Raid on the Isle of Pestilence

[The Love Ballad]

Waves lapped against the shore of the isle, the crew daring not to venture too far from their beached schooner. The haphazardly put together crew sat in various positions across the beach, only a single man remaining aboard the ship, and the younger lad's face showed no sign of happiness at the fact. The Marigold Pirates had been camped on the island for nearing three days now, the sunset marking the end of that third. They'd made a decent bounty pillaging undefended merchant ships and fishing towns for the past few weeks. Of course, all good things had to have come to an end, and it all so happened that the marines had become painfully aware of the crew bearing the bright yellow jolly roger not too long ago. The captain had called it, their days of raiding were to come to a brief intermission, and they'd found themselves resting on an island that any sailor worth his weight in salt knew to avoid like the plague. Because the island was one of plague.

Mag and the more experienced crewmen knew not to venture into the jungle, and to rest by the shore, feasting on the provisions of fish jerky, bread and rum. For the interior held naught for them but illness and hostile natives, natives who had turned the island into a veritable death trap. Stories preceded Golden Island among the seamen of the East Blue, and none of them were good.

Yet, as darkness took over their little camp, and the only sight visible beyond the waves was the black smoke and red haze of their campfire, Mag's uneasiness did not draw from the interior of the isle and its many dangers. Rather, it was a much deeper fear, one that seemed to almost envelop his soul. Something was off, there was something cursed about this part of the East Blue, and he longed to be rid of it. 

His time with the Marigold Pirates had been a brief one, and one that he was not in any hope to elongate. Once they'd finally set forth from this forsaken place, he had no intention of remaining with this shambolic party. As much as he longed for a permanent crew with which to travel, it seemed that none of the captains with whom he'd joined with had come near to reaching his standards. Such was the way of a no-name pirate outside of the Grand Line it seemed.

As the captain got drunk with his men around the campfire, Mag found himself drinking alone by the shore. Occasionally pausing to throw an empty bottle of lager into the emerald waves. On any other day he'd have found himself drinking with the crew, cheering and partying with the rest. Yet here he was, an odd sense of somberness overcoming his usually boisterous personality. It was peculiar, a general sense of apathy and disgust with his current circumstances had seemed to settle over him far too often in the past few months. 

Mag ripped the cap off his final bottle of beer with his teeth and downed the amber liquid as quickly as he could, the burning drink pouring down his gullet. The pirate lobbed the now empty bottle into the deep, before he began the trek back towards the campsite that his crew had established. The fire and haphazard tents more akin to a shantytown than a proper base, but that was typical of the Marigold pirates. Mountain bandits playing at brigands of the sea, the kind of men Mag would have felt so at home with not two years previous.

The fire blazed, a veritable lighthouse for the young pirate as he drunkenly shuffled his way back to his compatriots. Mag found his eyes focusing heavily on that auburn glow, his focus entirely ignoring that vast ocean surrounding the island.

[theone]

The ocean at night was a very silent place. It was something that the young Marine had never truly noticed, due in the most part to the fact that he was never really a seaman. Up until only a few months ago, he was a landlocked blacksmith from Kano country, but in the present, he lay on the deck of a frigate swaying quietly on the waves, on his way to his very first pirate raid. 

---

Yesterday

"But sir, I'm supposed to be on my way to Tequil-" 

"Listen, and you better listen well rookie, yer not goin' anywhere til I say yer goin'!" Marine Captain Lizard (pronounced Li - zhard) stared daggers into the burly teenager, but what he received in response was not fear, like most other subordinates, what he saw was something akin to an iron wall, steely blue eyes meeting his own gaze. Stiffening his own body, young Komodo saluted his Captain, "Yes sir!"

He turned and fell back in line with the rest of the troops, they had begun to gear up for the raid the next day. There had been intel that a particularly bothersome upstart of a pirate crew that had been terrorizing the open waters were stationed on Golden Island. Captain Lizard was going to capitalize on this opportunity to rid the seas of this nuisance. 

---

Waves lapped gently against the hull of the ship as it neared the destination. The ocean was no longer so quiet. Distant voices of merriment and partying could be heard traveling across the infinite expanse. Komodo's adrenaline spiked as the noises grew closer. In sync, other members of the crew began to move towards the small boats on the side. Captain Lizard, much too much of a man to ever be sprawled out on his deck, nudged Komodo with a foot. "Rook, come with me."

Softly, they lowered themselves into one of the rowboats attached on the side. There were five boats, with six men on each. They rowed quietly in the night, going perpendicular to the island, as they made way for the pirate's ship. They were going to get ahold of that so that the thieves and bandits had nowhere to run. At about fifty meters from the ship, Komodo took off his bright white shirt, and tucked it behind him, just over his Tang Family fan. He sank into the shivering depths, steeling himself against the cold. Taking a deep breath, he went below the surface, swimming swiftly and carefully to the Marigold Pirates' ship. A man from each of the rowboats joined him. 

A minute later he emerged from the depths just inches away from the portside hull. Gripping hold of the soaked wood, using pure finger strength, he pulled himself up the side of the ship, beating his compatriots to the top. As he peered through the spaces in the railing, a young Marine whispered to the Captain. "Sir he didn't bring rope nor cutlass with him." The older man simply scoffed. 

"If it's him, he won't need it."

[The Love Ballad]

Auteriaux Otoro had barely hit his sixteenth birthday, and the other members of the crew didn't let him forget it. The older pirates had taken to foisting upon him the jobs they did not want to do, most notably his current situation. As the other men enjoyed countless barrels of grog by the fire, he was stuck on the dark and damp boat, allegedly to keep an eye out lest they come under attack from the sea. Not that he had any intention of doing that, the chances of a marine raid or an attack by a rival crew were so close to zero that they may as well be zero. It was just another twice-forsaken power play by the more experienced members of the crew. A play that saw him stuck on a beached ship with naught but the sea breeze for a friend. Perhaps it was because of his anger aimed toward compatriots that Otoro failed to notice the marines boarding the vessel, his lone job thrown to the wayside as he stared longingly at the beach and its promise of warmth and drink. The wind chill bit against his skin and sunk into his bone, and with it his thoughts turned even further from the dangers that may be present, let alone those that were. As the marine rowboats made contact with the beached ship, he barely even registered it, the dull thunks he heard quickly reduced to the mere status of waves against the hull. His eyes stared onward toward the shore, not even registering that a sizable group of marines were now aboard the boat with him. Maybe it was more of a sign of the lack of quality that Captain Marigold took when recruiting his men than anything else, for one of the few pirates that day sober was as blatantly unconscious to the world as those of his friends who'd drunk more than their share of rum and sugar water.

-Upon the Isle-

Mag shuffled back to the crew, another bottle of alcohol to his lips, this one half rum and half some sort of carbonated water mixed with a lime cordial. It was sickly sweet and the flavours were so offensive to each other that he almost wanted to gag. Yet he did not, for the alcohol was far more valuable in his system than it was upon the golden shore of the island.

Through his drunken haze, the pirate allowed the odd thought to travel through his conscious, perhaps that was why it was called golden island. He felt a veritable genius at that realisation.

"Magherafelt!" Captain Marigold  roared, his hearty laugh cutting through the silence of the night, "Come drink with the lads, your knives very well deserve that at least."

Mag answered in turn with his own laugh, although it was forced, he barely had any respect for the tall man who captained the crew. He was old, well past the twilight of his years, a man clinging desperately to a dream of glory that he'd never had a chance to chase in his past life. Mag suspected that he was a former marine, perhaps one of the lower ranks or a merchant, playing at pirate in the relatively calm seas through which they now stalked. 

Yet with a forced smile Mag raised his bottle to the cheering pirates around the bonfire, none of them aware of what was going on just off the shore. 

"Te' victory!" Mag toasted loudly in response, still some way off from the main body of pirates. 

The roar that responded was one both half-hearted and loud, it seemed that more than just one of the men had collapsed from alcohol induced exhaustion. Mag continued his slow trek back to the shore, his eyes turning slightly over to the vast blue ocean, now dyed black by nightfall.

And in the distance he saw something that shocked him, the vague shape of a ship in the distance, such a sight that distracted him from their own shored vessel. What in the name of great blue sea was that? Were they being watched? Was their lookout aware?

As his neurons fired and considered the question, he found his instincts moving his eyes to check on their own ship, thought process slowed by alcohol it took him far too long to register the silhouettes were evident against the light of the moon. More than one. More than just young Autieraux. 

[theone]

Silently, the Marines moved with caution on the modest deck of the ship that belonged to the Marigold Pirates. There proved to be only a single lookout on the vessel, so thoroughly bored that they might've marched like elephants upon the creaky wood, and he still might've not noticed. Unluckily for him, the last thing he'd remember after waking hours later, was the gigantic palm of a Marine making contact with his jaw. For safe measures, they tied him up and hid him below deck. 

The first step was complete. They had successfully sealed off the pirates' exit, next they needed to tighten the net around the ruffians. The boats with the ground forces all tied themselves to the larger vessel, and unloaded their troops. Fifteen men were to assault the beach from the front, while ten more moved in the dark to flank the rapscallions from the left. Five men were to stay on the boat with the express mission of sinking her if she came into the hands of their adversaries. 

Satisfied with their preparations, Captain Lizard flipped open a silver lighter, and ignited a small flame. It was the signal. 

Loudly, three cannons fired upon the beach, aiming for the fire, where all the partiers were huddled around. With menace, the cannonballs hurtled through the air, looking to end the night prematurely for the partying scallywags. As the cannon fire rang through the still night air, it was echoed by the booming voice of one Marine captain. "ATTACK!!!" 

In unison, the Marines stormed the beach with a myriad of weapons in hand, yelling at the top of their lungs, with the purpose of stealing courage from their enemies, or giving some to themselves. Komodo grouped himself with the latter as he sprinted on the sand, for his first clash as a Marine. 

[The Love Ballad]

A small light flickered from the hands of one of the silhouettes aboard the ship, yet the redheaded pirate away from the group had already registered what was happening. He opened his mouth to shout, no one with good intentions sneaked aboard a ship in the dead of night.

"We're under attack-" Mag warned, his voice loud and frantic.

Yet despite this boost in decibles, it was subsumed into nothingness when compared to the booming sound of gunpowder. Any seaman worth his salt knew the telltale sounds of cannon-fire, and Mag's words were lost to the thunderous cracks. For when a pirate heard those noises more akin to explosions of death than any machination of man, it was clear that battle was on the horizon. Battle that had to take priority over anything else.

The sand shot into the sky around the fire, the impact of the cannon balls creating a storm of dust among the men who had been gathered in joyous uproar not too long ago. Mag dared not focus too long on that scene though, fear of what he'd witness, of what had become of some of the more junior men who'd been hit overtaking him. He had to focus on what he could do to survive, how he could get off of this all forsaken hell. 

Everything else seemed to happen all at once, the telltale sound of a man yelling attack, the confused nature of the pirates as they tried to process how friends who they'd been sharing a bottle of rum with not so long ago were now broken and unmoving on the shore. 

The marines that swarmed the beach seemed as if ghosts to Mag's confused brain, adrenaline slowly attempting to overpower ethanol. They smashed upon the pirates as a wave smashes upon a sand castle, ne'er-do-wells were cut down before they could process what was happening. It was only once more than a handful of men who Mag had considered, at least on some level, friends were down, dead or merely surrendering he could not tell, that the crew of bandits seemed to finally achieve their second wave of strength. 

"Send the dogs to hell!" Marigold roared, his own voice attempting to reach the same booming noise of the marine captain, although it had fallen significantly short.  

Yet as one of the older pirates finally reached for the flintlock pistol at his hip and fired it point blank at one of the charging marines, a young man who barely seemed old enough to be serving in the corps.

The pirates were far bloodier, far drunker and at a considerable disadvantage when compared to the military opponents, but they were making at least a show of defending themselves. Steel clashed against steel and the pirates unleashed their own battle cries, damning the marines and all they stood for. 

Mag found his pace increasing as he rushed toward the fray, his hands already grabbing at knives to loose. He had no intention of dying, but he had no way off the island, not unless they could find a way to retake the ship. 

As to the aged pirate captain, he turned his own attention toward a young marine, a tall and well-muscled man with bronzed skin and black hair. Marigold raised his own rifle, ready to take his first shot of the battle.