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.Excelsior	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Gulliver's Travels Views: 2164 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
Another not quite sequel, but in the same universe as Xchanged Student
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Sissara looked up when the other girls in the study group started to laugh. She couldn't see anything more than a table away. She looked over at Brunellete. They shared a shrug and waited.
Lou showed up between Belinda and Abby's shoulders. He was dressed oddly, even for a human. Striped shirt, bright cloth as a hat, something green and lumpy on his shoulder and a fringed leather vest.
"Ahoy, Mates!" he said in a gruff accent, swept the cloth off his head and gave the table a deep bow.
"Talk Like A Pirate Day is tomorrow," Abby said as he sat down. She probably had it in her planner. Ara noticed Brun nodding with a smile.
"Don't understanding that pretend," Ara sneered in Fuscan.
"Among the Englishmen I yeared," Brun pointed out….for the first time in almost two hours. Ara shook her head and looked back at Lou.
"Aye, tis well known to me and Polly, both," he was saying. "But it likes me fine to heave to and trice up a day before. Gets us both in the mood, as it were."
"Polly?" Brun asked. He waved towards the green knitted lump..
"Aye, we have to practice up the pirate alphabet, don't you know." He chucked the bird under the beak. One of his hands was out of sight below the table and apparently operating it somehow. His ventriloquism wasn't polished but it made the other girls giggle.
"Awk! Eh! Bee! At Sea! Aye! Oooh! Arrrr!"
"Shut the hell up," Belinda growled.
"You're all just jealous of me bird," he told her.
"I'll give you a bird," Abby muttered. Then she turned to Brun and Ara on their little stand. "Talk Like A Pirate Day is supposed to be international. Do they suffer it in Lilliput?"
"Not especially," Brun replied. "We don't overly romanticize our pirate period."
"What do you romanticize?" Lou asked. "What could you possibly romanticize more than bounding the main and trimming the o'sail?"
"Tomorrow," Belinda said, "I'm going to make you define every nautical term you misuse. Or pay a penalty."
"Let me be, woman, and I'll divvy up me rum with ye."
"Oooh," she smiled. "Um, sorry, Brun."
"Okay it always is," Brun said with her own smile. "Knocking a nautical nabob's knees needs doing, so nary a worry." The girls giggled at her alliterative skills. She took a bow and went on. "Anyway, we do go on about our ninjas."
"Lilliputian ninjas?" they chorused.
"There aren't any such scallywags!" Lou asserted. "Stop your drivel, little woman, or have ye already been at the cask?"
"Oh, we have ninjas," Ara said. "We didn't call them that until the captain of the rediscovery ship started hosting Movie Night on the beach."
"What did you call them before that?" Belinda asked.
"Your Grace." The humans blinked. "Well, the Royals run the country. Their closest relatives have skill sets to support them. One bloodline specializes in assassination and espionage."
"Really?" Abby asked. "What line would that be?"
"Hers," Brun told them.
"That a family secret is!" Ara hissed at the other noblewoman.
"Then Time Magazine kept it should," she replied.
"No," Lou said, shaking his head. "Not a chance in hell. No way there's Lilliputian ninjas."
"Him to wager," Brun whispered.
"Want to bet?!" Ara shouted, realizing just too late what the bitch had talked her into.
"Bet what?" Lou asked suspiciously.
"Rum!" Belinda said instantly, smiling down at the two smallest of her three roommates..
"What terms?" he asked. Everyone's eyes drifted towards Abby.
"What? You want me to set the terms of a wager on an instant's notice?" They all stared. "Okay, okay. I assume you already have rum? And it's in an appropriately piratey barrel?"
"Cask," he corrected.
"Okay. Have that some place in your room. Ninja Sissara will sneak into your room and deprive you of some or all of your rum."
"Okay," he agreed.
"Then tomorrow, if you are caught misusing a nautical term, you have to pay out one jigger of rum to each of us. When you run out of rum, you have to stop talking like a pirate."
Lou thought about that for a second. "So if she doesn't manage to sneak off with any of my rum," he mused, "and I don't make any mistakes, I can be Salty Sam all day. If she gets it all, I can't say one piratey thing, no matter how low the sun is under the yard arm." He nodded. "I accept that, Milady Ninjasan Sissara."
"Domo," she said.
"As long," he added, "as it's only you that steals the rum. No rolling the cask to a window and having a confederate carry off with it."
"Cross my kidneys," she assured him.
"So no matter what," Belinda made clear, "tomorrow, I am going to get some rum."
"Not if I don't make any mistakes," Lou pointed out.
"That's what I said," she replied. He stuck his tongue out. Abby finished typing the terms of the wager on her laptop, then turned to the Lilliputians.
"Hey, Brun, aren't you from a noble family, too?" She nodded. "Then what does your family do for the crown?"
"We were pirates," Brun said with a giggle. Ara rolled her eyes. It was the truth, but the delivery ensured the humans would think she was having them on.
She pushed the manipulative heir of privateers out of her mind. She had a mission to plan.
---------

When the water bottle was secured on the pipe, Ara turned her attention to the power socket. Her sensei had powerful opinions on the potentials of a human power socket.
They ran through her mind as she sawed the head off of one of the bolts holding it in place.
"Humans put electricity all over the place," he'd been fond of pointing out. "They've usually placed somewhere out of view. They're pre-cut holes in any sort of walls. And all you have to do is undo a screw from inside the wall.
"But there are three good reasons not to try covert entry through a socket." She changed her grip on the saw and attacked the other side of the bolt.
"One, if you make the lights flicker, you'll put them on the alert. Two, if you interrupt power to their toys, if you make the music stutter or the computer reboot, they always look to see if the power is plugged in.
"It doesn't matter how obscure the plug's location is if you make them look for it while you're crawling out of it.
"And three? They may not hear you screaming, but I assure you, they'll smell you cooking."
That had been the point in the lecture when the students realized someone was burning pig meat somewhere nearby. She wasn't trying to gain entry through the wall socket, but the image almost made her puke anyway.
She put the thought out of her mind with her chant. "Am I not a creature of zephyr and darkness?" she asked herself a few times. By the time she was stable, the bolt was cut clean through. She threaded the length out the back and tossed it into the darkness.
The hose leading down to the water bottle was lashed to the pipe she stood on. In moments she had that fixed in place behind the screw head.
She ran along the pipe to the back of the heating register. The rubber gasket around the part of the steam pipe that that went into the room was old and cracked. She sawed through the lip on this side of the wall and gouged out as much of the sleeve as she could reach.
Then she turned off her light and started to push. With her back to the pipe, she pushed and pushed with her feet. The rubber tore and compressed and eventually moved.
The hard part was probably that it was painted over on the other side. Once she got a tiny part to lift off the wall, the rest was easier.
Finally, the gasket was pushed a couple of inches past the wall. She listened for a minute. Lou was doing something in the room, but she didn't detect anyone right at the opening.
She eased her bags through, using lengths of dental floss to lower them gently to the floor. Then there was nothing but squeezing through the opening. Ara measured the space with her hands and took a deep breath. "Am I not a creature of zephyr and darkness?"
She whipped a cord around the pipe, put her feet against the elbow and pushed. It was a tight fit, but not a long tunnel. Just as her feet lost purchase on the bend in the pipe, her own elbows were through and pushing on the wall.
Her hips were the worst. She was reminded of the obstacle course back at the mansion, and the insane 'girdle' mother had forced her through twice a day. Up until puberty, it had been fun.
"Am I not a creature of zephyr and darkness?" she whispered. "Am I not a creature of….of….too many Snickers?"   She had to get back into shape. If that hamster wheel wasn't so damned humiliating…
The poor girl was just starting to develop intimacy issues with the pipe when she finally slithered free.
The cords wrapped around her hands gave her a moment to rest and catch her breath, hanging from the pipe, gazing down at giant dust bunnies behind the heater.
Then she moved to the other side of the gasket. She hung from the pipe and kicked it back into place. It would pass a casual inspection, which she suspected was far more than she really needed.
She brushed the dust off her bags and set off.
------
Lou sat in the middle of the room playing a video game. He'd moved his TV so that he faced the room entry as he played. Obviously he expected her to slip in under the door.
She shook her head and unfolded her claws. They were designed to help climb up to the window of a stone castle back home. On a human wall it was practically an escalator. She made the top of his desk in moments, making up for the time spent in that freaking entry.
The cask sat rather smugly in the center of his desk. She slid underneath it and placed the drill. A few drops of rum leaked past the self-threading plug. She was simply forced to lick them off her hands. No evidence was a rule, not a suggestion.
When the plug was set, she fitted the hose from her bag and watched it fill with fluid. There were a few bubbles but she pressed them through and into the cask.
With the tube cleared of bubbles, she very carefully climbed up the side of the cask. She gently slid a nail between the cork and the edge of the opening it stoppered. It made a small gap, but enough of one to allow air into the cask.
Then she took the bitter end of the hose to the edge of the desk and threw it down. She jumped to the back wall and climbed quickly down.
The screw head came off with a sharp blow of her cushioned fist. The hose sealed to the aperture behind the socket face. She heard one gurgle then nothing.
With two fingers pinching the smaller hose on her side of the wall, she could detect that the rum was flowing but otherwise it was as silent as a ninja.   She started the timer on her watch.
She stole under his desk until she could watch him. From here, the back of his bandana-covered head hardly moved. When shadows crossed the space under the door he glanced down but that was about it.
She got comfortable and waited.

------
Her watch vibrated, taking her out of a doze. Lou hadn't moved or made any noise that would have alerted her.
According to her calculations, the cask should have emptied itself by now. She retreated back to the hose. Rum still flowed but only weakly.
Another climb to the desk top. The last little bit of alcohol drained out as she approached the cask. With a smile under her mask, she tried to pull the hose free. It didn't move.
Well, the rules had forced her to work alone to steal the rum. This was cleaning up the evidence. In her mind, and Abby's, conspirators were allowed for this part. She pulled out her phone and hit the speed dial. Then she waited.
After a few moments someone stepped up to Lou's door. He saw the shadow of their feet and watched. His door rattled a bit but it wasn't a knock. He stood up.
Ara jumped to the top of the cask.
He stepped to the door. She recovered her nail.
He opened the door swiftly, hoping to catch whoever it was. She jumped back down.
He took a step outside to look up and down the hallway. She slid under the cask, braced her feet on the wood and yanked on the hose.
Lou started to back into his room. Sissara pulled the hose free with a loud, to her, pop.
He saw the picture taped to his door. She slid across the desk as one stealing home plate, shooting over the edge into space.
He read the caption, "Ninja Girl is on ur boat, stealing ur rumz." She slapped the wall with her slippers and gloved hands, slowing her fall. She absorbed all the remaining inertia by simply flexing her knees.
"Very funny," he laughed. She pushed on the hose in the wall, unseating the floss holding it in place. It dropped down the wall space, dragging the rest of the hose after it. She fed it through the screw hole, imagining the plug cover was sucking one long strand of spaghetti.
"Unless…" he muttered. She slapped a handful of adhesive in the hole and replaced the screw head.
He stepped over to the cask and tapped it. She ran on tiptoe to the heat register and slid beneath it.
"DAMMIT!" he shouted. She restrained a giggle and moved for her exit. He moved the desk around while she pulled the gasket clear. A few loops of dental floss ensured that she could pull it back in place after she made her egress.
Then she took a few deep breaths and slid into the hole. He continued to swear around her.
She was halfway though the hole when disaster struck. There was a ping somewhere in the distance. Then one closer. The steam started to flow.
Holy EGG! She thought to herself. Boston was a lot farther to the North than Lilliput, but it shouldn't have been cold enough to require heating yet.
Any human inside a schrict felt like a blast furnace. How the hell could they be cold in September? She started working harder to slip through the hole.
The steam in the pipe changed it's shape, expanding it in several spots. It was a very small change, hardly noticeable to a human, outside of the ricochet sound.
To a Lilliputian caught between the pipe and the wall, though, it was more than a little significant. She was pinned in place. Then the pipe at her back started to heat up.
If it was winter, she'd have worn her heat shield. It was September, though. That was only winter in the eggforsaken zones humans took up occupancy. It was going to be a slow, painful death.
She was halfway through consigning herself to her fate when she remembered this wasn't an actual mission, not for any royals, anyway. Bugger the bet, she'd just call for help.
Except that she couldn't scream. She couldn't even speak. She could hardly breathe! Oh, goody, she thought. It's a race between suffocating and cooking.

Just before she passed out, something touched her face. It was a hand. And if it was on the side of the wall touching her face….
Ara looked up at Brun's worried face. It was just barely visible in the light slipping around the pipe.   And it was starting to look pretty blurry around the edges.
"Come on!" Brun said urgently but quietly. She braced herself between the wall and the pipe and pushed. There was the barest of relief of pressure. Ara took a deep breath, another, then let everything out and pulled.
She got an arm free and Brun took it. They pulled desperately. The sweat made their grips bad, the heat made everything worse. Ara's ass cheeks were burning up where they slid along the pipe.
But it wasn't ninja training that kept her from screaming out. It was the knowledge that Brun's butt was pushed just as tight against the same hot pipe and SHE wasn't even whimpering.
After about forty years and a million degrees, she finally cleared the hole. She did a half-somersault and fell down to the waste pipe beneath them. Brun gasped and landed next to her.
They lay draped across the pipe for a while. Somewhere in the distance, Lou was calling "Olle, olle, oxen free. Where're you at, Ara?"
"What's next?" Brun finally asked.
"Put the gasket back in place," Ara panted. "Then siphon the rum down to our room." Neither made a move to start the work.
"I don't really like rum," Brun said after a minute of immobility.
"I used to," Ara said, gesturing airily towards the steam pipe.
"Let's put the gasket back, then put the rum on our to-do list," Brun suggested.
"Okay. Okay." Sissara sat up and reached for the wall. "Um. Thanks."
"My pleasure," Brun said. She held out her hand and Ara pulled her up. "Now I have bragging rights."
"Bragging over what?" Ara asked.
"Well, maybe only a ninja could have pulled off this theft? But it took a pirate to save the ninja." She smiled and started climbing up to the hole.
Ara started up at her for a long moment. "Yolk sucking BITCH!" she whispered. Then she smiled and started up after her friend.
- 4
- 5
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