Another day, another chapter.
...
And so the day came.
Port Tragedy appeared on the horizon just after breakfast; the sky was blue, the sea was bright, and three gulls were fighting over what looked like the remains of our last feast together.
With my comically large telescope, which I stole from Rusk, I could see that the port itself looked sorta like a miniature Marineford. I mean, this was home to Central Marine Command for all of the East Blue, so I'd expect it to be as large as it is.
Tall warehouses crowded the docks, as did the massive cranes surrounding them.
Captain Rusk stood beside me with his arms folded.
"There," he said. "Port Tragedy."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Name checks out."
He glanced at me.
"What?"
He snatched the telescope from my hand, asshole.
The Blue Gull drifted in, and the crew had been preparing since dawn, dragging ropes, shouting instructions, tying things down, pretending not to look at me too much. Which was stupid, because they were all looking at me too much.
Every single one of them.
Pelli had been staring at me for the last ten minutes with the expression of a wet dog watching its owner pack a suitcase.
It was getting harder to ignore him.
The ship bumped into the dock with a heavy wooden groan. Ropes flew. Men on the pier shouted. Someone on the Blue Gull shouted something so rude that it made one of the dockhands spit into the water. Then it settled, and the anchor was dropped.
That was when the air changed.
In the corner of my eye, one of the sailors tried to hide it by turning away and wiping his face with the back of his sleeve.
I stared at him.
"Are you crying?"
"No," they said, already crying harder.
"You absolutely are."
"I got salt in my eyes."
"We're not even moving."
"It's sea salt."
"That's not how that works."
Then another sailor started.
This particular one was built like a crate with arms, and I had seen him lift barrels by himself while complaining that breakfast had not been emotionally satisfying enough. He made one tiny choking sound, clenched his fists, and turned his face toward the sky.
"I'm proud of you, kid," he said.
I blinked. "For what?"
He sniffed loudly.
Behind him, two more sailors began wiping their eyes. One of them, a skinny guy, didn't even know why he was crying. He looked around, saw everyone else getting emotional, and joined in out of pure social pressure I'd guess.
Captain Rusk did not cry. He stood there with one hand on his belt and the other at his side, wearing the same sour expression he had worn since I first met him. Which, to be fair, was after I had broken into his ship and threatened them
"You'll want to avoid the western market," Rusk said. "Too many of Crest's men."
I looked at him. "That advice sounded dangerously close to concern."
If you die too soon, it'll make this whole detour feel pointless." He exclaimed
"That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me." I smiled
"It wasn't sweet." Rusk spat
"It was a little sweet."
"I can still throw you overboard."
"We're docked."
"I can drag you back out first."
I smiled despite myself, and Rusk looked away like he regretted everything about the last five seconds.
Then Pelli made a noise.
It was a full-body, throat-tearing, nose-destroying sob that sounded like someone had stepped on a bagpipe filled with soup.
Everyone turned.
Pelli stood in the middle of the deck with both fists clenched at his sides, tears streaming down his face, snot running freely, mouth twisted into an ugly shape that no human face should have been able to hold for that long.
"Oh my god," I said.
"I'm fine," Pelli wailed.
"You are not fine."
"I said I'm fine!"
That made him sob harder.
He rushed me.
I had enough time to take half a step back before he slammed into me and wrapped both arms around my ribs. He was shorter than me, but he grabbed on like a sea-prison chain and buried his entire wet face into my shirt.
"No," I said instantly. "No, no, no. Absolutely not. Your face is leaking."
"You stupid, stupid little menace," Pelli cried. "You came on our ship like a demon, ate our stew, insulted us, broke Hanks's nose, stole the captain's authority, nearly got us killed emotionally, and now you're just leaving?"
"That's a very strange list of grievances, Pelli"
"You didn't even say goodbye properly!"
"I am currently trying to, but you're watering my ribs."
"I packed you food!"
He shoved a cloth bundle into my stomach with enough force to make me cough.
I caught it. "You packed me food?"
"And socks."
I stared down at him.
Pelli looked up at me, tears still falling, nose still shining in the sunlight.
"You lost all your stuff," he said, softer this time. "Figured you'd need something."
Damn.
I looked at the bundle in my hand, tied with rough cord. It was heavier than I expected. Food. Socks. Maybe something else was tucked in there because Pelli was exactly the kind of idiot who would give away half his own things.
I swallowed.
"Thanks," I said.
Pelli nodded, then immediately ruined the moment by wiping his nose on my shirt.
"Pelli!"
"I panicked!"
"You have your own sleeve!"
"My sleeve was busy!"
"With what?"
"Grief!"
I shoved his face away, but not hard. He clung tighter for another second, then finally let go and stepped back, breathing like a man who had survived a shipwreck of the heart.
One by one, the crew came up.
One gave me a knife that was so dull it might have been safer to throw the handle at someone.
Another gave me a lucky button, or so he says. One slapped my shoulder hard enough to nearly drive me into the deck and told me to eat properly, which was insulting from a man who considered gravy a beverage.
Even Hanks, the one whose nose I broke, gave me a firm nod.
"Don't get killed," Hanks said.
"I'll try."
"No, properly try. You're annoying, but if you die, Pelli's going to be like this for weeks."
Pelli made another wet choking sound.
"See?" Hanks said.
Captain Rusk was last.
He didn't step close. He didn't offer his hand. He just looked me over, from my battered clothes to the bundle under my arm, then toward the port beyond me.
"Crest is not a dockside thug," he said. "He owns the people and Marines here. You start trouble here, and trouble will answer quickly."
I nodded.
"I know."
"No, you don't," Rusk said. He then sighed. "But you're going anyway."
"Yerp", I nodded
His mouth tightened.
"You're a reckless idiot." Rusk exhaled through his nose. It might have been a laugh if it came from a happier man.
Then he reached into his coat and tossed me something.
I caught it against my chest.
A small pouch.
Coins shifted inside.
I stared at it.
"Don't make a face," Rusk said.
"I wasn't going to."
"You were."
"I kind of was."
"It's not a gift. It's repayment for the trouble you saved us from later."
"I caused most of the trouble."
"You also uncovered cargo that would have gotten us tangled with worse men than you." His eyes flicked toward the dock. "So take it, leave my ship, and make yourself someone else's disaster."
My throat tightened again.
"You know," I said, "for a hostage captain, you've been weirdly decent."
"For a pirate brat, you've been weirdly tolerable."
"I'm not a pirate."
"Keep telling yourself that."
I slipped the pouch into the bundle and adjusted the bundle under my arm. For a second, I stood there, not moving. The gangplank waited. The port waited. Everything I needed to do waited.
And behind me was the Blue Gull.
A stupid merchant ship with a grumpy captain, a crying cook, and a crew full of idiots
I had known them for days.
I had threatened some of them.
One of them had definitely tried to stab me in my sleep on the first night.
Still, leaving hurts.
Not in the giant, crushing way losing my boat had hurt. Not like watching my last link to Vale and the ledger sink into the sea. This was smaller and stranger. It sat in my chest, making me want to look back before I had even left.
I hated that.
So naturally, I handled it with maturity.
I turned around quickly and started down the gangplank.
"Goodbye forever, criminals."
"We're merchants!" Pelli shouted.
"You sailed with me, so you're criminals now!"
Pelli wailed again.
I kept walking.
My boots hit the dock.
The wood felt different under me. Less alive than the ship. More crowded. More permanent. Behind me, the crew shouted over one another.
"Eat the bread first!"
"Don't trust men with red scarves!"
"If someone offers you miracle medicine, it's probably glue!"
"Punch with your shoulder!"
"Don't punch Marines unless you can win!"
"Don't punch Marines at all!"
I lifted one hand without turning around.
"Cowards!"
A few of them laughed. A few of them cried harder.
I made it three steps before my vision blurred.
Just a little.
Barely anything.
One drop slid down my cheek.
I stopped and wiped at it with my thumb, annoyed.
I looked up.
"Bad day for rain," I muttered.
A dockhand passing by looked at the cloudless sky, then at me, then at the sky again.
"It's dry and sunny right now."
I stared at him.
He stared back.
I punched him into the sea.
…
"Thief!" someone screamed.
The thief looked offended. "It's called market redistribution!"
A woman selling eels leaned out from behind her stall and hurled one at him. The eel hit him in the face with a wet slap. He screamed, dropped two oranges, recovered one, saluted her for some reason, and kept running.
I watched him vanish into the crowd.
Okay, I think I get the vibe. So far I've been travelling around the markets, with no clue for where to go here. I turned left and immediately had to hop over a swinging beam being carried by two men who were not looking where they were going.
"Coming through!" the front man shouted after they had already come through.
"Piss off!" I shouted back.
The rear man gave me the finger.
So rude.
It seems Port Tragedy was worse up close. It had the usual bones of a trade town, warehouses, markets, taverns, alleys, guards, beggars, dock offices, shouting merchants, but everything seemed so…shady. People watched each other too carefully. Men with matching red armbands stood at corners and pretended not to be security.
And Crest's name appeared everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE.
A stamped crate marked with a crest-shaped seal.
A dock permit signed by one of his companies.
A warehouse guarded by men who wore no uniforms but carried themselves like they expected the street to move around them.
Marlo Crest.
Even without Vale's ledger, the bastard's stench was all over this place.
I still hated that I had lost the ledger.
Every time I remembered it, my mood dropped through the floor. That thing had been a map of the rot and its secret treasures, and now I had to do everything the hard way.
I adjusted the bundle under my arm and kept moving.
Somewhere nearby, a goat screamed.
The next street over had become the site of a full civil breakdown between a vegetable seller, a man covered in flour, two dock workers, and the goat, which stood on top of a barrel chewing what looked like an official document.
"That goat ate my license!" the vegetable seller yelled.
The goat stared at him while chewing.
The flour man pointed at the dock workers. "They started it!"
One dock worker pointed at the goat. "He knows what he did!"
The goat swallowed.
Everyone gasped.
A few streets later, I found a food stall selling skewers that smelled good enough to make me temporarily forget crime, grief, and my rapidly shrinking dignity.
"How much?" I asked.
The stall owner looked me up and down. "For you? Three hundred berries."
The man in front of me had paid fifty.
I looked at him.
He looked at me. (R Kelly?)
I looked at the skewers.
"Three hundred?" I asked.
"Special price."
"I'm not foreign."
He stared at me.
I stared at him.
He lowered his voice. "Seventy."
"Fifty."
"Sixty."
"Fifty and I don't ask why that barrel behind you is moving."
His eyes flicked back.
The barrel froze.
The stall owner handed me two skewers.
"Pleasure doing business," I said.
"Leave."
I left, chewing victory meat.
It was pretty good.
The port continued like that, one stupid disaster after another. A man tried to sell me a compass that only pointed toward "opportunity," which turned out to be wherever he was standing. A woman in a purple hat challenged me to a shell game, then accused me of cheating when I quickly adapted to her playstyle and began winning consistently. I quadrupled my coins heh.
Then a Marine patrol came down the street and everyone suddenly became the most law-abiding crowd in history.
Three men who had been loudly arguing over counterfeit permits began discussing the weather.
I turned my face away and pretended to be deeply interested in a display of rope.
The Marines passed.
One of them paused beside me.
I kept staring at rope.
The Marine stared at me.
I picked up a coil, nodded like a man who understood rope professionally, and said, "Strong fibre."
The Marine frowned. "What?"
"Rope."
"I can see that."
"Good rope."
The stall owner, who had been watching this with the fearful eyes of a man who knew exactly how many illegal things were hidden under his table, nodded too quickly. "Best rope in town."
The Marine looked between us.
I held up the coil.
He walked away.
The stall owner exhaled so hard he nearly folded.
I put the rope down.
He grabbed my wrist. "You buying that?"
"No."
"You touched it, you buy it"
"That is not a real thing."
"In this port, everything is real"
I threatened to punch him, and that solved things quickly, and because apparently I was now the kind of person who bullies their way outta purchases by market men.
…
It was now around midday and I'd realised two things.
One, Marlo Crest had his own security force kinda running the place, I recognised them cause the red bands they were wearing matched one ogf the symbols that were littered in Vale's Ledger.
Two, I was being followed.
Not constantly, but every few streets. People leaning against walls. A woman pretending to clean the same cup for several minutes.
Maybe it was the bounty getting around
Whatever it was, I needed information before I picked a fight with the local economy.
I ducked through a narrower street, aiming for shade and space to think.
That was when I saw her.
Not fully.
Just a flash at the corner of my eye.
Orange hair.
I stopped dead.
My brain stalled.
No.
No fucking way.
The girl turned her head slightly, just enough for me to catch the line of her cheek.
My heart kicked.
I followed her. Immediately.
She was slipping through the crowd with incredible ease. I had to shove past a man carrying stacked baskets, dodge a woman with a boiling pot, and hop over a sleeping dog. Curse my massive body!
"Move, move, sorry", I exclaimed to each person
The girl turned left into an alley, I also entered.
Empty.
I stopped.
The alley was narrow and shaded, squeezed between a warehouse wall and a crooked row of back rooms. Broken crates lined one side. A drain stank near my foot. Laundry hung overhead between windows, barely moving in the dry air.
She was seemingly gone
I listened.
Distant port noise. A gull. Someone laughing on the next street over.
I took a slow breath.
"Damn it," I whispered.
Man, that woulda been sick if it was who I thought it was
I stood there with my hand half-raised, as if I could grab the moment before it escaped entirely. My chest felt weirdly hollow. Not devastated but just caught open you know?
I was sure I had seen her, and I had lost her in less than a minute.
"Good job, Kai," I muttered. "Incredible work. Really sharp. Saw a main character and immediately got defeated by basic turning."
Something shifted behind me.
Thunk!
A metal pole cracked against the back of my head.
Not hard enough to drop me. Hard enough to make my vision flash white and my soul briefly exit my body to file a complaint.
"Ow!" I cried.
I spun around, one hand clapped to my head.
A girl stood on top of a crate behind me, holding a long metal pole across her shoulders.
Orange hair.
Brown eyes.
A sharp little grin that had absolutely no respect for my pain.
She tapped the pole lightly against one palm.
"Normal people don't follow girls into alleys," she said.
My head throbbed.
My dignity throbbed worse.
I stared up at her.
There she was, in all her smug, orange-haired glory.
"Cat Burglar" Nami, future navigator of the Straw Hat Pirates.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 2919