it, saying that he would have done the same thing.

We left almost immediately. The captain himself steered the vessel, and he brought a lot of his own crew to help. All was well for the first 10 minutes. But then we heard sirens. And saw an empire ship behind us. For some reason they wanted us dead.
Sterman started to call for the cannons to be fired, but he wasn't able to finish. Halfway through an arrow pierced his chest. I looked over to the ship and saw someone I never though I'd see, General Varke. He was one of the most feared generals, known for destroying whole ships just with the use of his bow. He notched a few more arrows, and let them fly. Some of Sterman's men where hit.

"Gimli!!" I shouted, "Get this thing up to full speed!" He did what I asked for. We started moving significantly faster. I grabbed control of the ship. I moved us closer to the ground. A large vessel like the one the empire had wouldn't be able to sail this low. And then I did something I never thought I'd ever do, and it was the reason we lived.

I threw my axe at the other ship.

It landed perfectly, penetrating the other ship, and causing it to explode. But Varke had notched an arrow before, and it hit me in the left shoulder.

I raced to Gauntlet and reached him just as the arrow knocked him back. He dropped and I sort of caught him, just kind of slowing his fall. I pulled out the arrow and got to work repairing his shoulder.

"yeah...that I hurts," I moaned. It did.

"Of course it's going to hurt! You got shot!" I said, sewing the last bit of skin together. "There, it should heal fine now, if you don't strain it."

"There's but one slight problem," I said. "That was my only axe..."

I started laughing. "I will personally buy you a new one."

((and I will wait for Jon or Tiana to get on so they can have some input))

I ran over to Sterman. "No!" I gasped. He had always been nice to me, sometimes he would bring me stuff from his travels. And when I ran away from the orphanage he would take me in until I was ready to go back. I had done work for him and he always payed fairly. I looked at the arrow, it looked bad to me, but I didn't have any experience with arrow wounds.

"Sorry, Lass, but he won't recover from that," I said. "That's an arrow straight through the heart."

I glanced up at the 'lass' but didn't comment, I had more important things to worry about. "But, he can't just die!" I exclaimed. I felt silly, childish. everyone dies. I knew that. But I had never truly had to face it. "Alex, Alyca, you be safe. alright? Keep those cutlasses safe, and stay out of trouble." Gasped the captain. I saw a slight twinkle in his eyes, he knew as well as I did that trouble and I went hand in hand. But he also knew that I generally picked my trounble. So what he was really saying was, 'be smart about it.' I nodded. "I will. I wish you a safe journey to the next world." I said softly. Thankfully I didn't cry. That was something I would do later, alone. Our eyes met for a moment and apparently he was satisfied with what he saw, because he smiled and nodded a little. Then closed his eyes. I blinked. He was gone. Just like that. He looked so peaceful now. Not so weighed down.

"So which would you prefer; Captain Alyca or Captain Alex?" she stared up at me with blurry eyes. "You're Captain now." I turned to the rest of the crew. "Does anyone want to argue?" None of them spoke and several backed away.

I did a quick facepalm. Her...as our CAPTAIN?! She didn't know what we were doing. She wasn't part of the crew. She had no reason to be the captain. But I couldn't complain. Because then I'd probably be thrown off the ship. Because our new "captain" didn't exactly seem too fond of me.

My brain refused to catch up. Me? Captain? Yeah, I had helped out on the ship a few times, but only as an extra pair of hands. Usually I worked on the docks. The crew all knew and seemed to like me, but being proclaimed their captain seemed rather sudden. It wasn't like I was Stermans family or anything, I mean he was the closest thing I had to maybe an uncle, but it was nothing official. And even if it had been, captainship wasn't passed in the family. In the end I agreed with Gauntlets facepalm. I didn't know anything about running a ship. Not really. "You just learned my name... Names" I corrected myself, "You met me a few hours ago as a dock hand and you requested me to come and are now making me captain of a ship. Why? Why me?" I asked.

I was coming down from the control room thingy. I grumbled some more about the stupid empire and such. "We loose anyone?" I yelled. Turning around to steer us clear of some rocks.

"4 people," I said, "2 injured, one of them me."

"Not good, ain't one of you a medic"

"Tetra's working on it, It's a bit harder than fixing a machine, ya know," I said, sarcastically, trying to shut him up.

"That's why machines are so much better than people"

"nope, that's why people can destroy machines." I was done with him. Frankly, I was done with the day. It had been a long one. That's an understatement. I sulked to my cabin under the deck and found the bunk I decided would be mine. I got in and decided to sleep.
((I feel now is a good time to switch to the other storyline, focusing on the people on the main boat.))

I simply went back to piloting the ship.