Morg: Heyo!

Ikuto: We don't want to hear it.

Amu: Yeah, don't even bother.

Morg: Are you talking about my excuses or the chapter?

Ikuto: Excuses. You better make this chapter worth it.

Amu: I was talking about both.

Morg: Well, since I don't own you then I don't owe you anything.

~The Eighth Sea~

When Amu woke for the second time, she was alone in the bed. She wasn't, however, alone in the cabin. Ikuto was over at his table looking over his maps. "Ikuto?"

Turning, Ikuto smiled at the sight of a sleepy Amu in his bed. "Hey, did you sleep all right?"

"Yeah. Did you?"

Ikuto hummed as he turned back to his maps. "We haven't had any more sightings of any ships. Everyone is breathing a little easier right now."

Amu yawned as she stretched. She took a second to run her fingers through her hair before she slid to the edge of the bed. "Where are we heading now?"

Ikuto motioned for Amu to join him at his map table without looking up from it. "The piece of the map we got from the sirens is finally dry enough to make out the words. I was just fitting it with the others and checking the riddle."

Amu didn't bother with looking down at the map pieces. "What's the map for, Ikuto? What could be so important to risk the lives of those you love the most?"

Pausing, Ikuto stopped checking his map against the one from the pieces they'd been collecting to look up at Amu. "What do you mean?"

"The entire crew almost died getting the seventh piece. I'm sure some of the others weren't easy to come by either. Where does this treasure map lead?"

Ikuto turned to lean back against his table and face Amu. He studied her rumpled appearance for a moment before nodding to himself. "I suppose since you're part of the crew now then I can tell you."

Giving him an unimpressed look, Amu took a small step closer to the pirate captain. "Stop deflecting. Just tell me."

Sighing, Ikuto ran a hand down his face before shrugging. "The pieces of the map lead to the Eighth Sea and the Seven Sea's Treasure."

"Yes, you've said that before."

"That doesn't mean anything to you?"

Amu shook her head.

Ikuto let out another sigh before turning back to gesture at the map. "The legends say that many years ago, a pirate captain rose amongst the rest. He became the pirate king. The others all paid homage to him and he extended his protection to them. He gave them a safe place to rest when they needed it and swore to come to their aid when
they called on him."

"I've never heard of him before."

"That's because he disappeared."

"So he died."

Laughing, Ikuto shook his head. "No, Amu. He disappeared. See, the reason that he was able to become the king of all pirates was because he had something the rest of them didn't."

"Brains."

"Magic."

Amu opened and closed her mouth several times. She wanted to argue that magic wasn't real, but her time aboard The Lynx had proven otherwise. The things that Dia could do, the sirens, and the pieces of the maps themselves were all proof. "Magic?"

Nodding, Ikuto gestured back to his map of the seas. "He learned to harness the power of the sea through magic and opened a portal into another dimension."

"The Eighth Sea."

"Only if you gather all the pieces of the map and follow the instructions can the portal be opened."

"But how is there a map if the pirate king disappeared?"

Ikuto shrugged before looking back at Amu once more. "Others were allowed in the portal. That's the sanctuary that he promised them. For years, pirates would share the secret with each other. Only the worthy were able to enter and stay for a time."

"If they were all able to come and go as they please then why isn't it so today?"

Ikuto was enjoying their conversation. It had been some time since someone was so interested in learning more about the topic he'd been obsessed with since he was sixteen. "After many years of pirates doing just that, the pirate king sent out his crew to find all the pirates and bring them into the portal. He called a meeting and demanded any that had been there before to return. Then he sealed them all in there."

Amu's eyes widened with shock. "He trapped them all in there with him?"

Nodding, Ikuto gestured back to the pieces of the map he'd been steadily collecting. "The Navy had found out about his magic and the treasure that was supposed to be hiding with him. They wanted to not only find him and take his treasure but his magic."

"If the Navy had that sort of backing behind them then they'd be unstoppable."

Ikuto grimaced as he nodded again. "That's why he did it. That's why he sealed them all inside. If the Navy couldn't capture anyone that knew of the Eighth Sea and how to get into it then they would always be safe."

"But you have pieces of a map. Someone must have escaped."

"After several years, some of the pirates decided that enough time had passed and that they wanted to leave. They wanted to be back out on the seas. They wanted to do what all pirates love to do. But the pirate king said no. He wouldn't open the portal again. There was plenty of room where they were to sail. They were welcome to explore the dimension that he'd made for them. Some did. Some didn't."

Amu moved to sit in one of the chairs that surrounded Ikuto's map table. "I'm not sure I like where this story is heading."

"The pirates conspired against the pirate king. What pirates want most in life is freedom. He was keeping them trapped."

"They killed him, didn't they?"

Nodding, Ikuto picked up one of the pieces of the map. "They figured that if he was the one keeping the portal closed then killing him would mean they could open it once more. They wanted to go back to the way things were. They wanted to sail and pillage and return to the Eighth Sea when they felt like it. So they killed him and took his magic."

Amu bit at her lip before looking from the piece of the map in Ikuto's hands to his eyes. "Something had to have gone wrong or else that's how things would be right now."

Ikuto let the map piece flutter back down to the table before he looked out his windows at the ocean. "When they killed the pirate king, they tried to take his magic for themselves. What they didn't know was that his magic worked the way it did because it was his. He was the only one that could control it. When they killed him, the dimension started to collapse. The portal did open, but only a handful of pirate ships escaped through it."

"So many people must have died."

Ikuto nodded at that before looking back at Amu. "The Navy was waiting for them. The ones that managed to get out were met by battleships. Many more died. Only one ship managed to slip away. The pirates on that ship ran day and night for years. The captain finally decided the best thing to do would be to devise a way to get back to the Eighth Sea portal. He spread out the pieces of the map and then let the rumors of it reach the Navy."

"He thought that if they were chasing the map then he and his crew could finally escape them, didn't he?"

Ikuto took a second to appreciate once again how smart Amu was. "That was the thought. Only, he spread so many rumors about the first map piece that no one ever found it."

"Until you."

"Until me. I figured out that all the rumors themselves were one large riddle. From there it was easy to find the piece."

Amu chewed on her lip for a moment before she looked up to meet Ikuto's gaze once more. "But how did you know it was real? Why do you want to go there so badly?"

Sighing, Ikuto ran his hand down his face once more. He turned away from Amu and braced himself on his table. He stared down at the map pieces before sighing again. There were not many who knew his story and they were all on his ship. And the ones that knew anything only knew bits and pieces of it. But this was Amu. His Amu. "When I was young, my parents and I lived in the main country. We were very happy until one day my father was forced to take a job in one of the colonies. He didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave me or my mother, but he had to go. His ship never made it to the colony he was supposed to work at. My mother and I were devastated by the news. We were set to follow him only a few months later, first my mother and then me. I was to come last because I was in school. My father wanted me to finish my year before moving."

"You still went even though he wasn't there?"

Ikuto didn't look up from where he was still facing away from Amu. "Not right away. My mother wanted me to spend more time going to school. We stayed on the mainland for several more years. In that time, my mother became pregnant."

"Utau?"

"Yes, Utau doesn't know this, but my mother never wanted the pregnancy. It was forced upon her. Utau's father was not a kind man. When my mother learned that she had become pregnant, she panicked. She told me that she couldn't stay there. Utau's father would force her to marry him and she didn't want that. She still loved my father. So I told her to go. I told her to go to the house that my father had set up for us. We had it maintained for us until we made the crossing. I was to wait while my mother left first. She wanted to go while she was still in the beginning of her pregnancy. She didn't want that man finding out about her. So I stayed to finish school. I lived in a boarding school for most of my childhood but kept up regular correspondence with my mother. Not many of the people that knew me back then knew that I was alone there. We had to keep it that way so that Utau's father wouldn't come looking for me. I missed my mother terribly, but I was excited to join her. A friend of mine had made the crossing a few years before I finished school. I wanted to try and find them."

Amu waited. When Ikuto didn't speak for several more minutes, she reached out with her foot to tap his. "So what happened? Did you find that friend?"

Ikuto couldn't help but laugh. He did turn to look at Amu at that. "My friend doesn't remember me anymore. They broke their promise."

Amu frowned at that. "I'm sorry to hear that, Ikuto."

Shrugging, Ikuto turned once more to face Amu fully. "It is what it is. My mother made it safely. She wrote to me that the house was lovely and that the colony was different but interesting. She could see us making a life together there. So I followed. I boarded my first ship and set sail. We were four days into our journey when the storm hit. It came out of nowhere. It tossed us about before a large whirlpool developed. The ship went down."

Amu couldn't help but gasp she let out. Her mouth hung open as she stared at Ikuto in horror. "How did you survive?"

Ikuto shrugged again. "I don't know. I woke amidst the wreck on an island. I wandered about for a few days before finding the ruins of a city. It was eerie, walking through streets that no longer had people in them. I scavenged what I could for a few more days before I met him."

"Who?"

Ikuto's face darkened. "I didn't know him at first. He was a crazy old man that knew how to navigate the city and how to find food. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but bits and pieces of fruits and vegetables would show up. He showed me how to fish in the bay and how to cook. I spent months there with him in that abandoned place."

"Ikuto."

"I didn't know until a storm came where I was. I didn't know until he pushed me into a small rowboat and shoved me out into the bay. With the pirate king gone and his magic lost, the Eighth Sea is sporadic. It tries to balance itself out and opens random portals."

"The storm you were in?"

"The whirlpool was the portal. I was sucked down into it."

"You've been to the Eighth Sea."

"I have spent months in a place that was thought to not exist. I have been to that abandoned place and seen the city that the pirate king used to rule over. I have to go back."

"But why? You said it was desolate. Why would you want to go back?"

Ikuto shook his head as he looked down at the floor. "Time passes differently in the Eighth Sea. I spent months there wandering the empty streets but years had passed here in the real world. My mother and sister had quite the shock when I showed up. Utau had never known me but she had known of me. My mother tried her best to deal with the fact that I was sixteen still even though I should have been twenty. It didn't help that we hadn't seen each other in years."

"I'm sure it took you a bit to convince her of who you were."

"Not really. I look too much like my father for her to have not recognized me. Still, I knew that I couldn't keep burdening her. So I left on my first job."

"Let me guess, you worked on a ship."

Grinning, Ikuto gestured around him. "I started as a cabin boy and worked my way up the ranks. Once I saved up enough money, I bought The Lynx. The members of my crew have been coming to me ever since."

Amu couldn't help but smile at that. Ikuto did have quite the crew. "What I don't understand is why you want to go back. Your life makes it seem like the last place you would ever want to go is back to that place."

Ikuto sighed before standing up from the table. He crossed the room to the windows and looked out again at the ocean. "The person that was trapped in the Eighth Sea, the man that helped me to escape."

"What about him?"

"He's my father."

.

Morg: Boom!

Ikuto: Whoa! Plot twists!

Amu: So that's why I don't recognize Ikuto. He's younger than he should be.

Morg: Something like that.