A Dead Man's Tales

[Vio]

^{Yanmei #1}

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It had been over a day since the defeat of Captain Teazer’s crew aboard the desolate ship of the former Redmoon Pirates — over a day since Zhu Yanmei and John Culliford had first met on that floating graveyard — and since the frail little dinghy had escaped the fog. Mid evening and clear skies all around, a gradually deepening shade of orange seemed to infuse the air as the sun made its way to the end of its waking hours to tuck its weary head beneath the blanket of the horizon. Good tailwinds had allowed the little boat to make significant progress on its utterly ambiguous heading, but for now the sail had been furled to allow for a moment of respite.

“Sho whur’dja lurm ‘o ch’ooze a shord?” Yanmei asked through cheeks stuffed full of jerky. Currently, she sat cross-legged upon the fore of the deck, genuinely curious as to her newly assigned crewman’s origins as a swordsman. Sure, he’d explained a little of his background — at least as far as his reasons for being starved upon a mutinied ship were concerned — but that didn’t explain much about who he was. Maybe if she'd had patience she would’ve learned more, but now they had plenty of time to talk.

Dressed in her usual baggy black pants, the girl with the black ‘odango’ hair had since replaced her purple qipao with a very basic green t-shirt with a cutesy koala face upon it. That had been a necessity given the damage Caleuche’s blades had dealt her, though the cuts on her back were still rather shallow and currently covered by fresh bandages. Repairing her other garment could come later. The whole ordeal had made her very aware of her mother’s often repeated words on the matter of packing spares. A white stone — a curved teardrop with a single hole in it through which a red thread had been looped — hung from her neck.

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SPOILER: Click to show

{Post Synposis:}
<sub>As the two of them sail alonge, Yanmei asks John about his swordsmanship.

Notes: fearjunkie</sub>

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Zhu Yanmei | #301934
John Culliford | #4b6f44

[fearjunkie]

John #1

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John laid on his back watching the sky as their diminuitive vessel made its way across the West Blue. He'd been quietly humming old sea shanties when Yanmei spoke up. He sighed and sat up. "Yanmei, I can barely understand you with your mouth full of food..." He sat up, letting his hand rest on the cutlass he took off the ship. "Everything about fighting I know, I learned from my first captain, Gods rest his soul. He was a master of the Erlyn style and mentored me while I was serving as cabin boy on his ship."

John leaned back against the wooden interior of the ship. Though he still wore the same clothes he'd had on the ship, he'd taken off his coat and hat to coold down. His gaze fell upon the pendant that Yanmei was wearing. "So, what's the story behind that stone of yours? It seems important..."

[Vio]

^{Yanmei #2}

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“Mh! Showwy,” Mei replied as John called her out, the girl attempting to swallow the jerky in one go and eventually succeeding after very nearly choking. All the same, she did not linger on the event, instead taking a surprisingly keen interest in her first mate’s story. As brief as it was, it was informative in its own way, but while she took the time to process this information, John had prepared his own query.

“Oh! This?” she quizzed, holding the bead up between her fingers and beaming a wide smile. “It’s a promise! Me and Mei each took half of a charm and swore on following our dreams,” she announced, bouncing to her feet and dramatically pointing a finger to the sky. Why she did so, she did not really know. The pose simply felt like the right thing to do. Her arm relaxed as she looked at John, her expression shifting to something joyful yet tranquil as she recalled fond memories of years gone.

^{“I hope she’s doing alright,” Mei added:
“Her papa was always super strict!”}

The smile faded, but soon returned.

“Oh! Just so we’re clear on this,” Miss Zhu began. “You’re not actually dead, right? Huh… A skeleton man would be cool to have on our crew! Uh– But, yeah, you said they called you ‘Dead Man’,” she continued, plucking out small snippets of vague words that had been spoken to her when the two had first met. John’s introductions then had been comically cut short by necessity and unwanted interruptions, but suffice to say that Yanmei had at least caught some of his weird ramblings. Another question, however, also sprung to mind.

^{“How many Captains have you had…?”}

---

SPOILER: Click to show

{Post Synposis:}
<sub>Yanmei explains her charm and reminisces, but soon asks John about his moniker and previous employment.

Notes: N/A</sub>

---

Zhu Yanmei | #301934
John Culliford | #4b6f44

[fearjunkie]

John #2

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"Ack, don't choke on it-!"

John watched with amusement as Yanmei gesticulated wildly. "I take it your dream was to be Pirate King..." he said with a chuckle.

His expression grew a little more serious when she asked about his epithet. "Yes...I have a history of just barely eluding death...I almost died when I was a baby, I had to survive for a year on my own when a hurricane destroyed my home village....as for captains, I only consider one as truly being 'my captain' before you came along: Buford Lynx, the man who saved me from my village when I ran out of food and nearly starved to death."

John reclined in the boat. "When I told others of all the things I've been through, someone made a joke that the only explanation for it was that I was already dead and somehow eluded Davy Jones' clutches. The name sort of stuck after that..."

[Vio]

^{Yanmei #3}

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“I take it your dream was to be Pirate King,” John chuckled in response. But to that, Yanmei could only respond by rubbing the back of her head and smiling. Strangely enough, such a goal in life was a far more recent development, and she saw no reason to keep that a secret.

^{“Heh! Nah,” she answered:
“That’s pretty new to me!”}

Mister Culliford’s explanation of his story was a grim one, that much was undeniable. Perhaps what made it the most tragic was not the roughness of his upbringing, but the fact that there had been only one prior to Miss Zhu that he dared to bestow the honour of true captaincy. A man named Buford Lynx, though the name itself carried no meaning to the girl. There was, however, one thing that nagged her brain and prompted a strained squint as she worked to process it.

“‘Ellooding’? ‘Ellooded’? Are you sure that’s the right word?” Mei questioned. The language lost on her uneducated mind, she could not help but query whether or not such things were proper. “You kinda like saying it,” she added, perhaps in reference to John’s manner of speech. Fanciful almost, but not so flowery as to remind her of her best friend’s all too prim and proper pronunciations and extremely long words, nor of the very same young lady’s method of introducing herself.

“Hm! You’ve had it rough,” she said with a sharp nod, smile forming again as she giggled. “And I thought being the only sister in my family was bad!” Family left behind, thoughts of her extensive ‘clan’ rarely seemed to linger in her mind, and perhaps that was a good thing. Did she miss them? Yes, but the adventure was far more promising. Already she had made new friends and rivals. “At least I don’t have to share everything with my brothers now!”

---

SPOILER: Click to show

{Post Synposis:}
<sub>Yanmei is confused by words used by John.

Notes: N/A</sub>

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Zhu Yanmei | #301934
John Culliford | #4b6f44

[fearjunkie]

John #3

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Did she really not know what 'eluding' mean? John could have sworn it was a fairly common word. "Yes....it means 'to escape' or 'to evade'...'getting away'." John explained.

"Ah, did you have many siblings?" John asked. He'd been an only child, and had occasionally wondered what having brothers and sisters would have been like.

As he waited for an answer from his new captain, John had a realization: there was no way they'd be able to take on more crew members with this tiny dinghy of a vessel. 

"We should look for a bigger ship as soon as we possibly can...." John remarked. "There's barely enough room for just the two of us..."

[Vio]

^{Yanmei #4}

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Zhu Yanmei tried her best. Sadly, her best just wasn’t up to par. Words such as ‘eluded’ did just that to her comprehension. Why people couldn’t just use words like ‘dodge’ or ‘run away’ instead of imaginary ones like ‘eluded’ baffled her mind, but the more she tried to focus on it, the more her head hurt. Fortunately, John had helped to change the subject.

“Four older brothers and six younger ones,” Mei answered, identifying her position amongst a roster of eleven children. The age gaps weren’t anything ridiculous, either, with perhaps a year or two between each sibling. “I didn’t have any sisters, though,” she clarified. It was then that Mister Culliford raised an important fact, prompting Miss Zhu to consider something she seldom ever bothered with: The future. Very much living in the now at any given time, she rarely gave thought to planning out her journey. By sheer luck and happenstance, she had found a ship and her first mate, and she hadn’t had any plans beyond it.

“You think so…? I thought this’d be fine, but I guess you’re right,” the girl agreed, looking at the dishevelled boat upon which she had been sailing for so long. It had seen rough waters, been patched together, and yet had still somehow stayed afloat despite its journey. Perhaps it was time to say goodbye to the rickety old dinghy and find something new.

^{“Then we’ll do that!” she jumped up:
“Next island… We find ourselves a ship!”}

Silence lingered.

^{“Oh…,” Mei seemed to realise:
“What’s somebody who drives a ship called?”}

---

SPOILER: Click to show

{Post Synposis:}
<sub>Yanmei and John decide their next course of action.

Notes: N/A</sub>

---

Zhu Yanmei | #301934
John Culliford | #4b6f44

[fearjunkie]

John #5

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John raised his eyebrows when Yanmei counted off her many siblings. "Ten siblings in all? My, you must have had quite the large family..." John said with amusement. 

A comically large sweatdrop of 'you're kidding me, right?' rolled down John's face as Yanmei revealed she thought the dinghy would be sufficient. "I'd hardly call this fine....it'd sink from a single cannonball, let alone survive entering the Grand Line..."


John reached into the bags of loot they had taken from the Redmoon's ship and began doing some math in his head. "I think we should have enough for a caravel and some basic supplies...." John said, counting the doubloons and gems.

[Vio]

^{Yanmei #5}

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“We should have enough for a caravel,” John explained, having distracted himself with the counting of crystal and coin. When it came to money, Zhu Yanmei was nothing short of naïve — naïveté born of a more squalid background than some. The worth of the coins and the stones and the other articles that had been bagged amongst the treasure hold of the Redmoon Pirates’ ship was far in excess of anything she had likely ever seen in her youth, not to mention the fact that she had no idea of how much a ship such as a caravel cost in the first place.

“Helmsman! That was it,” she recalled, having been mentally fighting with her limited vocabulary while her First Mate had been running the numbers. Truth be told, she would have had no clue as to the various roles of a ship if not for her friend, Meifeng, whose more noble upbringing boasted a much greater knowledge of the world. “So that settles it, right? Next island, we’ll get ourselves a proper ship!” With energy in her step, she grabbed the line that held the sail, ready to let it catch the winds once more.

---

SPOILER: Click to show

{Post Synposis:}
<sub>Yanmei and John decide their next course of action.

Notes: N/A</sub>

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Zhu Yanmei | #301934
John Culliford | #4b6f44