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

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."

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"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.

"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?"

"A great cause," Vette replied, "though I don't think 'free the slaves' was his main motivation? Just... kind of something he did along the way."

She shrugged.

"He was the greatest bad guy out there, you know? And then, out of nowhere, he just..." She made a little poof gesture with her hands. "Disappeared. There are plenty of theories about what happened to him, but I don't buy any of them. Nok wasn't the sort to let anything short of flying into a sun be the end of him, and even then, I'd put my credits on Nok being the winner there."

Duke had a feeling the guy had been . . . popped out an airlock, or whatever the space pirate equivalent of being made to walk the plank was, but he wasn't about to say so. Let the girl have her hero worship. It probably wasn't hurting anyone.

"Used his powers for good and left mysteriously. A very fine pirate example indeed. Thank you, Vette."

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

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