“So, me hearties,” said Drunk Beard, “before there were that incident that never happened – “

“What incident?” asked Sam obligingly.

“Incident? I don’t be remembering any incident. Must’ve been last night.” He paused for a second, and Art was about to ask what the pirate was going to say when he added solemnly “Arr.”

“What were you going to ask?” said Art once he was sure the pirate wasn’t going to add another generic piratical phrase.

“What quest be ye landlubbers and foul ninjas on?”

Art glanced despairingly at Sam. “It’s a long story,” he said.

“I don’t be doing anything else. Not until the pub be opening in five minutes anyway.”

“Right. Five-minute summary for any readers who are confused by what’s happened so far. We need to climb to the summit of A Mountain North of here, which Ash is guiding us to. At the summit there’s a wizard’s tower, where my cousin Herbert who’s a crazy old wizard lives.”

“We followed him here through a portal thing,” said Sam, “only now we don’t know how to get back.”

“And he turned me into a hairy wizard,” Art complained; on cue, his hair grew another few inches. It was getting rather hard to walk around without tripping over. Maybe he could use his ear hair to build a new ladder for climbing the mountain? “And he’s my new rival now. So we have to get to his tower and kick his ass – “

“And get him to send us back to our own universe – “

“Where we need to deal with the Very Illegal Explosives my thief of a brother smuggled onto our spaceship – “

“And save Mark from being blown up by them – “

“And kick my brother’s ass and prove once and for all to my mother that I am the superior sibling!” Art finished triumphantly. “Well? What do you think?”

“I dunno. It be seeming a bit… complicated.”

Art’s face fell for a second; for some strange reason he found himself actually caring about the stereotypical pirate’s opinion. Then he had a better idea. “Orr… we could go and get drunk and worry about all that tomorrow.”

“Art, no!” Sam snapped. “We don’t have any of the anti-intoxication serums with us! And who knows what your cousin will try next!”

Drunk Beard had exactly the opposite reaction. He grinned – not that you could see it under the beard – and said “Aye aye, me heartie, that seems to be a good plan! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!”

“Slight problem,” said Baka. The two ninjas had in fact been present for the whole of this scene, but up until now had been invisible to the narrative due to their ninja powers and definitely not the author’s inability to think of good lines for them. “The honourable oaths we have sworn as ninjas prohibit us from drinking.”

“Do ninjas swear honourable oaths prohibiting them from drinking?” asked Art.

Sam shrugged. “I haven’t exactly needed to be an expert in ninjas as a crew member of a spaceship.”

“Hang on,” Ash pointed out, “if you’re prohibited from drinking, how come you haven’t died of dehydration by now?”

“Drinking alcohol!” Baka corrected desperately.

“What my brother means,” explained Ōkī, “is that we’re… uh… fourteen years old. It’s illegal for us to drink.”

Art stared at the ninjas. Now he thought about it, they did look rather young, and Ōkī in particular was unusually small even for a ninja.

“Not according to maritime law, it ain’t,” said Drunk Beard triumphantly. “All me crew share in the rum, however young they be.”

Sam raised a finger. “Forgive me for pointing this out, but we don’t appear to be at sea right now.”

“That’s what you think, landlubber! A pirate is always at sea, even when he’s on land. See – “ he reached a hand into the thick hair of his beard and rummaged around for a second – “here!” He pulled out a tiny model ship, complete with a miniature skull-and-crossbones flag flying from the mast. “Welcome aboard the good ship Jolly Roger, crewmates!”

Art inspected the ship critically. “Not as good as the Celestial Horizon,” was his verdict.

“How dare you insult me ship! Avast, me hearties, for this grave insult we must duel to the death!” Drunk Beard drew the flintlock pistol recently extracted from his ass in an incident that had never happened.

“Don’t suppose I could buy the first round of drinks instead?” Art offered.

“You have yourself a deal! Raise anchor and set course for the Wizard’s Ass, crew!”

“Is the pub actually called – “ Sam asked, knowing she shouldn’t.

“The Wizard’s Ass? Aye, that it be. Hoist the sails!”

“You heard the pirate,” said Art, grinning. “Let’s go!”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Sam sighed. “Okay, but you owe me for picking up the pieces afterwards.”

----------------------------------------

“Hey, Generic Abomination #2,” said Generic Abomination #1 a few hours later as the Horde marched down the road.

“Yeah?” asked Generic Abomination #2, pausing to check its map. There was a rather nice pub called the Wizard’s Ass in the village they would reach by morning, and it rather fancied getting a beer there if there was time once they’d finished off the wizard’s cousin and before they’d brought him back to Herbert alive.

“Weren’t we supposed to meet this Art Whatever-Our-Last-Name-Is along the way?”

“Huh,” Generic Abomination #2 mused. “So we were. Strange, that. Wonder where he’s got to?"

“Less talking,” hissed Pure Malevolence, “more walking.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry ma’am.”

“Won’t happen again, ma’am.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

The Abominations weren’t sure that Pure Malevolence was a ma’am. Her voice sounded feminine, at least, but she was cloaked in darkness so dark it was impossible to tell what was underneath. But they were all terrified of her, because she was Pure Malevolence.

The Horde marched on, getting closer to the village with every moment.

----------------------------------------

Fortunately for the crew of the Jolly Roger, it was a long way from A Mountain North of here to the village, and the Horde marched very slowly, so they had a lot of moments in which to prepare. The fact they didn’t use any of those moments for preparation was a little less fortunate.

The Horde was a couple of miles away when Art was rudely awoken by a bucket of freezing cold water being poured over his head. He immediately wished he hadn’t woken up: the pain of his headache was agonising. “What time is it,” he muttered.

“Four in the morning,” said the attractive young barmaid of the Wizard’s Ass, holding an empty bucket and smiling a little. What had Art said to her last night? How much did he deserve that bucket of water? The last thing he remembered was Drunk Beard trying to teach them all a sea shanty, and then… nothing.

“What kind of pub be closing at four in the morning?” asked Drunk Beard, slurring his words a little. “The night be only just getting started.” Though he’d evidently been unconscious himself, judging by the way his beard was now dripping freezing water. Or possibly the barmaid had just felt like soaking him.

“Maybe for you it is,” the barmaid said scornfully, “but for us it ends here. So, settle up and be going.”

Ash shrugged and winked six of his eyes at the barmaid. “Stick mine on my tab, please,” he said. “I’ll pay end of the month, as usual.” He seemed obnoxiously coherent given the amount he’d drunk. Then again, everyone seemed more coherent than Art right now.

“Right you are, sir. The rest of you don’t seem to have tabs, so that will be a hundred and fifty gold pieces between you.”

“A hundred and – “

“Your prices be outrageous!”

“Fifty? How did it get so much?”

“Well, it’s two gold pieces for one pint of rum, and you drank seventy-five pints of rum. To be fair, most of that was the pirate. So, splitting that evenly four ways, that will be thirty-seven and a half gold each.”

“Four ways?” asked Baka. “Aren’t there six of us?”

The barmaid sighed. “Well, Ash here is paying separately. And the woman who was with you left about midnight, said something about needing air and Art would cover her bill.”

“Damn that woman,” Art muttered. Sam was a decent and reliable girl most of the time, but ditching him when there was rum to be drunk? That was unforgivable. “How many star credits in a gold piece?”

“Star… credits?” the barmaid repeated, confused.

“Yeah. Legal tender in sixteen galaxies, recognised by the Interplanetary Confederation – here – “ Art reached into his secret underwear pocket and removed a handful of thin green heptagonal coins. “How many?”

“Look, those might be money in whatever galaxy you came from, but I’ve never heard of them before and the Wizard’s Ass doesn’t take them.”

“You mean… I don’t have any money?”

“Unless you have any gold pieces hiding in that secret underwear pocket of yours, it would seem not.”

“How the galactic FUCK do you know about my secret underwear pocket?”

“I just saw – oh, forget it. Well, between you you’ll have to find a hundred and fifty gold pieces somehow.”

“We have sworn honourable ninja oaths not to carry money,” said Baka.

“You mean you blew all our pocket money on chocolate,” Ōkī corrected.

“I did not! And it was good chocolate!”

Ash shrugged. “I’m not bailing you out. I like you, but not enough to bankrupt myself for you lot.”

Everyone turned to look at Drunk Beard. “Why is everyone looking at me?” asked Drunk Beard.

“You’re a pirate,” said Art. “You must have tons of gold pieces.”

“Well – uh – “ Drunk Beard rummaged around in his beard, his underpants and various other unmentionable places and pulled out a handful of coppers. “I do. But I buried it in a hundred different places. I have a treasure map to help me find them all again. Most of them are over the seven seas, though. Don’t suppose you’d – “

“Nope.”

“Though I do be having one hoard not too far from here… I’ll sign the rights to it over to you to clear this bill.”

The barmaid sighed. “You did that to pay for your drinks last night.”

“Did I? Don’t remember what I did last night.”

“So what you’re saying,” the barmaid said icily, “is that between you, to cover a hundred and fifty gold pieces… you have a grand total of six coppers.”

Art sighed. “Guess that’s right.”

“Well.” She smiled cruelly. “Looks like you’ll have to wash dishes to pay off your debt, won’t you?”

----------------------------------------

“You could at least help us out,” Art muttered two hours later, shooting Ash a glare between drying plates with his ear hair.

Ash shrugged with all three of his arms. “I’m not the one in debt here.”

Baka flicked soapy bubbles in Ash’s general direction. “It would go a lot faster if Drunk Beard here actually helped instead of sailing the Jolly Roger around the sink.”

Drunk Beard shrugged and nudged the model ship back towards him. “I be voyaging, me hearties.”

“Yeah? You didn’t happen to find any pieces of eight in the depths of the sink so we could pay off this money and get out of here faster, did you?”

“Well, no, but – “

Drunk Beard was interrupted by Sam rushing into the pub and hurtling over to the sink. “Art! Everyone! You have to come quickly! There’s a horde of Generic Abominations with Pure Malevolence coming towards the village! I think your cousin Herbert sent them! We have to go and fight them now!”

“Hold on a minute,” said the barmaid. “None of these people are going anywhere until they’ve done another – “ she glanced at her watch and at the pile of remaining dishes; it seemed to have barely got any smaller. Was it magically replenishing itself in some way? – “fifty-three gold pieces worth of dishes.”

“But the Abominations could destroy the whole village!”

“Don’t care. Get those dishes done.”

“All hands on deck,” Drunk Beard shouted. “To work, me hearties, to work!”

“Are you actually going to work now?” asked Ōkī.

“Of course I ain’t. What self-respecting pirate would do honest work?”

“A self-respecting pirate who cares about saving the village from the horde of Abominations with Pure Malevolence?” Sam suggested, plunging her hands into the soapy water. “Come on, Ash. You’ve got three arms, you should be able to work three-halves as much as the rest of us. And you ninjas should be faster than this!”

It took them half an hour, in the end. Half an hour in which the horde of Abominations covered the last bit of distance and entered the village. But eventually they had done enough to satisfy the barmaid and were free to go.

“All right, me hearties, let’s go kick some Abomination ass and get some shiny loot!” said Drunk Beard.

“Don’t you think – “ Sam began, but the others were already sprinting out of the pub. “Sorry about them,” she said to the barmaid, and followed them.