Conomi Island Cleanup

[mildofthewild]

A ship that big?? With that many wrestlers? Sif's muscles twitch as her eyes light up, the young woman's blood flowing freely at the thought of so many opponents to knock around. You can take the girl out of the wildlands, but you can't take the wildlands out of her.

She briefly notes Idol's tentative response, curious as to what must have happened between him and his pa. She never had any sort of distance between her own parents and herself, so the idea was new to her...but not enough to press it. She just became his student, after all; she didn't think she could hope to understand his plight, so she didn't want to press it and his a sore spot. He would tell her when he was ready. At least, she hoped someday he would...

"Wow...I'm gettin pumped just thinkin' about it! If you teach me, ill be the best pupil for ya, Master! I'll wrangle, thrash, bowl over anybody we come across! And when we find that boat..."

She pauses, thinking a little longer on the image. A large boat...a horde of wrestlers...challenges across the West Blue...the images brought one thing to her mind. Her body hunches over and her bro2 darkens, Sif absently pawing at the dirt around them as she contemplates her next question. If they were marines, who knew when they'd have the chance to venture out like that? Of course, more importantly, she contemplates the reason she joined the Marines to begin with...the memory of what inspired her enlisting. The carnage that gave her a purpose...

"...M-master Idol...this ship. These wrestlers, your Pa...are...are they...

"Pirates?"

[York]

Idol sighed a sigh of relief as Sif’s mind attached itself to the Battle Ship, and smiled at her apparent interest in the idea. His own mind ran wild at the thought of Sif going crazy with suplexes, powerslams, and running tackles. Momentarily, the thought of her transforming into a boar and charging into a crowd flashed into his mind and Idol’s excited smile wavered. His conversation with the commanding officer the other day about Sif’s rage came to mind and he got to wondering if it would have been a wise idea to bring her someplace where angering people came as second nature. Now how exactly was he supposed to go about helping her with that?

“Huh?” Idol asked, having been snapped away from his own question by a question from Sif. A rather insulting question that made Idol’s nose curl upwards and puff out his chest once it fully registered in his head. “No, Sif, we were not pirates! We were a very legitimate outfit! Professional wrestling is one of the more reliable, genuine, on-the-level, least corrupted sports out there! We pay taxes and everything!” Smiling proudly, Idol crossed his arms and nodded. “Granted, if Pirates did want to buy a ticket and watch the show, we wouldn’t stop them. Money’s money is what my dad used to say. But if they tried to cause trouble, then there’d be locker rooms full of people looking to throw them into the sea like the trash they are.”


Grabbing the bottom of his shirt, Idol flapped back and forth to let air in and cool down his body. "Oof,I got hot there. Sorry. I've had a bad experience with pirates, and I'll just say that I'm not too fond of the idea of being the son of one."

[mildofthewild]

Phew...that's a relief.

Sif relaxes, a sigh escaping her lips as she looks back at her master. Her hair smooths against her now slumped shoulders, the woman now looking sheepish as she stares back at the ground. 

"N-no worries, Master, I shouldn't have accused you of nothin'! I just got a little flashback to a run in with em...I'm not that fond of pirates either, but I guess you coulda' guessed that, hehehe..." 

It doesn't seem like Idol held any hard feelings; if anything, the story only brightened him up, the same being said for Sif as she straightens up, eyes shining once more. 

"As long as you throw pirates in the sea, that's good enough fer me! I can just picture it now...y'all got all kinds of meats on there, drinks...and not to mention sweat flyin'...bodies grapplin, slammin, chokin' out! You really start to miss it all when you ain't been in it for long..." Sif says, daydreaming once more as she imagines herself brawling with all kinds of imaginary legends, each one burlier than the last in her own mind as she watches all manner of locks and pins. 

"Huuuuuh, but if I'm in the Marines, who knows when I'll be able to go to such a place...I'd have to rank up to even have the chance of explorin' on my own, and there's fat chance'a that happenin'. C.O. said it herself, I'm jus' a palooka if I don't get myself under control..."

[York]

Not fond of pirates. A good sign. Idol’s worries of Sif being one of those excitable types who seeked freedom and romance that the pirate life had promised. No, she seemed excited about a few other things, things Idol could get behind. The meats and drinks were indeed the stuff of legends for the winners and champions on board, but Idol chose to keep to himself what the meal saved for the losers and lesser ranked fighters were like. No need to scare her just yet.

As she brought up her worries that she may miss out on seeing such a wonderful place as the Battle Ship first hand, Idol crossed his arms and nodded his head. A small smile crept over his lips that quickly faded when he dropped the broom he was holding. He regained his composure quickly, however.

“Don’t you worry about that, Sif” he said. “The Battle Ship has been sailing the seas for almost 40 years now. In that time, it’s survived pirates, bandits, gangsters, natural disasters, and several attempted hostile takeovers. I don’t think anything short of a worldwide cataclysm is gonna stop that ship from sailing anytime soon. If you travel the seas long enough, you’ll get there, no question.”

As the sun hung over his head, Idol withdrew the marine cap from his pocket and stuck it back on his head to shield his eyes. “It’s interesting that the C.O. said that to you, Sif. For you see, she said something like that to me too. She wants me to help you overcome that temper of yours, and I plan on doing just that.”

Idol picked up his broom and pushed together the last of the debris around him into a neat pile to be collected later. “When I’m done with you, you’ll be promoted so fast, your head’ll spin. First thing’s first. Tell me a bit more about yourself. You know, like your upbringing, your home, your family.” Idol set his chin on his broom and leant his weight on it as he stared at Sif for a response. He had already given her so much details about his own life, but he had to admit he knew little about the person who decided to become his pupil. That wasn’t very master-like, surely. “I might find the root of that anger of yours. The more details you got the more helpful it’d be.”

[mildofthewild]

Sif looks back to her mentor, listening intently to his promises of a Battle Ship that would never falter, of a place that could survive all kinds of damage. She beams back, smiling broadly and even giving in to a light chuckle of relief. As long as she could see something like that one day...it'd be good enough for her. 

However, Idol's chat with her C.O. gave her pause, the woman turning away as a deep blush spreads across her face, a heat of shame and embarrassment washing over her. 

"Th-the C.O. told ya that?! I...I...it's not big deal, I just get kinda rowdy sometimes, ya know? It's hard to deal with, I dunno where it comes from..."

Sif pouts lightly as she twiddles her thumbs, refusing to look her master in the eye as he calmly asks about her life before the marines. What kind of childhood, what kind of environment did she live in? Not many people took the time to ask, and frankly, she wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to respond. 

"W-well I dunno what i can tell ya that'll be any important," she mutters under her breath, slowly shifting herself to at least face her master's general direction. A brief sign of respect. 

"...Well...I figure I got an upbringing pretty normal, all things considerin'. I had a normal family. Ma and Pa, my brothers: Ulric, Ragnar, Arkyn and Leif, and o'course, my sisters: Gisli, Astra, and Liv! We lived in the wilderness in the North Blue, on the Pkt. Archipelago; that's where my Pa settled down with my Ma when she was pregnant with Ragnar..."

As Sif speaks she reclines on the ground, becoming lost in the stories her mother would tell her when she was a "young lil wildfire," as she liked to call her. Her smile softens as she thinks back on her life until this moment, reminiscing about simpler times when all she had was the archipelago. 

"Pa used to gather us together and told us we had to find our own food to eat; he said he wanted us to be strong, to fend for ourselves and all that. At the time I thought he was bein' serious, and that made me pipin' mad cause lil Leif, Astra and Liv couldn't catch nothin'! They were so young, so I took it on myself to help 'im catch stuff. Course, I know better now after Ma filled me in; Pa always had extra food he'd sneak into our bags when we weren't lookin'. I usedta think he was some right mean bastard, but in the end, Pa was jus' a big softie. He could still punch like hell if any of us got into trouble though..."

At this, Sif rubs tentatively at her head, grimacing at the number of  thumps she received throughout her childhood. As she continued, she told Idol of her many adventures with her siblings when she was younger, her run-ins with the fiendish bear Ursa Major, and of course, about the home cooking of her Ma. 

Of course, it was her time away from home where her smile falters, thinking back on her first experience with the outside world. 

"...It was at the Kingdom of Lyneel where I first met pirates..."

[York]

“Well just tell me anyway, something you might not find interesting might be the key to all this” Idol said, lifting his head and letting his broom drop to the floor.
The wrestler’s face twisted in confusion as Sif started talking about a normal upbringing and began rattling off sibling names like the pages of a phonebook. Was that 8 kids between a single set of parents? Must have been a boring place to live, the pkt. Archipelago. Usually, when meeting someone from a different part of the world, Idol’s mind would race to find a wrestler to have come from the same area to give him an idea of what the populace was like, but not this time. His mind was laser focused on everything Sif had to say. This was about being a good master and finding out what made Sif tic.

It was a wild upbringing from what Idol could understand. A rough father who wanted the best for his kids, but went about it a destructive way. It was nice to hear that he wasn’t all bad, but the tale of the tough man who treated his kids roughly was one Idol had heard many times over. By now, all semblance of cleaning had parted, and the wrestler was now sat on the floor with Sif, intently listening to her stories with wide, excited eyes. He'd smile hearing about her siblings, comically jeer at Ursa Major's bizarre hijinx, and even wipe his salivating mouth as she got to talking about her mothers’ home cooking. What was it with him and getting wrapped up with story tellers?

But as her expression turned, Idol could feel a dark turn coming in Sif’s jovial tale. At the mention of pirates, he swallowed hard and could feel beads of sweat tingling on his brow. He had an idea of what was going to happen next, but without even thinking, Idol let the question slip out of his mouth. “Pirates? What happened?”

[mildofthewild]

Sif wavers as she thinks back, barely hearing Idol's follow up to the story lingering in the air between them. What happened next...a lot happened next.

She remembers the fires raging from the shoreline, lighting up the sky and sea in an orange glow as she approaches. Screams and cries for help swirl among the crash of the rolling sea. The sands of the Lyneel Kingdom's shore, normally a blistering white, had become muddy and flowing with spilled blood as she disembarks from her makeshift raft. Too much pain, pain she wasn't used to.

The worst thing she remembers is the rising cackles mixed in with those screams, however. Laughter in the midst of such suffering that causes her to trudge through spattered sands and fallen bodies, pale at the sight of houses burning amidst roaring flames.

"...I went to the Lyneel Kingdom ta see the world...and I found it." She says, as her eyes look back on the slumped over bodies, draped over barriers and leaning against the walls of their very homes. Shes seen the world, and she saw what it was truly about.

"My ma and pa sent me out to see the world so I wouldn't be a bumpkin, but sometimes I wish I stayed on that island with them. 'Cause what I seen...I can't believe that such horrible people exist."

Sif describes the battle that happened after, of how she joined the few survivors on the outskirts of the kingdom push back the pirate threat. Many people had been afraid of her power, but none more than the pirates.

"Once the Marines came, I asked if I could join. I jus'...I wanted ta help people against pirates all 'round the world. I didn't wanna sit back and just let them hurt people."

[York]

Idol pulled his knees in close and wrapped his arms around them. From her expression alone, he expected the worst from her story, but as she explained the things she had seen and the battles she’d engaged in with pirates, Idol was still caught off guard. The act of going out into the world with high expectations, only to be met by the grim nature that reality just can’t seem to get enough of sounded familiar, but hearing Sif talk about her encounters in the free world made it sound like a different planet to what Idol had run through to get to where he was.

He tightened his grip on his pant legs, wanting to say something but not having any ideas. His eyes were wide and were even beginning to dry with how little he blinked, but he still did not look away from Sif for even a moment.

“That’s a noble goal” he finally said. “I see why you feel the way you do about pirates. I wouldn’t think too kindly of them either if I had a run in with those types.” Idol had in fact had a run in with a similar type of pirate, but not wanting to explain how exactly he ran into them, he merely breathed a deep sigh.

Finally blinking and relieving himself of the sting in his eyes, Idol thought of something to say to make Sif feel better, and maybe get the image of pirates out of her head. “I’m sure those people you helped on Lyneel were pretty happy that you left your home island. I’m sure many of your marine peers are happy you did too. I know I am too; I don’t know where I’d be right now if I didn't meet you here,” Idol said, smiling at his companion. “I’m sure the only other people who wished you’d stayed home are the pirates out in the world who know that the Mighty Sif is wandering the seas and doling out Justice to the worst of the worst that these seas have to offer.”

[mildofthewild]

Sif always had trouble with that memory. It was only recent, but it always seemed to bring her down and cause her to sink into herself, almost losing her mind in the process. 

But that only spoke to how well Idol could pull her back. The woman looks back up, eyes glistening with admiration. Her master...her mentor...

Was so cool...

"Yes...yeah! Thank you, Master! With your help...I can make sure no pirate ever takes advantage of people like that again!" 

The woman balls up her fist and raises it to the sky, grinning broadly as her hair stands on end. "The Mighty Sif...I'll be the mightiest Sif you've ever seen, Master Idol! And with yer help, we'll squash any pirate that crosses our path! I'll be the marine that makes 'em all quake in their boots!" 

The woman chuckles to herself, a little darkly, thinking of all the battles that she'll have...

"SIF! WRESTLEMANIA! YOU TWO HAVEN'T CLEANED THIS PLACE UP YET?!?!"

The sharp cry of her C.O. crushes Sif's resolve, the woman's eyes shrinking as her pale skin turns ghastly. Oh crap, that's right...they were supposed to be cleaning...

"Why you...you lazy bum?! The marine that'll make pirates quake in their boots, huh? Fat chance o' that when you can't even pick up after your own mess! Get back to work, you bum!" The Lieutenant says, shaking her fist and lobbing a brick at the young woman's head. Her dead aim knocks Sif on her back, her eyes rolling and her body twitching from the pain. 

"Grr...these kids...they have such big dreams, but they lack the discipline to reach 'em. What's so good about wantin' those things if you can't work for em." She says, absently, though it seems as if she was speaking to Idol, almost regarding him on equal footing despite his makeshift recruit uniform. 

"Idol, was it? ...What'd you say your dream was? Why do you hold that lummox in such high regard? You only just met her..." She says, though not harshly, looking back to Sif with an almost worried look. Even if the Lieutenant was scary...it seemed pretty obvious she was more than a little protective of Sif. 

[York]

Momentary worry arose when Idol saw Sif’s glistening eyes. Was she going to cry? Idol thought over his words, wondering if he had said something wildly inappropriate, but relaxed when it turned out that Sif agreed with him.

He rose his own fist in the air when Sif made her declaration. The two of them, doing good and crushing pirates out on the seas sounded pretty good. Idol made a mental note to start planning out tag team moves in the future. With Sif’s strength and Idol’s technique, their potential would be almost limitless.

And then the C.O. called out to them, and all of Idol’s mental notes flushed out of his mind like a toilet. He reached for the broom behind him to at least pretend to look busy and avoid some scolding, but it was just out of his reach. Idol almost fell over but he caught himself on all fours just in the nick of time.

”Wait, what did she just say?” Idol asked himself, turning around to face the C.O. in awe, just as she began tearing into Sif. “Did she just say Wrestlemania? She knows about that place?”

Before Idol could ask and indulge his curiosity, a brick flew by and nailed Sif right across the dome. The striking hand of a powerful dock worker wasn’t able to put Sif down, but a single brick did the job? This superior officer must’ve had a hell of a throwing arm. Idol quickly scrambled to his feet and threw up a salute, expecting a piece of debris over his own head any second now. But no more hard objects were thrown his way, only hard indictments about the youth of today and hard questions about Idol himself. How old was Sif anyway? Older than him? Younger than him? Was Idol also a lazy youth? It was hard to keep up in his flustered state, and Idol found himself muttering trying to answer a question as the C.O. would launch another before he could gather himself.

“My dream! Right!” he finally blurted, unsure of how exactly he was going to finish this sentence. “My dream… is to… is to… well” Idol’s mind raced at a mile a minute. What was his dream? What was he doing all of this for? What did becoming a marine have to do with defending the WBCW World Openweight Championship against strong opponents and proving his worth as a wrestler? How did any of this involve Sif? How did any of this involve anything?

Glancing over his shoulder at her downed, twitching body.

There was something in the sight of a downed person on the ground that filled Idol with a warm, proud, and excited feeling. As odd as it was, it reminded him of his days on the WBCW Battle Ship. The days where he would come out of a fight on the winning side, guaranteeing him a heftier payout, a meal at the winner’s table, and a night in the winner’s quarters. This proud sensation filled his chest and gave Idol the guts to look the C.O. in her eyes and answer her every question.

“Yes, my name is Adrian Idol, and I dream of becoming the greatest wrestler in the world. I dream of a world where professional wrestling sits at a degree just as high or higher than any other martial art. I dream of making a name for myself through professional wrestling, and leaving this world a better place than when I entered it. Through professional wrestling.” Pointing behind him towards Sif, Idol kept his confident gaze stuck on the break heaving superior. “And ma’am, in the short time I’ve known Sif, I’ve come to discover that she and I have the same goal in mind. I want to help her achieve her dream, just as much as she wants to help me achieve mine.

“I’ll be the first to admit, we might be a way’s away from hitting those peaks, but as a team, there’s nothing we wouldn’t be able to accomplish. What she lacks, in discipline and knowledge, I have in surplus. What I lack, in size and power, she makes up for in spades! I hold her in such high regard because of what we are capable of together. I'm not better than her, and she's not better than me. We are a team chasing the same goal, after all.”

[mildofthewild]

"Hrrm..."

The C.O. looks back to Sif's prone form, the young woman sitting back up while trying to shake the stars out of her head.

No better than the other, huh? ...Ah, that takes me back.

The C.O. looks up to the sky for a brief moment, feeling the breeze blow through her gray locks. Memories long since past, childhood exploits and fights of old...all of them passing away like dust.

Hmm...maybe it's finally happening. The new bloods are taking over. Then who the hell am I to stand in the way?

"Wrestling as a martial art, huh? Well...how can I argue with that? Although I will say you two have a long road ahead of you...but then again so did I."

Sif finally shakes her mind free, about to bark and plead with the C.O., only to stop as she does something she's never seen before. In fact, something no one in this company has seen before...

Her smile.

"Well, I can tell you one thing, you ain't doing any of that until you clean this place up. Mr. Idol, I'm trusting you to straighten this one out. Can't very well have the next future Admiral being some unkempt bumpkin. And Sif, you'd best do what he says; this man will make wrestling the top of the fighting world, he'll need the perfect student to show that off.

"Now, back to work! Tomorrow may be bright, but today is filthy! We all gotta start from somewhere!" She says, turning with a wave, leaving both Sif and Idol alone with the remains of their first step towards greatness.

"...What'd you say, master? I've never seen Ensign Leena smile before..." Sif says, rising back up with a broom in hand. Something set her mind back to work, the young woman absently sweeping at the piles of rubble around her.

"You didn't hit on her or anything, did you master? She's way out of your league, no offense, and she's way older! You gotta be careful about that, Master, you'll be swamped in broken hearts, and then who'll teach me all those techniques! You've gotta put that to rest, there's no time for horn dogging!" It seems it would be a running theme of Sif getting the wrong impression...

[York]

Idol waited, desperately hoping that he hadn’t said something asinine or embarrassing. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead as the C.O. took longer and longer to respond. He momentarily glanced to the sky to see what she was staring at, but quickly returned his gaze to her face in case she caught him ignoring her. And even though he was waiting for it, the first words out of her mouth still made him jump.

But he relaxed himself when she didn’t return his diatribe with put-downs and insults, but acknowledgement of his goal. As the lieutenant smiled, he smiled. Idol could feel his shoulders loosening, and his back getting straighter. But it wasn’t until he heard of her expectations towards Sif that Idol’s smile grew from ear to ear. If she trusted him to raise Sif to the levels of Admiral, then god dammit, Idol was going to make her into the best Admiral these seas have ever seen! Through the tallest mountains! Through the deepest oceans! Through the most pristine of plains! Through the messiest of messy messes!

Grabbing his broom, Idol got to work, sweeping with a newfound gusto. The next step on their journey wouldn’t be able to start until this one finished, and to get finished cleaning, one had to start cleaning! By the time Sif got up and started questioning Idol’s conversation and tastes in women, he was already pushing together a pile of rubble and working on another. The comment about him breaking hearts was flattering, but there was a time and a place to discuss these matters, and right now, there were more important matters to discuss.

“No, Sif! I did something a little better than that,” he said, in an excited tone. “What I did was I got her on our side! Got her to see things from our perspective, you know?” He turned on his heels and pointing his broom at Sif. “She asked me about you. I told her about you, and she smiled. She must have high hopes for you. As your master, it’s my job to help you reach, and achieve, and surpass those expectations!” Idol stuffed his cap back into his pocket and pulled off his marine shirt, tying the sleeves around his head to create a makeshift bandana. “But we won’t be able to make any forward motion towards our dream until we’re done here, so let’s get back to work already.” The day was still young, and the sun wasn’t gonna take a break on them just because they had ambitions. Today, Idol would push a heavy pile of rocks together into a pile, but tomorrow, he would start to push himself and Sif towards the finish line. "By the way," he asked, looking over his shoulder. "What did you say her name was? Ensign Leena? Or was it Henson? I don't want to look foolish when I have to tell her about the progress you're making."

[mildofthewild]

"Ensign Leena," Sif hurriedly corrects, huffing slightly at being ordered but going back to her work while looking back to Idol. According to him, this was the first in a long line of adventures to reach the top. She may have had some fun before she met her new master, but part of the young woman can't help but feel like this was the true first step to her true goal...

"...Alright, I get ya master...y'know, call me impatient or whatever, but if we are gonna start on our dreams, we need to be out on the seas, I think. You know, front line experience! I don't wanna just get stronger fighting jerks like those brothers here, I wanna make some real change, like on Shimoshiki Island!" Sif thinks back to her last great adventure, fighting against samurai and saving her friend...

"If you're gonna teach me those wrestling moves, I want a front row seat to see em in action!" Sif certainly was brash, but did she have the right idea? Were they going to get anywhere here?

[York]

“Ensign. Never heard that name before but I’ll be sure to remember it from here on out.”

As he swept the mess together, Idol took a good look at the surrounding stalls and buildings. He had been stuck on this island for a lot longer than he was hoping, and now that Sif mentioned going out to sea, he couldn’t help but feel sad about leaving. He thought back to the temp agency that would help him find work, and good old Manabu Fuchi who was always looking for a hand. They were responsible for Idol to maintain a least a modicum of his physical fitness in these times. Mentally, Idol took a note to send them something nice later.

“Oh, you’ll make change alright. Someone as strong and kind as you will move mountains someday,” Idol said, walking around the pile of dust, dirt, wood and stone he’d amassed and catching Sif in his line of sight. “And you’ll have the best seat in the house to reach that potential. Right by my side.”