"The Hula Girl"
Jemma didn’t know how long she was in that holding room, it felt like forever but in reality it was probably only about an hour with her curled up in the corner as her mind raced over all of the horrible things these barbarians were going to do to her when they came back. She had stopped crying about 30 minutes into the wait but occasionally the tears would fall down again as she thought about her family, her partner Fitz, and her safe cozy library at home. She probably would never see them again.
She yelped as the door slid open suddenly and that awful pirate stepped in to the holding room, her boots loud on the metal floor.
The pirate called for the lights to come on and they obeyed, then she scanned the room until her eyes fell on Jemma in the corner. The librarian was currently trying to back herself as far away as possible from her captor. She didn’t look up even though she knew that she was being watched closely.
“Sorry about that, we had to get to a safe distance.” She didn’t sound as horrible as the first time Jemma heard her voice but that didn’t help to calm her nerves.
“What are you going to do with me?” Jemma asked, still not looking up at the captor, she was scowling and pulling her knees tighter to her chest.
“Don’t worry, you’re just going to stay with us, then we’ll either ransom you or just drop you off at Tah-Woh. You’ll be back with your wife before you know it.” The pirate sounded cheerful and that made Jemma grimace, but she looked up finally, confused.
“I don’t have a wife.” She stated bitterly,
The pirate’s eyes widened in surprise and she pulled out her little hand held device, “Really? I just though that the way Morse was talking you guys were married?”
A hologram was activated from the device and Captain Bobbie Morse’s face appeared, even in the holographic state anyone could tell that she was fuming. She snarled at the camera, “I swear on my honor that you will be caught and Dr. Simmons will be returned to me safe and sound, you scum, you’ve just made the worst mistake of your life.”- She practically spat into the moniter.
Her anger actually made Jemma feel warm inside and she let slip a little smile, which was gone as soon as Skye whipped the device off and back into her pocket. “Someone’s looking out for you.” Skye quipped almost bitterly.
Jemma shook her head, although perhaps, she thought she should have just told the pirate that she was married to Morse, maybe it would have put some fear into her smug face. Jemma looked away, scowling at the wall, she didn’t even glance up when Skye sighed above her in frustration.
“Ugh, come on, do you wanna see the rest of the ship?” The pirate held her hand out and the Dr. looked at it distastefully.
“If you want me to..” She almost growled, Skye groaned impatiently,
“I’m like the nicest captor in the universe, why are you acting like I’m holding a gun to your head?” She squatted down to be on Jemma's level.
“You did hold a gun to my head!” Jemma snapped, she immediately regretted it, she had never been a hostage before but she guessed it probably wasn’t a good idea to yell at them. Luckily for her though, Skye simply made the same groaning noise, the one that made Jemma feel like she was the one being completely unreasonable.
“Here, look!” Skye offered, pulling a gun off her hip and pointing it towards her own chest, she pulled the trigger. Jemma screamed at the click, but her reaction was unwarranted, the gun shot out a flash of blue light which bounced off the captain’s suit and then disappeared into the air as quickly as it had been created.
Jemma’s eyes widened as she processed what she just saw, she paused, “You mean when..” The captain nodded with a small “Yup” in answer and Jemma's jaw tightened. “So I.. You have no bullets.. What kind of pirate are you?”
Skye stood up and placed the empty gun back into it’s holster, “The nice kind..” She glanced back towards the door and added more quietly, “Also arms dealers prices are ridiculous these days...”
Jemma was still processing the new information as the captain looked down at her, “So you want the grand tour or what? It’s gonna be a few days and you’re going to get really bored just sitting in the hold.”
“You trust me?”
" I think I could take you even without my gun.” The captain held her hand out again to aid Jemma.
Jemma didn’t respond, she only continued to scowl but she did rise, using the wall as support rather than Skye’s hand. The captain shrugged and gestured to the door, “Follow me.”
Jemma did and they left through the hold door, into a long connecting hallway. The walls were worn and pieces of metal hung from the corners and from missing screws and bolts in the wall. The carpet was a dull purple color with thin down trodden threading that was coming apart at the edges.
Only about 6 feet forward the Captain stopped at the first door to the left. The doors opened with a fizzle that didn’t sound healthy at all. Skye didn’t step in but she moved to the side so that Jemma could see in and it was just another shorter hallway, only about 4 feet long, leading to another door. “That’s our containment room where we keep our cargo, mostly plundered items of value, it's also the safest part of the ship because in the case of an emergency it can disconnect from the hull and the warp core.” Skye explained in her best impression of a 8 A.M tour guide. Jemma remained silent. “So if shit blows up, head in here and hold on to your ass.”
Skye nodded proudly and moved forward up the hallway almost four feet and stopped at the next door on the right. It opened with the same worrying crackle into an even more diminutive hall than the last with carpet matching that of the main hall. The walls of this part however were in even worse shape as they were pealed back exposing a back wall with what looked like graffiti, scribbled all over the remaining back panel. As they approached, Jemma could see a broken part of the wall with a junction box nearly hanging out, a blue wire hanging down nearly to the floor
Skye, then, led her down the tiny decrepit hall to the door at the end. It opened and Skye backed away so that Jemma could see inside, she reluctantly scanned the dark room. In the middle there four poster bed with broken corners. The bed was sort of made, with a mix of a purple and blue afghan and a tattered quilt, complete, with a variety of animals visible on the squares that were actually intact. The pillows were flat but there were a lot of them. There was a tiny bathroom and tub to the side but besides the body length mirror next to the sink the walls were bare, leaving nothing to distract from the crumbling state.
“This lovely place is my room, you can sleep here till we get there I don’t use it much anyway. The sink and the toilet work but I’m working on the tub so no bath tonight but I’ll get that fixed soon enough.” She stated in a more familiar tone.
She turned away, not waiting for a response from Jemma and left the little hall of graffiti back into the main hallway and stopped only three feet away on the left side where she led Jemma through a longer and cleaner hallway, with white walls that looked rather strange paired with the tattered old carpet, but at least it looked less exposed than the previous.
They walked into a octagonal room that was glaring white from ceiling to floor. It was sparkling clean and looked completly different than everything else that Jemma had seen on "The Hula Girl", it looked like it actuallu belonged in the correct century. “This is where Helen recharges or “Sleeps” as you can see she’s really into minimalistic furniture, anyway, if you ever need anything you can come here and if she’s not in the pod she’ll come and see you, the whole thing is wired with her sensors.”
They left that room and Jemma was just thinking that this was going to take forever at this speed when Skye led her to the very end of the hall where a large double door slid open. The captain raised her arms proudly, “And finally, the best room in the house. Welcome to the bridge and command center for “The Hula Girl"
Jemma, honestly, did not have a lot of experience with space ships but she was pretty sure that they weren’t supposed to look like the bridge of "The Hula Girl”. It was just a guess but she figured that space ships weren't supposed to have exposed wiring all along the ceiling, also that thumping noise coming off her left side did not sound healthy. Besides that and the various circuit boards that were exposed with little metal doors hanging off by weak screws, the place was just dirty; it was messy, there were bits of food and cups all over the consoles, and there was a pile of dirty clothes. What kind of “Command Center” has such a thing? Jemma thought. The entire place looked dirty and unsafe according to Jemma.
Jemma’s noise wrinkled at the sight however Skye smiled and did a small twist in the middle of the floor, kicking a tool box out of the way. “This is where all the action happens!” She stated proudly, then added as if it were a minor detail, “We’re a little low on cash these days but with this job we should be able to fix some stuff up.”
Skye turned away to look at what was probably a navigational console, Jemma stood behind her, not sure what to think about the whole situation. Actually, she did know what to think, she was kidnapped by the worst and most underhanded pirate in history obviously. In terms of a hostage arrangement, it was embarrassing.
“The Mockingbird” had a pretty good stash on her, it should be enough to get us started again, then “The Hula Girl” will be sitting pretty.” The captain patted the console and turned around to face her hostage who was currently staring blankly at the floor, “Helen’s in the storage hold checking what we got, after she’s done going through “The Mockingbird’s loot I’ll have a better idea of what the score’s going to be, and how soon we can get you out of here.”
Jemma remained silent, her eyes trained blankly at the ground, Skye gave a reassuring smile, “Hey, I know this is scary but it was necessary to escape, I hope you know that. I’m going to get you home safely. Hurting or even taking hostages isn’t apart of my philosophy.”
“Pirates have ‘Philosophy’?” Jemma asked coldly, still not looking the captain in the eye.
“Well, it’s generally just ‘fuck the system’ but we all have our own set of rules. This isn’t an ocean, Dr. Simmons, this is space, the void, and no one owns it, no one owns us but ourselves.”
“That’s pretty talk coming from a pirate.”
Skye actually smirked, caught off guard by the Dr’s tone. “And that’s brave talk coming from the hostage of said pirate.” She stated matter-of-factly.
Jemma balled her hands up into fists at her side, now looking straight at her captor, “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to shoot me? With your bullet-less gun? You don’t even have a crew!”
“Uh, Helen.” Skye reminded her.
“Oh that’s just wonderful! I shouldn’t even be here! I should be back doing my job on a safe ship! With nice civilized people! All I had to do was kick you in the shin and I would’ve been free! Screw you and your non-existent pirating career, I want to go home!” She yelled backing away through the door while the captain watched with a raised eye brow, but before she completely left the bridge she stepped back through angrily for one last point, “And this place? Is filthy!” She left down the ship’s one main hallway.
Skye called after her, “That’s a way to be ungrateful! I could be a lot worse, you know! Worst hostage ever!” She sighed and leaned back on the console.