Nocturna League (Episode 2: The Mist Hour)

Nocturna League
: The Mist
Hour

Kell
Inkston

Copyright 2015 by Kell
Inkston

For Jim- I’d never throw you in the
brig.

“
Manipulation is the salt
upon the dish of success.”

- Overlord Greed, Second Lord of
Whihelmish

Chapter 1: The Mist
Rises

The sun has set, and while
many of Lady Nocturna’s crew are resting soundly, midshipman
Dunklestein, jobber Colette, and the captain…
The Captain
, finish a game of wits and
luck.

With a scaled, greyish-blue hand,
Dunklestein lays his cards. “Pair of fives, pair of twos. I’ll see
you barnacles beat that,” he says with a wide, sharp
grin.

Colette gently scans over to Dunk’s
hand, and then over to the Captain. She clears her throat and lays
down her own. “Three of a kind,” she says with a smirk, displaying
her trio of kings.

“
No!” Dunk leans over and
spitefully looks at her cards. “I can’t believe it! Not
again!”

“
Don’t you wish you were
good at poker?” Colette asks as she reaches for the
chips.

The Captain, lurched over and
unmoving, scoffs. “Not quite yet, my little crepe. I have the
winning hand this night,” The Captain says as he lays down his
cards. “Look upon defeat, shipmen! A joker, a one, a two, a three,
and the instruction card. The priceless flush!”

The other two groan in defeat and
shell over the entirety of the pile, eighty percent of the game’s
chips, over to The Captain. As Dunklestein speaks up, a spited
Colette begins looking under the table.

“
You’re way too good at
this game, Cap,” Dunks says with a growl, “You always win with that
flush- I’ve been playing cards since I was just a little kip, but
I’ve never seen anyone but you win with that hand.”

“
Well, my dear Dunklestein,
that is simply because I am the best in the world at cards, and
stopped losing once I-”

Still peeking under the table, Colette
lets loose a gleed laugh. She peeks up with a long, sly smirk.
“Once you started cheating!” She says with a victorious tone of
powerful accusation.

The Captain readjusts his large, round
glasses and leans back a bit. “Why, dearest Colette, whatever could
you mean?”

She squints a hazel eye at
The Captain. “Finally, I figured it out. You
made up
that hand and have been
inserting those two into your hand at the end of the
game!”

The bandages around The Captain’s
mouth arch up a bit; he’s smiling. “Oh? Could you have some sort of
proof?”

With a snap of the leg she scrapes two
cards from below The Captain’s chair, and strikes up two cards, a
seven and a five. “These yours?” she asks, winning a shocked,
stricken expression from Dunks.

“
C-captain! I trusted you!”
Dunks the half-shark says, covering his eyes in the painful
realization that The Captain’s a cheat.

The Captain leans back a bit more.
“Yes- they are, and I switched them out when it was most convenient
to me.”

“
How does it feel, then,”
Colette asks, “knowing that you didn’t deserve to win?!”

The Captain’s smile widens a tad.
“Rather, my muffin, would you mind telling me since when was poker
a game in which cheating was not part of the rules, and instead of
accusing me of doing wrong, why are you not instead asking why you
both did not cheat as well?”

Colette’s expression is
dumbfounded. “Because it’s
wrong
!”

“
What
it is
, is a higher level of playing.
If you were more resourceful you would realize that poker, much
like life, is many games in one. The one that all can see and
understand, and the one that is played under the table.”

Colette squints and points her nose
up. “Except by playing the game you’ve agreed not to
cheat!”

The Captain turns his head down.
“Really? What made you think that? Sounds like a dangerous rule to
me if you’re hoping to win. You must be willing to put aside
anything for your goal.”

“
So you’re saying that a
good Captain’s a cheater?”

The Captain flips a chip about his
fingers lazily. “If that’s what it takes. Certainly, morals are
useful for a safe society, but people of command must bear the
burden of being able to make the decisions others
cannot.”

“
Captain?” Colette
says.

“
Yes?” Captain
says.

“
That is a
total
load of
b-”

The room turns and tilts violently,
throwing the three from the chair, and leaving Colette and Dunks in
an unfortunate pile with the chairs and cards. Hanging on one of
the room’s turbulence handles is The Captain, holding the heavy
table from crashing into the two as well. The ship’s alarm sounds
and sailors roused from their sleep dash out to check the damages.
The mist is the thickest The Captain’s seen in years, and there’s a
distinctly arcane feeling in the air.

The Captain sighs as the ship rights
itself. “How very unpleasant. I wonder what that could have been,”
he says as he steps out onto deck. Colette and Dunks join him
shortly after.

“
Sir!” An anglerfish
seasort says, firing off a jaunty salute to The Captain.

“
Engineer Luisoix. Damage
report.”

“
There’s fighting in the
helm! We were redirected into a rock!” He says, his bobbing head
light shining brightly.

The Captain turns around to the helm.
“Dunklestein, Colette- let’s go.”

The three step up a flight of stairs
to the helm room and the Captain reaches for the knob. At the
touch, a shockingly-fast, grey figure bursts through the reinforced
glass, and rushes down the stairs. The Captain is hot on the figure
with Dunks right behind them. Colette takes a moment to feel for
the new revolver at her side. The figure leaps into the blankets of
rolling mist, and leaps out from the opposite direction, catching
The Captain off guard and delivering a devastating kick to his
back. The Captain turns to grasp the figure, but in the same
instant the figure leaps off him, and again to the opposite side.
At a speed Dunks can barely see, let alone react to, The Captain
and the mist-walking figure exchange vicious, lightning strikes
between one another, but The Captain’s hits are too slow, and the
figure’s are too weak. They trade consistently as other sailors
join the brawl, but each one that comes forward receives a quick,
mist-driven boot to the face from the figure.

As the two fire off
scathing, powerful punches and kicks, the blond jobber takes aim.
She draws a deep breath, rests one hand over her wrist, and pulls
back the hammer. Watching The Captain struggle against the
mist-walker, she can hear his voice: “Remember, little bun, when
you draw the gun, it is not taking out a weapon, so much as it is a
statement to your crew that the one you point it at
shall
be hit. It is an
authoritative declaration of your position as captain, and a
reassurance of the crew’s security. It is a simple rule: if you
miss, you are not really the captain of the situation at hand, and
thus not the true captain of your crew. Do not leave it up to
fate.” His words ringing in her head, she pulls the trigger, and
marks the Captain in his shoulder, missing her mark by only a half
second. A strange, black-powder like substance leaks from The
Captain’s wound, small, bead-like orbs of fantastical
soot.

The Captain, giving no reservation to
the pain, continues fighting, and Colette gets over her failure.
The Captain isn’t reacting to her screw up, so neither will she.
She takes aim, the crew watching, and even the elusive chef
creaking open the kitchen door to take a look. With another click,
she fires again and hits the misty assailant in the forearm. The
figure smashed into the floor, realizes that its been shot, and
then swipes the nearest person that looks like they would be easy
to pick up. Amidst the chaos, young jobber and best friend of
Colette, Grancis Vereyrty, is the one grabbed. Her frying pan falls
to the side as the figure takes her up and leaps off the ship into
the dark and the mist.

“
Colette!” she screams in
the shrouding fog, her voice fading quickly to silence.

“
Gran! You dumbass!”
Colette screams off the port bow, staring blindly into the mist.
With a deep breath, she places the gun back in her holster,
exhales, and goes up to The Captain, standing straight as he
usually does. “We gotta get her back!”

Dunks gets to his feet, rubbing his
head. “Damn, that dude was fast!”

The Captain nods. “Indeed, though we
cannot very well pursue with the Nocturna, her hull having been
breached, we’ll have to send a small party across as the others
work on repairs.”

Colette sighs. “But, Captain! The
Nocturna’s fine with a few holes, its not like its
sinkable!”

“
Only because we have
maintained her so well. You don’t really believe that tall tale
that the ship’s alive, do you?” The Captain raises a brow under his
bandages as a couple of crew mates sweep up the black powder and
return it to him.

Another sigh. “You honestly believe
I’d think otherwise? Come on, do you really think just three folks
could take that thing? We need the cannons!”

“
We certainly do not need
the cannons, dear bagel with cream. If you have any doubts, you can
join me on the away trip. You missed one shot, but you hit with the
other, marked improvement considering the speed of your
target.”

Colette looks to the mists of the port
bow as they fade into a clear, starry night. She shrugs. “Thanks,
but I didn’t slow it down much.”

The Captain draws back. “I gave you a
compliment. I suggest you receive it properly, miss
Ketiere.”

Colette Ketiere takes a
deep breath, and nods in submission. “Wow,
thanks Captain
. I’ve gotten better but
shot you.”

“
You shouldn’t let that
discourage you. Now enough of your warbling and let’s get our third
and be on our way. Jim-”

Jim, his malefic tattoo sticking out
and shifting on his arm, struts happily over. “Alright! Reporting
for dut-”

“
Sir! You cannot be
serious!” Colette quickly cuts Jim off.

The Captain hums. “About bringing him
along? Of course I am.”

“
But last time he almost
killed us,
twice!
”

The Captain is silent a moment. “Did
he really come with us on that expedition for that witching
book?”

“
Yes!”

Another pause from The Captain as he
presses the rest of the black something back into his shoulder.
“Ahh yes, I suppose he did. I truly was not expecting him to tie us
up like that. Mr. Masthaven.”

Jim Masthaven winces. “C-come on, sir!
That wasn’t me! It was the other me!”

“
Which can emerge at any
time. I think you actually would be better off waiting on the
ship.”

“
Sir!”

“
Unconscious in the brig.”
With a snap of The Captain’s fingers a group of sailors run up and
beat the ever-sailing crap out of Jim. The Captain watches the
out-cold Jim get carried off with a smirk as Colette looks on in
shock.

“
C-Captain what the
hell!”

“
I would remind you not to
use such foul language, after all that deck hand’s had it
coming.”

“
Captain, Jim’s your
son!
”

There’s another silence. “No that’s
ridiculous… I think,” The Captain says, taking a flask out from his
coat pocket and downing a gulp. Colette just stares at him
dumbfoundedly as he goes on: “Now then, the other person… I think
Boris would be the most sensible choice.”

Colette spreads her hands
out in confusion and emotion as if expecting a lightning strike to
take her. “
What?!
The cook? Boris the
cook?
The creepy dude that Gran has to suffer with and
test all his weird dishes?!”