//------------------------------// // Chapter fifty eight, Off The Map: Fighting for what’s right. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Storm King Fleet, Storm King- Something exploded and not in the nice way, because we weren’t anywhere near our next loot and shoot location. I heard of a peppy nice little coastal town, it was going to burn to the ground after we were done taking everything and then we’d continue on our merry way. I got up and threw my night cap aside and started to don my armor. Somebody was going to pay for interrupting my sleep. Stalking out onto the deck, I saw one of the airships in the distance was blowing up and it was quickly being abandoned by the Storm Creatures as quickly as they feasibly could using their gliders. Near the airship wreckage, a large bird shaped silhouette soared away on a stream of fire. It had caught his interest immediately. -Storm King Fleet versus Blackcap Pirates- Jacky was already her burning towards the next airship with the two moderate sized connected yellow cylinders on her back spewing massive flames that accelerated her to absurd levels. It almost made her black out a few times and turning was rough on her body, but she had learned to fly using it well before this day came. She pulled out a stick of dynamite put it behind her for a few second and once the fuse lit in the flames pouring out of her jetpack, she simply let it go as she passed between the balloon and the ship connected to it. Jacky looked behind herself at the explosion cracked the ship and it soon started splitting entirely in half, lengthwise. She started to slowly turn and angle herself for the next airship that was higher than the last one. Above the deck of the next ship she flipped into a vertical hover where she pulled out another dynamite stick and began to fumble with it for a bit as her hovering wasn’t quite as steady as she wanted it to be. All the airships started becoming quite alert. Search lights were beginning to scan the dark cloudy skies that threatened rain and lightning, but so far it hadn’t started storming... yet. The Storm King was becoming well known for causing storms wherever his airships went and was one reason why he was given that title. It wasn’t long before quite a few Storm Creatures spotted Jacky hovering above the deck, a spotlight shined on her making her drop the stick of dynamite she had been fumbling with and she quickly flew away before they could shoot anything at her. The spot lights wouldn’t be able to keep up with the speeds she could move at and they would soon be too busy watching what happened to the ship she just left behind. Within seconds the deck exploded and the ship split entirely in half at the center, the confusing thing about this was that the stick of dynamite hadn’t even been lit when she dropped it and it had a long fuse. Jacky nervously bombed the next three ships hitting balloons, engines and propulsions respectively, while being extra careful with the dynamite and all without slowing down. Said ships were now slowly falling towards the ocean on fire. It was on the approach to the fourth ship that the flames from the magical jetpack started sputtering. “Oh no… no, no, no, no… not now!” Being who she is, Jacky’s curse decided to strike as she was approaching the fourth ship in her bombing raids. The jetpack went out and her momentum was enough to thankfully put her over the deck of the ship, the speed she was moving at had her ramming head first into a Storm Creature’s armored gut, bowling it and its many companions over. Jacky, bouncing off the creature and denting the chest plate with her thick forehead, performed several somersaults before landing on her toes which scraped harshly against the deck as she skidded to a stop and ducked the thrust of a spear coming for her. Ducking down under the spear while rubbing at her bruised skull, Jacky quickly pulled out a saber and deflected the spear off to the side. Following the deflection she slashed up at the exposed portion of its left arm making it drop the spear and then slashed at its chest. Only for the sword to bounce off the armor and send a tremor up her right arm, the blunt force still staggered the Storm Creature. Jacky gritted her beak and held her sword at the ready as several storm creatures charged for her from all sides. While Jacky was dealing with an unfortunate impromptu boarding situation. Various ships in the background started turning towards where the disturbance was currently. Many Storm Creatures were focused on the single odd parrot successfully fighting off several of their own with a ferocity like nothing they had ever seen before. They were quite distracted and missed a large butterfly and an anugyptian cat moving into position to start placing the first of their time delayed bombs that would go off after a set period of time. The shadow of a butterfly swept away from the balloon and moved onto the next ship carefully avoiding all the lights and eyes searching the sky, their captain was unlucky enough to have every single Storm Creature in the fleet of ships almost entirely focused squarely on her floundering form as she fought off several of their number. They were bigger and stronger than her, but she was fully using her wits and agility to avoid getting pinned down. Jacky was in the midst of sticking her sword between the prongs of the spear to hold it in a lock and looked behind her as she was slowly being pressed backwards by the strength of the being pressing down on her. She saw one coming at her back unimpeded and she really didn’t want him, her or it to damage her jetpack. These guy’s heads weren’t well protected from blunt force trauma, but it took a lot of force to knock them down and about three times as much to even knock them out. Trying to think of something quick, Jacky heard her jetpack giving off a whining noise and a smile crossed her beak. “About damn time…” Muttered Jacky before she leapt backwards and then rocketed into the Storm Creature behind her pack first, the force of her jetpack slamming into its skull made it slump slightly. Jacky quickly reoriented herself and placed her clawed toes against the Storm Creature’s chest plate and pulled her sword behind herself. Kicking off the unconscious storm creature with thunderous blast of flames, she shot forward and thrust her red hot saber straight into and through the anti-magic armor of the one in front of her. Much to its surprise and horror as it didn’t think the armor could be punctured like that. This made the Storm Creatures coming at her from the sides falter, they all backed up and started trying to deal with the flames that were now spreading across the deck due the badly burnt Storm Creature Jacky left behind in her wake. When Jacky pulled her sword free covered in the creature’s blood it, it gasped in pain and knelt down low enough for her to spin and slam the flat of her red hot glowing blade home into the side of its face marring it pretty badly as it went down. The available Storm Creature’s, the ones not dealing with the spreading fire problem, swarmed forward and then started to suddenly run when more fire was added to the ship by Jacky kicking off and shooting towards another airship. Jacky thrust her saber upwards as she hit the balloon, went into it, then came out the other side slightly singed being chased by the explosion. Stopping to hover in the air for a moment, Jacky put her saber away and took out another stick of dynamite while she watched Nefer and Belfry work in the shadows of several airship. Taking note of the airships they were working around, she quickly blasted sideways out of the way of a pair of arms that tried to grapple her. The storm creatures and their gliders really didn’t have the ability to keep up with Jacky who was actually flying and not relying on air currents to stay airborne. They still tried to chase her as she hit the side of an airship feet first and ran along it for a few seconds before kicking off it without actually doing anything to it. Seconds later it exploded violently sending the parrot spiraling through the air. This caused Jacky to look back at it in confusion as she hadn’t actually attacked that ship and none of her crew members had been responsible for that one. She had barely even touched it while busy avoiding the gliders that were trying to grab her with sudden quick dives. Turning forward Jacky just tried to ignore the fact that a ship exploded from her just touching it with her feet. Deciding to get inventive with the next ship, Jacky rammed her way into the cabin and slammed the Storm Creature in the face with the full weight of her body feet first, she quickly took the up wheel. “Activate, deactivate…” Jacky muttered quickly and felt a very strong tug towards the most dangerous thing in the area, she quickly turned the ship in that direction and titled it harshly. The Storm Creatures were quickly finding out that their ship had just been shanghaied, they were too busy clinging to the badly tilted ship as it soared at another one. Jacky pushed the ship into full throttle at the last second and the ship jetted forward to collide with another causing a massive amount of destruction to both of them. Before the collision Jacky was already jetting away as the two ships started to spiral towards the ocean. Heavy rains started spilling from the sky and it became a little harder to see, except for the flashes of lightning that threatening to strike Jacky. She could barely hear anything over the storm, but it at least made it far easier for Jacky to hide among the darkened sky. She saw the shadows of Nefer and Belfry being chased by some Storm Creatures, the nasty wind, rain and lightning wasn’t doing Belfry any favors in staying aloft. High altitude flying was not Belfry’s forte and they were retreating from the area barely faster than the gliders chasing them. Thankfully the Storm King’s army had yet to actually spot the Ardent Survivor, but Nefer couldn’t directly retreat back that way. They needed a distraction and Flotsam was likely to provide one in a matter of… One of the ships exploded and caught fire, Jacky glanced at it and watched as the search lights faded out of existence. She was fairly sure that was a cannonball shot that hit something explosive. Losing sight of Belfry and Nefer, Jacky wished them well as she made her way towards the Storm King’s ship. She angled for the closest ship as she felt her jetpack sputtering again, she had to survive another round of facing Storm Creatures. She heard several loud blasts in the vicinity and the bombs that Nefer and Belfry managed to plant were starting to go off. Even if they didn’t succeed in stopping the Storm King here, they had at least crippled quite a large portion of his fleet in a ridiculously quick manner. Hearing several more ships going down, Jacky was beyond impressed that Flotsam was still making accurate shots in this kind of weather. They were hitting as many ships as they could safely manage given the horrible weather situation. As far as pirate names go, ‘The Unstoppable Disaster’ kind of stuck with her as much as ‘The Blackcap Pirates’ did for her whole crew. They would definitely be remembered for this day. Jacky silently wished she had more notoriety than Savannah did, as she came down on a bowsprit running forward and pulling her other saber out, given the other one was still cooling off. She met the first spear with her blade and twisted around it to thrust her clenched talons into the side of the Storm Creatures head dazing it slightly. Lashing out at one the guy’s legs with one of her feet and grasping it with her claws, Jacky then heaved herself backwards with her other leg. The Storm Creature lost his balanced and flailed. Jacky shoulder checked him, causing him to topple over and slam the back of his skull against the deck. He went limp almost immediately, Jacky put a clawed foot on his chest and pointed her sword at the other Storm Creatures. The other Storm Creatures surged forward only to suddenly be cowed when lighting flashed through the airspace behind Jacky. The lightning had been close enough to almost touching her in a loud, noisy and painful manner. They noted that the parrot didn’t even flinch, instead the rain soaked Jacky screamed at them. “Who else of you bilge swallowing, cackle fruit laying, pineapple faced, yellow bellied, rat tailed, flea ridden, death fearing, bullying sheep bastards wants some of this?!” The Storm Creatures cowered at Jacky’s harsh voice and aggressive demeanor and the look in her eyes promising them pain. “Leave me be and I won’t do a thing to the rest of you gutless cowards!” She might have been one being compared to their many numbers, but they had seen her take out entire ships by herself with little effort. There was also the fact that the Storm Creatures all remembered how strong the Storm King himself was and he was smaller than all of them too, they were all too scared to actually engage Jacky in a fight as she stood there waiting on them to make a sudden move. They would stay on the defensive and didn’t approach the glaring Jacky or her threatening stance at all. “That’s what I thought!” This worked out in Jacky’s favor as eventually a whine started building up from her jetpack. “Activate, deactivate…” Feeling a strong jerk towards the ship she was heading for, Jacky nodded to the Storm Creatures that gave her plenty of breathing room and then shot off towards the Storm King’s ship passing by another one on the way. The parrot idly tossed a dynamite stick at the balloon of that ship. The dynamite stick hit the balloon, bounced off, then fell towards the sea, twenty second later the balloon popped explosively in a shower of flames and the ship started to quickly fall out the sky. The flames traveled down the ropes towards the ship, clearly in spite of the rain, the ship started burning as it fell. The Storm Creatures of the untouched ship shivered at the sight and were glad that they hadn’t attack Jacky. They really didn’t like fire and every last one of their species had intense pyrophobia after attacking the dragon lands. It was fairly obvious that she was aiming to fight the Storm King, they actually wished her luck. They would injure themselves just to make sure the Storm King didn’t ask too many complicated questions afterwards if that highly destructive parrot lost the fight to him. -The Stormageddon, Jacky- I landed. “So you’re the one attacking my ships… how about a deal?” My answer to the smiling Storm King was to pull my sword and hold it towards him. “Don’t say that I didn’t try to be nice!”