Pirates and the Golden treasure ch.08

    “Mr. Mousey report in.”

 

   No sooner do they arrive when Betty is right to action.

 

   “Captain,” the talking in pirate duds says, “no sooner did the captain of the other vessel make contact when this thing started ramming our hulls and striking the ships with these three strange heads, we managed to drive it back under just before you arrived.”

 

   He sees the others with her, “Who are they captain.”

 

   “Introduction later,” says Rhulan, “Little Figmention, that’s a Dah-Hoth in the water, your cartoon land exploding cannon balls are useless you’re going to need something stronger.”

 

   “Understood Mistress.” Says Betty.

 

   Grabbing up a microphone, “All hands, situation Royal, switch to serious ammo!”

 

   At her command the cannons along the side of the hull pull in and are replaced by what look like colored rods.

 

   *ZZZZZ*

 

   *Scraaaaa!”

 

   The techno-colored beams are effective as the creature beneath the waters issues a scream loud enough to break the surface.

 

   The water cascades as the massive form looms over the surface, a volcano shaped mountain of flesh. The center of its body is home to a giant spider’s head. Before it are two giant pincers looking to be a cross between the pincers of a scorpion and the heads of vultures, complete with eyes even. Behind rises up a scorpion’s tail with the same the stinger also looking to be crossed with the head of a vulture. The top of the volcano shaped body opens like some disgusting fleshy flower from the depths of darkest hell. From it rise three scaly, serpentine, dragon heads, two in front and one in back, the two in front are red scaled while the one in back is golden, almost looking the same as one of the tentacle heads of Polymoebial.

 

    In this instance the impossible happens, the mouth of the spider-head moves, and…speaks, “I am Ravana, the very stomach of Demiurge, impudent creatures, I will swallow you, souls and all!”

 

    *vit, vit, vit, vit, vit, vit…*

 

   *CRAW! Rrrrrr*

 

   From above comes a spray of purple laser capsule bolts from the almost gun shaped ship of Lee Lee and Ki Ki.

 

   “Now!” screams Betty, “All batteries, open fire!”

 

   *zzzzzzzzz*

 

     “Lets not be outdone!” yells Cata from her own ship, “Charge the plasma cannons, I want that thing dead, and I want it dead, yesterday!”

 

   “Aye Aye Captain!” echoes the crew.

 

    Meanwhile on Betty’s ship Scrags looks down at his hands with his daggers, then back up at the mountain sized monster, then back down again, up again, down again…. “No way I am fighting that thing. Can’t even hit the son of a bitch from here.”

 

    “Hollia,” says Rhulan, “You and LinLin take Scrags to shore, take cover and be prepared to heal any survivors.”

 

   “Miss Rhulan.” She says.

 

   Staring intently at Ravana, “Hollia…now, you aren’t ready for something this big, not sure we’ll win, have to be ready…”

 

   She turns and winks; “besides we’re counting on you to heal us all up after words, can’t have the only healer around get hurt.”

 

   Hollia nods, understanding, including what wasn’t said, “Yes Miss Rhulan.”

 

   Chanting the words of the air follower bubble Hollia with LinLin

spinning around her; scoops up Scrags and heads to the shore to get out of the way.

 

   *CRASH!*

 

    The mountain sized monster lunges its claw into the side of Cata’s ship, the screams of the crew on that deck echoing over the waves.

 

   “Damn it!” screams Cata.

 

   “Air Shredder!” she yells out followed by two great blue arcs of energy flying from her swords, growing in the air to massive size before colliding into the side of Ravana causing it to jerk back a little. The only marks however are a pair of thin cuts next to its giant spider like face.

 

    “Cursessss.” Hisses Cata.

 

   Ravana raises its body to the air, both claws coming down at Cata’s ship just as another volley from the space ship above sends it staggering back.

 

   The explosive firework like beam weapons from Betty’s ship are pretty much ignored by the monster at this time, at this moment she wishes she had packed more powerful weapons on-board and not just weapons designed to disable other vessels.

 

  “It has adapted.” says Rhulan to Betty, “This isn’t your everyday Dah-hoth, this is an actual chunk left over from Demiurge.”

 

    “Demiurge?” says Betty, “Impos…that’s just a myth.”

 

 

   “I have shared living quarters with myths.” says Rhulan, “we need to hit this thing hard and hit it…”

 

     *ahhhh!*

 

    Everyone on Betty’s ship screams at once as they the entire vessel is sent flying into the air towards the shore where Hollia and Scrags are waiting.

 

    “Damn!” screams Rhulan, vanishing from sight like ghost only appear between Scrags and Hollia, before they can even react between the sight of the ship flying in their direction and Rhulan appearing between them she has grabbed them both, with LinLin holding tight around Hollia, and vanishes again.

 

    Hollia and Scrags don’t see where they went, only a blur, as though wind were being pushed around them rather than moving through it. They find themselves being held easily, impossibly easily under Rhulan’s arms, high in the air. They see below where they just were the Addy, Betty’s ship stranded on the shore, split in half having smashed down a row of trees in the process.

 

    Looking at sea, the battle continues, the space craft continues to fire, as does Cata’s ship, and Cata herself. But its not looking well despite the continuous barrages the monsters is barely being damage, thankfully the plasma beams fired from its dragon heads are bouncing off of the space ship’s shields which has most of Ravana’s attention.

 

   “Not good,” thinks Rhulan.

 

   “Where is Betty and her crew!?”

 

   Hollia screams brings Rhulan back to the sight below them, no signs of bodies in the wreckage.

 

   “Holy shit!” exclaims Scrags pointing up “Look.”

 

    Above them slowly floating back down is a large white sphere, inside they can see easily thirty or so Figmentions and in the middle is Betty…”

 

   “Wow.” says Hollia dumbfounded.

 

   Jutting out from her back reaching the length of the sphere are two great white feathered wings.

 

   The sphere passes right by them, Rhulan notices a dazed expression on Betty’s face as they float passed them.

 

   Rhulan takes them too the ground as well releasing Scrags and Hollia to stand to their own feet.

 

   The white sphere vanishes, Betty immediately drops to one knee exhausted.

 

    “I…I…save them all.” she gasps before fainting face down in the sand by

her destroyed ship.

 

   “Betty!” screams Hollia running over, “What’s wrong? How…?”

 

   “She drained all her power,” says Rhulan matter-of-factly, “She just said she save them all.”

 

   She points out the thirty or so concerned Figmentions.

 

   “There weren’t nearly as many as this on the deck, a bunch of these were manning the guns. When Ravana hit the ship…with that damned tail no doubt…something of these had to have died. Betty there warped time and space as well as healed them at the same time. My guess is she’s a lot younger than those of her kind people usually encounter. This explains the whole concern with the Royal City sending Dimension Police.”

 

   “Huh?” says Scrags as Hollia begins a healing spell.

 

    Healing Light

    Glowing bright

    From the heavens above I call thy might

    Heal this body of its ails and bring all to right.

    Healing Light of White.

 

   A white orb emanates from Hollia’s hands, engulfing Betty’s body in its soothing light.

 

   *FRA-KREEEEEEE*

 

   “What the hell?” says Rhulan turning in horror.

 

  A focused blast from all three of Ravana’s top dragon heads as gotten through the shields of Lee Lee and Ki Ki’s ship, hitting the engines.

 

   Several purple and blue arcs of energy blast out during the rear explosion before the ship suddenly starts flying with little control to the west, vanishing over the horizon in a second.

 

   “What the hell just happened?” asks Scrags,

 

   “Shit.” says Rhulan, “Their engines got hit, no doubt sending the ship out of control. Don’t worry about them, I have no doubt they’ll live.”

 

   “How?” asks Hollia with out stopping her healing.

 

   With a wink Rhulan just says, “Those two are of the Immortal race.”

 

    Hollia had heard about them, a human like race with an indefinite life span, who are incredibly difficult to kill. Her parents have had trade with them before as colonies of them can be found in parts of the Makai Cluster, but she remembers that her parents said they weren’t originally from there.

 

    A rumbling draws their attention to Cata’s ship, its slowly sinking, and unseen force all that’s keeping it above water, but barely.

 

   “Damn it all.” says Rhulan, “I have had enough of this.”

 

   She vanishes into the air leaving behind a cyclone of wind in her wake. High in the air purple spheres of energy form around her hands as purple bolts fly in all directions.

 

   “Mystical Destroyer!”

 

   Bringing her hands together a massive purple beam of energy cascades from a warp in space around her front, making it look for all the world as if the energy was coming from her hands directly.

 

    The greats blast hits the side of Ravana with a mighty burst, ripping and destroying its flesh.

 

    *Scraaaa!*

 

    The monster’s attention is removed from Cata’s ship as it turns and raises its claw to try and defend from Rhulan’s blast, the eyes on its claw blistering and melting from their sockets under her assault.

 

   Cata throws her two swords down, leaving them standing embedded into the deck.

 

   “Okay.” she says cracking her neck back and forth, “So be it, if that’s the kind of crazy shit it takes.”

 

   “Captain?” asks Mr. Boarders, but a little too late as she does something even he didn’t know she could, fly into the air.

 

    Claws unsheathed and teeth bared arcs of electricity dance between her palms as she places them to her side as though holding onto a load of some sort. A blue sphere of energy forms and swirls between her palms at her side.

 

   “Rai….

    Ko….

   Ken!”

 

   She thrusts her hands forward vertically wrist to wrist, claws slightly pointed inward, sending a massive blast of plasma and cosmic lighting cascading and spinning around the beam into the other side of the monster.

 

   *Scra…Scra…Scra…*

 

  The mighty monster huffs; while trying to block the massive blasts on both sides. All any of its eyes can see is a massive purple energy on one side that rips at its flesh and destroys it at the molecular level, and on the other a blinding light that burns hotter than the surface of a sun.

 

   A blackness appears in the sea beneath it, as the monsters lowers down, halfway down its attempts one last attack, firing plasma beams from all three of its heads. Two only fire wildly into the air, the third however gets a lucky hit damaging Cata’s ship’s Kuhrai drive. The ship is now sinking at full speed, the large crew manning all the life boats, some to shore, the rest going back the way the ship came for some reason….that reason would be obvious as the majority of the crew at this point, most from Aesperia picked up at the local pirate ports as decided, “fuck this.”

 

   Ravana vanishes, half its face melted off, its two claws effectively destroyed, into the dimensional vortex, much as Gabrielle had attempted before.

 

   Cata floats down to the shore, only four life boats have stayed loyal to her, on the beach she smiles weakly, gives a thumbs up and passes out.

 

    Rhulan lowers to the ground; the ground however dissolves beneath her feet, the very air around in fact ripples.

 

    “Don’t come near.” says Rhulan as Hollia starts to walk over, “That attack’s after effects will take about ten minutes to die down.”

 

    Hollia nods, feeling a little hurt but understanding to some degree as she sees the sand grains below Rhulan levitate and dissolve in the strange rippling aura. In a flash of memory she recalls Rhulan using something similar to stop the collapsing ceiling of the coliseum back at Stratalia, a power that allowed her to easily survive tons of rock falling on her head, or at least…she looks back, she thinks it was that power.

 

    Before Hollia can start her healing spell on Cata a blue aura appears over Cata. She blinks for a moment before coming too and shaking her head,  

 

    “damn it.” she says.

 

     “Captain?” asks Mr. Boarders…”What was that?”

 

    She eyes him, “you mean me or that ass ugly monster Mr. Boarders.”

 

    “Sorry.” He says

 

 

   “Never mind that, it’s a Kuhrai thing.” She says, but thinks, “but not my mother’s…damn it all…between my dad’s attacks and my mother’s healing…its like some cosmic joke.”

 

    She looks around seeing the strange power around Rhulan dieing down, but clearly didn’t exhaust her, just made it hard for her to interact with the world around her for a moment, looks down at Betty whose eyes are starting to twitch as she comes too, much to the relief of her crew.

 

   Cata sighs as she sees her ship tipping over in the waters as the mostly destroyed engines are only keeping the back end up and dragging it towards shore and shallow water dragging it along the bottom. She looks over her shoulder at Betty’s ship, smashed in two. They won the fight, but if not for resorting to some extreme measures which clearly took Betty out of the fight and Cata could have only lasted for a moment more before passing out. If not for their being two of them capable of such high end attacks chances are they would have all died this day. But in the end they only drove it off, not kill it.

 

  Looking to the air she remembers the other vessel…

 

  “What was with that?” she thinks.

 

   Shaking it off, “well who ever they were they only managed to distract that thing before having to retreat.” She says aloud, mostly to herself.

 

   “Lee Lee...Ki Ki…” says Betty weakly, drawing Cata’s attention.

 

   “Their ship was forced to retreat, they were out of control thanks to their engines being hit.” says Rhulan.

 

   “O…kay…” she says

 

   “Please Miss Betty.” says Hollia, “you’re not back to one hundred percent, you still need to rest a moment.”

 

    “Mr. Boarders.” says Cata, “How many men remain?”

 

    “About twenty,” he says.

 

   She glares, not so much at him, but through him, “Twenty men, out of over a hundred. Cowards.”

 

   “With all due respect,” he says, “We lost fifteen when that thing struck the ship, and five more from that last shot.”

 

    *rrrrr*

 

   “Loyalty….hell who am I kidding, I paid those sea bastards a fricken fortune, gave them access to technology not seen for…”

 

   She looks at Rhulan whose field has dissipated and rejoined her comrades

 

  “For a thousand years at least. Our target has always been the Tiger’s Eye Ruby, did they really expect us to keep on raiding merchants and hijacking adventurers, or trying to pillage the ancient tech on Los Rodos…”

 

   She thinks about it for a moment and laughs at herself, “Of course they did. Well, guess we got lucky, weeded out the short term thinkers.”

 

    “On that note,” says Mr. Boarders, “With this many men, even sending them back to the pirate cove its going to take at least four months to repair the ship.”

 

    “I assume your taking into account the self-repairing systems?” she says with an expression as close to raising an eyebrow as a being with a fur covered face can express.

 

   “yeah, those.” He says with a nervous chuckle, “that will take the first three months, and then only a month once those are online.”

 

    “I…see.” she says.

 

    “My ship isn’t going anywhere soon either.” says Betty walking over, “my men are staying behind here to oversee its repairs. It too has an auto-repair that’s damaged that they need to fix. So I guess they can help you guys out.”

 

   “The way you’re talking you’d think you weren’t sticking around.” says Cata.

 

   “Oh…uh…yeah I’m like not.”

 

   She points at Rhulan’s group, “I’m going with them to go after the big bad that summoned that monster, but my guys are totally versed at repairing all sorts of high tech stuff.”

 

   “Hmm,” says Cata looking at the mostly local riff-raff she’d brought along. Only two guys with her had any knowledge of machinery, Mr. Boarders, and the other guy…only…knows…knows considerably less advanced…tech…

 

   “Where is Mr. Jones?” she asks.

 

   “He took off.” says Mr. Boarders softly.

 

   “What?” she says coldly, “That stupid bastard actually left with the rest of those cowards?...that doesn’t make any sense.”

 

   “Uh…no.” he says nervously, “From what I can tell he ran off during the

fight with those blob things. With all the confusion, between being sucked into another dimension, I thought he had run back to the ship, but then we were attacked…”

 

   “Enough,” she says raising her hand, “If he wants to run off and get killed so be it, not my problem and most certainly not my job to baby-sit that proto-human.”

 

     She smiles at Betty, “Thank you Captain Betty, my men would be much appreciative to have your crew’s expertise.”

 

   She walks over to Rhulan, “Empress Rhulan, or by what ever title you wish to be called.”

 

    Cata bows her head, “My sword and my skill is at your service.”

 

   “Excuse…me?” says Scrags, “Lady…”

 

 

   Rhulan holds out her hand, “What my thief friend here means is. Why would you want to come with us instead of watching over your crew?”

 

   “My ship will take four months to repair.” she says, “It is my understanding you are going after the bastards who summoned that thing that destroyed and killed some of my crew. I owe them blood. My enemy is your enemy; I reckon I have a better chance going after them with you folks than on my own.”

 

    “And,” says Rhulan with a smile, “I don’t suppose it hurts that our enemy seems to be tied to this gem you’re looking for either.”

 

   Cata smiles, “Of course not, a mutual enemy, and we’re going to the same place after the same people anyway.”

 

   “Well then,” says Rhulan, “Welcome to the party.”