"Do not try to kill someone, unless you have the readiness to be killed yourself. Complaining when others kill you because you try to kill them is something only two-bit villains in cheap stage plays get to say." - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

"Aaaaaaaaaah!"

*Sploosh*

Privateers screamed one after another as they were bodily hurled over the sides of the boarding plank, Aideen's staff - back in its long staff form for more leverage - batting them away one after another. Some lucky few died before their feet even left the boarding plank, while others fell down into the sea with broken bones, many of which failed to even keep themselves aloft.

With Aideen in the lead, several other Ptolodeccan sailors and agents climbed the plank behind her as they worked their way up. Those in charge of ranged support also intensified their offense to keep the remaining privateers busy. What few shots went towards the plank, more often than not caused friendly fire anyway as the remaining privateers on it scrambled to get back to their ship.

With a leap forward Aideen reached the privateer ship, her staff extended in a thrust that collapsed a woman's windpipe even as she shouldered another privateer off the boarding plank and into the waters below. Behind her grim faced men and women followed, and what awaited the privateers next, were slaughter.

The last bastion of resistance amongst the privateers were led by a shark therian male who wore fine clothes and a tricorn hat, probably their captain by the looks of it. He savagely chopped at Aideen with his two axes, his strength far greater than hers.

Too bad for him she just deflected his strikes to the side, while the other end of her staff swung from the outside and caved in his knee from the side. Even as he collapsed to his knees, Aideen pulled her arms back and thrust her adamant staff into the therian's screaming mouth.

Sharp shark teeth shattered as the black metal staff barged into the man's mouth cavity, where Aideen's thrust struck against the back of the privateer captain's mouth with so much force it pierced through his body and out from behind his head. The man's body lolled over, his limbs paralyzed as the strike had shattered his spine, though he still refused to give up the ghost considering his still twitching eyes.

Nothing another blow with the staff, to the center of the head area where it pulverized through the skull and crushed the brain, could not solve.

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By then many of the surviving privateers surrendered, dropping their weapons and raising their empty arms. Some others even went and turned on their former comrades, as several privateers suddenly found themselves receiving a blade to the gut from an ally.

Not that either reaction would have changed their fate anyway. Aideen nodded grimly when their ship's captain gave her an unvoiced question in his look, and nodded with equal solemnity before he has his men, aided by some agents, round up the surrendered privateers and gathered them on their ship's deck.

Aideen walked somberly back to the caravel, and as she passed by Jerrod, who was trying to reassure a panicked Martha that he was all right but failing miserably as he couldn't speak through his torn throat, chuckled slightly as she laid one hand over his throat and healed it up in seconds.

"Finally! I'm fine, Martha, okay? Please stop worrying your head about me like that," he said as he hugged his wife and rubbed her back reassuringly. His eyes found Aideen, who smiled at him in return. "Thank you, milady."

"Think nothing of it," replied Aideen as she sat down beside the couple and rested her back against the deck railings as well. Jerrod cannot be said to have acquitted himself well in the fight earlier - in fact he would have died had he still been alive - but she liked how he refused to give way regardless. She offered him a waterbag from her storage as well. "You did well, so keep that determination in your mind as you go forward."

"Thank you, milady," Jerrod said as he greedily gulped down the water and cleared his mouth and throat from the taste of blood. He then looked behind him, towards the privateer's ship, where most of their own ship's crew had went and where faint, but still audible screams began to echo from. "What's going on back there?"

"Oh, they're just cleaning up the trash," said Aideen nonchalantly. After having been through the past few decades, the naive girl who puked her guts out the first time she killed another person was long gone. She had killed far too many with her own hands by now, and sometimes wondered if she should worry about how she felt nothing when she killed others these days.

"Cleaning up- oh," said Jerrod as he got the implication of her words and visibly paled. His wife also paled in his embrace, and looked at Aideen with a bit of trepidation.

"We had warned them that this would be the result, but they still chose to attack us," Aideen replied to his unspoken question. She got another waterskin out from her storage and drank deeply off it, the scent that the wind carried over hinted that it was definitely not water inside the skin. "This is a covert mission to begin with. We avoided hurting anyone when we left the Empire, but that's partly because nobody accosted us on our way out. These privateers, on the other hand, are witnesses, and as they say, the dead tell no tales."

Left unspoken was the implication that had people from Jerrod's village caught up with them, Aideen wouldn't have hesitated to kill them either, if she had to do so.

The caravel's crew took around another half an hour before their grisly business were done, and a small portion of them returned over the plank together with the agents, removing the boarding plank once they all finished crossing.

When Jerrod asked, the first mate explained to him that everyone else were manning the privateer's ship, since they were taking it back with them, leaving the caravel with only the minimum crew it could operate with until they returned to Ptolodecca.

As for the privateer corpses, they were all tossed overboard, and the spreading blood had attracted some ocean predators, which quickly cleaned up every last bit of the mess. Before long the ocean stilled again, leaving only the two ships that now sailed side by side towards Ptolodecca.