#Steam Deck Dock protection

[crazydiscostu]

Jsaux Upgraded Steam Deck Case

Today we're stroking this case and whispering sweet nothings to it. Join us at crazydiscostu.com

Picture the scene : You’ve shelled out a small fortune for the latest and greatest gaming handheld. You’re broke, but you’re happy. The only problem that plagues your now-perfect life is the lack of protection and portability of your shiny new Steam Deck. Enter JSAUX! Their Steam Deck Case is specifically designed for both the Steam Deck and ROG Ally promising to keep your new toy safe. Today…

[writealongnowdear]

Love me Like a Sailor

Arthur Morgan x Captain!Reader

Summary: You're the captain of a small smuggling ship in need of protection. Luckily, Arthur Morgan, a part of the infamous Van der Linde gang, is more than happy to oblige. He's also a little nervous, but that's neither here nor there.

A/N: This isn't my first rodeo, but it is my first show 😥😥 Be gentle with me, ladies and gentlemen! I don't know when I'll update or how long this will be, so stay tuned 😈😈

☆☆☆☆☆

You’re down on the dock.

You’re working on your ship, hair shining like silk in the sun, plaited back from your face. Sweat drips from your brow, and you lift the side of an arm to wipe off the drops. Your smile is sharp, wicked when you stand and gesture at your crew. The laugh that tumbles from your lips is loud but sweet - rough around all the right edges.

Arthur can’t stop looking. He’s posted up in Van Horn’s grungy hotel, watching you out of his window like some sort of pervert. Adjusting his jeans and shifting his lean and trying to wipe the blush off his face as he watches you chip away at something with a weird little tool, cigarette hanging between your pretty lips, he knows damn well he’s acting a fool.

He has to go down there, eventually. A job is a job is a job, and Dutch would nag him for days if he didn’t secure this frankly inconsequential partnership.

Arthur sighs, pushing himself off the wall and tearing his eyes away from the window. He grabs his hat, jams it onto his head, and slams the door to his room shut when he leaves with a huff. His boots squelch through the sand and silt as he makes his way to the Konstantina, hands gripping his belt buckle for dear life.

The little steam ferry isn’t overwhelming - has a stack, two decks, a paddlewheel, and that’s about it. It’s colorful though, polished shades of ochre, red, and black glittering in the sun. The crew of the ship are doing what Arthur presumes is maintenance. Some are scrubbing at the top deck with sponges, some standing around the paddlewheel, and some chipping away at rust.

Arthur had sat through enough of Pearson’s ramblings about his time in the service to know that a ship was always a reflection of the captain. He tried to make heads and tails of it, the way that the Konstantina was so obviously yours. There wasn’t a speck of rust that he could see with his bare eye, boat painted brightly and polished to perfection. If he focused real hard, he couldn’t tell where the boat began and you started.

He gets close enough to meet your eyes, and his knees go a little weak. Your smile is blinding, as you watch him approach. Your ratty work shirt is rolled to your shoulders, leaving miles of skin uncovered. Freckles travel up and down your arms - Arthur’s mouth goes dry, wanting to count every single one with his mouth and mark them down in his journal. Wants to see how far along your body they go, and if he can’t dig his hands into your hips and leave something of his own-

“Mr. Morgan! Pleasure to finally meet you!”

You stride down the gangway to shake his hand, and Arthur watches you in a trance. When your hand, small and calloused, fits into his own, his breath catches imperceptibly in his chest. Arthur clears his throat, scratching the back of his neck. You watch him, a glitter of amusement in your eye as if you know exactly what you’re doing.

As loath as he was to admit it, John was right. He was in deep shit.

“S'good to meet you, too,” he said, voice rough. “Sorry for the delay.”

Scoffing, you grab Arthur’s arm and link it with your own, leading him onto your ship. “It's no issue! I'm just glad you made it. I know it's quite the trek to get out here.”

He watches as you sweep an arm out to gesture around you, and he can't help but smile.

“Nothing I can’t handle, Miss.”

“Of course, Mr. Morgan,” you say with a laugh. You throw your head to the side a bit, revealing your neck to him like you're asking him to bite into the skin there. His grip on your arm tightens just slightly as he tries to breathe - but he can't, not with you right next to him.

“I talked to Mr. Van der Linde briefly, but he said that you’re the one with the real plans,” you say, releasing his arm once you've led him out of the sun and into a small office on deck. He looks around, inspecting the charts on the drawing table and the strange gear that he wouldn’t know how to use if he tried. When he returns his gaze to you, he’s surprised to see a fond smile on your face.

“Ain’t much in the way of plans yet, I’m afraid,” he says, registering that you were waiting for a response.

You snorted, propping yourself against the table. Arthur’s eyes flash to your hips, quickly flicking to your face before you can notice. He immediately knows that he failed, however - you’re wearing a bemused smile.

“Well, I sell up the river and in San Denis. Could use some protection, and in return, we can pay you or sell for you. Some things sell better up north than at a fence. Believe me,” you say, confidently gesturing to the chart behind you. Arthur doesn’t know what he’s looking at when he follows the sweep of your fingers, but he finds that he doesn’t care much.

“You’re the expert, Miss."

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. Morgan,” you joke. He chuckles quietly, leaning against the wall next to the desk.

“But it’s always worth a try.”

You chuff, sitting up and looking out the window of the small bridge at the men working.

“Never let anyone tell you that you ain’t a gentleman,” you say distractedly, furrowing your eyebrows at whatever you see outside. You frown and shoulder past him gently, making your way to your crew. He turns to watch you through the window.

“Gentleman,” you say, slapping your hands on the shoulders of two of the men standing around the deck with cigarettes between their fingers. “What’re you doing?”

Both men seem to tense up, awkwardly standing still as they try to come up with an answer. You wait patiently, tapping your foot slightly and raising an eyebrow. The younger of the two men clears his throat, and rubs the back of his neck.

“The deck looked clean from yesterday, so we figured-”

“Oh, dear. Captain’s tax,” you say, gesturing to his cigarette and smiling when he gives it over with a long suffering sigh. You take a couple of drags, the men shuffling their feet as they wait for you to finish. Handing him back his cigarette, you put your hands on your hips and look between the two.

“Deck maintenance is important. I know that you know that. Consider this a warning,” you say calmly. “You know where the holystone supplies are. I expect the deck to be done by noon if you want the rest of the day off. Don’t disappoint me boys.”

Both of them duck their heads, throwing their cigarettes overboard and trudging to the stairs that lead down into the hold, muttering a resigned “Yes, ma’am” as they go. You smile, thanking them as they leave, and make your way back to the bridge.

“Sorry about that, Mr. Morgan,” you say. “They’re good boys, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no room for laziness on my boat.”

Arthur’s lips tug up into a smile. He thinks that he likes this side of you - the side that Dutch decided would be worth their while.

“Nothing to worry about, Miss.”

“Please, Mr. Morgan,” you say, a twinkle in your eyes. “Call me Caspian.”

☆☆☆☆☆

[jeffgerstmann]

I wish the steam deck case was flipped, the charger should stick out of the zipper part so that i can keep it closed but not zipped while its charging to protect it from cat hair

I still can do this but jt hurts my brain setting it in there the wrong way

Mine's been sitting in the dock when I'm not using it, I kinda forgot there was a case!

[hellojijoejoshi-blog]

Asus ROG Ally: A New Competitor in Handheld Gaming

Asus has officially revealed its much-anticipated handheld gaming device, the Asus ROG Ally, which will compete with the Nintendo Switch OLED and the Steam Deck. The new Asus ROG Ally is a full-fledged Windows 11 PC that has been scaled down to the handheld form factor. It is packed with impressive hardware, including a Full-HD 120Hz display, AMD’s new Ryzen Z1 series processors, and more. Let's dive into the specs and features of the Asus ROG Ally. High-End Specs and Features The ROG Ally packs a 7-inch Full-HD display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 500 nits of brightness. It supports AMD’s FreeSync Premium and has a wide sRGB 100% color gamut to ensure enhanced clarity while gaming. The screen has a response time of 7ms and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and comes with DTX Coating. Design and Build Compared to the Nintendo Switch OLED and Steam Deck, the ROG Ally is "thick and hefty," weighing around 608 grams. Both the front and back panels are made of plastic and are textured for better grip during long gaming sessions. The extra bulk also means "full-size controls" on the ROG Ally, something that both the Nintendo Switch OLED and the Steam deck compromise on to achieve "comfort and portability." Powerful Hardware The handheld is powered by AMD's latest 4nm Ryzen ZI Extreme processor with AMD Radeon graphics. It comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD. ASUS is using a Zero Gravity Thermal System mesh design and a dual fan system to maintain bearable temperatures during intense gaming sessions. There is support for ROG Dust Filter and 0.1mm Ultra-thin Fins to ensure the internals remain clean. Controls and Connectivity The Ally features ABXY buttons, a D-pad, L&R Hall Effect, analog triggers, L&R bumpers, a View button, a Menu button, a Command Center button, an Armoury Crate button, 2 assignable grip buttons, and many more. The ROG Armoury Crate SE allows users to access their entire game library on their handheld, with a dedicated command center and customization center. The gaming console comes with 3 months of Xbox Game Pass for free. In terms of connectivity, the ROG Ally has support for Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth version 5.2, ROG XG Mobile Interface, a 3.5mm Audio Jack combo, a USB Type-C combo, and much more. The ROG Ally comes with Windows 11. Additional features include a built-in fingerprint sensor, Microsoft Pluton security processor, and support for accessories like ROG Gaming Charger Dock. Price and Availability The ROG Ally is available for pre-order now at $700 via ROG's official website and will be released globally on June 13. Read the full article

[maddiwrites]

Secrets of the Shore (Chapter 4)

Pairing: Pogues x OC, Eventually JJ x OC

Summary: This is just my rewrite of the show Outer Banks with my own twist by adding another main character which also happens to be John B’s twin sister.

Note: Changed my update schedule to two times a week (probably Sunday and Wednesdays) because three days was kind of overwhelming hahah. Again, thank you for all the wonderful reviews and feedback!! I appreciate every single one!!!

Word Count: 4.2k

Warnings: Being shot at?

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3

The Pogues come over later to hang out like usual. No one mentions last night's party. I don't know whether its because they don't want to talk about it or we're pretending like it never happened. I'm fine with either.

I sit next to Kie who taps her fingers on a bongo and bobs her head to her own beat. Pope's shuffling a deck of cards to my right and JJ sips on another beer across from me. It's hard to concentrate on what they're talking about. I'm too busy locked in my own head, thinking about what Peterkin said - foster care - what life would be like if we were taken away. Would I ever see my friends again? Would John B and I be in the same foster home? The thought of being separated makes me sick.

"Look, I'm calling it off. All right?" John B pulls me out of my thoughts. JJ rolls his eyes at my brother and glances at me. "Peterkin said if we stay out of the marsh, she'll help us with DCS."

"And you believed her?" JJ asks. "An actual cop, John B. You believed a cop."

John B sighs. "All I gotta do is stay out of the marsh for a couple days, and she'll help me out. It doesn't help that your ass was the one shooting a gun."

Here we go.

"You know what I should have done? Just let Topper drown your ass."

"Topper was gonna drown me?"

"Sure looked like it."

"Funny," John B deadpans.

"Have you looked in a mirror?"

"Tell me some more. Come on." I can tell by the look on John B's face that he's getting annoyed. It's pinched and he keeps rolling his eyes.

JJ steps closer to him. "They always win, don't they, man? Kooks versus Pogues. They always, always win!" He turns around and punches one of the small volleyballs we have tied in a string like a decoration.

"Look, it's okay!" Kie tries to calm him down.

"No, it's not okay! It's not! They don't want us to go down into the marsh." JJ comes back. "That means there's something valuable down there, and you know it." He turns to me and points. "I know you do." Then he looks at Pope. "I know you do. And I understand why you don't wanna go. You're the golden boy. You got way too much to risk. And you -" He turns to Kie. "I mean, you're already rich as fuck anyway. Why would you bother? But you and me, and Marleigh, man, we got nothing to lose! We really don't all right?"

"JJ -" I sigh.

"And I know it didn't use to be that way for you -"

John B shakes his head. "I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to talk about it!"

"So that's it?"

John B shoves past JJ. "Just get out of my way, bro."

"John B, listen to me. I have a plan." Well thats never good. "You got the key to Cameron's big boat right?"

"No," John B says, already knowing where JJ's head is at.

"There's scuba gear. We borrow that, and then we go down to the wreck this afternoon, and that is what's gonna save you, man. You don't see rich kids going into foster care, do you?"

Here's the thing about JJ. He can be really convincing, which is usually the reason he and I get into the most trouble. Because I always fall for what he's saying. He gives me hope when I don't think there is any. He can be surprisingly optimistic sometimes. And when he is, I fall for his charm and agree with everything he says. If he told me to jump off a bridge, I probably would.

When he looks at me, my lips tug upwards into a smile. This creates a domino effect, and soon the other Pogues get excited. John B looks at me, trying to look disapproving but I shrug in response. I mean, JJ's right. What do we have to lose?

                                                       ~ ~ ~

I light a match and ignite my gas stove to make myself lunch. A can of chicken noodle soup that's been in my food closet for who knows how long. John B left to grab the tanks from the Cameron's boat, so the rest of us are waiting here until he comes to pick us up.

"You're eating soup? Its like a hundred degrees outside." JJ walks into the kitchen and lifts himself up on the counter next to the stove.

I stir the liquid around with a wooden spoon and smirk. "Do you see any other edible food around here?" JJ chuckles at that. He knows better than anyone how horrible John B and I are at food shopping. "I meant to go to the store today but..." I sigh. "I've been busy."

JJ pauses, causing me to look up at him. He's usually so quick with his wit and humor. Something I admire and love about him. How he always manages to put a smile on my face with some dumb remark or a sarcastic reply. Only now he's staring at me with curiosity. "Are you okay?"

"You mean other than the impending doom that is foster care that's going to hit me and John B in the near future?" I say sarcastically. I turn the stove off and grab two bowls out of the cabinet behind JJ's head. He ducks for me and my waist presses against his thigh. I pour half the soup in each bowl and hand him one with a spoon.

"Yeah, I mean other than that," JJ says. I blow on the liquid on my spoon to cool it down. The steam that comes up from my bowl already makes me feel hot.

"I'm fine," I tell him.

He gives me a look that says he's doesn't believe me, but I ignore it and he doesn't press me on it. Truth is, I am fine. I just have a lot of my mind but I'm going to do my best not to let it ruin my summer. JJ got me excited again. He's promising an adventure and possibly a fortune. He's right. John B and I have nothing to lose. If we don't go on the marsh today, DCS will find another reason to snatch us. So why hold ourselves back?

"Mar, JJ, he's back!" Kie calls out to us from my yard.

JJ sips the last of his broth out of the bowl and I shovel in the last couple of scoops into my mouth. We throw the bowls in the sink and run to the dock where John B and the others are waiting for us.

Pope directs John B to the part of the marsh where we found the wreck. I sit next to Kie in the front of the boat. She's looking at the two tanks that John B was able to snag off the Cameron's boat. Her brows are furrowed in confusion as she studies the gear.

"This is empty," Kie says, looking up at my brother who stops the boat when we find the sunken Grady-White. "You took empty tanks?"

"I..." John B says slowly. He definitely didn't look at it before he took it.

"Okay, this one's a quarter full," Kie says, pulling the tank to her left closer to her. "Its enough for one of us."

"Love it when a plan comes together," I say sarcastically and pass a look to JJ who rolls his eyes.

"Does anybody know how to dive?" Kie asks.

I purse my lips and look around at my friends and brother. None of them speak up.

"Uh..."

"Anybody?" Kie asks.

"It's kind of a Kook sport," I say.

Pope raises his hand. "I...read about it."

"Great, Pope read about it so someone's gonna die," Kie says.

JJ walks towards us and picks up the mouth piece and shrugs his shoulders. "Look, you put the thing in your mouth and breathe. How hard could it be?"

Pope answers, "If you come up too fast, nitrogen gets into your blood, and you get the bends."

JJ glances between Pope and the rest of us. "Bends like..." JJ bends forward, purposely sticking his butt out, "bend over and..."

Pope cuts him off. "The bends kill you."

JJ snaps straight up. "Right."

I roll my eyes and stand up. "I'll do it."

"Uh, I don't think..." JJ starts to say but my brother cuts him off.

"No. I'll do it."

"What, why?" I turn to my brother and send him a glare.

"Because Pope just said it can kill you and you don't listen to instructions very well." My brother glares back at me. I roll my eyes. He does have a point and evidence to prove it. I usually follow my own gut and ignore others' directions. And because I don't want him to bring up past events, I decide not to fight him on it.

"He has a point," JJ says, earning a punch in the bicep from me. He looks at my brother. "You can dive. I'm cool with that."

"Since when can you dive?" Kie says not liking the idea any more than me.

He shrugs. "I'll do it. It's fine."

"Let me do some calculations real quick," Pope says as John B starts putting on the scuba gear.

"You serious?" JJ asks.

"That boat's about thirty feet down. Okay? So it'll take twenty five minutes at that depth. Twenty five. Which means you need to make your safety stop at about...ten feet."

Contrary to popular belief, I do the actual listening to instructions, I just don't always follow through. But I process everything Pope just said and think of a way to make this easier for John B.

I shimmy out of my jean shorts and pull my top over my head, leaving me in a purple and white striped bikini. Without saying anything, I jump into the water with my shirt.

"Uh..." Pope says, looking into the water where I just disappeared. "What was that about?"

"I don't know. But I liked it. A lot," JJ says, staring at the same spot. John B slaps the back JJ's head and glares daggers in his direction. JJ pretends to clear his throat and turns away from John B.  "Uh, so..."

Pope pretends to focus on his calculations again, not wanting to get caught by John B for staring at his sister too. "Yeah. Uh, when you uh, when you're down there, you look for the cargo hold. You stick this thing inside and twist and pull, okay?"

I guesstimate how deep ten feet is and tie my shirt around the chain attached to our anchor. I look one last time at the blurry image of the sunken boat and pull myself back up.

"Hey," I say to grab their attention. They all look at me. "I tied my T-shirt to the anchor chain about ten feet down. It's where you need to do your safety stop."

John B nods. "Cool."

I stay in the water, loving how the water feels around me like a protective blanket. I listen to Pope explain the important parts of diving. There's some kind of meter he has to pay attention to to keep track of time.

"Okay, how much do I need?" John B asks.

"Unclear," Pope answers. "Breathe as little as possible."

JJ slaps John B on the shoulder. "Zen. Think zen, you know?"

John B turns to the water, preparing to jump in next to me.  "Yeah. Got it."

"Hey," Pope says, stopping him. "If we get caught in the marsh, we're basically screwed, so better get a move on."

"No pressure or anything," I add.

"Copy that," John B says.

Kie approaches my brother and stands in front of him. She's really close to him, almost inches away from his face. Then she leans in and kisses his cheek slowly. Way more intimate than usual. My eyes widen in surprise and I look at Pope and JJ to see their reaction. They mirror mine.

"Diver down?" Kie says softly.

"Diver down." John B says just as softly.

"See ya, dude," JJ says.

John B jumps in the water and sinks down below me. I lay on my back in the water and bathe in the warmth of the sun above me. I even close my eyes, letting relaxation overcome me. I could probably sleep here if I wanted too.

"Shit, JJ," Pope curses, catching my attention.

"Guys, that's the police," Kie says.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," JJ says, glancing at me.

My eyes go wide with anxiety. I swim closer to the boat and look up at JJ. "JJ, they can't know I'm here. If they find me-"

"Hey, hey, hey. It's gonna be okay. They're not going to, just stay there."

I nod and press myself tighter against the boat.

"Just act freaking normal," Kie says through clenched teeth.

I can hear the sirens coming closer until I feel their boat bump against ours. I flinch against it and kick my feet faster to stay afloat. I look down at the water, but I can't see John B. My heart races at the thought of him running out of air.

"Evening," I hear one of the cops greet my friends.

"JJ, tie it off," Pope says.

"How you kids doing? You know the marsh is closed?" The officer asks them.

"No."

"No. Wow."

My friends play dumb. I look up, finding comfort in seeing JJ's long hair. I can tell he's trying hard not to look down at me.

"Why - why is it closed?" Pope asks.

"Well, we're conducting a search out here. Boat went down." The officer explains.

"Oh."

"See anything?"

"No." JJ purses his lips and shrugs.  

"No boats," Kie says. "No."

There's a pause and for a split second I think he's gonna call their bluff. But he doesn't. "Where are the other two kids you always hang with? The twins? They here?"

I bite my bottom lip hard in anticipation for what's to come. He knows we're here. He has to. I can tell by how suspicious he sounds. I look back down in the water, John B still invisible to me. I don't know how much time he has left, but he's definitely running out of it.

"They both had to work," I hear Kie answer.

"Hm," The officer hums. "I'm gonna check your little boat out."

Shit, shit, shit, shit. I look around for a place to hide, but the only thing surrounding me is water. I'm going to have to go under.

"Yeah." JJ coughs, risking one last look at me before pretending to help the officer into the boat. "Yeah, hop aboard."

I push myself under the water and swim directly underneath the boat. I open my eyes, ignoring the sting of the salt water. I can see John B's silhouette by my T-shirt and the blurry light of his timer.

Thirty more seconds pass. I swing my arms upwards, pushing myself deeper into the water. The shadow of the cops' boat is still next to ours. My lungs are screaming at me for for air like they're tearing into my chest. Just like John B, I don't know how long I'm going to be able to last down here.

My body reactively gulps for air, forcing myself to swallow the salt water. It feels like a stab in my chest, my throat on fire. I've got to pop back up to the surface or I'm going to drown.

Just as I'm about to reveal myself, the shadow of the boat drives off. I push myself up, coughing up the water I swallowed and gasping for air. Less than a second later, John B pops up next to me.

"Oh, god! Jesus Christ," Kie says with her eyes closed and her head looking up.

"Don't scare us like that!" Pope says.

JJ watches me instead of John B, concern laced into his features. As I feel my heart go back to its normal pace, I smile at him and laugh the anxiety off. "You good?" He asks me. I nod and let him help me back up to the boat. "How'd it go down there?" He asks my brother. "Did you find anything?"

"Did I find anything?" John B scoffs and holds up a dark velvet bag.

"Yeah, there we go!" JJ claps his shoulders. "That's my boy!"

"Jeez, dude," Pope sighs.

"You okay?" Kie asks John B.

John B pants as he swims closer to the boat. "Yeah, I ran out of air."

"You and me both," I tell him.

John B pulls himself up. When he stands, he's met face to face with Kie who shoves him back playfully. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Yeah, the cops were up here, but, uh...we took care of 'em." Pope says, trying to act like he wasn't going to piss his pants the entire time he was talking to them.

"My bad," John B laughs.

"You're all good."

"Yeah, you kinda missed the show, brother," JJ says.

I move to the back of the boat to ring my wet hair out when something catches me eye. Its another boat, but it doesn't look like the one the cops were just using.

"Hey, guys? Guys!" I call louder to grab their attention. "Bogey, two o'clock."

"What?" JJ comes up next to me and eyes the boat that's making its way closer to us.

"Do you recognize the boat?" Pope asks.

"I've never seen it," I answer.

A bad feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. I can make out two people, I think men, standing in the front. They keep their eyes straight on us. No laughing or talking like a couple of buds would on a boat day in the marsh.

"What are they doing here? The marsh is closed," Kie says.

"Let's not stick around and find out." JJ places his hands on my bare waist and pulls me to the side so he can pull up the anchor.

"JJ get the bowline," John B says, not realizing that JJ was already on it.

"Yeah."

"Should we wait on 'em?" Pope asks.

"No. No. We should leave now. Right now," Kie says, looking directly at John B.

"Go get the stern," John B tells me. "Go!"

I kneel next to JJ and help him. Similar to how I felt in the water, my heart beats violently against my chest and my breathing becomes static. I try not to think of the fear that creeps through my veins as I help release the boat from it's hold in the marsh.

"Guys, don't wait for us! Go!" JJ yells.

"Go!" Kie says.

"Pull out the stern!" Pope yells at us.

I yank the chain hard, revealing the slimy anchor covered in seaweed and moss.

"I don't like this," I mutter to JJ between clenched teeth.

John B pulls away from the wreck. JJ looks between me and the boat that still driving in our direction. "Are they coming for us?"

"Maybe they're fishing," Pope says.

"Go, go, go, go!"

"Go into the marsh," I tell my brother, constantly glancing between him and the other boat.

"Let's go," Kie says. I can hear fear creep into her voice and her hands shake around the drivers seat she's holding with a death grip.

"I'm going. Act natural!" John B hisses and revs the engine of the boat.

He takes a left turn into the marsh. I watch anxiously for the people in the other boat to make its move.

They turn left.

"Guys, they're following us!" Kie says.

"This can't be good," Pope says.

"Dude, you gotta go faster!" JJ says.

"I'm going!" John B yells back.

"Gun it!"

I look behind the boat. They're getting closer. Too close. Can't say I'm surprised. The HMS Pogue is no match for their boat that looks more expensive than my house. However, something catches my eye. Something long the guy in the passenger seat is holding and pointing right at us.

"Is that..." I mutter before I'm cut off by exactly what I was going to say.

The gun shot rings through my ears as if the person who shot it was standing next to me. Before I can react, JJ pulls me down to the floor of our boat by my waist and covers me with his own body. I gotta say, this isn't how I pictured him being on top of me. His left arm outlines my head, keeping me face down while other bullets pass our boat. The cries of my friends are dull through the blood pounding in my ears and my heart inching its way up my throat.

"Holy shit!" Kie shouts.

"John B, get down!" JJ yells.

I try looking up at my brother but JJ's hold is strong. John B's still behind the wheel, trying his best to duck from bullets without crashing the boat.

"We're gonna die!" Pope yells.

I try looking around the boat for anything we can use against these guys. Of course JJ decides to leave the gun he stole at my house for the day, leaving us practically useless against these two strangers.

My eyes find a net pooling in front of Kie's face as she keeps her head down. I try crawling out of JJ's embrace which only makes him tighten his arms around me.

"Kie!" I shout. She looks up at me with wide eyes. "The net!"

Immediately she understands what I'm trying to tell her. She pulls herself away from Pope and army crawls to the wide net. This only makes my friends yell at her, telling her to get down, but she doesn't listen.

"Get down, Kie!" John B shouts.

Another gun shot echoes through the air, making me flinch closer into JJ.

Kie throws the net overboard towards their boat and drops back down to her knees. The sound of the other boat's engine clanging against the net gets my head to perk up and I watch Kie's reaction. She's surprisingly smiling. When she looks at me, she lets out a breathy laugh and shakes her head in disbelief because that just worked. Their boats gets stuck.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go," Pope says.

One last gun shot rings through my ears before we make our getaway.  I pull myself off the floor and look back at the boat one last time. We severely underestimated how important finding that boat was. Whatever John B found was worth killing us for.

A couple minutes later, John B pulls the boat up to the Chateau and docks it by the wooden slacks that I used as a bed last night. My friends cheer and actually smile after what just happened.

"That was insane!" Kie says.

"Whoo!"

I look at my brother with adrenaline rushing straight to me head. I feel giddy about finding out what JB found - what must be so important. "What do you think it is?"

"Gotta be money, right?" He asks, looking at me.

"That or a couple of keys with street value to the low-to-mid-mills," JJ says, leisurely danglingly his arm around my shoulders.

"Can we please just open the bag?" Pope says loudly, forcing everyone's attention at him who now looks at us sheepishly.

"Wow, Pope," John B laughs. "That's a rare outburst of emotion."

"Okay, you guys are literally killing me with anticipation," He says. "Open the bag!"

"Jeez." JJ whistles.

"We almost died over this," Pope says like its an explanation. But he's right. We did almost die for this, which is why I need to know what's in it now.

John B opens the velvet bag. Something heavier than money falls out of it with a thunk. Its round and metal. Dirty and dented. Physically ugly and maybe priceless, but it looks familiar. I narrow my eyes at it, trying to study it and rack my brain through where I've seen it before.

"Oh, wow. Yup. That's about right," Pope sighs at the sight of our treasure. "Good job, everybody. We found a compass."

The word compass hits me like a train and my body goes slack like my limbs just turned into jell-o. John B is already looking at me, shocked at the real meaning of what we just found. I push myself in front of JJ and look down at the object he's holding. Priceless maybe true to the others but not to me. Not to John B. This means everything.

JJ looks between John B and I and laughs nervously at our reactions. "Dude, what? It's not worth anything."

My brows furrow together in confusion as I try to wrap my head around how we just found our dad's possession on another man's boat. A dead man's boat. But I feel blank. Like someone just wiped all my thoughts and memories.

"This was our father's compass," I say emotionless, keeping my eyes on JB who looks equally as terrified.

Tag List: @notyourcupofteax @acvross-the-universe @jjmaybankzz  @jeeperky​ @realistic-breadstick  @moniamaybank  @urbinoutfiters​ @brebear121​  @x-lulu​

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (3) || atz

The first three days pass as uneventfully as the sea you are sailing on. Every three hours or so, the man who you now know to the quartermaster, Mingi, unties the ropes around your arms and allows you to take a short walk around the deck to stretch your limbs. 

You appreciate the thought, but you feel like a piece of meat in a sea of piranhas. Your ankle screams in pain every time you step on it, but you force your mouth shut. It's definitely twisted, but you can't afford to show weakness now. It throbs red and has swollen to twice its normal size, so you hide it with the hem of your trousers and pray that no one sees it.

What makes you even more worried than the twisted ankle is the musket wound on your arm. Even though the bleeding has scabbed over, much to your relief, the flesh around it is swollen and the surrounding skin is tight, angry red. Yellow pus is oozing from the wound and even though you’ve tried to wipe it away as discreetly as possible with your meagre water rations, the area feels tender and you feel your lips cracking faster than what should be normal. 

Your vision of the horizon sometimes splits into two and your head swims, but you cover the wound with the coat the best you can and will the pain away.

Thrice, Mingi has caught you stumbling, but he obviously thinks you’re simply unused to being on a seagoing vessel or that you simply haven’t had the chance to stand in a long time. Lucky for you, he doesn’t suspect a thing.

Who knows what they might do to you if they see any sign of frailty?

Even after Mingi has explicitly instructed no one to harm you, the crew obviously hold a very deep grudge against you for the broken nose you gave their quartermaster. Their faces sour whenever you so much as glance in their direction and some even flash bared teeth at you. When Mingi deems that you've taken enough of a walk, he ties you back to the main mast, and the next three hours are spent gazing at the endless stretch of sea, wondering when is the next time Mingi will return.

Seonghwa, the cook, comes to feed you every meal. He is kind at heart, you can see, when he does not strip away your dignity by offering to feed you, instead undoing your bonds and allowing you to feed yourself with a spoon. His voice is soft and polite, if a little guarded, and his hands warm and gentle. While you eat, he moves among the crewmen and distributes food and rum, listens to their troubles and rowdy jokes, laughs along with them and they're so happy together it makes your chest ache.

You can't join them. The voyage is long and your dizzy spells are getting longer, but you can’t give up now.

Meanwhile, you watch the crew at work.

The captain is rarely on deck. If he has orders to relay, his quartermaster and first mate does it for him, not that you mind (the sight of him terrifies you). You take the time to notice their little nuances, what they do on board.

Anything to distract you from your missing memories and the mounting pain your body is in.

The deck is never really empty, so at least you have a constant source of entertainment and distraction. They seem to still be recovering from the aftermath of their raid of the town, some pirates carrying out their duties with bandages tied over their arms or legs. They perform lighter duties, such as cleaning out the cannon barrels and sifting the gunpowder into bags, while their brethren pack heavy cannonshot and heave on the sails. At times, the lookout descends from his perch in the crow’s nest to lead them into a silly jig or song.

You recognise him.

Tall and lean with a mop of soft brown curls that match his lively, vibrant eyes, his smile is infectious, irresistible, almost. There’s a childlike nature to him, in the playful way he messes with the crew and they can only give him fond smiles, joking alongside him and teasing him back.

Yunho, you hear his name is.

He’s the one who met your eyes back in the town as you were fleeing to the harbor, the one with the massive oak spear in his hand. He mainly stays in the rigging, only coming down to stretch his legs and make conversation with the rest of the crew, but you feel his curious eyes on you even when he’s in his usual spot in the crow’s nest. You wish he would talk to you, that anyone would acknowledge your presence, but he has orders from his captain. No one would be foolish enough to disobey Hongjoong.

On the third evening, it rains.

When the first drops land on your cheeks, you immediately turn your face up to catch the precipitation falling from the sky. They feel so good against your burning cheeks, sliding down your body and dampening your clothes. You might just be having another dizzy spell again, but you swear you see the raindrops turn to steam after they touch your bare skin.

It’s not storming yet, even though the waves are slightly more choppy than usual. Seonghwa glances up at the rain in the middle of dinner and frowns, getting to his feet. From the quarterdeck you hear Mingi shout.

“Men, to sails! We’re heading to shore!”

There’s an unhappy mumbling as the crew drain the last drops of rum and shove the remaining scraps of salted fish into their mouths, but they rise to their feet and take their stations quickly. You hear a long, drawn out creak of wood as the water pushing against the rudder forces the ship to the left, heading towards a small cove in the stretch of sandy beach they have been travelling along since dawn broke this morning. The rocky cliffs will provide protection from the coming storm and the colour of the water is a deep blue, indicating that the cove is deep enough for the ship to lower the anchor without fear of getting beached.

The opening into the cove is a little narrow but the captain seems unfazed, steering the ship straight into the cove without fear or hesitation. The Treasure glides smoothly into the little cove, and Mingi relays his next orders.

“Furl the sails and drop the anchor!” You catch sight of the quartermaster descending the stairs of the quarterdeck. His nose is looking better already, but he wears a wooden splint on his nose bridge to realign the cartilage. “We have a free night of rest today, crew.”

There are cheers echoing all about you. When docked in a small cove such as this one, the constant pitching and rolling of the ship has slowed to a gentle rock, making it much easier for the crew to get deep, uninterrupted sleep below deck. It’s no wonder that they are overjoyed… but you’ll be left alone on the main deck.

The men secure the sails, coiling excess sheets and shrouds before bundling them with heavy wooden cleats. The yardarms on the three masts are lowered and the ship finally slows to a stop, bobbing up and down on the waves.

And not a moment too late, because all of a sudden, the sky splits open and a torrential storm strikes. For a moment, you wonder if you can drown from the amount of rainwater falling, the droplets the size of beans and the wind howls past your ear. You curl into yourself, grateful to the thick ropes that are keeping you warm but wishing you had something to cover your freezing feet. Once again, as if the heavens have heard you, Seonghwa approaches you with a piece of heavy sacking.

“Here.” Is the first word someone has said to you since Mingi tied you to the mast, and his hands are warm and impossibly gentle against you as he tucks the thick, coarse sacking around your shoulders and feet. You manage not to flinch as his fingers brush your ankle, and he straightens up with a frown on his face.

Please don’t leave me alone, you want to say.

He opens his mouth as if he wants to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, Seonghwa turns and strides away, following the rest of the crew who are descending below deck into the bunks. There’s a final thunk as the hatch slams closed with a resounding finality, and then you’re all alone.

It’s dark on the deck. The only light comes from behind you, where the captain’s cabin is located beneath the quarterdeck. It barely reaches you, faint and wavering, and the rain limits your visibility to just a few feet in front of you.

Seonghwa stops at the captain’s cabin for a moment, staring back in your direction, teeth worrying his bottom lip. While he’s lost in thought for a moment, the door swings open and someone pulls him inside.

“Dry yourself off.” Their navigator, Yeosang, passes him a towel, eyes soft and worried. “You don’t want to fall ill.”

“Thank you.” Seonghwa replies, ruffling his hair dry. The slightly built man returns to study the maps on the table in the middle of the cabin.

“If the storm stops by tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be able to reach Tortuga in another few days or so.” He declares, poring over the navigational maps. “But we should be careful, Hongjoong-hyung, the Royal Navy might ambush us the closer we get to the port.”

Seonghwa turns to see his captain lying back and swinging side to side in his hammock, strung up in the corner of the cabin next to an eyehole overlooking the ocean outside. But there’s nothing to be seen, it’s completely dark out there.

“I’m well aware of that.” Hongjoong replies, absentmindedly tossing one of his daggers in hand. Seonghwa bites back a fond smile.

“Captain, if you keep up that bad habit you might lose your fingers.” He chides and Hongjoong snorts in amusement, finally sitting up in the hammock to look straight at Seonghwa.

“And you need to stop calling me captain when we’re in close company, or I might use my authority to order you to.”

Yeosang lets out a chuckle as he jots down a few notes down in his rutter. “The two of you never change. Seonghwa-hyung, you should go to sleep and get as well rested as you can. It’s straight sailing for the next three days or so.”

At that Seonghwa pauses. He opens his mouth to say something, but hesitates. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Hongjoong.

“Speak your mind, Seonghwa.” His captain’s gaze is serious and unwavering as the first day he met him. “You know I will not ignore what you say.”

At that, Seonghwa relaxes slightly. They’ve been a crew, a family for years, but Seonghwa still has worries about how Hongjoong might react to certain things. Especially the one he’s about to bring up.

“The prisoner we have on board…” He begins, and Yeosang makes a noise of recognition.

“Ah yes, the stowaway you found in the cargo hold who broke Mingi’s nose.” He comments as he starts to roll up the maps once more, stowing them in their tubes. “I’ve been charting our course for the next few days, so I haven’t seen him yet. Did he cause some kind of trouble?”

Seonghwa shakes his head. “No, he hasn’t. In fact, he’s been surprisingly well behaved. There’s no rebellious behaviour in him, he doesn’t react to the crew antagonizing him, and he lets himself be tied up without a fight. He hasn’t even asked for more water or anything to cover himself with at night. Yunho says he remains quiet at all times and doesn’t speak a word.”

He remembers when he put the sackcloth around him earlier, how small and thin the young boy was, how sallow his cheeks were. But his eyes were sad, so sad and mournful, just like Wooyoung’s when he had first stepped aboard this ship trailing chains onto the deck. Eyes that had known only loneliness their whole lives.

A dark shadow flashes across his captain’s face.

“Might be a ploy to get us to lower our guard.” Hongjoong replies, his voice firm but Seonghwa can hear the mistrust in his words. “Things might be different the second we get close to Tortuga and he has a chance to escape.”

“I know.” Seonghwa swallows uncomfortably and exhales. “But didn’t he already mention that he can’t remember why he was at Raguza?” Raguza was the town they had raided just three days before.

“If that story was supposed to win my favor, it was sorely lacking.” Hongjoong leans back in his hammock, resuming fidgeting with his knife. His eye is dark, expression cold. “How unlucky can a person be, waking up without any recollection of how he came to be dressed in a Royal Navy coat, bound for the gallows when he should be an officer of high prestige and managing to escape onto the one ship in the harbor whose captain bears the most hatred towards the Royal Navy?”

“Him?” Seonghwa offers weakly, but Hongjoong gives him an exasperated glance and he shakes his head. “Your hatred towards the Navy might be clouding your judgement.”

“And your kindness yours.” His captain retorts, but there’s no real bite behind it. “If he does turn out to be a Royal Navy officer who thought this would be an opportune time to steal back their maps and escape at Tortuga, his suffering will be a lot worse than merely being tied to a mast.”

“But you cannot deny that there is a chance that he might be telling the truth.” Yeosang pipes up from shelving the very maps they were talking about, glancing at the two of them. When they don’t speak, he continues. “Temporary short term amnesia is a common symptom among those who have suffered blunt head injuries and the Royal Navy doesn’t treat its prisoners kindly.”

There’s a thoughtful pause, then Hongjoong laughs.

“Always the voice of reason, Yeosang-ie.” The captain sighs in amusement, shaking his head. “You’ve been spending too much time listening to San ramble on.”

Yeosang chuckles, but doesn’t deny it.

“I’ll think about it, Seonghwa.” Hongjoong reassures the cook, who reluctantly nods his head. “You should go to sleep. Worry about your own health instead of our stowaway's.”

That’s the most Seonghwa can do for the prisoner. “I trust you, captain. Goodnight, the two of you.”

Seonghwa turns to leave, and Hongjoong calls after him jokingly.

“Call me Hongjoong!”

Seonghwa steps out of the cabin with a chuckle. Yeosang pulls off his boots and lies down on the bed, putting his hands behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling. Maybe he should take a look at the new prisoner soon.

He sees Hongjoong stand at the door that Seonghwa has just left, one eye staring out of the glass window onto the deck, where the prisoner is.

Yeosang gives a knowing smile and closes his eyes.

Your body slackens all at once. For three days, you’ve been hiding the throbbing tenderness of the wound on your shoulder, the agonizing pain in your ankle and the pounding in your head. You feel as if someone is knocking you repeatedly on the inside of your skull with a heavy stick, and all at once your stomach heaves.

You bite your cracked lips and force the food down. No, you can’t throw up. That is the only form of sustenance you have to last you, and the captain will surely be displeased if he catches you puking over his deck. Luckily, the nausea subsides and you rest the back of your head against the solid wood of the main mast.

It’s cold and hot all at once. Your body burns impossibly hot and your tongue is heavy, as if you haven’t drank a mouthful of water for weeks. But it’s cold, so frighteningly cold, ice creeping up your veins and the once comforting feeling of rainwater on your body is like torture. You burrow beneath the wet sackcloth, the only barrier between you and the elements, and let out a tiny whimper.

There’s no one here to see you break down. You are alone, you’re in pain, your memories are lost. You’re on a hostile pirate ship and even if they don’t kill you on suspicion of being a officer of the Royal Navy, what will you do once you reach Tortuga? You have nowhere to turn, no one to help you. You are alone all over again.

A tiny sob leaves your throat and you hiccup, pressing closer against the main mast. You try again, try to remember something, anything, but all you see is a sheet of white, the sound of ocean waves in your ears. Then pain lances down your head and the back of your neck and you give up your attempt on trying to remember. Remembering is about as easy as trying to catch smoke.

Before you can catch them, tears slip down your face and you bow your head, trying to hide it. But you can’t. It spills out of you again and again in waves of soft sobs and muffled whimpers, wracking your body.

The world sways beneath you. Is the sea getting too choppy? Will the waves rise over the sides of the ship? Are you going to die, here, before any life you have truly begins?

I will be with you every step of the way.

Your eyes finally fall shut, unable to bear the weight of the pain you carry.

But you don’t hear the footsteps behind you.

Hongjoong steps forward, unflinching against the rain that pelts his body and the wind that bites at his skin. He walks around the main mast, to where Mingi has tied you up.

He observes you silently. You’re small, compared to even him, tucked up in sackcloth and held upright only by the ropes that bind you to the mast. He doesn’t bother checking the knots, Mingi is more than capable of doing a perfect job.

Your eyes are closed, head lolling forward slightly, mouth a little ajar. You look so peaceful, so harmless that Hongjoong can almost bring himself to believe your story, but then he catches himself.

No. All too easy to fool him into letting his guard down around one of the Royal Navy. Looks are deceiving. You may seem harmless, but even the most adorable of animals have fangs.

The howling wind pulls away the corner of the sackcloth that was tucked behind your shoulder and you shiver in your sleep, curling up on yourself. Hongjoong frowns, and before he can stop himself, reaches out a hand to put it back.

And immediately jerks his hand away.

Hot. You’re boiling hot. You should be freezing cold from the rain, he was intending to allow you a warm bed the next day if you just told him the truth about your identity. He touches your neck once more and feels as if he’s just placed a hand on one of Seonghwa’s pots right after cooking.

He tears the sackcloth away from you with deft hands, noting how dry and cracked your lips are even though he’s instructed Seonghwa to give you water rations equal of that to the crew. His eye scans your body for any sign of what could be causing this, when he sees a bloody patch right beneath the rose emblem of the Royal Navy. He pauses in his tracks.

Does he really care if one of the Royal Navy lives or dies?

“But you cannot deny that there is a chance that he might be telling the truth.”

Hongjoong grunts at his indecisiveness. If you’re a Royal Navy officer, he can always kill you later. Focusing on the task at hand, he tugs the coat from your shoulder, revealing your black undershirt and an ugly gash on your upper arm. The skin around it is obviously swollen and thick, yellow pus is still oozing from the wound, but what is the most worrying are the tiny, red streaks he sees moving up from the wound.

It’s infection. He doesn’t even need San to tell him that. And from the distance the streaks have moved, it’s been infected the day you were tied up on board. A scowl tugs on his lips.

And you said nothing?

He hates that he admires your grit for one so young. Shaking the damp hair out of his eye, he raises a hand and lightly slaps the side of your face.

“Oi, officer, wake up.”

You groan a little, eyebrows furrowing, but by the slack muscles of your arms and legs, you’re as dead to the world as Yunho. Hongjoong curses under his breath and moves to the knots, undoing them with practiced ease. The ropes loosen and there’s a thump as you collapse to the deck in a heap. Hongjoong grabs you from under the shoulders.

“Get up, will you?” He mutters under his breath, supporting all your weight on your feet so he can drag you to the sickbay, but you let out a cry of agony and bury your face in the crook of his neck, much to his shock. He jumps at the contact and almost drops you, but catches you at the last moment, a longer, more vulgar curse leaving his lips when he catches sight of your ankle.

It’s swollen.

Hongjoong groans. Is he blind? Yunho’s never going to let him live this down if he finds out about this. How did he not notice?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

He cracks his knuckles and in one smooth motion lifts you up in his arms. You’re surprisingly light, as if you haven’t been eating enough for a few weeks already. He should get Seonghwa to cook you a hot meal after you recover.

Then he almost pulls away the hand under your shoulders to slap himself in the face. What is he saying? After you recover, it’s back to the main mast for you. He still can’t trust you, even if he grudgingly admires that you’re as tough as his crew members despite being the smallest person on board.

Why did you have to pick his ship?

Shaking away his thoughts, he turns towards to sickbay, feet thudding on wood as he sprints across the deck. Your breathing is shaky and uneven against his throat, and he grunts as he stops in front of the wooden door next to his cabin.

He raises a booted foot to kick on the door as hard as he can.

“San!

[scribbles97]

Paris

From @gumnut-logic 's AU Where There Be Dragons

Specifically from THIS FIC exploring Eos' creation

Thank you for letting me play in your universe Nutty.

“Eos has promised to do no more harm. She just needs a chance.” Please, Gordon. A one-sided slow blink as the black spots danced. “I invoke Paris.”

Gordon’s eyes widened. “John, no. No, not for this. Please!”

“Worth it.” And John was falling, hands grabbing at him until he blanked out.

It was Grandma who saved John.

And Gordon who saved Eos.

Because John saved Gordon.

Paris was beautiful at night, there was no denying, John thought as he strolled the banks of the Seine with Penelope on his arm. The city was more to Scott or their father’s taste, all boutique tailors and nice places to lunch. Women that smiled prettily and batted their eyelashes until one paid attention to them.

Alongside him, Penelope was dressed to match the most elegant of ladies in the city. All tight corsets and coats that she complained pinched at her waist, and big skirts that took up more space in the carriage than John needed as a whole.

It was apparently the fashion though, and John had caught more than one so-called gentleman taking a second look at the pale pink dress she had been wearing over dinner. Even covered in her winter cape, thick, dark and heavy to protect from the cold night, he still caught others looking. He didn’t doubt the question in their eyes of what was under such a luxurious coat.

John had no such interest. The oil lamps that lined the streets blocked out the stars, their light drowned out by something artificial.

Penelope has asked for him specifically though, insisting that his brothers stay aboard Thunderbird Five nestled away deep within the English Channel. She had been unwilling to say more until they were well on their way to Paris from Calais. Apparently the other didn’t need to know until more information had been garnered.

With both Gordon still not operating at full steam, and Scott and Virgil insistent on mollycoddling, John hadn’t disagreed.

“What is on your mind?” Penelope murmured, turning slightly to look up to him, “I can hear the cogs turning from here.”

He knew his smile was tight and hardly reassuring to the lady that saw everything. To trick Penelope was fatal, and near impossible for his family. She knew them all too well, had spent enough days watching them all to know their traits and tells.

John wasn’t sure he would ever have reason to lie to her anyway.

“Gordon.” He admitted softly.

Her frown was brief but noticeable as she focussed on the path ahead, twirling her umbrella slightly as her brow dipped.

“I thought your brother was doing well?”

“He is.” John nodded, tugging at his scarf slightly against the frosty night air rolling in off the river, “As you saw, he is walking well now. The function he has regained, even at this point, is remarkable.”

“However?”

“You know my brothers, Penelope,” He smiled with a slight shake of his head, “They are not patient men. Gordon wishes to prove he is fit, that he can and should be allowed to return to duty alongside us.”

“He is not ready.”

“He is not.” John confirmed.

Her hand squeezed his arm tightly in a form of silent reassurance as she nodded ahead, “I believe this is the barge we were looking for.”

John followed her gaze, recognising the figure stood under the next lamp smoking his pipe.

“I would be inclined to agree.”

He took the step across first, holding his hand out for her as she stepped lightly from pavement to the boat. The river was still and quiet around them, much like the rest of the city hiding away from the frost bitten air of winter.

Allowing her to step ahead, he hesitated, eyeing the figure approaching the edge of the dock as he jumped more purposefully on to the coal barge.

“Parker.”

“Master John.”

“Parker.” Penelope turned back, umbrella folded as she smiled to them both, “I trust our hosts are expecting us?”

“That they are M’lady.” The older man tipped his cap to her, “Below deck h’I’m h’afraid.”

John could tell the lady wasn’t best pleased with the news, the light colour of her shoes would no doubt be ruined by the black dust left from the coal. He knew better than to expect it would put her off though. There was a goal in mind for the evening, and he doubted anything would disrupt her from it.

“Well I suppose we shan’t keep them waiting.”

Parker ducked ahead of them both, gesturing towards a hatch, hidden amongst the piles of coal, “This way M’Lady.”

John followed last, having to duck down in the low height of the hold clearly designed for people much shorter than himself.

“Good Evening, Mister Yost.” Penelope was saying, her focus aimed on the sole occupant of the room, a man tied to a chair in the centre of the space.

“Who are you?” He spat back at her, “What are we doing here?”

“I am aware that you have a hand in the designs for the tower that is to begin construction next year, yes?”

John glanced between her and Yost. Penelope knew exactly the man's part in the plans, knew what information she was there to gain.

“If you want ze plans I shall not give them to you.”

“It is not the plans I am in need of, Mister Yost, but I do not believe you are the sole architect as had been planned?”

“It was to be my masterpiece.” He uttered, eyes aflame even in the low light.

“Assist me in my queries and maybe it shall be.” Penelope offered, the young sweetness in her voice like a flame drawing in a moth.

The sneer from his face fell instantly, dropping to a slight glare before landing on something altogether more neutral. John could guess Penelope was using that smile of hers, the one that seemed to manage to get her whatever she so chose.

“What changes did the other architect make?”

He glanced towards John, the man’s eyes hardening again before looking back to Penelope, “To ze designs themselves very little. It was ze alloy zat he changed, a new material, one I had not heard of before.”

“Why?”

John missed the response, something above him scuttering along the tops of the boards. A glance towards Parker told him the older man had heard it too.

Being closer to the hatch, John turned slightly, stepping up onto the first step as he listened again.

The footsteps were meant to be quiet, he could hear how they were slow and cautious in their movement. Against the wooden deck of the barge, sneaking was impossible.

“We have company.” He murmured, glancing back into the hold.

Penelope’s tutt was loud in the small space as she turned to face him, “Might yourself and Parker deal with our visitors, I shall finish off here with Mister Yost.”

“Quite.” John smiled, “Try not to be too long.”

She almost laughed at his request as she turned back to Yost, and John focussed on making it above deck unnoticed.

Movement immediately caught his eye as he rose from the dusty hold, drawing his attention towards the port side.

A flash of blond in the lamp light was enough to have him straightening in fear as a figure in black wrestled with the shorter person. One set of feet against the deck were much heavier than the other, a whir of hydraulics accompanying each movement.

Parker alongside him hesitated, “H’is that…?”

“Gordon.” John confirmed under his breath, “I’ll kill him myself.”

“Not if we do first.”

Both spun at the voice, accent familiar english.

Parker was first to move, taking on the other Brit with a well trained hand. John knew he was more than capable, but the man was older, getting slower as life moved on by his own admission. It wasn’t something a Tracy did, to run in the opposite direction of those that may need help.

A cry of pain from across the boat reminded him that his brother was the one more likely to need such help.

He was off without further thought, not caring for how the coal may muck up the crisp lines of his evening suit. His shoes were slippy against the deck, made for walking along cobbled roads and not climbing across boats mounded high with wares.

Stumbling around the hatch they had emerged from, the glint of metal caught his eye.

“Gun!” He yelled, hoping his brother took heed as he raced for the assailant.

Gordon spun too fast, the hiss of his legs not keeping up, his balance off still as he adapted to the new legs. It may have been months, but learning to walk was a slow process, one the swimmer was yet to remaster.

The line of his fall flashed before John’s eyes as he tracked the squeeze of a finger on the trigger. The timing had to be right, he had to save his brother.

“No!” He screamed at the final possible moment, grabbing for the gun as he slammed into the man. Kicking hard, he buckled before him, giving John the desperate moment he needed to claim the gun.

A single solid thwack to the back of the head was enough to still the man that had been attacking Gordon.

“John!”

He would always react to the call of his name from a brother, though it was rare for such a call to set his heart racing. The fear and desperation so plain and clear.

In the rush he hadn’t heard the splash that he knew must have happened. He hadn’t had time to do anything other than allow it to, even if Gordon had yet to relearn to swim as he once had.

John had only hoped he had the upper body strength to keep himself above the water for long enough.

“Reach Gordon.” He encouraged, throwing himself half over the side, stretching as far as he could. Even from a distance he could feel the icy coolness of the river against his face, his brother would freeze if he didn’t get out in a moment.

“‘Ere!” Parker called, throwing a rope down into the water before John could look around, “Grab on Master Gordon.”

His brother did as the older man bade, grabbing on with hands the shook from equal parts cold and fear. Together, John and Parker heaved, pulling the swimmer from the water and to the damp boards of the barge.

John didn’t dare look, anger burning hot in his chest as he dropped the rope and looked straight to Parker.

“Get a carriage and get him out of here.” He spat, “Penelope and I shall finish here.”

“H’of course, Master John.”

He didn’t look back as he headed for the hold.

***

Penny had been the one to catch the blood staining his hair a darker shade of red. One look at him in the hold and she had been pulling the scarf from his neck to tend to the wound.

“We have what we need.” She had uttered to him, “Where has Parker gotten to?”

“I sent him to the hotel.” John murmured, wary of listening ears as Yost looked between them, “There was a complication.”

“Then we shall follow on.” She nodded matter-of-factly, “Mister Yost is of no more use to us.”

In the moment, John didn’t overly care for what Yost had or hadn’t told her. There were too many other aspects to consider. Scott and Virgil were going to give him so much grief for not only his wound but for Gordon sneaking along.

“You are fortunate,” Penelope whispered once they were in the cab, she hadn’t stopped fussing with his hair since they had set off, “”Tis a minor scrape, less than an inch and it would have been your head.”

He couldn’t help but scoff with a shake of his head, wincing as the world in front of him spun with the movement.

“You can blame Gordon.” He uttered back to her, “Dear brother followed us.”

Her silence had him worried, it wasn’t like Penelope to not have a response quick off of her tongue.

His head was starting to throb though and he really did not have the energy to look to her.

“Scott is going to kill me.”

Her gloved hand was warm over his, “He shan’t. We will deal with this and your brother need never know.”

Opening his eyes just enough to look down to her, John found himself smiling slightly. When it came to the Lady, he knew he had her word.

***

He awoke to the sun shining through the light lace curtains of the windows, it’s low light in the winter sky an indication that he had slept in far later than anticipated. His head still ached as it had the night before, the gash at his scalp pulling as he screwed his eyes shut again.

The bed was warm but the air around him cold. There was another reason for him to hate Paris, for him to dislike anywhere that wasn’t his ship.

The quiet hiss and pop of a fire assured him that the room would heat up soon, even if he wasn’t quite ready to venture from the warmth of the bed.

“Master John,” Parker’s voice was soft despite the harshness of his accent, “H’it is time you were h’awake.”

Sighing he hummed softly in some sort of response. The ride back would be hell if his head continued as it was.

“Her Ladyship has made arrangements for us to remain in the city for another day.” Parked continued, “She thought you might want to recover a little more before making the return journey.”

If he had been so inclined he would have kissed the woman.

“H’excuses ‘ave been sent to your brothers. Her Ladyship shall fill you in over breakfast.”

Shifting, he sat up in the bed, resisting the want to probe around in his hairline to asses the wound on his head.

“Might h’I recommend a wash before you make h’an appearance, Master John?”

Grimacing, he looked to Parker, “That bad?”

The butler tilted his head slightly, a smile hiding somewhere behind his eyes.

“How is Gordon?”

“‘E’s well. Though regretful of your injury.”

John frowned, they hadn’t run into his brother on their return to the hotel the previous night. Parker had done enough to assure John that his brother would at least live for the time being. It had been John’s aching head that had forced him to retire early, despite the conversations he knew he needed to have.

“Master Gordon ‘eard your return with ‘er Ladyship and caught a glimpse of you before you retired.”

That made more sense.

Reaching for his shirt he swung his legs out from the bed, “Send him through please.”

“Of course.” The butler nodded, stepping backwards towards the door, “Though, master John?”

“Yes?”

“H’if I might say, h’I wouldn’ be too harsh on Master Gordon. There was no intention for ‘im to get you hurt. H’and I do believe ‘e was only lookin’ out for ‘er Ladyship.”

As much as John wished to deny it, he knew the older man had a point.

“Tell Penelope we will join her for breakfast in good time.”

“Of course, Master John.”

He dressed quickly, determined to keep out the chill of the room and have himself composed before Gordon turned up.

His family had always said his anger had burned as red and as hot as his hair.

It seemed ironic, he thought to himself as he warmed his hands by the fire, that red hair determined a hot temper when fire so often burned the yellow of Gordon’s hair. Everyone knew his younger brother wore his emotions on his sleeve, that you simply had to look in his eyes to know exactly what his feelings were on any matter.

“You asked for me.”

John looked up from the flames as his brother slipped into the room, layered up in clothes that didn’t quite fit him.

“Are you well?”

He looked okay, though John knew that looks could be deceiving.

“Bruised and sore,” Gordon admitted softly, still hovering by the door, “I spent the night by the fire, Parker ensured I was warmed through. I shan’t catch a chill.”

John nodded to his own fire, “You will do well to stay warm today brother, I do not know what I should tell Scott if you were to catch a chill. Where does he think you are?”

“Thinks I went up the coast to Dunkirk to meet some old Navy friends. I would rather we kept him believing as such.”

The swimmer had the decency to look guilty as he approached, sinking down in the armchair John directed him to.

“Fortunately that is possible as you did not take a bullet last night.” John uttered, voice low and dangerous, “Was there any thought as to the implications of your actions, Gordon? Do you not think we have already lost enough of you without the risk of losing more?”

He stayed quiet, not even fighting back as John knew his brother should have done. His anger was burning hotter than the fire though, heating his gut from the inside out as he glared at his younger brother.

“I am not Virgil, Gordon. I had no way to save you like he did. I do not even know if he could have saved you from that. Having your life saved once does not make you invincible brother, it would do you well to remember that!”

“I did not anticipate the situation.” Gordon uttered, not looking up from where he was wringing his hands together, “I did not expect for someone to attack me, John. I did not--”

He caught himself, looking away as his mouth twisted.

John frowned down at him, ignoring the pain in his head. He knew his brother, knew that it was so very unlike him to leave anything unsaid.

“What?” He prompted.

Gordon looked down as he shook his head, “Tis nothing.”

The voice was too soft and young, so unlike his brother.

“Gordon?” He stepped closer, shifting to crouch, “Brother, something is bothering you and I can see it. I may not be Scott or Virgil, but you know you can still talk to me.”

Amber eyes were wet as they looked to him, the sharp intake of breath a telltale sign that something was most definitely wrong.

“What am I, John?”

There were many questions John had heard in his life, he prided himself on having the answers to all that he could.

Except, he didn’t understand Gordon’s.

And there was no answer for a question he did not understand.

Shaking his head he reached out to the arm of the chair, “I--”

Gordon reached to the leg of his breeches, tugging just enough to pull up the hem and reveal the metal beneath.

“What has Virgil done to me?”

John shook his head, wincing at the pain briefly before refocusing on his brother, ���Virgil saved you.”

Desperate hands grasped at John’s, amber eyes pleading as they reflected the firelight.

“Yes, and for that I am forever grateful. Is this not also a curse though? None of you shall ever allow me near a rescue again, I am not capable, last night was simple proof of that. I cannot even swim, something I have spent my whole life doing!”

The energy was all Gordon, burning as hot and as bright as the fire behind John. It burned his heart to hear the words, singed him to even think that his brother had all these feelings.

“I cannot do anything that my life has revolved around and with all that I am a monster. I must hide in the shadows for fear of either ridicule or theft. You and I know this world John, we saw what people will do last night, nobody shall ever know the truth outside of our family and that--”

A fist tightened as he pulled away, jaw clenching tight as he tried to blink away the dampness in his eyes.

“Virgil saved me, but now I do not believe I shall have a life.”

Long, cold fingers grasped at his brothers, pieces of the previous night falling into place all at once.

“Gordon,” He choked, “Tell me you did not ignore me last night. When you were in the river? Tell me you intended on getting out?”

His brother looked to his legs again, “The last days were the first I have seen Penelope since…”

John didn’t need him to gesture to the false legs before he continued.

“And until last night she had barely said more than two words to me.” A tired scoff as he shook his head, “I am well aware of the jokes you all make at my expense, because you all know how I feel for the woman. When she came for you though, whisked you away in her carriage without even a thought of me. What was I left to think, John?”

He could only bow his head in response, the thoughts of his brother irrational but so understandable all at once.

“My dear brother,” He whispered, squeezing the hands in his tightly, “Penelope, she--”

“I know.” It was whispered back as Gordon slouched in the seat, tears fresh on his cheeks as he sunk into the cushions, “Parker set me straight last night. It was about when he threw me the rope that I realised how wrong I was.”

“I love Penelope dearly,” John murmured, “As a friend, Gordon. She does not see you as anything other than the man you always have been. Penelope is a woman so very above material things despite her expensive taste.”

The comment had the desired effect as Gordon laughed, eyes brightening just slightly with the sound.

“And do you really think I would allow her to court me aboard a coal barge?” John continued, allowing his own smile to spread, “Of all the places in Paris?”

Gordon laughed softly again, nodding slightly in admission, “I’ve been out of sorts. I am sorry.”

John sighed, watching him carefully and knowing all too well what it felt like to be so very alone in a room full of people.

“You will save people again my brother, do not doubt that. You are still healing though, your injuries still fresh and raw to us all. We are your brothers and we shall always fear for your safety. There is no denying though that we cannot keep you from that life, and if you have started to believe that we would then I can only apologise.”

The wetness in his brothers eyes was gathering again, brightening the reflection of the fire as he focussed on John.

“Have we not proved so many times,” John continued, “That there is always a way my brother, whatever you need we shall do all in our power to make you well and make you happy. If that means to be on rescues we shall work towards that, or if it means courting Penelope then we will find a way.”

Taking a breath, John thinned his lips, “You are not the only one in our family to believe that you are so very alone. I promise you though Gordon, there is always someone when you need them.”

He didn’t expect the soft snort as a response, “Parker said the same thing.”

“Parker is a wise man.” John smiled softly, “It would do for you to listen to him once in a while.”

Nodding, Gordon sniffed, “I am truly sorry John, I almost got you killed.”

Shifting to stand, John winced, the shift in height exacerbating the ache in his skull.

“Damn,” Gordon cussed softly, “Sit down before you collapse.”

He waved him off, “I am fine, just don’t tell Scott.” Softening he smiled as he rested a hand on his brother’s shoulder, “It is worth it for saving a brother's life.”

“In more ways than one.” Gordon murmured, “I owe you.”

John didn’t disagree as he glanced towards the fire, flames dying down quietly as the wood settled into place.

“Do not forget it, brother.”

[hermitcraftheadcanons]

Pirate AU Masterpost

Different ships captained and crewed by different hermits, maybe some could be normal sailors too? Or maybe even some could be sirens? There could be a pirate ship, a pirate hunting ship/law-keeping ship, some random shipping vessels, some sirens or sea monsters, or whatever else! I envision Doc as a pirate captain and Xisuma as the law enforcement captain, but it's open to whatever changes! (@-shadeswiftdraws.)

Headcanons to start us off:

-Bdubs is a fruity sailor.

-Cub and Scar sell things to both pirates and the law enforcement. They only take the aide of profit.

-DocM threatened Bdubs into joining him. Whether it worked is up to the 'what gets popular' Gods. If not, he probably just holds Bdubs hostage or something.

-Hypnotizd's bandana has a skull and crossbones on it, as does Etho's headband.

-False is feared by Doc.

-Grian has a parrot that always sits on his shoulder. Doc keeps telling him to get rid of it but Grian refuses.

-Iskall wears an eyepatch.

-Hypnotizd has scurvy.

-iJevin makes maps and sells em to pirates to keep them off his back. Did he bury the treasure? I dunno.

-All of ZIT collectively own a boat. They like to pretend its a yacht and have fun. Sometimes they just use it to relax, sometimes they just go fishing. Sometimes they scare each other with stories of pirates and massive storms.

-Joe Hills is scared of the water because he nearly drowned as a child. But when he ends up accidentally stowing away on the ZIT boat, his worst fears happen.

-Keralis is Xisuma's second in command.

-TFC is a retired sailor that knows too much.

-VintageBeef and basically all of the NHO are with Doc.

-XbCrafted grew up by the beach and likes to collect shells. One time he found a fossil of a dinosaur. What will he do? I don't know. His childhood friend, Hypnotizd, left to be a pirate. Xb hasn't heard from him since (he promised he'd write letters,) and fears the worst.

-ZombieCleo is a dead zombie captain. Her and her crew (the gals, and maybe some co,) are out to get their revenge on Doc. Her second in command is Stress but her main muscle in False.

-Mumbo is usually the one who works maintenance on the ship. (He's with Xisuma.)

-Rendog got stuck on an island he's called 'Loser Island' and has been there for at least a year. He's found by Doc.

-Stressmonster makes people fear her through her name, but they usually laugh when they see her because she's really unintimidating.

-Welsknight hoardes cool swords.

-Everyone underestimates Stress when they see her but those who have faced her in battle have realized their mistake. She is slowly but surely gaining the reputation as one of the most feared pirates of the seven seas. She’s still very sweet if you get to know her tho - 🌙

-At some point while attempting to leave the ZIT crew's yacht, Joe somehow ends up with Cleo and the gals in the middle of the ocean, who take pity on him. Because they help him with his fear and take care of him on the way back to land, he decides to stick with them for good. The Navy and a lot of other pirates don't believe that Cleo can be the captain of such a feared vessel or that False can be that deadly and decide that Joe must be doing it all. He takes joy in deferring to Cleo whenever he can, and the whole crew gets a laugh out of his combat attempts. He mainly handles navigation and stuff, though he does record their adventures and anonymously submit them to newspapers and/or publish his accounts. (Don't want to skip the Joe+ZIT stuff, just love him and Cleo and need that dynamic :-) )

-Half siren/merman grian? - Frost Anon

-Different anon adding to the Merman Wels idea, he's a siren but instead of stealing your life he steals your swords and shinies. Some pirates may be on good terms with him and gives him swords occasionally and ask for directions or just hang out with him and be nice (I'd think Ren would sing with him and Jevin would hang out and steal shinies with him landing both their crews on good terms with him. He may even follow them around as it can be lonely in the ocean)

-Mumbo never meant to be a pirate. There was just a mutiny of the last captain he was under and everyone liked him enough to keep him around.

-Some loser thinks that joe is the muscle of the group and asks for a duel. cleo decides fuck it and just pushes joe into a fight with them because thats how she be sometimes. (False is on standby so joe doesn't get creamed)

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/619926302710956032/another-take-on-the-pirate-au-concept

- At some point, Cleo's ship begins picking up stray orphaned children. They are kept safe below deck during battle and are taught by the crew how to run a ship and fight, but Cleo also teaches them stuff like how to read and do math. The crew is very protective of the young'uns and the ship eventually becomes known for the fact that they take care of kids. Most other ships, upon learning this, respect that and don't attack them. If a ship does, they will find that the Rotten Corpse is viscous, and has many powerful friends who will back them up. If Doc or X come across Cleo's ship, they will give the kids gifts and stay close for a bit to provide protection. As the kids grow up some go back to shore and build legitimate/legal lives (including opening an orphanage) but a group of them go off and become their own pirate crew! Their ship's name? I don't know, I'm not clever.

-In a tavern someone's just like "im gonna sail to this island." Tfc, sitting nearby "you wont find anything" a little while later that ship goes missing. No one actually knows what tfc found in his sailing days. But my god does he know where to avoid

(All above in red are from our community's lovely Anons!)

-The ZIT boat is a bit of a disaster because each person always thinks it's the other people's turn to maintain it. Joe probably saw it on an evening beach walk and thought it was abandoned, decided to explore it, and accidentally fell asleep in the hold. He wakes up to the ZIT boys arguing about what to do with him.

-Xisuma has a reputation for being strict and disciplined and running a very tight ship, but if you're actually on his crew you'll know that's a front for intimidation purposes. In reality he is organised but extremely forgiving, and he will often sit down with crew who are new or going through something stressful and talk it out with them.

-Iskall is with Cleo's crew, he appears just as driven as the rest of them but he's mostly just there to make sure Cleo and co don't go too overboard with the revenge thing. He just doesn't want them to do something they'll regret....

-Wels can be a merman! He hoards cool swords as souvenirs of the surface world and dreams of two-legged adventurers and explorers.

-The "incident" that put Cleo on the path of undead revenge was partially accidental. Doc's goal was to raid the ship and get away with no casualties, but things escalated way too quickly. He is haunted by what happened, but Cleo doesn't know that and is determined to hunt him and his crew down.

-Pirate singalong nights! Doc's ship definitely has a singalong under the stars every night, where everyone can gather together and relax and let loose. It's fun to think about who would be good at it, and who would be bad at it but sing anyway ☺️

-Grian starts off on Doc's ship (with his parrot), but he gets washed overboard in a storm. Siren!Wels rescues him and gives him siren magic.

-I got tired of referring to "Xisuma's ship" and "Doc's ship", so: X's ship is called the Voidrunner, and Doc's vessel is the Black Goat. (Cleo's is The Rotting Corpse -Anon.)

-(I did a submission mentioning ConPost earlier, so look at that for context) The ConPost boys don't sail, but they're very knowledgable about sailing supplies and even ship repair. Cub does bookkeeping and negotiates big deals. Scar likes to wander the docks checking stock levels, with Jellie napping in piles of rope or following close behind.

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/619819577428279296/for-the-pirate-au-cub-and-scar-own-a-supply

-Xisuma is feared and respected by pirates because his ship is one of the first/only steam powered vessels at the time. Mumbo is his engineer; he maintains the mechanics and is constantly testing ways to make the ship faster and more efficient.

-If you ask Iskall why he wears an eye patch, you will get a wild tale of adventure and heroic battle that may take an hour to relate. However, the story is different every time. He actually lost his eye in a completely non-pirate related accident as a child. It just sounds cooler the way he tells it 😂

- About Joe moving from the ZIT crew to Cleo's ship: Joe really wants to be taken back to shore, and the ZIT lads understand his fear of water and try to take him back as soon as possible. However, they get caught in a storm, and the boat isn't in great shape to weather it. The boat is not quite wrecked, but badly damaged, and Joe is washed overboard. Cleo's crew finds him and pulls him aboard to save him (maybe siren!Wels helped bring him to her!)

-As a pirate Etho is known for his skill in boarding enemy ships. It doesn't matter how many ropes you cut, how many pirate grappling hooks you throw into the sea in an effort to keep them from your decks. Even if there's no possible way across, Etho will just sort of.. . End Up on your ship, and you will end up in Davy Jones' locker. (Based on the creepy teleport thing with Grian, and just Etho's general cryptid-ness)

-The sea spray and the general ocean humidity is horrible for Doc's arm. Ren helps him keep it as clean and rust-proof as possible, but it still probably squeaks a lot and stiffens up sometimes.

(-@shadeswiftdraws.)

-ZombieCleo's gal (& co.) crew includes Iskall. [More info pending for when I finally get around to watching s6 and see the infamous Iskall & Stress duo in action] (-@basaltdragon.)

-Inspired by shade: Cub is an ex-sailor, and Scar grew up in a family of fishers. Cub was really good at ship maintainence (he just got sick of the politics), and Scar loved keeping stock of the fishing nets and what sort of fish were caught, how much they might sell for, though he's not as good at repairs.

-For the Pirate AU, Mumbo telling Siren/MerGrian stories of the surface world and (secretly?) making a way for Grian to see it for himself. (-@shiniestumbreon.)

-Pirate au: one day there is a really bad storm that destroys all of the hermits boats except for one of them. So now all the hermits are all on one boat that’s really far away from land. (Angst part) some of them went over board (I’m thinking the captains maybe) so the remaining hermits are either grieving them or looking desperately hoping that their crew mates are still alive and clinging to wreckage. Who they find, if they do find any of them is up to the reader for now. (-@lookitsspacekween.)

- Mumbo, being the spoon he is always forgets where he buries his treasure. (-@xxpzmistxx.)

-Mumbo, as the Voidrunner's engineer, has so much to work on that Xisuma will sometimes take over the maintenance so poor Mumbo can get some sleep. This leads to the hunt for a secondary engineer and maybe that's how Mumbo and Iskal end up meeting. (-@my-cat-is-a-bastard.)

-A cat scratched out Iskall's eye as a kid, and he's too embarrassed to tell anyone. He's still a bit afraid of cats, so you'll always see him keeping a close eye on Jellie when he's at the dock. (-@12u3ie.)

- i dont really know much about pirates but ima try!! ok so, cleo is human, but she gets the nickname "zombie cleo" because she faked her own death. people thought she drowned, and her old crew along with her. most of them went to live normal lives under different names, but cleo missed the sea and eventually returned to being a pirate, eventually becoming the capitain of a new ship. (i hope this makes sense lol) (-@bakubakunyanyaa.)

-Pirate headcanons! As someone said before Ren and Wels are friends and like to sign together. I can imagine Wels telling the Black Goat that there is a treasure burried in Loser Island to get Ren rescued. Also! People think Ren is halve siren/has siren magic as he is really good at singing and the melodies he hums are similar to the ones sirens are said to sing, turns out just a bit of siren magic and Wels singing style rubbed on Ren during all the time they spent together singing.

-More pirate hc cause i have no self control and they are not a lot of them: Doc gives shiny stuff to Wels in exchange of him warning them when X’s crew is on a port. Iskall is also a great engineer and is working to make the Rotten Corpse Steam powered too. He insist Cleo to let him take a peek on the Voidrunner to see if he can copy Mumbo’s work, the gals agree this is the most dangerous idea Iskall has.

(-@ivi-prism.)

-Ship AU! Hypno originally joined the ship's crew with his friend, Jessassin. They became a swashbuckling duo, and still sometimes work together, despite Jessassin's inactivity from pirate duties. (-@calmshejaguar.)

[asfaltics]

and yet we went on reading

  Flim, sb. Obs. Sc[otch]. A whim; an illusion.       1   in the manufactory of these flimsy things       2 had hung a basket of fodder underneath for these flimsy things       3                                                 Poor indeed are their prospects of continued protection, if they rest upon these flimsy things alone.       4   will you never learn to choose good, useful, lasting articles, instead of these flimsy things that do good to no one, and that a breath       5 took hold of these flimsy things, Oh!       6 the discomfort, the positive misery of these flimsy things       7   wretchedly printed on bad paper, with few or no literary expenses, these flimsy things drag on       8 “These flimsy things don’t last long, they soon break,” said he. “Of course they do!” declared Madame Guibal, with an air of indifference. “I’m tired of having mine mended.”       9 In all her looks the words we see, These flimsy things are not for me And I with them do not agree.       10   of these flimsy things       11       the ice floes ran in under and cut out these flimsy things.       12                         about 12 inch in being evident that these flimsy things are depth, which projects over the top of the difficult       13                           He knew “Well, it’s a good deal warmer than when to leave a man unhindered and to these flimsy things” he said, lifting the       14 attempt to hit some of these flimsy things, you will put your screwdriver through them.       15 You undertake to fix some of these flimsy things and you put a screw driver into them and they go to pieces.       16   You undertake to fix some of these flimsy things and you put a it in the same condition although I know       17                                                                         Lucy gave her skirts a toss “I am getting tired of these flimsy things, and am trying to wear them out”       18 “I must get some more,” he said, “stronger than these flimsy things.”       19   First of all, I know now what it means to travel “light.” These flimsy things       20 These letters, these unintelligible flowers, these bits of lace and of paper, what are they? Around these flimsy things what is there left ?   And yet we went on reading. But something strange is growing gradually greater...       21 “Why, if I put these flimsy things on now they’d be in holes before I ...”                                                                                     Thorough Young Lady enters. Thorough Young Lady — “Good morning... I’d like a dozen”       22   They had seen it as a whim, Agnes knew; a flimsy, floating thing which scientists might examine under a microscope. But if that were what it was she was full of them.       23  

sources (all but the last pre-1923)

1 Joseph Wright (1855-1930), The English dialect dictionary (London, 1898) vol. 2 : 405 2 OCR cross-column misread (on forged bank notes, and banks), at The Black Dwarf (“A London weekly publication, edited, printed, and published by T.J. Wooler”; January 13, 1819) : columns 21-22 “The Black Dwarf (1817–1824) was a satirical radical journal... published by Thomas Jonathan Wooler, starting in January 1817 as an eight-page newspaper, then later becoming a 32-page pamphlet. It was priced at 4d a week until the Six Acts brought in by the Government in 1819 to suppress radical unrest forced a price increase to 6d. In 1819 it was selling in issues of roughly 12,000 to working people such as James Wilson at a time when the reputable upper-middle class journal Blackwood’s Magazine sold in issues of roughly 4,000 copies.” wikipedia on Thomas Jonathan Wooler (1786-1853), also see wikipedia 3 OCR cross-column misread, at “Mrs. Perewinkle’s Visit to Boston,” by “Muhitable Holyoke,” in Frank Leslie’s New Family Magazine 3:2 (August 1858) : 161-167 (162) 4 ex The Chronicle (“An insurance journal”) 10:18 (October 31, 1872) : 274 on the mismanagement of The Globe Mutual Life Insurance Company under Frederick A. Freeman, its president, and/or other members of the Freeman family (including Pliny Freeman). 5 ex Out of the world, by M. Healy vol. 2 (of 3; London, 1875) : 27 asides — this would be Mary Healy Bigot (1843-1936), daughter of the painter George P. A Healy (1813-94 *) A brief entry on Mary Healy is found at A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901; rather more, including an extensive list of her publications (journalism, fiction, translations, &c.) is found at her French wikipedia page — “Mary Healy utilisa le pseudonyme de Jeanne Mairet, mais aussi celui de « Madame Charles Bigot » et de « Mary Healy-Bigot ». On trouve des écrits non seulement publiés en français (souvent par Paul Ollendorff), mais aussi en anglais et en allemand. Elle produisit aussi de nombreuses traductions avec parfois l'aide de sa soeur Edith Healy.” in his autobiography is to be found the reason he (and later his daughter after the death of her husband Charles Bigot (1840-93 *)) would move to Chicago — George P. A. Healy, his Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter (Chicago, 1894) : 57 6 ex Alex(ander). Mackenzie, The Life and Speeches of Hon. George Brown (Toronto, 1882), in Chapter 19, The reform convention of 1867. Resolution of thanks to Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown’s reply : 113 7 ex correspondence to the editor (on the subject of “new restrictions in dress”), by “Freedom,” in The Meteor (“Ed. by members of Rugby School”) 175 (May 18, 1882) : 60 8 ex John Bull’s Neighbor in Her True Light : Being an Answer to some recent French criticisms. By a “Brutal Saxon.” Veluti in Speculum. (Third edition. London, 1884), in Chapter 11, The French Press: its Vanity—Le Temps and London Telegraph contrasted—Des Debats—Le Figaro—Le Clairon—Press Laws—Fear of Actions for Libel—Want of Freedom : 87 9 ex conversation about a fan, in Émile Zola (1840-1902 *), The Ladies’ Paradise : A Realistic Novel (London, 1886) : 74 aside — The novel is set in the world of the department store... (wikipedia) 10 “The Village Wedding,” in Poems by Chas. F(rederick). Forshaw, LL.D. (Bradford, 1889) : 28-33 (30) 11 from Act 2, Scene 4 of John Lesslie Hall (1856-1928) his Judas : A Drama in Five Acts (Williamsburg, Virginia; 1894) : 73 aside — “also known as J. Lesslie Hall, was an American literary scholar and poet known for his translation of Beowulf” (wikipedia); (some) papers at the College of William and Mary 12 ex “He saved others” (from Brotherhood Star), at Herald and Presbyter (“A Presbyterian family paper”) 68:46 (Cincinnati and St. Louis, November 17, 1897) : 15 in full — “When ice was running in the North River at New York, a ferryboat was crushed in, under the water line. An employe was sent down to stop the leak, or hold it until the boat could be run into the slip. Bedding, clothing and anything available were passed to him, but the ice floes ran in under and cut out these flimsy things. The boat reached the dock. Passengers were all hastened ashore. The boat was raised up by chains, so that the break was above the water, but the man did not come up on deck. They hastened below and found a bruised body of an unconscious man, pressed close against the opening. Careful nursing brought back life, but broken health and a disfigured body were his. ‘Even Christ pleased not himself.’” 13 OCR cross-column misread at J. B. Fulton, “Faulty Concrete Construction,” in Fireproof 3:6 (December 1903) : 31-33 (32) 14 ex OCR cross-column misread, at Francis Prevost (H. F. P. Battersby, 1862-1949 *), “The Siege of Sar,” in Ainslee’s (“A magazine of clever fiction”) vol. 12 (January 1904) : 1-44 (22) 15 ex Arthur H. Elliott, “The Gas Range in the Kitchen” In Light, Heat and Power 5:12 (February 1906) : 942-946 (944) self-described as “A monthly magazine devoted to the fields of illumination, and also combustion for producing heat and power, wherein the elements employed are natural, artificial, acetylene, gasolene, or petroleum gases.” 16 ex “The Gas Range in the Kitchen," in report of Elliott paper, in The Metal Worker, Plumber and Steam Fitter (March 3, 1906) : 52 17 same as no.s 14 and 15 above, but OCR cross-column misread, at Arthur H. Elliott, “The Gas Range in the Kitchen,” Progressive Age (Gas-Electricity-Water), 24:4 (February 15, 1906) : 96-99 (97) 97 Paper delivered at the First Annual Convention of the National Commercial Gas Association, held at the Cadillac Hotel, New York City, January 24th and 25th, 1906. 18 ex Mrs. Mary Dudeney. All Times Pass Over (London, 1909) : 75 (snippet view only, but entire at hathitrust) aside — little is found, biographically; author of poems, stories, even songs as Mary Du Deney (BL catalogue); are these of the same Mary? — “A novelty appeared in Judge Allen’s court in the shape of a woman, Mrs. Mary du Deney, who sought solace and mental refreshment in a book while her fate was being decided in a divorce proceeding. After reciting the grounds upon which she sought the divorce, the lady was lost to the world until the Judge cut the knot and she again felt the thrill of single blessedness.” (Los Angeles Herald (23 December 1900) : here); and   ◾ “...Old Lady Was Swaying, Fatal Collision with Cyclist At Bridgwater. Returning a verdict of Accidental Death at the inquest on Thursday on Mrg. Mary Du Deney. aged 85, of 2. Holmes Buildings. St. Mary-street, Bridgwater, who died in the hospital on Tuesday...” (Taunton Courier, and Western Advertiser (20 September 1947) : here) 19 ex William Caine (1873-1925 *), The Devil in Solution, (nicely) Illustrated by George Morrow (London, 1911) : 68 (snippet view only, but opens to same page at hathitrust 20 from this longer passage — “First of all, I know now what it means to travel ‘light.’ These flimsy things which the Japanese make are wonderfully serviceable. For instance, I purchased a silk Japanese raincoat which sheds rain perfectly, and yet when not in use I carry it in the pocket of my light overcoat.” ex “Japanese Milling, and Weather,” in Rosenbaum Review 2:39 (Chicago; September 15, 1917) : 8-10 asides — devoted to grain trade; at some point title changes to The Round-Up; published by the J. Rosenbaum Grain Company; this would be Joseph Rosenbaum (1838-1919), whose interesting life is sketched by Arba Nelson Waterman, in “Historical Review of Chicago and Cook County and Selected Biography," found here   ◾ perhaps more interesting is the editor of Rosenbaum Review (and its successor Round-Up), J. Ralph Pickell (1881-1939? *).   ◾ see, for example — “Senate Asks Jardine of Chicago ‘College’” ¶ Secretary Jarine was asked Friday, June 25, by the Senate to explain his connection with the Roundup College of Scientific Price Forecasting of Chicago. ¶ A resolution making the request was offered by Senator Caraway (Dem. Ark.), and adopted. Caraway said the secretary had accepted appoitment as a member of the faculty of the college to teach students “how to speculate and get around the rules of the grain futures act which he administers.” ¶ The resolution asked the Secretary to state whether his information on grain futures markets was obtained as a result of his official connection with the department of agriculture, and what compensation he has received from the college. ¶ The Roundup College school for price broadcasting [sic, should be “forecasting” ?] was held at the Congress Hotel four weeks ago. Secretary Jardine was announced in publicity as the principal speaker. The school is run by J. Ralph Pickell, listed in the telephone book with offices at 1848 West Washington Boulevard and 328 Ashland Boulevard. It is said, however, that the offices have moved to Western Springs, Ill., near Chicago. ¶ Pickell at the time the school was held, said about 500 students would be in attendance. Each student, he said would pay $50 for the course. ex The Illinois Agricultural Association Record (July 1, 1926) : 3 21 ex chapter 23 (the last) in Henri Barbusse (1873-1935 *), Light (Fitzwater Wray, trans.; 1919) : 301 several scans of the same at hathitrust 22 ex Fashions for Men (this passage) and The Swan (in one volume, subtitled Two Plays by Franz Molnar (both comedies in three acts; English texts by Benjamin Glazer); (Liveright, 1922) : 117 Ferenc Molnár (1878-1952), at wikipedia 23 ex Rachel Cusk, Saving Agnes (1993; Picador 1995) : 2

—

subject to change, corrections, &c.  

[star-doll-universe]

Michelle Goes to Yakigashi Island

FINALLY FINISHED THIS! Oh my gosh, this took so long to complete, and I’m so glad it’s finally done. I hope you enjoy the final part of this little mini series I started for @one-piece-dumpster-fire​

Have a lovely holiday everyone! Merry Christmas <3

Part 1   Part 2  Part 3

“Cracker, why are you putting explosives in the picnic basket?” Michelle cocked her head to the side, a worried expression knitting her brow.

“They’re not explosives!” her fiancé exclaimed, holding up the offending rocket-shaped objects. “They’re fireworks! You can’t have a Founding Day celebration without them.”

“Oh.” Michelle bit her lip. “Is that really safe to bring to a party that kids are going to be at?”

“Are you kidding?! Oven’s sons will be furious if I don’t bring them.”

“Ok fine,” Michelle finally relented with a somewhat heavy sigh, “Just make sure they don’t crush the cookies. Giuseppe and I spent hours on those.”

Honestly, the young woman would like to admit that she was more than a little exhausted from this week. The planning process for her and Cracker’s wedding had been temporarily put aside somewhat when they received an impromptu invitation to Cracker’s older brother Oven’s home for a “Founding Day Party”.

Not long after moving to Tottoland, Michelle had learned that the citizens of each island in Big Mom’s territory celebrated the day they were assimilated into the empire as an annual holiday.

Apparently, today was the anniversary of that event for Yakigashi Island where Oven was Minister of Browned Food.

So, Michelle had to put her wedding planning on hold so that she could quickly prepare for the celebration. Initially, she had somewhat hesitated accepting her future brother-in-law and his wife’s invitation, but she knew that it would be rude to not do so, and Cracker seemed really excited about the party.

Plus, she remembered meeting Oven’s wife Samore at Winter’s tea party on Candy Island, and the woman had extended an invitation for a future visit. She supposed now was as good as time as any to take her up on that offer, even in the midst of her currently hectic life.

You are going to be the wife of a Minister of Tottoland, Michelle, the young woman had reminded herself. Not to mention he’s one of the sons of Big Mom, a Sweet Commander at that. Your life is probably only going to get crazier after you’re married.

Michelle mulled these thoughts over again as she finished the last of the packing for the trip, careful to navigate around Cracker’s fireworks. She’d prepared several batches of different flavored cookies with Giuseppe, and the couple was also bringing a bottle of spiced cider as a gift for their hosts.

Although, she supposed Spice might drink most of it. Michelle smiled to herself, remembering her feelings towards this party improving drastically when she learned Spice would be attending as a fellow Sweet Commander.

Sakura and Katakuri were also going to be there as well, along with Perospero and his family and even Smoothie was joining them.

Even if times were crazy, this party was still going to be fun.

“Ready to go, my dear?” Cracker asked, jerking Michelle from her thoughts. She looked up to see him holding his hand out to her, his trademark grin bright on his face.

“Yep. Let’s go,” Michelle picked up their basket and took his hand with her free one. The folds of her blue dress swished around her legs as she let Cracker lead her out of their lavish home and down to the docks of Cookie Town where his ship was waiting for them.

It would take a few hours to arrive at Yakigashi Island. Cracker predicted they should reach it by sundown, just in time for the party to begin.

                                                          ~~~

 “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Cracker snarled through gritted teeth.

Michelle, meanwhile, was too absorbed in the startling sight before them to really offer up much of a response. Her eyes were wide in her face as she gawked up at the monstrous wall of fluffy white pastry that stretched out before them.

It rose out of the sea like the back of some bulbous sea creature, snaking across the line of sight of Cracker’s ship, dwarfed in comparison. It obscured the entire island from view as it drifted almost lazily in the scalding sea, which foamed and bubbled all around them like a living thing breathing.

“What is this?!” Michelle exclaimed.

“It’s some of the Popover rocks that line the coast of Yakigashi Island,” Cracker explained after shouting some orders to the Biscuit Soldiers they had manning their ship. “Sometimes they break off the mainland and drift out into the Boiling Sea. The heat causes them to expand and form something like a wall around the island’s borders.”

Michelle glanced back at the massive mound of fluffy pastry. “It looks like things got a little out of control.”

“You think?”

“What are we going to do?”

“It’ll take too long to sail around it,” Cracker proclaimed as he produced a Transponder Snail from his pocket. “I’ll call Oven.”

However, before Cracker could put the call through, Michelle saw a massive, gloved hand reach over the top of the Popover wall. She couldn’t help but scream as a huge face followed suit, falling onto her butt on the deck.

Cracker glanced at her. “What?” He then followed his fiancée’s terrified gaze to see the huge pair of red eyes peering down at them. However, he did not react in nearly the same way, he didn’t even reach for Pretzel resting at his hip.

“Oh. Hey there, Samore!” He called up to the massive person, who slowly straightened up to their full height, dwarfing the pastry iceberg floating in the sea. Michelle could now make out the familiar figure of a woman with warm brown skin and crimped dark brown hair that reached her waist. Her eyes were a deep red, and she was wearing marshmallows as earrings. The fluffy pastry mound now only reached her waist as the giant woman peered down at Michelle and Cracker’s tiny ship.

“Cracker, how lovely to see you again!”

Meanwhile, Michelle was still huddled on the deck of the ship, staring up at the massive woman before them with her mouth hanging open. “S-Samore?!”

“Hello, Michelle!” Samore’s voice echoed across the Boiling Sea as she smiled down at them, her teeth large and white, each the size of a house. “How have you been?!”

The other woman blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. “I’m not crazy right?! She was not this big when I first met her,” she said to Cracker.

Cracker chuckled at that.  “I guess no one told you about Samore’s Devil Fruit power. She has the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Giant. That’s the whole reason why Mama wanted her to marry Oven, so that she could finally have a Giant in Tottoland.”

“Oh?!” Michelle’s eyes were still huge. “I see.”

“Do you want me to give you two a hand?” Samore called down to the couple, easily stepping over the wall of puff pastry and trudging through the Boiling Sea seemingly unfazed by the searing heat. Michelle soon noticed that she was wearing a pair of thigh high boots that looked a bit like the lower half of a hazmat suit, which was most likely protecting her skin.

Cracker grinned up at his sister-in-law. “If you don’t mind.”

“No problem at all.” Samore then knelt down and grasped either side of their boat as gently as she was able.

It still jostled them quite a bit and Michelle would have toppled over again along with several of the Biscuit Soldiers if Cracker hadn’t caught her.

“Easy does it, Sugar Cube,” he grinned down at her as he held Michelle against his chest.

The young woman felt her face grow hot in spite of herself.

Meanwhile, Samore had successfully lifted Cracker’s ship out of the Boiling Sea and now held the entire thing in both hands as gingerly as an egg.

The giant woman then turned and slowly clambered over the wall of puff pastry, trudging through the bubbling water in her protective boots.

Michelle clung to Cracker the entire time, trying to keep her knees from knocking as the Biscuit Soldiers scrambled about all around them, struggling to remain upright.

Cracker laughed as he took out Pretzel and stabbed it into the deck, giving him more of a solid footing as Samore trudge through the steaming water and towards Yakigashi.

The island in question soon came into view not long after they crossed the Popover barrier, slowly coming into focus amongst heavy clouds of steam, like it was gently floating closer to them out of the boiling water.

Gingerly, Michelle broke away from Cracker and slowly made her way to the edge of the ship, gripping the railing so she could remain steady while she peered down through the steam at the island before them while Samore slowly waded closer to it.

Yakigashi was another one of Tottoland’s larger islands. It seemed like everything on the island was made of some kind of bread or type of pastry. The city that spread out from the island’s center and stretched down its coast of fluffy rocks was comprised almost entirely of warm brown buildings with a heavenly baked aroma wafting from them.

Michelle inhaled deeply, a small smile forming on her face as Samore approached the dock at the edge of Yakigashi and then gently set their ship down beside it. As Michelle looked on, she noticed the pier was made of breadsticks.

“Let’s go, Michelle!” Cracker called to her, holding out his hand. His fiancée quickly accepted it, still a little wobbly on her feet as the Sweet Commander lead her off the ship, shouting commands to his Biscuit Soldiers to watch over things while they were gone.

As Michelle and Cracker exited the ship, they heard the thunderous footsteps of Samore stepping out of the Boiling Sea and up onto the shore.

The young woman glanced up, open-mouthed as Samore stepped over their heads and, as she watched, started to shrink down. The other woman had barely blinked before she was standing in front of her, far closer to her size.

“Michelle!” Samore’s grin was still large as she leaned closer and grasped her hands. “It’s so good to see you again!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Michelle replied, still a little flustered.

“I love your dress!”

“Oh? Thank you…” the young woman’s face went a little pink at the compliment.

Her outfit for the Founding Day party was brand new, another gift from Cracker, and consisted of a purple tea-length dress with a vest made of biscuits and laced in the back with white icing stays as well as large white bow tied around the waist. Over this, she had draped a magenta cape in case it got cold. Her outfit actually somewhat coincided with Cracker’s: he was wearing a shirt for once and more armor which matched the shoulder guard and leg pieces that he normally wore along with his billowing cape and sparking hair.

“Let’s go. Our ride is waiting for us,” Samore continued, grabbing Michelle’s hand and pulling her along with Cracker following after the two women, smirking at his fiancée’s slightly flustered state.

Michelle quickly found walking on the island a bit difficult. The ground beneath their feet was very soft and fluffy, like walking on a marshmallow. She stumbled a little, but Samore gripped her arm tighter to steady her.

“Sorry, the terrain does take some getting used to, but my daughter enjoys making the ground soft and fluffy like this with her Devil Fruit. She says it’s more fun this way.”

“It feels like a cloud or something,” Michelle mused, bouncing experimentally on the fluffy ground.

Samore lead them over to two large porcupine Homies with saddles on their backs and smoking marshmallows stuck to the ends of their quills. “They’re quite harmless,” she said as Michelle looked at them wearily.

One of the porcupine’s snorted, blowing smoke out of its nostrils. Cracker walked over and pet the closest one’s nose before helping Michelle climb into the saddle as it was a bit of a long way up. Samore then clambered on in front of her and grabbed the reigns while Cracker mounted the other marshmallow porcupine.

“Let’s go!” Samore called out, cracking the reigns and the two spiked creatures took off into the city ahead of them.

The capitol of Yakigashi Island was called Fukkura Town, and it soon became apparent that the Founding Day celebrations were already well underway.

Color and light had exploded across the streets of the city in the forms of streamers and balloons, torches and sparklers. Crowds of people and Homies weaved throughout the buildings while thunderous music reverberated between them like a storm.

Michelle didn’t know where to look. There was dancing and singing, performers doing backflips and juggling flaming torches, people selling and eating delicious foods and bands blasting loud and rambunctious music.

“Oven really outdid himself this year,” Cracker mused from on top his porcupine mount, waving halfheartedly to some of the passerby that had recognized one of the Sweet Commanders.

“He can be pretty competitive,” Samore replied with a fond smile, leaning down to accept a flower from a young female Fukkura Town resident, who was smiling sweetly up at her and Michelle.

“Is it a competition between Charlotte siblings for who has the best Founding Day celebration?” Michelle inquired.

“It certainly is between some of the older ones,” Samore agreed with a nod, pausing to smell the flower she’d been gifted.

Soon after, the group arrived at the gates of Oven’s massive estate, which was built out of pure white bread that looked almost like polished marble. There were torches made of giant marshmallows mounted at the entrance, spouting crimson fire into the growing night.

A pair of Biscuit Soldiers were patrolling at the gate, both of which quickly bowed to Cracker and Michelle as the former disembarked from his mount and then turned to help his fiancée off her own porcupine.

“At ease,” Cracker said to the soldiers, who jumped aside as Samore breezed past them, the gate swinging open with a bombastic shout.

“The lady of the house is home!”

“The party is happening in the back yard. We’ve got a pavilion set up,” Samore called back to the other two as she lead them around the side of the massive white house and through a garden gate.

In the backyard, more of the roasted marshmallow torches were set up around a dancefloor made of polished saltine crackers. Multicolored streamers looped through the autumnal trees above their heads, making a canopy around the floor and the white covered tables that create a semi-circle around them.

The rest of the guests were already there, and Michelle spotted Spice immediately. Her hair was as bright as the flames and her smile just as brighter as she leapt over to the other young woman in two levitated bounds.

“Michelle! It’s so good to see you!” Spice exclaimed, grasping the other woman’s hands and squeezing them tightly. “How have you been?!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Michelle replied, beaming. “I love your dress.”

“Oh, this old thing?” Spice giggled as she smoothed down the folds of her orange and yellow dress with red accents that looked like it was made of fall leaves. Her choker and bracelet looked like dripping maple syrup.

Michelle was about to compliment her outfit again when a pair of gloved hands suddenly covered her eyes, making her gasp. “Guess who, Aunt Michelle!

“Peppermint?” the young woman whirled around as the hands were removed from her vision to see Peppermint and Candy Cane, the twin oldest children of Winter and Perospero. They were wearing matching red and white striped suits with top hats. CC in particular really resembled his father in the outfit, especially since he was wearing his blue hair loose from its ponytail.

“How have you been, Auntie?” He asked Michelle.

“Very good, thank you.” She replied with a warm smile.

“Hey, you two! It’s been a while” Cracker exclaimed, clapping each of the twins on the back. “I hope you two have been practicing the sword techniques I taught you.”

“Of course, Uncle Cracker,” Peppermint insisted.

“We can show ya if you want,” her twin added, a mischievous glint in his red eyes.

Spice’s face lit up. “That sounds fun!”

“Not now, it’ll be dinner soon,” Samore replied insistently.

“You’re no fun, Samore,” Spice grumbled.

“Oh, there you are, Cracker. I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up.” Michelle turned at the sound of an unfamiliar voice as Oven strolled over to them. He was wearing long white robes that were trimmed in brilliant embroidered flames.

“I wouldn’t miss one of your parties, Oven,” Cracker replied with a grin. As he spoke, his arm wrapped around Michelle’s waist, pulling her closer to him. “You remember my fiancée, Michell, right?”

Oven smirked down at the young woman, giving his brother a knowing look. “Of course, how could I forget? She’s very memorable.”

Michelle felt her face go rather warm, and she doubted it was from the marshmallow torchlight.

“Don’t tease her, darling,” Samore lightly chastised him, crossing her arms disapprovingly.

“It’s just a bit of fun, dear,” Oven exclaimed with a booming laugh before he scooped his wife up and placed her on his shoulder, despite Samore’s protests.

“Oven! I need to get changed.”

“Come on, you’re fine as you are!”

“Oven, please put me down!”

A loud bang from across the yard interrupted the couples’ friendly argument.

Samore froze for a moment, fingers tangling in her husband’s reddish orange hair to steady herself. “Burn! How many times have I told you not to turn your brother into a bomb!”

The boy she was referring to whirled around immediately, a guilty expression on his wide brown face. He looked to be in his early teens and was dressed like a traditional magician with a black waistcoat and top hat. He had bright white gloves which offset his warm brown skin and red eyes like Samore. From under his tall hat, reddish curls peeked out to frame his face.

“Aw come on, Mom! I can just make another one!” called a slightly younger boy with orange dreadlocks that danced around his lithe form. He was wearing a cheetah print button down and black ballet slippers and was expertly twirling around the boy in the top hat, jumping around with acrobatic expertise.

As Michelle looked on in confusion, the boy with the orange dreadlocks and cheetah print top suddenly split into two identical beings like some kind of single celled organism. As she looked on, mouth falling open, the boy divided again and then again and suddenly there were six identical copies.

Almost as soon as he did so, the older boy with the top hat and red curls pressed his gloved hand to one of the moving bodies and it suddenly light up bright red. With another loud bang it exploded like a lead balloon, sending the other copies scrambling to get out the way.

“Again! Again!” Laughter and clapping could be heard from Perospero and Winter’s other set of twins, nearly identical boys named Truffle and Fudge, whom Michelle remembered from the tea party on Candy Island.

“Burn! What did I just tell you?” Samore loudly chastised the red-haired boy, “Stop using your Devil Fruit before someone gets hurt!”

“But Mom! Bake is fine!” Burn insisted.

“Yeah, he’s only blowing up the fake mes!” the orange haired boy insisted.

Samore sighed in exasperation, pinch the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to get changed. You talk to them,” she added to Oven before jumping from his shoulder and landing on the ground with surprising ease. She then made her way to the house, flanked by some of the dough boy Homies that were wandering around the pavilion serving drinks.

“We brought spiced cider, by the way,” Michelle exclaimed, remembering the drink and producing it from the basket, giving it to Oven.

“Oh thanks for that,” he took the bottle from her. “Now excuse me, I’ve gotta go deal with my kids.”

“I’ll take that!” Spice exclaimed, snatching it from her older brother and flying off.

“Hey boys!” Cracker reached into the basket he and Michelle had brought as well, pulling out the brightly colored rocket-shaped explosives. “I brought fireworks!”

Burn and Bake both clapped and cheered at this as did Truffle and Fudge.

“Wait until after dinner,” Oven called over their reverie, giving Cracker a murderous glare.

Meanwhile, Michelle felt someone tap her on the shoulder and turned to see Perospero standing over her, holding his youngest child Chestnut close to his chest.

The baby babbled and waved his chubby fingers.

“Good evening, Michelle,” the eldest Charlotte sibling said to her, smiling through his long tongue.

“Hello, Perospero. Hello, Chestnut,” Michelle couldn’t help but brighten up immediately at the sight of the baby.

She reached up towards him only to immediately draw her hands back when the baby suddenly took a snap at her fingers.

“Chestnut!” Perospero quickly adjusted him in his arms. “Terribly sorry, he’s teething.” His father quickly explained, waving his hand to produce a piece of candy using his Devil Fruit. “Here you are, my boy. Suck on this instead.”

Chestnut eagerly slurped at the candy piece as Michelle looked on fondly.

She then spied Winter sitting a short distance away at one of the covered tables beside her sister North, both of whom were wearing heavy fur coats. It soon became obvious why as a heavy cloud of snow was hovering over the two women and frantic flurries danced over their heads thanks to Winter’s own powers.

Michelle’s eyes soon met with the older woman’s steady gaze, and she waved halfheartedly, still a little intimidated. Winter smiled at her in response. Her demeanor was cold, but her eyes were warm.

She then slowly rose to her feet and walked over to Michelle and Perospero, holding out her hands to the latter so she could take their son from him.

At that moment, a large arm suddenly wrapped around Michelle’s shoulders, pulling them against a firm body. The young woman glanced up to see the sharp yellow eyes and flowing green hair of Sakura. “Hi, Michelle! How are you?!” the taller woman exclaimed in her thick Wanonese accent.

“S-Sakura!” Michelle struggled slightly against the other woman’s strength. “It’s nice to see you again.”

Sakura was wearing a magnificent pink yukata with her hair all swept into an elegant updo. She had cherry blossoms and other ornate clips twisted into her hair as well as many necklaces and rings on her fingers. She was even wearing a pair of gold earrings shaped like tiny samurai swords.

“Same to you.” Sakura held a pastry out to the smaller woman. “Want a maple bacon donut.”

“Thank you,” Michelle accepted the treat before glancing around. “Where’s Katakuri.”

“Over there,” Sakura pointed to where her husband was lounging at another table, arms and legs crossed and face mostly buried in his white fur scarf. “He doesn’t want to be here,” she added in a hushed voice with a knowing smile.

Perospero clicked his tongue, “He works too hard.”

“Tell me about it,” Sakura rolled her eyes.

Suddenly, Spice swooped down between them. “Drinks girls?!” she handed them each a champagne glass of the spiced cider Michelle and Cracker had brought. “Smoothie’s bartending, so this party is going to be awesome!”

The other young woman could indeed spy Spice’s fellow Sweet Commander behind the bar further back from the pavilion floor. She was wearing a magenta suit that accented her long silvery hair perfectly. She was speaking in hushed voices with Crystal, Winter and North’s middle sister.

Even from this distance, Michelle could see the yearning in their eyes, and her heart felt sad.

“Oh wow!” Spice’s exclamation drew the other young woman’s attention towards Samore, who was making her way back from the house.

She had changed into a beautiful evening gown that was made of melted chocolate that dripped down her entire body like a waterfall, perfectly molded to her form. Her jewelry was tiny marshmallows that glittered like crystals and the decorative clutch she clasped in her gloved hand was made of graham crackers.

“You look beautiful, Samore,” Sakura said to her. “Does it stretch to accommodate your other sizes?”

Samore smirked at her. “Nope!” She seemed almost happy about this, and Michelle felt her brow crinkle in confusion.

“Mama always makes her stay in her Giant form for Tea Parties and such,” Spice whispered to her, “So she can show her off to all of her socialite friends. I think it’s frustrating for her, so it’s probably nice to stay in her normal form.”

Michelle didn’t really know how to respond to that, especially since as Samore walked back over to where she, Spice and Sakura were standing, she noticed the rather prominent scars against her neck indicating there had once been a very heavy collar fastened against her throat.

“So, is this a party or what?!” Sakura suddenly exclaimed, throwing up her hands, “Let’s dance or something! It’s a celebration.”

“Figures you wouldn’t be impressed,” Spice replied, rolling her eyes as she floated after Sakura towards the dance floor, “Your dad throws wild parties every night of the week!”

Michelle almost jumped when someone tapped her on the shoulder, but the tight knot in her chest instantly softened when she turned to meet Cracker’s familiar grin. “How about a dance, my dear?’

His fiancée quickly accepted his hand, “I’d love to.”

As Cracker lead her onto the dancefloor, Oven and Samore followed suit, and Michelle caught a glimpse of the branded mark burned onto the small of the other woman’s back.

The Hoof of the Celestial Dragon: scarred over but still there.

                                                         ~~~

The rest of the party was a blur of eating, drinking, talking and dancing. There was so much food available, Michelle thought she might burst; although she supposed it should be expected for an event involving the Charlotte family.

She danced with Cracker and drank cider with Spice and Sakura (as well as a bit of sake courtesy of the former). She talked with Winter and her sisters and even took Truffle and Fudge up on their offer to dance with her.

As the night carried on, and the stars moved across the sky to the rhythm of the city’s fervor around them, Cracker eventually got out the fireworks for Oven and Samore’s sons Burn and Bake to enjoy.

They set up the rockets in the field, down the grassy slope from the pavilion. Everyone else pulled their chairs to the edge and lined them up, so they could watch the show.

Michelle was sitting beside an empty seat for Cracker on her right while Charlotte Souffle, Oven and Samore’s third child and only daughter, sat on her left.

“Isn’t this exciting, Auntie Michelle?!” she was saying. “I always love the fireworks.”

Michelle turned to give her a warm smile. She was a small girl with medium skin and red eyes like her mother. Her hair was yellow and very curly, mostly hidden behind a blue bonnet which matched her dress that had a balloon like skirt that seemed to puff out like a great white and blue balloon. Her face was painted white like a clown’s with additional eye makeup and a small blue dot on her nose. Her mouth was wide and full of an innocent grin.

Michelle had to put hers on somewhat. She was personally a little anxious about fireworks.

She nearly jumped when the sudden popping bang could be heard. Facing forward once more, she watched another of the fireworks shoot up into the sky and explode amongst the stars with a loud bang and eruption of color. All of the party guests clapped and exclaimed their appreciation.

Souffle’s eyes were filled with nearly as many stars as the sky above them as she took in the fireworks, raining down around them like shimmering jewels.

Michelle then noticed Chestnut was sitting up in his mother’s lap, his hands reaching up towards the remnants of the fireworks as they fell back down to earth, almost as if he wanted to catch them in his chubby hands.

She felt a familiar warmth in her chest that reminded her of how much she wanted to have children of her own one day. She couldn’t wait for her and Cracker to get married.

Meanwhile, Katakuri was sitting off to the side with Sakura on his lap; his arms were wrapped around her waist, keeping her in place as she leaned back against his chest, a content smile on her face.

The fireworks show seemed to take forever and seemingly no time at all; it held a spell over the crowd, transfixing everyone and practically lifting them out of time and space and temporarily transporting them to a pocket dimension where only this moment existed, only this land of noise and light reminded, independent of everything else.

Michelle sat, surrounded by her family, and she was happy.

Once the last rocket had been set off, Burn and Bake ran back up the hill, out of the darkness of the field towards them, with Cracker trudging not far behind.

Michelle leapt up from her seat and ran to meet him, leaping into his arms as he caught her by the waist.

“Here’s my girl!” he exclaimed, “Something on your mind, sweetheart?” he added.

Michelle blushed as she wrapped her arms around his neck, nuzzling her cheek. “I’m just having a very good time,” she replied simply.

The party started to wind down after that. Winter, North, Crystal gathered around the bar to talk with Smoothie while she cleaned the used glasses.

Perospero and Oven were having a heated discussion about some Tottoland politics while Samore and Souffle played with baby Chestnut.

Spice was entertaining Truffle and Fudge along with Burn and Bake, who were soon having another round of fireworks with Spice’s soul clones.

Peppermint and Candy Cane soon challenged Cracker to a duel, which carried out into the field. It was a friendly spar, but still intense as all things tended to be with the Charlotte family.

Michelle watched from a distance, starting to feel a little chill coming from the night air.

After parrying Peppermint and her sword Uzumaki and then blocking CC and his sword Kasane, Cracker looked her way. “Michelle! You look like you’re getting tired, sweetheart.”

“Oh! No, I’m fine,” she barely got the words out before the young woman had to stifle a yawn.

“Perhaps you should get going,” Perospero mused from nearby, “We’ll probably leave soon as well. The younger children shouldn’t be up too late.”

“You do have a bit of a journey back as well,” Samore agreed. “I’ll have one of the dough Homies fetch yours and Cracker’s coats.” Their hostess paused, glancing around, but there were no Homies in sight.

Oven chuckled. “I think our kids may have destroyed them all.”

“Those little pyromaniacs!” Samore huffed.

“It’s alright, I can get them myself,” Michelle insisted.

“Are you sure, my dear. I can always-” Samore started to offer, but Michelle shook her head.

“I don’t want to keep you from seeing off your guests.”

“Well, alright. The coatroom is the fourth door on your right when you go in the back entrance.”

“Thanks!” With that, Michelle ran across the garden towards the large white manor.

It didn’t take her long to locate the back entrance, but the hall beyond was dimly light and difficult to navigate. Remembering Samore’s instructions, she fumbled through the shadowed corridor until she found the door to the coatroom.

As she was gathering hers and Cracker’s cloaks up, she heard muffled noises and what sounded like voices coming from another room nearby.

Somewhat disoriented, Michelle stumbled out of the coatroom only to notice that the room across the hall’s door was slightly ajar. She could still hear the hushed sounds coming from inside.

Curiosity burning inside her, the young woman tiptoed across the hall and peered through the gap between the door and the wall.

It took a moment to come into focus, but she could soon make out Katakuri’s large form braced against the wall with one hand, holding Sakura’s leg against his hip with the other. His scarf was loose, but his face wasn’t visible as it was buried in the crook of Sakura’s neck. His wife’s arms were gripping his shoulders tightly, her long nails digging into the fabric of his suit jacket. She threw her head, gasping her husband’s name.

“K-Katakuri! Ah!” she yelped as he seemingly sank his teeth into her neck, her hands scrambling up into his hair, pulling the short strands tightly.

Michelle scrambled back from the door, struggling to force down a surprised squeak. She probably made far too much noise in her frantic dash towards the exit thanks to her bad leg, but she didn’t linger long enough to see if she had been discovered.

She dashed back outside, her face burning in the cool night air only to run straight into Cracker’s broad chest. “There you are, Sugar Cookie. I was wondering where you went.”

Despite the short distance she had run, Michelle was panting, “I-I got the coats.”

Cracker smirked down at his fiancée, reaching out to clasp her face between his large hands. “Is everything alright, my dear. You look a little flushed.”

“I’m alright,” Michelle insisted, forcing back the urge to pout.

“Very well, I suppose we should be going then.” Without another word, Cracker scooped his fiancée up along with the coats and carried her towards the gate despite her feeble protests.

The other party guests were making their way out as well, sharing final farewells with their hosts.

Michelle managed to regain her composure enough to thank Oven and Samore for inviting them and to say goodbye to Spice and the others.

As Cracker carried her back to their ship, she felt her eyes beginning to grow heavy. It was indeed very late; the edges of the horizon were starting to fade indicating they were not long for a sunrise.

The party that had been carrying on in full swing had died down, with only some drunken revelers lingering sporadically in the messy streets.

Cracker’s long strides covered the distance almost as quickly as the porcupines they road into Fukkura Town on, and the rhythm of his movements practically rocked Michelle to sleep.

As they approached the coast, she could barely make out their waiting ship through her sleepy haze. Cracker leaned down and whispered, “We’ll be home soon, my love. Sleep well.”

Michelle smiled to herself, resting her head against her husband’s broad chest as her hand lazily reached up to stroke the side of his face before going limp as she drifted off to sleep.

                                                           The End.

[lovingwhitemtnsnh]

Home for Sale - $1,339,000 - Almost new home on private 2 ac on the Pemi River Virtual Tour: https://tourwizard.net/0a37ea7f/

TURNKEY CUSTOM BUILT ADIRONDACK RIVERFRONT HOME

on the Pemigewasset River in Thornton, N.H. 

This waterfront residence is just over two years young and in pristine condition. Sitting on a knoll overlooking a back spur of the PEMI RIVER, it was built with extraordinary detail and functionality, as it was intended to be the owners forever home.

This location was chosen to build upon, for the convenience to the river from the back of the property, the snowmobile corridor from the front of the property, and being only ½ mile from the major interstate, all without the noise of any river commotion, snowmobile or vehicle traffic.     This is truly a most desirable and tranquil setting.     The new owners will be fortunate to have all the benefits of artistic and creative construction, by the most talented builder in the North Country.     This is the Perfect Riverfront estate with hard to find social amenities, including: Skiing, Snowmobiling, Fishing, Camping, Golfing, Hiking, Hunting, Antiquing, Boating, Swimming, Tubing, Kayaking, Music Festivals, Maple Sugaring and countless other activities!     This is all in a little town, located in the White Mountains of N.H. Enjoy the scenery, fantastic views, wildlife, flowing sound of the river, and especially the privacy of your 2+ acre homestead.    Showings begin on Friday April 16th by appointment only, with a 24-hour notice.    

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 MORE DETAILS AND FEATURES BELOW

 This riverfront haven is only 1/2 mile from Interstate 93, in the second town north of  “The Gateway to New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest”.  Located only a few exits north of the Lake’s Region and known as the place that New England goes to Play.

The White Mountain National Forest is known for Skiing, Snowmobiling, Fishing, Camping, Golfing, Hiking, Hunting, Antiquing, Boating, Swimming, Tubing, Kayaking, Music Festivals, Maple Sugaring and countless other activities! This home is the perfect spot to access the entire playground.

* A long winding tree covered driveway off a town maintained road, gives you all the privacy you could desire.

*The Central NH Snowmobile Corridor is accessed right out the back overhead door of the workshop, driving through your own private wooded trail, to the end of the property that has access to the main trail system only hundreds of yards away.

* Snowmobile Trail access out the front of the property, and Riverfront access from the back of the property!

* Since the front of the property has heavy tree coverage, and foliage, you’ll never hear the snowmobiles going by. The 200’ water frontage is on the spur of the river so you can swim, and launch your kayak / tube without getting swept away by the current.

* There is a floating dock, that is left in for the summer to make the access even easier.

* Prior to construction a Shore land Protection site assessment was done and it was determined that this home is NOT in the flood plain.

* Extra Amenities such as: 70’ X 30’ Workshop and Garage with drive through access (8’ X 20’ overhead door in the front, 10’ X 10’ overhead door in the rear), giving you plenty of storage for all your toys and room for your DIY projects. More Amenities include an 8’ X 20’ Woodshed, Hot Tub (7 Person tub with 60 Jets, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Stereo, with a Chemical Free using an Ionization System, 5 Person Steam Room, and a Hanging Chairlift Seat for your enjoyment. Outdoor overhead lighting surrounding the tiled Fire Pit and Seating area (big enough for a very large gathering), Outdoor Shower and so much more…Too much to list!

* You will never have to worry about space to park your guest’s vehicles. There is plenty of parking within the corralled “Red Western Cedar Fence” along the drive. There are also cut outs off the drive for many more vehicles.

*****THE PERFECT RIVERFRONBT LOT*****

Enter the home through an “old craftsman’s style” wrap around porch that surrounds the side and back.

As you enter the home you notice the exquisite quality, and detail that the builder used to butt the ends of the light colored wood walls and ceilings. Only an artisan can create such fine detail. Tile flooring makes for easy clean up in the home's entry /mud room. This mudroom boasts custom built in shelving for all your outdoor gear that you might wish to bring in. This can include your skis, along with a place for your coats, shoes, and keys. As you walk down the hall, the first door you open takes you into a cozy space for your home office and a beautifully designed half bath with a river rock vessel sink, and the builders signature curved thick pine slab countertops. Heading to the end of the hall you enter the home through a stately massive barn door on a black metal railing.

The home’s large great room has hickory flooring and a 20+ foot high cathedral light wood tongue and groove ceiling, with the custom detailed woven walls and a ceiling fan that is turned on with a remote or wall switch. 4 Skylights not only let in light and air, but also close themselves automatically when it rains, trimming out the ceiling.

The kitchen on one end has beautiful natural wood cabinets and a custom thick curved pine counter top, leathered granite island top any master chef will enjoy, black stainless appliances, and a black granite sink. The island accentuates the kitchen's color pallet with beauty and functionality. The kitchen overlooks the dining area and living room, with a stone hearth and woodstove. There is a glass door that leads to the covered/open air deck and another that leads to a covered, post and beam screened in porch This space is expansive yet intimate and a wonderful space to sit and ponder, watching and listening to the river below flow gently by.

Off the Great Room is a large master bedroom suite with hickory floors, an oversized barn door entrance, a large master walk in closet and a master bath with custom tiled oversized shower with a Rain Head, Handheld Shower and 3 jetted wall ports to ease any pains from your kayaking trip! Master shower with custom built seating, glass doors and a tiled pebble floor in addition this bathroom also boasts a custom double sink vanity with river rock vessel sinks and a sliding barn door mirror above the sinks that reveals the bath window. This custom bath feels like the luxury of going to a spa in your own home.

The custom fir stairway carries you to the second floor theatre room with a circular electric stadium seating couch, which overlooks the wood wall with oversized TV, connected to a Bose surround sound system making it feel like you are in a theater, while in the privacy of your home.

The second level includes a large bedroom with seated reading nooks, another large bedroom, which has Queen sized bunk beds, a separate twin bed while having enough room for bureaus and end tables. The second level large bath has a river themed tiled shower, a granite vessel sink, and a vanity with the builder’s signature countertop.

The home also has a finished basement, with a large family room a second high end half bath with vessel sink, large mechanical room and the most amazing home gym with flat screen Television; 2 tread mills, 1 rower, 1 back stretcher, 1 flat bench with incline, 1 flat bench with decline,1 bench press,1 preacher curl, 1 universal machine, 1 smith machine , 1 full set of dumbbells with rack , 1 set of free weights, with rubber flooring and mirrors that all come with the house.

This home has 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 2 half baths, a theater room, an office, a massive gym, a large family room, a great room, a screen porch, potential in-law apartment, outdoor deck seating and more…

Excluding the porches and decks, this home has more than 3000 square feet of living space, central air, a drilled well with purified drinking water, and a state approved 3-bedroom septic system on a 2.13-acre lot. 

Property Type: Single Family Building Type: House Bedrooms: 3 Bathrooms: 2 Lot Size: 2.13 House Size: 3000 Year Built: 2017 For more information call 6037268642 or 6032547037

[holyfool-arcana]

The Holy Fool: Chapter 3

Hook, line, sinker

Word Count: 2.1k Warnings: Mentions of infant death and murder, implied sexual relationships,  Rating: M Description: An Arcana AU set in a Vesuvia that is half-noir and half-fantasy.

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✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ

Liuyin’s left ear had been both yelled off and pinched beyond sensation by the time Doctor Devorak returned, and they were pretty sure it was as red as a sunset by now. Luckily, Auntie Liya had grown weary of tormenting them for their impulsiveness and left to brew herself some tea in a huff, and Liuyin had retreated back into their own room, changing out of the funeral robes and veil, and into a casual set of clothing once more.

That extra layer of blazer made them feel better, like a suit of armor, and Liuyin had healed themselves up as well, a bit vexed by the lingering sting where their hair had hung over their ear.

Thus, Doctor Devorak was greeted by the sight of aunt and apprentice in the courtyard veranda, two cups of tea between them when he emerged from the autopsy and packed the baby back into its original bundle.

Liuyin smiles at him and gestures him to one of the stone benches-- Aunt Liya scoffed, rolled her eyes, and then begrudgingly produces a matching third teacup that had been tucked up her sleeve before pouring out some tea as well, Liuyin seemingly unperturbed by the judgemental airs as they steepled their fingers and turned to the auburn-haired man.

"The baby died in water. But it wasn't drowned this morning, and I also doubt it was drowned in the harbor," Liuyin says plainly.

The doctor blinked, frowned, and then stared at Liuyin, rather taken aback. "How did you figure out?"

Liuyin smirked internally-- they were only half-sure of their prognosis, with the rest being guesswork. "There's a certain smell to bodies found at sea, from the salt, and when I'd been holding onto it this morning, the body was already stiff as a board."

“And the drowning?” the doctor asks, admittedly with a bit too much excitement.

Liuyin had opened their mouth, most likely intending to tell them, before being cut off with a resounding smack to the table coming from the older woman.

"Liuyin," Aunt Liya interjected with a withering look between the two of them, knowing and probably resenting the fact her ward was enjoying the banter. "We don't speculate on the manner in which the bodies our clients bring to us died!" She admonishes.

Liuyin replied, nearly reflexively, “Sorry Auntie,” while not sounding very remorseful at all.

By clockwork, as if this were a dance they’d perfected by now, Aunt Liya had said in the vernacular dialect of Langya, “Silly child, we’ve seen so many dead, why the interest in this particular body?”

“You’re not curious at all, auntie?” Liuyin asked blithely, with that same sort of calculated shrewdness they’d exhibited at the docks. Be just vexing enough to get others to dismiss you, but not enough to want to harm you or arouse suspicion. It involved a fair amount of playing at stupidity in moderation, something that must have come by either years of practice or as instinctively as breathing.

When Julian tried his hand at it, it came wrapped in a bundle of cavalier flirtatiousness. For Liuyin, it was a calculated mix of ignorance and innocence projected onto a face with eyes far too clever for such a con.

Yet Julian Devorak watched in amazement as the very woman who raised Liuyin from an infant huffs and busies herself with chugging down the chrysanthemum tea in dismissal at their ward’s pretense of innocence, having seemingly bought the lead.

Hook, line, sinker.

“Our lack of curiosity is what has kept us alive and fed,” Aunt Liya replied pointedly. “Our clients are wealthy, or powerful, or both. What’s to stop them from believing we’ve outlived our uses? Especially if secrets were shared with,” and here, she levels a sharp gaze at the doctor, who’d at least had the good grace to look down at the steaming cup. “Outsiders with no regards for what we do, our customs and rituals.”

Liuyin was openly frowning now, and had been opening their mouth-- perhaps to argue, perhaps to agree, perhaps, and this was a ludicrous belief, Julian had thought to himself, to defend his own honor.

He cuts them off by standing with a flourish of his overcoat, having gauged by now that he had, as with most places, overstayed his welcome. “Ah, well Madam Zheng, Apprentice Mei. It’s been an honor, to be certain, but I must be off.”

No use driving a wedge in between Liuyin and their aunt, especially given the way they’d indicated their regard and appreciation for them on the way to the coffin-house.

The witchling looked as though they wanted to interject further but hadn’t the opportunity-- Julian readjusted his gloves, nodded sharply at them, and then made his way down the cobblestone path of the courtyard to the front door. He doesn’t wait to clarify Liuyin’s abrupt call for him to wait, nor Madam Zheng’s hiss for her apprentice to stop being so foolish and reckless to chase after such a man.

With a hint of ruefulness, he thinks that the old witch is right.

✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ

“I suspect foul play,” Julian greets Asra with no other prelude as he sidles in from the back door to the shop, stooping before he hit his head on one of the lower ceiling beams.

“Mhm? That’s nice,” the white-haired magician replied absently, stooped over a table on which laid a prosthetic arm as well as a spread of cards.

Unbidden, that old longing returned to his chest like an instinct-- not really love, no, and even calling it a crush was pushing it, but that inclination to act like a foolish schoolboy and (metaphorically) tug at Asra’s curls or chatter his ear off till the other would just literally shut him up by crushing their mouths together, give his hands something better to do.

A flash and then the impulse was gone.

After a brief pause, Asra prompts, gesturing. “The arm and the missing fiancee? Or Liuyin’s baby?”

“Well,” Julian cleared his throat, deeming whatever Asra was doing safe enough to pull a seat up for, slinging his arms around the back of the chair. “I’ve only taken a look at one of those.”

“So the baby is a foul play case,” Asra murmurs as he reshuffles his deck of tarot cards and then flips one over, frowning at the horned figure on it.

“I think so. I think Liuyin would agree, but her aunt wants the case closed and baby buried,” he muses. Not in a suspicious manner, he had gauged-- Julian knew enough about that sort of thing, the wanting your secrets buried six feet deep where no one could hear even a whisper of it. It was almost… protective, in its own strange way, slightly overbearing or smothering, which reminded him of Pasha and the way she scolded him when she got too worried for his safety and recklessness. Idly, he wondered if Liuyin were the same.

Asra seemed to agree, flipping over another card-- a smiling youth who looked suspiciously like the person occupying a corner of the doctor’s thoughts, an orb with a star shining within it cupped in their hands. “The Old Witch doesn’t like asking questions. Says they’re bad for the business.”

“I can tell, dear,” Julian replied automatically, earning him a look of near-scorn from the magician. “But is it because she doesn’t like to or doesn’t want to?”

“What difference does it make, even?” Asra raised a brow. “A baby died. Case closed and over with.”

“Don’t tell me your cards aren’t saying there’s more to it than that,” Julian replied, reaching out a hand lightning-quick, laying it over Asra’s.

“I’ll take another avenue,” he responded firmly. “It’s not a matter I want to pry into. Liuyin’s business and mine remain separate for their sake.”

“So there is something more, you agree.”

Asra turns to him then, something like fire in his violet eyes as he carefully, using his free hand, encircled the wrist that Julian had caged his other hand with, extricating the offending appendage. “Ilya.”

He’d never heard him sound this dangerous before, truth be told. It was sending shivers down the hair on the back of his neck.

Asra continued. “Whatever happens, my affairs are my own, just as Liuyin has their own matters to attend to. I suggest you don’t try to reel them into this. Are we understood?”

What if they want answers, what if they want to be reeled in?

It was so silent that Julian could hear the soft rasp of his own breathing, the dull thud of blood in his ears. “Yeah,” he found himself nodding obediently.

✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ

“Blessings for the rich, blessings for the poor!” Liuyin chanted listlessly, waving the stack of talismans in their hand as they assailed yet another group of unsuspecting tourists in the Temple District.

“You! Good sir over there! You look like you could use a little… magic in your life,” Liuyin said with as much charm as they could muster after staying up the previous night, chasing after a baby-corpse-snatcher in the dark, and then getting yelled at by their aunt for consorting with the likes of cads like Doctor Devorak who stuck their noses too far into other peoples’ businesses. As a result, they were made to hand out talismans as punishment to the tourists, which, between the tourist-wrangling and the general lack of success this endeavour turned out to be, was far worse a task than having to clean the cadavers brought in.

The tourist, probably not expecting to be beset by a figure who dressed like a religious fanatic and spoke like a particularly ambitious but dead-inside street vendor, had shaken off their grip and stalked away.

Other attempts bore similar fruit, with only one or two accepting their talismans-- Liuyin had checked the sigils inserted subtly into the charms for protections that had a persuasive air-- one that manifested as a small voice in the user’s head that suggested they visit a particular coffin-house on the edge of the Center City and the Temple District for any blessings, curses, exorcisms, and funerals they needed to undertake.

Their punishment, as per usual, ended at sundown. Liuyin gazed over at the setting sun and groaned, wiping a clammy hand down their face and slumping against a nearby wall. Finally, finally, their workday was over.

With great enthusiasm, they’d torn the veil and forehead ribbon from their head and balled it up, shoving them along with the talismans into the pouch slung from their shoulder, getting started on the white robe they wore atop their actual clothing as well, undoing the sash.

“You didn’t look the type to be into public indecency, but I suppose appearances are deceiving,” a voice said right next to their ear, and Liuyin jumped forward several feet before realizing who it was.

“Gods and devils,” Liuyin had blurted out, “Please don’t sneak up on me again, Doctor Devorak.”

“Call me Julian,” he grinned down at them.

“Julian, please don’t sneak up on me again,” they corrected, letting their robe hang loose, opening onto a pair of loose trousers and neck-high blouse, so much for public indecency.

“Won’t happen again, darling. ‘Pon my honor,” he’d said, holding three fingers up and clasping the other hand to his chest in a gesture like taking a vow.

They looked half-amused at that, softening the words, making them less suspicious than they were earlier. “What do you want?” Liuyin asked, query mirroring what they’d demanded from the doctor just earlier today-- heavens, it was only today that this entire fiasco had taken place. Not even twenty-four hours later, and they’d been bantering with the taller man as if they were old friends.

“Ever to the point as usual,” he’d said with a grin. “Come, walk with me. I was looking for you, but your aunt said you were out-- while chasing me off with a sword.”

“Ah, right, the peachwood sword. I believe she thinks you’re a wicked spirit,” Liuyin muttered, earning a hearty chuckle from Julian. Their aunt used it to banish wicked spirits, as was common in their line of spiritualism. Liuyin had their own, usually left in their room along with the rest of the charms and trinkets, unless they were going to perform some ritual or blessing or another, in which case they had it strapped to their back.

“Then, my dear,” Julian says, swivelling around to face them with a hint of mischief glinting in his eyes. “Would you be adverse to an evening of wickedness?”

Liuyin raised a brow expectantly. “Where did you have in mind?”

His answering smirk promised a world of trouble. “The Red Market.”

[ask-de-writer]

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : Part 44 of 83 : World of Sea

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SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

Part 40 of 83

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2020

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users   of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may   reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information   remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in   my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical   compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  PART 1 is here

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Chapter 15: Old Crab

Kurin got to ride on a catamaran sailboat as she was taken to the Gathering rafts.  She watched everything with interest from leaving the Dark Dragon to arrival at the docking area.  As she was lifted up to the raft deck, Kurin realized that most of the ship booths were taken down and stowed.  Only the food booths and a few others were left.

The crowd around Marad’s booth showed that he still had his flair for dealing with the public.

“Let’s go to Marad’s for some food!” said Kurin enthusiastically.

Tousling Kurin’s hair, Sula replied, “You go eat.  I have to make my report to the Council.”  She strode off to the Council Pavilion. Kurin, supported by Doctor Worran and Seve, a deck-hand from the Dark Dragon, made her way to Marad’s and food.

Most people, seeing that it took two people to support her, stayed back and left Kurin alone.  She could hear the whispers, though.

“I heard that she lived through Ord poisoning.”

“Not what I heard.  Someone told me that they faked …” that one ended in a thud and a scuffle, with a “You take that back!”

“Weak as a new hatched bird, poor thing!”

And one that got her interest, “Get Roper, he’s got her trade chits!”

Kurin steered through the crowd and entered Marad’s booth, needing both Doctor Worran and Seve to keep her on her feet.  Marad brought out a chair, when he saw her coming.  “Good grief! Dragon Hair, it’s good to see you!  You look like bird breath smells!”  He paused in seating Kurin, to stare.  Kurin followed his eye and grinned.

“Doctor Worran, meet Marad, one of the best cooks around.  Marad, this is Doctor Worran, from the Dark Dragon.  She saved my life.  This good man is Seve, he’s from the Dark Dragon, too.”

“Now you’ve done me in, Kurin.  I’ll always feed you to pay you back for that tutoring, but you’ve gone and brought an exotic beauty and a friend as well.  If I don’t feed you all, I couldn’t live with myself, and there goes all of my profit.”

Belying his words, busy helpers bustled about his small kitchen, serving the hungry crowd.  “Now what can I get you fine people?”

“Do you have any crab or lobster left?” asked Kurin without much hope.

“No live ones, Kurin, but I have some steamed crab cakes, made from flake blocks.  They’re just about to come out.  There’s sweet or tart dipping sauces to go with ‘em.”

They were just tucking into the crab cakes, when Sula came striding up. Her business with the Council was done for now.  Marad saw her coming and had a crab cake waiting.

“This looks like it was a good place to come,” Sula said, eying her crab cake like a hungry sea bird.  She joined the group, and Kurin introduced her to Marad.

“I wish that we could have these on the way home,” Doctor Worran said wistfully.  She was industriously cleaning every bit of crab off the Strong Skin board that it had been steamed on.  “Unfortunately, crab just doesn’t keep very long.”  

Kurin and Marad looked at each other, nodding slowly.  He said, “That crab was over a Gathering old and nowhere near the end of its shelf life.”

Sula pounced on that, “How do you manage that, or is it Ship’s Business?”

“It is,” said Marad leaning on the counter and displaying a waxy looking block, a little bigger than a man’s hand, “but it’s Captain’s Discretion.  We were hoping to sell the process.  I can sell you up to two hundred of these one pound crab blocks that are surplus in our pantry.  We have a few tons in one of the holds, too, but I have no authority over them.  If folk in this fleet know that they are eating old crab or fish, they won’t touch it.  It doesn’t sell, and we need the pantry space.  You can put up almost any edible fish or other food the same way.  Keeps good for two to three Gatherings.”

Just then Roper came proudly up to Kurin. The grown folk paused and watched as the young ones did business. “I sold all of your toys, and got good prices, too.  I saved the chits for you, cause I was sure that you’d come back.”  He dumped a whole pouch of trade scrip in her lap.  “There’s thirty four skins, twenty two blocks and eighteen bits.”

Kurin, eyes wide, looked into the pouch, “And you put away my booth.  I saw.  You have been busy, Roper.”  She was counting from the pouch.

“Master Juris showed me how to fold it and where to put everything.”

“Then you have earned this,” said Kurin, handing him scrip.  

His eyes grew wide in turn. “Five whole skins and five blocks!  This is the most I’ve ever got!  I’ll go to Alor and put it in my account right away.” he scampered off.

Sula said, “I see why you trusted him with your booth.”

Just then, Captain Mord emerged from the Council Pavilion and Kurin, without thinking, tried to stand up and wave. She did call, “Captain! Over here at Marad’s!”  Sula and Doctor Worran caught her as her big muscles went lax, and eased her back into her chair.

Captain Mord, seeing her slump, came at a run.  “Are you OK, Kurin?” he asked in concern.

Before Kurin could pull words together, Sula answered for her.  “She’s fine, Captain Mord.  She is recovering nicely.  I’ve been Ord poisoned twice, so I know what I’m talking about.”

“We owe you thanks, Captain Sula,” he said, crouching in front of Kurin and looking her over to be sure the she really was there and OK.  He looked over her shoulder at Sula and said warmly, “Your account of her navigational ability in unfamiliar waters, turned the tide.  They were going to close the school and make us pay refunds because they thought she was too sick.”

“Were — — what do they want now?” asked Doctor Worran, curiosity alight in her eyes.

“Only to buy a master chart of the Naral - Cliftos current system — — Bottom and all — — Dragon Sea to Equator.”  He was grinning as he waited for his bombshell to go off.

Sula was the first to realize the magnitude of the task. Eyes shocked to wide green pools, she asked, “How many ship-Gatherings are they going to pay for?”

“Two, up front.  If they like the initial results, up to four more.  In total, a minimum of 50,000 skins and as high as 250,000 skins.  We will conduct the school as we make the chart.  That is a separate income.”

Kurin, dancing in her chair with excitement, said, “Captain, if you grin any wider your teeth will show behind you!”

“That’s wonderful!” exclaimed Sula.  “It’s enough to build a ship like mine!”  As she thought, she gazed at a long winged Sea Hawk soaring overhead, its shadow causing other, smaller, birds to panic into flight or swarm under awnings for protection.

“You might even have some left over.  It makes my business with you seem small.”

“Do you need to sell or buy?” asked Mord, instantly curious and guarded.

“To buy.  Both provisions and a process covered by your Ship’s Business.  I am told that it is available at your discretion.

“We have just become aware of your block preservation process for fish and other food.  We want to buy all of the block preserved food that you can spare, and the process itself.”

“What do you offer for all of that?” asked Mord, carefully neutral, preparing to haggle.

“I have the entire prepared hide of a nine tonne Hag.  It is already stretched and dried.  I will sign a non-revelation agreement for the nearby fleets, so long as it does allow us to reveal the process to the Winternight, Corlis and Barant fleets.”

Mord was shaken by the magnitude of the offer.  It was enough to equip five ships with the best of distillation equipment, kitchen fireboxes and the array of special pots needed for cooking over flame, and specialized fire boxes for their boat-shops as well.  Mord said, “You must want this very badly, to offer so much.  If the hide passes Master Juris’ examination, you have a deal.”  He shook her hand, and sent for Alor to draw up the necessary agreements.

Turning to Marad, Captain Mord leaned on the counter and asked, “You set this up, didn’t you?”

“Well, Sir, what I did was give them some crab cakes, and then show them a block.  After that, I told them that I could sell them some provisions but you had to sell them the process and goods in the hold.”

“You did well, and there will be a bonus for you, as well as shares for the whole crew.  Now, would you please get Master Murel so that he can explain the process and demonstrate the equipment?  Also, he needs to set someone to sorting which blocks we can sell, including the ones in the cargo hold.”

Turning back to Sula, he asked, “Why do you want this so badly?”

The circling bird became an object of extreme interest.  Sula, watching it, felt past pain and tears well up again.  Her voice shook as she answered, “There were twenty seven reasons on my ship alone in the last two wars.  Three of those reasons were children.”  She sat heavily and braced her arms on the table.  Her voice broke and she began to cry.  

TO BE CONTINUED

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[portgas-d-ace-of-hearts]

Take Me Down (To Paradise) Chapter Two

Chapter Summary: In which Ace gets to punch someone and the group returns to the ship.

Notes:  Small trigger warning for a brief mention of sexual assault in conversation, nothing shown either explicitly or otherwise.

Violet eyes wide, Nym’s lips parted. She licked her dry lips and replied with the only words that came to mind. “I guess you won’t mind if I tag along with you, then?”

  …

“Tag along with us?” 

  Ace cringed inwardly. He could have hit himself when the only thing he could do was echo Nym’s words back to her. Then again, he felt numb. Somehow he’d found his second soulmate getting noodles and sake at a pub during a night at port. A soulmate who seemed to be in a bit of a bind, considering the reason that brought her to their table in the first place. Whoever that shady-ass stalker was, her sitting down between him and Marco had been enough to send him scurrying. The sudden surge of protectiveness he felt startled him, at once both familiar and foreign. He’d felt similar instincts with Marco, even when they’d only first gotten to know each other. 

  “Yes, tag along with you, ya know? Leave town together?” Seeing as they’d just been revealed as soulmates, he grudgingly gave her the rest of his udon, motioning at the nearest family member of the pub owner to bring two more bowls. Judging by how she wolfed down the rest of his cooling portion, she’d need more as much as he did. 

  “What, just like that? You don’t have a life here? What about your family?” As irrational as it made him feel, the longer he looked at her the more he wanted to touch her, if only to see if she were real. When Marco’s mark had revealed itself on his arm as the man held a dish of food out to him like a peace offering, he’d wanted to do the same—he had done, before long. Once soulmates were revealed to each other they were damn difficult to keep apart. 

    How could this be happening?

  Nym slurped up the last of the thick noodles and wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist. Her strange violet eyes alighted on him, and the inappropriately-timed thought of how many kisses fit between them reared its head. “Yes, ‘just like that’, and no, I don’t. My family doesn’t live here. I was just passing through.” Her nose wrinkled playfully. “I’m what they call a wayfarer.”

  Thatch leaned towards her with interest, though careful to keep his shins far out of her range. “Oh, so you’re just a traveler, then? You go where the wind takes you?”

  Nym propped her chin on her fist, her elbow resting on the table. “Exactly. Sometimes I travel with folks, and sometimes I travel alone. Since me and Ace here just found out that we’re soulmates and I’m not doing anything else, it stands to reason that I might see where the wind takes us when it blows us in the same direction.”

  Ace found that deeply amusing for some reason. A cheeky grin curled his lips. “A thirst for adventure and nothing holding you down to one location? You might as well be a pirate.”

  Nym eyed him curiously. “Is that an official invitation?”

  “Well, you did say you’re not doing anything else—”

  Thatch’s head thunked onto the table, his fist smacking against it emphatically. “Oh good god,” he moaned.  “Not again. Not more of this fucking soulmate flirting bullshit.”

  Nym flushed a rather fetching cherry red—in Ace’s opinion—and then in the next moment Thatch swore and bent down to rub at his shins. “Fucking hell do you kick hard for such a small woman!”

  Marco let loose a raucous bark of a laugh. “It’s what you deserve. Payback for all the times from before when you gave me and Ace shit.”

  “Fuck you, man, you two were un-fucking-bearable,” Thatch insisted as he continued rubbing furiously and muttering curses. 

  Nym looked between Ace and Marco with interest as two bowls of steaming udon were laid in front of her and Ace. “You two are already soulmates?” Ace watched as she connected the dots, then held still as she studied him. “So you have two soulmates, then, Ace.”

  Ace found himself gifting her an easy smile, voice soft and almost drawling. “Apparently I can’t help myself. I have to find double the trouble wherever I go.”

  Nym laughed, then sobered, clearly intrigued. “Does he have a second one as well?” 

  “He’s right here,” Marco chimed in then, taking the opportunity to steal a bite from Ace himself, “And the answer is yes.”

  She hummed. “Hmm. I wonder…”

  “What?” Ace’s brows creased in concern, trying to picture what might be bothering her. 

  She extended her opposite wrist in front of her on the table, baring a secondary, dormant soul-mark. “Is your other mark active or dormant?”

  Wordlessly Marco slowly offered his other wrist as well, revealing another dormant mark. “You’re not thinking—?”

  “One way to find out,” she murmured, pressing her wrist into his. Not being on either end of that match, Ace couldn’t feel the burn of activation, but he could observe as Nym’s mark appeared on Marco’s flesh the way it had on his own, mirrored against Marco’s Phoenix flashing into existence on her. 

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Thatch blurted, watching them with wide eyes. “Double mutual soulmates? A bonded set ?”

  Ace’s stomach twisted itself in knots. Outwardly he appeared smug, but inwardly the turmoil might suffocate him. How could he safely love his soulmates without hurting them? How could he be everything they needed without also being his father’s son? He felt, almost, a rising sense of panic, one that abated suddenly, and when he looked up from glaring into his udon he found Marco’s hand in his, and Nym’s on his wrist. As his soulmates they’d instinctually felt his distress and moved to comfort him.

  “It looks like now I have two reasons to leave,” Nym shrugged, sounding upbeat. 

  Marco chuckled, amused both by her demeanor and the expression evidently on Ace’s face. “Face it, Ace,” he teased him, “you’ll just have to get used to twice the love.”

  “Twice the annoyance, you mean,” Thatch muttered, dodging the elbow aimed his way by Marco. 

  Ace flipped off their blonde friend and dug into his new udon, unable to take his eyes off of Nym—or off of Marco, for that matter. Despite having eaten before she arrived, he still finished before her, sending his bowl away with coins to settle their tab. As soon as she finished eating and her bowl left the table as well, he stood, readjusting his hat. “Time to go. Do you have your things?” 

  His friend and two soulmates got to their feet. Nym picked up a small pack he hadn’t noticed before and nodded resolutely. “Yep.” She’d looked short before when she slid in next to him and changed his life irrevocably, but now standing next to her with Marco he could observe how truly tiny she looked next to them. Despite her wide hips and not being particularly thin, she seemed almost delicate in her features, elf-like in some way. The name Nymphadora certainly suited her, even if she found it distasteful. 

  “Let’s go then, babe.” 

  Her reaction to the endearment was lost in the murmur of the crowd around them.  Without conscious thought, Ace took her hand in his, twining their fingers together. When he looked over his shoulder as he led them toward the exit, he saw Marco holding her other hand, Thatch trailing behind them like a sulky duckling. He slipped outside with his ears pricked for danger. A good thing, as when they emerged onto the street they found the man from before lurking in the shadows nearby. 

  He made as if to grab at Nym, the motion aborted halfway through as he realized she had company with her. Before he could change tactics properly, Ace decked him with his free hand, sending him sprawling onto his back and out cold. He lightly stepped over him, tugging the others along with him. He noticed with no small sense of satisfaction that Marco had stepped on the man’s nose when passing over him. 

  “You’ll like the ship,” he told her conversationally as they walked through the streets hand in hand and abreast to Thatch. “It’s called the Moby Dick. ”

  “Is it now? Your captain must have a fondness for old novels,” she remarked. She didn’t seem at all fazed by him laying out her would-be attacker. In fact, she had a definite spring in her step as they made their back to the ship. 

  “Guess so,” Marco mused. “Pops has read a lot of books in his time.”

  “Pops?” 

  “Yeah, the Old Man,” Ace explained. “Whitebeard.” 

  “He treats us all as his sons,” Thatch added. 

  “Ah, I see.” Nym paused. “Does that mean—do you think—are there women onboard?”

  The three men slowed, Ace and Marco sharing one of their loaded glances that had more than once earned them gentle ribbing from the crew. Marco sounded as uncertain as Ace felt. “A few. As a general rule he doesn’t typically allow women combatants, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any in the crew.”

  Ace’s hand tightened on Nym’s, not willing to let her go for a second. “There’ve been exceptions. When he takes a crew under his command, he’ll usually give the old members a choice of joining him or starting over again. Banshee and Cornelia were some of my old crew that he allowed to stay.”

  Thatch continued their reassurances. “And he’s accepted a few exceptionally gifted women into his forces for other roles—trackers, spies, messengers, healers…”

  Nym seemed a bit upset. “So why does he have that rule, anyway?” 

  The docks came into view, an array of ships of varying shapes and sizes moored up and down the row. 

  “Probably to avoid conflict in the crew,” Thatch guessed. “To avoid fights over relationships. Or, ah, children on board.”

  “Or to protect them,” Marco offered. “I wouldn’t fancy being a woman captured by an enemy crew or the marines.”

  Nym made a disgusted noise. “Some of the crews allow rape?”

  “Some—not all, and not ours,” he hurried to reassure her. “Not any halfway decent crew, for that matter. Pirates don’t have many laws, but we’re strict about the ones we keep.”

  “He’ll make an exception for you.” Ace’s voice wavered, his confidence not absolute even to his own ears. The way he said the words, it was clear he wanted to believe them, but that even he couldn’t be sure. “He has to. You’re our soulmate.”

  “And I’m useful.”

  Ace and Marco shared another glance. “You don’t have to be useful, babe.” Ace squeezed her hand to offer what comfort he could muster. 

  “But I am,” Nym insisted. “Marco’s right about my family, about our haki I mean. I’m a Swan, so I’ve trained to use it. Plus, I speak a few different languages. I could serve as a ship translator.”

  Ace felt a small bloom of pride in his chest. He and Marco may not think she had to be useful, and he knew his first soulmate agreed with him on that, but she bloody well would be . The translation abilities alone would make her an incredible asset, but with training in how to properly wield haki, it made her all the more valuable. If only the Old Man would see it that way. 

  “And.” Her voice dropped to below a whisper, and Ace had to strain to hear her speak. “And I’ve eaten a Devil Fruit.”

  Well then . 

  The conversation cut short as the Moby Dick came into view. Ace pointed out which ship it was to Nym as they approached. She let out an awed, breathy chuckle. “It’s huge.”

  Firmly trying to steer his mind out of the gutter, he agreed. His hold on her hand tightened briefly before he disentangled their fingers so they could board. He turned to Nym and carefully tucked her long hair into the hood of her cloak, which he then drew until it shadowed her face. Less than five minutes later, they found themselves aboard. A few of the night sentries called out friendly greetings to their group as they passed. Ace, Marco, and Thatch returned them as politely as possible without stopping. They kept to the shadows until they reached the room Ace shared with Marco, then Thatch wished them luck and split off to turn in for the evening. They slipped inside with Marco shutting the door firmly behind them and latching it from the inside. 

  “You can put your things on my desk for now.” Ace pointed toward the far corner as he unstrapped his dagger and laid it on his nightstand. He sleepily removed his hat and necklace, a little drowsy from his interrupted nap. 

  Out tumbled Nym’s hair as she discarded her cloak, the night-black curls completely unruly. She draped it across the back of his chair and set her pack on top of his desk as suggested, shucked off her boots, then flopped onto their bed lazily, looking between the two of them expectantly. “So what’s the plan? I assume I can’t hide away inside of here forever.”

  Marco finally moved from where he’d been hovering by the door to stand in front of Ace’s shelves of belongings and souvenirs. “No, that’s true. All the same, you should stay here until we can speak to Pops about this.”

  “Right.” She sighed. “It’s going to be rather awkward if he says no to you two.”

  “He won’t.” Ace swallowed thickly. “He can’t.”

  “He can ,” Marco disagreed, “but he probably won’t. There’s no real reason to.”

  Ace sat on the edge of his bed with a sigh and leaned over to discard his boots as well. “It’s times like these I wish I was still captain of my own ship.”

  End notes: I'm fully aware that we aren't clear on what happens with Cornelia and Banshee, so I took liberties there with the wiggle room I had considering he did seem to adopt the entire crew of the Spade Pirates. That, and we have Whitey Bay to show that despite his rule, there were a few exceptions to the female combatants stance. I also took that statement at face value and assumed that many of the women who DID work for him did so under a different capacity. As for his reasons, it seems like folks can only speculate, so I added a few of my own. I've also, ah, put in a lot of ideas about Soulmates.

“You don’t mean that.”  Marco’s soft chastisement sounded slightly muffled, as he’d balanced against the wall and bent in half to get out of his sandals. 

  Ace sighed. “No, I don’t.” He allowed himself to fall bonelessly back onto his bed, turning his head to look at Nym. “You should take the bed. Marco and I will sleep on the floor.”

  Nym rolled onto her side to face him. “Why?”

  Ace blinked at her, perplexed. “Because you don’t really know us well.”

  “Fair, but I’m pretty sure I can take on both of you if I have to.” She reached out and hesitantly touched his hand. “Besides, I know you won’t hurt me. I can read both of you and you don’t have any…let’s say nefarious plans. Besides, soulmates can’t harm each other. Doing that would hurt us all.”

  Ah, yes. The fail-safe of being a bonded set, regardless of number. Injuries inflicted by one soulmate on the other would be mirrored on the offending party unless they were done in self-defense, and outright killing your soulmate would only end in one's own death. It did serve as a deterrent toward physically harming your match, though it also seemed rather inconvenient if your match were an evil prick you wanted to be rid of. Soulmates could also harmlessly share memories, emotions, and sensations with each other. Now that particular soulmate ability had various applications, many of which didn’t bear thinking of with the inappropriateness of the moment. 

  Ace couldn’t fight off the smirk that threatened to take over. His other soulmate had fire. “I don’t know that you can take both of us on at the same time, but you’re right, we can’t hurt you.” 

  “But you might still want time to acclimate.” Marco dropped down on Ace’s other side to avoid boxing in Nym and making her feel trapped. “You went from having no soulmate to two in less than an hour and now you’ve agreed to skip town with us. It’s all a bit much for anyone I would think.”

  Nym shrugged. “Maybe. If you were up for it we could always just talk and get to know each other a bit more, but I think you two want to rest.”

  “No kidding.” Ace yawned then got back up, snagging one of his pillows on the way. “We’ll just take the floor. We’ll straighten out the details after a few hours of rest. We’re not set to leave port for another day or so, so we have plenty of time to get to the Old Man before we cast off again.”

  Marco took another of the pillows and set up a makeshift bed next to Ace, pulling him close so that his soulmate’s warm back pressed into his chest. Nym gazed at them as they quickly fell asleep, their quiet breathing filling the room. Despite not knowing each other for long, the inexplicable tug she felt toward them didn’t fade. Soulmates often found themselves drawn to each other even before they touched and their marks activated, though not all met under such strange circumstances. Once their marks activated, an irrevocable link would form between them and there would be nothing and no one that would be able to keep them apart save their own efforts, as they would find a way to stay together. Separating them would be the height of cruelty. Soulmates felt an inborn desire to speak to each other, to touch and be touched by each other, to see and smell each other and be in relatively close proximity. They craved intimacy from each other, whether it be as simple as a kiss or running their fingers through their match’s hair. 

  As much as her two soulmates were strangers, as bizarre as their situation was and as much as she really did wish to know them more, she also felt a longing to join them where they cuddled on the floor, bury her hands in their soft hair and press her face into each of their necks. She fidgeted, trying to get comfortable and eventually falling into an uneasy sleep. 

  Surely things would work out with their captain.

    Surely . 

...

End Notes:

I'm fully aware that we aren't clear on what happens with Cornelia and Banshee, so I took liberties there with the wiggle room I had considering he did seem to adopt the entire crew of the Spade Pirates. That, and we have Whitey Bay to show that despite his rule, there were a few exceptions to the female combatants stance. I also took that statement at face value and assumed that many of the women who DID work for him did so under a different capacity. As for his reasons, it seems like folks can only speculate, so I added a few of my own. I've also, ah, put in a lot of ideas about Soulmates.

[jeonsduck]

Wonderland (Space Pirate! Hongjoong

Treasure Planet Style Space Pirate AU (Note: Ateez’ ship, the Illusion is styled like a Korean turtle ship (look it up, its rad)) The stars were exceptionally bright from your position aboard the quarter deck of the Amaryllis. There was something about the way the stars looked aboard an airship that truly entranced you. You were busy drawing connections between the constellations when the first arrow struck the deck. You watched it sail out of the cloak of night like a comet, burrowing into the main deck, where it proceeded to spark and explode in flames. Then three more in quick succession. You quickly sat up, straining your eyes into the darkness beyond. Another arrow whistles past your ear and stuck fast in the railing behind you. “Attack! Pirates on the starboard bow! All crew to battle stations!” Came the lookout’s cry and there you say it. Blacker than night, save for the sail, a gold compass flipped upside down on a white backdrop. A rather pretty calling card for the deadliest space pirate crew in the Delta Quadrant. The crew of the Illusion, and their terrifying captain, dread pirate Kim Hongjoong. You scrambled down the quarterdeck, caught up in the mob of crew members rushing to their battle stations. A sonic cannon lit up the space around the Amaryllis in white hot fire. The camoflaged skin of the Illusion reflected the light of the cannon blast, revealing its location the the crew of the Amaryllis. You nearly collided the captain of the Amaryllis, shouting orders to his crew. “What are you doing up here! You need to get below deck!” He shouted, shoving you towards the hatch. You stumbled, and at that moment, the Illusion collided with the Amaryllis, sending the crew and yourself sprawling on to the deck. “Shit.” “Captain, the hulls’ been breached! We can’t take another hit like that.” The quartermaster reported. The captain looked at you and took something out of his belt. He handed you a piece of paper will a very official looking seal on it. “You, take this and get below. Whatever you do, do not let Kim Hongjoong get his hands on this, do you understand? Die to protect it if you must.” He ordered, and shoved you in the direction of the quarter deck. “Hide, now.” He urges, pulling a laser pistol from his belt and turning to aim towards the Illusion. You run, as best you can across the lurching ship and hunker down behind the bannister between the two decks. It’s not the best hiding spot, but once the crew of the Illusion boards the ship it won’t matter which deck you’re on, because neither will be safe. You chance a peak over the edge is the bannister, and watch seven members of the Illusion crew sail over the Amaryllis on sky boards. Under different circumstances, you might have applauded their solar cruising skills. As it was, you cowered in fear as the descended upon the deck in a v formation, backlit by the fires eating up the Amaryllis. The battle didn’t last long. The hardened crew of the Illusion were seasoned fighters, and the crew of the Amaryllis were no mariners, just simple passenger sailors. So why was a crew as fierce and bloody as theirs looting a passenger airship? Your train of thought was disrupted by an eighth figure landed on the burning deck of the Amaryllis. “Captain, no sign of the docking schedule on the crew.” One of the pirates said, lazily resting on his light sword. “Then search the passengers. Go below deck.” Hongjoong commanded. The other pirate saluted ostentatiously and the crew began to search for the hatch. You looked at the slip of paper in your hands. Was this what they were looking for? Unfolding it, you found four words written on the page. Cyrius, Devule, Trisk, and Modai. All planets bordering the edge of the Delta Quadrant, the last being the capital of the Kryn Empire. Flipping the page back over you looked at the seal. Official, from the desk of the Kryn emperor himself. This, was a very important document. You looked up again, watching the crew of the Illusion search around for the hatch. If they went below deck, they might very will kill those passengers, searching for information that you had. Cyrius, Devule, Trisk, and Modai. “Stop it! Leave the passengers alone! They don’t have what you want.” You’re speaking before you even know what you’re doing. What ARE you doing? The crew turns around, weapons drawn and Kim Hongjoong, slowly walks around to face you. You catch glimpses of his face in the fire, the x-shaped scar in his eyebrow, short hair, sharp nose. He’s wearing a long military coat, unbuttoned with a fur collar over his shoulders. His boots are nearly knee high, and from his belt hangs a light saber and a sonic pistol. Neither of which are necessary, due to his left arm ending a few inches below the elbow and having been replaced by a miniature plasma cannon. He smirks, even laughs, approaching you slowly. “And what do you know about what I want? Hmm, little one?” “Well, I do know you’re a lot shorter in person that the stories make you out to be.” You have no idea why you said that. Why the fuck did you say that?! The bannister next to your head explodes violently, shrapnel catching you across the cheek. “If you don’t want the next shot to go through your head, I suggest you make your point.” Hongjoong says, arm cannon still humming and steaming after blowing the bannister to pieces. “You want this list of planets don’t you.” You say, holding out the piece of paper. Hongjoong’s eyes widen and he chuckles. “Maybe you know more than I thought.” He offers. He holds out his real hand, and nods at you. “Give it to me, I really don’t want to have to kill you today.” You hold your hand out with the manifest, trembling slightly. “If I give you this, you have to swear to let us go.” You say. Where is all this confidence suddenly coming from? The crew of the Illusion laughs, and one of them jabs another in the ribs jokingly. “They want his word. They want him to swear!” He says, eliciting another round of laughter. “You have my word.” Hongjoong promises with a sly smile. “Well then in that case.” You say, and move to hand the paper to Hongjoong. He reaches out for it, but at the last second, you turn and throw it into a nearby fire. It’s quickly eaten by the flames, and the crew of the Illusion looks on in a mixture of surprise and anger. “Never trust the word of a pirate.” You mutter to yourself. Hongjoong stares blankly into the fire for a solid minute. Then he whirls on you, arm cannon powering up and aimed at your head. “I warned you.” You back up until your back hits the deck, swallowing nervously. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” “And why the hell not?” Hongjoong nearly snarls in your face. You look him directly in the eyes and fine yourself smiling. “Because I read it already. I’m the only one who knows what it said.” For a moment, time freezes and Kim Hongjoong stares at you, barely restrained anger in his eyes. The he sighs, taking a step back from you. His cannon arm transforms into a hand, which he settles on his hip and brings the other up to pinch the bridge of his nose. You let out a breath, sagging against the deck behind you. “Fine. Have it your way.” Hongjoong says, before pistol whipping you in the back of the head, knocking you out. Your unconscious body crumples forward into his arms, and he hands you over to the youngest pirate, who throws you over his shoulder with ease. “Let’s take our new smartass and head back to the Illusion. Come on.” Hongjoong grumbles, walking back to his own ship. They place you in the only bed on the ship, Hongjoong’s, and push away from the Amaryllis and her flaming deck. The Illusion slips away into the sky, blending in with the space around her.

[buzzknowsbest-blog]

CONTROL:  In Prepositions

From the start

      in the DNA

      in the code

      in the phenotype

in the control room in the park:

On the intercom, on the radio

with a minor adjustment

for the next version...

into trying to shut down

in the park.

So negative!

In the corner with a red stripe

with his key in the Jeep

into the dark...

At the edge of the lagoon

of the upper branches of the palm trees;

on their hind legs, on their long necks,

with no natural enemies.

At the foliage, at the sky,

from the mouths into the trees.

Alongside the apatosaurs at the field.

At the dock 

on the east side

into the storm

to protect the pier.

On the decks

through fields of steam

to the stegos

in Jurassic Park

at the edge.

REMIX using all prepositions from “Control” chapter in: Crichton, Michael, Jurassic Park, NY: Ballantine Books, 1990, pp. 167-172.