Interlude 3: Con Hare (1/2)

“Brace yerselves!” Anne Bunny screamed, just before the world went ass over teakettle.

This wasn't her first crash. When you did business from an airship, you learned very quickly that gravity was a harsh mistress. And they'd had warning of it coming, so it wasn't a surprise.

But it was still never pleasant.

All Pirates who made it to level five got the Shipwrecker skill.

This skill, which was always active, reduced damage and bad luck effects from shipwrecks. Any shipwreck. Once she'd been teamed up with a group of land pirates, who drove wind-powered carts to get around, and the skill had considered those to be ships.

She'd gotten around their sudden but inevitable betrayal by chopping the masts away from their captain's cart and swinging to safety at the last moment, and from the mess that had resulted when they rolled into a chasm, their Shipwrecked skill had helped them not at all, so she had to be mindful of the line between ships and not-ships.

But given the fact that she found herself standing up, hurting all over but still alive and mostly intact, that fate hadn't struck her vessel.

“Karey!” she bellowed, looking about the cracked and broken deck for her first mate. “Be ye dead? If not then stir yer stumps! We've got to hop to!”

The nearest mast groaned and sagged toward her, and she flicked a cutlass out and carved through it before it could crush her skull. Cut into two chunks, the larger part of the mast hit the side of the ship, crunched a large dent into the wood, then knocked down a few trees as it fell.

Water pattered down, and Anne shook her head irritably, stomping along the now-sloped deck as she searched for living souls.

The storm made it hard to see, and the rain made the deck slippery, sloped as it was, but her Sea Legs skill was up to the challenge. “Karey!” she bellowed again, pausing to take a look at the groaning piles that were her crew, looking for a specific face among the battered and bruised bunnies.

One of them muttered something as she stomped by, and Anne thought it sounded a touch disrespectful. She grabbed the wench by the ears and hauled her upright as she yelped.

“Where be Karey?” Anne growled, baring her gold buckteeth in the swab's face.

“D-down!” the crewbunny squeaked. “Down belowdecks, she ran down there before we crashed, cap'n ma'am!”

Anne dropped her back to the deck, ignoring the yellow '12' and the yelp of pain that rose up from the sad sack. Finding the hatch down to the forecastle still clear, she adjusted for the grade of the ship's deck, and clambered down the ladder.

“Karey!” she bellowed, passing by more slumped and groaning crew. Some were still, more were bleeding, but it looked like most of them had come through alive.

“Here, captain!” came the call back, and Anne's shoulders untensed. She hadn't even realized they were tight, thought that had just been from the bruises of the fall.

Now why am I a-worryin'? She asked herself, then shook her head as she turned the corner and found her first mate watching the foc'sle door, a pistol in each hand.

Half the locks were off the door, the heavy chains lying in piles on the deck below, collected in the seam where the wall met the floor due to the slope of the crashed ship.

“Karey,” Anne growled. “What are ye doin? I seem to recall ordering that our prisoners not be let out under any circumstances, and yet here ye be a opening their door?”

“No, Captain,” Harey Karey said. “I got here in time to see a fiddly little wire working through a teeny hole in the door. At least one of 'em knows their way around locks, good enough to use a three-foot length of pick to diddle them without needin' sight. They stopped when I told them I'd blast'em to kingdom come.”

“Ah well that's a relief!” Anne grinned and slapped her back. Karey fought hard to keep the pistols from going off. Anne didn't notice, and laughed. “Ha harrr! And here I was thinkin' I'd have to kill yer and train a new first mate!”

Karey's grin was wide, and she shot a loving look at Anne through cracked spectacles. “Not today, mother.”

“Day's still young,” Anne said, grinning back. Then the grin faded. “I need healers on sweep duty, pickin' up the wounded 'fore they bleed out.”

“Already on it,” Karey said. “Stormy's got a pair of my trainees, and they're workin' their way up from the lower decks. Should be outside in a minute or two.”

“You know,” said a muffled voice from behind the door, a voice that sounded like a young girl to anyone who didn't know better. “I'm a healer. If you'd just let us out we could—”

Anne drew and blasted a shot through the door. In the aftermath of the echoes, she heard people hastily scrambling around in the room. Then low voices.

“Ah, nevermind. I'm sure you've got it.” the small female's voice hastily replied.

“Ye'd best shut up and stay where ye are if ye want to avoid a keelhauling,” Anne spoke carefully, leaning in so they could hear her through the door's newly-smoking bullet hole. “Pretty sure yer little fortune tricks are what got us to this sorry state o' affairs. But without proof I won't kill ye. So long as yer BEHAVE.”

No reply from within, but Anne decided she was satisfied. She nodded to Karey. “Keep a guard, then. I'll head up top and see if we've got any carpenters left among the survivors. They'll have a tall task ahead to get us... ship... shape...”

Anne stopped, surprised. The wreckage of the Cotton Tale was moving.

The ship was rocking, heaving like it was on the ocean.

“Did we land on it?” Harey whispered. “Did we fall on the dragon?”

“Ye have yer orders!” Anne yelled, calling over her shoulder because she was already moving, heading down below, forgoing the ladders to hop down each hatch and pound down the narrow stairways.

“Clear the way!” she bellowed, and a group of limping crewbuns threw themselves to the sides of the passage as she hurtled through.

Down the remnants of the ship. Down, wincing whenever she water trickling down from above, or a hole where hull should be. Down into what would be the bilges on most ships, but was the engine room on the Cotton Tale.

And there, in amongst the wreckage of what had been a set of magitechnical components, was a massive bulge in the hull that shifted and rocked, warping the thick planks and heavy metal components above it. Wood groaned and splintered, and her poor, battered ship creaked and groaned with it, but over all the cacophony she could hear something.

She could hear voices speaking just under the hull. Muffled voices, frantically chanting skills.

The calmest among them was saying “Mend,”over and over again.

The shrillest among them was piping up with “Godspell Mend!”repeatedly.

A gasping, panicked male voice said “Create Earth,” twice.

A burbling voice said “Manipulate Water.”

Which was followed immediately by a scholarly-sounding voice saying “Hm... adjusting for the ratio... yes. There it, mmm... is. Manipulate Fire.”

And a tiny, tinny voice shouted. “I just got a skill-up! Do it now, now now now!”

Then all the voices were drowned out by the sound of a rising whistle.

Anne was not an engineer. Anne didn't know that the sound was coming from steam, steam escaping from what was essentially a stone cannon hurriedly forged by an Earth Elementalist under the instruction of a tinker who really only knew gun design. She didn't know that the barrel of it had been filled with water, water that was now being superheated while two teddy bears quietly and steadily threw mending spells into the unstable structure to keep it from exploding, cracking and boiling them with hot steam, or collapsing and letting the ship crush them all.

None of these things were evident to Anne Bunny, who stuck to her bailiwick of piracy and let other people handle details like science, magic, magitech, and all that business.

But while Anne might be a bit ignorant of high-pressure ballistic physics, she was still a bunny beastkin. And she knew danger when she heard it.

She dove for cover an instant before—

CRACK!

WHAM!

PTING!

CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKclackclackclack...

When the dust cleared, Anne poked her ears up, twitching in the holes of her captain's hat. She heard groaning, a few hastily-muttered healing spells, more mending, and the scrambling of small creatures. Also what sounded like a very large cat meowing frantically.

She followed her head with her ears, pulled a pistol, and stared at the hole in her deck, through which a sort of rounded stone bubble protruded. It had a hole in the center, much like a chimney, and it was smoking... no, steaming from that hole. She glanced up to the ceiling of the deck above, and found that some sort of projectile had been blasted clear through it. The clacks were the sound of loose items from the galley, the next room up, falling down into the engine room.

The cat yowled again, and her fur rose on edge. Definitely a predator. Definitely big. Anne pulled the hammer back on her pistol, and bared her teeth. “Put yer head up,” she whispered, as the debris settled around her, and the steam slowly cleared. “Put yer head up and I'll give ye a new eye, me furry friend...”

But it wasn't a cat that poked its head up first. It was a black top hat, a tiny one, followed by a button-eyed face that WAS furry, true, but definitely wasn't a cat.

I be knowing that style o'hat, Anne thought, and for a moment she suspected that her prisoners might be trying a game, or taunting her somehow. She considered putting a bullet in that ursine snout on general principles... but decided against it. Clearly someone had poked their stuffed toy up out of the hole. It'd be a waste of a bullet, and whoever was down below would doubtless take the opportunity to charge her.

And then the bear SPOKE.

“I'm very sorry to have intruded and made a mess, but I think you dropped a house on us.”