DUELING FOR HER FATHER'S LIFE
"Eeeeenough!" a new voice calls, piercing the racket.
"Who dares interrupt my speech?" the admiral roars.
"It is I!" Dakiya roars back, bounding up onto the gallows. Under one arm, she carries a wad of half-burned parchment, the remains of the admiral's precious charts.
"Daki, my dove!" shouts the pirate king, catching her up and clasping her to his beard.
Dakiya squeezes him in a crushing hug, saying "Leave this dog-slobbering clown-mutt to me, Papa." Then she rounds on the admiral, "Looky here! These are the last of the maps, and if you don't trade them for my father…" she pulls out a burning chandelier and dangles the maps over the flames, "then I shall forcibly unchart all the waters for a hundred leagues!"
The admiral, wracked by teeth-gritting terror, snarls, "Your phrasing seems bizarrely contrived, but no matter! I refuse! Charts and ships and sailors have no purpose beyond the capture of the pirate king, so your trade is nothing but an absurdity!"
"I hear and obey, cap'n," she salutes, and slowly lights each individual map on fire, staring into the admiral's eyes as he is forced to watch his treasured charts curling and blackening into ash.
"That's fine with me! Just fine with me!" The admiral howls, apoplectic with excruciating rage, "But now your father shall die!" He fills his lungs to continue his deadly speech, but Dakiya reaches into her pocket, grabs out a gilded gauntlet, and flings it in his face.
"I defy you!" she shouts, "I challenge you to a duel!"
The crowd gasps, and even the velociraptors fall silent in amazement, for the imperial admiral is the most renowned duelist in all the land. He gives her a condescending smirk. "Very well, a duel for your father's life. But if I win, I'll take your head!"
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"Peachy!" Dakiya snarls, "Now pick the first seven matches!"
The admiral giggles malevolently, "Not just yet! For the pirate king boasted that his daughter could trounce me with both hands tied behind her back!"
"Well," Dakiya says, glancing uncertainly at her father, who is nodding and smiling proudly, "Well I can! Ha! Uh, easy!" She turns around and allows the admiral to knot her wrists behind her.
The duel commences with the traditional opening competition, and the cataclysmic moves and countermoves of the two send shockwaves of astonishment through the gasping spectators, as the duelists match powers in a thrilling game of checkers.
Mostly they just sit and frown at the board.
After the admiral seizes a thunderous one-sided victory, the combatants compete at juggling, push-ups, chin-ups, finger-painting, piano, and handstands (all chosen by the admiral). Despite her bound arms, Dakiya wins at piano and push-ups, but loses at finger-painting (which is a specialty of the Imperial Navy). Handstands, chin-ups, and juggling are, of course, a draw.
Still panting from her tour de force on the grand piano, Dakiya says, "Now I get to choose the last seven. First!: Balancing on your own hair!"
The admiral, who is gasping for breath beside Dakiya on the piano bench, counters, "After you, mademoiselle."
She summons Ayavail to the stage. Ayavail, with a wink at Dakiya, shrinks her, all except a single hair, which she stretches between her hands. Dakiya parades down the hair like a royal highway while shouting insults at the colossal admiral.
But the admiral is smug and unperturbed. When his turn arrives, he yanks out one of his hairs and hands it to Ayavail to hold, and then balances on it, full-sized and majestic, refusing to wobble even when Ayavail 'accidentally' snaps the hair. (For it is the admiral's special power never to be humiliated while posing on a high place).
Dakiya shouts, "Raccoon catching! Spelling bee! Dance-off!"
Due to the scarcity of raccoons in the central regions of the execution platform, the pair journey eastward on donkeyback, arriving in the far northwestern part of the platform, near the grand piano, where a range of snowy mountains (elevation 14,154 ft) divides the civilized countries around the pirate king from the unknown regions of the corner, which no human eyes have ever seen.
After the duelists have arrived at the Snow King's palace and have intrigued for six months in his royal court, they begin a conspiracy to inveigle the vizier of parks and wildlife into granting them license to capture raccoons (a sacred animal that has been the emblem of the royal house for ten million years).
The saga of their conspiracy might fill ten million tomes, but suffice it to say that after many gruesome murders, narrow escapes, and strategic whispers at masquerade balls, the conspirators succeed.
Then the spectators and velociraptors ooh and aah as the duelists charge up and down snowy slopes, battling avalanches and cave-ins, volcanic eruptions and vicious armies of mechanized raccoons.
But alas, Dear Reader, we cannot join the spectators in their lighthearted glee, for there is a matter of greatest importance which we must discuss…