[fic] Uppity Pirates - Chapter 04 ~The Moneyman~
Title: Uppity Pirates
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame, RyoPi. Other possibly later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: fantasy? It's got pirates...
Beta by: my cat. okay, seriously, nobody
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Captain Kame and his bold crew of "adventurers" take to the seas in search of wealth and fame and cheesecake. Or, well, if they can't have all of that, then at least wealth and fame. They can always buy cheesecake later.
An Important Note: Whenever it refers to "I" or "me" it is in fact referring to me, the writer. When the characters address "you" it really is referring to you, the readers.
Author's Note: Sorry about the delay. But here's last night's chapter with hope that I'll still get a new one up tonight. It's the weekend so I can stay up later on the one hand, but it's the weekend so I'll have more hubby-related stuff distracting me LOL.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - Uppity Pirates Master Post
On the akame_ Community - Uppity Pirates Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - Uppity Pirates Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - Uppity Pirates Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - Uppity Pirates Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - Uppity Pirates Master Post
Chapter 04 ~The Moneyman~
Ren and Ueda settled in readily enough and Captain Kame assigned Tegoshi the job of showing the two of them around. He’d have normally done it himself (with such a small crew, he tried to take a hands-on approach regardless of position to cut back on potential mutinies) but he needed a few hours of sleep himself.
Plus, he had a man to go threaten.
The truth of the matter was, most pirates did not bury their loot. After all, how can you spend money you’ve hidden away on some deserted stretch of land? Also, currency wasn’t the only form of loot a pirate might seize. The Real Face had raided ships carrying everything from spices to textiles to, well, anything that could be bought or sold.
Most of the major ports had some sort of moneyman. For a slice of the profits, pirates (or, well, probably regular merchants as well but they didn’t count!) could bring their wealth to a moneyman. That man would take care of the selling of non-currency riches and would make sure the captain and his men had access to the loot for purchases in the city.
It wasn’t perfect. Every now and again, a moneyman would go bad… er, well, worse, at any rate and try to rip off the crews investing with him.
But with pirates for clients, most moneymen wouldn’t dare sell them out or steal from them.
Their other clients from the city itself…. now, that was another matter. For the right price, a pirate could get all kinds of information on the rest of the wealth moving through the city. More specifically, shipping routes and schedules.
Every now and again, though, something special turned up.
The moneyman the Real Face crew used in Crystal City was a man named Koyama Keiichiro. He was the one that told Captain Kame about the map.
Apparently, one of Koyama’s wealthy clients (he hadn’t yet said who) from between the twin rivers had come into possession of a partial old map that would supposedly lead the owner to the riches of the greatest pirate hoard ever - the infamous Tackey’s entire haul. It was hard to imagine the sheer amount of wealth to be found because it was just so massive.
The legend said that Tackey didn’t trust moneymen so instead, he’d hidden his haul away somewhere that could only be found if you knew where to look. The map was divided into four pieces, three of them given away to various crew members and one kept by himself. Of course, there was also some silly story about a curse, but who believed that these days? Honestly…
When the Real Face had pulled into dock a few days ago, Koyama had sent a message that one of his land-based clients had gotten ahold of a piece of the map and that he and Captain Kame should meet.
Normally, his pirating was done on the water, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. If Koyama’s judgment was true, that map was their ticket to fame and fortune.
Only the next thing Kame knew, they were being attacked by a rival pirate gang in the Scared Unicorn.
It couldn’t be coincidence.
So now, Kame had to go to Koyama and have a little “chat” with the man. But he wasn’t going to go alone. Not this time. He was going to bring Koki and Ryo with him.
Okay, so Koki might not be nearly as vicious as he looked, but the fact remained that he looked downright scary. And Ryo might not look quite as scary but if he had need, he could be quite violently persuasive.
Kame would rather have brought Jin with him but since “someone” got the man drunk (Kame gave me a tiny glare), he was sleeping it off still.
Koyama didn’t look particularly happy to see Kame and his men.
“Ah… hello, K-kame. Um… good day for sailing?” Koyama gave a nervous laugh.
Oh, good. That meant the man knew why they’d come. That saved them a whole lot of explaining and threatening. Kame snapped his fingers and Koki and Ryo took a couple of steps towards the man.
“Hey, no need for that!” and Koyama frowned. “You pay me for info, not exclusivity. If you want to alter that arrangement…”
With a bit of a snarl, Kame said, “You sent the crew of the Sayaendou against us in the Scared Unicorn.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t just let this pass.” And Kame gave a tired sigh. “Koki, break one of his legs or something.”
“I don’t wanna break people’s legs. Make Ryo do it,” Koki complained.
Ryo shook his head, waving his hand out in front of himself. “I don’t mind hitting him but I’m not going to break his legs. Why can’t you do it, Kame?”
“I’m the boss. That implies I already went through the part of my life where I was the one breaking the legs.” Kame frowned.
“Can we… I dunno, write him a strongly worded letter or something?” This time, Kame was addressing me.
“It’s not very piratey, is it?” I responded.
“But… we don’t want to break legs. This is a comedy. You know, a strongly worded letter would be funnier,” Ryo said.
With a laugh, I said, “True, you smooth-talker you. Okay, okay. Koyama?”
“Yes?”
“Pretend a strongly worded letter is even scarier than getting your legs broken and I’ll give you a piece of the cheesecake from my fridge for the effort. I’m not really fond of the turtle ones with the nuts and the caramel, so… But don’t touch my triple chocolate or I will break your legs.”
Everyone sort of glanced back and forth at each other, but Koyama agreed and so everyone finally stepped back into character.
“Koki, write him a strongly worded letter telling him how very, very angry we are,” Captain Kame ordered.
“Wait! Anything but that! I can explain!”
“Listening.”
“I thought you’d want their piece of the map, too.”
“Wait, what? They have part of the map?” Kame asked, completely surprised by this turn of events.
While Kame was busy talking to Koyama, Koki whispered to me, “Did we get their map piece from them during ‘The Incident’ then?”
I shook my head and put my finger to my lips in what I hoped he’d interpret as a polite “shut up” so that I could pay attention to the dialogue between Kame and Koyama.
“… have to track them back down, too? You better be right about the authenticity of this map!”
“I know my maps, Captain Kame. Trust me. Oh, and that reminds me…”
Apparently he wasn’t going to need Koki and Ryo’s help after all. “Yes?”
“The man who has the first piece of the map… You’re not going to like this.”
“Who is it?”
“Look, just show up here around noon tomorrow and see for yourself. Maybe you can follow him from here.”
Right. Like they needed some moneyman to tell them how to rob people. They may not be out to sea but they were still pirates, damn it!
Koyama must have figured out he wasn’t about to die and the conversation turned towards business. Kame mentioned having replaced Bob, and that a quarter of that share was to be spread around to the rest of the men. He didn’t mention Tatsuya since he wouldn’t be coming to shore in Crystal City anytime soon. Ren would get the lad whatever he needed from shore.
“…and Yoko, Massu, and Tegoshi will be directing the reupping of our supplies so expect them to drop by in about an hour and a half for notes of credit, from the supply account, not the personal accounts.”
Koyama nodded. He looked very relieved that he’d dodged the dreaded strongly worded letter, but Kame couldn’t help but notice the slight tremble as he shook the man’s hand.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 05 ~The Slave Merchant~
A/N: So, yeah. Treasure map. Rival pirate gang. Mysterious map-fragment owner.
FEAR THE STRONGLY WORDED LETTER! MUAHAHA THE STRONGLY WORDED LETTER DOESN'T CARE WHO IT DESTROYS!!
LOL okay, now that's out of my system and I can get Un-Silly-Fied so I can go wash dishes and sweep the kitchen.