Chapter 6: Tick Tock

            The pirate captain sighed, pushing away thoughts of Luke and how Pan knew about the whole thing.  Perhaps it had just been a lucky guess, one that Hook’s reaction had confirmed.  Not that it really mattered at the present.  Saving his missing gunners was far more important.  Though the whole bloody mess was their fault in the first place.  Why couldn’t the idiots just fucking listen to him?  But their stupidity wasn’t cause to abandon them.  Captain Hook may’ve been a ruthless pirate captain, but even he had room in his shriveled heart to give a damn about his men.

            Of course, the game itself was a fool’s task.  It would take weeks to thoroughly search the island.  Neverland was more than a day’s journey across at its widest part.  No, he couldn’t afford to blindly stumble around looking for his men.  He had to be clever and get into the demon’s head and figure out where Pan was likely to hide his men.

            “So who’s going with the cap’n?” the voice broke him out of his thoughts, accent a dead giveaway that it was Demont.

            The gunner was the only Verician in the crew, seeing as they usually didn’t make good pirates, heads too far up their own asses and all that.  Demont was mostly tolerable, except when he was encouraging Larimore and Gaspar’s stupidity.  Which was always.  That gunner team was called the Disaster Crew for a reason.

            Hook raised an eyebrow.  “Who said I’m taking anyone?”

            “The demon never said you had to go alone,” Demont said.

            “I’m pretty sure it was implied,” the captain sighed.

            “You can’t search the whole island yourself,” another of the gunners, Hamlin, protested.

            “You idiots getting involved is what led to this fucking mess in the first place,” Hook grumbled.

            “Cap’n,” Roche said, “Let ‘em go.”

            The captain was tempted to argue, not wanting to risk any more of the crew, but stayed his hand due to the look on the scarred man’s face.  It said “let the men take the hit so they don’t try anything stupid later”.  Which, damn it, was a really good point.

            “Right”, he sighed, rubbing his face with his hand.  “I don’t give a fuck who comes, just decide it elsewhere.”

            “Cap’n?” Hamlin questioned.

            “As you so generously pointed out, we can’t search the whole island.  So we’ll need to figure out where that bastard would’ve hid them.  And for that, I need quiet,” Hook sighed, “So the lot of you scarper.”

            The gunners muttered out an “aye cap’n” before retreating to the underdeck.  Roche stayed put, but the captain didn’t mind so much.  At least the master gunner had the decency to know when to keep his mouth shut.

            Hook turned to face the island, as if there’d be a signal fire telling him exactly where his men were.  There wasn’t, of course, but Neverland was a prettier sight than the deck hands scurrying around, at least.  The Jolly Roger was anchored in a cove on the southeast side of the island.  A thin strip of land separated the cove from Mermaid Lagoon, but Hook doubted that Pan would involve the mermaids again.  The boy was a demon, practically the personification of chaos, and he would loathe to be so repetitive in his games.

            Where else could he rule out?  Well if there was one thing that the pirate was certain of, it was that Pan hadn’t left his men out of reach.  It was a game.  And what fun would it be if his victory was assured from the beginning?  Especially due to mere things like human endurance.  Of course, the boy absolutely did play dirty pool and had no qualms about making it borderline impossible for his opponent to win.  But a fully rigged game had zero stakes and that would be just unbearable for Pan.  So that would rule out the northern and western reaches of the island.

            Which left the jungle that covered much of Neverland’s landmass, though it was mostly concentrated to the southeast part of the island.  But he didn’t have time to check every single damn tree.  So where in the jungle would the demon stash his prize?  His homebase was an obvious choice.  Putting his newest acquisition on full display was Peter all over again.  The boy absolutely would showoff now that he had the luxury of having things.  Hell, the bastard had probably had fun building a mock jail to hold the would-be assassin of the “king”.  Definitely sounded like something Pan would do.

            But that just left the question of where the hell Pan’s fortress was.  Hook had always figured it was somewhere towards the middle of the island, but he had never actually seen it, what with Pan’s habit of teleporting directly to the ship whenever he had business.  Well there was always the option of tracking down a Lost Boy and torturing the location out of him.

            And that just left the other hiding place.  But except for Mermaid Lagoon, there weren’t any other notable places close to the ship.  Unless…Hook’s heart did a little flip in his stomach.

            Oh the demon absolutely would.

            Bloody hell.  Fuck.

            “Go get the men,” he snapped at Roche, too perturbed to care about his tone.

            At the very least, the master gunner seemed to understand the urgency because he raced off to the underdeck.

            “As for you lot,” he addressed the deck hands, who snapped to attention.  “Get the pinnace ready.”

            They turned to each other, communicating through a quick series of head-jerks and eyebrow-raises, before two of them left their usual duties to prepare the boat as ordered.  Hook glanced at the sky.  The sun was just barely above the horizon, which meant that there were still a couple of hours until the tide fully came in.  It would be a close call. 

            The deck hands finished their work quickly, the boat ready just as Roche returned with six gunners trailing behind him.

            “Get in the boat,” he snapped, using the tone reserved for battle.

            The gunners seemed confused even as they rushed to follow the order, bodies moving instinctively the way they did in a fire-fight.  Hook joined them, turning to the deck hands.

            “Alright, drop her.”

            They began lowering the boat towards the water while the gunners shifted uneasily.

            “What’s with the sudden rush, cap’n?” Hamlin asked.

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            The captain glared mutinously at his hook for a moment, wishing it was buried in Pan’s chest.  “Marooner’s Rock.”

            “What ‘bout it?” Martel asked.

            “There’s a chance that the demon left one of the poor bastards tied to the thing.  Best check before the tide comes in,” he sighed.

            The men shared disgruntled looks.

            “But to sail into Mermaid Lagoon…” Goffe the Coward muttered.

            “I doubt the hags will get involved again after what happened last time,” Hook said.  Pan had made things very clear about what would happen to any being who dared to lay hands on his favorite toy and, while Hook loathed the position, he hoped that fear of the king of Neverland would keep the bitches in line.

            If not, they were probably fucked.

            Not probably, definitely.

            The boat landed in the water and the gunners made short work of freeing it from the pulley system.  They took to the oars, easily propelling them towards the shore.  They were well coordinated, what with how long they’d been on gunner teams together.  Demont and Blanco were half the Disaster Crew, while the other four were the most effective team of the lot.  They might be morons, sure, but they were effective at their task.

            “What about the other one?” Demont asked.

            “Pan’s basecamp,” Hook said, “Though it couldn’t hurt to check the coastline near the ship.  I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to stick Larimore up a tree and laugh while we trek miles in the opposite direction.”

            Peter always had loved irony.

            “Where is his hideout anyways?” Cockram asked.

            “Fuck if I know.”  Hook’s lips twisted into a grin.  “Sounds like we’ll have to hunt down one of his boys.  But,” he paused for emphasis, knowing the gunners would jump at the promise of violence, “first we need to get to the Lagoon.  Those idiots can survive being jailed by twelve-year-olds for a few extra hours.  Being submerged underwater, not so much.”

            “I thought that the demon wanted to kill them himself,” Demont said.

            “Last time I checked, tying a man to a rock that’ll be submerged at high tide counts as murder,” Hamlin retorted.

            “Did one of you bring a flare?” Hook asked.

            “Aye cap’n,” Blanco said and Hook felt a wave of sympathy for the dependable man always having to put up with the Disaster Crew.

            “Good, give it to Cockram,” he said.

            “Cap’n?” the man questioned, even as he handed it over.

            “Right, never though I’d say this, but we’re going to split up.  Demont, Blanco, you’re with me.  The rest of you stay on the coast, see if you can find one of the idiots.  If you do, send up a flare but don’t move them.”  He emphasized the last three words.  “The challenge was issued to me, which means that I have to find them.  And if the bloody Lost Boys show up, make sure to capture one.”

            “Aye cap’n,” the men responded as one.

            It didn’t take much longer for them to reach shore.  The lot of them clambered out, Demont and Blanco looking anxious to set off for the Lagoon.

            “Right then, let’s go,” Hook said.

            “Good luck, cap’n,” Martel said.

            Hook nodded in acknowledgement of the sentiment before he headed off towards the jungle with Demont and Blanco following on his heels.

            It didn’t take them long to hit the tree-line, the tides having already started to come in.  At low tide, the sandy beaches of Neverland were fully exposed.  At high tide, the beaches were almost completely concealed, the water only a foot or two away from lapping at the trees.  And once they left the beach, they were almost immediately swallowed by jungle.

            Neverland’s jungle was a wild, untamed place, the ferns seeming to reach for the trespassers’ ankles, the branches to graze at them as they passed.  It felt like the vines were slithering over the tree trunks as if itching to ensnare.  The dense underbrush quickly grew impassible, forcing Hook and his men to draw their swords.  They would have to cut their path to the lagoon, only slowing them down further when they could barely afford it.  They were passing through the island at its narrowest point, but even then it would take them at least two hours to conquer the jungle.  By which time Marooner’s Rock would be almost submerged by the tides.

            The three barely spoke to each other as they trudged through the now-darkened jungle, the only sounds being the ambient noises of the wilderness and the impact of their blades slicing through vine after vine.  Blanco’s silence could be written off as the man’s usual stoicism, but Demont’s betrayed his worry.  The Verician was one of the talkers of the Disaster Crew, often serving as sidekick to Larimore.  Hook could remember nights back before he had been elected captain, when he’d still shared sleeping quarters with the rest of the men, where the two idiots couldn’t shut the fuck up.  So it was almost unnerving to see Demont so quiet.  But the Verician had been a team with Gaspar and Larimore under de Soto, before Hook had even been brought aboard the Jolly Roger.  So the captain couldn’t say that he was surprised by the man’s despondency.

            When they finally broke through to the beaches of Mermaid Lagoon, all three pirates were panting, their shirts stuck to their backs from sweat.  Very little of the actual beach was visible, hidden by the tide just was it was in the pirates’ cove.  Marooner’s Rock was in the very center of the lagoon when at low tide, but at high tide it seemed so much further out to sea.  At this time of day, the rock itself was mostly submerged, only its tip remaining to break the violent waves of the coming tide.

            And there, struggling amongst the waves, was Gaspar.

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