Vuela

Chapter 17

By night, Captain Kujo's injured ankle has gotten worse instead of better. Celia attempts to stand her up on a few occasions, but it only brings more pain and suffering to the head of the team. Copper informs them all that the injury is something more than just a sprain. There's formerly undetected internal bleeding discovered. Traveling is not an option, at least for the time. For the Captain's sake, there's no way to escape back from the jungle to the sub with pirates surrounding the shelter. As far as Vuela and Sora are concerned, they're all sitting ducks ready to be cooked over an open flame.

"What will we do?" Celia asks, generally to the group as a whole.

Kujo coughs and says, "The best we can do is stay together and hold down this heap of a fort. There is nothing else we can do. We have four more capables for self defense...against a whole pirate team..."

This is not the Captain Delilah Kujo that Vuela has known for the past two weeks. She sees the Captain slowly, but surely, giving up, which Vuela hurts more than anything. She watches the Captain wincing in pain, and it strikes pins in Vuela's heart. How can a heroic war Captain sit down and let the rest of her team watch?

The next thing the Captain whimpers is something Vuela never thought she would hear from the woman (at least while the two are in communications). "Celia, have I told you that you have stunning eyes?"

Celia's voice highers in pitch. "She's gone absolutely mad."

"Well, there's gotta be a better plan than this," Sora says. "Copper, what can you do to better the Captain's injury?"

"The injury requires operation on the limb immediately. Unfortunately, the recovery will take multiple hours, and due to our circumstances, we have conflicts between transfer of the patient and the pending safety of the party as its whole."

"Ugh! If I were a real doctor, I'd know how to fix this, but instead, I only know about the ocean, which makes me absolutely useless in this case!"

"You are not useless, Celia," Vuela scolds. "You are a brilliant scientist and greater than any scientist I know."

"Affirmative, Celia," mutters the Captain. "Listen to the girl."

"But Copper is right about our situation though." She walks over to the opening of the shelter and stares at the newly formed pirate base camp. "If we wait until the morning, we're dead. If we try to leave, we're dead. If we stay here..."

"Then, Savage will blow this place, and us, to smithereens," Sora reminds her, trying to also copy Savage's accent in a mocking tone.

"Damn it! What do we do?" At first, Vuela wants to shut off everything, including voices, so she can think fast of a plan that doesn't involve sneaking past sleeping pirates. But then, she whips around when Copper mentions something while prepping for the Captain's emergency surgery. "Did you just say, "back door?""

Copper rips some vines away from the back of the tree and reveals a mossy, metal trap door in the floor. "It is required for the body to reach an appropriate temperature for an operation, so the door must be open to let in the proper cooling."

Vuela and Sora assists the Android in the opening of the trap door, and they can't believe what they were seeing. The escape way is an amazing view, full of stair rails and ladders. "This is incredible!" Vuela exclaims.

"Where does this lead to?" Sora asks, elated at the sight.

"All over this island, comrades. If I do not wish to be seen, I travel underground. I used the north tunnel to get to the trap you happened to get yourself stuck in."