“Don’t I look so fly in these cool ass goggles and leather jacket?” Flora said, pulling a bit at said jacket.

“Sure, you look positively dashing, prettiest woman I have ever seen for sure.” John said, voice laced with forced sarcasm, as he was not in fact lying. “That said, I have a few minor concerns, nothing big really, just minor observations let's say. First of all this is not a boat. Second of all you seem to have failed to provide me with any kind of goggles which makes my eyes hurt just slightly whenever I attempt to exercise the incredible human ability that is sight. Third of all, will you please stop doing upside down air loops in this 80 year old aircraft that looks like a gentle breeze could push it over!”

“Humbug! This great work of engineering is what carried Britain victorious through the war and to top it of yours truly has modified it to carry you passengers as well as being able to fly much quicker. You know you should be grateful this is the only two seat Spitfire in existence.” Flora said in a matter of fact tone.

“Well maybe I would enjoy it more if goggles had been provided!”

“Oh man up, we're almost there.”

“No! I demand to be treated with the respect and compassion that I as a human deserves.”

“Fine if you're gonna be such a pain about it, just take my goggles.” Flora then proceeded to turn around and attach the, admittedly rather stylish, goggles to his eyes. Then John could suddenly see and because of that wonderful gift he soon realized that Flora now very much could not. as an immediate result of this they seemed to be rapidly losing altitude. The eerie black sea was getting closer fast and this all had John quite worried.

“Flora!”

“Yes?”

“We are falling! Do something!”

“Okay chill dude.” Flora then proceeded to press a button then, nothing happened. The plane kept falling through the sky, not bothered by the authority flora failed to wield over the questionable button. They were mere seconds away from crashing and John was about to once more call out when he was suddenly ejected from his seat.

"Whaaa!" John screamed then he realized that a parachute had unfolded and on a whole the experience was actually quite pleasant.

“Happy?” Flora screamed over the sound of the wind seeming quite content herself.

“So what is the plan now we just glide on to their ship? Am sure they're not going to notice that.”

“No. Silly we land on the island and then infiltrate.”

“What island there is no island here we’re in the middle of the North-sea! and you just blew up our plane. How are we going to get back to land? We'll drown!”

“Stop being silly Doggerland is right there, look” Upon following Flora's finger there was in fact a large piece of land coming out of the fog, that was laying thick upon the sea.

“But-” John started, then visibly surrendered to both himself and to the rest of the world in general.

The rest of the hangliding was boring, peaceful and almost made the previous part of their travels seem pleasant, exciting and pleasant. Soon they landed in the large forest a few hundred meters from the shore touching down. John's parachute got tangled up in a tree and as usual Flora had to come to the rescue, using a swiss army knife to cut him out of the parachute. Feeling slightly emasculated and more than mad they set off towards civilisation.

“Okay this is the infiltration plan.” Flora spoke up.

“Things are quite difficult on this island you see, especially for people of the fairer sex like myself.” Flora said, swaying her hips whilst gesturing wildly for extra effect. “You see the business of piracy is like a lot of fields particularly male dominated, as there is a stigma surrounding women who like to rape and pillage in our society. As such a great deal of detail has to go into our, well, my backstory as there are hardly any women on this island. This is what I have prepared for us. You are my down on luck husband who loses job after job due to his horrible drinking habit and sadistic tendencies which he constantly unleashes on his perfect wife whose only flaw is being too kind, even to those wholy undeserving such as dregs like yourself.”

“Wait, why am I so horrible!?”

“Well one of us has to be, it needs to be believable and I could never pull off horrible with my dashing personality.” She said in a way that made it difficult for John to tell whether the supposed affront was feigned or not.

“Well I also think that I have a lot of nice guy qualities going for me, for example, I unlike someone I know asks questions first and shoots later, or preferably never.”

“Well too late we’re already there!” Flora half screamed running ahead a bit on the dirt road towards the shanty looking settlement that stod befote them. The settlement was quite old-timey not having outgrown its medieval walls and ramparts. The walls however seemed to be largely unmanned, presumably having become redundant with the advent of the artillery. In fact the only human presence close by was at the gates where lights were coming out of a small wooden shack that seems to have been added a long time after the rest of the wall.

As Flora and John advanced towards the gate two quite burly looking men emerged from the shack. Completely unperturbed Flora walked up to the gate in long powerful steps.

“Good evening gentlemen.” Flora greeted and then promptly tried to walk past

the two men like this were business as usual, only to be just as promptly stopped.

“And where do you think you’re going? I haven’t seen you around these parts before.” This particular man was large and sported deep red hair and an uncovered upper body that really tied his whole barbarian persona together.

“Well me and my husband were just seeking shelter for the evening, hoping to find a half decent inn.” Flora said with all the grace of someone from the Victorian period.

“On an island run by pirates? Where there are nearly no women? wearing what looks like air fighter gear? You know I'm not a genius but there is something fishy here and I am not letting you in until I find out what.”

Having been told this Flora turned and gave the we have compromised look, and after a quick blink I was once more reminded why you do not mess with Flora. For most people it might seem strange that a fairly small woman could without issue hold a fit man currently at the peak of his power captive. But Flora was not your typical girl. As on que she demonstrated this not your typical girlines by delivering a swift roundhouse kick to the temple of the man closest to her then in one smooth motion pulled a revolver out of it’s hidden sheath and placed two well aimed shots at the other man one straight to the heart the other between his eyes. That was the thing about people who picked a fight with Flora. They never fight again.

As John bent over he noticed that the man who had fallen to the round house kick had a visible knife wound at his temple that seemed to have taken him out of commission.

“Well that was embarrassing though I think we at least have a solution to the disguise problem.” Flora said, pointing at an android wearing a Victorian style dress on the inside of the, now deceased, watchman's hut.

“Okay.” Was all the response John could muster.

***

After having entered the city and walked for a bit Flora turned to John and said.

“Something is wrong, it’s too quiet and too few people about, I mean we've barely seen anyone since the gate guards!

“Well we are still at the outskirts of the city, maybe something is happening further inside at the city center.” John speculated, and as if to confirm his theory the very sky itself lit up with fireworks, they were quite grand really there were all kinds of shapes from cars, to suggestive photos of ladies, to surprisingly heartfelt messages centered around the number nine.

“Looks like they are celebrating some kind of anniversary.” John said savoring the feeling of being right for ones.

“Yeah, but I can’t think of anything important happening nine years ago. As far as I know that was just a regular old year for the pirates.” Flora mumbled clearly unhappy being out of the loop in regards to whatever secret the pirates were keeping. “Well at least we’re about to learn something new.” She stated with a special kind of thirst in her voice that made John take a breath in order to calm down.

“I have a question.”

“Yes.”

“Why are we even here on this island of pirates? From what I was able to gather from the internet most cars taken by pirates are quickly shipped to the Americas or Africa where they can be pawned off for cash. Wouldn't my car realistically be half-way across the ocean by now?” John asked with a small frown.

“Well usually yes that would be the case but, there is a reason as to why your car specifically is here on this island, did you even consider why your car was taken?”

“Wasn’t it because it has potential to be the most powerful weapon this world has ever seen?”

“Noo, there is no way some old pirate captain would know how to find such artifacts, much less know how to use them. You know I have it on good authority that this baby here is the most advanced technology in the field and it can tell me whether something is not of this dimension when I am standing half a meter from it. Flora said in a cocky attitude, as if this sensory capability was a marvelous feat of engineering on par with that of the Apollo Program.

“Okay, why did he knick my car then?”

"Because Kidd likes cars, ironically. One of his officers probably saw it and realized that it was one of a kind, and you know how some collectors get when they see something they want.”

“Wait! Did someone actually want my car? Because they liked it?” John blurted out and could not help feeling a little flattered. As he remembered all those times he changed the vehicle's oil and that one time he had even changed its spark plug thingies, he truly had been a good car owner.

“That is good tho right, if he doesn't know the cars worth it might not be too heavily protected.

“Well, let's hope so.” Was all the response Flora mustered with an excited look in her eyes that clashed with her bored tone.

After having walked a further distance they arrived at a more crowded area that seemed to contain a large amount of smaller shops, this in correlation with the fact that everyone was dressed like, well, pirates gave John the feeling of a standard convention. He imagined a strange version of ComicCon where through some incredible coincidence everyone had chosen to cosplay as the same character.

As they were walking through a few eyes were raised but apparently it was deemed normal enough as there, so far, had been no attempts to detain them. Nervously John looked towards Flora hoping to pick up some of the confidence that she seemed to naturally exude. This was an action that John quickly regretted as it served only to worry him further. What he had in that time seen was Flora casually taking a glazed apple from a stall making no attempt to in any way pay for the product in question. Not wishing for her to be caught, John held his tongue for a time, until he could no more.

“You just stole that!” He said, sounding angry and confused at the same time.

“Yeah I know I should have taken something for you too but these vendors are tough it’s almost like they're expecting people not to pay.” Flora justified sounding quite sincere in her regret of not being able to steal something for him. “You know what, why don’t we share this one? It still has some good bits of glazing left on it.”

“That's not the point! I don’t care about the glazed apple! It’s just, what if you’d

been caught? Our whole operation could have been ruined, for an apple! And that's not even taking into account the questionable morality of the action.”

“Dude, you need to loosen up. Everyone knows it’s okay to steal from pirates, have you never seen The Goonies, or any other of the thousands of works where people try to steal a pirates treasure” John really wanted to argue that, hunting for pirate treasure is completely different, a respectable adventure that followed all old, and contemporary rules of british fair play. But after some consideration he realized that it was at best a rather unorthodox form of grave robbery. Fortunately for John his thought process only got this far, preventing an oncoming world shattering realization, as Flora continued her argument after a skillfully included moment of silence. “Besides, did you see that guy, murder rapist for sure, with that scar menacing build and angry tattoo. Can you imagine him getting up in the morning and making candy apples, cause I can not. He probably stole them from some hard working stoic straight man pirate character who is now lying beaten and battered in a ditch whilst the dick that did it to him is reaping the benefit of his efforts.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Whilst John’s really quite impressive imagination could and did produce the image that Floras mind could supposedly not, he did agree that it seemed fairly unlikely.

“Just eat a bit of the apple. I promise that it will make you feel better.”John already being fairly shook up, at his wits end and fresh out the ever precious resource that is hindsite, made the decision of taking a bite out of the candy apple, and just like Flora had claimed it made him feel better, suspiciously better, I should not feel this good better, something is definitely wrong better.

“you’re right, I feel really good now.”

“Told you.” She said and then snatched the apple back after having allowed him a few more bites.

This is the time of the evening when things started to get quite hazy for John and if he’d been asked later, which much to his dismay he never was, he would have described the next hour in the following way.

Pretty women, happy feelings, I'm magic, cars go hahahehehoha?

But as the vast majority of people lack the experience with psychedelics and or being roofied I shall with the help of ALIS narrate the course of events that took place on that fateful evening.

Completely oblivious to John's current state of mind Flora set off towards the center of the attraction and a stunned and lost John followed her like how a sheep would follow its herder. Whilst this worked fine for a while a small problem slowly crept up that being, oh, you want this one okay.

<-Puas->

“You see in the dimension that John was currently residing, the appearance of everyone comes down to this strange thing called genetics. Now, what is that? You might ask. The truth is no one really knows more than that they are these small double helix shaped threads that if taken out of a human body can stretch all the way to the sun, or maybe moon, one of the great mysteries in life.” Psst blue hair.

“Oh, right, in this particular universe approximately 90% of people carry the particular geometric structure in their blood which makes their hair appear blue. As both participants in any given baby making session need to carry the gene for this trait to take effect. This means that approximately 80% of the population is sprouting blue hair, granted that it’s considerably less than that in the region of western Europa that John is right now.” Now that everyone's caught up back to the story.

<-Resumed->

Now with John's limited capacity for lateral thinking, especially at the current point of time, he was utterly stumped when the world in front of him seemed to mirror and show him two versions of the truth. Presented with the option of following blue haired girl dressed in a victorian hooker outfit to the right and blue haired girl in a victorian hooker costume to the left. His mind at the time made the choice of following a blue haired girl in a Victorian hooker costume to the right on the simple logic that right was a more refined and proper direction, as opposed to its floozy of a sister that was left. This however whilst not being the correct blue haired girl in a Victorian hooker costume turned out to be a decision that saved John a great deal of trouble (blue haired girl in a Victorian hooker costume to the left most notably)

As John continued onwards he noticed in sheer fascination the shape that his hands were currently taking.

“Wooh, my hands, they're huge!” He said followed by a mellow laugh whilst twisting his hands wildly. Now normally this kind of typical stoner behavior was, at the island of pirates, meet with 10 men lining up for the privilege of playing a few pranks on you and then making off with your wallet. For John this did however not occur, this was because the gesture had in this particular context not been interpreted as stoner behavior. You see at this very moment John was standing outside a building, well building is a bit of an understatement it was more like a palace, a very unique palace that seemed to be thoroughly lost in regards to its identity spouting unique architectural features from most of the world's different high cultures. It’s safe to say that this was a very important building and the tricky thing for people that want to get into important buildings is that they tend to have guards, guards who tend to be quite hard to fool. Fortunately for John he had managed through sheer coincidence (or some hitherto undiscovered prophetic property of STS) make the exact hand motions that served as the entry password for one especially eccentric guest and was thus not stopped at the gates by an angry guard. Thus blissfully unaware of the hurdles that he had just overcome, John continued to follow who he thought was Flora.

The palace that John was currently walking through was quite grand in every conceivable way and served as a good example for when people had an unproportional amount of good taste and wealth. John however thought it really quite impressive, something that he kept remarking, loudly.

“I think that is a Picasso! Look at that pile of gold! Flora look there is a two headed dog there!(Unknown to John the latter was actually fairly common with more than 10% of canines spouting this particular trait.) Flora, Flora, Flora.

After John had called out to Flora for the tenth time most of the women walking in front of him were starting to get quite worried, all having had rather unpleasant experiences with men who had either been under influence or simply not making sense. Fortunately a man they all knew to be most reasonable soon arrived, one mister Viveck, Kidd’s current right hand man and individual who had the solemn duty of being the man who actually had to get things done. After all, even pirates needed roads, power, flowing water and stores that actually had breed to sell.

“Now then my good ladies you are set to appear on stage 15 minutes from now and will serve as the opener for mister Maurice over there, your cue is when the pillars of fire rize up from the floor. As for you Maurice I am going to introduce you in a light-hearted guessing game, so the time in which you go on the stage depends on when the audience answers, but it’s an easy question so they should get it after one or two guesses. Does everyone understand?”There was a chorus of nods. “Good, just go to the side of the stage and prepare and let's give them one hell of a show tonight.

***

Flora was feeling quite pleased with herself on several accounts, most notably the shoplifting spree she had managed to pull off, but also in her new found therapeutic abilities. I mean who would have thought that it was so easy to get men to shut up, the apple truly the mark of a genius. “The thing you have to realize about men is that their problem always boils down to being hungry.” Flora thought to herself. Aside from that particular feat she was even more proud of the accomplishments of her inner kleptomaniac. Something that was reflecting quite noticeably on her character as she was at this point wearing no less than three eye patches (she was particularly pleased with these), two sheeted sabers (one real one toy) and also carrying a giant teddy bear,that for some reason existed as a price even in festivals for pirates. She was wearing the eye patches on her forehead as if they were hiding a third eye. The entire costume together landed somewhere between pirate queen and what a small child thought would aptly portray a pirate queen.

Moving steadily forward towards the center of the commotion, she noticed that the further she went the more formal the event seemed to become. Pirates starting to appear dressed in improvised suits, some even wearing monocles that they had presumably stolen on some occasion or the other, she was also garnering less and less attention as the ratio of men to women was increasing. Eventually she arrived at a large scene around which several large objects wrapped in gift paper were standing around, most of which had suspiciously car-like proportions.

“Now, how did you say your car looked?” Flora asked, expecting a response from John. “Hey ho-” She started then cut herself off after having turned around and noticed a distinct lack of John in her field of vision. “Well that's unfortunate, oh well, I'm sure he’ll turn up.” As Flora finally realized that she was no longer being accompanied by her captive, more and more attention was starting to gather in the direction of the scene. Like most things in the center of the town, the scene was very much grand, almost capital G grand, although not quite. There were gold embroideries, beautiful murals and seemed, completely out of place for an island of pirates to the extent that those who did not know better might assume that the entire building had at some point been located in the more well of districts in a European capital.

Pillars of fire spewed out from the ground of the stage and a plethora of women walked on stage from all directions. They were dressed in Victorian clothing that sure left a lot to the imagination (at least that's what Flora thought). After they had walked in on the stage the show truly began, there were flashes of light, music, the women stripped down to more revealing outfits and even did the row high kick thing that everyone always enjoys. After they were doone a small man with a bald head, a gray well trimmed mustache as well as a patterned suit went up on the stage and started to speak.

“Well give it up for The Queens of The Sea for such a gracious and stunning performance! Now I know that you all know why we are gathered here today and I know you all know that the bastard (said playfully) has a particular like for a certain something. Let me hear it, what does he like!?

“Cars!”

“Well, yes he likes cars and you can see that we have plenty of those if you look around, but what else does he like?”

“Women!”

“Well that is also in fact the case, but not quite what i'm looking for there is something else that the captain is quite fond of.” He asked calmly, a tiny bit of irritation leaking into his voice. It was at this point that some in the audience were starting to get a bit nervous, their best guesses not actually having landed on the mark. This however did nothing to dissuade the less keen in the audience and there were plenty of people in this group.

“Beer!”

“Yes, but which of his likes could likely in some way be fulfilled on a stage in front of a fair amount of people?” After a several second long pause this question too was answered with.

“Cars!”

“Fuck it. I give up, there is a magician here that is going to perform some illusions, watch it or not I don’t particularly care, hope you enjoy it Kidd. With that said, give a warm welcome to the amazing Maurice. Flora, who had at this point become quite invested in the show on stage, made her way to an empty seat, sat down and started to chew some popcorn that had appeared from god knows where. Though she quickly got restless as no one seemed to bother showing up on stage, then after some less than friendly gestures from the host a bewildered man showed up on stage confusion practically oozing off from him. This did however turn out to be one of this particular man’s stample traits thus allowing for easy identification, the man was in fact John.

“I am-” John started and after a considerable pause, presumably during which his next words were carefully chosen, then he finished with “magic”.

“Well then mister magic why don’t you show us an illusion.”

“I, I think there is something coming.”John stammered out and Much to Flora's surprise there actually was something coming, it was a greenish sort of beam thing that flew up in the sky and then caused an implosion whose shockwave was felt by all those on the ground, much to most of them’s delight and amusement.

“Oh shit. That’s cool.” Thought Flora.

“Wow cool, give it up for Mr Magic, I wonder if he has got something else in store for us.” Whilst really thinking. “Was he not supposed to transform a potato into an avocado or something and how did he get explosives into here?”

“Now watch as I fly.” Said John and to everyone's surprise he actually did. Well not particularly well but he did undoubtedly fly that much was undeniable. While doing so he quickly lost control floating off the stage and whether by chance or fate he shot off in the direction of the vehicle which was his own. As he approached the car he surprisingly managed to pull off a not so gracious landing that happened to rip off the car's paper. There were loud gasps of “ooh” and “Ahh” and then one really mad “What, do you think you are doing?” The voice was deep, and made you want to bend your knees and submit to their authority, it was like being told off by everyone that has ever held power over you all at once. This was the build up to a large surprise as the moment Flora turned towards the person in question she saw “a kid?” It was indeed a child who seemed to be around 9 years of age, he had deep red hair, verging on what could naturally occur, he was dressed in shorts and an open shirt, he also carried a gun and had a saber sheeted at his side. All in all he looked just like you would expect a pirate captain to look albeit 20 to 40 years too young.

"Answer me!” The figure shouted out. “And what is that car? I have never seen anything like it.” Escaped him.

“It’s a Skoda Octavia, and I am magicing." John Answered innocently now sitting on the vehicle's roof.

This was when Flora decided that it was time to strike. She figured that this would be the best time to make a getaway, with the car, John and herself occupying approximately the same spatial coordinates. Thus she opted to start shooting randomly shouting “”Enemy attack!” Whilst legging it towards the car. As she was quite the proficient marksman she felled a plethora of pirates during her 60 meter sprint, none of them the wiser in regards to who had ended their existence. Flora's considerable weapon proficiency and natural aptitude for entropy was however not enough to throw off the child who had spoken earlier that was also currently running towards the car whilst taking shots at her with an old looking revolver.

“John! Start the car!” Flora said, throwing the keys towards the car.

“Okay, sure.” John said, catching the keys and opening a hatch on the cars roof that had not existed a minute before. As Kidd saw this his eyes widened.

“You are not a normal magician are you?” He said although no one heard him with all the shooting and fighting going on, all of it friendly fire. There was an intense race between the parties, Kidd arrived first, Flora followed soon. As soon as they reached each other an incredible melee started, fists were flying, kicks were launched, guns went shooting, it looked really quite impressive, John thought watching from the passenger seat having called shotgun a moment before. As the fight continued it entered into pattern, they would start of on approximately equal footing then Kidd, through a variety of fancy looking maneuvers, would gain an edge, after which he would close in for the finisher only for Flora to pull some kind of contraption from her ass (well ass region) that distracts Kidd to the point of fumble and then the show starts all over again.

This was all well and good as he thought it was quite entertaining, especially the bit with the rubber mallet, but Flora however was starting to sweat a little owing largely to the fact that she only carried so many contraptions, but Kidd’s skill with a cutlass went on forever. Flora being a, at least according to herself, logical person decided that if you can’t win by fighting it’s better to win through escape.(It might be important to note that Flora had in fact never lost in her entire life, at least that's what she thinks.) And that she did through the subtle art of misdirection and help of a wrench that just happened to have the ability to fire off a small exploding projectile she managed to get into the driver seat of the car.

“That was really cool.” John said, alas he received no response as Flora was busy starting the car. Which she did and then she drove. Through a swarm of people. All of which it would later turn out had survived due to one lucky circumstance or another. Soon after there was a resounding thud on the roof followed by a loud shout demanding to be let into the vehicle. John being in the state that he was happily complied with this, and suddenly the car realized it’s full potential and became a cabriolet, much to Flora's anyance.

“Don’t listen to him! He’s the enemy!” She screamed now also fighting what might be the most livid nine year old ever to have lived. At some point this fight evolved into something that could not be done whilst also operating an automobile and as such that duty was neglected, that did however not stop said automobile from moving onwards and by the reckoning of four, now destroyed, brick walls nothing could.

“I don’t know who you are. But you don’t appear to be stupid and we both know in what direction this battle is heading. If you surrender now you and your magican friend might yet be allowed to keep your heads, in my service of course.”

“Are you stupid? You think I would ever surrender when there’s still a fighting chance? That’s some real loser mentality you’ve got there.

“Oh I like you.” Was all Kidd said before charging once more. This act however proved more than unsuccessful as during it John finally realized that cars don’t actually move forward when there is no one sitting at the steering wheel, this realization caused the car to stop accelerating making Flora stumble and fall, well it was more like gravity and friction suddenly started to work launching her towards the back seat saber first. Unfortunately for Kidd he had found himself in the exact same position but in reverse and 0.0003 seconds before Flora, thus the point of contact with Flora's saber was not the back of the vehicle but rather the left side of Kidd’s head. Time stood still for a moment, at least for John, unown to John it also did for the rest of the world, Then the airbags activated, which due too John’s preconceived idea of that an airbag was a white lookin force that held everything in place, just stopped the vehicle after a white glow.

“Is he dead?” John asked Sounding a bit sad.

“As dicks.” Flora responded cheerfully as ever.

“Well what do we do now?”

“Eh.” Flora shrugged “Let’s just throw him into the trunk and call it a day.” This to a John who was beginning to feel ever more nauseous and less happy by minute sounded like a brilliant plan.

“Sounds good.”