Natural Enemy 2-10B

Kai frowned as he walked past the buzzing sign overhead, the same sound of a dying fly coming off the neon as it cast a sick twitchy light over the main strip of the Last Resort port town.

Stepping onto the pavement felt like walking into a mouth; wet and greasy heat slapping him in the face from open-air roast pits where all sorts of meat turned on iron spits. Thick fat dripped in heavy globs onto the coals, hissing and popping as it sent up clouds of smoke.

It smelled like a party.

It felt like a headache.

Kai kept his head down, brim of his black bucket hat pulled low as he did his best to slide past people without drawing attention. Thing is, though, it was hard to disappear when you were the only person on the island who wasn’t old enough for a beer.

He walked past a group of guys arguing over a map, the smell of stale tobacco thick around each and every one of them. With a frown, he sidestepped a drunk man stumbling out of a building with a lot of women hanging out by the door, the man giggling with lipstick all over his face.

He clutched his healed arm, all the bruising faded to nothing after a couple hours bathing in the ocean. The phantom weight from before was still there, though. Beach boy. He clicked his tongue. Toy boat.

He let the street funnel him down the road, the crowd of sweaty bodies flowing toward the center of the town, the loudest noise and brightest light pulling everyone in. 

"-re you seeing this?" A voice squealed next to Kai’s ear, high-pitched and excited enough to break glass. "It's him! It's actually him!"

Kai looked up, blinking blue eyes in confusion at what had the woman so hyped up, only to freeze where he stood at what was in front of him.

In the middle of the town square sat a bunch of tables, each one of them with plates of food in front of and being brought out to them by servers. A big open-air restaurant, with no walls; just a thatched roof held up by pillars of carved driftwood.

The place was packed, every table full, with both plates and cups overflowing.

And, in the center of it all, was the bastard: Cutter Cain.

Kai’s fists clenched as he spotted him; the red-haired bounty thief sitting pretty with his boots up on the wood of a table, looking perfectly pristine. The man held up a mug of something, but he wasn’t drinking it.

No, he was too busy talking.

“So, there I was…” Cain’s voice floated over the noise of the crowd, smooth as his smile. “Deck slippery with gut and the smell? As bad as you can imagine.” Cain shook his head. “Barnacle Bill right there looming over me, ten feet tall if he was an inch.”

Kai blinked. Ten feet? 

That was… that was bullshit. Bill was six feet, maybe six-two in his boots.

“He swings that hook of his.” Cain kept going, the crowd listening close. “Whoosh. The thing misses me by an inch, enough to feel the wind of it part my hair.” The crowd leaned in — all the hunters, drunks, tourists and barmaids eating it up like candy.

“I duck.” Cain jerked down, foam sloshing onto the floor from the drink in his hand. “I roll. I kip back up inside his guard. The bastard thinks he’s got me. He thinks, ‘I’m Barnacle Bill, I’m the terror of the Forya Isles!’”

Cain paused, the silence hanging there for a second, before he grinned that perfect, white, toothpaste-commercial grin. “But he forgot one thing.”

“What’s that?” Someone spoke, a breathless girly voice from the front row.

“He forgot he was fighting Cutter Cain!”

The crowd exploded; cheers, whistles, fists banging on the table.

Kai stood there, still silent as the crowd screamed around him. Blood rushed to his ears, the sound of it louder than the crowd. Liar.

His eyes stayed on Cain, even as a mountain of a man stood up from his seat and patted the redhead on the back. With skin as dark as Kai’s, he was scarred all over and the smile he wore looked like a threat.

A woman in a bikini sat to his right, checking her nails as Cain continued on with his bullshit story. Across from where Cain sat, another redhead with short messy hair juggled knives in a lazy arc. Three of them, Flip-flip-flip.

“I surged forward with my blades.” Cain tapped the hilt of both cutlasses sitting on his hips. “And with my famous Cutter Clash, I hit him with one strike, clean! Right through the one weak spot in his armor and down he goes!”

“And the bounty?” Somebody else spoke up, another woman.

“The six million?” Cain shrugged, lifting his tankard to his mouth. “Pocket change, isn’t it? But it’s not about that. It’s a matter of keeping the seas safe.”

Safe? Kai’s eye twitched as the taste of copper filled his mouth, tongue stinging as he stood there watching Cain brag. Yeah, no.

Kai moved, not another thought in his brain. If he wasted time with another thought, he might have stopped as he pushed throught crowd. Instead, he shoved past a guy carrying a tray of drinks, ignoring the shout of protest as he marched right up to the table.

"Hey, Cain!"

The music didn't stop, but the conversation did as Cain looked up.

Blue eyes, clear and empty as the ocean sky, flickered with confusion for all of a second. Then Cain smiled again. “Well, well, well…” The bounty thief didn’t take his feet off the table, not even bothering to sit up as he stared right at Kai. “It’s the beach boy.”

"Y-you're a liar!" Kai almost flinched as his voice cracked, pitching high enough to sound like a kid on the playground as he pointed a shaking finger at Cain. "You didn't fight Bill! I did! You stole him from me!!"

The restaurant went dead, the quiet enough to press down on everyone. The big man stood up slowly, a machete pulled from under the table, as the knife juggler caught each one of his blades and held them still in one hand.

Cain just held up a hand, his crew staring over at him. “Easyyyy…” Still smiling, he finally let his chair fall forward to the ground. “I’ll handle this.”

He stood up, all six feet of him managing to loom above everyone even when his crewmate was even taller. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Last Resort…” Cain gestured to Kai with one hand, like he was a circus act or something. "Allow me to introduce my biggest fan."

Laughter.

Kai turned around, blinking as it started with giggles in the front row before rippling backwards, until the whole crowd was cackling. That wasn’t even… funny? It didn’t stop his face from burning, though.

"This is the kid I told you all about, the one who tried to get in the middle of my big brawl with Bill.” Cain shook his head, tongue tut-tut-tutting. "The little wannabe who thought he could play with the big boys."

"I beat him!” Heat radiated off his face, cheeks hot enough to fry an egg. “I’m the one that cracked his shell! You just walked in at the end!"

Cain chuckled as he gave the crowd a sad look. “See how he remembers things? He really thinks he pulled it off. It’s a little sad.” He leaned in, elbows resting on the table as he turned back to Kai. “Because the way I saw it, you were almost crying on that deck. Begging for help with snot running down your face even. I saved your life, kid."

Kai took a step forward, only to flinch as the black-haired woman in the bikini placed her flintlocks on the table. "Y-you stole my bounty!"

"I collected a bounty you couldn't carry." Cain waved a hand like a flyswatter. "Now go run along, beach boy. Take your little toy boat home before you hurt yourself."

Kai took a step back as the laughter started up again.

He opened his mouth, trying to find something to say but over the laughter, dozens of voices cackling loud and proud…

He could barely even hear his own thoughts.

Shaking his head, Kai pushed his way back through the crowd, head down, and face still burning. The laughter followed him, over a hundred voices chasing him down the street even as he kept moving.

Kai didn't bother to stop until he hit the edge of town, the neon and lights faded this far out as the noise dropped to a dull roar, swallowed up by the shadows of warehouses and the smell of the tide.

By the time he fully stopped, Kai breathed heavy as he stood outside a hole in the wall that probably wanted to be called a bar, at least from the sign that said ‘DRINKS’ in peeling white paint on a rotting board.

Shaking his head, Kai walked in, blinking at the sight of the place; the bar dim to the point of darkness and smelling like mold, wet dog and beer. The fourteen-year-old walked up to the bar, the man behind the bar managing to look up even without a neck. 

“What’ll you have?”

“...apple juice.”

The bartender didn’t blink or laugh. The man simply nodded before reaching under the counter and poured out a surprisingly clean glass from a bottle, before sliding it across the scratched wood surface.

Dropping a gold Beri coin onto the bar, Kai took his glass of juice and walked over to the furthest corner of the room, into the deepest shadow he could find. The booth vinyl was cracked and sticky against his back as he stared at the juice.

I’ll sneak on his boat tonight and sink it. Kai grit his teeth. I’ll fill his cabin with water. I’ll steal his swords and throw them in the ocean. It was all revenge plans, stupid violent plans that wouldn’t go anywhere.

But he could.

Going back to Kaihua Island was still an option, back to Auntie Loa where he could eat pork and forget about being a bounty hunter.

"-an you believe that red-haired prick?"

The voice came from the booth right behind him, Kai freezing up.

"Crowing about Barnacle Bill like he took down a Warlord.” A second voice grunted, gravelly and old. "Shitty little bounty thief has no shame. Rich boy needs to shut up and go back home to his family."

"Six million.” Another voice chimed in. "Big deal, sure. Bill was coasting off fumes anyway. The crusty bastard was barely worth a good three million.”

Kai turned around slowly, the teenager peering over the high back of the booth. Three men sat there around a table, each one of them older and scarred and looking like they’d been chewed up and spit out a few times. One had a metal hook bolted to his right hand, skin puckered and pink around the rivets. The second had a nose that clearly had been broken more than a few times. The third was missing pretty much his whole ear, just a hole in the side of his head like a lizard.

None of that really mattered to Kai right now, not even a little, because he had a question already on his lips. "What do you mean?" 

The men looked up, all eyes on his face, before the one with the iron metal hook laughed out loud. "You eavesdropping, kid?"

"I…" Kai shook his head. "Look, you said Barnacle Bill was a joke, but he was strong. I know, I was there."

"Bill had a Fruit, sure, but the guy was the leftovers.” The earless man snorted, taking a sip of something black that looked like motor oil before he looked up at Kai again. "His old group, the Krusty Krew, split up years back. Y’ain’t heard?"

Kai shook his head.

"Bill got the worse ship and the worse half of the crew.” No-Ear clicked his tongue.

“Yeah,” Broken-Nose nodded. "Bill was the captain but the real threat was the first mate, his ex-wife."

"Ex-wife?"

"Beula." Mr Hook shuddered. "Triple B. Beula “Beluga” Billions. Divorce is ugly, kid, "

Beula? Kai blinked. What kinda name is that?

"Beula took the best men.” The earless man swirled his drink. "She took the good ship. She kept the original name. And she took most of the bounty, twenty-four million Beri."

Kai’s breath hitched, fingers twitching as the air in the bar seemed to thin. "Twenty-four...?"

"Out of the original forty-two," No-Ear nodded. "Bill got the scraps. Man ain’t as much of a threat on his own so six million’s all he got left."

Ain’t much of a… Kai shook his head, math slotting into place already; six million vs twenty-four wasn’t even anything to compare. "Why aren't you hunting her, then?" He stood up in the booth, leaning all the way over. "If she's worth that much?"

The hunters laughed, hard enough the sound bounced off the low ceiling.

"Hunt Beula?" Mr Hook wiped his eye, the man actually tearing up. "Y’hear yourself, lad? She's a Fishman, a Whale Fishman.”

“So?” Fishman?

“So?” Earless leaned in, looking Kai in the eye. “She’s eight feet tall and with a crew of two dozen. She eats guys like us for breakfast. Literally, I heard she ate a hunter who came after her once. Whole. Just… gulp."

“Suicide.” Mr Hook nodded. "You don't hunt Big Beluga without a fleet. Or a death wish."

Kai sat back down in his booth, his heart thump-thump-thumping in his chest. Twenty-four million.

He’d been out here hyped for six.

But the wife...

The wife was the real prize.

And nobody was hunting her, because they were scared. Even Cain, if that guy was so great, why was he chasing Bill and stealing bounties?

Kai looked at his hand. The one that had cracked the shell.

Crust-Crust Fruit.

Whale Fishman.

He didn’t understand all the powers this place had, but he knew that drilling through barnacle shells was hard. Drilling through blubber? 

Kai grinned, and with one gulp, he finished his apple juice and slammed the glass black down.

He stood up. “Thanks.”

"For what?" No-Ear grunted.

"For the tip.”