Starcustard { chapters 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 }
Chapter 7
Optional music track: 'Apocalyptica - Cortege.'
Hepthazard was in their sights.
The pilot surveyed the curious structure with milky white eyes and gently guided the ship towards it, its intricately engraved, bronze hull glinting in the light of the nearest sun. The red spines protruding rigidly along its back from prow to stern glowed like warm blood.
* * *
'THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!' screamed Organza, as she was dragged along the garishly lit corridor by the slick, black appendages of two security guards, causing the other creatures making their way through the spacestation to have to back themselves against the walls. 'YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! I HAVE STATUS! I HAVE BEEN DUPED! DUPED AND VICTIMISED! I ORDER YOU TO RELEASE ME! NOW!'
A dozen slug offspring slithered after her, wailing their equal distress.
* * *
'We wantarr keep this right and simple,' growled the pilot. 'No be mistakes, no be extra troublin'. Got that?'
The others waiting in the darkness of the cockpit behind him grunted their affirmation.
'We just traders today,' he said. 'They know that.'
* * *
Organza was thrown into the corner of a room full of cells. The fierceness in her huge orange eyes threatened explosions, and her rage choked the further exclamations making their way to her open mouth as thin metal bars dropped from the ceiling and formed a barrier around her. She slammed her tail into them, only causing herself injury. She shrieked and whimpered.
Her besmudged features creased into a hideously pitiful expression. 'Don't you know that I am a grieving widow?' she wailed. 'And my beautiful ship was stolen by the very savages who brought my husband to his untimely end!' Her twig-like fingers clutched at the bars. 'I AM INNOCENT!'
* * *
The maroon alien with the handlebar moustache held on to his oxygen mask when he saw the ornate yet menacing ship approach. An unpleasant feeling clung to his stomach.
He lifted his beacon gingerly.
They only came here occasionally, when they needed to trade. Stay away from them and trouble was avoided. They did their deals and then left. Spacestations weren't worth the effort of anything else, not even a big one like Hepthazard, and they found them useful as they were.
But he felt uneasy with their being here all the same. Hopefully they wouldn't stay long.
The ship entered the docking area.
* * *
'My beautiful children!' she squealed. 'Where are you taking them?! You can't do this to me!' She sobbed great, heavy sobs. 'I'm too beautiful to be imprisoned!' She reared up and pressed herself tragically against the bars, her thick-skinned flab bulging through the gaps. 'No! This is not happening to me! Bring back my adorable children! I order it! I will have you all killed! All of you! Killed and fried and thrown out into space! Are you listening to me? You will all pay!' She sucked in great gasps of air. 'Do you not know who I am?!'
The guards moved away, uncaring.
'Don’t you dare leave me here! Don’t you dare! You will not! I will have you destroyed if you dare! Remember this name!’ she screamed after them. ‘Remember this name because I guarantee you’ll be begging for your lives once I get out of here! You’ll be begging for your lives and your jobs and your disgusting, slimy little faces! Nobody does this to me!’ she howled as they left her. ‘NOBODY DOES THIS TO ORGANZA BONANZA NOUSU!'
* * *
The bronze ship touched down and its spines dimmed.
Its occupants climbed out; the one who had been piloting the ship came first. They were tall, robust, humanoid creatures, bulky under their oily and matted, foul-smelling fur, grey-brown in colour. Small, pointed ears protruded from the tops of the brown bandanas over their heads, which had holes for their milky white eyes. They wore trousers of the same thin, leathery material, apparently not long enough for any of them and reaching only to their shins.
Their arms were mechanical and numerous, each serving a different function. Some ended with cybernetic hands, others with knives, torches or other utilities. Two were hooked to metal-plated belts around their torsos, while the rest hung inactively from a smaller belt around their wastes. Wires ran from the metallic belts up into the base of their heads.
They were pirates.
And into Hepthazard they went.
* * *
Optional music track: 'Garbage - The Trick Is To Keep Breathing.'
Flit hadn't asked what the fat shoplifting slug had done to Gen.
'What if they let her out again?' Gen asked.
'They won't,' Flit said. 'She stole an ugly pair of shoes and then she assaulted that officer. Why would they let her out?'
Gen sighed and took a deep breath. It was a good hour or two before she calmed down and stopped worrying. Even then, small indestructible what-ifs were still alive in her head.
* * *
The walls in the girls' half of the upstairs were painted a pale yellow and the rounded sconces along the wall gave off a pinkish light. Tenua would've loved it. Gen had claimed the mattress next to Flit's. Mars' pendant and the Tenua's glass trinket were safely tucked into one of the small drawers above Gen's bed; her old clothes were folded in another.
Flit was flopped on her bed skipping through song after song on her bright blue music player. Gen walked in and pulled off her Mel's visor. In her other hand she was holding a small brown envelope of brightly coloured metallic coins: her first week's pay. She sat down cross-legged on her mattress and stared at it.
'What're you staring at, Gen?' Flit asked, turning her head.
Gen continued to stare.
'Mel has to pay us, you know. We're not slavekids anymore.'
Gen looked up at Flit. 'Slavekids?'
Flit paused. 'You were a slavekid, weren't you?'
'Not exactly...'
'But--' Flit sat up. 'Where did you come from? Gregarium brought you, didn't he? And he--'
'I-- Well, he just found me. But where did you come from? You were a slavekid and you escaped? That's impossible...'
'What do you know about it?' Flit said, squinting sideways at Gen.
'I saw--' but Gen couldn't say it. 'Gregarium just found me,' she repeated. 'I ran away from my stepparents.'
Flit fiddled with the wires of her music player but didn't ask any more questions. Her eyes moved around the room like she was putting pieces together in her head. Gen's wages were spilling out of their envelope onto the blanket. 'Most of us were bought and Mel sort of adopted us,' Flit said. 'I thought it was the same with you.'
Gen didn't know what to say. But Flit didn't seem to want to know the story of Gen's escape.
'You're one of us now, anyway,' Flit smiled and brushed her wayward fringe with one hand. 'What're you going to do with it?' she nodded at Gen's money.
Gen shrugged, scooping the coins back into their envelope and peering down at them.
'We could get smoothies,' Flit suggested, pulling open one of her drawers and extracting a pair of large blue coins from an old sock. 'Let's go.'
* * *
The girls returned to the café with two sacks of shopping and two empty plastic smoothie cups. Flit had seen a poster she wanted, talked Gen into purchasing a music player just like hers only silver, and laughed hysterically at the three free tracks that came with it. Gen laughed too, though she didn't know why. It felt so good to laugh.
At the top of the staircase, Mel was sitting in his armchair waiting for them.
'You girls are late for supper,' he said with a deep scowl.
Flit grinned 'Sorry, sir,' and tossed hers and Gen's sacks onto the coffee table before scurrying into the dining room. Gen was about to scurry along behind her, but Mel, his face suddenly softening, asked how she was settling in with all the other ragamuffins.
Gen smiled. 'Really good, sir. We were just--'
'I know,' Mel nodded. 'Flit's a good girl.'
Gen looked up at Mel. 'She said that--' she began, 'they were all slavekids, sir.'
Mel nodded again and leaned forward in his chair. 'Lucky slavekids,' he said. 'Run along now. Your supper's gotten cold enough.'
* * *
Optional music track: 'The Format - Let's Make This Moment A Crime.'
Scape.
The Captain glanced miserably at it, his chin resting on his arms. The display cycled through photographic, topographic and thermographic images of the planet as the Captain paid no attention to any of them, details and statistics scrolling down the right of the screen to its own contentment.
He reached out and glumly pressed a finger down on the control panel. The display cleared with a silent white flash, leaving behind the star-speckled depths of generic space.
He felt trapped, and he felt alone. Trapped and alone with unreasonable kids frighteningly eager to embark on their massive suicide mission. It wasn't fair. He'd done nothing wrong at all except not want to die, be it by slugtail or cutlery or completely uncalled-for shouting in his direction. But now Scape loomed up in his mind, big and white and blue and inevitable, his grand reward for a life of servitude.
It wasn't fair at all.
The Captain buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
* * *
Stat followed Noleph's helpless wail and found him in his new residence in the dishwasher. She had to pull hard in her attempt to get the child out of the tangled machinery, nearly getting stuck herself, and suspected, when a good portion of the dishwasher's inner workings came out with him, that it would not work quite so well again.
She gazed around the kitchen. It was a mess, pots and pans and other miscellaneous cookware strewn about the place. One or two electronic appliances sparked. Food of various colours generously coated the walls and floor and even ceiling, carrying itself in a wave of mush through the kitchen door and out into the ship beyond, where some of the other kids had pelted Organza with rotten vegetables not so long ago.
Stat pulled a towel from underneath a tipped sack of Slezterpian flour. 'Alright, you?' she cooed, wrapping the towel around Noleph.
Noleph sniffled and chewed on his chubby fist. He grabbed at Stat's collar and stared up at the ceiling. She looked at him and sighed, wondering if all the others knew about Andromed's plan and realising all over again what was going to happen to the entire ship and everyone on it.
Andromed. He was so brave. Even if his plan was the most frightening and insane thing she had ever considered.
She blinked. Noleph had turned and wandered off somewhere. Stat stood up and watched him exit the kitchen and attach himself to a group of slavekids who were making their way along the bespattered corridor with their arms full of bedsheets.
Stat rummaged in the cupboards for something to eat, and stuffed her face with some delicious kind of dried plant. Then she bent backwards, placing her head under the tap of the sink in the stainless steel preparation counter that dominated the room, and guzzled water.
'Stat?'
Start snorted and spluttered, and awkwardly limbo'd herself out of the sink.
Andromed hoisted himself up onto the counter and sat watching her as she recovered herself. 'Hi,' she said.
'They're making parachutes,' he said, conversationally.
'Parachutes?' she queried, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears.
'Yeah. Out of bedsheets. So we don't go splat.'
'Oh.'
Andromed looked around the room at the artistic chaos. Stat leaned against the cupboards behind her, drumming her fingers on the countertop. Andromed shifted in his seat. 'We should probably--'
'I know where Mistress O keeps her ice cream,' said Stat.
Andromed looked at her. Then he said: 'Where?'
'She has a revolving refrigerator behind her biggest mirror. I saw it when I brought her some hot chocolate. She didn't let me in her room, but I saw it. From the doorway,' she said excitedly.
Andromed raised his eyebrows. 'Password?'
'Pistachio.'
They stared at each other, mischievous smiles creeping onto their young faces. Andromed was about to say something else when Stat grabbed his hand and led him out of the kitchen.
* * *
The boy next to Jormes kept flicking the seeds out of his dinner roll at Gen. She glared at him and went back to stirring her casserole into her vegetables. Flit was telling everyone about the band she wanted to see at the Trove Pit Theatre next week, begging a few of the older kids to at least consider coming with her, it was going to be so amazing.
'Pass the jelly, Flit,' a short freckled girl at the end of the table repeated for the ninth time. 'Someone pass me the jelly!'
Gen poked Flit with the handle of her fork. 'Vellina wants the jelly, Flit. Flit.'
Mel came into the dining room just as Flit finished screwing the lid of the jelly on tight and throwing it across the table at Vellina. Gen giggled.
'Would one of you be so good as to slide that casserole dish down here?' Mel said loudly as he took his place. Jormes nudged the casserole as the boy next to him reached out to scoop a spoonful of the stuff onto his plate. The boy tossed the spoon back into the dish, splattering the tablecloth with peanut gravy.
'Thank you, Jormes,' Mel said, with a stern look at the spoon-tossing boy.
Something smashed. Mel looked up sharply. 'What was that?'
Several of the children around the table exchanged blank glances. The rabble had suddenly gone quiet.
Mel, having surveyed the table for the source and found nothing, stood listening.
There was another smash, this time more distinct in the silence. It was glass.
Mel turned and left the room, taking his fork with him. 'You stay here,' he said to them, without turning.
As he crept down the pink-lit stairs, the kids began to crawl out of their seats and patter lightly after him. Gen followed Flit as she pushed past the others and peered down into the dark café below. Mel sniffed and wrinkled his nose at the smell of something foul, wafted towards him from a cold draft from beyond the café. The yellow light from outside spilled in; Mel's hairs prickled as he saw that the glass of the windows had been smashed in. He made his way silently across to the serving counter, the fork still in his hand.
'Where is it, eh?' came a hoarse voice from somewhere to his left, though he couldn't tell if it was he who was being addressed. He stuffed the fork into the back pocket of his trousers, spying the glint of the metallic cutlery rack and wrapping his large hand around its base.
Then he roared, swinging the rack to his immediate right. The kids upstairs jumped as they heard him. Cutlery flew off the rack in all directions and clattered noisily to the floor as whatever had been approaching him stumbled backwards to avoid it; the stink was almost tangible in close proximity. In a pirouette surprisingly graceful for his size, Mel spun around and slammed his fist into the light switch. Before him, surrounded by knives and spoons, was a pirate.
Optional music track: 'XTC - Cross Wires.'
One of his mechanical arms reached up towards Mel. 'Give us what we come for,' the pirate muttered, 'and we let ye live.'
'What's going on?' Gen whispered to Flit.
'Somebody's down there,' Flit answered quietly. 'He might need help.' She put a foot down on the next stair and looked back at the others.
Mel took a step backward and slid one of the large dough hooks from its peg along the wall behind him. The pirate grimaced as the large man waved it menacingly in front of him. 'You fellows had better get out of my café,' Mel said, coolly. The creature then unhooked and discarded one of his mechanical arms, reaching to the belt at its waste, grabbing a replacement and attaching it to the metal plate around his torso. It slid across it on two flimsy-looking wires, very much a thing possessed.
The arm sprouted a curved blade.
Upon seeing this, Flit and the others needed no further encouragement. 'You heard him! Get out!' Flit shouted, reaching the bottom of the stairs. The kids behind her started throwing whole dinner plates of food.
'Stay back!' Mel bellowed. 'Get back upstairs!'
They didn't listen. Gen took a metal sheet tray from a stack and walloped the nearest oily furball with it. As the pirate tried to ignore them and advanced towards Mel, a boy ducked and dived behind him, retrieving the discarded metal limb, fitted as it was with its cybernetic hand, and went to slap one of the other intruders at the other end of the café.
A few smaller boys ran around with large wooden spatulas, beating everyone who came within range. They arrived at the shortest of the pirates and hit him repeatedly. The pirate irritably shrugged them off, swiping his captain's arm from the boy who had been attacking him with it for several minutes, and dealt him a harsh blow to the face. The boy tumbled back, falling onto the others. The pirate growled with fury. 'Ye nevarr said they be all number o' kids!' he spat.
Then Vellina charged at him with the upturned legs of a chair.
Jormes looked about, hesitating. In an act of panic, he climbed onto the counter along the wall and frantically kicked all of the spice canisters as hard as he could into another pirate's fat, greasy face, not quite believing his own bravery. He hopped down to the floor when the obnoxious-smelling creature sought retribution and dragged a blade across the countertop, exploding a bag of cinnamon.
Gen had run out of sheet trays. Flit was gathering all the serrated knives she could from the magnetic strip above the sink while Mel and the pirate captain circled each other, their weapons of choice parrying a slash or a swipe from the other.
Flit handed a knife to Gen as she ran to Mel and began striking the metal of the pirate's arm.
'Flit, no,' Mel said sternly. 'Flit!'
The pirate turned on her, attempting to jab her with the blade, but his arm fell off. With a growl he kicked the knives out of her hand and took another arm from his belt. He reached out and grabbed her by the hair with his hand; the other arm, clicking ominously, trained some kind of gun on Mel. 'Tell us where you hide it.'
Gen gasped. She stood there trying to think of something she could do.
Then Jormes ran dangerously past them, unintentionally knocking the gun to one side. The pirate captain was annoyed about this right up to the moment when his fat comrade, bounding after the boy, hit him like a giant, dank cannonball. Flit fell with him, and Gen rushed over to pull her away.
Mel stepped up to the pirate on the floor and made to kick him to a pulp when he heard a child scream. He looked up and saw the other pirate battling his way viciously through the kids towards the stairs.
'Get away from him!' he said, picking a blunt knife up off the floor and making his way hurriedly towards the injured children.
Optional music track: ' A Perfect Circle - Crimes.'
The captain pirate scrambled to his feet and collected his blade arm, fixing it once again to his belt. Gen watched from a safe distance as he walked around behind the counter, looking for something.
Gen nudged Flit, who was watching Mel fight off the pirate by the stairs. 'What's he doing?' she whispered, and Flit turned.
The captain pirate found the trapdoor by his feet. He glanced around before heaving it open, peering into the hole, and making his way down the winding metallic steps. Gen started walking towards the trapdoor as if to follow him.
'Where are you going?' asked Flit, hurrying after her.
Gen grabbed the torch, not yet switching it on. 'We have him trapped. We can knock him out or something.'
Even Flit seemed momentarily doubtful about this suggestion, but Mel and the others were more than occupied, and they didn't know what the pirates were after.
She nodded, and they made their way cautiously down the steps and into the darkness.
Jormes leaned against the cash register, catching his breath. He watched as his fat pursuer got unsteadily to his feet and ambled over to the others; he saw the short pirate wince as Mel took him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground, and then he saw the two girls disappear into the storage room after the captain.
The boy took a deep breath and picked up another of the knives scattered all over the floor. Then he went down after them. He peered into the shadows, trying to see where Gen and Flit had gone. They had taken the torch, but he couldn't see any light. He began to make his way down; he didn't even dare whisper.
When he reached the bottom, he kept to the walls, looking around in the darkness. A few of the sacks, the ones with hot custard, glowed red in the gloom. Even with the thick rope wrapped tightly around each one, they just about illuminated the rows of other sacks around them. Jormes froze as he saw a shadow pass by. Then he turned to see two milky white eyes in the darkness right before him, and yelped.
Gen clicked on the torch and shone it in their direction. Jormes and the pirate shielded their eyes. The pirate growled and attempted to strike Jormes with his hand, but the boy ducked and disappeared into the shadows.
'Git outarr here if ye want be keepin' yer eyes, filthy blights!'
Flit threw something at him from her hiding place, and in his anger he fired a misdirected shot as one of his arms slid rapidly around on its metal belt to retaliate. A round bullet tore through a custard sack, only narrowly missing Gen. She fell and the torch clattered to the ground, the light jumping before flickering out as the fresh holes in the sack oozed custard. Gen reached for the torch in the dim red glow around her, but it wouldn't switch back on.
Then from the darkness the pirate emerged once again. He glared down at Gen. She glared back. Just as he reached down to grab her, a wheeled cart bearing several buckets of chilled avocado glaze and Flit ploughed into him, veering sharply to the side at the last second thanks to an erratic wheel, the very reason the cart had been hidden away in the first place. 'Take that,' Flit shouted as she poured a bucket out onto his slimy head. The pirate flailed his various mechanical arms, tearing Flit's shirt and knocking the cart over.
Cold glaze spread quickly all over the floor. Warm gobs of custard sizzled faintly as they dripped into it. The pirate captain lunged for Flit; Gen scrambled to help her.
Jormes hesitated against the wall. The sloppy sounds of scuffling echoed in the metal exhaust ducts along the ceiling.
* * *
Optional music track: 'Meat Beat Manifesto - Plexus.'
Directly above, Mel was grappling with the fat pirate as the others swarmed about the other, advancing and retreating like a circle of choppy water around him as he wielded a blade not unlike his captain's. Some of the children tended to the injured.
The fat pirate had his cold metal hand around Mel's throat, forcing him back a stair. Mel gritted his teeth, his face red and his chins many, trying to break the iron hard grip. As he was forced back further still, he spun and threw the pirate against the wall to his right. The grip loosened and Mel reached out for the fur of the pirate's own neck, but was cut off by an angry swipe of the arm and then pushed back, his elbow colliding with one of the pink lights in the sconces, which popped as the glass broke.
Mel cried out in fury, and, with seemingly superhuman strength, he grabbed hold of the smelly, squirming creature and carried him across the café where he threw him violently down on a table. One of the thin, metal table legs snapped with the force of the blow; the fat pirate slid miserably to the floor.
He scrambled bulkily to his feet, seething in embarrassment as the entire café fell silent to watch him. 'Kill 'em all!' he screamed to his comrade. 'Enough time wasted witharr little runts! Kill 'em now!'
Mel hit him again.
* * *
The pirate captain hoisted the broken cart over his head and threw it wildly across the room. Its warped edges tore through another of the custard sacks; Jormes flinched as gallons of custard slurped onto the slick tile and the heating system sparked. Cursing to himself, the pirate sludged toward the stairs. Jormes headed him off, surprising the captain in the dark and yanking at the mechanical arms clipped to his belt. Both of them fell.
The pirate struck twice, once hitting the stair rail, the second time knocking Jormes aside. He turned and aimed his gun at the boy's head.
Jormes rolled out of the way just as the bullet embedded itself in the tile, which exploded into shards inches from his face. He looked up to see that Flit had launched herself at the pirate and was clinging on to his neck from behind. The boy scrambled up and away as the pirate prised Flit's wrestling arms apart and flung her across the room. She collided almost directly with a row of several of the custard sacks, which swung dangerously, some torn, until finally one cushioned her slowed impact and she fell to the ground.
Gen screamed and Jormes careened forward into the darkness as the pirate fired more haphazard shots. Sacks punctured, burst, and erupted with viscous yellow gore; the children shielded their faces as mingled globs of custard hot and cold showered down upon them, some steaming and hissing as they splattered the floor, their clothes and their skin. Open, deflated sacks rocked like ripped carcasses in the dark above them. Heating rods, bare, glowed a violent red at the ends of their wires, casting turbulent shadows as they pendulated.
Gen and Jormes scrambled for the refuge of the sacks still intact as the gloom settled once again; Gen frantically searched on her knees for Flit, dragging her to safety once her hands found the smooth, leathery material of her café uniform.
The pirate captain's gun was out of bullets. He removed the arm and retrieved from the floor the one with the blade. Then he advanced into the darkness.
* * *
Mel stood by the smashed glass, breathing heavily. He was about to strike one of the intruders again when he noticed that a crowd of aliens all different shapes and sizes had gathered and were watching with mingled expressions of worry and curiosity from a distance. The stout, spherical figure of a security guard weaved its way unsteadily among them.
Mel turned to confront the pirates again in the hope of distracting them until help arrived. But the short pirate, in the middle of reaching for his projectile-firing arm, had seen what he had seen.
Then the large man noticed another thing. One of the pirates--and some kids--had disappeared.
'We gotarr get outarr here!' hissed the short pirate.
The fat one, once again picking himself up from the floor, this time with the aid of a chair, shook his head as if to relieve himself of the blow, the ears protruding from his bandana twitching in intense irritation. 'We find fer what we came!' he growled.
'Be forget that,' said the short pirate, staring at the approaching guard. His hand slid to an arm he had not yet used. The fat pirate turned and followed his gaze. He cursed, then retrieving one identical from his own belt. Neither sported any lethal-looking attachment like the others. Mel stood tensely, unsure of exactly what this latest weapon was. It appeared to be largely made of wood, but with metal joints and presumably circuitry running through it to keep it operational.
Then he realised that both of them were about to leave.
'Oh no you don't!'
The short pirate walloped a girl who had been creeping up behind him, then deftly ducked under Mel's arms as the man grabbed the fork from his back pocket and lunged. As the pirates hopped through the jagged window in the glass and ran out into Hepthazard, the kids trickled like a mudslide after them. 'STAY WHERE YOU ARE!' boomed Mel.
Creatures outside the café gasped and screamed and moved rapidly aside as the pirates approached.
'Stand down!' said the security guard, attempting to block their way. 'You are under arrest!' Its eel-like arms shot out of its spherical blue casing. 'You are defea--'
The fat pirate raised his wooden arm and caught the guard's tentacles around it. Before it could tug free or release any more, the pirate forced the wooden arm down onto its gelatinous head and into the hole in the armour from which it protruded. There was a crackle and a sizzling sound, and a monotone scream as he held it there for several seconds, its entire body rattling unpleasantly. A curl of smoke rose out from the hole. The wood was smouldering as the pirate stepped away, and he waved it about to extinguish the flames as the two of them fled.
* * *
Optional music track: 'Nine Inch Nails - Complication.'
'Where be ye now?' the pirate captain hissed, making his way down one of the aisles. The blade arm twitched restlessly along its metal plate. He swiped and gutted a sack to his left, then gashed another to his right as his arms exchanged position and he peered about the darkness in search of them.
Then one of the sacks jumped out at him, bludgeoning him aside as Jormes and Gen revealed themselves. The pirate quickly recovered, although his cybernetic hand had been knocked off, and his single remaining arm began to slide along its belt, back and forth along his chest as he hacked furiously away at all obstructions and the two kids tried to get out of his way.
Jormes cried out as the blade slashed his arm, but was able to get away before it came at him again. The pirate marched determinedly after him, the arm starting to spin the whole circuit around his upper body at the risk of coming loose, gaining speed as it did so. The blade was sharp and cut through more of the custard containers with ease, the contents glooping copiously from their gashes. As Jormes struggled with difficulty to escape his path, the pirate began to run at him, the blade revolving around him now no more than a blur.
Gen, working desperately to keep pace with him while staying out of range of the blade, had grabbed the gun arm he had tossed aside by the stairs and was trying to find an opening in the remaining sacks between herself and the pirate before he could corner Jormes. She took a chance and threw the arm; the blade glanced off it, knocked from its orbit, and the pirate stumbled forward as it struck the ground at his feet and flew off, hitting a naked heating rod that then swung back towards him. The rod hit him; he shrieked and stumbled backwards into an already wounded custard sack, which spilled hot custard over his head as he fell.
He attempted to get up as the belt around his torso whirred and sparked for the lack of arms, but was knocked down again as Gen kicked him hard in the face. He struggled some more, bleeding, but his feet slipped on the custard-slicked floor and could not gain purchase. He rolled over as he pathetically tried again to get up. Gen hurriedly grabbed his head with both hands and forced it down into the puddle of thick, hot custard, digging her knee into the small of his back and trying desperately to hold him in place as his strong, muscle-bound body tried to heave her off, once successfully doing so, but wriggling weakeningly beneath her.
Jormes watched, horrified, as the pirate's movements were reduced to a twitch, the custard bubbling at his mouth.
Gen did not let go until long after he was dead.
Optional music track: 'Emiliana Torrini - Dead Things.'
