All fun and games

[hiken]

Who: The Spade Pirates
Where: Nuevo Empieza, an unnamed Military Base
When: 11/29 - 12/1
What: The Spade Pirates fall into a trap
Warnings: V for Violence, R for possible gore
Style: Action!
Status: Closed to Spade Pirates and anyone on Nuevo Empieza

The comments below are going to represent focal points during this plot!

Comments

11/29

[hiken]

[Exploring Nuevo Empieza!

The Navy will immediately know the moment the crew reaches shore, so within three or four hours, they'll have a half dozen ships geared. Halfway through the day, those ships will close in on the island. Towards the early afternoon, the soldiers will start hunting down the Spade Pirates.]

[fierybluebird]

All right, listen up punks!

[Directs and points which way to go.] Left flank, right flank, straight ahead. We'll try to send them scattering, don't separate from your divisions, got it?

[Feel free to completely ignore these directions, most of the Whitebeard pirates always did and Ace was the worst of them about it.]

[hiken]

Hmph. [Ace stood in the middle of the gangway, sizing up his dagger and axe, wondering if he had time to sharpen them.]

They picked a weird place for an ambush. With those wide streets, we'll see them coming from a hundred different places.

[uccellodifuoco]

I give them points for choosing to keep an eye on this island, but they lose them all for bad picking of when and where to attack.

[What's that about divisions? Ikki doesn't know what that is.]

11/29

[lonelygod]

Early on in the day, the Doctor heads off into town, well before the Navy starts to arrive. He's been holed up for a while now, working on some big project that he's not really willing to talk about to anyone yet. And it's not like he's worried about military action against the Spades. It's not like 'ambush' is the first thing to cross his mind.

He can be found poking through shops, carrying with what essentially appears to be junk that he's collecting. Beads, glass, jewelry, and other assorted odds and ends.

As the day wears on, he's pretty oblivious to the possibility of an ambush, but then...he hasn't really got the look of a pirate, now does he?

11/29

[vysecaptain]

[Not long before the Navy arrives in person, Vyse can be found wandering around town. He looks a bit different than normal, having detached the bottom parts of his sleeves and removed his eyepatch in an effort to make himself look a little less...piratey.

Not that it helps too much when he's stealing at least half of the items he's buying from the shops. An unused candle or two here, a few interesting-looking metal objects there.]

11/29

[hiken]

[Late evening, after the ambush. The remaining Spade Pirates are called back to the ship by Ace, bloodied and bruised. In his left hand, he's carrying a set of shackles for hands and one's own neck. Around his neck, there's a bloody and bruised impression from where he had been wearing it.

He doesn't say a thing, other than slamming a map down on the deck, drawing a flintlock pistol from his belt. Wordlessly, he shoots the map at a certain location and then discards the pistol.

Right after, he drops the Striker off of the deck and jumps into it, taking off on it. The map is partially of Nuevo Empieza, with another smaller island a few miles away. That second island, the one Ace shot, is simply labeled 'Base'.]

[fierybluebird]

Ace...

[He moves to inspect the Captain's neck, but then Ace is getting ready to take off again already.]

Oi...

[lonelygod]

[The Doctor hadn't been present at the ambush, because he'd simply just been lucky enough to be somewhere else. And let's face it, he didn't exactly look the part of a pirate. A creative use of the Psychic Paper had gotten him past checkpoints now, and he'd linked back up with the others as soon as he'd heard. Word on the street was that it was bad, and that a bunch of pirates had been taken for summary execution.

That...well...he wasn't going to stand for that.

So once Ace returned, the Time Lord looked up from his thoughts, eyes on fire. He was well and truly angry now, a furor nobody in this universe had seen in him.]

Where are they and what at the defenses like? Without theatrics.

11/30

[hiken]

[The Navy Base.

With their prisoners in tow, the Navy sailors take no small effort in dragging their quarry around as roughly as possible. Pirates other than the Spades are gathered as well, being lashed in the middle of the square and thrown back in their cells after their names have formally been called.

Everyone is told that early the next morning, each and every pirate captured will be hung by the neck until death--as formally as that may sound.]

11/30

[reluctantjinrou]

[This is an experience that Natsuno isn't looking forward to at all. He'd been completely caught of guard and caught pretty easily. He is easily manhandled to the centre of this viewing area and one officer unbuttons his shirt and pushes his shirt and coat down off his shoulders, to expose his back. With his arms shackled behind his back, his clothing remains there as he's pushed to the ground.

The lashes come fast and with little warning. His fingers curl into fists and aside from grunting from a few of the worst ones, he's not about to give anyone the satisfaction. The wounds don't heal right away, simply because he's getting close to very hungry, and his healing skills aren't quite up to par. Once they are finished punishing him for the crowd's pleasure, his clothing is pushed back up his arms at least and he is one of many escorted from the square after the announcement. Hanging. Yeah, right.]

12/1

[hiken]

[The sun rises like any other day and...

The entire Navy Base is up in arms, because one of the front-runner galleons owned by the base's Admiral is now up in flames.

Executions are still being drawn out and scheduled, though. Nothing is going to stop the Navy from attempting its gruesome task.

Though, a young man spotted with blood strolls through the crowd of Navy soldiers, walking opposite of their direction--towards the gallows. While other men sought to put it out, he walked right past it, fixing his fancy upturned hat and feather, regarding the gallows with disdain.]

[booyaka_boom]

*Executions still scheduled, and here comes the next one. She is dragged along, because there's no energy in her left to walk on her own. This girl, one of her eyes is red and completely swollen shut. On her arms are bruises that suggest she's been grabbed roughly. There are deep scratches on her inner thigh, one of which is bleeding. With each inch she's pulled along by her bound wrists, the figure groans out loud at a hidden pain - that would be her broken ribs. She shows no sign of being able to walk for herself, let alone fight for herself. Seems she's set for the gallows*

12/1

[reluctantjinrou]

[A little further in the procession is Natsuno. Despite his injuries from the day before, he seems unharmed at this point. Overnight the lashes did heal, but he remains stuck there, bound in shackles as he waits his turn to be hung. He looks worried, he's wondering what will happen when they try and hang him, but really he's not going to die from this, so most of the fear is negated that way.]

[watchesthesea]

[Even after the experience of cutting ones hair just to escape, eventually being caught anyway and even being lashed simply for being a pirate without a choice, Kairi still had some fight with her, although that to was draining fast as they dragged her, with force when she struggled slightly and bringing her down to her knees.

As she was pulled up, she looked up at the gallows, the final place where she was headed. She had faith that someone would come help her, even as she got closer and closer towards it. In her mind she believed and that was all that was left to stop her from breaking down at what happened. Hope that her friends will come save her.]

12/1 - Closing Move

[hiken]

[The Sun had begun to take some damage. Ace's answer had been simple. He wanted to preserve his ship and make sure those of his crew attempting to steer it to safety didn't get sunk. His response was completely within reason, he thought--but the delivery wasn't exactly the best of methods. There had been a galleon arranged for a high ranking Navy officer loaded up, built and ready to sail. There hadn't been a soul on it yet, because it wasn't officially given the Navy's blessing to touch the sea. Ace, propping his hands underneath it, strained to grip the underside of the boat and began to drag it across the square, towards the water.

His wounds opened and everything felt like white streaks of lightning and pain across his sides, but with effort he managed to lift the navy ship, crying out as he hurled it into the water, sending up tidal waves of foam and spray in all directions. Buckling to his knees, Ace was given a moment of reprieve when the Navy soldiers themselves gawked in disbelief. No one had anticipated a move at all that unlikely.]

11/30

[lonelygod]

There are certain advantages to not sleeping. Not the least of which is a simply the sheer amount of time one has, linear or otherwise, free when one goes without that simple human need. And if you're not human and don't actually need to sleep, then it's even easier to capitalize on the time. Something the Doctor is more than happy to do right now.

Anyone near the Sun would find it hard to miss the "inventor" out on deck rather than squirreled away in his workshop. He'd set up a bit of a makeshift workstation, really a collection of barrels and a board balanced on top, and the whole mess was strewn with wires, little bits of glass, and various bits and bobs that most people would probably consider junk.

And at the center of it all was a sword. Anyone who'd seen the Doctor, spoken to him, or really been around him at all would easily recognize the significance of that. Weapons simply were not in his general vocabulary. But clearly that was not the case today. As the buzzing of a sonic screwdriver filled the air the Doctor barely glanced up. His usual jovial demeanor was gone, and there was a nearly palpable sense of pressure around him as he worked.

Occasionally he would mutter something to himself during a lull in his work, and sometimes snatches of a tune he was humming drifted across the deck, a singsong-y military cadence familiar to one individual in any universe. For the first time since the Great Time War, a Time Lord was going to war. And he was going armed for Dalek.

11/30

[uccellodifuoco]

Sleep is a luxury that you have to earn.

If asked, Ikki wouldn't be able to tell who told that to him, his biggest guess would be Guilty as the memory is accompanied with pain and it certainly fitted how life at Death Queen's Island was. Constant training, constant fighting until he was on the verge of death, sleep wasn't something he went to, it happened, on short intervals whenever he lost consciousness before he was awakened again by his master. After that, life went calmer, and sleep became something he was able to properly do, but it remained a luxury to be earned.

And he had lost that luxury right now, he lost it the moment the first of the Spades was captured. Instead of sleeping, he hurled himself in his room for a while, burning his Cosmo, pushing his own regeneration capacity, meditating and focusing his energies the same way he had done many times in the past, before heading out to fight the enemy.

He didn't expect much when he stepped out on the deck, definitively not to see that nameless guy working there, but he wouldn't be able to say that he was surprised either. "How are preparations going?" Was it adventurous of him to guess what the other man meant to do? Maybe, but no one could blame him for it, not with the display and situation they were in. Any member of the crew that wasn't preparing to go to war should better have a good reason for it in Ikki's opinion, a reason on the lines of being dead, being one of the captured ones or being so wounded they wouldn't be able to walk.

[fierybluebird]

Marco wouldn't admit on the point of death that he'd gotten used to making sure a certain freckled idiot was safe before going to sleep each night, and therefore, having Ace not on deck was making it hard to sleep. It wasn't going to give him nightmares about the time just after Thatch's death when Ace ran off alone to avenge the man, but it wasn't exactly a peaceful thought to drift off on either. Besides, if he had one job here other than trying to keep Ace and Thatch from dying several times over again, it was looking after Ace's beloved crew as much as possible.

So as a blue phoenix he quietly made the rounds. Which was how he found the doctor, practically in a nest of junk, and thus whistled in phoenix, forgetting that he should switch back to human form first. "Eh? What are you doing?"

Late 12/1/afterthefact

[booyaka_boom]

Following her rescue, and after some medical care, Selphie is bandaged up in her bunk. A bath, some food, and water, seem to have taken away much of her physical fatigue. At least, she's not nearly as low on energy as she was. But she has shown no attempt to leave her bunk at all.

The problem isn't a physical one. She's never been one to let something so trivial get in her way. Now, the problem is the various thoughts going on inside her head. The trouble she put everyone in... The pain that potentially happened to those attempting the rescues... And, of course, the fact that she was a soldier, but had been so incapable to fight back.

She'd tried, and she'd given the navy no answers, no matter how much they tortured, ridiculed, or threatened her. At least she didn't give anything away. But it just wasn't good enough, and she was angry with herself to the point that she was far too embarrassed to go out on deck and see anyone. She knows she's let so many people down...

[uccellodifuoco]

He's on his way to his room when he stops in front of where Selphie is, giving the door a side glance for a long moment. He knows that she's there, safe finally and tended to, in the ship where she should be instead of in a Navy base waiting for her execution. He knows it, and the knowledge should be enough to calm him, not just her but everyone else is safe and on the ship, wounded on different degrees but alive and together.

It's driving him insane. The knowledge that he wasn't able to protect everyone, he wasn't strong enough. He, who has faced gods and terrible foes, always saving those who needed him, had failed to protect them. He always succeeds when it comes down to rescuing the others, but apparently he can't protect anyone. Not even when somehow, this stupid ship, this stupid crew, has managed to get him to want to do it. It hadn't been duty what had driven him in the attack, it had been his own heart, his anger at seeing his crew hurt. And that knowledge tears him inside, because it's not him, it's what he told himself he wouldn't do ever again.

And in the middle of it all, was her. That stupid girl who couldn't just take his advice and step back and away. She was a mercenary, a soldier, and what good had that served for at the end? They had almost lost her, and he hadn't noticed until they were back on the ship and doing a recount. Part of him wants to enter the room and make sure that she's okay, another part wants to enter and yell at her, and yet another part just wants to go to his own room and forget it all. Maybe leave this ship and crew, find another one. One that focuses n finding the shards, that won't get in so much trouble.

It's belatedly that he realizes that he has entered the room and is now standing in front of the closed door. Apparently his body had decided for him.

[lonelygod]

Later in the day, the Doctor pops in to give her a once over. He'd treated her injuries, and thanks to Time Lord science she'd be up and about in a few days of course, but that didn't necessarily mean she should be running around. And besides that, he'd been the one who'd seen most of what they'd done to her, and that worried him.

So, when he does come in, he's carrying a tray with tea and little cakes on it, as well as a weatherworn book.

"Selphie? You awake?"

[fierybluebird]

Marco sneaks in as quietly as he can with a bowl of warm chowder and no words. He's hoping Selphie's asleep peacefully, she deserves it and more, but Marco isn't quite sure the right words to say to comfort her if she isn't. At least not unless she starts it off the way Ace always did.

Ah well, soup would have to do for now. And maybe tea later. And if it got cold, he'd just toss Ace in there to heat it up.

12/1 - Evening

[hiken]

[Ace had secured the Navy ship. For the first hour or so, he steered it to the best of his abilities, pausing in his maneuvering to set aflame the sails of the ships that had been pursuing. After some time, he lost them, tailing the Sun, though barely. When all was said and done, Ace stumbled onto the middle of the deck of that ship and stared up at the stars, realizing it was a clear night. The last of the fight in him vanished in an instant--the moment it was no longer needed. So, he gave the sky one little smile before collapsing on the deck, falling asleep right where he landed.]

[fierybluebird]

Eternally Ace's self-appointed phoenix guardian, Marco shows up soon enough, knowing just where to find his idiot of an adopted captain. He wraps him up in a blanket and carefully tucks a pillow under his head before sitting down next to the fiery idiot. Logically Marco knew Ace would no more get cold in snow than from being outside without a blanket, and Ace fell asleep in his food so often that a pillow wouldn't make a different anyway, but it isn't anything less than Marco would do for any of the crew, and besides, Ace needed to be able to rest sometimes without using all his energy on other things too.

Marco's not the least bit sleepy yet, but he doesn't leave Ace's side either. Just sits and quietly reads next to the sleeping kid.