ic I Have Not Yet Begun To Fright!

[Supercape]

Flintlock

 

"Ow! Ow ow ow ow!" snapped Flintlock as golden coins pinged into her like a machine gun. Curses! Bruises and welts scraped over her body. If not for her eldritch tattoos, she might have been made mincemeat. 

 

The Skeleton Crew took it worse, with flesh and splintered bone popping and exploding, landing into the sea like rain. Flintlock could swear she saw an enucleated eyeball fall to the ocean beside her. Her undead crew were torn to ribbons, and fell into the sea, the waves swallowing them. 

 

All but Sweet Jennie, by the cannons, hidden under the firm planks and wood of the Black Flag, whose timbers buckled and cracked but did not sunder. 

 

"I'll guzzet your snoodleguff!" she yelled at Montenzuma. Who knew what guzzet and snoodleguff meant? but Sweet Jennie meant it, anyhows. 

 

With a determined lighting of fuse, with gnashed teeth, she fired the Cannons once more, the smoke bellowing, the iron hurling, and Montezuma's face ready to receive a right smashing...

[EviscerusNox]

A cannonball took Moctezuma in the chest, being incorporeal he did not splatter across the waves or sail back into horizon.  There was, however a large, singed hole through his middle and Moctezuma stumbled taking a knee in midair.  

 

"A curse upon your pox-ridden corpses!  The Great Moctezuma will not be undone by undead pirate filth!  I am ruler of the Tenochtitlan and the Dead!  I am the wrath of the waves!  The scourge of the Spanish!  I will have my vengeance now, and throughout time!  Your petty slights will not stop me!"

 

Despite the wrathful blustering, Moctezuma was still on one knee, the gaping hole in his chest knitting closed slowly.

[Supercape]

Flintlock

 

"I'm no fan of the Spanish either!" agreed Flintlock, remembering the heated sea battles around the Carribean. "Why, they are almost as bad as the English!"

 

She started to swim back to the Black Flag. 

 

"And yet, they destroyed you, did they not? Wiped clean. Oblivion. But who do you think destroyed them?" she asked. 

 

"I did. Never a battle lost, never a ship sunk. So if I beat the men and women who beat you, what chance for you now, when I am stronger than then?" she laughed confidently. 

 

"Fire the Cannons! Destroy him!" she called to the skies, as Sweet Jennie once again fired the black iron cannons of the Black Flag, and the tentacled horror in the sea flailed it blubbered tentacles at the ghost...

[EviscerusNox]

Moctezuma scoffed at Flintlock's jests but his sneer quickly turned to wide eyed panic as he belatedly remembered the Tentacled horror, which slammed into him with a tentacle, sending the ghost spinning.  

 

Moctezuma recovered quickly and in a fit of rage screamed a wordless scream of anger, ghostly spittle flying from his mouth as a literal storm of coins swirled around the ship, the kraken and Flintlock.  Thousands of coins rained from the sky, shooting at the speed of bullets towards Flintlock.  

 

"IF I PERISH, SO DO YOU!"

 

With that, the sky rained death.

 

 

[Supercape]

Flintlock

 

"Wait, what?" asked Flintlock. There was almost a trace of politeness in her question. 

 

Was she linked to this Ghost somehow? Surely, there was more to this than met the eye. Like always!

 

But the coins once again smashed into her, bouncing of her skull. One flew into her mouth. She could feel a tooth chipping. 

 

At least I'll have the gold for a filling...she thought as her head spun. Gold, gold, all around!

 

As the Kraken thrashed its multitude of tentacles at the Ghost, Sweet Jennie loaded the cannons once more. "I'll smash your Aztec bones! Grind them into toothpaste, I will!" she shouted, lighting the fuse. 

 

Boom!

 

And once again, a mighty cannon ball hurled across the sea...

[EviscerusNox]

Moctezume had but a moment to revel in the pain he obviously caused Flintlock before another cannonball took him in the middle.  At first a confused look spread across his face, then looking down, he noticed that his ghostly legs were missing.  Completely removed by the well aimed cannon shot.  Moctezuma's eys flashed red, then went glassy as the injuries started to take their toll.  His form wavered between winking out of existence and forming on this plain.  He tried to summon his will, the coins floated up out of the water barely a foot before dropping back in as his arms drooped to his side.

 

"YOU... you will... feel... wrath... death..."  

 

Moctezuma spun around, his eyes seeming not to be able to focus, to find his enemy.  It was all it seemed he could do to keep his form together.

[Supercape]

Flintlock

 

"Hold your fire, Jennie!" called out Flintlock to the mad Swedish zombie pirate gunner. 

 

"What? I can't hear you!" pleaded Sweet Jennie, gleefully lighting the fuse. 

 

"I said hold your fire you crazy valkyrie!" hollered Flintlock at the top of her voice. 

 

Grumbling, sweet Jennie spat on her zombie fingers and pinched out the fuse. She did not look best pleased. 

 

With a wave of her hand the Kraken stomped flailing its tentacles. Flintlock called out to Moctezuma forcefully. "The game is up, sir! Yield, and tell me your story...mayhap even I can help. You would, I think, prefer my aid rather than my fury!"

 

 

[EviscerusNox]

Moctezuma looked confused, like no one had ever actually asked him before what his issues were.

 

"I ruled my people long ago.  The Spanish came, took my treasure and my life and the life of my people, then carried it away on their ships.  I cursed them and the treasure, and so now my fate is entwined with that of my treasure.  None may possess it and not befall the fate of the Spaniards before them.  Those souls that do take my treasure I deal with, then they serve me forever.  This is the way it has been and always shall be!  I was robbed of the ability to exact my revenge on the souls of the Bonhomme Richard, and so I had to wait till the veil was weak, and my strength was gathered to lift her out of the sea.  There is nothing you could offer me, no succor that will quench my rage.  My people are gone, their lives and impact almost forgotten.  I will make them remember us.  I will make them fear us!  I will make you all pay!  You will all know my RUIN!"

 

The sky cracked and a peel of lightning forked overhead to emphasize the last word.  The ghost of Moctezuma's eyes flashed a red light and Flintlock could see his legs had reformed to just above the knee.  He still looked weak, but his anger fueled his mad spirit even beyond death.  There seemed little to no reason left behind those spectral eyes.

[Supercape]

Flintlock

 

Flintlock considered Moctezuma's words carefully. And then carefully considered her own. 

 

"Well then, sir, if there is no mercy or life left in your spirit, I think our parley is of no consequence, much as it laments me to say so. But know this, the bitter twisted shade you are now would turn the stomach of the Moctezuma in life. For he might be brimming with rage, but it was not his totality. There was love there, too, even if it drowned in fury..."

 

"I grant you know mercy, then shade, for there is none in you!"

 

She nodded to Jennie, who, with a smile full of half rotten teeth (or half-full of them, to be more precise), lit the fuse once again. 

 

"You heard the captain!" she called to the ghost, and fired once more, as the beast of a thousand eyes, the Kraken of blubber and tentacle, once again lurched....

 

[EviscerusNox]

Moctezuma's eyes went wide for brief instance before the cannon took his ethereal head off his shoulders.  Any question of the ghost surviving such a blast flew out the window as a tentacle of the massive kraken came crashing down on what was left of Moctezuma's form.  After the gargantuan splash of water all that was left of the spirit was red vapor and a ghostly, distant scream.  As the waters settled, the sun finally split the clouds.  Mist dissipated leaving a calm sea that showed no signs of the brewing storm and vengeance of Moctezuma. 

 

As the rays of the sun lighted upon the deck of the Black Flag there came a glittering rain of bullion of gold and silver upon her decks.  Not the angry bullet sped ripping that the crew was used to, but a small tinkling as the La Nochte Triste treasure was freed from the curse of it's previous owner.  Soon the deck was covered in gleaming coins that caught the sunlight and lit the deck of the pirate ship as if it was a heavenly sent craft carrying the angels.  The day was won, and another treasure had been recovered, as had another shade been put to final rest.

[Supercape]

Flintlock

 

Relieved, and somewhat bruised, Flintlock waved away the unsightly beast. It sank beneath the waves, bubbling, frothing, to seas beyond this earth. Where it belonged. 

 

The horrors of strange dimensions crawled around in her skull. This would call for Rum, and lots of it. 

 

But first, the Black Flag was hers again, but not the crew, who, she imagined would be sinking rapidly. One could only hope that the seas were not too deep. 

 

"Jennie! Get the nets!" she called out. 

 

"What am I, a fisherman?" she yelled back. 

 

"Today, you are" yelled back Flintlock. "So put away your viking axe and get fishing!"

[EviscerusNox]

It took a while, but eventually the entirety of the Skeleton Crew (minus a few parts) were back aboard the Black Flag, including her Captain.  The wounds would heal and the appendages would regrow, but now the main concern was getting the stranded sailors of the fishing trawler back to shore.  They were all quite a bit nervous and fidgety, considering they were on a literal pirate ship with a literal crew of undead pirates, but they were at the least aware that these particular undead saved them from the other undead.  It was not long before a post went up on twitter:

 

Crabbin4lyfe wrote:

Just got saved from an evil ghost ship by undead pirates!  Tnx Capt Flintlock!  #notallundead

 

The only question for Flintlock was at this point, how much rum could be bought with Aztec bullion before having to get it exchanged into modern currency.

 

 

Fin.

Edited October 16, 2017 by EviscerusNox