Trick or Treat! 🕸️
(Please share a headcanon, a preview of a wip, or anything else you'd like and pass it on!)
Oops, sorry for missing this one! I see your Trick-or-Treat and raise you a Naughty or Nice. 😉
Intercepting her, Rizo slung a lanky arm around her shoulders. She stiffened slightly.
“Hey, soldier! How ya been?” he grinned. “Wasn’t expecting t’see you here tonight, and dressed so fancy.” Before she could form a reply, he redirected. “Any chance you’re sailing aboard our Mistress again soon?”
“Well, that’s… difficult to say,” Ta Ming answered, starting forward in hopes his arm might slide off. Instead, he matched his stride to hers. “The Fire Lord determines which missions I assist abroad and which closer to home,” she continued, then added, “Though I admit, I may have had my fill of the open seas for a while.”
“Not enough of Lu Da, apparently.” He said it so casually, the air so noisy, it took a moment to sink in.
Ta Ming stopped. With a shrewd wink, Rizo slid his arm away, leaving her blinking in a flare of heat. She opened her mouth—to say what, she didn’t know—when a burst of cheers cut her off.
“Should’ve gone with your gut, Rizo!” someone jeered.
“Ah, burning piss,” he muttered, glancing back before jerking his head toward the commotion. “Come on.”
She followed him through the sweaty throngs to a clearing, where a jubilant handler waved a scorpion rat aloft, the crowd cheering as coins changed hands amid curses and triumphant laughter. Rizo groused as he tossed a pocketful of silver toward a gloating brute.
“This place is bleedin’ me dry,” he grumbled, and then something else that was lost to the swell of a louder, bawdier song, voices ringing out in discordant harmony.
The scene buzzed, but the atmosphere tipped into something sharper as Lu Da’s voice reached her. Even in this chaotic din, there was that familiar shift, a charge moving through the crowd when he was near. Ta Ming knew exactly where he was, even before she saw him.
He was joined now by two more crewmates—his quartermaster Marik, and Jinze, whose vague frown suggested he knew who his captain was searching for.
Lu Da’s gaze swept the crowd, sliding past her, blurred by the haze of smoky lanternlight and the tavern’s restless churn. But Jinze’s eyes locked with hers, briefly, through a shifting gap.
As always, the flint of his gaze and the guarded set of his jaw said what he wouldn’t aloud—he didn’t care for her. A deep-seated superstition about women aboard ships, Lu Da had once explained, one that she’d come to personify the more frequently she sailed on missions. It was nothing personal, and he’d get over it.
Whatever getting over it was supposed to look like, she had her doubts.
Jinze broke away in the opposite direction, and Marik cast him a curious glance before looking around. As they drifted closer, Lu Da sang the rowdy chorus with gusto, “The rogue was made of fire, and the guard was made of ice, and when they took to bed one night, he made her melt not once but tw—”
His voice tripped mid-verse as he found her, two cups of liquor sloshing precariously in his hands. The knowing grin he flashed was a confession in itself, and she shook her head.
“So that’s where my nephew heard it,” she said. “Guowei’s been singing the song for days, Jhu Lin even received a letter from his school.” Despite it, Ta Ming felt the corner of her mouth twitch as she fought to keep her expression stern. “You, Pirate King, are a very bad influence.”
“Believe it or not,” a rakish glint as he pressed a drink into her hand, clinking the side of his own against it, “I’ve heard that before.”
With booming fanfare, the announcer’s voice rang out again, calling for bets to be placed as a row of tiny hedgehog boars shuffled into position. Their stubby little legs were an amusing contrast to their spiky armor and the fierceness of their expressions.
Lu Da knocked a brawny shoulder against hers, staying close as he leaned in to speak over the drunken revelry. “So, Soldier, are we betting on looks, grit, or pure attitude?" A crooked smile tugged up one tattooed cheek. "Because that one there looks like it’s running on spite and heart palpitations.”
