The Misadventures of The Good Ship 'Penny Bone' Continue

The sun beats down from its blue prison, burning at the ocean below. On said ocean sails the good ship 'Penny Bone', experiencing her first day on the wide open sea since they left port. Orlop is standing at his rightful place, or so he thinks, behind the wheel, keeping the ship on course. Not that he's really sure what the course is. He squints at one of the nearby crew beasts, a tall rat named Juan, and yells, "Oy! You! Go an' fetch me tha' navigator!" Juan bobs his head once and trots off below deck, in search of the elusive navigator.

Down below, away from the prying eye of the captain and those who would punish lazyness the first deck of the Penny Bone is seeing some rather lax behavior. If one where to walk by the mess hall they would find a young pine marten resting in the corner of the room, sprawled out on bench like chair of his table. The marten has no plates or silverware out but for some reason his belly is distended with food. He appears to be awake and digesting a very large meal.

Juan comes padding down below decks, muttering incredulously to himself about the unjustness of ship life. After a moment, he comes upon the mess hall and peers in at the marten, an eyebrow raised, "Yew seem awffuly comfy. Dunt yew "ave some job ta dew?"

With out distrubing himself from the comfort of laying on a wooden chair the marten crosses his legs, idly tapping his free foot paw in the air like he is listening to some unheard beat. With hands folded behind his head Kazi replies, "Just finished it actually. I was sent to make sure the food was ok in the store room and (urp) remove any rotten veggies and fruit we had."

Juan scoffs, gesturing to the martens belly, "An Oi suppose yew were supposed ta throw it ova' board, eh? Ah well, if yew get food poisoning an' die it'll be one less mouth to feed." He chuckles to himself, before seeming to remember his original intent for coming down here, "Oy, by tha' way. Tha capin want's ta see tha navigator. Know where he is?"

Kazi chuckles. Of course what one considers rotten in reguard to food is different from beast to beast. And it's a little hard to prove it /wasn't/ rotten befor ebeing eat-er, thrown over board. In response the marten shrugs, "I havn't seen him. How about you guys?" THe marten looks over to two beasts in the table oposite. A red furred vixen wearing a tight fitting cloth tunic and a pot bellied blue scaled lizard. "Sorry, havna seen him." The vizen Kassandra says. The lizard Blue simply hisses to the marten. "Sorry mate, I guess he isn't here." Kazi concludes.

Juan curses under his breath at the absence of the navigator, "Right. When was tha' last time yew saw 'im? If at all? Come ta think of et, I avn't seen 'im this whole voyage!" Not that there's much too the voyage at this point, since they're only one day in.

The vixen strokes her chin, "The navigator? What does he look like? Weasel right?" Kazi replies, "He's some kind of marten last I checked." The fox raises an eyebrow, "Marten? I don't think he was no marten. No he was a weasel!"

"He vasss a tall grey ferret. Sssaw him on the docksss before we left." Blue replies before taking a long steady drink of grog. "Oh? So you did see him. Did you see him later on then Blue?" The lizard replies, "Yesss, he wasss on the docksss when we ssset sail."

Juan's eyes bulge, "Yew mean we left 'im there?! Tha capin' won't be 'appy about this." He pauses a moment, measuring his words, before saying in a slightly pleading voice, "How would one of yews loik to tell 'im?"

There is a long pause as each beast glances at the other. In a flash the fox and lizard bolt out of the room. Kazi, weighed down by his own greedy gut is unfortunately slow to launch himself from the bench he is laying on. Sitting up instead he turns to rat. "Us? Why no no no. Why would we want to take the honor away from you mate?" He stands up, wrapping a paw on Juan's shoulder, using the other to wave at some far off imaginary horizon, "Just think about how happily it will make the captain to know that you are brave enough to go tell him the bad news instead of pawning it off on some other poor beasty, (cough cough) unlike us (cough cough)."

Juan watches helplessly as the two other beasts escape and he returns his gaze to Kazi, his eyes hopeful. His hope, however, crumbles as the marten speaks, "It ain't no honer! Hell skin me alive! If not worse. Come on, be a mate an' at least come with me. He can't skin both of us." His voice is melancholy and he looks pleadingly at the marten.

The marten laughs, shaking the rat as he does, "Juan, Juan, Juan. It's time for you to stand on your own two paws. Just think of how you will feel, standing up to the captain, bravely telling him the bad news." The marten begins walking the rat back towards the stairs. "And besides, only pirate captains skin beasts alive. Here on merchant ships they just Keelhall you by trying a rope to your feet and paws and dragging you against the underbelly of the ship." He gives the pleading rat a shove towards the stairs.

Juan starts to struggles weakly as Kazi starts moving towards the stairs, his horror at having to face the captain only growing at the mention of keel hauling, "Oi imagine I'll feel mighty bad! Please, Kazi, don't lemme do this alone! Come wif me!" When the marten shoves him towards the steps, he stumbles slightly and looks despairingly at Kazi, whimpering, "Please..." His voice fades off. It's clear the marten isn't coming with him. He sighs and starts to make his way slowly up the stairs, looking like a prisoner about to face execution.

Kazi sighs as he watches the rat go. Even the marten has a heart and cant stand to watch some poor beast heading off to what is surely the tail chewing of the century. That is why he heads back into the mess hall to grab some grog. Having been able to hear the conversation through the wall the other many beasts here bore a hole at Kazi. "What?" The marten says, flailing his paws through the air, "He'll be fine. The captain will just jell at him a bit. I think...it's my first day here." More staring, "Oh come on, its not like the captain is really going to gut him and wear his fur like a cape? Right?" Yet more staring. Finely the marten caves in, "Fine!" Stomping out of the mess hall he walks by the rat, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him up the stairs, "Alright, you win. You're going to owe me so many lunches for this, you know that right?"

In the span of time where Kazi had left and come back, Juan had only managed to cover the first three steps, staring at the top of the stairwell with a stricken look on his face. This was it. This is how he died. However, his death ridden thoughts are quickly dashed as the marten comes into view and starts escorting him up the stairs. His face breaks into a grin and he starts babbling, "Yew got it Kazi! Yew can 'ave my lunch AN' my breakfast for a whole week! Na, a month!"

Kazi licks his chops, lunch and breakfast, Juan really knows how to sweeten a deal that he never needed to. "You my friend, have a deal. Now lets go see our big bad captain and give him the goodnews." He reaches the top of the stairs, turns to the right and begins to climb the stairs to the what ever that wheel thingy is called. He isn't too good on the sea lingo yet but he plans to pick it up soon. "Now remember, bad news is like a bandage that gets stuck in your fur, sometimes its best to just rip it off. Unless of course, the captain is in a bad mood, then you want to be gentle, don't give Orlop a heart attack from stress. If he is inbetween...well, i always just like to go in, say my peice than dash out before the captain realizes who to toss over board." The marten stops at the top step, "Well then mate, off you go. I have your back...from back here."

Juan follows along with the marten, nodding enthusiastically at the advice. Once they reach their destination, the rat seems slightly crushed that the marten has decided to stay behind, but if worse comes to worse, he can always run behind the marten for protection. He turns slowly towards where Orlop is standing behind the wheel and starts hesitantly towards the squirrel, "Uh...Capin'?" Orlop glares over at the crew member, grunting in response. Juan takes a breath and gathers his courage, "Capin'.....we left the navigator behind." And with that, the rat takes several steps back, getting well out of the captains reach. Meanwhile, Orlop grips the wheel harder, bellowing in his best parade ground roar, "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!"

Kazi smacks his fore head, "No, no, no, Juan, I said if he's in a fowl mood ease him into. Start out with a joke, compliment him on slimming down a bit then toss in that grenada." The marten can see that young Juan's life is about to be snuffed out, at least from his own morbid terror of his captian. Kazi must admit, the squirrel has a pair of lungs. He nearly blew the marten off the side of the boat with his yell and he hasn't seen a beast snarl so well since his last boss. And he was a wolverine.

While the crew members shudder with fear all the way down to the bottom storage hold Kazi leaps in to save the day, "Tis true captain. It looks like..." Kazi pauses, he might be new to sailing but he has played the in house corporate politics game before, telling the captain that through oversight or incompitance that his crew forgot their navigator is bad for his carier...carier towards living of course. "...It looks like that sneaky ferret jumped ship the moment we left port. Cowardly beast didn't have the back bone to sail with us." And what better beast is there to pin the blame on than one you are most likely never able to see again?

Juan shrugs helplessly, "Why didn't you specify before now?!" Before he can say more, Orlop says in a menacingly quiet voice, "Get your rottin' tail over an' make a full report." Juan had taken one shaking step towards the captain before Kazi steps in, causing the rat to nearly faint from relief. Orlop raises an eyebrow at the marten, "Is that so? And how do you know this? Be quick, sailor!"

Kazi gulps. See? This is why he doesn't stick his neck out for beasts! He didn't charge near enough food for this. "Well...you see sir..." Kazi begins, realizing that he so totally did NOT think this lie through. How is he supposed to explain how he knows that the beast jumped ship but never told anyone about it? Instead of distrubting the blame equally in safe portions across the entire ship he now stands ready to take the entire blame in all its squirrely fury. And if he blames someone else he will have the ire of the entire crew by day one! Think Kazi, think! "Er, well you see sir, I um, that is heard a rummor that the beast got left behind. But we both know the quartermaster is pretty good at keeping track of his duties so I went about, under me own innitiative I might add, to inquire about the navigator with out uh, disturbin all the higher ups from their important...things that they do. It took me until now to search the entire ship with out letting the crew know we are missin a navigator cause," Kazi laughs nervously, "Cause we all know what sort of panic that would cause, but yes, it looks like he jumped ship." He takes a deep breath to swollow his own words, and adds for good measure, "I...I can read maps. Sorta."

Orlop raises the eyebrows above his wrath ridden eyes, "I see. From now on, I want you ta tell me if you suspect something like this. Remember tha' or there'll be consequences next time." He glances around the deck of the ship before addressing the marten again, "Can you now?" His voice spurts to a shout, "WELL THERE AIN'T ANY BLOODY MAPS ON THE SHIP!" Spittle flies out of his mouth and he growls, "Bring me Kilby."

The marten whimpers, it's his turn to hide behind Juan. No wonder the rat was scared of him! The beasty snaps a left pawed salute, "Yes captain! Right away captain!" The marten feels that the rat should know by now when to run for it and gives him an example of just that. Running for it. First day into his first sea voyage and Kazi has nearly gotten killed by the captain. The good news is, it was only /nearly/"

Hope you enjoyed! More to come!