The deck of the Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Friday afternoon

[betterthanaplan]

So. Duke had been in Fandom for two weeks now. And while he'd absolutely never say out loud that he felt like he had a handle on things . . . he felt a bit like he had a handle on things.

Case in point: he was lounging on the deck of his boat, sipping bourbon and pondering whether or not he could sail to 2008 Baltimore, stash an inexpensive bottle somewhere, then walk across the causeway to 2019 Baltimore, pick it up, and sell it all nicely aged. He was pretty sure he could get away with something like that without breaking time. So long as he didn't manage to run into his older self or something. But wouldn't his older self know to just avoid Baltimore in 2019?

He was not so lost in such thoughts as to not notice the small green thing creeping around his crates, though. He dropped his hand down to the butt of the gun taped under his chair.

"Pretty sure biting your subjects is a big reporter no-no."

The gremlin made a sort of grumbling, snarling noise, and scuttled off. Duke nodded to himself and sipped his bourbon.

Yeah. He was getting a handle on things.

[open boat deck is open!]

Comments

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Yeah," said Prompto, chuckling a little. "Definitely no lack of material there.

"I'm Prompto, by the way," he added, tilting a smile back at Mr. Boat Dude. "I don't think we ever got around to names."

[betterthanaplan]

"You know, I don't think we did. Duke Crocker. Recently recruited to teach piracy."

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Oh, hey!" said Prompto, eager to leap as far away from reasons why he was still on this damn island as possible. "Then you've got Sidon and Vette in your class! They're two of my best friends!"

Because of course Sidon had told him about Pirate Class. And Movie Class. And Dating Class that Then Became Cooking Class....

....and that guy liked to talk...hoo.

[betterthanaplan]

He really, really could.

"I do. He even brought her in while she was a bird."

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Awww," said Prompto with a faint grin. "Was she, like, a little super floofy ball of birdy anger the whole time, too?"

He was also going to try to not think about the last time he saw Vette as a little super floofy ball of bidry anger, because that had been when she'd changed back while sitting on his head.

"My girlfriend brought me to one of our classes when I was a puppy once, so I got to hike Machu Picchu on four legs. It was great! Exhausting, but great."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shrugged. "She was a bird. He gave her a hat."

Look, birds weren't really his thing.

"You were a puppy?"

[hashtag_chocobro]

"...he totally would give her a hat," Prompto noted, after a long moment of imagining and snickering a little.

"And, yeah, I was a puppy, for about...two weeks, I think? Or, like, a week and a half. It was a long one. My friend Nina turned into a flying snake thing once. It's just a thing that happens sometimes. Kind of weird, but also kind of cool. And it doesn't happen to everyone. It took Nina forever to get an animal transformation, and I'm pretty sure Sidon never has and he's been here longer than all of us."

[betterthanaplan]

"People just kind of turn into animals," Duke said. He shook his head. "I shouldn't even be surprised. I was just telling off a bipedal lizard thing about journalistic ethics."