Jade Force
Chapter Eight: Make your Nest with Us
After a year of doing tours, I've finally realised that, instead of napping during film parts of my tour, I can write bits of my fanfics! So for the last week I've taken a pen and scrap of paper in with me, and there's half a dozen for both this fic, Eleutheromania and a random plot bunny scattered all around my house, and Nico keeps stealing them to play with, so hopefully it's turned out ok! Please let me know!
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Silvers Rayleigh had never met a girl quite like Aubrey. Even though she was still in her midteens, she had an aura of command and professionalism, and that attack of hers… If pressed (which Shakki did), he would have said that she'd turned her leg into a pillar of green crystals! And yet she didn't know about the Grand Line, or Devil Fruits, or indeed anything regarding their world. Those countries she had listed… Rayleigh had never heard of them. And let's not start on the "mage guild" thing, or that strange not-quite tattoo on Aubrey's gut.
There was one more thing, as well.
"How did she get up there!?" Rayleigh exclaimed as he and Shakki looked up, up, up to the top of the Mangrove tree, where his Haki had located the strange girl. He blinked in surprise when a drop of moisture landed squarely between his eyes.
"Hey, Shakki?" He asked quietly. She removed her cigarette and blew a puff of smoke in acknowledgement. "Do you need another hand around the bar? Someone to do odd jobs for you?"
"My, my, Ray-san!" Shakki teased. "Is this your old age showing?"
Rayleigh gave a big belly laugh, before calling up the trunk, "Aubrey-chan! Please come down! We'd like to talk to you!"
With her dragon-like hearing, it was easy enough for Aubrey to hear the shout. Drying the last of her tears, she created wings with her magic and free fell back to the ground, using her wings to control her decent and pull up in front of the former pirates.
She gave them her most professional 'S-Class Wizard' face. "Yes?"
Rayleigh looked delighted; Shakki, still calm and collected, asked, "Would you like to work at my bar? It's not much, but you'd have a roof over your head, free food and new clothes as necessary. We'll even teach you about this world of ours."
Aubrey's face lit up. "Yes! Please, Shakki-san, thank you very much! I promise I'll work really hard! And you won't have to worry about liars or cheaters in your bar, either, I'll make sure of it!"
The following months went as promised. Aubrey built herself a nest at the top of the Mangrove, and she did all of Shakki's odd jobs from laundry to groceries to throwing out unsavoury customers – after Shakki had finished extorting money from them, of course. Very quickly, Aubrey adjusted to her new world, reading and listening to stories from both Ray-san and Shakki until it seemed like she'd grown up on Saboady rather than a Boscan Mountain range.
She missed her guild mates and little brother terribly, though. It wasn't uncommon for her to use her sixth sense to look slightly into their future to see what they were doing: Mermaid Heel was as prosperous as it had been before she joined. Gajeel-kun, though, had been kicked out of Titan Nose for fighting and property damage; after time on the streets once again, he was taken in by the guild master of Phantom Lord – Aubrey had never been Jose Porla's biggest fan, but he was doing a kindness to her brother, so she let it slide.
It wasn't as if she could do anything about it, anyway.
She did, however, manage to make something of a name for herself on the Archipelago, using her old epithet of Dragonet. There were many human shoppess in the Lawless Districts – please note the past tense. Once Aubrey had found out about the slavery on this island, she'd gone to great pains to get rid of the shoppess. If there was one thing Dragon Slayer Magic was good for, it was destruction, after all.
_ * . * . * _
Shakki had left Aubrey to man Rip-Offs for a couple of hours while she was out, and Aubrey had to admit that her mind wasn't in the bar. She's been reading through the books that Yeoleum had given her months ago, and she did not like what it had to say in regards to the Dragon War four hundred year ago, or the predictions regarding Zeref and his Demons. END, in particular, she was none too pleased about…
The door opened.
Aubrey snapped back to the present, closing her book and putting it back in the satchel she kept on her person at all times.
"Welcome to Shakki's Rip-Off Ba – you!" She looked up from her satchel and gasped, starring. "You're him, the scarred man with the straw hat!"
"Eh? You know me?" The redheaded man asked.
Aubrey shook her head quickly. "We've never met, but I've seen your face in my dreams for nearly three years now."
"How could you see that?" A dark haired man with a smoking pipe asked. Aubrey eyed him wearily – this man was particularly dangerous.
"I have a sixth sense," She said calmly, tucking a stray strand of white hair behind her ear. "Name's Aubrey, anyway. What can I get for you?"
"We're looking for Ray-san," The darkhaired man said, talking over Redhair.
Aubrey was already shaking her head. "Sorry, but Ray-san hasn't been back in almost four months. You're welcome to wait, in case today is the one he returns, but you might be awhile. Shakki-san should be back soon, however."
"Thanks for that," Redhair said. "Say, where are you from? I haven't seen you before."
"Me?" Behind the counter, Aubrey's hand strayed to her guild mark. "A little town called Salix. You wouldn't have heard of it."
"What's the island called? We're pretty well-travelled."
Aubrey eyed the darkhaired man again. "It's a country called Fiore. As I said, you wouldn't have heard of it." Reaching for a notepad, she decided to change the topic. "I can take a message for Ray-san, if you like? You seem like you don't want to be on this archipelago for long."
"Is that your sixth sense talking?" An almost-grotesquely large man asked around a leg of meat.
"No," Aubrey replied, sunlight flashing off her glasses. "It's called observation. You're all tapping your feet and making shifty movements, and yet you have no intention of trying anything in this bar. So you want to leave." Her eyebrows narrowed. "If you're looking for them, then you must be pirates, also. The Marines are in a huff on these islands because the Dragonet has been destroying the human shoppes on them. Trigger-happy Marines make for itchy-footed pirates."
"Ooh, amazing!" Redhair exclaimed. "Hey, would you –"
"I don't want to come to sea with you!" Aubrey snapped suddenly. She turned her head away, then. "I'm sorry. I get motion sickness, and besides, I owe Ray-san and Shakki-san. They're my nestmates now, and I want to stay with them."
Redhair stared at her, before smiling softly. "That's ok, then. Just let Ray-san know I stopped by, please? If he asks, I've gone to East Blue, for old time's sake." His smile turned wistful.
Aubrey nodded. "I'll let him know."
_ * . * . * _
It was just as Shakki-san returned that Aubrey realised she'd forgotten to ask for Redhair's name (although, Ray-san should be able to guess his identity from the description alone). Giving Shakki the outlines, Aubrey ran after the remains of their scent, ears and senses strained to see what she could see.
She should have paid more attention to her surroundings.
"Ooh, who are you~?" The man's way of talking was very drawn out and drawling. "Don't you look familiar!"
Aubrey narrowed her eyes at the weirdo in a yellow suit, hackles raised. He was strong. "You are mistaken. We've never met."
"That's right~!" His way of talking was starting to annoy her. "Eh~ but, I've seen you before! You're the one called Dragonet, aren't you?"
Aubrey raised her eyebrows at him, senses on high alert. Danger, danger, danger! "I don't look anything like that person – they are covered in scales, and I am not. If you'll excuse me, I'm in a hurry."
He made to grab her shoulder, and Aubrey slapped it away, glaring furiously from behind her glasses. "If you'll excuse me," She hissed. "I'm in a hurry!"
"That last building the Dragonet destroyed," He drawled. "It still had a Tenryubito inside, did you know?"
"I hadn't heard that." Aubrey replied coolly, chest tightening. Danger, danger, danger!
"As a resident on Saboady, then you must know the rule~! If anything happens to one of them, then an Admiral will be called down to deal with the offender~!" The lazy smile dropped off of his face, his eyes quite dark behind his amber-tinted sunglasses, his arm raised with his pointer finger extended. "That would be me."
If it weren't for her sixth sense, Aubrey would be very, very dead.
Deciding that there was no reasoning with this strange Admiral, Aubrey allowed jade scales to cover her body quickly. If anything, the facets should help deflect some of those light-based attacks.
"You're the one they call Kizaru, then?" Aubrey asked quietly.
"I have been called that," He replied, voice more sarcastic than drawling now. "My name, however, is Borsalino. And you?"
Removing her glasses and placing them inside her satchel, which she encased in dense jade crystals, Aubrey answered proudly. "I'm the Dragonet – and I'm a Mermaid Heel mage!" She closed her eyes, opened her senses as wide as they could go, and roared.
"Hisuiryū no Hokou!"