Gascogne stepped lightly over a piece of twisted metal and gave a slightly wry twist to her lips. "You really know how to make a big mess, don't you."
"Oh, stop being such a pain in the ass," Barnette complained, scowling a bit as she glared at the older woman. "We did get the ship after all."
"If only by the smallest bit of luck. You do realize that if you had shot this tin can any more, you'd have sunk her and sent anything we could have taken to the bottom of the sea."
"It's not like I meant that."
"You know Barnette. She never means for this sort of thing to happen," Parfet put in, kneeling next to an access hatch.
"Thank you very much."
The pirate engineer grinned over her shoulder at the other women. "She just has a habit of blowing up in anger every time something irritates her."
"HEY!"
"Well, you know it's true," murmured a sultry voice from near the railings.
"Not you too, Jura...."
"What? You do realize that you blew up when the ship's second officer mocked you."
Barnette gave a rather indelicate snort. "He wouldn't understand that women pirates were perfectly able to handle a pathetic loser like him!"
"And here I thought that he was simply commenting about your age and how you kept on yelling at him from the start."
"What was that?"
"Nothing...."
As she finished getting onto the captured ship from the pirate launch, Magno gave a small smile at the antics of her crew. This bunch was young yet, and still prone to outbursts of emotion that experience hadn't tempered, but they were good kids. It wasn't the sort of life that bred gentleness and 'good behavior', but then she'd never claimed to be running a nunnery. Her 'surrogate family' was made up of girls and women who'd lost their own homes, and had no other place to go to. They'd come together to become something more than just the sort of rabble that other crews had, and she knew that she could trust, and have faith in, her girls.
That made the knowledge that she could lose any of them at any time all the more bitter. Already the shelf in the cabinet that she'd reserved for the pictures of those lost forever was too full by any way that she could determine. Not that she brushed off the loss of any of the crew, but she did understand that in their line of work, there would be losses. However, even worse than losing a girl to the 'final voyage' was having one vanish on her. It meant that they would have no knowledge of what had happened to her, so they couldn't truly mourn, and couldn't have unadulterated hope.
'No', she decided with a shake of her head, 'that is too dreary a thought for today'.
Instead, the elderly pirate leader stepped up to the pale woman at the bow of the ship.
"Captain, I didn't expect to see you here," Meia told her, a slight widening of her eyes being her only show of surprise.
"I thought that I might come and see what we've got for ourselves. Since we didn't seem to have any problems...."
"We were lucky this time."
"Too true. Still, is she salvageable?"
"We'll have to have Parfet look it all over, but I'd say that the best that we can hope for is the cargo. After Barnette's shots, we'll probably only be able to patch it enough to get it to port," the attack leader reported.
"What? Do you want me to apologize or something?" the short haired young woman in question muttered.
"Hardly. I am not looking to get myself a scapegoat."
"Well...."
"You should try to rein in your temper, though."
"Damn it," Barnette sighed, crossing her arms just under her bust. "I know that I should, but those guys just get under my skin. Just why men won't take me as I want to be, I'll never know."
"I can think of several reasons," Jura commented under her breath, eyeing how the green haired girl's current stance was lifting and pressing her breasts together in a rather appealing way, showing off just how physically appealing she was, including to any straight guy.
"Still, what do we get from this?"
"Other than the riches in the hold?"
"Maybe a few pictures from dry land," Parfet suggested, pulling a photo from the hand of a prone member of the ship's 'rightful' crew.
"Oh, yay. Images of a place a thousand miles from here, and an event that's already happened."
"You have no imagination, you know that? Come on, let's see if someone else'll enjoy a view of some place that's not on the water. What about you, Meia?"
The normally reserved combat leader acted as if she was going to simply give the offer a negligent refusal... until her mouth opened and she grabbed the picture.
"What? What is it?"
"This photo."
"Yeah? What about it? It's of some sort of market...."
"Dita."
"EH?!" went most of the other crew, save for Magno, who stiffened where she stood.
Meia pointed one pale finger towards a certain redhead in the shot of the crowd. "There. It's her. Dita's in this picture...."
"Let me see that," Jura insisted, and stared at the indicated place... where there most certainly was a particular girl striding through the mass of people. "It's her. It's really her."
"You mean that she's not dead? Really?" Barnette asked, her voice actually showing some hope.
"No one else holds herself quite like that. That's most certainly our Dita."
"But what is she doing there?"
"Who knows? But once those 'authorities' got her, she could have wound up anywhere," the blonde reminded the green haired girl.
"Which means that we have to...."
"Track her down," Magno interjected, and fixed each of the younger pirates with a single look. "But remember that we can't just run around without any sort of idea of where to look. Like you noticed earlier, that picture could have been taken months ago."
"But it's our first clue, which leads us to somewhere that...."
"I know of," Gascogne put in.
"Huh?"
"I'm the ship's supply officer, remember? Going shopping and selling stuff are things that I have to do all the time. And I've been around this market before."
"Which means that...."
"We get back there, and we'll have a starting point."
That was something that Magno could feel good about, as she knew that this was one missing dove that she could bring home again. She could only hope that fate had been kind to the sweet, if clumsy child, as anyone who had mistreated the girl would likely have a horde of angry female pirates on his doorstep. And she didn't know what would happen to any companions that Dita had right then.
All that she did know was that they were going to aim to get their crewmate back, while:
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(Posted Sun, 29 Apr 2007 04:56)
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