Deck of the Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Sunday afternoon

[betterthanaplan]

So after yesterday's picnic, Duke had seriously considered raising anchor and just getting the hell back out of Fandom while the going was still good. Unfortunately, he still needed supplies and at least a little more socialization before he was ready to hit the seas again, and an island so small it didn't even show up on any maps was the best damn hiding spot he was going to get from the various and sundry people who either wanted to arrest or kill him.

He was definitely not going to teach a class at the high school though. Certainly not one about piracy. That was just -- people hadn't trusted him around kids when he was a kid. It was clearly nonsense.

Having spent the morning on various repairs and maintenance around his ship, he headed into town for groceries around noon, then set up his small grill on deck to make some lamb shashlik and vegetables. After a couple weeks of living on fish and jerky, kebabs were right up his alley.

[open! Duke's boat's deck is visible and easily accessible from land. Think of it like someone's front patio or driveway, only furnished with crates and random thrifted benches and things.]

Comments

[in_sidon_we_trust]

"Ah, my apologies, your grace!" Because, of course, Sidon was a prince. Why wouldn't he assume he was talking to an actual duke? His head dipped in the best approximation of a bow as one could manage when half in the water. "A student, then? I thought you looked a bit older, is all, but it is still rather difficult for me to get a good guage on age with humans and human-like people! I suppose...you could also just be visiting, or perhaps attending to business in town? It's just that, with the welcome picnic having just occurred, one's mind rather does tend to lean toward attributing any new faces to the role of either teacher or student. Perhaps you've been gone on a long voyage in your fine vessel here, and you've only just returned? If that is the case, well, then, allow me to wish you a hearty welcome back! You've managed to miss one doozy of a summer, I can assure you of that much!"

[betterthanaplan]

"I'm thirty-three!" He did not look like a student, dammit! "Business, yes. I needed to resupply and this place looked nice. . . . What do you mean 'doozy of a summer'?"

[in_sidon_we_trust]

Humans aged so quickly, though! You blinked, and they were ancient! Thirty-three would still be a child by Zora's standards! Sidon himself hadn't been thirty-three in forty-four years!

It was all terribly relative.

Sidon chuckled, beaming at the opportunity to tell the duke all about it. "Well, you see," he said, "the island decided that it wanted to take itself on its own lengthy adventure, which meant dragging all of us along with it! There was something new and different and sometimes horrible, almost always exciting happening at nearly every turn! At one point, this whole place was submerged under the very ocean, protected only by a thin, fragile bubble of glass!"

That one had been a personal favorite, though he understood he was rather on his own there.

"One week, it was a land entirely of boxes and squares, including ourselves, with a different challenge every day! Another week, random rifts in reality were opening up all over the place, wreaking havoc on your ability to be one person one minute, in one place the next! We've had to deal with irradiated wastelands, turning into nightmarish monsters that only cared for desctruction, having everything in black and white, the town turned into an ever-changing labyrinth and people were kidnapped by goblins and trapped in bubbles....why, some of us even turned into vampires!"

Well, technically that had been before the summer, but could anyone really blame Sidon blurring the details a little and lumping that one right in there with the rest of them.

"I even ceased to exist for an entire week! No one else! Just me!"

Still hadn't figured that one out.

"I didn't care for that one very much. My girlfriend had planned a date for us to go visit this absolutely incredible-sounding aquatic world in her galaxy for that week, and, as you can imagine, it rather fell through the cracks, what with me not even existing.

"It seems to have settled down these last few weeks, though," Sidon concluded, not even a bit breathless from all that, though he looked apologetic for a moment before his bright grin flashed again. "But no worries! You didn't miss all the fun! This place is almost always pulling some wild adventure out of its metaphorical sleeves!"

[betterthanaplan]

"Sounds . . . troubling."

Duke managed not to shudder, but it was a near thing.

"Evi definitely slipped something in my tea, didn't she."

[in_sidon_we_trust]

"I'm sorry," shouted Sidon, "did you say Evie?"

Between the water and the waves, it certainly sounded close enough.

"Why, that's my newest little sibling! Do you know her? Does she not have some of the most magificent hair you've ever seen? Then again, I'll admit to having a particularly strong bias toward blue!"

[betterthanaplan]

". . . Evi," Duke corrected, with a shorter "e" sound. "Short for 'evidence'."

Because of course he'd married a woman named "Evidence".

"If I'm not hallucinating, then she's about five thousand miles from here. And her hair's not blue. It is pretty great, though."

[in_sidon_we_trust]

"Ah! I see!" said Sidon. "Wonderful! I don't believe you're hallucinating, your grace, but, of course, I couldn't tell that for certain. I'd be quite willing to wager a significant amount of rupees, however, that you are indeed not."

[betterthanaplan]

"Your --" The honorific had managed to fly right over Duke's head the first time. "Do you -- think I'm an actual duke?"

Seriously. That was not a reaction he'd gotten anywhere else in the world. He really was losing some of his disreputable cred, wasn't he.

[in_sidon_we_trust]

Well, had he spoken with many princes anywhere else in the world?

The prince he spoke to here in Fandom looked a little bewildered for a moment. "Well, is that not what you said?" he asked. "Duke Crocker?"

He shook his head a little. "It must be this wind!" he shouted back at him. "Or the waves! Either way, I can clearly not hear a thing! Permission to board...." He hesitated, throwing a queirying lift to his next words..."Mr. Crocker? I can only imagine it shall significantly enchance the quality of our conversational comprehension!"

[betterthanaplan]

"Yeah, it's my --" Duke sighed and gave up, waving the shark guy aboard. "Come on up. Then we can have the 'sometimes titles are names' conversation."

[in_sidon_we_trust]

Sidon nodded and turning away from the boat, dove back into the water and...in the opposite direction, though only for a bit, until he could circle back around, thus giving him enough space to build up enough momentum to start swimming like a rocket toward the boat and then, at just the right moment, leaping out of the water with all his strength, gaining more than enough height to throw a smooth little flip in there before landing gracefully on the deck in a low crouch.

Well. Gracefully as a seven-and-a-half-foot tall solid-muscle shark man could, anyway. Which, to Sidon's credit, was still fantastically graceful, but it was still a seven-and-a-half-foot tall solid-muscle shark man launching himself up onto a boat.

You didn't think he'd just mosey up on land and walk on, did you? Or even worse, climb aboard?

"My apologies for the duke thing," Sidon offered, as he smoothly raised himself up to his full height and didn't seem at all bothered by any rocking or other disturbances caused by his elaborate approach. "It's simply that, as an ambassador prince such as myself, one must always be expected to be on, as it were, and so it is only natural, when presented with a potential title, that one err on the side of caution. I assure you, no offense was meant. As a matter of fact, an offense was precicely the thing I had hoped to avoid in my misinterpretation."

[betterthanaplan]

. . . Duke was really glad the Rouge was a fishing boat designed to get nets full of thousands of pounds of fish dropped on it occasionally.

"It's cool, buddy," he assured the very very large shark man. Holy shit. "Just surprised me, is all. Duke is actually just my name though. I'm -- really not that fancy."

[in_sidon_we_trust]

"Well," said Sidon, beaming with another sharp grin that just sparkled so easily when he was outside, "contrary to popular belief, being fancy is not actually a requirement for being royalty, though it does help! Perhaps you have the spirit of a duke within you yet! Where is it that you hail from, Duke? Did you sail this magnificent vessel from there? Was it a terribly thrilling journey?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had to laugh at that. Sidon's enthusiasm was . . . let's go with "impressive".

Much like his teeth.

"Place called Haven, Maine," he said. "And yeah, that's where the Rouge comes from, too. Won her in a poker game and she's been home ever since. About 12 years now."

[in_sidon_we_trust]

Impressive was fair. It was usually a pretty hard toss-up between that and 'extra.'

"The Rouge," Sidon repeated the name with the thoughtful sort of flair of someone testing out just how rougish they could make it sound, and he grinned down at Duke. "Marvelous. What an excellent name! I can only imagine some of the spectacular adventures you and the Rouge have had together over the years, and here you are! About to embark on another! You must be incredibly thrilled!"

Sidon was thrilled for him, and he'd only just met the guy!

[betterthanaplan]

"Cape Rouge, technically," Duke said, shrugging. He titled his head and smirked at the description. "I don't know about thrilled. The last adventure ended a little . . . abruptly."

Fleeing the hemisphere to go into hiding abruptly.

"I do enjoy a change of scenery, though."

[in_sidon_we_trust]

"Ah...abruptly?"

Sidon's voice was so full of intrigue, it actually seemed to pull him forward a little, leaning in, eager for more, because one couldn't just say that an adventure had ended abruptly and then abruptly end the story there!

[betterthanaplan]

You could when the abrupt end came from your wife suddenly ditching you, leaving you holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise with the Polícia Federal, Interpol, and a drug cartel breathing down your neck.

"Let me put it this way," Duke said. "Never make business plans during Carnivale, avoid peyote when you're treasuring hunting, and never trust anyone who runs around calling herself 'Evidence'."

Really, that last one could be shortened to just "never trust anyone" and Duke would find that equally true. Everyone always either screwed you or left you in the end. Usually both.