Chapter 5:

Tension

"Here we are—careful." The watchful citizen docked the vehicle beside its makeshift pier while the water lapped near her feet. A peculiar lock was carefully adjusted upon the small boat. He rose out after her, and as his feet left the sand and met the grass, he began to notice his muscles stiffening and aching more than ever. The house before him was plain, and angular, painted with white and grey, with an outside garage having a tan foundation and a tarp stretched overhead to shield it from the rain and wind.

"It's no mansion," admitted Nelle. "But you've made it clear that you want to sleep here, haven't you?"

"That would be preferable, yes. I have nowhere to go otherwise."

His last sentence was said with some sort of strange despondency that unsettled him, a specific sort of hopelessness akin to a planner without a database. Regardless, if this person gave him any trouble, he would have no problem disposing.

"Not too much skin off of my back, Mr. Pierce." His new acquaintance rubbed her neck and pressed her fingers into its sides. "I have an idea for you. It's food for thought, but I'll bet you're more interested in actual food, at this point…" she rustled for a key inside one of her pockets, and he noticed that it lay close to her packet of cigarettes.

Kuro leaned forward with suspicion.

"An idea, eh?" Was it really an idea, or was it a plan? He knew the clear difference between the two. "Do you mind telling me what that's supposed to mean?"

"It can mean plenty of things. None of which endanger you. There's no need to look at me like that. It's… It's unsettling. Not you yourself, not your face or anything, just—never mind."

The former cutthroat ignored the blunt comment and focused on the more cryptic one.

"I'm certainly interested if it involves money."

The mechanic blinked, "It sure does."

What an answer: an answer that didn't help at all. He felt a mixture of suspicion and growing interest at the prospect of money. This woman's claim was questionable as she approached the back door. Meanwhile, Kuro scoped the garage's entirety and eyed the frame of an unusual three-wheeled contraption. Its bizarre engine was a symmetrical mess of metallic tubing with a valve firmly set in its middle, two polished canisters proudly rising upwards on opposite sides. It was something he had never seen anywhere before, and as a result, he barely understood its means. If it was no rounded steam engine, than what could it possibly be? Rolls of labeled blueprints lay in a neat bin beside the stranger's solid metal worktable and a row of porcelain coffee mugs adorned the shelf jutting beneath the tool wall. The garage door opened to the inside with a soft creak. The woman defensively stepped in first. As he followed, his eyes quickly scanned the interior, and he was taken in by its cleanliness.

"My. You keep this place quite organized."

"I can't live without organization," she answered curtly. "Now, please sit in this chair. You have… An offensive odor to you. I really don't like this chair," she itched the inside of her ear. "I'm getting rid of it soon."

Kuro shot her an uncomfortable, miffed look. As the inventor was putting her belongings in their rightful and noticeable places, he was observing the nuances of the room and the house in general. It was apparent that he was in the living room, which had a door on each side, both of them closed. The living room met with the kitchen area which rested against the wall and took up the space near the front door. There were two loveseats and another chair, a much better one than the one he had to endure. Nestled towards the back of this living room was a small workspace, with large tomes of non-fiction on its shelves. Stacks of pale paper formed straight columns along the wide desk space. To ensure some sort of connection with the rest of the world, a blue and grey snail-phone rested comfortably on the kitchen counter. He took in the living space with keen eyes. He checked for valuables. To his disappointment, this was indeed no mansion, but rather its antithesis.

"Come to think of it, just use the shower in the guest bedroom. Over there. Now. Please," Nelle brusquely returned to him with a frown and pointed, recoiling at his briny odor.

"Is it actually functional?"

His shoulders relaxed at the thought of clear, clean water.

"Of course it works." Her next statement was a huffing mumble that wasn't meant to be heard. "Why wouldn't it when I'm the one who lives here?"

Groaning pipes expelled the frigid water that ran down the bony expanse of his back. Its small floods scurried away in clear and twirling ribbons, stripping away his amalgamate grime of sand and dirt and blood. Despite the its glacial temperature, it was a relief to experience pure water after being on a ship for days and days, where the sweat stuck to himself like tree sap after long hours of perusing deck underneath a glowing hot sun. It was still a shock to him that his galleon would now shrink into a distant remnant of his past that he was all too eager to forget. Piracy had been a chore, but this fiasco was unprecedented and clumsy. Kuro sighed and felt the grease from his pomade disintegrate as he gripped the hair atop his head, pulling back the emerging dark strands away from his eyes. He turned his head to look out of the tiny fiberglass window and saw the inventor pacing back and forth, a cigarette caught between two of her fingers. Smoke puffed hurriedly out of her mouth, and she paused to slouch and cross her arms, tapping her foot against the ruddy clay beneath her and appearing caught in a state of contemplation. She was soon out of sight as she drew away from the view of the window.

His clothes had become mostly dry, and he slipped into them somewhat cozily, returning to his comfort zone, returning to his things, to his possessions. They were awful, but they were his, and they were all that he currently had. These were things that he held close to him, things that were his, things that never changed, and had no interferences from outsiders. He delicately cradled the round glasses in his hand and rocked them against the towel to dry.

Kuro situated himself on the chair again after inspecting the living room and standing on his toes to get a view of the kitchen ahead. As soon as he thought he had seen everything noteworthy, or plainly boring, something interesting caught the his eye, resting on the counter and blanketed by a shadow. It was a massive white binder, bound with a smooth, slippery covering on the outside. A mysterious label marked its tab, centered and clearly written in dark ink:

B 00'10

Kuro searched his surroundings swiftly for any sign of the engineer's return. He listened for footsteps or the rustling of doorknobs, but heard nothing of the sort. He checked the window behind him: the inventor was still outside, obliviously cleaning her speedboat and assuming him to still be taking care of himself—this bought him enough time to be discreet. Was this enormous, bound paper pile just full of engineering sketches? Were they records of previous drafts and prototypes, or perhaps just a dry book of equations? Something inside of him rejected these seemingly rational assumptions. This tome reeked of importance and he wanted to use every piece of knowledge to his advantage. He took a moment to try and make sense of the number pattern, then placed his longish fingers across its spine and carefully flipped back its cover, and the encased pages, protected by thin sheets of plastic, crackled softly at his touch. Revealed plainly was a plentiful amount of sheets dating back as far as eight years ago, maybe even ten, with a multitude of Beri counted on each as if it were a lottery, with grisly photos squared in their center, and they were all bearing the same bold mark emblazoned on the bottom:

WANTED

His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened as he flipped through the pages gently and scoured for their dates. There were colored tabs labeled E, W, N, and S. Then there was a burgundy colored "G". The meanings of these labels weren't difficult to decipher. He cleared his throat: E it was. E had to be. He skimmed through a few records of vagabond bandits and city crooks, and the Beri count was getting higher as the section dedicated to higher threats drew nearer. Pirates ahoy.

The Fishman, Arlong, the tyrant that had reigned over Cocoyashi village for as long as I'd been sailing…

Another flip of the page.

The Clown. A joke of a man. Unimportant.

And yet another.

Krieg. Befitting shot for such an ape. If only he could've just bled out and died back when—

His thought was broken as he averted his eyes to the following discovery. There were two posters of him. Yellowed and dated, his oldest had a red "X" in the corner, but his most recent was well-preserved and somewhat new looking. As much as it was predicted, beneath his own stoic face were bones that chilled. He took a deeper breath than usual, and continued, flipping his own image out of his sight after studying it intensively. A muscle in his back grew tense and a sharp pain invaded one of his knees. He cringed and massaged it, and frowned in frustration over the situation. It was a pressing, jarring one, but the haphazard location of such a wellspring of information surprised him.

Perhaps this woman was a liar—no. He knew it. He was in the seemingly innocent lair of a pirate hunter, just waiting to sharpen her knives around him when he was vulnerable. After Kuro's mind had already spent a miniature eternity festering with rotten ideas, the inventor returned.

"Oh, look at you," she commented halfheartedly, leaning sideways at his cleanlier appearance. "I just want to have a word with you. Something that may radically interest you. And when I say that, it means I want a practical discussion before I just let you stretch your legs like that." She adjusted the pale collar of her shirt. "You keep eying that." Nelle proceeded to take a seat across from him, leaving a good space between them. She handed him a glass of water. "Tell me, did you look through it?"

She sipped casually, looking unfazed at the thought of its intrusion. Kuro's fingers undulated and tapped against the arm of the chair. He was considering lying. However, it was much more rewarding to cripple people with words, and to expose them with their raw faults laid out on the space before him. To relish seeing a person fall to their figurative knees was within his normal behavior if it meant that he snatched away their power. Stripping people of their defenses was molded into something of an art.

He smiled softly at her, hiding his aggression as he brought the glass close to his nose, testing the air around it.

"Quite the little book you have, just bursting with bounty records local and foreign, Ms. Nerz." He saw her freeze at his undertones. "That's right. I'm no fool. I suspect that you're a bounty hunter looking for another skin," Kuro finished and awaited her reply with a smile that was passively menacing, and if she had any ideas to endanger him, he would catch onto them and crush them in his hand. Beneath his pleasure at his own wit was the truth that he was slightly on edge at his observations, and he felt less than comfortable in a state of weakness.

"Gee, at least you have observational skills." With a white-knuckled hand firmly gripping the glass, his opponent took a quick sip of water. "But you're wrong about the last part—you're very wrong. I wouldn't be caught dead hunting bounties myself! That's a special kind of crazy. Like a captain without a crew," she looked particularly long at him during the last sentence. "Even if I did… Why would I try to turn in a man who… Who…" the woman hesitated and as he watched her mouth pause. Kuro's teeth grated behind his lips. "Who claims that he's dead to the world?"

Dark pupils flashed, sudden anger shattered through the glare. Kuro slowly raised his glass and the water was very close to meeting his lips, but he didn't tear his eyes from hers for a single moment, and they blazed with displeasure.

"You," he seethed. "You're pushing your luck. How very ill-considered."

"Calm down," shuddered the engineer, glued to her seat. She looked at him seriously, her posture squaring for an escape. "It's unmistakable… Isn't it? The shadows fall on your face in the exact same way."

His hand which so fervently squeezed the water glass shook.

"You're bravely imbecilic." A troubling hiss defined him. "Such people often deserve to die."

She froze again. His heart raced with apprehension.

"I believe that I don't."

"If you're convinced that I'm Kuro, then you won't live to tell it," he snapped. His word strung out evenly, methodically, strangling the air in front of him. "Who am I? Tell me," he interrogated her as he rose from his seat. "There's a right answer. Who am I?"

Nelle swallowed an invisible lump and she was about to speak, but it was bit back several times.

"Who you are… And who you're not, is… Precisely the reason why I'm interested in letting you stick around."

"Is that so?" Kuro leaned himself back on the seat slowly, raising his chin to make further eye contact through a puzzled glare. "Very well, inventor." His teeth were bared at the civilian and he met her with derision. "Tell me what you want before I exceed my limit of patience. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm sore. Those are all things to avoid when you're in the presence of a pirate, especially one that his killed hundreds of people like you."

His last words were emphasized, coarse and forced, like sandpaper rubbing against skin. His glass was upraised and in line with the darkness of her irises, vibrating and wobbling to distort the image of her tense face, her tense body, that which harbored a rapidly beating heart and a nervous mind, like the rest of them, like whoever experienced that unsettling expression of his.

"I—alright. That's just it, here, you…" She paused as the words escaped her and he was left trying to read her eye movements. "I mentioned this before, about a fine job, a good job, a job that actually makes money. …Something that could…" Her murmur became quiet and barely audible as it sunk into her own mutter. "With time and money," she projected once more. "And—and skill, of course. It could work, with my sort of entrepreneurship. You're a competent fighter with a bounty like that, aren't you? And I have a few connections of my own—locally."

"And...?"

He fingered the rim of his glass.

"Mr. Pierce…" Nelle Nerz thrust his own alias upon him. "Would you be interested in hunting bounties?"

Bounty hunting? Was this madness he was hearing? He could nearly laugh if his chest didn't ache. Bounty hunters, the type of government parasites who had proved to be nearly as bothersome as Marines? He couldn't stand it anymore, nor could he hold such a wildly astonished feeling inside. He did it: he laughed. He laughed quietly, then loudly, with a poisonous, malevolent guffaw that was equally as smooth as it was disquieting.