Iale's tiny muscles strained against the rope as she pulled her wayward captain up onto a large boulder.

"Phew!" she exhaled, collapsing on the ground beside him. Briny Joe Billow's eyes were vacant, and his mouth hung open, drooling a bit. He was quite obviously drugged. The small wagon to which he was strapped groaned under his weight.

Iale turned to Angel.

"Ye think she'll show?" she said, sticking her finger in her ear and wiggling it around to dislodge the wax that always built up when she went ashore. "I'd like to say I know th' girl well enough, but most of our interaction's been at gunpoint..."

As if on cue, Lacey bounded into the scene, sporting a particularly saunty captain's hat she'd aquired from a very drunk, very now dead man along the way. Walking with her arms held in a praise me kind of way, she whooped.

"Ello ye fine ladies! What a night! I 'ave many things to tell ye! OH!" She looked at the stinking heap that lay on the wagon, curling her lip.

"Is that him?"

"Aye," Angel turned a bloodshot eye at Lacey, "he's half-crazed with the Pathos, but we got 'im."

With a sigh, she turned to Iale, "Are ye sure you don't know anything about a cure for that damned disease? I don't wanna hear another thing about tha' Man of the Sea superstition...[/i]

"Ain't no cure on land or sea," said Iale truthfully - there was no known cure for the disease, which claimed pirates often enough to have spawned a legend. She patted her former captain on the shoulder sadly, her lip wobbling. "If I'da known - I shoulda seen the signs, I shoulda paid better attention..."

She stiffened her lip, angered by her moment of emotional weakness.

"We can't count on 'im for nothin', but we can sure as hell see to it 'e lives out 'is days in peace," she said, impassioned. She shook Briny Joe's shoulder in a gesture of solidarity. "Don't you worry, cap'n. Ye'll have cloves aplenty wherever I set you up."

The piratess sighed despairingly. "Well, we're here... what are we gonna do with 'im? No ship, no crew, no money..." Angel rubbed her forehead in agitation. Billows was next to useless now. In the back of her mind, she remembered her original reason for finding billows, but nothing lay for her in the Bad Brothers. His ship had probably been scuttled.

"Wasn't Billows some kinda Pirate King of the Islands? Where are his hordes of gold? Where are his pirate fleets?"

Lacey looked back and forth between the two women as they spoke..opening her mouth like a fish a few times. She bobbed on the spot.



Lacey took a breath to speak, one finger held up.



The blonde made a sound like a dying whale and stamped a foot.

"Would ye shut it ye clockin' jabberjaws?! I got somethin' useful for ye. A ship, and a clue and a plan." Her face turned into one huge grin.

"I'm yer captain now and I am hirin' ye!"

For a moment Angel looked at Lacey, pretty much flabbergast. Then she resumed her composure and broke down laughing. "Oh no... oh no no no... You're calling that smoking bucket a ship?"

The Sky pirate crossed her arms and cocked her head at the woman. "Last time I saw it, it was practically falling apart. Where are you gonna get the money to fix it." You plan on turning the old man in? Though she didn't want to have to chose sides, Angel put her hands on her hips, each ready to fly to the grips of the guns that hung from her back.

Lacey's face didn't change, it still grinned at the insulting woman. She rested her hands on her own hips, thumbing her own pistol lightly.



The blonde raised an eyebrow and scoffed.

"Not th' Lady ye clockin' kenser erse." In three leaping steps, she was on the boulder beside the man and the wagon. It wasn't any prettier close up.

"I spoke t' a man tonight. Part o' some underground group. Thare be a map." She paused dramatically, knowing full well that word would grab any pirates attention.

"This map be on yer one Joe Billows see? An' if we were t' get this map an' take it t' this fellow Hawke, he'd be needin' a crew t' find what this map pointed t' see? A secret cargo. A big one. An' I've been given a ship an' two other crewmates." Crossing her arms she looked between the women.

"Well?"

(( BTW, I'm waiting for Iale <__< I'm sure she has something to say... ))

Iale cocked an eyebrow at Lacey as she listened.

"Map?" she spat, turning to Briny Joe and immediately rifling through his pockets. "Who told ye he had a map? If 'e'd had any map worth knowin' about, Lacebottom, 'e'da told me about it, sure as the sunri-"

Pausing, she pulled a tightly rolled piece of parchment from Briny Joe's breast pocket. It was sealed with black wax and tied with a blood-red ribbon. Her jaw dropped.

She at once felt betrayed and exhilarated.

"A ship, ye say ye've got?" she said cautiously, still staring at her dazed captain in disbelief.

Angel looked askance at Lacey as Iale reached into the breast pocket of her Pathos-crazed Captain and pulled out what the blonde pirate had been going on and on about. "Aha!" She laughed merrily, not noticing how hurt her diminutive comrade looked. "This is shaping up to be a grand adventure!"

"Yet, one thing worries me... Hawke. Why would he just give you a ship and tell you be on your merry way? This... can't be good..." The paranoid piratess looked around carefully, "In fact, we're probably being listened to right now..."

She shook her head defeated, "But forget it! Point is, we got a ship, we got a map, and all we need now is a heading!" A rare smile lit her face. "Let's get this show on the road! Don't worry about me, I can sail a ship just as good as I can fly an aeroship. I'm up for navigatin'."

Iale was still staring blankly at the map. She could barely believe Briny Joe would hide something like this from her. Many grand adventures lay behind them in their history; why would he have not trusted her? Had he suspected her of being untrustworthy?

Lacey just about spilt her head with the grin she was wearing as Iale pulled out the rolled up parchment. So it was true!



The blonde hooked her thumbs in her belt and nodded.



Tipping her new hat at Angel, Lacey spoke.

"Good t' hear Red!" She looked at Iale and her smile faultered slightly.

"E'ery thang okay thare DuPont? Ye in? I need a first mate ye know, an' ye know what they say...keep yer friends close..."

"An' yer enemies closer," finished Iale, with a halfhearted grin. "Aye, ye can count me in, then. But what about Joe here? He ain't got family nor any type o' friends in this port..."

Lacey looked thoughtfully at the man. Personally, if it were entirely up to her, she would string the man up by his feet and leave him to die a horrible and slow death. But she knew Iale wouldn't really approve of that. Sighing, she rubbed her chin.

"Bring him if ye want. But ye gotta cover him up or somethin'. These Bad Brothers would do worse things to him than I would...if I could. Ye hear me? An' if he ain't gonna help us at all, I'll throw him t' the Prayer Fish. If he comes, he' yer responsibility." Nodding to herself, the blonde pirate waited for the short redheads response.

Angel wasn't entirely sure what they were going to do with Billows, but she thought taking him on the ship was unwise. "The ship is owned by the brothers... and there are sure to be agents on board. It'd be some risky business taking him on it. I have some money... ain't there anyone ye trust in Old Rose that we could pay a bit to take care of him?"

Iale nodded at Angel. "Aye, t'would be a fool's errand bringin' him aboard," she agreed. "May'aps I can find someone willin' to take 'im aboard. I reckon I knows a few what owes me a favor 'round the harbor. 'e'd be happy on a nice quiet voyage to Muluku, wouldn't ye, cap'n? The warm'll do ye some good."

Nodding, she turned to the girls.

"When do we depart, then, me lovelies?" she asked. A mischievous grin crossed her face. It was good to be part of a crew again.

Lacey sighed and relaxed with a laugh.

"Gods its good t' hear ye say that. I really didn't want t' take him on th' ship."



The blonde jumped off the rock and spun around to face them with a grin.

"Tomorrow, we get ourselves t' the dock, I've got two other's meetin' us thare. Th' Cutlass should be in dock, an' we can 'ave a once o'er on her. Buyin' supplies, packin', maybe findin' a few more hands, we should be ready t' leave around th' twenty fifth?"