Chapter 2: Mink AU: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Summary: Vice Admiral Dalmatian knows what he is.


"I know what you are," The mongoose mink hisses, not looking away even as he's forced down into the brig. "I know what you are! Traitor. Traitor!"

His screams echo across the deck, and Vice Admiral Dalmatian's lips curl. Twenty years he'd been in the Navy, twenty years of service. Thousands of civilians defended from pirates, hundreds of bastards put away.

And yet he still can't rid himself of the stink. A leopard can't change its spots. A pig in lipstick is still a pig. If it talks like a duck, walks like a duck… his hands clench into fists.

He hadn't seen Zou since he'd leaped off Zunesha for his life when he was fourteen, could count on his fingers the number of times he'd met another mink on the high seas. A reclusive people, a secretive people. A people not recognized as people by the World Government. Too animalistic, too strange, too friendly to those willing to engage in the underworld.

For a moment, Dalmatian can see his father, gnawing human bone between his teeth, the rest of Dalmatian's litter scrabbling around in the dirt and offal like the animals they so proudly claimed heritage. Zou had no great cities, had no ships to speak of, no great authors, engineers, scientists. No history makers, just that stupid worship of that fucking ponegliff that they couldn't even lay claim to.

And he refused to let that define him. Better to pretend, to let the humans think he was one of those zoan users than to shuffle around in the dirt until his bones lay bleached in the sun.

"You know that guy, Sir?" comes his second-in-command's tinny voice, reedy mustache twitching.

"No," he growls, "And don't bother to feed him, no reason to waste food on animals."


Notes:
Yeah so far, no minks have been spotted in the Navy. Very fucked up.