Outlaw X Presents: High Seas Booty

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I like having a break from the storytelling duties, so I’m taking one again. Gives y’all a break from my bad stories. I’m going to let Outlaw X handle this one again. I know it might seem weird that I seemingly want to help people and allow a thriving underworld to exist, but I don’t mind all of them. Sure, the past few years have revealed a lot more Nazis among the general populace, but there are plenty of people labeled criminal because they opposed a system set up by Senator Nazi from the state of Kentucky. Or it’s a living. Or it’s about thrill-seeking where no one gets seriously hurt. It’s not all fun if you’re on the victim side of it, but it works better if I don’t stick my nose in all the time.

**

“Rebel Rebel yellin’ at ya! Man, this world’s freaking out, isn’t it? First you have that My Little Pony fangirl going around being a god, doing weird My Little Pony shit. Now, you have to put up with me on Outlaw X’s usual timeslot. The Unicorn Goddess didn’t disappear him, thank Zoroaster for small miracles. He’s trying to secure us a new and improved permanent base of operations with more advanced gear and gadgets and gizmos that will make us sound better and help our reliability. Reliable transmission around the world without being blocked by cops who reliably try to take a piece out of our asses.

While X is out there handling business, I’m in here handling pleasure. That means that we’re about to have the entire stolen one-copy-only Wu Tang Clan album that one smug son of an ass rat. But before we can get to that, I’ve got one of our stories to get to. Tonight on Outlaw X Presents, we’ve got someone some of you have heard of making his story debut: VelocityRaptor! No, not Veloci-Raptor, the cloned Utahraptor with superspeed. This is VelocityRaptor, his airquote-evil-other airquote rival whose powers come from speed-based power armor. I’m not the reader on this one, so I’m curious. I wonder how he’s doing after that nasty spill he took at the Grand Coulee Dam.

**

Cruise Day 1

I never thought I’d go on a cruise, aside from that time I was younger and thought about running away to work on a cruise ship. I hear they’ll take anybody, but didn’t think enough about how bad the work must be. Maybe it’s the guests. Maybe it’ll give me an excuse. I’ve been down in the dumps and anyone I still associate with knows it. My therapist is encouraging. He thinks the change of pace might help me figure out a new normal. He thought keeping a log of it would also help me. He wants me to try and chronicle the good things that happen to me.

I’m depressed. I haven’t told my therapist why yet. I can tell that annoys him. Part of it is to protect myself from him discussing anything that might violate privilege. I guess I’m still embarrassed about what happened. Not just embarrassed. I don’t know a good word for it. The whole world saw my latest defeat to the dinosaur.

I’m through. It’s not just the loss. The armor is trashed. I was trashed. The hospital was going to keep me paraplegiac, but I had my own stash of nanites and got away when they thought I was paralyzed. The armor couldn’t be put back together so easily. Ricca doesn’t sponsor me anymore. I don’t have a lot of funds to basically rebuild everything. It would be easier to build a new one, but I can’t get the high quality materials anymore without going into a debt I don’t want on me.

That’s rationalization, but still a good reason. Velociraptor beat me. I’m beaten. It’s psychological, it’s depression, it’s me giving up. I’m done.

I give up, so I’m taking a transatlantic cruise. A week to get there, a week back, and a few days to try stops in Spain and Portugal. Maybe it will give me a chance to reset and find something else to live for besides revenge. Or maybe I’ll jump off the side halfway across and rest beside that necklace the old lady threw away.

Maybe I’ll write more onboard. Don’t want to be late now that I’m a regular person with no power.

**

Cruise Day 1

I was almost late. A bunch of people slowed down for traffic and then some asshole wouldn’t let me get over into my turn lane. I got here, but it was closer than I wanted. It’s a lot of older people and younger singles and married couples. I guess that just means a people then, fuck. I’m not an author.

The ocean’s so damn big. How’d they ever get across it in those dinky little wooden things? And how’d those Polynesians ever go all around the Pacific in canoes? Maybe they were called canoes but they were bigger, or like catamarans.

I’m hungry. Going to stop by the salad bar and see if the vegetables are suspicious. See what events are tonight in case there’s anything I want to do. I saw some stuff online, but I didn’t see a full schedule yet. The rooms come with TV sets if it’s all shit.

I bet they offer some really skeevy porn in international waters.

**

Cruise Day 2

Everyone’s so cheerful for some reason. I try not to pay attention to them, and I stay far away from the adult and children’s pools. I don’t know who’s screaming and shitting their pants louder, kids or grown-ups.

Looked out at the ocean today and wondered, if I jumped just right, how long would it take people to realize I was gone? You think they’d get all the way there and back and never notice I was gone? No fuss, just a splash and let myself sink. I might puss out and try to swim. It would be embarrassing to call for help like that. Oh god, what if someone recognized me? VelocityRaptor almost drowns, cries out to be saved like a little bitch.

**

Cruise Day 6

I suck at keeping a journal. I forgot all about this thing. I guess I failed NaNoWriMo if people do that still. The cruise activities have been keeping me occupied. I don’t know if it’s fun. I think the depression acts like a condom keeping fun out and killing it with funicide.

The fun’s over, and I’m the only one who realizes it.

We’re near Spain and a bunch of people started staring at some other ship off the starport side or something. Right, I guess. People were gawking and taking photos. I pulled out my camera to zoom in and saw the guns and equipment. I’d seen that before from times I worked with the Privateers. They’re rogue soldiers meant to stop piracy by the UN who decided to turn pirate with the equipment they were given. They got their own pirate kingdom down there while everyone was worried about Ricca or Russia or aliens instead.

We’re in a big ship. They saw us when we saw them raiding that small boat that looked like it had a diving crew and an old metal chest on it. They were in a cutter of their own, so it wasn’t many of them. They’ve been following us from a distance since then. I don’t know if they care about food and regular consumer electronics, but it could be they don’t want witnesses to them stealing some chest of whatever.

I stopped to type this out for now. It’s on my VillaiNet computer, which I can’t use to call in the cavalry. I think I spotted some good closets for hiding in and getting the drop on people. There aren’t a lot of weapons onboard.

**

Cruise Day 6

I’m taking a break after nearly getting shot. Either I’ve escaped or I’m cornered and I can’t do anything. Fuck its hard to type breathing like this.

They waited until dark, for people to go inside. I ate and shat early. It wasn’t a large force, maybe ten privateers flew over on their jetpacks. They didn’t wear much armor, but they still had rifles and jetpacks and shiny combat machetes. They spent half a minute dividing up into pairs, which wasn’t bad for me. I stayed quiet, clutching a champagne bottle. I had a loaded flare gun in my pants. That last comment was for any woman who somehow reads my private journal on a phone clutched by a dead man.

I waited until they started to spread apart. One of the pairs opened fire on someone. The shots covered my approach when I swung the champagne bottle. It knocked one of the pair over the side, taking his rifle with him. I shot a flare at the other guy’s face and grabbed his gun. It didn’t come loose from the strap, but I stole his machete and sliced his head almost completely off.

“Hey!” I heard someone yell. I sliced the rifle’s straps and ran off, dumping the body behind me and dripping blood. Right now, I’m hidden in this room with pool supplies after diving into the water to get all the blood off. That guy was a gusher.

I’ve got an idea though. The cutter they took here might be guarded. I bet they’d be pissed if I sunk it.

**

Cruise Day 7

It’s after midnight, and I blew up the cutter. They weren’t expecting resistance. No one reinforced the cutter. There were a couple of guys there, but I shot the shit out of one of them. The other took a gutshot and held his hands up. The one I killed had a belt of grenades, which I took.

“Please, I’ll pay you…” the other guard begged. He reached over the for the metal chest and started to lift the lid.

It made me laugh. “Yeah, you’ll pay me so the other Privateers can shoot me and take it back. No thanks.”

I pulled a couple of pins, then dropped the entire grenade belt out of reach of that guy. For a moment, I nearly froze up remembering how high up the climb would be, but I jumped up and made every 80s movie high school gym teacher proud. The explosion took me the rest of the way over the railing. I wanted to lay there and get a lung transplant, but people notice things like explosions. The starting bell for the next spring came when a gold bar clanged to the deck next to me from the cutter below.

That might be enough, just enough, to get me back on my feet. Maybe. Maybe VelocityRaptor races again.

I ran from the explosion and the roaring fire. Or roars? I had a lump of gold in my pants then. That one goes out to the ladies, too.

I typed this up while hiding in another closet, this time next to balls and these weird crescent-hooked poles. There are a lot more gunshots and screams.

**

Cruise Day 7

It was a fucking demon. Full horns and hooves and flaming skin like he was supposed to drag Gandalf. He was pissed and he made the Privateers pay for it. I looked out and saw him pick this one guy up. He sizzled and screamed before the demon tore him in half.

I was hiding from Privateers. I hid from the thing tearing them apart like ants, too. I waited five long minutes after the last gunshots and screams died, then looked out. The demon left gore and burned deck everywhere, but other guests were looking around. It was chaotic for thirty minutes while I tried to figure out if the demon was onboard. Everyone was screaming at the regular bodies instead, and the crew didn’t know what to do. Most of them were idiots just out of high school who realized cruise ships would take anyone they could get.

Finally deciding “Fuck it,” I went back to my room. I’m writing this down, then I’m going to sleep.

**

Cruise Day 7

I looked out at the water again. They’re not letting us into port in Spain because of everything that went on. There are a lot of boats out there looking things over, trying to figure out what happened. I laughed at my own internal joke about how they were ruining any chance of suicide. Then I heard a metallic thud against the deck.

A member of the crew bent down nearby and picked up the gold bar that I didn’t think I had with me. “You dropped this, sir. Say, is this real?”

I grabbed it out of his hand. I didn’t want that guy having it. He wasn’t as young as the others, maybe early thirties. Weird thing was, he sounded familiar. I knew that voice from somewhere, and it wasn’t the DJ at Salsa Hour. I kept looking him over and held my hand over the deck. I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting it past these guys going through this ship. They would be up my ass with their gloves looking for anything now that a crewman saw the gold.

“What are you doing” the crewman asked. He sounded even more like someone I knew the more panicked he became. Others saw what I was doing and were alarmed as well. Someone tried to grab the gold out of my hand and I dropped it.

“No!” the crewman yelled and I finally placed him. He sounded just like the gutshot Privateer on the cutter. He drew a lot of attention to the gold bar as it tumbled into the water below. The crewman growled, but grinned when some of the other guests jumped overboard. Another crewman ran right by and dove for the gold. The familiar crewman’s teeth blackened, with little veins of glowing fire between them. His eyes burned away to flame just briefly.

“Smart boy,” the demon told me. Then he turned and jumped in along with all the greedy people. He didn’t come back up and neither did several people. Others fought on the surface of the water.

I shrugged and grabbed some cash out of the purse of a woman I saw toss her kid aside and belly flop into the Atlantic. Every hour you spend other people’s money on drinks is happy hour.

**

“Whoa, demons that go after greedy people? We here at Outlaw X are happy we dodged that bullet. Oh my god, can you believe it if that chest made it to land? We’d tear cities apart.

But I’m kind of curious how much gold it was anyway.”

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