Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Tensions were rising as a coalition of sailors and guards justly raised their weapons against suspicious phantom pirates. Had those scalawags not spawned out of thin air, it might have been an easy clean up for the local security. But if they could appear like that, what other crazy abilities were they hiding in those various tricorn hats?

Uncle and Indena weren’t afraid to join the fray, both stepping up next to the guards to offer aid in their time of need!

“Hey, civilians, clear out of here!” the sailor captain shouted.

“Civilian Code 783 states that anyone licensed to use magic is allowed to assist in arresting a criminal,” Uncle said.

The sailor captain shot them both a scrutinizing look. “Are you guy’s licensed?”

They both pulled out their own crystal cards. Uncle’s was green, Indena’s was blue. Somehow, those coloured ID’s gave them the authority to fight.

“Hah! Bring all the civis’ ya’ like!” The pirate captain announced. “No one can stand against the mighty ol’ Ghostbeard! Yarg! Blow them down, men!”

Dastardly pirates! Uncle and Indena would show them who they were dealing with!

The pirate fired his gun at the sailor captain, but Uncle deflected the bullet away with his chrome metal bracer!

Then Uncle ran in and thrust his fist toward Ghostbeard, but one of his subordinates sent down a sword to block Uncle’s punch from connecting.

Uncle's hard light sword spawned in his clutches. He swung it down at the pirate’s metal sword and cut clean through. The light blade traveled right down the side of the pirate's torso and burned a line across his chest.

Blue sparks flew out, and it looked like the guy started to vanish.

“Yaaahrg!” The pirate screamed as he fell into the water.

SPLASH!

“Huh?” Ghostbeard had a sudden spell confusion, but reloading his antique weapon brought him back in the moment.

He aimed his pistol at Uncle, but Indena jumped in and attempted to kick the pistol out of his hand.

Her kick phased right through the pirates weapon like it wasn’t even there.

“Hah!” Ghostbeard laughed, aiming his pistol at her now. “Die, lassy!”

BANG!

The pistol fired, but she was fast enough to dodge it with a spin.

Now the pirate whipped out a second pistol and tossed away the first. It hit the ground and vaporized.

BANG!

Pirate guns only get one bullet at a time, just like in the movies! So he must have had backups to fire off more at once. How clever!

Indena went to attack him again, but he was pretty good at dodging her strikes. It really seemed like plenty of those hits should have connected, but they didn’t seem to be doing any damage at all.

BANG!

He fired off another gun! It flew right past Indena’s ear. He had a new gun ready in seconds

“Are you for real?!” Indena shouted, her ears recovering from the loud bang. “I hit you dead center ten times.”

"Yer' eyes deceive ye', because I do look pretty real here."

“Whatever!” Indena’s body lit up bright with magical fire, especially her fists. Then she went in for another attack.

This time I saw the pirate put a lot more work into dodging her. He fired off another shot, missing, then tossed his pistol and pulled out the next one. Indena was less concerned about taking a hit, but still needed to back off.

"I hate guns!" she growled. “Fight me like a man!”

Meanwhile, Uncle was dealing with all the other pirates on the docks, supported by the guards and sailor men’s gunfire.

He was having a better time attacking them then Indena, but they were keeping a distance and pulling out their own guns to shoot him.

Uncle's speed more than matched their bullets. Quick steps let him evade and counter each shot with a swift strike of his energy blade.

Even though he wasn't going for fatal cuts, they seemed to be vanishing after getting hurt.

The pirates were slowly getting pushed back. A few of them grabbed some boxes on the docks full of metal scrap and raced for small boats to flee.

“Let’s get back to the ship!” Ghostbeard announced as he retreated. “We’ll be back again!”

All the pirates were following their leader's example. Indena wanted to pursue them, but Uncle told her that it wasn’t the right time, especially since her hearing was impaired from the gunshot.

Thankfully, it didn’t look like anyone was hurt badly, but a couple of guards were wounded. I was going to use healing magic, but Yamin stopped me.

“Hey, don’t use that in public,” she whispered. “It’s illegal.”

Illegal?

Healing magic aged you the more you used it, like you were putting your own life force into someone. I was immune to the aging effect, but it was best not to draw too much attention to myself.

Instead of me healing people, someone came by and used some first aid gear and healing potions to fix up the guards. They even used this tuning fork thing to help Indena’s hearing from being so close to gunshots.

We might not have stopped the pirates, but we did stop them from killing anyone. Fortunately, they also left some cargo behind too.

I ran down, analyzing the materials they’d collected…

-…Analyzing materials; complete…-

Huh, that’s odd…it was all lead scraps.

Why would they need lead? Oh, maybe for cannons and bullets? Seems like a really weird thing to steal, if you ask me.

"Somethings up with those peg-legged freaks," Indena grumbled. "I kept missing everything I threw at them."

"No, that's not true," Yamin argued. "You were hitting them with magic. Same as Mel. Maybe the name 'Ghostbeard' has something to do with that."

"You think they're ghosts?" I asked.

I checked my enemy ID logs. My sensors picked up on them as sentient beings. But weirdly not as organic. Uncle's logs confirmed the same thing. Maybe this was some sort of trick?

One thing’s for sure, magic was involved.

"I don't know if they were ghosts,” Yamin replied. “But they’re pretty weird."

“Hey, you guys!” The one sailor captain, who’d been spearheading the defense, waved us over. “Good stuff out there.”

“We’re just doing our job,” Uncle replied, adjusting his hat in place.

“Yeah, we owe you one.” He shook Uncle’s hard. “I’m captain Mitchel of the Navy crew stationed here. I might be asking for too much, but think you guys can help out just a bit more?”

I cleared my throat, then stepped forward. As the leader of this party, it was up to me to make the big decisions like this.

“Well, I bet we can…”

“If it has to do with those pirates, we’d be interested.” Uncle totally cut me off!

Merak came up to the sailor captain next and also ignored me.

“On behalf of the crown, I, Marek Le’ Verren, would like to offer my assistance as well.”

“Lord Verren…” The sailor saluted him. “I didn’t realize the royal council would send you of all people.”

Marek was quick to clarify that we were just passing through. It was a complete coincidence that things just happened to be getting bad when we arrived.

Seeing as we agreed to help out, we started making our way toward the building where the guards were stationed.

Yamin turned to Marek with a brow raised. “I didn’t realize military personnel were supposed to salute political figures other than the queen.”

“They normally don’t,” Marek replied. “But let’s just say I have some history with the navy.”

I wonder if he ever served in the military. He sure was built like a tank under that blue suit of his, so maybe he was for a while. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it right now though, no matter how much I begged him to.