Chapter 2:

A Rude Awakening

Siam's laughter nearly drowned out his own overjoyed clapping.

"Yes! That's right! Turn, you damned yella'bellies!"

"I think we've done it, boys!" Buchi swung his arms outward to the surviving crowd while the remaining Marines were evacuating and streaming out of the ship like frenzied ants. Some cheered, some sneered, some boasted about how they could impress their captain, with others grousing about how much they wanted a cold drink.

"Look at these guys," a Marine petty officer watching from afar nudged his accomplice.

"They really think we're scared," replied the seaman beside him, who had remarkably large teeth that barely fit inside of his mouth.

The recruits squawked aloud and their chuckling persisted despite the possible lurking presence of the galleon's captain, with only a strip of ocean between the predator and the prey.

Of course, the Marines were not so easily shaken by a single crew of East Blue pirates, nor were they new to the types of techniques that Black Cats used in order to dispatch them. They evaded their previous cannon fire or, rather, their battalion leader went as dramatic as kicking them into the ocean. He stubbed his toe more than once, twirling around the deck, foot in hand. The seamen were clever and experienced enough to pass on codes with hand motions, one of which meant that the vessel was going to open fire as a last resort. Although many valuable items that Kuro had pilfered, that they had not already retrieved with excited hands, would be lost in the process, it ensured that there would be no survivors to tell the other side of the wreck for years to come.

The lumbering sound of cannons being pushed and lugged was heard across the not-so-distant expanse, and the ship's imposing Vice Admiral was surveying the Marine deck. Eventually his eyes latched onto every discrepancy on the Bezan Black ahead of him. Like a focused hawk, his eyes were drawn to the weakness in the frames, the faults in its architecture and its old and worn blind spots that hid beneath lavish paint.

The green-haired pirate's eyelids quivered at the sight of the cannons. He stared down at his own shaking limbs. This time, his cowardice was entirely real.

With an aghast expression, the larger man faced his sibling, "Siam?"

"Buchi?"

He placed his chubby hands on his shoulders.

"I just... I love you, man! If we don't make it, then I'll see you in Hell!"

"Damn it, Buchi! You know it," Siam's eyes turned jellylike and his mouth blubbered as he clutched his own chest. "Don't say things like that!" he dug his face into his arm and let out a hoarse gasp while tears and snot streamed from his face. "We're brothers, and we're going to save our asses!"

They then busied themselves with deafening screaming that was projected all the way to the border of the Marine vessel. The two rushed frantically to find the escape boats. While the remaining crew was in a state of bewildered frenzy, they pushed and shoved and dashed with impressive quickness that trumped the remaining hooligans.

"We've let them struggle long enough! I know he's in there, he's hiding, I can practically sniff him out," the leader of the Marine fleet lowered his binoculars, his curly mustache twitching. "If you can't lure a cat out of its hiding place, then you need to blow it up!"

"I don't think that's how that saying goes, Vice Admiral."

"That's... A great observation, Ensign Sheri… Now, let's stop this play and begin the work!" the tall man gestured dramatically with a stiff index finger. "Just hold her steady and fire! In succession, on my count! Keep your eyes sharp! Trust nothing! And if he makes it onto this ship, think of your family, and for the Greater Good! Make sure that he doesn't leave alive!"

Meanwhile, the two brothers many meters away were bickering.

"Our goddamn captain is still passed out, like a rock, I bet!" Siam puffed and pulled with difficulty on the ropes, his hands burning under the rough friction at work. "I've never seen him that stupid. This is the worst day of my life. Maybe my last! I mean, I don't even think—"

"Imagine if he heard you!" whispered Buchi.

"It's those damned sedatives of his. What is it… Melanine?"

"Mezzanine?"

"No, no… Melon time—"

"Melatonin?"

"Yeah, yeah, that one."

"I broke down his door—you almost tried to kill him—and now—we're not going to try to save him?" the fatter man huffed and swung his head around to spot the loading cannons.

"Ha! Not a chance," Siam scoffed, turning in his eyebrows while the eyeliner streamed off of his face from his fearful sweat. "I've had enough of his tyranny!"

"Good point! We're getting out of here!"

After they failed to lower the escape boats quickly enough, the two resorted to diving into the water.

Shortly following their escape, the rattling, rumbling blast of several cannons broke up the muddled sounds of shouted orders and screamed threats. Uniform and rigid, the Marine formations deeply contrasted the arbitrary chaos of the Black Cat vessel. Flailing bodies were sent skyward, and stragglers abandoned ship, only to be caught by a few clever Marines who surveyed the waters below the larger military vessel.

In one destructive and thunderous instant, the captian awoke.

Kuro found himself flying through the air and being surrounded by a deafening cage of noise. Adrenaline jolted through his veins in a startling flash. His dark eyes shot open and were overwhelmed by the sudden wash of light. The force of the blast was thrusting him forward with alarming speed. His body rocketed through the circular window that once gave him an outside view, and he rapidly squeezed through its center with such bizarre accuracy as a cat would have when squeezing itself through the crevice in a door. Cringing, he shielded himself from the shattered glass following him through the air, though a thin fleck of blood escaped his forearm and pattered into the ocean. In a flurry of sight and sound, Kuro saw the last crumbling moments of his ship, his Bezan Black, until his featherweight body turned and flipped until he collided with the frigid sea below.

"There!"

A Marine underling pointed a gloved index finger to the flying man and got the Vice Admiral's attention. He was the man known among the Naval community as Mongoose, who was previously scoping with his binoculars, parading around deck, and shouting with noticeable enthusiasm in the thick of a battle. His hair and beard, that were once a muted and wispy blond in his youth, were peppered with an ashen grey tone.

This Mongoose fellow was impressed and the operation was going as planned. If they could not personally dispatch the Black Cat leader, they would simply destroy everything that made him so. The decorated man had his fair share of experiences where there would often be the most influential and dangerous members on the ship taking cover in more secretive passageways in larger vessels if they were too weak, too sick, or simply too intelligent to fight.

However, this was absolutely none of that, and it was one of the most peculiar and ill-fated ambushes he'd ever carried out—and it was certainly unexpected of a captain known for his calculating ruthlessness. This visual was enough to make him laugh, and it manifested as a booming roar. It was not even in cruelty, but more out of pity at all of its ridiculousness.

It felt as though Kuro was smacked into a pile of cement upon his ungraceful landing. They say that a cat always lands on his feet, but this isn't the case when one is bumped off of a bed while it's dreaming. The water's chilly hand crushed the bewildered schemer at first. He gasped at the sudden rush of water entering his throat, he felt the saltiness stream into his lungs. His glasses were sluggishly yet all too speedily floating below him. Their cold metal frame soon startled his toes and he grabbed for them in a sudden panic. Once his glasses returned to his face, Kuro was exasperated as to what he was seeing. His ship was utterly ruined, its fate sealed to become a tottering, beleaguered hunk of a previously fine design. Heavier chunks of debris were bubbling downward and nestling in the nearby reef, and the now-shredded wood was teetering and groaning against the wind. An explosive plume of orange and yellow invaded his sight, and he quickly hid under an astray plank, lightly lifting it to breathe from under the water.

He quickly felt his instincts overhauling his immediate sense of shock. Kuro didn't remember the exact reason that he flew out of the window his quarters with such baffling speed and precision that the laws of nature could have been plotting against him. He could only assume that it was from the shattering smash of a cleverly placed cannon ball. The razor-thin cut on his arm was burning, its red line already felt wet and grainy against his fingers. He swiftly cooled his head despite seeing his gold gone, specifically in the hands of this Marine battalion who had already cut down enough of his men to confiscate it. They shamelessly stepped over the crumpled bodies of his crewmen. His hands were free to act upon his own plight, but they were all too naked and weaponless. He would find it to be lucky to snap a grunt's neck if they just so happened to fall into the water.

Kuro hadn't fully accepted the situation yet, but he acted as if it was meaningless: he put his own life before anything else and his men had obviously failed to meet his expectations. It required him to improvise, and so he did, scouring for any of his belongings, evading hounding eyes, and being unsuccessful at finding anything but his captain's coat. He spotted it with a fair amount of luck. It was previously a blur of black and red as he flew through the air, but was now floating beneath a watery shadow. He quickly dove again, dressing a body with a keen eye towards his other directions. The corpse was previously known by the name of Naishi—a shipwright far stronger than his appearance—and he made a fine decoy, sharing his dark attributes and underweight body. Improvising was never his style, but neither was accepting complete failure.

There were Marines with sabers, and guns, and plenty with, no matter what weapon lay in their hands, focused and alert expressions insistent on extracting any remnant of living, breathing piracy from the ocean. The particularly nettlesome had smug pleasure slapped across their faces at the glory of possibly drowning him.

In perfect timing to break his incubating thoughts, shouts that were vulgar enough to dirty the air were thrown across the divide. Lifting his face slightly from under a floating plank, he saw that his two most distinguished buffoons were now aboard an otherwise ordinary Marine battleship, titled ERMINE on its side: growling, snapping, hissing, and making every other irritating noise that Kuro could think of. They panted from exhaustion as several recruits arrested them with firm handcuffs and taut ropes. He supposed that they would be fine subjects for interrogation, though not the most cooperative. Without much of a second thought, he was thankful that they were disembarrassed from his life, along with the rest of his crew, but his money and material possessions were ruined entirely, and this made him irate.

Was it really the end?

Probably not.

The water was disgusting. He wasn't nearly as adept in the water as he was on the land, but he could manage. Kuro envisioned himself as a shadow, slithering through the brine undetected. He hid time and time again under any ample-sized piece of rubble, and even shielding himself with his dead crew mates. Any man comfortable with such heinous conditions might as well be called vile.

His leaden eyes narrowed and shifted from side to side. The captain of the Black Cat vessel was a patient man, while being ruthlessly impatient at the same time—he was often a living contradiction, but used this often to his own advantage. He would wait as long as necessary before they caught onto his dead form, but he was inwardly rushing with anxiety if he were to be found. He wouldn't allow it. His head pounded and he felt like his own stomach acid was eating at his insides. Kuro wondered of his own involvement with the sake and the pills last night. He simply couldn't recall.

The next slice of time passed as a blur, but it stuck to his memory like a parasite to his skin. He was rushing in and out of the chopped waves, to and fro, gasping for his own breath, sticking to the bottom of planks and stray pieces of escape boats, mapping out each and every next direction he'd choose. It was mentally engaging, physically straining, and highly annoying. He saw everything, from the passing seaman's gangly arm muscles supporting the grip of a rifle, to scores of waterproof boots nestled inside of smaller boats. Soggy debris was tapped and moved and poked and searched, until they recovered his convincing facsimile and examined poor Naishi scrupulously, and they would be searching for tattoos or lack thereof, and any other odd and notable difference that was scoped out under his files.

A twisted smile etched across his face while his conniving eyes were hidden by the forlornly mangled back of a deckhand.

To Kuro of One Hundred Plans, survival was merely a waiting game.