Author's Note: Weird pairing. Originally from the kink meme. Hope you enjoy it, since I know I enjoyed writing it! Originally I planned to make this as lifelike as possible, but having researched submarines for a nice long period of time I can say clearly, "Fuck it, this is going to be fantasy/science fiction without any material basis." Sorry guys, didn't mean to have to sacrifice believability there, but hell, even to get enough fuel for the voyage would be impossible if I kept it realistic, so I won't. The images of colonized peoples and nations, however, I'll do my best to keep real and respectful. Just a heads-up.


Kaito fussed, jounced by the cobblestones under the motorcar's thin wheels, the glasses that sat perched on his snub nose held in place by a fretful hand. His hair was slicked back for this important occasion, pampered and trimmed by his overzealous mother only moments before he'd climbed into the black open-air roadster, which he'd tried not to marvel at, still used to the horse-drawn hansom cabs that even now trotted and careened around the car come to take him to his new assignment.

He convinced himself his actually rather peevish expression was regal, when he found time to think between between clutching the trunk containing his research tightly between his knees and wincing when he heard the clink of glass on every major bump. Of course it was regal. Kaito couldn't believe he was betraying his jangling nerves and coarse excitement as he was ferried through the sooty streets of London on this, March the 11th of 1903. No, indeed, Kaito must be showing only his calm, cool, and collected nature on such a fortuitous day.

Putrid smog and a collecting fog off the Thames coiled around the streets of London, coal fumes from the factories that inundated the city and its outskirts filling the air with poison, the busy calling of men and clanking of machinery, whinnying of horses and chatter of ladies and shouts of ragged beggar children so usual as to remain unnoticed by the young botanist, called to defense of the glory of the Empire, come to dwell among the tribes of a far-off land and collect samples of their linguistic habits and rare and fantastic plant matter.

Eat your heart out, Kurama, he thought smugly, overlooking the fact that only a sudden worsening of his mother's condition had stopped Kaito's archrival from applying for this job with the East India Company as well.

But Kurama was at home, and Kaito's tearful family had just sent him off for a prosperous venture into the great unknown. Kaito practically vibrated at the thought, though a sudden jerk over a particularly malformed cobblestone nearly sent him bouncing off the high seat of the horseless carriage and into the dirt next to it.

The roadster, Kaito knew, belonged to Mr. Sakyo, the cold-eyed and unsettling patron of this voyage. Kaito was to perform as the medic, linguist, and had a few other duties he'd glossed over on the day he'd signed the contract, too eager, frankly, to worry overmuch about whether he'd have to help out the submarine's chaplain or such. The car turned suddenly off of the busy mainstreet it had been chugging down towards Dockside, and in a moment, they were at the docks.

Kaito craned his neck, awed by the marvelous industrial wonders that lay spread before him like a feast. Ocean liners, the beautiful and enormous temples to modern technology, towered over all other ships. Fleets of fishing boats, sloughing blood over their sides and covered in cawing, flapping seagulls, jarred side-by-side with pleasure yachts of the rich nobility and massive battleships brimming with guns. Dockworkers were everywhere, crawling like an infestation of spiders around ships and over ramps, roaring to one another as sailors and soldiers wove inbetween them, staggering as though drunk without the constant movement of the sea beneath them, or perhaps, in fact, drunk. Dockside was covered with holes for such men to indulge in their dirty excesses, and that, and the rotting stench of low tide, made Kaito's nose turn up in disgust.

"Won't be long now," the driver, who had identified himself as Gokumonki, said reassuringly as he maneuvered the shockingly finicky and mysterious equipment that made this machine run with ease, taking them through the intermingling dockhands turning to look at a real horseless carriage and the masses of stacked crates. He was a big man with a mane of tough hair like winter scrubs and a salt-and-pepper beard in a strange pattern over his chin. Kaito continued to stare around him, nostrils flaring at the scent of salt, feeling intimidated.

Kaito was craning his neck to look behind him, almost bug-eyed at the sight of one of the towering white sides of an ocean liner, the Queen Anne, nearby, when the motorcar suddenly ground to a stop, almost throwing Kaito face first onto his research.

"And here we are!" Gokumonki chortled, hopping down from his seat in a spritely fashion and laughing at the queasy look on Kaito's face.

Kaito gulped and turned, taking his first look at his home for the next few months.

Demon, which was the name of this beautiful siren, was huge, bigger than Kaito had thought it would be. He couldn't stop his in-breath at the size of it, the undeniable splendor of long cylindrical steel, polished to a shine reminiscent of silver, bobbing tightly in the water, which was green and rancid with algae. The sub was hooked to the dock by ropes and chains and ramps which men, Kaito's new cabin mates, clambered over again and again, cursing and lugging crates from the dock to the hatches at the semi-flat top and back again. Kaito had been told that Demon was the biggest of its ilk ever to be built, but that hadn't fully prepared him, hadn't even begun to make him understand a machine large enough to skate underwater like a snake, and carry a hundred and fifty good men besides, marines and shipmen and who knows who else.

Sleek sides were interrupted by portholes and, along the top, one particular periscope that clearly led down into the bridge, personal headquarters of the Captain. The blunt nose bobbed lightly in the frothy cresting waves, its streamlined sides tapered, with the powerful blades at the back covered in men, men greasing, examining, shouting to one another as they made sure that the engine would carry them safely to the ivory coast of Africa.

Kaito's heart began to beat, strumming against his chest with excitement. Far-off lands, adventure, fascinating new discoveries –

"Mr. Kaito."

- they all awaited him, so close he could practically taste their delicious nectar.

"Mr. Kaito!"

If only this buffoon would stop yelling. "What?" he snapped, looking up to see Gokumonki, and was surprised by a chuckle. He turned sharply, pushing his glasses further up his nose, to see a mountain.

Kaito gasped and leaned back, staring up, far up, into a rugged face blank and amused, which stared down at him from a soaring height. The man chuckled again, and Kaito's face flushed a splotchy, enraged red.

"So this is the boy?" the stranger asked, arching an eyebrow and examining Kaito in a way that made him strangely uncomfortable.

"I am no boy," Kaito sniffed, sitting up straight, his legs clenching unconsciously around the wooden trunk containing his research. "I'm twenty, almost twenty-one already."

Another chuckle had him glaring, "Well, come on then," the giant rumbled, turning away with his hands sliding into the pockets of his workman's trousers, several sizes larger than Kaito had known they could be made, and began striding confidently towards a nearby ramp.

Kaito blinked, and then colored again, enraged. "My luggage!" he groused, practically pouting.

The man stopped, his back still facing Kaito. "Carry it," he responded calmly.

"I have three trunks!"

The man turned, his annoyance enough to make Kaito huddle back with unnameable fear. Surely this man is just a ship's hand, Kaito thought. I'm certain I outrank him – he'll never lay a finger on me. Why am I scared?

"You were told to bring one trunk, medium-sized, two at the most." Kaito sputtered at the disdainful inflection to his rich, deep voice. "If you were fool enough to weigh down my vessel with three trunks, all larger than the one trunk should have been, then you're fool enough to carry them yourself. I won't waste any of my men's time with your idiocy."

"My vessel? My men?" Kaito gasped aloud, eyes popping at the implications.

The man shook his head. "And Mr. Sakyo said you were smart. I'm Toguro, Captain of the Demon. At your service," he said, nodding, and then turned and walked back towards the submarine, completely uncaring of Kaito's distress.

"Wait," Kaito shouted, "wait!" He scooped up his research materials and the smaller clothes trunk, sparing a sad glance at his third, which was completely stuffed with books, and scrambled to catch up. Maybe this Toguro character would let him pick it up later.

This struggle was, in Kaito's opinion, more torturous than the labor of Sisyphus, eternally rolling his boulder up Hades' hill. The trunks banged excruciatingly against his knees, surely drawing raw chafing marks by now from the rubbing of his starched trousers. After this short but humiliating walk over the ramp, every breath was a pathetic whimper, every step a limp, every blink almost letting out a tear. Toguro adjusted his pace occasionally to let Kaito catch up, but that was as far as his kindness went.

When they reached the main platform, Kaito was breathing in great honking gasps like a beast of labor, his saliva flecking his lips with foam, reminiscent of a racehorse's muzzle after a cross-country run. His clumsiness had certainly shattered all the beakers he'd brought with him by now. The normally prim man wanted to smack Toguro with his luggage and curse wildly, shout expletives that would make even these sailors blush, but was too winded and unnerved by the giant fellow to try.

Kaito dropped his trunks unceremoniously when he stood in front of the hatch, bow-legged and sweating profusely, ruing the thumps and clatters of his abused equipment. He heard amazed laughter around him, and even a couple of jeers, and was amazed at how much he wanted to scream and turn around, announce that they would all be punished, demand to be taken home.

Big hands suddenly wrapped around his, disentangling his moist palms from the handles and gripping them lightly. Kaito looked up into Toguro's angular face, his skin paling beneath the freckles.

"You're making all that noise over this little weight?" Toguro snorted derisively. "Pathetic."

And then the big man hefted his clothes trunk over his shoulder with the research hanging at his side, and maneuvered them both and himself down the stairs leading through the hatch with no more trouble than if he'd been carrying a lady's purse instead of two overstuffed trunks.

Kaito stood blinking and panting for a moment, listening to the men's snickers, but at a hurry up from Toguro, he began to climb quickly down the hatch and into the subdued, cramped lighting of the sub, his new home, nervous of what he'd find.