[I]Are these pirates, or whalers?[/I] thought Gunni. Then she addressed her phone's VI. "Carmen Panzer mode." Triggering the bike to jump, the smartphone sent the programmed commands that unfolded the bike and wrapped it around her, displaying the stars of the Southern Cross on her left breastplate. The wheels folded up in back, using electrostatic forces to push jets of air to lift her up towards the back of the truck ship. Crux drew both of her blades, and the blessings of Freya on them made them glow in the presence of the Undead.

Crux cut the lift and dropped hard onto the deck below the first burst of the minigun. "Belay that resistance! Yer boarded, fair and square! Now, I can send ye ta Hel the easy way, or ye can try ta get inta Valhalla or Fólkvangr!" Beneath her mirrored visor she smiled, pirate-talk was fun.

The first two to move got hilts to the jaw, at nearly the strength level of a full-blooded Æsir. Several landed blows in return, and two got shots in, but Crux's armor dispersed most of those impacts. She staggered briefly as the ship swerved, and one skeleton got his blade into a joint over her stomach; it came out with blood on the tip. Recovering her balance, she leaped forward in a jet-assisted bid to close with the Captain.

Crux braced herself and her armor to take the blow on her shoulder, letting the impact get transmitted to the deck timbers. She swung her longsword, which looked like something out of WETA with special effects added post-production, at the captain's skull, wondering what exactly the blessing of a Goddess of Death would do to the cursed being before her...

"No souls? No reason to save you, then." She rammed the diamond gladius into a [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thwart]thwart[/url], letting the captain hammer it in a bit more with the minigun on top of her left arm. A thin wire snapped into the hilt, and the other end went into the hilt of the longsword. Three more skeletons drew blood through the gaps in her plate, and she'd have bruises from the cumulative blows despite the plate and the motorcycle "leathers" beneath it. She hurled the longsword; the cable drew taut just in time to make it wrap around a light post across the street. Crux bulled through several skeletons to get to the wheel and spun it hard towards the makeshift anchor...

Crux had the advantage of expecting a wreck, and she grabbed the hilt of the gladius before the tension snapped both of them back towards the lamp post. She rolled with the impact of the street, and came to her feet in time to shake off the wood wedged onto the blade before testing the blessing on the gladius on the skull of one of the skeletons that was still getting to its feet.

Crux pursued the largest cluster of skeletons, hacking at hips and thighs in an attempt to cripple as many as possible to reduce their strength next time they came calling.

The usual techniques not working, Crux sliced off the top of the skull of the hopping skeleton and scooped it up in her free hand. She backed away a bit, watching to see if the skeleton - or any of its companions farther away - would take notice.

"Carmen bike mode." The armored suit unfolded and refolded back into the motorcycle, with Gunni in the saddle. She tucked the skullcap into the cargo pannier before heading towards Alexandria. The remaining charge in the battery pack would be enough to get her out of the area, but not back to Whitehold. "Carmen, find Charging station en route to Whitehold." There was one close enough. "Carmen, post ad. Help wanted, contagion trace..."

The Zodiac[sup]tm[/sup] skimmed across the waters of the Atlantic, circling wide to come at the island from the seaward side at dawn, out of the rising sun. Crux was already armored up, and she disconnected a power cable that had kept her power cells charged before bagging both the cord and the engine and opening the valve to release the air in the buoyancy tube. The little boat sank into the waist-deep water as Crux waded ashore, assessing the terrain before her.

Crux looked around, but didn't see any clues pointing to the lair of the pirates. So she pulled out the skull section from the cargo slot and held it suspended from a string. As she activated the tracing spell, it spun around several time, the black ink arrow she'd drawn on it finally pointing one direction. The rest of the skull would be there, so that was the way she started walking, wary of the possibility of an ambush.

The shadows started moving Crux might recognize the forming shadow portal of the avatar of Hel, Rotten Luck. Thought this portal wasn't vertical but horizontal about 8 feet up in the air and soon Rotten fell through the portal to the ground below. "CURSE YOU HEL!" Rotten was dripping wet and the only thing covering him was a towel. "Couldn't give me five minutes..."

The shadow portal came apart and formed around Rotten soon it faded completely revealing Rotten in his sleeveless Trench coat, white muscle shirt, blue jeans, and combat boots. Looking about he noticed Crux "Crux correct? you might want to look behind you. By the way, could you give me a bit of an update on what's going on. My Boss didn't give me details."

He then started running to the source of the moving bones sounds behind her.

"Good to see you again! Well, there was this pirate ship-truck with a crew of skeletons attacking a delivery truck back in town. I stopped them, but the crew scattered. And they aren't normal undead, that or they have a serious 'protection from holy' going on. My blades are only as good as regular swords against them." She turned and demonstrated; the swords cut through bones like butter, but the rest of the skeleton stayed active. She continued slicing as she talked. "Maybe they're like the Koschei, with their souls hidden somewhere? So I cut off the brainpan on one of them, let the rest of the skeleton run off, and I'm using it like a compass to track where the rest of that skeleton went. And this sure looks like the right place."