Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
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Post by Antenora on May 12, 2005 7:53:10 GMT -5
Try saying "Six-Six-Seventh Serenity" three times fast, even when sober. It is hard.
Great chapter. Yzay for my talking crow!
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Post by Ennui on May 12, 2005 9:39:38 GMT -5
CHAPTER 3
Though they did not know it, the pirates were being led by the Ninjas through ridiculously thick tropical rainforest. A tiger wandered by with a low growl; a toucan fluttered overhead (Nora's crow cawed disdainfully at it); and a family of sloths could be seen on one branch. Well, they couldn't, if you're looking from the pirates' perspective. Never mind that.
However, the everpresent crow often surreptitiously scratched at Nora's blindfold. Eventually two slits were formed, and she found she could see perfectly.
"Beware," Am-Ber muttered to Pee-Jai. "We're passing through...Her...territory."
A collective squeal erupted from the European Commissioners as they realised yet another woman in a position of authority had just been referred to.
Pee-Jai shivered. "She Who Shows No Mercy?"
Am-Ber nodded grimly. "She Who Veils The Eyelids."
"You don't mean to say...She Who Pierces The Fingertips?"
"Alas, Pee-Jai, the very same."
Just then a throwing star whizzed past Pee-Jai's head, slicing his sand coloured mask and revealing his curling locks. Nora had to stifle a laugh.
"Fauntleroy! Fauntleroy!" shrieked the crow.
But this was no time for nostalgia for dear little children's stories. Another throwing star sliced into Am-Ber's shin, and she fell. A third cut the wire securing Ennui's hands to Nora's. Nora quickly leapt to Am-Ber's side.
"Sorry 'bout this, lass. I be needin my associate's rapier." She rifled the possessions of the fallen Ninja, producing the Toledo blade, six hundred and sixty seven very small throwing knifes in a gold case, and a loaded crossbow pistol.
Meanwhile Pee-Jai was, at first sight, struggling with all his skill against...nothing. It transpired that he faced another Ninja, a female, in worryingly accurate green and brown camouflage. She was in equipment, in stature, and in speed his superior and it was clear he could not long stand against this dervish.
Nora ripped off Ennui's blind and passed him his rapier. She also liberated Dante, chucking him the crossbow-pistol.
"Yeargh, sheer genius, Nora," Ennui exclaimed. "Now, I take it, we escape?" He started to run off.
"Stop, ye lilyliver!" Nora bawled. "The Ninjas here will die. And ye can't leave the lass defenceless and weaponless on the ground."
They were interrupted by a clank as Pee-Jai's katana flew from his hands. Reduced to dire straights, he started hurling knives at a tree trunk and climbing up it, but found his way blocked by the creeping sloths. Lacking the heart to dislodge them, he hung helplessly from his latest dagger, high above the scene.
"You don't mean to say, girl," Dante sneered, "that you intend to rescue Ninjas? I thought that went against the obsure code of your anachronistic profession."
"True, true, matey," Ennui answered with a grin and started to run off again. Nora yanked him back.
"To Davey Jones with that! It doesn't count if'n we save Ninjas from Ninjas." And so, with her reluctant cohort and her crow in her wake, she rushed against the mysterious green-garbed Ninja, just as the latter was advancing on the prone Am-Ber...
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Post by Amber on May 12, 2005 10:01:53 GMT -5
Will I stay be rescued or will I go be dragged away by the mysterious ninja?
Either way it's still great.
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Post by Dante on May 12, 2005 10:29:20 GMT -5
I think that the new twists in the tale (and my patronising attitude) continue to make this an enjoyable read.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
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Post by Antenora on May 12, 2005 12:03:32 GMT -5
This is very enjoyable, indeed.
The obscure code of my anachronistic profession may or may not forbid me from helping ninjas. Too bad I never wrote it down, or I could check..
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Post by j42 on May 12, 2005 17:48:45 GMT -5
Can Rob and I be ninjas?
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Post by Ennui on May 12, 2005 23:39:32 GMT -5
Heh, heh, heh, if only you knew, J...oops...
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Post by PJ on May 13, 2005 6:20:19 GMT -5
Yzay for sloths! And my tree climbing skills are pretty cool. Blasted female ninja, freeing pirates! Who does she think she is?
Surely, not J.?
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Post by Ennui on May 16, 2005 6:30:45 GMT -5
CHAPTER 4
"Pirates," said the green Ninja with calculated disdain. "Frankly, I expected better. I suppose you're here seeking the Dread Admiral's Crock?"
"As it happens, lass," Nora replied, "no...we were shipwrecked..."
Dante's quarrel collided with another throwing star from the Ninja, bearing them both to the ground.
"For goodness sake, girl!" he said, exasperated. "That's the oldest one in the book..."
At that precise moment something heavy fell on his head, and he knew no more. As it happened, it was Pee-Jai, who had been disconcerted to see one of the sloths transform into a wasp and sting him repeatedly on the hands, and had not been able to maintain his grip on his dagger. Now he was unarmed, winded, and rather disorientated.
"Excellent work, Captiosus," the green Ninja commented. "Now we will slay them all...pirates and ninjas alike...my feud is all-encompassing, all consuming. I hate everyone on this island. Including you, Captiosus, but there's not that much I can do about you, being part of my soul and all..."
During this tirade of detestation Ennui had discreetly got hold of the fallen Am-Ber's arm and started to drag her away through the undergrowth.
"You saved me..." Am-Ber gasped.
"Arrgh, twas nothing. Besides, you be the only one who knows the way to this fortress...and prison or not, I feel like a spot of civilisation, yeargh. Besides, the prison that can hold Luckless Ennui hasn't been..."
He fell headlong over another tripwire. Three dark-robed Ninjas revealed themselves.
"Am-Ber!" one cried. "In the hands of a pirate!"
"It's alright," Am-Ber muttered wearily. "Pee-Jai is lost to...She Who Hates Unrestrainedly. This pirate escorted me from her ambush. I owe my life to him. But, naturally, we've still got to lock him up thoroughly."
"I expected something o' the kind, dearie. Don't feel guilty," Ennui said, rather cheerfully. Mentally, the left compartment of his brain was repeating the three hundred and sixty eight ways to escape a prison cell, and the right side of his brain was considering that Am-Ber really did have very pretty eyes.
For Nora, whom he had left to face the merciless Ninja, he spared not a thought. Regret was a sentiment, in his opinion, unsuited to the sanguine, irrepressible nature of a true buccaneer such as himself.
***
Back in the territory of the green Ninja, She Who Was Called The Unforgiving One laughed insanely as she advanced on Nora.
"Your companion seems to have abandoned you..."
"Aye. Not the first time it's occurred in our career, particularly," Nora added tartly, "where a bonny girl was concerned."
"I will catch up with them later," the Green One concluded, stepping forward. Nora looked back, but found her retreat blocked by Wasp-Captiosus. With peerless skill, the Ninja caught her off guard and disarmed her. It was all up now.
Then suddenly, for no good reason, the Ninja dropped both Nora's rapier and her own katana.
"Nooo...swallowed...ah...you...will...suffer...Admiral's Crock...torture...gurgle gurgle gurgle..."
She slumped, quite dead, to the leafy ground. Antenora's crow resettled on her shoulder, deftly ejecting a wasp-sting from its beak.
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Post by PJ on May 16, 2005 7:10:36 GMT -5
Cool. So the crow killed Captiosus, and with that blow, J. as well? It's been a while since I read His Dark Materials. Also, nicely done. I've incapacitated Dante with my extremely....skilful skills. I expect I will try and attack Antenora, and she will beat me senseless, and keep me hostage. Or something like that. Do more.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on May 16, 2005 7:47:36 GMT -5
I <#### my crow.
And I love the description of Ennui's brain activity. This is a wonderful story.
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Post by Amber on May 16, 2005 8:37:41 GMT -5
Did I mention you're perfect?
True perfection has to be imperfect I know that that sounds foolish but it´s true
I love it, "...gurgle gurgle gurgle..."
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Post by Dante on May 16, 2005 11:23:32 GMT -5
I ran out of original comments long ago, but rest assured that I continue to enjoy this.
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Post by Ennui on May 25, 2005 11:53:56 GMT -5
CHAPTER 4
Ennui consented with an air of cheerful resignation to being blindfolded.
"Twasn't so unconfortable last time, after all..." he remarked. "I s'pose ye have lots of practice, lass, for it feels almost as if ye caress my brows..."
Am-Ber rolled her pretty eyes, though she was somewhat flattered, and applied the blindfold. Ennui felt himself being marched a long, winding way; at one point Am-Ber's voice said "Take him down to the cells. We'll interrogate him in the morning."
When his eyes were uncovered again, he was in a small, damp, square room. A cursory glance identified it as an example of Standard Prison Class 6, somewhere between dungeon and oubliette. A surly Ninja had removed his blindfold, and quickly marched out, slamming the door behind him. But still, he was not alone.
"It is good to have company," a polished, exotic voice rang out. "I haven't seen another soul for...eleven years. Apart from the Guards of the Fortress, of course."
The speaker was richly, even rather flashily, attired, as an exceptionally successful pirate might be, in scarlet and black. In some ways, he looked similar to Luckless Ennui; but he seemed to possess more dignity and less mischief.
"They used to call me Akbar," he said. "Akbar the Great. A ridiculous title, as any elementary knowledge of Mogul history will show you..."
"Akbar?" Ennui cried. "I've heard o' ye before. Was it not ye who gathered a crew to discover what happened to the lost expedition of the Dread Admiral Kobolos?"
"It was I," Akbar confessed. "But it's a long tale, pirate. And we have escaping to do. Not to mention you still have not graced me with the knowledge of your own identity."
"I," Ennui said with some pride, "am Juan Lopez-Martinez, Vice-Regent of Antigua and Governor of Cartagena."
"Only one pirate I've heard of uses such ridiculously elaborate pseudonyms," Akbar commented. "Welcome to the Six-Six-Seventh Serenity, Ennui."
***
Meanwhile, Pee-Jai made his stealthy advance on the victorious Nora, who had just retrieved her rapier. He had recovered his wits, and struck as silently and ineluctably as an anaconda, laying Nora low with a devastating display of martial art to the small of her back.
Unluckily for him, however, Dante had also returned to consciousness. Groggily, he grabbed the empty crossbow pistol and threw it. Inadvertently, Dante had aimed it perfectly and it crashed onto the top of Pee-Jai's head, and the Ninja crumpled over his recent victim. Nora's crow cawed in satisfaction.
Dante contemplated the two prone figures for a moment. Nora, in particular, interested him strangely. In defeat and vulnerability, she seemed different from the hard, weather-beaten pirate of their voyage. Something about her loose hair and well-proportioned features recalled someone else entirely; so much so that Dante now reached for the locket where he kept the photo of the beloved he had been travelling to meet.
"Antenora..." he breathed. "But what could have reduced her to piracy? Or did she merely never tell me?"
He swept both the groaning Pee-Jai and these disconcerting thoughts aside, and hoisted Antenora up tenderly. In a land of hostile Ninjas they might be, but he would keep her safe as far as he could.
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Post by Dante on May 25, 2005 12:07:06 GMT -5
I should have guessed that Kobolos - in his pirate form - would make an appearance. Good idea, Ennui. Akbar's appearance is also interesting, and balances out the pirate ranks (well, a little, considering they're in a ninja fortress).
I also quite like the plot twist that the pirate 'Nora is, in fact, my beloved Antenora.
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