Tropic of Capricorn: Shipwreck

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Garrison and Adrienne run into a storm as they're sailing the South Seas and the ship goes down.

"I'm not sure I'm the nautical type. I keep forgetting the names of all the sails." Kane tilted his sunglasses back to peer at the swath of white canvas for a moment, before returning to his perch at the wheel. They were already a day and a half out of Auckland, heading north towards Fiji. Their current plan was to make the halfway point, about six hundred nautical miles, and then head back; a five-six day trip that their sailing master had assured them was a relatively safe challenge for inexperienced ocean sailors.

"I call this one Will, that one's Dustin, that's Clay over there, and the one way over there is Jacoby," Adrienne answered, tilting her own sunglasses and pointing to various sails. Her powers helped a little with her nervousness over undertaking this trip without a more experienced sailor on board, as she now had a wealth of history about sailing their vessel in her head. Well, most of it was actually experienced sailors yelling things at inexperienced sailors. But that was better than nothing. "Is it just me or is the wind picking up?" she asked as she tugged her Red Sox cap more securely onto her head.

"A little bit. The radio said that there's a chance of a storm, but nothing too serious." Garrison had made a point of checking in on weather forecasts, and the boat came equipped with an up to date communications suite. Part of the reason they'd settled on their route was that sudden tropical storms were fairly rare. Still, Adrienne had a point. There was a taste of rain in the air, and while the radio had been clear on big storms, they wouldn't bother with squalls.

Adrienne strode across the deck of the ship in her canvas shoes, bermuda shorts, bikini top and open blouse and socked him in the shoulder. "Way to jinx us," she chastised. She stuck a hand on the wheel for a moment and, despite a momentary flash of a very rowdy party with a group of models along what looked like a Greek coastline, got a future reading on the ship. "Hmm. Okay, maybe you didn't jinx us. I can't pick up anything bad happening. In fact, I see us fooling around in about five minutes," she smirked.

"I'm willing to bet money that the last part didn't come from reading the ship." Kane said wryly as he searched the skys. A few clouds on the distance, but nothing threatening. In fact, if it hadn't been for Adrienne's initial comment, he probably wouldn't have noticed the slight change in the air either. Beginners nerves, it seemed. After all, there was nothing like being surrounded by limitless ocean to remind you just how small you were. "Not that it's not a fantastic idea, mind you."

"Of course it came from reading the ship," Adrienne snorted. "I can also tell you every other person who's fooled around on this ship. Not that I would, but I can," she shrugged. "It's not as good as using maple syrup to call moose and squirrels from Canada to us," she teased, "but I'm sure there are worse powers out there."

"You know, the fact that you can touch pretty much anything and get a voyuer view of anyone who's gotten freaky near it must really make regular porn boring. Or explain your apparent perpetual state of arousal, eh?" He was mostly joking, not pretending to hide the enjoyment he took watching her parade around the deck in tiny clothes.

"You just wish you had a psychic link to my brain so you could see what I see in my Readings," Adrienne quipped as she poked him.

"I'd rather not know what happened on the bench I happen to be sitting on at the time." He quipped, spinning the wheel slowly to keep the ship adjusted to the swell. "Can you go take another look at the radar? See if anything has changed on the advisory. Not to try and pretend to be all nautical, but there's something different in the air right now."

Flipping the Professional switch in her head to the 'on' position, Adrienne nodded and scurried belowdecks to the computer, frowned at it for a few moments, and returned to Garrison. "Uhh, there's a lot of red on it now," she announced, failing to not sound nervous. "It's like the Red Screen of Death I used to see on the Canadian weather channel in my Montreal office when there would be snowstorms imminent."

"That's not good." He locked the wheel and followed her down, taking a look at the screens. He reached over and turned up the radio, something he should have done before, considering. The storm advisory was in effect, and he shook his head when they mentioned the speed; wind reaching 80mph, seas expected to climb to twenty feet, and all of it an abnormal proto-cyclone is exactly the point it wasn't supposed to be possible. Hurray for global warming. "That is really not good. Adri, this thing is going to run right over us."

Adrienne just stared at him for several seconds, struggling with her composure until her self-preservation streak battled back the panic and took over. "Where the hell is Ororo when you need her?" she quipped, even managing a slight smirk as she said it. Okay, that probably wasn't helpful. "Shall we batten down the hatches?" she suggested, since she had no idea what else to do.

"Yeah, get everything closed and tied down." He got back on to the deck, and at the very edge of the horizon, he could see the shadow building. They'd been taught what to do if they hit a storm in open seas, but it wasn't reassuring. The basic advice had been 'don't be'. It wasn't a typhoon or anything of that scale, but it wasn't a brick rain shower either. "I'm going to shoot northwest and see if we can run ahead of it. It could change direction or slack off a bit before it hits us."

"Aye aye, captain," Adrienne answered, since snark had always been a distress symptom-slash-coping mechanism of hers. Putting her newfound knot-tying knowledge to work she set out to tie things down and close things off while Garrison navigated the ship. Her stomach dropped when the sun disappeared behind the black thunderheads that had infected the sky and the ship was blanketed in greyness. "How's the running ahead of it working out for us?" she inquired as she made her way back up to the bridge where Garrison was steering, though it seemed to be a rhetorical question.

"It's going to hit us. The question is how bad for how long." He motioned to the lines on the deck. "Hook both your lanyards in and strap into the seat if you're staying on the deck. If the waves get bad and you get washed over, I'd never find you in this weather."

Eyes widening, Adrienne scampered back belowdecks. She returned after a short interval, however, with two rain slickers and two life jackets, handing one set to Garrison and putting the others on herself. Being a strong swimmer, she had foregone a lifejacket up until now so her lanyards were on her belt; she now hooked them to the lines on the deck. "Yeah, like I'm really gonna stay belowdecks and leave you here by yourself," she scoffed as the rain started to fall, feeling it on her ball cap. She looked up into it and shivered. "You know, if Emma's arranging for me to be lost at sea so she can have my money, you can just tell me now," she quipped. "I'll just give her the money and give you whatever cut she promised you."

"I'm not interested in pulling a Natalie Wood scenario today, thanks." The rain was starting to freshen, and the swell was following suit. His tremendous strength made controlling the rudder much easier, but as the waves grew, it was harder to keep the boat moving on course. Every so often, he'd lock the wheel long enough to check the radar, but the storm seemed to almost be trailing them, keeping them in the midst of the front and slowly overtaking them, deeper into the winds and the rain.

Adrienne didn't know much about weather patterns so she wasn't sure if it was weird or not that wherever Garrison seemed to take the ship the storm seemed to follow. The longer she watched it happen, though, the more paranoid she became, until she decided to voice her thought even if he did think she was crazy. "Is this storm... normal?" she shouted at him over the howling winds and the slapping of the water against her face. "Or is there someone else like Ororo out there? Doing this to us?"

"I don't know. This isn't the high season for this kind of storm, but remember what the sailmaster said? They happen randomly sometimes." He called over the wind. Now the waves were starting to break over the front of the ship, frothing white as they deluged the deck. They'd reefed part of the sails, running thin to keep the wind from taking control over the ship, but the mast was starting to sway, making it more difficult to stay on course. It wasn't a full on tropical storm, but it was more than enough for an inexperienced pair of sailors. He struggled as a wave smashed into the stern from the starboard side, threatening to swing the hull around.

"Come on, you bitch, even out." Kane muttered as he fought the ocean for control.

"He doesn't mean to call you a bitch," Adrienne cooed, patting the rail of the ship as if speaking to a horse. "You're a good girl, you're not gonna be a bitch to us, right? You're not mean like that. You're a nice ship and you're gonna be cool and get us through this." A wave washed over the deck and had her sputtering as it drenched her. "Fuck!" It wasn't the water that bothered her, but the force of it. It came at them with such power it was a struggle to stay on her feet when it had hit. More waves followed with equal force.

The boat was now sholoming through the waves, going up and down the troughs as Kane tried to keep it on-course. They had failed to outrun the storm, and now the only option was to find a place to go to ground or to try and ride it out. Maybe his father could have picked his way through it, but Kane didn't have the experience. At some point, if the storm didn't slacken, he'd make a mistake.

The rain was almost blinding, but Kane could make out a dark shape on the horizon. An island perhaps? He nudged Adrienne and pointed. "Can you see that!"

Adrienne squinted in the direction he was pointing. "Yeah," she shouted back, "but I dunno what it is. Don't hit it, whatever it is," she added superfluously. Obviously he wouldn't want to hit it, but they seemed directly on course towards it right now.

If they could get close, maybe there'd be a bit of a sheltered space they could find; get the boat into shallower water and anchor until the storm passed. Kane pulled them around, angling towards the island. But just as the bow hauled over, an errant gust fell on them, tearing the headsail from the mast and snapping the mainsail over. Adrienne was nearly decapitated as the boom swung around, and a wave smashed into the stern, spinning the boat around on an angle.

Kane fought the rudder, trying to keep the deadworks from hitting the water. The next swell lifted them, pitched the boat towards the small island and with a nauseating swing, the hull righted itself. The celebration was short lived as the surf boiled up, and Garrison could see the water froth just past the bow of the ship. They were bearing straight down on a reef, and to either side, sharp tendrils emerged and disappeared with the waves like hidden knives, blades flashed as a threat.

Quick reflexes from years of combat training saved Adrienne from the wrath of the boom, but diving out of the way of it had taken her off her feet and she had difficulty getting back on them with the buffeting of the winds and water. She managed to scramble upright just in time to see them connect with the reef, cringing at the sickening noise of the hull being torn up.

With a sharp crack and then a grinding shudder, the hull hit the spines of the reef, back broken against the rocks. The whole boat bucked, and Kane only had time to grab Adrienne by the back of the lifejacket when the stern pitched to one side as the boat tried to separate. Clawing against the waves, he held her with one hand and the top of the deck with another as the swell crashed over them. In the brief respite between waves, Kane grabbed the bright orange emergency pack from the gunwale mounted chest, and ripped the inflate cord. The rubber emergency boat flopped phallicly on the deck, buffeted by the waves as the braced against the rails, holding it as it inflated.

When Garrison grabbed her lifejacket Adrienne used her fingers to follow a line up his arm to his shoulder and grip his lifejacket as well, knowing it would be more difficult to separate them if they were both holding on to each other (even though she realized that with his strength he wouldn't have much trouble keeping them together without her help.) Rain and waves had made it impossible to see clearly and with one hand gripping Garrison's jacket and the other holding onto the rail of the deck she didn't have a free arm to wipe the water away, so she wasn't sure what Garrison was doing until she picked out the bright orange of the pack in her flooded vision. "Abandon ship?" she shouted in a questioning tone as the noise of the boat inflating added itself to the din of the storm.

"Not much ship left to abandon." he muttered, cursing as a wave took one of the oars and sucked it into the water. Kane got Adrienne into the boat. "Curl up and hold on tight! This is going to get bumpy!" He braced his feet against the rail and gunwale, and as a wave rode in at them, leaped as far as his strength could take them. The boat slammed down on the surface of the water hard, with Kane gripping the back firmly. The impact nearly jettisoned Adrienne from it like a trampoline, but they both somehow hung on as as another wave crashed over them. They had cleared the outer reefs, but now more loomed between them and the shore.

"I don't think we're getting that damage deposit back," Adrienne quipped wryly, turning back to watch their vessel. The oar that had gotten away had resurfaced about thirty feet away but they were now going in the opposite direction of it, so she watched it drift away as well.

"I'll worry about that if we live through this." Kane fished out the oar as another wave swelled under them, pushing them towards the shore. He tried to use it to steer, but the storm and wind were pushing the waves too quickly, and as the passed over the inner reef, there was a rasping tearing sound as the rocks slashed open the inflatable raft's sides. It started to take on water immediately.

"What do you mean, if?" Adrienne snorted, stamping down the panic that was rapidly rising as the raft started to take on water. "We're not going to die. There is no way I'm dying out here. I'm only allowed to die when I'm surrounded by hundreds of pairs of gorgeous shoes. So we are living through this."

Kane didn't respond as the boat wobbled under him. Another wave hit them hard, driving them closer to the shore but also nearly capasizing the raft. It was now sinking, and Kane pushed himself into the rough water with a grip on the boat. Surprisingly, for a moment, his feet touched bottom before a wave pulled him back up and spat them forward. This time, he struggled against the undertow and dug a foot into the sand, hauling the raft and Adrienne behind him. In moments, they were on the sand, being lashed with wind and rain and the surf, but safe on dry ground.

The island wasn't much more than a spit of sand with some trees; an atoll, Kane's mind coughed up the word. Just a scraggly fractual of land, with a crescent of palm trees and some brush in the middle. He took Adrienne's hand as they went into the brush, pulling the raft with him. After emptying out most of the water, he stretched the ruined boat between two trees, creating a flimsy tent that at least stopped most of the rain from hitting them.

"Such a Boy Scout," Adrienne teased with a grin, but she snuggled up against him gratefully. She still wasn't used to other people looking out for her; it was pretty nice not to have to do everything for herself all the time. Especially when she was so completely out of her element as she was now. "Hopefully this doesn't last long so we can get out and figure out where the hell we are," she muttered, indicating the storm.

"That might be awhile." Kane said. The boat had an emergency bouy that should have deployed once it started to sink, so rescue efforts would have an idea where to look. The thing that worried him was that they were only a day and a half out to sea, and planned to sail for five or six days. So it could be a week before someone noticed them missing, and if there wasn't water on the atoll, it could be too long. He shifted to adjust the cover, moving it so the body would trap some of the rain pouring down on it. "We'll see where we are when it subsides."