A/N: I love my readers :)
Chapter is not betaed. Betaed chapter will be posted when availabe.
Chapter Eighteen
Chased
"Whoo-hoo!"
Pirates were scrambling all over the deck as the series of shocks from the sudden turbulence of being lifted into the air and the high speed travel aboard a sea king woke up the sleeping and sobered everyone else.
The pirates who knew what was going on – sort of, the situation was so insane that only the most jaded worked without direct orders from Beckman – were climbing the riggings to bring in the sails while those who just woke up were trying to figure out if they were having alcohol-induced hallucinations.
The captain just stood at the bow and cheered.
Spaz, after helping with one of the sails, looped his feet into the rigging near the top and swayed in the wind, laughing hysterically.
Harry decided it was about time to retire from the madness and left for the kitchen to prepare a midnight snack for the crew.
As dawn approached, the pirates trickled back to their sleeping quarters intent on sleeping off the alcohol-induced drowsiness that had returned once the ship stabilized. Spaz, worn out from his "ride," and also still a little drunk, fell asleep on the deck. Harry, after cleaning up after the impromptu meal, joined Shanks at the head of the ship.
"Does this guy know where we're going?"
"Sure he does!" Shanks replied, before looking back past the stern of the ship where the sea king's eyes could be seen rising above the railing. "Don't you boy? We're heading to East Blue on the other side of the Calm Belt!"
The sea king gave an enthusiastic splash of his tail and a short burst of speed in affirmation.
"Loguetown is just on the other side of the Calm Belt from here. So, Kid," Shanks redirected, "just how did you stay sober after drinking so much?"
Harry gave a little secret smile. "'Fraid I can't tell you that, old man. Trade secret."
"Chefs have trade secrets for drinking?"
"I'm not a chef, Shanks, remember?" Harry explained, "I just happen to have a lot of experience cooking for people from various situations."
"Fine, fine. So what's your trade then?"
Harry paused, but eventually chose to toss away his worries for just a bit. The dawn was approaching clean and crisp. The only one here was Shanks, who accepted him perfectly fine after seeing his Devil Fruit ability and disillusionment charm.
And Harry was a bit tipsy. Magic kept him conscious and reasonable, but to never feel the effects of alcohol wouldn't be much fun.
"Magician."
Shanks' eyes widened. "Show me a trick! Do you do card tricks? Illusions?"
Harry grinned. "You saw one before, didn't you, when I turned invisible?" he teased, but held up his hand anyway. "Watch carefully."
Palming his wand, Harry reached his right hand inside Shanks' cape and wordlessly conjured a stick that looked a lot like his wand, though Shanks didn't know that. This was one conjuration Harry mastered during the war as a form of deception until he didn't even need to concentrate to permanently conjure it.
Slowly withdrawing the stick from the cape, Harry let it lie flat on his palm in front of Shanks' face and spoke clearly for dramatic effect.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
The stick rose steadily an inch, then two, then with a jerk, smacked Shanks on the head.
"Heh, hahahaha," Harry chuckled, amused by Shanks' indignant glare at the stick that now lied lifelessly on the deck as Shanks rubbed his head beneath his straw hat.
"That was really cool," Shanks finally said, forgetting about the stick.
"Thanks." To muggles, something as simple as a first year levitation charm could create endless amounts of awe. Harry smiled as he watched Shanks pick up the abandoned stick and look over it, feeling for wires or holes as evidence of some sort of trick.
Finally giving up, Shanks handed the stick back to Harry.
"Show me more!"
Maybe it was just the sun rising over the horizon reflecting off the pirate's eyes, but Harry could've sworn that at that moment, Shanks' eyes twinkled brighter than Dumbledore's ever did.
"Blue!"
With a flash, the neon green stick in Harry's hand turned the same shade of sky blue used to paint the inside of Laboon.
"Now red!"
A soft glow faded to reveal the stick had changed to match Shanks' hair.
"Awesome!" chorused Shanks and Spaz.
The two guys – Spaz had woken up and joined Shanks immediately after catching Harry in the middle of a shrinking charm demonstration – were excitedly calling out colors for Harry who was making good use of color-changing charms on his conjured wand-replica.
"Oh, oh, Harry, can you change the color of other stuff too?" Spaz asked excitedly.
"What do you have in mind?"
Shanks gestured over his shoulder at the sails. "How about turning one of the sails black? I can get Alvin to paint our Jolly Roger on it after."
Harry was starting to feel that Shanks no longer believed his magic tricks were just tricks after all with a request like that, but before he could reply, the ship gave an awful lurch.
"Whoa!"
Harry, Shanks, and Spaz were thrown onto their backs. As Harry and Spaz picked themselves off the deck, Shanks scrambled up and turned towards the sea king.
"What's wrong boy?"
With a loud, growling roar, the sea king's eyes narrowed and it took off twice as fast as before, leaving its previous northward path to go east instead.
Spaz recovered quicker than Harry and nimbly crossed the swaying deck to look over the side behind the sea king.
"Shanks! We've got a problem! We must've entered the territory of a Yuda and I think it's hungry!"
"Damn!" Shanks gazed into the eyes of the fleeing sea king. "Don't worry boy, I won't let that nasty snake do anything to you."
"Shanks!" Harry yelled over the loud wind, clinging onto the railing as he was unable to stand on his own due to the violent swaying of the ship. "Focus! Exactly how do you plan on stopping the predator of something as big as this sea king? And what about our course? We've veered off into a completely different direction!"
"Who cares about the course?" Shanks yelled back, releasing unconscious waves of Haki. His cape billowed in the energy and his straw hat threw menacing shadows across his face, the three scars across his eye almost glowing in relief. "We're pirates! We sail where the wind or sea king takes us! But I'm not letting him get eaten!"
Harry stared, leaning against the railing underneath the pressure Shanks was releasing. In the short hours since taming the creature, Shanks had gotten attached to it. The pirate was furious at the idea of letting his new pet be eaten and looked as if he'd jump right onto that pursuing Yuda to chop it's head off with his own saber if need be.
"Don't worry, Shanks," Spaz finally called out, breaking the tension. "That traveling snake isn't moving any faster than we are. Unless the sea king tires soon, we have time to figure out what to do."
Shanks relaxed a bit.
"Right. Let's think up of a plan to save Zeb!"
"Zeb?" chorused Harry and Spaz.
"'Cause he looks like a zebra," Shanks explained with a grin.
Harry and Spaz shared looks and said nothing more. Clearly this man didn't posses the fear of mere mortals when dealing with monsters.
In the end, the three didn't discuss much more after Shanks named the sea king. Spaz had asked how long the equilibrium between Zeb and the Yuda would last, and Shanks, through a series of yes and no questions directed at the sea king, found that usually, pursuits like this could last weeks before it becomes clear whether the predator succeeds in capturing a meal or the prey succeeds in escaping. As such, Harry dismissed himself and Spaz for breakfast and animal care duties and Shanks chose to rouse his crew who managed to sleep through event.
Breakfast came and went with Beckman easily deflecting his captain's crazier ideas to deal with the situation. By lunch time they were no closer to a solution, and the pirates lounged around with little to do, mostly napping to make up for lost sleep last night. By dinner time, some pirates made rope swings to ride on, taking advantage of the heavily swaying ship, a few were stuck in the sleeping quarters with motion sickness, and the rest took the time to clean their weapons.
Greg had stopped by earlier to add salt to the salting fish and teach Harry to make sausages from the leftovers of the pig slaughtered for the barbeque just yesterday.
Spaz was trying to calm the livestock.
Harry was trying to keep Lucky Roo from nicking yet another rack of meat.
It was hard to believe that in the course of just a day, the Red-Haired pirates had managed to gain a sea king for a pet, ride the sea king's head across the ocean, and then get stuck on the sea king because it was eyed by a Yuda.
The next day, Shanks snapped. While everyone else enjoyed their midmorning daze, Shanks leaped straight over the back end of the ship, onto the sea king's snout.
"Oy!" Harry startled. He was watching the clouds, trying to activate his devil powers and balanced precariously on the back railing, and as Shanks sailed past, Harry fell down with him.
"Ow, bullocks," Harry muttered, accepting a hand up from Shanks.
"Sorry about that Kid."
"Save it, old man. Mind telling me instead what the heck you think you're doing?"
"I'm going to climb Zeb and see this snake thing."
"You aren't going to do anything stupid, are you?" Harry asked, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"Hey! Give your elders some respect."
Harry just glared until Shanks dropped the topic in favor of answering Harry's question.
"I might try some Haki, I thought."
Harry blinked. "That's a surprisingly good idea. How come no one thought of it before?"
"Because we're too far away."
"Then what are you going to do about it? You aren't going to try and bring it closer, are you?"
"Nah," Shanks denied, starting the climb up the sea king's head. "Don't want to put ol' Zeb here in too much danger. I just want to test the limits a bit, see if maybe I can at least distract it or something. I can't just sit here for the next few weeks hoping the snake'll give up."
"I suppose," Harry agreed, climbing up after Shanks.
On the top, Harry and Shanks could see the vast expanse of ocean. The sky was crystal clear and the ocean was smooth as a mirror. The only wind was from being aboard a fast-moving sea king and the only currents were the ripples left behind the sea king and its pursuer, the Yuda, the traveling snake.
Like its name implied, the traveling snake did indeed look like a snake. Other than its large size and its strange mane, it looked exactly like a snake, including slit eyes and flicking forked tongue.
"Stop."
Harry gave an involuntary shudder beneath Shanks' power. The snake, however, showed no outward response, likely because it was several hundred meters away.
"Stop."
Harry froze this time before finally forcing himself to breathe. Gazing out across the water, he saw the traveling snake had not stopped.
"Damn," Shanks sighed, "no reaction at all."
Before Harry could say anything, a wave of sound washed over them. An impossibly loud hissing was being emitted from snake as if in reply to Shanks' Haki.
"Foolishhh… thinksss… won't work… how dare he… hungry… food…yesss…"
Harry's shook his head rapidly to clear his ears. Parseltongue. He couldn't understand the whole thing since Voldemort's horcrux in him was destroyed, but he could pick out bits and pieces of it, having studied it much like Dumbledore did, though he had yet to reach Dumbledore's level of comprehension.
For a brief moment, Harry almost regretted loosing his Parseltongue ability.
A very brief moment.
The satisfaction of Riddle's death made such petty losses more than worth it.
And of course, now that he knew at least the traveling snakes, if not normal snakes as well, of this new world spoke Parseltongue, he could continue to study it.
"So?" Harry asked Shanks, "what's the verdict?"
"I think my Haki reached that last time, but it didn't do anything other than cause a little hissy fit. If we were a little closer and I had eye contact, I might be able to knock it out along with everything else in the 500 meter range, but getting it to look at me when there's prey distracting it won't be easy," Shanks explained, clearly frustrated.
Harry thought about the situation for a bit. Shanks clearly had no intentions of abandoning "Zeb," and the chase could go on for nearly a month more. Food wasn't too much of an issue, though water supplies might be strained as there would be no rainfall in the Calm Belt. The pirates were already started to entertain themselves, but a few were suffering from motion-sickness.
In the end, though, it really came down to whether or not the sea king would be able to out-swim the traveling snake. If, after waiting the allocated time, the traveling snake caught up, just what insane ploy would Shanks resort to?
Harry would rather not find out.
"I can probably get its attention."
A/N: And that's all for now.
I think its about time I answered some of my reviews! For those this does not apply to, PLEASE at least read the last paragraph below. Thanks.
jacann: Thanks for the detailed description of the disillusionment charm :)
lighthawk610: The Leaky Cauldron, of course! Thanks, I forgot about that detail from the first book.
: Thanks :)
To everyone, I think I might have gotten my first real flame and would like to address some of the issues it brought up. Some of you might have noticed I removed "Super!Harry" from the summary and changed Robin as the second character to Shanks. This is due to the fact that Harry isn't super yet, won't be for some chapters yet, and Robin won't be reintroduced for awhile, and these two problems apparently is irritating to some people, so sorry :( Otherwise, um, if someone could maybe point out specific places where I make Harry emo or stupid so I can fix it up a bit, that'd be appreciated! There's still angst coming, so if Harry is already too emo, that's a problem o_0
254 reviews today, February 9, 2011