Meanwhile, all alone on his little island Prince Tyrone was settling in. It had quickly become apparent to him that the island had served a purpose, it seemed many Pirates had been marooned here over the years. He wasn’t entirely certain if this was a good thing or a bad one. Particularly as thus far the only evidence he had of them was a lifetime’s supply of skeletons, for a particularly ambitious necromancer.

He gathered together what he could scrape up from around the island. Washed ashore barrel of pickles of dubious age and origin? Well they were all his now.

Splintered remains of a few crossbows, that could probably be cobbled together to make one halfway decent one? SCORE, he claimed it.

Almost ancient hard tack, as edible today as the day it was made (see also completely inedible, but hard tack always was that way anyway, and somehow when you got hungry enough, and learned to ignore your tummy grumbling in protest was still an all you can eat buffet.) Well he’ll have that thank you very much. On the plus side at least there were no weevils living in them (all signs indicated there were once, but then they made the mistake of trying the hard tack, hah survival of the fittest baby.

Earthen bottles were very thoroughly cleaned, then carefully placed into a rain water catchment system. Tyrone surveyed his domain (all mile and a half of it) and in the tradition of ass holes everywhere made up a flag and claimed the place as his own.

Now he was set, this set up should last him a while, there was prey to hunt (rat in a practically endless supply, but hey Tyrone would take what he could get until he could take what didn’t belong to him, and of course meat was meat right?)

After a few days he came to realise rat was not meat, no matter how much it may seem like some of the more dubious food available in street stalls all over the city. Well technically he supposed it was, but after working a home dug privy to death in a single day he couldn’t help but accept that he probably shouldn’t put that stuff in his mouth.

It took a couple more weeks before he finally figured out the fine art of trap making, fell into his own pitfall, dug himself free, and finally came to accept that if he wanted to make traps he had better get good at it pronto. Trap making as a profession not being the most forgiving of professions to the unwary beginner at the best of times, much less in his current situation. It took a while until he reached a level of dare he say it? Competence. Now the only problem was that he was lonely, it wasn’t as if Indiana Bones (the skeleton of a long dead explorer) Sue Humerus (dearly departed young lady who had found that despite all those thrilling adventure stories beloinclothed young men raised in the wild she could raise up and bring back to so called civilisation did not grow on trees. This disappointment haunted her for the rest of her days, or at least until she picked up a stone club, and learned to become the beloinclothed young woman. At which point she learned bookish, yet devastatingly handsome, and misunderstood young heirs didn’t grow on trees either.) Were not exactly charming and scintillating conversationalists, no matter how much you rigged up their jaws as puppets, and pretended they were talking. (It seemed they only did that when he wasn’t looking, and even then.... OK there was a possibility the isolation was getting to him.) So once more he eyed the bigger than him grog barrel for a time, then with a sigh he started to drink.

“YOU AGAIN, I do not want to play I spy, punch carriage, or the floor is lava, I’m telling you this in advance, so do not ask me please” Sighed Kevin. At this point this buffoon had hallucinated him so often it was pretty much baked into the system, Kevin had essentially been voluntold, and as a hallucination he obviously didn’t really have much say in the matter. But he could at least lay down the ground rules so as to not end up performing a miracle and strangling his own hallucinator.

************************************************************************

Kevin was at his wit’s end, not only had this obnoxious bastard actually survived, he seemed despite the unlikelihood of such a thing to be thriving. Kevin hoped, and often prayed (oh my gods did he pray) that he would never be hallucinated by this obnoxious git again. Sadly for him the gods either weren’t listening, were indifferent, or far more likely for the gods, knew of his predicament, had the popcorn out, and were snickering at his misfortune and were placing bets on how long it would take before he finally snapped. It seemed at this rate it wouldn’t be very long before a lot of them won their bets, as it seemed Tyrone ha gotten himself a new hobby, SINGING.

If he fit the handsome prince cliche to a tee then he would have been magnificently hauntingly beautiful song about his beauteous beloved. But this was Tyrone, and he found his entertainment instead in singing (let’s call it that generously, Tyrone’s rather unique singing voice belted baritone, strenuously strangled soprano, tortured tenor, battered bass, assaulted alto, and mercilessly messed with mezzo. To call his singing terrible would be to insult terrible singers the world over.

To make matters worse there was the issue of his choice of song, anybody can butcher a good song, it’s practically obligatory. But it took a special kind of talent to take a terrible song and somehow make it worse, and Tyrone managed it. Worse yet he was convinced he had a good voice.

“Charlie ‘ad a pigeon, a pigeon, a pigeon,

Charlie ‘ad a pigeon, a pigeon e’ ‘ad..” Tyrone bellowed, in a voice that would make a cat in heat search desperately.

“E’ flew in the mornin’ ‘e flew on the night, and when ‘e came ‘ome ‘e was covered in”

“Just finish just finish, just finish” Kevin mumbled to himself, even the terrible punchline was better than the endless loop of almost completion.

He didn’t even notice the singing had quieted, he had decided he would take the hit on his reputation, even a demotion had to beat this.”

“I suppose you’re leaving too, I don’t blame you at all. But it was nice to meet you.” came the vulnerable sounding voice from behind him. It was Tyrone, but he didn’t sound like himself, he sounded..... broken.

Kevin looked around him and reached a decision, he’d stick round until this guy made it out, then he was requesting a transfer to the imaginary friends department.