I started writing this thinking something along the lines of-oh yay a cute little steampunk oneshot it's going to be the most fun ever and nothing will ever hurt and it wouldn't be like forty longhand copy pages or anything. I WAS WRONG.
Maka looked like she was about to hit her 'precious baby' with a wrench, something Soul knew she would never actually do. However, Soul was equally aware that no matter what went wrong with the ship, it was always, and unconditionally his fault. He made the executive decision to get the hell out of the engine room before his forehead was introduced to whatever his abusive engineer had at hand.
Maka had built the Ghost herself-almost all her own design, a labour of love she was constantly updating, upgrading(Soul was almost a hundred percent sure that both of those words meant the exact same thing) and, thanks to their less then legal endeavours, repairing. Stacked up along one wall of the tiny room were dozens of boxes bursting with convenient pocket sized notebooks, all filled with cramped handwriting and minute, annotated diagrams-"Every engineer creates his own bible," and Maka's bible was... extensive, to say the least. Also set out in an extremely complicated system known only to Maka-although Soul suspected part of the system was always have something within arms reach you can use to clobber your pilot-was a plethora of tools and spare parts that Maka had to modify for her masterpiece.
Her masterpiece which to the casual passer by, if the casual passer by was in the possession of an undiscerning eye, would very much like an engine rebuilt from pieces of the finest scrap the world had to offer, if you were willing to search for long enough. It was of course built from scrap, each piece lovingly modified by Maka to fit her grand design of the smallest airship ever built.
Smallest and fastest. The Ghost was as living a legend as an inanimate object could be. Maka, who would've clobbered Soul for claiming that her airship was inanimate, was rather greatest engineer in the world; but she was never going to get into any college. Her gender denied her that opportunity; her gender and old superstitions stemming from the Dark Era when man had forgotten flight and ships had been confined to the seas alone, and the skies were empty. Maka and countless engineers like her, with their heads beyond the clouds, pondered how high they'd be if the secrets of flight had not been lost. If they had not reinvented it completely.
Every inch of the small ship's hull was covered in solar cells and the less than flexible sails of the Ghost, giving the ship its strange scaly appearance. Maka had become obsessed, working every spare minute on the tiny solar cells. She'd pored over heavy tomes and texts, something not unusual for her, studying scales and feathers and most of all flora until she'd cracked whatever the hell it was she was cracking. Until she'd managed to make the small, each only about the size of her own small palm, solar cells adjust to absorb the most light energy. The solar cells, normally used tile the roofs of houses, moved constantly; and when the Ghost was on a raid, darting in and out, the ship looked very strange indeed.
If the engine was Maka's baby, more like almost the whole ship, the cockpit was Soul's. The most advanced navigation system money could buy from unscrupulous dealers, echo-location, the works, all put to shame by Soul's pride and joy- the organ.
The organ flew the ship. Soul played the organ, the pipes doubling as steam valves at Maka's practical insistence. It was a masterpiece born of Soul's mind and musical prowess, not to mention his talent for the restoration of even the most derelict instruments. The organ ensured nobody but Soul could fly the ship, and only Maka knew how to turn on the auto-steering. The organ was tuned to his wavelength. It was complicated, and Soul was only about ten percent sure how it worked, but if Maka was working on her baby and needed not to be disturbed unless the sky was falling down around them Soul was going to work on his.
The last raid had knocked the ship around a bit, messing up the engine and invariably making the organ out of tune. Soul couldn't play an out of tune organ, couldn't fly the ship when the organ was out of tune.
So, he set to work.
When Soul claimed the Ghost was a legend, he hadn't been exaggerating-people thought the Ghost was an actual ghost ship, a ship of the Golden Age Of Flight one built of the Lost Technologies, haunting the skies for millennia.
Hundreds of legends had been absorbed by the Ghost's mystery, giving the ship a much longer life than its three years. It had fought for the witches in the Thousand Wars; it had been the ship on which The Last Emperor of The Sunken Isle had been murdered; it was the airship that the First Death himself built.
The ship was small, less than half the size of the current official record holder, the Beelzebub, about the size of the Ancient Airships that barely existed, if even. They were only remembered in fables and legends, ghost stories and fairytales, most sources discredited or unacknowledged by leading historians in that field. Maka believed in the Golden Age like some people believed in religion. Soul didn't buy into either- the Ghost was revolutionary and of course very, very real.
Her 'baby' got shrouded in its own steam and the pale smoke it coughed out, shrouded in mystery. The strange and twisted music that heralded its arrival echoed in the minds of many. And of course, the Demon at the Helm and the Running Reaper.
Most people didn't believe it existed and there were all kinds of legends and stories about the Ghost. Stories embroidered and embellished in dozens of places, segments completely changed to suit the teller of the tale's own flair for melodrama. The Officials? As far as they were concerned it was a scam, since Maka and Soul only targeted black market ships, the Underworld smugglers along illegal trade routes, the officials weren't reported to, and the only sniffs of whispers they heard led them to believe that it was a vague sort of conspiracy. The smugglers were selling the goods themselves and blaming this 'Ghost'.
Unfortunately, to make the ship that small, Maka sacrificed a lot of what she had thought to be extraneous and other people might have referred to as necessities. There wasn't space to swing a cat, if one had a cat to swing. And in Soul's absolutely honest opinion, the airship was ugly. To Maka, the bare nature of the valves, the steam outlets that both ran the ship and kept the small space a minimum of toasty warm, and the fact that the ship had been completely built out of junkyard scrap, illegal equipment, and a church organ, was beautiful.
The outside held a certain charm-the way the solar cells, regular little pentagons, fit together in a honeycomb pattern. The way the grey looked warm and alive when holding the light, and the way they rippled when Soul was darting around a much larger ship.
The cargo hold was a space that held a reality of not actually that much, behind which, automatons of the barest and ugliest nature created by Maka shovelled all manner of fuels-wood, coal, anything that burned- into a furnace that boiled water to supplement that boiled by the solar cells.
Soul wouldn't trade that rust bucket for the world.
The Ghost was the only two man airship in the world. Even if people knew it was real, it would still be a legend.
Death the Kidd, mostly just Kidd, stood before his father's desk nervously. Throughout all the Ages, the Death family name had remained prominent, and the Steam Era or the Second Age of Flight was no different. Kidd stood a little straighter, if that were possible, when his father entered. His father had never before called on him during work hours. Lord Death didn't want to show favouritism, or be accused of nepotism. Not that he could've avoided it any longer- Kidd was first in The Shibusen Academy for Pilots.
Shibusen, or The Academy as it was known, was a high class establishment with the sole purpose of teaching the generation's most promising to be best and the brightest of pilots, engineers and communication experts. It churned out airship crew cores the way some colleges churned out teaching staff.
Lord Death was running out of excuses not to give his son's crew a mission.
"Father?" Kidd saluted smartly, just because they were blood relatives didn't mean military formalities could be ignored.
"Kidd, I'm assigning you a mission, and a crew."
"Father," Kidd pointed out, hoping not appear impertinent, but rather informative, "I already have a crew,"
"Yes, it's just a small change to your ...company. Nothing to worry about,"
"Who are they?" Kidd had to fight to keep a note of suspicion out of his voice. It had been no secret that his father disapproved of the crew his heir had put together. His father feared that the class differences might cause the ship at best, might cause his family name at worst, to be cast into a shadow of disrepute.
"Just the one- I need you to take Spirit Albarn," Spirit was a member of Lord Death's own highly qualified and extraordinary crew. He had a mysterious past, a shady present, and a questionable future if his behaviour remained as it was. He and Lord Death had been friends for a long time; the only reason Kidd's father overlooked the numerous scandals he was entangled in. And he was the best there was at his chosen profession. He was treated as an equal, with respect, but Kidd's crew were looked down on.
"But he's-"a lot of things. Not least a womanizer, overly fond of the drink and the company of women of ill-repute. Half of Kidd's crew were women of ill-repute.
"Son. He's the best navigator out there, and you know it."
"My navigational skills are fine," Better than fine, I'm first in the Acadamy for a reason. Kidd had managed to catch himself, and swallowed his defiance where he stood- he needed this mission.
"For this particular mission, you need the best, and Spirit's Underworld connections can't hurt either," Most of Kidd's 'company' were so Underworld, they were overworld connections to about ninety percent of their friends.
"Yes Father, but what's the mission?"
"You have heard of the Ghost, I presume?" Lord Death asked seriously, and it had suddenly become necessary for Kidd to take a moment to compose his thoughts.
"Of course, Father. It's the talk of the shipyards, not to mention those awful penny dreadfuls. It's a legend. As mythical as a mermaid. What does it have to do with anything?" Kidd's expression of confusion was genuine.
"I need you and your... crew,"-again there had been the hesitation before referring to Kidd's crew, the tiny pause laced with distaste at what was to come next, "To find out whether or not that ship is real, and to apprehend the crew if you deem it necessary. Above all, your objective is to capture the ship. If it's real, which I rather suspect it is,"
"But why us?"
"Your ship, Beelzebub, is, counting this Ghost, thebest there is available. You're the best out there. I-we need the best people for each particular mission, and right now the best people for the job are the best people. And the best are you, Spirit and, much to my dissatisfaction, your crew,"
Everyone knew Lord Death had issues with his son's, admittedly unorthodox, crew. Or more specifically the three women serving on it, women who didn't exactly come from the highest social standing. Old biases died hard, and women still hadn't been allowed to study at the Acadamy. Or almost any other college, almost. They had extremely limited options, and negligible power to change that.
Kidd knew Tsubaki, Liz, and Patti were the best out there, and so did his father, as much as it had pained him to admit it.
"Yes, sir." He took the slim paper file, stamped with the seal of the House of Death, before saluting once again and taking his leave.
As Kidd had suspected, his dutiful and every loyal crew were outside eavesdropping shamelessly. One advantage of being notorious was that even the most higher-ups skirted around them, only reporting their unacceptable behaviour quietly behind doors were it stayed, easily ignored by the crew.
"Sounds like a wild goose chase to me," Tsubaki had said sadly, a disappointed sigh escaping her. Tsubaki had done the impossible-the curvy Japanese woman had hacked the impenetrable Shibusen Academy Hub, and almost got away with stealing millions of dollars worth of her preferred currency, information, from the most secure system in the world. Kidd had caught her and now she worked for him.
"A ghost ship? Of all the-"Liz muttered darkly, if one could simultaneously mutter darkly and look absolutely terrified out of their life. From street rats to infamously unscrupulous sharp-shooters, she and her sister Patti-the Thompson sisters- were just as unorthodox as Tsubaki.
Black*Star, too big to listen to their blather properly in the normal run of things, and Hiro-the only member of Kidd's crew with his Lord Death stamp of approval- who was looking about nervously clutching his notebook, were the engineers of the Beelzebub. Black*Star was a charity case who'd risen quickly through the ranks of his class of engineers, owing to his unwavering dedication to being unbeaten. The pair of them had looked up at 'ghost ship.'
"Do you mean the Ghost? That's just an urban legend," Hiro dismissed, before returning to his notebook and beginning to record the conversation in a shorthand of sorts he'd invented-a complex system of prime numbers and characters with only a very small amount of actual letters- and that only he could read. Tsubaki, an information junkie had, in her spare time, been attempting to learn but thus far, she wasn't making great progress.
"Yeah!" Black*Star jabbed his thumb into his chest, successfully yanking the narrative back on track. "The only real legend in this world is me!"
"Father wants us to verify if it is a legend or not, then apprehend the crew and seize the ship in the name of Shibusen, if it really is a reality," Kidd read the thin file as he started to walk, his crew quickly scrambling up behind him- illegal trade routes, myths, an artist's impression of the ship, the Demon Pilot and the Reaper Runner.
The ship was small, shrouded in smoke and coated in scales. It looked like a great dragon, except for the twisted musical notes the artist had added of his own volition. He wasn't going to take any of these illustrations for accurate-people exaggerated, it was in their nature- and when he saw the snarling red-eyed demon with a shock of white hair and an even bigger shock in the form of a mouthful of sharp teeth and the cloaked androgynous figure with a scythe like a reaper of souls, he laughed out loud.
"Father assigned me a new crew member,"
The others blanched and didn't bother attempting to stifle extremely audible groans-nobody liked working with them, and they all left the collection of underdogs in the end. But more usually as soon as they possibly could.
"You aren't going to like this, girls-Spirit Albarn." Tsubaki put on her brave face, but the Thompsons groaned again-even louder than before. Spirit Albarn was a legendary navigator, and on top of that, a total slut. Despite his reputation extending far beyond the local hangouts and his frequent customer privileges at the local cabaret, the man was smooth operator, charming as prince and able to seduce almost any woman he set his sights on.
"Wait, back to the Ghost, he really thinks-?" Tsubaki looked grateful for the none-too-subtle subject change. She smiled at Liz.
"No. It's a wild goose chase- the only way a ship could be built that small and that fast was if-" Hiro cut off Black*Star's inevitable 'If it was built by me, the great Black*Star!'
"-it was built using the Lost Technologies," Hiro flips a page in his notebook. "Which, apart from being lost, there's only one academically credible documentation of ever actually existing in the first place."
"The Books of Eibon," sighed Tsubaki almost reverently.
"Those aren't exactly do-it-yourself manuals- the man was the Tsubaki of his day. An information junkie, but The Lost Technologies, which weren't nearly so lost back then as they are today weren't interesting to him. The lost wonders of flight were commonplace back in those days."
"Liz," Patti giggled, "How can technology be Lost?" Patti giggled again. Patti was always giggling-she couldn't help it.
Liz shrugged, glanced around for suggestions and when nobody had any, said: "Maybe they forgot where they left it sis,"
"At any rate, a ship that small-it shouldn't be possible! The engine alone..." Hiro lapsed into a whole pile of technical jargon, arguing with Black*Star over what was and wasn't possible. For the rest of the crew, too accustomed to discussions similar to this to care, and too unfamiliar with the terms to really understand what they were saying anyway, this was ignored and the conversation continued, if slightly louder.
"Kidd, this really is a wild goose chase, isn't it? He had to throw you something, even if it'll make us into a laughing stock," Tsubaki glanced back at Black*Star and Hiro, their voices had raised a further notch, if only to compete with the slightly louder conversation of the rest of the group. They could get pretty violent, or rather, Black*Star could get pretty violent and beat the tar out of Hiro until he was a tarless pulp.
"Well not, necessarily- if this Ghost is real-and I do have my doubts- the technology is, the crew-they could be of huge benefit to the Academy" Hiro piped up.
"No way! They'd never beat my contribution!"
"Of course not," Tsubaki smiled, soothing Black*Star's ruffled ego wasn't in her job description, but it wasn't in anyone else's either, so she took it upon herself to do it anyway.
They climb aboard the Beelzebub to find Spirit already there, feigning nonchalance even though it was clear in how hard he's trying that realy, he's dying to explore the most expensive ship in the fleet, somehow crewed by these fledglings. The regular crew plus interloper headed to the conference room. Meaning the part of the bridge with the large oval table and chairs that they usually ate dinner at.
"So glad you could join my crew," the open hostility in Kidd's voice made the opposite extremely apparent.
"Spirit. Please," He grinned, aiming his winning smile at the ladies.
"Mr Albarn," A small act of defiance, but enormous at the same time considering it was Tsubaki, "You've been around airships your whole life- if the Ghost's as small as they say it is, how many would crew it?"
"Hunting the Ghost, eh? On Daddy's orders?"
"Yes. Answer the question," Dealing with Spirit Albarn was going to be a trial.
Beelzebub was the finest ship in the Academy fleet and contrary to popular belief, not paid for out of 'Daddy's' pocket. The Beelzebub was funded by the standard Academy loan to fledgings which usually bought a ship, and the rest came out of Kidd's own pocket- his entire life savings. Not his father's. Like the rest of the crew he was subsidizing on the Academy allowance.
"They say there's only two," Spirit scratched his scalp under his red hair, mussing it slightly. "But to pull off all the gigs that they supposedly do there should be at least six, but with a ship that tiny doesn't have the space for a haul and even that size of a crew..."
"Two engineers at least is the legal requirement," Hiro supplied.
"Trust me, these people aren't fussed about the legalities of things,"
"Probably four. At a squeeze. Spirit decided,.
"Breakdown?" Kidd didn't look up.
"One pilot, one engineer, one artillery tech and the runner," He counted each one off on his fingers.
"Hiro, Black*Star, I don't want you to worry about what you think is possible or not, If this thing flies figure out how, or at least how to take it down with minimal damage,"
"Yes boss," Determined to be the epitome of professionalism in contrast to Spirit Albarn, Hiro snapped a salute. Black*Star, determined not to be outdone be anyone saluted also. Kidd handed them the artists impression of the Ghost.
"Liz, Patti and Tsubaki. Hit the docks and compile a list of every ship raided, every sighting and everything that was taken, if you can get it. But most importantly focus on the when and where. The only ones we know of are the undercover operatives there's got to be more, and we need to build a complete profile to catch these possibly don't even exist bad guys" They nodded, and moved to leave. "And Tsubaki, order them chronologically and try to establish a pattern,"
"Maybe I should go with tha girls, offer them some-"
"They don't need your protection." Kidd cleared his throat. "They can take of themselves, you, Spirit are going to map every illegal trading route and smugglers port you know on this map."
"The hunting ground of the Ghost."
"Exactly. We need to become a target, and then, come hell or high water, we are taking that ship."
TIMELINE
Golden Age of Flight- Ancient Airships, Lost Technologies 1000
The Thousand Wars. 1000
The Dark Era- Ships are grounded, flight is forgotten. 500
The Steam Age/The Second Age of Flight-Flight is rediscovered. 500
This will become necessary. This is hella being it's own story. Sorry about the uncharacteristically long chapter. Please review, and tell me everything wrong with it. (My overswollen ego can handle it, I swear.)
Also please note, although this wasn't inspired by Airship Grigori, it was inspired by some fanart of Airship Grigori. Which is almost the same thing but not.
Not that there would be anything wrong with that, because that story kicks major ass.