[Talk Like a Pirate Day] Chapter 8: "Hornswaggle"
STORY TITLE: "Talk Like a Pirate Day"
CHAPTER: 8 - "Hornswaggle"
SERIES: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, xxxHoLic, X/1999, Tokyo Babylon
DISCLAIMER: Everything in the CLAMP Megaverse was originally created by CLAMP. They are entirely to blame for creating a system of crossovers that do not easily disclaim. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.
PAIRINGS: Kurogane x Fai D. Fluorite (main). References made to: Doumeki Shizuka x Watanuki Kimihiro, Aoki Seiichirou x Kasumi Karen, Li Syaoran x Princess Sakura, Sakurazuka Seishirou x Sumeragi Subaru, Clow Reed x Ichihara Yuuko, Ashura-Ou x Fai D. Fluorite, Monou Fuuma x Shirou Kamui, Shirou Kamui x Monou Kotori (this list applies to the work as a whole and may not be depicted equally in every chapter)
RATING: PG-13. Strong language and vigorous discussion of sexual situations.
WARNINGS: 1) Pirates. 2) Ninjas. 3) No Kamuis have been harmed (much) in the writing of this fic.
SEQUEL TO: Rum & Popcorn
SUMMARY: Long ago, in a universe slightly askew to this one, circumstances beyond anyone's control led to a fierce and bitter rivalry between Pirates and Ninjas, but Kurogane doesn't care about that. His only concern is to retrieve Princess Sakura and Syaoran from the Pirate King's ship...
Which doesn't mean he'd intended to end up in the pirates' gossip column.
Previously...
1: Ahoy, Matey!
2: Drivelswigger
3: Jolly Roger
4: Shot Across the Bow
5: Batten Down the Hatches
6: Athwartships
7: Futtock Shrouds
Hornswaggle (v) to cheat; to gain another's money or property by fraud
The roll of the waves outside beat a slow, grim march on the hull -- the only sound to be heard as the report they'd just received had stolen the voice of every pirate in the room. They'd been waiting here below, with jaws locked and hands clenched on cutlasses through the kind of battle a man might have killed to fight, all to hear... that. And when the silence finally broke, Kamui had to assume four of his shipmates had gone insane.
More insane, anyway.
In an instant, the cabin filled with laughter, from Lady Kasumi snickering politely into Lord Aoki's shoulder to Yuzuriha bracing herself on the bedpost to keep from doubling over. Arashi kept her her head, of course. She looked like Kamui felt: far too appalled to smile. Laughing was out of the question.
"The hell you say," Sorata gasped through his giggles. "I can't believe I lived long enough to see the Sumeragi tell a joke."
If anyone else had given that report, he might have been laughing along with them, but...
First of all, everyone in that room should have known better than to think Subaru would tell a joke, let alone a bad joke, let alone when the situation was practically a disaster -- no thanks to one Fai D. Fluorite, King of Pirates. If the other lords didn't already understand that, then they should have noticed how blank their navigator's face had turned when they'd started splitting their sides. The Sumeragi didn't joke.
Which brought Kamui to his second reason to be appalled. Ninja didn't and shouldn't ask for parlay. What in the seven drowned hells had happened on deck? And why in all the rest of them hadn't that kinky fucking dandy of a Pirate King let him do something about that ninja before matters had turned inexplicable? He wouldn't have destroyed the ship. One little armada turned to toothpicks, and he had to spend how many years living it down? The boats hadn't even been that well built! That didn't mean he was incapable of taking one ninja alive. Fai hadn't needed to bother Subaru about it.
Then again, Fai might have known Kurogane would pull a low trick like that. Tricky people could sense when someone else was being tricky -- one of the many random things the blond flake was annoyingly good at, like dodging, punching, and baking first-class confections. One of these days, Kamui would manage to explain to him that even the double chocolate chip cookies didn't give him the right to act like all of piracy was one big game of dress-up that he could twirl around at his whim.
Although they were very, very good cookies.
Whether or not His Grace had figured the Sumeragi's battle would come to this, his chuckle wasn't a chuckle of disbelief like the rest of the room's laughter. It was clearly a chuckle of triumph. "Ladies and gentlemen," Fai announced, and swung his legs over the side of the bed to pull on his boots. "I think you'll find he's serious."
With that, the King had successfully killed every laugh in the room except his own. As he touched his toes to stretch, and as he hopped off toward the looking-glass, that laugh kept ringing like a faraway chime on the wind. Kamui felt his eye twitch at the sight of him prancing across the floor like this wasn't one of the more grievous breaches of right, propriety, and justice the pirate world had ever known.
"Parlay, is it?" the blond asked. "And me without my waistcoat!"
There was just something wrong about that.
As suddenly as the room had fallen silent, all the pirates objected from every side (except, again, for Arashi, who took a chair and rolled her eyes). "But he can't be serious!" Lady Kasumi gasped. "Ninja asking for parlay?"
"That's like something you'd read in the Daily Picaroon," followed Lord Aoki.
None of this seemed to reach the man who was already preening himself in front of the mirror like a cockatiel in mating season. Kamui knew better than to think Fai wasn't listening or that he couldn't hear, because whenever he thought that, it ended with the Pirate King appearing behind him to ask what he meant by thus-and-such. It wouldn't be so bad if there were any kind of warning, but no. He seemed to zip out of nowhere as if by goosebump-inducing magic, and all the while wearing a grin fit to whip the rigging. Safer to assume Fai was just pretending to ignore the lot of them.
Because he was an ass.
"This ninja does," Subaru replied instead, giving the crowd all the answer they were likely to get, then joined the King at his bureau. More softly, he told Fai, "Don't forget your cravat."
Kamui's jaw just about hit the floor when the Sumeragi took a pile of silk lace off the corner of his mirror and handed it over. Wasn't His Grace's own cabin ten steps down the corridor? Could he not be bothered--
No, of course he couldn't. What had he been thinking?
"You'd think that if ninja knew they could parlay, they'd have done it before," Yuzuriha chirped, jumping up and down in her ankle boots. She and the rest of the council were understandably more interested in the odd behavior of the ninja than in the King's perfectly normal toilette, but not a one of them seemed as concerned as they should have been that a goddamned spy/rescue operative had gotten onto the ship under all of their noses, successfully impersonating a pirate and quoting articles out of the goddamned Code. He hadn't seen this kind of delighted commotion since the day Keiichi had realized you could make a pinata that dodged if you hung it from the jib.
"Doesn't anybody care how he got his information?" Kamui snapped. "What if he's the reason the 'Pink Ross' went down? What if he tortured the crew to find out he could ask for parlay? And if I may remind you, any pirate who did that in the middle of a fight would be a laughingstock right now."
The captain shrugged and ruffled Kamui's hair. Kamui hated it when people ruffled his hair. "Yeah, but he's a ninja. That's kind of cool."
"Besides, there's no reason why he would have needed to torture the anyone." Lord Aoki pulled his logbook and his pen out of his pocket and scratched out a few lines . "The Pirate Code isn't any kind of a secret. He could have asked normally."
Kamui felt his ill humor coming out in a snarl, watching so many others take this so easy. "Since when does a ninja ask anything normally? It's always, 'Tell me what I need to know or you'll have to learn to walk without that leg' or something! Do you think Kurogane will even respect the terms of parlay?"
The Code couldn't mean anything to him. He'd probably be trying to run while the King was prettying himself up with that lace around his throat, no matter what Subaru had done to tie him in place. Ninja weren't gentlemen. He was trying to buy time to get away with the princess and her bodyguard, obviously, and if Fai kept acting like this was some messed-up kind of a date instead of the tactic of an enemy prisoner, he'd succeed!
"Just because ninja can be uncouth doesn't mean we have to be," their artillery mistress declared. As she cuddled up to the Oathkeeper's side she laughed again, all her surprise from earlier giving way to excitement. "Honestly, Kamui. You'd consider not granting a parlay? If I were Princess Kotori, I might call off your engagement for that."
"For the last time, we're not..." He trailed off as the red-head hid a fresh giggle behind her hand. "If you know we're not engaged, don't bring it up!" Bad enough he got that from all the tabloids. He might marry her someday -- only one reason why he wouldn't -- but every time someone wrote it or said it like it was decided, he couldn't look Fuuma in the eye for a week. Pirates weren't supposed to have trouble knowing what they wanted.
Karen the Blaze summoned a few flames to dance across her fingertips. "There'll be enough time to light some powder kegs if the ninja makes trouble."
"He's already making trouble!" Wandering over to Subaru's bed, Kamui took a seat and pointed their attention at the blond who was adjusting his cravat and straightening his collar. "This is the man who took one look at an enemy he knew was Kurogane and said, 'Send him to my bunk, I need a piece of that!' How are you expecting a parlay? They're just going to have sex! Again! And then the ninja, who's probably counting on that because that's predictable, will escape. Again!"
Yuzuriha popped over beside the bed to poke him in the cheek. "And then we'll catch him... again. Don't you want the chance to?"
Of course he did. He was even sure he could do it, even though he admitted that one-on-one wasn't a safe plan for most of them -- which Kamui didn't point out, since Subaru didn't like it when people said he was special -- but all six of them together could take the ninja down. It was worth a shot. Subaru shouldn't have to clean up Fai's messing around twice in as many hours, after all. The navigator might never breathe a word in complaint, but that didn't make it right.
"Besides, scoring during a parlay isn't against the rules," Sorata added with a nod to Lord Aoki. "It's extra points, right? Like, triple?"
At which the council secretary pulled out his other ledger. Because no matter how seriously Kamui tried to take any given situation, nothing ever got in the way of figuring out the points for getting laid in that situation. He kept hoping that the way Arashi always shot down the captain (and anybody else, but mostly the captain) would convince Sorata to take some pity on the rest of the people who weren't getting any and didn't care even a little bit. But no. He was right in the middle every time.
"If you get five times the points for a ninja and triple points for a parlay," Lady Kasumi asked, "does that mean you get fifteen times the points for a ninja parlay?"
Sorata scrunched up his nose and crossed his arms across his chest. "Just eight times, I think... But shouldn't we start with the base score? I mean, the man's hot, but is he a nine or a--"
"He's a ten," Kamui groaned, and on every side of him the walls echoed back a room full of pirates answering in chorus. Even Subaru, who usually couldn't be bothered to have an opinion on that -- though he did sound like he just wanted the conversation over and out of his room. Besides, that the ninja smoldered was more 'one of those cruel, incontrovertible facts of the universe that plagued his life' than 'an opinion'. The fact that Arashi had thrown in her voice, too, was all the proof you needed of that.
And the betrayed puppy eyes the captain turned on her were, as ever, a sight to behold.
Lord Aoki wasted no time in marking down the numbers. "He's one of a kind as well, which gives him a base score of a full hundred..."
No surprise there. Kamui had thought it was obvious the ninja ranked with Fuuma as soon as he'd heard who he was. Or, he supposed, Arashi and Subaru each rated a hundred, too -- and technically That Man -- but his two shipmates were untouchable and if anyone had ever touched the Barrows-guard, he really didn't want to know. The bastard.
"... Kamui! Are you listening?" Yuzuriha asked as she nudged his shoulder.
"What?"
"We're trying to guess what His Grace's multiplier was for after dinner. You saw what they were doing, right?"
He could feel his hair standing on end, so vehemently that it just about hurt. "Just part of it! And that doesn't mean I want to remember!"
As she yanked his hands to pull him off the bed, Kamui got a bad feeling from her smile. Straight-up nausea, in fact. Probably less because of Yuzuriha's glee and more from being forced to recall certain events that pitiless fate would never let him scrub from his mind thanks to too many years of repeated exposure. "Come on! It's for a good cause. We need to know more than, 'He was tied up'!"
Somehow, Kamui was certain it was no coincidence that when the lady let go his hands, he ran back-first into Sorata.
"Captain, do you have any rope?"
"Somewhere--"
"No!" Kamui yelled. "No, no, no, no, no! No bondage re-enactments!"
Lady Kasumi's pout was deadly, but Kamui was pretty sure he was deadlier. "You look so much prettier in bondage than the rest of us," she sighed. "Even me." Lord Aoki nodded in agreement, too cool to be called 'begrudging' about it though he looked like it was a hard choice.
Must not kill my shipmates. Must not kill my shipmates.
Fuuma never had to put up with this shit. He made up for it by having to serve with pirates who were the most murderous group of anti-social assholes ever assembled (except maybe Kakyou, who was just anti-social), but the fact remained that no one ever tied him up because they thought he 'looked pretty' that way. But these were good people, who always had his back in a fight, and if he snapped on them, Fuuma would be sad, and Kotori would be sad... and maybe Subaru wouldn't care as long as it was what he really wanted, but it wasn't what he really wanted. Moreover, it wasn't what Subaru would do.
Subaru had dignity. He just had to brush someone off, and they'd stop bothering him, usually for at least a month. Times like now, when Kamui's fellow pirates were shoving him left and right and posing Sorata around him, he could try to push their hands away and he could try giving them the long-suffering look that Subaru was so good at, but it didn't work. At least they weren't getting out the rope. With a sigh, he let Yuzuriha push him onto his knees and put his hands behind his back when Lady Kasumi asked about how Fai had been tied. He could trust the people on the 'Dragon of Earth' not to actually do anything, and the fastest way to get out of this was to ignore his shipmates while they figured out whatever they felt they needed to figure out.
That's what Subaru did, and someday Kamui knew he'd manage it just as well.
In fact, across the room, the Sumeragi was ignoring everything right now and staring into space. It wasn't his normal look, though. It was the one he only got when the 'Dragon of Earth' sailed to meet them. No one but Yuzuriha liked it when that lot showed up, and even she didn't care for the hell ship's navigator, but they could all tell it bothered Subaru most. They didn't know why, exactly, and Kamui didn't plan to tell his friend's secrets. Even so, he didn't comprehend how they could see that look on his face now without realizing. He was in love with the Barrows-guard. So much it hurt, though That Man had surely never done anything to make it hurt less.
Fai could tell. Kamui saw a similar look in the King's eyes sometimes. Not as often, since he was good at hiding.
But sometimes.
As he focused in on the two of them, he caught a snatch of the blond murmuring. "-- glossed over the status of our Princess," he said. Kamui did his best to tune out the ruckus around him and listen for more. "Unharmed, I hope?"
Just as he was about to yell at the pirates hovering around his head to gag the talk about points, because the hostages were actually important, Subaru met his eyes and hinted with a quiet glance that he should keep his mouth shut. So shut it he did. "Gone," the navigator replied, barely above a whisper. His tone was as gentle as ever, but decidedly unapologetic, which was odd. Subaru usually sounded sorry for everything that went wrong, whether he'd done it or not. "Princess Sakura and her companion managed to slip away from their guards on deck during the commotion, but the crewmen in question shouldn't be reprimanded. I take full responsibility for the situation."
"I'm sure."
The volume around him kept escalating, making it hard to hear if anything else was being said over where he cared what people were saying. 'Gone' was clear, but not clear enough. Then, just a fraction of a second before it was too late, he realized the captain and Lady Kasumi were pushing him forward -- slowly, but enough to put him past where he could balance on his knees -- and he ripped his hands free to break his fall.
"It's no good," Yuzuriha said. "We can't expect him not to catch himself if we don't tie his hands."
"Hey, if he says no, then we don't tie him up!" Sorata answered. Which, certainly, Kamui appreciated, but he would have rather heard what Fai was planning to do about the lack of a Princess. Since he'd refused to explain to anybody why they needed her, the answer was hardly obvious.
"Well, the angle's right, and I don't know what other surface would lend itself to a drag mark. But Kamui," Lady Kasumi asked, leaning closer to get his attention. "I know His Grace was the one tied up, but could you tell who was really in control?"
He gritted his teeth, holding in the retort that he had a very important conversation to eavesdrop on just two yards away, and brushed the dust from the fall off his jacket and pants. "Just give him some bondage modifier!" Kamui complained. "I don't know if it was prisoner or reverse-prisoner, and I don't want to!"
"I'll lay odds on a fifteen-x modifier, all told!" Yuzuriha cried out with a laugh. "His Grace always manages double digits."
"But did you see the look on his face? I think I'm in for a twenty..." The gunnery mistress drummed her fingers on her lips, looking more deep in thought over the neverending questions of whether Fai was topping from the bottom than the King himself was about the circumstances of their hostages' escape.
Kamui let the others lead him over toward the berth, straining his ears to listen across the room and paying a mighty ignorance to the way Sorata gently mimed slamming him cheek first into a bedpost from a few different angles. Fai, meanwhile, ruffled his hair out of the pillow-squashed state it'd acquired on Subaru's bed and ran a fingertip back and forth under the rough mark that everyone on the council found so worthy of investigation. It still looked ghastly, but the swelling had subsided quite a bit while they'd been waiting for Subaru to come back. For all the discoloration spreading over the arch of the bone and for all the violent redness where the skin had broken through, the shape was very nearly symmetrical with the other side of his face. From the way he smiled, he seemed quite satisfied with it.
But, damn it, what had happened? If the girl and her ninja bodyguard could 'slip away in the commotion', did that mean Subaru had let them out of the brig and kept them on the deck? Their facilities for imprisoning ninja were second to none. The kid may have been good, but that kind of timing was beyond good. All he could think was that Subaru hadn't even tied their hands, for that kind of escape to be possible, which meant he could have only drafted the greenest recruits on the ship to watch them.
Had Subaru... been trying to let them escape?
No wonder he wasn't sorry. Kamui knew for a fact the Sumeragi would never apologize for anything he wanted; he was just sure there was only one thing in that category, which had nothing to do with any Princess.
He watched the King turn from the mirror to give their navigator his sad look. The subtle one that he usually kept in his pocket, not the pouty, pitiful one. "Oh, Subaru." The words were soft, but not quite as soft as before. Shaking his head, the blond buttoned up his cuffs. "Did she remind you that much of how you used to be?"
"You mean ... the girl?" The words were just loud enough to be certain he'd heard them right, even over the banging of Sorata's knee against the footboard and the general commentary of 'No, it didn't sound quite like that'.
The statement didn't make any sense. Subaru had said he'd known Fai when they were younger -- before whenever That Man had killed his sister -- though Kamui had never gotten to hear more. It was more than anyone else had been told, anyway. He had worked that out before long, so he kept the confidence locked away. But no matter how he pictured Subaru when he was young, the dainty, frothy innocence of the Princess didn't fit. Subaru himself didn't seem persuaded, either, nor like it had been his reason, but Fai shrugged and shook out his sleeves. "I thought her eyes were like yours," was all the more explanation the King gave.
Even the lighthearted roar of bickering brigands felt like silence while he waited for whatever Subaru had to say to that. At last, the navigator placed the hat he'd been wearing on an empty hat stand and gazed at it as if he were tracing every bend of the feathers into his memory. The turn of his mouth was just as thoughtful, just as distant, as when he stared out the window at the night sky. "I wouldn't recall," he answered, and walked off to his desk without another word.
"At any rate," Aoki said, breaking into the Ladies' and Sorata's dramatic restaging. "I think we can safely say his end totals for that were over two thousand. And if anything happens during the parlay, I think we can assume his usual level of escalation..." As he quietly scribbled away, Lady Kasumi stepped over to look, and her eyes widened a bit when she checked over his calculations. "We can't forget that the combo modifier doubles everything, either. Captain Doumeki may have competition for this year's fruitcake after all."
As soon as his hands were free, Kamui broke from the space by the bed and growled, "Your Grace, if you don't mind a point of procedure."
"Kamui!" Fai turned around and clapped his hands together with his brightest grin. "And here I thought procedure was Lord Aoki's calling."
He stormed over without pause, nor the least concern for the King's commentary. "You plan to handle a parlay yourself?"
"Oh, that is definitely the plan. The very first parlaying ninja! How could I resist?"
"So you've forgotten that you're not an officer? The ranking officer takes parlay, and that's Captain Arisugawa. You're just... you!"
"Objection denied. There are benefits to being me." Humming a light tune, he opened a drawer to take a long, silver brocade sash that Kamui couldn't recall Subaru actually having worn. The blond waved it in the air for the navigator to mark. "May I?"
The Sumeragi nodded his consent, as Kamui meanwhile fumed fit to burst. Was no one on this ship planning to respect the true spirit of a parlay? He could feel every hair on his head standing on end as he watched Fai turn back to the mirror. Without a care for anything that mattered, the blond folded the sash in half longways and draped it around his neck. All his attention was on flattening the brocade out smoothly enough, wrapping it in criss-crosses around his shirt neatly enough...
At least no one had ever had to ask why Kamui thought he was a fop.
"C'mon, Kamui. I really don't mind if he wants to have sex with the ninja again, you know?" Sorata said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
He let out a sigh, feeling like his entire body dropped six inches down when the air left his lungs. For some reason he could never fathom, it was impossible for anyone to stay angry once Sorata started asking him to cool down. Kamui was very nearly certain that was why the man had been put nominally in charge of the ship.
"I might not have sex with him," Fai laughed, as if suggesting that it wasn't the plan.
"Yeah, I'll believe that when I see--"
The captain clapped a hand over Kamui's mouth. "He will invite you to watch if you say that," Sorata hissed into his ear before dropping his hand again. "Don't think he won't."
With a dejected sigh, Kamui wandered back across the room and collapsed onto Subaru's bed. "Why do you have to be the Pirate King?" The day might come when that fop justified his authority with more than an absurd ability to make whatever he did work, but Kamui didn't count on being around to see it. Presently, the King was using his talent for pulling impossible skills out of his ass to hold the overlapping layers taut on his little makeshift waistcoat so that he could tuck the ends of the sash neatly underneath. And it looked fucking fantastic, which was the most absurd part. "We have a royal family. Fuuma could be the Pirate King!"
"You're just saying that because you want to be his Pirate Queen," Fai shot back.
Sighing yet again, he picked up his hat where it had fallen aside when he flopped and pulled it over his face. No doubt the tabloids would love to quote that, if they ever heard it. Which he'd see they never did. "That's not even funny."
"You know that once Lord Monou takes the throne, he'll be far too busy to sail the blue oceans day in and day out," he answered. Kamui pushed up just the corner of his hat enough to see the King walk across the room to throw on his coat. "Toujours, tout le temps, sans cesse..." With a flash of a grin, he pulled his collar and cuffs sharply into place, then swept the cockaded and feathered hat from the wall onto his head. "La piraterie, c'est moi!"
"I hate it when you speak French."
It was also painfully annoying how that ... that blond ... could roll out of bed and make himself look fit to grace the throne room in under ten minutes, dressed in little more than pajamas and a scarf.
Life was not fair.
continued in...
9: Well, Blow Me Down [ full - explicit/ edited - PG 13]
10: Davy Jones
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AUTHOR'S NOTES
******************************************
So, as you can see, the last chapter was not only horribly delayed by the unavoidabilities of life... it also became three chapters.
You won't have to wait nearly this long for the next two.
Heaping piles of thanks go to my beta reader, sumeria. Also, an overdue chapter of Atobe x Ryoma after this is done. And now, back to the writing!
CHAPTER: 8 - "Hornswaggle"
SERIES: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, xxxHoLic, X/1999, Tokyo Babylon
DISCLAIMER: Everything in the CLAMP Megaverse was originally created by CLAMP. They are entirely to blame for creating a system of crossovers that do not easily disclaim. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.
PAIRINGS: Kurogane x Fai D. Fluorite (main). References made to: Doumeki Shizuka x Watanuki Kimihiro, Aoki Seiichirou x Kasumi Karen, Li Syaoran x Princess Sakura, Sakurazuka Seishirou x Sumeragi Subaru, Clow Reed x Ichihara Yuuko, Ashura-Ou x Fai D. Fluorite, Monou Fuuma x Shirou Kamui, Shirou Kamui x Monou Kotori (this list applies to the work as a whole and may not be depicted equally in every chapter)
RATING: PG-13. Strong language and vigorous discussion of sexual situations.
WARNINGS: 1) Pirates. 2) Ninjas. 3) No Kamuis have been harmed (much) in the writing of this fic.
SEQUEL TO: Rum & Popcorn
SUMMARY: Long ago, in a universe slightly askew to this one, circumstances beyond anyone's control led to a fierce and bitter rivalry between Pirates and Ninjas, but Kurogane doesn't care about that. His only concern is to retrieve Princess Sakura and Syaoran from the Pirate King's ship...
Which doesn't mean he'd intended to end up in the pirates' gossip column.
Previously...
1: Ahoy, Matey!
2: Drivelswigger
3: Jolly Roger
4: Shot Across the Bow
5: Batten Down the Hatches
6: Athwartships
7: Futtock Shrouds
Hornswaggle (v) to cheat; to gain another's money or property by fraud
The roll of the waves outside beat a slow, grim march on the hull -- the only sound to be heard as the report they'd just received had stolen the voice of every pirate in the room. They'd been waiting here below, with jaws locked and hands clenched on cutlasses through the kind of battle a man might have killed to fight, all to hear... that. And when the silence finally broke, Kamui had to assume four of his shipmates had gone insane.
More insane, anyway.
In an instant, the cabin filled with laughter, from Lady Kasumi snickering politely into Lord Aoki's shoulder to Yuzuriha bracing herself on the bedpost to keep from doubling over. Arashi kept her her head, of course. She looked like Kamui felt: far too appalled to smile. Laughing was out of the question.
"The hell you say," Sorata gasped through his giggles. "I can't believe I lived long enough to see the Sumeragi tell a joke."
If anyone else had given that report, he might have been laughing along with them, but...
First of all, everyone in that room should have known better than to think Subaru would tell a joke, let alone a bad joke, let alone when the situation was practically a disaster -- no thanks to one Fai D. Fluorite, King of Pirates. If the other lords didn't already understand that, then they should have noticed how blank their navigator's face had turned when they'd started splitting their sides. The Sumeragi didn't joke.
Which brought Kamui to his second reason to be appalled. Ninja didn't and shouldn't ask for parlay. What in the seven drowned hells had happened on deck? And why in all the rest of them hadn't that kinky fucking dandy of a Pirate King let him do something about that ninja before matters had turned inexplicable? He wouldn't have destroyed the ship. One little armada turned to toothpicks, and he had to spend how many years living it down? The boats hadn't even been that well built! That didn't mean he was incapable of taking one ninja alive. Fai hadn't needed to bother Subaru about it.
Then again, Fai might have known Kurogane would pull a low trick like that. Tricky people could sense when someone else was being tricky -- one of the many random things the blond flake was annoyingly good at, like dodging, punching, and baking first-class confections. One of these days, Kamui would manage to explain to him that even the double chocolate chip cookies didn't give him the right to act like all of piracy was one big game of dress-up that he could twirl around at his whim.
Although they were very, very good cookies.
Whether or not His Grace had figured the Sumeragi's battle would come to this, his chuckle wasn't a chuckle of disbelief like the rest of the room's laughter. It was clearly a chuckle of triumph. "Ladies and gentlemen," Fai announced, and swung his legs over the side of the bed to pull on his boots. "I think you'll find he's serious."
With that, the King had successfully killed every laugh in the room except his own. As he touched his toes to stretch, and as he hopped off toward the looking-glass, that laugh kept ringing like a faraway chime on the wind. Kamui felt his eye twitch at the sight of him prancing across the floor like this wasn't one of the more grievous breaches of right, propriety, and justice the pirate world had ever known.
"Parlay, is it?" the blond asked. "And me without my waistcoat!"
There was just something wrong about that.
As suddenly as the room had fallen silent, all the pirates objected from every side (except, again, for Arashi, who took a chair and rolled her eyes). "But he can't be serious!" Lady Kasumi gasped. "Ninja asking for parlay?"
"That's like something you'd read in the Daily Picaroon," followed Lord Aoki.
None of this seemed to reach the man who was already preening himself in front of the mirror like a cockatiel in mating season. Kamui knew better than to think Fai wasn't listening or that he couldn't hear, because whenever he thought that, it ended with the Pirate King appearing behind him to ask what he meant by thus-and-such. It wouldn't be so bad if there were any kind of warning, but no. He seemed to zip out of nowhere as if by goosebump-inducing magic, and all the while wearing a grin fit to whip the rigging. Safer to assume Fai was just pretending to ignore the lot of them.
Because he was an ass.
"This ninja does," Subaru replied instead, giving the crowd all the answer they were likely to get, then joined the King at his bureau. More softly, he told Fai, "Don't forget your cravat."
Kamui's jaw just about hit the floor when the Sumeragi took a pile of silk lace off the corner of his mirror and handed it over. Wasn't His Grace's own cabin ten steps down the corridor? Could he not be bothered--
No, of course he couldn't. What had he been thinking?
"You'd think that if ninja knew they could parlay, they'd have done it before," Yuzuriha chirped, jumping up and down in her ankle boots. She and the rest of the council were understandably more interested in the odd behavior of the ninja than in the King's perfectly normal toilette, but not a one of them seemed as concerned as they should have been that a goddamned spy/rescue operative had gotten onto the ship under all of their noses, successfully impersonating a pirate and quoting articles out of the goddamned Code. He hadn't seen this kind of delighted commotion since the day Keiichi had realized you could make a pinata that dodged if you hung it from the jib.
"Doesn't anybody care how he got his information?" Kamui snapped. "What if he's the reason the 'Pink Ross' went down? What if he tortured the crew to find out he could ask for parlay? And if I may remind you, any pirate who did that in the middle of a fight would be a laughingstock right now."
The captain shrugged and ruffled Kamui's hair. Kamui hated it when people ruffled his hair. "Yeah, but he's a ninja. That's kind of cool."
"Besides, there's no reason why he would have needed to torture the anyone." Lord Aoki pulled his logbook and his pen out of his pocket and scratched out a few lines . "The Pirate Code isn't any kind of a secret. He could have asked normally."
Kamui felt his ill humor coming out in a snarl, watching so many others take this so easy. "Since when does a ninja ask anything normally? It's always, 'Tell me what I need to know or you'll have to learn to walk without that leg' or something! Do you think Kurogane will even respect the terms of parlay?"
The Code couldn't mean anything to him. He'd probably be trying to run while the King was prettying himself up with that lace around his throat, no matter what Subaru had done to tie him in place. Ninja weren't gentlemen. He was trying to buy time to get away with the princess and her bodyguard, obviously, and if Fai kept acting like this was some messed-up kind of a date instead of the tactic of an enemy prisoner, he'd succeed!
"Just because ninja can be uncouth doesn't mean we have to be," their artillery mistress declared. As she cuddled up to the Oathkeeper's side she laughed again, all her surprise from earlier giving way to excitement. "Honestly, Kamui. You'd consider not granting a parlay? If I were Princess Kotori, I might call off your engagement for that."
"For the last time, we're not..." He trailed off as the red-head hid a fresh giggle behind her hand. "If you know we're not engaged, don't bring it up!" Bad enough he got that from all the tabloids. He might marry her someday -- only one reason why he wouldn't -- but every time someone wrote it or said it like it was decided, he couldn't look Fuuma in the eye for a week. Pirates weren't supposed to have trouble knowing what they wanted.
Karen the Blaze summoned a few flames to dance across her fingertips. "There'll be enough time to light some powder kegs if the ninja makes trouble."
"He's already making trouble!" Wandering over to Subaru's bed, Kamui took a seat and pointed their attention at the blond who was adjusting his cravat and straightening his collar. "This is the man who took one look at an enemy he knew was Kurogane and said, 'Send him to my bunk, I need a piece of that!' How are you expecting a parlay? They're just going to have sex! Again! And then the ninja, who's probably counting on that because that's predictable, will escape. Again!"
Yuzuriha popped over beside the bed to poke him in the cheek. "And then we'll catch him... again. Don't you want the chance to?"
Of course he did. He was even sure he could do it, even though he admitted that one-on-one wasn't a safe plan for most of them -- which Kamui didn't point out, since Subaru didn't like it when people said he was special -- but all six of them together could take the ninja down. It was worth a shot. Subaru shouldn't have to clean up Fai's messing around twice in as many hours, after all. The navigator might never breathe a word in complaint, but that didn't make it right.
"Besides, scoring during a parlay isn't against the rules," Sorata added with a nod to Lord Aoki. "It's extra points, right? Like, triple?"
At which the council secretary pulled out his other ledger. Because no matter how seriously Kamui tried to take any given situation, nothing ever got in the way of figuring out the points for getting laid in that situation. He kept hoping that the way Arashi always shot down the captain (and anybody else, but mostly the captain) would convince Sorata to take some pity on the rest of the people who weren't getting any and didn't care even a little bit. But no. He was right in the middle every time.
"If you get five times the points for a ninja and triple points for a parlay," Lady Kasumi asked, "does that mean you get fifteen times the points for a ninja parlay?"
Sorata scrunched up his nose and crossed his arms across his chest. "Just eight times, I think... But shouldn't we start with the base score? I mean, the man's hot, but is he a nine or a--"
"He's a ten," Kamui groaned, and on every side of him the walls echoed back a room full of pirates answering in chorus. Even Subaru, who usually couldn't be bothered to have an opinion on that -- though he did sound like he just wanted the conversation over and out of his room. Besides, that the ninja smoldered was more 'one of those cruel, incontrovertible facts of the universe that plagued his life' than 'an opinion'. The fact that Arashi had thrown in her voice, too, was all the proof you needed of that.
And the betrayed puppy eyes the captain turned on her were, as ever, a sight to behold.
Lord Aoki wasted no time in marking down the numbers. "He's one of a kind as well, which gives him a base score of a full hundred..."
No surprise there. Kamui had thought it was obvious the ninja ranked with Fuuma as soon as he'd heard who he was. Or, he supposed, Arashi and Subaru each rated a hundred, too -- and technically That Man -- but his two shipmates were untouchable and if anyone had ever touched the Barrows-guard, he really didn't want to know. The bastard.
"... Kamui! Are you listening?" Yuzuriha asked as she nudged his shoulder.
"What?"
"We're trying to guess what His Grace's multiplier was for after dinner. You saw what they were doing, right?"
He could feel his hair standing on end, so vehemently that it just about hurt. "Just part of it! And that doesn't mean I want to remember!"
As she yanked his hands to pull him off the bed, Kamui got a bad feeling from her smile. Straight-up nausea, in fact. Probably less because of Yuzuriha's glee and more from being forced to recall certain events that pitiless fate would never let him scrub from his mind thanks to too many years of repeated exposure. "Come on! It's for a good cause. We need to know more than, 'He was tied up'!"
Somehow, Kamui was certain it was no coincidence that when the lady let go his hands, he ran back-first into Sorata.
"Captain, do you have any rope?"
"Somewhere--"
"No!" Kamui yelled. "No, no, no, no, no! No bondage re-enactments!"
Lady Kasumi's pout was deadly, but Kamui was pretty sure he was deadlier. "You look so much prettier in bondage than the rest of us," she sighed. "Even me." Lord Aoki nodded in agreement, too cool to be called 'begrudging' about it though he looked like it was a hard choice.
Must not kill my shipmates. Must not kill my shipmates.
Fuuma never had to put up with this shit. He made up for it by having to serve with pirates who were the most murderous group of anti-social assholes ever assembled (except maybe Kakyou, who was just anti-social), but the fact remained that no one ever tied him up because they thought he 'looked pretty' that way. But these were good people, who always had his back in a fight, and if he snapped on them, Fuuma would be sad, and Kotori would be sad... and maybe Subaru wouldn't care as long as it was what he really wanted, but it wasn't what he really wanted. Moreover, it wasn't what Subaru would do.
Subaru had dignity. He just had to brush someone off, and they'd stop bothering him, usually for at least a month. Times like now, when Kamui's fellow pirates were shoving him left and right and posing Sorata around him, he could try to push their hands away and he could try giving them the long-suffering look that Subaru was so good at, but it didn't work. At least they weren't getting out the rope. With a sigh, he let Yuzuriha push him onto his knees and put his hands behind his back when Lady Kasumi asked about how Fai had been tied. He could trust the people on the 'Dragon of Earth' not to actually do anything, and the fastest way to get out of this was to ignore his shipmates while they figured out whatever they felt they needed to figure out.
That's what Subaru did, and someday Kamui knew he'd manage it just as well.
In fact, across the room, the Sumeragi was ignoring everything right now and staring into space. It wasn't his normal look, though. It was the one he only got when the 'Dragon of Earth' sailed to meet them. No one but Yuzuriha liked it when that lot showed up, and even she didn't care for the hell ship's navigator, but they could all tell it bothered Subaru most. They didn't know why, exactly, and Kamui didn't plan to tell his friend's secrets. Even so, he didn't comprehend how they could see that look on his face now without realizing. He was in love with the Barrows-guard. So much it hurt, though That Man had surely never done anything to make it hurt less.
Fai could tell. Kamui saw a similar look in the King's eyes sometimes. Not as often, since he was good at hiding.
But sometimes.
As he focused in on the two of them, he caught a snatch of the blond murmuring. "-- glossed over the status of our Princess," he said. Kamui did his best to tune out the ruckus around him and listen for more. "Unharmed, I hope?"
Just as he was about to yell at the pirates hovering around his head to gag the talk about points, because the hostages were actually important, Subaru met his eyes and hinted with a quiet glance that he should keep his mouth shut. So shut it he did. "Gone," the navigator replied, barely above a whisper. His tone was as gentle as ever, but decidedly unapologetic, which was odd. Subaru usually sounded sorry for everything that went wrong, whether he'd done it or not. "Princess Sakura and her companion managed to slip away from their guards on deck during the commotion, but the crewmen in question shouldn't be reprimanded. I take full responsibility for the situation."
"I'm sure."
The volume around him kept escalating, making it hard to hear if anything else was being said over where he cared what people were saying. 'Gone' was clear, but not clear enough. Then, just a fraction of a second before it was too late, he realized the captain and Lady Kasumi were pushing him forward -- slowly, but enough to put him past where he could balance on his knees -- and he ripped his hands free to break his fall.
"It's no good," Yuzuriha said. "We can't expect him not to catch himself if we don't tie his hands."
"Hey, if he says no, then we don't tie him up!" Sorata answered. Which, certainly, Kamui appreciated, but he would have rather heard what Fai was planning to do about the lack of a Princess. Since he'd refused to explain to anybody why they needed her, the answer was hardly obvious.
"Well, the angle's right, and I don't know what other surface would lend itself to a drag mark. But Kamui," Lady Kasumi asked, leaning closer to get his attention. "I know His Grace was the one tied up, but could you tell who was really in control?"
He gritted his teeth, holding in the retort that he had a very important conversation to eavesdrop on just two yards away, and brushed the dust from the fall off his jacket and pants. "Just give him some bondage modifier!" Kamui complained. "I don't know if it was prisoner or reverse-prisoner, and I don't want to!"
"I'll lay odds on a fifteen-x modifier, all told!" Yuzuriha cried out with a laugh. "His Grace always manages double digits."
"But did you see the look on his face? I think I'm in for a twenty..." The gunnery mistress drummed her fingers on her lips, looking more deep in thought over the neverending questions of whether Fai was topping from the bottom than the King himself was about the circumstances of their hostages' escape.
Kamui let the others lead him over toward the berth, straining his ears to listen across the room and paying a mighty ignorance to the way Sorata gently mimed slamming him cheek first into a bedpost from a few different angles. Fai, meanwhile, ruffled his hair out of the pillow-squashed state it'd acquired on Subaru's bed and ran a fingertip back and forth under the rough mark that everyone on the council found so worthy of investigation. It still looked ghastly, but the swelling had subsided quite a bit while they'd been waiting for Subaru to come back. For all the discoloration spreading over the arch of the bone and for all the violent redness where the skin had broken through, the shape was very nearly symmetrical with the other side of his face. From the way he smiled, he seemed quite satisfied with it.
But, damn it, what had happened? If the girl and her ninja bodyguard could 'slip away in the commotion', did that mean Subaru had let them out of the brig and kept them on the deck? Their facilities for imprisoning ninja were second to none. The kid may have been good, but that kind of timing was beyond good. All he could think was that Subaru hadn't even tied their hands, for that kind of escape to be possible, which meant he could have only drafted the greenest recruits on the ship to watch them.
Had Subaru... been trying to let them escape?
No wonder he wasn't sorry. Kamui knew for a fact the Sumeragi would never apologize for anything he wanted; he was just sure there was only one thing in that category, which had nothing to do with any Princess.
He watched the King turn from the mirror to give their navigator his sad look. The subtle one that he usually kept in his pocket, not the pouty, pitiful one. "Oh, Subaru." The words were soft, but not quite as soft as before. Shaking his head, the blond buttoned up his cuffs. "Did she remind you that much of how you used to be?"
"You mean ... the girl?" The words were just loud enough to be certain he'd heard them right, even over the banging of Sorata's knee against the footboard and the general commentary of 'No, it didn't sound quite like that'.
The statement didn't make any sense. Subaru had said he'd known Fai when they were younger -- before whenever That Man had killed his sister -- though Kamui had never gotten to hear more. It was more than anyone else had been told, anyway. He had worked that out before long, so he kept the confidence locked away. But no matter how he pictured Subaru when he was young, the dainty, frothy innocence of the Princess didn't fit. Subaru himself didn't seem persuaded, either, nor like it had been his reason, but Fai shrugged and shook out his sleeves. "I thought her eyes were like yours," was all the more explanation the King gave.
Even the lighthearted roar of bickering brigands felt like silence while he waited for whatever Subaru had to say to that. At last, the navigator placed the hat he'd been wearing on an empty hat stand and gazed at it as if he were tracing every bend of the feathers into his memory. The turn of his mouth was just as thoughtful, just as distant, as when he stared out the window at the night sky. "I wouldn't recall," he answered, and walked off to his desk without another word.
"At any rate," Aoki said, breaking into the Ladies' and Sorata's dramatic restaging. "I think we can safely say his end totals for that were over two thousand. And if anything happens during the parlay, I think we can assume his usual level of escalation..." As he quietly scribbled away, Lady Kasumi stepped over to look, and her eyes widened a bit when she checked over his calculations. "We can't forget that the combo modifier doubles everything, either. Captain Doumeki may have competition for this year's fruitcake after all."
As soon as his hands were free, Kamui broke from the space by the bed and growled, "Your Grace, if you don't mind a point of procedure."
"Kamui!" Fai turned around and clapped his hands together with his brightest grin. "And here I thought procedure was Lord Aoki's calling."
He stormed over without pause, nor the least concern for the King's commentary. "You plan to handle a parlay yourself?"
"Oh, that is definitely the plan. The very first parlaying ninja! How could I resist?"
"So you've forgotten that you're not an officer? The ranking officer takes parlay, and that's Captain Arisugawa. You're just... you!"
"Objection denied. There are benefits to being me." Humming a light tune, he opened a drawer to take a long, silver brocade sash that Kamui couldn't recall Subaru actually having worn. The blond waved it in the air for the navigator to mark. "May I?"
The Sumeragi nodded his consent, as Kamui meanwhile fumed fit to burst. Was no one on this ship planning to respect the true spirit of a parlay? He could feel every hair on his head standing on end as he watched Fai turn back to the mirror. Without a care for anything that mattered, the blond folded the sash in half longways and draped it around his neck. All his attention was on flattening the brocade out smoothly enough, wrapping it in criss-crosses around his shirt neatly enough...
At least no one had ever had to ask why Kamui thought he was a fop.
"C'mon, Kamui. I really don't mind if he wants to have sex with the ninja again, you know?" Sorata said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
He let out a sigh, feeling like his entire body dropped six inches down when the air left his lungs. For some reason he could never fathom, it was impossible for anyone to stay angry once Sorata started asking him to cool down. Kamui was very nearly certain that was why the man had been put nominally in charge of the ship.
"I might not have sex with him," Fai laughed, as if suggesting that it wasn't the plan.
"Yeah, I'll believe that when I see--"
The captain clapped a hand over Kamui's mouth. "He will invite you to watch if you say that," Sorata hissed into his ear before dropping his hand again. "Don't think he won't."
With a dejected sigh, Kamui wandered back across the room and collapsed onto Subaru's bed. "Why do you have to be the Pirate King?" The day might come when that fop justified his authority with more than an absurd ability to make whatever he did work, but Kamui didn't count on being around to see it. Presently, the King was using his talent for pulling impossible skills out of his ass to hold the overlapping layers taut on his little makeshift waistcoat so that he could tuck the ends of the sash neatly underneath. And it looked fucking fantastic, which was the most absurd part. "We have a royal family. Fuuma could be the Pirate King!"
"You're just saying that because you want to be his Pirate Queen," Fai shot back.
Sighing yet again, he picked up his hat where it had fallen aside when he flopped and pulled it over his face. No doubt the tabloids would love to quote that, if they ever heard it. Which he'd see they never did. "That's not even funny."
"You know that once Lord Monou takes the throne, he'll be far too busy to sail the blue oceans day in and day out," he answered. Kamui pushed up just the corner of his hat enough to see the King walk across the room to throw on his coat. "Toujours, tout le temps, sans cesse..." With a flash of a grin, he pulled his collar and cuffs sharply into place, then swept the cockaded and feathered hat from the wall onto his head. "La piraterie, c'est moi!"
"I hate it when you speak French."
It was also painfully annoying how that ... that blond ... could roll out of bed and make himself look fit to grace the throne room in under ten minutes, dressed in little more than pajamas and a scarf.
Life was not fair.
continued in...
9: Well, Blow Me Down [ full - explicit/ edited - PG 13]
10: Davy Jones
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AUTHOR'S NOTES
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So, as you can see, the last chapter was not only horribly delayed by the unavoidabilities of life... it also became three chapters.
You won't have to wait nearly this long for the next two.
Heaping piles of thanks go to my beta reader, sumeria. Also, an overdue chapter of Atobe x Ryoma after this is done. And now, back to the writing!