29: The Mary Reed, Again

He could hear explosions erupting somewhere in the ship and crawled away from the door knowing what was coming through it any moment. A second later a giant crab burst through the door, heading straight for Ray and chattered in his face, the tips of its pointy legs pinning him to the crate behind him.

“I don’t know what you want! Are you one of them?”

It stopped and pulled back with a general feel of confusion about it. Fitz ran into the room, “Hey! Get off of him!” He threw his gun on some boxes and pulled the crab off of Ray. “What are you doing? Of course he isn’t one of them, why would we take him to Oliver if he was?”

The crab clicked a bit, grabbed a bag out of a crate and scuttled out of the room.

“Sorry about that.” Fitz helped Ray up. “Those guys can get a bit testy.” He saw Ray cradling his arm, “How is your arm?”

“Oh, it’s alright. What’s going on out there?”

“Oh… um, we are under attack. I am told that Tuesday’s other ship was waiting for us on the other side of the gate.”

“Couldn’t you see it through the gate?”

“No, they were behind the gate. Um… the gate is in the middle of water, you can go all around it but not pass through it unless you go through the center of it. I have heard it explained as a tear in space.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, I try not to think about it too much. Also, we need to get moving.”

“What? Why? My arm.”

“You need to fight for us. You’ll die either way.”

“What? How can you think that way? Of course you’ll lose.”

“Well, they have a thousand or so soldiers, we only have three-hundred militia. It’s possible that we could win, but unlikely that you will survive. To be honest the rest of the guys wanted to try to offer you as a plea bargain.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Here’s a gun,” Fitz handed him a handgun from his belt, “it is all I have.”

The two raced down the hallway toward the fighting and found the crab from before blown to bits along with others. Fitz just shook his head as he ran past.

“What happened here?” asked Ray, obviously unprepared for the situation.

“The crabs are very headstrong, they can think and do many cleaver things, but when it comes to fighting they usually take themselves out along with about ten enemies. They are not wise creatures.”

They continued down the hall and a blast opened up a hole in the wall next to them and they both ended up on opposite sides of about five soldiers. Fitz took out three of them ridiculously fast and Ray confused the other two long enough for Fitz to come behind them and knock them out with the butt of his gun. “Do you know how to use that pistol?”

“Uh… yeah, I just wasn’t expecting that to happen.”

“Now that it has, you can expect it to happen again. Now, lets go up top.”

They rushed up some stairs and found there way on deck. The Mary Reed stood a good five stories taller next to them and had men repelling down the sides of it. There was shouting and guns firing in every direction. Ray looked down the ship and got a glimpse of the sun glairing off of something in the distance, followed by a premonition of Rex. Ray took off running down the ship followed closely by Fitz yelling after him and shooting most of the soldiers who attacked them both.

Ray dodged a few men and shot one in the leg. Out of breath he reached the front of the ship and a man entirely clad in steel. “REX!” Ray yelled, everyone stopped. Fitz caught up and stopped short of knocking Ray over.

Rex held, what appeared to be, a bird-man and looked up at Ray. The bird punched Rex in the chest but only broke his own hand; Rex threw it into the sea without taking his eyes off of Ray and squared himself up to him.

Fitz jumped in between them. “You’ll have to get through me!”

Ray pushed him out of the way, “No! Rex is my friend.”

A voice from the crowd yelled out, “your friend has killed fifty of us, you must be one of them too!” followed by a brief fight and some creatures being thrown off deck.

“Rex, what’s going on? What did Tuesday do to you?”
Rex tilted his head as if pondering the question, but didn’t answer. He walked up to Ray with rage in his eyes and picked him up by the shirt. “What are you doing, dude?”

Fitz opened fire on Rex and the ship went back into an all out brawl.

A soldier hastily knocked out Fitz and Rex made quick work of Ray as well. Rex pointed to Ray and the dog and motioned to the Mary Reed. He then pointed to the rest of the Familiar Ronin and twirled is hand in the air to suggest wrapping things up.

A little while later Ray woke up in the cell of the Mary Reed with about ten other Ronin. “This is starting to become too frequent” He muttered to himself.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” It was the smaller dog-man he had first met. “Fitz has been worried sick. Hey Fitz!”

Fitz came running over and took Ray up in a big hug, “Oh, I was so worried! I am so glad you have woken up!”

“Heheh, thanks buddy. Where are we?”

“We’re on your friend’s ship.” Replied Watson the small dog.

“Oh good!” said Ray.

“Good? They’re taking us to their POW camp. That place ain’t the friendliest.”

“What? Why would Rex do that?”

“Um… Ray…” Fitz spoke with sadness. “I do not believe your friend is your friend anymore.”

A loud clicking came from the door. A crab had picked the lock and the door swung freely open, but a hand came up quickly from the outside and slammed it shut again. “I do not think that is a good idea buddy, lest the men here will try to compel me to make you into a stew.”

The crab clicked some profanities at the Chef.

“No, no, no. I would kill them before they made me do it. It was just a warnin’ kid.” He then slid a large container of stew under the gate for the Ronin to eat and walked away.