Recital

Davy Back is a pirate game, played between two pirate captains where the winner of each round gets to pick a member of the loser's crew to join his own ship. Of course, being a pirate game, everything not strictly forbidden by the rules is permitted, and even those forbidden things can be overlooked if you are not caught. My captain agreed to three games: we lost the first but won the next two, thus winning back the crew member who had been forfeited in the first match and my captain decided that as his prize for the final victory he wanted his challenger's flag. So we won and remained on the island a little longer as our challengers departed, but as we wandered we encountered a certain ice Logia who was familiar with my captain's archaeologist and decided that the crew assembled by the straw-hat pirate with the Will to rule had too great a potential to be permitted to live any longer. So he injured my asura, my captain and the chef, froze the archaeologist solid and then tried to shatter her. I managed to get her away in time and fled with her back to the ship to defrost her; the ice Logia did not pursue me but instead allowed my captain to challenge him to a duel. My captain lost, but was not killed: just as I had defrosted the archaeologist my asura brought him to me and the ship's doctor for treatment, frozen solid.

"You ran into Aokiji?!"

"Kajin…"

"Yeah. Right. Sorry."

"After both captain and archaeologist were out of danger the crew confronted me on what the ice Logia had said to me. I let my captain decide which questions he wanted answers to, and to my delight he proved uninterested in my parentage and business connections, wanting only to know how I had come to meet his own grandfather and the identity of another pirate I had mentioned. This reassured me that my decision to follow the pirate with the Will to rule had been a good one, for he saw me for myself and not my connections or abilities. We then sailed onwards, arriving at an island famed for its shipwrights where the navigator sought out someone to mend Merry for us. I did not say a word of my suspicions that the dear caravel who bore us so willingly could not be fixed; she had asked me not to and I did not think I would be believed.

Once we had dropped anchor the crew separated: my captain, the navigator and the sniper went to exchange the gold taken from the Sky Island for cash then in search of shipwrights, archaeologist and doctor went shopping, I and the chef went to visit my own contacts so I could sell my wares and acquire funds of my own and my asura remained on board to guard the ship. In disguising myself before leaving I found that Fire Fist had left his spare hat with me; not the first time he had left his clothing in my possession. I decided to wear it, as it did a good job of disguising my appearance. Then I set off.

On returning I discovered the shipwright had visited in my absence and declared Merry unfixable; I also learnt the archaeologist had vanished and two-thirds of the money from the gold had been stolen. My captain initially wished to deny that his ship was no longer fit to sail, but he soon understood the situation and was willing to lay Merry to rest and replace her. However the sniper was not, and started a fight which led to him leaving the crew. I felt deeply hurt by his betrayal and angered by his denial of the situation, so I asked my captain for permission to track down his missing crew-mate and was granted it. I found her in the company of hitmen in the employ of the government, so I tracked their movements carefully before returning to the hotel my captain had moved his crew to and sleeping in my asura's arms, needing his presence away from the security of a ship.

The next day it was revealed that our missing archaeologist had participated in the attempted murder of the most influential shipwright on the island and, as part of the same crew, we were considered complicit. However as only the captain and my asura had bounty posters, the rest of us were reasonably safe from retribution. Considering the nature of the accusations I took the time to retrieve anything that might be considered suspicious from our rooms before taking a little time to think.

My situation was becoming precarious: the ice Logia who had seen me in the company of my captain and his crew was unlikely to keep that information to himself. My parentage made my position more precarious and my profession means I must remain above reproach or else risk permanent house arrest under the excuse of 'protection'. Therefore I needed another face to assist my captain with. My phantom servant would attract too much attention and was unsuited to the task in hand, so I created a new aspect of self: she is called the Angel of Death, and it suits her. I thus embodied this new aspect throughout my captain's eventual confrontation with the hitmen who had pressured the archaeologist into leaving and assumed it in many later interactions with those not belonging to my captain's crew.

So it was that even after we pursued the hitmen into the fortress of my captain's enemies and slew them within their own stronghold, even as my asura and the rest of the crew defeated every last one of the hitmen as I found and freed the archaeologist, I was not recognised. Even after our triumphant return to the island of shipwrights and reconciliation with those who had believed us guilty of attacking one of their citizens, none thought to connect the wild destructiveness of the Angel of Death with the quiet watchfulness of the warlord's daughter. But when we returned our hearts were heavy, for we had been saved at the end by Merry, whose awareness had grown so much that she could steer herself and speak aloud. It grieved me terribly that it was her last act: we held a funeral for her at sea before the shipwrights who had followed us brought us back to the island. I do not know what happened in that time, as the strain of losing one so dear to me overcame me and I did not wake until the morning after our return.

Yet many good things came of that incident, terrible though it was. My captain came face to face with the harsher aspect of my nature and accepted it without question or hesitation. The sniper acted in a way to begin to redeem his former foolishness and the archaeologist learnt that she truly wished to continue living. My captain also gained the respect of a shipwright, who on our return offered to make a ship for him free of charge. I also grew closer to my asura afterwards and he became my lover.

In that quiet time after the battle my captain's grandfather also came to visit him and informed him of the identity of his father, the father who had rescued him before he even entered Paradise yet not been seen. My captain however was unmoved by the knowledge that his father was the Revolutionary Dragon; he believes that who a person was depended solely on themselves, not their family background. The ice Logia also visited for a quiet word, though I did not mention his presence to anyone else. Then the new bounty posters were released, the ship was finished and it was time to leave. However my captain succeeded in recruiting the shipwright who had built our ship, so that he might achieve his dream of sailing and caring for his masterpiece. The sniper also apologised for his foolishness and was permitted to rejoin the crew.

However shortly after leaving the island of shipwrights we found ourselves in the Florian Triangle, where a warlord who commanded shadows was secretly building himself an army of animated corpses. These corpses were animated by shadows stolen from strong fighters and cunning warriors, who after losing such a vital part of their being could never stray into sunlight again, as they would die. The shadows of my captain, my asura and the chef were all stolen and they had to act quickly not only to defeat the warlord, but do so before the sun rose. They did ultimately succeed, but at great cost and only after receiving many injuries. Then another warlord appeared on the scene intending to take away our captain with the Will to rule so that he could not further disrupt the government with his dreams. My asura prevented it, offering himself in the captain's place. The warlord accepted the deal and transferred all the pain and fatigue the captain had suffered onto my asura, then left. The transferral killed my lover, but I did not let him leave me; I could not. I loved him.

Ace had been hooked on the story ever since she'd started on the parts that had occurred after he left Alabasta and his diligent reading of the newspaper in that time –due to seeking news of Blackbeard– helped him fill in all the blanks and the parts she was glossing over. She'd barely touched on Enies Lobby, for instance. Hearing about the Sky Island that featured occasionally in her dreams had been very interesting though, particularly since he could also see the memories recounting her adventures had conjured up.

Fox was also a damn fine storyteller, as evidenced by the point she'd chosen to take a break and have a drink in.

"I have missed hearing your stories, Rokuseizon-sama," Truei said with a warm smile, sipping her own drink. "You breathe life into your tales in a way few ever achieve."

"Flattery, Truei," Fox reprimanded her gently. "I am not the best of storytellers and I am not giving events the attention they deserve. But you wanted the full story, so I am covering the important parts to the best of my ability. Perhaps later there will be time for a more in-depth account of each adventure."

"I would like that," the woman agreed, glancing sideways at her husband who had not uttered a word since apologizing for the earlier interruption when he had recognised Ace. Sako did not say anything, simply watching the flame Logia and his lover with a thoughtful intensity.

"I could tell some stories about how I met her and stuff we've done together since," Ace offered, willing to join in the fun even though a good number of said stories placed him in a not-so-good light. Looking back, he'd been the hothead she'd called him: touchy, fiery-tempered and with barely any idea of how to interact with normal people. His sisters had helped with some of that, but Fox had done more. He'd really mellowed recently.

"That might be fun," Fox agreed, smiling. "A lot of those stories are pretty funny." Some of them were and a lot of the funny ones had given Marco headaches. Ace had heard him muttering about how Mihawk would kill them if he heard about this or that. Like the skinny-dipping; admittedly he might have gone a bit too far in stealing Fox' bikini, but it wasn't like she'd minded. Seeing her soaking wet, wearing in his hat and nothing else had kept him warm at night for weeks afterwards. Then there were the inevitable games of strip poker, the drinking games, the times she dragged him into helping her wash her hair, and that time a storm had delayed laundry day for a week and she'd gone around for two days in his shirts, borrowed trousers and bare feet because Swift Hunter couldn't surface and all her other things were wet or ruined. Note that it had been tipping it down with rain and the shirt and trousers really had been all she was wearing… Ace smirked. He'd enjoyed those two days in spite of the dreadful weather and he hadn't been the only one doing so either.

Of course, there were also all the times she'd tricked him into making a fool of himself, the never-ending verbal traps he fell for, waking up after a narcoleptic fit to find she'd messed him about in some way or stolen his food, one-upping him while sparring, sneaking on board and into his bed in the middle of the night so he woke up wrapped around his mostly-naked best friend with hands in all the wrong places –there had been times he was inordinately grateful she was a heavy sleeper– as well as her being generally female and frustrating. "No naming names though," he decided. "I don't want anyone coming after me."

And we get to the bits her audience are really interested in. Oh, and a little of the kind of things Ace and Fox used to get up to together.