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Out of the corner of his eye, Jack Tarpig, standing at the front of the Cockroach, spied a rival craft hovering dangerously close. This craft was none other than the Rodent, which was a little better than the Cockroach, as the name implied. The history between the Cockroach and the Rodent went back a long while, but to put it simply, the Rodent’s captain, Skip Commander (a believer in nominative determinism, unlike Xylo Foan), had a fierce one-sided rivalry with Jack. The rest of Skip’s crew, namely Harold Shaman, Mardan Contcreat, Ava Mitchell, Jim Mallord, and Expero Mental, didn’t give a flying fuck about this rivalry. But Skip was extremely intent on once and for all defeating Jack, preferably through the medium of naval combat. Skip steered the Rodent within shouting range of the Cockroach and leaned over the starboard. “Hey, Jack! Hey! Hey, Jack! Hey! Hey! Jack! Hey! Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Jack? Can you hear me? Hey!”
Jack really, truly did not care about any of this. All he wanted in his oceangoing career was to have a good time and maybe find the lost city of Atlantis (if such a thing was to happen), not fight any other ships. Especially since the Rodent was about ten times larger than the Cockroach, and was equipped with several cannons, and would probably immediately cause the Cockroach to capsize, were combat to begin. Jack looked over at Skip and said, “What is it?”
“Are you ready to get your ass kicked?” Skip was trying really hard to hide his grin and noticeable excitement.
“Can we do this later? I’ve been having a pretty good day, and I don’t really want to spoil it by fighting you.”
Skip sighed. “Is this… do we have to do this again? Can you not see how important this is to me? I really would like to blow up your ship, just once, to prove I can. Is that so wrong?” Skip had the tendency of assuming the vocal style of an overly hammy actor when he got emotional, and tended to begin gesticulating like a Shakespeare actor, which he was, at this moment, doing quite violently. “Can a man not do that? Would you deprive me of this joy, Jack?”
“Can we do this tomorrow?” Jack said disinterestedly.
Skip sighed again. “Fine. If we really have to.” He perked back up and said, “But be sure to show up! You don’t want to look like a bunch of cockroaches, do you?!” He laughed. In his mind, there weren’t many animals superior to rodents in the great chain of being. And on the contrary, there weren’t many animals lower than cockroaches. He clearly didn’t know about the classic Nuclear Bomb Test (NBT), invented by Dr Silverhammer to test animal superiority, in which cockroaches were the clear victors.
Skip turned the Rodent around and sailed back to God knows where. Jack resumed his cheerful whistling and steering. Aphrodite Oubliette had come onto the deck about halfway through Jack and Skip’s conversation, but had been silent until now, when she said, “Did you notice that equine back there on their ship?”
“I did. I didn’t point it out though, I really didn’t want that conversation to be more uncomfortable than it already was.”
“Weren’t its, uh, eyes glowing…?” She wasn’t making eye contact with Jack during this.
“I think that was just a trick of the light,” Jack said with a hint of knowing he’s definitely wrong and that the horse is probably possessed or something.
“Hm. Weird.” She turned around and went back inside the ship.
Onboard the Rodent, spirits weren’t high, but they weren’t low, either. Spirits were pretty medium all across the ship’s population, really. Skip was lying in his bed at the moment, gazing up at the ceiling. Next to him stood his personal horse companion, Reah. Its eyes were glowing intensely. It stared directly at him for a long period until he met its gaze. “What is it, Reah? What are you trying to tell me?” he asked.
Reah opened its mouth, but instead of some sort of neigh, it let out a horrendous noise that sounded remarkably similar to a buzzsaw cutting open a wasps’ nest. The sound ended as soon as it closed its mouth. Skip nodded and said, “I understand, I’ve gotta take care of that as soon as possible. I promise I am trying my best, please understand.” The horse turned its head away.
Onboard the Cockroach, nighttime was falling. Inside the ship, at one of the tables commonly used for eating and bickering, Aphrodite said, “Brevity is the soul of wit, as the Bard said.”
“What the hell did he know about comedy?” said Pierre.
“Quite a lot, actually. You should study a truly great comedian like him if you’re wanting to make it in the biz.”
“‘Study a truly great comedian?’ These are pieces of advice reserved for people who aren’t already incredibly talented in the art of comedy, Aphrodite. Do you think I’d be wearing this clown makeup literally at all times,” pausing to gesture towards it, “if I wasn’t already extremely knowledgeable about the art of comedy?”
“I don’t think those things are correlated.”
“Fuck off. What do you know about comedy? Everyone here clearly thinks I’m funnier.”
“How, uh… how many times have they laughed at your jokes since you’ve been onboard, Pierre?”
“At least once!”
“Don’t kid yourself, that was because I attached a much funnier joke to the end of your incredibly lame one.”
“But you’re a normal person, Aphrodite! You haven’t spent any time at all poring over the great texts of the medium! I bet you haven’t even listened to a single podcast in full.”
“Yeah, whatever. If you ever need any advice on how to make jokes that don’t make others’ ears bleed, feel free to ask me.” She leaned back on her chair smugly while saying this, causing it to tip over a little too far and crash onto the floor, producing a truly monstrously loud clatter. Odysseus and Jack, sitting in another table across the room from Aphrodite, saw this and chuckled lightly to themselves as Aphrodite got up, dusting herself off and giving a thumbs up. “God damn it,” Pierre said.
“Anyways,” Odysseus said, pulling out her notebook and handing it to Jack for his inspection, “take a look at this new script I wrote. It automatically identifies nearby landforms and tells you what they’re called and who and what is on them. It should be really helpful for our navigation, I’d say.”
“This is great, Odysseus! Only problem is that we don’t have a computer onboard, but we can probably get one somewhere!”
“How would we power it here?” she asked.
“I could probably figure something out,” which he definitely couldn’t. “Thanks for writing this!”
“No problem, anything to make me forget that I’m on open ocean right now.” She looked down. “How did you drag me along on this in the first place?”
“Funny story, actually…” As Jack started narrating this, Vlad sat in the back corner of the room on the floor, clutching a sketchpad and a worn-down pencil. His current subject matter was copious violence, similar to most of his other pieces of art. In this current picture, entitled “Nightmare Blood Death,” ominous shades of black and red surrounded an image of a person bleeding out from what appeared to be gunshot wounds, stab wounds, several missing limbs, and a severed head. It was a little tame by his standards, but he figured he should mix it up sometimes in terms of subject matter.
As he finished his sketch, Jack said, “And that’s how I got you to come along on this crazy journey of mine! Is it all clear now?”
“Oh yeah,” Odysseus said, “that actually makes perfect sense, I would’ve been an idiot not to come.”