It's been AGES.
Indeed it has been ages. I kind of abandoned the tables I had adopted for awhile in a bout with depression and anxiety-related writer's block and a computer that liked freezing every time Microsoft Word would do a quick save.
But, I've been working on one of them; from the occhallenge livejournal page, a table I adopted to help develop my One Piece OCs a bit more. Well, in all fairness, I've developed them beyond the point of normalcy, but I needed the practice writing them as well. I was intending for it to be a series of nothing but oneshots, but I decided to pick up from where I left off; the entire table might not be dedicated to a linear storyline, but there will be mini two- to five-shots among it. So, without further ado, here is the second prompt-inspired writing!
Title: Profit Margin
Author: commallama
Table: 3
Prompt: Sharp
Claim: Fandom; One Piece
Characters: Sedna Beckman(OC), Rolf D. Lyon (OC), Shanks, Benn Beckman
Fandom: One Piece
Rated: PG
Warnings: Nothing terrible in this one. I don't think there's even any swearing; maybe one or two instances, but almost definitely nothing serious.
Summary: After a less than eventful day, in which the biggest stir were a couple of rookie pirates causing the slightest bit of mischief, the Morstein Tavern finds that they've come up more than half their earnings short for the day.
Disclaimer: The only characters I own mentioned here are Sedna, her and Benn's parents, Lyon, and perhaps Janx if his name was mentioned anywhere (though I don't believe it was); the settings I own here are limited to the island, the town of Evergreen, and the tavern. Everything else belongs to the One Piece universe and is copyright to its respective owners.
A/N: Not much to say here. This is part two of my previous post for this table from just over a year ago. I hope to be working on it more regularly now that I have a computer that seems to function like...well, like a computer. Though I should add, the currency here is of similar measure to Japanese Yen; that is, a thousand beli would be equivalent to about ten dollars US money.
From the moment the two had walked into the tavern, Sedna had gone instantly on guard.
It seemed no one else was terribly worried; while the small village of Evergreen didn’t openly welcome their sort, they wouldn’t be apt to chase them off with pitchforks and torches. Generally, the refusal to serve any and all pirates at nearly any business in town tended to lead their kind to go fare for themselves in the caves in the more rural parts of the island until their log posse could reset itself. Whether they made it out alive was of no real concern to Sedna.
The girl jumped, nearly dropped the plate she was holding, when she was elbowed, surprised out of eying the boys cautiously. “Relax, there’s only two of them and they’re just kids.”
“They look at least my age…” Senda mumbled back to her older brother.
“Exactly.” She glared at him in response, her green eyes narrowing shrewdly; Benn laughed as he walked past to the boys now sitting at the counter. “How’s it going, men? We don’t get strangers here very often.”
The redhead with the straw hat was the only one who looked up; the other had his chin resting on the bar, dripping wet and staring at the rum lining the shelves directly across from him with great focus and forlornness. Something about him struck familiar with Sedna. Frowning, the sixteen-year-old girl turned back to the dishes again.
“Really?” Sedna guessed this was the redhead. “Huh…this was where our log posse led us, you’d think more people would end up here…”
“Well, pirates end up on the island often enough, but none of them stay in town. No one here cares much for them.”
“Oh…”
Sedna smirked a little at the momentary awkward silence that followed his trailing off. The Morstein Tavern was the first on the road from the docks, and the few pirates that ignored or didn’t notice the large sign on the door prohibiting their kind from service here had a tendency to go running with their tails tucked between their legs within five minutes of entering, normally without her brother even having to raise his rifle to them. Normally it was rookies that didn’t notice the sign; after a while, experienced pirates seemed to look out for such things as second nature. These two had “rookie” written all over them, from their age alone right down to their soggy appearance, which stated that they hadn’t fared well at all with the ice around the docks.
The redhead laughed a little nervously. “Sh…shouldn’t they post signs about that right at the docks?”
“They do. Guess they might have been frozen over. I know the one outside this bar isn’t, though.” The sound of a match lighting issued from his direction. “I keep up with it.” The smell of smoke came from off to her left at this. Benn had picked up smoking over the past few years, something Sedna didn’t like but that she had given up arguing with him over. The arguments normally ended with her angry and him laughing, like always; his patience was really a constant source of irritation. “So, what brings you two here?”
“Er…nothing much. We…er…you know, just traveling, and our log posse pointed us here. We’re not pirates or anything. Right?”
“Eh…? We’re not?” This was the first time the other had spoken. He didn’t have any distinctive accent that Sedna could note, not like the redhead; he sounded like he was probably from somewhere in West Blue. The soaked blonde boy’s voice wasn’t the least bit familiar to her, but still…frowning, she glanced back at the two.
“Nope. Definitely not.” The redhead raised his eyebrows at his friend, who seemed a little slow to follow.
“Oh. Okay.” With this, he returned to his previous attempts to will the rum behind the bar to him.
Benn laughed. “I didn’t think so. All right, what can I-?”
As the redhead was sighing in relief, the blonde boy suddenly regained some of his will-he sat up straight and looked at Benn in absolute astonishment, demanding, “What’s that supposed to mean?” Groaning in exasperation, the redhead rested his forehead on the bar instead. Sedna, now a little more interested, turned around from the sink, wiping a plate dry as she did.
“Nothing, really.” Benn took a drag on his cigarette and continued, breathing smoke at the suddenly indignant blonde. “Just that you two don’t really look cut out for piracy.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Come on, who cares?” the redhead said over his friend, lifting his head back up. “I don’t know about him, but I’m not a pirate. I’m a paying customer who needs sake, now.” He untied a rather soggy pouch from his belt and began working the knot in its drawstrings loose. “How much for a bottle?”
Benn surveyed the two for a moment, before saying levelly, “Two thousand.”
“What?” He stopped immediately. “You can get at least three bottles for that much in Loguetown!”
“I’m not giving you guys the same deals as locals. You’re lucky I’m offering to serve you at all. Pirates normally get chased to the caves to the east of town.” He smirked, putting out his cigarette on the edge of the bar. “I guess looking like a couple of shrimp has benefits too, huh?”
The blonde's fist hit the counter at this, and he stood from his barstool. “You-!”
“Cut it out,” the redhead said over his steadily more infuriated friend once again, returning to untying the satchel. “I don’t care, I’ve still got extra cash from Loguetown anyway. You win some, you lose some, I guess.”
“I care!” The vehement blonde boy turned his glare over to his friend now, who shrugged in response.
“Those who care,” he said, digging out a couple soggy thousand beli notes and placing them on the counter, “get to stay sober.”
“B…but that’s…” He looked between Benn and the bottles lining the back wall, apparently measuring the worth of his dignity verses sobriety. At length, he sighed, and slumped against the counter once again; the rum seemed to have won. “Fine, fine…can I borrow two thousand beli?” Rolling his eyes, the red haired boy pulled out a couple more notes and dropped them on the counter. “Thanks.”
“What happened to yours?”
“It was on the damn ship.”
“Ah…”
“What kind of idiot leaves that much money on an unguarded ship?” he said, though more forlornly than angrily.
“Your kind, apparently.” The redhead was nearly shoved off of his barstool, but managed to catch himself with one hand, steadying his hat with the other. He was smirking as he straightened himself out. “You asked, I didn’t want to leave you hanging. You’re not really that sharp. I wasn’t sure you’d figure it out on your own.”
Benn picked up the money and set the two bottles down on the bar; obviously he had taken note of the amount of staring the blonde kid had been doing at the rum, as that’s what he was given despite having not made the request out loud. “That’ll be all?”
“That’s it,” the redhead replied.
Flipping through the bills, Benn turned to walk off to another customer down the bar. “Rum’s only a thousand,” he said. “Thanks for the tip, kid.”
“Wait a minute-!”
Benn went on, ignoring the protest in his wake; Sedna was caught off guard when the note was tossed at her as her brother passed. “I’ve already got a decent share in tips from today, do what you want with it.” Sedna straightened out the damp bill, frowning at it a little. The redhead seemed to have already accepted the loss. You win some, you lose some, as he had said. At the same time, though, considering how little they did care for pirates, her brother’s own behavior had been awfully roguish. The money was as good as stolen (and, in fact, probably had been stolen from someone in Loguetown by the redhead in the first place), and she didn’t have any interest in stolen money. She had been finished with the dishes anyway, so it was about time for her to start making rounds again; the end of the bar was generally first stop.
When she reached the two, she set the bill down in front of the redhead in the straw hat. Eyebrows raised, he slowly lowered the bottle of sake. Not very fond of being scrutinized, she crossed her arms and spoke coolly, “It’s not a favor. I don’t accept stolen money.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, picking it up. He looked it over, frowning, and slid it back across the bar. It was her raising her eyebrows now, and he grinned back. “How about as a tip?”
“For what?”
“For being so pretty?” Her brow lowered slowly, her eyes cooling again instantly. She had tossed longtime patrons’ drinks in their faces for craftier lines than that one, and would have been more than glad to do the same if this one didn’t have such a firm grip on his bottle; Sedna wondered whether he wasn’t used to having sake thrown over him himself. His grin persisted. “Come on, take it. It’s like I said, I’ve got plenty more anyway.”
“Pick-pocketed, I’m guessing,” she said, flipping a wisp of her short green hair out of her eyes.
“Nah, I’m not much good as a thief myself. I won it fair and square in a few card games.”
“You cheat at cards.” The redhead elbowed his friend, who had just taken a drink from his own bottle, causing him to choke.
“I’m leaving it whether you take it or not. If you don’t I’m sure someone else will.”
“That’s up to you, I’m not interested in your-” Both Sedna and the redhead were caught off guard when another hand picked up the bill; it was held out to the redhead again, and the hand turned out to be connected to his friend.
“Here’s the thousand beli I owe you.”
The redhead raised an eyebrow. “I loaned you two thousand.”
“Yeah, but she brought back one thousand, which you accepted, which brought my bill down to one thousand. Here’s the other thousand.” He waved the bill at the redhead, and it was snatched out of his hand and laid upon the counter in front of Sedna once again.
“You’re a cheap bastard.”
He shrugged, setting down his rum. “At least I’m a crafty cheap bastard.”
“I guess I can give you that…” Almost immediately, he returned to his previous disposition, turning back to Sedna. “So, ‘Sedna Beckman,’ is it?” he asked, noting the name tag pinned to her shirt. “I’m Shanks.” He held out a hand as though expecting her to shake it; she scrutinized it for a moment, and then looked up at him pointedly. Sighing, he took his hand away. “Worth a try, I guess. I’m wasting your time. Take this for your trouble?” He lifted the thousand beli note again.
“You are paying customers,” she said, pushing his hand away and otherwise ignoring his suggestion, “so I should ask if you need anything before I go.”
“Come on. Customer is always right?” When he held out the note this time, she sighed irately and snatched it away.
“Fine. I guess I can’t complain about having a little extra pocket money even if it was ill-gotten.”
“Ah, loosen up.” Shanks shrugged. “I’d bet at least fifty percent of the money in the world has been stolen by someone at some point in time. It shouldn’t be any problem to you as long as you’re not the one who stole it, right?”
“Do,” Sedna said slowly, once again ignoring his banter, “you need anything else?”
“Not right this moment.”
“All right.”
“I hope you’re not this short with all your customers,” Shanks said teasingly. “I might like a feisty barmaid, but most people seem to prefer polite and sociable servers.” Her hand twitched dangerously close to one of the two flintlock pistols concealed beneath her apron as she was pocketing the thousand beli note, but, with a deep breath, she walked away without paying any further mind to him.
An unspoken sort of agreement seemed to have left Benn to tend to the boys while they were in the bar. He elaborated later, while taking inventory of their stock in food and drink, that he had noticed his younger sister’s rather ill encounter with them and decided it would be best, both for business and safety purposes, if she didn’t go near the two for the rest of the day afterwards. Rolling her eyes a little, Sedna went on counting out the day’s earnings.
“I can take care of myself…” she grumbled.
“I know. I was talking about their safety. And the rest of the customers.”
At this, she flinched. “Well…yeah, I guess.”
She couldn’t exactly deny it; her short temper had led to hazardous situations before. A little less than a year ago, she might have killed a rather caddish pirate-one decidedly less polite than Shanks had been-had he not been a logia type devil fruit user with quick enough reflexes to revert. Instead, her bullets had gone through him to puncture a large keg of ale and the arm of a respectable and gentlemanly elderly man (who was gracious enough to understand the situation and was still a regular at the tavern); in addition, they had ruined a couple plates of dinner on a couple different tables and taken out the eye of a boy around her own age. Some of the locals still jokingly called her Scattershot, including her brother, much to her irritation.
“I doubt either of them were devil fruit users, though. They definitely looked like rookies to me.”
Benn shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything. Even kids get a hold of devil fruit sometimes. I noticed the blonde kid was pretty sluggish until he dried off.” Thinking about it, this was true. Sedna frowned, glancing over at the spot where he had been sitting. “Though I doubt anyone would be very lively after falling in the water near the docks.”
“Is that what happened to them?”
“Their boat hit a block of ice and ended up sinking. They jumped across at least mile’s worth of ice blocks to get here, according to them. The towhead fell in twice.” Sedna laughed to herself quietly at this. “Seems his friend was right about him not being very sharp, if you ask me. And we should have made seven hundred and six thousand, seven hundred eighty four today.”
Sedna, who had just finished counting, set the money on the bar, looking back at her brother. “Seven hundred?” He looked up from the pad of paper he had just worked out the calculations on, in time to see it and his pen snatched away from him. “That can’t be right…”
“Why?”
“I definitely didn’t count that much. Here…” Sedna moved a little further down the bar and gestured to the neat stacks of coins and bills. “You double check mine, I’ll do inventory again to be sure. I probably made a mistake, I thought it seemed like a pretty low number with all the business today…”
“How much of a difference was there?”
“Around four hundred thousand.”
Benn finished counting quickly, given the bills were already sorted, and informed Sedna that he had come up with the same amount as her-three hundred and two thousand, two hundred twenty-three. It was another half an hour before Sedna finished tallying their inventory again. She dropped the notepad on the bar in disbelief. “That makes us more than four hundred thousand short,” she said slowly. “We should have had a profit today with what we sold of about three hundred thousand, that puts us one hundred behind the profit margin. We lost money somehow.” She looked incredulously at her brother, who picked up the pad of paper and scanned through again. “How could we have lost that much without noticing?”
“Money or inventory. My guess would be a little of both, but definitely more money.” He glanced down at the notes and coins on the counter. “I can’t think of any time this could have happened.”
“Those pirates.” Benn quirked an eyebrow at his sister. “Did you ever lose sight of either of them?”
“They stayed at the end of the bar the entire time they were here. I had my eye on them.”
“But if one of them was a devil fruit user, they might have been able to do something without anyone noticing…” He shrugged in a noncommittal sort of manner, not looking very convinced. “They even had motive-you said they lost their boat. They might have taken the money to buy another with.”
“They mentioned they needed another one, but they figured they had enough already to buy another dinghy.”
“They came here in a dinghy?” she replied, in disbelief. “Are they insane?”
“Probably,” Benn said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a slightly warped and wrinkled stack of papers, “but that's actually not why they had a dinghy. They had the caravel they bought in Loguetown stolen from them and the thief threw one down as he was leaving. I told them they won’t find anything much larger than a dinghy for sale here, so the odds of them stealing the money to buy a ship here seem pretty slim to me.” He dropped the papers on the counter and began sorting through them-receipts. Sedna reached into her apron pocket for hers.
“They’re still pirates,” she said, accepting the sheet of paper from the small pad that was handed to her. She retrieved a pen from a pocket on her apron and set to smoothing out the receipts to the best of her abilities. “Rookies or not. I don’t trust them. And I’m not even sure they are rookies; the blonde boy looked familiar.”
“You thought so too, huh?” Benn laughed. “I didn’t catch his name, either, so there’s not any way of knowing.”
“I don’t care who they are,” Sedna said. “They’re not coming back in here tomorrow.”
“Well, we’re going to be here all night, regardless,” he said, waving his stack of receipts at her. “But the sooner we finish here, the sooner we can go home. We’re going to need at least a few hours of sleep if we want to make back any of what we lost today tomorrow. We’ll probably have to pool our tips in with the earnings for a while to make up for the difference.”
Sedna nodded in response but, taking her brother’s advice, spoke no more and set straight to work. Still, though, she was sure it had to be those two rookie pirates. Rookies or not, pirates on the whole were lowly scoundrels. If they thought they were getting away with this sort of trickery, then neither of them were very sharp.
But, I've been working on one of them; from the occhallenge livejournal page, a table I adopted to help develop my One Piece OCs a bit more. Well, in all fairness, I've developed them beyond the point of normalcy, but I needed the practice writing them as well. I was intending for it to be a series of nothing but oneshots, but I decided to pick up from where I left off; the entire table might not be dedicated to a linear storyline, but there will be mini two- to five-shots among it. So, without further ado, here is the second prompt-inspired writing!
Title: Profit Margin
Author: commallama
Table: 3
Prompt: Sharp
Claim: Fandom; One Piece
Characters: Sedna Beckman(OC), Rolf D. Lyon (OC), Shanks, Benn Beckman
Fandom: One Piece
Rated: PG
Warnings: Nothing terrible in this one. I don't think there's even any swearing; maybe one or two instances, but almost definitely nothing serious.
Summary: After a less than eventful day, in which the biggest stir were a couple of rookie pirates causing the slightest bit of mischief, the Morstein Tavern finds that they've come up more than half their earnings short for the day.
Disclaimer: The only characters I own mentioned here are Sedna, her and Benn's parents, Lyon, and perhaps Janx if his name was mentioned anywhere (though I don't believe it was); the settings I own here are limited to the island, the town of Evergreen, and the tavern. Everything else belongs to the One Piece universe and is copyright to its respective owners.
A/N: Not much to say here. This is part two of my previous post for this table from just over a year ago. I hope to be working on it more regularly now that I have a computer that seems to function like...well, like a computer. Though I should add, the currency here is of similar measure to Japanese Yen; that is, a thousand beli would be equivalent to about ten dollars US money.
From the moment the two had walked into the tavern, Sedna had gone instantly on guard.
It seemed no one else was terribly worried; while the small village of Evergreen didn’t openly welcome their sort, they wouldn’t be apt to chase them off with pitchforks and torches. Generally, the refusal to serve any and all pirates at nearly any business in town tended to lead their kind to go fare for themselves in the caves in the more rural parts of the island until their log posse could reset itself. Whether they made it out alive was of no real concern to Sedna.
The girl jumped, nearly dropped the plate she was holding, when she was elbowed, surprised out of eying the boys cautiously. “Relax, there’s only two of them and they’re just kids.”
“They look at least my age…” Senda mumbled back to her older brother.
“Exactly.” She glared at him in response, her green eyes narrowing shrewdly; Benn laughed as he walked past to the boys now sitting at the counter. “How’s it going, men? We don’t get strangers here very often.”
The redhead with the straw hat was the only one who looked up; the other had his chin resting on the bar, dripping wet and staring at the rum lining the shelves directly across from him with great focus and forlornness. Something about him struck familiar with Sedna. Frowning, the sixteen-year-old girl turned back to the dishes again.
“Really?” Sedna guessed this was the redhead. “Huh…this was where our log posse led us, you’d think more people would end up here…”
“Well, pirates end up on the island often enough, but none of them stay in town. No one here cares much for them.”
“Oh…”
Sedna smirked a little at the momentary awkward silence that followed his trailing off. The Morstein Tavern was the first on the road from the docks, and the few pirates that ignored or didn’t notice the large sign on the door prohibiting their kind from service here had a tendency to go running with their tails tucked between their legs within five minutes of entering, normally without her brother even having to raise his rifle to them. Normally it was rookies that didn’t notice the sign; after a while, experienced pirates seemed to look out for such things as second nature. These two had “rookie” written all over them, from their age alone right down to their soggy appearance, which stated that they hadn’t fared well at all with the ice around the docks.
The redhead laughed a little nervously. “Sh…shouldn’t they post signs about that right at the docks?”
“They do. Guess they might have been frozen over. I know the one outside this bar isn’t, though.” The sound of a match lighting issued from his direction. “I keep up with it.” The smell of smoke came from off to her left at this. Benn had picked up smoking over the past few years, something Sedna didn’t like but that she had given up arguing with him over. The arguments normally ended with her angry and him laughing, like always; his patience was really a constant source of irritation. “So, what brings you two here?”
“Er…nothing much. We…er…you know, just traveling, and our log posse pointed us here. We’re not pirates or anything. Right?”
“Eh…? We’re not?” This was the first time the other had spoken. He didn’t have any distinctive accent that Sedna could note, not like the redhead; he sounded like he was probably from somewhere in West Blue. The soaked blonde boy’s voice wasn’t the least bit familiar to her, but still…frowning, she glanced back at the two.
“Nope. Definitely not.” The redhead raised his eyebrows at his friend, who seemed a little slow to follow.
“Oh. Okay.” With this, he returned to his previous attempts to will the rum behind the bar to him.
Benn laughed. “I didn’t think so. All right, what can I-?”
As the redhead was sighing in relief, the blonde boy suddenly regained some of his will-he sat up straight and looked at Benn in absolute astonishment, demanding, “What’s that supposed to mean?” Groaning in exasperation, the redhead rested his forehead on the bar instead. Sedna, now a little more interested, turned around from the sink, wiping a plate dry as she did.
“Nothing, really.” Benn took a drag on his cigarette and continued, breathing smoke at the suddenly indignant blonde. “Just that you two don’t really look cut out for piracy.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Come on, who cares?” the redhead said over his friend, lifting his head back up. “I don’t know about him, but I’m not a pirate. I’m a paying customer who needs sake, now.” He untied a rather soggy pouch from his belt and began working the knot in its drawstrings loose. “How much for a bottle?”
Benn surveyed the two for a moment, before saying levelly, “Two thousand.”
“What?” He stopped immediately. “You can get at least three bottles for that much in Loguetown!”
“I’m not giving you guys the same deals as locals. You’re lucky I’m offering to serve you at all. Pirates normally get chased to the caves to the east of town.” He smirked, putting out his cigarette on the edge of the bar. “I guess looking like a couple of shrimp has benefits too, huh?”
The blonde's fist hit the counter at this, and he stood from his barstool. “You-!”
“Cut it out,” the redhead said over his steadily more infuriated friend once again, returning to untying the satchel. “I don’t care, I’ve still got extra cash from Loguetown anyway. You win some, you lose some, I guess.”
“I care!” The vehement blonde boy turned his glare over to his friend now, who shrugged in response.
“Those who care,” he said, digging out a couple soggy thousand beli notes and placing them on the counter, “get to stay sober.”
“B…but that’s…” He looked between Benn and the bottles lining the back wall, apparently measuring the worth of his dignity verses sobriety. At length, he sighed, and slumped against the counter once again; the rum seemed to have won. “Fine, fine…can I borrow two thousand beli?” Rolling his eyes, the red haired boy pulled out a couple more notes and dropped them on the counter. “Thanks.”
“What happened to yours?”
“It was on the damn ship.”
“Ah…”
“What kind of idiot leaves that much money on an unguarded ship?” he said, though more forlornly than angrily.
“Your kind, apparently.” The redhead was nearly shoved off of his barstool, but managed to catch himself with one hand, steadying his hat with the other. He was smirking as he straightened himself out. “You asked, I didn’t want to leave you hanging. You’re not really that sharp. I wasn’t sure you’d figure it out on your own.”
Benn picked up the money and set the two bottles down on the bar; obviously he had taken note of the amount of staring the blonde kid had been doing at the rum, as that’s what he was given despite having not made the request out loud. “That’ll be all?”
“That’s it,” the redhead replied.
Flipping through the bills, Benn turned to walk off to another customer down the bar. “Rum’s only a thousand,” he said. “Thanks for the tip, kid.”
“Wait a minute-!”
Benn went on, ignoring the protest in his wake; Sedna was caught off guard when the note was tossed at her as her brother passed. “I’ve already got a decent share in tips from today, do what you want with it.” Sedna straightened out the damp bill, frowning at it a little. The redhead seemed to have already accepted the loss. You win some, you lose some, as he had said. At the same time, though, considering how little they did care for pirates, her brother’s own behavior had been awfully roguish. The money was as good as stolen (and, in fact, probably had been stolen from someone in Loguetown by the redhead in the first place), and she didn’t have any interest in stolen money. She had been finished with the dishes anyway, so it was about time for her to start making rounds again; the end of the bar was generally first stop.
When she reached the two, she set the bill down in front of the redhead in the straw hat. Eyebrows raised, he slowly lowered the bottle of sake. Not very fond of being scrutinized, she crossed her arms and spoke coolly, “It’s not a favor. I don’t accept stolen money.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, picking it up. He looked it over, frowning, and slid it back across the bar. It was her raising her eyebrows now, and he grinned back. “How about as a tip?”
“For what?”
“For being so pretty?” Her brow lowered slowly, her eyes cooling again instantly. She had tossed longtime patrons’ drinks in their faces for craftier lines than that one, and would have been more than glad to do the same if this one didn’t have such a firm grip on his bottle; Sedna wondered whether he wasn’t used to having sake thrown over him himself. His grin persisted. “Come on, take it. It’s like I said, I’ve got plenty more anyway.”
“Pick-pocketed, I’m guessing,” she said, flipping a wisp of her short green hair out of her eyes.
“Nah, I’m not much good as a thief myself. I won it fair and square in a few card games.”
“You cheat at cards.” The redhead elbowed his friend, who had just taken a drink from his own bottle, causing him to choke.
“I’m leaving it whether you take it or not. If you don’t I’m sure someone else will.”
“That’s up to you, I’m not interested in your-” Both Sedna and the redhead were caught off guard when another hand picked up the bill; it was held out to the redhead again, and the hand turned out to be connected to his friend.
“Here’s the thousand beli I owe you.”
The redhead raised an eyebrow. “I loaned you two thousand.”
“Yeah, but she brought back one thousand, which you accepted, which brought my bill down to one thousand. Here’s the other thousand.” He waved the bill at the redhead, and it was snatched out of his hand and laid upon the counter in front of Sedna once again.
“You’re a cheap bastard.”
He shrugged, setting down his rum. “At least I’m a crafty cheap bastard.”
“I guess I can give you that…” Almost immediately, he returned to his previous disposition, turning back to Sedna. “So, ‘Sedna Beckman,’ is it?” he asked, noting the name tag pinned to her shirt. “I’m Shanks.” He held out a hand as though expecting her to shake it; she scrutinized it for a moment, and then looked up at him pointedly. Sighing, he took his hand away. “Worth a try, I guess. I’m wasting your time. Take this for your trouble?” He lifted the thousand beli note again.
“You are paying customers,” she said, pushing his hand away and otherwise ignoring his suggestion, “so I should ask if you need anything before I go.”
“Come on. Customer is always right?” When he held out the note this time, she sighed irately and snatched it away.
“Fine. I guess I can’t complain about having a little extra pocket money even if it was ill-gotten.”
“Ah, loosen up.” Shanks shrugged. “I’d bet at least fifty percent of the money in the world has been stolen by someone at some point in time. It shouldn’t be any problem to you as long as you’re not the one who stole it, right?”
“Do,” Sedna said slowly, once again ignoring his banter, “you need anything else?”
“Not right this moment.”
“All right.”
“I hope you’re not this short with all your customers,” Shanks said teasingly. “I might like a feisty barmaid, but most people seem to prefer polite and sociable servers.” Her hand twitched dangerously close to one of the two flintlock pistols concealed beneath her apron as she was pocketing the thousand beli note, but, with a deep breath, she walked away without paying any further mind to him.
An unspoken sort of agreement seemed to have left Benn to tend to the boys while they were in the bar. He elaborated later, while taking inventory of their stock in food and drink, that he had noticed his younger sister’s rather ill encounter with them and decided it would be best, both for business and safety purposes, if she didn’t go near the two for the rest of the day afterwards. Rolling her eyes a little, Sedna went on counting out the day’s earnings.
“I can take care of myself…” she grumbled.
“I know. I was talking about their safety. And the rest of the customers.”
At this, she flinched. “Well…yeah, I guess.”
She couldn’t exactly deny it; her short temper had led to hazardous situations before. A little less than a year ago, she might have killed a rather caddish pirate-one decidedly less polite than Shanks had been-had he not been a logia type devil fruit user with quick enough reflexes to revert. Instead, her bullets had gone through him to puncture a large keg of ale and the arm of a respectable and gentlemanly elderly man (who was gracious enough to understand the situation and was still a regular at the tavern); in addition, they had ruined a couple plates of dinner on a couple different tables and taken out the eye of a boy around her own age. Some of the locals still jokingly called her Scattershot, including her brother, much to her irritation.
“I doubt either of them were devil fruit users, though. They definitely looked like rookies to me.”
Benn shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything. Even kids get a hold of devil fruit sometimes. I noticed the blonde kid was pretty sluggish until he dried off.” Thinking about it, this was true. Sedna frowned, glancing over at the spot where he had been sitting. “Though I doubt anyone would be very lively after falling in the water near the docks.”
“Is that what happened to them?”
“Their boat hit a block of ice and ended up sinking. They jumped across at least mile’s worth of ice blocks to get here, according to them. The towhead fell in twice.” Sedna laughed to herself quietly at this. “Seems his friend was right about him not being very sharp, if you ask me. And we should have made seven hundred and six thousand, seven hundred eighty four today.”
Sedna, who had just finished counting, set the money on the bar, looking back at her brother. “Seven hundred?” He looked up from the pad of paper he had just worked out the calculations on, in time to see it and his pen snatched away from him. “That can’t be right…”
“Why?”
“I definitely didn’t count that much. Here…” Sedna moved a little further down the bar and gestured to the neat stacks of coins and bills. “You double check mine, I’ll do inventory again to be sure. I probably made a mistake, I thought it seemed like a pretty low number with all the business today…”
“How much of a difference was there?”
“Around four hundred thousand.”
Benn finished counting quickly, given the bills were already sorted, and informed Sedna that he had come up with the same amount as her-three hundred and two thousand, two hundred twenty-three. It was another half an hour before Sedna finished tallying their inventory again. She dropped the notepad on the bar in disbelief. “That makes us more than four hundred thousand short,” she said slowly. “We should have had a profit today with what we sold of about three hundred thousand, that puts us one hundred behind the profit margin. We lost money somehow.” She looked incredulously at her brother, who picked up the pad of paper and scanned through again. “How could we have lost that much without noticing?”
“Money or inventory. My guess would be a little of both, but definitely more money.” He glanced down at the notes and coins on the counter. “I can’t think of any time this could have happened.”
“Those pirates.” Benn quirked an eyebrow at his sister. “Did you ever lose sight of either of them?”
“They stayed at the end of the bar the entire time they were here. I had my eye on them.”
“But if one of them was a devil fruit user, they might have been able to do something without anyone noticing…” He shrugged in a noncommittal sort of manner, not looking very convinced. “They even had motive-you said they lost their boat. They might have taken the money to buy another with.”
“They mentioned they needed another one, but they figured they had enough already to buy another dinghy.”
“They came here in a dinghy?” she replied, in disbelief. “Are they insane?”
“Probably,” Benn said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a slightly warped and wrinkled stack of papers, “but that's actually not why they had a dinghy. They had the caravel they bought in Loguetown stolen from them and the thief threw one down as he was leaving. I told them they won’t find anything much larger than a dinghy for sale here, so the odds of them stealing the money to buy a ship here seem pretty slim to me.” He dropped the papers on the counter and began sorting through them-receipts. Sedna reached into her apron pocket for hers.
“They’re still pirates,” she said, accepting the sheet of paper from the small pad that was handed to her. She retrieved a pen from a pocket on her apron and set to smoothing out the receipts to the best of her abilities. “Rookies or not. I don’t trust them. And I’m not even sure they are rookies; the blonde boy looked familiar.”
“You thought so too, huh?” Benn laughed. “I didn’t catch his name, either, so there’s not any way of knowing.”
“I don’t care who they are,” Sedna said. “They’re not coming back in here tomorrow.”
“Well, we’re going to be here all night, regardless,” he said, waving his stack of receipts at her. “But the sooner we finish here, the sooner we can go home. We’re going to need at least a few hours of sleep if we want to make back any of what we lost today tomorrow. We’ll probably have to pool our tips in with the earnings for a while to make up for the difference.”
Sedna nodded in response but, taking her brother’s advice, spoke no more and set straight to work. Still, though, she was sure it had to be those two rookie pirates. Rookies or not, pirates on the whole were lowly scoundrels. If they thought they were getting away with this sort of trickery, then neither of them were very sharp.