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“You’re gonna die here, kid.”
Stalking through the underbrush, the figure emerging from the twilight and shadows fully revealed itself to be a dark haired man. Stepping closer, the intruder brought with him a muted sense of danger. Kanata shivered, straightening himself as best one could when preoccupied with firmly pressing trembling fingers over sluggishly bleeding wounds.
The dark haired man looked shockingly familiar, Kanata realized, blinking past the darkness rimming his gaze and the swaying of his vision. ‘It’s the pirate,’ he realized with a jolt of fear, ‘From this morning, at the docks.’
The man had eluded the Marines, then, and somehow kept himself scarce on the small island long enough to approach and corner Kanata during the worst night of his life.
There was shouting above them, high above their alcove on the beach, drawing Kanata’s gaze back along the broken path he had taken through dry beach grass, his steps far too obvious in the thick sand. The angered voices called to one another unsure what should be done now that they’d followed his trail to the cliff’s edge.
There was very little time left.
The Marines and villagers alike were searching the island, calls for his blood echoing out over the everpresent roar of the ocean. Indistinguishable from his own, the lifeblood of his own father dripped from his stained hands to the sand under the palms that sheltered him from prying eyes.
“I-... I can’t. I can’t d-die.” He gasped, firm in resolve if not in voice. The cold air, cutting across the waters of the North Blue, was making its way into him, nestling in his bones and worsening his shaking.
“Whaaa? Never thought I’d find someone claimin’ to be immortal out in this shitty place,” The man grins through his obvious mocking, yet his voice is not unkind. “Come on, kid. You’re just scared, runnin’ from your problems, huh? All that shoutin’ up there, you must’ve done something bad, right? That fancy priest with the Marines tied around his finger... Your pops? Thought I heard someone was yellin’ that he was dead.”
Kanata couldn’t keep the man’s gaze, dropping and hiding behind his hair. He could feel his expression twist despite the urge to stay calm, faltering as the shocking force of his fury, fear, guilt, pain - it hit him all at once, again. He could barely even think of what he’d seen without consequence - the galley at port, the hidden prison, manacles too small for an adult, the ledger of funds directed between the Marine base and the orphanage alike; images swam before his eyes in a haze. His blood would be boiling again if not for the shaking ice spreading from the gunshot wound to his side.
“Seems t’me like that might not be such a bad thing, really,” the man laughs, and Kanata began to wonder if his emotions were manifesting in the form of this specter come to haunt him. “There was a lot of hollerin’ from those kids, though. That girl that was hanging off ya today, she was screaming something fierce. She in trouble, too?”
Kanata’s teeth bare into a fierce grimace, his frightening anger finding a focus in the man now. The wounded boy hurried to bring himself to his knees at the claim, his weakened voice still biting, “She didn’t do anything! I-... I-...” Energy seeps from him as quickly as the anger had fueled it. He staggers, leaning back against the tree, vision swimming.
“Really?” He sounds amused now, “That’s not what she was sayin’.”
The man laughs at the blank look Kanata gives him, but takes mercy. “She was tellin’ everyone she’s th’ one that set fire to that ship, and the church to boot. Claimin’ she told you to run and killed the guy herself!” His smile turned sharp, and Kanata felt an overwhelming dread take over.
‘She lied. She lied to try and protect me.’
“Hell, she’s probably on the next ship outta this place already.” The man in black waves his hand absently, “Gotta get her to the base ‘nd give her a farce of a trial before they hang her for it all.” The man’s tone was oddly calm, his eyes shining like gemstones between the swaying shadows of the moonlight amongst the trees. Kanata could lose himself in the eeriness.
There was only one answer.
“I can’t die. Misella needs me.” Kanata forced his legs to move, shattering the cold ice in his veins to drag his limbs into working so that he could stand. He felt the man’s interest pique, the grin splitting his face.
“What? Not gonna beg me t’do it for ya?”
“No. I’ll-... you can take me on your boat, right? I’ll pay you.”
The laugh the man gave was harsh and dismissive, “Ehh, sounds like you might be outta that inheritance. That’s not happenin’, kid. ‘specially not with how much blood’s on your outsides.”
The pirate steps closer, and Kanata is pinned to the spot as prey before a predator. His jittering gaze snaps to something he’d missed before. Held loosely in one hand, the man is carrying something that eats the light, a black void of a thing that makes him want to shake and never look at it again. Despite his silent pleading, the man lifts the thing into view and grins.
“Maybe we can make a deal. But,” He tosses the thing up and catches it, the image it leaves in its wake stuttering with an unnatural shadow. The amusement in his expression slips away, and Kanata feels the weight of his words strike true, “You don’t just get a Devil Fruit for nothin’.”
The name makes Kanata’s eyes go wide, suddenly unable to look away from the terrible thing.
“You get this,” he held out the terrible object, the light absent in negative over its surface, unnatural and obscene, “Dependin’ on what it does, it could help ya put all your pieces back together. If you die anyway, nothin’ lost, right? And if it keeps ya from eating dust, y’swear to me and serve me on my ship. We’ll go get your girl.”
Kanata was still stunned, struck silent. A Devil Fruit - near myths, powerful things that gave fantastical powers to those that ate them. Kanata had often heard of the strangeness they wrought on the world; one had turned a man into living fire, another let metal and stone bend to another’s will, even worse would create unholy unions of animal and man in one being. The son of a priest had grown up with stories of these things as warnings as much as myth.
“... what will it do to me?” Kanata asks softly, eyes locked on the item as it’s held out to him.
“I dunno. Never really do. Not like I hand these things out like candy.” The man shrugged, and Kanata could believe the situation was completely above the man’s ability to care if not for the way he was still holding out the strange thing.
Kanata had been wrong, he realized, as the moonlight broke through the clouds. The thing wasn’t completely shadowed. Ichorous, swirling flames licked the surface in a whirling pattern, making it hard to see what the thing - the Devil Fruit, Kanata reminded himself - really looked like.
“See, the thing is,” the man continued, tipping his head slowly and giving Kanata a sharp look, his smile not meeting his eyes, “You don’t have many other options, do ya? You sit here and bleed out, maybe ya live long enough to get picked up and shipped off to a prison or executed in a big show. Or you take this, get back on your feet. Whether or not you end up blowing up, shootin’ off like a rocket, or turning into goo, doesn’t matter much to me. It might give ya a fighting chance, y’see?”
Kanata did see. He saw his world spiraling out from under him, his father’s actions weighing heavy on both his heart and his sense of duty. He saw himself in a coffin, at worst, or in chains if he survived. Shipped away, never seeing his familiar island home ever again.
And he might never find Misella again if he let himself fail here.
Kanata lunges forward to seize the fruit in both hands - the fire searing flesh and turning cloth black - biting into it with a desperate cry.
It was nothing like real Devil Fruit, but by the time Kanata and Vicious learned otherwise it was far too late for them to prevent any of what followed.
Normal Devil Fruit wouldn’t save someone near death. They couldn’t stitch wounds and stave off the grave. They couldn’t repair flaking and blackened skin, broken bones, or gored skin.
And not every Devil Fruit left its bearer with a blackened stain on their body as proof of their loyalty to their Captain.
But that was a lesson to be learned another day.
The door to the inner rooms of the ship slamms behind her, Kanata’s worried voice faltering into shy silence as he realized she was not likely to come back out.
Misella drops to her cot, hands fisting in her dress and shaking with anger. She only needs a moment to herself, obviously. She was too fair to spend all her time on the open deck, of course. She needed time away from the sun.
The young girl barely remembers what it was that started her argument with Vicious, the newest addition and topmost name on her list titled “Least Favorite People”. It was easy, far too easy, to lose herself in biting comments and sideways insults with the man who called himself the Captain of their terrible little ship. Their stolen ship, she reminded herself. Stolen after she’d been whisked away from her death in a burning gallows, her own white hot fire trailing behind them the whole way after tasting the ashes of her grave and the sweet fruit of mercy in turn. Stolen and nearly burnt after she had struggled to cage the fiery bird that had been born from her funeral pyre, only abating when Kanata’s shaking arms drew her back to herself.
Only days later, and the three of them were at a loss of how to manage at all. She hadn’t set foot on a boat since the one that brought her into the orphanage’s care, and Kanata hadn’t had the chance as the son of such a public figure. Vicious himself was startlingly useless at seafairing, as it was, content to keep the sails tied open and point himself in whatever direction his instincts led him.
It was easy to hate him, easier still to rise to verbally spar with Vicious. Knowing that Kanata had sworn himself to the man left her nerves frayed and her tongue loose with vitriol. As clear as it was that Kanata had needed Vicious’ intervention, she resents how the pirate had tied his charity to something amounting to slavery.
She expresses as much, and Vicious hardly falters before crowing back an insult that hits her sharply - and that sets everything off again. They hadn’t stopped attacking each other, not even when Kanata stepped between his newest and oldest friend.
Misella, as had been the case since meeting him, wasn’t taking his scorn lying down. She sneers in response, hissing back a biting retort about the chastity of his mother and the diseases he must have been riddled with as a child, but Vicious only howls in laughter and claims she has the ‘filthy mouth of a pirate, for sure’.
Kanata, stunned and worried in turn, had nearly laughed, too.
Kanata was enjoying himself, he was having fun, he was happy - she let the words repeat over and over, trying to make them soothing rather than hurtful, the attempt at making things sting less doing little to calm her. The open ocean had always called to Kanata like a long lost friend, and Misella knew how serious he had been about one day exploring the world. The young orphan, knowing the ways she was tied to the orphanage and the man who ran it, nonetheless had held a small dream of her own - that she might be able to adventure with Kanata far away from that terrible place.
Kanata had promised her as much earlier the same night before their world had fallen apart.
Misella’s dream was nearly a reality even now, if not for the unwanted baggage the ship carried with them. The demon of a man that Kanata somehow enjoyed having as a crewmate, entertaining and even becoming friendly with the vile creature who was the root of their current trouble.
She not only owed her own life to the man, she owed him for saving Kanata’s (as much as she loathed the price paid). Misella was tied to him in a way that left her feeling more caged than any orphanage walls ever had. She could never admit how close she’d come to being lost, not when the chains that bound her now might tighten to choking.
Kanata might find out and blame himself.
(Even if his beautiful blade of light had torn through crowds of lesser men, the unearthly power was yet too new to keep her from her fate on its own.
Misella wouldn’t confess, not when Vicious might understand just how much she owed him for saving her, not when he would certainly turn on her and use it against her. How would she even explain that the bite of her Devil Fruit was taken not out of a building resolution to live or out of love for Kanata, and a desire to stay by his side?
What way was there to explain that she took the fruit only when her fragile, blackened lungs refused to draw another breath?
The sun and moon swung in turn, the ship sailed, and ultimately three became more.
“What-... what do you mean none of you knows anything about seafaring!?”
Aegis’ voice rang out over the deck, leaving Kanata and Misella to wince at the volume while Vicious lounged uncaringly in his hammock.
“We know some things!” Kanata was quick to correct, and Misella quickly nodded along.
Holding up a finger as she listed them off, the young girl began listing off, “We know not to let Vicious into the crow’s nest unless we want more dents in the deck. We know that if we start tilting to the side, the hull is taking on water. We know that the anchor should never be deployed because it’s very difficult to get back up after the chain got tangled--”
Aegis, whose expression grew more mutinous as she spoke, started pacing before holding up a hand to stop her talking. Kanata tried to stammer an interjection (he’d learned long ago which knots to tie and how to read the stars) but the former marine was deaf to him, and quickly began muttering to himself - a litany of curses and stilted prayers that no one would answer.
Yuna emerged from the open window on the deck, from where she was seeking shade from the harsh sun. “What is zis I ‘ear about no one knowing how to sail? Aegis, you ‘ave so little faith! I of course know many things, but a poor, poor civilian prisoner of these terrible pirates could not possibly do any work on the deck, lest she be left to their terrible, ‘orrible whims!!”
Aegis was quick to cover his face before letting out a short scream into his gloved hands.
Yuna raises a finger into the air, her voice calm and voice bright. “Ze Devil Fruit come in sixteen different types, of course!”
“There are only three,” Aegis cuts in before Kanata can let loose his excitement. The boy droops, his smile quickly turning into a pout.
“Yuna!” He protests, whining, “You can’t say that you’re trying to teach us about things and then lie about it!” He fidgets, draping himself over the rail of the ship to watch the water instead. Misella, perched in a chair nearby, absently leans over to grab his cape and drag him back.
“Mais non, but did I not lie when I said I wanted to teach?” She chides, giggling at the looks given to her.
Aegis sighs, weary of the lies but resigned to them after the time spent with the chronic fibber. He takes pity on the younger teens. “As I said, there are three.” He holds up a finger as he lists them off, his own demeanor shifting into a lecturing style. Kanata perks, interested, but Misella just rolls her eyes even as she listens.
“Paramecia, the most common, are those that are generic abilities granted seemingly at random. I know of a man who can allow his body to split apart into pieces and reform them at will - these are often easily defensible, but unpredictable.” He nods to Kanata, “The way I utilize my spears and pull them from my body is likely a Paramecia. The ability that creates that sword of yours at first appeared to be a Paramecia to others.”
Kanata shifts in place again, squirming, “Oh, it’s not? What is it then!?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment,” Aegis turns instead to Misella, raising another finger, “Zoan are the next most common. They allow the user the power to gain characteristics and abilities related to specific animals. I suspect yours is Zoan, Misella, as--”
“What kind of bird exists that’s made of flames?” She deadpans back, tipping her head. “You couldn’t even eat something like that. What a useless animal.”
Yuna snickers, delicately covering her mouth, while Aegis puts a hand over his eyes. “A mythical one,” he admits, dragging his hand down and looking to the sky, “It’s very likely that the fruit Vicious gave you was a Phoenix Zoan type. Not a natural creature, but one from either ages past or fictional in nature.”
“You’re welcome!” The man in question cries from where he lounges on the upper deck, “Sounds like I gave ya something extra cool, huh, brat?”
“Extra stupid, you mean!” She raises her voice back, “You can’t even make a normal animal, how embarrassing.”
“Hey, hey, wait, what’s the third, what’s mine!” Kanata interrupts, pleading to Aegis with clasped hands.
Dutifully ignoring the brewing argument, Aegis raises a third finger. “Logia. The rarest, and what some consider to be the most powerful. The person in question gains not just abilities related to, but the physical form of, whatever element or material in question. You may only have the control to manifest light from yourself, Kanata, but I believe the Devil Fruit you ate may have turned your body into the energy of light itself.”
As Kanata’s smile grew wider and wider, Misella’s head jerks around to look at him as Aegis spoke. When the younger boy jumped up, shouting about how cool of a power that was, Aegis simply watches as Misella relaxes, watching Kanata with an expression he could only describe as serene.
The knight-turned-pirate, remembering the kindness and hope that shined through the darkness of his flight from the Marines, shares her sentiment.
It suits the young First Mate quite well.
Perched on the railing of the deck, her hands on her knees, Yuna strikes a fair figure.
She could feel the hesitance behind her, no one else on the deck yet but their eyes on her from the window. Aegis, as unhappy as he had been at yet another cursed by the black-fire Devil Fruit, had been the only one to make an aborted attempt to check on her wellbeing in the hours since the disaster at Centerport.
Her lips twitch, and her eyes burn - the theatrics of true pirates pretending to be pirates for the stage was only the beginnings of the fun they’d had. Penelope’s bright smile had overwritten any misgivings Yuna had carried of bringing them there to chart their next course and evade the ever present fear of Marines on their tail.
The curtain must fall in the end, non?
“Yuna?”
At her name, she turns. Kanata, unsurprisingly, but with a rather welcome addition.
“Oh, little Meakyu. Has he stopped shaking with fright, yet? Has he yet grown flippers to accustom himself to the sea?” Her smile was only part farce - the bundle of fur and warmth in Kanata’s hands providing an anchor to her worries.
“Uh, yeah, kinda. I mean-! The getting used to it, part. I know you like him, and you seemed lonely out here.” He glanced away, over the railing, before jerking his eyes back. “Uh-... you know, um, now that you’ve had a Fruit, you… you shouldn’t tempt fate, right?”
Yuna turns her eyes back to the water. She knew, of course, what Kanata meant.
Those with a Devil’s Fruit boon in their blood were cursed by the very sea that they called home. Unable to swim, and weakened by the mere touch of salt water. Though the Fruit themselves had their differences with those that occurred naturally, it seemed that becoming an enemy of the sea itself was a twist of irony no Devil Fruit user was to escape - Transgressor’s Blessing or no.
(Though, she mused again, Vicious’ own ability to swim and fetch their wayward overboards was a mystery of its own. His power to give boons at a whim was itself not the power of a cursed Fruit. The information was tucked away with the rest of her odd notes about the man, to be inspected when she was a clearer mind).
… she was making them worried, she realized with a start.
“Oh. You are correct. D’accord. Do not worry, Kanabon.” She gifts him with a brilliant smile, the one that always makes him blush - and right on cue, the merry pirate grows pink. “It will be a while yet before I will truly be able to fear ze sea like I should. Not that you seem to.” she teases, reaching out to poke his cheek before picking up Meakyu from his hands. Kanata, sheepish at the reminder of just how many times Vicious has had to fetch him from the murky depths, seemingly decides that diplomacy is his best bet and ignores the teasing.
Yuna, tucking the warmth that was Meakyu to her chest, finds herself smiling despite her troubles.
The others are obviously scrambling to look like they hadn’t been listening in when she opens the door to the kitchen, and the sight makes her cover her mouth and laugh.
An uncovered eye blinks and turns to survey the disaster before him.
“This, uh… you sure this is your guys’ ship?”
“Yep! This is the Dauntless!”
Vicious, halfway up the ladder to the crows nest with a taciturn looking Yuna glaring at him from the base, turns at Kanata’s voice to call back, “That’s the Endless Wavecrasher, to you!”
Misella’s dry voice calls from under the makeshift shade and charting maps they had arranged on deck, “At the time it was two against one, so it’s the Dauntless, actually.” Meakyu stretches and curls up into himself on the table, and Misella reaches out automatically to move the weighted inkpot from the spot near him.
Aegis rolls his eyes and turns to Orwin, offering the shadow of a smile. “It’s a terrible little thing, I know. It once served as a companion vessel to a much larger ship, carrying extra cargo. Its name was formerly Regalia, but I have been firmly overruled in restoring that name.”
“And, uh,” Orwin fought for the right words. The deck was marred with scorch marks, gouges, worn boards, and fading paint. One sail was out of commission entirely, a large tear down the center too sharply done to be anything but by a blade. He turned to Aegis with a wince. “It looked like this when they stole it?”
Vicious hurries to interject an affirmative with a grin while Kanata’s forlorn sigh tells the runaway royal what the real answer is.
The stars shone brightly overhead, the lanterns on deck drowning out the starlight from one's eyes if they were looked at for too long. The merry crew of the newly comandeered Sinner’s Wake lay sprawled as they wished, Vicious’ new hammock stretched between two high posts while the rest lay on the shining boards of the deck.
“And-- oh, Orwin, look, that’s Rodger’s Mirth! See, if you line up the six stars there and find the two just above them, all the little stars fill out to look like a grinning face --”
“Aegis, dear, you can’t threaten us like zis again, ‘ow are we to live now that we know someone on board can manage better food than ze burnt rations and za stale broth? My imprisonment on zis ship before, it was ‘orrible! Vicious knows nothing but ‘is drinks, and --”
“Kanata, you forgot about the Silver Shores. It’s right there, to the left, remember? I showed you once we got to see, you’d only ever been able to read about it. It’s sensitive to the light of bigger populations--”
“Hey, c’n someone throw me the damn thingamajigger? This bottle’s being a piece of shit.”
The others were lost in conversation, and Yuna simply threw a teasing grin at Vicious’ demand. She gestures over to the side, where Kanata and Misella are regaling Orwin with the common names for the constellations, the man having never the need to learn them. He’s nursing a mug of something dark, the spiral corking tool laid on the blankets amongst the pieces of their shared dinner.
Vicious sighs, audible and exaggerative, swinging himself soundly out of his hammock. “Just got comfortable, look how y’re all treatin’ me. Lazy waste of a crew, all a’ya.” The words are muttered and without any real bite. He approaches the blankets where Misella lay with her head in Kanata’s lap and Meakyu chirps from his position on a pillow at the approaching footsteps. The small creature dismisses the interruption of his sleep just as quickly when he realizes it’s only Vicious, while the man reaches to nudge Kanata with his boot.
“Ah, yeah, Vicious?”
“Can y’gimmie the damn bottle opener, Captain?”
He raises a brow, saying the fresh title with a touch of emphasis that has Kanata beaming in delight at him and leaning to reach for the tool without hesitation, jostling Misella enough to earn Vicious a heated glare. The man simply sticks his tongue out at her, and she raises her hand in a gesture far more foul, making him snort.
“Here y’go! Say, Vicious, I was thinking - why not let Misella be the first mate and you be Assistant Captain--”
Misella quickly props herself up on her elbows, looking imploringly back at the boy, their hands suddenly intertwined. “Kanata, I told you, he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the title-!!”
“Hey, hey, calm your land legs, girlie. Told ya both, you keep the damn title because you earned it. Sick of it, anyway. First Mate’s better, I get all the power and none of the heat, ‘ey? Then girlie here’s left to do whatever it is a navigator that can’t even read can do-”
“I directed us to our refuling port with little problems, didn’t I? Far better than a First Mate that lays on deck all day like a drunkard-”
“I’m watchin’ for trouble!”
Kanata surprises them both before they can get much more heated by laughing, falling onto the pillows at his back, unable to stop himself from chuckling at their incredulous faces. “F-fine, haha, fine! Misella, you really did a good job finding that out, by the way. I don’t think I said so!”
Vicious watches the young girl blush crimson from the pale expanse of her collarbone all the way under her fringe, and he snorts a laugh and rolls his eyes.
The kids were getting to him.
As he twirls the corking tool over his fingers and waves over his shoulder, Vicious threads his footsteps carefully around splayed limbs and shared blankets. Stepping over an open book, a misplaced pair of glasses, an unneeded pillow, he makes short work of swinging himself back into his hammock away from the chaos on center deck.
From his perch, he catches Orwin’s eye, finding the older man giving him a bemused and frankly irritating look. Something in his eyes has Vicious raising an eyebrow and scowling back. Orwin silently shakes his head, and Vicious huffs a dismissive sigh, focusing on opening his alcohol.
Aegis coughes politely below, and Vicious stoops to twist in place and give him a glare, unsurprised to find the former marine looking away quickly.
“The hells gotten into everyone?” he gripes, annoyed, before Yuna’s giggling has him groaning and rolling his eyes to find hers. She looks serene, relaxed in a way he hadn’t seen since they’d been at Centerport, before she’d lost her place and home completely.
“You’re adorable, Vicious.” She titters, and Aegis coughs politely next to her, reaching for his own drink to cover what is certainly a grin.
“And you’re a radiant ball of fucking sunshine.” He deadpans, ignoring her fluttering lashes at the not-compliment. “Got a problem?” The claim is made without any heat, and her slow shake of the head betrays her smile.
“Vicious!!” Kanata calls, unaware of the frankly confusing war of wills happening amongst his crew, “You have the first watch, right? I’ll trade off with you before the sun’s up and we can set out properly tomorrow!”
“Y’got it, Captain,” he calls back without thinking, and Yuna’s laughing again, quickly covering her mouth at his sharp look.
Scowling, he realizes exactly what it is that has the others laughing at him. Vicious scoffs, settling back into his hammock and taking a sip of his prize - it’s shit, really, the kind of stuff they could get on their terrible hauls before Orwin joined and used all his money to get them their ship. Kanata had been quick to promise better days for everyone - the strong ship was sure to help them on their treasure hunting and Marine didging ventures.
The young Captain was taking his job very seriously, so what else was Vicious to do but take his new place seriously in response?
Vicious ignores the teasing completely and looks up at the stars. The Silver Shores, just to the left of the string of six-and-two, was it?
It was easy to find, and beautiful to look at.
He lets his eyes be guided along the journey Kanata was reciting below, finding secret meaning in the stars and hidden stories amongst the planets.
The ship swayed merrily below them all.