“Unhand her you scoundrel!” Peter demanded, drawing his dagger and storming into the room. “She belongs to Neverland and I shan't let you steal her away from it.”
Gwen felt Jay bristle and stiffen as she pushed out of his hold. “What do you mean she belongs?” Jay demanded, his voice darkening. “I don't think its for you to decide where she belongs.”
She stepped in front of him, putting herself between the two boys. She raised her hands to signal Peter—and his dagger—to stay back.
“Peter,” Gwen began, her voice as full of caution as his eyes were full of reckless enthusiasm. “We've got a big problem.”
“And I have a little solution,” he replied, brandishing his knife.
Gwen wanted to approach Peter and try to reason with him in nonsense terms he would understand, but before she could, Jay pushed her back and put himself between her and Peter. “Drop that knife,” Jay told him, his voice stripped of goodwill. “I won't let you near Gwen with that thing.”
Her eyes held a dead serious look, and she was foolish enough to hope Peter would recognize the issue's gravity when he looked at her. “He's not the problem,” she told him. “We need to get out of here. The CAO and the Admiral are calling the shots, and they're sending special reinforcements to the island as we speak.”
“Nonsense!” Peter contradicted her. “Captains are in charge of ships, and I'll fight any captain who brings such a boatful of ill-intent to Neverland, let alone one who lays a hand on you!”
“He can help us!” Gwen shouted. “It's complicated. I can explain, but he's not the enemy.”
What she said, she said truthfully, but Gwen could not account for the playfully vengeful mechanics of Peter's mind and loyalties. He had no sympathy for adults, or anyone who desired to grow up at all. In his world, anyone that came to Neverland on sea meant trouble for him, and he gladly accepted the challenge of any villain that designed to abuse his whimsical paradise. For Peter, everything always felt like a fairytale.
“Rubbish and rutabagas,” Peter replied, charging forward. “Let me at the villain!”
She tried to push past Jay and stop him, but he held her back. To Jay, Peter must have seemed deluded. His first impression was doing nothing to undo the prejudices Lasiandra had sown with her duplicitous stories.
Perhaps what confused and unnerved Jay was the absurd combination of Peter's seriousness and sheer lack of malice. His words and intention offered no room for doubt—he possessed far too great a zeal and conviction. However, that same zeal animated him with an excitement, a delight, which belonged to a child at play, not a man at war.
“What!” Peter asked, sizing his opponent up, “Are you unarmed? It's not a fair fight if I've got a dagger and you're without.”
“No,” Jay answered, grim and simple, as he pulled a pistol from out of his uniform. “It's not a fair fight.”
Gwen's head swam in a panic. “Don't!” she yelled, hoping at least one of them would heed her and stop this escalating conflict from rushing into dangerous action.
“Before you take another step with that dagger,” Jay told him, “you should think about what six shots of anomolium will do to you at close range.”
Knowing that Jay had only magic repellent ammo did little to calm Gwen's nerves or deter Peter's fighting spirit. Peter, deep down had a human heart, but it had beat magic through his blood for so long she couldn't help but worry that the draining shock of the blue bullets would arrest him with a painful, and maybe even lethal, wound.
Peter understood the threat, but not how it affected the situation. With reluctant civility, Peter cast his dagger aside, throwing it into a cork-board hung on the wall. It's sharp point struck a crude map of Neverland and kept the blade impaled on the cork-board. “Very well then. You really should have brought a sword, but I can beat you whether we fight armed or unarmed. I'll beat you silly, wrestle you blind, and throw you overboard barehanded!”
This made no sense to Jay and he stared with bewildered eyes at Peter. The boy had disarmed himself, and yet still aimed to fight. Peter's cockeyed expectation took a moment to register with Gwen as well—he waited for Jay to put aside his gun and have at him in a fair fight.
Peter had a boy's sense of justice and a gentleman's sense of combat. He hadn't attacked Jay when he had assumed him unarmed—such a dasterdly move would be unsporting. Peter's good form was an instinctive relic of both a time in history and youth that Jay had abandoned. Unlike other enemies Peter had faced while frolicking Neverland, Jay did not aspire to play by invented game rules when the stakes were real and high to him.
He took a step aside, toward the control panel. This exposed Gwen, but he kept his gun trained on Peter to protect her as he nodded to the communication equipment. “If you so much as lift a finger to hurt Gwen, I'll call for the CAO and whatever backup he wants to apprehend you with.”
Peter, seeming amazed at Jay's response to his challenge, looked to Gwen and asked, “Why would I want to hurt her?”
Gwen breathed the first breath of relief she'd had since Peter stormed in. With them argued to this standstill, she just needed kept them calm long enough to explain the situation to their mutual satisfaction.
“He's not the enemy, it's a trick, Peter,” Gwen announced, approaching him and making sure she could shield him from Jay's fire. She'd already been shot today. She knew she could survive it. It would strip her of her ability to fly off and escape this dangerous ship, but better that fate befall her than Peter. “If you get distracted by him, we don't stand a chance to save Neverland.”
“What foolish bug bit you?” he demanded. “Let us
