XI. Leafed Behind Part II.

A navyman wearing a chef's hat lowered the bamboo cages. "Excuse me," he asked, "but between the two of you, who would you say is the toughest?"

"Figuratively speaking?" Majel asked.

The navyman faltered, not really knowing the fancy word she used. "Uh... well... you see, we got a stew goin' alongside the spit roast and the quartermaster told me to use the toughest cuts for it."

"Hmm... I'd say that's you, Majel," the elf guessed.

"Thanks for having my back, D'anna..." the cat grumbled.

"No, no, no! It's the 'not dying in vain' thing we were talking about earlier, remember?"

Majel continued to glare at her.

"Y-you see, I bet that you're the toughest out of the two of us, meanwhile I'm all chew," the elf stuttered. "That means I would need to crisp up over a fire while you'd need to simmer."

Majel looked down and pinched her forearm meat. She pursed her lips and looked back at D'anna. "I'd say that's apt, yeah..."

D'anna extended her hand out of the cage and waved. "Sir? We've decided that I'll be spit-roasted, and she'll be in the stew."

The navyman nodded. "Alright, then. Both of you get undressed—the quicker, the better."

"And then what?" Majel asked.

He shrugged. "Well... then, you'll go into the stew."

"What!? You're not even going to put me down beforehand?"

"There's more flavor if you're both still alive."

"We're not lobsters!" D'anna cried out.

"I wish you two were! Do you think we're happy about having filthy pirates for dinner? You two are only on the menu because you're not one of us..."

"Navymen?" asked the elf.

"Human?" asked the cat.

"Both. Now shut up and get undressed, dinner's already late as it is..." he said before storming off to the cauldron.

Majel scowled and looked at D'anna. "I am going to piss and shit in that stew so hard..."

Cain was now all alone in the jungle, running to the source of the smoke. His cutlass made quick work of any leaves and vines in his path—as well as one or two animals. (Up to that point, they had managed to evade the same grisly fate that fell upon the majority of Zsa-Gabor's fauna.)

His rattling bones echoed throughout the quiet forest. They sounded like a foreboding maraca filled with wooden dice. He had lost the two zombies accompanying him, but that did not bother him all too much. As the saying goes, "There's other fish in the sea to infect with zombism."

As Cain drew closer and closer, he noticed that this particular forest fire seemed... reluctant to spread. The smoke never grew wider nor intensified; it always came from the same spot.

A wall of shrubbery blocked his path, yet he knew the fire was on the other side. A warm glow reflected against the surrounding foliage, the only source of light at this hour. He could hear the crackling of the flames from the other side, sounding like the cracking of many tiny twigs. Whenever the skeleton hacked through the wall, he sighed—both with relief and in frustration.

The fire, as it turned out, was only heating up a cauldron, not the collective vegetation of Zsa-Gabor. A man in a ragged, blood-soaked Horatio Navy uniform was stirring its contents. His skin was sunburnt, and his hair was long and unkempt. It was greasy, too, but it would be hypocritical for a pirate to home in on someone else's cleanliness. (Especially if the pirate in question was a walking skeleton with bits of residual flesh.)

There were about ten other navymen on the campsite, all in a similar hygienic condition. (Although some opted to wear leaves instead of uniforms, with a select few donning nothing at all.) A couple of them chopped firewood with swords instead of axes (to varying success). Some sat on logs, sharpening primitive spears and worn-out rapiers. One of them was walking around the campgrounds clutching a spear, presumably patrolling.

No doubt about it, they were the refugees from the HMS Delight. Although, Cain knew that galleons like that took hundreds of sailors to operate. Where was the rest of the crew?

It dawned on him when, satisfied with whatever was in the cauldron, one of the navymen walked up to a tree and began untying a knot. Once undone, the navyman grabbed onto the rope and began to lower a strung-up bamboo cage to the ground. Inside was D'anna and Majel—imprisoned, disheveled, and a lot more bare than Cain would care for. The navyman opened Majel's cage and ushered her to the boiling pot.

He picked her up, lifted her over it, and—

BANG!

The sound echoed across the campground, catching everyone's attention within a split second. Nobody could tell where the shot came from, only where it ended up.

The smell of gunpowder stunk up the place as the navyman's eyes glanced up to the new, gaping hole in his forehead. He looked back to Majel, whose face was now covered in red. They stood there for a few seconds, completely frozen.

"Ssstewww..." he groaned before shifting back and forth. Majel screamed as he dipped towards and away from the pot, his body wobbling and quite unsure of what it should do. Majel wrestled herself out of his arms, which was quite easy when his nerves were in total shock. She fell onto the ground and not, unlike him, into the cauldron.

"Grayson!" one of the navymen called out. He ran towards the cauldron and leaned over it. There was no reply—only a skull bobbing to the surface. He swallowed in horror before another skull reflected in the water.

"Why don't ye join him, matey?" it smiled before a pair of hands picked him up and dunked him into the pot.

"Captian, you’re here!" D'anna beamed, her ears shooting upward with joy.

"Have ye two found the plant yet?" Cain asked as he thwacked the elf's cage open with a cutlass.

"No! We've been a little preoccupied!" Majel growled.

The castaways began to draw closer, circling around and pointing a variety of swords and spears towards The Rogers. Majel and D'anna, both unarmed, huddled behind their captain. Majel held up her fists and took a fighting stance—D’anna cowered.

The skeleton looked at his adversaries and chuckled. "Yer crew's lookin' two members light, lads... ye sure this'll be a fair fight?"