The golden jackpot banner from Gu Nian’s punch still shimmered in Gu Changsheng’s vision as the forty-nine remaining Black-Claw pirate warships bobbed like corks in the shockwave’s wake.
Across the Broken-Tooth Asteroid Belt, five thousand space pirates stood frozen at their battle stations, staring in sheer terror at the twelve-year-old boy in the yellow bunny apron standing on the courtyard porch.
“Nobody move!” a pirate captain on Ship #12 screamed into the fleet radio, his voice pitching an octave high. “Don’t touch the firing triggers! If that yellow-rabbit kid punches a second time, he’ll knock us straight into the nearest sun!”
“Drop the anchors! Raise the white surrender flags!” another pirate captain on Ship #27 hollered, scrambling under his navigation table after throwing his cutlass out the airlock.
“We don’t have any white flags? Then take off the cook’s undershirt and wave it out the top hatch!”
Within three seconds, forty-eight of the forty-nine pirate warships were frantically waving laundry, mop heads, and white tablecloths out of their upper viewports.
Up on the command bridge of the Pirate Vice-Flagship at the back of the formation, however, the hooded Upper-Realm Script Scout didn’t care about the pirates’ lives.
Wiping silvery-purple fluid from beneath its grey hood, the Scout staggered toward the vice-flagship’s central helm console.
