Chapter One - In Which There is a Kidnapping
She looks up just in time to see an orange boiler suit wearing Mink polar bear enter the bar.
She tilts her head to the side, thinking of approaching it for a short second before deciding it was none of her damn business and returns to staring into her mug. It evidently could take care of itself, if it got that far out of the Grand Line without being captured by slavers so there was no need to involve herself.
Still, she occasionally continues glancing up to observe the bear. It was her first time seeing one of the elusive tribe members, and she was curious. They almost never left their secret island. They were rumors that it actually moved, since Log Poses were unable to point to it. Some laughed at that, but she's seen many unbelievable things in her short life. She wasn't going to dismiss any rumors without proof.
To her great disappointment, the Mink doesn't end up doing anything interesting other than accidently scaring a female server when ordering drinks after it sits down in a corner. It appears to be apologizing to the young girl, but even subtly leaning in, she still sits too far to hear anything over the loud din of the pub, leaving her hoping it was waiting for another Mink of a different species to even slightly satisfy her interest.
Her eyebrows furrow when after a short while, three other men join the Mink instead, two of which wear boiler suits similar to his own only colored white, while the last one was wearing a yellow hoody with rolled up black sleeves and a black hood. From where she was sitting, she thinks he had a Jolly Roger of sorts printed on the chest area in dark ink, but her angle of sight was wrong to properly observe it. His jeans had odd dots on both the knee and ankle areas, and he had a similarly dotted norther-style white fur hat. His hands were tattooed.
They know each other well, she has time to note, as the odd group jokes around as only people who spent a lot of time together could, before the tattooed one turns to look around, and she freezes, having been caught observing them.
Those are the eyes of a killer.
That one will be trouble, her instincts whisper as her gaze meet the man's, and he pointedly shifts the incredibly long sword leaning on his shoulder. An odachi type, although she could be wrong; swords were really not her thing.
She politely returns her attention to her drink, her previous good mood now gone.
Pirates, she concludes. There is no other explanation for the presence of a free Mink in the company of uniform-wearing humans. They sure as hell were not Marines. They have little enough Giants in their ranks, and she does not recall ever hearing of a Marine Fishmen, much less of a Mink.
The tattooed man was probably his captain since he the only one not wearing a boiler suit, and his own status as right-hand was presumably shown by the orange color of his outfit. Very unusual, but not improbable. Weirder things happen in the Grand Line daily.
In all honesty, she had nothing against most pirates. It was not like she was any better, and she might indeed be worse in some cases. It was the ones who indulged in slavery and rape that she could not stand. The ones who killed children and the weak for no other reason than they could. For pleasure.
Killing for pleasure was different from killing for money.
She swallows the last of her drink and throws down some money on the counter. Except for their captain, they did not seem like such bad guys, but one should never judge anyone by their appearances. She learned that lesson a long time ago. Painfully.
The group, she cannot help but notice involuntarily, is laughing at something together when the bar's door swings closed behind her. Unquestionably friends, even if she's (doubtfully) wrong and they were not a crew.
She will leave tomorrow, she decides, walking through the darkened street. She'd stayed on this island for far too long anyway, and it was high time to move on. If she manages to avoid any mischief the pirates might have planned, then it was only a bonus.
"Hey, little lady!"
She's heard of an island built entirely as a labyrinth not that far from here. Maybe she should stop by there next? There must be a ship heading in that general direction, at least.
"I'm talking to you, bitch!" She automatically grabs the hand clamping down hard on her shoulder, and flips the man down unto the floor, before pressing down on him with her foot, spiked spurs glinting in the low light of the street lanterns.
"Was there something you needed, gentlemen?" She asks the other six men blandly, though she could already undoubtedly guess what exactly they wanted.
A group of men cornering a young, weak-looking woman alone in an alleyway at night? Please, they clearly only had one thing on their minds. Plus, she knew who they were from the various tales spread by the ladies at the market. To hear them tell it, those men were nothing but a group of angry drunks who spent most of their time lazing about in bars and terrifying the rest of the island's population with petty crimes. She had beforehand only noticed them once, and on her very first day on the island, but they were a little hard to forget, what with the people parting around them like they were Celestial Dragons as they walked by.
They were also well-practiced in gang rape if the way approached her was any indication. Even before gaining her attention, they had spread out, surrounding her to cut off her escape routes. Making sure she wouldn't be able to run.
So, not the type to enjoy the hunt then. Pity, those were always more fun to play with. She loved the thrill of the chase. Of slipping away at the last moment, leaving her pursuers frustrated and angry. Of returning and letting them be the prey for a change.
The strategy the men were using on her this time would be more than enough for a normal civilian woman, but they were evidently not expecting anyone to fight back successfully, rather than cower against the wall pathetically at the mere sight of them. By the time they reacted to a violent gesture from her, she'd have already killed them all. It was all in their lax postures, in their overconfident expressions. In the overpowering smell of alcohol wafting around them.
Well, she was probably being a little harsh on the women who had fallen prey to the men, but she genuinely could not see them managing to escape even if they did try fighting back. Had there been only one or two men, maybe they would had stood a chance. But not against seven of those musclebound idiots.
"You think you could fight all of us, bitch? Better give up now, and enjoy it. It's not every day you got a group of men willing to fuck you."
Yeah, she could leave anytime she wanted too but letting the men get away unpunished left a bad taste in her mouth. She absolutely hated it when people talked down to her like that.
She was going to teach them a lesson. One they wouldn't forget for years.
Several of the men step closer, and she cocks the hammer of the revolver she was pointing at their companion and lifts a perfectly groomed, icy blue eyebrow in warning. Some of the smarter ones exchange worried glances, but the rest, unfortunately for themselves, pull out various weapons.
Morons.
"You don't have the guts, little lady." One of them claims, hefting his sword with a leer. He's among the larger sized with almost impressively large muscles, and she will hugely enjoy cutting him down to size.
"Don't I?" She pulls the trigger without much further ado, and the man underneath her screams, clutching at his leg. "Next shot is his head, or maybe his dick. I haven't decided yet." She had. It would be the dick.
Of course, the men decide to charge her, thus reacting just as she had been expecting them. She calmly shoots them too.
It takes her barely a minute.
Such an unfortunate waste of bullets, she laments, stepping over the sobbing bodies – she knew better than killing anyone on a Marine Base island – those things were expensive.
She managed to take only a few strides away before a lanky figure steps out from behind the corner of the alleyway. There were still several bullets in her gun, but she nevertheless moves her other hand towards her hip where her second revolver rested in a leather holster, and eyes the man from the bar warily.
"What do you want?" She asks, her voice cold, harsh. He, unlike the others, was dangerous enough to necessitate the increased caution.
"They're Marines, you know." The man tells her instead of answering her question, looking amused.
No, shit. She hadn't noticed the very recognizable uniforms. "And? They aren't dead."
He cocks his head. "Their buddies will be out to arrest you the instant they get back to base."
"Only if they tell them and their superiors they were all beaten by a single woman." She retorts. "And I highly doubt they will."
"Heh." He chuckles, and a chill runs down her spine. Something was telling her she's in big trouble, that she should be avoiding his attention, rather than coming under it – better for her continued good health in general. "I'm Trafalgar Law."
She debates for a long moment, trying to decide whether it was a good idea, and finally gives up when she notices the man's smirk grow the longer she hesitated. "Hamasaki Kujira."
"You're a good shot, Kujira-ya."
Tell her something she didn't know. "I'm aware."
Another spine-chilling chuckle echoes in the night, and she moves away when the man steps closer towards her. "I'm gathering a crew strong enough to reach Raftel and find the One Piece."
"The Mink?" She asks thoughtlessly and immediately knows it was a mistake. Nobody calls them Minks here. They don't even know what Minks are in the first place. She dearly hopes he is not observant enough to notice her slip of the tongue.
The pirate blinks, startled. "Not a lot of people know who the Mink are, in the Blues."
He did notice, she thinks glumly. Damn her curiosity and her big mouth.
"You're actually from the Grand Line, aren't you, Kujira-ya?"
"Does it matter? Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to reject." She firmly tells the man, sliding her gun into its holster and picking her way back through the still sobbing men.
"Are you sure? I require a navigator who knows the Grand Line well." He replies.
You and every other Blue rookie. "You're out of luck then. I only know the bare basics. Nowhere near enough to survive longer than a couple of days."
"Pity."
She makes it out of the alleyway without any more interruptions. When she takes the turn in the opposite direction of her inn, she feels the pirate's eyes burning into her back.
The next half hour, she spends twisting and turning through the most confusing streets she could find in an attempt to shake off any possible tails – she highly suspected Trafalgar Law was not above threating her to join his crew – before finally climbing into her temporary room through the window.
Screw leaving in the morning, she thinks while throwing things haphazardly into her stolen military-grade duffle bag. She wanted as much distance as possible between her and the newbie pirate captain by dawn. She'll even steal a boat if she had too. As long as it guaranteed she did not get involved in whatever he was planning, she would do almost anything.
Hoisting a big, black case first over her shoulder, then picking up her bag, she climbs right back out her window to hurry towards the port. Belatedly she remembers she hadn't paid for her room yet. She considered her options without breaking her step and eventually shrugs to herself. Not only the owners had been rude, but her stay had also been rather unpleasant, so she didn't see the point in paying them for a subpar experience with her hard-earned money. She was practical like that.
A cannonball whistles overhead through the slowly brightening sky, making her drop instinctively flat on the ground, arms covering her skull. Something explodes several streets over, and several more projectiles go flying. Warning bells start resounding throughout the town.
"Pirate attack." She mutters through clenched teeth, crawling behind a low garden wall. "Of-fucking-course, just my luck."
On the other hand, nobody's going to notice a missing boat for a while yet. They might even think it had been burned down during the raid. If she could wait till the pirates leave and then cuts the mooring of multiple ships, the inhabitants will be too busy helping put out fires and taking care of the wounded to care about a few drifting boats.
A sharp smile stretches across her face. Feeling considerably happier, she gets up from the ground to resume her walk to the harbor.
The streets are filling up with panicked people dressed in sleepwear, all of them hauling their valuables with them. They were all running further inland, few bothering to give her a passing glance, even if she was walking towards danger rather than away from it like any other sane person.
The air thickens with smoke from fires, the closer she approaches the sea. It makes breathing harder, and she raises the bandanna around her neck higher to cover her nose. She has seen too many people dying from smoke inhalation to underestimate the risks.
In the distance, she hears the sounds of battle, and she takes care to avoid that direction while looking where to hide until the attack was over. The pirates would be searching every nook and cranny there for the remaining civilians.
Marines rush past her, shoving over any civilian who does not move out of their way quickly enough. She steps to the side, pulling a little boy with her.
"Careful there." She tells him. "Try to watch the people around you, or you'll get trampled."
A young woman runs over, profoundly apologizing and gratefully thanking her in turns, and soon she's disappearing back into the crowd with her son again. She continues back on her way, pleased with her good deed of the day. The crowds eventually thin out, leaving the streets looking abandoned. The dropped belongings of the fleeing people littered the ground, and the doors of most buildings were left swinging open. Occasionally, some stragglers would rush past her. They were mostly the old and the ill, deserted by the rest of their kin as dead weight but still determined to live.
An exhausted man stops to try persuading her to turn back. She gives him a bottle of water and suggests he covers his face to protect his lungs from the spreading smoke.
A couple of more men run by her, and she pays little heed to them until they double back. She thought they would also try convincing to run to safety, and was already preparing her excuses when they snatch her case right out of her hands.
"Hey!" She yelps, shocked as they quickly disappear behind a street corner. "Those are my guns! Give them back, you bastards!" She pulls out both of her revolvers, and charges after them.
After chasing after the thieves through several progressively closer to the site of the battle burning streets, she is forced to skids to a stop just before she bowled over a group of decidedly unfriendly looking pirates who had just stepped out of a house.
They stare at each other for a long moment, the men too startled by her unexpected appearance to immediately attack her.
She catches sight of her case disappearing behind yet another corner, and the snarl of fury she emits is almost animalistic sounding.
"Move." She orders the men, who only laugh in response, finally going for their weapons. "Fine. Have it your way."
This time, she kills them all. She wouldn't get in trouble for exterminating that kind of trash.
The entire harbor is empty, the pirates having followed the citizens further inland, and the Navy following the pirates. So, she stalks through fallen debris and broken houses and bodies, the bottom of her white duster flaring behind her.
Most of the fallen are Marines, but here and there lies the corpse of a pirate. She would not be surprised if she ended up killing more of the criminals than the Government grunts themselves.
They were particularly pathetic here and were more suited for an East Blue post than anything else, in her opinion.
The rest of the bodies were of the non-combatants who were caught unaware at the beginning of the invasion. Some were taken down by bullets and swords, others by fire and, others crushed by the debris of their own homes demolished by cannonballs in the initial bombing.
She pays little attention to them beyond a cruising glance. Dead bodies were nothing new to her.
The deck of the bright yellow submarine – the only vessel the thieves could have used as a refuge other than the highly damaged boats of the fishermen – is empty save for Trafalgar Law, who leans on its railings, staring down at her in innocent surprise.
"Where is it?" She hisses, brazenly pointing a revolver at his face.
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about, Kujira-ya." He answers with a smile.
"My case! My guns!" She howls.
His smile widens. "The big black box my crew just came back carrying?"
"Yes! As you should well know. You ordered them to do this, didn't you?" She accuses the man.
"I assure you, anything they did was under their own volition. I had nothing to do with it."
"Lies!" She seethes.
"No lie, Kujira-ya. Why don't you come on up?" He suggests craftily. "They are likely to have hidden your case somewhere deep inside."
She hesitates then. It was an extraordinarily bad idea she knew that. But those were her guns, extremely expensive, and custom-made.
She takes a step closer to the sub. She hesitates again.
Trafalgar Law was a scoundrel and a smart one at that. Who knew what he would do to her the moment she stepped foot on his ship.
"We're leaving soon, Kujira-ya."
She clicks her tongue in displeasure at being rushed with such a hard decision but jumps unto the deck without further delay.
"Welcome aboard the Polar Tang." The pirate captain tells her and leads the way inside.
She follows after him, clutching her revolvers tight. Under no circumstances was she trusting the man.
They enter a hallway, and the temperature change leaves her dazed and unsteady. While the outside wasn't cold, per se, it was nearing winter, and the wind coming from the sea blew the heat of the fires deeper inland, leaving the port slightly chillier. The sub, on the other hand, was so hot with such still air, she found it difficult to breathe.
"You get used to it." Trafalgar Law says apologetically, as she clutches the wall to steady herself.
"I'm not planning on staying long enough to get used to it." She snaps irritably, standing up. She never liked showing weakness, and especially not in front of people she didn't know or like.
"Let's go check the bunks first." The pirate offers instead of commenting, turning back around.
They walk by numerous closed rooms and descend several stairs, surprising her with the amount of space, having thought the submarine's interiors would be much smaller, before arriving at what she suspected was the crew's sleeping quarters.
She had been expecting something along the lines of hammocks like it usually was in ships, but here the sleeping areas were little more than three stacked rows of hollow nooks carved right into the three door-less walls. Each cavity was fitted with cupboards where the feet of the presumable user would be and mattresses.
"An ingenious use of limited space." She had to admit grudgingly to Trafalgar Law's smugly smirking face.
Only three of the bunk beds seemed to be in use, with pillows and blankets thrown messily around, but a fourth one had her precious case pushed against the back wall.
"And that one is supposed to be mine?" She asks, infuriated by the audacity of the other men.
"Sure." Agrees their captain, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.
"I'm leaving. There's no need to accompany me, and I remember the way back."
She sweeps out of the room with her case safely returned, making her speedy way back to the surface of the ship.
The two white boiler suit men duck back into a room they were leaving when she strides by, hissing to them what she would do to them if she saw them again with identical alarmed yelps.
She, unfortunately, does not spot the Mink, by the time she approaches the door leading to the deck. Sighting disappointedly, she exits outside, and all thoughts of revenge entirely evaporate from her mind.
"Shit, what's this?" She whispers, staring at the bright blue, infinite sea stretching out in every direction.
Not just the city was gone, but the entire island was nothing but a speck disappearing on the horizon.
"This is a kidnapping. A fucking kidnapping." She answers herself, still murmuring, stumbling to the railings on wobbling legs.
"Pirates, Kujira-ya." Unnecessarily reminds her, a highly amused Trafalgar Law from where he was leaning against the door. "My crew seems to want you unexpectedly strongly as one of them to resort to such tactics without any of my input. Bepo had the ship moving the moment you stepped foot inside."
And she hadn't noticed?!
She angrily rounds on the man. "Bring me back. You're the captain. They have to listen to you, so have this ship turned around and bring me back to the island."
"Regrettably, there is a storm coming, and we would be moving against it if we turn around now. This area is also very well known for its reefs. More than one ship met its end here for that reason in heavy rains." He peers at her in well-feigned concern she didn't believe for an instant. "You could always try swimming back if you'd like."
For a single second, she thinks of shoving his obnoxious sword he was tapping against his shoulder again, down his throat, before remembering that with him dead she would be stuck alone on an unfamiliar vessel, with several other enemies of unknown strength trying their hardest to kill her for offing their captain.
She swallows down her rage, ground her teeth together until she thinks they were going to break if she clenched them any harder. "No thank you, I prefer not to spend much time in the water."
"Not a fan?"
"Grew up far-inland on a mostly desert island. Not much use for swimming there." She explains unwillingly. Revealing her weaknesses even to trusted allies always left a bad taste in her mouth. "You'll let me off at the next island?"
"Of course." The pirate agrees, calmly accepting the subject change and leads the way back inside again. "I hope you don't mind sharing your sleeping space with men. I haven't planned for female crewmates and don't have anywhere else to put you."
"It's not a problem. Nothing I haven't seen before."
"I'll leave you to get settled then. Feel free to explore the ship as you wish."
She flips her finger at his retreating back and marches in the opposite direction of the berthing.
If they thought she was willing to sleep anywhere near them after this stunt, they were incredibly mistaken.
She finally discovers a storage room that seemed not to have seen any use in a while, and after prying off the lid of one of the multiple wooden boxes, she finds it full of ammunitions.
To her considerable glee, she immediately recognizes them as Gatling gun bullets.
Locating the biggest box, she pulls off the lid of that one too and sights in contentment at the sight of the gorgeous pieces it contained.
"Look at you all locked up. Such beauties as you should be out there in the open showing off. How typical of pirates isn't? Wasting your potential so. They all prefer one-on-one combat when it would be so much easier to gun down all their enemies from a distance in one go." She glances around at the cramped space, sighing wistfully. "And there is not enough space to assemble you here either."
With a last longing glance, she closes back up the boxes and sets herself to making a livable space amidst the cases of explosives.
She had slept in worse, anyways. At least this place was warm and dry, without any rodents running freely around.
She is introduced to the crew later that night over dinner.
Bepo, the navigator who had planned the whole kidnapping, turned out to be the Mink. She made sure to give him – not 'it' as she had previously assumed, she should have known better –a mean glare before staunchly ignoring him. She was not going forgive him for a while yet, and she was planning on showing her displeasure the entire time she had to spend in the crew's company.
Shachi had bright red hair, and Penguin, to her disbelief, was wearing a penguin hat. Both were also visibly trembling when their turn came, so she abstained from scaring them any further. Even she wasn't that mean.
"Hamasaki Kujira, your unwilling guest until the nest island. I will be staying in one of the storage rooms until then."
Her piece said, she resolutely dismisses the men and sits down at the table to eat. The soup was under-seasoned, and the fish slightly burned, but when you had been forced to either eat unpalatable garbage or starve, you learned quickly not to complain.
"I know it's not the best." Penguin eventually said after several minutes of awkward silence. "But none of us know how to cook well. We're looking for a chef."
Damn him, but he looked like a kicked puppy. You couldn't stay angry with that face looking up at you. " 'S alright. I can't cook anything either."
"Really?"
"Mhm, never had a chance to learn." She confirms. "I can tell you how best to kill a sheep, but for the life of me, I wouldn't be able to cook it. Unless you count charring it beyond recognition as cuisine."
"So, what do you do then?"
"Mh?" Now that was some mighty good tea.
"What do you do? Are you an engineer, a doctor?"
She actually laughs at that. "No, nothing this prestigious. I am a simple mercenary between jobs right now."
"What's that like?" Shachi asks interested.
"Dangerous." She thoughtfully replies, twirling her fork. "You can't trust anyone. Not even your own employers."
"Sounds lonely." Trafalgar comments quietly, his dark eyes scrutinizing her.
"Maybe." She drops her fork back into her empty plate and stands up. "Thank you for the food, boys. It was lovely."
"But there is still dessert left!" Bepo calls after her.
"Maybe next time." She throws over her shoulder.
She is out of the messroom and walking back towards her temporary room before the pirates could say anything else.
He was right; it was lonely work. Your friends could turn on you the moment somebody offered the right price, and the employers cared little for the lives of their workers as long as they, themselves, stayed safe. She had seen groups fall apart because of numerous ridiculous reasons, though most often it was over women or money. And she was a woman in a chiefly men-dominated work environment.
If she only had a beli for every time she was mistaken for a whore. She would be rich beyond belief and retired somewhere peaceful.
She closes the door. Takes a long deep breath in the darkness of the room, smells gunpowder, and burning human flesh. Somewhere in the distance echoes the screams of dying men and the boom of cannons. Terror racing through her veins, she runs forward. She cannot stay still. She is going to die.
I don't own One Piece.