"Keep rowing!" Alistair cracked his cat-o-nail-tails in the air. His crew paddled with new vigor.
It was supposed to be an easy pair of bounties. A fisherman had told him they'd both be on a passenger ship sailing for Ishport. They'd stick up the lot of them, find the stowaways, and sail away with one prisoner and a corpse, soon to be 25 million berries richer. Enough to buy a new boat, after that Navy Captain made short work of the Theseus . Instead he had no bounties, no boat, no treasure, four lifeboats, and few dozen grumbling men left of his crew. He ordered them to row to the nearest island, hoping to find the harbor before their rations ran dry.
He saw the shared looks of scorn between the men, felt their burning gaze on him when his back was turned. Stomach's growled, and many men tended wounds. An unspoken word hung heavy in the air: mutiny .
His whip sailed, nine cracks split the air. They had a streak of bad luck he'd admit. It started when Captain Cobra died, and their ship capsized. He'd stepped up from First Mate and held the crew together, fixing the ship and sailing for the Grand Line. En route, they'd been ambushed by a Navy Captain with fiery red hair. She sunk their ship, and shortly afterwards those two runaways had sunk it again.
"Not far now boys." He cracked his whip, but it stirred nothing from the men.
"Keep rowing!" His First Mate echoed, a scarred man named Bit.
"If you hadn't been on the rum, we'd be sailing instead of rowing." A powder monkey grumbled.
"That had nothing to do with it!" said Bit.
Captain Alistair's attention was drawn to the shore. A hollow hill carved out by a cave, closed away by a man-made stone wall. His vision narrowed on a small plume of smoke drifting from the cave.
"Captain Alistair, please…" his navigator Beetle brought him from his thoughts. "We've been rowing through the night, we need a break.
"You'll row as long as I tell you to! I'll cat-o-nine you wretched lot until you run out of screams!" He brought down the nine knots of the whip across Beetle's back, shredding his shirt and cutting nine deep lines into his skin. Beetle cried, and sped up his rowing.
Alistair's lifeboat was the first ashore. His men collapsed onto the beach, weeping and kissing the ground.
"Useless landlubbers…"
Bit appeared at his side, out of earshot of the crew. "What are we doing here, captain? We don't have the men or the weapons for a raiding party."
"We don't need to raid, we just need a few parts for the ship."
"In this backwater?" Bit rubbed a grapevine scar that cut across his chin. "Besides, we lost all our treasure."
"The ship will sail again, I swear it." Alistair called out to the other three rowboats. Each lifeboat disembarked, and hauled in the massive ropes tied to their sterns. It took Alistair's entire crew, save him, to haul the broken pieces of their ship on shore.
They'd saved the keel and ribbing of the ship, but scarcely anything else. The bow bore a rusted nameplate.
Theseus.
"Have the bosun salvage what he can. Take the men with swords, and start felling trees for spales. Do it out of sight, would ya? And keep an eye on the men."
Bit saluted, and left to organize the men. Alistair straightened his hat, adjusted his clothes, and sauntered into town.
He went first to the notice board. An old man in fancy robes and a long beard sorted through the papers.
"You!" The old man cried. "Your a bounty hunter, aren't you?"
"Of a certain variety."
"You carry bounties, do you not? I need to copy two of yours, someone has vandalized the notice board!"
Alistair pulled out two bounties from his captain's coat. "By chance, are these the bounties you're missing?" The old man's face lit up. "You can take mine." Alaric flashed a smile of yellow teeth. His eyes were drawn to the man's gold saucer earrings, ruby rings and golden rings.
"Very kind of you, very kind. I'm the Serpasha of this town, Soren."
"Mister Serpasha, have you seen anyone like this, without the beard?" Alistair's knife tapped the bounty labeled Redwin Asada. The old man frowned, studied the papers with jewel-encrusted glasses. "Yes, thats him! He landed on our island yesterday, with another boy, pale as death."
"There was two ?"
"Yes, though the skinny one looked worse for wear." Alistair his his fury behind a crooked smile. His only consolation while rowing here tirelessly was that he had at least killed the one who sunk his ship. How had that rat survived the Dagger Snake venom? The old man looked him up and down, stopping on his firearms, and captain's hat. "What's your name, stranger?"
"Alistair, Captain of the Cobra Pirates." He took off his tricorn hat with a spin, placing it against his breast. "Pleasure to have your acquaintance."
"Cobra, you say?"
His title Serpasha meant some kind of priest or shaman, Alistair hadn't been listening. The temple he ran was just as lavish as the rest of the man. Bowls of incense along the walls filled the air with putrid smell. Snakes were everywhere. Snakes in the coat racks, snakes in the pools, carved into the pillars were stone snakes, down to the snake-carved arms of their chairs. Alistair picked his nose with a dirty finger, wiping it on the underside of the gold-leaf table
"Captain Alistair, judging by the shape of your ship, your crew was no match for these two yesterday. If we were to continue with your… proposal , what makes you think this time would be different?"
"They caught us off guard, when Theseus was undergoing repairs." A half-truth, Theseus was always in a state of repair. "If properly supplied, the Cobras can root them out and kill them like rats. We'll have the jump on them, and it'll be over before they know it.
"Supplies you seek from me, I presume?" Soren rubbed a lounging snake under the chin. It rattled its tail like a cat's purr.
"You've enough trees here to build a hundred ships. If we had the help of a few labourer, any carpenters, the Theseus could be sailing again in a day. We'd set sail for pest control, we can even split the reward."."
Soren studied him carefully. "That skinny one-Valentine, you called him. I saw the poison in him the moment they arrived. Was that your handiwork?"
Alistair sunk his dagger into the Serpasha's desk. Slick purple venom dripped down its edge, eating away at the fine lace tablecloth. Alistair noticed his face perked up, almost with glee .
"I believe I know where these two slipped off to. They sought shelter from a heretic, who hides deep in the jungle. She's a threat we've ignored too long, we can't stand by while she terrorizes innocents and harbors criminals. I can have your ship fixed in three days, on the promise that all three of them will be disposed of."
"Not three days, today ."
Soren barely contained his rage.
"Your ship is a ruin! It will be impossible to fix in a day!"
"It's today, or nothing. Redwin and Valentine took many of my men's lives and left us to drown. There's a blood debt that must be paid, and if I wasn't focusing all my efforts towards hunting them down, my men would mutiny and replace me with a captain who would. The bounty money for Red will be welcome, I'm sure, but it's blood we want. If they don't get it soon, then even with all my strength I may not be able to stop them from looking towards your town, and all of your shiny things."
Soren's face turned red, and nearly burst with anger. "Keep in line, and I'll send carpenters as soon as I can. Remember, we're friends of snakes here."
When night fell, the Cobra Pirates had built a system of spales to lift the ship off the ground. The air was filled with the smell of sawdust, and the sounds of sawing and chopping. The town had hung lanterns for them, casting their work in a warm glow.
Alistair worked tirelessly, drinking village wine from a snake-carved chalice, supervising his men from his captains desk. The desk had been saved, by the grace of god and the lives of 3 powder monkeys. A white fluid splashed the carved mahogany, after which a seagull landed upon it. His tongue shot from his mouth like a bullet, slamming into the bird and pulling it back into his mouth. He swallowed, and dusted feathers from his lips.
" Creeps me out when he does that… " A powder monkey grumbled.
'What did you say?!"
"N-nothing Captain!"
A small blue snake with yellow eyes weaved through their makeshift lumber yard. Men cried and leapt from it. First Mate Bit aimed at it down the sights of his pistol.
"Hold, Bit!" Alistair cried. "These snakes are tame. Village will raise a fuss if we kill one."
Bit grumbled, but stowed his pistol. The snake flicked its tongue at him, as if blowing a raspberry, then slithered away, disappearing into the shade of a warehouse.
Long logs were laid on their side, and cut with massive saws by teams of two men. As they sawed, they sang to the tune of their labor.
Red-win, slice him thin
Val-en-tine, break his spine
Red-win, peel his skin
Val-en-tine, killed like swine
Red-win, break his shins
Val-en-tine, blood flowing like wine
Blood debt owed, kill those two
We won't rest until they're through!
Alistair wandered off to piss, humming the murder song of his crew. Before the first drops could fall, he heard voices coming from the building.
"I have medicine for you, but you can't tell anyone. Not even your parents."
Alistair spied around the corner, and saw a blue-haired woman knelt next to a child.
Tears poured from the child's eyes. "I'm scared… They told me I'm gonna die, that I got bit because I've been real bad. I just wanted to play with the snake."
"Rosie, sweetie." The woman wiped a tear from the child's face. "You'll be okay, I promise."
The click of a flintlock's hammer made them look to the open door.
"Don't move, both of you."
The woman turned white. She lifted her palms in the air, showing the vial she held. "Please, this child is going to die if I don't-"
"Don't speak!" Alistair snapped. His eyes traveled down to the child's arm, and a swollen purple snakebite. "Treating a snakebite is heresy on Elder Falls, the Serpasha should know about this."
The child began to wail, despite the woman's attempts to soothe her.
"Listen to me, the girl is not your enemy. I can tell you're not from this island. This child did nothing wrong, I'm begging you. I just need to administer the antivenom."
"It's not the kid's fault you're worth five million berries, Snake Demon Aria ."
Aria's expression changed. Her uncanny yellow eyes narrowed on Alistair. Despite himself, his hackles rose and his skin began to tingle.
"Let me give her the antivenom, then I'll come with you, no fuss. "
"The Serpasha would be livid with me. Although, he'll be pleased when I bring him your head."
A blue snake's tail whipped out from the shadows, knocking the gun from his hand. Aria passed the vial to the child.
"Drink this! Don't leave a drop!"
The child lifted the vial to drink, but Alistair's tongue whipped out and plucked it from her grasp. The glass vial went to Alistair's hand, which he crushed in a fist.
"You monster ." Aria cursed.
"Miss, I'm immune to flattery, but the name is Alistair."
From behind him, a knife sailed past. It curved, trailing towards the child. Aria wrapped herself around the child, and the knife sunk into her back.
"Rosie, take this…" Aria's mouth opened, and another vial sat on her tongue. She tucked it into the girl's dress pocket. "Show me how fast you can run, then drink it when no one is around."
"W-who are those men?" The child was frozen in terror. Aria ripped the knife from her back, and cleanly cut through the warehouse wall. A section fell away, opening an escape for the child.
"Run, then drink!" Aria cried. Rosie ran out the warehouse, tears streaming from her eyes.
"Sorry about that, Captain." Bit reached for another knife, running a poison-soaked sponge across the blade. "Was aiming for the woman, usually I'm a better throw."
Alistair eyed the poison, and a smile tugged at his lips. "Attaboy, Bit. No matter, it's Dead or Alive for the 'Snake Demon'. You just poisoned 5 million berries."
Bit smiled, showing he had less than half his teeth. "Our luck has come around. She should be feeling it already."
" You…" Yellow eyes glowed in the dim. She cried out, and fangs stabbed out from her gums, larger than daggers.
"C-captain?" Bit's knife hand shook.
In the dark, her size began to grow. Polished scales glittered in the moonlight, casting the warehouse in blue glow.
"Ohhh… Snake Demon . I get it now." He patted Bit on the back. "Good luck, pirate."
"Good luck? Wait, don't you go chameleon on me!"
Smiling, Alistair skin began to blot away until he disappeared in the dark. Without a sound, he was gone.
The barrel head of the Snake Demon slammed into Bit. He flew, breaking through the warehouse and two fences to land in the harbor with a resounding splash.