Chapter 14: Reavers
Tenten wakes up drenched in the cool ocean mists. Damn. She hadn't meant to fall asleep, though she feels much better now. How long had it been since she had slept? It feels like an eternity since she'd been standing in the Lady Hokage's office, being debriefed from her last mission. She smooths out her maps; fortunately, they were waterproof. It's hopeless, though. The fog obscures the already darkening night sky, and there are no landmarks in sight.
She searches through her little craft for a candle or lantern of some sort. Nothing. It had only been meant for short excursions just outside of the bay to catch fish, not for extended voyages like this. No food, either. Not for the first time in the past few days, she curses her situation. The unfairness of it all almost overwhelms her, but she refuses to cry. No, she is strong, and she will see this through to the end.
Like a ghostly goliath, the prow of a huge ship looms out of the fog and Tenten dares to breathe a sigh of relief. She calls out to the leviathan, waving her arms above her head, though they are sodden and heavy with moisture. The watchman sees her – she can tell by the way he points and shouts to his comrades – but to her horror, the dreadnaught speeds up and turns onto a deliberate collision course.
She had heard reports of corsairs attacking merchant vessels and terrorizing travelers in these waters. Misfortune upon misfortunes. Hastily, she folds the maps up and clenches them in her teeth, drawing her butterfly swords to challenge the advancing behemoth. It surges through the waves, deceptively fast for its bulk, and crushes her tiny boat to splinters without so much as slowing.
Tenten leaps clear just in time, driving her blades into the wooden hull and latching on like a stubborn barnacle. The splash of oceanic crests chills her already frigid form and she knows she cannot stay there indefinitely. Using her impromptu climbing equipment as portable handles, she works herself up the sheer face. She is aware that the cursed seal has begun to spread, but survival is first on her mind, now.
Five feet below the edge of the deck, she sinks her swords deep into the solid cladding, splintering it with the force, and braces herself atop them. With a quick inhale-exhale to steady her nerves, she launches herself up and over the railing. Instantly, all eyes turn to her – she counts at least twenty pairs – and she just manages to cram the maps away before she is set upon by the seaborne raiders.
She drops down, tucking into a roll and rising with a full-bodied straight that doubles over the first man she meets and throws the remainder of her momentum into a spinning guillotine elbow at the back of his head. He slams to the deck as surely as if crushed by the palm of an invisible giant, and she ducks as well, narrowly avoiding the metallic swath cut overhead by his partner's sword. Before he can recover, she produces from her back a pair of pronged wind and fire wheels, adopting a low, ready stance.
Tenten catches the next swing of her closest enemy on the edged rim of her new weapons, arching her back and deflecting it high with one wheel while the other rips across horizontally, laying his throat open with one of seven undulating flame blades. She continues her pirouette with both arms extended, making space and bloodying any who would near her. They are cautious now, made wary by the rapid incapacitation of two of their crewmates.
She can hear rumbling and shouting beneath her feet. Of course. A ship of this size would have an appropriately large crew, and more are doubtlessly on their way. One quick step brings her before her next victim, who manages to parry her short forward thrust, but not the accompanying high to low arc that nearly takes his arm off. This movement is balanced out by a backswing of her other weapon, which buries itself into the gut of the sailor that had attempted to attack her unguarded back.
Tenten kicks out, toppling over the buccaneer before her, who seems more concerned with keeping his body intact at this point, and steps over him to make a run for the hatch leading to the lower decks. She reaches it just as the first would-be reinforcement pokes his head up from under the trapdoor and promptly takes his eyes with a low strike of her left arm. He falls back, howling, bowling over the group of men behind him as he tumbles down the staircase, and the hatch falls shut again. Tenten pins it down with her other wheel, locking the points in with a stomp of her foot on the padded handle.
She swivels just in time to parry the frenzied slashing of two swords on the wide circumference of her remaining weapon, disarming both of her ambushers with a deft twist of her wrist. As they fall back toward the safety of their comrades, she feels her emotions spike irrationally at their cowardice. Then the burning comes: the wild rush of her blood in the heat of battle as the cursed seal begins to take over.
Before they can reach their haven, she has secured another length of razor cord onto the hilt of her wheel and whipped it around, crippling their legs in one arc. They go down, aghast at the raven-feathered spectacle before them, fingers scrabbling for purchase on blood-slickened planks.
Tenten lets the cord spiral around her body, shredding her clothes but leaving her unnaturally fortified skin untouched as she pins the flying wheel underfoot. A whirling butterfly kick unwinds the lanyard and sends the metal disk at the end shooting out to thud into another target's skull. Eight down. Eight kill markers painted on the ship's hide. The remaining insects surge forward, but are caught in the cutting spiderweb of her frenetic strands as she whips her wire back and forth. A sharp jerk shreds their fragile bodies and paints the deck crimson.
Someone is yelling something from the helm, on the dais in the back of the ship. The captain. A captain of curs, a captain of worms. She's in front of him before he can blink, stepping out of the way of her trailing comet's tail, which takes his first mate's head cleanly from his shoulders. She snaps the cord back and severs it with her teeth, hurling the stained star behind her. One of the pirates had been trying to free more trash from below deck, and the projectile lifts him off of his feet and pins him like a grotesque butterfly to the main mast.
"Call them off," she snarls between gnashing teeth. The captain does not respond, his eyes darting left and right, looking for an escape. Tenten hisses in rage, more black feathers than white skin now, grabbing him by the collar and heaving him into the air with one hand. She needs speech. Words. Words to talk. Understand. "Call them off!"
The worms burst forth from their subterranean prison and wriggle forward across the ground in an ungainly way. Her captive looks relieved. Disgusting. Worms, drawn out by the sanguine rain. The rain will wash them away. Tenten's cursed seal glows rosily and consumes the last of her.
Four wings burst from Tenten's back, exposing metal feathers to the copper air. They quiver with anticipation. Their birth marks the death all else. The first of the worms crests the ascending staircase. But he is not meant to occupy the realm of angels. With a rattling gnash of iron on iron, the angel's wings explode, filling the air with angry shrapnel and screaming blades, savaging the worms like wheat before the scythe. Sweet death flares Tenten's nostrils and she smiles.
Maps. She tears them free of her shirt and waves them before the captain.
"Go," she commands. Lovely. Her voice is lovely, all ringing steel and silver-edged. He scrambles to take the wheel, clinging onto it for dear life. Protests. He's protesting. Can't read the maps. She nails his feet to the ground with her feathers. Can he read them now? He cries affirmatively and Tenten smiles again.
She glides down into the bowels of the ship. The hellhole. There are worms aplenty here, but they shrink away from her. They fear her. Demon worms must fear iron angels. She draws two swords from her regrown wings. It is their fear that makes them weak, and death will free them from fear. She shivers with excitement, advancing on them with weapons bared. There is plenty of room on the inside of the hull, and she will display the worms as butterflies with her silver pins. It is a far better fate than they deserve. They are blessed worms, for she is there to free them. A chorus of agony calls out her praise and she smiles.
Feedback is welcome.