Insistent Assistant 8 (Patreon)

Insistent Assistant

Chapter 8

-VB-

“Wakey, wakey!”

I jolted awake at the unfamiliar sound and the bucket of water that got dumped on me.

“What the hell?!” I shrieked as I whirled around to find my victim! ‘I was perfectly fine with dishing out a beating before breakfa-!’ My thoughts came to a screeching halt, however, when I caught sight of exactly who held a wooden bucket still dripping with water.

Dressed in long sea boots, linen trousers, a striped red sash, a red bandana over his head with the Piece of Eight dangling down, dreadlocks, goatee, a tricorne hat, and a ragged brown post-Elizabethan era long coat…

It was Jack Sparrow.

Which also meant that…

“... Hi, I guess,” I grumbled.

Yeah, I might be feeling a bit miffed at losing Thorkell. He had been with me for months, and I’d grown to like his gruff and maniac. Now… now, there was a flamboyant man who can’t ever shut up in his place.

This was going to take some work to get used to.

“Oi!” Jack whined. Whined. “I can hear that! I can shut up!”

I looked at him, and he looked at me.

He did some weird gestures with his arms, trying to say something before he gave up and slumped.

“Okay, so maybe I can’t shut up, but that’s a good thing! It’s gotten me out of a lot of trouble!”

“And threw you into as many, I wager,” I snorted.

“Yes, but I got out.”

I sighed and then stopped because I noticed something.

I felt … great. Like healthy great. The healthiest I’ve ever been.

Was this because of whatever that Thorkell did before he disappeared?

“Alright, so … Hi, Jack,” I said lamely as I greeted the man.

“Hi, master~.”

I shuddered. “Hey, don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not playing any games.”

“... You realize I’m probably strong enough to punt you a good six foot, right?” I asked with a grin.

Jack’s lopsided grin disappeared and he quickly stepped back while looking away.

The good thing about having had Thorkell as my first servant - or “assistant” as I preferred to call him - was that I got a lot of physical conditioning and buffs, including the final one he gave me last night whose effects I still didn’t know. But if I was as half as strong, fast, aware, and tough as Thorkell, then there were fewer things I had to worry about from the normals of this world.

‘But then again, the normals of this world are crazy,’ I thought to myself. Then I took a breath in and looked at Jack.

Jack must have gotten a hint of what I wanted from him because he froze up and then ran for it.

I chased after him.

-VB-

After chasing him down, dragging him to the cafeteria, and then coming straight to the training yards I spotted the day before, I waited for Jack to choose his weapon of choice.

“Seriously, I don’t get why you don’t want to have a quick spar,” I huffed. “I just want to get to know you a bit better, you know?”

Jack gave me a side glance, and he was making it very clear with his man-pouts that he did not want to do this. Nonetheless, he picked out a saber and turned to face me.

A few of the soldiers training in the yard in the early morning stopped to look at the two of us.

After all, I had already been seen by many soldiers after I saved the king. Even if Thorkell was not here, the pirate-looking guy and I facing off was a treat for them, maybe even a learning experience.

“Do we really have to do something like this, master?” Jack drawled. “I mean, I get why you’re doing this. You want to rank me and see how I match up to Thorkell! Big guy, big weapons, girthy laughter, girthy need for meat-!”

“And letting you talk is a mistake,” I smiled before I lunged forward with my axes.

Despite the fact that he had no stance beforehand, he easily parried my first two strikes.

Then dodged the third.

Kicked my shin before my fourth.

Finally, parried my fourth and fifth strikes away before hopping away like he was on the dance floor.

“Ah ah ah! We mustn’t get too hasty, master!”

Now that he had just established his dominance, Jack grinned like a loon.

I glared at him.

Then I activated it.

See, I liked to call it Battlefield Awareness because it allowed me to perceive everything when a fight was going on. A person normally wouldn’t be able to perceive everything happening on the battlefield because there was too much going on!

But that’s why my Battlefield Awareness came with a little trick.

It slowed down my perception of time just a bit. Not enough to let me go full matrix but it was close enough.

I charged in again.

This time, I timed my strikes with his on purpose. None of my attacks had been swung with the intent to hurt Jack even in the first exchange. All of it had been to gauge him. I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew.

And Jack still parried everything, but left himself wincing from the force of my strikes.

I decided to pull a new one on him.

The moment he parried a strike, I arrested its momentum, making Jack’s eyes widen, and then swung straight back in.

And stopped before I nicked his throat.

For a second, both of us just stood there…

And I looked down.

In the split second that I had used all of my strength to reverse the force of an attack, he had brought his own saber down and pointed it at my core.

I backed off.

“Okay. I acknowledge you. You are Thorkell’s successor.”

Jack looked at me for a second before loosening up.

“You are a troublesome master.”