Joy had been having a great time on this little voyage. There were just so many people who couldn’t avoid him here. Back at the castle most people would run away as soon as they saw him, but here, there was nowhere else to run to.

His favorite person on this trip so far had been the Courier. The man had been paid an exorbitant sum of gold to simply stay on the ship and run his business there. The Courier had been truly blessed by whatever god gave him his gift. It allowed him to send letters anywhere in the world if the letter was properly addressed.

The Courier was a rat of a man. His nose was far too long, his eyes were beady, his back was curved at an unfortunate angle, and his facial hair was so wispy is almost looked like a pair of whiskers. He carried himself with no elegance or poise, he shuffled or skittered around the ship. His voice was nasal, and he was constantly sniffing, as if he was trying to unclog his nose.

The Courier had set up a little booth in a secluded corner of the ship where he would accept letters from any of the crew or passengers and would send them to whomever they wanted, for a fee of course. The service was incredibly expensive, but truly invaluable to the rich members of the crew that needed to stay properly informed constantly.

The prince was always willing to spend a gold coin to make sure that Rose would keep him properly informed. And everybody else was willing to part from some gold to let their loved ones know that they were safe in the high seas.

The reason the Courier had become Joy’s favorite person on the entire ship was because he was the only person left on the entire ship who was willing to gamble with Joy at all. Since he was the only one left with any money, or hope.

Joy had been forced to pay off Lillian, to keep her from telling the crew about his skill in gambling, and he had made an absolute killing off everybody that first night. But someone, maybe with some strikingly blue eyes, had told everyone that he could find about Joy’s skill, and that they were basically giving him their money. That had put a real damper on Joy’s mood.

But then he found the Courier. He had so much gold that his every motion brought about tinkles as his gold jingled in his pockets. Joy sniffed him out like a bloodhound, following the scent of an easy mark.

Joy started his tenuous relationship with the Courier out with a game of poker. The stakes were low, and the two men only bet up to silver. Joy made sure to let the Courier win as much as his pride would allow. Joy could not rush this or bleed him dry on the very first night, since this man was going to be his only source of true entertainment for the rest of this journey.

The first two weeks of the journey had finished, and Joy had slowly been raising the ante against the Courier. Even through their two weeks of “friendship” Joy had still never learned the man’s name, but it was no matter. Since tonight, he was going to show the fruit of his labor.

The night started as many other nights had. Joy asked the Courier to play a game of cards. The rat-like man twiddled with his wispy facial hair while he pretended to think, then eventually was “convinced” to join in a game of blackjack.

Joy used his gift to bring out a deck of cards and started shuffling them. He would play as the house for the night, while the Courier would be paying for Joy’s future house.

Over the past two weeks, Joy had goaded the man into playing with gold instead of silver but had never taken more than a few gold pieces off the man. Instead, tonight the gold flowed out of the Courier’s pockets right into Joy’s. It was like magic, no matter what cards the Courier had, Joy always had one higher. It was so improbable that it almost looked like cheating.

After nearly three hundred gold had gone from the Courier’s pockets to Joy’s, he stopped. Joy felt that after taking enough gold to buy a small river village in the northern part of the Hearted Continent, that the man might wise up and just accept his losses. There was a small mountain of his own gold staring down at the poor man as well.

Joy pulled the cards back into his soul space, expecting his fun to be over, when the Courier suddenly burst into tears. Not the regal tears, streaming quietly down the face of a defeated man, these were full on wracking sobs. The snot pooled down his face, leaking into his mouth, his little wispy mustache was suddenly soaked with the salty water. And he dramatically collapsed to the floor, his pain was simply too unbearable to stand.

Slowly but surely, every person turned to face the racket, then once they saw the situation, their glares turned towards Joy. Joy learned a very important lesson that day, do not bully the man who allows everyone to talk to their families.

Joy could admit he had underestimated just how popular the Courier was with every single person on the ship. Joy had sent a quick letter to his parents and received one back, but he didn’t feel that those pesky familial bonds required them to throw him overboard.

Twenty people had volunteered to toss Joy off the ship, and he was feeling fairly unappreciative of this whole process. At least Theo was here, so Joy wasn’t going to simply drown and die in the middle of the ocean. Theo would save him, right?

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The mob hoisted Joy over their shoulders and tossed him over the side. It was not the first time Joy had incited an angry mob to come and attack him, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t just as painful every time.

Joy closed his eyes and prepared for the bitter cold and the salty salt that was going to invade his mouth and eyes.

Instead of hitting the water with a splash, Joy impacted something with a squish. It was an unpleasant experience, but he supposed it beat being soaked.

Joy felt around himself, his eyes still closed. It felt squishy like flesh, but with a little extra elasticity. As his groping hands kept moving, he eventually found someone’s leg. Joy had felt many a leg in his time and he knew just by the feel of it that the person was incredibly sick. The leg felt emaciated and barely had any muscles left, it was mostly skin and bone.

This was finally enough to make Joy open his eyes. And he saw that he was surrounded by the least intimidating pirates he had ever seen, not that he had seen many pirates in his life. They were all rags and open wounds, not one was unmarred. They were actively bleeding as they tried to move, brandishing knives at Joy.

Of the group of pirates Joy saw maybe two who were a real threat to him. The other six all seemed too out of it to care, or too injured to help kill Joy.

The biggest and meanest looking one, which wasn’t saying much, spoke up. His raspy tone was a clear indicator of how little water he had consumed recently.

“Now look here pretty boy. You are going to give us the run down on how to steal this ship or we’ll gut you like a fish.”

Joy obviously focused on the most important part of that sentence and replied, “oh you think I’m pretty?” With enough eyebrow waggling and eye fluttering that it looked like he was having a minor seizure.

That was when Robert, the big mean one, tried to stab Joy. It was a fair move, even Joy could respect it, but that didn’t mean he was just going to sit there and take it.

Joy took one step to the side and let Robert slide into the water. Murdering people is quite hard if the murderer was not getting enough nutrients in their diet.

Joy sighed and spread his arms, even if it wasn’t a particularly fair fight, it would be bad manners not to give it his all.

“Do you all want to play a game?” Then Joy clapped his hands together striking a ridiculous pose.

All the pirates and Joy heard a distinguished voice in their heads say, “judo. Do any of you need the rules explained to you?”

Joy smiled, he hadn’t gotten his exercise in for the day, and this would be fun. He cracked his neck and took a stance, preparing himself for the game.

The pirates didn’t realize something was wrong until the third person had been thrown. Joy had been moving with intense speed, grabbing wrists, and making surprisingly expert throws. The pirates were not worried by this since anyone who is thrown can get back up again. At least he wasn’t taking their knives and stabbing them, they couldn’t take any more losses. Too many of their crewmates and friends had died on this journey.

But after the third person had been thrown, and subsequently didn’t get up afterwards like expected, they knew something was wrong. They tried to resist but Joy was a titan of unimaginable power compared to them. Their weak bodies were unable to keep up with him.

So, they fell one by one until there was only one man left. Robert had been swimming back, trying to save his crew from this man, but he had been too slow. Far too slow to save anyone. So now he floated in the water staring up at the man who had impossibly fallen on them. Johnny’s gift was supposed to hide them, so it was a pure coincidence that this man was here to destroy them. Luck had beaten them.

But Robert was beyond caring at this point. He needed that man to pay. So, with reckless abandon he told Eight to grab his seven crewmates and then go wild attacking the attacker.

The giant octopus gingerly held the seven injured men, who were still, for some inexplicable reason, unable to move. And attacked Joy. Two things limited the octopus from attacking with its full power: four of its tentacles were occupied holding the injured pirates, and Joy was standing on its body. Not even a giant octopus likes to hit itself.

But the four tentacles roiled up the water, rocking the nearby ship a little bit. The appendages flicked and whipped through the air. Snapping back and forth as unpredictable as the wind, hoping to strike down the flea that was upon its flesh.

Joy flowed like water, unable to be touched by the flailing tentacles, but not able to do much else than dodge. It was a little unreasonable to have him try to throw this monster.

Joy had nearly resigned himself to dying at the hands, well suckers, of this octopus when the ice started forming. All around the octopus, ice was crawling into being, it was slow, but there was no stopping it.

Once the octopus had been immobilized by the cold, and Joy was chattering his teeth loud enough for everyone to hear, Theo jumped down off the deck of the ship to help Joy out.

With the two of them they were able to find all the pirates and confine them, to keep them from causing any problems.

“How do we get back up now?” Joy asked innocently.

“We wait.”

“You were so worried about me you just forgot to bring any rope, weren’t you?”

Dead silence, if there had been crickets out in the ocean, their chirping would’ve been clear as day. Until, of course, Joy burst out in a guffaw at Theo’s expense. Theo glowered menacingly, but there was no stopping Joy’s joy.

___

Robert awoke with a start. He felt as if he had just had a horrible nightmare, something about attacking ships out at sea, and his entire crew dying. He took a few deep breaths hoping to calm himself down. He could feel the gentle rocking of a ship, he was safe.

Now that he was looking around more closely, this didn’t look like his ship at all.

“Oh good, Robert, you’re awake.” A person with a dark complexion, and piercing brown eyes came into his view.

“We are a little busy right now, so I am going to cut to the chase. We could really use a person with your skills to help us, so we are willing to look past your pathetic attempt at taking our ship, and your failures at taking the other two ships. For your work we are willing to keep you and your remaining crew healthy as a horse, you will be fed better than you ever have before, and you will never have to go thirsty ever again. As a show of good will, we have already healed your crew and your octopus back to a prime condition.”

Then this mysterious person seemed to take their first break for air in their entire monologue.

“What say you, Robert?”