Episode 2 - High Seas Stories
The sky grew darker as the star pirate crew along with their newest member pulled away from the island of Winoah. Maggie helped Lucas adjust the sails according to their captain's orders while captain and navigator Mason charted the course they would be sailing for the next few days.
"It's going to be a good while before our next landfall so I hope you're okay with life on the sea Maggie" Mason yelled from the helm of the ship.
"I grew up in a port town don't worry, I'm well accustomed to life on a boat" she replied.
After a few hours of sailing into the night it had grown to about midnight and the captain called his crew below deck for some food. Mason called to Lucas to grab some meat they had preserved before their stop in Winoah while he himself started to prepare a soup.
Maggie couldn't help but notice that crew had plenty of food on board for two men even without the supplies her and Chuck had gathered earlier that day.
"Mason, if you two had all of this food then why did you send me back into town to get more, clearly this would have been enough food for the two of you for at least a week." She questioned.
"Sure we had plenty for the two of us but because we were going to be taking on a third crew member we needed to pick up extra just to be prepared" the captain answered.
"What do you mean because you were…" Maggie stopped herself, "you couldn't have possibly known I was going to ask to join your crew!"
By this point all three pirates were stuffing their faces with the soup which Mason had prepared. It was edible but he was certainly no chef.
"I could tell as soon as I saw how you looked at those marines in the bar that you'd make a fine addition to our crew and I never let myself believe otherwise. Now eat up, it tastes even worse cold."
Both Mason and Lucas laughed with a beer at hand while Maggie couldn't help but crack a smile at the two idiots she was getting involved with.
After the meal it was back on deck to do final checks and preps for the night ahead. After was set now that they had broken out of the rough water that was now surely surrounding Winoah and holding the marines at bay.
"Lucas it seems like a fine night to me, go below deck and grab some blankets off the empty cots, Maggie, finish tying down the supplies on the main deck and meet me up on the fore deck" Mason shouted down from the helm.
Lucas threw the pillows and blankets down onto the deck in 3 spots next to each other just as Mason and Maggie were arriving.
"Have a seat Maggie" Mason gestured to one of the 3 cushioned spots. Both Mason and Maggie lied down on the deck facing up towards the night sky.
"Tell me Maggie, have you ever looked at the stars" Mason questioned.
"Well of course I have, they are out every night."
"No but have you ever truly looked at the stars with nothing else to distract you. No lights, no sounds no outside thoughts. Right now were in the middle of the West Blue, not an island for miles and thus not a light for miles either besides those on this ship. I want you to see what the stars truly look like."
No sooner did Mason say this did Lucas finish turning out the last light aboard their ship. The light on the boat vanished and suddenly the night sky seem to light up brighter than it ever had before. The sky was littered with stars, constellations and interstellar clouds which had never seemed to exist before now splashed the sky with an array of colour.
"I can't believe this" Maggie stuttered, "I've never seen the sky so beautiful, in fact I've never seen anything so beautiful. I can't believe this kind of beauty has always been there."
"Just imagine those stars have been then shining these same beautiful lights for as long as our planet has existed, for as long as you've lived and you're only just now seeing it Maggie. This Maggie, is why we sail" mason said with a satisfied look on his face.
"I know it's a little deeper than just to see the night sky but we wanted you to see what we saw and we're hoping you'd understand our feelings" Lucas added, his eyes never leaving the stars.
The crew of three lied there for a few more minutes just taking in the sight before Maggie spoke up.
"It's funny, you knew I would join your crew and here I am on your boat, admiring the stars without another care to think of and yet you know nothing about me. All you have is a name. And I know nothing about either of you as well besides your names and an apparent starry eyed obsession."
"Well I suppose we couldn't ask for a better night for story telling now could we? What did you want to know" Mason asked.
Maggie was surprised at the captain's willingness to open up to a complete stranger. Clearly he was a very trusting man although I guess she hasn't given him any reason not to trust her.
"Well first of all I want to know how you morons intended to escape after getting yourselves arrested. What if I hadn't come, what would you have done without me?"
"Well that one is easy" Mason nodded, "both Lucas and I are devil fruit eaters. We could have broken out at any time but I wanted to wait and let you make your move."
Maggie seemed shocked. He'd said this so casually as if this hadn't been some kind of huge deal. She couldn't believe that these idiots had eaten the cursed fruits and gained their powers.
"There's no way that's true, if either of you really had eaten one of the devil fruits your bounties would be a lot higher just on pure principle. Also the marines would never have put you in such simple wooden shackles. The always put devil fruit eaters in seastone cuffs to negate their powers." Maggie paused to take a breath.
"You're right, if the Navy knew we had devil fruit powers our bounties would be considerably higher and surely they would have opted for seastone cuffs instead. For this very reason up until now both Lucas and I have kept our powers a secret from the Navy. Since we've become pirates neither of us have used out powers publicly" Mason explained
"The one down side to this whole ordeal really is the fact that because we've both eaten cursed fruits neither of us can swim. That's why you now come in."
Maggie was now secretly regretting her decision of joining the crew of probably the worst pirates she has ever met.
"You both have just been sailing all this time and neither of you could swim? Have you both always been unable to swim?"
"No" Lucas replied, "there was a time when we first set sail where only Mason had devil fruit powers, I only gained my just recently."
"Well alright then captain," The girl turned and faced him "how did you get yourself cursed?"
"I guess to answer that I have to go back quite a ways, probably to around the time when Lucas and I first met."
"We met when we were about 4 years old. Lucas never had parents, they'd either run off as pirates and them him at home or died. Maybe they were pirates and had just been captured by the Navy. Mo matter which story you chose to believe it doesn't really matter because it never seemed to bother him."
"My parents raised Lucas as their own son and as my brother. The two of us grew up as close as any two brothers could have. "
The sound of Lucas's snoring in the background showed his level of interested in hearing this story again.
"My parents owned a café in the small port town of Noman quite some miles away in the West Blue. It was a much more pirate friendly town. In fact most of our parents business came from pirates who were just passing by."
"Notably after been exposed to pirates and old sea stories in our parents café for much of our young lives Lucas and I set our sights on a life out at sea from an early age."
"We worked at the café almost every day helping our parents any way we could, cleaning dishes, taking orders you name it."
"We always loved to hear stories from the new pirates in town however in doing so we ended up taking a lot of very long breaks to listen." Mason took a pause to laugh at his sleeping brother then continued.
"Lucas and I were in constant competition on who was a better waiter. Often we were tied, breaking just ad many dishes as the other and mucking up just as many orders. It was more a competition of who could do the least damage but the pirates didn't mind."
"One day when the two of us were eight years old we asked our parents if we could take the day off from working in the café and spend it out by the docks. We asked for the day off as if we ever actually worked" Mason chuckled.
"Instead of just listening to the stories told in the café Lucas and I want to go out to the dock and play pirates which we hadn't done for a lone time."
"We had noticed the day prior a large pirate ship had docked on the western side of the port. Lucas and I saw this as a great opportunity to pretend we were pirates on a real, large pirate ship."
"Once we were sure that none of the pirates were still aboard the ship we climbed our way on and pulled out our wooden cutlasses and had an epic duel on the deck of a real pirate ship. It was every kids dream."
"It wasn't long though before we started to hear voices approaching the ship from the docks. We both panicked and the two of us ran below deck making a series of confusing turns until we burst through a door slamming it behind and taking a moment to breathe."
"After a few seconds of heavy breathing we both realized what room we had chosen as our hiding place. It was the pirates treasure room."
"At first I think we both panicked because how bad would it have looked had those pirates come into their treasure storage and found these two little kids, we would have looked like thieves."
"Luckily after a few minutes of tense waiting it seemed like nobody had followed us or knew we were aboard the ship."
"Naturally we did was any two eight year olds would do, we started to dig through the mountains of gold, silver and jewels."
"We had no intention of stealing any of it we just wanted to look at it all, wear the crowns that were way too big for our heads and put on the rings which we could fit three of our fingers into."
"After a short wile of digging through the many piles of gold I saw something out of place in a nearby pile, something not plated in gold or silver and no encrusted with beautiful gems. It was a small wooden box hanging out of the side of a stack of goblets and coins."
"I opened the box to find only a pale green fruit covered in a waving pattern and a tiny curled stem."
"A devil fruit" Maggie interjected.
"Correct but in all of the stories Lucas and I had heard from the pirates at the café never had either of us heard of the devil fruits. Pirates talked about men with unhuman abilities but never mentioned where they got those abilities."
"I turned around and presented the small fruit to Lucas producing a laugh from the both of us. He told me that it probably awful and that he'd bet me a days pay from the café that I wouldn't eat it."
"You ate a devil fruit because of a dare!? My captain really is the biggest moron in the West Blue" Maggie shouted.
"Regardless" Mason interjected, "I did in fact eat it and he was right, it tasted awful. Not only that but I felt like I needed to throw up immediately after stomaching the thing."
"Lucas could tell something was wrong and decided he needed to get me off this ship and back to our parents at the café."
"By the time we had gotten back onto the deck of the ship I could hardly walk and Lucas was having to support most of my weight. He tried his best to keep me up but as soon as reached it I fell through the gap in the ship's railing left by the bridge back to the dock."
"I was sinking quickly to the shallow sea floor. Up until now both Lucas and I has been natural swimmers, another thing we often competed in. When Lucas saw I hadn't immediately come up after falling in he must have been very concerned."
"Lucas jumped in after me and managed to haul be back up onto the dock. Surely by now the two of us had drawn quite a bit of attention from passerbies. A familiar sailor from town who saw the commotion helped carry me back to the café."
"I had fallen unconscious by this point so if you want any more detail on what happened next you'll have to wake up sleepy head over there. Needless to say he told them about everything that had happened and I guess it didn't take long for them to diagnose what had happened, I'd unknowingly eaten a cursed fruit."
"Well which one did you eat, what powers did it give you" Maggie asked now fully immersed in in Mason's story.
"I had eaten the Toppū Toppū no Mi, the Gust-Gust Fruit. It's a paramecia type fruit that gives me control over the winds and breezes."
Mason sent a quick gust of cold wind over his brother's sleeping body jolting him awake.
"Oh so we're already at the part where you ate the fruit" Lucas grogged.
"We are" Mason replied, "would you care to finish the story from here?"
"Sure, why not. I'm sure she's pretty tired of hearing you talk about yourself anyways" Lucas answered.
"Well if he didn't mention Mason and I used to compete in just about everything, one thing being our work in the café. Up until now it was pretty even but once he gained the powers of that Gust-Gust Fruit the scales tipped way in his favor."
"Whenever I would have normally tipped and fallen he could use his wind powers to help keep his balance. He could safely throw drinks and plates across the café knowing that he could keep them all upright with his wind and not let them break."
"These unfair competitions are what drove me to pursue my interests as an inventor and engineer. I was going to invent things that would put me ahead of his stupid wind powers. I had no clue what I was doing at the time but I was determined at least."
"After many years of trying and failing I just couldn't out do Mason, however in the process of competing we both improved our skills greatly. Mason learned how to better control his wind powers and I became a much more confident and capable inventor."
"Soon the two of us became famous in town as some kind of crazy waiter brothers. We were more like entertainment to the customers, and it brought our parents a ton of business outside of just the usual pirates."
"We continued to grow and learn in the same manner until about three months ago when we decided it was finally time to set sail and follow those foolish childhood dreams of becoming famous pirates."
"We had both turned 20 so we were the same age but Mason was always a natural leader so there wasn't much of an argument of which one of was going to be the captain."
"We set sail from our home town under the name of the Noman Pirates on a ship quite a bit smaller than this one and only a childhood dream to follow. The town and our parents surely didn't want to see us go."
"So when you and Mason set sail only he had eaten a cursed fruit" Maggie questioned.
"Indeed, I received my devil fruit powers much more recently and it was a much less exciting tale. To put it simply this wasn't originally our boat and the previous owners still had some valuable on board including a devil fruit."
"The fruit I ate was the Būmu Būmu no Mi otherwise known as the Boom-Boom Fruit. Another paramecia class fruit but it's a bit hard to explain. It allows me to turn certain materials or mechanisms into bombs simply by touching them. I can blow them up whenever I want and it's not detectable at all."
"Like I said I only recently gained the power and I'm still trying to learn how to use it, which is another reason the Navy doesn't know about it."
"So wait, you can control the wind and you can blow things up and neither of you are using these powers in battle? That makes no sense to me those seem incredibly useful" Maggie stated.
"There really hasn't been a need to. Both Lucas and I are quite handy with guns and swords plus now that Lucas has his own workshop here on the ship he's made plenty of other useful gadgets to use in fights" Mason re-entered the conversation.
"We're only small time pirates right now" Lucas added, "no need to let the government know just yet what we can do."
"Still seems dumb to me but I'm not the one with devil fruit powers. I guess my only question left is why the name change. If you left your home town and set sail as the Noman Pirates why change it" Maggie inquired.
"You're looking at the reason right now. About a month ago Lucas and I found ourselves in the middle of an incredibly strong storm. I tried my best to keep us upright with my wind powers but the tiny ship we set sail in could hardly handle the rough seas and weather."
"I couldn't swim and Lucas wouldn't be able to save me with how the rough the seas were. All of our lanterns had shattered and most of our supplies had been washed off the deck by the storm or destroyed but when the storm passed that night we were both alive."
"Most sailors wait to be greeted by the morning's sun to know the storm has passed but that storm had settled in the middle of the night for us. It left us in complete darkness out in the middle of the sea."
"That night, for the first time, Lucas I truly saw the stars and it was indescribable. From that point on as captain I deemed a change to our Roger and we then became the Star Pirates."
"Anyways it's getting late and cold. We still have several days of travel until we get to the next stop so you both grab a bunk and get some rest. I'll watch the ship's course for just a bit longer. Goodnight."
"Goodnight captain" Lucas and Maggie said in unison.
Author's notes: Backstory and more backstory. Both this chapter and the next will mainly be focused on backstory to help connect with the three characters before moving on too far. Once again all feedback is welcome.