Ravensgate PBEM

Ravensgate PBEM

Issue #19, “Whisky In A Jar, Part II”

PBEM

On the bridge, Kachina drops to the deck. Joshua looks up and catches a dart in the chest. Vic finds himself face to face with a fourth humanoid as he hears Margaret's scream from the aft deck.

Instinctively, Max bends down and tugs at the hardening gelatin encasing Salome. It stretches somewhat but does not break. Max scoops up Salome and runs past the cabins down the hatchway stairs. He throws open the hatch at the bottom of the stairs, almost nailing Jack as he bursts through. He yells, "INTRUDER ALERT!!"

Dani leaps in front of the hatchway to block the humanoids' line of fire. She places two fingers behind an ear and relays information: "Foundry: At least two intruders amidships, mayor is down. They're blue scaly merfolk, they have poison dart guns, don't get hit by them."

Below, Max tears at the gelatin again, to no avail. He examines Salome and notes that she is somehow able to breathe through the gelatin.

Two of the humanoids fire their fish-shaped guns at Danielle. One misses, the other does not. Danielle feels a slight sting in her abdomen, then some light-headedness. She stumbles under the sudden impact of the toxin but remains standing and conscious. There is a bright polychromatic halo around everything in her field of vision.

Jason rushes over to assist Max, but has just as much luck with the gelatin. “This is an unknown substance,” says Max, “but somehow she’s able to breathe through it.” Jason looks down at the dart—-more accurately quill—-in Salome’s left shoulder as Namor runs up the stairs. No metallic components: “Oh, $#*^!” He begins humming, and this resonates throughout the lower deck: “Oh, $#*^! I think someone else is below us!”

On the flying bridge, the two humanoids fire at Vic. One dart strikes Vic in the chest, but he lets out a roar, tightens his solar plexus and wills himself into an adrenaline rush. He calls out on the VoxDot: "Foundry! Pick up the wounded and regroup below decks!" He drops to one knee, rolls, and sweeps his leg through one humanoid's legs. With a splash of water, his leg goes right through, but the humanoid still falls to the deck.

Jack bolts up the stairs toward his berth. At that moment, the bilge hatch explodes open, narrowly missing Max, and a wall of water flattens Jack. He is momentarily winded and is prone on the stairs, but he is still conscious. The wall of water begins to form a vaguely humanoid shape halfway up the stairs.

Francois is stunned by the speed of what is happening. His own thoughts are cautionary: Is this a kidnapping or a setup? Over the VoxDot, he echoes the thoughts: “We’re too exposed! Be careful about revealing powers!” He pushes off the handrail, rocks on the balls of his feet preparing to dive ahead or to the left, and scans the skies for news choppers.

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Dani leaps up and snap-kicks a humanoid square in the chin, but the rippling shockwaves on the humanoid's watery form give no clue as to its effect. It staggers backward with the momentum.

Max takes a deep breath, calls out, "Jack!! Namor!! Stay below with the mayor!!" and bolts up the stairs-—through the watery form on the landing!! It flies apart in thousands of droplets, then it slowly re-forms. Max slips on the stairway wall but maintains his footing with his left foot, using it to launch himself onto the deck in a backward somersault. He lands on the bridge in a forward somersault, scooping up Joshua's unconscious form in one motion and returning downstairs just as quickly. Max reports, "We have six intruders!! One is on the landing between decks!!"

Two humanoids, the one Dani struck and the one who shot her, fire darts at Margaret and Oscar. Margaret, who was diving for the stairs behind Dani, catches a dart in the small of the back. Oscar catches a dart in the upper left thigh. Margaret slides down the stairs along the banister, through the re-forming humanoid on the landing, and comes to a stop two-thirds of the way down. She slumps over against the bulkhead.

Oscar drops to the deck, seeing stars—-literally. He has the sensation of floating through time and space. It is an overcast spring day in Ravensgate, and Oscar is looking out at the Inner Canal sectors from Downtown. Behind him is the Ravensgate Totem, next to him is a Ravensgate Historical Society cenotaph. The inscription at the bottom of the cenotaph, barely visible near the grass, sends a chill through Oscar's spine and snaps him halfway back to reality.

Jason moves up the stairs to retrieve Margaret and fires a sonic beam into the re-forming humanoid. He ripples and shakes violently, but with no discernible effects.

Oscar shakes his head, pushes himself back up from the deck, and sees, through a rainbow-hued corona, a pair of scaly webbed feet in front of his face. He back-flips into the water and takes the form of a porpoise once he is submerged.

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The humanoid that Dani snap-kicked ripples and contorts with each BANG! of displaced air as the small blurry form of Namor appears and disappears around it several times, returning to the top of the stairs. The humanoid staggers back to the railing.

One of the humanoids on the bridge fires a dart at Vic, who is able to turn and catch the dart harmlessly with his leather trouser belt. The other leaps over the railing at Dani, crashing into her as a wall of water. She is driven to the deck but somehow rolls into an upright position between two of the original attackers.

Vic completes his spin, striking the remaining humanoid in its now-watery solar plexus. At the moment of impact, he twists his wrist, pulls back, and drives his left elbow into the humanoid's right temple. After a moment of ripples, cross-ripples and counter-ripples the humanoid drops to the deck next to Kachina. And speaking of Kachina, a strangely Max-shaped blur scoops her up and runs back below.

Jack pushes himself back up and shields his eyes--now that they are red, his hair is white and his skin is now obsidian.

The creature on the landing finally takes shape, for a fraction of a second as a brighter-purple version of the merfolk above but morphing into a nearly-human form in a World War II US Navy dress uniform. Except that the dress trousers are shorts, and the man's webbed feet are bare. His uniform bears the rank insignia of captain, and he has a graying buzzcut. He appears somewhat fatigued.

"Sorry, sonny," he says to Jack. "Wasn't watching where I was going."

He turns to face topside and extends a webbed hand toward the humanoid that jumped Dani. Water erupts from the humanoid and rushes into the man's hand. The humanoid drops to the deck, looking emaciated and breathing laboriously.

Max and Jack both look up and recognize Captain Atlantis—-who has been missing for 53 years!! Max advises the team: “The one on the stairs is Captain Atlantis!! He might be on our side!!” Jack, on the other hand, is more direct: “Who are these people and why are they attacking us?”

Captain Atlantis responds, “I’ll tell you later, sonny.”

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Francois fades out of sight. As he moves across the deck, he notes that the humanoids have a wider nasal ridge that merges into the forehead, and a dozen nostril dots—-six on each side—-arrayed symmetrically in a "V" pattern from the upper lip to the temples. Their gills, under the lower jaw, are closed. So, Francois notes, are their eyes: Drat! Of course their eyes are closed! It's darker down where they live!

Dani whirls around to see the man in the naval uniform—-and his odd forehead-nasal ridge and pointed ears—-and the unconscious form of the dehydrated humanoid. The naval officer looks vaguely familiar, but she cannot place how or where. Taking it on faith that he may be the storied Captain Atlantis, Dani kicks through the torso of one of the humanoids in a shower of water droplets. The blow reverberates throughout its body, and the momentum sends it overboard.

One humanoid fires a dart at Namor, but he appears six inches to the left of it. The dart sticks in the oaken paneling.

A sixth humanoid appears on-deck, grabs the unconscious comrade who had been struck by Captain Atlantis and leaps overboard.

Oscar sees one of the humanoids dragging two of its unconscious comrades under the water and then turn into a churning liquid dervish. The humanoids are gone in the blink of an eye. Oscar surfaces in the wake of a passing speedboat and goes airborne in the form of a gull. He sees one humanoid standing at the aft railing, surrounded by at least half the team, and an unconscious one on the bridge.

Namor grabs at the last remaining humanoid and does his stutter-teleport, but ends up with little more than a handful of water. The humanoid dives over the railing.

Vic leaps down from the bridge, landing with a shoulder roll and a cocked-back fist: “Status check! One bogey down! Where are the rest?”

Oscar sees the humanoid on the bridge turn to liquid and spill over the deck and into Nehalem Bay.

Jack moves up the stairs, cautiously stealing glances to either side. His hands crackle with electricity.

Captain Atlantis drops his arms to his sides and glances down at the gangway.
“I take it you folks are superheroes? I don’t see very many teleporters among mayoral bodyguards,” he says, then apparently looking off in the distance—-at Francois. “Or those who cloud men’s minds.”
“Who are you, what are you doing here, and who the hell were those clowns?” Vic demands.
“I am Captain Atlantis. I have Presidential authorization to enforce American law on the high seas. As for that boarding party, they are a squad of raiders from my homeworld.”
“And how can we verify you are who you say—-?”
Captain Atlantis pulls a laminated card out of his pocket. It is the miniaturized text of an Executive Order from 1941, signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“Son,” he says to Vic, “if you want to be that way, you can raise the War Department on your wireless and I’ll give them the verification codes myself.”
“We don’t have a wireless. Or a War Department. Pop.”
”Well, then, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”

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