Peter Pan - Part III

Part III

The directions to Neverland are simple:  Second star to the right, and straight on ‘till morning.  This implies a heck of a distance to be flown, and it isn’t clear as to whether or not Neverland is somewhere on earth, or is on another planet/alternate reality/dimension or something.  One wonders how, living so far away, Peter Pan ever got the news that Wendy was telling stories about him in the first place.  

It could be that he wouldn’t exist at all without those stories; that his adventures transpired in real time as the tales were spun, brought into existence in a romantic sort of way by a little girl’s imagination, but that would mean that the stories would have to have been about Peter sitting outside the window listening to stories of him sitting outside the window right then.  That would be boring, and he’d stop coming to listen and the universe would explode.  Wendy must have been channeling the information through some sort of hands-free Ouija board technology, which in a way is even more remarkable than having a really good imagination.  

They get to Neverland, and as soon as they do they’re spotted by pirates, which is pretty incredible considering they’re up at ten thousand feet or so in the cloud layer.  The one guy in the crow’s nest with the spyglass managed to spot them coming in, which means he either must have been expecting them or is just unimaginably lucky.  He yells down to the decks and there’s a scramble of cutlasses and eye patches and whatnot while they get the captain, whose name is James Hook.  

Like any well-developed character, ol’ pirate Jim has a backstory.  Like any good children’s villain, the backstory is drenched in violence and blood.  Apparently, back in the day, Captain Hook got in a sword/knife fight with one Peter Pan and lost horribly despite the fact that he was a grown ass man with a bloody great big sword, and Peter Pan was a little kid with a knife.  This alone must have been hugely embarrassing, but that’s not all.  Peter went so far as to lop off one of the old bastards hands, and threw the severed limb to a crocodile, who munched on it with vigor while Hook gnashed his teeth and clutched his bloody stump of a wrist in agony, spurting blood like a sprinkler all over the freshly swabbed decks of his beloved ship, the Jolly Roger.  


Having once verily supped upon Captain Hook’s person, the crocodile rapidly developed a taste for human meat, and actively stalked the one handed pirate forever afterward.  Prosthetic limbs not in abundance on the high seas, Captain Hook affixed a hook where his hand once was, accepted the fact that with the last name of “Hook” the thing was probably inevitable, retired his banjo, and proceeded to go about his business always looking over his shoulder in perpetual horror and justified paranoia for the giant flesh eating lizard that is out to get him.  

As luck would have it, the crocodile had also swallowed a clock which went tick-tock loudly enough to be audible through the entrails and hide of a live crocodile, who apparently never takes a shit or else there’d be a tick-tocking pile of crocodile poop on the bottom of a lagoon somewhere.  Since the crocodile tick-tocks, Captain Hook has a bit of warning whenever the monster is nearby, which is almost always.  The tick tocking drives Hook insane with fear, and he suffers a panic attack pretty much hourly as a result.  

The clock never stops ticking or tocking, so it’s either on some wicked good batteries or if it’s a wind up clock the little coil spring never un-coils all the way, or else it’s one of those types that winds itself when you wave it around.  

There’s no documentation as to why Hook and Pan were fighting in the first place, but it’s clear that Hook has a reason to hate the little green tights-wearing ankle-biter now.  He wants to kill Peter with the fury and the vengeance, and sets aside all of his pirately duties in favor of hunting down and slaying him most violently.  His crew is remarkably tolerant of this agenda.  They’re very loyal, even though Hook emasculates them verbally at every turn.  The most loyal of all is Mr. Smee, who is at best an obnoxious whining sycophant.  

Anyway.  The pirate in the crows nest spots the flying kids, and Hook orders them to fire the cannon at them.  Firing cannons at children may seem unnecessarily violent, but don’t worry, the kids see the cannonball coming and duck behind a cloud (clouds being notoriously cannonball proof).  They barely escape being exploded into a fine bloody mist by the cannonball, but miraculously all manage to hang on to their happy thoughts and thus stay aloft.  

Peter, the selfless warrior type, tells Tinkerbell to take Wendy, John, and Michael down to the island while he goes down and distracts the pirates.

Previous (Part II):  http://extremenoob.blogspot.com/2014/05/peter-pan-part-ii.html
Next (Part IV): http://extremenoob.blogspot.com/2014/06/peter-pan-part-iv.html