Nakama
Characters: Law, Penguin, Shachi, Bepo, Polar Tang. Rating: K+. Warnings: None
Travelling in a submarine posed a unique problem, which the Heart Pirates had noticed early on, and that was the requirement for fuel. Mercifully, the Tang had several huge tanks, half of them reserves, so the likelihood of ever finding themselves running on empty was slim.
The run of bad luck started when island after island was unable to provide them with any fuel. The Tang wasn't picky about what powered her – a stroke of luck, considering how specialised she otherwise was – but they'd been young and naïve enough to not start looking for fuel until they were down to the reserve tanks, believing that they still had plenty of fuel left.
"I don't like this," Shachi admitted, staring at the display panels in the control room. All four of them were gathered there, not quite comfortable with their current situation as the dials claimed they were down to less than an eigth of a single tank. In an ideal world, they'd have resorted to sailing long ago, manoeuvring her bulk the traditional way until they found enough fuel to start the engines going again.
Doflamingo had unhelpfully decided to be in the same area as them, and Law's pink flamingo-induced paranoia had overridden his running low on fuel paranoia, so they'd taken in the sail and dived, regretfully igniting the engines to escape.
"He won't linger long," Penguin said hopefully, looking at Law, who shrugged helplessly.
"Keep the engines on minimum power," the youngest ordered. "We'll let the currents carry us, just use the fuel to keep our vital systems running. Bepo, chart where it takes us so you can get us to an island once we resurface."
"Aye, Captain!" the mink agreed eagerly, already surrounded by maps and his paws covered in ink, which smeared onto everything he touched. The maps seemed unintelligible to the humans, inky black smudges covering the lines between land and sea, but Bepo didn't seem perturbed by his additions to the cartography. "We're here," he explained, adding another splotch of ink to the map as he nudged the spot in question. The other three leaned in, unable to tell for themselves and trusting that the mink was right. "The current seems to be heading this way so far," he continued, dragging the claw along the parchment, leaving a black streak.
"There aren't many islands that way," Penguin commented dubiously. "If the current takes us past that cluster," he pointed to a small group of islands almost but not quite on their route, "we're going to be sailing for a long time."
"We should be able to surface there," Law said. "If we come up just past them and backtrack, it'll take a little more fuel but we'll be able to avoid Doflamingo. He wasn't heading this way from what I saw, so coming up the other side of the islands should keep us out of sight."
"Do we have enough fuel for that?" Shachi asked, unconvinced, as he glanced back at the gauges again. He couldn't read the exact level from where he was, but it was worryingly low.
"Yes," Law said, sounding about as certain as Shachi had been. "We might need to cut power everywhere except this room," he added, thinking out loud. "But we have enough."
No-one bothered to ask if they knew how to isolate a single room. They all knew they didn't.
"It'll be fine," Bepo said, his grin almost genuine, and they smiled weakly. It was a testament to the fear Doflamingo instilled in their captain, and by association the rest of them, that running out of fuel underwater was still their preferred doom.
Two hours later, with their fuel gauge now firmly at the bottom end of the red, Shachi ventured out of the control room to make sure all the lights were turned off in all the other rooms, and anything else that was taking unnecessary power. A painful order from Law had him shutting down even the machines in the infirmary, and as he carefully picked his way through the darkness back to the control room, the external lights flickered off.
"Where are we?" he asked Bepo as he re-entered the room to find even the control room's lights had been dimmed as much as possible.
"An hour away from the islands," Law replied for him, having clearly just asked the same question himself, and Shachi breathed a shaky sigh before collapsing into a chair. It let out an oof, but Penguin didn't push him off. Opposite them, the other side of the table, Law was covered in ink and nestled on Bepo's lap. For once, he wasn't protesting at the mess. "This current is staying steady." There was nothing left to say, so Shachi slouched back against the taller boy, whose arms loosely wrapped around him while a chin found rest on his left shoulder.
It was going to be a long hour.
Or so they thought.
If the external lights had still been on, they might have had some warning. As it was, there wasn't even a flicker outside the sole, dark, window in the room before the Tang lurched wildly. A high-pitched wail started up as they were flung to the floor, caught off balance. Something shattered.
"I thought we turned that off!" Penguin shouted above the wailing, flapping a hand towards the red light now flashing away urgently on the control panel.
"Priorities!" Law snapped back, already fumbling his way forwards to slap the external light controls. Shachi shrieked.
Suddenly illuminated outside the singular window was a row of gleaming teeth, each one easily larger than any of the pirates. As they moved, heading forwards towards the prow of the Tang, scales glinted in the light, and a large eye passed right by the window.
"S-s-sea King!" Bepo screamed, throwing himself back, away from the window.
"Why now?" Shachi lamented, scrambling towards the control panel himself. "Weapons, weapons, weap-ah!" The Tang lurched again, jostling him sideways into Law, who toppled to the floor. "Law!"
"Weapons are offline!" Penguin shouted from where he had managed to cling to the section of the panel that controlled the engine power. "Fuel is almost zero. If we turn the weapons on we won't be able to surface!"
"We won't be able to surface if we're dead!" Shachi yelled right back, slamming a fist on the power button. "Come on, come on, come on!" he muttered as the systems started to re-engage. "Come on, come on, come o- no! No, no, no, no!" he screamed as the lights flickered and died. "No, dammit, come on! You can do it, please, come on!"
The external lights flickered once and died, followed shortly by the ones in the control room itself, plunging them into almost total darkness. The faint glow from the control panel, the sonar screaming now-silently as it declared the threat circling them.
"What do we do?" Bepo cried. "Captain?"
Law was silent for several long moments, fingers dancing over the controls as if he could coax some response, any response from them. The fuel gauge declared total emptiness, completely drained by the attempt to turn on the weapons, and slowly the background hum of the Tang faded away to nothing.
"I don't know," he said finally, and for once sounded his age – a scared young teenager trapped as death raced towards them - in the unnatural silence. "I… I don't know."
"There has to be something!" Penguin exclaimed frantically, joining his captain in flicking controls. "Something, please, please."
The Tang lurched again, sending them all toppling to the floor in one giant heap, and they clung to each other, each of them trying to use the darkness to hide the way they were sobbing in terror.
"Please!"
None of them knew which of them said the final plea out loud, maybe it had been all of them, but as if it were a cue, a familiar roar sounded.
The roar of the Polar Tang's engines coming to life.
None of the lights came back on, and in reality it was less of a roar and more of a dying splutter, but the stuttering hum beneath their feet was unmistakable, and they all looked up at the panel as one, just in time to see the lights signifying the weapons were active flicker weakly on.
The sonar shrieked, the sound once again on, as the shape denoting the sea king hurtled towards them, and before any of them could move, could comprehend what was happening, the Tang moved.
It was a lurch, but this time there was no shuddering impact to go alongside it – a fact only noticed in its absence. It felt more like a roll, the sort of movement they did when dealing with a sea king attack with plenty of engine power to spare.
The controls moved, just a little but enough that it couldn't be explained away as a trick of the half-light, and the Tang lurched back the other way just as the sonar reported the sea king passing over their heads.
Bepo was the first to react, pulling himself out of the pile of pirates on the floor to run to the panel, where the gauges still said there was no fuel despite the way the Tang's engines were humming and her weapons system was somehow online. He grabbed the moving controls, glancing at the sonar and steering the Tang as if she had a full fuel of tank, away from the next attack.
The impossibility of the situation could wait. Shachi was next to surge to his feet, throwing himself to the weapons and firing off at the sea king as it lurched towards them again. True to form, as a World Government standard ship, the blast was powerful enough to knock the sea king a long way down, into the depths.
They didn't wait for it to come back, Law and Penguin now joining them at the control panel as the Tang roared painfully, accelerating and peeling away from the current she'd been riding to head for the surface.
Doflamingo was long-forgotten as they broke the waves, the action feeling like a triumphant leap from the water even though in reality it was little more than a final splutter before the Tang's engines went silent, all of the controls turning off and locking up as whatever mysterious energy that had powered her disappeared, leaving her a drained husk.
"We… we're alive," Shachi panted, flopping over the dead control panel limply. Beside him, Penguin was shaking in disbelieving laughter. "We're… how?"
"Raise the sail," Law said automatically, looking around blankly. "Bepo, where are we?" The mink scrambled to pick up his map and carry it over to the window, where daylight was streaming in. The map was covered in black ink, and he frowned at it for several long seconds before his ears flattened in defeat.
"The map's ruined, I'm sorry," he mumbled, following Law as he decided to leave the still-dark control room and head for the main door. Somehow, despite the Polar Tang being completely offline, the main door slid open jerkily to let him out on the deck.
"Don't worry about it," Law said absently and Penguin and Shachi wandered past, still dazed, to raise the sail.
It was only once the sail was up, the white fabric catching the breeze and slowly pushing the submarine to glide along the surface of the water, that Law let himself sink to the decking, head in his hands. The others congregated around him, all in equal states of shock.
"How did she do that?" Penguin asked, his voice cracking. "She was empty – is empty. How..?"
No-one had an answer for him, shaking with relief and the fading dregs of adrenaline as they flopped back on the deck. Somehow, the Polar Tang had done the impossible and snatched them from the jaws of death. None of them knew how.
"You're amazing," Shachi said, running a hand along the damp wood. The ship remained silent, save for the wind in her sail and the waves lapping at her side, but he just smiled.
"We'll get fuel at the next island," Law said, and it wasn't a wish, it was fact. No matter what it took, they'd fill the Tang to the brim with fuel so she never had to do that – whatever "that" had been – again.
"Best ship ever," Bepo added, his fur still stained with ink that was rubbing off on the deck as he lay there. "Thank you."
She bobbed just a little bit more vigorously over the next wave.
Chapter 200? What is this sorcery?
Crazy chapter numbers aside, I have a lot of ideas about klabautermanns and the ships in general, which in this case boils down to "if Merry can sail with a broken keel and no-one on board, why can't the Tang run on no fuel with her nakama on board?" Running on fumes is a viable thing for engines anyway (I've driven a car on fumes before, nerve-wracking but possible). I still have more ideas, so I'm sure the Tang will be making more appearances later on.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari