Showdown at El Corazón Dorado

The afternoon sun blazed through the salt-stained shutters of El Corazón Dorado, casting golden bars of light across the weathered wooden tables where gold was won and lost with the turn of a card. Cal "Splitjack" Caldeaux lounged in his chair with the easy confidence of a man who'd never met odds he couldn't charm, his fingers dancing over his cards like a maestro conducting an invisible orchestra. The sea breeze carried the intoxicating scent of spirits, danger, and possibility through the cantina's open doors, mixing with the earthy dampness that clung to everything in this island port where bayou met ocean.

"Your play, Marshal," Cal drawled, his voice—carrying the lazy warmth of bayou summers and island nights—drifted out from underneath his slouch-hat. His gift—a peculiar ability to coax probability into doing his bidding—shimmered around him like heat waves rising from sun-baked cobblestones.

Marshal Rawlings sat hunched across from him, sweat streaming down his face despite the cooling ocean breeze. The corrupt lawman had been drinking heavily for hours, and Cal had been carefully pushing the stakes higher and higher. Gold and silver dragons glinted in towering stacks between them, more wealth than most men saw in a lifetime.

"Three hundred silver-dragons says you're bluffing, Splitjack," Rawlings slurred, shoving forward his stake with unsteady hands. He was loaded to the gunwales with eyes glazed from fiery spirits, but there was still cunning beneath the surface.

Cal studied his cards with theatrical boredom, then pushed the entire pot forward with a dismissive wave. "Gold is boring, mon ami. Give me information—I hear talk of a trafficking job, I want a piece."

Rawlings' eyes narrowed, his drunken haze clearing slightly. "You tryin' to hornswaggle me boy?"

The entire cantina had gone quiet, conversations dying as every patron—pirates, smugglers, dockworkers, and cutthroats—turned to watch the high-stakes game unfold. Gold was one thing, but information in Port Esperanza was the most dangerous currency of all. Whispered bets were being placed on whether the charming stranger would get what he was after, or if the marshal would wise up.

In the shadowy corner booth, Captain Fortuna "Lucky" Silver sat with her small crew of murderous-looking pirates, nursing a rum and watching the proceedings with the same idle curiosity as every other patron. The silver streak in her raven hair caught the lamplight, and her crimson coat marked her as clearly as any flag. She was just another smuggler keeping her own counsel in a cantina full of rogues—nothing more, nothing less.

The card players—a colourful mix of pirates, smugglers, and one particularly nervous merchant—leaned forward eagerly, but they were just the inner circle. Every soul in El Corazón Dorado was riveted by this dangerous dance between the charming stranger and the corrupt marshal.

Cal was readying his lazy request when the cantina's batwing doors burst open in a shower of brilliant sunlight. The figure silhouetted against the blazing afternoon made conversation halt and hands drift toward weapons.

Duggan Flint filled the doorway; the personification of grim justice, his weathered duster hanging open to reveal an arsenal beneath. A well-chewed cigar jutted from between his teeth, and his steel-grey eyes swept the cantina with the calculating gaze of a man who tracked dangerous quarry for a living. Wanted posters rustling in his coat pocket, and he carried himself with the quiet menace of someone who'd never failed to bring in his mark.

The cantina's cheerful chatter softened to whispers. Even Marshal Rawlings straightened in his chair, though whether from fear or guilt was anyone's guess.

"Splitjack Caldeaux." Dug's voice, a gravelly rumble around his cigar, sliced through the sudden quiet like a cutlass through silk. "We need to discuss some outstanding business."

Cal didn't look up from his cards, though every instinct screamed danger. This was the moment he'd been working toward all afternoon. "Monsieur Flint, I'm in the middle of a most profitable game, cher ami. Perhaps we could discuss your... business... after I've concluded my own business with the Marshal?"

Dug strolled across the room to the table, his hand resting casually on his pistol grip. "There's a bounty on your head, Splitjack. One thousand gold-dragons, dead or alive. Naval desertion and theft of crown property, they tell me."

The words hit the room like a cannonball. Every eye in the cantina turned toward Cal, measuring distances to doors and weapons. In her corner, Fortuna's crew tensed like coiled springs, though Fortuna herself remained perfectly still, her face revealing nothing.

Rawlings choked on his drink. "Well, I'll be... A wanted pirate, right here at my table!" His drunken laugh carried an edge of hysteria. "Seems like the only business left for you is a short drop and a quick stop!"

"Mais non, there must be some mistake, mon ami." Cal said with elaborate calm, "I'm just a simple gambling man who happens to have extraordinary luck."

"Luck won't help you now," Dug replied, but he made no move to draw his weapon. "Though I'm curious about what kind of business you think you might have with Marshal Rawlings here?"

Rawlings, deep in his cups, let spite and spirits loosen his tongue. "This pirate's been chasing secrets all afternoon, but I've got one on him!" His bleary eyes glittered with malicious pleasure. "His little romance with the fishwife Lady Tidemire!"

The name hit the room like a lightning strike. Lady Tidemire—Admiral Garn Tidemire's wife. A bottle slipped from nerveless fingers and shattered on the sawdust. Someone gasped. And by the door, a hooded figure who'd been nursing his drink suddenly went rigid, then slipped out into the blazing afternoon with the stealth of a man carrying deadly news.

Across the cantina, Fortuna Silver felt her world shatter. Her face went white as sailcloth, then flushed crimson with rage. She rose from her corner booth like a hurricane made human, her crew instinctively reaching for weapons before she waved them down with a gesture. Every conversation in the cantina died as Captain Fortuna Silver stepped into the light, no longer content to watch from the shadows, her heart breaking and her fury blazing in equal measure.

"Is this true?" Fortuna's voice started low, dangerous as a riptide pulling sailors to their doom. The room held its breath like the moment between lightning and thunder. Even Dug took pause, cigar smoke wreathing his face as he tried to parse this new development.

"The Admiral's wife!?" Her voice rose like a battle cry echoing across the now-silent cantina, the pain of betrayal making every word slice like a scalpel. "Fuck you, you faithless, smooth-talking, two-timing bastard!" The stranger she loved—the rogue who'd stolen her heart with his silver tongue and easy charm—had been carrying on an affair behind her back.

The cantina erupted in murmurs. Captain Fortuna's temper was legendary, but this was different. This was the rage of a woman scorned, and everyone could feel the raw emotion crackling through the air.

"Lucky, mon cœur, this isn't—" Cal rose from his chair with liquid grace, sweeping off his hat in a gesture both apologetic and desperate.

"Isn't what it sounds like?" Fortuna's laugh was sharp enough to draw blood. "You've been fucking the fishwife while whispering sweet promises in my ear!"

"Sacré bleu, it wasn't like that," Cal protested, his hand over his heart in a gesture of wounded honour, but his voice carried the guilt of a man caught in his own web. "Chère, my heart belongs—"

"Belongs to me!?" Fortuna's hands closed around the pistol grips at her hips, her voice saturated with betrayed fury. "Is that what you call seducing another woman behind my back?"

Dug's eyes narrowed as pieces began falling into place. A pirate with a bounty on his head, a smuggler captain who was clearly his lover, and an affair with Lady Tidemire. His instincts told him there was another story here, more than just maritime piracy.

That's when the real excitement began.

The cantina doors exploded inward in a shower of splinters and salt spray. The figure that filled the doorway made every patron freeze in terror—this was no ordinary man.

Admiral Garn Tidemire stood seven feet tall, his massive frame draped in the gold-braided longcoat of the King's Navy. The admiral's tricorn hat did little to hide face beneath was something from the deepest trenches. His eyes were pale, unblinking orbs, alien and predatory. Where a man's beard should have been, thick tentacles writhed and dripped with seawater, never still, never silent as they slapped wetly against his naval insignia. Two powerful tentacles emerged from his back, moving with their own intelligence. He was an abomination wearing the crown's authority.

"Where is he?" His voice was like grinding coral and the wail of drowning sailors. "Where is the swamp-rat who dares corrupt my wife?"

Behind him came his officers. The shorter one, barely clearing five and a half feet, had the scaled hide of a shark, dorsal fins protruding through tailored holes in his naval uniform. His companion stood taller, nearly six feet, with the bulging eyes of a deep-sea fish and razor-sharp gill slits that fluttered along his neck. His hooded cloak abandoned, his information delivered.

Rawlings lurched to his feet, "now see here, you scaled seadevils! You hold no authority on land and I won't have—"

The marshal never finished his protest. Garn's handcannon thundered; the round collapsing Rawlings chest like paper. Blood left an airbrushed mist across the sun-drenched wall. His body hit the ground with a wet thud, coins scattering across the sawdust floor like fallen stars.

The cantina erupted into magnificent chaos.

Fortuna was moving before Rawlings stopped twitching, her matched flintlocks already singing their deadly song. "To arms!" Fortuna called out, putting a shot through a fishman's eye. “Santos, alert the ship!” Her crew joined the fray with professional fervour, cutlasses ringing as they engaged the fishmen sailors.

Dug found himself caught in the crossfire of a battle he hadn't started, but his survival instincts kicked in. Sweeping back his duster, he brought out his scattergun, cigar clamped firmly between his teeth. "Well, I'll be damned," he growled, and the heavy weapon roared like dragon's breath. His first shot lifted a fishman clean off his feet, sending the creature spinning through a window in a shower of glass and scales.

Cal rolled behind an overturned table with acrobatic flair, his hands weaving probability like a magician spins silk scarves. When a harpoon thrust should have pinned him to the wall, he nudged chance just enough to make it veer wide. "Bien sûr!" he called out, producing a razor-edged playing card that whistled through the bright air to find a fishman's throat.

The battle was magnificent and fierce, but the fishmen kept coming. More poured through the splintered doorway—Garn had brought his entire crew. Steel ground against scaled flesh like funeral bells as the tide of battle began to ebb.

Fortuna's crew fought with the coordination of seasoned veterans, but they were outnumbered three to one. Her first mate went down with a harpoon through his chest, his flare-gun skittering away.

"Santos!" Fortuna's anguished cry cut through the chaos, but there was no time to mourn. Another of her crew crumpled under a fishman's claws, his blood painting the sawdust crimson.

Dug fought with methodical efficiency, his shots careful and measured, unhampered by the cigar he refused to abandon. When his scattergun clicked empty, he grabbed a cutlass from a fallen fishman and wielded it with surprising skill. "We're being overrun!" he called out, parrying a scaled claw.

Cal rolled behind another overturned table, desperately collecting the flare-gun. Firing it through the window to alert Fortuna’s ship. But even supernatural luck had its limits. His concentration wavered, the constant small manipulations of chance taking their toll, allowing a harpoon thrust to catch his shoulder, spinning him with a cry of pain. "Merde!"

"Cal!" Fortuna screamed, her fury at his betrayal forgotten in the face of mortal danger. She emptied both pistols into the advancing fishmen, but for every one that fell, two more took their place.

Garn Tidemire advanced through the carnage like an avatar of deep-sea vengeance, his curved sabre dripping with blood. "You cannot escape, rats! Tonight you all feed the depths!"

"The office!" Dug shouted, grabbing Cal's good arm. "Regroup there!"

They fought their way backwards, step by bloody step, toward Rawlings' office door. Fortuna's crewmen fell one by one. Fortuna reloaded frantically, tears of rage streaming down her face as she watched her loyal crew die protecting her.

They burst through the office door just as the last of the pirates fell, slamming it shut and barricading it with Rawlings' heavy desk. The wood immediately began to splinter under the assault of claws and weapons.

"Gods below, they're all dead," Fortuna whispered, her voice breaking.

Cal pressed his hand against his wounded shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers. "We're trapped, chère. No way out."

Dug checked his remaining ammunition—three shots left. "They'll break through that door in minutes."

The office was dim lit only by a porthole window giving view of the harbour. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they began to make out details of Rawlings' sanctuary—ledgers, maps, bottles of expensive spirits, and...

"Dieux ci-dessous," Cal breathed, his voice thick with horrified realisation.

Six women huddled in cages along the back wall. The youngest couldn't have been more than eighteen, her eyes wide with terror. Their hands were chained, clearly prepared for transport.

"Right under our noses this whole time," Fortuna whispered, her grief transforming into white-hot rage. "The bastard was keeping them here. In his own office. Ready to ship them out like... like cargo."

"Gods... and I came here for a simple bounty," Dug whispered around his cigar. "This is what was happening under a marshal's badge while I was chasing pirates?"

Cal was already moving despite his wounded shoulder, his hands dancing over the cage locks. "Locks are just another kind of probability, mes amis." Click. Click. Click. The makeshift cells swung open one by one.

"Mesdames," he said gently to the frightened women, sweeping off his hat despite the chaos, "we're going to get you out of here.” Looking around the room, “I hope,” he added under his breath.

They were trapped, outnumbered, and wounded. But they all came to the same silent understanding. They might die here, but they wouldn't die without a fight.

The office door splintered further. Garn's voice roared through the gap: "Break it down! I want that scurvy dog!"

Just when it seemed all was lost, the sound of cannon fire erupted from the harbour. Through the small window, they could see The Siren's Revenge approaching at full sail, her long-guns blazing.

"My ship!" Fortuna laughed fiercely. "They’ve seen the signal flare!"

The walls of the cantina exploded outward in a shower of splinters exposing the interior to the cobbled streets. In that moment of distraction, Cal made a desperate move. His probability manipulation went wide—every weapon jammed, every footing slipped, every strike missed. But the effort sent fire racing through his veins like molten lead. He cried out in pain, blood trickling from his nose as his gift burned through him with the heat of a lightning strike.

"Merde!" he gasped, his vision blurring. "Allons-y ! Through the hole!"

As evening painted the sky in shades of gold and crimson, they reached the harbour where The Siren's Revenge waited at anchor, her sails ready to catch the wind. The rescued women were helped aboard with gentle efficiency, safe at last from their captor.

Once aboard, they watched El Corazón Dorado burn. The rescued women were stowed away in the ship's low quarters. Cal sat with his shoulder bandaged, Dug with his leg bound, and Fortuna stood at the rail, tears on her cheeks for her fallen crew.

"They died well," she said quietly. "To a man."

"Oui," Cal replied softly. "They died as heroes."

Dug worked his cigar, then looked at Cal, and then at Fortuna. "You know, a thousand gold-dragons is a lot of money."

"C'est vrai," Cal nodded, very aware his fate rested in the hands of a tempestuous woman and a grizzled bounty hunter. "It is."

Fortuna turned from the rail, her eyes still red. "Are you suggesting we turn this pirate in and split the reward?"

"I was just weighing my options, Miss Fortuna." Dug said. "It seems that amount of gold is worth considering. I do have a pocket full of other bounties to chase, after all"

"And you?" she asked Cal. "What do you have to say for yourself, mon trésor infidèle?"

Cal winced at the endearment turned accusation. "Ma belle—"

"Don't." Fortuna held up a hand. "No more silver-laced words. Tell me truthfully what happened, and give me cause not to let this bounty hunter collect on you."

Cal's grin faded, replaced by something raw and genuine. "Chère, I cheat at everything. Cards, dice, probability itself. I'm a faithless rogue who can't help himself." His voice grew quieter, more honest. "But I swear by all that's sacred—I never stopped loving you."

The words hung in the salt air between them. Fortuna searched his face and found not the silver-tongued lies she expected, but painful, honest truth. Without a word, she stepped forward and let herself sink into his arms, her head nestling against his chest.

"You know what?" she murmured against his shirt, her voice soft but fierce. "I quit trying to figure you out, you magnificent, faithless rogue."

She stayed there for a long moment, breathing in his familiar scent, then lifted her head to pin Dug with a look that could melt steel.

"What other bounties do you have in that coat, Mr. Flint?"

The message was crystal clear: Cal Caldeaux belonged to her and her alone. The bounty hunter would have to look elsewhere for his fortune.