*Greetings, all. It's been a hella long time, I know, but I'm still here. I've been thinking about switching to a third-person POV. Let me know your thoughts, if it interests you. Enjoy!*

"Ho! Careful with that, boy!"

The bosun's whip cracked over my head, and I winced as I rushed to secure the ship's foreyard. Hauling on the rope with sore hands, I pulled the spar into place as pirates snickered around me. I forced a smile onto my face and clapped one of them on the back. 'Calm down,' I told myself, moving across the deck to tie down the other yards. 'It's just like joining any other team; I'm the new guy.' I began pulling myself up the wooden ribs of the main sail, slower than the other crew on account of my inexperience. After a minute or two, I was pulled onto the narrow topgallant by the first mate, a thin rat of a man with a squeaky voice and two wisps of mustache clinging to his upper lip like barnacles to a rock.

Propping me against the swaying mast, Oh laughed. "Don't worry, we'll make a pirate out of you yet," he assured me, winking. I stood up, keeping one hand on the mast for balance, and peered out over the ocean, prompting an elbow from the first mate. "Quite a view, eh?"

The sun was approaching its zenith, making the whitecaps sparkle in their dozens as we passed. As I watched, a few whale flukes appeared, waving at the ship before they sunk out of sight. I couldn't disagree with Oh, though I neglected to tell him that I'd had better views while sailing on air currents on my wings. "It's something to see, that's for sure."

"Just wait 'til we sail with giant koi," Oh replied, winking. "It's a lot more fun than swimming with shark-eels."

My face twisted into something akin to a smile; swimming with shark-eels was exactly where Oh and the rest of the pirates had found me a few days ago. It was a miracle that I hadn't been eaten earlier, considering that I'd been floating unconscious in the ocean for a whole night. After I did my sky-high belly flop into the drink, I'd blacked out. When I woke up again, I was sitting in a cell barely big enough for the goat that was my cell-mate.

I thought I was toast, but then Oh had come down and explained what had happened and why I was in the brig. In his easygoing, cheerful way, he'd told me I could either join the crew and prove my worth or be sold as a slave to the Earth King. Upon seeing my happiness at being offered a job as a pirate, Oh had a quick word with the captain and I was free, free, free! With no way to track down Aang and no way to know where he was going, I figured the best thing for me to do would be stick with the pirates. Since they traveled extensively and apparently masqueraded as exotic merchants in ports all over the Earth Kingdom coast, rumors of the Avatar would reach me sooner or later.

"You're not listening, are you?" I wasn't fast enough to dodge the slap that came next. "How are you supposed to know where to look for hidden reefs if you don't bother to keep an eye on the currents, hmm? You know what happened to the last guy who ran us aground?"

"Youuuuuuu… keel-hauled him?"

Oh wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Well, it's not something that you talk about. But let's just say that his name is Four-finger Fred."

I shot him a look, then gave my fingers a tentative flex.

Oh tweaked his mustache as he chuckled. "Now let's give this another go, shall we?"

I concurred and peered into the water near the prow, but was admonished again for my trouble. "It's like staring at your feet while you walk: you can't really see where you're going, and it won't stop you from tripping." Oh pointed toward the horizon as he pushed a greasy lock of hair out of his eyes. "Look out there!"

I grumbled a little, but didn't argue as I peered out over the water, squinting against the light of high noon. 'Waves… More waves… A whale…'

"Do I need to worry about pods of whales?" I asked without shifting my gaze.

"Eh, if you really get that bored. Most whales are smarter than the average pirate, though. They're not big on getting hit by boats."

"I can understand that," I muttered. Then I frowned; something had caught my eye. "Oh, what's that?" I leaned forward off the mast in my curiosity and nearly fell. Clearly, my balance still needed work. Righting myself, I pointed at what looked like a few small clouds crawling across the water.

"That's the ocean, my boy," Oh chuckled to himself, then frowned and squinted his sly eyes. "But really, I don't... " Oh gave an abrupt cry and hopped to his feet as though he wasn't several dozen feet in the air. "Sail ho! Twenty degrees to starboard!" he cried, leaning dangerously far from the mast. "Sail ho!"

He turned to me with an expression of glee. "What a pair you've got!" he exclaimed, clapping me on the shoulder. "Of course, I suppose you owe it to having such a good teacher," he mused for a moment, quirking one eyebrow. Then he laughed. "Either way, go down below and see Dredge. He'll set you up."

"Set me up for what?" I wondered.

Oh looked even more excited that I'd asked. "Why, to do what all pirates do best! This is where the fun begins," he cackled. Then he made a shoo-shoo motion and went back to eyeballing the pair of sails in the distance.

Leaving him perched on the topgallant like the captain's iguana parrot, I shinnied down the main sail. I dropped onto the deck and nearly fell over. A massive hand shot out of nowhere and steadied me.

"Easy, little man," said a deep, gruff voice. Attached to the hand was the biggest pirate I'd ever seen. He was naked from the waist up, giving me an excellent view of the poorly healed scar on the right side of his chest. He wore a set of leather braces on his wrists, which were thicker than my biceps, and a set of loose blue pants. He had a rough slab of a face with a goatee anchored to the bottom of his square chin, and he was muscled like a pro catgator wrestler. Which, for all I knew, he was.

Taking the more cautious route, I backed away slowly. "Sorry about that," I apologized. "Guess I don't quite have my sea legs yet."

The big man didn't smile, but he didn't try to eat me, either. "No worries," he rumbled. "Better find them fast, though. Raid won't go well for you, otherwise."

"Speaking from experience?" I asked before I had a chance to bite my tongue.

He regarded me, his face blank. Then he let out a booming laugh that nearly had me diving for cover. "I'm Dredge.".

"Dao," I returned, surprised that I'd found the man already; I'd been prepared to scour the ship for him, thanks to my unfamiliarity with the crew. "Oh said I needed to come pay you a visit."

"Ah. Arms, you'll be needin'," he clarified. He strode past me, boots thudding audibly on the deck. "C'mon." He waved a hand at me, and I hurried after him into the belly of the ship.

For such a big man, Dredge moved with surprising grace down in the hold. Sidestepping around crates and hopping over baskets, he led me to an ironbound trunk not far from the stairs. "Pick yer poison," he grunted, muscles bunching as he heaved up the lid with one arm. Popping my head over the rim, I saw the faint gleam of steel: the trunk was filled with weapons of all kinds, most of which I'd never seen before. I ran my eyes over them, then glanced back up at Dredge.

"If it's all the same to you, I'll just stick with these," I told him, showing him my empty, calloused hands.

Dredge's eyes narrowed, and he took a step toward me. "Are you sure?" he asked, and something in his tone made me start to sweat. He glanced down at my palms, then back up at my face. His eyes bored into me.

"Yeah," I confirmed, trying to keep my nervousness out of my voice. "You know, hup hup HA!" I mimed two punches in the stomach and a big uppercut.

Dredge jumped at my sudden movement, then visibly relaxed as he understood my meaning. "Thought you meant bending," he grumbled as he closed the trunk. He headed for the stairs. "Captain doesn't trust them."

'Hmm.' Clearly, I had to keep my bending to myself. Dredge had looked downright murderous when he had assumed I could bend. If it was a ship-wide policy, then the other pirates wouldn't appreciate my fire, either, whether I was on their side or not.

Back on deck, the helmsman was busy tacking into the wind toward the sails that were now silhouetted black against the last light of day. My eyebrows crept up in surprise; we were already gaining on them. I ran up to the prow to get a better look. As we got closer, I could see that they were actually heading in slightly different directions. Footsteps behind me turned out to be Oh, down from his post on top of the sail.

"You ready to give her a pirate welcome?" he asked, indicating the nearest of the two ships. "She's just a simple fishing boat, but curios can come from anywhere." He tapped the side of his nose to emphasize his wisdom.

"Aye," pronounced a gravelly voice behind us. "You wouldn't believe the kinds of things I find on 'fishing' boats."

Turning, Oh and I moved aside in respect as Captain Angel strode to the front of his ship. He was clad in his usual maroon getup, with an impressive hat helping to keep the graying hair out of his eyes. His jian sword hung ready on his belt, and his ever-present iguana parrot shrieked at me from his shoulder. I curled my lip at the sound, but the captain didn't seem to notice. "Go easy on the sail," he continued, though the men around him smirked.

"Cap'n, you've been tellin' me t' go easy on the sail fer the past fifteen years." The ugliest pirate I'd ever seen dropped out of the rigging, the lonely shock of blue hair on his head waving in the wind from our passage. "Yet 'ave I ever let 'er rip once?"

"You 'let 'er rip' plenty in your hammock every night!" laughed a pot-bellied pirate with scraggly lanks of brown hair down to his shoulder; clearly, hygiene wasn't a big thing around here.

The blue-haired man gave a gap-toothed grimace while the other hands chuckled. Even Angel cracked a smile. "Alright, you dogs, that's enough. Let's say hello to our fisherman friend." He jerked his chin, and the iguana parrot on his shoulder shrieked again before taking off and soaring toward the other boat, which was drawing rapidly closer. Already, I could see a panicked figure running back and forth on the deck.

Within a few more minutes, the captain, Oh, Dredge, and I were hopping down from our railing onto the low deck of the fishing dinghy. Before us stood an old, crotchety man with a bushy white beard, a cone-shaped hat, and a bad attitude. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have appreciated being boarded either. "What do you youngin's want?" he grizzled at us.

"I'm not here looking for trouble," Captain Angel promised. I might have believed him, except for his hand resting with almost an casual air on the hilt of his sword. "I find myself in unfamiliar waters, and I was wondering-"

"Ebenezar!" shrieked a female voice from the cabin. "These fish aren't going to clean themselves, lazybones!"

The old man's face drooped. "It's so hard to find good help… It's even harder when the help you have is your wife."

The captain's face twisted with a measure of amusement. "Dredge, go below and see if the poor lady needs any help."

"Aye, captain." Dredge lumbered toward the cabin, and I followed him as the captain continued talking to the old man. Before we made the door, though, Oh elbowed me with a wink and muttered, "Follow Dredge's lead. I'm going to check out the rest of the deck." He disappeared around the side of the cabin.

Inside the cabin was a short set of stairs that led down to a room that seemed to be divided into two main parts. One part was nothing but a couple of cutting stations, the wood stained with old blood and reeked of fish. The other was a series of salt barrels and ice chests that smelled even more strongly of fish, if that was possible. The old fisherman's wife stood at one of the cutting stations, hacking up a sizable fish with a speed and precision that could only have come from decades of doing so. Looking up, she shrieked and said accusingly, "You're not Ebenezar!"

"Dredge," grunted Dredge, moving over to peer into the barrels and chests, pawing through each with one big hand.

"I'm Dao," I offered, smiling. "Captain Angel is upstairs asking for directions."

"Hmph. He must be smarter than my husband, then. I swear, we spend half our time on the water wondering which way land is."

"It doesn't look like you've been catching much today, huh?" I asked, peering into one of the ice chests. It was filled about a quarter of the way with red-tinged, slimy-looking water that sloshed back and forth with the swell of the waves. One lonely fish peered up at me. "Is it usually this slow?"

The old woman snorted. "When you fish the same area every day, the fish tend to start avoiding your lures." She finished filleting her fish with a vicious stroke, as if she blamed it personally. "I've tried to tell Ebenezar that we need to change our location again, but he says it's still too soon."

"When's the last time you changed it up?"

"Ten years ago," she said dryly, chucking the filets into a salt barrel with nary a glance.

"Dao," Dredge's voice rumbled. I turned to look at him; he was already halfway out of the cabin. "Time to go. Oh calls."

I listened, and, sure enough, I could hear Oh's unmistakably reedy voice calling for us. "I hope you can find more fish soon!" I told the woman, and I followed Dredge out onto the deck.

Topside, Ebenezar was standing off to the side, arms crossed and grumbling to himself, while Dredge and Oh were getting ready to take up the gangplank. Captain Angel could be seen pacing the deck of his own ship, shouting gravelly orders. I darted across the plank before they could leave me behind, and soon we were pulling away from the fishing dinghy.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Was the old man that good at giving directions?"

Much to my surprise, Dredge cracked a smile. "The captain knows right where we are," he confided. "He distracts people while we search the ship for goodies. No need to hurt if we don't get caught."

I blinked; was it possible that Captain Angel was a bit of a pacifist?

"That," continued Dredge, pointing with a massive sausage finger, "is why we left so fast."

I followed his line of sight over the prow of the ship. In the distance was the other ship that we'd seen, its sails taut with wind and whitewash on either side of the bow shining silver in the sunlight. It was clear that she was trying to outrun us, though whether it was going to work, I didn't know. "So the other fishing boat decided that he didn't want to get boarded and got the hell out of Ba Sing Se. So what?"

Oh eyed me, a shade of disbelief crossing his face. "Have you ever seen a dinghy leave a wake like that?" He pointed out the long trail of disturbed water and the height of the whitewash. "Regular old fishing barques don't cut through the water like that."

I felt my brow furrow as I took that in. "Couldn't it be a fisherman that happens to have a nicer boat than most?"

"It doesn't matter."

I jumped; I hadn't heard the captain approach until he was right behind me. "What do you mean? Why?"

Captain Angel fixed me with a cool look, and I almost got knocked over the side as Dredge gave me a nudge with his elbow. "'Why, Captain," he coached.

"Why's that, Captain?" I corrected myself, and Angel almost smiled.

"Better." He acknowledged my respect with a nod of his head, then turned to regard the fleeing vessel. "There's only two reasons to run from pirates, boy: the pirates have a grudge against you, or you're carrying something valuable. I don't recognize the ship, so there's got to be something shiny on board."

"'N a shiny somethin' now means more shiny somethin's later," added the blue-haired pirate, giving a sage nod before striding off to check out the rearward sail. As I watched him go, I noticed he had a pink heart-shaped tattoo on the back of his head, which clashed horribly with his blue hair.

After reconciling myself to the fact that pirates apparently had their own special fashion sense, I turned to Oh. "Are we going to catch her?" I asked, indicating the ship we were following.

Oh's expression turned unexpectedly nasty, and I took a step back as his hands fell to his knives. "If we still had our Sea Shanty," he grumbled, "we'd have caught her already." His eyes twinkled with fond nostalgia. "She was the fastest junk on the water. Nobody except those damned Fire Nation steamers could outrun her." His knuckles turned white on his knives. "Damned Fire Nation," he repeated under his breath.

"We should never have agreed to that deal," agreed Dredge. Before I could ask what they meant, though, the big man flinched as the iguana parrot landed on his shoulder, and the captain's voice barked behind him.

"Enough of that talk!" Captain Angel's eyes blazed as his hand went to the hilt of his sword, ready to draw. "We all feel the same about it, and, mark my words, we haven't seen the last of him! Dredge, your grog is stopped for a week."

Dredge deflated, but he touched his forelock. "Aye, captain."

Captain Angel stalked away, his parrot following. I didn't dare inquire any further at the moment, but I filed it away for later reflection. Oh confirmed my suspicions by drawing a finger across his neck when I glanced his way. "Rest assured, Dao, we'll catch her," he said loudly, pretending nothing had happened. "This may not be our old girl, but she's quick on her feet, nonetheless." He gave the railing a thump for emphasis.

True to Oh's word, within the hour we were close enough to hear the other ship's captain yelling orders in a panic, telling his crew to prepare for boarding. Up at the helm, Captain Angel called, "Prepare the hooks!"

I wove through the other pirates to the base of the mainmast, where I would be out of the way, and watched the unfolding process with a keen eye. I'd never seen a boarding under full sail.

Dredge and another pirate that was almost as big stepped up onto the foredeck with an angular, jagged piece of metal in one hand. It had five spikes arranged around a central shaft, and each spike was wickedly serrated. Three more pirates lingered near the railings holding regular old grappling hooks. Long, worn coils of rope were tied to the end of each hook, and the rest of the crew backed away.

"Stand clear!" boomed Dredge, a tad unnecessarily. Then he took the shaft of his giant hook in both hands and started twirling it over his head, slowly at first but with building speed. The other pirate did the same. With a grunt, they released.

The angry-looking hooks soared over the water and clattered onto the deck of the other ship. They must have dug in, because both men suddenly strained on their ropes, veins standing out on their necks as they struggled not to be pulled overboard. Oh and another pirate darted forward, wrapping the ends of the ropes around cleats on the deck to tie them off. When he was done, Oh called to Dredge, who let the cleat take the strain before shaking out his red hands.

"Spirits above and below," I swore once Dredge came over. "You do that every time?"

"Every time they run," he confirmed. "Makes running useless; they just drag us along."

"Half the time, we don't even have to reel them in. They realize they're in deep and just allow us to board with no trouble," Oh added, indicating the other ship with one of his daggers. "Just like that. Lucky for you." He winked at me.

I raised an eyebrow, not knowing what he meant.

"If we had to reel them in, you'd be the one working the crank."

"'Ware!" cried a voice above us-the lookout-and a moment later, a small volley of arrows thumped into the deck. One put a gash in the foresail, and another stuck in the leg of Dredge's big counterpart.

"Looks like they want a fight, men!" Captain Angel bellowed. He spoke to the helmsman: "Bring us alongside her. If her crew wants to fight it out, they'll soon see their mistake. Bosun, prepare a boarding party."

Without being told, certain pirates started gathering near the raised prow of the ship. To my eyes, everyone was armed to the teeth, and hardly a single weapon was like any of the others. The bosun himself bore what looked like a pair of straight-edged sickles, while Dredge had picked up a naginata spear/staff with a broad serrated blade. One pirate looked like he carried nothing but an iron ball on the end of a rope. As they gathered, I noticed the grappling ropes were beginning to fall slack; we were drawing closer to the other ship as they dumped wind from their sails, no doubt wanting every hand to concentrate on fighting rather than sailing.

"It won't help," Oh said, following my gaze. His usual greasy but sincere smile had been replaced by a grim sneer and a cold light in his eyes. He patted himself down, making sure all of his knives were in place. "No weapon?"

I knocked my fists together in answer, and he turned toward the railing without another word. When I stepped up next to him, though, he almost cracked a smile. "Don't die," he advised.

"I'll do my best not to disappoint."

Within the next minute or so, we were drawing alongside the "fishing" boat with aching slowness. I couldn't spare a glance for the sails, curious as I was. I was too busy doing an airbender breathing exercise, clearing my mind for the coming battle. "In, out. In, out. In…"

"Boarders away!" thundered the bosun. Whooping and hollering filled the air, pirates belting out war cries and incoherent yells as they leapt over the railing in two's and three's. As the first mate, Oh was the first man on the opposing deck, and the clashing of steel on steel immediately filled the air.

I took a quick look over the side. "Boy, that's a long way across." I gulped; it couldn't be that far across. All the other pirates were making it.

"Come, Dao! Let's see how good your fists are!" Dredge taunted, his stride so long that his jump over the sea looked like he was taking a casual stroll. I couldn't say no to a challenge like that, so I uttered a quick prayer to whatever spirits might be watching and took a running leap over the side of the ship.

In the split second that I was airborne, I felt my instincts wanting to take over, my back muscles tightening to beat wings that weren't there, my body straightening to cut down on wind resistance. Then I was tumbling onto the deck and rolling several feet to dissipate the momentum.

When I jumped to my feet, I couldn't see a damn thing. Thick gray smoke covered the deck, light enough not to make me start coughing but heavy enough to completely obscure everything beyond five or six feet. "Did someone jump over here and start a fire?!" One of the first things Oh had told me about sailing was that fire was the number-one enemy of ships; it was why the Fire Nation built theirs out of steel. It was also my main reason for not practicing my bending before I figured out that it was a no-no among Captain Angel's crew.

Before I had a chance to figure out what the hell was going on, a man charged out of the mist jabbing a jian sword at my chest. He missed by a hair as I twisted to the side. "Not cool," I told him, breaking his wrist with a palm-heel strike. He screamed and dropped to a knee, which I promptly shattered with another well-placed blow. He cried out again and tumbled away from me into the smoke, where I lost sight of him. Confident that I wasn't going to be seeing him again, I dropped into a ready stance, hands open in front of me, and started making my way through the smoke.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the deck behind me. I spun, ready to lash out. My eyes flickered back and forth, picking out the enormous shadow of Dredge stumbling across the deck. He had one man clinging to his back like a hog-monkey, looking like he was trying to strangle the big pirate, and another man's head clenched in his sausage-sized fingers. As I watched, Dredge bashed his enemy's skull off the deck rail. The struggling sailor went limp immediately, and Dredge dropped him so that he could use both hands to seize the other sailor from his back and fling him bodily in my direction. "Catch," he grunted.

Since I wasn't a seven-foot-tall mountain of piratey muscle, I didn't bother trying to "catch." Once the man/projectile had rolled to a stop on the deck, I ran over and delivered a quick rabbit punch to his forehead, knocking him out cold. "Where's your pointy stick?" I called to Dredge.

"Thought I'd try it your way," he replied, appearing from out of the smoke and knocking his knuckles together with an audible thunk.

"Die, pirate scum!"

A man dressed in Earth Kingdom green with a blue scarf around his head came charging out of nowhere brandishing an ordinary hatchet. I dipped away from his first strike on pure reflex and redirected his second into the side of the ship's cabin. I backed up to get some space, but I tripped over the unconscious sailor on the deck. As my attacker drew back for a third swing, the blunt end of his hatchet caught me on the underside of my jaw.

Suddenly, I was seeing three of everything, my head vibrating for a split second from the force of the blow. I became vaguely aware that I was flat on the deck, and that there was some kind of green blur standing over me. "Hey, over here!" the blur was shouting, and I could feel footfalls through the deck. Panicking, I tried to jab a thumb into the back of his knee, but misjudged and missed. He smashed a foot into my ribs, making me gasp and exacerbating the pounding in my head, before taking his hatchet in both hands like a lumberjack and raising it over his head.

'You're about to die, Dao,' a small voice in my head told me. 'Maybe you should do something about that.' Spurred on by that voice, I thrust a fist upward. A high-pitched squeal told me I'd hit the right spot. The man dropped to his knees, straddling me with hatchet forgotten as he clutched his groin in agony. Without thinking, I drove a fist into his solar plexus and smashed his nose up into his brainpan with my palm. Gurgling, he slumped over sideways, bright red blood streaming out of his nose, and I levered him off of me with my legs.

"Oh!" I cried, wincing as my overloud voice made my head pulse with pain. "Dredge!" A few forms staggered out of the smoke, and I almost sighed with relief. "Thank the spirits for-"

Stars flashed across my vision and I tasted blood as one of the figures brained me with something; I never saw it coming. It was a miracle I wasn't knocked clean out. As it was, I dropped to one knee.

"That does it," I slurred.

I cranked open my sore jaw and coughed an ember-filled cloud of soot and smoke into my aggressor's face. As he stumbled backward clawing at his face, I took a breath and tried again. This time, my chi responded, and I spewed white-hot flame all over the man, sending him up like a candle. More shadows came running out of the smoke in response to his shrieks. Every man I didn't recognize got bathed in my fiery breath or blown away by the fire blasts from my fists. "I'll teach you to fuck with a Nomad," I growled to myself, kneeing a man in the gut and driving my elbow through the vertebrae in his neck. He dropped without another sound, and I immolated his partner with a double-fisted fireball.

It didn't take a minute for me to finish them off, but by that time the smoke from our boarding had finally started to thin. Someone beckoned to me from across the deck, and I was finally able to distinguish Oh's silhouette from the rest of the pirates and sailors as I made my way over. "Is it over? Did they finally give it up?" I asked him.

"For the most part," he answered, cleaning one of his knives on a rag. "We won't know until the smoke from our palm-bombs clears up." He indicated the side of my face, where I could only assume a massive dark bruise was already rearing its ugly head. "Looks like you lied to Dredge," he chuckled. "Those fists of yours aren't as good as you seem to think."

"I'm still here, aren't I?" I coughed into my fist, then casually wiped off the flecks of soot where the pirates wouldn't notice. "I want my booty. How long does it take the smoke to clear up?" I pointed out the drifting clouds of dirty grey that still hung in the air.

Oh lifted a greasy eyebrow. "First thing: pirates don't say 'booty.' Booty means one thing, and you won't find that on the sea." He snorted at his own joke. "Second thing," he continued, frowning as he looked around, "It should have mostly cleared up by now. I don't…"

"FIRE!"

The pirates and I turned as one to where the shout had come from. A skinny, shirtless pirate came sprinting around the corner of the cabin where I'd nearly been killed. "Fire! Fire on deck!"

The sailors' faces turned ashen, and the pirates began scrambling around, looking for buckets, pails, anything to help throw water on the fire. Oh ran past me with a ladle of water from the bilge, yelling, "C'mon, Dao! We have to start a chain!"

Knowing he meant a bucket brigade, I followed him around the side of the cabin. By the time I caught up, Oh was throwing the pitiful ladleful on the burning corpse of a sailor and chucking it back at me. It didn't help; thick black smoke was rolling from the body, as well as three more further down the deck where I'd lost my temper. Greasy red flames were already licking up the railing, rigging, and the side of the main cabin. I could see the hopelessness in Oh's eyes, but he motioned me to get moving.

I ran around the corner to look for a water barrel, and Dredge's big grappling partner ran past me with a bucket in either hand. Before he could make it very far, Captain Angel's hoarse, angry voice rang across the deck. "What the hell's going on here?" he demanded.

"Captain, there's a fire on deck," I responded, pointing to the side of the cabin where smoke was pouring into the sky.

"I can see that," he snarled.

"It's bad, sir," Oh called, coming around the corner. His face and hair was stained with soot and ash, making him look even filthier than usual. "I've no idea how it started, but it's already got belowdecks and into the rigging."

"Scuttle it." Angel turned without another word and headed for his ship. Oh turned white under his covering of black, but started passing the word immediately. Dredge made his way past with two sailors slung over his broad shoulders, walking up the gangplank someone had affixed between the ships. Pirates streamed after him, some escorting sailors and some hauling boxes and sacks of unknown contents. But as we abandoned the burning boat, something caught my eye.

"Hey," I exclaimed, grabbing Oh's shoulder as he passed on his way to the gangplank. "What about those men?" I pointed to where there were still sailors on the deck, bound and screaming through their gags as they were left behind.

Oh's face tightened. "They're getting what they deserve. Get on the ship, Dao."

I blinked at his abruptness, but didn't hang around the question it; already, the entire back half of the captured ship was aflame, and the deck was starting to list. I skipped up the gangplank, and Oh followed close behind, the last one to leave. I helped another pirate pull up the plank and the helmsman began steering us away, the sails billowing above.