Chapter Two
Tashigi navigated through a blurred haze, and wished that she could put her glasses back on. Unfortunately, they were among the things that seemed to make her distinctive to other people. (Which just went to show that other people were crazy - after all, the really distinctive thing about her was her blade Shigure, but hardly anyone else seemed to notice it.)
Hina must have done a really excellent job of giving her a bad record. None of the other Marines wanted to talk to her at all, except for the ones who for some reason thought she'd be interested in astronomy and kept on trying to get her to go for private strolls to look at the stars. Luckily they got discouraged easily. Especially when she said that she wanted to polish her sword in private.
But they'd arrived at Hawk Island without anything really serious happening.
Perhaps it was a good thing that her vision wasn't currently at its best. The place was a hive of scum and villainy. She'd already had to walk past three cases of blackmail, two of armed robbery, five of unarmed robbery, three of encannoned robbery, one of arson, one of assault, five of dangling out of window by ankles . . . really, she should come back here with Colonel Smoker once he was on the loose again. It'd be the sort of invigorating rest cure that would do him good.
The local Marine base had clearly been built with local needs in mind. It was institution grey, institution ugly, and institution heavy. It had all the grace and charm of a heavy iron box, and if it hadn't been for the half-dozen men who had for some reason insisted on mentioning a set of loose bricks in the back wall suitable for climbing over in order to reach a local tavern, Tashigi would have been quite worried about her chances of breaking someone out of prison.
She handed over the dispatches that Hina had given her, saluted, bumped into the commandant's door on the way out, and set off to explore the place. It was the standard Marine layout, though with more bars than usual over the windows.
Finally she located the jail cells. The usual set of photographs, names, and bounties were plastered over the wall nearby, and she frowned at them, her nose up against the inky paper, as she squinted at the posters, looking for a particular one.
No, wait. This was the normal set of Wanted posters. She could tell this because she was staring into the smirking, sneering, brazenly infuriating face of Roronoa Zoro, scumbag among scumbags, disgrace to the name of swordsmen everywhere, and thoroughgoing example of the corruption of the day.
Five minutes later, her knuckles still aching from a bit of applied therapy on Roronoa's poster, she found the one she wanted. The man in it was inoffensive, his glasses sliding down his nose, his worried smile the picture of eagerness to please the nice Marines.
It was very recognisably the same man as the picture which Hina had shown her on the old Wanted posters, decommissioned due to the death of the pirate involved.
Name: Unknown. Good, they hadn't identified him yet.
Identifying Marks: Wears glasses. Fortunately a number of short-sighted pirates did that, particularly the ones who wanted to survive and not walk over the edge of their own ship.
Identifying Weapons: None. That stood to reason. If he'd had his usual weapons on him, he probably wouldn't have been captured.
Circumstances of Capture: Pulled out of debris after collapse of Bloody Bill's Tavern during Happy Hour (see damage report and expenses claim). Hm. Sounded like an accident. Well, that made sense too.
Charges: Has to be guilty of something. Ah, the classic Marine standby, otherwise known as "if you were hanging around there then you must be guilty of something". Tashigi had never actually needed to apply it herself, mostly because she was too busy running after Colonel Smoker, and anyone he was chasing was automatically guilty, de facto, de jure, de whatever.
It was mid-afternoon. There weren't any scheduled inspections for a few hours. After a bit of polite chit-chat with the officer in charge of the cells, and an offer to check his current guests against the latest bounties from headquarters, she found herself strolling along the corridor, peering hopefully at the pirates behind the bars.
Conveniently, her target was in the end cell. The pirate jailed alongside him was snoring noisily. The granite bars rattled in sympathy as she walked past.
"Excuse me, sir?" she said politely.
The man's pale blur of a face tilted in her direction. He was lying comfortably on the pallet against the far wall, legs crossed, arms folded behind his head. "Yes, miss?"
Get his interest, Colonel Hina had said.
"I'm here about a deal," Tashigi said quietly. It took an effort to keep the self-disgust out of her voice. She'd practiced in the privacy of her cabin, but she still wasn't sure that it was working. "I'm from the Black Cage."
The man on the other side of the bars swung round and brought his legs down, sitting up on the mattress. "I beg your pardon?"
He'd be stupid to admit anything at first, Colonel Hina had said. and the one thing he isn't is stupid. So first we give him a reason to listen to what you have to say, and then we give him a reason to cooperate with you.
"It's about the criminal record of Captain Kuro," Tashigi said quickly. "You know? The man who was executed almost four years ago? There were some rumours he was back, but Colonel Hina doesn't believe them. In fact, she's quite certain that they're false. That is --" She realised she was babbling, and cut herself short. "Of course, they are false, aren't they?"
Even without her glasses, she could feel the intensity of the man's stare. "Of course," he agreed blandly. His voice was that of a teacher or a shopkeeper, rather than a dangerous pirate. "And does Colonel Hina the Black Cage have anything else she'd like me to know?"
Tashigi's hand twitched for her sword hilt. "Um, she thought that if you weren't here, you might like to go somewhere else in order to investigate something. She said to me that she was almost certain that if you were to do that, then she'd be only too happy never to hear of Captain Kuro again." She thought of the packet which was weighing down the luggage in her room. "There would be a down payment, too. In ready money."
The man rose from his pallet and strolled across to face her through the bars. He was close enough now that she could make out his facial expressions. For the moment, he seemed to be going for Blandly Unconcerned, with just a dash of Curiously Interested, seasoned by a hint of Invincibly Ignorant Innocence, and a touch of Mass Murder in his narrowed eyes.
"Speaking of which," Tashigi added hastily, "I want to join your crew. I'm a good recruit. Really."
"You want to join my crew?" the man asked, as though he couldn't believe his ears.
"It's sort of a package deal." Tashigi restrained the urge to grab the man through the bars by his loosely swinging tie, haul him nose to nose, and inform him that he was taking the mission, Or Else. "First there's the bit where your faithful crew breaks you out of jail tonight. Then there's the bit where you head off, um, I've got the dossier for later. Then there's the bit where Colonel Hina hears everything's sorted out and she loses your record and everyone agrees that Captain Kuro died three years ago and the base here is so embarrassed about a prisoner escaping that they forget you even existed."
"And that last bit is easier to arrange if Colonel Hina has an observer on my crew? Would that be it, Lieutenant Tashigi?"
She twitched. He smiled.
"We have a deal." He walked back to his pallet, and seated himself again, resuming his earlier slouch. "Provisionally. Contingent on your performance tonight."
Tashigi gave him a curt nod before she strode away, and tried to decide whether or not she should be pleased by his agreement.
---
The night sky above Hawk Island glittered with a sprinkling of diamonds, pure and fine, high above the pettiness of pirate thefts and bar brawls.
Tashigi lurked in a back alley behind the Marine compound, and nerved herself for action. The black leather gear that Colonel Hina had provided her with made her near-invisible, she tried to convince herself. She was a sleek shadow in the night, a panther on the prowl, a trained expert on the stalk.
Her shoulders were bare. She wished desperately for her usual Marine jacket to cover them.
With a quick flick of her fingers, she shoved the new gold-tinted spectacles down over her eyes. Another present from Colonel Hina, who had made several extremely pointed comments about distinguishing features and that it was all on Marine expenses anyhow so Tashigi need not feel embarrassed about taking it, this polite diffidence is all very well, lieutenant, now pick those items the hell up and put them in your backpack, yes madam.
Time.
She clambered up the wall via the protruding bricks, and hung at the top for a moment as she peered over. The area directly between the wall and the building was clear, and the patrols wouldn't be round for another half-hour, so now was the time to strike. Surgical extraction, she tried to convince herself. Precise rescue mission.
The very thought of the words "breaking a pirate out of jail" made her blush to her ears yet again. Good lieutenants didn't do things like that.
She sidled through the doorway, sprinted down three flights of stairs, picked herself up off the floor, and tiptoed down the corridor towards the jail cells.
"Hey," said a young male voice from behind her, "you don't look like a --"
Tashigi turned, drawing her blade in one smooth movement. "I'm not," she hissed, doing her best imitation of Nico Robin (for want of any other immediate female pirate role model that she could think of), and slammed the flat of her sword into his head.
He went down and stayed down.
Now, what would a pirate do in a situation like this? Oh, yes. "You should have kept out of this," she hissed down at his unconscious body.
Hm. Strangely satisfying. She probably needed to work on the delivery. Oh, wait. Yes. Rescuing Captain Kuro. She dragged the Marine into the nearest storage closet, stuck a broom through the handle to keep him in there if he woke up, and continued through the base.
Tashigi reached the corridor of jail cells without further incidents, and paused round the corner from the guardroom. Assuming the Marines in here were competent, they wouldn't leave their posts for less than a full base-wide alarm, and she didn't have the resources or inclination to set up one of those. Better to get things over fast.
She walked into the guardroom, sword already drawn. The two Marines sitting there barely had a chance to look up from their card game before they were both unconscious.
Key ring in hand, she strolled down the corridor to Kuro's cell. There was a hushed silence as she walked past cell after cell, and drop-jawed pirate after drop-jawed pirate crowded to grab at the granite bars and make imploring gestures at her.
Kuro himself was still lying on his pallet. He looked up with a mild air of curiosity.
"Captain," Tashigi said through gritted teeth, and turned the key in the lock of his cell. The click as the door came open had a horrible air of finality to it. This is where you stop being a Marine. This is where you really start being a pirate.
He came to his feet like a cat, and stalked to the door, snatching the key ring out of her hand as he passed her. Her hand trembled as she struggled not to grab for the hilt of her sword. "How long do we have?" he asked.
"Fifteen minutes till the next patrol out at the back, sir," Tashigi answered.
"Right." He tossed the key ring through the bars to the man who'd been in the cell next to him. "I'll let the rest of you sort yourselves out."
Tashigi reassured herself that the other pirates in these cells were all fairly petty criminals, and shouldn't pose a significant challenge to the Marines in the base. Just a distraction. That's all. "This way, sir," she said, and led the way at a trot.
They nearly made it to the door to the courtyard before Tashigi heard the shouts and crashes from below. She turned on reflex to look back to the stairwell, but Kuro grabbed her wrist before she could complete the movement. "That'll do nicely," he commented dryly. "I take it there's a convenient point to climb the wall."
She gaped. How could he have known that? "Yes, sir, but . . ."
He made a dismissive gesture, releasing her wrist. "Marines gravitate to drink. Going out through the front gate takes too long. Every Marine base in the world has a secret way out over the back wall."
"There are two of them!" a voice yelled from behind them.
"Come on!" Tashigi gasped, and ran out into the courtyard -- still empty, thank goodness -- and towards the back wall. She couldn't hear Kuro following her.
Oh.
That was because he'd somehow got past her and was already halfway up the wall.
Perhaps the protruding bricks were a tiny bit obvious.
Now what would a pirate do under these circumstances? Flee like a cowardly rat, of course. A cowardly sweating rat, running away like the sneaking squeaking Roronoa Zoro did . . . wait, she was getting distracted again. A pirate who actually wanted to impress her future captain would probably dispose of the Marines.
She reversed her blade and took down the first of the Marines, then slammed the second into the wall, stunned the third, nearly lost her glasses, staggered backwards several steps while resteadying them on her nose, ducked the swing of a bludgeon, went up on her toes, saw that five more were coming, decided that enough was enough, turned round, and ran for the wall. Kuro was sitting on the top, watching with an air of mild interest, the lamplight glinting on his glasses.
"Stop them! They're escaping!" yelled a Marine behind her who clearly loved stating the obvious.
Kuro reached a hand down for her once she was close enough, and pulled her up with surprising strength, helping her clamber over the top of the wall. They both tumbled over to the other side. He landed gracefully. She landed in a jumble of arms and legs.
". . . yes, I suppose I should have expected that," Kuro stated. He grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her to her feet. "Come on, Claw. We have to get moving."
"Claw?" Tashigi asked, blinking.
"Your name." He pulled her down one alley, then up another, then through an archway and into the maze of streets that housed the town's inns. "From now on, your name is Claw, you are a deserter from the Marines whom I have recruited, and if you betray me, I will kill you without a moment's hesitation. Am I understood?"
Tashigi's hand twitched.
"And don't salute," he added.
"Yes. Sir."
"Good." He smiled. It changed his face, transforming it from sealed bland darkness to apparently open cheerful mild-mannered gentleness.
Tashigi wasn't remotely reassured. "Ah, sir -- I'll need to pick up my backpack from the inn I left it at earlier. It's got the documents in."
Kuro nodded. "I'll come with you." So as not to lose track of you, the unspoken words hung between them, and for a moment Tashigi had to suppress a shiver. Far too many proverbs about having tigers by the tail were milling around at the back of her mind and waving red flags for attention.
This is for Colonel Smoker, she reminded herself. He's still my real superior. This is just -- temporary.
"Lead on, Claw," Kuro said. He was still smiling.
. . . And the smile on the face of the tiger.
---
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