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Rayfan — Piranha - Chapter Fourteen, Part 5a
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Published: 2017-10-24 09:53:00 +0000 UTC; Views: 1297; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 0
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PIRANHAChapter 14: The Black Hole, Part 5a
Piranha opened his eyes. Then closed them again.
After a moment, he opened them once more. Nausea swirled the dingy, ashy greyness around him.
After another wait, he sat up. Gingerly. Maneuvered himself to the edge of the bed. Remained there motionless.
It was day. The lights were on. Much too on.
He was going to have to move. He prepared himself.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t —
NO —
He did not bury his face in his hands. After a moment, he stood up. Step by weighted step he moved into the bathroom.
Out of the shower, dredging his face in a towel, he stopped moving. Then, grimly, started up again.
Never mind.
Never mind.
Never mind.
***
A slurry of fragmentary images: tankards of rum, empty and full, vertical and horizontal, littering the tables, floor, everywhere. Long sinuous lines of absurdly dancing human pirates – flushed, rowdy, roaring, swaying, yelling; elbows linked, thick boots joyously kicking over everything in their path except the massive lumps of tables welded to the floor. And robots by the dozens, arrayed in mathematically immaculate row upon row – all jerking their arms, flinging out their fists with booming impacts as they punched their own and each other’s trunks and chests, bashing their metal feet to the metal floor in perfect, grim, and thunderous unison; moving identically as one robot, utterly solemn through the deafening, floor-shuddering clash and crash of their dance.
And in and out of the darkness, things of various weights, sizes, and smashability flying through the air; Anaconda and Grouper, laughing, scowling, alternating between mutters together with their wildly contrasting heads nearly touching, and having to be held back from launching the nearest grabbable heavy objects at each other. The shapeless metal truss of a table unpleasantly close to his face. Somewhere beyond that truss, fluctuating masses and volumes bellowing, thumping, screeching, chattering; a thick miasma of alcohol permeating what passed for air; an implacable, inchoate, all-encompassing reverberation of sensorium beyond anything senses could interpret. Emotions – gleeful, petulant, belligerent, maudlin, greedy, sarcastic ... yes, a lot of sarcasm somewhere ... a very known voice...
And all of it, all of it, submerged, immersed, engulfed in silence.
He drank more water. Nothing could get that noxious, oily taste out of his mouth.
Closing his eyes, he pressed his face against the cold metal sink and stopped moving again.
He would get used to it.
All of it.
***
Trudging through the tattered wooden halls of the Old Section, his half-hooded eyes kept falling shut.
“Another swig now. Come on, another one. For spark’s sake, can’t you at least pretend to look like you’re at a party?”
“G-glum, glum drunk... glunk... shpoilspt-shpot-short– Path-etic glummy drunk!” Another voice, unquestionably not glum.
A snort like the snap of an electric arc. “Ever the apt phrase.” Then a multipart clanking hiccup.
Piranha shook his head; shook it again with violence. Then clapped his hands to it, just before it fell off. Various internal components rolled and rattled indecisively back into place.
He took a long breath.
Rum had never affected him much before, but then he’d never managed to down – by all that was rusted, how much had he ended up —
Not enough.
There wasn’t enough.
What difference did it make.
***
He had vaguely expected the ship would be in a coma after the last night’s events. But the halls were crowded with sales booths and their customers, little stands and platforms crammed against every available fingerbreadth of wall, every toehold of floor crammed with customers. The air rumbled with discussions, negotiations, haggling, growling, laughing, jibing, crowing, arguing, yelling, even singing. It sounded like, he thought – in fact, it was, a country fair, sideshow, circus. There were humans and quasi-humans in every crevice and corner – hawkers, hucksters, haranguers, jesters, jugglers, jostlers, traders, taunters, flaunters, and touts – the merchants and their cronies from the Black Hole, a few of which Piranha had seen in the officers’ booth last night. They were of all kinds and sizes, from the rotund, expansive, prosperous owners of tents, hawkers of exotic delights, to sharp, scrawny, furtive little beings without a fixed location, seemingly only a step above slaves themselves, who darted from crewman to crewman offering the few precious items they might have to sell, anxiously shielding their goods from very possible theft by a clientele who were, after all, pirates.
The floors were mobbed with that clientele, bellowing for attention, pirates both robot and human – even now and then a slave sidling up to try to sell some hoarded item, whether their own or not. Pacing through the chaos, squeezing with difficulty past the more popular booths, Piranha watched the buying and selling, the crew unloading their accumulated booty, the merchants offering their services and trinkets, from clothes to the ornaments so beloved by pirates, to food and drink and small animals (which Piranha grimly hoped were not also food), tattooing, body piercing, metal plating, robot refinishing in various lustrous colours... There were also, very much crowding the corridors and filling some of the meeting rooms, those large tentlike structures offering gambling, shows and exhibits of one kind or another, as well as various other services, personal and impersonal.
Noisy as it all was, there was not very much looting or fighting or even overly rowdy drunkenness. It was clear the merchants wouldn’t stand for that, and the pirates were too anxious to take advantage of this rare chance to trade. (Any too-passionate competition between customers was swiftly taken down by Bubo’s circulating team of large, efficient, and cheerfully violent thugs.) Without major trouble, thankfully, none of this was directly Piranha’s business.
Let them have their fun. As Bubo had said. It didn’t matter anyway.
Through the swirling piratic waves of the boisterous mob he was indifferently washed, a grain of black sand rolled by the tide.
Even more than the working levels, the huge mess halls were a seething warren of tents and stands, thick with colourful banners and even floating balloons to entice customers. The noise – well, it was Insurrection noise. Like having buckets of nails and tacks dumped over you, then the bucket itself upended over your head and hammered. Wasn’t he used to it?
Quickly he moved up towards the officers’ mess, usually a less-occupied part of the ship. But not today; the mob there was, if anything, even more packed, and much more unruly and aggressive. This was the domain of the biggest, richest merchants. The higher-level pirate officers were there, browsing and arguing, but nearly every crewman with goods of any value eventually found his way there as well, lured by those big, bright-coloured tents and the delusory hope of getting a better price for his booty.
It might be a good place, Piranha thought, to get a glimpse of Hacker, who apart from his sullen showing at last night’s games remained as elusive as he had been for weeks, since before they left the last planet. Not surprising, considering that despite last evening’s truce, Anaconda still didn’t seem particularly favourable to Hacker’s continued existence. Which meant that Piranha, for his own safety, needed to keep track of the giant lummox.
... Perhaps he might see Tulik. Could Tulik himself possibly be drawn out by the merchants, looking for a rare book, or tools, or some new materials for that furniture he kept busy making? Those things he occupied his time with, the interminable time of an immortal with no remaining purpose.
Well, no purpose except perhaps to step in now and then to rescue idiots from their inherent, implacable idiocy...
Piranha smiled sourly. On how many pirate raids had he himself stepped in to rescue some dumb goof from his own blundering. Even more often than he’d rescued one of their victims from the same dumb goofs...
Tulik, aloof and pure, shining silver though he kept himself, was a true member of the crew, fully as much a pirate as any of those dumb goofs; as much as the elegant Anaconda; much more than Piranha. Yet the dumb goofs, human and robot, who now swirled in greedy vortices around him had never accepted Tulik as one of themselves. Less than they accepted Piranha. Day to day, Piranha thumped them and yelled; they understood that. But the rare times they saw that tall slender figure stride down the hall, solitary and self-contained, bent on some project they could neither comprehend nor care about, they would mutter nervously, and they would anxiously whisper wild rumours of the ideas and doings of that weird being – uncanny, alien, even terrifying, a thing of superstition.
Yet over the centuries, how much more had Tulik had done for them than their captain, their officers, the various leaders they grumblingly but matter-of-factly followed; how much more than they had ever bothered to do for themselves. What would have become of this ship and crew if – well, for example, what if, a while back, a mad magical planet had won?
A black grin. He was here. Among pirates. A pirate. Would anyone dare deny that now? Anyone?
Tulik was nowhere in sight.
He trudged forward.
Still aloof and pure? Naive? Innocent? Provincial?
If anyone – anyone – had the audacity —
No. He was who he was. He was who he was always going to be. No more damn whining. No more self-pitying. No more getting used to it.
No more not being used to it. What the hell difference did that make?
No more goddam dreaming that he —
His feet halted. His body turned to ice. He stopped seeing.
Oh, gods —
Through a momentary gap, a glimpse, a tawniness, a burlap bulk —
The ice shattered — he staggered, caught himself —
Elly?
Where was she?
Where had she been this morning? Where? He hadn’t seen — He’d been so —
Oh, gods, had anything unspeakable – last night – had he —
No, no, no, no – but where – why —
He spotted it again, a fleck of dull gold, a long blackness — Was that —
The whole ship was resonating, vibrating, screaming with panic, an earthquake crumbling under his feet —
With complete disregard, indeed without even awareness of anything unfortunate enough to be in his path, soft flesh or hard metal, he plowed into the mob.
* * *
She had been barely visible, dwarfed by the three massive figures around her, as well as the shifting bodies of the crowd which blocked her from his view except for the most momentary of glimpses. But he had grasped instantly what was happening.
Elly’s hand was engulfed in the shapeless paw of a young human pirate, a recent recruit judging by his provincial, nonmetallic clothes. He was talking earnestly to the Boss, gesticulating eagerly with both hands (yanking her completely off the floor in the process, as oblivious of her weight as of her frantic writhing to get loose). Anaconda meanwhile eyed the two of them with about as much interest as if some small child, having snatched up a grey stone from the ground indistinguishable from every other stone, was presenting it to him triumphantly as a glorious treasure.
Anaconda raised a hand as if to brush the pirate away; but halted. Head angling a little, he smiled.
Unable anymore to endure either the sight or the inability to see, and even more unable to endure the delay in forcing his way through the crowd, Piranha leapt up onto the shoulders of a nearby human pirate. Before the man was able to whirl around to face his assailant, Piranha was already launching off his shoulders towards the hanging ceiling lamps he sometimes used for travel – but then, instead of latching onto one, he dived back into the crowd. He darted behind the row of merchants’ booths and tables, and, ignoring their protests, sidled quickly along the wall. Better to be less, rather than more, conspicuous.
When, some five minutes later, he finally did claw his way through crowd to lunge into the little space around Anaconda and Grouper, the rookie pirate had already been chased off. But Elly was there, small and slight, huddled under the bulky arch formed by the Captain of the Insurrection and the Slaver, their heads close together as they peered at this small item of booty.
Grouper said, without enthusiasm, “Sure, I’ll take her. I always need more ship sanitizers. They get used up so infernally fast. But don’t tell me you think this is going to make up for everything you cheated me out of? – Say, could it be that after all these years of my teaching, your tiny mechanismical soul is finally struggling to develop some trace of a conscience?”
Anaconda turned slightly, grinning, towards the fierce dark blot of the First Mate as it descended upon them.
“Yes, that’s it. I took so much advantage of you, in spite of all your clumsy but truly heartfelt efforts to swindle me, that I do feel obligated to throw in a little bit extra. Truth is, as that fool recruit was ineptly attempting to point out, she got missed. Just another stray that was already part of the package.”
“She’s not a stray,” Piranha snapped as he strode up to them. He took hold of Elly’s arm. Her knees had nearly given way when she saw him; now she stood straight, if a little wobbly, her golden eyes fixed on him though with no emotion visible.
Some of the milling bystanders, sensing an evolving drama, slowed down their milling to watch.
“She’s not part of your shipment,” Piranha said to Grouper. “She’s mine.”
“Yours?” Anaconda grinned. He held up a hand in which a small, thin, slightly crumpled white square fluttered. “Yours, Piranha? It’s written here specifically that you’ve relinquished ownership of her.”
Piranha didn’t blink. “If it’s a choice between her being my slave or being handed over to this body-jobber, then she’s my slave.”
Anaconda shrugged, raising his slender hands in a gesture of pious helplessness before the vast, irresistible forces of commerce. “Can you primitives ever get through your heads the concept of property?” he sighed. “You did give her up, and in writing! Thus, she’s mine. And she’s already sold.”
A couple of Grouper’s large assistants were edging in on the scene. Piranha showed no sign of noticing, nor of letting go of Elly’s arm. “She’s not yours. I paid you for her, Anaconda. As you demanded. I’m sure you remember how many times you upped the price.”
“Regardless, if you choose not to own her anymore, then she must by default be mine. How can there be an unowned slave?”
Piranha’s eyes dilated; rage crackled through him so electrically that Elly’s body cringed. “She’s not an ‘unowned slave’! She’s free! I freed her!”
Chuckles, and then a wave of laughter surged through the bystanders, building and rebounding, cascading through them all – the pirates, the slavers, the merchants, even a few scattered slaves. Elly hunched a little, glancing at Piranha fearfully. He in turn stared at the crowd, his hard breathing gradually slowing. And as the hilarity died down, he sighed.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Okay, Anaconda. I’ll pay you for her again, if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, no; not possible. She’s already sold to the High Lord of Ethics over here. You’ll have to negotiate with him.”
Through the hard grip he still kept on her arm Piranha felt the jolt that ran through Elly’s body. He didn’t look at her. He turned to Grouper, who was still patting tears of laughter out of his eyes with an ornate, gold-trimmed handkerchief.
“All right,” Piranha said, grimly. “You. How much?”
The Slaver chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think you can afford her, little pirate.”
Piranha’s eyes dilated again. For a moment he didn’t stir. Then, slowly, he took a step toward the man, and then another. He held onto Elly’s arm so tightly that her hand began to blanch; but she didn’t seem to feel it any more than he did. The Slaver’s bodyguards moved in closer, grabbing instinctively for their guns – then, hands finding air, recollected that all weapons had been found and confiscated before they were allowed on the ship. Nevertheless, they were very large, and they began to encircle the two.
Ignoring them, Piranha took another step towards the Slaver. Grouper paled and took a small step back, bumping lightly into one of his guards.
“I believe,” Piranha said calmly, “that we can come to a mutually acceptable agreement.”
“I, er —”
Piranha, still clutching Elly, reached into his jacket and pulled out the little money bag he carried for shipboard emergencies. He spoke right over anything Grouper might be attempting to say. “You don’t want her. She hasn’t got a trace of glamour. She’s very small and very ordinary and only good for the most mundane purposes. As you said yourself. You’ve got thousands like her already, and one more or less means nothing to you. What did you pay for her? I’ll give you that.”
“Plus a fair profit,” interjected the Slaver, automatically.
“All right. Ten bronze pieces.”
“What are you talking about? I paid twenty gold pieces for her.”
“You paid nothing of the kind. Ten bronze.”
“Ten gold.”
“Twenty-five bronze.”
“Are you mad? Seventy-five bronze.”
“Of course I am, I’m a pirate. Thirty.”
“Sixty. Or I keep her.”
“Fifty. That’s my last offer. Of money, I mean,” said Piranha, his voice dropping to a growl.
There was a pause. The crowd’s gleeful chattering chittered into silence. Grouper and Piranha held motionless, glaring.
And then Piranha relaxed, tilting his head a little. He pushed his large hat further back on his head and raised his eyebrows with a sardonic but confidential little smile.
“I get it,” he said. “This is some kind of little side game between you and Anaconda. You have a bet, right? Is it on me? – Oh, but – No, couldn’t be – Don’t tell me the game isn’t with you? It couldn’t possibly be – on you? Is he winning a bet with somebody else by duping you into this embarrassing — Or do you imagine you’re winning?”
Grouper straightened his dumpling-like frame so fiercely that its horizontal bulges flattened, leaving yards of empty cloth flapping like sails on a becalmed ship. “Do you imagine that steam-powered profit gobbler can manipulate me?” he roared.
Piranha shrugged with gentle self-deprecation. “Hey, I’m just a country bumpkin. How can the likes of me possibly keep up with you two?”
Grouper wheeled to glare at Anaconda. “What’s really up? Are you selling me a slave that doesn’t belong to you? I will not be party to anything illegal!”
If flat yellow lights could roll, Anaconda languidly rolled his eyes. “Illumination forbid.” The eyes, however, were directed at his first mate.
Huffing, Grouper turned back to Piranha. “Look, you little abomination. I don’t care who’s doing what. The last thing I want is to get sucked into the political machinations on board this filthy, benighted, blasphematic tub. Give me fifty-five bronze and we’ll call it a deal. And good riddance.”
Without another word Piranha counted a series of worn coins into the man’s puffy hand, and, still gripping Elly so that she almost lost her footing in the scramble to follow him, instantly swivelled 180 degrees and set off.
Quietly, Anaconda spoke up. “Oh, by the way, First Mate.”
Piranha halted. (He felt Elly’s shiver.)
“In an hour,” Anaconda said, “you will meet me at the dock. We’re going aboard the Black Hole.”
Piranha felt Elly’s knees start to buckle and clenched her arm savagely to hold her still. Not turning to look at the Boss, he nodded. Then the two of them strode away, she stumbling a bit but as close to being glued to him as she could manage without their bodies actually touching.
***
He led her swiftly through the crowd, in and out and under and around every still and moving obstacle, until they left the main corridor and pushed through the door into the staircase. It was, as usual, mercifully uninhabited. (First Mate or not, Piranha’s preference for using the stairs had had no effect on the general population.)
Piranha finally let go of her arm and collapsed onto a stair. Unexpectedly, he was gasping. Elly, herself nearly out of breath, sank down on another stair. For a time they both sat silent, breathing hard, Elly unconsciously rubbing life back into the arm that was still flushed and tingling where he had gripped it.
“Piranha,” she ventured, at last, “You – I – Thank —”
He waved her away. She subsided. But couldn’t hold back.
“That – that place —” she quavered, “He’s not going to – What’s he going to do to you?”
Piranha rested the back of his head against the cold metal wall, his eyes closed, and took in one more long, long breath. “It’s okay, Elly,” he said. “He’s just showing off.” And those eyes abruptly opened again, fastened on her. “And how the hell did they get hold of you?”
“I —” She half-raised her hands, let them fall again. “I – Piranha, I was only going to the kitchens for food like I always do.”
“Did Anaconda send someone to get you? Did he tell that idiot recruit to —”
“I don’t think so, Piranha. The Boss didn’t even recognize me at first. I think that pirate was on his way to the kitchen for something. He passed me in the corridor, then turned and grabbed me, began snickering, said I was an escaped slave and wouldn’t listen to anything I said. ... I don’t know him, I think maybe he didn’t know who I was either. Maybe he was just trying to get on the Boss’s good side by bringing in a – stray slave.”
“And you showed them —” Piranha gave a mirthless chuckle. “You actually did show them the paper.”
“That thing you made? You told me to.” She gave the faintest hint of a shrug. “It couldn’t make things any worse.”
Piranha laughed again, a genuine laugh this time. His gaze met hers, a little black spark of dance deep within it, a sly conspiratorial challenge; she blushed and lowered her eyes.
“Well,” he said, deadpan, “Now I’ve paid for you twice. Seems it’s my fate for you to own me.”
She looked at him earnestly. “Please, Piranha. Please. Don’t ever free me again.”
“I’ll behave, Elly. I promise. Unless you change your mind. Now, let’s find you someplace safe from any more would-be minions.”
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Comments: 11
I don't think he really has trouble keeping hold of his appendages - in fact I kind of get annoyed when Ubisoft implies that here and there, but they're just joking. I did make a comment about that one time in the story, but that was mostly to point out how intensely preoccupied he was - it was also kind of a semi-grim joke. I think he holds together as well as any of us do. It would make his life very difficult if he didn't!
Despite the ups and downs in their relationship, he has done his best to protect her in the past, as well as in this chapter, so yeah, I agree it would be unbelievable.
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Yeah - I always felt if any of his parts *did* get detached from him against his will, that would be every bit as traumatic to him as it would be to us. The idea that they can just fall off while he's sleeping or that somebody can accidentally pull him apart with a little extra yank, like in some of the games or other things produced by Ubisoft, is okay for a laugh, but I can't personally see him that way. (Though I do enjoy that old sketch of Ly juggling him 
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Yeah, I doubt Anaconda would have let Rayman out of that punishment box in the beginning if he hadn't been vastly entertained at the idea of seeing what kind of mayhem the little squirt might create on his ship.
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My estimation is around 4 to 4-1/2 feet tall. Maybe a little taller as Piranha.
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He probably is too "perfect" in some ways, especially at the beginning of the story, but that's the way I saw him in playing the first two games. Also, some of it comes from my thoughts in beginning to write this, of what kind of person he would have to be to play the role he does in those games - as well as some qualities that are related to my assumption of him being an "energy being," as he describes somewhere. He has plenty of imperfections, but he does have abilities that make him good at his job of Guardian. He also has a lot of experience from his time as Guardian.
I think (I hope!) both Rayman and Piranha made it very clear a number of times through the story that this isn't a romantic relationship, and that he does think of her as at least close to being a child. There are many reasons why he wouldn't want a romantic relationship with her, though I haven't explicitly spelled them all out.
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What was it that made you think that? I'd like to know if there's something too confusing.
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Aw, thank you, glad you still like it
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I'm amazed by your devotion to continuing this! I'll still be checking in (and reading).
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GUESS WHO'S STILL ALIVE and thrilled to bits that you're still writing this!
I need to jump back in and reread this entire glorious story, muahaha 
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