THE BRIDE WORE BLACK

By Stacey and Jo

Stacey writing in purple, Jo writing in teal

PART TWO:

That Sid was pleased was putting it mildly. He was SO pleased he vowed he would not kill anyone for a good ten minutes. It would be hard, but he'd manage somehow. Then a sudden thought went through his marvelously capable and complicated mind. "Darling, do you expect that when I come out of the computer this second time that I'll be without...attire?"

Meanwhile the Dread Pirate Wigand was so busy biting off blue tentacles that he'd had to spit out the three cigarettes in his mouth. Instantly he went into the most terrible spasms of withdrawal, his toes curling twice around his instep. The rest is best left unwritten. But it was bad. Very bad. And he would surely have breathed his last were it not for the peach-colored rowboat that suddenly slammed into the back of his head as he managed to surface for one last desperate gulp of air.

"Darling!" Lady Meggie cried, leaning over the cannon. It was rare, indeed, for a rowboat actually to have cannons but she had been lucky and found one with not only a 12 pounder but a large mound of cannonballs nearly filling the small vessel. "Jeffrey?" She called out, concerned when he merely started to sink back under the waves. Jeffrey was not all that good at swimming, alas, especially when he was unconscious.

Looking wildly about, Lady Meggie spotted Sir Robert, wrapped in kelp and floundering under his several tons of English longbow arrows. "Sir Robert!
Help Jeffrey!"  Her voice was almost shrill with anxiety and upsetment.

"My lady," he gasped roughly due to the formation of barnacles on most of the surface of his tongue, "I fear the weight of my quiver is too great!"

"Drop the damn quiver!" she hollered back, too worried for Jeffrey to be overly concerned about strong adjective use.

Sir Robert's eyes widened. "Lady Meggie!"  He was shocked. But then his gaze locked on Jeffrey, who had sunk a good 25 feet under the crystal clear waters. He sighed. Perhaps if he sacrificed his quiver to save the Dread Pirate Wigand then Lady Meggie would look upon him with great kindness of heart?  Slipping out of the quiver's shoulder strap he watched it sink, biting his lip with the exquisite pain the sight caused. Then with a flash of white teeth, a jaunty tip of his pointy green hat, and a hearty hi ho Silver, he arched his body and dove down down down down down down to where the Dread Pirate Wigand lay draped over the back of an orca who was obviously trying to decide if it were a seal and, therefore, dinner.

Just when the orca had made its decision and tied a napkin under its chin, Sir Robert swooped past, scooping the Dread Pirate Wigand into the crook of his left arm and heading for the surface.

"For you," he said, hefting Jeffrey up and over the barrel of the cannon. "Everything I do, I do it for you," he murmured Prince of Thiefly.

Back in Sid and Stacey’s basement…

Stacey quickly took Sid’s personality module…er…cube-thingie… carefully set it in a petri dish full of blue nano-goo, then popped it into the incubator. Sid’s original incubator had long since been destroyed, so Stacey (the ever-vigilant ex-girl scout) fashioned a new one out of an old Easy Bake Oven and a few odds and ends she found lying about Sid’s place. After a few turns of some knobs and a quick set of the timer, Stacey went about waiting for her husband to be “reborn”.

She couldn’t help but grin to herself at the thought of what Sid might look like when he had fully “baked”. As her mind wandered with thoughts of Sid’s “attire” (or possible lack there of), the timer on the incubator dinged. Startled, Stacey jumped up and quickly ran over to greet Sid – now standing in front of her…his left foot immersed in the petri dish full of nano-goo.

“Siddums!” she cried, as she ran to him, throwing her arms around him and showering him with wet kisses. “It worked! You’re back! And now we can have some real fun!”

Back at his home, Terry thought he heard the sound of loud evil laughing followed by dogs howling and bombs going off. A cold shiver ran down his back.

If only Terry had known what was truly going on, the shiver would have run down his front as well...a thing no K&R agent wants to admit is even possible. There were no dogs to howl, no bombs to go off. No, there was only Sid and his bride rejoicing at his release. They also rejoiced that he was no longer in the computer.

Sid had emerged from the computer as naked as the day he'd first unpodded and, much to Stacey's delight, he did not keep his back turned nor stand behind counters. He also, new groom that he was, had other needs than chopping his finger off.

Lady Meggie beat on Jeffrey's back, forcing the several gallons of salt water from his lungs. Then she rolled him off the cannon and lay him gently atop the cannon balls where she placed her lips on his and breathed for him. His lips tasted of nicotine and octopus tentacles, a combination she found oddly disconcerting, yet she continued her ministrations until she felt return pressure from his mouth and his arms slide around her neck.

Sir Robert, treading water beside the rowboat, watched silently, tears sparking in his seagreen eyes. Was Jeffrey her true love or was he? He had sacrificed his last several tons of English longbow arrows to prove his devotion. But to what end? He simply did not know, so all he did was tread silently, watching, waiting for what she might do next.

One of his longbow arrows, though, had not landed at the bottom of the sea. No, it was currently lodged in the shoulder of the Black Highwayman, also known as Ben Wade, who lay even now on the cabbageless table top in Joimus' dining room, a General's hand gripping its shaft. "Do...do you think he...he...might die?" Joimus asked tremblingly.

"Quite probably," Maximus replied, his biceps bunching in preparation to yank the missile from Ben's flesh.

"WAIT!" It was Cort, climbing in through the small kitchen window over the sink. "I must give him the last rites."

"HA!" Richie laughed, coming out of the bathroom, zipping his jeans. "The man has no rights. He's clearly a criminal."

"I will give him the rites and then he will have them," Cort insisted.

"You can't give rights to a man who has no rights," Richie growled. "This man belongs behind bars."

"Don't worry about that, Richie," Joimus said, dripping with empathy and compassion. "He'll be dead in a moment and the right rites will be a moot point."

"Rites are not subject to mootness," Cort sighed. He looked at Maximus. "Though with you being a pagan, I can't expect you to understand that."

"I have never been a member of a motorcycle gang in my entire life!" Maximus snapped, truly offended, and yanked hard on the shaft.

Joimus looked at all the blood spurting on her green carpeting, sighed, and said heavily, "More sand."

"Not on the carpet, dearest," Maximus interjected, truly shocked at such a suggestion when the vacuum was in the shop. "I'll sop it up later with his black coat."

"But don't you think the coat already has enough blood in its fibers, darling?" she replied, staring at the quickly-spreading red stain.

"HOLD IT! Hold everything!" a female voice shouted from the firebox of the nearby chimney.

Everyone turned, staring at the young woman wearing soot-blackened red velvet. It was none other than Velvet Richards, the singing psychiatrist from the North Pole.

"Velvet!" Joimus said in some surprise.

"Velvet?" Cort asked.

"Yeah, Cort, Velvet. Surely you remember her? Nobody forgets Velvet."

Just then Ben moaned and Velvet pushed her way through the bystanders who were bystanding and doing nothing at all for his spurting blood. "Sponge!" she shouted, looking desperately around for something square and yellow with little brown pants and big eyes.

 But Stacey had shoes that matched that description and no sponge was to be had. "Veil!" she tried next, but the peach-colored item was currently in use by Lady Meggie, who was gently wiping orca slobber off Jeffrey's forehead. "Cape?" she tried, eyeing the General's glorious cloak.

"No," Joimus said, calmly leveling her AK47 at Velvet. "I think not."

Velvet sighed. "What, then, DO you have that I can use to stop the spurting blood of my beloved?"

"Try this," Joimus replied, helpfully reaching into her pocket and handing Velvet a small round mole-remover patch.

"THIS?" Velvet said in disbelief. "For all that streaming, spurting blood? THIS?"

Joimus shrugged. "In dire circumstances, one must make do with what one has. It is the way of the Stoic."  She looked fondly at Maximus.

With much effort, Velvet managed to place the patch over the hole from which Ben's lifeblood was spurting like the spouting of a sperm whale. Of all the whales in the world, it was that species that, for some reason, came to Velvet's mind as she leaned over Ben.

"Well," Joimus said sympathetically, "at least if he had any moles in his wound, they'll be gone by tomorrow."

"If he lives," Maximus added somberly.

"Yes, if he lives," Joimus nodded.

Terry, still very uneasy and suspicious about the loud ruckus that he heard moments earlier, decided to do a bit of investigating. He had an idea where the loud noises had come from, but he just hoped he wasn’t right in his thinking. With his weapon drawn,

he quietly tiptoed around the outside of Sid and Stacey’s house. “Hmph,” he hmphed to himself. “Only a sadistic, maniacal villain like Sid would paint his house purple!”

The house was dark and the shades were down, with little smiley faces drawn on the shades. Eerily, all was quiet. “Too quiet,” Terry thought to himself, as he made his way around to the back of the house, purposely kicking over a Sid-faced little garden Gnome and giggling to himself. Suddenly, without warning, he was knocked down to the ground by something large…large and…purple!

“Ahhhh!” Terry screamed, as a rabid Barney the Dinosaur lunged on top of him and viciously tried to bite his face.

Meanwhile, Sid and Stacey, now rejoicing in Sid’s return in a completely different way altogether, made their way down to the marina, where the Surprise was still docked. Captain Jack had helped Terry by taking Sid’s cube and hiding it on the Surprise, where they both thought it would be safe. They were wrong, of course. And now that Sid was back, he and his bride planned on surprising the Captain and inviting him back to their place for a bit of “fun”. Well, fun for Sid and Stacey, anyway. The Captain might think otherwise.

“I dare say I’m a wee bit offended, darling,” Stacey commented, glaring up at the tall ship. “Not even a welcoming party to greet us! How very rude of that stuffy ‘ole Captain Aubrey. I shall have to lodge a complaint at once.” The pair of them giggled, as they made their way up onto the side of the ship.

"Oh, Captain...my Captain!" Sid sang out as he boarded the Surprise, a large pouch slung over his back.

Jack was busily standing atop the mainmast, the wind blowing his hair, and was not yet ready to descend so he ignored the newly-arrived couple and just kept
staring off into the distance.

"I thought as much," Sid mumbled, untying the length of suede that bound the end of the pouch and tumbling the two rather large beavers out onto the deck. He pointed at the base of the mainmast. "Tasty! Go!"

The male beaver looked at the female. "The bloke 'ere thinks we've got no brains, luvvy."

It was obvious, not because they could talk but because they did so with an English accent, that they were from Narnia. Sid had no time to waste, though. "Look, beaver," he growled. "It's not your brains I'm interested in, it's your teeth! Now gnaw down the mast or I'm telling the White Witch where you are."

"You...you wouldn't!" the male beaver gasped, horrified.

"Wanna bet?" Sid leered.

Within moments the mast teetered this way and then tottered that way. Jack clung on for dear life until he was forced to whip out a knife from beneath his knee sock, stab a sail, and letting the blade slice the canvas, slide downward as has oft been seen in various and sundry pirate movies but is frowned upon as an activity by those in the Royal Navy.  So doing was subject to the requirements of the service and it was in the service of avoiding neck breakage that the Captain so did.

Landing lightly on his tippy toes, Aubrey glared at the beavers, who sat at the base of his mast, licking wood chips from their lips. "Off my ship!" he ordered. "Off my ship, I say!"

Sid made a little dismissive gesture with his fingertips and the two beavers waddled to the railing, heaving themselves into the sea. Jack turned on Sid. "BEAVERS?" he roared. "You bring beavers on my vessel?"

"If you had simply come down," Sid shrugged, checking a fingernail, "the beavers would not have even entered this storyline."

"You could have...asked."

"Would you have come?"

"No. I was having a double turn because no one else is aboard. It's been a long time since I've had a double turn."

Sid shrugged again. "Hence the beavers."

Aubrey narrowed his eyes. "How did you get here? I thought you were...."

"Cubeless? Is that what you thought, Captain? That you had rendered me helpless and that you could then happily spend hours atop the mainmast pretending you're a seagull."

Aubrey's narrowed eyes widened. "How did you know that?"

"About the seagull?" Sid grinned wickedly. "My dear Captain, it's right there in your character dossier."

"I...I have a dossier?"

"Most assuredly. I simply dossiernapped it from Stephen."

"Stephen? He would never keep a dossier on me."

"Wouldn't he?"  Sid reached into Stacey's bodice where he kept all the character dossiers and handed it to Aubrey. "It's only a copy. I keep the originals
someplace less obvious."

Aubrey was agog and aghast as his eyes skimmed down the page. Not only did it reveal how he pretended to be a seagull atop the mast, but his fetish for the curvier members of the mermaid population. When his crew, watching from deck, thought he was checking for damage to the hull of the Surprise, he was always...always... mermaid watching.

(pic by Jo)

"What do you intend to do with this information?" he asked, eyes wary.

"You could come to my house now and, quite possibly, we could toast marshmallows over the dossier as it burns." Sid smiled disarmingly.

Aubrey, though, had spent the last several days in cannon practice and was not so easily disarmed. "You do not eat marshmallows," he accused.

Sid stared pointedly at Aubrey's girth. "True, but obviously you do."

"You...you really have marshmallows?" Aubrey asked.

"I do. Big soft rounded white ones. Just like...other things...I know you like."

Aubrey gulped. "All right. I'll come. But only for a couple of dozen or so."

And so it was that Sid, Stacey, and the Captain all set off for Sid's abode.

ON TO PART 3

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