"I won't be stopped!"
Yama's brows rose as he heard the strident protest echoing in from the corridor. The crew of the Arcadia weren't exactly restrained, but they didn't tend to be quite so loud without reason, either - especially not just outside the bridge. Or the Captain's quarters. Or Yama's greenhouse bay, where he'd recently built his own experimental botany lab.
They were . . . cautious, when it came to their Captain, and if not in the same way, also around Yama himself.
"You let me on board!"
Yama sighed, rolling his eye, and twisted to meet Harlock's gaze. He snorted, unmoved - at least, so he would have seemed to a casual observer - and Yama shook his head. Harlock had made the call a few weeks ago to allow the man currently shouting on board, in the end - Harlock was . . . always so open, willing to give almost anyone a chance, if they reached the Arcadia itself. If they truly wanted it.
It had been a little . . . surprising to learn, some months after their showdown with the Gaia Legion, just how . . . soft Harlock could be. Probably more of a surprise than it should have given everything he'd learned about Harlock in his time on the Arcadia before.
The door burst open, stopping shy of slamming against the wall possibly only because it was the wrong kind of dramatic display for the Arcadia. The ship - or Tochiro, possibly; Yama was never quite sure how much of the 'haunted' Arcadia and its very clearly independent mind was actually the lingering consciousness of Harlock's old friend - had very definite opinions on drama.
"I need to speak to the Captain!"
Harlock cocked his head without moving from where he was leaning with one hip braced against the railing near the wheel. Yama met his gaze and lifted his jaw, then looked at the new crewmember who had just stormed onto the bridge.
"Yes?" Harlock and Yama said in the same moment, and Yama had to fight a grin.
He darted a glance sideways and saw a faint curl teasing at Harlock's mouth, though he doubted the man before them would read the humour there. Kei, following him inside with an irritated switch of her hips on every clicking step, might.
"Oh very funny." the man said, curving his hand over the butt of his pistol, slung at his hip. "I know the Captain of the Arcadia is no ordinary being, but instead a cursed, immortal, shadow of a man." He said the words like they were bitter. "Which of you is it?"
Harlock's mouth twisted with sardonic amusement, and Yama snorted, stepping forward a little more. The engine creaked and growled behind the throne, the large ring spinning lazily, and the man - Yama thought his name was Jericho - flinched warily away, hand tightening on his gun.
"Why do you need to see the Captain, rookie?" Kei asked, stalking around him and looking him up and down with a disdainful huff. "Either one." she added with an almost wry twist of her lips.
"The Arcadia has only one Captain! A ship only needs one Captain!" Jericho snapped at her, eyes narrowing. "Can only hold one Captain. And I made my way onto this godforsaken ship to deal with him, not some-" he broke off, looking over Harlock and then Yama with a twisted, ugly expression.
"You know so much," Yama said wryly and tilted his head, revealing the scar across his face and the eye patch he wore, well aware of the legends surrounding Harlock, "you tell us. Which of us is the . . . immortal Captain Harlock?"
Jericho's eyes darted over Yama's face, and then shifted to Harlock. Harlock snorted and threw his shoulders back as he straightened off the railing, his cape fluttering, the movement revealing a little more of his face as well. "Everyone on the Arcadia has the right to confront the Captain if they feel it necessary." Harlock pointed out, gaze falling on Kei.
She pursed her lips and didn't nod, but her posture relaxed a little.
"Necessary!" Jericho spat.
"Is it necessary?" Yama asked, leaning forwards a little and watching him.
"Yes, of course it damn well is!" Jericho glared at him, then faltered, turning it on Harlock instead. Yama snorted silently, but didn't speak, waiting.
"Which of you claims captaincy of this pirate ship?" Jericho said with an ugly expression twisting his mouth. "If that's what you insist on calling this heap."
Yama's brows rose. The Arcadia grumbled, deep in the machinery, the engines ticking noisily, the noise slowly building as Jericho swept his gaze over the bridge. "This is ridiculous, this entire ship is a joke! And no true pirates would act as you do - under your . . . Captain." He directed the last at Kei, who bared her teeth, taking a step forwards. "Whatever you call yourselves."
Harlock raised a hand slightly, making eye contact with Kei. She huffed, crossing her arms, and obediently stayed back, leaning against the barrier that demarked the beginning of Miime's domain with the open workings of the engine.
"The Arcadia is a marvel." Yama said, and the growl of the ship softened a little. "And her crew is unlike any other." he added with pride.
Harlock smiled, inclining his head in agreement.
"Unlike any other." Jericho scoffed. "In that you are a ragtag group with no true goals - you fight the Gaia Legion's army, you move against them openly - do battle head-on! Do you ever do anything true pirates would?"
"We have our reasons." Kei said harshly, eyes narrowing.
"What would you suggest we are, then, if not pirates?" Harlock asked, much more calmly. "We are certainly called that by most of those whose paths we cross." His lips pursed slightly and he lifted his jaw.
Certainly the government called them that, even as their hold on the people fractured with the truths the Arcadia had revealed.
"And you are one of us." Yama pointed out evenly. "As long as you are on board, as long as you are part of the Arcadia's crew. . ." Even he, with his hidden reasons and his mission, however ill-devoted he had been to it, however much he had wished he was not there for the purpose, had been accepted as part of the crew - and treated as such.
"I am not!" Jericho protested as though he had been grievously insulted and had not expected anything of the kind.
"You made your way to us and asked to be part of the Arcadia's crew." Harlock reminded without inflection. "It was not an easy trek to make, either to find us or simply to get on board."
It never was. The Arcadia did not follow any set patterns, flying to the whim of her Captain - and the ghost who was bound in her engines. And when they did land - as Yattaran had told Yama in his first days on board, it was not necessary, ever, for the running of the ship itself - it was always somewhere difficult to reach.
"Because of my ship and crew!" Jericho shouted, and Yama startled.
"What?" he questioned, tipping his head. None of the crew were asked to speak of why they had wound up on the Arcadia, and most didn't reveal much about their lives prior to finding their way to the ship. Yama hadn't known that Jericho had been crew on another ship prior to joining the Arcadia - he hadn't really acted like it, not that Yama had seen. Nor been a capable enough hand at any duty he'd been assigned to seem like it.
"The Plunderer's Boon!" Jericho snapped. "A real pirate ship, with a true Captain at its helm - at least, until the Arcadia blasted across our path and blasted us, almost clear out of space!"
Yama thought about pointing out that if their ship had been able to land afterwards and the crew survived, the Arcadia had hardly been trying to blast them. The Arcadia didn't . . . lose battles, not in that way. It was an immortal ship, and its own spirit - whether it was the Arcadia, or Miime, or Tochiro, or some melding of all three - guided it in the instances when the Captain, and now Yama as well, was busy elsewhere. The ship was certainly difficult to best in battle.
"Your ship which crossed into our path," Harlock said, eye narrowing, "and attacked the scuttled shuttle we were assisting."
"Assisting!" Jericho waved a hand. "Pirates don't assist! Pirates loot! Take what we can! Everything we can! Whatever you are, this cursed crew of yours," he sneered, "it isn't pirates."
Yama's jaw tightened. He remembered that shuttle - there had only been one that he could have been referencing, though there were always many ship-to-ship battles with the Arcadia - and the people the Arcadia had helped to safety.
And Jericho was sneering because the Arcadia had chosen to help - to save those people and their wrecked ship, rather than attacking them to take whatever they might have that could be valuable? Yama frowned.
"The ship's descending!"
"Where are we going?"
Yama glanced beyond the wheel - which was turning on its own, now - and out as the crew continued yelling below, but the visible swath of space offered no clues as to why they were moving. He looked back at Harlock, who gave a minute shrug.
"I know the 'haunted ship' legend is nonsense, the ship doesn't move on its own," Jericho said, snorting, "this isn't going to scare me, so however you're doing this, you can give it up now. It's just a ship."
"Hey," Yama said mildly, "quiet. You'll hurt the Arcadia's feelings." He glanced at Kei, eyebrow raised. The man had been on the ship for a few weeks and he still didn't believe the Arcadia was . . . sentient? Alive? Even if he didn't know about Tochiro - many of the crew did not, and those who did often stayed quiet out of respect for Harlock - it was surely impossible not to see the Arcadia acting as more than any other ship.
"It's a fucking ship! It doesn't have feelings, for god's sake!" Jericho shouted, and the grating beneath him dropped three inches at one side, nearly flinging him off his feet. He grabbed at his gun, eyes wide.
"I'm sure you're right." Harlock said dryly. "It's just a very old ship. That explains everything you've seen, does it?" His gaze dropped to the grating and flicked back up to Jericho's face.
Jericho scoffed, and the groaning beneath the deck they stood upon grew even louder. Yama took a step sideways and rested a hand on the nearest railing, gripping it securely. Kei was out of range. Harlock didn't move.
The grating bucked and the ship growled, metal sliding over metal with a muted sound as they roared down through the atmosphere towards the planet's surface. Yama's hand tightened on the railing and he kept his feet. Harlock's cape swayed around him but he remained steady without apparent difficulty.
"What is this supposed to be doing, then?" Jericho asked with a snort. "Terrifying me into agreeing that you are really pirates? Not likely."
An ocean came into view before them, and Arcadia pulled level above it, still high in the air. Yama's eye widened as one of the ship's walls shifted and bowed outwards, and fresh salt air suddenly washed into the bridge. He cocked his head as one section of the floor - the grating Jericho stood upon - shifted and was suddenly shunted outwards towards that open space.
Harlock snorted, and he looked at the Captain instead. Harlock only shook his head rather than explain, and Yama eyed him. "Harlock. . . What is it?"
"What do," Harlock huffed, not quite clearing his throat, "real pirates do, when they must throw someone off their ship? I believe . . . Arcadia has a point to make to you."
"What?" Jericho frowned, stepping quickly backwards only to find the ship refused to allow him to retreat.
Yama startled as he realised what Harlock was referencing. "Walking the plank. From the days of pirates sailing the oceans of Earth." he elaborated. "I- Oh. Has this happened before?" he asked.
"Plank?" Jericho questioned, voice pitching suddenly higher. "Wait- Shouldn't the Captain do that, if- if anything?" he asked, looking between Harlock and Yama. "Ah. . ."
The new gangplank bucked and shifted, and Jericho yelled as he fell from his feet to his knees, then began to slide towards the end out in open air. Yama stepped a little closer, looking out over the ocean.
"Arcadia does . . . as Arcadia will." Harlock said, with a slightly pinched expression. "You declared yourself not a part of our crew, you do not belong here." he added.
"I am not-" Arcadia's engine roared and Jericho tumbled off into space with a wordless shout. Arcadia immediately began to rise higher in the sky, the engine growling quietly.
"He still didn't know which of us is the Captain?" Harlock questioned, eyeing the ocean through the still-open gap in the wall.
Yama shrugged. He had addressed Harlock by name - and surely others had done so at times over the past few weeks where their new recruit could hear.
"You're a legend, Captain." Kei said, her lips twitching. She glanced at Yama, then back at Harlock. "Your name's more of a title, now, as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned." she added, and Harlock rubbed his face with one hand. "When you . . . indicated Yama as your successor, you rather bequeathed it to him, didn't you?" She still looked like she was on the verge of laughter.
"Not intentionally." Harlock said flatly, looking up at Yama.
Yama laughed, moving towards Harlock as the Arcadia gained speed, sea-scented air blowing forcefully in across the bridge. "I've been called worse things than Harlock." he said lightly, playful.
Harlock glared at him, but his exasperation had softened into a smile and he stretched out a hand to rest on Yama's hip as he came close. Arcadia rumbled low and steady, sounding more contented than disturbed now, and the walls of the ship slowly closed up again as the wheel turned and the Arcadia soared back towards space, their erstwhile pirate interloper left floundering in the ocean below.
Written for GeneralZargon who requested the 'I want to speak to the Captain' - 'Which one?' exchange.
Thanks to my friend M for giggling gleefully along with me while I was plotting this, pointing out that Tochiro would totally make the problem (false) crewmember here walk the gangplank, and helping me brainstorm what Jericho's actual 'grievance' was. XD This silly story would not be what it is without her (oft-given) indulgence.
I don't know why Jericho's logic says 'haunted ship = pfft, nonsense' but 'cursed, immortal man = everyone knows this is true' either.
Look me up on Tumblr (Kalira9) to request a story yourself.