So You Want to Be a Pirate!, Wednesday, period two

[betterthanaplan]

The Danger Shop had been programmed into the deck of a classic tall ship, complete with multiple masts and sails, three different deck levels, and way, way too many ropes. There were barrels and crates aplenty for the students to use as desks, so long as they didn't mind said barrels and crates occasionally sliding around as the boat drifted along the swells.

Their teacher showed up a couple minutes late, looking ruffled and disgruntled, and — facial hair aside — not really at all like he should be leading a class called "So You Want to Be a Pirate". He was much too clean, for one, and had all his limbs. He didn't even have a pirate hat on!

"Alright, alright!" he called, as he stumbled backwards through the door. "Fine! I'm here, okay? Call off the damn moose!"

He tripped over a rope, flailed his way through a stumble, and turned to get a full look at his "classroom."

". . . Holy shit. Okay. Sure. This is definitely a thing that's happening."

Such professionalism.

He rubbed a hand over his face and blinked around at the students, then sighed and gathered himself. "Hi. Right. So. Welcome to pirate class. I guess. I'm Duke Crocker. You can call me Duke. The description for this class makes me out to be a pirate, which isn't entirely true? But I'm probably the closest you'll get who's not going to fucking kill any of you, so sure. Why not."

Yeah, he was off to a great start here.

"Um. Okay. So the weirdly gossipy radio station you all have around here makes it sound like introductions are the thing to do the first week, and considering I just got bullied in here by a moose, it's safe to assume I don't have a lesson plan. So introductions it is. Let's go with name, sailing experience, and . . . favorite historical or fictional pirate? Sure. Yeah. That's a plan. I'll . . . go first? I already told you I'm Duke. I grew up in a harbor town, so I've been on boats my whole life, though — not quite ones like this one." He was going to have to look up how to run a damn tall ship, wasn't he. "And as for favorite pirates, I gotta go with Ching Shih. She was a Chinese pirate from the 18th century. Born in poverty, worked as a prostitute, and ended up commanding eighty thousand other pirates in her prime, which is a hell of a success story. They say her first rule of conduct was that anyone giving any orders that didn't come direct from her got beheaded on the spot. Woman did not like insubordination." A beat. "Seriously, you all, pirates will fucking kill you, please don't take to the seas expecting loveable drunks who sing sea shanties. Like, they probably will also get drunk and sing. But, you know. Also there's murder."

He let that hang in the air for a moment, then clapped his hands and pointed to one of the students. "Okay. Now you. Name, sailing experience, favorite pirate. Go."

Comments

Sign in

[betterthanaplan]

Piratically

Re: Sign in

[axe2grind]

Jack (Two)

Re: Sign in

[in_sidon_we_trust]

Prince Sidon

Listen to the lecture

[betterthanaplan]

Tl;dr: pirates like to murder. Such fun!

Re: Listen to the lecture

[following_my_fishie]

Del rocked on into class in the spirit of the thing. She was wearing puffy pantalons over mis-matched socks. One was black and white stripes, the other was printed with a peg-leg pattern and the shoe she wore on that foot had some wooden taps on it to clunk when she took a step. A frilly and somehow glittery blue shirt frothed out the opening of a fitted rainbow jacquard Hollywood-pirate jacket, embroidered with gold ships and complete with shiny brass anchor-shaped buttons. An eyepatch covered her eye but which eye it covered seemed to change every few minutes when she moved it back and forth. A tricorn hat in an eye-watering shade of neon teal trimmed with gold rickrack sat atop her head. There was even a stuffed parrot on her shoulder that every so often called out in a mechanical voice, "Pieces of eight!" or "Polly wants a cracker!" or "Dead Men Tell No Tales!"

Pirates were cool!

Re: Listen to the lecture

[betterthanaplan]

Holy shit that was a lot of look. Duke was impressed. There was a level of commitment in that outfit that he hadn't seen in . . . ever.

He was also impressed that she'd managed to be even more trippy than the giant shark dude and the girl with tentacles. That was not easy to do.

Re: Listen to the lecture

[raisedbybooklice]

Elisabeth had gone into the lecture trying to figure out how the Director (or Master Hargrove, okay probably Master Hargrove, the Director was far too busy) thought that this class would help her become a warden.

And then she had caught sight of several of her classmates and questions about hows and whys were most definitely replaced by questions of whos and what. Even talking to the...kitty?...the other day over breakfast hadn't really prepared her for Sidon and Vette.

So she spent half the lecture trying not to stare, (because that was rude even a 'feral librarian' knew that) and the other half of the lecture failing her willpower checks.

Re: Listen to the lecture

[rotten2thecore]

Evie was listening intently, but she wasn't sure what to think of a moose threatening a teacher.

Introduce yourselves

[betterthanaplan]

Name, sailing experience, and favorite pirate. Explaining the ways said pirate would kill you not required, but likely to earn you bonus points.

Re: Introduce yourselves

[in_sidon_we_trust]

Ah! They were all there on a large sailing vessel, on the open (fake) sea, there had been an incredible story of a truly ruthless and successful pirate, and now there were to be introductions! There were even some people in the class he had not met yet to make the introduction that much more viable, although, feeling terribly proud of this for some reason, the instructor was not one of them!

"Hello!" he started out brightly, somehow managing to not bounce too much from foot to foot in his eagerness. "I am Sidon!" And, of course, he pumped his fist heartily across his chest and flashed his most brilliant, toothy smile, and, no, he would never, ever grow tired of doing that. "The Zora Prince! My sailing experience is a little limited, as I usually don't bother with boats when I'm out to sea," he chuckled a bit, finding that to be terribly clever "but I'm always thrilled to learn new things and I have taken a ship course at this school before I think??. It can never hurt for one to improve their skills, after all, especially when those skills are rather new and novel!

"And as for my favorite pirate," if you thought Sidon's grin was big before, oh, boy, just you wait until he finished this doozy, "why, she just so happens to be right here on this fine vessel with us! How could I absolutely, positively choose anyone other than the adventurous, the audacious, the ceaselessly cunning and splendidly radiant thief of my very own heart, none other than the stealthy and sensational Vette! I can hardly see how any other pirate can even begin to compare!"

It was true that Vette was pretty much the only pirate Sidon knew of because I'll be fucked before I try to make sense of the supposed LoZ timeline , but he didn't believe a detail like that should make his statements any less applicable.

Also, it was Sidon in a class with Vette. Completely unashamed and unabashed bouts of adoring praise were gonna happen, might as well just get used to it.

Re: Introduce yourselves

[chirpchirpchirp]

Was Vette turning a very fetching shade of purple? You BET Vette was turning a very fetching shade of purple, laughing softly and burying her face in her hand.

She was muttering something under her breath in Ryl that might or might not have amounted to a simple, "oh no."

Re: Introduce yourselves

[betterthanaplan]

"That's . . ." So sweet it was sickening. ". . . very nice, your, uh. Highness." Pun very much intended. "Seriously. Very romantic. I gotta know you understand what a pirate is, though. There anything particularly pirate-y your girl's done? Other than steal your heart?"

Re: Introduce yourselves

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Hey," Vette said, lounging back against a barrel with her arms crossed over her chest and a little smirk on her lips. "I'm Vette. No experience on a boat, exactly, but plenty of experience on a ship. Just..." She eyed Duke appraisingly. "Probably not any kind of ship you have experience with."

Sorry, bud. You looked a little 'Earth Standard' for that.

"Favorite pirate, though? Hands-down that would be Nok Drayen. Became the richest pirate in the galaxy overnight when he bombed out a whole pirate settlement using a deadly nerve toxin. Killed half the members of the Hutt Cartel in a single night, and nobody, not even his own crew, knows how he pulled that off. They gave him an entire sector just to keep him from killing the other half. And then, to top it off, he took down the Rath Cartel AND the Vandelhelm Combine during the Syndicate Wars." She paused for a moment. "But that's not why I like him. He also did this thing? In the years before he vanished? Where if any gangster he took down had slaves..." She shrugged. "He gave them a choice. Join him or be free. No strings. Just... That. Freedom or a job."

She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. "Ol' Nok was as cold as the belly of an ice lizard, but for all his murder and plunder, he knew who to point those cannons at."

And Vette was forever grateful to him for that.

Re: Introduce yourselves

[betterthanaplan]

"Gonna go out on a limb here and guess you're more familiar with space ships," Duke said. He was, in fact, very Earth standard. But thanks to his conversation with Kitty yesterday, he was also realizing that his threshold for weird was much, much higher than he'd previously have thought. "I imagine while the medium's different, the spirit of it's pretty much the same: long trips through dangerous environments with only your ship and your crew to rely on? There's a reason they're both called 'ships'."

He listened carefully to her description, nodding along. "Guy sounds like a fine pirate indeed. And hey, you gotta respect an anti-slavery stance. There's stories of historic pirates on Earth doing the same kind of thing. If you're gonna be a ruthless killer, might as well be doing it for a good cause, right?"

Re: Introduce yourselves

[following_my_fishie]

"Um, hi? I'm Delirium and I have lots and lots of sailing experience! Only not on boats like this? But this is a nice boat! It's just not like the boats I make. This is bigger? And has sail things and goes in water. Um. Um. Ummmmm and for pirates I think Anne Bonny and Mary Read? I can't pick one of them, not just one of them because they were together, you see, and that wouldn't be nice. They were very good pirates!"

And then she was distracted because there was a crow's nest and she wanted to be in that! So there went the tiny girl in pirate garb, walking up an invisible set of stairs that existed for nobody but her.

Barnabas sighed, "She's going to be up there all day."

Re: Introduce yourselves

[betterthanaplan]

"They were, in fact, very goo--where is she going?"

Duke watched her climb to the crow's nest with a sort of resigned boggling that said Fandom had broken him already and he honestly couldn't bring himself to care anymore.

And, well. At least this kid's version of crazy was one he felt familiar with. He'd spent most of his life chasing after delirium in some form or other.

He looked back at the -- talking dog. "I guess I don't really have to worry about her falling, do I."

What with the air-walking business and all.

Re: Introduce yourselves

[raisedbybooklice]

"I'm Elisabeth Scrivener," Elisabeth said when it was her turn. "I've never been sailing before. I'd never even seen the ocean before I showed up here."

And the tiny waterway that provided Summershall with its water was barely big enough for a canoe, never mind a proper boat.

"My favorite pirate? I suppose that would have to be Captain Omoira of the Basilisk. She's, umm, a character from a story I read growing up, not a real person. Austermeer is landlocked, we haven't really any historical pirates."

Re: Introduce yourselves

[betterthanaplan]

"Hey, I included the fictional option for a reason. Can you tell us more about Captain Omoira? What made her memorable, maybe?"

Re: Introduce yourselves

[midichlorianfail]

"Theron. I've been knocking about the hyperspace lanes nearly as long as I've been alive." It was what happened when you where raised by a crazy old Jedi. "Which is how I know about the Captain of the Red Hulls."

He paused for effect. "See, someone like Nok Drayen's impressive and all, but that level of infamy's going to lead to a target on your back. Better to be a ghost, and the Captain of the Red Hulls is a ghost, no one even know what species they are, just that ships that hit by them are found floating empty in space, no sign of the crew." Another pause. "Except in the galley's conservator."

Look, he'd come up with the Red Hulls when he was ten and still under the impression there was something cool about cannibalism, rather than just being sad and creepy.

Re: Introduce yourselves

[betterthanaplan]

"In the galley's -- that like a fridge or something?" Duke shook his head. "That's . . . very creepy. And a fine example of how pirates can and will fucking kill you. Thank you."

Re: Introduce yourselves

[rotten2thecore]

Evie was bouncing only slightly. This class was almost as fun as ones at the Hall, but so different than Auradon.

"My name is Evie and I'm from..." She straightened up proudly. "I was born on the Isle of the Lost." She looked around to make sure no one was going to yell about anything upsetting and then looked back at the teacher. "I've been on the Lost Revenge but wew weren't allowed to go anywhere on here since we couldn't get out to the open seas due to other things."

She tilted her head. "Well, the most famous pirate back home is Captain James Hook but that's just because he's an evil jerk and tried to kill Peter Pan. His children are smarter than he is. My favorite pirate will probably be Uma because she just takes control."

Re: Introduce yourselves

[axe2grind]

"Jack. Or Jack Two, if Jack the teacher is here," Jack said, trying to look blase' about another foray into suddenly being somewhere he didn't expect. "No sailing experience, really. Rowing experience?" Did that even count? "And the only rather famous pirate from Oz was Captain Samuel Salt, who discovered quite a few islands. Although he was more of a confidence man than a pirate, really."

Re: Introduce yourselves

[mylandmyrules]

Nell looked a little stunned to be in this class. Must have been some strange sort of paperwork mix-up.

"Um... I'm Nell Ingram," she said. "And I don't have any experience with ships or pirates. I couldn't even tell you the name of a pirate." Slightly sheltered here.

She was definitely going to have to do some research.

Talk to the teacher

[betterthanaplan]

He's probably still going to insist he's not actually a teacher

OOC

[betterthanaplan]