Natural Enemy 3-3

The tavern’s low hum of conversation slowly kicked back in, as if a man hadn’t been half an inch from bleeding out like a stuck pig. The noise was a little thinner now in the bar, all eyes on the red-eyed marksman as everyone pretended to be paying attention to something else.

Kai didn’t bother pretending, blue eyes fixed right on him as he watched the other boy from the shadows of the Drowned Rat. 

He was a strong guy.

Strong enough that he could haul a cannon over one shoulder and tug around ironwood trunks without much trouble. Island living and plenty of pork in his stomach on top of pure Conduit power gave him a solid base of pure mass; a human cannonball if he tucked his arms and legs in. The water surging around inside him — the Conduit power — did the rest for him.

But that was the thing, though.

He was a hammer.

His body was as much a hammer as it was a cannonball and, as much as he tried to practice precision and focus and all that, his power was no different. Smashing through whatever was in his way came naturally and he could do that to pretty much any problem if they stayed still long enough to let him get a clean hit.

As long as he swung hard enough — and didn’t care about collateral damage — he was the world’s softest and wettest wrecking ball. 

But the boy with the knife…

Kai blinked slow, tracking the blond’s relaxed posture. If he was a wrecking ball, Red Eye was a knife, too. Breaking things didn’t seem like what Red Eye did at all. More like taking them apart, piece by piece.

He shook his head again. So cool…

Before he could think better of it, Kai pushed himself up from his own dark corner, sandals slapping wet on grimy beer-soaked floorboards as he made his way across the tavern. The second he got close, Kai pulled himself up a chair, uninvited, and plopped himself down in front of the recently rerighted round table.

Red eyes held themselves still, perfectly calm as the other boy looked up. His hands kept moving, even as he blinked at his new guest, still cleaning his throwing knife with a small gray cloth. 

“Hey.”

Red eyes blinked again. “...hey.”

“Sup.”

“...sup.”

Great conversation so far.

“That was a sick throw you did, brah.” Kai nodded slow, leaning forward as he let the easy-going Kaihua drawl coat his words. It felt a little old, like a jacket left in the closet, but it was all he had to remind him of the days on the island. “Like, real smooth with it. Barely saw you even twitch, like… brah.”

“Mmmm. More like a party trick.” The other boy sucked his teeth, the sound sharp as his nose twitched with it. “I don’t really throw knives like that.” He let the rag fall to the table and slid the knife he didn’t really throw like that into his tall red boot with a simple but too-fluid flick of his wrist. “Hard to get my point across without making a mess.”

“I make messes,” Kai allowed himself a little grin, all thirty-two bright-whites on display. “Big ones, even. Mostly with water, which… you know, different than a knife, for real. Hard to be neat when you’re throwing water at people, though.”

He paused for a second, waiting for the obvious question. Water? What do you mean throwing water?

But that wasn’t what he got.

“I’ve heard.” The boy’s gaze sharpened, target-like eyes firmly locked on him. “The water guy who washed away Beluga Billions and her crew. ‘Beach Boy Kai.’”

His smile turned tight, Kai’s teeth gritted as the edges of his lips fought to stay in place. That frickin’ name… He already had reasons to hate Cutter Cain but that guy’s big mouth was numero uno. That title he’d dropped on Kai’s head had spread and spread, like the world’s fastest tumor, until a fifth of the West Blue seemed to know him by those three words. 

Beach. Boy. Kai.

The older boy didn’t seem to notice Kai’s mood shift.

And if he did, he definitely didn't seem to care as he just leaned back in his creaky wooden chair, arms crossed over a pristine red vest. “Took down four bounties in under a month, half of them in the eight digits.”

“Big juicy bounties, yeah…” His smile eased up, just a little.

“They’re calling you the new ‘Daz Bones’, you know?” Red Eye raised an eyebrow. “A name like that’s gonna get a lot of heat sent your way.”

Daz Bones. Kai blinked at the name, eyes fluttering as he took it in. What kind of name is Daz Bones? Who is that, even? Thoughts of some super-skinny guy flickered through his head, Kai even considering the idea of an actual skeleton for a second. Skeleton-Skeleton Fruit? Or… or maybe a Bone-Bone Fruit? No… no… no…

Shaking his head, Kai pushed that ridiculous idea aside as he leaned forward and planted his elbows on the sticky beer-splattered table. “Man, the heat’s the whole point, right?” 

“Is it?”

“Hells yeah!” Despite Red Eye’s lack of enthusiasm, Kai made sure to make up for it. “Brings the bounties right to my front door. Saves me the travel time, even.”

“...you’ve got this all planned out, huh?”

“Hells yeah!” Kai flashed another grin as he echoed his words. “But… uhh… what about you, though? Someone who can do stuff like that, flicking knives through sleeves and all... what’s your name, brah?”

Red Eye sucked his teeth again, eyebrow finally lowering. “I go by Lucky. Lucky Vee.”

“Lucky…”

Lucky nodded his head slow, the rag on the table disappearing into the pouch at his side. “I like to keep to myself. Being famous is painting a target on your back for every idiot with a sword and some gunpowder to waste.”

“Yeah, but you know that targets get paid, right?” Kai drummed his fingers on the wood as he countered the older boy’s words. “Sitting in a dump like this playing cards with guys who smell like low tide for chump change. Come on, brah. Someone like you…” He shook his head. “You gotta be better than that.”

“It pays for the drinks and my dinner,” Lucky tilted his head over at the bored-looking bartender still wiping down another glass. “And it’s good fun sometimes. Watching meatheads flip tables is a hobby.”

“Right, right, right. Cool hobby, I get that, and all… It’s just...” Kai looked around the dim tavern, then back at Lucky. “Look, I’m only in this place to get my boat fixed, but…”

Lucky raised that same eyebrow again. “But?”

Kai tapped a finger on the table, slow at first before letting the rhythm pick up speed. “But I’ve been looking for a partner. A bounty hunter partner. There’s some big bounties out here in the middle of the West Blue. Like, big big.” Beula was an example of that. If he hadn’t gotten lucky with that last move, he might be whale food. “Way too big for one person to handle without getting chewed up and spit out.”

Blue eyes met red as Kai refused to blink, trying to match that flat stare.

“You’re… uh, no joke, you got skill, brah,” Kai’s eyes flicked back to the pillar where the knife had been. “I’m... I smash things. You cut.”

Lucky’s red eyes slid over, not quite rolling but still something as his lips pursed like he wanted to say something to that. “You could call it that, yeah.”

Huh? “All I’m saying is we could smash and cut our way to the biggest payday we’ve both ever seen.” Kai nodded. “And then we split that right down the middle.”

Lucky was silent for a long moment, somehow managing to go without blinking for nearly a half-minute as he just stared back at Kai. If he wasn’t measuring him up, Kai could only guess the other guy was trying to read his mind or something.  

"Question…”

“Answer.”

Lucky’s mouth clicked shut.

“...sorry.”

“Whatever.” The blonde boy forced out a sigh and sat up straight. “Question: do you even know the first thing about bounty hunting?"

Kai stared back, mouth falling open as he wasn’t sure what to say back. Okay, wasn’t expecting that. Kinda dumb question is that? "I've taken in a bunch of bounties, like.. I, man, look… I don’t know what you would call taking in a bunch of  bounties if I didn’t know anything about bounty hunting. Five of them were some real big names, too. You just said so yourself."

“I did.” Lucky nodded back, sounding as unimpressed as he had since the beginning. "Been at it for less than a month from what I heard."

"Three weeks, give or take," The correction came quick and without a thought. "But you’re right, it could be four. I don't really keep a calendar with me you know? Hard to keep track out on the water."

"Exactly.” The word dropped heavy on the table between them as Lucky let it fall. “That’s kinda my point. A lot of things are hard about this job of yours.”

He leaned forward, eyes narrowed until all Kai saw were blood-colored slits. "West Blue’s an underworld, lil man. It’s mob shit, not a playground. Running around and splashing is whatever if you were smashing up crews in some puddle like the East. Hell, if you were a scrub hunter, just going after penny bounties, or some bandits, nobody would give a shit like that. Cus’ that’s small fry behavior. But being a star in the West Blue?” Lucky’s eyes narrowed further until all Kai saw were slits the color of blood. “That’s not a good thing."

"Why not?" That just didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t you wanna be a star? "That means you're winning. Means you're getting paid."

"Cause people wanna steal your shine," Lucky let the words out with a sigh. "Only so many eight-digit bounties floating around. You overfish in the pond and somebody big comes down on you for doing a lil too much.”

"I'll take on any pirate.” The sentence was a bite, teeth clicking into an even wider grin. "Let me at ‘em. More loot for me."

“See, this is what I mean, lil bro.” For the first time, Lucky let out a laugh. A small laugh, but still a laugh. "The hell makes you think I'm talking about pirates?" 

Kai swallowed a mouthful of nothing at the soft words, one of his own slipping out before he could stop it. "Oh.”

I didn’t think about…

Honestly, he’d been so focused on tracking down the bad guys on the posters, he hadn't thought as much about the people holding the posters like him. Cutter Cain had been one and done, and even then the guy had only stolen Barnacle Bill out from under him.

Going after him because he was too good was something else. Hunters hunt hunters. Good to know.

“Yeah. Oh.” Lucky nodded back, eyes rolling as he leaned back in his chair. “Honestly, how’d you even know I was a bounty hunter to come over here with this?”

“You’re a bounty hunter for real?” Kai blinked, pulled clean out of his thoughts by the new information. 

Long fingers tapped the table, the movement slow and deliberate and just dripping disappointment. “You didn’t know… before you asked? You just… walked up to a random and asked?”

“...I… I mean…” Kai shrugged, the strap of his black guitar digging in tighter against his collarbone. “I didn’t really think about it, brah. You looked like you could handle yourself with the knives and the attitude and the…” Kai rolled his shoulders a second time, looking away for a second. “I mean, you liked money, so… it seemed like a good bet.”

The boy across from him closed his eyes, muttering something under his breath that Kai couldn’t catch. When he finally opened them again, he looked more tired than before. “Seems like the first thing you should think about before inviting a stranger to share a ship, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Kai waved a hand to brush past the embarrassment. “Details, bro. We can figure that out later. You wanna bounty hunt with me or what?”

Lucky tilted his head, blond dreadlocks shifting over his shoulder. “...I’m guessing you’re the boss?”

“I mean, I got the rep.” Kai’s words were simple, no heat or arrogance to them. Even Lucky said it himself, so it was just a statement of fact. Besides, only one of them could punch a giant whale-woman through her ship. “Only makes sense.”

The older boy sucked his teeth again, the sound enough to put Kai a little on edge.

“Alright, boss.” A slow smile spread across his lips, not a friendly smile, but not an unfriendly one either. “Let’s see if we can’t make it rain.”

“Bet!” He held a hand out, a hand Lucky shook without another word.

“C’mon.” Lucky stood up.

“Wha…” Kai’s mouth fell open at the sudden move. “You wanna go out right now?”

“Nah, not right now, but I gotta see the boat we’re using.” Both eyebrows went up. “We’ll need a solid ship if we’re gonna work together and not kill each other in our sleep.”

Boat. Right. The boat. Kai clicked his own tongue, his eyes darting away from Lucky's face for a second to stare at a stain on the wall as he rubbed the back of his neck. “...about that…” 

“...about what?”