| Details for Oh Ship! |
| Summary: | A gathering of the dangerously adorably and deadly Pirate Crew as they discuss the future of their merry band of cutie pies and start to plan. Things. Terrible Things. |
| Date: | Mar 24, 1938 |
| Location: | Forest Fringe |
| Related: | — |
| Characters |
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Hogwarts
Forest FringeThis large patch of open ground at the Forbidden Forest's very edge is covered in pumpkin vines giving the ground a dark green look with sudden and festive splashes of orange in places where the pumpkins can be seen through the leaves. The pumpkin patch is protected from vermin incursions by three large scarecrows randomly set on large poles throughout, dressed in brightly colored rags and floppy hats the wave and snap with the slightest breeze. The Forbidden forest to the north looms grimly even on the brightest of days. Many trees that should have brightly colored leaves here seem to only have the darkest of green leaves, so dark they nearly look black. Hanging and posted from many trees along the fringe are signs that read !!DO NOT ENTER FOREST!!
When the Captain Cillian leaves an invitation/message, there's always a riddle or a puzzle to solve to get to the message. This time, it was a cookie wrapped in parchment after being broken in two and you had to put both pieces together to read 'Edge of Forest. Bring Tools. After Lunch.' along with the time and all that. He is waiting there, his burlap sack stuffed with edible supplies and his satchel slung over his shoulder as he is kneeling at the moment, digging something up and retrieving worms to drop into a glass jar beside him. Of course…his pirate hat is in place, sporting its magenta feather.
Gabriel comes ambling down the hill from the castle, tossing a red ball into the air and catching it over and over. From time to time he stops walking and ducks under the ball to catch it with the front corner of the tricorn hat he's wearing and actually making the catch almost half the tries. Once he catches sight of Cillian he stuffs the ball into one of the inner
Back in the Hufflepuff Common Room, Charlie was napping from her awesomely huge lunch, the better to fuel her incessant energy with. When she woke up she ate the cookie first, because…it's chocolate, and it would help calm her down to focus on, "Edge of Forest? Tools? After Lunch? That's now!" She bolts up straight in her chair. She starts mumbling 'Hufflepuff' under her breath as she's apt to do when running late these days. She's jogging/running down the hill; she's got a drawstring pack slung over her back, fro-y hair, rumpled clothes, and a bright smile. Yep, still rocking that Stowaway vibe.
A satchel strapped across his back in a sling of deep blue cloth, Cathal's sort of just walking and well… reading all at the same time. The book's not too big so he's able to balance it most splendidly in one hand as he uses the other to occasionally flip the page. It's only when he gets close to the assembled group the somber boy closes the book, snapping it shut as a punctuation before he says,"I do not have tools but I did bring other things." He then unslings the satchel from his back and places it on the ground, the handle of a wooden saber peeking out from the top of the bag in the process.
"'ello Gunny!" Cillian greets brightly as he looks up from his collection of worms, screaming the lid on his jar and shaking it up a bit before peering at it. "…just be needin' some grubs aaannnd a few beetles and I'll be ready to add the cream." He gives a little cackle before turning to see Charlie arriving and he quirks an eyebrow. "Curly!" And then…here comes the somber one and Cathal gets a wave of his hand as well. "Oi! Ye all be comin' thats…well that's excitin'!" He gives a little bounce.
Gabriel finds himself a big pumpkin on the forest side of the patch and promptly sits down on it, watching Cillian for a moment before turning to smile and wave at the rest of the crew. Once everyone else gets down to the same are Cillian and himself are in he digs around in his robes and finally pulls out a hammer and a small canvas bag. "You didn't specify what kind of tools to bring Cap'n so I brought these." He flourishes the hammer and shakes the bag, making it jingle and removing most of the doubt about what might be in it.
"Yes…I brought a saw…and," Charlie starts to narrate as she brings things out of her Marry Poppins like bag. They're magical. It's the norm. She pulls out a long saw from her pack, and then digs deeper, shoving her hand all the way in. "Got something…hold on." She pulls out a letter opener/knife. "For protection," of course. "And…well I suppose that's it. I thought I put more in here but it's all just fizzy drinks." She shrugs.
"I brought us swords. I only have three of them right now." Cathal says shaking his head a little bit,"I do not have any tools handy and the ones back home are for making violins. I doubt that they will be sufficient for what you have in mind." He says seriously. Yes. He makes violins as well as plays them. His blue eyes watch Cillian, Gabriel and Charlie intently for a moment,"So…what is the purpose of this endeavor?"
Cillian hmms softly as he folds an arm over his chest, squinting with his good eye as he looks from person to person and he nods slowly. "Well." His hands are clasped behind his back as he begins to pace. "We 'ave…a hammer…and nails and a saw and a pokey thingie…fizzy drinks and swords, it be obvious what we 'ave to do!" Some rummaging goes here as he digs around in his satchel before tugging out a thick book, holding it up…it has the simple title 'Ships'. "We! Me crew…we are goin' to be building our pirate ship. It is the only way we can protect ourselves."
Gabriel's eyes open wide then a smile slowly starts to smile,"Ooooo… I like that idea. But there's one problem. Where are we going to get the wood for it? We can't go into the forest and even if we could we don't have a way to turn the trunks into boards…" Even after a year, it seems Gabe hasn't gotten fully into the wizarding mindset. But he's clearly ready to think his way through the problem since he's now holding out his hammer and bag with one hand and holding out the other one for the book.
"It's okay! I've got my dagger," Charlie says with a nod of her head as if this is the perfect order of things. "Oh, I should get some rats then!" Yes, because every ship is not complete without rats. "But later, first the ship." She's starting to learn how to keep herself on task. She plops down on a pumpkin. "But what are we going to use-" she shuts up with Gabriel says what she's thinking. Then she looks to the side, at the forest. "Ahem." There must be a fallen log or sommmmething just right there right? She scans the treeline.
"No rats. Those can mess up the ship and ruin our hard work." Cathal says in a very casual manner,"A ship. Do we really have the resources to do such an endeavor? I know the muggles take all sort of time and number of people all working together to build a single ship." He says trying to point out the logic,"Yes we can probably reduce the number of people needed and with a good amount of work get the impervious charm to work. I don't think we can."
Cillian's jaw sets as he listens to the concerns and his hand goes to his hip as he offers the book to Gabriel, shaking his head and sighing softly. "Well. I won't lie…it'll be 'ard as a Slytherin's head but we can do this!" He stomps his foot and nods firmly. Then he points to the forest tree line and then all the pumpkins and vines and such and he shrugs his shoulders helplessly. "We can do it!" A look goes to Cathal as he blinks. "Well." A pause. "Mebbe we can kidnap people?"
Gabriel starts leafing through the book. However, he's clearly paying attention to the conversation as well since he answers Cillian's last comment at about the same time as he stop on a diagram of a sloop, " I don't know if that's the best idea Cap'n… Kidnap victims will compromise project security and secrecy since someone will come looking for them sooner or later. And we would have to feed them and build cells for them. And clean out the cells." He points down at the diagram in the book as he offers a different solution, "Maybe we would be better off taking this diagram and making a smaller version of it so that it can be done, and sailed, by just four or five people. And we can just charm wood out of the forest over to us here. Then we wouldn't be going into it and risking getting thrown out of school…"
"No no no, these will be nice rats. I'll make sure they behave," Charlie tries to reassure Cathal, even if she has to /create/ rats that are nice. She'll make it happen. "Pssh, they don't need all that. Those are niceties. Why when I was a stowaway I didn't have half those things," the Hufflepuff scoffs in good humor. "I could stack them up in one cell. Or I could let them go when things get suspicious and re-kidnap them!" she says, mostly to herself. "I could be in charge of slave labor. Curly the slave driver," she says and then giggles.
"I do not care for them personally. Anyway, it is not wise to kidnap. It will just cause trouble because people will resent us for it. We should find an older student that could help us with things. We can always bribe them into doing the work with chocolate. No doubt many would willingly trade work for such." Cathal says as he considers all of this. His blue eyes watch Gabriel and Cillian more than Charlie who seem to be working on things.
"Accio charms would work pretty okay. We could start wit' the smaller sized tings. Aye." Cillian offers to Gabriel and then he looks to Charlie. "Well…I'll make sure ye 'ave plenty of chocolate to work with the older kids…it'll take some smiles and dimples, but we'll not be kidnappin' I suppose just…hirin' labor. They just 'ave to swear an oath never to tell." Then he looks back to Cathal. "What sort of tings would we need for our ship?"
Gabriel absentmindedly pulls out a pencil from another one of the pockets sewn into his robes and starts doing some math and sketching out a 1/4th scale version of the sloop plans in the margins of the book, being careful to keep his writing light enough to be easily erasable. "As long as the rats are trained not to eat any stores of food we have on the ship I'm OK with them. But I'm still not OK with the idea of slave labor so I vote for the hiring of other people… /If/ we need them. I think we can probably do this by ourselves if we really try."
The gleam in Charlie's eyes suggest that she takes Cathal's distaste for rats as a challenge…quietly of course since she says nothing more of it, for now. She quietly sits, thinks, and listens. "Right, well I'm up for anything," not displeased at all when she learns she doesn't get to be a slave driver. "Aren't we not supposed to be doing magic?" Charlie asks, because kidnapping and slaving is okay, but heaven forbid, a school rule! She looks at Cillian with a little furrow of concern in her brow.
"I'm not sue that we could perform a adequate summoning charm and impervious charm. We'll need some sort of finish to stop the water from getting in." Cathal says nodding his head a little bit,"And it's true. We're technically not supposed to be doing so but as long as we're not found to be doing anything on other students I am not sure that we would get into too much trouble. It's also good to do it without honestly, just not as fast."
The Hat is adjusted for a moment before he quirks an eyebrow…yes Cillian must think this out as he paces and narrows his eyes, looking thoughtful. "Well, we could try 'accio wood thing'." He worries his bottom lip. "Alright! So! Gunny will do the ting as he is doing the ting with the drawing and such. I've done alot of research about /how/ to build it and…well we'll need some special paint." He looks to Charlie. "Curly, ye job will be…to find us some rats and little random critters to help us man the ship iffen we're not gonna get any kidnapped people." Then to Cathal. "And we'll need to figure out a strategy to get our tings easily. Because at this point, I tink maybe we can start piratin' wooden tings…too."
Gabriel keeps working on the scaling down of the plans, "Most of the wood we need is boards really. I think we need to figure out how to turn logs into boards… And how to knock down trees without going into the forest proper. After all, we can't Accio the trees out of the ground, now can we?" Here he pauses for a moment and looks up at the trees, tilting his head a bit to the side as he considers the idea,"Can we..?"
"Well, we should impervius the finish I would suspect. It could be anything, even paint." THERE'S A BRAIN CELL! Charlie shrugs, though when Cillian gives her the task to find critters, she sparks up. "Right Captain!" She'll be a creature slave driver! She leaves the other problems to the other people. "Hmm, maybe some field mice are about at the hills," she considers to herself.
"We can probably perform transfiguration to do the boards, because otherwise we have to get the wood cut and then find the appropriate spells to season the wood." Cathal says without blinking at all,"I will see what we can do. I'm going to investigate things and see if there are any spells that would help us perform the needed tasks. Ravenclaw had a ship back at the beginning of term, so we might be able to figure something out."
Cillian mmhms softly and ponders as he goes back to pacing, hesitating as he eyes the tree line and casually tugs his wand from up his sleeve, eyeing the wand and then the tree line and then back to his wand as he hmms softly. "Yer all very very smart!" He declares before he freezes up and peers at Cathal curiously. "…wait…didn't we /all/ 'ave ships!?"
Gabriel tilts his head a bit to the side and considers Charlie's comment then nods,"Paint should work but pitch is more traditional." He then turns to Cathal, closing the book as he returns fully to the conversation but making sure he keeps the pencil between the pages so as not to loose his place,"What do you think we can learn from the ships we had at the beginning of the…" His face lights up as an idea hits him and he suddenly jumps to his feet, "Wait! We're pirates! Why should we build a ship when there's four of them ready to be pirated if we can just find them?"
Charlie's brow arches up at Cillian's words, bringing her out of her reverie on rats. "What? Oh! That's right!" By her tone, this /does/ change things. "Oh this will definitely be a proper adventure. We should go find them!" she says as if to say, pleeeeeease Captain? She bounces up off her pumpkin, her fro kind if mimicking the motion, though not as sharply.
"Yes. We should try and figure out what happened to the ships. Even with as few as we have we could easily sail some of them." Cathal says as he begins thinking,"Which one should we aim for? If we got the Ravenclaw one, we could also sail the skies."
"…Let us think!" Cillian is going to be wise, yes! He rummages around in his burlap sack before tugging out bars of chocolate and he offers one to each one of his pirates as he nods slowly. "This be serious business. Our first real…raid of substance I be tinkin'." He expresses the gravity of the situation. "The Ravenclaw one 'as wings, aye…like most birds but the Hufflepuff one be 'avin lots of room for food…" He taps a finger against his cheek. "But then we be 'avin to consider the Ravenclaws are really smart and might be 'avin traps and such to catch us…"
Gabriel takes the chocolate bar and then reclaims his seat on the pumpkin. "Well, if we get which the bigger one is we can have better picnics out on the lake where faculty can't bother us… Or we could go after the Gryffindor one too. Its bound to be ready to do battle, in case we ever have to pitch in defending Hogwarts." As he speaks he works on unwrapping his chocolate bar then bites into it, chewing on the candy thoughtfully.
"Like we wouldn't have traps in ours," Charlie says as she snatches the chocolate from Cillian. Huff! "But yes, you're probably right." She settles back down on her pumpkin as well. "Yes, well, he has a point, about battle and all. I imagine piracy won't always be about picnics and flying seems like it would make an awfully large target, but you can't do battle if you can't get to where the battle is," she points out as she munches on her chocolate. Yes, it kind of does help with that thinking thing.
"Untrue. Flying ship would have the high ground benefit." Cathal says shaking his head a bit,"We would not be doing battle directly but we can deal with those that would cause problems. Plus can you imagine being in the air?" He says in a very casual manner. His blue eyes look up towards the sky,"I think it would be interesting. I like flying though on brooms so, not sure it would be worse." His expression doesn't show that he's excited by the idea. "And actually even though it's a good target, you still need overcome the distance."
"…Strings, mate, eat yer chocolate…I tink you might actually be excited 'bout somethin'." Cillian offers with a grin. "Yer usin' so many words!" He winks and shakes his head before looking between Gabriel and Cathal. "Iffen we go 'after that one…ye'll 'ave to do some questionin' and research….yer in that 'ouse after all. Curly and I will try to find out /where/ exactly they be hidin' them ships." He nods firmly. "Its decided."
Gabriel hums happily around his bite of chocolate and then nods as he swallows, "You know, I like the idea of the flying ship. There's less of a chance of spiders in a ship that's in the air. Even on a ship that's always on water there's a chance of a spider floating in on a little stick. They're crafty bugers, spiders." Now that that thought has popped in his brain he seems happy with the idea of going after the Ravenclaw ship too.
"It's /easy/ to overcome that distance, on brooms," Charlie points out with a shake of her head. "Brooms are much more mobile…wait. Well, we could have advanced fliers to protect it anyways…if we were in battle." She shrugs, realizing that the problem could very well be the solution. "I suppose it would work." She's now on board with the flying ship, provided they can properly defend the ship. She turns to regard Cillian and nods. "So it would seem." She looks at the last bit of chocolate in her hand and takes it with her other hand to snatch it out of its wrapper and pop it in her mouth.
"And they would be at a disadvantage. We would be stationary on the boat making for less that we'd need to worry about while they'd be flying and having to focus on their flying and taking aim." Cathal says shrugging a little bit as he begins nibbling at his chocolate,"And spiders are annoying. Always putting their webs in inconvenient places."
Cillian has lots of serious things to consider here as he bites a chunk of chocolate off his bar and chews, cheek puffed out like a lopsided squirrel and he hrmms softly. Then he finally nods to himself. "Or we could just be stealin' the best ship and then ya know, finding the charms to /make/ it fly. Either way, we 'ave to get that ship so all in favor of the ship in the air wit' no spiders and of course advanced defense fliers."
Talking with your mouth full is rude so of course Gabriel just raises his hand. Never you mind that he usually speaks with his mouth full when he really feels like he needs to say something.
"Yes. We will figure out something. I will speak with one of the upper years and see if they know where it was stored." Cathal says nodding his head as he then proceeds to settle down to munch more seriously upon his chocolate.
Cillian cackles and gives a bounce, pumping his fist into the air and then he freezes up. "…oh…but what 'appens if somebody finds out? We 'ave to be very very secretive…"
"I think everyone here can keep a secret, but we just have to be very very very careful," Charlie says as she wads up the wrapper of her chocolate and then tosses it underhanded into her open bag. "Very careful. And if someone finds out, we'll have to deal with that the best way when it comes. We'll figure it out."
Gabriel goes back to his calculations one his chocolate is gone. "Of course we can be secretive. But we have to be careful about how we ask questions about the ships, so that the teachers don't get suspicious." Carefully folding the chocolate wrapper so that none of the chocolate bits are on the outside he tucks it into the back of the book so that it can be used as an ad hoc bookmarker later.
"Asking about ship would not immediately be confused with us trying to commandeer the ship for our own purpose." Cathal says casually,"It is all in the questioning. I think we can do this without raising any suspicions."
Cillian nods firmly and places a hand on his hip, glancing up towards the sky before looking back to his crew. "I'll 'ave to bring Josie up to date on this as well, but we now 'ave a mission." A pause. "We also should be practicin'…the summoning and reparo and err…levitatin' spell tings and…" He eeeeees happily. "We're gonna get our ship!"
"But once it went missing, it would make us prime suspects!" Charlie mentions. "We wouldn't have it for long. Anyways, if we know where they are keeping them, I don't see why we can't keep the ship birthed there until we need it to fly really," she points out, still riding on that chocolate. "After all, we don't have a place to birth it that wouldn't be given away." She looks at Cillian and smiles. "Well it's right proper we commandeer our ship I think, given we're pirates and all," as if it were the loveliest thing in the world.
Gabriel hmmms. OK, that's a problem worth considering. And maybe that's why subconciously he was working on the scaling of the sloop,"Charlie's right. We need to find somewhere to berth the ship where it can't be easily found. And once we have the ship we should probably partially deconstructe it and build it back up so that it looks different. That way even if they see us with it at some point they won't be able to prove it isn't ours." Yep, perfect solution.
"You are assuming that they would notice it going missing. Since the majority of the time we can keep it in the same place, they'd have to be watching it to know when we take it out and besides. It is only logical that they see use. Keeping it birthed is not what a ship is for. You know they say a ship is safe inside a harbour but that's not what a ship is for." Cathal says in his usual manner as he thinks.
"Oh…bollocks…" Cillian considers the new considerations as a captain should, clasping his hands behind his back once more and starting to pace as he listens to what his crew has to say and then he just shrugs. "One step at a time, we 'ave to get the ting first and the decide what to do with it. Ye first get the booty and then ye decide on 'ow to use it!"
Gabriel starts to get up and stuff the various things in his hands onto the pockets of his robes, "Sounds like a plan. But now I have to excuse myself. I have to go write a scroll on the uses of mandrake in potion making. Thank you for the chocolate Cap'n."
"Yes, let's just find out where it is carefully. I think that's a good idea," Charlie echoes. "But when we do find it, we'll have to consider our options," she points out. Then she bounces up onto her feet. "I think we should let the hunt begin!" she beams, eager to get them motivated again on the task at hand. She nods to Gabriel. "Of course. It's also important to carry on." Seeing as they won't be using the tools today, she starts packing up her saw, the 'dagger', and some of the fizzy drinks that fell out of her pack.
"I tend to think of multiple issues at once." Cathal says shrugging a little bit,"Perhaps it is best that I went back as well. I have a scroll on transfiguration that I am not quite satisfied with right now." He says as he gets back up and takes one of the wooden sabers,"Do not forget your blade captain." He says before he begins heading back towards the school.
"Alright! Dismissed crew! We 'ave a week and then we'll see where we are then in this important mission, thank ye all for comin'." Cillian nods slowly before blinking. "Oh! I 'ave to finish puttin' worms…in somebody's sandwich for stealin' the answers off me potions essay without askin'…" He looks to Charlie and Gabriel and Cathal and nods. "…oh, right…and I'll race ye all." He chirps before snatching up his wooden saber and taking off running.
"Oi!" Charlie chuckles and snatches up her pack to make after Cillian, hoping to close ground. "I'll have you!" If she could catch up with him, she'd try and trip him, all in good fun, but that's rather unlikely with his head start, so she just runs like mad after him, giggling madly.