Chapter 3 - How To Make Enemies And Irritate People
The message telling me I had an appointment came quickly. Almost too quickly, considering the fact that I didn't know anyone, much less any place here that would tell me 'yeah, you need to be here by 10:30 AM but you should show up 15 minutes early so we can check your paperwork'.
Was there going to be paperwork? I had no idea. All I knew was that I was supposed to meet 'Marshalsea' - the name was familiar in the same way that Ravenser Odd and Stonecutter had been, but there were no details attached to that memory explain why - at the appointed time and that Meryl would know where to go.
That, discounting the approximately five hours of sleep I'd end up with under ideal circumstances, gave me about four hours of total prep-time, three if I wanted to account for any potential delays in traveling. That was more than enough time to shower, pull together the best interview outfit I could out of the clothes Meryl had picked out of the boat, and try not to go out of my mind worrying over 'what ifs'.
Well, I figured as I smoothed down the sides of my jacket again nearly a full hour before the appointment was supposed to take place, as they say, two outta three ain't bad.
"Right. Anything else I missed?" I asked Meryl, almost adding something about my glasses, only to remember again that she'd already apologized for that.
Really, losing my glasses just as I got to a new world was on brand for my type of luck, which was somehow reassuring despite the inconvenience - and I didn't feel right blaming a kid for something that was more than likely a pure accident made in an attempt to do right.
"Breakfast?" Meryl suggested. "There's still some left from what I had."
My stomach turned over greasily at the thought. "Think I'll skip. Nerves killed my appetite."
Along with my first look at the hellscape Meryl called a 'kitchen'. If I lived through today's interview, my next big task would be deep cleaning that place 'cause that was the next most likely cause of death in my calendar as far as I could tell. Good god, and people had judged me for not keeping a clean house. At least I'd never left enough cultures growing in my sink to constitute a revival of the Macedonian Empire.
Hopefully she had a shit-ton of bleach and soap along with a working water heater in the house.
While Meryl locked the door to her house, I put the matter of cleaning in my mental box for 'later' and switched to the more immediate concern of how I was going to handle the matter of Marshalsea… and calculating how tired I'd be after this walk.
This far away from town and strangers - that Meryl had shucked the title already in my mind was something I could fuss over later -, I could talk fairly openly, getting ideas out and bouncing them off of my traveling partner. Even if she couldn't really provide any answers, there was still something to be gained from airing the issues out; there was a reason the rubber ducky method worked for programmers and writers, after all.
"-I guess I'm just a little worried about getting the right balance. I don't want to be rude, but being overformal can come off as being insincere or condescending and I'm pretty sure that could get me killed in a pirate town," I rattled on, trying not to focus too much on any one thing even as my anxiety built up over a purely hypothetical situation that'd yet to manifest.
"I don't think you're worried about the right thing here," Meryl said.
"You're probably right - I get focused on being anxious about silly things sometimes," I agreed, letting air stream out between my teeth in a low, steady hiss until my lungs were empty.
"But," I continued once the pressure let up off my chest - not completely, never completely, but enough for now. "If I'm focused on being mildly anxious over something dumb and kind of silly, it's harder to lose my mind over something bigger and more relevant that I can't do anything about. But if you think there's something I should know and worry about, I'd be glad to hear it."
That was all the offer Meryl needed to start talking, which she did quickly and at speed, mostly framing her information in the form of personal anecdotes that probably wouldn't do a stranger too much good with what was coming, but the second-hand familiarity would hopefully serve to humanize the people in my mind instead of letting them hang out in my head as nebulous terrors capable of anything.
Not to say that humans weren't terrifying enough on their own merit, but in general, they were easier to deal with when they actually felt like real people.
It also served the purpose of giving me something else to focus on besides the ever present pain in my joints - barely fifteen minutes of walking down a gentle slope and my ankles were screaming at me - and, as we drew closer and closer to the town, the many misgivings I had about venturing into a new, strange world.
Meryl's house was fine, in a way. For all it was unknown, it was still private. Enclosed. Uncrowded.
Ravenspurn? Within three minutes of us passing the town limits, I'd come to a realization that, while not surprising, wasn't going to make my life that much better for the foreseeable future.
That realization was this - I didn't like this town.
To be fair, I didn't like most towns to begin with. Any place where people tended to cluster tended to be one that grated on my nerves, but even buildings could crowd me under the right conditions if they were tall enough. Here… well, most of the structures didn't look like they went above three stories, but the way they crushed into the space like the foundations themselves were fighting for every inch of space was claustrophobic in a different way.
And then there were the people.
Ugh.
As horrible as it was to even think it, COVID-19 had spoiled me. Even if not everyone had played by the rules of social distancing and limiting excursions, it'd still rendered the world sparse enough to take the edge off of my social anxiety, even if the threat of disease had filled that gap in on its own merits.
Here? There was no space, no breathing room, and if there was any system of direction to smooth the process of walking through the town, I certainly couldn't see it. I'd been knocked and jostled more than a few times already to the point where I'd assumed - based on what books and movies had taught me - that my empty pockets had already proven a disappointment to at least six different pickpockets on this street alone.
I released the breath I was holding. Well, at least it wasn't Walmart.
The building Meryl led me too was, as far as I could tell, one of the better-looking ones in town - the wood siding was evenly placed and well-painted without any clear signs of age or damage diminishing its face, which was saying something considering that too many of the roofs we'd passed had an uncomfortable dip down the middle of their spines. It also had a pretty nice set of double-hinged batwing doors, for that classic saloon vibe.
Still, I thought as I squinted up at the sign, trying to force the blurred letters to form up into something legible, I wasn't in much of a position to judge how anything looked.
"The Dead Admiral Benbow Inn," I said as I finally parsed it out. A Stevenson reference? "Charming."
"It's the best place in town!" Meryl replied. "Well, the calmest, at least. Almost nobody ever tries to start anything in there."
"Because of Marshalsea?"
"And Pew."
Pushing aside my impulse to ask if this 'Pew' was also blind on top of the implicit 'not to be fucked with' - not everything had to be a Treasure Island shout out, dammit -, I focused on shaking off my jitters.
You are not that special, I told myself. You are not going to be the center of attention. A few people will look, because you will be new stimuli in their space, but ultimately, nobody will care. You are not in danger here …at least not from everyone in there. And even then, that danger is a 'maybe', so relax.
Yeah, that would have to work, I decided before pushing the doors open.
If I'd presumed the streets full of people, the Dead Admiral was packed like a sardine can, the smoky air endemic to so many bars I'd been in as a kid defusing the light of the space in a way that almost made it dark despite the placement of the light fixtures.
Meryl pulled me into the space, eyes searching for something or someone I didn't know as I simply settled for trying not to have a panic attack.
Too many people, too many bodies pressed too fucking close, the smell of humanity - all sweat, oil, gas, dirt, and blood - pressing in almost too much…
"Zahlia!"
Meryl abruptly found direction, making a beeline for the bar and the dark-skinned woman polishing glasses behind it, her black-and-turquoise striped dress near luminous in the bar's semi-dark space, pulling me along behind her with an almost reckless abandon that saw her knocking against a woman in patterned thigh highs and a minidress and me barely twisting away in time to avoid doing the same to another with a bedazzled leather jacket and to-die-for legs put on full display in a one-piece swimsuit.
There was just enough time to catch a nod of acknowledgement from the Lovely Legs before I was forced to turn my full attention to my feet.
The woman behind the bar immediately brightened as she saw Meryl coming, her sudden happiness almost startling in both its intensity and authenticity. "Meryl!"
Closer up, I could see that her hair was a shade somewhere between the two colors of her dress - not quite perfectly, though, lacking that last touch of green compared to the band she had holding it back - but close enough to serve as a reminder that this was a universe based on a manga, complete with the wide range in humanly possible palettes implied by that.
Or was the manga based on this place?
Shoving both the philosophical questions on the nature of the universe and my own anxieties about the crowded space aside, I pulled the edges of my mouth into a polite smile as I came up to stand beside Meryl.
"You must be the one my grandmother advised I keep an eye on," Zahlia said, tilting her head slightly back to look down at me. It didn't look like it was hard for her to do so - she had at least five inches height over me. "You're not much to look at for all the fuss."
"I'm not usually fuss-worthy," I agreed. I looked around the room again, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go next. "Where…?"
"Marshalsea is usually upstairs, I can show you-"
"No," Zahlia said, cutting off Meryl's bolt for the stairs with a gesture. "Marshalsea wants to see your friend here alone."
Had a feeling that's what I was going to be talking into. Still…
"Don't worry about it," I told Meryl, preempting any prospective arguments from her corner. The girl already looked rough enough - if she was worried on my behalf, the least I could do was at least try to take some of that off her shoulders. "What happens will happen. You just hang out down here and try not to freak out until there's something to freak out about, 'kay?"
After a moment of internal wrestling over whether the impulse was a good one or not, I cautiously stretched out a hand to Meryl's head, patting her hair down with a gentle awkwardness I'd be kicking myself for over the course of the next week if I survived the next half hour.
God I was bad at this.
"Up the stairs two levels, turn right and she'll be by the upstairs fireplace," Zahlia said, gesturing vaguely towards her left. "There will be a seat for you."
Hopefully not one with shackles or a collar attached at neck height, I thought as I followed her directions, forcing down my misgivings along with that stupid acrophobic response to going any higher than twenty feet up from the ground.
It was actually easy to ignore that bit, once I got distracted by all the colors.
For all this place had an old-timey feel of 'normal' - almost like wandering into a movie set, there were the little touches that reminded me of where I really was. Mostly with the people.
It wasn't just that people had a wide range of hair colors. That was the most boring possible thing to latch onto, despite it being one of the stand out details. It was the sheer variety of shapes and forms people had.
An eight-foot tall woman in a low-cut wrestler's singlet and tube top combo flashed a grin full of fangs at me as I passed her before turning her head back down towards the main floor, while a cowboy with rich brown skin and long purple-black hair and his paper pale, tattoo-covered conversation partner - with hair as bright an orange as I'd ever seen outside of a fireplace and just as wildly curling as that fire - paused to turn their attention to me as I passed.
I'd watched them too, for a moment. It was hard to tear my eyes away once I could tell the horns stabbing out from the hat band of the ginger's hat looked to be part of his head rather than additions to the accessory, but I managed it right before the atmosphere took a turn for the properly awkward.
Instead, I managed to turn to look at something else. Specifically, something in between me and the stairs I was supposed to be using. Something that I immediately recognized as 'oh yeah, definitely gonna have a problem with that', because something that wasn't going to be a problem wouldn't have shifted position to be even more in the way when they noticed me looking at them.
That alone was the act of not only someone who felt that messing with perfect strangers was good sport, but that it was also their favorite field of free entertainment. The rest of the package simply promised more problems of a similar pettiness.
Long, iron-straight black hair slipped to the side over the arms of ruby lensed 60's sunglasses, showing a layer of cherry red beneath, which, if I had somehow managed to miss the thick raccoon rings of smudged eyeliner or the spotless jet-black fingernail polish, really should have sealed it for me, even before the nearly solid black outfit complete with a black trench coat - worn over the shoulders like a cape, of course - and blood red accent details came into the picture.
Goth. More specifically, the near stereotypic kind of goth in the style of a certain Immortal fanfic, though if I could take the symbols he was wearing on his jewelry and hat as any indication, one with a bit more Thelemic tilt than the standard Satanic.
Either that or he was a fan of Mindless Self-Indulgence and wanted to inform the entire world of that fact by using his body as a billboard, which was probably easier when you were near nine feet tall.
Behind him sat a small collection of people who, while not strictly in the same style of dress, were close enough that I felt comfortable lumping them together in my head as a single crew. Perhaps drawn together by the fact that I would have probably seen all of them at a metal festival if I'd ever had the health, money, or inclination to put up with the crowds.
A dark-skinned woman in honestly exciting leather gear winked at me, drawing my attention to a shockingly pale eye that didn't match the other, as a grungy mummy stared stoically into the middle distance, the only identifiably organic feature on them - outside of some suspicious dark spatter on their shredded heartogram crop-top - being the long spill of pale sea foam green hair stained an unsettling dark red-brown near the roots.
I was going to have to shuffle that last detail into the 'but that's not my business' box, because I'd otherwise spend next half hour wondering if it was a bloodstain from some untreated head injury or just the result of a botched bleach job.
The other two members of the 'Hot Topic' lunch table were less attention gabbing, for all they were both in heavy black-and-white face paint. That - and the vague sense that they were both middle aged - was the only common point between them, because their styles couldn't have been more opposite in execution and intent, with one going in on a full, if rumpled, Rob Zombie Dragula look complete with slightly squashed top hat while the other seemed comfortably situated in a simple t-shirt and black jeans pressed to match the crisp lines of his KISS-esque face paint, the only parts of his image that looked even mildly out of place being the scar curling though the right side of his mouth and the streaks of grey running through the green of his hair.
A flowery twist of a wrist pulled a long tobacco pipe out of seeming nowhere brought my attention back to the 'leader' of the group. The mall goth grinned around the mouth piece as he took it between his teeth and, with all the flair of a life-long performance artist ready to drink in a fresh reaction, waited a beat before snapping his fingers.
With the snap of a small explosion, the gesture sparked flame and I barely managed to keep from jumping. That full body twitch was still enough of a reaction for him, judging by the way his grin spread even further across his stupid face as he touched his still flaming finger to the bowl of his pipe.
A pale finger - still smudged at the tip from whatever trick had been used to spark the fire - curled up to pull down the glasses, giving me a look at icy blue eyes that I was almost tempted to describe as 'limpid'.
Instead, I'd have to settle for the infinitely less amusing adjective of 'leering'.
"Th' name's Crowley, luv," he said, apparently insufferably pleased with himself for punching one of my PTSD triggers with his little stunt. "C'n I 'ave yours?"
There was a vague indication of an accent around his voice, but it was hard to parse out if the vague mumble was part of it or a secondary facet to making his speaking style halfway impenetrable. Either way, it didn't do much to make his tone sound any less like 'smarmy jackass'.
"No." I squeezed the word out between grit teeth as I turned to take the last staircase between me and my appointment, only to feel a hand catch me by the wrist and reel me back.
"Th' day's still youn', innit? No need'ta rush off, is tha?" he asked, all pick-up artist pleasant despite me sending every 'no' signal I knew of.
"There is, actually," a new, steel cold voice cut in. Everyone's head twisted up and to the side to look.
I'd gotten a basic description of Marshalsea from Meryl earlier. Old woman, on the heftier side, black, with silvering blue hair and a whole lot of battle scars from a life lived roughly.
It did sum her up; remove the imperial bearing and she looked a bit like someone's grandmother in the stereotypic sense of the description, apart from the vague silvery smears of scar tissue and oddly puckered left eye that I could make out even at my current distance, right down to the pale blue rinse - though for all I knew, that might have been her natural shade simply greying with age -, but there was a vague indication of danger pooled around her like the coils of a resting cobra and it wasn't just my anxiety talking.
There was a tangible weight on the air. A pressure that was halfway between that of an oncoming storm pushing down on lungs and the touch of unfriendly hands laid against my skin.
It was oppressive, but the weight was only a hint - no, a reminder that danger was a possibility. The storm was still a distance away, the hands still held loosely, but that could change very quickly. The thunder would roll and those fingers would tighten and move to make me submit if I made that one wrong move.
If this was Conqueror's Haki, I could see why it had a habit of bringing people to the ground unconscious and foaming at the mouth.
Personally? Not a fan of being on the receiving end, even if I was just collateral damage.
Crowley, who did seem like the actual target, let go of my wrist with a speed that most would reserve to accidentally touching a hot stove, though not fast enough for me to miss the way his hand had gone clammy with cold sweat.
"Didn' realize ye had a previous engagement," he said, eyes darting between me and Marshalsea as he crumpled in on himself in a way that made him feel closer to six foot than he probably was. "T'was no insult 'tended, Cap'in Marshalsea."
The pressure in the air ratcheted up and I resisted the urge to buckle at the knees. This wasn't my fault, wasn't my mistake to make up for, I didn't need to apologize for anything -
"That's a pattern with you, Mister Crowley. You don't mean insult yet… you keep managing to do it. It's only because of your… usefulness in helping maintain the hygiene of the town that I give you the leeway you have. Do try to remember that there are limits to that. Especially when you start interfering with my interests." Marshalsea shifted in her stance, finally easing up on the Haki as she turned her head towards me. "Now, I believe I called you to meet with me for a reason. Come up here."
The last staircase was no taller than the last one, no steeper in the steps, or more physically difficult in any way I could pick out beyond the usual issues I had with stairs and my own body. Yet every step was difficult, in a way that made me unsure if I was about to fall down and crash back down to the floor I'd just left.
In the end, I didn't, but it still felt like a close thing even after clearing that last step.
Fucking Conqueror's Haki.
"You're ten minutes early," Marshalsea noted as I made my way over to the table in front of a fireplace. She had already taken up position in a comfortable - if not overly flashy - captain's chair and there was another sitting at the other end of the table. Small, not flashy. Not concerning, like the vaguely sword shaped thing on the table.
"Better to be early rather than late," I replied, anything else I might have said being cut off as I noticed the coat.
It was kind of hard not to, what with it clearly being cut for a person in the ten to fifteen-foot height range long before someone else had seen fit to nail it to the wall above the fireplace with actual swords. It was the Marine standard for officers - an Admiral's, if the name of the tavern and the seafoam green cuffs were any indication - apart from the fact that it looked as if it had seen six separate tours through hell before being put on display here.
While its 'Justice' kanji was largely intact and untouched, the rest of the coat was a tattered, scorched, bloodstained, and dirt-smeared ruin. One of the sleeves had been half sliced through, only to have that loose section sloppily stapled back into place after its 'mounting' while the other had taken a beating that had seen specks of fire damage climb up from the wrist to the shoulder like a sort of crawling rot. The tassels of the epaulettes had become partially unwound at some point, leaving the gold threads to dangle haplessly like frayed Shirley Temple curls and… well. There was more than enough blood for me to comfortably say that whoever had once worn this coat definitely hadn't been in any state to complain about it being taken as a trophy after the fight.
"I… presume that's all that left of the titular Admiral Benbow?" I asked after a moment of awkward silence.
"Well, I think there might have been few pieces of him floating around our last dancefloor in the aftermath - I know there was certainly a few of me -, but it's been long enough that nature has probably taken its course with regards to that," Marshalsea said pleasantly, as if the conversation wasn't about killing someone - in battle, yes, and it was vanishingly rare for Marines that far up to actually be good people based on the manga, but still, that was a death and not a clean one by what little description I'd gotten. "So yes, the coat and whatever honors the Marines saw fit to bestow upon him posthumously are all that remain of any significance."
Casual. Not quite cold, but there was something in the way that she spoke about it that made it clear that for all the day she'd killed Admiral Benbow could have been a remarkable Tuesday, it had still been Tuesday to the point where she probably couldn't even remember which day of the month it'd been.
I finally tore my eyes away from the grisly trophy after I bumped into the table on my way to my seat. I couldn't afford to be distracted, not by something that was not only old news but ancient history to everyone else here.
What I needed was to be polite, be respectful, be concise and on point with information, and don't be -
The thought died as I recognized the sword was laying on the table. Because it wasn't just any sword.
It was my sword. My cheap, stupid, off-model copy of Shusui I'd ordered off of Amazon back in 2011. The first thing I'd ever bought for myself with money I earned. It was a blunt, poorly painted piece of shit, but it was mine, not a copy, because I recognized the fraying wrappings.
"Where the h-"
Marshalsea's words - "Did I say it was time for you to talk?" - and the start of some ruckus in the background were almost lost as the pressure from earlier returned with a vengeance, cutting off my ability to speak and pushing me down towards the floor, nearly knocking me out of the chair.
Before, her Conqueror's Haki had been aimed at someone else and I'd just been caught in the periphery. Now, I was the target, and every sensation that I'd felt then was brought back tenfold along with the memories of hands grabbing onto my body, of being pinned down into position while my body was acted on by someone who only cared about controlling -
"No."
A kernel of pure white-hot spite ignited in my chest, granting me that sort of strength fueled by anger to straighten my back and make eye contact with Marshalsea - she looked surprised, how dare she look surprised -, even as my teeth creaked from my clenching them too hard and my hands reached for my sword.
"You don't get to do that to me," I said, feeling my eyes burning even as I refused to even give her even so much as a blink, as my fingers curled around the reassuring texture of my knock-off Shusui's hilt.
I didn't know how to use it. Hell, even if I knew how, my body wouldn't hold up in any kind of extended fight. There were too many old injuries that had never healed right and only become worse with the passing years for that. But I still reached for the sword with a sureness in my heart that said I would draw it and I would go down fighting, kicking and biting the whole way.
The pressure let up so abruptly that I almost stumbled at its sudden absence, the fire in my chest going out almost as quickly as it had materialized, leaving me exhausted for that ten second burst of strength.
While I was trying to get my bearings back, Marshalsea started talking again.
"You're a weird little thing, aren't you? Just like that sword of yours. A curiosity at first blush, useless on closer inspection, and then once you scratch the surface-" She clicked her tongue in a way that didn't seem like quite an insult, for all her words were covered in condescension, "- so much more interesting."
Interesting. Not quite a counter for 'useless', but it was a sort-of-compliment that I might've appreciated more if my heart wasn't hammering against the inside of my ribs like it was trying to escape.
"Most people open interviews asking for names instead of whipping out their Conqueror's Haki," I finally got out. My voice was little more than a wheezing squeak at this point, strangled out by the stress and adrenaline that was still pumping through my veins.
"True. But I've long since passed the point in my life where I care to waste any more of it on passing pleasantries with people not worth my time," the woman said with a shrug that wasn't much of an admission of guilt as it was a blasé statement of fact as she stood up. "That little display of salt and vinegar was fun, though. Not usually the kind of reaction people have to it - actually, near the opposite. Forty years ago, I might have taken you into my crew on merit of that alone… or tried to kill you for even thinking of drawing a sword at me."
That didn't say she couldn't still kill me if she felt like it, but it was probably better to take the mercy as it was instead of picking at holes in her wording.
Marshalsea might have moved slowly as she made her way around the table, a mild stutter in her stride giving away some kind of hip problem, but every step was a surety as she made her way over to my end of it.
"How much did you even pay for this sword?" she asked, picking up my sword with a practiced hand.
Thirty-five dollars sixty-five cents, including tax. Shipping had been free. Even ten years later, I could account for where I'd gotten every penny of it.
"Can't remember," I lied, before doing a quick calculation. Beri ran along a roughly similar price-range to yen, didn't it? And that was roughly a hundred yen to a dollar, though I knew the exchange rate could vary by quite a bit depending on the rest of the economy… "Probably in the range of thirty-five hundred, give or take the five."
Marshalsea raised an eyebrow. "Hundred thousand?"
"No. Just… three thousand, five hundred. Flat." I was pretty sure a valid Meito of the lowest grad would probably be actually be mildly undervalued at three and a half million beri, even if it was cursed as all shit, but my machine cut junk blade was anything but that.
"You got it for a steal then, even with it's… quirks."
Considering I'd paid almost double for my other, distinctly more accurate Shusui reproduction, that wasn't inaccurate. Still, there was a hint there that I was missing some other layer to the conversation.
"Maybe," I said. "It's not good for much."
"True. I've seen bargain barrel swords that were more rust than steel with sharper edges than that. On the other hand, those tend to be fragile little things without an ounce of personality, which doesn't really describe this piece at all," Marshalsea said, turning the sheath over to rest the hilt in her left hand.
She was missing her pinky, I noted. Not just one or two joints, but the whole thing and a bit of the hand that would have been the base of it along with it, with the only sign of there ever having been a finger there in the first place being a weird dip in the flesh and a crawling mass of faded scar tissue that made my own hand burn in phantom sympathy pains.
Had that been one of the bits she'd lost to Benbow back in the day? Whatever had happened, it hadn't been clean or pretty, but it didn't slow her down any as she smoothly drew the blade free of the sheath.
I blinked.
And then blinked again, just to make absolutely sure that I was really seeing this thing right, because for all I recognized the sheath and hilt as belonging to the same sword, I couldn't say the same for the blade that came out.
The blade I remembered had been a piece of nondescript steel - little different in terms of color and quality from any butter knife I could have pulled out of my silverware drawer at home and probably just about as sharp - that someone had painted red and black along the appropriate areas to recreate the sawing 'teeth' of an anime sword… an effect that had been diminished by the fact that said paint had already been chipping by the time I'd gotten my hands on it, leading me to fill in the gaps with Sharpie scribbles.
This? This was anything but that.
This blade wasn't a tinny dull silver, but the bruised purple-blue-black of a moonless dusk, complete with faint 'stars' glittering wherever the light hit a grain of metal that wasn't quite in line with the rest, right up until the red - blood red in all that could be implied by the term, shifting from dark oxygen starved shades to the bright near candy hue of arterial blood - teeth cut through it like a wildfire through the woods, followed by the deeper velvet black of midnight proper down the spine.
That was a blade that I'd be lucky to see listed at thirty-five thousand dollars, much less actually lay hands on with the casual reflex I had earlier. But somehow, there was a bone-deep sense in my heart that said that it was unquestionably my sword.
"The smith might define the initial quality of a blade, but a sword's first wielder has just as much impact on its character as its maker. And your blade here is no exception," she said as she lifted the blade towards the light, letting the dark metal glitter as she turned it over, twisting her wrist around in a slow windmill. "Maybe more so in your favor, considering what I've seen today. Does it have a name yet?"
"No." It deserved a name. It'd taken enough mockery and degradation from me as an ugly duckling to deserve it on that merit alone, even without the transformation into a beautiful bone-breaker of a swan.
"It'll come to you. They always do in the end," Marshalsea replied as she slid the blade back into its sheath. "Now comes to the second matter of names; your own-"
The loud and unmistakable sound of someone vomiting somewhere behind us cut off the conversation. Then, all hell broke loose.
Author's Notes
Monica says I'm gay for swords. As a long-term (if retired and out of practice for very good reasons) martial arts practitioner and unrepentant bi, I can't argue that, considering I had about 5 different versions of the 'sword porn description' scene hanging out in my text salvage file for the last year or so.
There's still a bit more mileage to get out of the mysterious sword, but I figured that this chapter was already long enough - and taking long enough with how many parts I wrote and rewrote over the course of the last month. There's also the fact that our protagonist still hasn't managed to introduce themselves yet, haha.
On a more serious note, this chapter took a long time to get out because I kept having to rewrite and rework sections to get the right tone and speed of plot progression (along with controlling word bloat). I hope that I'll be able to keep the delays from getting too much longer but we'll see how it pans out given that there's still a lot of stress from COVID impacting things.
One other cause for delay - though for good reasons in this case - was so Monica could look over what I have and catch any weird word choices I might have made without realizing that might have broken up the flow and disrupted your experience with the story. Hopefully we were able to smooth out that as much as possible.
Marshalsea was a character from a draft for a 2015 fic - likely the same one that some of the later crew would have featured in, if you've been checking the information on my tumblr, but it didn't get much further than brainstorming names and sparse ideas attached to them. I can say that Marshalsea was one of the more developed of that set (not that that's saying much), though her original appearance was a generic old white dude with a lot blander personality (though the same general background was present). The Conqueror's Haki is a newer feature though - I only thought to give it to her as I was working on this chapter, though it has ended up fitting quite well.
Crowley, on the other hand, is new, though his inspiration isn't - as I was working on potential characters for this story, I remembered my first 'introduction' to Brook via a wiki of some sort, which was so garbled by various factors at the time that my initial understanding was completely off base to any of the facts, barring the 'came back from the dead as a skeleton due to a delay in finding the body' aspect.
Obviously that part got left out of this version of him, but that did have some impact on his career, background, and hobbies - the faking of deaths (including his own) and theft of actual bodies, among other things. He's also an escape artist and magician.
A note that should be made about a lot of the characters for this arc - many are based on musicians. Zahlia is based on V. Delila (the singer for the band Drill Queen), Crowley takes inspiration from Ozzy Osborne (which is why his speech pattern is Like That) and his crew takes inspiration from various artists - the cues haven't really been played up enough on most of them to really justify me pointing at them and going 'yes, identify musician!' so that'll wait until later I think.
There is a Danny Elfman hanging around in the section before Crowley, though expecting people to have watched Forbidden Zone (1982, by the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo) to pick out the nature of the reference is a bit… presumptuous maybe. He might just become important later though.
Something I forgot to mention in the previous two chapters - I've been trying to work in a musical theme with this story. It hasn't come to feature dominantly yet, but all the titles so far have been lyrics, song titles, or album titles.
The first chapter was named after U2's song A Sort of Homecoming while the second chapter title was taken from the lyrics of U2's Dirty Day. This chapter was named after the 1994 album by Screeching Weasel.