Hearts of Delmar 2... ( 2 many Nicoles)

Chapter 2: A pirate's life

Kraken 2.0 stood in the bathroom and stared into the mirror, disgusted by himself, he raised a knife to his throat and took one deep breath, slicing off his precious beard braids. "You know, spying on a man in the bathroom is not very polite."

"You know I always hated those stupid chintacles." She said playfully.

"Well they represent something that's gone. I can't change my face, but I can change how I display it. I should really change my name too. Something reborn. A delmarians title is everything, selected by his peers and earned as they become an adult."

"Cut the head off a hydra, and it grows another one back and only gets stronger. Earth seamonster mythology. The Kraken has fallen, hail Hydra. Or Hyde for short."

"Hydra...interesting. Of course, the girl with the sea monster DNA would pick another sea monster to replace the old sea monster"

"Well you gotta show your face eventually. You can't run and Hyde forever." She quipped.

"See here I thought you were the perfect Nicole, but clearly the one thing that didn't evolve was your sense of humor."

"Vinn would have laughed." She gasped sarcastically.

"Vinn laughs at fart jokes, you wanna compare your attributes with that?" he asked.

"Touché" She said.

"Any thought on your name?" he asked.

"Nicole."

"Not changing it?"

"I just had my last name changed to Gurvmurmurder or whatever it was, and one of me still has that bullshit. I'm not married anymore. I'll take back the one I was born with, if you don't mind."

"Fair enough. Easy for me to remember." He said, evening his beard, now 2 feet shorter and more...traditional.

"And yours make you easier to forget...which is not entirely a bad thing." she reminded.

"Wow, just moving the shock collar from my neck right to my nuts, hu?"

"Don't tempt me. I'm still pissed off on some level. Don't give me ideas to make metaphors a reality. So where are we? I wake up in a basement, and you still don't tell me where I am?" she snipped.

"It's...not a basement. It's a cargo bay. You're on a stolen spaceship." He admitted. She turned with a look of pure irritation.

"You turn good and the first thing you do is steal a ship?" she asked.

"Turning good is a hell of a stretch here. We're literally born criminals, escaping the government to open space, you're part sea monster, part zombie, and I went from The Kraken to Captain Hydra. At what point do we just admit we're pirates and get a black flag with a skull on it?"

"Uuuugh...other Nicole has a shirt that would just be perfect for that." That bitch has all my good stuff. Id really love to get some of it back."

"Are you standing there refusing to call yourself a pirate while contemplating robbing half your loot from yourself using a stolen ship?" he grinned.

"Okay we're basically pirates. Fuck it, Yolo!" she said unenthusiastically, remembering the ironic meaning of that, both in how she used it and how they both lived at least twice already.

"Are we really risking everything to steal your own shit?"

"No, we'll buy more shit. You got a lot of money from that double cross deal before you took me hostage. Oh my god, we really are pirates. And I just realized half the stuff I have, you can't buy."