1. The Blue Ship That is Not, In Fact, Blue.
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Dawn peeked between the craggy features of a distant mountain range, shedding off the blue mottle of dark and revealing the sun’s shimmering plumage of gold, peach, and purple. The golden light illuminated two ships suspended in the air. One was a massive British man-of-war, a hulk of floating junk whose only impressive feature were its sails. The English, though they were unimpressive in pretty much everything else, did have neat stitching. The second was a small and narrow xebec, built for speed and sporting the pirate flag. Its canvas stitching wasn’t awful, but it certainly wasn’t English.

Below the xebec’s imperfect sails, a skirmish was beginning to wind to its highest point when a dragon decided to join in on the fray.

“Goddamned dragons,” Jackie muttered.

She had just managed to kill off the latest Englander that tried to try to scalp her. Her hands and some of her corset were covered in a mess of blood. And of course, she was the closest to where the dragon had landed.

About the size of a large Great Dane, the dragon dropped a few meters in front of Jackie, its tongue flicking to test the air. Its jaundiced eyes narrowed with the promise of blood and pinned onto Jackie. It’s cracked talons scrabbled across the sun-bleached wood of the main deck, and in the next heartbeat, the dragon’s wretched breath blasted in Jackie’s face.

Jackie fell backward onto the deck of her skyship, her dao skittering out of her hand.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck,” Jackie’s words were an unconscious stream.

The dragon opened its mighty jaws, and Jackie stared stupidly into it’s gaping maw.

“Try moving!” A tinny voice roared.

The dragon was jerked back by the neck, screaming in a blind rage. Jackie blinked. She instantly recognized Valencia straddling the dragon’s back.

“You’re an idiot,” Jackie muttered, turning to find her dao.

“I heard that!” Valencia shouted.

Jackie scrambled to find her dao, but by the time she’d grabbed it, Valencia had already snapped the dragon’s neck and stood over it like some proud hunter.

It was kind of sexy if Jackie thought about it. Valencia’s face was sunburnt, and Jackie had already memorized the dapple of the freckles across her nose and cheeks. The rush of the wind pulled and tugged at the deep blue linen shirt and white ascot. Jackie already knew what lay beneath the shirt, and the unbidden image made her heart rush. With hatred, of course.

“Captain Steele!” Jackie said, keeping a careful distance from Valencia. “Surrender now?”

There was no reason to think Valencia would surrender. Jackie had already captured Valencia’s ship, crew, and Valencia herself last night. But even then English RAF thought she still had a right to refuse surrender. She was more stubborn than Jackie. Which was annoying. 

“Kiss my ass!” To emphasize, Captain Valencia Steele slapped against the so-called ass. But not even her tight silk breeches could show anything noticeable about her backside.

“Not my thing!”

Raj, one of Jackie’s crewmates, sprang up behind Valencia and attempted to tackle her to the ground.

But Valencia was a bit sprier than the average Englander. She had no trouble swinging the teenager over her shoulder, and in quick time had punched Raj twice in the nose and once in the temple, knocking the person out.

“Hey!” Jackie roared. “Leave Raj alone!”

Valencia looked up and spasmed out a tight smile. “Aye, aye, mi celio.”

Time seemed to pause with the endearment. Jackie and Valencia shared a meaningful look that could have wound up to them clasping hands and leaning in for a full-on make-out session in the middle of a gory battle, but no. Valencia had places to be.

“Think of me fondly!” Valencia laughed, springing up from the deck and racing towards the ship’s head.

Jackie ran after Valencia, but it was pretty pointless. Not only was Valencia faster, but Jackie was also swarmed by Valencia’s greedy crewmates. Jackie could almost smell the anxious need to cut off one of Jackie’s arms, or at least a finger for a reward.

Jackie cut through them all with the finesse of a born fighter. One Englander rushed her, his arms raised back to clobber her with a plank of wood. Jackie sliced through his exposed stomach, then tucked so the next Englander fell over her.

Jackie plunged her sword into his eyeball, then turned back to keep running. She was already too late. Valencia stood at the head of barely balanced on the bowsprit.

“Don’t you dare!” Jackie shouted, able to guess Valencia’s next desperate attempt at escape.

A long line of rigging rope led down to Valencia, and the English captain just finished tying the loose end around her wrist. “Oh, I’m gonna dare,”

And dare she did. Jackie spewed out a stream of Chíro curses as Valencia kicked off from the bowsprit and flew overhead, shooting towards the English man-of-war. Her only chance of escape.

“Someone get her!” Jackie shouted uselessly.

“Aye aye darling!”

Jackie stopped dead in her tracks. Following the sound of the voice, Jackie was utterly flabbergasted to see her lover, Morrows, standing on the poop deck.

Morrows never came on deck during a battle. It was an unspoken rule on the ship that Morrows did not come on deck during a battle.

But there he was, brass goggles snapped down, blond hair fluffing in the air current, his waistcoat partially undone and shirt sleeves rolled up to show he meant business. The strange glass pistol he aimed at Valencia also signaled some sort of business-making at hand, as did the cocking and following explosion of the machine.

Would you dare?
  • Oh, I'd dare. Votes: 1 33.3%
  • I'd poo myself Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Yeabsolutely not Votes: 1 33.3%
Total voters: 3
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