Thank you to li'miss sunshine, StaraptorFan, Tanya Takaishi, Mitchie Love, Sweet Cari, BlueFallenAngel and To Love Is To Destroy for your super sweet reviews :) I hope you enjoy this chapter, it's the last kind of "filler" chapter before some serious stuff starts going down ;) Thank you everyone for taking the time to read this and I hope to hear from you! :D
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The moon reflecting off the now-still water would have been beautiful if it hadn't meant something so awful. The ship was gone. His ship. Taichi had lost all feeling in his fingertips.
No one had spoken for hours. Jyou and Mimi had fallen asleep, the latter resting her head on the formers sunken shoulder. Sora was awake, physically at least. The distant look in her eyes had been present almost all night as she stared, unflinchingly, at the distant place in the ocean where his ship had once been.
It was horrific. Sword fights were always Taichi's favourite part in movies, the more gore and blades flying the better. But there was nothing entertaining about what he had just witnessed. And fled from.
Whoever they were, the men wearing the red uniforms came out of nowhere. Hundreds, Easily outnumbering his crew, in number but not in skill. He felt a flush of pride that faded almost instantly. He had left them to die. Albeit, Willis had ordered him off, saying that the men would leave sooner if they believed the captain to be dead or off the ship, and seeing Sora… knowing it would be her best chance of getting out of there alive… he had no other option. At the thought of her he changed his gaze from the glassy water to the redhead, her hands clasped in her lap, twisting something small around and around. Fidgeting. Although she had never personally met Catherine… their world's Catherine, it was impossible for Taichi not to notice the look on her face. It had only been present a handful of times. The weeks after she had left Biyomon behind.
When Mimi moved to America.
After he stopped returning her calls because she and Yamato got together.
Yeah, to the public he told everyone that Yamato was his best friend. Maybe Koushiro in some crowds. But even the two of them together didn't know him the way Sora did.
He exhaled loudly, it escaped as a sigh and Sora flinched. She didn't say anything, and honestly he was glad. He wasn't ready to face it yet.
His ears had stopped ringing, Taichi just noticed. The gunshots and clanging swords, the screams had done their part, but then there were the explosions. After he had shot the officer who Jyou claimed was "Pell", the water carried them further and further away. The screams and shouts were barely audible and they noticed the red-uniformed men's ship pulling away. They were leaving, and Taichi had reached for the oars to begin rowing back to the ship and with Jyou's help they could help anyone in poor condition, and have some kind of… memorial for those who were in the worst.
But then there were the explosions. Canon fire, six of them. Each one a signature on the glorious ship's death certificate. Fire caught when one hit where Taichi assumed was the kitchen. The only thing that extinguished it was the ocean water when it sank beneath the glassy bluish-black expanse.
They were gone.
Mimi had tried to comfort him, saying that the men could have been taken prisoner. Horrible thought, but much preferable to the alternative. They weren't pirates, it was evident. What were they after?
The sky was dark, the impenetrable darkness that came with the last few moments of night before dawn. It felt like the longest night of his life, only rivalled by one other. He had lit the boat's lantern after the enemy ship had departed, and by the still flickering light could see the currents had taken them back to the island where they had shot Mimi. It had only been that morning but it seemed like days ago.
Sora had snapped from her daze, still clutching the object in her hands, a ring maybe? She leaned back to pull Jyou's blanket over Mimi. She was mad. Taichi could always tell. Mad at him, as was usually the case anyway.
Against his better judgement Taichi spoke. "What's in your hands?"
She didn't answer for several moments. Probably gauging the necessity for a bitter, angry or sarcastic response. "Catherine's ring." She answered instead.
"Can I see?" He didn't much care to see some girly ring, but as it seemed to be important to Sora, Taichi had learned that showing interest in that kind of stuff always calmed her down.
She looked down at the small gold ring in her palm as if he had asked her to sell her soul instead. But she handed the ring to him, "Don't drop it." Her voice was thin and tinny, almost threatening him to drop it so she could have an excuse to throw him overboard.
It was nothing fantastic. A simple gold band, tiny so that it probably would only fit halfway onto Taichi's baby finger. But it would have fit on any of Sora's, her long lender fingers, save for maybe her thumb. He spun the ring around, pretending the examine it but his thoughts went back to the only other girly ring he'd ever looked so hard at. He'd gotten it for Sora, a joke mostly. "A promise ring", his mother had teased when she found it in his room. She had cooed and teased him, and was probably writing a list of acceptable names for her future grandchildren. But it wasn't that, it was just a ring he'd gotten her. A small reddish pink stone, that reminded him of her crest. Love. What a stupid word.
But it was how he dismissed that word, and a relationship revolving around it, was what caused him to keep the ring under his bed for a year and end up giving it to Hikari for her fourteenth birthday instead. Because he dismissed it, and Sora dismissed him. And brought in the next candidate.
The instantly returning feelings caused Taichi to squeeze the ring tightly, bouncing the gold loop from his fingers and onto the bottom of the boat. Sora shrieked.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Taichi fumbled and he reached down for it. "Safe and sound." He picked it up, wedged underneath the supply bag and a floor board. "No harm done."
The fury in Sora's eyes was unmistakable, but at that moment something else caught Taichi's attention. "Look, there's something on it!"
Sora withheld any remarks to lean over to see the ring, pinched between Taichi's thumb and forefinger, the inside having a barely noticeable etching, "What is that?" she whispered, as if any volume could wipe the symbol off the gold band
It looked like a fancy sideways 'S'. Kind of. It was too ornate to be accidental and too shapely to be a fancy 'S' anyway. "It might sound weird, but it kind of looks like a crest." Taichi whispered. "Like how yours is kind of like an L on the side and looks like a heart, you know? This one is like… a sideways S or a… weird unfinished infinity symbol."
"Why are you guys talking about crests?" Mimi mumbled, groggy from just waking up.
Sora looked at Taichi, her eyes telling him to keep it to himself and he understood. There were enough complications at the moment, they didn't need to bringing new ones into the equation. "Nothing." He lied, Sora nodding in approval as she slipped the ring onto her index finger.
"You're talking about crests! Did you see it too?"
Half playing dumb and half playing along, Taichi asked, "See what?"
"I saw Jyou's crest! Maybe that's what all the officers wanted!"
Taichi considered this. Was this just Mimi being… Mimi or did she actually know something?
She continued, "I mean, what else could they want?"
Sora scoffed. "I dunno, let's ask Captain Jack Sparrow over here."
Taichi nudged Sora. What did they want? He closed his eyes and furrowed his brows. Shouts rang through his ears and the words formed on their lips. That was it! "They kept asking me where the prince was."
"Prince? Wonderful. On top of everything we now have a renegade prince to worry about." Sora let her face fall into her hands.
Mimi shuffled her body so she was sitting up straight. "Well, the only real lead I think we have is the crest I saw. Maybe that can help us get home." Mimi offered. She adjusted the blanket so it was completely on Jyou's still-sleeping body.
"Where is it?" Taichi asked, curiosity outweighing scepticism.
Mimi motioned vaguely towards the water. "That island where your crew shot me." There was an accusatory tone, but she was evidently trying to hide it on account of the situation involving the current status of Taichi's crew.
"We're almost there anyway. We can check it out." Taichi mused, briefly looking at Sora for approval.
She nodded and quoted Mimi. "It seems to be our only lead at the moment."
Mimi suddenly looked uncomfortable. "One more thing," the fragility of her voice grabbed both Sora and Taichi's full attention. "It's not really an island… it's like the top pillar of a castle. An underwater castle."
Under normal circumstances Taichi would have burst out laughing, and would have made several variations of jokes involving such a statement that he could use to tease Mimi on future occasions, when deemed appropriate. But these circumstances were anything but normal.
"Oh, one more thing. I know I said that before but this is actually the one more-"
Sora sighed. "Mimi, we get it."
"Oh, okay." She let out an uneasy giggle. "Umm… the water, the castle under there... I couldn't breathe in it. There must be some kind of magic, or force. It might be important."
"You couldn't breathe underwater? That's unusual." Taichi couldn't resist the sarcasm.
Mimi kicked him from across the boat. "Stop being mean! I was a mermaid in case you've forgotten. I didn't have a scuba tank with me."
He had forgotten that part.
So now they had a magic underwater castle, an island with the crest of reliability, a mysterious crest on a ring, a renegade prince, his missing crew, Jyou's damage (whatever it was), Mimi's special bond with fish, how Sora was indefinitely mad at him, and they still had to find the rest of their friends who undoubtedly were just as messed up with new baggage as they were.
Taichi let out a deep sigh. Whoever was in charge of this wasn't making it easy for them.