by Adam Clark
***
Chainsaw-boy had just finished throwing up the last bits of their dinner over the side of the wooden pirate boat. They’d been at sea for a week, and it wasn’t getting any easier for Chainsaw Boy, he still didn’t know why they hadn’t travelled by aerolift. Grigor had said something about the aerolift not being righteous enough.
Chainsaw Boy was getting settled in on the boat, and getting used to having chainsaw arms. Although they made a lot of things harder, and he hadn’t come across a situation where they made it any easier, he was still chuffed with the way things had turned out.
He was getting used to Grigor as well, while not being sure that travelling with a band of murderously crazy finance advisors was a wise life decision. He’d decided to dump these guys the first chance he could in new Zealand and start a new life, maybe as a lumberjack, that seemed a fairly apt course for his life to take.
Chainsaw-boy was looking wistfully out to sea when Grigor came smashing through a door and out onto the poop-deck holding a mobile phone to his ear.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LOST IT? ROBOTS? I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING WORSE THAN ROBOTS TO WORRY ABOUT, NAMELY MY FIST, JUSTICE!” The sails on the mast quivered in fear, but the wind, not willing to feel Grigor's wrath as well, decided to pick up the pace, the sails tugged taut and pushed the boat faster across the sea. When he finished his call he threw the phone far out to sea in anger.
“Is everything alright?” Chainsaw-boy asked.
“No, Skwisfellgar is just a complete idiot, and has massively fucked up everything.” He took a big puff on the blunt he had to hand, held his breath and let out big cloud of Mary-J. “You know what, I don’t even care, I’m sure everything will work itself out” he started giggling, “it’s not like the Dragon Heart is the most powerful item in the universe or anything! Do you want some?” He offered the blunt to Chainsaw boy.
“I’m alright thanks, I feel queasy enough as it is.”
“Suit yourself, I’m going to go listen to rap music.” With that he jumped onto his tame tiger that was lounging around on the deck, and rode it off towards his personal quarters at the front of the boat.
Chainsaw-boy went back to looking out at the sea, he was thinking about what to make of Grigor, he seemed nice enough, and he’d given him an opportunity that no one else would have done. But Chainsaw-boy had a feeling that he meant nothing to Grigor, in fact, he doubted that anyone in the world meant much to the smartly dressed barbarian.
His train of thought was rudely interrupted by a firm hand grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. He was staring into the face of a middle-aged pirate captain whom was dressed rather stereotypically, he had a black eye-patch offset to the left of a broken nose, a grey eye the other side of the aforementioned nose and a white bushy beard. This was accompanied by long white hair, braided on several strands that flowed out from a tricorn hat. The face was odd however, the man didn’t appear to be old, more like he’d been shocked by lightning, and Chainsaw-boy got the distinct impression that this man was wiser than he looked.
“I don't like the look of you, or those fancy arms of yours… boy” he said meanly.
“Yeah, faggot!” squawked the racist parrot perched on his shoulder. “We’ve got our eyes on you.”
“Shut up Patrice, you can’t say that word, use the term asshole or something else generic instead.” The pirate spoke out of the corner of his mouth at the bird, trying to maintain the grimace he’d adopted for this encounter.
“Fuck you, cum dumpster!”
“Woah, that’s a little bit too harsh, and maybe worse than the previous slur. Just tone it down a bit.” The pirate said, slightly unnerved.
“I’ll cut you cracker! I’ll smash your CD rack, won’t get none of your CD’s back!” The parrot squawked.
“I guess that’ll do, even though I’m pretty certain no one uses CDs now, anyway” he coughed to regain his menacing demeanor. “I don’t like the look of you.”
“Ok, look.” Chainsaw-boy replied “I’ve got fucking chainsaws for arms, I'm 37 and I have nothing to live for, I'll kill you without even thinking about it... boy”
“Well, when you put it that way, I like your balls. We should be friends, I'm Napalm Explosionface, master of seas, and this is my parrot, Parrot Explosionface. He hates everyone, and don’t leave anything valuable lying about, he’ll either steal it, or smash it.”
“What’s with you, why didn’t you just introduce yourself nicely?”
Napalm thought for a minute. “I don’t really know, that’s just sort of how I’ve always introduced myself, it’s the done thing y’know.”
“Well you should try a different tack next time” Chainsaw-boy was a little bit disappointed, that would’ve been his first chance to try out the new arms. “Are you the captain of this ship? I’ve seen you doing a lot of shouting.”
“Aye, I’ve been running this hunk 'a' trash since 400 B.C.” He paused for effect, the parrot on his shoulder, well trained gasped dramatically. “I hear you, how could that possibly be true Napalm? That would make you 4000 years old!”
“I wasn’t really thinking that at all, sounds quite a reasonable age to be, I’ve certainly seen odder things” Chainsaw boy replied stoically.
His lack of surprise took Napalm by surprise, gathering himself, he continued as if chainsaw Boy hadn’t actually said anything. “Yes, that’s right! I'm an immortal pirate captain, although Grigor is technically the owner, I’m a little bit shit when it comes to gambling. However! I never used to be this way, I got bitten by a magical shark when I was working on a frigate during the first pirate-elf war. I’ve been impossible to kill since then. Unfortunately though my limbs don't grow back” He said, tapping his wooden leg on the floor.
“Oh man, is that a guitar leg?” Chainsaw-boy exclaimed noticing the exposed machine head and fret board that made up Napalm's foot and shin.
“Yeah, I’ve been playing ever since I met Hendrix back in '65, he gave me a few tips and I picked it up from there, I taught Metallica everything they know.”
“Wow, you're kind of a living legend then?” Chainsaw Boy was feeling a little bit more respect for this ancient paragon of popular music.
“Yes I am.” he said, “D’ya want to see something really awesome? Check this shit out.” Lighting up a spliff the size of a man's leg and holding it between his lips and standing on his good leg, he rolled up the opposite trouser leg to reveal an intricately ornate guitar leg. He leaned back, balancing expertly, and began to play. For the next thirty seconds his hands were a flaming blur, averaging out around 100 notes a second. He shredded like no mere mortal could shred. In response, the biggest killer whale Chainsaw-boy had ever seen launched itself up out of the sea and jumped over the boat, at the apex of its jump Napalm held his hand up and high-fived its car sized flipper. Then the killer whale was back in the sea on the other side of the boat, leaving only a few ripples on the surface to show it had ever been there.
Napalm calmly pulled his trouser leg back down and took the spliff out of his mouth. Chainsaw-Boy was speechless.
“Yeah, you saw that, I'm best friends with the killer whales. Thannnnnkk yoouuuuuuuu” he called out to the whale in his deepest whale voice. The Whale surfaced alongside the boat and sprayed a fountain of water in a friendly response, and then it was gone.
“Um… That was quite impressive, I don’t really know what to say.” Chainsaw-Boy said after regaining his composure.
“Don’t say anything, just savour the moment.” Napalm took a deep breath, savouring the moment.
“You know what, you seem like a nice guy so I have to ask a question I’ve been wondering about since I got on this boat.” Chainsaw-Boy looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and leaned in close to Napalm “Are we smuggling drugs?” he whispered.
Napalm laughed uncontrollably, “Smuggling! Ha, that’s hilarious. This isn’t smuggling lad, this is all for personal use, so it’s all leg
al, and it gets really boring out at sea.” He pointed at a group of hacky-sack playing pirates in the shade made by the sails in the middle of the deck. “If we didn’t get high all the time those guys would’ve killed each other by now.”
Chainsaw-Boy could hear them talking from where he was standing.
“Man, hacky sack is so good, it should be like, a real sport, like in the Olympics and on TV and stuff” said a tall, mean looking pirate.
His hacky-sack playing accomplice thought for a few seconds then replied “True say dude, and also, Reggae is the best music. It could be the Olympic hacky-sack theme song or something. That would be radical.”
Chainsaw-Boy turned to Napalm, “I see what you mean, they don’t look like they could fight anyone at the moment.
“Yep, keeps the scamps out of trouble.” He went to shake Chainsaw-Boy’s hand, stopped awkwardly and retracted his hand after thinking twice about the situation. “Well, it’s been nice to meet you, I’ve got important pirate captain things to be doing so I’ll see you around.”
“See you” Chainsaw-Boy said to Napalm as he walked away to the captain’s room at the back of the boat. I might as well kill some time, he thought to himself, picking up a big fat doobie with his mouth that had been left on top of a crate next to him. He lit it from the sparks made from grinding his arms together, leant back on the railing, took a deep breath of the spliff and soaked up the sun while the sounds of Bob Marley drifted serenely over the boat.
the republic strikes back