Setting the Stage

Shaad's vision was the first thing to return, at least in part. With no clue where he was or how long he'd been out, he simply aimed for clarity. Clarity of mind. Of sight. And, of air. The air there was so suffocating like an elephant on his chest. Cracking his eyes, the room appeared as if through a haze like a soaked rag was being held tightly over his face. Trapped in that suffocating air, a part of him wanted to panic, but his body wouldn't move. Speaking of which, he couldn't really feel his body. Everything felt numb. A stinging, burning numbness that prodded him like a thousand needles. Opening his eyes from mere slits, black spots dotted the young man's vision, dull colored blobs taunting him everywhere his eyes could flit. He tried to look around, but his head pounded with every exertion, the constant ringing in his ears threatening to break what remained of his sanity. For several minutes, Shaad could only lay there with his eyes closed, conscious but immobile as every little action he was capable of, even breathing, sent pain whirring through his system and every speck of light was a brutal assault to his tired and sensitive retinas.

He tried to recall how he ended up in the position he was in, but he couldn't even figure out what position that was. Wracking his mind every which way, Shaad tried to piece together the broken memories from last night. There was a bar, and Raine, and. . . and two other women, and then. . . nothing. 'See, this is why I don't drink.' He didn't recognize the two women and his first thoughts went to the bartender. But, even then, things didn't make sense; he'd watched the bartender, even if just out of the corner of his eye, and saw nothing out of the ordinary, at least not that he could remember, though, admittedly, Raine dominated his attention and thoughts, just as she did whenever she was around. But, a nagging sentiment at the back of his head kept telling him the two women were also important, somehow.

Shaad tried to focus on that part of his memory, but that just brought a new round of headaches. He pushed through the pain, though, willing himself to remember. Finally, when he was ready to cry out from the building pressure within his skull, a series of images came to him. Those women felt familiar, like he knew them. Not their names or backgrounds; he knew them on a far more basic, more carnal level. Memories of rough, lust-filled kisses and roaming hands came to the forefront, taunting him.

Those memories were nice and all, but they seemed strange, incomplete somehow. He was missing something, something important. Shaad focused further, ignoring the pain that came with doing so, and remembered one of them - a brunette, maybe - blowing a white cloud of something in his face. 'That's it! They drugged me.' Mild satisfaction akin to relief washed over Shaad. No longer, was he grasping at straws. He finally had something to sink his teeth into. But, that steak was airy, the memory vapid. Lingering on the thought, Shaad realized it was a false recollection. In his haste to fill in the blanks, his mind briefly went off the rails. However, what it did do was set him on the right path. That first kiss. His first kiss. He may have been out on his feet and weak, but that beautifully intoxicating woman did drug him. A pill. Shoved right down his throat while his mind was still playing catch-up.

'That would'nt have put me out like this; after that cloud, my body was warm. I was sensitive to touch and. . . aroused. . . I was up in more ways than one, a full go when I fell out. But, if not that then what? Why is my body so weak?'

Shaad knew the basics of his Devil Fruit. After all, he'd spent a year focused only on its most efficient use. He was lucky in that regard. Most Devil Fruits were volatile and unpredictable. Getting the ability to work at will was the hardest part. He had eaten one of the few that worked passively as well as actively. Most poisons and intoxicants had little effect on him because his devil fruit would just increase energy output to multiply his kidney functionality and push it out. One pill couldn't have done this much without killing him. There was more. There had to be.

Shaad wracked his brain trying to organize the scattered mess that was currently his mind, focusing as much as he could on the last moments before he fell unconscious: being pushed onto the bed, the kissing, groping, grinding - the pleasures of those moments returned in a flash - and being tied up. 'That's it!' Shaad mentally celebrated even as awareness of the mind numbing pain throughout his body hammered him like a punching bag, recalling that he'd been tied up, and the two women rummaged through his things before leaving. 'Ugh. That bitch. . . That beautiful, beautiful bitch.' Shaad didn't have much in the way of belongings, especially not on him. The only thing he really had was his swords. 'Oh, if they touched my swords.'

Anger flooded the confusion, washing away the haze. The feeling to his extremities gradually returned with the realization, but, with that also came the total donning of his current predicament: strapped to a bed by all four limbs, spread eagle and stark naked.

Despite the sharp, tightening pain it caused throughout his body, Shaad wrestled with the bindings. But, there was nothing he could do. They were too tight and too strong, and he was too weak. Shaad looked around as he tried to think of a way, any way to get free and rid his system of the drugs. Looking around, he noticed something, though: none of his things were in the room with him, not even his clothes.

Now, Shaad wasn't much one for panic, but he was one to get angry, extremely angry. And, when he noticed not even his pendant was still around his neck, his fury rose to new heights and he echoed a scream of silent rage, face clutching in a twisted scowl though no sound escaped his open mouth. Fire burned in his eyes, and a single desire filled him. He focused intently on pushing the drug from his system, the mind wrenching pain not even worthy of being called an afterthought.

Shaad didn't know how it happened, nor did he exactly care at the moment (his mind focused on darker thoughts), but somehow, through his willpower, he pushed his body to its limits, using his reserve energy to speed up the internal processes to a life threatening pace and flush the drug from his system in record time. However, even with the drug all but forced completely from his system, his body still felt. . . detached, as if it were not his own. But, he clenched his fists tightly, focusing on flexing every muscle in his body one by one until he was once again completely aware of his control over them. Once that was finished, with an audible grunt of exertion, Shaad used his remaining energy to pull both of his arms forward, splintering the bedposts, before ripping the ties from his wrists and ankles, leaving red burn marks in their wake, and sitting up in the bed.

With his mind mostly clear and his body his own, Shaad's recollection of the night's events finally began to come to him in full. He'd have to use what little knowledge he had of the girls to find them and get his stuff back, and with that in mind, one image persisted in his head, the tattoo on their lower backs: that BM logo tramp stamp. That was a marker; somebody in that wretched town would definitely know where to look, and he had an idea where to start.

Before focusing on his revenge, though, Shaad had more pressing matters to attend to. He was standing up when a sound outside alerted him. Checking the window, two hooded men approached the front door, moving briskly in the pouring rain. It was still dark out - a full moon hanging overhead - so he wasn't out too long. That was good because those men were after him. It could have been paranoia that had him believing that. And, on most nights that may have been true. But, furtive glances to his windowsill like a love-struck teenager and weapons in plain sight made that highly unlikely. So, he hid, lying in wait behind the door for them to come barging in.

They didn't barge in, though, per se, opening the unlocked door and storming in noisily. They were both inside by the time they realized Shaad wasn't in the bed. Without a word, Shaad stepped forward from the shadow of the open door and snapped each of their necks with one hand, leaving them to crumple lifelessly to the floor. He then stripped one of the men of a pair of black jeans and matching tennis shoes, not wanting to go into a rainstorm in just his boxers (which he'd found at the foot of the bed), and took the black sleeveless hoodie and gun off the other.

Shaad quickly dressed in the stolen clothes, opting to go shirtless with the hoodie unzipped. He then left the room, putting his hands in the hoodie's front pockets as he came to the bottom of the stairway. There was a card in one of the pockets, and when Shaad withdrew it he noticed the design that he'd burned into his memories. He was at the front desk in a flash, burrowing holes through the inset, beady eyes of the deskman with an intense glare. Shaad noticed the shocked expression the sloppy man wore and the jiggle of his drooping jowls as he none too slyly did a double take when the youth first descended the stairs, confirming everything Shaad already deduced.

Shaad grabbed the terrified clerk by the neck, digging his nails into flesh and watching with disdain and enjoyment as blood pooled in the bulbous features of the man's face. The front desk shook as Shaad wrenched the overweight slob closer, a sound like a shotgun hitting the floor prompting an even tighter squeeze around the already constricted airways. The man's deceitful eyes looked ready to burst from the skull, blood vessels popping at an alarming rate, as Shaad's glare intensified. "Anything you wanna tell me, Rudolph?"

The man was truly pathetic as he begged for his life in sporadic mumbles as his neck was nearly wrung out, tears starting to stream down the sides of his face while snot driplets added a sheen to the layers of fat on his cheeks. Shaad wasn't in the mood to ask twice, but as his grip tightened, threatening to snap the guy's neck right there, answers flooded out.

Shaad threw the man's body into cabinets along the back wall, satisfied the man spoke truth and not wanting that musty smell of dirt and tobacco so close anymore. As he looked up, a pleading thankfulness in his eyes as he wolfed down lungfuls of air like a last meal, Shaad made room for a third eye right between the other two.

'Naw, I don't like it.' Shaad thought, dropping the smoking gun and going out into the night time air, the sky crying profusely at the blood that would be spilled that night. Dressed in the all black head to toe, he raised the hood, pulling it taut and showing the piercing red eye design on each side, making him look like a demon lurking in the shadows as his own eyes were all but indistinguishable from the creeping blackness under the moonlit sky.

Windows had been smashed out, tables and chairs broken in two or splintered into innumerable pieces, and the walls and floorboards were covered in impact craters where people had been thrown, slammed or driven into with the unconscious bodies of the patrons strewn about all over the place. One such body lay in a gaping hole in the center of the floor, face unrecognizable as he found himself facing death in the dark confines of a pit greater than six feet in depth. Amidst all of this chaos, Raine sat on her barstool, nursing a beer not even half finished, at the only piece of the bar that had somehow managed to remain intact aside from a blood smear leading to the floor where broken teeth lay free. She was teetering on her seat and cursing the brutes that interrupted her drinking. Having actually drunk enough for even her to be significantly buzzed, Raine drunkenly stood up with a Cheshire cat-styled smile and just about slurred to the bartender, "Who's that young fella with the bandaged arms?"

"It took a while for the cowering bartender, eyes shooting open at the sound of Raine's inebriated voice, to register what she'd actually said, managing after some time to stammer out, "H-He's new. . . L-Lookin' fer strong. . . fighters. . . p-p-pirate crew."

A gleam shone in Raine's eye while the mischievous smile stayed stock still until she remembered. "How much?"

The frightened bartender quickly stammered out, "N-nothing; it's on the house."

"Aren't you sweet? Now, I don't have to kick your ass, too." Raine stated with a false smile. 'But, drug my captain again, and-' she let the statement taper off as she stumbled out of the destroyed bar, leaving the man looking like the cat that swallowed the canary.

The brothel was precisely where the motel clerk said (as if he had been a frequent visitor). The two story building was quite ordinary by all accounts, distinguishable for what it was by only the irregular color of the accessories compared to the neighboring buildings and the numerous tell-tale signs if one knew what to look for. Shaad, though, wasn't sure; as far as he could tell, it was no different than any of the surrounding places aside from the tacky decorative sense of the owner and the gaudy red curtains. But, with the clerk already dead, it didn't make much difference.

For that reason, Shaad simply stood across the way from the brothel, lurking in the shadows with the hoodie hiding his features and keeping the pounding rain at bay, watching intently. After some time, the door opened slowly and a man Shaad recognized as one of the high rollers at the fights strolled out, a sloppy grin plastered on his face. Shaad thought little of it even as a petite redhead bid him adieu from the door in nothing but a silk nightgown that did near nothing to conceal her tantalizing figure underneath. But, when she turned to go back in, the brooding young captain saw it: the very same tattoo as on the women he was searching for.

Shaad pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against and headed for the inconspicuous brothel with evil intent. He was immediately greeted by a heavy musk that threatened to overwhelm him as he opened the door. Once he recovered from the olfactory sense overload of the various perfumes and scents mingling together in the establishment, Shaad opened his watery eyes and saw a woman, in her late 40's, with beautiful black and blue tresses cascading down her back and over her shoulders, teasing at the eye catching cleavage on display in the front tie bustier the woman paired with a free flowing long skirt and bicep length evening gloves, looking graceful and alluring, and far younger than her actual years.

Removing the cigarette holder from between her deep purple lipsticked lips and blowing a smoke ring around Shaad, she spoke in a thick, husky accent. "Hello, darling. What will be your pleasure tonight?"

Shaad didn't answer as his face - the hard features slick with rainwater droplets - returned to its previous intensity after the initial surprise, brushing the madam aside and heading toward the staircase, quickly noting that the two women he was looking for were not among the myriad practically laying on top of the men (and women) in the open downstairs area.

Shaad's foot was about to come down on the first step when something coiled around his neck from behind. He reached up to keep the object from constricting his windpipe while taking a step back and turning around to face the perpetrator. The madam stood facing him with a threatening smirk, a sturdy whip held taut in her hands. "Sorry sweetie, but I can't let you go up there without an invitation.

This seemed to not be an uncommon way to deal with 'uninvited' patrons as the customers around them barely glanced at the scene before returning their attentions to the pleasurable activities they'd previously been engaged in.

'I don't have time for this.' Shaad thought as he slowly approached the older woman. Using his right hand to protect his throat, he wrapped the other around the whip's length and wrenched the woman toward him with tremendous force. The madam may have been stronger than most, but she was no match for Shaad's boosted strength and was quickly taken out by the enraged pirate, being pulled into a solid clothesline without time to defend herself.

Shaad let the whip loosen around his neck and discarded it to the side, ready to head up. But, his display instilled panic in those who saw it as some of the customers ran out screaming while some were so blinded by desire and adrenaline that they dared to fight. The workers, meanwhile, either hurried to check on the madam or went straight past her to a door just past Shaad.

Shaad released a frustrated groan before moving at breakneck speed to easily dispatch those who stood against him, not holding back and feeling no remorse for those who wailed in pain from the floor, clutching broken (sometimes exposed) bones, or groaned agonizingly as blood filled their insides. When he turned around, Shaad was almost face to face with a man only about ten years his senior, holding his pants up with one hand and naked from the waist up, wearing a scowl as he glared at the troublemaker. Four completely nude women could be seen lounging and fondling each other in the long couch behind him, but the most recognizable thing about the man was by far the multi-colored spiked mohawk on his head. Shaad delivered a powerful push kick to the man's torso and was already up the stairs as he crashed through the plush couch, splitting it and burying him in the rubble of his destroyed designer furniture as the frightened women fell on top of him from either end of the red, cloth couch.

Shaad moved with purpose down the hall, opening the doors along the way to search for his targets. Behind each door, he was greeted with a different visual, but none included either of the women he remembered whether it was the man sitting in the available bed with a woman on her knees between his legs while another topless woman sensuously massaged his back, the three women furiously going at it, the woman being simultaneously plowed by three men, or the man on his knees pleasuring two other men with his mouth.

'They really do serve every pleasure here,' Shaad couldn't help but think, closing another door as his frustration peaked as after five doors he'd seen a lot, but neither of whom he was searching for nor did he care to see so much of others' private lives.

Just as he was ready to simply destroy the entire building and search the wreckage, a door at the end of the hall cracked open. From behind it, a woman scanned the hall for the reason for the abrupt opening and closing doors. Even in that split second, Shaad recognized the sharp green eyes and blonde hair as she ducked back behind the door. Shaad raced down the hallway; there was a slight rustling behind the door and Shaad didn't even try to open it, bursting through and splintering the fragile wood with a full head of steam. But, all he saw was a bare leg slinking out the window just as he entered. He ran to the window and saw the two women he was after sprinting along the bundled rooftops in opposite directions.

Before he could follow, though, he was interrupted by a presence at the door. There, stood the mohawked man from before, still with an exposed torso, though he wore an open multi-colored, striped shirt and had his pants zipped up with a rope belt around the waist. Additionally, he wielded a sword in each hand, his animosity towards Shaad for the boot print that was still faintly visible on his chest reaching near palpable levels.

Shaad looked from the man to the two swords he held and a deep hatred immediately registered in his heterochromic eyes. The distinctive black and silver blades made it readily apparent that those were Shaad's prized swords. His anger blew up and he charged the man without a second thought, appearing in front of the colorful man in an instant and planting his clenched fist deep in the stranger's gut as if attempting to punch a hole through the playboy's stomach. Shaad looked down on the foe with contempt and spoke in a dark tone, showing no respect for his enemy. "Drop the swords and I'll grant you a quick death; don't, and I get to have some fun."

The next instance puzzled Shaad as a foreboding laughter bubbled past the man's lips and he slowly stood up, a smirk to his features even as a bit of blood still dribbled from the side of his mouth. "Do you know who I am? You're a dead man; I'm -" His brash boasting was cut off as Shaad nearly crushed his throat with a hard knife hand chop.

Shaad directed a cold gaze at the kneeling man, gripping him around the throat so he couldn't breath. "The fun way it is," Shaad hissed into his ear. "Let's see how long you last." The young pirate punctuated the statement by releasing the man and slamming a knee into his face.

Shaad held nothing back, but the man was no amateur, standing defiantly and angrily even as blood flowed freely from the broken nose. The man charged forward and lashed out at Shaad with his own swords. The audacity of such action only further enraged Shaad and as his anger rose so too did the strength he focused into each punch. He continued to avoid the sword slashes, but was in no mood to play defense for long, slipping past a double side swipe, ignoring the pain as both blades bit into his exposed bicep, and landing a thunderous hammer fist, further disfiguring the colorful man's formerly well defined face and launching him into an armoire against the wall. Shaad followed that up with another vicious knee, sending the man's head crashing through the armoire and the wall with no time to recover as the destroyed piece crumbled atop him.

With his upper body lolling in the hallway through the hole in the wall, Shaad reclaimed the two swords from the man's still surprisingly firm grasp and pulled him back into the room. Shaad then stabbed the man through the ankle, the pain serving to jerk him back from his fading consciousness. By stepping on the run through ankle, the man's undivided attention was immediately on Shaad, and Shaad glared down on him with a predatory gleam.

"These swords are mine," Shaad informed, stabbing the man through the hands to remind the man which swords he was talking about. "Where is the rest of my stuff."

The man was panting for breath after his pained scream finally died down. And, through the excruciating pain he managed to squeak out a response. "F-fuck you."

"Wrong answer," Shaad declared, pulling his swords from the man's hands and spinning them around, bringing them back down to cut off those hands at the wrists. "Now, why me?" He asked through the man's prolonged screams.

"You're. . . a. . . fool."

Shaad listened closely as the man croaked out the offensive retort, declaring, "Wrong," again before impaling the man just above the pelvic bone with both swords. "You're not very good at this. Why don't we try another game? If you answer any of my questions satisfactorily before my swords reach your collarbone, you win. Now, who's your boss?"

Shaad repeatedly cycled through those same three questions as he walked his swords up the man's torso at an agonizingly slow, incremental pace, twisting the blade in a full circle each time before he withdrew it.

The man was kept in a state of unimaginable agony, but despite the torturous pain, he didn't answer the questions, his high volume screams continuing on unabated. But, when Shaad finally reached just below his collarbone after what seemed like hours of unceasing torture, he'd had enough. Not wanting to know what might happen were he to lose the game, the man frantically cried out to answer the simplest question and stop the brutal assault. "W-Wait, wait," he pleaded, tears of pain and distress streaming down his cheeks. "Yo- your stuff. . . is in my office. . . downstairs. Just. . . Please, stop." His pleading answer prompted Shaad to stop his swords just before he plunged them down one last time.

But, the pause was only momentary as despite the sorrowful cry, Shaad drove his swords through the man's collarbone, the sharpened blades piercing the bones without ceremony and drawing yet another anguished howl from the defeated man.

"Wh~y?" He wailed out in sputtered, garbled speech as blood completely flooded his throat and lungs.

Shaad quickly withdrew the swords and cut off the scream by cutting off the man's head. "Because you pissed me off."