…cos he needs a good whackin’
On The Road With Violet : Nigel Gets His Gun
After quickly climbing a ladder to the top of the dome that is the turtles interior shell, Nigel slips into a chair inside what looks like a large pipe hanging from the ceiling. After strapping himself in, he releases a catch and the turret begins to rise. Within seconds, it stops and a machine gun rises up from the floor beneath Nigel’s seat, its barrel sliding through a two foot wide firing slot.
Grabbing the handgrips of the machine gun and looking into a periscope device, Nigel locates a pirate and fires away. Screaming as the bullets strike his lower legs, the pirate loses his grip and falls to the ground. As the turret rotates, Nigel shoots one pirate after another, ever careful to disable them, not kill them. Once he has cleared off nearly two dozen of them, he stops firing and looks for more.
As the turret rotates towards the rear of the turtle, Nigel sees several burning pirates rolling about on the road, trying to extinguish the flames from Violet’s flame thrower. Faintly, he can hear Violet shouting things like “Who else wants a go at me?” and “Come on, you bastards! I’ll fry the lot of you!” Oddly, hearing her talk this way gives Nigel a bit of a thrill.
Rotating forward, Nigel is just in time to see Sir Rupert finishing off several pirates with a flashing blade. A short distance away, he sees a large wagon, obviously the transport of the road pirates. As the pirate captain comes up on deck to talk to Sir Rupert, Nigel decides to take aim at him, just in case of any pirate trickery. As he’s sighting in though, Nigel sees a shadow on the hill behind the pirate captain.
“What the devil?” He says, as he begins swivelling the turret to face in the opposite direction. A few seconds later, he sees the cause of the shadow: a skyship…a huge skyship…and it seems to be lowering large chains from both bow and stern.
“Sweet Mother of Pearl! They mean to carry us off!”
Nigel knows he can’t fire on the skyship, since the gun won’t tilt that far up. Instead, he unbuckles himself from the turret and climbs out onto the ladder. Doing a controlled slide down it, he begins shouting to Violet and Hercules.
“Violet! Get out of there and come here! We’re under attack from above! Hercules, they mean to carry us off! Warn the Professor and try to get us out of here!”
When he reaches the ground floor, Nigel runs towards Violet, who is now out of her gunnery chair and heading towards him.
Well, the action is certainly picking up! Next episode, we’ll check up on Hercules (and Lavender, too), but first, not a poll, but a question from Your Humble Director…
So, what do you think of our tale so far? Praise or criticisms both equally welcome
The Dociverse Blog 
I think its highly entertaining. I am always hoping that you’ll have written a new one when I check my friends page. Its a lot of fun.
The only complaint I have so far is how Sir Rupert seems to have conveniently been to the City of Glass.
Yes, I know that was the adventure route that won out over the others, so it’s hardly your fault, but it seems a bit contrived to me.
Otherwise, lovely!
It is a good thing the road pirates have more scruples than our erstwhile heroes when it comes to the use of flame throwers and machine guns, else Sir Rupert would be a barbequed and bullet-ridden goner.