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thewildwaffle · 3 years

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Humans are Weird - Helium

It's been a while since I got a new story up. I'd been working on some other projects, then had some pretty unhappy life events happen. I am doing fine, so don't worry. Hopefully, now my muse is back and will stick around a while :)

This story is from a prompt ao3

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When you bring together a wide variety of races from different planets and environments, you tend to have an equally wide variety of needs that need to be met from species to species. Ships were typically staffed by a food and nutrients safety team. Custodial teams were careful about residual chemical and oil cross-contamination between particular races. Sections of hab suites had controlled ventilation systems that could be set to various atmospheric needs. Outside the hab suites, at work stations or in communal areas, some species have to be fitted with atmospheric filters. Over the years, these devices have gotten less uncomfortable, thankfully. They weren’t the best, they were a bit bulky, noisy, and in some cases obstructive to the wearer, but hey, being able to properly breathe on a ship with beings who had different atmospheric needs than you was more important than comfort. When the humans joined the galactic community, the newer filters started becoming noticeably smaller and less obtrusive. Many were concerned that the changes would make them less effective, but leave it to the humans to tinker around and invent the impossible when they really wanted to. The latest models were supposed to be so small and comfortable, you could sleep with them on. Heck for some races, you could barely tell they were wearing an atmospheric filter at all. Not only that, they were up to 40% more effective at filtration and gas delivery for many species. This opened up crew rosters for ships. Species who couldn't reasonably be stationed in the same ship due to the gases they breathe being dangerous to others, or vice versa could now be on the same crew.

That included duibs like Marvi who breathe large amounts of helium. She’d been serving aboard Galactic Coalition ships for more standard solar rotations than many of her fellow crewmates had been alive. It helped that duibs were long-lived, of course, and in her time, she’d seen many new technologies come and go. If you pressed her hard enough, she’d likely say that the atmospheric filters the humans developed were by far her favorite. Being able to safely and comfortably pass through different atmospheric biomes was an important ability when you had a long list of custodial and maintenance duties each rotation. Marvi huffed a deep sigh as she rounded another corner. Lighting beam replacements weren’t heavy, but maneuvering them around corners like this was a bit of a pain. “Need a helping paw Marvi?” Marvi turned to see a dark gray priso steadying the end lighting beam she was carrying. The furry face was relatively expressionless, but a clear look at his flicking whiskers and triangular, alert ears and bright eyes told her that he was holding back laughter. He must have just come up from around the other corner and seen the small duib struggling. “Oh, hello Aurrin. I definitely would appreciate some aid, though I would understand if you are busy right now,” Marvi replied politely. Honestly, the help would be very nice and she hoped the offer was serious. “I’m waiting for Human Karl, I can help until he gets here,” Aurrin rose to his back paws awkwardly and grabbed the ends of the light beams in his dexterous front paws. Priso were normally quadrupedal on flat ground, but the forested terrains of their homeworld meant they were at least somewhat adept at grabbing and climbing. He followed along, holding on to the light beams and kept them away from the walls and corners as the pair walked. “I was actually just installing something by the hab suites over there,” he tilted his head back to gesture behind them, “I’ve got something I wanted to test before I go off duty. After that, I’m looking forward to two whole cycles of rest and whatever I want to do.” The corridor here was darker and Marvi stopped walking. This was where she needed to replace the light beam. “Two whole cycles, huh?” She set down the light beam carefully, Aurrin following suit. She pulled out a tool from her hip pack and started working on opening the control panel. In order to open the panels to install the new light beams, she had to make sure power was redirected for safety. “What are you going to do with your time off? Any fun plans?” “A few plans. They might change depending on how my experiment goes.” Marvi worked quietly, waiting on the priso to expound, but other than chuckling to himself, he didn’t say anything more on the topic. Well, Marvi supposed it was not really her business, so she changed the subject and chatted cordially until the new light beam was installed and she rerouted power back to the panel. The darkened hall was filled with bright, cheerful light and Marvi let out a satisfied sigh. “Well, that’s that. Another task down.” The old light beam would need to be taken back to her shop for a repair and gas exchange, or refill, or whatever it ended up needing to get it up and running again. “Thank you again for your help. I should be able to get these back alright myself, I don’t want to take up too much of your time if you’ve still got your experiment to run.” From around the corner of the corridor, the distinct sound of a hab suite door opening was followed by approaching footsteps. A light on Aurrin’s comm device flashed and the priso’s long tail flicked excitedly back and forth. “No worries, it looks like my experiment is already underway.” Marvi felt the frills all along her body perk in curiosity, but before she could ask anything else, Human Karl rounded the corner. He grinned without showing his teeth, as it would have been a sign of aggression to many species on the ship, and gave a small wave as he approached. “Hey Karl,” Aurrin started. Marvi only partially listened as he started in on a spiel about his upcoming off-duty

plans. Instead, she was more interested in a quiet hissing noise and was trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. It sounded like… well it sounded almost like an atmospheric filter, one beside her own. Hers was in light operation since she was in a sector of the ship that was tuned to a generalized setting, but this noise sounded like a filter at full power output. Did Human Karl hear it? Could he hear it? Surely Aurrin could? She studied them, they didn’t seem to notice. The noise had started when Karl arrived, did that mean…? Her suspicions were confirmed the moment Karl opened his mouth to reply to Aurrin. “I’m actually on my way to…” What. The. Frewan? Human Karl’s voice, which was usually a calming deep tone, was disturbingly high and unnatural. The surprised expression on his face made Marvi’s core freeze. That meant this vocal change wasn’t some weird human thing? What was going on?! “I, woah,” the squeaky voice stuttered, “is this… helium? What is this? What’s going on?” He looked at the comm device strapped to his wrist and pulled up the readout. Sure enough, it was an increase of helium output from his atmospheric filter. The skin on his forehead wrinkled as he looked from the readout to Marvi and Aurrin, his eyes finally locking on the latter who was fiddling with something on his own comm device readout. “You punk! How did you do this? Change it back!” Karl started laughing a bit, Marvi wasn’t sure if it was directed at the ridiculousness of his voice or if it was because the helium was affecting his cognitive functions. She worried it was the latter. Panicking, Marvi approached to see if there was some sort of override. She had to act fast! Humans didn’t breathe helium, he could die! Before she could do anything though, Aurrin spoke up while trying to muffle his laughter. “Okay, okay, hoooo… I’ve deactivated it, you’re good. Keep talking though while your voice turns back to normal, you’re hilarious.” Karl gave him a look that Marvi couldn’t interpret. “What was that? How did you do that?” His voice was already back to normal and it sounded like a mix between annoyed, intrigued and amused. “When you came out of your hab suite, you passed a sensor I set up that overrode your atmospheric filter controls. My latest invention. Imagine this: a ship gets attacked and boarded. Normal defenses prove insufficient and the crew is in grave danger. As the hostiles pass hidden sensors, their atmospheric filters are overridden and they fall asleep, get loopy and confused, or simply pass out before they can get to and harm any crew.” Marvi and Karl blinked in unison while Aurrin’s tail swept side to side proudly. Marvi was the first to find words. “Your… your experiment?” Marvi glanced between Aurrin and Karl worriedly, “Is this what you were experimenting with? You ran it on a crewmate?!” “Well,” Aurrin’s ears pulled back slightly, but his whiskers still kept their amused look, “I say experiment pretty loosely. This was more of a field test. I ran all the actual experiments long ago. I knew exactly what would happen. And I did research on humans and I found out what effects helium has on them and I had to see it for myself. That’s why I was waiting for Karl.” The human in question was still laughing a bit - of course, a human would be able to laugh after nearly being asphyxiated, they’re crazy - before he ran his hand over his head to compose himself. “So this was a prank?” “For science.” “Of course. For science.” Karl’s smile suddenly morphed into a thoughtful frown. “Wait. Is this payback for the soap thing I pulled on you last week?” Aurrin’s face was statuesque and solemn as he stared silently at the human for a moment. “Yes.” “You’re the worst.” “Thank you.” “Want to go do this again in front of Aylin? She and Maruti-kar would think it’s hilarious.” “I had been planning on it. But only if we can get video evidence of it.” “For science?” “Naturally.” Marvi watched, hearts still beating rapidly from her panic, as Aurrin and Karl deactivated and retrieved the sensor to reenact the stunt she had just been a witness

to. Almost reflexively, she started tracing the side of her atmospheric filter. The quiet hum and hiss were calming. Helium to her was life. She’d thought it was toxic to others. And yet Aurrin thought it fine to use it on a human, and Karl was not only unworried about it but found it funny. Was it not dangerous?! And his voice? Why did it do that? She pulled up a search screen on her comm device and searched in the human database. Helium. Breathing. Voices. Apparently, helium took up space in their lungs that normally would be filled by oxygen, so yes, it was dangerous because they could asphyxiate. It also amplified higher-pitched tones of their vocal tract while simultaneously dampening lower tones because of the gas’s low density. That explained the voice change. And for some reason, the funny noise was enough of a reason to play around with deadly materials. Well, if anything, she supposed humans did keep to their MO pretty well. She picked the spent light beams back up and headed back to her shop, careful to not hit the ends on any walls or corners.

#humans are weird #space orcs #humans #aliens #helium #science #writeblr #original writing #space #spaceships

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sub-danny · 3 years

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How do you think the boiz would react to being told to wear a butt plug all day?

(Let’s just forget that laszlo and Andrea are in older times because I don’t know if but plugs were invented yet and I’m to lazy to look it up)

I decided to look it up for you, and this is what came up:

"Sold under the name 'Dr Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators', early primitive forms of butt plugs have been traced back to the late 1800s. Most forms of anal intercourse were illegal at the time under harsh sodomy laws, so of course they were strictly used for medical purposes and definitely not for Ye Olde Bum Fun."

So techinally they did exist in Laszlo and Andrea's time though they were more for medical purposes (but we are going to pretend that they definetly used it for ye olde bum fun)

Zemo:

Zemo would be done for it. This might be because I have read so many Zemo wearing a butt plug fanfics on ao3 but nothing can convince me otherwise that he loves wearing butt plugs. As long as he knows at the end of the day when it's taken out you will instantly be filling up his wide hole. Now also think about vibrating butt plug, where throughout the day you get to control the intensity of it. Just thinking about him in the middle of doing something important, or where he is having to talk to an important person and just raising the vibrations up to see him desperately try and not moan or whimper from the way it's stimulating his prostate or see him try not to dry hump the air. He secretly loves it though and loves letting you have that control over him. So when you tell him you want him to wear it for the whole day, he would smirk at you and walk over to a table to lean over.

Laszlo:

The first time you bring it up he would be mortified. I see Laszlo as being quite embarrassed by doing anything related to butt stuff. It's really a new concept to him and he is quite shy about it but after talking to him about it and letting him have a month to think about it he would finally be ready to try it. He would feel weird about having it inside of him, never quite being able to forget that it's there. He would try and concentrate on his work and talking to his students but there would be times where he would move on his seat and it would press the butt plug right into his prostate and it would be testing everything for him not to let out a moan in front of the kids. So when you ask him about wearing it for a whole day he would definitely have to sit down and discuss it with you in-depth.

Andrea:

I see two ways Andrea would react. If you asked him quite early in, in your relationship about wearing a buttplug for a whole day he might be quite shy about it as well but still agree, however, if the two of you had been dating for a bit then you know how much of a slut he can be and he would eagerly accept it, wanting to feel full for the whole day. He'd love to move around and feel it within him, pressing up against his prostate. If he was having to perform at a concert he might be more reluctant as he won't be able to concentrate on his violin but it would be so fun to see him struggle with it.

Niki:

Niki would be very reluctant if you ask him. He doesn't like doing what he is told plus having that inside him the whole day would be humiliating, plus he would not be able to concentrate well on driving if that was within him the whole time. Yet after talking about it with him for a bit, he might finally agree for a few hours as it would certainly help stretch him for you to peg him later, and over time he's willing to accept longer and longer times until it does get to a whole day.

Ernst:

Ernst would also be a bit reluctant as well but rather he is worried about his other crewmates finding out that he had that inside of him, though you told him repeatedly that there was no way they would find out, but still he was hesitant. But he's also really curious about all the different types of butt plugs (especially vibrating ones) and so he would agree eventually and slowly he would love wearing them until when he is not wearing one he feels weird.

Alex Kerner:

All of these things are really new to Alex. He had no idea different ways to enjoy sex with a man being a sub was a thing until the wall went down so he wants to try everything. He would be fascinated with butt plugs, he would be looking in a shop with all the different sizes not thinking they could fit inside of him, but oh boy does he want to try it. It would take him a little while to get used to it, for the first time he tries it he would stay at home the whole day but slowly he would gain more confidence in wearing it outside. So yeah when you ask him to wear one for the whole day he would be super excited to give it a try.

Sebastian:

He's definitely worn butt plugs in his ass before you two started to date. He's used to these things and so asking him to wear one inside of him for the whole day he's like, 'no biggie' and ready accept you putting it into him. He also acts like he doesn't even have it in him. He's good at maintaining his composure just to annoy you because he knows how much you want to see him react to it. When it's just the two of you though he might tell you how good it feels inside of him but how it's not the same as having you inside of him.

#zemo #laszlo kriezler #andrea marowski #niki lauda #ernst schmidt #alex kerner #sebastian zöllner #subdanielbrühl #daniel bruhl #daniel brühl

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imaginejamesandsirius · 4 years

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Can we get like. A pirate AU where James is the captain of a ship and Sirius is like a Private in the Navy on a ship that James's crew attacks. But instead of killing Sirius James is like 👀 and Sirius joins the crew and they're in love❤️❤️?? You are doing gods work carrying this rarepair on your back.

((A/N: Warning for mentions of slave trade and past child abuse))

Sirius knew that he could've thought through his escape plan a little better, but he'd been desperate to get away from his family, by whatever means necessary. He needed to do something that they couldn't pull him back from. Joining the military had been the easiest, most solid answer that he'd been able to come up with. It was bad for their image if they pulled him out of that, but they could do it. Their reach was long and powerful, and Sirius knew that. Military wouldn't just be enough; he needed to get away.

So he joined the navy. Sailors spent all their time on ships, hardly ever in port. With no war on, they didn't even fight. They were little more than guards to merchant ships carrying valuable cargo, and Sirius didn't mind that at all.

He sort of minded being told what to do all the time, but he figure out that the better he got at his job, the less he was ordered around; there was no point in telling him what to do if he was already doing it, after all.

He kind of hated his fellow crewmates, but that wasn't a surprise. Sirius didn't get on with other people, and he was still content to be away from his parents.

Sirius wouldn't describe himself as being happy with his new life, but he'd never been very happy to begin with, so it was no real loss. He knew that freedom was a dream that could never be attained. He'd been born into a prestigious family, and while he'd reaped the rewards, he wasn't willing to deal with the consequences. His father had called him spoiled, and his mother had said he was being ungrateful. The truth was that Sirius was plenty grateful for what he'd had growing up, but not who he'd had it with.

He hadn't been a part of the navy for a full year when it ended. He'd always thought that if he was pulled out of service, it would be because his parents yanked him out, or maybe that he finally lost his temper and assaulted a superior officer. In a way, the latter is what happened. He just... didn't get discharged for it because there were bigger events at work.

Pirates attacked them, and that was around the time that Sirius learned the 'valuable cargo' they were guarding were slaves-- it suddenly made sense why a single ship had needed an escort, but it didn't make it any less reprehensible. They were under attack and the chances of any of them making it out of this were slim, so Sirius figured it was well within his rights to be the shite out of his captain.

Whether it was considered improper conduct or not-- which, to be clear, it definitely was-- Sirius was rounded up with the rest of the sailors that still lived when the attack was over. The worst they'd do was kill him; pirates didn't have time to be inventive torturers, and any way they could kill him would be quick. Even the more frightening ideas would only last for a couple hours before he died. That being said, he didn't want to die. He rather liked living. They were on their knees, waiting for the verdict as the pirates deliberated.

He could hear one of the pirates talking to his captain, but he couldn't hear what was being said. All he knew that was one second, they were talking, and the next, the captain was squat down in front of Sirius, peering at him curiously. Sirius met his gaze evenly. "You're not like the others," the captain said. "What's your name, love?"

Pirates were weird. Who called someone 'love' before killing them? "I'm pretty sure you don't need to know someone's name to kill them."

"Who said anything about killing you? I know I didn't. What's your name?" he asked again.

Sirius didn't have a good reason for why he refused to answer. Best he could figure was that he just didn't like being told what to do, and if he was about to die, there was point in being accommodating. This pirate captain could say as much as he wanted that he didn't plan on killing Sirius, but he knew that pirates didn't take prisoners; it simply wasn't feasible. He didn't want to answer, so he just stared into the captain's eyes and raised an eyebrow; if there was one thing he was good at, it was being annoying. According to Regulus, at least, but he had plenty of evidence to back up that claim.

After twenty seconds or so, one of the other sailors next to him muttered, "For fuck's sake," before saying, loud enough that the captain could hear him, "Sirius Black. His name's Sirius Black." It was one of the lieutenants, which meant that he'd almost certainly known about the slaves in the merchant ship.

Sirius had the urge to kick him, but he couldn't do it without falling over, what with his hands tied behind his back and all. He settled for glaring at the man. He didn't turn his head quickly enough to catch the spark of realisation in the captain's eyes.

Instead of the pirate captain saying anything about his family or the hefty ransom he could try to get for giving them back Sirius, he just said, "Like the star." Then his gaze slid over to the lieutenant and down to his shoulder where his rank was displayed, and his face hardened. He looked back at Sirius, his expression clearing again. "Moony?" he said, pointing at the lieutenant.

The next second, there was a sword sticking out of his chest and he made a horrible gurgling sound. Sirius flinched, and he wasn't the only one. The sword pulled back out, and he fell, lifeless and face first, on the deck.

"Don't worry, Sirius Black," the captain said quietly, like this was something just for the two of them, "that's not going to happen to you."

Sirius clenched his jaw. It wasn't the reassurance the captain wanted it to be. Going back to his parents and that sodding house was nothing short of a nightmare.

All the same, the captain was true to his word, and Sirius wasn't killed. The same couldn't be said for the rest of his crewmates, but a few of them did live to see the next day.

None of them were prisoners, and that was as strange as everything else about this had been. It made sense that they wouldn't have jailcells, but it didn't make sense that they let them roam free. That just wasn't safe. And it certainly didn't help that Sirius had no idea why he hadn't been killed. The captain had been dead by the time the battle ended-- and it had been a short lived battle-- and the rest of the higher ranked officers had been killed. All that was left of the original crew was Sirius and a handful of other privates. Did the pirates think they were harmless because they were new? But that theory didn't hold because from what Sirius had seen, these pirates weren't stupid. They had a reason for keeping these particular crewmen alive, and he wished he knew what it was. Sirius? He was obvious. Ransom, a grateful reward for transferring him safely, whatever they went with, that was smart. The rest of the privates didn't have those sorts of family connections, though.

Sirius had never liked being idle, and when he had more reason to be cowed, he had a tendency to act out-- or, as Regulus always said, act stupid. As far as stupid ideas went, this was harmless. He went on deck, and when he saw someone struggling to keep hold of the rope and get down where they needed to tie it off, he went over and said, "Want a hand?"

"Tie this off," they said, tossing the slack rope down to him. After he did, they gave it an experimental tug, then hopped down. "You must be Sirius," they said with a grin.

He blinked. "How d'you know that?" He hadn't met any of the pirate crew, and he certainly hadn't been introduced to them.

"You're not on our crew, and James only cared to mention one of our passengers to me. I believe the phrase he used was 'devilishly handsome'." Now that they were closer, Sirius could make out all the freckles dotting across pale skin. He guessed that some people tanned, and other people just freckled. He caught sight of coppery red hair tucked under their hat, and that explained the resilient paleness, at least.

Sirius blinked some more. "Who's James?"

Their grin widened. "He must really be in it if he forgot to introduce himself. He's the captain. I'm Lily. Normally, I would follow that up by saying that I'm available to someone like you, but I think James would get pissed with me if I even thought of stealing you out from under him."

"I'm supposed to think fondly of someone that kidnapped me?" Sirius said with a snort. "He'll be waiting a long time for that to happen."

Lily raised an eyebrow at him. "We kidnapped you? That's news to me. The way I see it, we saved your life. You would've been around slavers for years before they realised you weren't one of them. When that day came, they would've killed you."

"I find it hard to be grateful when I'm about to be delivered into the hands of my family," he said, even though he was grateful for the save; the Navy crew would've tossed him overboard.

"You don't miss them?"

"Not one bit," he said immediately.

She hummed, then glanced out at the ocean. "If you're going to be up here, you might as well help me. C'mon."

"You did what?" James asked, staring at her, dumbfounded.

Lily rolled her eyes. "It's not like I went into his cabin and pulled him out with my feminine wiles. And, in case you forgot, you never introduced yourself to him. He asked questions and I answered them. I wouldn't be surprised if he confronted you about it tomorrow," she said with a sly smile. She liked to meddle. Normally, James thought it was funny, but that was because normally he wasn't involved. It was so much easier to find her funny when it didn't effect him.

"Please tell me you're joking."

"Why would I joke about something like this?" Lily asked innocently.

James narrowed his eyes at her. He couldn't tell if it was genuine innocence or if she was faking. Knowing her, it could easily be either one. "You did not tell him that I thought he was cute. Right? Lily, tell me. I need to hear these words from your mouth, right now."

She cocked her head. When she had her hair down, it did a fair job of distracting him from the point. With her hair tied back though, James was not so easily deterred. "I thought you told me to stop lying to you." Definitely fake innocence.

"You are such a pain in the arse. Why do I keep you around?"

"Because I'm your second best swordsman." She crossed her arms and leaned forward. "Man to man, James. What're you planning on doing with the privates from that ship? We aren't going the direction we do to drop people off. We're going straight to the free colonies."

He looked at her for a moment, debating if he wanted to tell her or not. Eventually, he settled on not. There was a certain amount of push back he was willing to deal with, but it would be more than that if he told her the truth. "It doesn't matter what order we do it in, Lils. It's the same end result. I'll see you in the morning," he said, heading to his cabin.

As Lily had predicted, Sirius came up to him the next morning. It's what woke him up, actually, which meant he wasn't fully dressed when he stumbled to the door.

"What?"

Sirius's eyes tracked over him before flickering back up to his face. It was, admittedly, gratifying, but it didn't explain why he was here so early instead of waiting until after they'd gotten some food in them. "You have some questions to answer."

"Do I?" James asked, rubbing one hand tiredly over his face.

"Am I prisoner?"

"What? No, of course not."

"Then where are you taking us?"

"You'll see when we get there," he said grumpily, then he shut the door. He was not a morning person, and what he hated even more was getting woken up before he was ready. If it was an emergency, that was one thing, but this was decidedly not an emergency.

It took him about thirty more minutes of being awake to realise that he'd been an arse to the bloke he wanted to impress. Wonderful. He meant to apologise the next time he saw him, but Sirius glared at him before he could get close, and he figured some time to cool down might do him good.

James had made mistakes. In life, generally, but specifically he meant today. The way he'd started his day with Sirius had been getting off on the wrong foot, and it had only gotten worse as time passed. Sirius knew how to hold a grudge, that's for sure.

As much as James would like to say that it was an annoying aspect of someone growing up rich, he liked it. Sirius was bloody fit, and no amount of him glaring at James changed that opinion. In fact, he thought it might've made it worse. His crew respected him, and he was friendly, so there was a decent amount of smiling. As captain, his word was final, so there was a certain amount of distance. Even Remus and Lily, his closest friends, knew that there was a limit to how far they could push him. But Sirius didn't care; he didn't care in a way that didn't take away from James's authority, so it's not like anything had to be done. James had double-checked by telling him to do something, and all Sirius had done was nod and go off to do it. In hindsight, not his best idea, but at least he knew that he didn't have to turn on captain mode with him.

James was full of bad decisions, but he couldn't get himself to stop. He looked at Sirius, caught sight of his jaw or his thick black hair or his piercing grey eyes, and all rational thought left him. Sirius was hardly the most experienced sailor that James had met, but his competence was hot. He had big hands and he knew exactly how to use them. James knew that getting hot and bothered over one of his crewmen was a recipe for disaster, but he looked at Sirius and he wanted. He didn't know how to turn it off, and he wasn't sure he would even if he did know how. Fancying Sirius put a fire in his stomach that made him feel alive, like a reminder of all the things he loved in life.

After dinner, James was manning the wheel while Peter got ready for his night shift, and that was when Sirius approached him. He tried not to show how surprised he was, but he wasn't very successful.

Sirius didn't say hello or give any lead up. He just stomped over to him and said, "You're giving me back to my family, aren't you?"

"That was the plan," James said, even though he didn't want to and he normally wouldn't have bothered. If anyone asked-- and people had requested it before-- he told them that he couldn't risk it. Which was the truth. He wasn't putting his ship and his entire crew at risk to deliver someone right to their doorstep. Hell, even with Sirius, he wasn't bringing him all the way; he'd never make it back out if he did that.

"Is there-" Sirius swallowed thickly "-something I can do to change your mind?"

James blinked at him. Every point of Sirius's posture screamed that he was uncomfortable, but it sounded like he was propositioning James. And this, Lily, is why you should keep your big mouth shut, he thought. "I'd have thought that you wanted to go home," James said, ignoring what Sirius was attempting to offer. "Most people do." Even the people that no longer had homes. It wasn't something they could attain, but they wanted it all the same. It honestly hadn't occurred to him that Sirius might not want to go back.

The ship gave a long heave, and James braced his foot on the bottom of the railing. Next to him, Sirius put his hand on the bannister, moving easily with the motion of the larger waves.

"Do you not want to?" James asked.

"I'd rather die," Sirius said, his answer plain enough that James knew it was true.

"Then we won't bring you back," he said easily. "Was that all you needed?" The unease was gone from Sirius's posture now, but there was no chance that he wanted to stick around and chat with James. That being said, all he wanted was for Sirius to want to stay and talk to him. Talk on the deck, in the dying light of the sun, and feel like he was falling in love all over again. He didn't expect it though. He knew that Sirius would probably say yes and then leave.

"Yes," Sirius said, but he didn't leave. He didn't say anything further, not yet at least. He just stayed there, looking at James.

He'd always thought that he was pretty good at reading people, but Sirius's expression couldn't be described as anything other than closed off.

Sirius stayed there for several minutes, only leaving when Peter started making his way up the steps to relieve James. As he left, James was struck with the feeling that something important had transpired. Hell if he knew just what it was that had happened, though.

James's interest in Sirius had never been a secret onboard, and not just because Lily had told Sirius flat out that James fancied him. James always let his eyes linger too long, and the frequency with which his eyes strayed to Sirius made it quite obvious.

What came as a shock to everyone was when Sirius started returning that interest. It wasn't in any way that was as obvious as James's feelings, but it was there. No one was more surprised by it than James, to the point that even when Sirius was kissing him desperately and grabbing at bare skin, he almost didn't believe that it was happening.

"You like me," James said wondrously. It could've been a dream. He would've been convinced that it was a dream, actually, if not for the little details that dreams never contained. The swollen lips, the too-dry hands, and the fact that there was no amount of practice that made snogging someone new on a ship easier than doing it on land. Until they learned to move together, there was going to be a certain amount of awkwardness that they had to deal with.

Sirius grinned at him, happy and utterly unashamed. "What gave it away?"

"You used to hate me," James said, as if Sirius hadn't said anything.

"I didn't hate you," he denied, tugging James a little closer.

"It felt that way to me," James said. He wasn't judging. He'd killed a lot of people that Sirius had worked with during their rescue.

"I thought you were going to send me back to my parents," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "And you were acting like a total arse by ignoring me and acting like you were better than me."

"What if I am better than you?" he asked curiously.

"Don't worry. You're not."

James laughed, and then Sirius was kissing him, and thoughts about Sirius having hated him at one time was far from his mind. Even if he was right and Sirius had at one time hated him, it was a thing of the past, now.

"Potter!"

"Which one?" Sirius called down, leaning out from his perch with a shit eating grin. He wasn't holding onto the wood with his hands right now. He was prevented from falling only by his legs wrapped around the nest and linked together, and with the way he was hanging, it made his thin shirt cling to the taut muscles in his abdomen. From where he was standing, James could see a patch of familiar tanned skin because of the way his shirt fell. The spyglass he'd been using dangled from one hand as if carelessly, but they all knew he had a firm hold on it. James looked up at him and could only think of how much he loved him.

"You know damn well I meant the captain," Remus yelled back.

"Then just say captain!" Lily said from the front of the ship where she was looking through her own spyglass. "We do this every time!"

The crew amongst all of them laughed to themselves as they went about their jobs.

"You bloody well know why," Remus groused.

"Did you actually need something, mate?" James asked, even though he was always amused by these conversations-- and had been since the very beginning, when him and Sirius had gotten married. He continued working on strapping his sword on; they were preparing for a battle, after all.

"We're running low on gun powder. Unless you want to buy more from Rosmerta the next time we're in her bay, but there's no point when they should have plenty."

"We'll check on what they have and see how much cargo space we have available," James said. Fresh water was of the highest priority, of course, and it took up most of their space below deck. That they had to plan for any people they rescued didn't make it easier. The fact was that they didn't often fight in a manner that required gun powder, but if Moony requested it, then he'd check. Plus Rosmerta's blend was more powerful than what the British Navy carried, so sometimes it wasn't worth getting it for free.

Sirius winked when James glanced up at him again, then pulled himself to a normal sitting position.

"How's it look up there?" James asked Lily.

"Looks to be a barge, Captain." she said.

"Sirius?" he checked.

"Not seeing anyone guarding them."

"This'll be easy. Like finding rum in a pub," Remus said, and James couldn't help but agree. Stealing from the government, even when the ship in question wasn't running slaves, wasn't exactly something he would lose sleep over. And, he thought with another glance up at his husband, there was no one else he'd rather be doing this with.

#prongsfoot #marauders #fanfic #james potter #sirius black #lily evans #remus lupin #filled #no magic au #post hogwarts #getting together #pirates au #siriuslystarbucks #the-best-url-on-this-site

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junkyardlynx · 4 years

Text

As the wind stroked his boyish face, Gran found himself smiling softly. Not one of previously unrealized joy, nor the fragile countenance of someone on the edge of sorrow. No, it was a smile of resignation. Not over anything huge, really, but more a persistent fact of his strange life.

He would always be underestimated.

The breeze’s affection turned fickle and slipped away, leaving only stillness and birdsong to fill the tree he was perched in. The light armor he wore fit him well - a black ensemble, decorated with geometrical splashes of red and trimmed in gold. The plates were near-weightless, but they were tough enough to take all manner of punishment; the master artisan six islands back claimed the whole set was forged from adamantite. The matching gauntlets fit him like a second skin, responsive and pliable and even as he leaned forward on the spindly branch, the greaves gave not a creak or a groan.

By all accounts, the armor was fit for a majestic king, or perhaps a revered general. Not a boy who barely looked sixteen summers. So, who then? One would be forgiven if they mistook him for a prince, or perhaps an up-and-coming knight-commander. His features were handsome, if boyish, and people always told him that he had a “very dashing” air to him. As if that actually meant anything.

No, Gran was none of those things. By birth, he was a nobody from the edge of the known sky, left with his friend that was definitely not a lizard. By trade, he was a skyfarer captain. By destiny, one who shared his life with the Girl in Blue. And by effort? Well, that was the one he was most happy to share. Not that anyone ever believed him at first.

By effort, he could be summed up in four words.

Conqueror of the Eternals.

A boy of sixteen, now going on twenty-two, was the one who bested all ten Eternals in single combat? Even to himself, it sounded like a nice story and nothing more. Even though he lived every moment of it. The more spectacular details, like the defeat of the Erste Empire and his rejection of the True King’s offer were public knowledge. Though, well, it was true that they tended to draw his likeness a bit taller, and his face a bit more rugged. Artists paint what they feel, even if they don’t know it, even if they try and hide it. The bias creeps in. Surely whoever performed these fantastic deeds couldn’t be a sixteen year old kid. It was probably a part of the tale added later to spice it up and make it marketable for local papers.

Well, they were sort of right. When he rejected the “True King” and his poisoned wish, Gran was just about to turn twenty-two. Four months later, he now found himself intervening in a messy war between two kingdoms with his friend and crewmate Altair.

Six years. Six years had passed. Six years that showed nowhere on his face, his countenance. Nowhere save his eyes.

It started six years ago. He’d died protecting a terrified girl. A girl he didn’t even know. Even now, if Gran was left to his own devices, he could taste that choking pain -- not the way his lungs seared from the hydra’s flame, nor the gash in his side from the hydra’s claws. No, it was the pain of being powerless. The pain of not being able to reach his hand up to the sky and ask his father in hated grief if he was proud. Proud that unlike his old man, Gran didn’t abandon a child in their time of need.

So when that girl in blue did something impossible, he made two little promises inside of his weak heart.

One, never let anyone hurt her again.

Two, never feel that way again.

Six years and four months showed only in the tone of his muscles and the strength of his gait. The softness of his steps, the way he would round a corner like a prowling lion due to the endless combat he found himself engaged in. How long was it until he figured out the peculiarities of his resurrected body? His hair and nails grew, he still had to eat and sleep and still smelled awful when covered in silverslime after a successful hunt. Open wounds bled and illness forced him to bed.

But he didn’t age.

He probably realized it after teasing Rackam about his patchwork scruff one day. Rackam had lost his razor and was pilfering through the kitchen for a spare, muttering about the “damn gremlins” who “sneak aboard even though people are on watch duty.”

The exchange wasn’t noteworthy, really. Rackam had laughed and jabbed his index finger into the captain’s cheek, wondering when his peach fuzz would finally pack its bags and leave for more hairy locales.

Rackam’s voice echoed in his head.

“C’mon cap, aren’t you eighteen now? You gotta have more than this in ya!”

---

Weird how such a statement could open a can of worms. Last he checked, he wasn’t in the worm business, either. Well, unless Altair’s little solo mission for me involves worms somehow.

Gran hadn’t honestly asked for details since Altair didn’t seem to think they were important. The gist of his part in the greater plan amounted to “stop the western advance.” Simple and concise, really. The field he was scouting below the tree was still and peaceful, seemingly unaware of both the passage of time and the rumblings of war. The breeze kicked up again, carving gentle waves through the grass, and memory pulled him back under.

---

After that, it was impossible for Gran not to notice everything strange thing going on with his body. Despite nearing the age of nineteen, not a single hair managed to grace his face. Meanwhile, he could still tan (and burn) under the blazing sun and if he chose, he could grow the hair on his head as long as he liked. As an experiment, he’d left one toenail to grow as long as it could, just to see what happened. Other than a supremely stubbed toe one early morning followed by a string of swears angry enough to make Eugen blush, nothing came of his experiment.

If was as if nobody has given his body the blueprints for life after sixteen, as if the existence of “Gran as a person” was tied to his current general appearance, as if something altogether removed from natural biology had decided that “this” was Gran. Whatever was supposed to come after simply...didn’t. Naturally, Gran lost his mind a bit. Only a bit, though. He had the good sense to seek out the famous alchemist and self-proclaimed cutest girl in the world, Cagliostro. She’d joined the crew a while ago and had a keen intellect when it came to matters of the body and it’s intricate workings. After all, she’d made one for herself, probably countless times. Her verdict?

She was stumped.

Apparently, senescence - the process of cells deteriorating after copying themselves over long amounts of time, leading to aging - had stopped in Gran. Sort of. The truth was much stranger. She’d been having him report to her little workshop on the Grancypher twice a week, taking blood and tissue samples much to his immediate and mildly painful dismay. This process continued on for three months before her exasperation and wonder lead her to discuss her findings with “cute, baffling little Gran.”

“Basically, captain! You’re aging just right for the first eight samples. The only way to tell is to be able to “find” the itty bitty little bit of info that goes missing from the blueprint of “you” every time your cells divide. I imagine the Astrals put it in as a sort of safety fe-errrrr, moving on! So! Being the inimitable genius I am, I noticed something about the ninth set of samples. They’re alllllmost the same as the first. Way too close. You don’t just get that bit back for no reason, and you really don’t get THAT much back for any reason.”

Gran nodded slowly, already onto what she was talking about. However, knowing that Cagilostro loved a.) having a captive audience and b.) herself, he let her continue.

“I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure, and positing a hypothesis that early on when I might have just mixed up the samples would be irresponsible. So I waited until that Saturday when I got to stab and slice you again, triple-checking that alllll the samples were out of my workshop. Same result! They looked just like the second sample, even fresh farm-to-table.”

She turned an adorably calculated and seemingly malicious smile to Gran as her explanation ended. Though it wasn’t exactly news, her words were still unnerving. After all, his cells were basically rolling back the clock of aging every four weeks. You know, normal things.

“You know how much I’d give to figure out your secret? Even ignoring the fact that it certainly has to do with whatever Lyria did to you three years ago, this is a discovery so amazing you’d think I’d invented it. Your body is pretty much just removed from time! It’s almost envious enough to make me cry. I can’t believe you, making a genius cry. It’s honestly ridiculous. You can obviously still put on muscle mass and your brain isn’t fried like one of those Golden Friday SHRIMP.”

For a bit there after that, Gran lost a...well, a bit more of his mind. If he had to be honest. Three days locked up in his room, not letting anyone in, not even Vyrn. He poured over alchemical texts, medical documents, arcane and state secrets, anything the Grandcypher had that might be pertinent. After three days of intense study, stopping only for the necessities of life, Gran came to an answer. Well, his answer.

Did it matter?

Had his sword arm stayed the same over those three years? No. Was his cut not deadlier, his stab not sharper, his fist not faster? Had his body not taken on the tone and muscle of someone who fought primals -- and prevailed? The difference between the weak Gran of three years ago and the Gran of today was immeasurable. The young man who had once fallen to a single tortured hydra now found himself battling ancient primal beasts of war and guile on a monthly basis.

He may not ever have a thick Draph-sized mustache and his cheeks might permanently retain their tender charm no matter his age, but his body was fit to fight. To protect. To chase his absent father until the end of the sky. That’s what mattered. Though he was quite sure Cagilostro would tease him endlessly for his answer.

With newfound determination, Gran threw himself into what the rest of the crew considered hellish training simply because he knew he could endure it. It was a way to prove himself - even after death, even after abandonment, he was worth something. He had value and merit and talent, but also the drive and yearning to turn it into something. In the wake of this new regiment for himself and his little visit to a certain alchemist on board, rumors crept up. Slow and steady at first, they soon burned like wildfire through the decks of the Grandcypher, spreading out of context and control. He finally became privy to a good chunk of the downright goofy rumors via his afternoon footwork training on the vast open deck.

His footwork training was simple. He would empty his mind and fill it with visions of attackers, then repel those attackers as they came at him from all sides and angles. Though it didn’t hold up to real battles, it offered a sort of vision training and group combat scenario that duels never quite could and best of all, it could be performed anywhere with ample space as the only thing required was himself.

Being simple in those relative terms, it provides opportunities for a capable multitasker to easvesdrop things they shouldn’t, like the hottest Grandcypher gossip. On one such afternoon, in the early days of summer, things came to a head as crewmates found themselves unable to contain the rumor mill around their captain any longer.

“I heard the captain’s immortal!”

Not entirely inaccurate. His nonexistent blade swung a tight arc, lopping off the head of something never there. With his arm extended, he challenged the thin atmosphere between the islands. Nothing came.

“Yeah, I heard he was like a six thousand year old primal beast?”

Missed the mark a bit there, he quipped internally. It seemed both directed at the conversation and himself as he danced between the attacks of no ones and nothings. His sweeping kick, though near-flawless in form, barely grazed the torso of his last imagined attacker in that scenario. With a click of his tongue, he noted to himself that an actual attacker couldn’t simply stop on a dime like the one he imagined did. Even in his mind, he was tough on himself, as no one else seemed to want the responsibility. With a little consternation, he ended up giving himself the point for his made up little game. The points didn’t matter, but they made him feel better.

“We have a few of those in the crew, so it makes sense.”

It would, but that’s not the case. Gran’s feet shuffled to and fro, dancing softly across the wooden deck of the Grancypher. To the casual observer, it almost appeared as if he was simply rehearsing one of the dances Anthuria had choreographed with him. He ducked under an imaginary bullet, fist rising from below to smash the jaw of the illusory gunman.

The nothings and nobodies fell to his invisible sword strikes, his matchless kicks and punches, to the spells he snap-conjured between the thrust of a lance and the flight of an arrow. Finally, panting hard with exhilaration and the flow of combat, Gran slew the final “attacker” with a quick reversal and stab to the gut, ending the dream with its own weapon. Nothing and no one fell, other than comfortable silence, but he still felt a measure of success as he picked up the warmed vacuum flask that had his lunch in it.

“No, no, he’s only thirty-six and he’s the son of that one legendary adventurer. It’s his hero’s blood. I hear his dad bathed in the entrails of the primal beast he slew, though, so maybe that’s what caused it in the end?” Why would a hero be forced to stop aging before he could legally drink? The snort of his barely contained laughter sent soup up his nose, straight from his vacuum flask. Hot soup. Hot, spicy soup.

“That makes a lot of sense.”

More than the six thousand year old primal beast bit, yes.

“He’s still our captain, so who cares? That’s good enough for me.” Oh. Ah. I...

That last overheard comment had humbled him, but the clear ring of all the affirmations that followed from crewmates in it’s wake shook him to his core. Somehow, he’d gained the loyalty and friendship of some of the most accepting people under the great blue sky. His training, already considered to be a form of self-punishment by the rest of the crew, grew in scope and desire. If there was a mountain in his way, he would cut it. If there was a river in his way, he would part it. If even the great ocean of stars spanned the distance, it would be crossed.

For all the things he could still protect.

For the dreams he had thought beyond him.

For the sake of surpassing the absent father that had abandoned him long ago, leaving only a note.

When still a boy in a backwater nothing, Gran wielded a simple short sword and fancied himself a sort of knight as he grew up. Wearing a slightly ragged blue tunic with a hood, a few pieces of spare platemail strapped to his right arm, and holding a sword containing more rust than blade. Training with Vyrn in the forest every day, the boy dreamed of something bigger. A fighter, a protector, a guardian of what he loved and treasured, not a bandit that cut and run from his family. That’s what he wanted to be... That dream was, for lack of a better term, driven from his chest. By a hydra. Just so we’re clear.

He abandoned defensive posture after that, seeking to end fights as quickly as possible. An axe found it’s way into his hands and for a time, he was satisfied by the devastation it wrought. Teenage postmortem angst seemed to be quelled by a felling cleave to an enemy’s collarbone, and chunky plate scraps held together with red leather and white fur served him well enough as protection from the elements and the enemies he faced.

Nothing so simple satisfied for long, though. Gran took to himself in a sort of hermitage for a while, studying magic under the occasional tutelage of his talented crewmates. There was a certain ripple of insecurity in his scouting party’s mood when he’d shown up late one day, his usual armor stripped down to basic protection and his axe nowhere to be found. They tossed light jeers at his green cloak and the staff he carried, even as they set off for their destination - a bandit camp they had been hired to uproot. Peace talks were attempted by the bandit’s leader and an Erune comrade of Gran’s, one better suited for diplomacy than the boy-faced captain.

Things deteriorated quickly. Gran had quietly stepped forward once the leader made it clear he had no intention of retreating peacefully. With the green hood still covering half his disappointed face, Gran slashed the tip of the staff in a dismissive motion to the right, as if telling them their time here was over. Before they could protest or retaliate, wild magic burst into life around them, sealing off all escape and action. Concentric rings of frost and fire cradled in the stony embrace of the earth, carved into being with the fierce wind tore at everything inside the bandit’s camp. With the oxygen burnt out, the earth lashed and the encampment in shambles, the dazed and injured bandits were easy prisoners.

No one jeered after that.

As his prowess grew and the crew took on more work, that cloak had weathered with time. It faded to an almost dull grey, and with this Gran had added a black half-mask to the ensemble. Admittedly, it was mostly to hide his youthful features and force enemies to take him somewhat seriously for once, as the sting of his blessed curse grew more apparent as he approached his twentieth year.

For combat, a middle ground was found. He embraced not pure swordsmanship, nor did he place his trust only in magic. Instead, he channeled his power into debilitating his opponent’s often unworldly vigor and vitality, then coaxed those weaknesses open with his unmatched swordplay. Victory after victory piled up at the crew’s feet, and the legend of the “boy captain” grew.

It also provided the fodder for what Gran considered a highly embarrassing piece of “art.” Somebody had caught him resting his right hand on his jaw, leg crossed over the other almost lazily as he read a scrap of paper in his left. It was a failed betting ticket, so close to winning millions of rupees, save for the upset victory in the sixth match. An enterprising somebody, who’s name begins with L and ends with -unalu, had committed this terrible and dreadful sight to memory. She then committed that memory to paper with her talent.

Only, well.

She’d used her license of artistic interpretation to replace the slip of paper held in contempt with a comically oversized sword. Stabbed unceremoniously in the ground. The barstool? That was now a throne carved of stone. The title of the piece, an unknowing and fortunate soul might ask?

“Chaos Ruler.”

The print she made was reproduced and sold to more than a handful of people on and off the Grandcypher. Copies of it hung from stray support beams and walls on the ship, as if to lovingly taunt him and people switched their mode of address from “captain” to things like “my liege” or “ruler” or “chaos kid” for the better part of a month. Gran said nothing, choosing to keep what little of his dignity he felt he had left.

Nobody saw Gran wear that outfit again.

In hindsight, he had to agree that the metal half-mask was a little much. But, ah, Ejaeli and Predator had convinced him it was cool. They made masks look cool, after all. The palpable disappointment from them almost made him walk back on that decision. Almost.

From then on, he’d taken to wearing a simple outfit when on duty, reminiscent of his teenage years. Having turned twenty some time ago, he decided to make a simple blue hooded tunic the mainstay of his combat attire. On top went a basic but functional steel breastplate, covering his heart and ribs. His arms were covered in gauntlets of the same make, and steel greaves offered his feet and shins ample protection as they went on over a pair of loose beige pants. What it lacked in flair it made up for in comfort and capability. A sensible choice. It gave nothing about his combat style away either, other than the obvious caveat that he might engage in it at some point.

---

Funny to say teenage years, he supposed, looking down at the peaceful field. Fires were beginning to rise and march in the distance, headed this way. An army. For now, though, he had time, and the world seemed to move so perilously slow. Memory reeled him in once more, as if the grass and the trees of this island made him long for another time and another place.

---

Thinking seriously on it, the reason his legend had spread as that of the “boy captain” probably had to do with two things. One, the Grandcypher traveled an awful lot between three different skydoms, and two? The crew of the Grandcypher loved events.

It probably had to do with a third thing, too.

His crew really, really loved to tease him about his age.

Every birthday, it’d be “Happy sixteenth, Cap!” They reused the same banner six times now, adding a tally mark just above “sixteenth” every single time. It was as endearing as it was maddening. Eugen and Rackam pulled the same thing at every new bar, ordering three beers and then pretending to flip out at Gran when he took his. It caused its fair share of problems for Gran, so sometimes Gran would flip the script before they got the chance and get angry at his “dad” and “brother” for getting drunk while “mom” was at home alone.

Some of the Grandcypher ladies would tease him with lines about “when he was older” and what an “earnest young man he was” if they saw him during the more romantic holidays, much to his chagrin. He learned to reverse that too, going on the offensive by playing the straight man to their act. He paid them straightforward compliments with toothy grins and presented them with chocolates during White Day as a form of playful revenge.

A few times every year, the crew would be called to an ancient island where a sort of...war game took place between skyfaring crews. An Astral experiment run amok meant that otherworldly and ferocious beasts overwhelmed the singular island now and then, and their presence courted the attention of primal beasts. As the people of the skydoms always sought to turn misery into growth, they established a way to turn it into a competition. Extremely rare treasure was brought in from all across the skyrealms and the monster problem on the island was handily taken care of in what they called Guild Wars.

Ten times, the Grancypher emerged victorious. Each time, for his troubles, the Captain would receive an ancient weapon of unparalleled power, power that courted disaster - and inevitably the attention of those that would protect the sky from unparalleled threats.

The Eternals.

Ten times over the years, Gran wore his convictions on his sleeve and fought the strongest people in the sky, all to prove that he would remain himself in the face of that dread power. In truth, Gran didn’t plan to use those relics of war. He simply reveled in the chance to face those brilliant, blazing souls in single combat.

It was a way to prove himself. Both to those who he had grown to admire after hearing their legends, and to his eternally absent father. Surely, even his father would have to notice if he conquered the ten strongest people in the sky--

He didn’t, but it didn’t matter.

In the end, the people he met and bonded with mattered.

After an incident involving the mafia bearing down on Stardust Town, the Eternals got together and presented Gran with a suit of armor and his own cloak, signifying his status as the eleventh Eternal, an irreplaceable part of their group. While Siete was still the de-facto leader and Uno was the first of the Eternals, Gran - given the new title of Jedenáct - was the end-all-be-all when it came to pure combat strength. As they had joined the Grancypher’s crew, they wanted him to join the crew of the Eternals and share in that camaraderie.

He might have felt sixteen behind those misty eyes when they draped the white jacket over his shoulders and popped the celebratory drinks open, but he’d never admit it. Openly. Nio knew, because of course she did. His heart’s plaintive melody was clear to her ear from the moment they’d met. He’d been seeking a place to belong, a place that respected him since the day he understood that his father had abandoned him. Between the Grancypher and the Eternals, he’d finally felt like part of a family.

A family more real than the blood that spawned and abandoned him, all the while burdening him with purpose.

This is where I belong.

---

Of course, it was just after this heartfelt moment that Altair had been roped into this awful and brutal war. As a member of the Grancypher family, Altair’s problems were Gran’s problems. And now, that advancing army was coming into ambush distance. Concentrating his mana for a second, Gran summoned forth an ethereal bow, shaped like the one Song used but made of pure, blue light. Standing up on the branch of the tree, he took aim at the ground some twenty metres in front of the enemy general’s advance. Luhua was said to be a fearsome combatant, and Gran secretly hoped for a chance to resolve things with a non-fatal, honorable, one-on-one duel. The best kind of fight.

Of course, he would always be underestimated. There was a chance that no such duel would be found, and it might turn into a bloody melee.

Either way?

Time to keep the sky’s sweet peace.

#granblue fantasy #gbf #gran #fanfiction #writing #my writing #self-indulgent bullshit

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phthalology · 6 years

Text

Star Wars Legends: Idiot’s Array

In honor of today’s movie, here’s the “Han Solo is Force sensitive” story I wrote ten years ago. I kept thinking of it because of the sabacc theme and because the end still works remarkably well with the new canon. So, with a few tweaks, this is the same post you might find on FFN! 2,600 words, gen.

Roulette wheels spin. Hands with dirt under the scales on their sides drop chance cubes and watch them bounce. Sabacc cards shush against one another. The players covet their hands, tallying up the numbers. But at any moment the values could shift, snatching victory from some, delivering it into the hands of others, becoming all possible numbers and suits for one immeasurable moment….

1. Chance

It started with wishes, as so many stories do. Surely every child wishes at some time in their life to be a Jedi, and tries to move something from across the room to their hand with only their mind. But young Han Solo, crewmate on the Trader's Luck, did not have the luxury of far-fetched dreams, of stillnesses in which to squint and test imaginary powers. His dreams were ferrocrete, not clouds: he longed for a successful business, for safety from older, nastier space pirates such as Captain Shrike, and often enough he got those things through his own abilities at dodging—or ending--trouble. He had an abiding faith in persistence.

2. Hazard

The Empire occasionally sent out warnings, lists of danger signs. Beware of men who speak cryptically, of children who float in their sleep, of even one-credit roadside fortune tellers, of laser swords. Ostensibly, these mandates were to protect the galaxy's citizens from Force-users, those dangerous individuals who had been granted more power than good human judgment (not to mention the unstable and primitive minds of aliens) could handle. Han paid little attention to them, involved as he was in his own matters of business. The Corellian tradition of Jedi were as far from his thoughts as the Coruscanti one was.

3. Legate

Many years later, after the dream of escaping the Luck had been realized and all more far-fetched ones had been forgotten, Han slouched in the dimness of the Mos Eisley Cantina and looked at Ben Kenobi. Part of him did not trust the man; he was a raggedy exile, maybe even a slave trader. One did not simply give people like that a ride, no matter what they were paying, and expect to have a peaceful journey.

But another part of him had a gut feeling that he was meant to do this. That he ought find out everything he could about the old man and the boy, because—he didn't know, maybe they had known him once or something. That's what it felt like—déjà vu.

He compromised by acting noncommittal and allowing them a ride.

4. The Star

When Han saw Luke Skywalker practice with the lightsaber in the Millennium Falcon's hold, he was skeptical of whether the Force was simply an invention of old Kenobi's mind or not. While it certainly sounded difficult to deflect something traveling at the speed of light with something else made of a sort of light, it was no more improbable than a human dodging blasterbolts, which he had done, inadvertently or purposefully, enough times.

5. Moderation

"I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful force that controls my destiny..."

Not control, no, but sense—Han could identify Kenobi's location as surely as if a tracking screen were in front of Han's eyes….as surely as he had, so many times, picked enemy spacecraft out of the sky with the forward lasers before the tracking screen had warmed up.

"…In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."

If there wasn't, what had Han lived on for so many years?

6. Demise

Kenobi never got to tell him directly, but when the old man died, Han distinctly heard his voice say, "Carry on."

7. The Wheel

The stars spun around him as the Falcon plummeted toward the Death Star. The battle flared between surprisingly few starships; the Empire had known it didn’t have to release the fleet to take out the handful of Rebel squadrons. But somehow, without lights cluttering his tac screen, this fight felt even more confusing than usual, even harder to keep straight in his head. Because he wasn't sure whether he was doing the right thing, whether following Luke into this suicide mission would be worth it or not (it was worth getting Chewie to stop looking mournful), whether his life was going to change for the better or not (or whether that mattered any more if the Rebels didn’t survive).

And it was not only inside his mind that chaos was building. He felt the tension of battle, and he had felt it before, but back then he was in the Imperial academy and other TIE pilots were shouting through the comm even if they weren't supposed to, jokes and orders and death-screams. This was silent except for in his head, like he was going mad, but he knew he wasn't. Because they said that madmen think they're sane, and he knew he wasn’t. He's wild with the Force, wild with uncertainty, but also driven by I have to rescue them (replace 'them' with Luke, Leia, the Rebels, or 'my future' ).

So he whooped like a madman and, pointed by the Force to the tiny trench on the side of the Death-Star-become-horizon, came to the rescue.

8. Balance

First, he had to decide whether he was going to tell anyone.

The days went by and he tried, tried to confront Chewbacca’s steady gaze, or Luke's innocent eyes or Leia's sharp ones (sharp as daggers, he can't look at her too long or his mind will feel like it's falling away from the world, but if he endures, then everything is all right, because what replaces his mind is happinesshurtwonderment). But he did not know how to begin.

Finally he decided: following, he supposed, his master's lead, he didn't tell anyone anything about the power he suspected he had.

He would not speak of it, would not pursue the power, because, also, then the line between himself and Luke would blur. They were two separate pillars of the Alliance, the noble and naïve, and the gritty and skeptical. Everyone expected the two to be foils to one another. They only needed one Jedi.

9. Endurance

"Deck officer! Deck officer. Has Commander Skywalker reported in yet?"

"Sorry sir, I don't think he's come back from patrol."

Luke's presence—the terminology had snuck in to Han's thoughts, although he'd tried to drown it in memorizing tactics and spacelanes, in thought of Leia, in the occasional drink because the Force was too complicated—glowed dimly in the back of his mind.

He could follow it like a beacon, and so he did, out into the cold, out into Luke is unconscious—I've got an excuse for why I don't just tell him now.

10. Queen Of Air And Darkness

The Force was not a willing tool of Han's will; in fact it seemed to have a capricious and cruel will of its own in terms of when it allowed Han certain powers or when it worked for him at all. When Leia kissed Luke, Han could not with certainty tell whether or not she was doing it just to make him jealous (even if she didn't know that was why she was doing it), but he was pretty sure.

But Han could not hate Luke. (Consider him naïve and young, yes, but never hate.) They were too together in the dangerous gaze of the eye of the Empire, too bound by shared death-defying experience. Luke seemed oblivious to Han's growing acceptance of whatever modicum of the Force was within him, but Vader, Han knew, especially as he became more and more integrated into the Rebellion, would not be, and even Leia's weight against his as they struggled in the passageway to escape from Hoth could not dissuade the feeling of being watched, even if it was by only one black-lensed eye.

11. The Evil One

No power helped him when, in Cloud City, Darth Vader finally stopped to take notice of Han. His chest was raked with claws of electricity as he screamed and waited for them to ask about the one they kept referring to dispassionately, harshly, as Skywalker.

But Vader's eyes had not been closed on Hoth; he had another target as well.

No questions were asked. Pain simply opened the door to Han's mind, and Vader swept in.

Minds are not as simple as datapads, but Han could tell that he was being read like files, like simple charts and graphs, and could stop being read no more than those objects could.

Vader found Han's power and read it like entrails.

The pain faded away slowly. Vader's booming laugh rose out of the haze the pain produced, like a monster out of the sea, before allowing Han's other senses to recover.

"The Force persists," Vader said, triumphantly as if he had known all along and was only now savoring the revelation. The laugh bit at the edges of his words as if all along he had been holding it in.

"Mopek," Han cursed. He raged at the Force, although his body was immobile. If it had dropped him into this nest of pain and abandonment, then by the Nine Gates of Corellian Hell, he'd abandon it—"I don't know anything about it."

"No," Vader rumbled, "you do not. It is latent in you." He turned away. Luke could have taught me, Han thought. I could undo my bonds right now—but he would not wish that that had happened. It was anathema to his nature, to his old, injurious, oh-so-safe desire to trust only himself.

Vader turned again and Han felt one more layer of pain spear into his arm; dimly he saw a syringe withdraw, filled with his blood.

"You are lucky, Solo," Vader breathed, "that the bounty hunter wants you alive, and that you are too weak in the Force to matter to my Master."

The torture continued, and deep in a quiet, locked space of Han's mind he saw that this was all so that Luke would do what Han had done on Hoth; track him through the Force and rescue him from being caught in a snow storm against which he could only create a temporary shelter.

When stormtroopers took Han back to the detainment cell, he could only collapse into Leia's arms. The desire for secrecy wrestled with the overflow of his thoughts. He compromised and did not lie. "They didn't even ask me any questions."

12. The Universe

That's enough of this Force mopek. I don't want it. It doesn't fit me, it's a burden, it complicates an already kriffing complicated life. People have been killed in this war, and it hasn't helped me save one of them. Han fought with his thoughts and threw them away, as he crouched under cover of tall, leafy plants on Endor. His squad arrayed around him triple-checked their blasters, oblivious to his frustrations.

But he could not stop himself from being concerned about others. (That thought immediately brought him to the thought of her, because Luke didn't need a rival, and Leia didn't need another man in her life who was likely to be killed in the service of an invisible master.) The thoughts and power that Han rejected picked up a stormtrooper crouching behind a nearby plant, trying to pick off the Rebel squad, and slammed him into the trunk of a rotten tree that shattered, like Han's expectations, into one thousand tiny pieces.

13. The Idiot

Leia said, laughing behind her words (like Vader had--), "He's my brother."

Han wanted the astounded, perfect kiss to last forever, to remain uncomplicated, but digging into his heart was his secret. It prevented her from nesting alone in his thoughts, as if the Force were a mistress. So quietly he said, unable to meet her eyes, "Leia. I think I'm Force-sensitive."

She touched his chin to turn his face toward her, but would not meet his eyes either; she looked weary and sad, as if she had aged the light-years Luke had between Bespin and Tatooine. "I have it too," she said. "The Force is strong in my family."

And so Han decided at that moment to learn, to explore this power, so that he might know Leia better.

14. The Satellite

The moon of Endor, which had no name except the one which the Ewoks gave it that simply meant 'forest/universe', rang with the sounds of celebration. Dancing shapes whirled past the firelight. But Luke was staring into the trees, cold to the communal warmth, and Han and Leia moved toward him to try to draw him back toward the heat.

But as they approached, they saw what he was looking at. Three figures glowing like clouds at sunset, the drop beyond the tree visible through their sky-blue-tinted bodies. A young man, with curly hair, a scarred face, and a lopsided smile. An alien, less than a meter tall. And Kenobi, smiling with the light of unfettered knowledge behind his eyes. Han did not recognize the young man by face.

But his Force presence was unmistakably familiar, even distilled and brightened as it was. That man was Vader, in his happier days.

The cards are fixed now, their values set. One player wins, and others lose. Their lives go on.

Sabacc rarely changes live, or saves or takes them. But the Force is no mere game of chance…

15. The Destroyed Starship

Even as Luke discovered more and more records of the old Jedi Order, he never found another Solo who could have been Han's ancestor and link to the Force. So there was no knowing what his powers would manifest as most often, although he was moderately good at all the usual things once he got used to them. (He never could enjoy lightsaber combat. Although he kept the black-wrapped hilt of the blue blade attached to his belt, he always used blasters when he could.) He spent time with his children in Luke's academy, learning as they did, until the Yuuzhan Vong war made his skills as a pilot more essential than those as a Jedi.

So there was no precedent for the vision that wracked him soon after the war was over, when everyone felt a glimmer of hope again.

No precedent for the terrifying certainty of what Jacen was going to become.

The galaxy wept in the back of his head, threw minor chords with the vehemence of a crazed conductor and an enslaved orchestra, pressed against him, insisted (he was finally going to save it), and in its throes he walked through the apartment like a sleepwalker (except he was awake, so clear and awake that time did not exist anymore and he could see everything, could see Mara Jade slaughtered, could see Jacen tempted and fallingfallingfalling) and walked into Jacen's room and primed his blaster and saw his son sleeping (adult and scarred but so deceptively innocent-looking now) and could almost taste the new name on the tip of his tongue—!

#Star Wars #Han Solo #Solo: A Star Wars Story #writings

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thetradeway · 3 years

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Session 43 31 May 2021: “This is a local ship for local people.”

I’m a bit late, so are Duncan and Sophie. What were we doing? Oh yes, we killed some sirens. It turns out that the boat we are on is 190ft long and not 200 as advertised; clearly Captain Beckett felt the need to exaggerate a few things.

Ed has read the blog so he’s all caught up. (Yay me!) Tarragon mentions that Popcorn was very cross that someone killed his shark, so Kessler offers to throw him a few fins. He is suitably mollified.

The crew of the Fallen Star are scanning the ocean around us for more threats; the First Mate (Aegea) is still looking horrified at the violent deaths of two of her crewmates. We are told the sharks shouldn’t be this close to land. She also says that although she’s heard tale of sirens, she’s never seen one before today. This is not a typical voyage for them at all.

(Could this be something to do with Sea-Bitch? I forget her name.)

A kid runs up to Aegea to tell her she’s wanted below deck. Tarragon heals Ahleqs and casts Lesser Restoration on him and Gideon for the lowered HP max situation.

Aegea reappears and asks if one of us is a cleric; Brother Charity, Ardvack, says he will do whatever she needs. (Hm.) What god does he follow, she asks? Helm, he says. He’ll make it as multi-denominational as he can.

They need to bury the deceased. He says he needs about an hour to get ready. We help clean up the deck during the hour, and are invited to attend the ceremony afterward.

(Ardvack asks Gideon for a quick word in private, but Ed has gone to make coffee because he’s flagging. Matthew decides that means he’s agreed; why would he not want a clandestine meeting with Ardvack?)

The crew pitch in to help clean the deck; Aegea is attaching shells to driftwood; we do Investigation checks. They are painting symbols on the wood - split waves, symbols of Umberlee. (Sea Bitch!) There is also a lightning symbol - we’ve seen Gunna wearing that. It’s a symbol of the Captain of the Waves. Melaina only recognises the dolphin symbol - the elven god of the Underseas. They are attaching candles to the driftwood; these effigies will probably be put out to sea in lieu of bodies.

Ahleqs thinks it would be nice to be able to cast Prestidigitation, but he doesn’t have the spell. He tries to cast it anyway and the DM makes him roll on the ToC table - 73, a random creatures within 60ft of him becomes poisoned for 1d4 hours. He casts Mage Armour for when his unfortunate victim attacks him. No need, because he’s poisoned himself, and we all just assume he’s seasick. He retreats to the poop deck, just in case, and lays down and presses his head against the deck because it’s cooling.

The sailors start coming up from below deck after the hour.

Kessler asks who’s on watch while all this is happening? We’ve already been nailed once, she’d hate for it to happen again. The captain, first mate, bosun, quartermaster, even the cook are all on deck so they can watch.

Beckett approaches us; he looks unwell. Tarragon and Kessler inquire after his health; he says he’s fine. He asks if we’ve seen Brother Charity - he’s still in the surgery. Gideon is still with him.

Meanwhile, in the surgery...

Ardvack: “I expect you’re wondering why I’ve called you here.”

Ed, who has just come back from making coffee and might not have heard the part of the session where he was invited to the surgery: “Errrr…”

Charity thanks Gideon for being the only one of the party who have made him feel welcome; he gives him a scroll and says he wrote it himself. (Oh boy.) It’s a scroll of disguise self; Gideon is relieved as he thought it might be poetry. Ardvack says he thinks it might come in handy. Gideon can copy it into his book; Charity says he hopes Gideon will think of him when he casts it. He says he will put it to good use.

On deck, we are discussing doing something with the shark; Ahleqs throws up over the side.

Charity emerges on deck. The crew have finished their offerings. Charity starts the ceremony for the fallen: Christopher Moistloins and Brian Tetheradick.

He recites a short piece of his own creation and invites the crew to say a few words; he will be sending Carl around with an alms box for their families.

Matthew reads the following:

(We all hear a big sob from the aft castle from Ahleqs.)

Charity burns some stuff in a brazier. Some of the crew and the captain tell stories about the fallen crew, and some put coins in the alms box. We all add some too.

We hold a wake on deck in the evening with rum. We roll perception checks; Ahleqs at Disadvantage because he’s poisoned. He also still cannot get drunk; his body has no idea what’s going on.

The crew are whispering that the Captain was not on deck for the fight; this is unusual. Aegea says the Captain was sound asleep when she got to his chambers and he had to be woken magically. Hmm.

The wake goes on for several hours, after which we retire - some of us for healing and then rest. Ahleqs follows Charity to the surgery, very green and hugging a small metal pot he’s found.

Charity asks him to describe his symptoms; he vomits. Everything is spinning, and this rash is new too. Charity prescribes a course of leeches. He makes a Medicine check - an 18. The Tides of Chaos turned his stomach contents foul. (Ew.) Charity makes a check with the Healer’s Kit - a 21 - and hands him a glass vial that looks like pepto bismol (and smells like it). Ahleqs chugs it and feels much better.

Gideon wants to play dice with the sailors; Melaina and Tarragon help with the watches. Tarragon takes a long rest first, and helps with the last of the watches. (Mina struggles to type the right command to do a long rest; we cheer when she finally gets it.)

Tarragon and Melaina ascend to the crow’s nest. The evening is clear and beautiful. I get all of my good rolls out of the way nice and early with a 25 Perception check. In front of the ship, we see unnatural looking storm clouds. Tarragon shouts to the crew; a lad climbs up the rigging and takes a look through the telescope, pales, and runs to get Sparks. (Mina, OOC: "Is he singing 'This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us' as he goes?")

We could have sworn we saw something very large break the surface of the ocean ahead of us. (Me, Melaina, and Charity still have water breathing, so we can drown as slowly as we like.)

Sparks arrives and looks scared - Tarragon points out the big shape but Sparks can’t see it. What did it look like? We aren’t sure. Could it be a whale? She goes back down the rigging and goes to get the Captain.

The storm clouds are getting nearer. The Captain appears on deck and beckons us; we scramble down. He says we don’t have time to turn away from the storm, so we don’t want to be in the crow’s nest when it hits. Tarragon runs to the cabins to wake the others; with no idea what social niceties even are, she bursts into their rooms without knocking.

Ardvack, rolling over in bed to face her, crossly: “Tarragon, I’m not interested!”

Tarragon leaps onto his bed and starts kicking him, furious. “There’s a storm approaching, get up and help us!”

Ahleqs casts Mage Armour.

The ship is lurching by the time we all get back on deck. Tarragon casts Water Breathing on as many people as she can who don’t already have it. We make DEX saves for the lurching deck; all of us except Tarragon deal with it pretty well. She falls prone.

The crew are running around; the deck is chaos. Spark’s eyes are pure white - she’s concentrating really hard. The storm seems not quite as bad directly around the ship. The waves are bigger outside her sphere of influence, and the lightning doesn’t strike within it. Ardvack decides he’s going back down until he’s advised it might be worse down there. He looks for a rope to lash himself and Carl to a mast.

We make Perception checks. Those of us who roll 15 or over hear what sounds like a horn over the rain and thunder and crashing waves. This storm does not seem altogether natural.

Kessler has Ahleqs cast Light on one of her crossbow bolts; she fires it in the direction of the horn that we heard. It flies in a straight line, is taken by the wind and disappears. But she has invented the first signal flare crossbow.

Ardvack finds a place to shelter. Literally all of us except Melaina roll super bad on our DEX saves and are moving at half speed for this encounter. Ahleqs uses Tides of Chaos to give himself Advantage and rolls a nat 20, but then rolls 100 on the d100 - we all panic until he says he ‘regains all his expended Sorcery Points’. Because he rolled so well the DM lets him give a pass to one of his team - he chooses Tarragon. "Barbarians need to move to get closer." (Yeah!)

We roll Perception again. Those who roll ten or more hear the eerie horn again - this time it’s much closer. Should Kessler try her flare bolt again?

(Gideon is worried this might be a ghost ship…) Anyone who rolled 15 or more can roll Perception again at Advantage. Ahleqs sees something and falls down in fright.

The horn sounds again and we all hear it this time. Aegea shouts, “Sea Devils! We have to keep them away from the Captain and the mage or we’re all fucked!” Tarragon runs toward Sparks. The others place themselves where they want to be, and we roll Initiative. I get a nat 1! Fuck! Melaina hides near the mast so she can do some cowardly shooting at a distance.

(We may need to figure out now which of the crew have Water Breathing. Three of ours already had it - Tarragon, Charity and Melaina - and Carl doesn’t need it, so she casts it on Ahleqs, Kessler and Gideon. She can get 7 more.) DM says I got: Captain, Sparks, Aegea, and a couple of the crew. The bosun is not on deck.

Melaina makes a Perception check - a 23. She sees, out of the ocean and scurrying up the side of the ship, a sea-devil!

Ahleqs is up first. He waves to the sea-devil. “Hello! Uh… How are you? Can we help you at all?” He’s using his Retail background. (Sophie, OOC: “This is a local ship for local people.”) He makes a Persuasion check.

It snarls at him and says “Those who are eaten should shut up.” Its voice is raspy, throaty.

Ahleqs holds his hands out: “I’m sure we can come to a mutual arrangement that will benefit all of us,” and readies a Firebolt. If anything attacks any of us, he will attack it.

Ahleqs, Gideon and Melaina - actually most of us, this thing’s big - Thanks Joe - see this, crawling up the side of the ship:

A Huge sea-devil. Well, shit. (Gideon’s only complaint so far is that it doesn’t have webbed digits. It does seem to have webbed armpits. It must get through a lot of deodorant.)

Carl is killing it today - he rolls a 17 for his Dex save. The ship lurches as if something very large slams into it, which is likely exactly what happened. Gideon and Ardvack are knocked prone.

Kessler is up. She shoots the first sea devil with her crossbow, vowing to eat it if she gets a chance. 16 hits, for 8 piercing damage. It screeches, sounding more angry than hurt. That’s okay, this is just the opening salvo. She fires another shot - a 9, which misses.

Tarragon sees another sea devil scale the back of the boat - because it’s feeling friendly it throws a net at her, rolling a 20. Well shit.

Melaina hides and shoots at the bigjobs - a 20 hits. she only - only! - does 25 damage.

Another sea devil runs up to Tarragon in her net and grabs her, running back toward the railing. Shit!

(Duncan complains that all of the sea devils who are attacking are doing so behind him where he can’t see them to unleash his Firebolt; Joe says he will move one that Ahleqs can see. Ahleqs: “I didn’t mean it…”)

Gideon goes on operation Rescue the Druid - well he tries, but he’s prone at the moment. He uses half his movement to get up and goes as far as he can, but can’t quite reach her. There’s still stuff to kill elsewhere though, and she tells him not to worry too much as she has a plan. There’s a pause; is he trying to remember how big a Fireball is? Ed, OOC: “Not yet.” He decides to Grease the deck. This may help or hinder, but he’s doing it anyway. He’s trying to trip the one dragging Tarragon over the side. Hopefully it will hit the railing groin-first in a comical manner, taking 10 cloaca damage. It has to make a DEX save; it rolls a 5 and falls over, yay! Tarragon rolls out of his grip - she’s lucky there’s a railing around the edge.

Thanks Gideon! Grease Wizard to the rescue!

Carl’s turn. (Does he smell bad, by the way? Yes, Matthew tells us. He was already desiccated, and the sea water hasn’t done much to help. He might want some herbs to freshen the air around him or we could all get nosegays.) He uses his turn to dash.

Tarragon rages and uses the Rage to get Advantage on her Strength check to get out of the net - she rolls a nat 20 and does a big roar at the sea devil, forearm veins bulging as she does so. She uses half her movement to stand up.

The sea devil nearest Ardvack throws a dart at him - it rolls a 5 and misses. Ardvack doesn’t even notice it over the noise of the storm. It’s his turn. “Carl, what on earth are you doing?”

Duncan, OOC: “Well, I think we’ve established that they don’t want to be mates.”

Ardvack does Bonus Action Shellegblghlslehhlhlsfghh, then does a Very Holy Eldritch Blast. One hits, the other misses. (The hit definitely doesn’t heal it for 7HP. He’s turned on us!) It screeches, showing rows and rows of sharp teeth. Ardvack, unimpressed: “How gauche.”

A sea devil multi-attacks Carl at Advantage because he’s flanked. The bite hits with a 17 for 3 piercing, and the spear hits at a 14 for 2 piercing. Carl is now their friend, as is their custom.

Anther shiny new friend joins us on the boat. It has a vajazzle!

(I delete myself off the board by accident. Whoops. Benevolent DM puts me back on the board, and in the turn order; sorry, thank you, sorry.)

The new she-monster barks at the others: “Spare the honoured one!” She’s feeling friendly, so a magical looking trident appears in front of Ardvack and takes a swing at him. Just as soon as her spell sheet loads. Ardvack is against whatever’s going on here.

It’s taking forever, so we move on to Ahleqs. He was going to ask - he thinks it’s important to have a conversation about Fireballs and ships. It’s about our third day on the ship; since we’ve been here a while, DM says he knows by now that the ship is warded against fire damage. It’s not immune, but it won’t take full damage.

If he places it right, he will do minimal structural damage. What he’ll do then is first turn around to see what horrors are going on behind him. He sees Gideon’s Grease, and casts Fireball at level 3. Joe makes some DEX saves. two 9s, a 16 and an 18. The 9s fail and take 34 fire damage, and 17 for the rest.

Here is the good news - he’s killed three and injured two more. Nice! The big one was still over the side and was therefore protected from the blast, which is the bad news. He moves, but not too close to the edge 'in case a tentacle comes'. He hunches a little bit and cowers. Ardvack takes the attack from the trident - 18 hits, so he takes 4 Force damage from the she-monster’s Spiritual Weapon.

Another sea devil throws another dart at Ardvack and misses; again he is utterly oblivious. The big bastard one dives back under the water. He is appalled at our treatment of them as guests.

Another comes out of the sea and climbs on board; DM: “Because that’s fun.”

(Tarragon has her back to all of this, and has no idea exactly how bad things are behind her.)

Kessler asks Tarragon if she needs any help, and receives a mindless roar in response. She shoots at some of the creatures - 11 misses, 24 hits.

(Carl is disappointed to find out that the devils aren’t Small; he wanted to grab one by the face and swing it at another one.) We make more DEX saves as the ship lurches again. Ardvack gets a 3 and goes over the side. He can breathe water at the moment, but he’s not a strong swimmer. As he hits and goes under, he catches a glimpse of something:

Oh Christ. Oh no. It’s labelled ‘Enormous Shark’. He’s now keeping Ardvack company in the sea. It’s almost like someone doesn’t want us to reach our destination…

22 hits Tarragon with a poison dart; she takes 3 piercing damage and has to make a CON save - if she fails by 5 or more she is Unconscious. The DC is 13 and she rolls an 8; she is Poisoned and Unconscious (But not at 0HP.)

Melaina Hides with a 24 and shoots at the priestess - 18 hits, for 40 damage with Sharpshooter. (She is a god among women, isn’t she.) Now that she’s attacked, she is visible - the priestess says points at her and says, “Brethren, unclean one!”

The nearest one picks Tarragon up and flings her overboard. Rude. She awakens when she hits the freezing water though, so not entirely bad.

Gideon has two party members in the water. “Well… crap. Okay.” He eventually decides to scamper across the deck (I can’t see where as I’m in the water and facing the wrong way) and do Aganazzar’s Scorcher to try and catch two of them. They both save and take half damage, 7 Fire. The one closest to him is killed. Gideon: “oooh. Fried fish.” It smells disgusting apparently; he uses his bonus action to plug his nose.

Carl turns slowly and ominously to his new buddy, and his hood is blown down, exposing his pallid dead flesh and his milky eyes. He does a, and I’m quoting here, “double-handed splat on him”. Open handed on the top of the head, he rolls a 21 Slam attack to compress it into the deck. He and it make contested Strength checks; Carl wins. The devil is Grappled. Carl would like to squeeze until his hands meet in the middle or something bursts; maybe his head?

(Ahleqs looks at Carl and thinks of the picture he drew for them. Matthew, OOC: “As I said, Carl has a rich internal life. There’s a lot going on.”)

A devil shoots a dart at Melaina and misses; Sophie, OOC: “Twats.”

Tarragon rage-climbs up the side of the ship, using her Action to Dash, and ends her Rage. Everyone is surprised by this; we didn’t know you could do that.

Can Ardvack see the shark? No, because he’s back on the surface of the water. (It turns out that he can see in the dark, but none of us know that in-game. Huh.)

He rolls a nat 20 Perception check. He can now target the shark; it’s 30 feet long. Holy fucking shit.

Matthew, OOC: “It’s a dumb idea. It’s a dumb idea. It’s a very bad idea.” What is? He was thinking he could Misty Step and cling on to the back of its fin and, again I’m quoting, “pester it”. Perhaps he could pump air into it with a hypodermic needle…?

He doesn’t know if Ardvack is that much of a reckless maniac. Can he cast spells with a verbal component underwater while hanging on to the back of a shark, since he has Water Breathing? If the spell has a Somatic component he would have to let go. If he was a retired rodeo champion, the DM might let him try.

He could Misty Step into the shark and pester it from within…? Matthew, OOC: “That sounds like a one-way trip.” He Misty Steps onto the back of it, and he’ll see where he goes from there.

Duncan, OOC: “How fast can a shark go? Are we ever going to see Brother Charity again?”

The shark has almost armour plating; a knife likely won’t go in. Ardvack attempts to cling onto the fin. His Gunna is showing, and the DM approves. He awards Ardvack Inspiration; “That’s ballsy.”

Is that you done, Matthew? “Yes. I have made a terrible, terrible error.”

Contested Strength checks for the devil and Carl; Carl fails this time. The fish man is off; he does not enjoy this. Carl raises his hood in fury. He will take this out on something else close to him on his turn.

The priestess casts Mass Healing Word on her sea-devils. She drinks a potion, because Melaina ruined her day. She calls out to her comrades: “We who eat! Quickly, attack those who are eaten!”

Ahleqs does Eldritch Blast at one of them, using Tides of Chaos for Advantage; 23 to hit, and a dirty 20 to hit for 5 total Force damage. He rolls on the Table of Joy and Wonder: 30. He teleports up to 60 feet to a space he can see. Every space he can see is worse than the one he’s in, though. He teleports to the least dangerous one.

A sea-devil shoots a poison dart at Melaina - it misses. Does Ahleqs want the good news or the bad news? He opts for the good news: he is told he 'ain’t gonna be lonely no more'. The bad news is that he’s joined by the Big Bastard, who has clambered back on board. It does a multi-attack at him. The bite hits for 9 damage.

Duncan, OOC, with hope in his voice: “Is that it?”

DM, with no trace of remorse: “Nope. not so much.”

It gives him a quick prod with its trident - Ahleqs uses two Sorcery Points to Bend Luck - the attack misses. Phew. The Big Bastard prods him again, but rolls a nat 1. “That was fortunate.”

A devil chucks a net at Carl - 22 hits, and Carl is netted. Carl’s other friend scoops him up and slings him overboard. He’s full of corpse gas, though, so he floats. Naturally buoyant. He looks very avant-garde, floating around in his net.

Aegea has a go at killing one of them; she manages it. Woo! Kessler is up. She shouts at Ahleqs to cower (“already all over it”) and shoots her crossbow over his head at the Priestess for 4 damage. She takes a shot at the one that just escaped Carl’s clutches with a dirty 20, for 10 piercing. He is looking ropey; she can see his opal-y flesh through his scales. She then yells at the big bastard to try and get it to attack her instead of Ahleqs.

We all make DEX saves except Ardvack who makes a STR check as the shark slams into the ship again. Tarragon rolls a nat 1. Ardvack is thrown from the back of the shark and is now floating in the ocean. The shark uses some of its movement to dive down.

DM, sounding entirely too gleeful: “You’ve seen the thing on documentés where it comes up from below, right Matthew?”

Melaina wants to pour oil down the mast to make it slippery so the devils can’t climb up. She can cover half the mast if she uses her action. That’ll give them a DC15 to climb. She does that. Two of them slide back down. She attempts to hide but rolls a 12.

The sea devil in Gideon's Grease uses half his movement to stand up, rolls a DEX save which he fails and falls back down. He uses the rest of his movement to stand up again. Amazing.

Gideon uses his fancy new spell on the Big Bastard - Phantasmal Killer. (oooooo!) It makes a WIS save and fails, taking 24 Psychic damage and is Frightened. At the end of each of his turns, he must succeed another Wis save or take 4d10 further Psychic damage. Woah. Wait - it doesn’t take damage yet.

Carl frees himself from the net and starts to climb back on board, ending his turn about halfway up. A devil shoots a dart at Melaina and misses.

Tarragon wanted to cast Greater Shillbblldhdlgslfslgghhh, but finds out at the last second that she doesn’t have it prepared, so she just runs up and hits a devil for 5 damage, and throws a Healing Word to Ahleqs at second level for her bonus action.

Ardvack isn’t sure what to do; he can’t go up against a shark, he’s a tiny little man! He swims away - away?! - from the boat. (He has another character prepared, right?)

He holds his action so that when the shark comes, he will teleport onto the boat. Actually, wait - he has another idea that’s even worse. If you opened up a Bag of Holding underwater, would it fill with water and stay the same size? DM, dubiously: “… Yes… Where are you going with this?”

He wants to get in the BoH, filled with water which he can breathe, and wait for the shark. He will hold his action and wait for the shark. Then he wants to wait for the shark to eat the bag, and do something even dumber than that. The DM warns him that the shark might decide that a bag is a meagre prize, and go for something else.

He decides instead to chum the water a bit - he is bleeding. Perhaps some smaller sharks will distract the big one.

Nope - he decides to go half in, half out of the bag. That’s his turn with his held action.

Does 18 hit Gideon? He is just an elderly dwarf in a dress. We wait for Ed to reply, but it seems we’ve lost him - oh wait, there he is. 18 does hit. He takes 3 Piercing damage and is Poisoned. Nope - he succeeds on his CON save and is not poisoned. He makes a CON check to maintain concentration on his spell and fails; Phantasmal Killer fails and does no damage. Booh! We ain’t dead yet, though.

The Luscious Lovely of the Sea comes down to the mast, and casts Hold Person on Melaina. Ahleqs does Counterspell - and blocks the spell. The priestess thinks that’s incredibly rude, so she uses her bonus action to move her Spiritual Weapon towards Ahleqs. She attacks with it - and misses. Yeah!

Ahleqs casts Burning Hands on the Big Bastard - at 4th level, because he’s terrified. (The DM remembers that these things have Blood Frenzy, so technically they have advantage on attacking us if we’re injured. All of us: “Thanks, Joe!”) The Big Bastard makes a DEX save versus Burning Hands, and rolls a nat 1. She takes 21 Fire damage. DM: “You swine!”

Ahleqs gibbers a little bit. The Priestess looks cross, so he cowers and says, “sorry!”

A devil claws its way up the mast and slashes at Melaina - a multi-attack, both of which hit her. She takes 5 damage total. “Little swine!”

Does Ahleqs have all his HP back? Duncan, OOC: “What’s it to you?” He does, because Tarragon healed him, so the Sea devil doesn’t have Advantage on him. It does a multi-attack - 18, 18 and 21 all hit. He uses a Sorcery Point to Bend Luck on one of the 18s, but it doesn’t do anything. He takes 24 damage total. Ouch.

This ain’t looking grand for us. Aegea will try to run for reinforcements on her turn.

More poisoned darts - Melaina dodges it again. Aegea, to Gideon: “Have you got this for a second? Protect the Captain and Sparks and I’ll get help!”

Kessler is going to do something incredibly daft. She leaves melee range of one of the sea devils and takes an attack of opportunity - which misses - and marches up to the Big Bastard, stowing her crossbow. “Leave the squishy one alone!” She goes for an attack to the face with her Thunder Gauntlet - which hits. 9 points of Thunder damage. Second attack is a nat 20! She does an anime sequence before she hits. Stunning blow - Max damage, and the target must make a DC14 CON save and is stunned on a fail. He rolls a 26. Well, shit. Still though, if he tries to attack anything else he’ll be at disadvantage, which is good news for Ahleqs.

Ardvack is splashing around in the roiling ocean. Does he want odds or evens? The shark can attack him, or leap out of the water and bite at Carl, hanging off the side of the boat. He chooses odds - the shark attacks Ardvack. He climbs mostly inside the BoH - with one hand hanging out, holding an Immovable Rod. With his held action, he activates it. He makes a DEX save - if he succeeds, the shark leaps out of the water and swallows the Bag of Holding. It is suspended in the air as the Rod activates. The DM allows Matthew to make his case for what sort of, and how much, damage he rolls.

How fast was the shark moving, first of all? DM googles it, and reckons about 35MPH. Matthew wants to calculate the damage as you would falling damage - a d6 per 10 feet travelled. Duncan has looked up the rules surrounding the Immovable Rod. It can hold 8,000lb. So how heavy is a shark? An enormous one, at that? There’s a lot of talk about sharks and weight and tons versus tonnes. We decide to go with Imperial tons, as that’s what 5e uses. Great whites can get up to 5,000lbs at about half the length, 15-16 feet.

We decide that the shark weighs more than the Rod can hold, so it swallows Ardvack, the Bag, and the Rod - which deactivates. Well… He’s biffed that, hasn’t he? He spends the rest of the round coming up with a new plan. We all saw and heard what happened, sadly for him. Ahleqs will still be screaming when his turn comes around again.

Melaina ignores the devils next to her and aims at the Priestess, but hides first. 13 misses. “Bollocks. Okay, that’s me done.”

No wait - 13 hits! Nice! 34 damage. Bitch is haggard. “She looks in a terrible terrible bad way.”

(Matthew OOC: “I’m inside a giant fish.” Sophie: “You idiot.”)

The devil nearest Tarragon attacks her with a 20 for two damage. She laughs at it, showing the blood on her teeth. Another attacks Ahleqs with a 16 for 2 piercing. Another attacks Kessler - both its multi-attacks miss.

Gideon’s plan is to shoot a spell in a line at three of the Devils - he does Aganazzar’s Scorcher again. They make DEX saves - the first dies outright. “Woohoo!” One succeeds - taking 9 damage - and one fails, taking 18. Gideon sits back and says some encouraging words to Sparks and the Captain.

Carl has another ten feet to climb - which takes 20 feet of his movement. He clambers back on board like Jason Voorhees and does 'that weird shoulder breathing thing' and spends the rest of his turn looking intimidating.

Another poison dart - this one at Melaina, again. It just hits, with her new AC (two added as she’s behind cover). She takes 2 piercing and makes a CON save - she fails with a 2, and falls unconscious. “Awhh!”

Tarragon hits the devil in front of her for 10 bludgeoning; it’s looking ropey. She Healing Word’s Ahleqs again.

Brother Fish Food is up. He doesn’t need his hands to cling on from inside the shark, so good news, Somatic components are A-OK. He clings to the edge of the Bag of Holding and casts Dimension Door to bring himself and the Bag to the edge of the ship where he was originally knocked off. He spills out of the Bag; anyone near him hears him mutter-sobbing: “Terrible idea, terrible bad idea, my books are ruined, I’m never going in the sea again…” and vomiting. DM: "… there was water in the Bag, yes?"

He has flooded the deck with acidic shark stomach contents. Lovely.

Duncan, OOC: “Well, you aren’t in a shark any more, so that’s nice.”

What horrifying event is going to befall the group next? Can’t be anything worse than what Ardvack has just done to himself.

Nothing happens yet; the Priestess Heals her scabby ass so she doesn’t fall down dead on the deck. For her Bonus Action, since Melaina is unconscious, she clobbers the gobbo with her Spiritual Weapon. She rolls a 23, but Kessler casts Shield. DM, frustrated: “God damn you!”

Ahleqs’ turn. “Hello!” Looks like the goblin has things under control, so he can probably run away. The Priestess and the devil are both in melee with Kessler, so no attack of opportunity. He runs for it and turns to throw a Fireball, but changes his mind and casts Shatter instead at 3rd level. He hits the Priestess and two of the remaining devils - they make CON saves. We wait for Joe’s computer…

The Priestess and one of the devils save; 17 for the other and half for the two who succeed. He kills one, yay! He swigs a Healing Potion for his Bonus Action.

Melaina takes a d6 of damage as the devil in the crow’s nest with her picks up her unconscious body and flings it down onto the deck. She wakes, but takes 3 falling damage.

Kessler makes an attack of opportunity as Big Bastard moves to get past her - she smacks it with her Thunder Gauntlet but rolls a nat1. Matthew reminds Joe about the crit-fail table. On the Rebound - Your weapon bounces off your target and strikes you in the face. Take 1/2 the weapon’s damage, and you have Disadvantage on your next attack.

DM, delighted: “I hit her, I finally hit her!”

Does 17 hit Melaina? Yes, it does. Big Bastard is going to have a little bite of her, and then stab her with his trident. He’s at Advantage because she’s prone but at Disadvantage because she’s not Kessler, so a straight roll - an 11 and an 18 for 18 Piercing damage. Melaina is not in a good way, now. Another one comes and bites and claws at her as well, because this lot hate elves. Matthew, OOC: “This seems like racial profiling.”

Aegea returns with reinforcements - including Lolo, to Tarragon’s delight.

Kessler is up. She uses her bonus action to activate her Defensive Shield, giving herself 7 temporary HP. She does her Thunder Gauntlets at Big Bastard again. 6 Thunder damage. She can’t reach the back of his head so she aims for the back of his groin. Ahleqs, wincing: “Oooh, right in the gooch.” DM: “You’ve caressed his dangles.”

We all make DEX saves as the boat lurches again. Melaina is already on the deck, so she doesn’t have to worry about it. Again, Tarragon falls - and Carl goes overboard again. Matthew, OOC: “He had plans…”

Ahleqs expends two Sorcery Points to add a d4 to Carl’s DEX save - he rolls a 2, which is just enough to save him from falling into the water again. Carl feels a warm sense of something - has he wet himself? - No, a sense of community. DM allows him a free Intelligence check to see if he can speak, to mark the occasion - he rolls a 1. Well, he rolls a 4, and applies his minus-three modifier. At least he’s still on board.

Sophie is nodding off and it’s a school night, so we knock it off there. Kessler is going to enjoy kicking the shit out of that Big Bastard next week.

#dnd #thetradeway #campaign diary

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eternal-bruh · 7 years

Text

Why being caught in a Casual Loop is best to be avoided: I

Chapter 1

"Land ho!"

The captain's head snaps up immediately from the process of devouring his new acquisition – a piece of meat fresh from Sanji's frying pan. He has only been so lucky to snatch it because Nami was distracting the cook with enough of her feminine charms. It enabled Luffy to be able to sneak inside and steal one, lovely and succulent, though still partially raw piece of meat. Still, he has his doubts on whether Sanji has let him off the hook this time around or the blond was really that distracted by the sight of Nami in a semitransparent top. Either way, he has been content with munching on it with the usual fervor in the face of such an early meal until Zoro's shout caused an outbreak of adrenaline and thirst for adventure to surge through his veins.

"What island is that, Nami?" Chopper’s head pokes curiously from the doorway of the infirmary.

Luffy's eyes trail over to the orange haired woman and find her leaning against the railing with an unusually confused frown on her face.

"While it does appear on the map I stole the other day," the navigator begins slowly, eyes never leaving the growing mass of land splayed in front of her, "it doesn't really have a name. So I thought it might not be here at all, just a paper island or something.” She trails off uncertainly.

"What’s that?" Luffy pipes up from his place on the swing. “An island made of paper?”

Nami points a manicured finger down at the large canopy spread over three barrels. "On big scale maps such as this one the cartographers invent them to avoid others making a copy off of it and getting away with it." She pinches the bridge of her nose at the lost expression on her captain's face. "It's like a signature."

"Oh, so that's what it was! So let's go to the signature island then!" The pirate captain jumps off the wooden seat and throws his arms in the air in his usual ready-for-trouble style.

"You sure it doesn't have a name?" Zoro asks from up above as he leisurely makes his way toward the grassy deck, leaving to Usopp the supervision of their last few miles until they get near enough to the shore.

Nami feels the beginning of an eye twitch, but she struggles to answer as calmly as possible. "Yes. Very."

"Then we'll find it out when we arrive." The swordsman sighs tiredly and drops down near the railing for a quick nap.

"I suppose research is in order?"

The navigator jumps slightly at the voice coming from the bodiless mouth somehow attached to her shoulder, but smiles nonetheless.

"I guess so."

She can imagine the rare, excited grin on the other woman's face.

"It's kinda’,” a pregnant pause, ”deserted, you know?" Usopp glances at the desolate street with desperation and dread building up inside his chest.

He can already feel his invented sickness acting up, not to mention the overwhelming feeling of pressure pushing down on his shoulders. It’s like he is suddenly carrying a thousand invisible kilos just by smelling the slightly musty air that has a tang of copper. It spells nothing but dead bodies on their hands, he’s sure. The dust scratches his face rather painfully and he is sure that two more steps will send enough vibrations through the earth to bring down one of the many shabby wooden houses lining the street on both sides.

"There sure isn't anyone around." Robin also remarks, looking contrastingly unconcerned and at ease. She slides one finger over a decaying advertisement board that groans under the soft pressure of her touch. "We should find a bar."

"This is like the classical horror story, guys!" The sniper whispers fearfully, trying in vain to attract his friends' attention, but only succeeding in scaring Chopper and Brook. “And I don’t think a bar will hold anything else other than dead bodies…”

"Are you sure it was fine leaving the Sunny all alone, bro?" Franky shouts from the back of the group, his posture predictably tense in light of the constant worry of leaving his beloved ship all alone in that desolate port. These heinous thoughts circle through his head without respite and Franky hates it.

"Yep!" Luffy grins widely, stepping over the carcass of a dead animal a little too nonchalantly for the crew's overstressed sniper. "Don't worry! Sunny will be fine! We should have fun, too-"

"How? When there's no bar anywhere in this crap city." Zoro grumbles, his face a few shades darker because of the aforementioned fact. “We better find some dead people at least-“

Sanji snorts in contempt. "Serves you right. And don’t go around throwing words like that or we’re going to have to deal with Usopp’s mumbles all the way through."

"I believe we should be able to find one, Zoro-san." Brook breaks in before anyone else can express their disappointment at the dilapidated state of their new discovery or the very real possibility that a mountain of corpses is waiting for them. Or, hell, even start a fight.

A bony finger points down the street.

Nami squints to make out exactly what their musician is showing them.

"That's-" Her eyes wide and already livelier than a moment before, she double checks the rectangle hanging on the wall of a house, swinging in the passing breeze with a furious series of crick-cracks.

"Finally!" The green haired swordsman almost throws his hands up in the air as he resolutely marches down the street.

Luffy and Usopp jog to catch up with him with the others closely following behind.

"This doesn't look like much." Usopp whispers as he hears the door creak closed behind them.

When his eyes finally adjust, he takes in the overly shadowy room that exudes a foul odor of alcohol that no doubt permeates everything from the equally shabby interior and its filthy looking occupants seated around a few low tables. The wooden bar is cracked and torn in a few places and the bottles aligned behind on bended shelves are half buried under a mound of dust and trash. The liquids inside don’t look all that inviting either.

"Hey, Zoro." Luffy's voice seems too loud in the ultra silence and it’s almost eerie under the distrustful gazes of the few patrons. "Is this a bar?" His voice gets higher by the end, as if intimidated of the glares thrown his way.

Zoro grunts something unintelligible and plops down in a seat at the bar, already in the middle of ordering something. It seems that their swordsman doesn’t mind the unusual establishment that exceeded even the pirate bars they usually frequent. The door swings open again to reveal the way more inviting outside and closes just as quietly and solemnly as during their entrance.

"What... is this?" Nami's eyes are unfocused as they move frantically, raking in the room at large while her nose slightly scrunches up reflexively in distaste.

"I think this is a good place to find some answers." Robin nods resolutely, more to herself.

A couple of patrons shift in their seats in a familiar way that reminds her of the warning currents before a fight for territory would ensue. She has seen it all so many times before, it feels almost ordinary in this unordinary piece of land they just stumbled upon.

"... Here?" Chopper's voice is as broken as Usopp's heart.

"I doubt it, Robin." Nami begins quickly with determination, already alarmed by the multitude of glares and suspicious stares pointed in their direction full of something bad and something worse that it gives her goose bumps just standing in their wake. "We should-"

"You oughta' listen to her!"

Suddenly and without preamble as it usually happens in such circumstances and places of gathering, someone – or God forbid something – erupts from a table next to a roughly boarded up window that still has a few traces of glass shards hanging limply from its termite eaten frame. The voice is atypically high and light for someone who'd usually be found in this kind of place and certainly misplaced the age the younglings considered the figure to have.

Luffy looks at his battle-ready companions with amusement and ignores his mounting uncertainty. They are sometimes such scared cats!

"You got some information for us then, old man?" The pirate captain lets his easygoing grin take the lead and proceeds to walk towards the table despite the many gestures from his friends to not do that. He can deal with whatever will arise and besides – they were only a few feet away from him!

The man at the table grins widely. It is the only thing not shadowed by the mainstream black hood draped over his head. His overall appearance shifts to something slightly more savage, though, as he stands there hunched over a table full of glasses and tall towers of food leftovers.

"Sure I have.” His tone is more than delighted. “I heard you kids want to go on a grand adventure!"

Against Nami's rapidly growing feeling of fear, Luffy simply beams and almost jumps on the table in his hurry to make the man spill the beans. Anyone who offers an adventure is less of a villain in his books.

"Hell, yeah!” The sparkle in Luffy’s eyes brings a foreboding sense of alarm even to the most clueless crewmate. “What's it about?"

"You know what guys? I don't think we should..." Usopp trails off as his eyes dart between the duo at the corner table and Zoro. The swordsman is now approaching them with feline grace that undermines a dangerous aura that usually serves to make people forcibly back down.

Hooded Man simply doesn’t seem to get the message. “Oh, I’ve got a special one just for y-ou!”

“Alright now, this is getting super creepy-“

“And this is not even that time of the year yet.” Franky says over Usopp’s garbled sentence.

“What can you even offer in this shit-filled hole of a place?” Zoro growls with eyes too lucid for someone who has probably drunk two bottles of stale liquor in quick succession just under a minute ago.

"Eh, no time! What'd ya' say captain? Ready to bring it up a notch?!"

Sanji's hands move to get Robin and Nami out of the way first, but he is a few seconds too slow. Their clueless captain shouts ‘Yes’ way before the man has fully finished what he has to say and he curses that son of a bitch for being in so much damn hurry and never taking the time to listen to sense first. Danger always rides with them because of this and the cook realizes with a horrifying chill that the rest of them are slowly taking after Luffy in this aspect.

They are nine, though. So an old man shouldn’t be such a big deal. Zoro is nearest and he can easily deal with him. It isn’t like the stupid moss head hasn’t dealt with things like this before. Shady, obscure drunks like this old man that take a sudden and sick interest in their captain are few and far between, but always offering adventures of all kinds that Luffy never has to know about.

But the rest of them have been informed about it in some instances, when one of them has really overstepped it and Zoro’s temper had reached a boiling point Sunny’s boiler would be jealous of. Sanji knows the guy keeps locked and buried the kind of unhealthy rage that comes with primal instincts, but he is certain that Zoro has to struggle to keep it at bay sometimes. So he is glad that after weeks on end of drifting and navigating the ocean, these poor saps come unabashed to address them because this is one effective way to let him explode and their world – the opinion of those who really matter like Nami and Chopper and Luffy – will remain perfectly intact. Because what is the world without a couple of suicidal scumbags that dare bring up the Paramount War or a City of Gold when Sanji knows there is one where they are heading to anyway. They just have to wait a damn bit more for their captain to be ready for Raftel, that’s all.

“This is getting old.” Sanji mutters when he feels the lit cigarette slip from between his lips.

Zoro’s form minus his odd hair is obscured now by a strange beam of light that comes from something the man is holding and he realizes with mind numbing certainty that Luffy is nowhere now. He tightens his grip on Nami and Robin and feels both respond in turn and he only has time to hope that the cigarette will light this shack on fire before he finds that they are shrouded in a sea of black with only the vivid, stark, white image of that obnoxious and – dare he say, manic – grin behind his possibly closed eyelids. After that everything fades away from him.

Usopp jumps up almost as soon as he gets some feeling back in his brain and limbs. His head moves left and right rapidly, eyes trying to focus on his surroundings, but mostly coming up foggy. The sniper stops when the first signs of vertigo and the pulsing of a headache have become simply impossible to ignore anymore and simply lays sprawled on the grass, trying to clear his mind. They’ve been in some possible Hell, a bare nothingness that had him suffocating way before he actually registered that he couldn’t see and feel anything. Way before he had even set foot into it. Around the time he had been complaining which was most of the time. But it was mostly because he felt like that island was going to drain him of every speck of life he had and his instincts never ceased screaming to duck, run and kill.

The grass tickles his ears and he opens his eyes to a clear blue that scars his retinas before his crumpled brain figures it out.

"Grass?!" The long nosed pirate shrieks, definitely not giving a damn about his health this time around as he jumps upright and takes a few cautious steps backwards.

Sharp eyes finally find more than a sea of green color around him. And he knows that he is definitely in a forest. A damn big forest with all kinds of plant life that could have easily fooled him into believing that he is back on the Boin Archipelago. But he has enough mind left to analyze the cold, hard facts. For one, the smell and sounds of the jungle are slightly different than he is used to, not to mention that he would have been wild animal food by now had he laid down there for more than two hours in that unmerciful jungle. So it is entirely possible that this isn't that kind of raw wilderness. Or he is simply somewhere the animals would stay clear of.

"Something. Or someone. Like a settlement?" The whisper carries on with the breeze and Usopp has to put a mental stop to the thought before he starts analyzing the other possibility – the dark, bloody lair of an equally horrifying monster.

But at another look, it isn't and he is simply surrounded by trees. Swaying trees with large crowns and a minimal amount of birds flying in and out of them. He can barely hear their song, as if the whole forest is holding its breath.

"So..." The slight echo gives him the creeps, but he has to continue pretending to be sane somehow so he continues. "This smell-"

It is definitely different, but at the same time familiar, like he's smelt it for such a long time. Usopp pauses as his mind finally processes the thought and draws to the shameful conclusion that the mystery smell – damn this sounds so Luffy-like, even inside his head – is, in fact, salt. More specifically – sea salt. And yes, he's been smelling the damn thing for quite a long time now in his otherwise relatively short pirating career.

"Damn! I've been so focused on the Boin Archipelago that I forgot to pay attention to the smell!" Usopp slaps his forehead in defeat and wills his leaden feet to move towards the source of the breeze. He now knows why the smell is different from the Boin jungle, too. Due to the dense vegetation and him training as near the centre of the island as he possibly could and not fall into the mouth of the carnivorous plant that made up the body of the island itself, this kind of smell barely passed through so his mind did not associate it with the carnivorous island to begin with.

"Where could the others be, though?"

The words barely escape his mouth before he finds himself stepping through the thick line of trees and into a completely different place. It is like one of those vast plains he sometimes reads about in one of the books he likes to sneak from the library. But he can still spot the ocean above the tall blades of green and small bushes scattered all over. Three vertical stripes of grey cut through the darker hue of blue and he knows he has hit the jackpot. If there is a village, then it means that there is food, which in turn meant that meat is definitely part of the menu. And where meat is, his captain is three times over – with his stomach, mind and appetite.

Nami knew that they are in big trouble the moment she first climbed over that messily built fence these people like to call protection. The houses – oh, don’t get her started. No matter how unkempt they could get or how messy the villagers could ever be, they are built with stone and straws. There are no definite windows besides small cuts with colorful glass attached when the molten earth had still been liquefied and nothing else attested that living in one of these is at the very least comfortable. But the real problem – and she has kept the complaints to a minimum until now! – is that they are as equally strangely shaped too. As if they have melted off in some bizarre heat.

Two steps in and she was already the definite outsider with her choice of clothing and the villagers weren't making it any easier with all their staring.

Not being one to be self-conscious in such situations, Nami had squared her shoulders and decided to let them be. She had more important things to take care of, like finding some clues about their location and possibly a restaurant.

Nami inwardly hopes these tribals or whatever they are supposed to be, have one at least and not for the first time thinks that Robin will certainly be delighted to have found such a secluded and untouched culture – whatever this culture with a funny style of building houses is.

The navigator grits her teeth as she tries to keep her shaking knees steady, hoping that the wave of whatever is assaulting her will pass already. It is bad already that she is the bad man here, she doesn’t need to let herself look weak. That will give them the opening they need and an advantage and Nami knows from hard earned experience that to survive in the world of pirates there is no place for those weak and quaking with fear.

Her honey gaze wanders over to the side and she tries not to stare at the minimally dressed women who seem to be keen on wearing a straw skirt and a mixture of leaves and leather bound together over their breasts. Thankfully, the males are infinitely more dressed and tattooed, something that makes Nami wearier over her seemingly leisure walk. Most aren't regarding her in a friendly manner, but at least they aren't outright attacking her. Glares she can deal with. At least she is somehow blending in with only her bra as a top, but curses her hesitation for putting on a skirt that morning instead of her jeans. Then her problems would have been half cut.

Most importantly now, she has to find the place from where that infernal rhythm of a melody is coming from. She doesn’t think that these people were artistic – just look at those houses! – but the song sounds too broken and off-key to even be considered an attempt. So this means that they didn't have guitars here.

Smiling to herself, Nami follows the trail of random sounds to its core. She finds it in the form of her crewmate laying on the ground unmoving while the villagers gathered around his body prod gleefully at the strange instrument with wonder worthy of little kids. Her feet stop as soon as the points of her flats touch Brook’s side and she stares in confusion for a minute before she realizes that, yes, as much alive as he seemed to her now, Brook is still a skeleton. So surely walking around in a primordial village where death is the final door will no doubt land him in more trouble than it was worth. Nodding at the good conduit, the navigator steps forward. She is planning to at least save her friend's possessions from the overly curious people.

"He's with me, don't worry!" Her words are meant to be reassuring but all she gets in return are suspicious and guarded glares.

At least they let go of Brook's guitar.

Nami lifts her hands up in a gesture of peace, the smile slowly sliding off her face as helplessness makes its way through. Her gaze drops to her Clima-Tact, reassuringly strapped to her thigh, before lifting up toward a group of approaching men. They brandish their long spears in a pointedly warning manner at her and Nami feels sweat gather on her forehead. She doesn't have the time or inspiration to plan an escape route, but she is pretty sure there won't be one. These locals don't seem to mind making the women or children fight.

Her brow furrows when the one standing at the front of the group starts shouting at her in gibberish. She has never heard this kind of language before. It sounds broken, though somehow still melodic. Maybe it is a dialect? A dialect of what, exactly?

The man starts gesturing wildly and the orange haired woman gulps when the group starts advancing from all sides. Well, that was it for playing it safely, she concludes and draws her weapon, preparing to pump the heat and cool balls into the atmosphere.

"May I be of service, Nami-san?"

The navigator's eyes grow wide at the sight of the musician, keeping a tight clutch on four struggling tribals. Disembodied arms suddenly burst from the ground like flowers of hope and entrap the other five. Nami grins when her surroundings gradually descend into an incomprehensible madness, but she is too busy searching for Robin to mind it much.

"I'm here." The black haired woman steps away from her hiding spot behind a half fallen house. Her face is tight and Nami takes it as a sure sign that this situation is not at all resolved even if they’ve somehow managed to overpower the gibbering creeps.

"Robin!" Either way, she is relieved to see her friends. "Did you find the others?"

The archaeologist nods gravely. "I have. Come with me. You are the last ones to arrive." One corner of her mouth lifts as she watches Brook's struggles to recuperate his guitar from the tribe’s people.

"Where are we, Robin?" Nami fearfully whispers, already too afraid of the answer to bother helping their bony crewmate.

"If my assumptions are correct then in another place and time altogether. Our dear sniper almost had a mental breakdown because of this. So I suggest we return to the meeting point before any explanation is to commence." Robin smiles without any warmth or reassurance, more of a reflex really, and waves a hand in Brook's direction, gesturing him to follow them. She finally grimaces.

"It will be a little hard to digest."

Nami’s stomach plummets.

"So I suppose they were only trying to bring Nami-san here?" Brook asks as he seats himself down on the carpet covered ground of the small hut they have found the rest of their friends stuck into. More like stashed, really.

He is not at all surprised to see Luffy munching on a piece of half cooked meat, but their navigator made sure to scold the raven haired pirate for even trying to act in character in such a precarious situation. Though the musician assumes it is her way of dealing with everything she has seen until now. He is surely still digesting it, but is ironically, tremendously curios at the same time to hear all about it.

And, dare he say it even inside his empty skull with Nami still in the room? All but ready for whatever adventure that shady man back at the bar has promised them.

"We can very well be on the same island, but another part of it." Sanji offers, inhaling greedily from a cigarette. He looks worse for the wear with twigs and grass in his hair and dirt all over his suit. "Maybe we have encountered the wrong culture..."

"Yes, the culture where your ass will be beaten by the same women you so gleefully ogle." Zoro cackles haughtily, clearly enjoying every minute of the cook's misery. "I must say, I kinda' like them."

"You damned algae brain shouldn't-"

"Would you shut it up already?!" Nami glares at the bickering duo even though they’ve barely said a third of their usual snark before intervention should be required. Her arms tighten around her quivering form and she looks in desperate need of a calming cup of tea.

Usopp places a reassuring hand on her shoulder, not looking any better, but certainly able to handle the situation. Now. It didn’t help that he has been the second one to arrive after Robin. Thankfully, the woman was able to convince the village leader that they were not in any way a threat to them. He still doesn't know how she managed that when they spoke a completely different language.

"Maybe it's a dialect?" Chopper tries to take the smoother road.

"C'mon buddy, you understand any of it?" Usopp finds himself asking, throwing a curious glance at the reindeer. To his discouragement, his friend only looks down and shakes his head. The rest of their friends don’t bother to launch any helpful comments to that.

"Then it's not animal." The sniper sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks over to Robin, her expression shuttered and realizes that their archaeologist knows more than she lets on. "You understand any of it, Robin?" He repeats his question a second time.

Robin startles from her thoughts and observes the tightly packed group with the sort of allusive silence that signals bad news. The sad smile she allows to melt her earlier frown is the cross on their dug grave.

"No, but you are right, Usopp. It is a dialect."

The sniper blinks in surprise at the information.

"You are never going to believe where we are."

"How are you so sure we are where you think we are?" Usopp immediately counters, feeling a new sickness assault him.

"I don't doubt miss historian, but..." Franky trails off, not sure what to present in hopes of bringing their spirits up.

"So where're we?" Luffy quips from behind the many clay plates stacked in front of him. Usopp eyes him with mounting jealousy. "Future or another planet?"

"This is not funny, Luffy!" Chopper exclaims, horrified as his captain should be.

"Past actually." Robin's answer makes Nami groan and Usopp is already in the midst of developing the possible symptoms his new sickness is capable of.

"Oh." Luffy almost looks disappointed. "How far then?"

"You don't look half remorseful for getting us in this shit, you selfish asshole!" Sanji explodes, his hands clenching and unclenching in the act of strangling air.

"Go cry about it somewhere else, swirly." Zoro grumbles, moving away from the blond pointedly.

Sanji clicks his tongue and leans back on the hard wall, arms crossed over his chest in silent mutiny.

"Isn't it bad, though?" Franky interrupts before Robin can answer. "I mean, we could be changing something!"

"That's the last of our problems." The archaeologist answers easily. "When I arrived here, I didn't know what to make of this either. This... language." She explains patiently. "But after walking around for a bit, I did find a single stone embed with very familiar characters. And then I started to realize. That this is really the place. That man..." Robin trails off, her narrowed eyes flashing with frustration. "I don't know what he wants from us."

A small, brown notebook is lifted into the tense, stale air and everyone understands what characters she is referring to.

"You're saying that these people speak the ancient language." Brook concludes, suddenly breathless even though he doesn't have any lungs. His shoulders hunch along with the rest of his friends' as the true weight of the situation finally descends upon them.

"Yes, but even though I can read it – the language they speak doesn’t make any sense to me either. Only after I found the tablet and started paying attention, but it's hard. Making sense of it…" Robin nibbles at her lower lip with worry.

"So that's why you think it's a dialect!" Usopp's eyes widen at the realization.

The historian nods. "I believe so. This village is small and it does look remote enough, so I did not concern myself with understanding everything. I assume that the language written on the Poneglyphs is the grammatical one."

"So how did you make the village leader understand you, then?" Nami inquires, doubtful and still fearing for their future, as strange as it sounds.

"I used the written language. He knows how to read and then I found out that he knew some of our words as well so we managed to understand each other all right." Robin inclines her head from left to right. "I hope."

Chopper and Franky deflate at the last part.

"What are we going to do?" Usopp is the one to pose the question after another prolonged silence. "The others sure don't look like they understand us. This communication barrier is just too tough!"

"Stay here and figure out a way to go back!" Nami cries out in a no-nonsense tone to the sniper's question. "If even one guy knows some words then we'll have to make it work and go back!"

"Of course not!" Luffy bursts back, suddenly indignant. He stands up, causing the plates gathered at his feet to clatter. "We're going on the adventure that old man was talking about!"

“We don’t even know what that fucking creep wanted in the first place!” Sanji raises his voice accordingly.

"And where are we even going?” Franky asks breezily. "We don't know how the world is right now and we don't even have the Sunny with us!" The cyborg sniffs, the corners of his eyes already wet. His worry for the ship has been exchanged with outright panic at the thought of Sunny being left in that miserable port all alone on that island full of degenerates.

"Exactly!" Nami nods resolutely. "I don't know what the deal is with these people, but we should use every moment we have to try and figure out a way back-"

"Hell, no! We're leaving this place." Zoro interrupts and frowns when his declaration is met with glares from the unwilling ones. "We're never going to be able to find anything worthwhile in this dump!"

Luffy grins through his freshly started meal. A disturbing image indeed. "That's right! We gotta take a tour around-"

"With what?" Usopp insists, though a plan is already forming inside his mind by the time Luffy finishes chewing and stops long enough to start pouting. He makes a mental note to watch out for a new wave of nonsensical violence that will inevitably result in the near future judging by Zoro’s thunderous expression. Maybe make sure that this time Chopper won’t be almost able to find out about it. They don’t need that kind of scare again.

"I will ask the village leader." Robin ends their argument swiftly. "Now there's only the problem of finding a way out of this place."

"I'm afraid you will not be able to leave for the capital without a proper boat. No boat, no leave."

Robin nods at the scratched message and short words as she scribbles down something in return.

"Where can we have one?"

The old man shakes his head, making the many trinkets he is wearing jingle along with the movement. Nami eyes the tattooed, feather-covered man in apprehension and wonders silently if this man can really understand what they are saying. And if so, why he would help strange people such as them. Even by normal standards, the Strawhat pirates are out of the grid of weirdness.

"Must come from capital.”

The navigator appreciates that he is at least trying.

Robin purses her lips at the words. "When?"

The village leader takes a while to answer, choosing to consult with a few younger men standing respectfully behind him. When he finally starts scribbling, Robin tries hard to contain her anxious shifting from foot to foot and not allow her impatience show through.

"We hope that next week at the latest."

The archaeologist squints at the last word, but she nods again nevertheless.

"He says that we'll have to wait a week for a boat from ‘the capital’ to come pick us up." She announces, mildly annoyed herself at the unfavorable news. Just when they have all decided to go along with Luffy's plan and take a look at this world, this happens. And now they are stuck here waiting and hoping.

"Can't they give us a boat?" Usopp tries to reason with the older man, but the only thing he gets is a sharp shake of the head and a warning glare from the other. The sniper sighs.

"Or maybe a map or something." Nami also urges her friend to ask more.

Knowing it was better they are aware of this, Robin writes eagerly on a fresh page of her notebook.

"Can we have a boat from you?"

The villager leader's eyebrows shoot up in obvious surprise.

"We have only small ones. Do you know where to go if we give you one?"

"They only have small ones." Robin translates absently, ignoring the unintelligible question that follows in favor of penning in the next item on their list.

"Map?"

"None."

"Well?" Sanji prods, already anticipating the answer.

"They cannot give us a boat and without it I doubt that we would not sink even with Nami's amazing skills. Much less find the capital of this place." The archaeologist sighs and thanks the old man verbally.

"You stay. For now."

Robin smiles. "Thank you."

"We should learn more about them then." Brook offers his input, startling the villagers gathered around.

Luffy snickers at their apprehensive faces.

"Sounds good. If the old man lets us stay, we'll stay!" The raven head grins widely in the leader’s direction and is hesitantly sent one in return.

The pirate captain takes it as a positive sign and is out of the door of the small hut in seconds.

"I guess someone needs to keep an eye on him." Usopp scratches the back of his head as he turns on his heels, already resigned to his fate as their captain's babysitter.

�� 2 DAYS LATER

"Thank you for the clothing."

The old man smiles at the writing and shakes his head. He mumbles something in that language of his that Nami cannot make any sense of, but remains silent and reserved overall.

Ever since their arrival, the villagers have treated them better than what they expected of uncivilized – by their standards – people. They allowed them to explore the settlement and its surroundings and also offered them a deformed hut to sleep in. Which wasn't such an amazing experience with Zoro's constant snoring, Luffy's random limb flailing or Sanji's perverted dreams that were constantly expressed through barely incoherent mumbles during his sleep. And then there was the food. Sweet Lord, their meals were divided between two extremes, with Sanji stuck right in the middle and suffering from severe cooking deprivation. He was not allowed by the local cooks to touch anything in the rudimental kitchen they were preparing meals in for the whole village, but the blond had snuck up to watch and maybe steal some recipes. Bottom line was – the food was either too undercooked for anyone but Luffy’s taste, which seemed to be traditional in overcast and rainy days. Or it was on a whole new level of exotic goodness in sunny ones.

Nami wonders how a war hasn’t started between their captain and the other starving folks at meal time.

Also, now they have been given clothes – tribal clothes for tribe people, but a fresh change of clothes nonetheless. Which is a real God-sent mercy.

On her part, Nami has kept her flowery bra on and only exchanged her jeans for a traditional dress – as Robin has put it. The tribe women did not hesitate in braiding and adorning her hair with flowers. Robin has received the same treatment, but the older woman has chosen not to change out of her short jacket and long skirt.

"What should we do now?" Chopper asks from his spot on the grass. Next to the reindeer, Usopp and Luffy are lying on the ground, staring at the clouds passing by with a mixture of boredom and wistfulness. They both have straw coats over their normal clothes that are a little too thick for this warm weather.

"Oh my, only two days and you're already bored?" Robin gazes at the two with mounting amusement.

"This looks super on me!" Franky's shout causes a flock of birds to fly out of a nearby tree. The cyborg twists around to observe his new straw coat better.

"Indeed we are very fashionable!" Brook readily agrees, patting his feather-decorated hat. "Now we really are the straw hat pirates! Yohoho!"

Luffy snickers at the pun while Nami can't help but roll her eyes.

"Oi, Luffy! You took a look at the island already?" Zoro lays down in front of his captain's sprawling limbs, having a little difficulty with the mountain of straws on his back.

"Nope! We only got to the end of the forest." The rubber man answers easily, gaze still pinned to the sky.

The green haired man lifts an eyebrow. "And what did you find on the other side?"

"Nothing." Usopp groans, turning on his side to face the swordsman. "There is only a small plane bare of any trees before a forest starts up again. There are a few mountains in the distance, but that’s as far as I could make out. And then we found a river somewhere in there too, when we were coming back."

Nami frowns as she takes in the towering trees circling them. "Huh. That's unusual for an island."

"I'm starting to have my doubts that this is an island at all." Robin sighs despondently, even her usual confidence strangely low in the tone of her voice. Her fingers comb through her hair as she continues leafing through the small notebook propped on her knees.

"Then are we on the Red Line or what?" Zoro looks at her expectantly, but the archaeologist simply shrugges, her attention never straying away from her studies.

"Great! No map, no idea where we are and this might not be even an island!" Nami throws her hands up in the air, exasperated. "This just keeps getting better and better!"

"Don't worry, Nami-swan! I will find a way out of this creepy ass place." Sanji hastens to reassure her, even though the words sounded all but that even to his own ears.

A distinguishable set of strange sounds alert the pirates of new visitors. Robin glances up to see a mixed group of men and women, some of them with kids, watching them back carefully but not unkindly. They seem to be debating something amongst themselves before one with a snake tattoo steps away from the crowd.

"Would you like to know more about our language? Language... learn?"

Surprise courses through her, but she is not about to decline a free lesson on the ancient language of the Void Century. Especially since it is very much confirmed that they have ended up here and still have to survive first before even hoping to find a way to get back.

The archaeologist nods once in his direction before she turns to address her companions. Even though they must have made sense of the situation from the two broken, familiar words. "They wish to teach us their language."

Predictably, Luffy is the first one to jump at the suggestion, happy and glad to have finally found something to do. Usopp is equally as eager and Robin knows that the sniper has a certain affinity to learning languages that no one – much less Usopp – knows about. She found out about it the day after she had accidentally left her notebook with annotations on the ancient language on the galley’s table one night. She had come back for it the next morning to find Usopp already in the middle of figuring out how to build a simple sentence. Since then, she had encouraged him in this prospect, but he seemed to shy away every time. But now it is a golden opportunity to learn something very useful, dialect or not and she is definitely part of the willing group.

Seeing their overall positive attitude, the villagers approach the group devoid of any of the earlier suspicion and reservation. They divide themselves amongst them into small factions in order to start the language lessons, though Robin isn’t sure how everything is supposed to go.

Sanji takes one long look at the enthusiasm Chopper, Usopp, Luffy and Robin-chwan are exuding then glances away at the sound of Nami-swans's dejected sigh to marimo's jungle-worthy grunt and growls under his breath. He so isn’t in the mood. It would have been better to just be able to slouch off and not have to be in anyone’s company, but that is impossible now.

It will be a long week.

"Let's get suuupperrr!"

Beginning right about now.

Surprised squeals and shouts accompany Franky's declaration before the musical tunes of Brook's guitar overshadow them in volume.

"Robin."

At the sound of her name, the archaeologist looks up from her chat with a village woman. She spots the leader of the settlement as he somberly makes his way towards her. More out of reflex gained from years of experience, the black haired woman does a quick sweep of her surroundings locating each of her friends, but she sees only Zoro and Nami remained after they finished their meal.

The swordsman is taking one of his usual naps on a large pile of dried grass while the orange haired woman is using her drawing skills to entertain a group of little children. Both navigator and first mate have been able to catch up on the language pretty fast. Which is one big surprise in the green haired man's case. Usopp didn’t let her down this time either. The sniper is already able to converse in short sentences with the natives and it is clear that he likes to learn new words. The others aren't doing half bad, but they still have trouble keeping Luffy in place long enough to learn something else besides 'meat' and 'fun' – he actually wanted to know ‘adventure’, but even Robin had trouble describing the word to the villagers since it isn't one she sees often and the books that contain such details remain on the Sunny back in their time.

"Yes?"

The old man smilew, now accustomed to the strange bunch that haw literally stumbled on his village's doorstep just six days ago.

"A ship from the Capital's been spotted. The men called it over so you'll be able to leave. Ship, leave. Soon."

The archaeologist purses her lips but nods, returning his smile with a grateful one of her own. She still hasn’t managed to catch everything the man has said, but she got the main idea. "Understand. Will tell my friends. Thank you."

The leader inclines his head in acknowledgement and retraces his steps back through the village proper.

"Nami, we have to-"

"Yeah, we heard him. Or at least, tried to.” She pouts. “That guy speaks so damn fast!"

The ginger haired woman hums happily as she finishes her latest piece of art on the ground and stands up, dusting her reclaimed jeans. She grins widely and Robin's mind amusedly remembers the circus yesterday when Nami barely managed to save her pants from the clutches of the village women by talking and gesturing widely an array of cuss words and threats so typical of her. But she has been as happy as a five year old that had managed to do an errand on her own and Robin knows that and opts instead to jut a thumb over her shoulder in the direction the swordsman has supposedly been sleeping in, only now it is deserted.

"I see that Zoro's taking care of it. Ah," the navigator sighs as she catches up with her friend, "I'm dying to know more about this world. At least now."

There is the unspoken gratitude of late nights filled with homesick tears in a time the world isn’t been kind to them – but it is still home. Sunny is home and they’ve abandoned her there.

"Me too." The black haired woman agrees easily. She has been preparing herself for this, knows that they have to get out of here if only to catch a glimpse of an extinct point in time. Even so, her eyes narrow on the barely noticeable speck on the horizon. "I cannot help but think that being sent here is more than just for laughs."

Nami hugs herself, does not want to think about what that super creep wanted with them. She has kicked herself over it too many times already to feel anything but a pang of dull pain where the wound still aches. She steels herself anyway and lets her eyes narrow with renewed challenge.

"Yeah. I suppose so."

"Nami! Robin! Where are they?!" Luffy's shouts echoes over the shoreline and makes way for a consistent group composed of the rest of their crewmates to approach.

Nami watches her captain with amusement as he tries in vain to converse with a native. Though speaking with him is stretching it since Luffy can and will only say one word.

"Meat! Yeah, bring me some me-meat... please?" The rubber man scratches his head and pouts when the only answer the local is inclined to give him is a snort and a shake of the head with a few muttered words accompanying his departure that Luffy can't understand.

"Man! They don't know how to be friendly!"

"I think it's your fault, shithead. Asking them for meat non-stop does that kind of thing to people..." Sanji mumbles around his cigarette, wondering how he wasn't having adverse reactions at hearing that blasted word over and over again, thousands of times a week.

"Zoro said something about a ship. Where is it?" Chopper looks around anxiously, but can't spot anything resembling one. So he decides to climb onto Franky’s steady shoulders for a better look and lets out a delighted squeal when he finally sees their ticket out of here.

"It's still far away, but it will come." Robin assures Chopper, patting his head.

"Yohoho! Finally, we begin our adventure!" Brook strums a few notes on his guitar jovially.

"Yeah, can’t wait!” Usopp only half jokes, wringing his hands anxiously. “Thought this week was never going to end."

"I'm sure the capital will be super!" Franky can't contain his trademark yell in the reigning silence. He is sure that all his friends are as tense as he feels, but there is no reason to ponder over the unknown near-future too much. It isn’t their usual style and he finds himself surprised when not one, but most are talking plans and possibilities. This never happens aboard his precious Sunny and Franky feels the need to somehow put them back on track. Leaving this place will be all kinds of beneficial. This aggravating waiting is even starting to wear on Luffy. Their steadfast captain has been seen more than once circling the shores, trying to keep too much pent up energy and restlessness in check.

Franky lifts his sunglasses, scanning the horizon for the growing dot, daring it to take longer than needed to get here. Also, this doesn't mean he has to keep quiet while doing so. It is more fun rallying them up anyway.

"Let's hope that these people will be able to provide some answers."

Franky pauses at Zoro’s low growl. He feels Usopp tense next to him and the shipwright sighs inwardly at the quite feral look the swordsman sports in this moment, but he cannot blame him. This situation has taken its toll on all of them no matter Franky and Brook’s efforts. Franky only hopes he can keep Zoro in check.

The ship that is supposed to get them to the capital is by no means small, but it differs greatly from the usual vessels the pirates are used to seeing.

The wooden structure is built with a different technique than what is used in the future. It has with a massive hull and four masts and the shipwright made sure to point this out the first time its features were vaguely distinguishable. When it docked he made sure to inspect everything he could and finally decided, with a lot of grudging acknowledgment, that the ship meets his standards.

But all in all, it floated so Nami has nothing to complain about.

"We wish to go to Capital." Robin tries to hide the reflexive wince as she realizes that something is wrong with her sentence.

The man in front of her has, at least, the decency to overlook her mistake. He studies them one by one, from Robin’s smiling face before he moves to her companions. He assesses the strange vibes the whole crew is emanating, taking in their out of this world clothing and colorful appearances and shapes that surely are a curious enough sight this early in history. Of course, Robin agrees hands down that history has really taught them nothing. So she is glad when the man doesn’t seem to pursue the subject and just averts his eyes the minute his staring becomes uncomfortable.

"You are not from around here."

His deep voice aside, the archeologist wants to sigh in relief. This... this is a language she is familiar with and can understand better than the villagers’ dialect. So her assumptions are correct about the time and place they’ve landed in. Now they only have to play this right and maybe the reason for their sudden time travel and the other lingering mysteries will be cleared in due time. Going back to the matter at hand-

"No. We found us in a... strange place. I hope we will able to clear this in the capital."

The man's eyebrows furrow and Robin knows she has to press further. Even in this time and age, things can be easily bought with money.

"We have money."

Nami perks up at that and, rather reluctantly, extracts from her leather makeshift purse, a small bag of gold coins. They learned during their stay that this is the currency of this time and so the Strawhats have worked around the village everyday multiple jobs given to them by the chief to obtain this little amount of change. He is the only holder of this kind of money since the settlement itself doesn't use trade with money locally.

The sailor takes the pouch and counts the coins calmly before he seems to make up his mind. Robin blinks when ten coins are returned into her hand.

"This will do. Come aboard."

Nami does not hesitate to take hold of the remaining money with large eyes full of glistening tears while the rest of her friends fill onto the ship. Robin rubs her friend's back reassuringly before she feels the weight of someone’s gaze. She looks up, noting with surprise that it was the village leader.

She supposes that he has done a great deal for them in this short time so she knows that gratitude is in order.

"Thank you for everything!"

The old man nods stoically, but does not return her wave.

"Make sure your efforts are not wasted this time around either. Good luck."

Robin frowns at his words, but she does not have time to press the matter further because Nami is already pulling her by the hand and onto the departing vessel.

Robin’s lips are taut when her captain finds her standing by herself at the railing.

"What's up Robin?" Luffy asks curiously, seeing the troubled face. Usually the woman reserves that expression when something truly strange and logic-defying happens and she isn’t the one doing it.

The archaeologist shakes her head, a thousand questions passing through her mind but not having enough answers to produce one for her captain.

"It's nothing."

Luffy raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t prod his friend any further. He watches the vast horizon stretch with a growing feeling of anticipation that matches his giddy smile in the face of this next grand adventure. Details such as how they got here and why, he decides, won't bother him anymore because Luffy now opts to concentrate on getting to know this world a little bit better. And when whatever is designated to happen will happen, he won't let it get in his way. That's what he promises the waves lapping against the hull as he watched the orange sun shrink leisurely beneath the waves, swallowed by the fiery waters of the ocean.

Whichever ocean this is.

Chapter 2

#opbigbang #opbigbang2017 #fanfiction #one piece #straw hats #luffy

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