[07] north country winters keep a-gettin' me down

[thethundersaid]

Who: Crew of Murderess/Howling Sabers
Where: West of Empieza
When: Month of March. Top post starts beginning of month; mark dates in new threads to maintain some semblance of continuity. :Db
What: Catch-all for March posts -- will include Captain fight at least.
Warnings: Violence as ever
Style: Anything that'll move!
Status: Open to anyone actually on board or nearby

They'd spent a month docked at Empieza, and finally they were on the move. Sasuke wouldn't deny that they had perhaps needed the time -- to get the ship back into shape, for one, and to pick up a medic-nin, even if that hadn't been in the plans. But an entire month of one small island and an even smaller ship had left Sasuke about as stir-crazy as he could get, and the presence of said medic-nin and her entourage only exacerbated it.

He'd told Naruto and Sakura that he hadn't been doing nothing since arrival, but in all honesty, in terms of real progress, he'd accomplished nothing. Nothing of use, nothing of real import, for all that they had a shard on board and no one had been possessed to kill everyone else recently.

So it was that Sasuke was in the rigging in a better mood than he'd been in all month as they sailed away from the island, heading for rendezvous with the crew of the sailboat that had gone to find fairies.

Comments

[thethundersaid]

No wasn't something Sasuke was accustomed to hearing, especially not in the course of a fight -- it threw him for a moment, enough that he was frowning as he cut through the new attackers. At their level, it was far too easy to duck into the middle of the cluster and turn their efforts against one another, Kusanagi glinting only a few times in the fray.

The suggestion would only have made sense if L-Elf were completely confident in his own ability to handle ambush in close quarters. Then again, maybe that made sense; with the man's build and what Sasuke had seen of his fighting style thus far, he might very well be suited for precisely that sort of footing. Still, the fact that there was room to disagree in the middle of a fight spoke to a fact they'd both already known -- that the crew, for all its strength, desperately lacked organization.

"Fine," he said, finally, accepting the plan and turning toward what was most likely the captain's quarters, assuming this was just a larger version of the Murderess. "What's your ideal time for me to reach the captain?"

[breakfastmetaphors]

L-Elf's eyes flicked to the nearest passage below decks, then to the door of the captain's quarters.

"Two minutes. Just focus on keeping the men on deck at bay rather than defeating them and draw him out. Once he's on deck, don't hold back."

The Navy captain was skilled in strategy and no doubt had several more tactics up his sleeve that he would attempt to employ, but without his reserves to draw on, he would be crippled. So far, they had shown themselves to be powerful fighters, but not necessarily tacticians. If he managed to keep things quiet, it would remain that way and give them the upper hand.

[thethundersaid]

Sasuke didn't bother staying to talk much longer, turning instead to assess what was left between him and the captain's quarters. Assuming the captain was even in there, and that the men between him and the door would fight to protect a dummy even if he weren't, two minutes was doable. Just not particularly neat.

If only fire were practical on board a ship, but they wanted to use this thing later, not sink its charred remains into the ocean. And keeping the sailors out of the way, but not incapacitating them -- it was like being back in Sound under Orochimaru's watchful tutelage. L-Elf might even have passed for a sharper-tongued Kabuto, silver hair and all.

In any case, it left Sasuke with taijutsu and the work of the Kusanagi, and two minutes blurred past as he reached the door -- which remained closed, making it highly likely that the only thing behind it was emptiness or further ambush.

He threw the doors open at the two-minute mark, tensed as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, and waiting to see if L-Elf had some kind of plan prepared for the extremely likely chance that there was no captain in the captain's quarters at all.

[breakfastmetaphors]

L-Elf had said "draw him out" instead of "find him" on purpose. The Navy captain was quite impressed with his own strategies. The attack from the rigging had shown that. It was effective, but flashy, and designed to surprise and demoralize them. Now that it seemed that they'd gotten their footing again, a second attack would be sprung on them. He couldn't quite hear what was going on on deck, but he expected the captain and a unit of elite soldiers, likely with firearms, would appear either from a hatch behind the crew or above them within a minute or less of the captain's quarters being entered. It would depend on the captain's temperament. As flashy as the attacks so far had been, above was 90% more likely, probably on a raised portion of the deck.

He kicked the body of a fallen sailor aside and descended further into the ship. There would be several more small units and they would all need to be disposed of before the captain had a chance to call on them. The timeframe had shortened again, so there was no time to waste, unless of course the rest of the crew managed to kill the captain before the units could be mobilized.