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Caprice

Chapter IV


Bringing his high-strung horse anywhere near the Boin forest proved rather difficult for Lord Portgas, even during the daytime. At night he would not dare to attempt it, for the forest held strange foliage that seemed cognizant, cantankerous, and carnivorous all at once. Then there were the beasts to contend with. The beasts that lurked within were always prowling for some sort of fleshy thing to tear into. That was what Trafalgar had warned him about extensively in his last letter.

Bepo met them at the edge of the forest, and sniffed the air with vague curiosity. Lord Portgas smiled at the white steed as he tried to rein in the unruly brute that wheezed an opaque froth into the air. When his horse caught Bepo's scent he focussed solely on the other beast, which to him smelt like certain death, and completely disregarded the cues of the lord.

With a bemused snort, Bepo loped off into the forest bowels, and horse and rider continued along a certain stone pathway that was almost overgrown with a tangle of clumped roots. Twice his horse stumbled dangerously, foaming at the mouth and throwing his head about, searching for the scent of the predator that lurked just beyond the tree line.

Lord Portgas arrived at the manor built into the side of a lush hill and admired the dark stonework and gothic trellises that swung up the sides of the structure, supporting shadowy green vines. He could see the emblem of his friend's home: that strange smiling face surrounded by a halo of prongs that reminded Lord Portgas of a symbol for a deadly disease or virus. In a port town he had visited in the past a symbol eerily identical to it was painted on the sides of houses during a plague to indicate someone infected lived within.

He hardly had cause to shiver, however. Dr. Trafalgar was not known to be excessively harsh with any creature, save for humans.

Something he was not. Not really, anyhow, which he found was more than enough to guarantee his safety.

He rode his steed right up to the siding of the home and dismounted. His horse was readying his haunches to rear and spring away in the opposite direction when he grabbed the reins to keep him steady. It took a few minutes to tranquilize the brute – by muffling the creature's crazed breathing with his gloved hand, which held only his own calming scent – before he could tie the horse to the only thing he could use in sight, the wrought iron trellis heaped in vines.

Meanwhile, the doctor within had heard the frantic neighing, the distressed snorting, and the ground being turned over by sharp hooves, and was outside to meet his friend like a gentleman.

"Ace! You have finally sought me out, have you?"

Lord Portgas turned away from his mount with an arched eyebrow and a wide, toothy grin. "I thought it was you who sent for me!"

Dr. Trafalgar chuckled and received the friendly clap on the shoulder after Lord Portgas strode up, letter in hand.

"I got your musings. Quite a funny thing to write me about, my friend."

The doctor rubbed his abused shoulder and then went inside, Shachi holding the door open for them. The boggart regarded the lord with innocent curiosity and even smiled a little, the skin around his mouth tightening and revealing his knife-like teeth.

"Well, Ace, I am engrossed in some new studies. I hope you will be kind enough to facilitate my research. It will be much tamer than my experiments upon that naval vessel we both wish to forget our shared time upon."

Lord Portgas raised both eyebrows this time as he took a seat at a table in Dr. Trafalgar's drawing room. "Whatever it is you're doing, it always sounds doubly dangerous coming out of your mouth."

"Oh, I assure you that you won't be injured by this. I'm mostly seeking verbal answers to some of the questions lurking about in the murky depths of my swampy mind. You needn't fear your life."

Lord Portgas laughed. His rough, rolling thunder resonated through the rest of the quiet manor and drew out a few curious souls.

Robin wandered into their discussion, head held high and dignified, with a rather large cat held against her buxom chest. Ace let out another peel of laughter.

"Green cats, Law! Really now, or do my eyes deceive me?"

"No, your eyes are indeed accurate; that little beast is a green fiend." Trafalgar grinned, exposing a set of rather elongated, wolfish canines. "His name is Mister Zoro."

Zoro, fiend in question, growled a bit but made no effort at all to introduce himself properly even though he was more than capable. Robin continued petting him after settling into a chair, even though all could tell the beast was rather partial to her affections. Still, Zoro made no move to escape Robin's lap.

They had bonded quickly, Trafalgar noted.

"What brings you to visit the humble abode of a killer, Mr. Portgas?" Robin asked, eyes flicking between the doctor and the lord who drew up his feet on a nearby chair.

"Oh, I was sent for, Miss Robin." Lord Portgas let his eyes rove up and down the young woman's body, and felt a familiar tingling. Yet, he wasn't anywhere as attracted to this woman as he was to Marco, which greatly disturbed him. Desperately, trying to fool his disobedient body, he said, "Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?"

Robin smiled kindly. "Not lately. I haven't seen you for months. In fact, I was surprised you'd decided to settle here, being the worldly wanderer you are. Where's Luffy?"

Ace sighed. Nothing. No strange longing had welled up in him listening to Robin talk in that silky tone of hers.

"Luffy is…playing with the Navy, one could say. Don't tell anyone yet, but the little runt has hatched a plot to return to Sabaody, search for a crew of vagabonds, and take to the ocean again as a pirate." Robin blinked, a glazy look coming about her face. "I'm mighty proud of that idiot for his bravery to give into his ambitions. He's really the biggest fool I know."

"When will he be coming about?" she asked next, tight-lipped.

"Perhaps next month, or even earlier," he replied. He grazed his fingers along the dark wood of Dr. Trafalgar's table, and cast his eyes to the wall that had transformed into a library of thick texts. He couldn't even keep his eyes on Robin. This was problematic.

Robin rose with Zoro, who himself appeared to have been highly interested in the affairs of Luffy, and padded softly away, retiring to her private chamber. Lord Portgas watched her go and tried to follow the motion of her hips, but his interest was elsewhere.

He was so absorbed in self-pity that he hardly noticed Dr. Trafalgar abruptly get up and seek out his medical cabinets on the far side of the room. Nor did he notice that the man now stood behind him. He didn't notice all of this until he felt a peculiar, warm, sticky substance drip down over his forehead. It ran down the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, his neck, and by that time Lord Portgas was swiping at it and uttering curses.

Dr. Trafalgar retreated with an empty bottle in his pale fingers, returning to his place across the table from the man he'd just assaulted to observe any and all reactions. So far, only flailing hands and angry words met his inquisitive eyes and ears.

"There is nothing quite like getting a bottle of vampire drool dumped on oneself," Lord Portgas spat, coating the sleeve of his coat with the clear, gelatinous goo.

"My apologies, Ace. Humans usually enjoy this stuff…"

"Before dying an agonizing death," Ace finished with a grimace. "And really, Law, I am not human, so please refrain from experimenting on me. I thought you said this was going to be verbal?"

"This is verbal, now. Anyhow, the fact that you are not human is precisely why I was hoping to get wondrous results from this little experiment." Dr. Trafalgar reached across the table and grabbed a notebook, then brandished a quill from inside its folds and dipped the tip in a pot of ink that sat to his right. "Unfortunately, these results have not helped me any. Of course, just to be sure…"

He began writing in his moleskin notebook, elegant script filling a page while the lord continued trying to wipe the last of the substance off of his skin. It didn't sink in like an ointment would; rather it glided upon the surface like fresh droplets of rain.

"Just to be sure…" the doctor repeated slowly before yelling, "Penguin! Come here!"

A flurry of flapping wings accompanied a shrill whistle as Penguin made his entrance from a room down the hall, plopping down on the table with dull grey, twiggy feet. He faced the doctor, ruffling his brilliant white feathers and blinking his dark, obedient orbs at him.

"Penguin, if you'll just have a look at our friend Ace here," said the doctor, gently reaching out to take Penguin's long, thin beck between his fingers. He turned the bird's head right around, showing him the patient before dropping his fingers away. The bird continued to stare at Lord Portgas, unflinching, scrutinizing him with beady eyes.

Dr. Trafalgar got up and padded over to a nearby, rather inconspicuous chest made of a metal that stayed perpetually cold to the touch. The chest was a newer invention, one that few people owned, and referred to by some as a portable cellar. The fact that the chest made of metal was unbearably heavy did nothing to influence a new epithet.

The doctor quickly opened and shut the top of the box, retrieving one thing from its hold. From his position, Lord Portgas could see the innumerable cylindrical jars filled with a red liquid heaped on top of one another, methodically placed not so long ago.

"Lots of victim's lately, huh?" the lord commented, acutely aware of the soul searching gaze locked on him. Penguin was beginning to unnerve him, though he knew the bird was beyond harmless.

"Robin isn't the biggest eater, and frankly neither am I, but I do have a bad habit of stockpiling things in the event that someday, sometime, I may need them." He waggled a frozen, scaly body about behind his Caladrius' head. "That's enough, Penguin. It seems as though our dear Ace won't die anytime soon. Here's your fish."

He tossed the fish and the bird snapped its head around like an owl, crushing the little six-inch krill between its beak. The Caladrius dropped it onto the table for just a second to pluck out the fish's dried eyeballs, then gobbled up the rest of the body whole, swallowing like a cormorant.

Lord Portgas looked away, rolling his eyes at the spectacle. As the bird hopped and flapped to a perch jutting out of the mantelshelf of a nearby fireplace, he said, "Well, I'm glad your strange harbinger of death thinks I'm going to be fine. I thought you said I wasn't going to have to fear for my life?"

"That was my hypothesis speaking," Dr. Trafalgar said with a wry smile. "In science no theory is definite." He sighed, placing his chin in his hand so his goatee was no longer visible. "Well, Ace, these results are most disappointing. That is not to say, however, that I wish death upon you."

Shachi, meanwhile, had been preparing a quick lunch for the two, and was finally ready to serve it. A full plate of delectable cuts from something that had lived deep in the woods that Bepo brought home dead and bloody for Lord Portgas' anticipated visit and an intricate glass that was soon topped off with a dark substance for his master.

Lord Portgas ignored the glass set in front of the doctor. If he thought too much about its contents he would retch on the spotted fur rug beneath his feet. Instead he dug into the meat and asked his friend, "What were you trying to do, Law?"

The doctor sighed and moved to rest his chin in both his hands now, elbows digging into the wood of the table. He stared into his wine glass, noting that the blood was thicker than usual. Since he had an overstock, Shachi had not taken to thinning the tart juice with water as he had in their early years together. "Do you know of Lord Eustass, to the South?"

"The hermit?" A pale brow wrinkled and a bit of meat slipped from rosy lips.

"Yes. The hermit had a son at one point, unbeknownst to the world, and that son, now deceased, had a child with a largely unknown woman. Likely illegitimate. Ace, that child is my newest patient, and after he smeared himself with some of my… special serum, I'm beginning to question that child's bloodline." Dr. Trafalgar nibly picked up his wine glass and precariously swirled the liquid about so it rode the edge of the glass, nearly spilling over. "You know I don't like gaps in my knowledge, and this is most certainly a gap." He finished with a frown and took a deep drink, the rouge slipping down his throat.

"And this ties in with dumping caprice serum all over me because…?"

The doctor made certain to clean his teeth with a bit of spare saliva and a quick flash of tongue before opening his mouth again. "Because, my dear friend, I have cause to believe this one may be some sort of demon of a higher hierarchy, much like yourself, but unaware of the fact." Dr. Trafalgar stroked one of his tattoos on the back of his hand. He had several black marks all over his body. Their origins lay in his original master, whom taught him the most basic of all medical practices before disappearing only to end up on a stake with a bonfire beneath him. Needless to say Trafalgar had learned from the mistakes of his predecessors.

Eventually, Dr. Trafalgar let an eerie smile take hold of his mouth. "You know how I absolutely can't let well enough alone. He could be the perfect test specimen to play around with. I have a variety of acids and poisons I've been meaning to try on–"

"I'm going to politely stop you here before your mind goes down a completely twisted pathway," Lord Portgas said, tossing some stray ebony locks from his eyes. He was more or less finished with the midday meal, and Shachi grabbed the plate to clean it. "Now, I actually have a problem I'd like to get your opinion on."

"Oh? Did something happen during your travels from the city to little Sabaody?"

"No, no. Well, perhaps. I'm actually not sure when it started, really. But I know it's going to be a problem. You see, my senses seem to be…" he trailed off, gesticulating with his hands some hard-to-conceive term.

"A bit off?"

"A lot off," the lord insisted, placing his hands in his lap to keep them from trembling. "I fear it could be something as serious as my nature shifting."

"Now that is curious. Yet I can't say I'm surprised. You showed none of your usual lust for Robin, and the first thing you noticed when she entered the room was not her plump breasts but the greenish shapeshifter with an excess of copper swimming about in his blood."

"Oh, so that's what that thing was. I was wondering about it."

"My point precisely. So what, or rather who, has caught your single-minded attention so completely that you've begun to ignore all others?"

Ace sighed, knowing his friend would laugh at him, but said it anyway. "A man."

He received his ten long seconds of laughter before the doctor grew serious again. "A man, hmm? It's very unusual that you'd become a mandrake so suddenly. Now I understand what you meant about your nature going through a shift. How amusing." The doctor dipped his quill in his inkpot again and turned to a different page in his notebook. "Please tell me about it."

"There is nothing much to tell," the lord muttered glumly. He had no intention whatsoever of explaining his perverse actions the night before. Not when there was a chance of them being recorded in Trafalgar's moleskin book. "I am infatuated, only not with a woman that I can sleep with and then abandon within the hour."

"No, men are much harder to bed," Dr. Trafalgar admitted wistfully. "Is he a lord you happened to pass when you stepped off the ship, or what?"

Lord Portgas dropped his gaze to the table, picking at his cuticles. "No, he's…my new valet."

The doctor snickered. "Now that is certainly something worth investigating. But honestly, Ace, why don't you simply take the man by force, kill him, and call me to take care of the body with some sulphuric acid and a little bit of firepower? Then you could move on to your next pursuit, whomever she shall be, and there will be no repercussions with the law and what have you."

Scrunching up his features, the lord shook his head, appalled. "No. No. I do not kill."

Trafalgar drank down the rest of his meal and set the glass down daintily, licking his lips. "Well, think of it in this light, Ace. It could be a very good thing that you're attracted to someone who isn't so easily obtained. It would give you and your incubus desires a break."

The lord brightened and sat back in his chair. "I suppose you're right. All I have to do is resist a bit of temptation under my own roof. It's actually relieving not to have the usual craving to pounce on every woman that passes me by. This could be therapeutic."

The doctor chuckled and rose from his chair. "I hope you'll let me know how that works out for you."

The lord got to his feet and nodded vaguely. "Sure. And in return maybe you'll inform me of this grandchild of Lord Eustass'. I'd like to keep tabs on all the lords around here, just for my own reference."

"I suppose I shall see you in a few days or a week at the latest. I assume you've been invited to Duchess Jewelry's little get together?"

"After she sent forth a second letter to prod me into action, I sent her a reply that I would attend, yes. She's a rather persistent woman, isn't she?"

"Made all the more persistent when she heard the tale of the Gol fortune."

Ace guffawed as he shrugged into his overcoat. When he finally stopped panting to get his breath back he barked out, "The One Piece! It is not even in my possession! It is somewhere out on the ocean, and I will admit I have no desire to find it at the moment, unlike Luffy."

"That's not what a lot of people believe," Dr. Trafalgar said with a snicker. "But no matter. I have to be going to Lord Eustass' to check up on the boisterous grandson."

Lord Portgas snickered his way out the door, mounted his steed so weak from nervous fright that he didn't even toss his head, and rode off.

With a loud cry, the doctor summoned Bepo when his friend was out of sight. He then gathered up his medical rucksack and, after a moment of contemplation, asked Penguin to perch himself on his shoulder.

"We have work to attend to," he told the bird, who ruffled his feathers and appeared pleased to be going on a venture with his master.

-oOo-

Dr. Trafalgar hadn't quite been expecting a knife to be tossed in his direction, aimed at striking his heart, but his quick reflexes and the walking stick he'd brought along for the occasion proved useful rather than simply fashionable.

"Lord Eustass, or should I call you Childish Kidd? What do you think you are doing with your grandsire's silver cutlery?"

"I am going to fucking kill you for what you did to my body," the man growled, advancing upon the doctor with another knife. Luckily, he could deal with a single knife. If the man had gotten hold of a firearm…

Now he knew what the elder Eustass had meant earlier when he said they didn't keep guns on the estate with which to hunt game. It had been a subtle warning, not idle chitchat.

"Mister Eustass," Dr. Trafalgar persisted, "you really ought to tame your foul language. What if a woman walked in to hear you cuss like that?"

"If a woman did walk in, don't you think she would be more appalled by a bloody body hanging from the ceiling with all its innards strewn across the floor?"

Dr. Trafalgar cracked a grin. "I see you are as lusty as ever. Shall we begin your torture now, or should we play with knives a bit longer?"

"You're mad," snarled Lord Eustass, eyes flicking to the door of the drawing room. He knew his grandfather had locked them in together. After the doctor had left him subdued and complacent the last time he'd been around, his grandfather had been eagerly awaiting the man's return. He felt like Rapunzel in a castle.

Only Rapunzel did not have to deal with a persistent, raccoon-eyed person and his pearly white smile.

He threw another knife in anger, embedding it in the wall next to the doctor's head. He had to admit, he was slightly impressed that the other did not flinch away or cower behind a piece of furniture like many of the other men his grandfather had hired.

"Mister Eustass, if you would be so kind as to take a seat. I wish to psychoanalyze your psychotic mind today."

"Your dry humour just kills me," the young lord said with a beastly scowl. Regardless, he had run out of knives with which to hurl, and besides, this time he would not let the doctor sneak up on him, nor would he experiment with what lay in this strange man's medicine bag. He had learned from their last encounter. "Fine. Let's get this over with."

"Alright," said Dr. Trafalgar, plopping himself down on the nearest piece of furniture, a low tea table. He crossed his legs and withdrew a notebook from his bag. Following was the bottle of ink. A pregnant pause. Then: "Ah, I seem to have forgotten a quill."

Lord Eustass snickered and lay back in a chair, only to tense when the doctor sprang to his feet and crossed the room with long strides. He stopped in front of one of the windows, fiddled with the latch, and finally yanked the glass up enough to fit a small body through. The second he stuck his head out and leaned his body over the ledge a morbid thought crossed the young lord's mind. He would have liked to run over and tip the self-righteous fool out the window by his pert behind.

The idea was conceived too late, as the man with the shadow-ringed eyes pulled himself back in. Much to his surprise, the doctor had his arm outstretched, and on it perched a very large, hunched, white bird. The yellow beak chittered an inaudible tune, almost as if the bird was muttering to itself.

He walked back to the table and placed the creature on a tall vase imported from a land beyond the sea. Then he got his quill by plucking a relatively small flight feather from the innermost part of the bird's outstretched wing.

"Now, where were we? I believe we were going to have a jovial discussion about that mind of yours."

Lord Eustass grunted, still not intending to cooperate. If that bird was a way for the doctor to strike up a conversation, he would not give him the satisfaction of asking a question about it. He would simply accept its presence and not let it bother him. That would surely annoy this man and foil his scheme.

Yet the doctor didn't attempt idle avian chitchat. "I want to know some things about your apparently troubled subconscious. Tell me about your dreams, Mister Eustass. When you wake up, what do you find you've dreamt about?"

"I have no dreams."

"Everyone has dreams, Mister Eustass. It's a matter of whether or not they can remember them." The doctor began smoothing and sharpening the quill he'd just plucked with his fingernails. The bird, meanwhile, had tucked its head under a wing, and didn't seem to be too concerned about the dark aura the lord gave off.

"Alright, fine." Lord Eustass adjusted his shirt, bothered a bit by the stifling heat in this stuffy room. He would much rather be rid of the useless fabric and walk around outside with his torso bare. "I had a dream, not so very long ago, where I killed someone."

He noticed the quill had begun scratching the paper and smirked. With a plot hatching, he continued: "So I killed this man by shooting him several times in the feet, maybe a couple times in the arms and chest for good measure, but what I did after that when he was still moaning and groaning was…" he trailed off, giving the doctor time to catch up with his quill. "What I did after I'd shot him was quite spectacular. I ripped him limb from limb with a rather blunt knife and my bare hands, and I suppose by this point he might've died, and then I scattered his organs around. But I kept his intestines you see, and I may have been intending to make some condoms out of 'em, you know, like they do with pigs intestines, but by that point I must have woke up. I imagine if the dream had kept going, I likely would have gone to one of those bordellos and knocked up half the whorehouse, but ah, it was not to be. A good dream cannot last forever, can it?"

Dr. Trafalgar finished writing within the minute and cast his eyes up to see his patient reclining with his feet high in the air, swung over the armrest of the sofa he'd laid upon. "A most curious account, Mister Eustass."

"The most curious part," the lord continued, his smirk growing, "is that the fellow I butchered looked just like you. Right down to the creamy white buttons on your coat."

He expected horror or revulsion, but instead the young doctor merely snorted and closed his notebook. "I see trying to get anything out of you is like trying to get a horse to throw up its hay."

"Horses cannot physically puke," Lord Eustass said, narrowing his eyes in confusion. "They colic and the intestines end up twisted in knots."

"And so the comparison is drawn." He picked up the bird behind him and swung the creature about so it huddled in his lap. The bird was unperturbed by the disturbance, and the doctor's hands stroking down the length of its back only made the creature more lethargic. "Dear Penguin here is quite the beautiful specimen. Truly one of a kind. Tell me, what do you think of when you see this magnificent bird?"

"I think of killing it and roasting it on a spit like a common goose."

The doctor sighed. "Penguin here would sooner see your death." He smiled at the irony that was so clearly lost on the young man.

"That is a stupid name for a bird that looks nothing like a penguin."

Eyebrows arched and the smile that never left the doctor's face for long broadened. "Oh, you have heard of that species then?"

"Who hasn't? It's been the talk of the scholars up north lately. They just love cataloguing fat birds. Likely because they remind them of their pompous selves, waddling about and squawking at one another."

"Is that really your view on scientists?"

"Only those concerned with the study of fat birds. I actually have a deep respect for scientists, especially those in the field of physics. Now, are we done today?"

Dr. Trafalgar replaced his notebook in his bag and left the quill on top of it. Likely Bepo would be anxious to go home and hunt. He just hoped whomever he'd handed his steed off to didn't decide to place the creature in with the rest of the horses. It would be a test of his ability to lie if a few of the horses went missing and bloody patches of grass were found. Not to mention red showed up starkly on Bepo's coat.

He let his fingers grope for the object he knew was there in his bag, and finally located it. He didn't dare withdraw it with the lord's eyes watching him closely, and instead pulled the handles of the bag over his shoulder.

"Well, Mister Eustass, it has been an absolute pleasure to hear about your desires to copulate and rip my limbs off, but I must be going on my way to a few more appointments in the heart of Sabaody. Show me to the door?" He leaned in to snuggle his face against the soft down on Penguin's chest, very carefully whispering a separate set of instructions. He got a talon curl as an answer and the bird hopped from his lap, ready to spring into action.

"Show yourself to the door."

"So I shall," Dr. Trafalgar replied, ignoring the rudeness of his host's grandson. "After I take a turn about this magnificent room. Really, the architecture is stunning; I cannot help but desire a closer look."

With all the poise of a graceful feline, Dr. Trafalgar leapt from his roost and walked the circumference of the room, strolling about it so he appeared to be appreciating the many paintings on the walls of various lords that had dwelled in the manor previously. The eyes were still on him, and the closer Trafalgar dared to stray to his tense patient the more he came to realize the irises of the man's eyes were not black, but a very dark red. It reminded him of certain albino rabbits Bepo had brought home from deep within Boin. They appeared positively possessed by demonic forces.

As he went for his second rotation around the room and stopped to examine a carved wooden figure that sat on a ledge along the wall, conveniently behind the lord's back, a shrill shriek sounded. Quickly he turned and withdrew his hand from his medicine bag, and in his fingers gleamed a hypodermic needle, full of a very carefully chosen substance.

He ripped off the cap that protected the needle, saw Penguin soaring towards Lord Eustass, who gave the bird his full attention, and slammed the needle home in the lord's bulging neck, plunging the liquid in just below his ear. He howled, and Penguin pulled up over his head before crashing, dropping through the air to grab a tight hold of the extra fabric that gathered around his master's shoulders.

Dr. Trafalgar sprinted away with his bird holding on by its beak and talons, one angry pursuer leaping the sofa and thundering after them.

"You insidious fucker!"

"I shall return tomorrow night! Give my best to your delightfully dowdy grandfather!" cried the doctor as he eased himself through the window he'd left open earlier. Lord Eustass reached the escape route just seconds after the much thinner man passed through it and cursed loudly, slamming his hands down on the windowsill and breaking chunks of weaker wood away. When he tried to hike a foot into that open air while sliding the rest of his body through, he realized it would be suicide to follow the doctor, who had landed haphazardly on the ground and was calling like a madman for his steed.

"If you come back here I'll kill you with my bare hands! Forget the gun and the blunt knives, I'd rather tear your head off with my goddamn teeth!"

By then that obnoxiously large horse had loped up like an obedient hound, and Trafalgar vaulted onto the beast's bare back. He spurred his mount into a gallop, with no concern whatsoever about the missing saddle or bridle. His tack was simply unimportant.

The impudent man had the mettle to wave cheerily over his shoulder as he fled, leaping a crumbled garden wall and disappearing out of sight.


A.N.: Thank you, everyone, who has left a comment on either the story as a whole or the last chapter. I haven't the time to reply to individual reviews like I used to, but rest assured I read each and every one thoroughly whilst grinning like a maniac. Really, I love you all.