Captain Raptor woke with a start. There was sand up his nostrils and he’d had a bad dream about losing his ship and crew. And hat. He sat up and saw 42 flopped out next to him, not moving, but staring at him with those faint glowing blue eyes. He looked around and found he was still on the sandy beach, but his ship was long gone.
“Well this sucks.”
42 responded in a metallic monotone, “I concur.”
“I assume since you’re where I dragged you that you can’t move?”
“I concur.”
“So I need to carry you don’t I?”
“I concur.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“I...concur.”
Captain Raptor swept sand at 42 in frustration. He glared at the sand for awhile, unable to express his feelings beyond the two his species could handle, tired and hungry. Right now he was ready to rip open somebody and eat their spleen just to inconvenience them.
“I am sorry.”
The captain looked up from his sulk, “what’s that?”
“I said I am sorry. I learned that saying that I concur was the easiest way to get through being asked question I do not know the answer to.”
“Hey, that’s pretty clever. But what do you mean you don’t know if this sucks or if you can move?”
“I wanted to make sure all the water dried out.”
Captain Raptor stood up, his stomach rumbled. “And you’re not sure if this sucks?”
“Well, now that I think about it...”
“Hold that thought.” He held up a clawed paw to 42 and stomped off to the water, marched in up to his waist and dove in. 42 watched from his tilted position on the beach as the captain’s coat flap and tail was the last he saw of the velociraptor. Then he saw the fin break the surface. The water frothed and turned red, 42 lifted himself so he could get a better look. The thrashing stopped. 42 saw that the situation did indeed suck.
The ocean exploded as Captain Raptor burst out with a four foot bull shark protruding from his mouth, his fore-claws thrust deep into its side as he thrashed his head side to side, spraying 42 with shark’s blood and gore. 42 leapt backwards from the sudden shock of it all. The captain landed on the beach and dropped the shark onto the sand, where he then lunged into it, chewing and biting as fast as he could. In short order, there was little left short of the red stain on the beach while 42 watched in horror.
“Pardon me, I might have eaten too much.”
“That was horrible! You killed that defenseless fish!”
“Can it talk?”
“Well no, it is dead!”
Captain Raptor picked up the shark’s head and looked at it’s rows or pointy teeth. “I meant before I ate it?”
“No. I do not think so.”
“Then it’s not a person and according to these teeth and the fish it was eating when I caught it, it wasn’t defenseless.”
“You have a strange moral code captain...”
The captain dropped the head and walked over to 42 and offered the ninja a hand up. “Raptor. As in Captain Raptor. The Captain whose boat your people stole and who saved your life.”
42 accepted the hand up, it seemed he had dried out and could move without short circuiting. “Thank you. I am 42. I believe I still need your help, and we can save both our people.”
“Let me guess, everybody’s eyes turning red was a bad sign, right?”
“Yes. It means there was a change of leadership. The transmission missed me when I was in the water.”
“Well, the black uniforms and suddenly red glowing eyes were an ominous clue. I have a hunch who the new boss is.”
“How? We lack any information.”
“It’s simple really, my arch nemesis is Captain King. He’s a tyrant and an egg sucking son of a purple...”
“There is no need for foul language, captain. I fail to see how you can reach this conclusion.”
“It’s in my grandfather’s book. The bad guy is always my nemesis. I always need to rescue whoever falls overboard. Stuff like that.”
“That,” 42 held his next words for a moment, looking at the lanky carnivore and his bedraggled captain’s coat, covered in sand, shark’s blood staining his lips, and then continued, “is an interesting way to look at the world. Perhaps we should be going to the control panel.”
“Sounds like a plan. Take me to your control panel.”
Read the next chapter here
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