Pete the Pirate Ch. 01

"How long did it take you ..." I started to ask - before saying, "Nevermind. I don't really want to know."

He laughed and said, "The good news is, the next bastard that kicks you in the balls is going to be sadly disappointed."

Kuss appeared once again and laid a hand on my arm.

"That tube has been in place for a while and has probably adhered to your body," the small healer warned me. "Xill is going to remove the tube so that he can set you right again. I will try to shunt the pain and convince your body to release its hold on the tubing. Do you want to be awake for this?"

Xill looked at me and said, "It will work better if you can stomach it."

"Okay," I agreed, cautiously.

"Why don't you look this way and talk to me while he works," Kuss suggested.

"Tell your bladder to hold things for a bit - if you're not already," Xill ordered.

"Done," I told him, looking at his wife.

"You've been here a long time," Kuss told me. "Anybody from your old life probably wonders where you've disappeared to. Do we need to send a note to anyone?"

"No," I told her. "My parents are gone."

"Siblings?"

"A sister who probably would rather never see me again; I pretty much owe money to everybody I know."

"Special friends?" she asked.

"No," I replied. "I'm kind of an asshole. Nobody sticks around long."

Kuss smiled sadly at me but confidently said, "If your heart is searching, just wait. You'll find them."

"You'll need to will your bits to stick," Xill told me. "Try flexing your member with your mind."

He didn't quite jump back but he moved his hand away and looked up at me. "All set," he said, grinning.

Kuss pressed her lips to my forehead, squeezed my hand, and disappeared again.

Seeing me look to see where she'd gone, Xill said, "She's a treasure; I'm still not sure why she puts up with me."

Not sure what else to say, I went with, "Thanks."

He nodded and returned to his workbench. He came back with either a large bug or a really small bird - almost like a hummingbird.

"It's no parrot," Xill said, chortling, "but I guess this is your pirate familiar. It communicates via your ear and your eye-patch - or it will - once you've bound it to yourself. Hold out your hand."

"Which one?"

"Either - they're both yours now."

I opened the left hand and turned it so that I could take the thing. Xill set the silver and gold metal hummingbird in my open palm.

I willed it to become a part of me. Instantly, I knew how to control it and "speak" to it. It rose from my hand, hovering in the air. I spun it around, looking over the room I was in through its "eye". I switched through the various modes that my eye-patch offered. The trap and magic-detection modes showed that I was in a world that I had never known existed just a short time - a month? - ago.

I brought the flying creature over to hover in front of my face - so that I could look him (or her) over. The critter did look a lot like a hummingbird - enough so that - without looking closely - most normal people would think that's what it was.

"Looks like you figured it out," Xill said, grinning broadly.

"It's very cool. Does it run on batteries?"

"Your magic will recharge it when it's in contact with your body. I would suggest just tucking it into your collar until you need it."

"How often am I going to need this?" I asked.

"Hopefully not often but I'll be sending you through some sketchy territory and this will give you an extra ability to avoid ... problems."

"So, gnomes exist, obviously. How much other Lord of the Rings shit is real?"

"Most of it."

"And nobody ever finds it?"

"Most of the time, those accidental discoveries or encounters involving humans and magical beings get excused away as UFO sightings or ghost stories."

I nodded, thinking about how many of those I had disregarded because I thought the people were just losing their minds.

"You ready to try standing?" Xill asked me.

"I thought you said I wasn't quite stable," I said.

"Kuss gave you two more healings ..." he answered, smiling.

"Ah. Yeah. I guess she did."

He began removing the restraints. I returned my little bird/bug to my left palm.

"Does it have a name?" I asked, glancing at it.

"Call it whatever you want. It will respond to mental, magic, or verbal commands."

"That's so fucking cool," I said.

Xill grinned and stepped back from the table, looking up at me, expectantly.

"If anything feels weird or hurts, stop immediately, and tell us."

I looked over to see that Kuss had returned again.

"Hello, again, angel," I said, smiling at her.

She smiled back.

"She's mine," Xill growled possessively, laughing at me. "Find your own."

Kuss wrapped him in a hug and kissed his cheek. They both turned to watch me as I tried to sit up.

"Easy now," Kuss warned me.

I sat up, carefully, and turned to my left to dangle my feet off the edge of the table. They almost touched the floor. Xill and his wife must stand somewhere between three and four feet tall - because the table was much lower than I had expected.

Looking around the room, I noticed that I was too big for just about everything.

"How did you even get me in here?" I asked.

"We stabilized you first," Xill told me. "I have a hover-cart that I use for moving heavy parts. It's a good thing you weren't much bigger."

I looked up and realized that my head was only a few inches short of the ceiling.

"Yeah," Kuss said, giggling. "Mind the doors and the ceilings."

"You'll probably have to walk on your knees - or bend way over," Xill agreed.

"You boys head towards the kitchen," Kuss said. "I need to check the stew."

The artificer ran me through a quick litany of questions designed to assess how my body - the original parts as well as the pieces he'd built for me - were working. Once he was satisfied that things were functioning as intended - and had asked (once more) whether or not I felt well enough to get up - we made our way to the dining room.

I ended up sitting on a small footstool. My legs were stretched out underneath the small table. The food smelled amazing. My stomach was growling as I blew on the bite I was waiting to taste.

"What kind of stew is this?" I asked.

"Mostly sewer rats," Xill said.

My lips had just closed around the spoon. I felt my eyes shoot open - as big as saucers - as my taste buds sought to analyze the sample on my tongue.

"Xill!" Kuss chided him, frowning at her husband.

"It's just vegetables," Xill admitted, laughing.

"There's some beef broth there as well," his small wife told me, still scowling at her spouse.

"You got me good," I told him, smiling to show Kuss that no harm had been done.

"To think, I used to find his antics funny," she sighed - more venomously than I thought she intended.

"Rat stew or ratfink - it doesn't matter to me - I'm thankful to be alive," I told her.

She shot the gnome one more look and then her countenance softened.

I turned to him and said, "Thank you, again, for everything."

He used his spoon to wave away my thanks and scooped another bite into his mouth. I took another bite as well and then chewed a chunk off of the piece of warm dark bread she had given me.

I groaned and said, "Good God! That's amazing!"

"I know," Xill said. "The first time I tasted her bread, I knew I had to find a way to get her to marry me."

Kuss' earlier anger finished melting and she smiled at him with warmth and love.

"You don't happen to have a sister who's available do you?" I asked her. "Who knows how to cook like this?"

Xill nearly choked on his bite of stew before he finally finished swallowing it. He quickly chased it down with a drink of water. After that, he howled in laughter while massaging his throat to work through the pain. Kuss giggled and shook her head at the two of us.

When our food was gone, Kuss looked at Xill and asked, "Could we go visit my mother? You always say it's dangerous but you've given Pete lots of tools and it would provide you with a chance to show him how all of it works."

He opened his mouth - no doubt to argue against visiting his mother-in-law - but gave up. Apparently, mothers-in-law were as bad for gnomes as they were for humans. Wait. Was I really a human?

"If I'm human, how do I have magic?" I asked Xill.

"Somebody in your line mated with a mage," he responded, matter-of-factly.

Turning to Kuss, he said, "If we visit your mother, can Pete and I sleep outside, so I can continue teaching him? He won't fit in her house anyway."

She considered that for only a moment before agreeing. Xill seemed to be much happier about the visit now that he knew he wouldn't be forced to sit with his wife and her mom as they visited.

"I'll need a day to clean up the shop," he told her.

"That's fine," she replied, taking our plates and giving him another kiss on the cheek.

Once she had left the room, Xill whispered, "I should figure out how to take you with us every time."

"I heard that," Kuss called from the kitchen.

He didn't look that surprised that he'd been busted. He winked at me and smiled.

Xill stood. I got to my knees to follow him back into his workshop. He looked at my legs for a moment and then darted off. I hurried to follow him.

By dinnertime, his shop was just as messy as it had been after lunch - but now I had a pair of shorter legs - in addition to the longer pair. The kneecaps on the new legs covered the joint where my new (shorter) legs joined the stumps of my human legs. Below the new knees, there was only about another six inches of leg before the feet. Xill gave me a backpack to put my other legs in. We left it in the workshop when Kuss called us to dinner.

I imagine I looked like a really weird dwarf as I followed the miniature mage into the dining area. Kuss looked over at us and just shook her head, smiling. I still sat on the footstool, once more, but my feet sat on the floor now as we ate. I don't remember what the food was - but - again - the bread was like the best thing you have ever eaten - wrapped together with a hug from your adoring grandmother. I had begun to think it might be enchanted. My mouth and stomach told me that it was definitely magical. (Although, when I looked at it with my eye-patch, it didn't detect anything.)

After dinner, Xill and I started actually cleaning up the workshop. As we put things back, he came across a belt-knife. A few minutes later, he found a leg-sheath for it. I slid the knife into the sheath and added it to my pack.

"I should probably have just built a cavity into the leg for you to hide the knife," he said.

"It's fine," I told him. "I have the knife and hammer hand. I'm not sure I even need this blade."

"Might be good to have one you can throw," he replied.

As we continued to work, I thought about all of my new parts and pieces.

"How is all of this hardware going to look, going through airport security?" I asked.

"Just tell them you have a prosthetic," he advised. "It will all just look like regular metal to them - unless they somehow have the ability to detect magic-infused metal."

"Guess I'll find out," I said.

"When you travel for me, you'll almost always be on foot. The stuff I need will have TSA or some other federal agency following you home."

"Fun," I said.

"Your biggest challenge will be thieves," he told me. "That's why your new body does most of what it does. I need those supplies to do my work. I would also rather not spend all of my time, running around the planet to go get the stuff."

"Where does Kuss' mom live?" I asked.

"Iowa," Xill replied.

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"We're walking to Iowa?"

"We'll take the car as far as we can - and walk when we can't," he said.

"What kind of car do you have?"

"A Prius."

"Of course," I said, laughing.

I mean, if you're some kind of magical inventor, why wouldn't you drive a hybrid?

"How do you see over the dash?"

"It's self-driving - or YOU can drive, if you want - doesn't matter to me."

"I'd like to drive for a bit if you don't mind. I might take a nap later and let the car drive."

"You've been asleep for almost a month. Even with all of your magical parts now, your body needs to get used to going and doing again."

I nodded.

At bedtime, Kuss led me to an extra bedroom. When I took my legs off, I was just about the right size to fit the bed. She touched the plate on the wall and the lights dimmed and went out. I hadn't even noticed that the lighting in the house was magical too.

~~~

I woke to the smell of breakfast frying. Kuss' bread was good toasted as well. When I finished the first slice, the inventor handed me another and slid the butter dish my way. I looked at the perfectly-toasted slice of bread and noticed the outline of Mickey Mouse's head was burnt into it.

I quirked an eyebrow at him, and he silently pointed his fork at his wife, grinning.

"Don't tell me you've been to Disneyworld," I asked Kuss.

"Xill won't take me," she growled in reply.

"How would it look with two children walking around the park without an adult?" he asked her.

She looked at me and raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question.

He threw up his hands and said, "Fine!"

She jumped up, clapping her hands wildly and giggling excitedly. Suddenly, Xill and I were subjected to a horrific kiss-attack. My kisses were delivered to both cheeks. His was on the lips - and lasted much longer. I turned my head when he reached down and grabbed Kuss' ass in his small hands.

My food was gone anyway. I headed towards the front door and made my way outside. I didn't have my longer legs but I'd have to go back inside to get them and I didn't want to interrupt Xill collecting on his wife's gratefulness.

I found myself inside of a huge geodesic dome that covered half of the roof of an apartment building in the middle of the city. The top of the transparent dome looked like it was 20 or more feet above the grassy floor.

There was a large vegetable garden, an herb garden, and a park-like area with a quiet, shaded area for sitting. A walking path wound around the perimeter of the enclosure. I set off to explore it. Partway around the park, I found a large stone structure with a spring bubbling out of the top. The water cascaded down over the stones and collected in a small pool. I didn't see a drain in the bottom but it looked like it had to be self-contained because there was more and more water entering the pool without there being an obvious outlet.

The gurgling water had an effect on me; I suddenly needed to use my new penis. I found a tree, undid my fly, and pulled out my metallic member. It worked just like my old one had. That was somewhat comforting.

I heard Xill clear his throat. I closed things up and turned to find him standing there with my backpack. He handed it off with a smile and headed back to the cottage. From the outside, it looked much smaller than it did inside. I guessed that only part of the structure was held within the dome.

Xill had disappeared after handing me my bag. I assumed that meant he wanted a little more "quality time" with Kuss. I took out my longer legs, traded them out for the shorter ones, and got back to my feet. I picked up my pack and started jogging around the path. Running was damned-near effortless. The only part of my original body that was really moving was my shoulders, abs, and hips. I sped up. Honestly, I had no clue how fast I was going but the dome was huge and I could do a lap in seconds. The wind rushed past my face as I ran.

I stopped near the shaded seating area. I was still breathing normally - like I hadn't just run a couple miles. I leapt into the air - way higher than normal. I was surprised at how easy that was as well. I landed without spraining an ankle - even though I was pretty sure I'd just jumped higher than the top of the nearby tree. I tried it again - pushing a little harder. My feet cleared the uppermost branches. I landed without any jarring - in my old body or the new pieces. I jumped higher - and dang-near hit my head on the dome.

I moved to the center of the dome - at the edge of the vegetable garden. I looked up and tried to calculate how hard I would have to jump to reach the roof. I guessed a little low - just in case - and jumped. My fingers brushed the dome and I looked down to find the ground racing back towards me - or maybe vice-versa. I'm not sure I would have needed to - but I bent my knees a little - just in case. It was fucking amazing! It was like my feet were spring-loaded. I did it again.

I heard laughter and looked over to see Kuss and Xill standing at the front of the cottage - watching me repeatedly leap up to touch the roof of the giant dome. I dropped to the ground and ran over to greet them.

"It's so amazing!" I gushed.

Xill smiled; Kuss giggled.

I noticed that they each had packs over their shoulders.

"We ready?" I asked.

Kuss handed me the bundle of clothes she was carrying under her arm and said, "Two extra outfits."

"Thanks," I told her, opening my pack to add them to the stubby-legs and the knife.

We followed a footpath that led off to the left of the entrance to their home and came to a freight elevator. When it opened, I saw that the thing was probably ten foot square. It was huge! We stepped inside.

"Place your hand on the scanner," Xill told me.

I did. He touched the panel next to my hand and his fingertip glowed blue for a second. When he took his finger away the panel glowed green.

"Use your magic to tell it to take us to the garage," Xill instructed me.

I did. The doors closed and we started descending. The elevator opened and there was a red Prius sitting in front of us.

"Get in the front," Xill told me.

The two of them climbed into the back.

"Tell the car to roll onto the lift."

I did. It eased forward - barely fitting inside of the elevator.

"Reach out with your magic and tell the elevator to take us to the alley - ground level."

The doors behind us closed, we rose a little, and the doors in front of us opened - revealing the alley where I had met Xill.

I sat and stared at the scene before me, replaying all of those events that led up to his offer. I thought over everything that had happened the last couple days.

"Sorry," I said, realizing that I was holding up the trip.

"It's alright, dear," Kuss assured me. "Take all the time you need."

"You didn't tell your mother we were coming?" Xill asked her.

"I did," she replied.

"Take your time, lad, but we'll pay for it at the other end if you keep the dragon waiting too long."

"Xill!"

I laughed - and willed the car to head to Kuss' mom's house. It rolled forward like it knew where it was going.

I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Xill holding his wife's hand and kissing her sweetly - trying to make up for his acidic remarks about her mother. I saw the elevator doors close - and a garage door sliding down to block the view of the lift.

"So weird!" I said quietly - mostly to myself.

As the car eased down the alley, one of the Neanderthals that had destroyed my body stepped out of the door that I had been trying to enter all of those nights ago.

He stepped back, against the wall, to let us pass. His face was inches from the car when we moved by. He glanced inside but acted like he didn't recognize me anymore.

"The windows look tinted from the outside," Xill said in explanation. "Although, now that you've started using your magic, I would be surprised if he would even recognize you - unless you chose to reveal yourself to him. I would advise against it. I don't really want anybody investigating my covert entrance to our home."

"I won't give away your secrets," I promised.

"I have multiple layers of protection in place," he said, "as you might have guessed. But blind ignorance is the best defense against curious minds."