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Stroke
By
KareemShaik,
Afellownotpompousenoughtohavehisnamebiggerthan
theactualtitle.
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Kareemullah Shaik
10922 Poblado Road, Apt.2411
San Diego, CA
(858) 521-8443
STROKE
By Kareem Shaik
about x words
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For
My Mom,
Oda Eiichir And
The Internet, along with Al Gore,
For inventing it.
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Chapter one
Avielle wakes
Setting: at ICP, on Thanatim Isle, upon Mistil, round
Patrick, Universe 53, at approximately(I question that.)
11:34:26 a.m., on the day of 9/12/1336.
Characters:
Avielle Bewt of the 23rd, a slightly(very slightly) pink girl
with a fiery sort of mud colored hair, standing at a
respectable height of 5'9", and although she probably would
not want you to know, with a weight 129 pounds. 17 years old.
Mister Black, a chubby(very chubby) man. I kid not here.
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Sir!, she said, as if he hadnt quite addressed her well
enough, The docks, where are they?
The peddler was quite illiterate, so he simply pointed to the
south and to the ocean, where in fact most docks are located,
smiled, and said Dock.
Thanks, and the girl was gone.
The peddler chuckled quietly to himself, and thought that the
girl was quite illiterate to the subtle nuances of nature.
Simply by looking at the various frozen pools of water, one
could see it was too cold for any sort of fish, and that the
docks had obviously flown south for the winter.
And so the peddler went on peddling.
A few moments later, after the jumping of various fences,
stone walls, and old sleeping hobos, Avielle hit the outer
wall of people of what was the Iniquitous Cymbalic (or, in
some awkward circles, Kumbalic) Port.
The ICP stood true to its officially-christened name, standing
as the largest harbor on the seas to pirates, thieves and the
like. The docks were shabbily built, broken granite covered
with glinting sand the roads, and heavy log posts draped with
old palm fronds the buildings. The horizon lent itself to the
sea, an endless mirror of the sky and the domain of the
pirates.
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She broke through the endless stream, elbows slicing through
the crowd behind her. And thusly before her stood the Central
Tent, in all its magnificent glory. Gold and blue stripes
shone as the sun and the sky, the bottom half overtaken by wet
moss, giving the effect of a creeping, lively canopy. Now,
the Central Tent was often called so because it was in the
vague center of the Port, and also because it was (usually) a
tent. Not too many people know what else exactly the Central
Tent could be, and Avielle certainly did not.
So, entirely ignoring the certain centric tentfullness of the
place, Avielle heeded the time and hurried in. The inside was
wonderfully lit, the shiny gold reflecting a certain wheel-of-
fortune-esque shape upon the floor, which looked rather non-
menacing, considering the startling effect the rest of the
tent-room had.
Tables, hurriedly constructed from various large pieces of
flotsam arranged themselves around the center, forming a
haphazard spiral to the entrance. Businesspeople, captains of
various vessels, and a few more businesspeople lined the
tables in search of crew, money, and grog, while others looked
for captains, prostitutes, and anyone who was up for a good
time. A few others looked for people renowned for being all
three.
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Now if they could all find each other and leave off, Avielles
work would be done, and she could go on her merry way. But
they couldnt, and so neither could she. Avielle rushed
through the throng of people, looking for the man. Oh, god,
that man. That horrible pig-bodied man! Ugh. But then her
heart skipped. There, a few dozen feet from her sat the
spherical lardbucket of a man, his head adorned with lenses of
quite a wealthy demeanor, turned down at a stack of rather
boring looking papers which I do not care to explain about,
for it would be mind-numbingly boring. Avielle frolicked over
to what was left of this man, ecstatic that she had finally
been at the right place at the right time. If she hurried,
shed still be able to make it. Oh, Joy.
Aylo!
This man, who had absolutely no conceivable neck, regardless
turned it upwards at this simple interjection.
Yes?
I, sir, dlike to rent a boat.
Rent, as if. Get yer scummy littol face out of mine before I
gotta threw yea out.
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She had entirely expected this. She slipped her hand down the
bosom of her dress, clutching the rough leather bag with utter
confidence. It fell upon the wood with a certain divine
clang, gold upon lovely gold, at which point the mans eyes
swelled with the quaint idea of making his fat little wallet a
little bit fatter. The sack was black leather, tied with an
exquisitely olive ribbon which Avielle had picked up from a
rather affluent looking girl at a party in old Scaints. Oh,
man. Those were the days.
By now, pig man, who before was doing something almost
certainly uninteresting but on a deep level comforting, Im
sure, was a bit confused. Here stood a girl who was almost a
total idiot, staring off into space and grinning oddly as if
shed done something that most in society would consider
unacceptable, but she considered a proud event.
Piggy was immediately reminded of an old friend of his, a
tightrope walker who tripped, fell, and died while walking on
a sidewalk. After mourning his loss, he quickly distanced
himself from the man, because that whole incident stuck of
unacceptable-ness. When Avielle turned back, Hogster had a
glazed look over his eyes, staring off into the distance,
ultimately pondering how he had made friends with a tightrope
walker.
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Avielle fist rose and flickered for a moment, before charging
into Swinoes face, displacing a healthy amount of fat from
one side of his face to the other, as his round glasses flew
off his face and he flew off his chair. An eye purple and
swollen, his oily hair-covered face pointed down, with blood
trickling down his eye, wiped his face with his jacket-sleeve
and jumped over the table, surprisingly light for his
unexaggeratable girth, fists promptly thrust into the air.
This singular moment of chaos sparked the Tent into a flurry
of table-jumping and scabbard-throwing, whereupon Avielle
burst into real life, her head and arms on the table, sweating
slightly, to the disgusted recoil of porknugget. She popped
herself back up, spine erecting fast, smooth and quick as
mercury. The general areas attention was planted on her, a
few tables coming to a suspenseful standstill among the great
spiral.
Hardly oblivious of the lard-thick tension around her,
Avielles heart raced. How often had she descended into this?
Was her life just that blatantly uninteresting?
The strange girl, who was now sweating profusely, placed her
hand upon the table, head hung, breath shallow, in an attempt
to calm down. It worked, for the most part. Grudgingly, the
big man turned back to his work, his triple chin folding back
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again, trapping his throat in perpetual suffocation. It were
these nutcases that gave any sort of spark to his life,
although he despised them. Sufficiently chilled out by then,
Avielle inclined her head upwards, just enough to notice what
the balloon was actually doing. Laid across his desk were
several papers, probably in some primeval form of organization
too complicated for most people on -and off- Mistle. But the
top one was the one that caught her attention, which was
albeit easy to acquire anyways.
Requist of foreign Portage
As Marcus Nistum, High and Nobel Iniquitor of the Royale
Sconnish State and Captain of the vessel Golden Sheath, I
request hasty portage at the ICP, so my men can rest and shut
eyes, for it is but a while til the Great Tug and Ug defers
our voyage until a later time. The battle raft Iron Blade
rests with your shipwright at the moment, where it shall
remain until you allow us to sail in. As an escort, money is
plenty among us, for we have few men to feed and little work
to do, and a healthy bit might be in for you, if you hear the
notes. I truly and humbly apologize for my tone of speaking,
but I am foreign.
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Marcus A. Nistum,
Stupid foreigners, the overweight gentleman thought. What with
their stupid ship names and bad grammar. He'd hated bad
grammar since he had learned good grammar. The edges of his
sight had to wriggle a bit and some light hippie refrain play
in the background for a few seconds before he got hold of
himself again. With a reluctant and timeworn hand, he lifted
and stamped out a large green APPROVED, tossed the paper into
the messenger boy's box, which was nothing more than a squat
wooden box, for the messenger boy, if you expected me to say
something pleasantly droll, and moved on.
Avielle, due to my incredibly long unbroken sentence, could
not but interrupt on the sequence of events at this convenient
pause. Realizing that being an official privateer of Scones
meant that he was probably also going back to Scaints, to
report on the fact that he now was able to report on affairs
at speeds that he was previously unable to utilize, now having
a battleship. Well, it was a good chance he'd do it. Avielle,
if you haven't realized by now, wasn't one to miss chances.
She snatched the box, and it flew up to her shoulder, almost
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her from the ocean, longing for its spanning blue depths.
Hurrr. She hurried. Among a healthy stack of papers plastered
with large red 'NUPE's followed by several of what seemed like
hand-drawn exclamation marks, she found the green APPROVED,
and chucked the rest of the papers over the fence, where they
blew down the hill, nicking several large, burly men, who
eventually would have discovered the Great Isle of Coinci, had
they not been infected with the first traces of the Inq Fever,
the disease which would eventually wipe Mistil of their
species, which apparently was not limited to just large burly
men, but also the rest of the human population, who, up to
this point, had been cheerfully excluding large burly men from
their definition of human, barring any chance for them to get
medical treatments or invitations to affluent parties in
Scaints. Avielle picked up speed. About a hundred yards ahead
of her, she saw the gate to the Main Docks, a surprisingly
well guarded place, considering the incompetent sort of work
the government did otherwise, which is in fact the only
singular fact that all 332 universes of the third dimension
have in common. In around 13 seconds (Or so I think, I doubt
anyone has kept a record of this for posterity), the gate
flourished in front of her, a black uninteresting thing,
rectangular in size, iron rusted and crumbled from the inside
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leaving hardened pillars of paint. Two men (large and burly,
if you were curious) solemnly guarded the gate, mouths open
and eyes flickering towards the slightest movement in their
immediate proximity with a particular quickness. Their minds
actively played out a colorful, if not bloody, series of
scenarios where every passing beggar, merchant, pirate, and
grain of sand could, and would attack the port and exactly how
they'd come to the rescue, being proclaimed kings of the land
and perhaps even the heavens. Avielle, after pitying them for
a few seconds, stepped cautiously forward. Their eyes firmly
affixed on her by then, the men grunted slightly, crossed
their sharp pointy sticks, and said "Identefacation, ma'am" ,
in a rather unoriginal fashion. Avielle stuck out her arm, all
the while mesmerized by how pointy their sticks were. Wow.
So...pointy. God, this man knows how to make a stick pointy.
Wow. The men stared blankly at the papers, and came to realize
that this girl actually had permission to get into their
domain. This made them cross.
Like two extremely large and muscular pieces of identical
clockwork, they simultaneously pursed their lips and crossed
their eyes. What was strange was that one eye from from either
of them looked her straight on, while the other looked over
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the crowded crowd. Avielle shivered. It was as if they'd been
practicing for the chance.
"You may passs", the one on the left said.
So Avielle passsed them, and she was amazed at how easy it was
to do so. She'd never attempted it before, and she considered
herself to be done with new things for the day.
Once out of their sticks' range, Avielle picked up her sprint
again. If the papers allowing them to anchor at the port had
been signed a few minutes ago...She did some calculations in
her mind, which mostly consisted of taking how many days had
passed, and adding two. The ship would have ported around 2
days ago! She felt mildly proud of herself. Certainly enough
time to sleep and collect Lime-biscuit(), the ascorbick slab
for scurvy-caused drab(), which she thought were just dry
lime juice puddles.
Then, she heard a voice.
"Hey, lady!"
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It came from the gate.
"Hey , Hey Lady!"
It being evident from the tone that it was the pair at the
gate, the girl spun on her heels.
"So, didya like that eye thing we...", said one.
"That eye..."
"Um, yes, that eye thi..."
"Ah, right. Yes. That...that eye... thing."
"Yes, that."
"It was pretty!", she lied back.
"Yes, well, thanks!", said the first.
"Right!", said the second.
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"We've been practicing!"
"Uh huh", replied Avielle, smiled, turned, somewhat muddled,
and shuffled off over the sand to the docks. She then promptly
grabbed a dinghy that probably belonged to someone else(A fact
which she knew but could not give a damn about, although she
tried very hard to), and sailed noisily(very noisily) off the
festering brown wooden mess that were the docks.
Her eyes(one black, one green, colors which seemed to switch
eyes every time she blinked) blinked with the hot mist of
seawater, frothing like clouds over the green sea. She blinked
a few more times and looked around. There they were, the
Golden Sheath, a large galleon, and the Iron Blade, drifting
slowly and without direction, about 20 yards from her. She
oared faster; she just had to make it.
About a minute later, she made it. Hair and clothes soaked and
flat, she jumped on the ship with right around no sense of
intelligence, but rather a sort of raw will to grab wooden
things. Her nails dug into the hard wood of the port side,
and her cheek seemed to be hugging a barnacle, but she'd made
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it. Crawling for minute cracks, she slowly made her way to the
edge of the deck, which seemed to be currently empty.
Strange. Mus' be checking the work or such.
She jumped onto the deck with the slight of a slipper made out
of squirrel fur, which is to say, very lightly. Careful to
avoid the stare of the candle from the brig, she crawled
around the edge of the ship, looking for the battleship
(previously mentioned).
It was chained to the stern, but had drifted to the starboard.
At the other side of the ship, she slid down the frayed yellow
rope, which seemed to be able to hold her weight, onto the 10
yard long gray gleam that was the Iron Blade. It was a strange
ship, like nothing she'd seen before. It was the shape of a
long teardrop, with the normally trailing edge(in a teardrop,
you see) the apparent bow. The entire vessel sat low in the
water, stick ing out 5 feet at the highest. The top was
painted a dull grey-blue, invisible from most directions. She
first turned the large tap shaped knob she presumed to open
the door(it was attached to the door) sharply to the right. It
stayed closed.
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Righty ti...Ah, right.
She turned it to the left, and it slipped open smoothly. The
sky moaned slightly, gray as cold metal but not nearly as
sharp. Avielle thrust her feet into the hole, and sat
pondering life for a few seconds. Why was she doing this? She
looked up at the moist sky, still halfheartedly spewing
raindrops. Her nose scrunched. At approximately 12 thousand
yards per hour, a raindrop collided with her left(currently
green) eyeball.
OW, she said, and slid inside.
Bloody rain
Marcus(Ill wait for you to look back) heard that.
What in the w?, he said.
Ill look, said one of his powder monkeys.
Yes, I know, said Marcus, his eyes back on the map.
The boy crawled out of the belly of the ship, and with feet
bare, wet and sickly, walked over to the edge of the ship,
watching closely for stowaways that might have(rather
stupidly) climbed on. He marveled for a second at the deathly
machine that floated silently to the side.
Nothing.
The men were climbing out by now. The captain climbed up the
stairs of the brig and then to the helmsman.
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20 degrees starboard, man.
The helmsman nodded and swung the wheel. The captain, fr some
reason solemn now, looked up. His long gray hair shuffled
slightly. At approximately 13 thousand yards per hour, a
raindrop collided with his eye.
OW
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