Duty Session 294: Still Coast Pirates

Called to the area by the Hunter's Guild to deal with a certain band of pirates, the group approaches the docks. The figure of an Undine with seafoam green hair can be seen leaping about one of ships, making it ready. A green and yellow bird can be seen hovering about his head, periodically landing on a shoulder, the gunwales of the boat, or a rope as Nami moves about, making preparations.

Goldenblade is joining up in the quest to stamp out pirates just prior to taking a trip, because pirates are bad. She shows up in her mail and with a blade on each hip, calling a greeting and making her way aboard. "Hello. Or is it 'Ahoy'?" She chuckles as she gets aboard and takes a look around. "Looks pretty seaworthy," she says, based on zero knowledge.

    For this adventure Mizuki's equipped her pirate armor set (it's a little more water-resistant, in the practical sense not the elemental sense): This armor set is a mix of fantasy and history; Most immediately eyecatching are the black hat with a feather plume that seems to be somewhere between a cavalier hat and a tricorner hat, and the blue cloak. Under the cloak is a realistic buff coat with a red sash around the waist. Two shoulder belts cross over her chest, with pouches for holding things and sheathed daggers. A pair of black trousers complete the outfit. Lastly, boots (hidden in were form) complete the set bonus.

    "Goldenblade, Uta, so good to see you!" She starts to go for hugs, then hesitates. ...Is she the only huggy crossplayer? Then she turns to Nami and extends a hand. "I don't think I've seen you before, nice to meet you! I'm Mizuki, were-cat ninja! I guess I'm your ship's cat today!" She smirks fangedly at her little joke!

"According to official records, the book known as 'Biographies of Illustrious Authors and Recipes for Seafood Sushi' was last seen on board the merchant vessel Murasaki Maru", mumbles Uta, who walks in with her head buried in a book. Today she's in a pretty generic (bordering on the overused side) peasant's dress, a pretty popular pattern for menu crafting due to the ease of creation and extremely cheap requirements on materials. At least, today she looks clean and doesn't smell offensive.

"After being depredated, Law enforcement has tracked the latest known location of the perpetrators to this particular cove of pirates."

She doesn't greet anyone, she doesn't lift her head from the book. Attempts to hug don't faze her, it's even doubtful if she'd register actually being hugged.

"Okay, Landlubber." Marty McFly offers to Goldenblade, before squacking and flying up to the top of the longship's mast. Nami glares at the bird a moment, then grins at Goldenblade, "If it wasn't before, it will be soon. It's amazing how this is like second nature to me by now. I didn't know anything about sailing before I came into the game." He dusts his hands off on his sailor's trousers and extends a hand, both to shake and to help Goldenblade aboard, "I'm Nami Seifuku Shu. Pleasure to meet you."

Next he turns to Mizuki, smiling, "I see you know the others. A pleasure. Always good to have a cat aboard, though this vessel is too small for a galley or bilge, so probably no rats." He blinks. "But cats are good luck!"

And then he sees Uta and almost winces, "Hi there. Good to see you again. You uh... doing alright?" He looks at the others and nods, waving a hand, "I'm sure she's fine."

Marty McFly, from above, offers "Her brain already abandoned ship!"

Once everyone is settled, Nami casts off. It's all smooth sailing... until it's not! The wind picks up as grey cloud suddenly appear above, almost as though spawned in. Even the parrot flies down and nests itself in Nami's tricorn cap, as though looking for a safer place to be.

"Brace yourselves folks, we're going to hit some... CHOOOOOP" And then the boat is falling, falling, and *KERSMASH* is shattered against some rocks. "Make for the ship!" hollars Nami, barely to be heard over the waves and wind.

    Mizuki blinks at Uta. "You changed your clothes? Uhh... shouldn't you equip some armor, though?"

    When Nami points out there won't be rats, Mizuki raises a finger to point out that she's not going to eat rats, but then remembers the Tasty Rat Meat and just closes her mouth and lowers her hand again.

TShe glares up at the crow. "Hey, don't be mean!" She looks to Nami, "Do you have a talking pet or is that an NPC?"

    And then the ship crashes before they even reach the target boat. Mizuki starts freezing ice platforms ahead of them with magic and leaps between them. "Hup! Come on! Whoop!" and then she slips off one and goes into the drink. After swimming to the pirate ship, she is soaked, her face looking as pathetic and undignified as any soaked cat.

Goldenblade is not a huggy person, herself. She /is/ a hair ruffler, and she will ruffle Mizuki's hair if she comes in too close and doesn't squirm away. It comes of having grandkids. She peers at Uta, lost in a book, and wonders, "Are you here today?" But she's ... on a quest to return overdue library books, or something, and just going the same direction, maybe?"

"Good to meet you, Nami," she replies, all workmanlike now that it's on to business. She'll help out as and where she can, without any actual skill, and wanders about as we sail being indeterinately useful. What she can't help with is keeping the ship afloat after it's wrecked and she's pitched overboard. She tries breathing water, but that's no good, so she tries swimming, and that's not much better. Then she's kicked in the head, and she realizes she's about four feet underwater. She struggles to the surface, gaks out a gallon of ocean, and pants, looking around. "I hope you got the insurance on that boat," she says to Nami.

"Gwen did," Uta corrects Mizuki. "Armor gets in the way of martial arts. Can't move freely." At the mention of rats, Uta quips, "Wait, are they combining multiple duties into one now? Is the Hunters' Guild skimping on costs?"

During the trip, and even the storm, Uta's completely unfazed. Her books and research is all that matters.

When she's tossed overboard, she -- oh goodness, she /keeps reading that book/. Until it gets completely soaked to the point of becoming unreadable. At that point, she panics. "...OH, NO! I CAN'T SWIM!", she yells out, and she flails and looks like she's about to drown, like the landlubber she is.

Someone will probably have to have dragged her to the pirate ship, where she'll cough and sputter a lot.

As the waves batter the party against the rocks and pull them under the water, Nami is glad that he chose an Undine at character creation. One by one he dives beneath the sea, and hauls each party member over to a net attached to the side of the pirate vessel, until each person hangs there, including Nami, who is panting and exhausted. At least Uta got a bath today.

Nami pants in response to Mizuki's question. "I have... a very... rude bird. I wouldn't dare call him a pet. I'd probably lose a finger!" To Goldenblade he offers, "Well, it belonged to the Hunter's Guild, so they'll just have to write it off as a business expense, I guess?" He blows some wet hair off his forehead, then looks up towards the deck of the ship. "Sounds like they're carousing. I don't think they'll notice if we slip aboard! Let's see what we can get up to!"

Goldenblade nods to Nami about it being the Guild's ship. Aha. She hangs onto the net where Nami left her while rescuing the others, catching her breath before scaling up the side of the ship. Spotting the beleaguered kobold, she passes him a few coins 'for his trouble' and asks which way to the Ledo deck. She's directed down a nearby hatch, which she can get to without bothering any of the pirates unduly.

    Once they're on the deck, Mizuki hugs Uta and summons up some wind to dry them. She doesn't use fire this time for fear of being flashy and attracting attention, but at least it leaves the two of them not-completely-soaked. The thought of fire distracting the pirates gives her another idea, though, and she discretely spits a tiny fireball at one of the barrels of alchohol, giving the pirates something else to focus on while the party sneaks further onto the ship!

Uta doesn't protest at being hugged, and seems rather glad at being dried up. Oddly enough, what seems to concern her most is, based on her constant repetition of "...my book...", during all this time, well, her book. "It took me, like, five seconds to menu-craft that copy from the original in library! Five seconds! Five seconds of my life I'll never get back!" A frown. "Actually, forget the five seconds! I need to finish reading it right NOW- actually, now that I think about it, I don't. That is inefficient. I should, instead, draw the family tree of Graggan Hikomuri cross-correlated with the whereabouts of each family member during each phase of their lives from memory. That'll save me time." She flicks her menu open, and materializes a pencil and a notebook chock full of diagrams and notes. She traces an incredibly rich, yet oddly readable, family tree where each member is connected to a timeline, aligned to facilitate cross-correlation.

A drunken pirate walks over, "Heya, lass! What be ye doin'?"

Uta... launches into a full tirade about slimes and book authors and biographies and such. The pirate seems interested at first, but... the interest quickly wanes.

The kobold accepts Goldenblade's coin like Dobby accepting a sock, tucking it away with wide eyed wonder before scurrying off to fill more pirates mugs.

Nami just walks right up to the pirates, beaming a smile, "Gentlemen, ladies, how lovely to see you, it's been far too long!" Marty McFly, ever the helpful sort, hops off of Nami's shoulder and lands on that of one of the carousing pirates. "Hey, that's Nami Seifuku Shu! The turncoat!"

As Nami is trying to kill his bird with a look, Uta is explaining cross lineages of slimes and those who love them, resulting in the pirate having a most disturbed look on his face. Just as he's about to draw his cutlass and run the Kung-Fu Nurse through, an explosion rocks the deck from the reaction of Mizuki's fireball intermingling with alcohol vapors in the grog barrel. Several pirates dissolve in a cloud of pixels, including the poor kobold, who was at that moment filling mugs.

The party gathers neer a door leading below decks, but it's securely locked against intrusion! Will our heroes be able to bypass this nefarious obstacle?

    Mizuki gasps in horror when she accidentally explodes the kobold! "I wasn't trying to make it *explode*..." She looks a bit depressed as they come to the door. Last time, they deliberately failed this challenge to get to a different route. This time... she WOULD like to know what's behind that door. She looks around... and all her time hunting for secrets in Metroid and Doom games comes back to her, she spots a spot on the wall that looks a bit suspicious to her, and opens a panel to press the switch.

Uta walks down the corridors with the rest of the party. Scribble scribble scribble. And as she does so, jotting down more ridiculously convoluted graphs from memory, she hums a tune with an obsessive rhythm. No lyrics, just humming a melody.

When the party reaches the door and the others stop to assess the lock, she doesn't. She slams right into the door.

"Ow," is all she says, and rubs her nose, which now glows red. Her HP bar gets docked an appropriately small amount of health. On the plus side, the impact seems to have somehow have been effective in weakening the lock and the door. Blind luck?

Goldenblade waits by the door, tapping her foot, because there are a bunch of things to be done with this door and it's going to take some coordination. When everyone arrives and the tasks are doled out, it turns out she's a door shover. She wasn't expecting it, but she's got a pretty stout shove, and shen she times it right, the door moves. She grits her teeth and shoves again, but it moves more easily now that it's started, and we can all get through. She'll escort Uta through so she doesn't hurt herself more.

After the explosion, Nami grabbed Marty McFly and stuffed him into his hat before heading over to the locked door. With almost astounding coordination, especially for a pick-up-group, the team sets to getting past the obstruction. With a soft *click* of a button press, Mizuki manages to find the release for the lock cover. Offering the ninja a nod of approval, Nami pulls out a bit of wire and a dagger and fiddles with the lock itself for a moment, until another *click* can be heard, this one releaseing the mechanism. He gives it a little nudge, but it doesn't move.

Uta collides with the door headfirst, causing a small dip of HP which quickly refills thanks to being out of combat. Goldenblade noticed that the door moves slightly in the frame, however, and gives it a more forceful push, causing it to fly open with a *BANG!*

"Oy! What're you lot doin?" says a wheedling voice from inside, "Ye cannae be 'ere!" After a moment's thought he changes his mind, "Look, I willnae say nuffin' if'n ye 'elp me find the Cap'ns prized treasure. Only... I don't know what it is!"

Marty McFly pokes his head out from Nami's hat and squacks, "Sounds like a you problem!" before Nami can stuff him back under, smiling as he looks around, "What'ya say ladies? Can we help this bilge rat find a nice shiney?"

Goldenblade is getting to the loot now, grinning as we find ourselves in the hold full of loot. "Oh, we'll help you find it, all right," she agrees. But, she can't get any of the boxes open. Or the crates. Ah, there, she's got one open ... but just ropes and chains. That doesn't help ... "It'd be easier if we knew what we were looking for," she says petulantly.

    The 'you found a secret!' sound from Doom doesn't play in the game but it does play in Mizuki's head, she smiles as the door opens. "I have a better idea: How about we take the treasure, and you come with us so the captain can't hurt you?"

    She makes an odd expression, squinting one eye a bit as Marty refers to the three of them as 'ladies', but doesn't comment out loud.

    Instead, she gets to work Identifying objects to see which one's description hints at it being the Captain's treasure!

Uta doesn't even deign the treasure, or anyone else, of a glance. Off she is in her corner, scribbling, scribbling, turning pages, scribbling, scribbling, and humming. So much humming and scribbling and page turning, and scribbling.

But mostly scribbling.

So much scribbling.

Goldenblade finds a box full of ropes and chains, and Marty McFly lands on the edge. "Yep, prized posession. If the Captain's name is Kinkypants."

While the bird is pecking at ropes, he also begins humming along with Uta's tune, and he flaps over to land on her hair, knocking his beak against her forehead, "Lights are on, nobody's home!"

Mizuki has an interesting approach, offering to bring the deck hand with, and Marty's contribution there is, "No way, walk the plank!" followed by an avian cackle.

"Wait, is this it?" says Nami, but before anyone can get a good look at the object, Marty McFly grabs it out of his hand, flies out a porthole, and drops the object into the sea.

"I swear, I'm going to roast that bird some day." and with a shrug and a sigh he walks over to Mizuki with the deckhand. "Well, I guess you /will/ have to come with us. Sorry about the parrot."

And then the group is travelling down the hallway, very confused NPC in tow. Two guards stand outside the officer's quarters. "Oy. W'ar ye doin? Ye ain' nae off'cers!"

When Marty McFly hums Uta's tune back at her, something happens: the Spriggan's focus deepens, she hunches over even harder, and her scribbling and page flipping accelerates so hard it's pretty much a blur. If she was barely audible when humming, before, right now she's humming the song loud and clear. She seems even more unaware of the world as before.

When the parrot interrupts his singing to jeer at Uta, she returns to her usual unusual level of focus (as opposed to the recently induced unusual unusual), just goes 'ow' each time she's knocked on the forehead, but does nothing else but continue scribbling at a more reasonable breakneck speed.

Goldenblade says to Nami, "I can fix your bird, if you like?" There's a glint in her eye that suggests fixing the bird will involve adjectives like 'Kentucky fried'. She's saying that as we encounter the two heavy guards, and she says, "I've noticed we're not really here to take out the rank and file pirates. Just the officers." She looks at the guards, draws both blades, "And of course anyone that tries to stop us." This last addition is not lost on the poor fellow that was just searching for the captain's knick-knack.

Both swords flash, and a tight space wouldn't seem like the best place for her agile, stabby style of fighting. But on the other hand, there's almost no place for the guards to be that isn't quickly pre-empted by a sword, and Goldenblade is stabbing them both, one with each sword, as the rest of the party takes them down.

Uta will just walk on if undisturbed, but if any of the guards will attempt to interfere with her path, well, someone is getting some surprise kung-fu thrown their way. By now martial arts are a second nature to Uta, so she'll most likely elbow or kick them, or sidestep, or dodge... anything that doesn't involve looking up from her notes.

    Mizuki's ears blush a bit when the bird makes implications about rope. "Are NPCs allowed to say that? What's this game rated again?" And then it MAKES FUN OF UTA and she turns and glares, hackles raised. "Don't make fun of her!" Marty throws something away. "Seriously? That better not have been valuable treasure... is this a familiar, or a curse you're stuck with?"Ain' nae? Mizuki detranslates the accent for a moment. "That was a double negative! That means we ARE officers!"

    Beat.

    Yeah that was never going to work. She charges, then before she reaches melee, leaps off the wall and ceiling to attack from an unexpected angle, going for a quick takedown with a knife to one of the NPCs' necks.

Nami tries to mind shock the guards, but finds there's just not really enough there for the spell to take hold on. Thankfully Goldenblade steps in with a *whoosh* of confussive force and stabs each pirate, pinning them to the wooden bulkheads behind them. "Owww! That hurts!" says one pirate, "Yeaaah, meanie!" says the other.

And then it's gurgling briefly before disapparating in a cloud of pixels.

Uta, inexorable force of nature she is, just continues on attempting to make her way past the guard. It raises an arm as though to block her, and then finds himself not only pinned to the bulkhead, but in an armbar as well. His elbow hangs at an awfully strange angle for a brief moment, before his HP bar drops below 0 and he joins his mate in whatever place Landers go to after they die. Probably the recyle bin.

"Well, well... Da huntah guild send me ye lot ta fight? GFAW HAW HAW," the Orcish Captain bellows before looking the group over. "An' oo's yer lil turncoat friend?"

The NPC deckhand looks terrified and just runs back out the door.

Nami seems overall unimpressed by the Captain's antics and the scared NPC, like, these are just things in the way of the treasure at the end of the duty, and he chats amicably with Mizuki about the bird, "Y'know, I ask myself that question quite often. And yet, I can't get rid of the little bugger. He just showed up one day back when I was doing the pira.. privateer thing. And now he's just salty that I'm not doing that anymore, I guess, and he's being A RIGHT JERK ABOUT IT." Nami raises his voice as he finishes this last part, telling off the parrot.

Goldenblade rushes straight at the Orcish Captain, but then vanishes just as she gets into fighting distance, his slashing blows whistling by where she was. She appears behind him, and nevermind how she got there, she thrusts both blades into his back and twists, watching his HP bar leak out. He tries to turn to face her, but she's much too fast for that, vanishing again, having left him turned around, now with his back to the party. And to her as well, so she stabs him in the back again. It seems like a good plan.

Uta looks up from her notes. "You must be the Captain. I'm looking for a copy of 'Biographies of Illustrious Authors and Recipes for Seafood Sushi.' You happen to have it around here?" she asks, and without waiting for a response, she begins to rummage all over the place. Anyone who dares interfere with her search (probably the Captain's attacks) will get yelled at. Where by yelled we actually mean air-rippling-shockwave-inducing-sonic-blast yelling, the kind of thing that breaks glass and makes weaker surfaces rattle.

    "That's right! He doesn't have to do as you say anymore!" Mizuki calls out. She starts doing the martial-arts looking moves to initiate an Earth maneuver. "I gotta ask, has taunting a group of adventurers worked out well for ANY Lander? If you want a fight, you die here!"

    Her plan was to summon up stoneskin on the entire party to protect them from those swords, but... something goes wrong. She miscasts it, or the captain rushes and stabs her in the middle of it, or maybe it doesn't work when not in contact with dirt or stone. She ends up with glowing red wounds and scratches. "Agh! Dammit!"

Uta finds every book /except/ the one she's looking for, GB slices and dices, AND gets fries for someone named Julienne, Nami darts around the captain slashing with fury, and Mizuki tanks for us! (It's not very effective)

In only a few moments time, the captain is defeated, and a 4 person team does an amazing job of beating a relatively challening duty made for 5 people! HUZZAH!

DUTY COMPLETE!!!