Post by Jade on Feb 12, 2018 0:14:19 GMT -5
“Rear Admiral!”
The older woman, the coat of a Marine officer draped over her shoulders, tore her gaze from the sea at last. Closing her eyes, she stood from her stool, planting her cane into the stone of the roof of the Marine base, where she and a handful of other officers had set themselves up in order to better view the encroaching Revolutionary Army forces.“Our ships are in position.”
Leena nodded, turning to face the three officers a few feet behind her, standing at attention at a table of Den Den Mushi. “Understood. Now, where is my…” One of the three officers rushed over suddenly, carrying a plain Den Den Mushi in his outstretched hands. “Ah, there it is. My thanks, Commander Wells.”
As she raised the speaker to her mouth, officers stood at attention across forty vessels, and forty Den Den Mushi suddenly opened their eyes, channeling the voice of Rear Admiral Leena. “Are you prepared to defend this island, officers?” Her voice rang through the air, as ships surrounding the island began moving. “The Revolutionary Army is nearly upon us. They’ve underestimated us and challenged our honor - but who cares about something as ephemeral as 'honor'? There are people who call this island home, and we aren’t about to let these upstarts endanger those people! So don't fight for the Marines, or yourself. We will win because we're the one thing standing between these dangerous criminals and the people who look to us to defend the peace!”
The Revolutionary flagship shook as Food Court’s fist hit the deck, wood splinters raining from the impact. The white-haired huntress stepped forward, pressing her fingers into his arm before he had the opportunity to right himself again - and where her fingers touched, vines sprouted, wrapping themselves around the Revolutionary commander’s arm and up across his torso. His other fist swung around into empty air as Bianca sidestepped yet again, sending the titanic man sprawling to the deck with the momentum.
“You… Have the audacity... To interrupt my lunch... My plans...” He snarled, pulling himself up and ripping the plants from his torso, tossing them to the side - oblivious to the new tears across his skin from the vines’ thorns and the blood dripping from the thin cuts. “You insolent… Little girl… 500 POUND CAKE!” Food Court roared, launching himself, his entire mass carried by the sheer force behind his punch. His target reacted faster than he could get to her as the vines around her left arm shot out, slamming into the deck and propelling her into the air.“Jasmine Whip.”
The vines from her right arm shot out, wrapping themselves around the colossal man’s shoulders, his momentum dragging her back down and along for the ride as his fist planted itself in the wooden wall separating the upper deck from the ship's interior. Bianca alighted on the man's back, leaning forward and lifting her left arm. The gauntlet of greenery around her arm twisted, thorns growing over her fingertips, and she slammed her fingers into his side, speaking calmly. “Silver Tip - Lady Grey Stiletto.”
Revolutionary soldiers stepped up, pointing rifles at Bianca as she landed back on the deck, vines twirling back into position around her arms again. Food Court pushed himself out of the wooden wall, revealing the splintered hole into his own office. “No! Back off - she’s mine,” he growled, spinning around. “Go! Help Sarsaparilla with the weapon!”
Rhea, in her long leather duster jacket, stepped off of the giant metal “tuning cannon”, her cleaver-like blade in one hand and her rifle in the other. The girl known as Sorbet, with her multi-colored bright hair, faced her, popping a bubble from her mouth, tapping her baseball bat against her shoulder, as she casually slid across the deck on her roller blades.
“You want to go, old lady?” Sorbet called out her challenge, swinging her bat around and pointing it Rhea. For her part, the bounty huntress didn’t react, staring the girl down with cold grey eyes from under the brim of her dark hat. Sorbet raised her brow at this but shrugged it off, slowing to a stop on her roller blades. “What, cat got your tongue? Fine. Be boring, I don’t-”
Sorbet was cut off as the woman stepped forward, tossed her gun to the side. With a flick of her wrist, Rhea's cleaver-like blade changed, metal pieces sliding into new positions, as the weapon extended into something resembling a halberd. “Agent Sorbet of the Revolutionary Army. Charged with mass destruction of public property and thirteen recorded cases of manslaughter.” Rhea’s quiet voice demanded the full attention of those listening. She raised her head, taking her cleaver-halberd's wooden shaft in two hands as she glared in Sorbet's direction. “Bounty of 19 million beri.”
Rhea took another step forward, swinging her halberd around in a lazy arc - bringing it down into Sorbet’s bat as the girl blocked the deliberately slow swing. The Tracker nodded her approval, picking her halberd up and pointing it back down at the ground. The two stood like that for a moment, mere feet apart, neither one making a sound as they sized the other up…
Until the blurred shape of a dark-haired man flew past, sprinting past them at top speed. Sorbet was distracted for a second - a second that Rhea capitalized on, swinging her halberd around at the Revolutionary agent's side, a blow that the the girl blocked with her bat just in the nick of time.
Thomas sprinted across the deck, doing his best to avoid the Revolutionary soldiers, clutching the four metal hammers from the tuning cannon to his chest as he went. The wannabe bounty hunter, turning his head to see if he was being followed, suddenly slammed into something solid, sending him reeling onto the deck, the hammers flying in four different direction. He rubbed his head as he sat up, muttering to himself. “Sh*t, did I run into the mast…?”
“I’m afraid not,” came the reply, and Thomas’s eyes went wide in terror as he fully comprehended the large man in front of him, with his neatly-trimmed beard and well-defined muscles, looking for all the world like some sort of titan in the mid-morning sun. Agent Bratwurst stood before him, his great two-handed sword held with one, resting on his bare shoulder. “I’m going to need you to put those hammers back where you found them, boy.”
Thomas sputtered, hand reaching to his side to draw his blade - prompting a chuckle from Bratwurst, who raised his own blade a few inches without the slightest hint of strain despite its obvious weight. “I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in. Hand over the hammers, boy. There’s more riding on them than you could possibly know.”
“So this where you ended up, Wolfe?”
The Crimson King stepped in front of Thomas, leaning partially on his plain wooden staff. “Tsk, tsk… Some no-name lackey of the Revolutionary Army. How pathetic. I thought you a greater man than that!” Harsha laughed, a horrible barking sound that prompted the massive man to take a step back, loosening his grip on the blade he had been holding so confidently a moment prior.
“You… You can't be... You’re supposed to be dead,” was all Bratwurst managed to get out, eyes gone wide in a mixture of terror and shock.
The elderly monk laughed at that, and then nodded back at Thomas. “Go on, get out of here. I’ll put this whelp in his place,” he glanced back at the other older man with a grin, “just like the old days. Shouldn’t be hard, since he’s let himself go.”
The wannabe bounty hunter looked between Harsha, with his lean figure and dirty clothes, and Bratwurst, with his bulging muscles and expression of fear, a look of confusion stealing over his face as he tried to piece together what the monk had just said. But the wannabe bounty recognized an opportunity where he saw it and, grabbing at the two closest hammers, he took off at his full-sprint again, calling back toward the old monk as he went. “Yeah, uh, have fun with that, old guy!”
Bianca took a step to the side, allowing the latest punch to simply sail past her body, dragging along the massive man it came from. She turned herself to look at Food Court, bleeding and panting, slowly trying to right himself to face her, and took the opportunity to smooth out the front of her suit jacket. “You may be strong, but all that strength is a waste if you cannot even touch your opponent,” she mused aloud as she darted in, her hands a flurry of well-placed blows across his body which, together, caused the glutton to reel.
Food Court stumbled backward before falling flat on his back, breathing heavily as he laid on the deck. The Revolutionary soldiers who were standing by with their weapons let out shocked gasps as he took in deep breaths that caused his body to seemingly swell in size, unable to believe that their commander could be down for the count - and when he got back up to his feet, they cheered. Food Court gave a low, forced chuckle, glaring at the white-haired huntress who was standing patiently in front of him.
“You… Talk big for a kid.” He managed to get out between pants, and then raised himself to his full (and, truthfully, intimidating) height. “But you’re still... Just… A kid.” He raised his leg into the air and brought it back down, stamping the plank below his foot - sending his side down and the side beneath Bianca up, launching the bounty hunter into the air.
Bianca rolled her eyes as her ascension slowed, leaving her hanging in the air for a second. The green gauntlets began sprung into motion, uncurling themselves from around her arms and coiling into two spear-like shapes in front of her body. “Rize Ranseur.”
The vines shot forward and slammed into Food Court’s chest, causing him to fall backward again, this time with a grunt of pain. Before he could reach up to grab the vines, they retreated, flying back through the to the Garden Woman, who planted them upon the deck to slow her descent and land gracefully upon the deck. “Tell me - is it 'just talk' if one can back it up?” She pondered aloud, brushing aside another loose strand of blood-caked hair from her face - a reminder of how the brute had walloped her in the face and off the deck earlier. “It seems to me as if it is you who is 'all talk'.”
“H-Hey, look, this is all just a big misunderstanding- c’mon, I wouldn’t betray you guys, right…?” The brunette musician-turned-scientist had her hands raised in front of her, as if that would ward off the encroaching weapon-toting Revolutionary soldiers. Sarsaparilla suddenly found her backward retreat halted as she bumped into the guardrail - and she had to laugh in the moment, as the hilarity of actually being forced to walk the plank (or something close enough) hit her.
“Yeah, I don’t think any of us believe that, ‘Sarsaparilla’,” one of them spat in response. “You told the boss that those guys were going to help, and now they’re wrecking everything!”
“Okay, true, but… But…” She looked over her shoulder, down at the waves below, and then began frantically waving her hands in front of her. “Look, I’ll surrender, and you guys can just, you know, take me down to the brig or something, and you can ‘deal with’ me later, or something…?”
She fell to her knees as the men continued their slow approach, weapons drawn and looking for all the world like horrid monsters in her eyes - and so she shut her eyes tight, waiting and hoping that this nightmare would come to an end. And then she heard a series of thuds, and when she opened her eyes again, the men were all laying on the deck, arrows sticking out from their backs.
The mousy boy, Quincy, was sitting on one of the larger men's backs, pulling his arrow out of the man and inspecting the arrowhead. “S-sorry about l-leaving you hanging like that, m-miss,” he stammered - and despite his stammer and the look of nervousness about him, Sarsaparilla could feel an air of malice coming from the boy that drew a shudder from her, just being near the young archer.
Right in time to be of no help with the situation, Thomas sprinted into the picture, coming to a sudden stop between the archer and the scientist. “Okay, I took the hammers off of the cannon, so even if they fire it, they’re going to have a hell of a time actually getting it to go off. Oh, and they'll have trouble doing that too, since I damaged the lever,” he explained, dumping the two metal hammers he had picked back up to the deck. “Your freakazoid friend with the big sword stopped me on the way here.”
Sarsaparilla dusted herself off and then picked the hammers up, looking it over, and then tossed them over her shoulder and off the boat. “Okay, that should do it. I think the only two people who could operate it now would be Bratwurst and Food Court himself - and your friends seem to be keeping them both pretty busy. So what do we do now?”
Quincy stepped off of the body of the Revolutionary soldier and stuck the arrow he had retrieved back into his quiver. “W-well, w-we should… Probably figure out h-how we’re getting out of here?”
The two stared at the lanky man, who was busy lighting a cigarette - but his eyes went wide as he noticed them staring at him, and nearly burnt his finger with his lighter as he froze. “... Why are you two staring at me?” When they didn’t respond, he pocketed his lighter and fixed the brunette woman with an indignant glare. “Are you serious? You didn’t have an escape plan for after betraying the Revolutionary Army, oh ‘brilliant scientist’?”
“Oh, well… No?” Sarsaparilla looked down at her feet and fidgeted under Thomas's gaze. “In my defense, I didn’t think I’d get this far.”
The three stood there for a second, looking at one another, and then put their hands to their chins to think about it. They stood there, undisturbed, as three great clashes went on behind them, the boat shaking under Food Court's heavy blows.
“We… Could try to signal for Yvonne to come back around...?” Thomas finally broke the relative silence, getting a look of confusion from the scientist. “Oh, she’s the one who took our ship away from here in the first place. Did you really think we just bailed on our own ship and left it alone in the water? What kind of idiots do you think we are?”
“Come on, granny!” Sorbet taunted, sticking out her tongue and tapping her bat against her shoulder. “Are you even trying to hit me?”
As if on cue, Rhea’s strange cleaver-halberd swung through the air, slamming heavily down into the deck in front of Sorbet, who only laughed as it swung through the empty air. The huntress pulled her weapon up in a smooth motion, and then swung it in a semicircle in front of her, slicing through the torsos of the men who had been brave enough to jump forward in what they thought was a safe moment. She flicked her weapon to the side, blood flying off with the swift motion, and then returned to her resting stance.
The woman’s continued silence seemed to further frustrate Sorbet, who suddenly came to a stop on her roller blades. “Ugh. You’re no fun.” With that, the Revolutionary kicked off the deck, rolling forward quite suddenly - only to have her powerful downward swing batted to the side like a parent swatting away an annoying child’s hand, and then received a slam in the back from the halberd’s shaft for her troubles, sending her crashing to the deck.
Sorbet pushed herself up from the deck, smearing the blood from her newly split lip. She looked down at her bloodstained hand with a degree of shock - shocked that she had been hit. As she looked up at Rhea, her expression of shock turned into one of anger, and then to fear as the halberd came bearing down on her. The Revolutionary pushed herself into a roll, popping back up onto her roller blades rather unsteadily.
Rhea lifted her halberd from the deck, turning to face the girl with the vibrantly dyed hair. “You’re impulsive. Easy to read.”
The five quietly-spoken words got a rise from Sorbet, who launched herself at the woman, swinging her bat wildly at her with both hands. “Shut! Up! Just... Just die already, won’t you?! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Her bat struck the woman’s weapon each time, slamming the bounty huntress backward with each and every blow - but the halberd itself remained steady. The woman had tilted her head down, hiding her expression under the brim of her leather hat, as she continued to slide backward under the Revolutionary agent’s furious onslaught.
“So I struck a nerve…?” Her seldom-used voice had a playful edge to it now, taunting Sorbet. Her halberd swung forward into the bat suddenly, striking it from the girl’s hands. Sorbet’s eyes followed her bat, reaching out with her now-empty hands after it - only to have the halberd cut into her front in a clean motion, drawing blood.“Lune de Sang.”
When Sorbet’s back hit the deck, she didn’t get back up.
The Tracker knelt in front of the girl's body, taking her wrist between her gloved fingers, and closed her eyes to focus on her work. After a moment, she nodded, placing the girl’s hand over her chest. “Good. Live prey fetches a better price.”
The Marine Captain who had been captured by the Revolutionaries, the larger man with the black goatee, the man known as Bentan, strained against his restraints once again, doing his best but ultimately failing to break out of the iron bindings that kept him locked into his chair at the otherwise abandoned table. The bloodied girl with the plants growing from her body had slammed Food Court into the table after suddenly appearing, a blow that had absolutely ruined the feast that had been laid out.
Bentan sighed, taking several deep breaths, trying to focus through the pain of his battered body - and then he grunted with the exertion of his latest attempt, shaking his seat back and forth. His seat leaned at a perilous angle, and despite his best effort to balance, he fell sideways into the deck, slamming his head into the wood. He sighed audibly; his position was clear. He’d just have to wait until the Revolutionaries finished their plan, or took pity on him and just sent him to the depths of the ocean, like the men he had led to their doom some hours ago...
So it was with a sort of resigned relief that Bentan regarded the footsteps coming his way. He screwed his eyes shut as the people who had come to dispose of him came to a stop around him, no doubt leering down at his helpless form-
“Yeah, I don’t know what they did with the key to his bindings, so I guess we’ll just have to take him with us like this...?”
He placed the voice as belonging to that strange woman with goggles, the lab coat with the peculiar code name - something that started with an “S”? It didn’t matter much, but her words got Bentan’s attention, and he turned his head as much as he could to look up at the three figures standing above him.
“You… Just get it over with already. Toss me into the waves so I can join my men, you, you,” he started defiantly, but sputtered out as he went on. Silhouetted by the sun, he could only make out the general shapes of the three people standing over him - and then his chair was righted by one of them, a man (who noticeably had a difficult time pulling him back up) who smelled of cigarette smoke.
“Yeah, no, I think you’ve got this all wrong,” the smoking man told him, taking his cigarette from his mouth and blowing out some smoke in what was clearly an attempt to look cool as he walked into Bentan's field of view - before falling into a hacking coughing fit as he tried to take a breath. “We’re - ack! - not gonna kill you. We’re going to get off this ship, and we’re gonna get you out of here with us. How’s that sound?”
Bratwurst’s great two-handed blade swung through the air, coming to a sudden stop as Harsha’s staff caught it. Again, that high-pitched sound rang through the air, persisting until Harsha spun his staff around and into the back of an unfortunate Revolutionary’s head - causing blood to fly from the point of impact as the man flew across the deck, slamming into the guardrail and into the ocean in a disturbingly rag doll-like fashion.
“Come now, Wolfe,” the monk taunted, swinging his staff back into a ready position, “where’s that strength you were always boasting about? Don’t tell me you’re so diminished!”
Bratwurst gritted his teeth and backed off, watching the Crimson King warily. “What the hell happened to you?” He asked - and then shook his head, cutting off his own question. “Don’t answer that. Is it even really you, Harsha?” His only response was another of the monk’s barking laughs, drawing a sigh from the shirtless Revolutionary. “You… Why’d you leave us like that? The crew scattered - we all thought you were dead. No, no, tell me this - how did you get your bounty revoked? You… We killed hundreds, Harsha.”
The monk put a finger to his lips. “A secret that will be lost to time, I’m afraid. There’s only me left to take it to my grave, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Bratwurst planted his sword in the deck, resting on it as he tugged on his neatly trimmed beard with his free hand. “I somehow expected that sort of answer. You’re just as infuriating now as you were back then, you know that? Fine. Tell me this, then - why are you working with those people? Why aren't you just killing everyone here, like the old days?”
Another short bark of a laugh. “Would you believe me if I told you I was a pacifist?” Harsha planted his staff on the deck, leaning on it like one would a walking stick. “I gave up the path of bloodshed, Wolfe. I’m a Crimson King no longer - nowadays, I’m just a humble drifter.”
It was Bratwurst’s turn to laugh - a deep, bellowing sort of laughter, though it was all too clearly forced. “You’re right! I don’t believe that for a second, warmonger.” He picked his blade up again, holding it in one hand. “And I’ll have you know, my strength hasn’t diminished in the slightest, old fool.”
“Oh, really? Wolfe, the young man who could lift an island whale with one hand… Reduced to swinging around some hunk of metal as his big feat of strength?” Harsha stepped forward, prompting the other, much larger man to take a few steps back. “You could have been great, Wolfe. But now you’re just another second-rate muscle-headed grunt.”
That comment sent Bratwurst over the edge - his zweihander came up over his head and swung down, meeting the old man’s staff yet again.“Path of Atonement.”
The monk brought his ringing staff around, planting it square in the muscular swordsman’s chest. Bratwurst glanced down at the wooden staff, more surprised that nothing had happened - and then the impact coursed through his body, forming an indent in his gut as he was blasted back, coughing up blood.
Harsha laughed his horrid, harsh laugh. “You see? I didn’t strike that blow - that was all you, you sh*tty brat.”
Bratwurst slammed into and through the wall on the ship's lower open deck, into the ship’s kitchen, where only a giant steel stove broke his flight. The sound of sizzling flesh was quickly followed by a yelp of pain as the Revolutionary agent too quickly tried to hop back to his feet. But he went too fast, and rather than hopping to his feet, he fell forward onto his face instead. Meanwhile, his blade had fallen from his grip as the impact tore through his body, and he was too far away to stop the monk as Harsha kicked the weapon off the deck with his bare feet.
“Get to your feet,” Harsha taunted, and then laughed when Bratwurst just slumped onto the floor. “I don’t think you understand, boy. On. Your. Feet.”
The scene shifted for both men to one that happened so many long years ago - on a moonless night, where a young boy had tried and failed to stand against a ruthless pirate who had set the boy’s hometown ablaze mere minutes before. And then they were in the moment again, the man once and still, to a select few, known as Wolfe charging the Crimson King, with that same cruel grin, his fist raised in the air.
But all that had changed was the years - his fist met the staff, nearly cracking it under the sheer power of the blow, and then the staff slammed into the side of his arm. The telltale crack of breaking bones split the air, and Bratwurst spun with the force of his own punch, and then fell back to the deck - and this time, he didn't get back up.
Harsha laughed, standing over the broken man. “You were always doomed to repeat the past, brat - but at least you did so with defiance in your eyes. That’s what separates men from curs.”
From Jreum itself, Rear Admiral Leena watched the scene laid out in front of her - two Revolutionary warships, each dwarfing the Marines’ vessels, and the gigantic flagship, bearing down upon the island as it showcased the massive so-called “super weapon” that they had developed. The Marine ships had begun their engagement under Leena’s command, attempting to close in on the massive flagship, but the two accompanying warships had managed to outgun, if not out man, the Marine vessels - and now the Marines seemed to be fighting a losing battle as they struggled to slow the Revolutionary ships.
Leena closed her eyes, taking a seat on her stool to rest. She had been staring out at the sea for quite some time now with all of her attention; it was beginning to become too much, even for her. An aide stepped up behind her, offering a reassuring word and a glass of water, both of which the Rear Admiral accepted graciously. She rubbed her eyes, stifled a yawn, and then looked out upon the blue of the sea from her perch on the top of the Marine base - and then let out an audible gasp as she caught the telltale flash of steel under the light of the sun.“Sound the alarms! Now! The island is-”
Leena wasn't able to finish her thought before the impact, as the massive tuning fork-like weapon slammed into the the stone of the foundation of the Marine base, burying itself deep into the rock. A behemoth of steel; even now, what was able to be seen of the weapon above the stone it was buried in seemed to be about the size of a sailboat. The woman stared out across the ocean, tracing the length of the thick cord that connected the weapon to the ship - watching as it slowly began to retract, pulling itself taut. Far too late to actually warn anyone, the sirens of the Marine base began to ring out, splitting the air in a cacophony of shrill alarms.
Three minutes prior…
As the fight between the two powerhouses on the Revolutionary flagship continued, it was becoming more and more obvious who the victor would be - Bianca was pressing close now, weaving between Food Court’s slogging and telegraphed punches. Her own blows only seemed to be speeding up as she fell into a sort of rhythm, slamming her fingers into the gigantic man’s torso and arms, punishing him for each and every missed blow. Multiple finger-shaped holes had been opened up in Food Court’s skin, dripping blood.
An ordinary blow to the chest winded the titanic man, knocking him off balance, and a Lady Grey Stiletto followed, drawing blood and knocking him over. Food Court fell backward, taking sharp, shallow breaths while Bianca stood over him, taking the lull in the action to push yet more loose strands of hair out of her face.
A few seconds passed in this fashion until Food Court rolled over, pushing himself up onto all fours, and glared up at the bloodied Bianca. The two stayed like this for a second before the Revolutionary commander’s gaze shifted from the white-haired woman to the scene on the rest of his ship - the arrows that changed direction mid-air, the monk and the woman in the leather duster staving off his soldiers, the unconscious bodies of Sorbet and Bratwurst slumped over each other in the center of the deck. His beady eyes found Bianca again, and, after hacking up a glob of blood, he spoke.“... I can’t beat you.”
The Garden Human raised a brow, allowing the man to take a few deeper breaths. He took the opportunity gladly, pushing himself up off the deck again, taking an almost squat-like stance with one hand planted firmly on the deck. “At least, not the way I am now." He tilted his head up to look at the white-haired huntress, a too-wide grin stealing over his face. "You know, I haven’t done this in almost four years. MEATBOOST!”
Bianca threw her arms up and out, commanding the vines wrapped around her forearms forward as the man in front of her disappeared in a cloud of steam - but there was no feeling of impact. A large hand shot out from the steam as it began to disperse, gripping the plants tight and then pulled, dragging Bianca forward, lifting her from the deck and launching her into the air.
The form of Food Court was revealed as the steam fully dispersed - but not the Food Court from even just a moment before. The previously massively rotund man was replaced by a slim, yet no less impressively large, man. The newly slimmed down Revolutionary tore his old buttoned-up shirt off and tossed it to the side and then pulled up his pants and tightened his belt.
Bianca’s vines wrapped around the ship’s mast and pulled her toward the wooden structure, from which she slid down and alighted upon the deck once more, no trace of any surprise on her face. The few Revolutionary soldiers who had still been watching this fight from the sidelines, however, looked on in a combination of shock and awe at their transformed commander.
“Heh. So, Stark,” he called out to her, running his hands through his slicked back black hair and adjusting his now far better-fitting suit jacket on his shoulders, “you’ve earned my respect, but are you ready for round two? I’m not going to hold back. Try to keep up, alright?”
Bianca kept her eyes on the man as she slowly, deliberately closed the distance between them, taking note of the way the puncture wounds she had given him had suddenly begun bleeding again - as if the wounds were fresh. “A fascinating ability. You store all of that excess energy as fat, and then you burn it all at once… But you are not long on your feet, even if you have some newfound vigor, are you?”
As his response, Food Court disappeared - and then the sun disappeared, and a large hand was placed on her back. “Perhaps, but I think we’re done here. 1000 Pound Cake.” The shadow of the giant of a man loomed over her now - before she had a chance to look up at the Revolutionary commander, an equally large fist slammed into her gut, causing her to slam into the hand on her back and spit up an amount of blood that onlookers would agree could not be healthy. The white-haired woman staggered forward as the hands were moved aside, the living gauntlets curled around her arms unwinding and falling limply to the deck as her hands found themselves occupied with clutching at her stomach.
The imposing figure of Food Court turned his back on the fallen woman, surveying the damage to his operation as she slumped forward onto the deck. Sarsaparilla had clearly lied to him - the fact that his two remaining Agents’ bodies were piled on top of one another on the deck and two of the people Sarsaparilla had supposedly hired fought off his grunt-level soldiers. He turned his head upward, looking to the upper deck level - the captured Marine officer was nowhere to be seen, and Sarsaparilla was being defended from a group of his soldiers by the two young men - including that one who had been smoking before.
The Revolutionary commander took a few deep breaths and then sighed audibly. “I’m disappointed, Sarsaparilla!” Food Court’s deep voice rang out, quieting the entire ship as all parties halted momentarily. “If you were going to betray me, you should’ve put more effort into it!”
Three arrows whizzed through the air, all flying wide - or so it seemed. The three arrows suddenly turned mid-flight, forty-five degrees, redirecting themselves so that they were each pointed at Food Court’s back. The Revolutionary turned his head in time to see them coming and dodged to the left, but the rightmost arrow still found its target, and the arrowhead buried itself in his side. He gripped the shaft in one hand, pulled it out, and then located the mousy-haired archer, who had nocked another three arrows, splayed out in a strange fashion. Beside the archer stood Sarsaparilla, and behind them the battered and bloody Captain Bentan, still in his chair. The tall man with the sword was nowhere to be seen - but it didn’t matter. Food Court took the bloodied arrow between his first and middle finger and flung it back at the archer boy, who let out a yelp as it lodged itself in his shoulder, his three nocked arrows falling from his fingers. Food Court laughed at that, and then turned his back to them, continuing his advance toward the front of the ship.
The tuning cannon stood proudly at the ship's bow - the drum contraption dismantled, but that wouldn’t matter. “You got scared of what you made, is that it? I understand! This is the weapon that will turn the tides, my dear Sarsaparilla - and even you turning traitor now can’t ruin this!” The giant of a man took the back of the cannon in both hands, fixing his eyes on the island and the Marine base in front of him - and then, through sheer strength alone, he aimed the tuning cannon manually. “This is my moment! All of history will remember this - remember me!”
His right hand reached forward, pulling the massive, man-sized lever - and tuning cannon failed to respond in the slightest as the handle simply pulled loose from the contraption, leaving a useless hunk of metal in his hands. Food Court stopped for a moment, staring down at the length of metal with a blank, and then tossed it to the side in disgust. He moved to the front of the cannon, putting both hands on sailboat-size tuning fork, and pulled - and slowly, but surely, it slid out, until the steel cord at its base was revealed. He grunted with the effort it took him to lift it above his head, the wounds he had received from his fight spurting blood as his muscles bulged - and then he turned to face the island with the tuning fork. He took a few deep breaths, and then wound back.
Everyone on board the Revolutionary flagship, the two adjacent Revolutionary vessels, the Marine vessels on the water, the people who had been evacuated from Jreum itself, and those who remained at the Marine base all stopped in that moment, watching as the gigantic metal contraption soared, arced toward the island, and embedded itself in the foundation of the Marine base.
The black-haired man stood with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath, his own blood pooling on the deck around his feet. “You... See...? None of you... None of you can stop this...! None of you can stop me!” He pulled himself together, staring up at the sky, forcing a massive grin through the agony of his every breath. Food Court caught himself from falling by leaning against the tuning cannon, where he stood quietly for a beat as he steadied himself. After a few seconds of catching his breath, he started his slow walk toward the back of the cannon. He didn’t register the lanky man standing on the other side at first, cigarette between his gritted teeth and sword held with unsteady hands, standing between the black-haired Revolutionary and the tuning cannon’s drum, but when he did, Food Court laughed - a spectacle which didn't last long as it turned into him spitting blood up onto the deck.
“Out of the way,” he spat out after a few breaths, drawing himself back up to his full, intimidating height. “You’re... Out of your depth.”
Thomas, to his credit, kept a brave face - a defiant grin in the face of danger, given away only by the way his legs trembled and the subtle shaking of his blade. “Really? Wh-what are you gonna do, bleed on me? Come on, a stiff breeze could probably take you down, man.” He spat his cigarette out and attempted to steady himself. “You want to use your stupid bullsh*t cannon? Then you’ll have to go through-”
He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as Food Court’s massive fist rammed into his torso, knocking the wind from Thomas’s body and sending him flying back into the cannon, more than a few loud cracks coming from his torso as multiple bones broke simultaneously. His sword clattered to the deck as the wannabe bounty hunter fell forward, landing hard on his face. The Revolutionary commander stood over the dark-haired young man, his titanic figure blotting out the sun.
“Did you have fun playing the hero… Boy…?” Food Court worked out as he unclenched his hand. “I told you, didn’t I? You can’t stop me.”
Thomas groaned, trying to force his body to move - but when that didn’t go great, and he was merely tried to look up at the massive man, forcing words out. “I… Didn’t have to stop you… Just… Had to buy her some time...”
And as Thomas’s world went black, Food Court laughed, facing the tuning cannon’s drum, raising one fist - but that was as far as he would get as he found his arm wrapped in greenery, preventing further forward movement.
“How does ‘round three’ sound?” Bianca’s far steadier voice rang out from behind Food Court, whose arm dropped as the vines released their hold. “I won’t even give you the chance to fall to your own ability. Do try to keep up, though.”
He turned to face the bounty huntress, his pained look giving way to absolute rage as he beheld the battered Bianca, whose white dress suit had been stained in both his and her own blood from their earlier fights. And as he attempted to close the distance between them, those green gauntlets around her arms unraveled, moving uncannily like the tentacles of some horrible deep sea beast.“Flowering Phalanx!”
The last few inches of each of the two dozen vines suddenly stiffened and then flew toward him like a volley of spears. Food Court raised his arm in front of him as he attempted to charge through to the girl, but the vines pierced his body, three at a time, tearing through him and stopping him mid-charge. The vines pulled back as soon as they punctured him before flying forth again, piercing him over and over again, the surprising force behind each blow sending the massive man reeling backward until his back was to the tuning cannon.
And then assault ceased - twenty-four blood-drenched vines connecting the inert man to the white-haired woman controlling them. Food Court made one last attempt at raising his body, but his immense strength had finally failed him. His eyes rolled back, his body fell limp, and then, and only then, did the vines retract, allowing the titanic man to fall forward to the deck.
Bianca’s hands pulled at the place where the vines connected to her arms, removing them like one would a dirty pair of gloves at the end of an operation, allowing them to fall to the deck like the man she had just taken down. Her eyes drifted over to Thomas in that moment, a wry smile stealing over her face, and then her world, too, went dark.
As consciousness returned to him, so did the sensation of broken ribs and the feeling that his entire body had been filled with lead. Thomas groaned, closing his eyes tight in an attempt to force himself back to that blissful state of unawareness - but sleep eluded him and, rather begrudgingly, he opened his eyes.
He was definitely in a bed, that much was for certain, in a room that was sparsely decorated with baby blue-painted walls. The only light was natural, coming in with the sea breeze through an open window across the room from his bed. There was a stand on the left side of the bed with a lamp on it - and on the right was a chair, currently occupied by the silver-haired woman known as Dr. Yvonne Leblanc, the doctor who had begun travelling with Bianca’s little group only a few weeks ago, who was currently dozing, her head hanging as she quietly snored.
Thomas attempted to push himself up, but his entire body fought him, pain spiking through his body for his troubles. He groaned again, more loudly this time, and slowly turned his head to face Yvonne. “Hhh…” The wannabe bounty hunter attempted to speak, but found his voice rougher, raspier, and quieter than he had expected. He coughed once (which was a mistake) and then made a second attempt. “Hey, doc. Doc?”
Yvonne started with a yawn, stretched her arms over her head, and then smiled down at her patient. As she stood up, he could see her white doctor’s coat draped over the back of the chair she had been sitting in, and before responding to him, the silver-haired doctor made a point of pulling that coat back on, adjusting the edges of the sleeves. “So, are you finally actually awake?” She finally responded, looking over her shoulder at the lanky man. “You’ve woken up a few times before, but you weren’t coherent. We’ll see if you remember this later, I suppose.”
“Wait, I’ve been up? Ngh… I don’t remember that at all,” he responded, and then groaned again, since apparently that was about all he was capable of at this point. “My head hurts. My everything hurts. Can’t you give me something to kill the pain, doc?”
She raised a brow at Thomas's request. “You’re on painkillers already, kiddo. You’ve been on them for long enough, so I’m actually trying to bring your doses down. Might be why you're seeming more coherent, actually...” Yvonne walked over to the bedside as Thomas suddenly noticed the steel pole holding an IV bag to his right, where it had previously been out of sight, beyond where he could see with his stiff neck. She tapped the dripper feeding into the line leading into his arm at the bottom of the bag a couple times. “It was some pretty strong stuff, so we don’t want you developing any addictions or dependencies on it. Plus, you’re recovering a lot faster than any of us could have anticipated, so you don't actually need to be on it longer.”
Thomas screwed his eyes shut, muttering a string of expletives under his breath that prompted a laugh from the woman. “Yeah, that’s really cool. I feel so great.”“Well, take some pride in how you got injured, at least.”
Thomas tilted his head slightly to look at Yvonne as she turned her back to him, walking over to a counter on the opposite side of the room from his bed. “Wha… Woah, hang on, what did I do?”
“You don’t remember what put you in here?” The doctor pulled a small vial out of a drawer, popped the protective top from the syringe she had drawn out, and began drawing out the clear fluid from the vial. “That Quincy boy told me what you did, and Bianca confirmed his story when she woke up. Apparently, you stood up against that big guy… Food Court, I think they said his name was?”
“Oh. Right.” He laid silently for a minute as Yvonne measured out the dosage. “... I kinda thought that was a bad dream I had.” He fell silent again as the needle slid into the spot where the IV line entered his arm - and he could feel a dull, cold sensation as it entered his arm. “You saw our signal?”
“Mm,” the doctor responded, sliding the now-empty syringe back out and placing the cap over the needle. “The flare? You know, we really should have discussed what sort of signal we were going to use ahead of time, but I figured it out. Lucky for you guys too, since it seems you had a pretty rough time of it.” What Yvonne did with the syringe was a mystery to Thomas, but it was nowhere to be seen as she took to her seat again. “I think I’m starting to understand what Bianca sees in you, Thomas.”
As the world began to go dark for him again, the lanky man fought it, raising his voice again. “You said Bi’s up…?”
“Yes. She has been for a few days, in fact,” Yvonne said, “and I just gave her clearance to be out and about this just yesterday. If you want my honest opinion, she probably should have another week or so of bed rest, but she wasn’t having any of it…”
But the rest of Yvonne’s words were lost on Thomas, as he fell back into blissful sleep once again, a small smile (despite the pain) on his face.“Is there anything else that you need from me?”
Rear Admiral Leena sat back in her chair, behind the desk separating the two women, tapping her fingers against the arm of the chair in thought. “Unless there’s some way I can talk you into joining the Marines, Ms. Stark, I believe that’s all.”
Bianca responded with a faint smile and a shake of her head. “I fear not. My path to greatness does not intersect with a military career. I am a woman of business, after all.” With the meeting coming to a close, the white-haired huntress stood from her seat, placing a hand on her side and breathing through the shooting pain, but never letting the pain show on her face. “Thank you for your time, Read Admiral, but I fear that I must get going.”
The older woman splayed her fingers, gave her guest a smile, and stood. “I believe I called you here, but you’re welcome. Take care, then, Ms. Stark, and know that what you did for this island was truly heroic.” The Marine bowed from the waist, held that position for a moment, and then stood back to her full height. A moment of fishing behind her desk produced her cane, which she leaned against as she led the way out of her office, opening the door for Bianca and walking with the bounty huntress down the hallways of the Marine base.
At the entrance, Leena said her farewells and walked back into the base, and Bianca had the black leather briefcase she had brought with her returned to her. And with that, she made her way back into the bright mid-morning sun, walking with a purpose in the direction of Jreum Island’s Resort block, toward the bar where she would be making an offer once again to a certain man to join her organization. But this time, with the position she found herself in, that was an offer she would truly be able to make.It wasn’t just a dream anymore. The time for her Tea Company was now.
