Siegfried, Tira, Ivy, and Sophitia had bought the services of a ship and its crew.
Their original plan was to obtain only a ship, but because none of them knew very much about the skillful art of controlling the motion of a boat across a body of water, they decided that it would be much wiser to buy the services of a crew as well.
In a Spanish port, they found a crew of a ship that were offering themselves for work. Siegfried and the rest approached the crew and requested to be sailed out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and back as quickly as possible and with absolutely no questions asked. At first, the crewmen thought that their request was a joke, but when Siegfried and the rest proved extremely willing to pay a large sum of money for their services, the crew did not hesitate to agree.
They had exhausted nearly all of their funds to pay for the journey, mostly using the money they had won at the Arena a while back, but their impending poverty did not seem to be very important to them; money had meant little to Siegfried, Ivy, and Tira for several years now. Besides that, as large as the sum of money was, it was a small price to pay for a solution to Soul Edge at long last.
The ship they were on was a two-mast ship, compact for its time, but it was fast and sturdy, and would get the job done nicely.
Or, at least, it would have.
---
As if hinting at the fate of the ship, about a day into the journey, the wind increased in strength, and a storm began to brew. As time passed, the storm grew in intensity, and soon the sky was dark with black clouds and raging waves crashed against the ship's hull as heavy rain fell upon its deck, the flashes of lightning and the booms of thunder punctuating the scene. Siegfried and the others began to question their safety, but the crew confidently assured them that they were going to be fine, and that they had encountered far worse storms.
However, they had never encountered an immortal pirate.
Seemingly at the exact moment the chaos of the storm reached is zenith, a shout rang out that made the situation all the more worse:
"PIRATE RAID!"
Upon hearing these words shouted from the deck above, Siegfried and the others rushed from the cabin in the belly of the ship to its deck. The dark clouds blanketing the sky blotted out nearly all light, and the heavy rain made it a difficult task just to keep one's eyes open, but it was still possible to see a ways off into the sea. Siegfried could see the silhouette of a ship approaching from a ways off.
The rest of the ship's crew - about twenty brawny men - had assembled on the deck by now. They chattered back and forth to one another, some of them panicking. "Are you s-sure it's a pirate ship?" One asked.
The captain of the crew answered. "Aye - you can tell by the sail they fly. Black, with a skull and crossed swords. A sail with that insignia boldly declares the intentions of all men aboard the ship: no life will be spared, no quarter will be given, and no quarter will be asked. If they don't intend to spare us, we won't spare any of them. If they won't give us any quarter, they won't get any from us. Rally, men! Raise your swords! Hell if those pirates will get the better of any of us!"
Invigorated by their captain's speech, the men unsheathed weapons and pumped their fists into the air, giving hearty cries.
In the distance, off in the direction of the approaching pirate ship, something that sounded almost like a laugh could be heard.
"Fools!" A voice bellowed from the ship. "Your zeal is in vain! I'll gut each and every one of you, and devour your souls!"
Chatter on the ship resumed. "Did you hear what he shouted to us?"
"What'd he say?"
"Something about...souls?"
"...S...souls...no...it couldn't be...Cervantes?"
All it took was one panicked man to utter a name, and immediately that name was on the tongue of every man present.
"Cervantes! It's Cervantes?"
"You mean, the Valencia Butcher?"
"Cervantes, the Terror of the Atlantic?"
"Surely it can't be the Immortal Pirate!"
"SILENCE!" The captain bellowed. "Are you little girls or men? Would a real man of the sea let some dead pirate's name frighten him? Nay! Pull yourselves together! Cervantes is long dead, and no man aboard this ship will die tonight!"
"But Cervantes isn't dead; he's immortal!"
"Look! Look, over there! At the top of their crow's nest!"
All heads turned to see what the crewman was indicating. They saw what appeared to be two balls of fire were circling a glowing orb above the crow's nest of the pirate ship.
"Look! It's magic! They use magic!"
"No, that must be Cervantes!"
"How is that ship approaching so fast? It's not even heading downwind!"
"It's moving with magic! Magic, I tell you!"
"We're all going to die!"
The ship's mysterious properties had escalated the men's panic to a level that not even their eloquent captain could draw them back from. The scene was a mess of noise - the captain's shouting over his men's panicked screaming, heavy rain and wind hitting the deck of the ship, and thunderclaps as lightning shot across the black sky. However, the panicked screaming came to a very sudden end in a single moment.
With a loud slicing sound, a sword appeared on the deck of the ship, its blade sticking into the wood floorboards. The crew realized that it hadn't magically appeared; it was propelled there from the pirate ship. A moment after it had landed on the deck, another sword soon joined it - a much larger, sinister sword that looked as evil and foreboding as death, but at the same time, seduced most of the crew at first sight. Sophitia recognized it instantly.
"...That's...Soul Edge!"
With a hard thunk, a figure dropped down beside the two swords, kneeled between them. He gripped the hilts of the weapons with powerful arms, and slowly rose up. He wore an extravagant pirate hat atop his head, but it did not lend any frivolity to his appearance. His hair was a messy mane of white, and his skin was a sickly and diseased color that was almost purple in hue. He wore a long, tattered cape that flitted about as the strong winds blew past him. When he had risen up straight, he held his swords with his arms crossed, and looked like a personification of the deadly symbol on his flag.
The sword in his right hand bore a peculiar handle - it seemed to be a small pistol with a sword blade attached to the top. But the blade he wielded in his left hand was far more significant. It was not as large as its brother had been in the hands of Nightmare, but it was still of considerable size. The main portion of the sword was just as meaty and fleshy as its other half, and the hilt of the sword seemed to be composed of shell-like layers.
However, except for the strange allure of the sinister sword, the crew cared little about the swords that this man wielded. They had never seen him in person, and very few firsthand descriptions of him existed, but right away, each of these men knew who stood before them.
"...Cervantes!"
The men flew into a panic. Some dashed forward in an attempt to stab Cervantes as quick as they could. Others froze in horror where they were standing. And yet others poised themselves to jump overboard or take their own lives.
However, no crewmember aboard the ship was lucky enough to take his own life.
Cervantes destroyed the men who chose to charge at him with a single swipe of Soul Edge - he swung it broadly and horizontally, and it passed right through the bodies of his attackers, separating their upper bodies from their lower halves. The men who had remained unmoving since Cervantes' appearance were nothing but sitting targets to him - he dashed from one to another faster than the eye could see, pausing only to administer a creative deathblow to each one - a decapitation to one, an impaling to another, one man left with stumps where his limbs once were, and other gruesome fates that were even worse. Not a single man managed to jump overboard - while still in one piece. Cervantes' swords had run through every man once - sometimes twice - before more than ten seconds had passed since his arrival.
Siegfried and the others had unsheathed their weapons and prepared to defend the crew, but were incapable of doing so. Each time they caught sight of Cervantes and took a step toward him, he seemingly vanished, only to appear on the opposite side of the deck, gutting another victim. It was utterly impossible for one's eyes to keep track of the deadly pirate as he moved from victim to victim with superhuman speed.
Then, all at once, his rapid massacre ended, when there were simply no more men left to slay. Cervantes stood on the middle of the deck, holding his swords with his arms crossed, while dismembered corpses and limbs fell down around him. Finally, except for the wind, rain and the heaving of the ship, the scene was still.
"...Pathetic." Cervantes suddenly spat. "They were all so weak...they didn't stand a chance against me! I have no need for weak souls..." He turned his eyes on Siegfried and the rest. "...Not much to look at. I was expecting more. No matter...all of you will die just the same."
Something in between a yelp and a gasp came from Sophitia's mouth. "H-how!"
"...Ah...the holy warrior..." Cervantes smirked arrogantly. "I must thank you. If you had not shattered the blade, I would never have been freed from its control to later control it myself."
Siegfried assumed an aggressive fighting stance, and held his sword ready for an attack - given his usual desire for pacifism, it was a stance he was very rarely seen in, and it was obvious that Siegfried was not concerned with anything less than the complete destruction of the man who stood before him.
"...And, you..." Cervantes said, turning to Siegfried, and disregarding his fighting stance. "I remember you, as well...You were just a lad when we first fought. You bested me because I was little more than a flaming corpse - I assure you that this time, things will be very different."
Cervantes shifted to a casual stance. "I hear you have Soul Edge with you. Is this correct?"
"We will not share any words, you abomination." Siegfried said coldly. Cervantes' massacre had disturbed him deeply - it had most likely brought back memories of the scenes he would awake to when he had been possessed by Nightmare.
"...Very well, then. I suppose that I'll just have to find out the hard way - the fun way." He grinned, and once more assumed a fighting stance.
Suddenly, Cervantes dashed from the point he stood such an incredible speed that he splintered the wood beneath his feet as he dashed across the deck. Acting on reflex, Siegfried raised his sword and blocked an impending blow from Cervantes. Cervantes swung again, and Siegfried parried the blow by the tiniest of margins, but Cervantes' next attack proved to be more than he could handle. The flat side of Soul Edge slammed into Siegfried, knocking him aside, bringing his head crashing into the ship's railing, and rendering him unconscious.
Sophitia raised her sword and swung at the blade of Soul Edge that Cervantes clutched. She swung the sword with every ounce of strength in her body, but Cervantes blocked the blow as if it Sophitia had merely swung a feather at him. He returned her swing with one of his own. Sophitia managed to block the attack with her shield, but was unable to control the backwards momentum that resulted from blocking the attack. Her own shield bounced back and slammed sideways into her jaw, turning her head to the side sharply, and knocking her out.
Infuriated at the one who had hurt her Master, Tira was the next to attack. She placed her ring blade around her body, and leapt at Cervantes, planning for a unique attack - but her efforts fell the shortest. As she charged at him, Cervantes merely dropped his pistol sword, grabbed her ring blade without so much as a wince, and flung it at one of the ship's masts. Since Tira had been inside of the ring blade at the time, it carried her with it - by her neck. It sliced almost clean through one of the ship's thick masts, and only stopped because Tira's neck was in the way and didn't allow it to go the full way through. Tira was unable to breathe. She grasped at the ring blade and tried to pull it away from her neck, but it was exceedingly difficult to grasp and pull a razor-sharp and razor-thin surface. With bleeding hands, she managed to pull the ring blade away from her neck enough to allow her to breathe again, but her body fell limp soon afterwards. She'd fainted from the lack of oxygen she'd sustained while unable to breathe, and would not wake up for a while longer.
With Siegfried, Tira, and Sophitia down, Cervantes and Ivy were the only ones standing aboard the deck of the ship. Each one stood poised to attack the other, yet neither of them did anything. They stood as still as statues.
As if to personify the elevated tension, the storm had increased in intensity, as well. Two enormous waterspouts - small tornados over water - had formed around the ships, and were slowly circling them, as if waiting to consume the loser of the ensuing battle.
The 'taint' of Soul Edge that was inside of each of them allowed them to sense other things that were also tainted with Soul Edge, and this ability easily allowed them to see that they were related to one another by blood. Ivy knew this very well, but despite this, she was unable to prevent herself from asking the question.
"...Are you really..." She paused. "...my father?"
It was a moment before Cervantes responded. "...It would seem that way." He muttered indifferently.
There was more silence between the two of them. "...Who is...my mother?"
"Don't get your hopes up for finding her - if she were still alive, I would be able to sense her, since she carried the same taint after you were conceived. She's long dead by now. To answer your next question, if I recall correctly, she was the daughter of the owner of an inn called the Black Tail."
"That wasn't going to be my next question. I was going to ask...what the circumstances were."
Cervantes grinned. "I raped her."
Ivy's body gave a very visible twitch, but she remained still.
"Soul Edge wanted to create a spare host - so it had me make you. That's all there is to it. If you were expecting some long story to soothe years' worth of pain...sorry, but you're out of luck!" Cervantes threw his head back and laughed, his cold words piercing Ivy deeper than any sword blow could have. She said nothing but gripped her snake sword tighter.
Cervantes continued, a smug smirk on his face. "Don't feel bad about what I did to your mother - she had it coming. She was a waitress at the inn's tavern, and from what I remember, she was quite a slut."
"...S...stop it..."
"But, whenever a man would make a pass at her, she'd act like it made her upset, and slap him. And there wasn't a thing anyone could do about it, because her old man ran the place. After a while, pretty much every one of the inn's patrons hated the dumb bitch..."
"...Stop...stop talking...!..."
Cervantes grinned, proud of the reaction he was garnering from Ivy, and delivered the coup de grâce. "So, don't feel bad about what I did. She was probably gonna get raped anyway."
"...SHUT UP!"
Ivy leapt forward towards Cervantes, snake sword raised. She swung the sword at him, but he blocked the blow with both of his own swords.
Cervantes threw a flurry of vertical slashes at Ivy, but she jumped back to avoid them and raised her sword to block the ones she couldn't dodge.
Cervantes finally caught her by slashing at her with one sword while slashing the other in the direction he expected her to dodge in. Ivy shrieked in pain when his sword cut her, but she did not give up.
The two continued to trade blows, and Cervantes continued to get the better of Ivy. While she was focused on parrying his sword blows, he caught her off guard with kicks. When she tried to sidestep around him to attack from a blind side, he allowed her to do so, but then thrust his swords behind his back to stab her. Ivy's body was slowly becoming covered in cuts.
"If you didn't want to sustain so many wounds, you might have thought of wearing more clothing. What are you, a whore? I guess you inherited that from your mother."
Ivy's wounds were causing her to move sluggishly, and so Cervantes began to use his speed to his advantage. He spun around while swinging his swords, delivering many blows quickly, too fast for Ivy to block; holding her sword out in front of her in defense became the most she could do.
Seeing that his victory was in sight, Cervantes lunged forward for a deathblow. But then, Ivy suddenly moved with surprising speed around to his backside, and struck him in the back. She had been faking most of her fatigue in order to deliver that surprise blow - but it affected Cervantes little.
Cervantes decided that if Ivy was going to play that rough, then he would hold back no longer. He gathered power, his arms beginning to spark slightly with electricity and his swords glowing. He charged forward, quickly swiped his sword horizontally, catching Ivy in the side, and knocking her over. As she fell, he swung his sword up, catching her in the gut with the flat of his blade and knocking her upwards into the air. While she was still in midair, he aimed his pistol sword at her, and fired a bullet that went through her shoulder. Ivy fell back down to the deck of the ship. Cervantes began to approach her for a final blow, and Ivy scooted backwards to avoid him, until she was sitting up against the railing of the ship.
Cervantes was intrigued by Ivy's actions. He threw back his head again and gave a long, hearty laugh. "You were so eager to fight me a moment ago - and now you cower in fear? HA! I'm disappointed in you...what a useless daughter you are."
Ivy merely gasped for breath and clutched the bullet wound in her shoulder.
"You're not only a useless daughter...you're a completely useless person, as well. Your existence no longer has any meaning. You were born to serve a purpose, but now you'll never be able to fulfill it - you're completely worthless now."
"...Stop..."
"I didn't even want you to be born. You're a totally unwanted person. You never should have been born in the first place!"
"...S-stop...!..."
"You're a truly pathetic sight; the perfect definition of a waste of human life. Unwanted, undesired...you're no different than garbage. You're nothing but trash."
"...Y-YOU FUCKING BASTARD!"
With a sudden burst of energy, Ivy leapt up and lunged towards Cervantes, her snake sword held straight out. He raised a sword to deflect her blow. Ivy's sword clipped against Cervantes', but it wasn't enough to stop her sword's movement. With its path only slightly altered, it carried past Cervantes' sword and sliced into his cheek.
"Agh!"
Ivy followed up with diagonal swings of her sword. Cervantes raised his sword to block them, but unlike before, every time Ivy's sword hit Cervantes', she'd turn his sword aside and nearly land a hit. Ivy's swings were now so wide that every time she swung her sword, wood from the ship's deck or railing would splinter.
Cervantes tried to counterattack, but every time he swung his sword against Ivy's, hers would not move, and she would follow his attacks quickly with one of her own. Ivy continued to aggressively assault Cervantes with a hail of attacks, and he had to struggle to deflect each one - and even then, some attacks would get through and stab into his body.
Ivy's attacks were knocking Cervantes back, and often he'd have to walk backwards to avoid the full force of her blows. Eventually, he was walking alongside the railing of the ship. A heavy blow from Ivy knocked his pistol sword from his hands and forced him to his knees. Cervantes held onto the railing of the ship with one hand, holding Soul Edge up with his other hand in an attempt to shield himself from Ivy's attacks. Ivy continued to assault him like a madwoman, continually bringing her sword crashing into Soul Edge over and over.
Gradually, cracks began to appear in Soul Edge. Tiny pieces of it began to chip off, and soon larger shards were breaking off of it. The more Ivy relentlessly smashed her sword against his, the more pieces of Soul Edge broke off and clattered to the side. Eventually, Ivy had chipped so much off the sword that it was now half of its previous size, and Cervantes was barely able to defend himself using it. With a few decisive blows, she created enough cracks in Soul Edge that it fell apart on its own. Cervantes was left clutching the hilt of a sword - and with another blow from Ivy, he lost even that.
Cervantes now had no weapon with which to defend himself. Ivy continued to swing her sword downwards upon him nonstop, and now that there was nothing blocking her attacks, her swings became lethal.
Each swing sliced into Cervantes' body, cutting deep into him. Cervantes tried to defend himself against her attacks using his bare hands, and screamed in agony when his attempts resulted in him losing fingers. Ivy's sword eventually cut through many of his tendons, preventing him from moving his arms or legs without extreme effort. Finally, her sword pierced his heart - after it had pierced nearly every other vital organ that Cervantes possessed. Cervantes still managed to live somehow, mostly due to the shards of Soul Edge within him - but as Ivy's blade pierced him over and over, she would occasionally dislodge a shard from his body, and eventually not even the power of Soul Edge could keep Cervantes' mangled body alive.
Even after Cervantes was finally dead, Ivy continued to bash her sword into his mutilated form. Her fatigue caused a blow to miss and strike the wooden railing that Cervantes' body had been slumped up against. The railing broke and Cervantes' body fell off the ship, was slammed against the hull by a powerful wave, breaking what bones in his body weren't already broken, and then sunk to the murky depths of the sea. Ivy kicked what pieces remained of him off of the deck of the ship, and then turned her eyes to a shard of Soul Edge that lay at her feet.
Your existence no longer has any meaning. You never should have been born in the first place. You're the perfect definition of a waste of human life.
Ivy raised her foot and then brought it down hard on the shard of Soul Edge, over and over, until it was ground into powder, and the rain washed it overboard. Ivy walked to every shard of Soul Edge lying on the deck, and stomped them all to dust. When she was done, absolutely nothing of that blade of Soul Edge remained, save for the evil energy that would haunt this spot in the ocean for decades to come.
Driven far beyond the limits of the human body, Ivy collapsed where she stood.