Because what does a guy with five unfinished stories need? To start another one, of course.
Disclaimer: Property of someone that is not me. Probably Nintendo. Bastards.
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Ryudo groaned as the alarm went off. Again. This was, bar none, the worst job he'd ever taken. He'd been down on his luck when Baltor made his pitch, though, and he'd needed the money. Food and a place to sleep weren't cheap, not in Nasr. So he'd accepted the engineering position on Baltor's ship, the Blackbeard.
When he'd been recruited, Baltor had seemed an intelligent and cunning, albeit rowdy, sort of fellow. After a few weeks, Ryudo had become convinced that that was just a mask the captain put on for visitors and prospective employees. The man was just about the most annoying individual alive, Ryudo had decided. Not to mention rather stupid.
The alarm either meant that they were about to sack some other defenseless cargo ship, or something else on the ship had failed or gone wrong or misfired. Baltor had had the right idea when he'd hired an engineer, but what the ship really needed was a team of them, or someone on par with the legendary Centime. Which Ryudo, admittedly, was not.
He shrugged. At least it paid okay. And the alarm was still going off. "Boarding party, on deck NOW!" roared Baltor over the pipes that served as the ship's communication. Another pillaging and plundering, then, Ryudo knew. Despite being the resident Fix-It guy, he was also part of the boarding party by dint of being pretty good with cutlass and pistol. Grabbing said weapons, he hurried from his quarters to the open air.
He paused on his way to the deck as his eyes caught on a floor-to-ceiling mirror they'd snitched off a wealthy Mid-Ocean ship. Gifted amateur was probably the best that could be said of him, he admitted, looking himself over critically. Same old brown eyes, same old brown hair, same freckled skin, same old worn red shirt festooned with buckles belted over black pants. Ordinary. For an Air Pirate, anyway.
When he reached the deck, he saw what the commotion as about: a small ship, hardly half the size of the Blackbeard with violet sails, off the starboard side, likely just some fellow out for a pleasure cruise. There couldn't have been more than half a dozen people onboard. Ryudo looked around at the twenty battle-hardened sailors around him.
Baltor must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel, Ryudo mused.
Surprisingly, rather than try and escape, the smaller ship spun about and sped directly at the Blackbeard. This, naturally, set off little warning bells in Ryudo's head. Nobody charged a better armed and larger ship without having a damn good plan.
While he was considering, however, the little ship came within range of the crew, and grappling hooks went out, keeping the two ships level and allowing the pirates to get across. Somehow, Ryudo had ended up being carried along by their momentum, and was over onto the little ship with the first wave.
And the owner of the ship was waiting for them.
Waiting for them was a single girl and her dog.
For one, brief moment, he had thought that there wasn't going to be a fight at all. Then he saw the truly massive gunmetal grey scythe the girl brandished at them. Her taste in clothing was a little extreme, even for people who sailed the skies, who tended to the unusual and bizarre. She was clothed entirely in varying shades of grey, her torso covered with something reminiscent of a bikini top, armbands in the same dark grey, and pants that were in turns light grey with vertical lines slashed through them and a darker grey matching her armbands. Over her feet were some sort of metal talons, like a bird's.
Her hair was snow-white in the front, and a deep violet in the back that matched the sails of her ship, drawn up into no less than three ponytails. Her eyes were a startling bright blue, color coordinated with the blade of the scythe.
In all, she was the picture of an exotic.
Ryudo was sure he had never seen a more breathtaking vision of loveliness in his life.
Then she started laying into the men around him as if she'd been born to it.
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The men in Baltor's employ were all good fighters, most of them cold-eyed killers. And that single, lovely girl cut a swathe through them as if they were rank novices who had never held a sword before.
The dog, at least Ryudo assumed it was a dog, though it was dark green and appeared almost scaled, joined her, hamstringing a pirate here, delivering a precise bite there. Ryudo winced involuntarily as the dog bit down on a pirate's sword arm and refused to let go, despite being shaken wildly in the air. He snorted. There was no way he was getting involved in that, not for the measley price Baltor was paying him. He silently wished the strange girl luck, and turned his back to head to the ship.
Before he had taken a step, he heard a single, strangled exclamation of "VYSE?" before he was lifted off the ground by the convenient handle of his throat and dragged to face shocked ice-blue eyes. Up close, she was even more lovely, though the shock, rapidly turning to rage, on her face was making him nervous.
He also noticed the remains of the decimated boarding crew make a run for it. 'Cowards!' he thought to himself, cheerfully ignoring the fact that he had been about to do the same. He also noted that the girl had to be at least a few inches taller than he, since, despite her holding him up by the neck - with one hand, no less! - they were still more or less at eye level.
The lack of air was becoming a problem, and so he muttered a gurgled sound that could have been anything from a request to be let down to a love poem composed in the girl's honor, to the opening refrain of 'I am a little teapot.' Fortunately, the girl correctly interpreted that it was a desire for air, and released him, allowing him to drop to the floor with a gasp.
She looked about ready to repeat her earlier question, or perhaps merely skip the question entirely and simply disembowel him, but Baltor and the crew of the Blackbeard took the opportunity to cut the grappling hooks connecting them and began to fire upon them.
'Thank you, Baltor, for that lovely rescue attempt,' Ryudo thought cynically, still choking and gasping as his body attempted to die on him, as the side and deck of the little ship was pelted by cannon fire. The girl uttered a swift curse before rushing to the prow of the ship and snatching up the wheel, getting them as much distance as they could from the pirate ship.
Ryudo just lay there as the ship began swerving to and fro; evasive maneuvers, he assumed. He slowly raised his eyes from the deck as he discovered his windpipe was crushed after all. Staring directly into his own eyes was the girl's dog. It would almost be cute, if it weren't for the bared teeth and palpable aura of menace it exuded.
"Uh. Good dog. Don't bite." The dog growled threateningly. "Please?" His hand closed on his pistol. If the mutt went for his throat, it'd at least find him able to defend himself. The dog lunged. He brought the pistol up to firing position. Then he saw the weird metal talon-shoes, and realized that they'd stopped zig-zagging all over the place not long ago. He raised his eyes. It was the girl.
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