Every city, no matter how close a Marine base was or how tight the World Government's grip on it could get, had an underbelly. Hell, even the simple fact of the Marines owning most of the docks and having eyes on the rest had merely inspired the local smugglers to get...creative.
Jack leaned back in his chair, mindful of the creaking the poor abused piece of furniture gave under his weight, and threw back another tankard of ale. Didn't do a damn thing, these days, but he did honestly appreciate it.
The tavern's door swung open, letting in noise from the street outside.
"Don't you want to do your duty to the world? Join the Marines, see the-"
It cut off just as quickly, as the man - the last of their party - closed it. "Fucking Marine recruiters," the grizzled old man growled. "Why'd they get the idea to start drumming for recruits now?"
"New officer moved on in," Jack answered. "The White Hunter, Commodore Smoker. Apparently, they're getting a battleship set up for him, and that needs men to crew it."
"So they come on down here for the desperate and the naive," one of the men at the table - who appeared to be little more than a bright yellow raincoat and hat with little round glasses to conceal his eyes - concluded.
"Well, not as though they'll find much," the other, a spindly, spidery-looking man, said with a thin smile. "Still, what brings the Bosun of the Nightmare Pirates down here?"
Jack laced his fingers together. "How many of your men have bounties on their heads, or warrants out for their arrest?" he asked the combined heads of the Thieves', Smuggler's, and Assassin's Guilds of Arlen.
All three of the men went very still. "If you intend to claim them…" the raincoat-clad smuggler began.
"Peace. It would be pointless, anyway. But...we have a pressing need for men. Ones who won't ask questions, and who aren't particularly fans of the Marines or the World Government."
"Oh? And what do you offer in return?" the thief asked.
"Call it peace of mind. How many men of yours have to lurk in the shadows, and can't show their faces without risking arrest? Join the Nightmares, and, well, we have a right of conscription, and any crimes upon entering the crew...simply won't exist."
The three men were quiet for a moment.
"We've seen what happens to your crew," the assassin said. "And that breeds rumors. Especially types like these...Wraiths, of yours."
"You think you'll never see your men again, because they've been used for horrifying experiments," Jack summarized.
"More or less."
"Well, since I very well can't play on my captain's good name as an associate of the World Government-" -everyone chuckled at that- "-why not a simple demonstration? Wallace?"
The Wraith fell from one of the rafters in utter silence, dark blue cloak fluttering around him. The low lighting of the tavern and the shadows cast by his hood made his skeletal mask seem almost alive, something cold and blue glittering in the depths of the hollow eye sockets.
Jack smacked him in the back of the head. "Knock it off," he growled.
The Wraith gave him the finger, and pulled back its hood, before taking off the mask. And under it...was just a man - a bearded redhead with snaggleteeth and freckles. Wallace grinned. "Heya, you lot. Got concerns? I mean, sure, the Cogs are a bunch of creepy chittering fuckers, but rest of us are normal enough. Well, normal as Nightmares get. Living in close quarters with the Butcher Bird maaaaay have warped a bit of our perception of that, I'll admit." He shrugged. "Well, see you lot around." And then he was gone.
"That was...disconcerting," the assassin said.
"Welcome to my world," Jack grunted.
"Still," the thief said. "Got a few of my boys who aren't much use at the moment. Decent hands with locks and such, a few skull-crackers too who'll take orders. Not really bright, but you ain't looking for that, I reckon."
"We have quite a few men who would welcome the chance to get away from the city. Permanently, I mean," the smuggler added. "A couple of crack shots, some crafty bastards who stepped on a few too many toes. Some dockhands, too - you know the type."
"Do I even need to state the specialities?" the assassin asked. "We won't have near as many as these two, our work tends to be quieter, but I could likely scare up a few. And in return, what can you offer, beyond you taking these men off our hands?"
Jack smiled. "How about this?" he said, setting down a small glass vial. The red liquid inside gleamed in the low light. Two more vials quickly joined it.
"This," Jack said quietly, "is something I asked the Captain to whip up. Well, after he fixed himself up."
The other three men nodded. Practically everyone who was everyone had seen the Captain limp into town yesterday, looking like he'd been caught in a tornado alongside a razor blade factory and a small army of angry cats. Kaneki had arrived later, immensely ticked off and dragging an entire Sea King with him, which he'd proceeded to disembowel and destroy underwater over the course of several hours. Last Jack'd checked, the water near that area had been permanently dyed red.
"In any case, what it does is quite simple."
"And that is?" the thief asked.
Jack smiled, and told them.
He whistled as he left the tavern, tipping his cap to the Marine recruiter outside, who had drawn a small crowd of perhaps a dozen people.
Meanwhile, Jack had three times that number, ready to be added to the ranks. Wolves, Basilisks, Wraiths, Fae, maybe even a couple Cogs if the twenty chittering bastards took an interest in the recruits or the other way around.
All in all, not a bad day's work.
C had found a very useful little nook.
First, and most important, it was warm - because it was right next to the chimney of a bakery, which provided heat day and night, enough to keep the cold away.
Second, it provided an excellent vantage point on the Marine shipyards, and the dry dock in which Ends Justified was being rebuilt to Jack and Lauren's exacting specifications.
"So this is where you've been going every day, little brother," Brother said, wings folding away as he alighted on the rooftop. He glanced at the shipyards, where much of the Ends from the keel on up was being rebuilt entirely. They'd fit more people once it was done, nearly twice as many even with the fact that most of them were huge. Proper forge for Herman, gunsmithing tools for Lauren, bigger labs for the Captain. Taking out the normal gun deck, and replacing it with a couple turrets. Five weeks, to do all that - the Marines worked fast, even more when it was, well, one of their ships.
C glanced at Brother, and realized there was somebody missing. Not the Oni - they had all gone elsewhere anyway, mostly to keep Eka out of trouble as he kept on taking the money of every Marine willing to dice with him.
Eka cheated, that was basically a law - or a Law, if you were Six and spoke with capital letters audible half the time.
Six! That was who was missing.
"Where's the other half?
Brother blinked, and then chuckled. "What, you mean Six? We're not attached at the hip. And what do you mean, other half?"
"He contrasts. You're super-angry about stuff, but I don't think I've ever seen him actually angry. You look like a shaved bear, he's all willowy. You bundle up, he's still going around showing off abs despite it being way too cold. You have normal color hair that's weirdly shaped, he's got normal shaped hair that's weirdly colored."
"Oi, what the hell's wrong with my hair?"
"You look like you glued a dead shrub to your scalp, Brother."
Brother growled at him. C stuck his tongue out.
"Brat," Brother said affectionately, sitting down next to him. "Still. Six is Six. It's not like he's trying to contrast with me."
"Mhm. So where is he?"
"Ugh, fine, he's in the bakery down here. Said he wanted to buy some stuff."
C smiled slightly. "Knew it."
"Hush, you."
C hushed, and kept an eye on the Marine builders and their ship. Further down in the dockyards, the skeletal shapes of battleships stood, in varying bits of completion. Big, metal hulls, mostly. Some were nearly done.
Hm. Brother was looking a lot better, ever since he'd beaten up the Captain. There wasn't that scent edging from frustration to madness, anymore, either. Good for him.
A bell rang below them, and Brother leaned over the edge of the roof and extended a tendril downwards. Six came up with it very swiftly, a paper bag in hand and a croissant in his mouth. Brother set him down on the roof gently, and returned to his spot next to C.
Six, naturally, sat very close to Brother. Brother blinked at that, before chuckling. "You're cold, aren't you?"
Six made a noise like one of the stray cats C had seen around town had when someone had scratched it behind the ears, and leaned into Brother, who laughed and wrapped a tendril around him.
"Dork," Brother said gently. "I need to get you warmer clothes."
Six bopped him on the head with his croissant. "Don't want them. Got you," the cook said serenely.
"Oh, so I'm just a mobile space heater, then?"
"One of your numerous good qualities. Given that we are not actively fighting anyone and the Revenant and the Bosun are handling training on the new recruits, it is currently the most important of them." Six took a bite out of his croissant. "So, technically, yes."
"Jerk," Brother muttered with a small smile.
Six cocked his head. "I believe Dui had a more accurate way of referring to me."
"Oh?"
"His definition was 'A walking generator of sass'."
Brother laughed. C looked at the two of them, and thought a little.
"Brother?"
"Yeah, C?"
"Where do babies come from?"
Lauren, quite frankly, was bored stiff.
Okay, yes, Vinci had dragged her to the Center under the pretense of keeping an eye on 'things' (and by things, he meant 'whatever I cook up in a deliberate campaign to slowly drive the researchers into insanity'), but the real goal was to wander around the Center and map the place out as best she could.
That'd taken about an hour.
The Center consisted of five towers, four smallish ones and a much larger central spire. That big one in the middle was where the rail line led, and the linkage point for the other four via glassed-in hallways. Hell, the other towers weren't even that important as far as she could tell - they might even be somewhat legitimate. The big one, though?
Well, to put it bluntly, she didn't trust the story about it being just a place for labs and clerical work. Part of it was how the building plans didn't account for a huge shaft in the very center of the spire. Part of it was her well-honed sense of hearing being able to make out people moving into and out of that spire, and the sounds of grinding gears and pulleys that resulted every time they did.
And a really big part of it was the fact she never saw nor heard hide nor hair of Vinci's cousin, once he entered that shaft right up till he left it.
She could put a guess at where the shaft ended, just from getting a good look at the foundations, but she wasn't Vinci or Jack, and her best guess was just that.
Maybe she should get Six up here, if she could find a crowbar to pry him away from his cannibalistic teddy bear. One decent vibration in the right place would ring the tower like a bell, and give everyone a good idea of what they were dealing with.
But that wasn't her problem, and having accomplished everything she reasonably could, she'd done the only thing she could think of to deal with her boredom.
Namely, climb to the top of that incredibly huge spire, and alleviate her boredom by testing her latest heavy rifle on most of the mountains.
Boom.
Lauren counted off the seconds, then smiled as she saw through her rifle's scope a very large tree turn itself into a cloud of flying splinters, a second explosion rippling through the air.
Maybe she should rent out her services for landscaping.
"Uh, miss? I'm…"
"A distraction," she replied to the voice. Young, male, uncertain. But she sighed anyway, and looked up from her prone position to glance at the voice's owner.
They sent a fucking kid up here?
The brat - and despite the fact he was in Marine whites, complete with big white cloak, and thus of an age to enlist, he looked so damn baby-faced she couldn't think of him as anything but - smiled sunnily, hazel eyes gleaming. "Heya. Sorry for distracting you, but…" He scratched at the back of his head sheepishly. "Well, the Captain wasn't really happy with the explosions. It's spooking some of the lab guys."
"Hmph. So he sent you up here to make me stop?" Lauren asked, safing the rifle and sitting up to keep an eye on the brat.
"Well, kinda. I was the only one willing to do it."
She turned an appraising eye on him. "That so? Marines here must be soft, then. Back home they'd have walked right on in."
"Well, you are kinda scary, ehehehe…."
"Kinda my point, brat," she said, lighting a cigarette. "Wouldn't matter, to them."
The brat paused. "Aren't you a pirate?" he asked.
"Yeah, and? Seen the boys and girls in white stand up to worse than me, back in the South Blue. Fought alongside them more than I've fought against them, too."
"Huh." The brat leaned against one of the hunks of metal that dotted the roof - what the machinery was for, she couldn't guess, it just sat in its box and made noise. "Aren't you cold?" he asked.
"Ain't felt cold for a while, kid. Captain did his work on me, so I don't need to worry about that sort of thing." She cocked her head, part of her running the numbers, assessing the brat's stance, weapons, and build. Unprepared, rifle with scope on his back, scrawny. "What's your name, brat?"
"Uh...Simo. Lyudmilo Simo."
"Hmph. You a sniper?"
"Er...yes, actually."
She chuckled, and picked up her rifle. She ejected the magazine of explosive shells, worked the bolt to rid herself of the shell in the chamber, and reloaded the massive weapon with solid shot. She presented the thing to him butt-first. "Prove it," she said simply.
Hell, at least it promised to not be boring.
The brat nearly staggered under the weight of the huge rifle, but he drew himself up manfully - well, as manfully as a five foot four scrawny little shit like him could manage - and walked to the edge of the roof, scanning the horizon. "Name a target?" he asked.
She pointed at a distant mountaintop. "See that weird little crag sticking out there?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Hit that."
"I'm...gonna need a ranging shot, first."
"Fair enough, send it."
The rifle roared, and the brat paused. "Okay, think I've got it. Ow, by the way. This thing kicks."
"Quit whining."
"Wasn't," the brat said, and the rifle roared again. Lauren tracked the bullet as it fell - low, way too low, what was he -
The bullet bounced off another crag, deflected into an adjacent mountaintop, bounced off that, and then finally connected with the crag she'd designated.
Lauren chuckled. "Show-off. Right, well, that's adequate enough."
The brat nodded, sitting back up after safing the rifle. "Uh, thanks, I guess? What's the gun's name?"
Lauren grinned, knifelike. "Longinus," she said, savoring every syllable.
"It's a beautiful weapon."
"It's meant to be."
Vinci was well aware that the various civilian researchers, bar one, were absolutely terrified of him.
Good. It'd make them less likely to try copying his work, at least hopefully for long enough to matter.
He hadn't come (visibly) armed to this little gathering, though, so he wasn't sure what was bothering them so much. Wasn't as though he'd personally threatened them, after all.
Ah, well, he'd take advantage of their fears anyway.
"Gentlemen, ladies, let me make one thing clear," he said, grinning his most evil-looking grin (the one every other officer had deemed 'most likely to give new recruits a heart attack'). "Through the power of science, the age of warriors is over."
He glared at the snail projector. The mollusc visibly paled, and began projecting the image Vinci had selected - a cut-away view of a Wolf's physiology, paring down past skin to muscle, bone, and the various extra organs that their particular Augment added.
"The Wolfsheart, as those who have been Augmented refer to it, serves as a vehicle for full-body genetic drift. Once the process of complete, the augmentee cannot, in any meaningful sense, be considered fully 'human' by traditional assessments." Not his own, of course - Vinci's own definition of humanity encompassed fishmen, mermaids, dwarves, and functionally speaking most humanoids: if everyone could interbreed, putting in arbitrary barriers to humanity was counterproductive and rooted more in bigotry than good science. "Homo sapiens fenris would serve as a more accurate designation," he continued. "Every one of the 'Wolves of the Sea' is immensely strong, capable of lifting multiple tons, and running at an excess of forty kilometers per hour while burdened with a quarter ton of armor plate and full combat kit. Their senses are more acute than almost any human can hope to achieve through purely physical means, including flawless adaptation to night conditions, a sense of smell rivalling that of a well-trained hunting hound, and highly sensitive hearing. Their reflexes are equally honed. In armor, and armed accordingly, I expect a Wolf to be capable of defeating any Captain- or Commodore-rank Marine in a physical confrontation. Devil Fruits and proper training muddy the water, sometimes greatly - I wouldn't back any number of them against Commodore Smoker, and I estimate it would take at least a full squad to incapacitate the likes of Captain T-Bone, but the fact remains that men like these are rare. Meanwhile, all it takes is a well-stocked laboratory facility, cell culturing equipment, and a willing group of implantees...and in a few months, barring exceptional circumstances, you'll have a steady production line of these soldiers. And I do mean soldiers, ladies and gentlemen. They train as one, they march as one, they fight as one."
He grinned ever wider, at the cowed and fearful audience that filled this lecture hall - and at Doctor Franz Josef, who sat with eyes wide and shining with, of all things, hope.
"This," Vinci proclaimed, "is the greatest thing I can grant to the Marines as a whole. The world is filled with monsters...and with Augments, men can gain the strength to fight back. Any questions?"