“Ahh, pirates. We’re not exactly the hospitable sort. In our line of business, there’s a lot more ‘hack, hack, shoot’ than sipping tea with powdered neighbors. Oh, pass me that rum. No, not that rum, do you want to die?”

-The Golden Son, account written by biographer shortly before the latter’s death, date unknown.

 

“Alright, brother. Out you come!” Torch called from the other side of the door.

Stephan sighed, straightened his collar, and splashed his face with a bit of cold water from the sink in the toilet stall.

He opened the door and stepped into the rec room of the ship known as the Tits Up, located on the crew deck.

The room was decently sized, equipped with a table and a couple couches that had been bolted to the floor. It also had a mini kitchen and a cabinet which held various games for the pirates to pass the time.

The walls were decorated with faded, factory-produced posters, depicting gun models, exotic vistas, and naked women who had their crotches and nipples pasted over with colorful stickers.

“Not bad,” Torch said with a twitchy grin as he looked Stephan up and down. The strange, scarred man lounged in one of the couches, a small flame dancing between the fingers of his outstretched right hand. “Grow some tits, and I’m sure you’ll be able to fill that thing out.”

Stephan looked down at the white button-up he had been given. It had felt a little tight around the shoulders.

He sighed inwardly.

This is Quintilla’s, isn’t it?

Great.

I’m wearing a woman’s clothes.

I need to stop telling myself things can’t get any worse.

His suit had been absolutely lousy after three weeks without being able to change out of it, as well as his little… incident. The pirates had given him a new button-up as well as a pair of roomy slacks.

“Are these Quintilla’s too, then?” Stephan asked and tugged on the pants.

Torch shook his head. “Nope.” He flicked the bobbing flame into his mouth and closed it, cheeks bulged. He blew out a plume of smoke that made Stephan cough. Torch just smiled. “Those are mine, actually. Check the pockets—left a little present for you, brother.”

Stephan rifled through the pockets and found a few hard lumps. He pulled them out and stared at them in the palm of his hand. There were five of them, each about the size of a fingernail. They were a matte grey color, with irregular, slightly rounded shapes, and they smelled a bit like sulfur.

Given how they were a gift from the pyromaniac, it didn’t take much to figure out what they were. Stephan placed them aside on the table with a polite smile.

“Thanks,” he said. “Very thoughtful. You shouldn’t have.”

“Aw, no fun,” Torch said with a disappointed puppy look in his eyes. It might have been endearing, if not for the twisted scarring that bunched his face into an ugly, puckered raisin. “You don’t want to pop ‘em? I made those firecrackers special for you.”

“Maybe later.” Stephan cleared his throat. “Now, I would like to see the captain, if that’s possible.”

“That’s impossible,” Torch said, completely deadpan as he sat up straight.

Stephan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

Torch broke into a grin. “Not before I give you a tour of the ship, that is! Come with me, brother. I’ll show you everything—even where that little reedling Yin keeps her snacks.”

He bounced out of his seat, and Stephan felt he had no choice but to follow as the odd little man continued further into the crew deck.

After the rec room, they came to a narrow hallway with doors on both sides. Stephan counted eight in total.

“These are all the cabins,” Torch explained. “Well, apart from the captain’s, of course, but we’ll get to that in a sweet minute.” He walked down the hallway, letting his metal hand scrape along the wall. “We don’t use all these—the ones at the end are just for storage. That’s where you’ll sleep tonight, I reckon.”

“Right,” Stephan said.

He was going to get his own cabin. That sounded like a dream compared to the hard floor he had been sleeping on until now.

Torch stopped at the first door on the right. “This one’s Kurko’s. Wanna have a peek at the first mate’s stuff?”

“I feel like that’s kind of an invasion of privacy. Maybe we shouldn’t…?”

Torch had already opened the door and wandered inside.

Stephan rubbed his temples to combat an onsetting headache. Curiosity got the better of him, however, and he headed inside after the pyromaniac.

Everything in the room seemed to have been adjusted of specially designed with Kurko the behemoth’s obvious bulk in mind. The bunk was both longer and broader than what would normally be considered reasonable, taking up almost half of the small cabin. There was a comparatively minuscule desk with a large chair behind it. The desk held a bunch of papers and several leather-backed ledgers which Torch immediately started rifling through, getting sooty fingerprints on everything.

“Nice,” Stephan said. “Very discrete. I’m sure he won’t mind you turning over his every possession.”

“What do you mean?” Torch asked. “He loves me. He’d never say a bad word about me.”

There was also a cabinet near the bed. Stephan opened it and found some kind of totems within, roughly human shapes made from clay and wood. Stephan couldn’t tell what they were for, but they looked creepy enough, so he left them alone.

There was a set of oversized dumbbells underneath the bed, but overall the room was sparsely decorated.

“Yeah, Kurko’s pretty boring, poor boy,” Torch said, dropping the papers back on the desk with a disappointed sigh. “Let’s move on, shall we, before we start sprouting moss out of our ears.”

Stephan thought that was a fine idea. He’d rather not suffer the wrath of that monster.

Torch barged into the room directly opposite the first, and Stephan was hit with a wave of humid, perfumed air as soon as he stepped through.

The cabin was dimly lit, but Stephan could still make out the fact that the walls were covered in full-body pictures depicting women of every race on the good earth of Solam in various states of undress, drawn directly on the walls from floor to ceiling. Whoever had made them clearly had a crude mind, but an expert hand. Every line was precise, every piece of anatomy exaggerated to sexual deviancy, but utterly believable.

“This is the den of our esteemed pilot, Kazzul,” Torch said. “His crotch burns hotter than my flames ever could, as I’m sure you can gather.”

Stephan nodded dumbly and averted his eyes from the paintings. The bed had been made with fine silk sheets and a fluffed-up pillow, both of which shimmered like pearl. This contrasted against the thin, hard cot itself.

A clunky humidifier spread a fine mist through the air. Several expensive-looking outfits hung from racks, and there was a pair of fluffy slippers next to the cot.

There wasn’t much else of note on display, so they proceeded to the next room—Torch’s own.

Unsurprisingly, it was an absolute mess, dirty clothes and metal parts strewn all over the floor. Instead of a desk, Torch had a small work station heaped with cables, components, powders, liquids, and grainy substances.

“I suppose you craft your own explosives, then?” Stephan asked, nodding at the workstation.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I craft them, per se,” Torch said with a shrug. “It comes to me in these flashes, like lightning, and then my hands just have to make them.”

“Is that how you lost your…” Stephan held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers.

Torch didn’t answer, already occupied with digging through his personal trash heap.

Stephan had a walk around the room, stepping carefully on the bare bits of flooring to avoid impaling his foot on a jagged piece of metal. He opened a drawer on the workstation and found various nick nacks within. Surprisingly, none of them looked like explosives. He picked up a metal badge and turned it over.

It had the six stars of the Concord on a bright blue field.

Stephan was about to ask Torch when he’d gotten it when the pyromaniac suddenly burst out into a shrill cry.

“Oh, that thief!” he hissed. “She’ll pay for this!”

Stephan watched, eyebrows raised, as Torch stormed out of the cabin. He followed with some trepidation and watched as the pirate kicked at the door to the cabin opposite his own.

“Yin, I know you’re in there!” he called. “Open the door, you little bug, or I’ll blow it to pieces!”

“Go away, clown!” a muffled girl’s voice cried from inside. “Go bother someone else!”

“You stole from me!” the pyromaniac insisted. He banged on the door with his blackened prosthetic, putting small dents in the metal surface. “Give it back!”

Stephan’s training kicked in. He affected a gentle, smooth tone as he put a hand on Torch’s shoulder.

“Whatever she took, I think we would all benefit if you took a step back and had a deep breath,” he said.

Torch shrugged him off and rounded on him. “Stay out of this, brother, or you might just regret it.” His face had gone red, scarred lip quivering.

Stephan held up his hands, palms first, in a pacifying gesture. “Just try to take a breath, alright? I’m sure we will be able to sort this—”

The door to the cabin burst open, and the green-skinned girl—Yin, as she was apparently called—came out into the hallway.

“I only borrowed a few of your stupid wires,” she said. “I needed them, okay?” Her Low Elandran was choppy but serviceable. She was clearly not from this part of the world, judging both by her appearance and her voice.

“She admits it!” Torch shrieked.

He leapt for the girl, metal fist raised high.

“Woah!” Stephan called, but it was already too late.

Yin slipped into a low crouch, so fast she was almost a blur, and Torch’s anima-powered punch passed over her head. She bounced back up, delivering an uppercut to the man’s chin that sent him reeling.

Stephan caught him before he fell and managed to stand him back up. His lip was busted open, the cut trickling blood down to his chin where it dripped on his clothes.

Torch seemed far from pacified, however. His breathing came in ragged wheezes, and his face had gone beet red. His prosthetic sparked with energy as he clenched the metal fist.

“Enhance,” Stephan said, tapping the side of his glasses.

Smudged blotches of light appeared on the surface of the glass as he regarded the two pirates. He hadn’t spent the long years required to learn proper magic, but his enchanted glasses gave him a tiny glimpse into the insight of a true mage.

With these, he could see the aura of those around him, the visual manifestation of their anima network. Each person possessed such a network of magical energy, and therefore, by extension, an aura. To the trained eye, an aura could reveal many things.

Both Torch and Yin’s auras were flared in anger. This much was to be expected, of course, but there was something off. Yin’s aura seemed to spike in random directions, shifting every color imaginable, as if someone had spliced together the auras of a hundred life forms into one. Torch, on the other hand, was pooling red anima in his right hand.

Red anima was undoubtedly the fuel used to produce his flames.

Torch raised his hand. Stephan shoved him just as he cried “Gneist!”. The burned man stumbled into the wall and a stream of flame shot out of his hand. It washed over the metal before dissipating uselessly.

“You motherfucker!” Yin cried, taking a step towards the pyromaniac. “You were gonna use a spell on me, you lunatic!” With one smooth motion, she drew one of the short swords at her side.

Stephan stepped between the two of them, hands raised. He stared at the point of the blade, which was only centimeters from his face. Up close, he was really able to appreciate how sublimely sharp the weapon was.

Keen enough to cut a strand of hair down the middle, he reckoned.

He swallowed.

“Both of you, stop behaving like children,” Stephan said, trying to put an air of authority into his voice. The frightened quaver kind of ruined the effect. “Now, I don’t know how you pirates like to do things, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go around killing your own. Especially not over a few, what, wires? So let’s talk about this, okay?”

Yin hesitated. The light of her aura grew a bit cooler, faded in its own, odd way towards a more neutral range. She lowered the sword just a hair.

“Then talk.”

Torch straightened himself but made no attempt to cast another spell. At a glance, Stephan saw no gathering of red anima in his body, although admittedly it was sometimes difficult to tell.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Stephan said. “Yin, what are these wires you took, and why do you need them?”

Yin shrugged, took a few steps back, and pointed into her room. Stephan looked inside and saw a potted, budding flower suspended from the ceiling by a set of thin, yellow cables.

Torch sneered when he saw it, arms crossed.

“And now you,” Stephan said, motioning to Torch, “could you explain how these wires are important to you?”

“They’re required for the trigger mechanisms of some of my explosives. I don’t have any replacements.” He paused. “And I told her not to take anything from my cabin! But what does she do? She goes and steals from me!”

“Take it easy, clown,” Yin said as she sheathed her sword. “I was gonna tell you.”

“Well, now we know that these wires are ones Torch can’t part with,” Stephan interrupted before another argument could flare up. “Could you perhaps simply place your flower pot on the floor?”

“No,” Yin said. “I want to give it enough sun. Also, it looks nicer like that.”

Stephan rolled his eyes inwardly, but gritted his teeth and pressed on. “Then, perhaps you have some replacement thread that you wouldn’t mind parting with, Torch? I’m sure Yin wouldn’t mind handing back the wire if she had something else to suspend her flower with.”

“I have a couple spools of thread lying around,” he said, tapping his chin with a steel forefinger. “I mean, who doesn’t?”

Stephan and Yin shared a look and remained silent.

Torch disappeared into his cabin. There was some clattering, then swearing. A minute later, he came out with a good bit of sturdy—albeit sooty—thread wrapped around his hand.

He reached the thread towards Yin, but when she snaked out to take it he pulled back his hand.

“In exchange for my wires, you Aqithi witch,” he said.

Yin shrugged noncommittally but eventually complied. They traded the wire for the thread, and Torch ran away giggling.

Once the conflict was over, Stephan tapped the side of his glasses and spoke the deactivation command in order to conserve their energy.

“Is he fully alright?” Stephan asked discreetly once the pyromaniac’s cabin door had slammed shut.

“I don’t think he’s ever been alright,” Yin said.

Stephan felt a certain pride at what he had done. If he hadn’t intervened, this feud would surely have ended in cuts and burns, if not something even more severe.

“Well?” Yin asked.

“Hmm?”

“Get the fuck out of here. I’m busy. I don’t want you sneaking around my cabin.”

“I think a little thanks are in—”

With a blur of movement, Yin had the tip of a blade against his neck.

He pursed his lips and cleared his throat. “Note taken.”