AN: I think this was meant to be a prologue for before Alice met Ace... The description gets a bit irrelevant at times. XD

A scene I wrote in 2012.


Alice was sitting at the back of the dining hall, watching her crewmates chugging down barrels of sake. It was a party celebrating the successful plunder of an enemy ship, but she felt it was unnecessary. She let out a small sigh, but then smiled. They sure didn't know what holding back was. Although the plunder that morning was a ship that wasn't even comparable to them in size, they were throwing a full out festival.

The men poured booze for the drunken men that kept drinking and drinking, trying to see who was able to hold the most liquor before passing out. A few of the women joined in as well, laughing as they watched their opponents give up. Others were stuffing their faces with food, and there were more competitions for who could eat the most.

Although she found it was unnecessary, it did make her smile to see her crewmates so carefree as if they had all the time in the world. She looked at the clock that stayed miraculously hung on the wall with all the commotion. It was well past midnight already, and Alice decided to retire to her room. Captain had mentioned earlier that they would have guests in the afternoon.

"I'm going back to my room," she said to her companion, the young and blonde doctor Leo. He nodded with slightly flustered cheeks and went for another mug of booze. She manoeuvred through the chairs and people like a snake and left the room.

The sun had risen sooner than Alice anticipated in the morning, and she was still sluggish as she went onto deck. As she expected, there were less of the crew out that morning than usual. On deck were about seven people in total, all of them were the division captains, except one who seemed to be one of the new recruits. She watched as he fumbled with the ropes of the sail, and smiled when one of the captains came over to help him.

It was a fairly clear day, save for a few grey wisps of clouds in the distance. There was no worry, however, as they were moving away from them. Birds circled overhead, and one of them was the news bird, a pelican like bird that had a sack with it. She took a copy, and handed the bird some beli before it started to peck her. The newspaper was dropped off at Captain's quarters after she gave it a quick read. The captain liked to know what was happening in the world as often as possible.

Alice's beast, a large black panther, slinked around the corner to nudge her. She rubbed his head for a moment, then gave it a tickling under the chin. He purred contently with his face obviously showing it.


AN: I don't quite remember where I was going with this one! But it's not too bad. I like the writing style.