The old ferryman was right. A storm did seem to be brewing. Angry black clouds were gathering overhead when Yvette and Janice started to cling to Charlemagne. It was silly that they thought he might be able to do something about it but endearing.
“Master,” Yvette whispered.
“Hmm?” Charlemagne had nearly dozed off.
“What are we going to do?” she asked timidly.
“Well,” he started after he gathered his tired thoughts some, “We’ll need to lie low for a little bit. In a few months, we can leave Tropic and start over somewhere else. I hear Indigo is handing out ‘tamer’ licenses like candy now. It would be a good cover and a decent way to assimilate into society there. Granted, we’ll be living in the woods for some time.”
Janice whined pitifully at that.
Charlemagne looked over to her. He knew this was going to be trouble. Ah! He knew what to do. “Janice, don’t worry,” he soothed with a soft but invariably deep voice, “We don’t have to move around too much, just enough to get a small place to live. Hell, if we find a feral that is one of those teleporting types, we’ll never have to be more that a moment away from home.”
That was an interesting idea. Hopefully the idea of that future would keep her sated until it could become a reality or until the urge to be tethered to one area was extinguished.
The next few hours were silent save for the rocking of the sea. That is, until the soft pitter-patter of rain began. The owner of the ferry left his post momentarily to scramble over to them. “Hey kids! Get below deck, it’s going to be-“
He was cut off by a bolt of lightning. Except unlike normal lightning which took place far above in the clouds, this one streaked right past the ferry itself.
Landing on the portside of the ferry was a human-ish looking woman. She did however have abnormal neon green coloration to her hair. She began to float and moved to the ferryman. “We don’t want any trouble, just the boy,” she said in a casual, almost sing-song tone.
We? Oh, Charlemagne saw the man who appeared on the same side as the ship. Hm. He didn’t seem to be armed with anything except that pistol, a glockenspiel of some sort by the looks of it.
The unknown pokégirl was a serious threat though. She was definitely a magic type. Those were tricky and extremely dangerous. She could easily kill him, but if he went with her, he was dead anyways.
He’d need to move fast. He made a small gesture with his head directed at Janice since she was the strongest amongst them. All he had was a prayer that she actually understood that he wanted her support. Yvette, although sweet and great company, would be useless in battle with her weak body and her breed’s natural hemophilia. This all depended on Janice saving his sorry ass by doing what her instincts should tell her to do.
He got up with his hands raised, as if to go peacefully, and stepped out into the open. One stride and he was in front of the man. The man sent to fetch him didn’t like the idea of such a big man being in front of him and his hand dove for his gun. Despite his uniform which suggested a place in the League Tamer Armada, a supposedly highly trained military organization, he was sadly slow on the draw. He probably bought his way into it just so he could fuck pokégirls.
With his left hand, Charlemagne wrenched the gun out of the man’s hand, breaking a few of the bones in his hand and wrist in the process and forcing a strangled cry from the bastard. The bounty hunter’s pokégirl was about to fry him with some sort of spell, but Janice tackled her and whatever that bubbling, glowing glob of plasma was went flying off into the sky. Hounds were faster physically than a simple Sorceress. Much stronger too. Their struggle was a tossup really. Would the Sorceress be able to manage a spell sufficiently powerful to get the stronger pokégirl off of her, or would Janice be able to knockout or kill the Sorceress with her superior strength?
Charlemagne didn’t think Janice had it in her to do either. She was just a status symbol whose official job was to guard a rich man’s house which no one was stupid enough to rob in the first place. He doubted she had ever had a serious fight in her life.
So, this would come down to him. One quick pistol whip to the temple, cut off the man’s screams and rendered him unconscious. Charlemagne watched the struggle out of the corner of his eye. Janice was soon sent flying and crashed into the stern. The Sorceress was up and she was pissed.
Charlemagne had the gun to the unconscious man’s head.
Fuck, they were in a stalemate. A hostage was only good so long as it was alive. If Charlemagne followed through with any threats to kill him, he lost his advantage. If the Sorceress was smart enough to know that, he was fucked.
“One step closer and he dies!” Charlemagne barked out, his deep voice adding to the menacing nature of the boom it created.
The Sorceress froze, unsure of what to do. Her bloodlust demanded his head on a pike, but her instincts told her to protect her master’s life. She stood on her feet rather and looked between him and her master. Her taking an experimental step forward nearly caused Charlemagne to panic. He dug his fingers into the man’s broken wrist.
The pain forced him back into the waking world so he could cry out once more. With a stroke of luck, Charlemagne saw a red and white ball at his waist. He knew what those were but had no idea how to use them.
With a gun to the man’s head, Charlemagne bellowed over his screams of agony: “Put her in the ball!”
That however, had unexpected consequences. For whatever reason, the Sorceress began to charge some kind of spell. Charlemagne had no idea why. He was right over her master. The man would die along with him. Or maybe she thought he could take him out without hurting her owner.
Charlemagne’s hand shot for the ball. Maybe he’d get lucky and be able to get her in it, however the hell that worked. Just as he was about to leap up and bolt for cover, something shocking and bewildering happened.
A figure let out a feral scream of rage and tackled into the Sorceress sending her overboard. It was Yvette. A pang of fear struck Charlemagne in the chest. It wasn’t primal fear for his life. It was fear for an old companion, something that had been a constant in his life for as long as he could remember.
He rushed to the port side of the ferry and looked over the edge. He saw nothing but waves being churned by the quickly gathering storm. He shivered from the chill the wetness and wind brought. “Yvette!” he shouted with all his might. She might still be tangling with the Sorceress. And she could fly.
Charlemagne fumbled with the ball device. He managed to make it change sizes from grape to grapefruit and back three times before a beam of red light shot out of it. A large mass of more red light followed along the beam, and the ball opened its maw gulping the light down before snapping shut.
He hoped that meant that the Sorceress was inside and couldn’t cause any trouble. “YVETTE!” he bellowed once more. He didn’t see anything. With high hope in his heart, he grabbed a lifesaver and tossed it into the water in the direction he thought she had fallen. He could only hope.
Something in the back of his mind wanted to tell him that she was alive. Logic pointed out otherwise. He didn’t want to believe it. There was business he needed to attend to. He walked over to Janice’s unconscious form and picked her up. The man whose Sorceress was hopefully sealed away in the ball device wobbled to his feet.
“You think this is over punk?!” the man shouted, nearly foaming at the mouth.
Charlemagne didn’t have time for this. He pointed the pistol him with his free hand, not really aiming, and took a shot that would hopefully miss just to show that he was the one with the gun. The bullet ended up grazing the man. He fell on his broken wrist. Idiot.
Peeking out from below deck, the old man whose ferry they were on ducked completely below no doubt regretting the clunk the trapdoor made. Charlemagne sighed. He didn’t want to unduly make that man’s life difficult. He knew just how uncomfortable having these people breathing down your neck was, and this guy was just an ignorant civilian completely unaware of the workings that happened beyond his small little world.
“Look, I’m not going to hurt you. I was just defending myself,” he called down. There was no answer. “Hey, if you want a tangible reason why I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to, I don’t know how to drive this thing and definitely don’t want to capsize any more than you do.”
At the reminder that no one was piloting the boat in the middle of a storm, the old man slowly peeked out from the trapdoor and hurried to the steering wheel. Charlemagne looked down at the bounty hunter- that’s what he assumed he was at least- and then looked to Janice who was still over his shoulder.
He set her down; he had a few things to attend to first. Charlemagne grabbed the bounty hunter by the hair and lifted him to his feet. The man threw a desperate punch his way. It was sloppy, and Charlemagne caught it easily, not that someone that man’s size and apparent lack of skill could really hurt him unless he had a weapon or managed to hit his soft tissue.
He kept his arm in his hand and bashed his elbow in, causing several bones to break and the ulna and radius to poke through the skin. It would make attacking him difficult with that and a broken wrist on the other arm. Ignoring the man’s renewed shrieks of agony, he dragged the man below deck, grabbing his backpack/portable cabinet on the way.
Once down there, Charlemagne grabbed a chair and pulled his trusty duct tape out of his backpack. Now that he had all the man’s limbs- including the broken ones- secure, he went back up for Janice and brought her out of the rain. He took her wet clothes off and left her in the corner. There was no place comfortable to place her and no towels to dry her.
Rounding on the man tied in the chair. The giant towered above him. The bound man’s impetuous and indignant expression melted. Charlemagne knew that his size and overly masculine features made other men instinctually afraid of him. It was useful in many situations especially for intimidation. Fear of pain was a much more interrogation tool than actual pain. Pain and torture just made people spit out the first thing they thought would make it stop. He needed a clear but fearful mind to spill what it new. He had never actually done this before outside of controlled practices set up by the family. However, the theory behind it probably gave him a leg up on those going in blind.
“Do you have any idea how angry I am right now?” he hissed. Charlemagne slid a knife out of his sleeve and brandished it menacingly. “I. Just. Can.-“ he growled bestially, the bass nature of his vocal cords actually making it sound like a growl. He brought the blade up, and the man flinched back expecting a cut. Instead, he heard Charlemagne grunt in pain.
The bound man looked up in shock to see that Charlemagne had dragged the knife across his own hand. Just what kind of person did they send him after?! Charlemagne could see the fear of the unknown in his eyes. He seized the opportunity. He held his shaking, bleeding fist above the man’s had as if to bring it down like a hammer. Blood oozed forth and dripped onto the man’s face, and Charlemagne allowed a practiced manic gleam to come to his eyes.
“Look, I don’t know what you want, man!” he cried out, trying to move out of the way of the dripping blood.
“What were your orders, and who did they come from?” Charlemagne growled out.
“Just to arrest you and bring you back! My handler called and briefed me on the details just about an hour ago,” he eyed the knife nervously. He had no idea what to expect and was about ready to soil himself.
“Names!”
“I don’t know! They call you not the other way around. It’s never the same number.”
“How’d you find me?”
“All the docks were being watched. I just got lucky when I saw this one pushing off. It took a while to catch up though what with the rowing and then the rain and all.”
Fuck, if they were watching all the docks, then they’d know which one he used from which agent didn’t report back. Although…
An idea bloomed inside his head. He spied what looked like some kind of communications device. He pulled it off of the man’s belt and gave him very clear instructions. He turned the chair to face away from his pack so he could disinfect and bandage his hand in peace before stowing the knife away and picking the chair up with his undamaged hand to drag it up top into the storm.
He held the device up to his captive, and the captive followed his instructions to the letter.
“Sir, reporting in!” he shouted over the howling wind, “I got the kid, but there’s been some complications.” Some voice on the other end screeched at him, saying things that Charlemagne could not understand. “Yeah, Monika got a bit carried away. The kid’s ribs are sticking out.” There was a pause. “Ya, I know. She’s in her ‘ball now. Anyways, I’m caught in the storm right now. When I can I’ll- Oh shiiiii-“
Charlemagne then hurled the device over into the deep of the ocean. When he turned back around, he noticed that the captive was screaming about something real and not just a surprisingly good actor. A huge fucking wave was heading right towards them.
Ignoring the captive, Charlemagne darted below deck, grabbed Janice and his backpack and held them close to him. He braced for impact.
Janice was just stirring when the wave hit the side of the ferry, flipping it over. For a few minutes, no one knew up from down while the boat tumbled through space. When it settled through, water was everywhere and the roof was gone. Water poured in. All that could be done was swim up. Fortunately, Charlemagne’s pack seemed to be buoyant and made this task much easier.
Their lungs burned during the struggle towards the surface. When they broke it, the first lungful of air was one of the most wonderful experiences of their lives. While his pack wouldn’t support both his and Janice’s weight, it was a convenient lifesaver at the time, allowing them to stay afloat. Now all they had to worry about was the water sucking the heat out of them and turning them hypothermic. Oh, and water type pokégirls too. Life was wonderful, wasn’t it?
Charlemagne kept an eye out for the old man who had been taking them to Basshead Island. He didn’t see him. Hopefully he died peacefully rather than drowning horribly. It hadn’t been his intention to lead the ferryman to his death. It made him feel horrible that he had endangered him so by tempting him with the money he stole from Edmund. The familiar pain caused him to cast another hopeful eye around him looking for Yvette. No sign.
They floated there for an infinite amount of time. The storm tossed them and jostled them around. His mind was numb both from the lack of feeling in his extremities and the dull, muted horror of their entire situation. They drifted endlessly in an endless sea. The wrathful clouds overhead never ceased their storming or their angry bellows. It was all endless and extended forever.
And then they were picked up by another wave that threw them violently into a hard surface. Charlemagne opened his eyes blearily as another wave of water washed over them. He looked around and felt something beneath him, dirt.
They had reached land.
He dragged himself to his feet and picked up his pack. Janice was a few feet ahead of him and conscious. He sluggishly wobbled over to her and managed to help her to her feet. Together, they managed to make it farther inland under tree cover. Eventually they found a spot where little to no rain was making it through the thick canopy.
Janice was already naked from Charlemagne having stripped her earlier. She shook out her fur in a canine fashion sending water in every direction. Too exhausted mentally and physically to be annoyed, he merely ignored the light spray and pulled off his wet clothes and cast them aside. He would have wrapped them both up in a warm blanket, but the entirety of his pack was pretty well waterlogged. The two huddled together for warmth.
“Janice,” he gasped out past his uncontrollable shivering, “there’ll be ferals out there. We’ll need to sleep in shifts.” There was no way around it. As much as he wanted to simply pass out right now, he couldn’t afford to. “I’ll take the first shift,” he offered. It wasn’t for her sake, really, but Janice looked ready to collapse and he didn’t want to have them both asleep at the same time. That would just get them both killed.
To his surprise, Janice sat up and shook herself awake. She looked down at him resolutely and said: “I’ll watch, I’m the guard dog here.” She gave him a toothy grin and sat up straight.
Charlemagne’s will to argue was slipping. “I know you’re just as tired as I am…” he mumbled. “Wake me in a few hours. That’s an order.” And with that, he fell into the sandman’s embrace.