Fic: Deep Blue Sea (Chapter Five)
Just in time to start NaNoWriMo... This chapter is primarily action, so it might not be as good as the others... that, and it took a month to write nine pages. I fail.
Previous Chapters:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Interlude
Chapter Four
Title: Deep Blue Sea (Chapter Five)
Fandom: One Piece (c) Eiichiro Oda
Rating: PG-15 for language, violence, and mature themes
Summary: AU Warning. Myths and legends are reborn, men and monsters are set on conflicting paths, and all for the love of the Sea.
Chapter Five
The bitter wind played herald to the storm, carrying the scent of heavy rain and the subtle thrum of electricity to an otherwise peaceful morning.
Zeff read the danger signs and closed the restaurant. Every waiter and cook was set to work preparing for the promised tempest, and though some of the newer staff objected that the weather was mild and would stay so, the senior crew knew that Zeff was never wrong about these kinds of things. Besides which, Sanji’s sea-glass gaze kept wandering to the window and the distant skyline, coming back darker each time. That, they said, was a sure sign of trouble on the horizon.
From the deck of the Going Merry, Usopp and Luffy’s beloved - if somewhat battered - ship, the selkie strained to read the Sea’s warning. The subtleties of her speech were slurred by distance and the callousness of the messenger, but not so much that the seal-blooded sniper did not go pale and begin to shake upon receiving it.
Dark haired Luffy sat on the figured head of his ship and listened, a wide grin spread across his face and excitement sparkling in his eyes. He listened to the warning and nodded, stare fixed on a distant point beyond the place where sea and sky became one.
“I know,” he murmured back, wise and foolish all at once. “Soon.”
“You should go.” Sanji said to Usopp, watching the smoke of his cigarette be whipped away by the anxious wind. “Your ship looks fairly fast. You might outrun it.”
“What about you?” The selkie asked, despite already knowing the answer in his heart.
“The Baratie isn’t designed to run.” The chef shook his head. “She weathers a storm, and her crew protects her from everything else.”
“Sanji-“ Usopp reached out to his friend but paused as he noted the dark light in the seamaster’s eye.
“The shitty old man isn’t running,” he growled, “ and neither am I.”
“I-I-I… Great Captain Usopp does not flee from such paltry threats as this!” At Sanji’s amused, though still decidedly grim, expression, he hastily amended, “Though he may on occasion make tactical advances to the rear with great alacrity as the situation demands…”
“Get out of here while you can.” The seamaster’s eyes flickered to the west, where storm clouds were just starting to come into his keen view. “I don’t need saving from here.” He stubbed out his cigarette and went back to help with preparations.
“No.” Usopp watched his first friend walk away, and he sighed, turning to go find Luffy. “You need to be saved from yourself.”
True to Zeff’s prediction, a monstrous storm blew up on the west and started closing in fast. The weak-willed wait staff was evacuated early. When the tempest drew closer, the Baratie’s owner told his fighting cooks that if they were caught, there was little chance of survival. None of the chefs left.
The waves turned rough, donning white caps to rock the sturdy ship. The wind howled across the distance, a sound of inhuman suffering echoing in the aftermath. The crew shifted uneasily and watched the clouds blacken the sky. Sanji’s gaze continued to dart between the window and Zeff, though the master chef sat silent as a statue. Nearby, Usopp watched his friend with equal concern, and Luffy played a game with napkins that only he understood.
“Here it comes!” Yelled the watch as the force of the dark storm rose up with a huge wave.
Luffy looked up from his game and smiled at Usopp.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “She’ll take care of us. She always does.” The selkie nodded tersely, somewhat comforted by his captain’s confidence but not entirely at ease. Sanji exhaled a long stream of smoke with a sigh like the last breath of a sailor dragged down to the depths.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The waves stilled and the wind was silenced. The thunder and lightening halted and the rain died. The sky outside was a mottled dark gray and purple, and the becalmed sea was a completely smooth mirror to it.
And on that mirror sat the atrocious blemish of the patchwork man-of-war, the damned ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman.
No one moved. The battle-seasoned crew of the Baratie, well versed in the nautical nightmares that faced all seamen, could only stare in horror at the abomination of myth and man that floated towards them. Before their eyes, two figures scrambled overboard and hit the calmed sea with a heavy splash. The escaped pirates made a quick break for the Baratie, but to the collective horror of those watching, the men made it not twenty yards before a harpoon was thrown from the Dutchman’s upper deck with deadly accuracy. One escapee was skewered like a worm on a fishing hook and dragged back to the Dutchman; a warning, perhaps, to both crews. The other sank beneath the waves and did not rise.
“He has no respect for his nakama.” Luffy said gravely, as if it were the most heinous sin imaginable.
His words broke their silence, and the crew’s fears and doubts rushed to fill the void until each could hardly say a word above his neighbor.
“We’re going to die!”
“We should be so lucky!”
“It’s The Bastard!”
“He’ll press us into service on his hellspawn ship!”
“We should have run with the wait staff!”
“Let the shitty guppy come.” Sanji snorted. “He won’t find this restaurant to be taken like some fat merchant ship.”
“Don’t be hasty, baby mudskipper.” Zeff replied, the echo of his peg leg a pounding reminder of the flaw in the combat style passed down to his protégé. “We’ve already given The Bastard a bone to choke on.” It was only with the stubbornness of the tide itself that Sanji managed to restrict his reaction to a twitch of his too-tense jaw.
“It’s okay. I’m going to beat him anyway.” Luffy interrupted lightly, causing the jaws of the Baratie’s crew to make an abrupt acquaintance with the floor.
“Don’t make that kind of announcement casually!” Usopp smacked the other boy, being more familiar with the outlandish proclamation and therefore faster to recover. Two or three of the other cooks proceeded to relate in detail the Bastard’s ferocity, bloodlust, and all around maliciousness, though the young captain appeared unconcerned by their gruesome tales.
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered. “I’m going to beat him, and then I’ll sail for All Blue with and be friends with selkies and seamasters.”
On its own, the statement seemed absurd. Said by anyone else, it would be the last words of a very arrogant fool. When Luffy said it, it still sounded ridiculous, but some part of their hearts heard and dreamed anyway.
A heavy knock on the doors jolted everyone from the moment of budding hope.
“Open the doors!” snarled a voice thick with exhaustion and a hint of desperation. “Open the damn doors!”
Sanji lazily raised his curled eyebrow and took a step forwards, but one of the other cooks grabbed his shoulder.
“It’s a trap,” the cook said. “It’s one of the Bastard’s men.” The blond rolled his eyes and shrugged off the offending hand as if it were a piece of rotting seaweed.
“Dumbass, do you think that a guy who risked becoming shish kabob just to get off that floating junk heap is really going to have any loyalty to the Bastard? Do you think there’s even one member of his crew who probably wouldn’t dance a jig and piss on his corpse, given half the chance?”
He opened the door and almost staggered under the weight of the man who collapsed on top of him, still dripping seawater and bleeding where the harpoon grazed him. The runaway’s tan complexion was dulled from missing the sun, but still several shades darker than Sanji’s, and his haphazard smattering of facial hair gave him a roguish look.
“That’s one of Krieg’s men!” Another cook gasped. “Krieg’s been pressed into service on the Dutchman, too!”
“Can it, Carne.” Sanji growled, laying the man out on the floor and checking his breathing and pulse.
“What are the lot of you standing around for?” Zeff grunted, glowering at his cooks. “If that half-dead shitty eel can make it over here, the Dutchman isn’t going to be far behind. Go get armed!”
Luffy and Usopp stayed at the window while the Baratie’s crew rushed about behind them, their eyes fixed firmly on the ship outside.
“They’re coming abroad!” The selkie trembled. Moments later, a warning shot took off the topmost fin on the fish-shaped restaurant.
“How the devil that shitty guppy manages to keep dry powder, I’ll never guess.” Sanji snarled. He rose to join the rest of the crew preparing defenses, but his “patient” grabbed his arm and dragged him down. The half-drowned pirate wildly searched his savior’s eyes for any sign of intended cruelty, but was met only by cool calm.
“Don’t fight him,” the pirate gasped. “He makes it worse if you fight, and if you run, he makes it last.”
“I’m not afraid of the Bastard.”
“You should be. He’s got this thing chained up to the helm, some kind of devil that can’t die, and sometimes he’ll throw someone to it and then the screams-”
“GIN!” A voice bellowed from outside, causing him to flinch. “Come out here an die like a man, you pathetic coward!”
“I’m not afraid of the Bastard.” Sanji repeated, eyes dark and deadly and rousing bits of their old hurricane rage again. “He’s not the only fish in the sea with teeth.”
Aboard the Flying Dutchman, tensions were running at an all time high. The storm that kept the majority of Arlong’s crew prisoner was gone, but the calm left behind was every bit as daunting. It was never calm around the Dutchman. The Sea’s anger had never once abated in the history of her hatred for her wicked bastard child; whatever caused the calm was stronger than the legendary grudge of one of the mightiest forces of nature, and Arlong could smell it.
He paced the deck of his ship, jaw clenched tight and veins throbbing. His oil-black eyes skimmed the Baratie, the bright paintwork seeming to dim and decay as he searched for the source of the Sea’s peace.
“It reeks of her love.” He snapped at his current second, a man wearing elaborate, though somewhat battered, armor. Don Krieg, a powerful pirate in his own right, was about as loyal a second as the last man to fill the position, which meant not at all. Given the opportunity, he’d cheerfully fill his “captain” with more bullets than the navy could issue in ten years’ time. Lacking the opportunity, he bided his time and hoped to find Arlong’s weakness before the Bastard tired of him.
“More than one?” Krieg, who had little belief in the Sea’s metaphysical blessings or curses before running afoul of them firsthand, was nonetheless curious as to what could unnerve the more powerful pirate.
“I wonder who she thinks she’s going to protect.” Arlong cast his oily gaze towards the helm and cabins, then back to the Baratie. The front doors began to open, and, with a shark-like grin, he hefted a heavy whaling harpoon in his hand.
The harpoon flew with deadly accuracy. So did Sanji. Into the air he jumped, coming down with a sharp kick that split the shaft of the weapon and drove the metal spike deep into the wood of the deck. He turned to face the Flying Dutchman, and Luffy and Usopp stood beside him. The selkie’s knees quaked like ripples in a pond, but the young captain stood unperturbed.
“Arlong!” Luffy yelled at the top of his lungs, causing Usopp and several of the Baratie’s crewmembers to flinch. “Come down and fight! I’ve come to beat you!”
Arlong burst out laughing, and his crew followed suit.
“Give our little lady a nudge, boys.” He barked. “Let’s see just how much these kids want to play.”
“Little lady?” Sanji and Usopp exchanged a horrified glance before the young cook quickly spun around and shut the door with a fierce kick. “Cover your ears! Don’t listen!” The armed crew inside barely had time to overcome their confusion and comply before the sound hit.
Human language utterly lacked the capacity to describe it. It was a sound of pure desire, of longing so intense that even the ships moved on the becalmed water to be nearer to it. It was sorrow and heartache, the unmistakable, unrequited desire for freedom. Usopp wept to hear it, even though he was still close enough to the Sea by blood that he need not obey a siren’s calling. Beside him, Luffy’s face was drawn and dark with anger; he obviously recognized the source of the song. Sanji’s expression wavered. One moment it looked as if he would collapse beneath the undertow of grief and drown in the tumultuous pathos, the next his features hardened and crystallized like the never-melting glaciers to the north most horizon.
It distressed Usopp to see his friend so affected by the Sea’s charms, when the siren’s song should have broken against his own preternatural nature like the tide against a rocky shoal. As the eldest of the Sea’s creatures, seamasters were supposed to be immune to the powers of their younger relatives.
The song ended, and the Sea trembled in the silence it left behind.
The next moments were a blur of action, exploding chaos betwixt the two ships. On one side, Krieg made the mistake of trying to convince Arlong to fight the three personally. The disloyal second saw how the sea song did not affect them as it should, and hoped to steal the Dutchman while the Bastard was occupied. If they did beat him, it would be a miracle and a load off his mind. If not, he hoped to be far enough away for cannon fire before the fight was done. Arlong, being every bit as sneaky and underhanded as Krieg, recognized the motivation and pitched the man at the Baratie instead.
At the same time, Luffy and Sanji lunged for the Dutchman, intent on rushing Arlong. Luffy’s path was abruptly cut off as Krieg collided with him, and the two began to fight even as they fell back to the deck.
Sanji, with his long, strong legs, quickly scaled the man-o-war and leapt over the railing.
Usopp took aim with his slingshot, picking off the Bastard’s crew who came to the sides as Sanji made his ascent, only to freeze as Arlong himself came to greet the intruder. Every instinct in the selkie’s blood screamed at him to flee, to run from the deadly predator that stalked towards the seamaster.
But Luffy was fighting Krieg, a grown man nearly three times his own size. He fought with the same ferocity and fluid strength as a force of nature, heedless of the odds. Usopp couldn’t run when his captain, the man he trusted with his fate, his friend, was fighting so desperately.
His eyes flickered up to the Dutchman’s deck. Maybe he could get a good shot at Arlong. Maybe…
Usopp’s heart dropped as he saw Sanji, slender legs flashing like black blades. Each motion was full of the same power as his captain, but with a subtle, significant difference. For while Luffy was the Beloved of the Sea, given her power and claimed for her own, Sanji was of her, had been born of her, and would be of her until the day his last breath dissolved as foam on the waves.
Which, judging by how his fight with Arlong was going, might not be so far off.
Sanji twisted his leg out of the way just in time to avoid Arlong’s wicked teeth. The seamaster was strong and fast, true, but so was his opponent. Worse, he knew what kind of monster Arlong was, but the Bastard had no idea that it was one of the Sea’s firstborn he fought. If the Dutchman’s captain knew he faced one of the vengeful children of the Deep Blue Sea, his cruelty and hatred would increase tenfold. Sanji was having a hard time fighting him as it was, let alone without the added strength rage would induce.
He caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye, just a glimpse of a familiar shocked face in the direction of the helm. It was all the distraction Arlong needed.
The next thing he knew, pain tore through his body as those terrible, shark-like teeth ripped into his neck and shoulder, and his blood spilled across the deck.
It was red, he noticed dimly. Red like a human’s, red like a mortal’s. He wondered idly if it was red all along. He wondered, perhaps, if he had always been mortal, and everything before the last ten years was nothing more than a dream.
Darkness clouded his vision as Arlong hung him over the surface of the Sea, preparing to offer him as a mockery of a tribute. A drop of his oh-so-red blood fell to the water below, and he watched its descent with the morbid fascination of a man who could think of nothing else but salvation denied when so close at hand and the inevitable end that followed.
The drop hit the water, spreading black tendrils like wildfire. It tainted everything in rushing ripples of darkness, until the Sea was black and topped with angry foam. Her scream of rage and grief was audible to even the humans who had none of her blessing about them.
The waves rose up, harsh and vengeful, and then…
Nothing. Blissful, blessed nothing.
To Be Continued...
Author's Note: Expect updates to be about as frequent as they were with this chapter for at least the next month... I was foolish and joined NaNoWriMo. Action is so hard to write... And it's a lot of action here on out.
Previous Chapters:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Interlude
Chapter Four
Title: Deep Blue Sea (Chapter Five)
Fandom: One Piece (c) Eiichiro Oda
Rating: PG-15 for language, violence, and mature themes
Summary: AU Warning. Myths and legends are reborn, men and monsters are set on conflicting paths, and all for the love of the Sea.
Chapter Five
The bitter wind played herald to the storm, carrying the scent of heavy rain and the subtle thrum of electricity to an otherwise peaceful morning.
Zeff read the danger signs and closed the restaurant. Every waiter and cook was set to work preparing for the promised tempest, and though some of the newer staff objected that the weather was mild and would stay so, the senior crew knew that Zeff was never wrong about these kinds of things. Besides which, Sanji’s sea-glass gaze kept wandering to the window and the distant skyline, coming back darker each time. That, they said, was a sure sign of trouble on the horizon.
From the deck of the Going Merry, Usopp and Luffy’s beloved - if somewhat battered - ship, the selkie strained to read the Sea’s warning. The subtleties of her speech were slurred by distance and the callousness of the messenger, but not so much that the seal-blooded sniper did not go pale and begin to shake upon receiving it.
Dark haired Luffy sat on the figured head of his ship and listened, a wide grin spread across his face and excitement sparkling in his eyes. He listened to the warning and nodded, stare fixed on a distant point beyond the place where sea and sky became one.
“I know,” he murmured back, wise and foolish all at once. “Soon.”
“You should go.” Sanji said to Usopp, watching the smoke of his cigarette be whipped away by the anxious wind. “Your ship looks fairly fast. You might outrun it.”
“What about you?” The selkie asked, despite already knowing the answer in his heart.
“The Baratie isn’t designed to run.” The chef shook his head. “She weathers a storm, and her crew protects her from everything else.”
“Sanji-“ Usopp reached out to his friend but paused as he noted the dark light in the seamaster’s eye.
“The shitty old man isn’t running,” he growled, “ and neither am I.”
“I-I-I… Great Captain Usopp does not flee from such paltry threats as this!” At Sanji’s amused, though still decidedly grim, expression, he hastily amended, “Though he may on occasion make tactical advances to the rear with great alacrity as the situation demands…”
“Get out of here while you can.” The seamaster’s eyes flickered to the west, where storm clouds were just starting to come into his keen view. “I don’t need saving from here.” He stubbed out his cigarette and went back to help with preparations.
“No.” Usopp watched his first friend walk away, and he sighed, turning to go find Luffy. “You need to be saved from yourself.”
True to Zeff’s prediction, a monstrous storm blew up on the west and started closing in fast. The weak-willed wait staff was evacuated early. When the tempest drew closer, the Baratie’s owner told his fighting cooks that if they were caught, there was little chance of survival. None of the chefs left.
The waves turned rough, donning white caps to rock the sturdy ship. The wind howled across the distance, a sound of inhuman suffering echoing in the aftermath. The crew shifted uneasily and watched the clouds blacken the sky. Sanji’s gaze continued to dart between the window and Zeff, though the master chef sat silent as a statue. Nearby, Usopp watched his friend with equal concern, and Luffy played a game with napkins that only he understood.
“Here it comes!” Yelled the watch as the force of the dark storm rose up with a huge wave.
Luffy looked up from his game and smiled at Usopp.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “She’ll take care of us. She always does.” The selkie nodded tersely, somewhat comforted by his captain’s confidence but not entirely at ease. Sanji exhaled a long stream of smoke with a sigh like the last breath of a sailor dragged down to the depths.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The waves stilled and the wind was silenced. The thunder and lightening halted and the rain died. The sky outside was a mottled dark gray and purple, and the becalmed sea was a completely smooth mirror to it.
And on that mirror sat the atrocious blemish of the patchwork man-of-war, the damned ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman.
No one moved. The battle-seasoned crew of the Baratie, well versed in the nautical nightmares that faced all seamen, could only stare in horror at the abomination of myth and man that floated towards them. Before their eyes, two figures scrambled overboard and hit the calmed sea with a heavy splash. The escaped pirates made a quick break for the Baratie, but to the collective horror of those watching, the men made it not twenty yards before a harpoon was thrown from the Dutchman’s upper deck with deadly accuracy. One escapee was skewered like a worm on a fishing hook and dragged back to the Dutchman; a warning, perhaps, to both crews. The other sank beneath the waves and did not rise.
“He has no respect for his nakama.” Luffy said gravely, as if it were the most heinous sin imaginable.
His words broke their silence, and the crew’s fears and doubts rushed to fill the void until each could hardly say a word above his neighbor.
“We’re going to die!”
“We should be so lucky!”
“It’s The Bastard!”
“He’ll press us into service on his hellspawn ship!”
“We should have run with the wait staff!”
“Let the shitty guppy come.” Sanji snorted. “He won’t find this restaurant to be taken like some fat merchant ship.”
“Don’t be hasty, baby mudskipper.” Zeff replied, the echo of his peg leg a pounding reminder of the flaw in the combat style passed down to his protégé. “We’ve already given The Bastard a bone to choke on.” It was only with the stubbornness of the tide itself that Sanji managed to restrict his reaction to a twitch of his too-tense jaw.
“It’s okay. I’m going to beat him anyway.” Luffy interrupted lightly, causing the jaws of the Baratie’s crew to make an abrupt acquaintance with the floor.
“Don’t make that kind of announcement casually!” Usopp smacked the other boy, being more familiar with the outlandish proclamation and therefore faster to recover. Two or three of the other cooks proceeded to relate in detail the Bastard’s ferocity, bloodlust, and all around maliciousness, though the young captain appeared unconcerned by their gruesome tales.
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered. “I’m going to beat him, and then I’ll sail for All Blue with and be friends with selkies and seamasters.”
On its own, the statement seemed absurd. Said by anyone else, it would be the last words of a very arrogant fool. When Luffy said it, it still sounded ridiculous, but some part of their hearts heard and dreamed anyway.
A heavy knock on the doors jolted everyone from the moment of budding hope.
“Open the doors!” snarled a voice thick with exhaustion and a hint of desperation. “Open the damn doors!”
Sanji lazily raised his curled eyebrow and took a step forwards, but one of the other cooks grabbed his shoulder.
“It’s a trap,” the cook said. “It’s one of the Bastard’s men.” The blond rolled his eyes and shrugged off the offending hand as if it were a piece of rotting seaweed.
“Dumbass, do you think that a guy who risked becoming shish kabob just to get off that floating junk heap is really going to have any loyalty to the Bastard? Do you think there’s even one member of his crew who probably wouldn’t dance a jig and piss on his corpse, given half the chance?”
He opened the door and almost staggered under the weight of the man who collapsed on top of him, still dripping seawater and bleeding where the harpoon grazed him. The runaway’s tan complexion was dulled from missing the sun, but still several shades darker than Sanji’s, and his haphazard smattering of facial hair gave him a roguish look.
“That’s one of Krieg’s men!” Another cook gasped. “Krieg’s been pressed into service on the Dutchman, too!”
“Can it, Carne.” Sanji growled, laying the man out on the floor and checking his breathing and pulse.
“What are the lot of you standing around for?” Zeff grunted, glowering at his cooks. “If that half-dead shitty eel can make it over here, the Dutchman isn’t going to be far behind. Go get armed!”
Luffy and Usopp stayed at the window while the Baratie’s crew rushed about behind them, their eyes fixed firmly on the ship outside.
“They’re coming abroad!” The selkie trembled. Moments later, a warning shot took off the topmost fin on the fish-shaped restaurant.
“How the devil that shitty guppy manages to keep dry powder, I’ll never guess.” Sanji snarled. He rose to join the rest of the crew preparing defenses, but his “patient” grabbed his arm and dragged him down. The half-drowned pirate wildly searched his savior’s eyes for any sign of intended cruelty, but was met only by cool calm.
“Don’t fight him,” the pirate gasped. “He makes it worse if you fight, and if you run, he makes it last.”
“I’m not afraid of the Bastard.”
“You should be. He’s got this thing chained up to the helm, some kind of devil that can’t die, and sometimes he’ll throw someone to it and then the screams-”
“GIN!” A voice bellowed from outside, causing him to flinch. “Come out here an die like a man, you pathetic coward!”
“I’m not afraid of the Bastard.” Sanji repeated, eyes dark and deadly and rousing bits of their old hurricane rage again. “He’s not the only fish in the sea with teeth.”
Aboard the Flying Dutchman, tensions were running at an all time high. The storm that kept the majority of Arlong’s crew prisoner was gone, but the calm left behind was every bit as daunting. It was never calm around the Dutchman. The Sea’s anger had never once abated in the history of her hatred for her wicked bastard child; whatever caused the calm was stronger than the legendary grudge of one of the mightiest forces of nature, and Arlong could smell it.
He paced the deck of his ship, jaw clenched tight and veins throbbing. His oil-black eyes skimmed the Baratie, the bright paintwork seeming to dim and decay as he searched for the source of the Sea’s peace.
“It reeks of her love.” He snapped at his current second, a man wearing elaborate, though somewhat battered, armor. Don Krieg, a powerful pirate in his own right, was about as loyal a second as the last man to fill the position, which meant not at all. Given the opportunity, he’d cheerfully fill his “captain” with more bullets than the navy could issue in ten years’ time. Lacking the opportunity, he bided his time and hoped to find Arlong’s weakness before the Bastard tired of him.
“More than one?” Krieg, who had little belief in the Sea’s metaphysical blessings or curses before running afoul of them firsthand, was nonetheless curious as to what could unnerve the more powerful pirate.
“I wonder who she thinks she’s going to protect.” Arlong cast his oily gaze towards the helm and cabins, then back to the Baratie. The front doors began to open, and, with a shark-like grin, he hefted a heavy whaling harpoon in his hand.
The harpoon flew with deadly accuracy. So did Sanji. Into the air he jumped, coming down with a sharp kick that split the shaft of the weapon and drove the metal spike deep into the wood of the deck. He turned to face the Flying Dutchman, and Luffy and Usopp stood beside him. The selkie’s knees quaked like ripples in a pond, but the young captain stood unperturbed.
“Arlong!” Luffy yelled at the top of his lungs, causing Usopp and several of the Baratie’s crewmembers to flinch. “Come down and fight! I’ve come to beat you!”
Arlong burst out laughing, and his crew followed suit.
“Give our little lady a nudge, boys.” He barked. “Let’s see just how much these kids want to play.”
“Little lady?” Sanji and Usopp exchanged a horrified glance before the young cook quickly spun around and shut the door with a fierce kick. “Cover your ears! Don’t listen!” The armed crew inside barely had time to overcome their confusion and comply before the sound hit.
Human language utterly lacked the capacity to describe it. It was a sound of pure desire, of longing so intense that even the ships moved on the becalmed water to be nearer to it. It was sorrow and heartache, the unmistakable, unrequited desire for freedom. Usopp wept to hear it, even though he was still close enough to the Sea by blood that he need not obey a siren’s calling. Beside him, Luffy’s face was drawn and dark with anger; he obviously recognized the source of the song. Sanji’s expression wavered. One moment it looked as if he would collapse beneath the undertow of grief and drown in the tumultuous pathos, the next his features hardened and crystallized like the never-melting glaciers to the north most horizon.
It distressed Usopp to see his friend so affected by the Sea’s charms, when the siren’s song should have broken against his own preternatural nature like the tide against a rocky shoal. As the eldest of the Sea’s creatures, seamasters were supposed to be immune to the powers of their younger relatives.
The song ended, and the Sea trembled in the silence it left behind.
The next moments were a blur of action, exploding chaos betwixt the two ships. On one side, Krieg made the mistake of trying to convince Arlong to fight the three personally. The disloyal second saw how the sea song did not affect them as it should, and hoped to steal the Dutchman while the Bastard was occupied. If they did beat him, it would be a miracle and a load off his mind. If not, he hoped to be far enough away for cannon fire before the fight was done. Arlong, being every bit as sneaky and underhanded as Krieg, recognized the motivation and pitched the man at the Baratie instead.
At the same time, Luffy and Sanji lunged for the Dutchman, intent on rushing Arlong. Luffy’s path was abruptly cut off as Krieg collided with him, and the two began to fight even as they fell back to the deck.
Sanji, with his long, strong legs, quickly scaled the man-o-war and leapt over the railing.
Usopp took aim with his slingshot, picking off the Bastard’s crew who came to the sides as Sanji made his ascent, only to freeze as Arlong himself came to greet the intruder. Every instinct in the selkie’s blood screamed at him to flee, to run from the deadly predator that stalked towards the seamaster.
But Luffy was fighting Krieg, a grown man nearly three times his own size. He fought with the same ferocity and fluid strength as a force of nature, heedless of the odds. Usopp couldn’t run when his captain, the man he trusted with his fate, his friend, was fighting so desperately.
His eyes flickered up to the Dutchman’s deck. Maybe he could get a good shot at Arlong. Maybe…
Usopp’s heart dropped as he saw Sanji, slender legs flashing like black blades. Each motion was full of the same power as his captain, but with a subtle, significant difference. For while Luffy was the Beloved of the Sea, given her power and claimed for her own, Sanji was of her, had been born of her, and would be of her until the day his last breath dissolved as foam on the waves.
Which, judging by how his fight with Arlong was going, might not be so far off.
Sanji twisted his leg out of the way just in time to avoid Arlong’s wicked teeth. The seamaster was strong and fast, true, but so was his opponent. Worse, he knew what kind of monster Arlong was, but the Bastard had no idea that it was one of the Sea’s firstborn he fought. If the Dutchman’s captain knew he faced one of the vengeful children of the Deep Blue Sea, his cruelty and hatred would increase tenfold. Sanji was having a hard time fighting him as it was, let alone without the added strength rage would induce.
He caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye, just a glimpse of a familiar shocked face in the direction of the helm. It was all the distraction Arlong needed.
The next thing he knew, pain tore through his body as those terrible, shark-like teeth ripped into his neck and shoulder, and his blood spilled across the deck.
It was red, he noticed dimly. Red like a human’s, red like a mortal’s. He wondered idly if it was red all along. He wondered, perhaps, if he had always been mortal, and everything before the last ten years was nothing more than a dream.
Darkness clouded his vision as Arlong hung him over the surface of the Sea, preparing to offer him as a mockery of a tribute. A drop of his oh-so-red blood fell to the water below, and he watched its descent with the morbid fascination of a man who could think of nothing else but salvation denied when so close at hand and the inevitable end that followed.
The drop hit the water, spreading black tendrils like wildfire. It tainted everything in rushing ripples of darkness, until the Sea was black and topped with angry foam. Her scream of rage and grief was audible to even the humans who had none of her blessing about them.
The waves rose up, harsh and vengeful, and then…
Nothing. Blissful, blessed nothing.
To Be Continued...
Author's Note: Expect updates to be about as frequent as they were with this chapter for at least the next month... I was foolish and joined NaNoWriMo. Action is so hard to write... And it's a lot of action here on out.