#timetide

Usually, Cass only stole things she knew she could sell in pawn shops and the like. Watches, jewelry, electronics… small things that would fetch decent enough money if she found the right shopkeeper to buy it. But… sometimes, her hands moved a little faster than her mind did. Sometimes, she was snatching something without thinking about it. Like, sometimes she accidentally grabbed an expensive looking sculpture from the car of the wealthy asshole who’d made the barista at her favorite coffee shop cry, and she knew no pawn shop would touch it.

Luckily, she did have an alternative.

Putting on her ‘Christie’ persona — which was really just her, but with a fake name and a little more meek — she called up the one person she knew would be able to help her. A few months ago she might have called Hikari, but… the other woman had been ignoring Cass’s calls for a while now, and Bobbi was a safer bet. The captain seemed more than willing to help, and Cass got another boat ride out of it. It would be fun, she thought.

She grinned at Bobbi as she came onto the deck. “I really appreciate the help,” she said. “And… I appreciate you not asking questions.”

You already know who's gonna win

You already lost, I'm up for the win, yeah

You already know who's gonna win

I'm undefeated, I'm fearless, fearless

Guapdad 4000’s Fearless blared throughout the captain’s quarters as Bobbi tinkered with a Darlington transistor. Now, normally, most people would be wearing clothes that were long enough to cover most of them just in case, you know, they’d get electrocuted while working, but a huxian like Bobbi, especially a huxian like Bobbi, could care less. Wearing only a white tank top over a pair of jeans, Bobbi bobbed her head to the music as sparks flew around her, mostly on her paper-free table. This wasn’t her first rodeo. 

“Your kid’s here,” John didn’t even bother knocking, knowing full well that with that volume, their captain wouldn’t hear him. Instead, he just grabbed the door knob with a hand towel—Bobbi wasn’t the only experienced sailor on this ship—and walked right in, informing the unfazed woman whose face shouldn’t be that close to that circuit, or any circuits for that matter, of the news. “You sure this isn’t going to be like Senkaku?”

“Huh? Oh, right, yeah, okay,” Bobbi perked up, and in a matter of seconds, cleaned up her desk, which was the shortest way of saying she turned off what needed to be turned off and then just freaking dumped everything in the drawer underneath her table. Classy. Grabbing a denim jacket on her way out, she smirked at John who had of course followed her. “This isn’t going to be like Senkaku, John. She’s just a kid, just curious and in desperate need for adventure. What could go wrong?”

“Christie, hey!” Bobbi greeted the young woman as they reunited on the deck of her ship, gesturing for John to don his captain’s hat, which he did, immediately going around to yell at the others to prepare the vessel. The huxian, however, was more focused on her guest, still at awe at how she resembled her old, lost friend. “Eh, don’t worry about it! Captain needs more info, though. He’s been on edge lately because of all the weird stuff happening in town, including the docks. You mind clearing his thoughts about this?” 

She placed a hand gently on her back as she started leading her towards the captain’s quarters, gesturing for Captain John to follow them as soon as he could. 

Some of Bobbi’s crew weren’t exactly thrilled to see her, which was probably fair. The last time Cass had been here, she had snuck on board, after all, had enthralled several of the sailors in an attempt to keep herself from being caught. She was pretty sure the only reason they were tolerating her presence on the ship at all was because she was friends with Bobbi. But that was okay. Cass didn’t care to impress a bunch of crusty old sailors, anyway. There was only one person on board she was interested in hanging out with.

It was with careful practice that she reacted to the fake name on Bobbi’s lips as if it was the one she’d been called all her life, smile widening as the sailor approached. “Oh, right, yeah, I totally get that,” she nodded, throwing a nervous look towards the man commanding the ship. She wasn’t really scared of him, but she figured it was better to keep up the act that she was. It was always best to remain underestimated, even among friends. 

Following Bobbi towards the captain’s quarters, Cass nodded. “Yeah, things in town have been… weird lately. I mean, they’re always weird, but, like, extra weird now. It makes sense to want more info. I’m, like, a hundred percent sure the sculpture isn’t haunted, though.” 

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Bobbi rolled her eyes before shaking her head. That wasn’t aimed at Christie, of course. It was more aimed at the fact that the spooks seemed to be much harder to figure out now, especially for folks like Lilian who were gifted against them. Lil had even warned Bobbi to take extra precautions, if not for her stubborn self then for the boys. They were less long-lived than the huxian, though Lil didn’t know about that. Not yet. “Shame we don’t have an Egon Spengler, eh?”

The huxian had been in town since its founding, so strange stuff like that never really worried Bobbi, even though she did sporadically sail elsewhere during its first few decades, trying to find out more about the ghostly fleet that stole her ship, her most prized possession, the same ghostly fleet that made recent events an exception to her overall apathy with regards to the non-docks parts of town. Much harder to take back her stuff if everything she’d learned so far proved useless with all these new developments.

Heaving a sigh, Bobbi tried her best to calm herself down, remove those thoughts from her head, and focus on the task at hand. John joined them shortly after, closing the door behind them, a scowl on his face. Seems like he still hadn’t forgotten that bit about Christie headbutting his little brother. Dang, man can hold a grudge. “So, uhh, captain, looks like it’s X marks the haunted sculpture. Won’t be a problem, right?” She grinned at him before turning to the young woman, winking at her right in front of the dude with the bad mood. 

John just crossed his arms and didn’t take his eyes off Christie. “We’ll see. What’s the plan, kid?”

There were some things in White Crest that went beyond Cass’s understanding. Not as many things as there used to be, thankfully — she knew a lot more now than she had a year ago — but enough to leave her feeling like she was scrambling more often than not. Ghosts were something she didn’t think she’d ever understand entirely. How could she when she couldn’t even see them? Lil and Jonas could try to explain things to her, but that could really only go so far, in the end. Furrowing her brow, she shot Bobbi a curious look. “What's an Egon Spengler? Is that, like, a ghost hunting tool?”

Something passed over Bobbi’s face, there and then gone so quickly that most people might have missed it. But Cass had learned to notice such things by necessity. In foster care, noticing the smallest shift in a person’s expression could ultimately mean the difference between life and death. She didn’t even know, really, how much of her ability to read people came from the natural empathetic abilities granted to her as a siren and how much was built up through her time in the system. 

Not that it mattered much here. Bobbi had earned Cass’s trust during their last encounter, and she was hardly the biggest threat in the room. The ‘captain’ was still shooting Cass dark looks that proved he wasn’t entirely forgiving regarding Cass’s attempts to remain ‘unnoticed’ when she snuck on board the boat before, and she tried not to be obvious as she eyed him warily. “I just need to find somebody who’ll buy it discreetly. And for a fair price. I figured you guys could help with that. You found somebody to buy those paintings, before.” Somebody sketchy, sure, but Cass could handle sketchy. She’d proven as much back then.

John almost broke character, the making of a full-blown cackle escaping his mouth. Bobbi was quick to turn to him, annoyed at how he was quick to make fun of her advanced age. Swiftly, and perhaps the wisest decision he has ever made in a long while, John turned away, not locking eyes with Bobbi or the girl. 

The huxian herself could only sigh, shaking her head, before turning to Christie with a chuckle of her own. She was…bemused. “You don’t know Egon Spengler? Ghostbusters? Imagine life as you know it stopping instantaneously with every atom in your body exploding at the speed of light?” That last part wasn’t the exact quote, but it was the closest Bobbi could recall.

John didn’t even bother remembering the kid’s name, noting her in his head as Stowaway Who Ruined Andrew’s Picture-Perfect Nose. To say that he loved his brother would be an understatement, though he would never admit to that. Far from it, he also believed that between the two of them, Andrew could escape the fisherman’s life and become something more. Like a model in those clothing commercials. He turned to Bobbi with narrowed eyes, and as if on cue, they both opened their mouths. “Old Creepy Guy.” “The Silver Fox.” Close enough.

“You’re in luck, Christie,” Bobbi grinned from ear to ear, much to John’s chagrin. She ignored him, though, because this wasn’t about him. Or Andrew’s halted modeling career. “We’re actually going to meet a potential buyer later today! And he’s way into…esoteric wares.” John cut straight to the point, wanting his part in all this over and done as fast as possible. “You even got the statue with you right now, kid?”

“Uh…” Cass glanced between Bobbi and the ‘captain’ carefully, shrugging a shoulder. “I saw the one with Chris Hemsworth in it?” She liked pop culture, but if it wasn’t comic books or superhero related, she tended to prefer the newer stuff by default. A side effect of being in her early twenties, she suspected. Plus, the special effects in old movies were always, like, super cringey. She only ever watched them to make fun of them, really. 

It was cool, the way Bobbi and the ‘captain’ seemed capable of having entire conversations without ever actually speaking at all. It reminded Cass fondly of Levi and Marina, the way they were so in sync that it seemed like they shared a mind, sometimes. Bobbi and John seemed very much the same, especially when they came up with the same ‘client’ at once. Cass laughed at their respective names for the guy, quietly settling on Old Creepy Guy as a favorite.

“That’s perfect!” She shot John another dubious look, reaching to the messenger bag at her side to produce the little gold statue. “Uh, duh. I wouldn’t be able to ask for Bobbi’s help the right way if I couldn’t show her what she was working with, could I?” Maybe sassing the ‘captain’ of the ship wasn’t the smartest move Cass could make here, but he kept shooting her mean looks and she figured she was entitled to a little payback for that. “Can I come with you to meet him?” The question was directed entirely to Bobbi.

“Who’s Chris Hemsworth?” Bobbi shot both of them a confused look, crossing her arms over her chest. She knew who he was, well, how he looked, just not his name. John answered her without missing a beat, keeping his eyes on the kid. “Thor, God of Hammers.” At that, Bobbi nodded knowingly, the reference she understood quicker than she remembered the muscled Australian’s actual name. “I liked the female one better.” John frowned and gave her a look of disbelief. No spoilers, though.

At Christie’s sass, John audibly groaned, which made Bobbi grin. It wasn’t every day she saw John get one-upped by a smaller, younger girl. Besides from her anyway. The ‘Captain’ extended his hand to gesture his desire to get a good handle on the thing, though for no real reason than to make sure the kid wasn’t conning them. He scoffed at Christie’s request and let out a loud, “No.” Bobbi put a hand on his shoulder calmly and gave Christie a wink before making her own request. “Captain, may I request a sidebar?”

John stared some more daggers at the kid before nodding his head. The two went out of the quarters, though they didn’t really move that far away from the door, with much of their conversation still in Christie’s earshot. “What do you mean no? The old man would love her!” Bobbi scoffed. John heaved a sigh, shaking his head. “That’s exactly why I said no. The old man is a pervert. You’re gonna risk the kid for a pay day? I’d end up punching him in the face, and we can’t lose him as a client, even if he deserves a punch in the face.” 

Bobbi saw his sigh and raised him her own, her hands finding their way on her hips.. “Kid’s not gonna get risked, John. If she’s anything like her mom… And besides, you’re not coming. Just gonna be me and her. Old man would love that, which means he’ll lower his guard. Not much of a threat then.” They continued arguing some more until things grew quiet. Bobbi returned inside the quarters. Alone. With a grin, she gave Christie a double thumbs-up. “Captain said yes! Wanna tell me more about the statue, why you need more money? If not, we can talk about something else. How’s school?”

Cass actually felt a little disgruntled at the ‘captain’s’ reference, because she didn’t want to like John, but it was hard not to think someone was at least a little cooler when they were talking about Thor. Keeping her eyes on Bobbi, she grinned. “I mean, same.” 

Reluctantly, Cass held the statue out when John reached for it, allowing him to inspect it. She had nothing to lose there; she knew the figure was legit, and she knew it was pricey. If the weight of it was anything to go off, the metal it was made out of was real through and through. She’d be able to get a good amount of cash on it for scrap metal alone, but… She didn’t like the idea of selling it to someone just so they could melt it down. Maybe her friendship with Metzli had offered her some new appreciation of art that she’d never thought possible before. 

She sighed as Bobbi and John gave contradictory answers to her request, nodding for them to go ahead and duke it out as she pretended not to listen. Something about an old man being a pervert and John not wanting to have to punch him, which was unexpectedly sweet. Maybe the ‘captain’ wasn’t quite as bad as he was pretending to be. 

Continuing to listen to the argument, Cass hummed at the way Bobbi came to her defense… only to stop as the woman continued. If she’s anything like her mom… The words seemed to echo. She was still frozen when Bobbi reentered the quarters, eyes a little wider than they’d been before. She almost missed what Bobbi said next, blinking. “Oh. Uh, yeah. Great.” She needed to pull herself together. She could grill Bobbi later, when John wasn’t there to listen. “I guess I don’t really need money, but I’d like some. My new job doesn’t pay quite as much as what I used to do.” Jonas paid her well, but not as well as stealing money from rich people. “I’m not in school, though. Uh, when are we leaving?”

“More money’s always a good thing to have,” Bobbi quipped as she crossed her arms, a grin on her face, chalking the strange expression on Christie’s face to John being a dick to her. While the huxian liked to consider herself a capitalist, the years have softened her stance on her pirate-y ways. It helped that there were no true pirates around anymore, at least not the ones that she was molded by, fought with and against. 

“We should be leaving soon,” and as soon as the words left her lips, the crew began to yell out their usual stuff outside, barely audible from where the two girls stood. As if on cue, Bobbi opened the door and gestured for Christie to join her on the deck before continuing. “The client lives on a yacht near Harris Island. Pretty sure he owns a fancy schmancy mansion over there, too, but he’s almost always on his yacht. Rich people and their yacht parties, am I right?”

John was talking to the other sailors, with his younger brother Andrew right beside him, the same guy whose nose Christie had broken before. Andrew’s nose was all healed up now. Well, as healed up as it could. It was less perfect now and more broken, which was why he was staring daggers at her when he caught sight of her. John noticed this, too, and patted Andrew on the head before walking towards the girls, though he simply nodded at Bobbi and shoved the statue back to Christie without speaking a single word to her, and disappeared into the captain’s quarters. Man can hold a grudge.

Bobbi found the whole thing funny but she didn’t linger on it. Sooner or later, John would soften up to the younger woman. Despite his grudges, he could never resist the whole knight-in-shining-armor schtick. That was why he worked well with Bobbi, with whom he often butted heads with but always made up at the end of the day. Or the week. 

The huxian simply took to the railings and watched the waves crashed against their vessel with a warm smile. There was just something about the sea that always captured her heart. Even if she had spent decades, centuries even, at the sea, with the sea, Bobbi never really got tired of it. “Huh. I honestly thought you were still in school. You’re not, like, I mean, I’m not gonna judge but, you didn’t quit school, did you? And what’s up with the new job?”

“That’s what I always say,” Cass agreed, hoping the pounding in her chest wasn’t too obvious. There was no way she’d misheard what Bobbi said; she knew that. She weighed the pros and cons of just coming out with the question, but she didn’t think it would be entirely effective. Here at the docks, it would be easy for Bobbi to avoid answering if she didn’t want to. She could decide to agree with the ‘captain’ and kick Cass off the ship, or leave herself. It would be more straightforward with the sea beneath them. Cass was positive Bobbi wasn’t going to make her walk the plank to avoid answering her questions, at least.

Cass watched as John spoke with some of the other sailors, flashing the one whose nose she’d broken a fierce grin when no one else was looking. The persona she’d built for herself on Bobbi’s boat — one that was, for the most part, a scared, meek kid who had only lashed out due to her own terror — ensured that nobody would believe him when he spoke of it later, which was kind of funny. Maybe a little mean, but Cass was okay with that.

She took the statue back, fiddling with it for a moment before tucking it back into her bag. She trusted Bobbi, but she didn’t really have the same faith in anyone else on this ship. She didn’t want to lose the statue she’d gotten with her own sticky fingers to someone else’s. 

Following Bobbi over to the railing, Cass looked out over the sea. She had a newfound appreciation for it these days, built up through her friendship with Levi and Marina. “I mean, I did,” she admitted, “but that was a long time ago. I dropped out when I was sixteen. I’m twenty-three now.” It was strange, just how much time had passed. Sometimes, it felt like just yesterday that she’d run away from the latest group home the state had stuck her in. Others, it seemed like an eternity since her time living on the streets. “I got a job at an antique shop. The owner’s pretty chill, so he lets me do whatever.”

“Huh,” Bobbi seemed genuinely upset when Christie revealed she had dropped out of school, which was a little weird, considering Bobbi didn’t formally attend school. The huxian was able to get her engineering degree only through lies and deceit, as she never had any legit documents that were required of her so she could enroll in the first place. Hard to get those when you don’t die. Plus, there was the whole thing about guardians and citizenship and the ever-changing educational system. Fortunately for Bobbi, as the computer and the Internet finally arrived, so did Photoshop and more terribly illegal things that she’d rather not get into. “Ever think of going back to school? Never too late.”

The thing about the antique shop piqued her curiosity soon after. That was a pretty good situation for some shenanigans. She wondered, as her eyes narrowed at Christie and where the statue was, if that was all intended from the very beginning. “So that statue…” Bobbi cleared her throat, hoping for the best instead of the worst. She wasn’t one to judge people but she’d rather have Christie on the better side of the world than be on the same side as her and her parents. “...that’s not from the antique shop, is it? You didn’t, uhh, borrow it, right?”

“Land ho!” John would soon call out to everyone on the ship, just as Bobbi always did, as they approached the Silver Fox’s yacht, even though actual land was still further in. The rest of the crew instinctively responded, already preparing to board the other vessel. “Ho!” 

Bobbi herself joined in before she started watching the yacht with steely conviction, arms crossing themselves across her chest. The damned thing was the very example of opulence. Even from afar, she could smell the expensive liquor and other party stuff wafting in the sea breeze. If only she didn’t know who owned the yacht, she’d be so impressed. Without turning to her, instead sharing a knowing look with John at the helm, Bobbi whispered to Christie a final warning, “You sure you want to come with? Those abilities of yours are always good to go, right?”

Bobbi looked disappointed and, for a second, a strange jolt of fear surged through Cass. She’d always hated disappointing people, always felt nauseous at the thought, even if it was someone she didn’t know particularly well. But the feeling quickly passed as she assured herself that Bobbi wasn’t mad at her or anything. She shrugged at the question, glancing down at her feet. “I dunno. I thought about getting my GED for a while but, like, I don’t really need it or anything. Nobody’s ever asked.” And if they did, Cass was more than capable of lying her way around it. She’d always been good at that.

It probably was a little suspicious to admit that she worked at an antique shop while holding a statue she intended to sell that was definitely an antique. But the idea of stealing from Jonas was so absurd that Cass actually laughed at it, shaking her head quickly. “God, no. I didn’t borrow it from the shop.” She had ‘borrowed’ it from a rich guy’s fancy car, but Bobbi didn’t ask about that, so it wasn’t like she was lying.

Hearing the ‘captain’ call out in a way that probably meant they were leaving soon, Cass hummed. She followed Bobbi’s gaze to the yacht ahead, thinking for a moment how fun it would be to sneak aboard that ship. There’d certainly be more things to steal than she’d be able to carry. Maybe another day, she figured. 

Turning back to Bobbi, she nodded quickly in response to the question. “Oh, yeah, for sure. I definitely want to tag along. And I’m definitely good to go.” She paused for a moment. “Your friend didn’t need to warm up, did she? When you knew her before?”

There wasn’t much else for Bobbi to say on that front, especially considering that formal education was the least of the long-lived’s concern. There were far more important matters that Bobbi had to deal with, and in the end, she still managed to get that degree. Although, again: through lies and deceit. “You’ll figure it out yourself. I mean, whatever works for you, you know?”

Whether the statue was acquired through legal means or not paled in importance to the new task at hand. Bobbi will just have to inspire Christie to go down the right path instead of this one, though that felt nigh impossible to someone in her shoes at the moment. Easier said than done. “Hmm? Oh, yeah, well, she was actually always the first out the door. Or in this case, off the boat.”

Bobbi chuckled at a stray memory of the good old days, as she gestured for Christie to follow her to the dinghy. The Captain watched them both, scowling because he did not get his way, muscled arms across his muscled chest. Two others helped the ladies off, and Bobbi did not waste any time before rowing them closer to the yacht, where a pair of serious men with visible weapons watched them with eagle eyes as party music blared on behind them. “Silver Fox has his own personal guard, and even the captain and his crew are former soldiers, so the old man’s a bit protective,” the huxian whispered the fact under her breath. “Of himself.”

Then she turned towards the guards and raised a hand, “Hey, guys! It’s Bobbi. I’m here to meet with Mr. Quincey!” They just stood there for a few seconds, eyes watching them, before one of them put a finger in his ear and then nodded, gesturing to the other one to follow his lead, as they helped both ladies aboard. Bobbi gave Christie a wink and waited for her to follow before giving the same two men a playful smirk. “Thanks, guys. Always a pleasure.”

“Bet we can take them both,” Bobbi quipped as they left the guards’ range of hearing. Or at least she barely cared. “You go high, I go low.” 

“Yeah. For sure.” Cass was a little relieved Bobbi didn’t push the subject; it was the kind of thing that could get awkward relatively quickly, and she didn’t want that with Bobbi. Things with Bobbi were simple in a familiar kind of way; lying to someone about the bare basics of her life, giving them a fake name and a mostly made up backstory… It was something Cass used to do all the time. There was something interesting about the strange new twist of Bobbi knowing something not even some of her friends knew about her — that she was a siren — without knowing her real name, too. It was a little intoxicating, in its own way.

Every bit of new information Cass learned about Charlotte was intriguing, especially after having met her in her brief time travel adventure with Sloane. Bobbi wasn’t entirely forthcoming with her short answers, but Cass still soaked up the new facts like she needed them. And maybe she did. Charlotte was the only other siren Cass had ever known, even if she’d known her so briefly and long before she was meant to. “Did she hang out on your boat a lot?”

Following Bobbi, Cass was a little surprised to find that they were headed towards the yacht. Maybe sneaking aboard wasn’t an option, but it didn’t have to be if she was invited. “What should I expect here?” John had seemed apprehensive about the whole thing, and Cass suspected he probably had good reason to be. The last time she’d witnessed one of Bobbi’s business dealings, the ‘customers’ had been rude and brash and kind of gross. She doubted this would be any different.

Once on board the yacht, Cass fell into step behind the guards, snorting as Bobbi turned to her. “Their boss might not wanna pay us if we do that,” she replied, though she wasn’t against the idea of fighting these guys. “But we could totally take them down if we wanted to.”

“You could say that,” Bobbi had conflicting memories of her friend. Most of what she could remember, or more precisely, want to remember were good things. She was kind, she was fun, she made her laugh a lot. Those things. But you don’t become close friends with someone and just have good memories. Long friendships tend to be a little mix of both, the good and the bad, and sometimes, some things become a little bit of both instead of choosing a side. “She was like a sister to me.” Maybe even more. 

“Smart,”  Bobbi grinned as they made their way further inside the yacht, leading the kid up the stairs that gave them quite a view of the large flat foredeck that was currently occupied by a bunch of girls in bikinis dancing to some party song the huxian wasn’t familiar with. That didn’t stop her from bobbing her head to the rhythm, however, as well as admiring the delicious eye candy. “Just your typical bad guy HQ.” Soon, they stopped in front of a locked door and Bobbi calmly rapped the wood three times without moving her eyes away from the young girl. “No windows inside, at least four visible guards, maybe six, and even the servers know how to fight.”

When the door slowly opened, Bobbi gestured for Christie to follow her in. What greeted them was a bar with a collection of expensive bottles but decorated terribly with plastic flowers, as if the decorator was just the bartender, who at that moment, watched them with keen eyes. The rest of the room was typical in its excess, not unlike what one would see in a Vegas casino, which was John’s favorite description of the old man: A walking Vegas casino. 

“Bobbi! You look beautiful tonight!” The old man shooed the two paid arm candy fluttering around him and descended the small flight of stairs, just three steps, that propped the bar a little higher than the rest of the room. Bobbi was quick to discourage any physical contact between them by making a completely exaggerated bow. “We’ve come for business, Mr. Quincey! Something that should pique your interest.” 

Bobbi then turned to Christie, gesturing for her to introduce herself, and more importantly, show the old man her ware. At the same time, she discreetly scouted the room, counting four guys just standing around, obviously guards, while noting that there were two other servers plus the bartender, which all sported terrible attitudes for the service industry. Definitely punching bags. 

“What was she like?” The question came out small, uncertain. Cass had known Charlotte for a moment, when time saw fit to throw her back to the eighties where the woman was probably younger than she was. And she’d felt — something, in that time. Some kind of connection, some kind of tie. Metzli had theorized it could be something like what hunters felt when they encountered the things they were meant to hunt or, perhaps more appropriately, what fae felt when they found others like them. And that made sense, because Cass had never met another siren before, but she wondered if there might be more to it, too. Bobbi’s earlier words echoed in her head. If she’s anything like her mom… She needed, with a hungry thrum, to know more. She needed to know everything. And she needed Bobbi to want to tell her.

Though… now might not be the best time for it. The yacht was like a maze, and Cass was careful to map it out in her mind, nose wrinkling when she saw the girls in bikinis. Some of them looked younger than her which, considering the fact that Bobbi and John had both mentioned that their client was an old man, was pretty gross. “You think these guys, like, take notes during James Bond movies? If he’s got a giant fishtank with a shark in it, I’m gonna lose my shit, Bobbi.” 

She followed Bobbi into the room, glancing around at the decor. She was uncharacteristically quiet as she took it all in, opting to make herself small and unassuming rather than give anything away. If they did end up having to fight anyone — which, like, they shouldn’t, should they? This was a business deal! — she wanted to be underestimated. It always served her best. 

The old man was pretty much exactly what Cass had expected him to be. Old, wrinkly, and gross. His wandering eyes raked up and down Bobbi and Cass in turn, and he made no real effort to hide the hunger behind them. It took everything Cass had not to let her disgust show on her face. She let Bobbi do the talking; the sailor had a working relationship with the old man, anyway, so it would be easier to let her handle this part.

Smiling when Bobbi turned to her, she nodded at the man. “Christie,” she said, the fake name slipping easily through her lips. She offered no last name, fake or otherwise; she figured, given the situation they were in, the man wouldn’t object to it. After all, sketchy people understood sketchy practices. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the statue. “Bobbi tells me this is something you might like. I think it’d fit in pretty well with the decorations you’ve got here, don’t you?” 

The thing about memories was, at least in Bobbi’s case, which she had learned to accept a few decades ago, they tend to get muddled with emotions. Sometimes, you over-remember the good of a person. Other times, you end up focusing on the hate, the rage, that you miss the more important moments where they did good beyond what you could have understood at that point in time. 

But Charlotte? Bobbi could never forget how she had been quite the character in her crew. “Hardheaded, stubborn, but more or less someone you’d want holding the knife while you’re on the table.” Operating table, that was what the saying she’d heard somewhere sometime ago specified, but Bobbi wouldn’t mind if Charlotte was her butcher. She stole a glimpse of Christie, curious as to why she was suddenly so curious about the woman. Does she know? “Why so curious?”

The old man did in fact have a fish tank. Well, two of them. One was filled with expensive pet fish, clearly for show, while the other only housed a pair of baby sharks, both bigger and taller than Christie. Why anyone would keep baby sharks in a saltwater aquarium was anyone guess, but Bobbi’s was that the old man had a tiny peepee he had to overcompensate for. The tanks were propped on opposite sides of the room they were in. Marina would probably lose her shit, too, if she ever finds out about this. 

“Well, well, well… Consider my interest very piqued,” the old man licked his lips at the sight of Christie, even before she showed him the product, which did not sit well with Bobbi. Crossing her arms, the huxian resisted dropping the frail old man with a quick right by clenching her jaw. John wouldn’t have had the same…decorum. When his old, decaying eyes finally landed on the statue, they widened as much as they could. “May I?” He tried to get a hold of the item, but it was already clear that he would pay as much as he could for it. “Where did you find such a fine specimen? Tell me more about it.”

Hardheaded. Stubborn. Words that had been used to describe Cass a time or two in the past, words that weren’t entirely inaccurate descriptions. She wondered if there was some kind of genetic component to a person’s personality, if you could grow up with the same traits that made your mother who she was even if you’d never met her at all. That was assuming she was right about what Bobbi’s words had meant, of course, and that Bobbi herself was right about whatever assumptions she’d made. It was a lot of ‘what ifs’ that Cass was clinging to because for a kid who’d never had anything when it came to her biological family, even the tiniest snippet felt like a feast.

She shrugged at Bobbi’s question, trying to act like it didn’t matter when the reality was that it might be the only thing that did. “I’ve never met another siren before,” she replied. “I was raised by humans, so I always just kind of… thought I was one of them, too. I’ve only known about this stuff for, like, a year, and I guess sirens aren’t that common, you know? So… I’m curious. About the one you used to know.” It wasn’t even a total lie, even if it wasn’t the whole truth, either. 

The fish tank brought a faint smile to Cass’s lips, at least; she glanced over at Bobbi and inclined her head towards it, raising her brows in silent communication. Given the fact that she’d just mentioned it, she figured Bobbi would know exactly what she meant. But… it was probably best not to say it aloud.

Especially not with the way this guy was looking at her. She’d seen that look before plenty of times; it wasn’t one she particularly liked. But Bobbi was here with her, and she had a job to do, kind of. She was going to sell this stupid statue and buy something expensive with this creepy old man’s money. When he reached for it, she held it towards him, allowing him to take it for a closer look. “It was a gift,” she lied smoothly, “from a man in White Crest. Something his grandfather left him that he didn’t have room to keep. I don’t think he knew what it was worth when he gave it to me, so his loss is my gain, right? And your gain, too, for the right price.”

“Fair enough,” Bobbi gave her a knowing wink before she reminded herself of her similar experiences in the past year. “Been a while since I met someone like me, too, so I know the feeling. You met another of yours within the past year? Mine went missing.” The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the other huxian in town remained a mystery to Bobbi. Well, Hikari was a kitsune, but a rose by any other name is still a rose. She had since wondered if she just upped and left without telling her. Or if her latest encounter with Teagan was an omen, perhaps Hikari had disappeared at the hands of a hunter. 

“Do your humans know what you are?” Bobbi was genuinely curious to know. Her humans, her crew, did not know what she really was, that she was not as mundane as them. John had almost caught her with the truth once or twice but so far, so good. The young man had never spoken up about it, and the rest of the crew showed no realization of any strange goings-on aboard their ship. Well, not supernatural strange, of course. They did have that encounter with Marina back when they collected that chalice to save the town, but only Bobbi and two others actually came face to face with the jellyfish queen. The rest had to stay away from the shore, remain afloat for the quick getaway.

Bobbi raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest, when she caught a glimpse of Christie’s gesture. She immediately knew what was up, having wanted to do the same first but to no avail. Younger generation’s always quicker on the draw, it seemed, and perhaps for obvious reasons. 

The old man’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the item while Bobbi kept hers on him then the girl and finally stealing glances at the other men in the room, counting them in her head, as discreetly as she could. Without turning to them, Mr. Quincey had the women, his paid eye candy, escorted out of the room with the rest of his non-gun-toting guests. Okay, here we go. Bobbi braced herself as the old man suggested a price, something lower than what any of them expected. As expected. It was his strategy, it seemed, to first go low and then a few steps higher. Cheeky old man. Let’s see how the girl bites.

“If I have, they haven’t told me,” Cass replied, and it wasn’t technically a lie. She’d met Charlotte, sure… but that had been in the eighties, thanks to the town’s recent flux of time-related shenanigans. And Charlotte hadn’t told her she was a siren. Cass had just known. It would be too complicated to explain that now, especially to Bobbi. If the Charlotte Cass met was the same one Bobbi had known — which she suspected to be the case — it would raise all sorts of questions on both ends. And they didn’t have time for that now. “Missing? When?” Maybe Bobbi’s friend’s disappearance was related to the time travel stuff, too.

At the question, Cass shrugged a shoulder. “Some of them do. But, honestly… I don’t really know as many humans as I thought I did.” And in White Crest, it was hard to tell. There were plenty of people Cass had assumed were human only to find out later that they weren’t. She’d learned it was best not to make any such assumptions.

The old man sent everyone who wasn’t packing a piece out of the room, and Cass tensed. She knew that was a bad sign… but she also knew it likely meant that both she and Bobbi had been underestimated. The guns, she figured, were here to intimidate. They would use them if they had to, but they probably didn’t anticipate any kind of resistance. 

Cass raised a brow at the ‘offer’ the man presented her with, pulling the statue back with a shrug and tucking it back into her bag. “Sorry. I thought you’d take this more seriously. That’s okay, though. I should be able to find someone else who’s willing to pay a fair price. Have a nice day.” She turned towards the door as if to leave, looking unconcerned about the men with guns. The best strategy in situations like this, she’d learned, was to refuse to even entertain offers like the one she’d been given. It sent a certain kind of message. 

“A while back,” Bobbi simply shrugged, downplaying the loss of a recently made friend. Having been alive for that long of a time, you tend to see friends come and go more times than necessary. Besides, their kind weren’t exactly known for having stable relationships, staying with friends and family. A fleeting fancy, whether a newly met lover or a different prospect in work and lifestyle, could just easily spur a huxian, or a kitsune, to abandon everything they’ve ever known for the new pursuit. She was guilty of that herself. “Though to be fair, she’s a traveling saleswoman, and was just renting a place in the Outskirts, so she probably just left for greener pastures. Wouldn’t be the worst timing, all things considered.”

Bobbi simply nodded at Christie’s answer. With her youth and beauty, she had immediately assumed she’d have made so many human friends, especially at that age, with the whole university and stuff. Bobbi herself had made many human friends around that time, when she tried to find herself in the academe, though to be fair, most of the humans around her were inherited, few of them were friends newly made, or more precisely, from scratch. John himself was a descendant of one of her closest allies as the pirate scourge Lin Baozhai, and the rest were the same. How strange it always seems to her that some people always find each other, by blood and by fate.

When Christie started to move towards the door, Bobbi made way for her while turning towards the old man with a playful smirk. The huxian admired the proverbial balls on this one, though that would be less accurate: Balls are technically easier to hurt. She wasn’t that much of a sports fan, but the amount of balls she had to replace over the years told her the same. Especially basketballs. Those things blow out easily. Or maybe I should stop getting the cheaper ones.

“Wait,” the old man brought her, and probably everyone with that volume, out of her reverie, prompting the two large men to enter the room before anyone else could leave. Bobbi saw Mr. Quincey let out a sigh before he continued, “What’s your price? Let me see if I can top it.”

“A saleswoman?” Things were clicking into place a little, and Cass shifted. “Is her name Hikari?” It had been so long since she’d heard from her friend, any attempts at contact going unanswered. And it was easy enough for Cass to assume that the kitsune had simply thought her no longer worth whatever friendship they’d built — that was what people usually did, after all — but she couldn’t fathom Bobbi as someone so easily abandoned. Not for the first time, dread gnawed at her gut. But Bobbi didn’t seem concerned, and Cass’s instinct was, as it always was, to cling to that optimism, too. “You’re probably right,” she said, forcing herself to believe it. Getting out of White Crest wasn’t a bad thing. It was probably something more people ought to consider.

Especially human people. It wasn’t something that applied to Hikari, of course, but it was something that came to mind as Cass considered just how few humans she actually knew. Jonas and Lil, with their ghost-seeing-abilities, probably didn’t count, so… Sloane might be the only actual human Cass really knew at all. It was strange to think about, now that she considered it.

Maybe it was better that way. She was beginning to believe some of the people who insisted that humans only ever really hurt people. Even this man, old and frail, thought he could step to Cass and Bobbi just because he had money, had power. Cass wasn’t one to stand by for things like that. Bobbi wasn’t, either. Of course, she had no intention of actually leaving without making a deal, and she doubted she’d be allowed to without a fight, but if there was one thing Cass was good at, it was putting on a show.

She smiled faintly as the man called out to her, pausing and tilting her head. Without turning around, she rattled off a price. It was one she’d pulled from her research, one she figured was fair to both of them… but was a little more in her favor than his. He had tried to lowball her, after all. “I won’t go a penny lower,” she warned. “If you try to offer me less, I’m out. I can go around your guys, or I can go through them.”

“Yeah, Narisawa? You knew her?” Bobbi was a little surprised at that thought. She didn’t picture the kitsune as someone who befriended younger folk, especially since she seemed to want to stay old and ancient, putting less to no effort integrating herself with the modern times. Bobbi couldn’t blame her. She was like that herself, but being trapped in White Crest, or more precisely trapping herself in the town until she got her ship back, required creativity on her part, especially with the whole long-lived thing. 

Bobbi and the old man exchanged glances. Hers was meant to only gauge his reaction. Just in case it would require her intervention. If Mr. Quincey’s frown was any indication, things were about to get a little interesting. Before he could say anything, one of his men made the unfortunate decision of approaching Christie, hand held out, as if ready to grab her. Put her in her place, that’s what another one of Mr. Quincey’s men had said when he tried the same thing on Bobbi. I wonder how One-eyed Jones is doing now.

“Yeah. We’re friends!” Cass intentionally ignored the past tense of Bobbi’s statement, feeling as if there was a rock settled into her stomach at its presence. It was like Bobbi said earlier — Hikari probably just left town. People did that sometimes, had every right to do that. Cass had left every city she’d ever lived in, hadn’t thought of most of them or the people she’d met inside their borders since the day she did. Hikari was probably the same. That was all.

A moment of silence followed Cass laying her cards on the table, a moment where the old man seemed to consider things. Cass could tell he didn’t love the number she’d thrown out, or the attitude she’d given when providing it, but she’d hoped for… a peaceful negotiation, at least. That seemed off the table when one of the men reached out to grab her. Using one of the moves Metzli taught her, the siren caught the man by the wrist and twisted until something snapped. “Like I said,” she said, pretending her heart wasn’t pounding, “I won’t go any lower.”

Perhaps acting on instincts, the other guy on Mr. Quincey’s payroll immediately pointed his gun at Christie, which prompted Bobbi to draw a concealed firearm from her back. She pointed the ancient-looking arsenal at the bodybuilder threatening a much smaller woman with a long-range weapon. On her face, a playful smirk challenged the serious scowl of the paid enforcer. “Easy, son. We don’t want to traumatize the fish in their glass prison, do we?”

“Enough!” Mr. Quincey boomed, silencing the room. For an old man, he still had some pipes in him. Bobbi stole a glimpse of him but didn’t quite sheathe her weapon yet, even as the other guy lowered his boomstick. With a sigh, Mr. Quincey shook his head, disappointed at the events that unfolded aboard his party yacht. He slowly addressed Christie with a more serious tone, though it wasn’t near anything threatening, more like a teacher trying to retake control of his classroom from an untouchable student. “If you would be so kind as to let my man go? I can wire you the money, you can leave the item with me, and we can be on our merry ways.”

At that, Bobbi gave the old man an unsolicited nod of approval, which he caught with a raised eyebrow. Something else caught his attention, though, and his disappointment immediately turned to shock. “My god, Is that…a flintlock pistol?” Mr. Quincey threw away all pretense and approached the huxian, waving off the same guy Bobbi had a dick-measuring contest with just a few seconds ago when he tried to express concern regarding hs employer walking right into a loaded gun. Bobbi flipped the gun in the air, tossing it so it would land barrel-first in her hand, and offered the item to the connoisseur. “Queen Anne. Not loaded, of course,” she turned to the annoyed grunt with a wink before grinning at the oblivious old man. “My item. Thought you’d fancy a souvenir from one of my…previous dealings.”

 The gun pointed at her was something Cass probably should have seen coming, but she was surprised anyway. For all the threats she’d had made against her in White Crest, having a gun pointed at her head was actually a relatively unfamiliar thing. Even in her vigilante nightlife, it wasn’t something she saw often. Most people in this town preferred other weapons, probably because guns were pretty useless against most supernatural creatures. Cass really wasn’t looking to find out what kind of damage one could do against a siren.

Fortunately, it seemed she wouldn’t have to. Bobbi was just as quick to pull out her gun as the goon was, but the old man didn’t seem to want a firefight. Which was probably smart. Shooting projectiles in a boat probably wasn’t the best idea. Looking to the old man, she hesitantly released her grip on the goon whose arm she’d twisted, and he yanked it back to his body with a grunt. “Wire me the money first,” she said. “I think you owe me that much, considering.” 

The tension seemed to evaporate a little, and Cass was glad for it. She was a thief, but she wasn’t the kind of criminal who was used to this kind of thing. She much preferred Bobbi and the old man talking about guns to the previous situation of everyone waving them around. 

Mr. Quincey frowned at Christie’s statement, but when he turned to Bobbi again, the huxian simply smiled and gave him a shrug. Why not?, she exuded the thought without the need for words and the old man could only heave a sigh. They’ve worked far too long with each other to not get these subtle hints between them, not unlike inside jokes between two old friends. 

He tride to return the flintlock pistol to Bobbi, only to be declined—It’s yours!—much to his delight. The old man, with the gift still in his hands, cradled like it was the most expensive thing in the world, then began to walk out of the room, his goons making way for him albeit a little embarrassed at their own conduct. Bobbi winked at Christie and nodded, a gesture for her to follow. When they started walking, the goons stayed behind them, eyeing them coldly. Bobbi could only chuckle, whispering to Christie, “You’re pretty exciting, kid. You should join the crew when you’ve got some free time from the antique shop.”

Outside, they walked past another room, catching sight of the same oblivious partygoers from earlier, before ending up inside a much smaller room where a girl with long legs and practical eyeglasses was seated behind a laptop. Bobbi grinned when their eyes met, “Hey, Sally! Heard about Jeremy. His loss.” The woman named Sally just shrugged as Mr. Quincey went behind her, whispered a retelling of what had happened in the other room, and turned to Christie with arms crossed. “What’s your account number then?”

Bobbi had her back, something which made Cass relax just a little. She was pretty sure she could get out of here without a problem — she was getting better and better at the whole ‘siren thrall’ thing, especially now that she actually knew what it was — but it was nice to have some backup, anyway. It was nice to be appreciated.

Cass preened under Bobbi’s praise, smile slipping onto her face as the whisper reached her ear. “I don’t think your captain would dig that idea very much,” she joked, thinking of John. If Cass decided to hang out on the ship as a permanent crew member, the guy would probably blow a gasket. Which, to be honest, did sound kind of fun to watch. “I’ll think about it.” 

Following Bobbi, Cass flashed a smile to ‘Sally’ and walked with a confident air about her. She had just won something, in a way. The old man’s money, Bobbi’s respect… It was a pretty good trip, all things considered. Rattling off her account number when the old man requested it, she bounced. “Pleasure doing business with you, dude,” she said, watching her phone and waiting for the ping. When the money came through, she pulled the statue back out of her bag and held it out to him.  

Bobbi smirked. She was growing too attached to the girl that she even started thinking about telling her the truth of it all, how she was the actual captain and not John, though John should be, considering all the work and loyalty he had put into their ship and crew. But the moment was not conducive to such truths. They had more pressing business to attend to, one that involved a whole lot of money. 

Instead of the old man, Sally was the one who took the statue, nodding at Christie as a gesture of gratitude and scowling at Bobbi when their eyes met. The huxian simply shrugged at her before Mr. Quincey ushered the two women out of the room, the girl first so he could whisper something to Bobbi: “Something that resembled the Jade Wind was spotted sailing off the northern coast two nights ago.” Bobbi’s eyes widened in surprise and hope, and she thanked the old man before leading Christie back to their dinghy, as fast as she can, ignoring the goons along the way.

Once off the yacht, Bobbi ignored Mr. Quincey and his men as they stared at them rowing away, back to her own ship. The huxian herself was quiet during the entire trip back, mostly because she was too busy inside her own head, now contemplating the possibility of finally regaining her most prized treasure. And yet, she wasn’t quite sure how to do that. How could she steal from the Lost Fleet what had been stolen from her?

Cass wasn’t privy to what the old man whispered in Bobbi’s ear, only the way it made her uncharacteristically quiet on the journey back to her boat. She pushed down the feeling that she’d done something wrong, knowing it wasn’t the truth even if her insecurities insisted it very well might be. If Bobbi wouldn’t speak, Cass would fill the silence instead; she’d always been good at that. She blabbered on as they made their way back, talking about nothing in particular. And when they were finally back on the deck of Bobbi’s boat, she offered the other woman a small smile. “I really appreciate all your help here,” she said quietly. “If there’s ever anything I can do to help you… You know where to find me, right?”

“Right,” Bobbi offered Christie a warm smile. The rest of the trip had been quiet, from Mr. Quincey’s yacht to the fishing boat and finally back at the docks. Even with her crew, the huxian pirate turned fisherfolk didn’t share the burden of her past. It was too early, she told herself, tried to convince herself, and bringing someone else in could only risk their lives. After all, at the end of the day, Bobbi still had no idea how to deal with the Lost Fleet. She’d learned a few things or two about ghosts from Lil, but she wasn’t even sure the Lost Fleet were all ghosts. The thought of teaming up with a hunter just disgusted her, especially after what happened to her and Teagan. Despite the information, she was still back at square one. 

Clay sat on a pier of Finney Docks watching the sunset spill oranges and violet across the blue sea, the water a murky mirror of the sky above. He leaned against the wooden piling, ignoring the bite of barnacles against his back, unfocused dark eyes staring past the dark forest of ship masts bobbing in the harbor, silhouetted against the evening’s roseate glow. The bustle of the docks had subsided with the waning hours. Docking cranes and fishnets lay idle while dockworkers and sailors murmured and smoked on the pier. Dockside bars were lanterns of light and laughter in the darkening evening, but Clay just kept his eyes on the horizon. 

Watch that old fire as it flickers and dies

That once blessed the household and lit up our lives

It shone for the friends and the clinking of glasses

I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes….

The voices of Robin, Yates, Darley, and Sattin mingled with a practiced resonant harmony. The sailors mended nets, whittled, and gutted fish long after others had quit the pier. Sea Shanties flowed from their lips and memories, the crewmen having practiced together since a childhood of listening to their parents sing these same verses, a line of legacy that threaded the lives of hard-working people together across generations. 

Heave with a will boys and heave long and strong

Away Rio!

Sing the good chorus for 'tis a good song

And we're bound for the Rio Grande, and it's

Away Rio! Away Rio!

Sing fare thee well, my pretty young girl, and

We're bound for the Rio Grande…

The sailors noticed the fifth fellow that’d stayed with them, but Clay just listened and made no trouble. Robin had raised his eyebrows to his crewmates between shanties and gestured with a filet knife in silent inquiry if this stony faced lad was sober or ‘all there’. Sattin rolled her eyes and quietly implied that this one poked around in shipwrecks looking for some of the …strange sights…that seasoned hands knew it was trouble to ever talk about openly. The Hunter, whose mutant senses made the whispers as audible as if the conspiring crewmates were talking directly at him, just smirked and contentedly watched the sun sink beyond the waterline. 

Yew that is old, in churchyard mould, he breedeth a mighty bow

Alder for shoes do wise men choose, and Beech for cups also

But when you have killed

And your bowl it is filled, and your shoes are clean outworn

Back you must speed for all that you need to Oak, and Ash, and Thorn

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

All on a midsummer's morn

Surely we'll sing of no little thing

In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn…

Fog rolled in after the last gasp of evening had faded, as if it were a living thing that the sun had kept chained. Sheets of thick vapor snuck over the pier and slithering amongst the ships at anchor. Clay stirred for the first time in his vigil, as the Slayer had been patiently tracking the approach of something unseen that’d shown itself at last. He stood and started doing stretches against the piling without any self-consciousness as sea shanties defied the fog. 

There once was a ship that put to sea

The name of the ship was the Billy of Tea

The winds blew up, her bow dipped down

Oh blow, my bully boys, blow 

Soon may the Wellerman come

To bring us sugar and tea and rum

One day, when the tonguing is done

We'll take our leave and go…

The song ceased as Clay interrupted after so long in companionable silence. The Slayer told the sailors, for their sake, that they needed to get inside right now and keep their doors locked.  The four sailors looked at each uncertainly before Clay slapped down money for drinks on a barrel beside the crewmates. His advice was heeded immediately. 

“I once knew an emperor, and this was almost two thousand years ago, who was obsessed with the idea of mapping out all the land that he ruled.” Bobbi heaved a sigh at the memory, sniffing at the recycled air within her houseboat. She leaned back on her makeshift hammock, a gift from one of her boys, the descendants of her once great pirate crew that now shares the struggle of mundane fishing with her, all because they knew the true value of the seas. None of them envied their peers, for they had none. “He had recreated his entire empire on an island he spent a great deal of gold, and lives, constructing… Would you believe that this was all in a lake in his imperial estates?”

Bobbi received no answer, which she had expected but could not be troubled to come to terms with, so she scoffed at the silence instead. “On this island of his, each molehill was turned into a mountain, each river a smaller rivulet. It takes him half an hour just to walk around the perimeter of this island.” She smirked as she looked up at the ceiling, eyes squinting at the artificial light that served as a beacon not only against the darkness of each cold night but also against her loneliness. In her head, she likened it to the pale light before dawn, when a hundred men would wade and swim out to carefully repair any damage wrought by the weather or the wild fowl. “Such futile attempts… But futility doth maketh purpose.”

In the silence that surrounded her and the prized katana on display, to which she was speaking, she had almost fallen asleep, her eyes heavy with the baggage of a long life lived to the fullest, only to be shackled by the loss of her soul. For any huxian, that would mean their last tail, or even just the first, but for Baozhai? Her soul was her ship, the Jade Wind, that which the Lost Fleet had taken from her, ripped from her very hands, along with the few unfortunate crewmates that had followed her to their doom. “So dramatic…” She murmured in her daze, until something woke her up, stirred her upright. “Hmm? Is that…? No, it can’t be…”

As if on a spell, Bobbi bolted from her respite and into the arms of a familiar fog, loathing rising from within her as did sparks of electricity from her own body, what remains of her huxian nature, eager to claim justice and vengeance for what had been taken, what had been lost. “Well, well, well… If it isn’t the assholes who owe me a ship… I’ve seen this movie before. You better not have a monkey with you. There’s no one here named Jack.” With a sprint and a lunge, Bobbi fearlessly jumped into the fray. For any huxian, conflict was something to avoid, but for Baozhai? She has already lost all her tails, plus her ship: She has nothing left to lose.

Clay let his sixth sense take over, each of the rising corpses registering as a blot of undeath on his awareness, a cold toxicity that called to him through the roiling fog. Thick vapor drowned docks, turning tall pilings and ship masts into lone islands in a sea of blue-white. Firearms would’ve been a liability with this much obscuration and civilian presence. So, the Slayer drew a machete from a sheath and plunged into the haunted fog. 

Corpses scaled piers and the sides with a fervor born of starvation. Sea life flourished in undead bodies that swelled with drowned bloating. Corals climbed up some of the bodies like lichen, blooming with vivid colors against cadaverous flesh. Eels and crabs gnawed in the constantly regenerating chest cavities of a few of the zombies, while barnacles and mussels had turned some of the walking dead into mollusk encrusted statues. Kelp and seaweed trailed from many undead like ragged capes. A wet misma of briny rot filled the air as Zombies emerged from from the water, like noxious gas bubbling the surface of a mire. 

Clay jumped from the pier, landing into the prow of a harboring vessel. A heaving swing severed the head of a corpse clawing its way up the anchor chain, sending the decapitated remains tumbling back into foggy depths. “Hello everyone.” Clay said to the crew of the vessel he’d just boarded from above, “might want to find some cover.”

If Mrs. Gao was here right now, Bobbi had no doubts she would rethink her business ventures. Finney Docks was, on paper, a great place for renting houseboats, especially if you have too many and none of which you’re actually interested in. The old woman’s late husband was the one with all the zest when it came to houseboats that it almost seemed an obsession. When he passed away, Mrs. Gao could not find it in her to dispose of them all, whether by sinking or selling them. So here we are.

“Here we fucking are indeed.” Bobbi scowled as she swiftly sliced the head off of a misguided zombie that tried to come near her, using only a cutlass that had been one of her favorite weapons. Back in the good old days, which was of course decades ago, perhaps even a century or two, the huxian, who intentionally lost her tails to pursue a life of adventure and some would say villainy, became a master of the cutlass. Considering she could actually shock a private’s privates off, it should have been more of an accessory, but there was something about the weapon, how it felt in her hands, how graceful she was with it, that it became her more favored tool to get things done. “What perfect timing… Just when the boys are passed-out drunk.” 

Two more charged at her, all looking like terrible extras from the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Or was it the third? Come to think of it, Davy Squidward Jones appeared in more than two movies, right? These thoughts filled Bobbi’s head as she gracefully stepped back, made three swings at the first charger that sent it back down into the sea, and basically did the same routine with the other. All she needed now was a pistol and a hat. Maybe a strange gait, almost drunken when in fact still sober. From the corner of her eyes, she saw someone, or was it something, fly aboard another ship, one that she herself was not familiar with. Did someone illegally park their boat again? She didn’t have much time to linger on the mysterious boats and its mysterious occupants, especially that strange man who hopefully didn’t fly down from the skies, as three more of the undersea-mutated corpses began to crowd her. “What is it that they like to say? Dead men tell no tales? Seems very fitting against someone with no tails.”

“Hello ma’am.” Boots slammed on the deck as a sodden figure covered in black ichor hefted his way up and over the railing. Clay dropped to his stomach as a dead man wearing the tattered beige of a World War Royal Navy jacket swung a rusted pipe into the railing the Hunter once occupied. A deceased woman in the blue fleet uniform and ushanka of the USSR used the opening to tackle Clay, the fleet pilot’s rotten jaws opening to dribble seawater and dark spittle on the Slayer’s face as she bore down on him.

“Nice…uh cutlass where'd .,.ugh..you get it,” Clay gagged as he tucked his knees up to his chest and slammed his feet into the chest of the Zombie trying to mail him, sending the dead Soviet pilot careening into one of corpses assaulting Bobbi.

“Ma’am?” Bobbi timed a step back, allowing the dead Soviet pilot to crash into one of her attackers. The forceful momentum sent them both back into the water, first colliding against the hard hull of another nearby ship. The huxian scowled as she spun around to her left, gracefully evading one of the remaining two brainless husks of decaying flesh as it tried to attack her, before swiftly kicking it towards the other, sending both of them back into the water as well. 

“How dare you? I don’t look a day over…” She almost slipped but immediately caught herself. Revealing how old she truly was would surprise the human, though she wasn’t sure if he was indeed just a normal human. His abilities and calm demeanor towards the attacking dead would suggest otherwise, but Bobbi has learned from the lessons of her past and maintained that revealing the truth about her would only lead to more problems than it was worth. “...twenty five.”

The dreary atmosphere in combination with her mood almost made her explain plainly the origins of her most favored weapon. But then she remembered something that the boys always loved to retort, and that made her smirk. Let me just… Before that, however, Bobbi spotted another disgusting ship stealer making its way towards her, so in one fluid motion, she charged towards it with a dropkick from out of nowhere, forcing it back into the fog, whatever was inside it, and then performing a kip-up without much effort. When she turned to him with that same smirk, she was already back to her feet. “...yo momma.”

Stillness had settled over the deck as the unliving things lay in piles of bisected bodies and severed limbs. Clay’s shoulders rose and fell with exerted respiration, gory machete held at the ready as he reached out his Slayer sense to more oily pulses of undeath. But the only pinpricks at the edge of his consciousness were far at sea. The last remaining signal of undeath was falling away down away from him after the definitely twenty-something captain of the vessel did a drop-kick that sent it over the side. 

Ok, fine, that was a cool move. Game must acknowledge game. 

“If you ask me,” said the little old lady to Tepin, “you’re something of a monster, am I right?” They were the only two people, apart from the occasional passersby, in front of Petal Pushers, the town’s one and only flower shop, which the balam never fails to visit on the rare occasions she dared venture far from the Outskirts. Tepin had been standing outside on her own, waiting for the newly made friend she was set to meet in the establishment, when the older woman came out and stood beside her. It was late winter, but it seemed to Tepin that everything was still cold and small and damp. She should have brought at least a book with her to keep her distracted. Or at least to use as an excuse to exit this conversation. “I’m Mexican,” said Tepin, “if that’s what you mean.”

The old lady cocked her head to one side, and she winked, theatrically. She had steel gray hair, and a gray face, and a gray coat, and she looked like one of those stereotypical grandmas left alone in sleepy towns such as this one, abandoned, forgotten. “Well, that is not what I meant,” she explained, “not exactly.” Tepin has had her fair share of…problems like this when she first crossed the border not too long ago—everyone feared the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable, and Tepin was all that and more—but the old woman didn’t feel like she was going to be much trouble. Not like the others before her. “I meant… We all have a monster within. The difference is in degree, not in kind.”

Tepin couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that statement. For some reason, it seemed familiar to her, like she had heard it all before. Also from someone familiar. But before she could say anything back to the old woman, the mysterious crone suddenly started walking away from her, not even giving her a wave of goodbye or a final look. Maybe that’s for the best… She wondered then if this was all a terrible idea, if the monster within her would suddenly take control from out of nowhere, putting everyone else in danger. Gulping, she quickly felt sick, afraid, doubtful. Like she had eaten a bad breakfast. But then she saw the familiar fishing captain approach and immediately calmed down at the sight of her new friend, greeting her with a meek smile. 

It was a good day: Bobbi woke up naked in bed with a wide grin on her lips, feeling more or less reinvigorated by the excitement of what’s to come. Something about the quality of the light seeping through her windows, bright and warm, like the color of happiness itself, told her it was time to prepare for the weekend’s primetime highlight. Time to get this houseboat some personality! A plant or two should prep it for a critter or two. Gonna be a good day, yes it is!

John’s truck smelled of old socks and sweaty shirts—a deadly mix of testosterone gone wild: there were actual dirty socks on the equally dirty floor, much to Bobbi’s chagrin. The seats looked like they would do well with some vacuuming, discolored with dust and hair, and there was a pair of used shoes stashed underneath the passenger’s side. It reeked. 

On any other day, Bobbi would’ve thought about chewing him out—lecturing him on proper hygiene and cleanliness as if she were his mom or grandma—but today was not any other day. She ignored all these horrible, terrible things and forced herself, still with a smile, to take on the steering wheel and make her way from the docks to downtown, humming along the way. 

Bobbi parked a block away from the flower shop to make sure the truck’s existence wasn’t revealed to Tepin. Walking with a pep in her step, almost hopping like she was some kindergartener, Bobbi’s grin grew wider as her almond-shaped ebony black eyes found Tepin outside the shop’s door. She waved at her, her arms high in the air, and called out to her newly made friend. “Tepin! Sorry, I’m late! You look amazing! How are you?”

There were black worry beads wrapped around her wrist, and Tepin fiddled with them as she spoke, a  wide grin on her face as Bobbi closed the distance between them. “You’re not late, Bobbi,” she said, “I was just early.”  She welcomed her new friend with a hug, the tightest she has ever given, before gesturing for her to get inside the flower shop first. It has been a while since Tepin was out like this, and it has been longer since she gave anyone a hug, but with the captain of the Salmon Ella beside her, she found courage to not fear the uncontrollable jaguar within.

They were standing inside Petal Pushers now, a few steps from the door. She decided to sling her arm around Bobbi’s, entangling them, but casually. Tepin extended her arm along the length of Bobbi’s and eventually sort of creeped it down, almost imperceptibly, until it was touching her. This is what friends do, right? Tepin wasn’t quite sure. She could’ve sworn she had seen something like this on the terrible television set she had inherited from the old woman who previously owned her cabin, but it was a DVD from a long time ago, and because she spent most of her days in the Outskirts, keeping to herself, she wasn’t up to date with whatever friends did these days. 

Brad Bradley, one of her more consistent customers, suggested something about scissors, but Tepin felt that those things were always too sharp and could only lead to violence outside of practical use. She said, “This is where I got my flowers for my garden and also my cabin. Mr. Green, the owner, lives above the shop and there’s actually a small greenhouse in the back. One of the kids who works here part-time bought some catnip from me and introduced us.”

The hug was warm, but it shouldn’t have felt that good, and her hair smelled more of the sun than anything Bobbi had ever smelled. Not that she intentionally sniffed her. No, that would be creepy. So very creepy. “Oh. Okay. Hugs. You’re a hugger! That’s nice.” She tried to return the favor but only mustered an awkward pat on the shoulder, her arms seemingly unable to wrap the other girl like any other normal pair could. Would. Tepin, however, surprised her yet again by trapping her closest arm. Bobbi looked away, pretending to focus on the inside of the flower shop, uncertain if her cheeks were red and if Tepin would find it weird. That’s the last thing she’d ever want, to alienate a new friend.

An old girlfriend was just like this and she resolved to stay far from her. The woman was a saint, and Bobbi wasn’t exactly in the right headspace to be anything serious, anything she’d ever want or need in the long run. To be honest, she has never been in that headspace anyway. Inevitably, she found herself introduced to a part of her new friend’s life, and although she had, at one point, considered Tepin to be nothing more than…an extra pair of tits, as John would say, she had proven herself valuable in the aftermath of their adventure, nursing to health the boys and relieving their captain of further pain and suffering. 

“Oh, that’s so cool,” she grinned. Bobbi realized then and there that while she found strength in her role as a captain, her lightning that could destroy and power her boats, the danger she posed just by existing, Tepin was the exact opposite. She knew people, and not in the way that was smarmy or gross like politicians (sorry, Sam!), but in the way that seemed so nice and carefree, definitely a welcomed respite from all the chaos and confusion in her life. “You’re really something, aren’t you? Making friends with kids and…florists.”

Tepin had told herself that the captain Bobbi was most definitely a warrior, a brave woman who could chase away monsters both strange and familiar, someone she must befriend, emulate, and perhaps even learn from. Perhaps there was a reason why their paths had crossed. Perhaps with her, she could finally figure out the cure for her condition. She resolved to make the most with this new friendship, to bring delightful discoveries to the captain’s seemingly dark and dreary world, and to finally free herself from the jaguar spirit’s curse: her much-desired birthday present to herself. She imagined herself finally kissing someone new, perhaps someone familiar, without the fear of the jaguar taking over unexpectedly.

“Is it? Am I? They’re really interesting folks,” she said. “I find it hard not to, especially Mr. Green who has been very, very kind to me.” There were a handful of flowering plants on display, all of which up to 50% off, but strangely no Mr. Green. He must be in the bathroom or upstairs… Tepin amused herself when she finally let go of Bobbi’s arms by taking to the flowers, admiring them closely and even taking a whiff of their natural fragrance. The hydrangeas were pretty in shades of purple and light blue, so it was hard for her not to go to them like a butterfly drawn by their sweet nectar. She let out a yelp, as the flowers tried to bite her nose. Fortunately for her, she was able to pull herself back just in time. “I think these flowers have gone bad!”

Tepin stood away from the plants on display and watched in horror as most of them began making strange noises, as if growing teeth where they sat. She turned to Bobbi with wide eyes filled with fear, feeling the rage of the beast within beginning to wake.

People back then had marks they made on gateposts and trees, sometimes even doors, to let others of their kind know a little about the people who live at the houses and farms they’d pass on their travels. Bobbi thought it was very helpful, the signs, and she nodded with a smile, turning to another display, different from where Tepin fluttered to, for a good look herself. “You’re a very kind soul. I mean, Mr. Green doesn’t even live in your neighborhood. I don’t think I could make friends with someone from another neighborhood that easily.”

She pulled her further back, taking a step in front of Tepin with a scowl on her face. Bobbi was surprised to hear and see the changes the flowers wrought upon themselves, transforming into horrific monsters despite their unchanged sizes. “Ugh, does this happen a lot here?” The huxian discreetly reached towards her back pocket but scowled when she remembered she had left her easily concealed weapon on her boat. It was just a meet-cute. She didn’t think she’d need the gun. Maybe I should’ve brought an axe or something.

The flowers must have had enough, Bobbi thought. People take them in. They get rid of the thorns and the bad petals, water them, and plant or place them somewhere new, somewhere strange to them. They prune their stems and their twigs, and, indignity upon indignity, they even have their leaves trimmed in a way to mock nature’s creatures. And they’re forced to stay with these people: for a few months, or for a year, or forever. Must be a nightmare for them. But who was she to judge? She had come here to do the same.

That moment, the jaguar began to stir, slowly, painstakingly waking up from its slumber. Or at least it was trying to. Tepin, with her eyes closed and her hands clasped in front of her chest as if in a prayer, was doing her best to quell the beast. Fearful as she was, she dared not give the jaguar an opportunity to run amok, especially not around Bobbi, a newly made friend, or inside Mr. Green’s shop. She herself knew the price one paid, the suffering one would endure, when their own source of livelihood was threatened. “No! At least not that I know of. This is a first for me, too.”

Speaking of her very kind soul, Tepin was just reminded right then and there that Mr. Green might be in danger as well. If his plants were acting terribly, monstrous even, then perhaps he was not down there with them for a reason. Perhaps the worst has happened to the nice man. “Mr. Green?” She turned towards the direction of the stairs, hoping the shop’s owner would hear her, could hear her. “Are you all right? Your plants… They’re acting all strange and stuff… Do you need help up there? Can you hear me? It’s Tepin. Tepin Silva. From the Farmer’s Night Market?”

If it could grin menacingly, the jaguar within felt like it was relishing in Tepin’s current predicament, a very stressful scenario indeed. With the threat of the teething plants, the fear of Bobbi finding out what she really was, and the current condition of her florist friend in question, the balam was surrounded on all sides by triggers that could very well set the jaguar free by a hair’s breadth.

Muffling arrived from upstairs as a response for Tepin’s callout, suggesting to Bobbi that the shop owner must be trapped where he lived and she quickly turned to her friend with a shake of the head; they can’t go anywhere, not yet, not until the nipping plants before them were sorted first. “We’ll need to deal with these things in front of us first. Any suggestions?”

Bobbi thought about just letting go, just zapping these monstrous plants to ashes with her ability, but decided against it. Tepin deserved better than to be dragged into the supernatural side of things, the thick of all the cursed events in town. She had a more blissful life, ignorant of all the underlying dangers of the town and its people, her positivity drowning the truths of the malevolent creatures masquerading as normal and boring and mundane folk. Instead, she resolved to defend the two of them with the closest weapon she could find—a broom.

“Back, you second-rate Venus flytraps!” Bobbi threatened them all with the blunt end of the shopkeeper’s broom. She’d swept a lot of things under the rug, mostly the illegal activities of her own machinations, a holdover from her past as a pirate scourge of the Eastern seas, but never predatory plants with a taste for blood. That’s what those teeth are for, right? Scowling, and without looking behind her for Tepin, she urged her to join her in the fight as well. Or at least defend herself with something other than her delicious fingers. “Find anything long or wide to keep their sharp teeth from you, all right? I’ve got your back, err front, but just in case, you need something to defend yourself, too.”

Tepin was not waiting. Not quite. Not while someone needed their help, her help. It was more that her own safety meant nothing to her anymore, at least not when someone else’s safety was in question, that the nightmares and the dangers could not touch her. Not at this moment in time. “I’m sorry, Bobbi,” she gritted her teeth as she took a pair of hand trowels from the nearby counter and started fighting off the nipping plants, intending to run through them so she could get upstairs. “I can’t just stand here while Mr. Green sounds like he’s in trouble.”

Tepin remained out of reach of the teething plants, seemingly implacable, mostly unhurt, and surprisingly beyond their reach, and soon, she knew, she would feel Bobbi go after her and fight behind her; because after that, she would scold her for being too stupid to follow orders. She was not a sailor, a member of her fishing crew. Instead, Tepin was an outcast, an outlier, a self-exiled nobody, and Mr. Green was one of the only strangers that had considered her something more, something that deserved a second chance. 

“What are you…?” Bobbi had visions of a familiar and stubborn soul that also braved the dangers before her for something else, someone else, the similarities making her groan quite audibly. She shook her head, and raised high above her head the weapon she was using to keep the carnivorous plants at bay. Anguish. She struck them hard. They ran through the nipping plants. When they reached the stairs leading upstairs, Bobbi took a moment to turn around and make sure nothing else followed them. 

“Go, get the man but be quick,” she yelled back at Tepin. “I’ll make sure they don’t get anywhere near the stairs.” The last thing they’d want is to get trapped up there, too, with the old man. Bobbi had faith in her newly made friend, especially after seeing firsthand her will and determination to save her own friend, that she would be able to do what she wanted to do and succeed. Watching two, three, of the potted plants smash themselves from their shelf to the floor, breaking free of their ceramic prisons, reminded her of the time when she had to deal with those Chinese vampires off the coast of Fujian. Just like old times. With a snarl, she let out a challenge to the predators. “Come get some, you annoying compost!”

Tepin was almost at the stairs when she noticed Bobbi was running after her. No. Not after her, with her. She turned to her with wide eyes filled with confusion, ever slow to get the memo, but had to turn away to make sure she would not slip on her own two feet. Bobbi did not have to yell at Tepin twice. Although the balam hesitated for a split second, not wanting to leave a friend for another, she remembered how brave and formidable the ship captain was at Hanging Rock. There’s no need for me, of all people, to worry about her. She’s as badass as they come. With a simple nod, Tepin pulled herself through the stairs and up on the second floor, focusing all her senses in finding Mr. Green. “Mister Green! It’s me, Tepin! Where are you? Are you all right?!”

“Tepin? Who?” If Tepin had a second to spare, she would’ve felt a little stung by that. However, she was too focused on getting him out of there as well as herself and Bobbi. Thankfully, that response was enough assistance for the balam to find where he was hiding: behind a small room, perhaps even a closet for his tools, whose door was being swarmed by three medium-sized plants. Oh, no… It’s the whole demon tree thing again. Fortunately for Tepin, they did not seem to notice her.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Green,” Tepin said as she tightened her grip on the pair of hand trowels she had brought from the first floor, from the shopkeeper’s counter. She’ll pay for them later. Gritting her teeth, she took a deep breath, and only then did it seem the plants noticed her. “I’m coming!” The words slithered out of her mouth at the same time Bobbi snarled her challenge at the foot of the stairs, and before she knew it, Tepin was charging at the plants like a less scary and more dopey White Tiger. Fortunately, she was able to resist the urge to roar.

That fox, Mrs. Gao had said, when she first met Bobbi, is a person. And while there was something very person-like in its huge leonine face: its broad black nose, its greenish-yellow eyes, its fanged but amiable mouth, it was not a real person. Not like the huxian was either. It was just a regular old fox, though perhaps Mrs. Gao, the widow who owned the houseboats for rent around Finney Docks, except Bobbi’s of course, meant something else entirely. The realization dawned on the former pirate just as she swatted away another carnivorous plant monster from her. Damn these unwanted vegetation!

Bobbi swung her broom, and struck another of her attackers clean off the floor and straight into the adjacent wall, and slammed the makeshift weapon down on the last one. Then she made the terrible decision to kick it away, only for the damned thing to grapple her foot, slither and crawl around her ankle and up her leg. “At least. Buy. Me. Dinner first.” She tried to shake it off, kicking in the air with each syllable, but to no avail. The plant was relentless and it was getting on the huxian’s nerves. Bobbi took a quick glance up the stairs but saw no trace of Tepin and her friend, not even a single shadow. Turning her attention to the groping plant, she noticed the others were starting to crawl back to her as well. 

“All right then,” Bobbi inhaled deeply. “If this is what you guys really want, then this is what you guys are really going to get.” Widening her eyes in furious determination, jolts of electricity started to dance around her, from her, rising in power and danger. Bobbi was never known for her finesse when enraged, at least that’s what she believed, but with Tepin in mind, her kindness that she wanted to emulate, that secretly inspired her, she was able to just focus short zaps at each of the plants, shocking them out of consciousness. When all was said and done, she grinned, proud of what she had done, even admiring her handiwork, despite several of the displays forced on the floor, some even having scorched marks on them. Damn, I’m good.

In fiction, Tepin thought she would have looked so badass, charging at the voracious monster plants like some sort of hero in a television show kids put on pedestals these days. Maybe even a superhero. In reality, she was clumsily swatting at everything, mostly air, and only taking out her attackers by sheer luck. When nothing more happened, she began to run for her life, frantically grabbing the door knob of the small closet-like room that Mr. Green had trapped himself in. “Mr. Green! It’s me! Tepin! The one with all the catnip? From the night market? I took down the plants, but I don’t know if they’ll be down for long. We need to get the hell out of here!”

“Catnip Girl?” Mr. Green’s voice answered from behind the door. Something flickered behind Tepin, which made her kick it away instinctively. When the medium-sized plant hit the adjacent wall, she was caught surprised by how strong she kicked it. Huh. Must be the adrenaline. Before she could linger on that thought, the door slowly swung open and out popped Mr. Green’s head. “You sure it’s okay now? I heard a loud thud. I mean, just now. I’ve been hearing loud thuds downstairs and behind this door for an hour now.” It was just around 20 minutes. 

Tepin wasn’t feeling like staying up there for a chat, so she immediately grabbed Mr. Green by the arm, oblivious to the loud yelp of pain the man had screamed when she then started back downstairs, dragging him behind her and kicking another plant monster for good measure. “Bobbi! We’re coming down!” Tepin let her accomplice know, just in case she needed to make way or prepare or something. She wasn’t sure what the protocol was. She had never done this, played hero against plant monsters inside a flower shop. “Sorry about the mess, Mr. Green, but we know a guy who can probably clean all that up!”

“And stay down,” Bobbi muttered at her scorched opponents decidedly, just in time for Tepin and her friend to join her on the ground floor. “Uhh, yeah, the plants really did mess up your place, sir. Totally just the plants.” She instinctively went to help them but realized she wasn’t needed as much, with her presence right next to them just making the whole escape plan more troublesome than necessary. Instead, Bobbi skipped ahead, so to speak, running towards the front door and holding it for the two while looking back to make sure nothing was on their tail. So to speak. Thanks, brain. Thanks for reminding me about my lack of tails. Maybe this will help grow one again. No? Eh. Who needs tails anyway?

“You guys all right?” Bobbi checked on Tepin and the shopkeeper as soon as they were all out of the shop, her fingers already browsing through her pockets for her phone. When they found what they were looking for, Bobbi immediately thought of calling for the police. But was that smart? He called John and her crew instead. At least that way, she can get help from people she trusted. Her people. “John? Where are you? Are the boys with you? I need two more. Get your butts downtown asap!” She then told them the address before ending the call, no necessary explanations. The crew didn’t really ask for them, not when she sounded mad and desperate at the same time, which Bobbi did. She’d explain later, when everything inevitably ends well. They always do.

Bobbi stood beside Tepin, searching her for any wounds or bruises. Just in case those things were like the massive tree in the Outskirts. “Are you sure you folks are all right? Should we call an ambulance?” It wasn’t strange for Bobbi to be this worried, concerned. For one, Tepin was growing on her. Not unlike those plants before they terrorized them. For another, she was here while the attack happened, making the whole thing transpire during her watch. Bobbi had too much pride as a former pirate captain and a current fishing crew captain to not worry about anyone under her watch, protection even.

For only a split second, if not quicker, Tepin felt confusion at the state of the first floor. Why were there burn marks on— You know what? That doesn’t matter. Not right now. What matters is that we first get the hell out of here before those things swarm us! Still grabbing Mr. Green, Tepin rushed through the front door that Bobbi had opened for them, not even thinking twice about anything. Her first priority was to keep Mr. Green safe. She could take care of herself, she’s been through worse, and she had no doubts that Bobbi would be much more competent in keeping herself safe than Tepin ever could.

“I’m fine,” Tepin offered Bobbi a warm smile, a reassurance, when she asked, though her thoughts were still on Mr. Green, even though the shopkeeper seemed more relieved than anything. Perhaps he had thought he would have been trapped there for hours if not for them. That’s never a good place to find yourself in. Tepin would know. She knows a lot about being trapped in places you’d rather not find yourself trapped in. Both her and the jaguar within. “Don’t worry, Mr. Green,” Tepin reassured the kindly shopkeeper with a smile just for him. She gestured towards Bobbi who was on her phone, already taking command of the situation. “Her friends will help clean up your store.”  

Tepin couldn’t help but chuckle at Bobbi’s aggressive display of concern. To see someone like her, someone she admired for being so strong and enduring, doting on someone like her, a cursed child in every definition of the phrase, it warmed her heart like no other. Well, not recently at the very least. “I’m fine,” she turned to Mr. Green to check on him but he was quick to give them a thumbs up at least. “We’re both fine.” Tepin heaved a sigh of relief discreetly before turning her full attention on Bobbi. “Are you sure it’s fine? To make your crew clean up the whole thing, I mean?”

“All right, well,” Bobbi suddenly felt Tepin’s eyes on her, and with that, her cheeks burning hot. She had a reputation to keep, and playing the over caring mother in this scenario might taint the whole brave and formidable captain of the seas schtick she had going on. It was more than a schtick, though. It was a way of life handed to her but her captain and his captain and so on and so forth. To tarnish its weight would be tantamount to spitting on all of their graves, and she had already lost the Jade Wind to the disgusting specters of this town she helped found in absentia. She can’t afford to keep disappointing them, their legacy, once feared now domesticated. “My crew will be here shortly.” 

“It’ll be fine. They like this sort of thing.” No, they did not. They were boys. Cleaning wasn’t something they were inherently good at, save for the few that weren’t in her crew. She could even count in her fingers the men she had met that had cleaning in their blood, part of their instincts. I should probably just meet better men. Better men were less likely to be found in pirate ships, though her fishing crew were at least much cleaner themselves compared to her previous ones. It helped that the latter weren’t out in the seas for months on end. Bobbi scratched her head as she addressed the shopkeeper next, remembering that she had laid waste to his shop in her attempt to survive. “Sorry about your, uhh, shop, by the way. The plants were too rabid, so I had to…do things.”

Mr. Green accepted her apology, though it was more like sweeping things under the rug. What wasn’t said outright was a promise that the pair would not talk about the dangerous plants that were found in his shop and he wouldn’t talk about how they trashed his place, even though it was all for the common good. Bobbi was used to that by now, having lived in this strange town for centuries, only coming and going to sweep her own longevity under the rug. How many granddaughters of her own has she pretended to be? She had already lost track a few decades ago. 

Soon enough, her crew came and everything, including the rug, was made to look like nothing terrible happened at Petal Pushers just a few hours ago. Might be for the best. “So, I guess I’ll just put the whole “plants” thing on hold for now. I think I’ve had enough of them for a while,” Bobbi grimaced at Tepin without looking at her directly, her hands digging themselves deep in her pockets.

“All right then,” Tepin perked up, a huge smile on her face, to ease the tension. The balam was quick to sense that Bobbi didn’t want her more sensitive side exposed. It wasn’t unlike her working hard every chance she got to keep her own other, secret self hidden from the rest of the world. The only difference was, hers could kill a man. “If you say so, Bobbi. I believe you.” And she did. Every word of what her friend said. And she would continue to do so no matter what. Some may take that as her being naive but Tepin had faith, especially when it came to friends and family, people she trusted, held dear. The only one she never had faith in was herself, mostly because of the way the jaguar kept surfacing seemingly without her permission. “Some other time then.”

Tepin took a moment to look at Bobbi, to really see her at that moment in time. She wondered thusly if she was always like that, always in command, always in her “captain” mode. It must be very tiring, to be the one everyone looked up to, turn to in their hour of need. Tepin could only imagine. Without even thinking about it, she reached for her hands, attempting to take them out from the darkness of her pockets and into the light, holding them in her own. “I should’ve asked this earlier, but I was preoccupied with Mr. Green: Are YOU all right, Bobbi?”

There was a part of her that already knew what Bobbi would say, most likely the same thing as she and the shopkeeper said, but Tepin asked the question all the same. Sometimes, just being asked would be enough for most people. It was the thought, the attempt, that counted for the most part. Whatever happened next, she would try her best to be there for her friend, for the woman that helped save her and this town regardless of how many people knew. “Would you like to join me for some merienda?”

Being asked if she was all right, that wasn’t something Bobbi was used to. Well, her crew, mostly John, used to ask her the same, to make sure she was okay, when they first started, but over time? Her irritating insistence that she was always going to be okay, that there was never anything to worry about her, even if there was, that asking was pointless, caught up with them and rendered their legitimate concerns to quiet ones. Hard to keep asking someone the same question that always seemed to irritate them. “Me? Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

The next question caught her off guard as well, though it was quickly replaced by a strange warm feeling inside of her. Was it just the exhaustion catching up with her? Bobbi might be fit enough to rain lightning on this entire town willy-nilly but restraining herself was more work than she cared to do, admit. It’s kind of like the whole smiling and frowning thing. Frowning apparently required more effort than smiling, at least that’s what John keeps telling her, and the same could be said for her restraining her abilities than just letting them out without a care in the world. Also one of those things could land her in jail, and not just the normal one. 

“Sure,” she replied with a smile, though it came slower than most. It would be a welcomed respite from all the work they’ve done today, their successful survival against the killer plants, Tepin’s unnecessary heroics to keep the old man who they definitely should sue safe, what came next after her boys arrived. Bobbi shook her head, hands finding their way on her hips. “As long as there won’t be vegetables. Going to take a pass at vegetarian stuff for a bit.”

It was fairly straightforward, as far as cases went. Not as exciting as Emilio might have liked for it to be, but private investigation jobs never were. There were a lot less gunfights than action movies would lead you to believe, a lot less mystery. At least this case didn’t involve anyone’s cheating spouse. What it did involve was a rich old woman whose family heirloom had been stolen. The police hadn’t looked very hard — they rarely did, in cases like this. Stolen items seldom turned up, and such cases often ended with the advice of taking the matter up with insurance companies rather than stretch police resources to try to recover items that were largely replaceable. But rich old ladies were stubborn things, and this one had gotten Emilio’s business card from a friend who must have hated her enough to recommend his services. At least she had cash. Emilio always preferred the clients who could actually pay him.

He’d managed to pick up a lead that landed him at Finney Docks, where someone swore they’d seen a necklace gaudy enough to match the description of the woman’s heirloom slipping into a crate on a fishing boat. If he was lucky, this would be an open and shut case. He was rarely lucky.

Emilio was inspecting the boat his lead had mentioned when he heard someone approach, and he shifted his weight off his bad leg unconsciously. “You know whose boat this is?” As always, he was nothing if not to the point. “Kind of need to have a word with them.”

Bobbi was no stranger to people snooping around her boat. She’s lived far too long to have never experienced this, especially since most of that life involved piracy in the Pacific. That doesn’t mean she appreciated random strangers popping up here and there, interrupting her way of life. Every now and then, some young thing would always find their way aboard her ship or around her boat, asking questions they shouldn’t really ask. Back in what she considers her golden age, that was easily remedied by making them walk the plank, sharks not included. These days, however, almost everyone can just pay off the damned sharks.

“Can I help you?” With a raised eyebrow and crossed arms, Bobbi came out from inside the boat, two younger men flanking her. While she believed she only needed herself to intimidate anyone who got too close to her for her own liking, her history had taught her otherwise. It’s not just the obvious men versus women thing: It’s also the very strength that numbers can have. Noticing something off with the man’s leg, however, she decided to take it down a notch. Bobbi gestured for her fishing crew to ease up, which they did, before she walked closer to the stranger snooping around her boat. “I own this boat. What’s the word, chief?”

She was clearly irritated. He could feel it rolling off her in waves, enough to spark the air between them with tension from the first word. If it bothered him, Emilio showed no sign of it. In a lot of ways, it was probably better like this, anyway. People were at their most honest when they were too pissed off to think of a decent lie. Emilio crossed his arms over his chest in a mimic of her own posture, quirking a brow at her. For a moment, there was a staredown between them, a beat where they were on even footing.

Then, her eyes darted down to his leg, and Emilio bristled.

She sent her men away, and anger burned in his throat, the idea that she might have decided he wasn’t a threat now far more offensive than the idea that she’d considered him one before. If there was one thing Emilio hated, it was this. The pity, the underestimation, all of it. He growled, rolling his eyes and fishing his phone out of his pocket. “I’m looking for something,” he said gruffly. “Got reason to believe it’s on your boat. You can tell me where it is, or I can find it myself. But I’m leaving here with it either way.” He unlocked the phone, pulling up a photo of the necklace and thrusting it towards her. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

Out of curiosity, Bobbi begrudgingly took a look at the photo on the man’s phone, raising an eyebrow at the familiar necklace that she was actually just looking at merely an hour or two ago. Oh, it’s on her boat all right, though it shouldn’t have been. The huxian pirate queen had better trinkets from her time as a scourge of the Eastern seas. With a playful smirk, she offered the stranger a quick shrug. “That’s very bold of you, assuming that you can force your way on my boat. Is it because I’m a woman? Or is it because I work on a fishing boat, not a cop or a soldier or whatever you are?”

Bobbi had just recently seen the first episode of a Sherlock Holmes television show, and although she has never met this Sherlock Holmes, which she was very saddened about, she felt an intense appreciation of his tactics. That was mostly why, when she saw this stranger’s leg, she immediately remembered the first meeting between Holmes and Watson and outright assumed this man’s leg was because of a war, skipping the more rational cause of an accident or other mundane, everyday causes. She yawned and shrugged, downplaying the value of the trinket. “This thing you’re looking for… What is it to you? Looks just like any other necklace you can buy at a jewelry store.”

Emilio might not have been great with people, but he was decent enough at reading them. It had been a necessity long before he chose private investigation as a means of making a living, something that came in handy for a hunter as much as a detective. He took note of the spark of familiarity in her eye, though she was quick to cover it with a smirk and a shrug. Emilio crossed his arms over his chest in return, tilting his head. “No. Mostly, it’s because I’m a relentless prick. I’ll get onto your boat because I won’t stop until I do.” Or until someone tossed his sorry ass into the sea. Whichever came first, he figured.

He didn’t correct her assumption, didn’t give her another option. If she wanted to assume he was a cop, he wouldn’t stop her. If she wanted to think he was a soldier, that was fine, too. Both options likely granted him some form of credibility here that a private investigator didn’t have on his own, and Emilio could use that to his favor. Clicking his tongue, he shrugged at the question. “Not worth shit to me, if we’re being honest. But it’s worth something to the lady it belongs to. Some kind of ‘generational’ bullshit that’s got her all up in arms. She sent me to get it back. So I’m getting it back.” So long as he got paid for it, at least.

“You do know that’s trespassing, right?” Bobbi raised an eyebrow at the self-proclaimed prick, though her lips started to curl into another smile. Humans have always been quite interesting to her. As a huxian, she had grown apathetic to their short lives, more when she came to terms with how their children could always replace them. In a way, it was a kind of reincarnation: The descendants of her pirate crew becoming her current fishing crew. This one reminded him of someone else, though she could no longer remember the name. Just as feisty and gruff, too. “Just because we live and work on a boat, doesn’t mean we don’t know our laws, our rights.”

Technically, she didn’t. Much of what she knows about mortal laws, she either saw on television or movies or had to experience the hard way. Even after the golden age of piracy, she did not stop until her ship was sunk and she was hauled to a prison overseas, only bailed out by a dying old millionaire who wanted a specific job done. But that was another story entirely. “What if you got something else back instead? Not for the old lady, but for yourself? Something worth more than shit?” Her eyes went back to her leg as she discreetly made him a better proposal, wondering if he was still a soldier or a cop or if his injury had changed him. “...the same way this world has changed me.”

“Is it? Well, geez, I’d hate to trespass. You’ve really changed my mind. I’ll just be on my way.” The words were flat and dry, and he made no move to actually walk away. Perhaps he should have had more fear of the law, given how easy it would be for him to be ejected from this country. Emilio had hardly gone through the legal motions when leaving Mexico, hadn’t bothered with documentation or an immigration case because it hadn’t mattered. Nothing had mattered. But, similarly, it wouldn’t change much of anything to him if he was forced back to Mexico. He had just as much waiting for him there as he did here, which was to say nothing at all. It was hard to threaten a man with nothing to lose, particularly with things as trivial as the laws of a society he had never quite considered himself a part of.

He raised a brow at her offer, the bribe clear where it sat. If he got the necklace back for this woman, she’d pay him, but… there was no real loyalty tying him to her. The money was the only reason he was here at all. If he didn’t get the necklace back, it would be just as easy to tell her that the police were right, that it was long gone. It was no skin off his back, a rich old woman losing something that she really only had to strengthen her reputation. He didn’t let his interest show on his expression, pretended to consider it with a click of his tongue. “I guess it would depend on what’s being offered, wouldn’t it? This is a fishing boat,” he mimicked her earlier phrasing, though they both knew now that there was more than fish on this boat. “And I don’t much care for fish.”

“Right...” Bobbi had spent too much time with the boys, which in itself was something that she felt embarrassing and sad, so the sarcasm was not lost on her. It's not the first time she's dealt with such a reaction. Men never took her seriously, even when they found themselves shackled in chains aboard the Jade Wind. They always had to see a blade first, feel that something sharp against their fragile flesh, taste their own blood from inside their mouths, before they found their wits. She never really understood the dance, least of all relish or savor it. Wouldn't it be more efficient, more effective, to just work with the other person? Resistance would just spell more trouble than it was worth. And for what? A final spark of rebellion before one inevitably perishes? Shouldn't have gotten caught in the first place then.

His curiosity wasn't a surprise to her either. It wasn't that he had greed or was greedy; everyone does, everyone is. People, regardless of mortality, even creatures beyond the natural, always wanted something. The want is part of existence, always, perhaps even its very core. Bobbi herself lost all her tails to pursue her own want, even though her tails were an important part of her, only for that want to get taken from her by a ghostly fleet that was seemingly bound to these waters. “Well then, why don't you come inside, so you can see what else this boat has to offer?” She made way for him as the other members of her fishing crew watched him with intense interest without making any moves. “Sometimes our nets catch more valuable things from the sea that aren't fish.”

It was hardly the first standoff Emilio had been a part of. It was certainly far from the most dangerous. More often than not, moments like this were set up with more than just sharp words hanging between him and his proverbial opponent. Sharp objects were far more common in situations like this. Emilio wasn’t ruling out the possibility of one making an appearance, the way she was looking at him. It was like she couldn’t decide if he was a threat or a particularly interesting case study. Both, he thought, might be the answer. He tilted his head upwards ever so slightly, a silent challenge.

But this might not end in a fight. Not now, at least. Not when she was offering him something else instead. His eyes moved almost lazily to the boat, assessing the situation with a careful gaze. He couldn’t control the situation if he followed her onto her own turf and he knew it. But he also knew that he’d wind up on that boat one way or another regardless, just like he’d promised her. And she was already underestimating him. He could feel it, could see it in the way her eyes had lingered on his leg when he’d shifted his weight off of it. If things went to shit and a fight happened despite the way it looked now, Emilio would win or he wouldn’t. He cared less about which option the result bore than he should have. So, with a click of his tongue, he nodded. “Show me what you’ve got to offer,” he agreed, “and I’ll decide if it’s enough to chase me away.”

He was hardly the first person with a limp that Bobbi had welcomed aboard one of her vessels in her years as a pirate queen of the Eastern seas. Some of them were prisoners, of course, men of duty, to their queens, to their kings, or just to their families, but all of them either fought what they already knew was a losing battle or simply fell as casualties of pillage and plunder. A few of them were actually on her side, though to believe that a pirate had loyalty to others not of their crew, of their ship, would be extremely stupid. Bobbi wondered which one this man was. Could he be just another casualty? Or could he rise to be a rival in wits and arms? There was only one way to find out.

Yes, I can see it… The stranger actually reminded her of a fellow she once negotiated a deal with, another pirate lord, though he was not of her territory. He was one of the men who tried to conquer the islands down south, though he was doing it for himself, not for his king. An admirable ambition, considering he made himself an enemy to those that serve his king and those that ruled the Eastern seas. Shame what happened to him, though…

“Follow me then, Mister…?” She tried to bait him to reveal his name, though she had no intention of following through with that information if she could get it. He was of the earth, and she was more involved with the seas. Leading him inside a cozy cabin that appeared just as ordinary as anything anyone would expect on a fishing boat, except maybe for that portrait of a magnificent looking shiba, she welcomed him to take an empty seat opposite hers. “Would you mind if I ask what you’re more into? I don’t think jewelry would be your thing. I believe we do have some rare antiquities that you may be interested in, however.”

Emilio had little experience with boats. He could count on one hand the number of them he’d stepped foot on, been on even fewer trips out to sea. There had never been any need for it, the way he’d been raised. Vampires and zombies had little use for long voyages with limited access to prey, after all, and things like air travel and trains were far more accessible during his travels. He refused to let the unfamiliarity show, refused to let the woman see just how little he knew about the vessel he was stepping on to. And he took some comfort, while he was at it, in the fact that they would remain docked. He doubted he’d be much use on a moving boat, with waves crashing into the side. With the old injury feeding the ache in his leg, Emilio had a difficult enough time keeping his feet beneath him on land. He didn’t need a demonstration to know it would be far harder to do it at sea.

He trailed along behind her onto the ship, glancing around in a way that was hardly subtle. A hunter’s mind categorized a situation by default, made note of things that could be picked up and used as makeshift weapons in the event of a fight. “Emilio,” he replied, providing only his first name. His surname was one he’d largely left behind in Mexico, when everyone else who bore it died bloody and terrified. It was a move that offered him more than one advantage. In avoiding his last name to stave off his grief, he also gave the people around him little to work with. There were so many Emilios in the world, many of them with the same accent and country of origin as Emilio himself. It made him a difficult man to track down.

Following her into the cabin, he paused at the painting for a moment, the only thing in the room that seemed to personalize it. He studied it for a beat, trying to decide what it told him about his ‘gracious’ host. A pet, maybe. Or a favorite animal. Lowering himself into the chair, he stared at her for a moment, head tilting to one side thoughtfully. “I’m into whatever I can sell to keep the lights on,” he replied bluntly. “I’m not a collector. Though it seems like you may be.” He didn’t much care how much stolen cargo was on her ship, but implying that he was aware of it to make her sweat a little wasn’t something he was above.

“Emilio…” Bobbi spoke his name as soon as he provided it. She tried to rummage through her memories if she’s met any Emilios like him but could not find a close enough ghost. The huxian has met so many of them through the years, but her favorite one was an Emilia who would have sailed the seas with her, if not for her untimely demise at her own father’s hand. Heaving a sigh at that bittersweet memory, another wandered into her head and made her smile. This Emilio was not like the one she was remembering, more a contradiction than anything else. “I’ve met another ‘Emilio’ off the coast of Mexico. Charming fellow, even though he did try to stab me in the end.”

She simply shrugged at his assumption, though it was not far off. She was a pirate once, a pirate queen, a scourge of the Eastern seas, now the Pacific. Although her hands were bloodied by past conflicts, she tried to minimize as many casualties as possible, but it wasn’t always effective. Piracy then was a crime, not just of greed but of passion. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure she had fallen in love with it because of the treasures. Maybe she just wanted to rebel against her nature, against all that she had ever known. Maybe she just enjoyed the struggle of cannons, cutlasses, and the occasional sea monster. “The sea has so many secrets that sometimes we find what we never expect to.”

It took them a few more moments of silence before John came in carrying a crate filled with knick-knacks. He placed it right beside Bobbi, nodded at his captain, before walking out, staring daggers at the stranger that had found himself aboard their vessel. Bobbi gave John a sweet smile before he left, though she largely ignored the exchange he had with this particular Emilio. “Let’s see then…” She instead started rummaging through the crate, humming a barely audible sea shanty from a time long forgotten.

Soon, she was laying out a variety of trinkets on the table between them, some seemingly more valuable than others. There was a handkerchief, a tiny figurine of a hunter shark, some knotted twine, a knife with a dull blade but a handle engraved with gold and some strange gem, another tiny figurine of a hunter shark, an iron spike, a gold cube carved with strange, almost demonic faces, and some lacy undergarments that she presented him with a smirk in an attempt to tease the stranger. The last item from the crate was a flask that she sniffed and then immediately drank from, offering some it to him as well. “It’s just wine… I think. Like anything you see, Emilio?”

She seemed to wrack her brain for a moment, seemed to search through her memories, but Emilio wasn’t particularly worried about what she might find. He was sure he’d never met her before because, honestly? She was the kind of person he would have remembered. Sharp eyes, smart mouth, quick enough to keep him on his toes… Emilio wouldn’t pretend he remembered every person he came across, but he knew she would have sparked familiarity if he’d met her before. And by first name alone, it would be hard for her to uncover his reputation, no matter how looming it may be. “Ah, that’s México for you,” he replied with a faint smile. It was telling, he knew, but it wasn’t as if his country of origin wasn’t something that could be easily deduced based on his accent and the tone of his skin. She’d likely already guessed it. “The story is nice, but introductions do tend to go both ways, you know.” It didn’t escape his notice that she had yet to provide her name, despite him giving his.

“That’s why I never became a sailor,” Emilio replied with a faint smile. “Not a fan of secrets.” It was hypocritical, perhaps, to make such a claim when he intentionally kept most aspects of his life shrouded in secrecy. He didn’t share his last name with anyone, had told only one person what became of his family and had only done that because she’d been present for the massacre. Emilio kept his own secrets close to the chest, clung to them as if they were all he had left, but he disliked when other people did the same. He liked knowing all the information in a story, liked having all the facts. It was a side effect, he suspected, of the way his uncle’s secrets had torn his family apart and left him alone and perpetually angry.

Another man entered the cabin, and Emilio tensed for a moment as if gearing up for a fight. He’d be at a disadvantage and he knew it, even if he weren’t outnumbered. This was her domain, a place she was familiar with. It was a strange place for him. That would make things harder. But the man vanished without much more than a glare, and Emilio relaxed ever so slightly. He leaned forward a little, craning his head in an attempt to see what was in the box. It looked like a multitude of valuables, confirming his suspicion that his client’s necklace wasn’t the only thing that had found its way aboard this ship.

Soon, she was laying a wide variety of objects out in front of him. Emilio’s eyes studied them carefully, moving from figurines to an old knife to underwear that earned her a halfway-amused expression and a quirk of his brow. He watched her drink from the flask before shrugging, accepting her offer to take a swig. If she was drinking from it, it seemed proof enough that it wasn’t drugged or poisoned. And Emilio wasn’t one to turn down a free drink. Especially not when his nerves could do with some soothing. Looking back to the items, he ran his hand over the metal of the knife, tested the weight of the cube. “Never was good at telling what something was worth,” he admitted. “Usually figure the older something is, the more you can get for it.” He held up the cube, tilting his head. “This real gold?”

Bobbi perked up when he revealed he was from Mexico as well. She had an inkling but she didn’t want to assume. South America is a huge continent, and she’s never really stepped foot in it, as much as she wanted to at least. She has sailed along its coasts, but that was so long ago. “Ah, yes, it is, isn’t it?” She smiled quaintly as she brushed a stray strand of hair from her face, tucking it neatly behind an ear. It took her a while to realize what he actually meant by it, still mistakenly assuming everyone who boards her ship would know who she was, what she was. This despite not being a pirate scourge for decades now. “Oh, you may call me Bobbi, but with an I.”

If you told her decades ago that she would be reduced to abandoning her majestic Chinese name for a terrible pun of an Anglicized name, she would have ripped you to shreds, thrown you in the brig and electrocuted you for nights on end. Bobbi had nothing against Anglicized names, nor did anyone force her to do anything regarding her own, but when she first docked in what would later become this strange town, the early settlers could not pronounce her name, Baozhai. In an attempt to explain to them in a way they could understand, Bobbi kept pointing to the bobby pin on her hair. One of the English navy men she’d met and likely electrocuted told her that her name Baozhai meant “bobby pin” in his native tongue. Unfortunately, the settlers just began calling her “Bobby Pin” and in frustration she decided to just go along with it. When she lost her ship, the Jade Wind, she took the last name “Lin” to remind herself of her undying goal to regain it, and over the years, her first name “Bobby” became “Bobbi.”

She squinted at him, instinctively turning to his leg when he revealed he was not a sailor. That confirmed her theory that he was not in fact a navy man. He must have fought on land mostly, perhaps even injured his leg valiantly fending off the enemy. It didn't dawn on Bobbi what war Emilio could have possibly fought in, as truth be told, all wars looked the same to her, especially those fought on land. Her grasp of history focuses mostly on the golden age of piracy, as well as a few tidbits of historical naval battles, but Afghanistan, Vietnam, Marco Pierre White's Kitchen Wars? Meh. “Secrets can be fun, though.” She teased, playfully smirking. “Like, your leg… Don’t tell me: You injured it during a great battle? That’s why you’re so grim and angry. You sacrificed so much for a nation that now finds no use for you, so it discarded you.”

“I personally don’t agree with such sentiment. All warriors should never be discarded. Time and time again, they’ll prove useful in whatever conflict you push them towards.” Bobbi noticed him tense when John walked in, and although John and his biceps and toned abs could put up a fight, he’d no doubt be a match against someone of Emilio’s military history. She watched him keenly as he did the items before them. Bobbi wasn’t a hoarder by choice: She just has so many things from her time as a pirate, and even these days, she and her fishing crew continue to just amass random shit that it’s become just a thing for all of them. “Hmm. It is. If I remember correctly, that was the reason why the other Emilio tried to stab me. Something about a family relic? I didn’t really hear him over the cracking of thunder and lightning during our scuffle. It’s yours if you want it. As well as whatever else you want from those things. None of them look good on me.”

“My countrymen can be the ruthless type, when they want to be,” Emilio replied with a shrug, smiling faintly. It was something his mother used to joke about, from time to time, mostly when his father tested his luck. You don’t get on the wrong side of a mexicano unless you want to regret it later. Emilio used to find it funny, the way his father held up his hands and apologized with a smile playing at his lips. He’d give anything to see such an interaction now, even if only for a moment. “It’s good to meet you, Bobbi with an I.” His smile widened, just a little, as he repeated the name back.

She didn’t provide him a last name, and he supposed he could hardly blame her. She was paying him the same unease he’d paid her and, besides, with a surname, he posed far more a threat to her. He’d hinted, a few times now, that he knew her business was more than slinging fish. He’d never rat her out to the police, but she had not way of knowing such a thing. Hell she’d assumed, when they’d met, that Emilio himself was aligned with the force. There was something almost funny about it, even if he’d made no move to correct her. He’d learned long ago to let people assume whatever they might so long as it kept you one step ahead of them, so long as it gave you even the slightest hint of an upper hand.

He was still smiling faintly, amused at the conversation, until she mentioned his leg. The humor faded from his expression all at once, his back going straight and his body tensing. He felt old anxiety creeping through, felt the dry Mexican air on his face, heard the shouts and screams of the people of Etla, his family among them. Swallowing, Emilio shoved the memories aside, nostrils flaring as he gripped the arm of the chair where he was seated tightly enough to make his knuckles turn white with the pressure. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said gruffly. A great battle. She wasn’t far off. But Emilio had sacrificed nothing for any nation. He had lost everything not in sacrifice, but in meaningless slaughter.

“Warriors are nothing without a war to fight. Just broken men with no place else to go.” The words were spoken to the table, as Emilio was no longer looking at her, no longer in the conversation so to speak. He focused on the items she’d laid out because it was easier, because if he looked at her while she spoke she might see the way her words sent him back in time and take advantage of it. This thing in his head, it was a weakness. Even more than the constant ache in his leg, even more than the limp in his gait. It would be his mind that did him in, in the end. Emilio had known this for a while now. “If I can have my choosing, I’ll take it. The knife, too, if you’d part with both. The rest, I have no use for.”

Bobbi simply nodded with a grin at Emilio’s emphasis on the ruthlessness of his people. That same could be said of hers, though at the moment, she wasn’t quite sure what her people exactly were. She was born elsewhere, but she had also done so much against them that they have called her a traitor. From sinking ships to upending naval trades, Baozhai was not a countryman that inspired pride, only mostly fear. Maybe the pirates were her countrymen now? A country for pirates… It was a thing way back when, though she’s never really felt a sense of belonging with those guys, so she never felt the need to keep in touch. Did it even still exist? Or did the British, maybe even the Spanish, get rid of them like one gets rid of barnacles on a ship’s hull?

Eh, it was unimportant to her now, much like Emilio’s last name. Maybe in the near future she’d get more curious, but at the moment, she didn’t really care. Bobbi has never had any use for last names. To her, they’re just unnecessary shackles to a past that you had little to do with. What your ancestors did, the crimes they committed, the achievements they accomplished… Those have nothing to do with you. You are your own person, and so, you must commit your own crimes, accomplish your own achievements, write your own story. It helped that Bobbi, Baozhai, never even had a last name to begin with.

She watched him squirm in discomfort and anguish when the conversation focused on his leg. Bobbi had expected this reaction. Well, it was one of her two expectations. The other was that he’d proudly cite his victory and triumph despite the sacrifice, as they were his own and no one would ever be able to take them from him. The anger, however, would be present in both scenarios, in this one much more prevalent. She understood it, however. Bobbi almost lost her own leg a few centuries ago, but her old captain had saved her, which cost him his own. He had changed after, became more hardened, angrier, more cruel. Was it because they both incorrectly considered themselves lesser men for losing a limb, a part of their physical form? Bobbi had met lesser men: They piss themselves in the brig after just hearing footsteps descend to meet them. Emilio and her former captain were not lesser men. “There’s always a war to fight. If not out here, then within.”

She tried to remember the sage words of a prisoner, an innocent passenger she had saved after their crew sunk his ship for all it was worth. It was always comforting for her, despite her decades of failure to regain the Jade Wind from the ghostly fleet that sporadically plagued these seas. Emilio’s words, however, punctured a tiny hold in that confidence. What if he’s right? What if the war I’ve been fighting has rendered me broken after all this time, and now I’m trapped here, in this town, with nowhere else to go. The times have changed. The golden age of piracy is over. What remains is but a mockery of what she once knew. His final statement breached her respite, dragging her back to the present. Bobbi quickly tried to regain her composure, pretending she had not just spaced out, which was a harder act to pursue, before gesturing her approval. “Take them both. They’re yours. I’ve never liked knives. They’ve always been…too short for me.”

There’s always a war to fight. It certainly sounded like something his mother would have said, back in Etla. There was never time to rest, never time to breathe. They finished one hunt, and the next was waiting on them. There will always be more of them than there are of us, mijo, she told him once, cupping his chin in her hand as she finished inspecting the black eye his latest hunt had left him with, her expression as close to pride as he ever saw it. We will never take them all out. But we keep fighting anyway. If we stop, what’s left? It had never been more true than it was now. There was no one left to inspect Emilio’s black eyes, no one left to stitch him up or bandage broken ribs. That was why he needed there to be more battles to fight.

And he got the feeling Bobbi needed it just as badly.

He probably wouldn’t admit it if asked, but he got the feeling they were more alike than she was letting on. Emilio didn’t know what to do with himself when wars ended, and Bobbi didn’t seem to, either. And perhaps that should have been more surprising, for a captain of a fishing boat, but it wasn’t. If there was one thing Emilio’s life had taught him, it was that no one was ever exactly what they seemed. Especially not here, in White Crest. Bobbi spoke of war with too much familiarity to be someone who had never seen it up close.

Emilio let the silence settle for a moment before breaking it with an exhale, shrugging a shoulder. “That’s not the kind of fight I’m good at.” He could hold his own in a physical battle, even with his bad leg slowing him down. He’d taken out more vampires than he could count, mixed so much ash into the dirt that there were places he’d been where he wasn’t sure anything would ever grow again. But internal battles? He was far worse at those. Emilio had never been taught to regulate his emotions, never learned how to understand them. He pushed what he felt into a deep, dark hole and hoped that, eventually, he’d just stop feeling it. It wasn’t as great a method as he’d like to pretend it was.

Looking down at the items on the table, Emilio did just that now. He pushed the thoughts away, shoved them down into that bottomless pit that lived in his stomach and focused on the physical because it was so much easier, so much simpler. He nodded at the offer, picking up both items and holding them up in a mock salute. “Swords are more your deal?” He guessed, and if he was at all surprised, he didn’t show it. Growing up around hunters had introduced him to a multitude of different weapon preferences. He’d known a slayer once who’d used a crossbow with wooden bolts in place of traditional stakes, citing that it made it easier to hunt from a distance. The relationship between a person and their preferred weaponry was one Emilio understood far better than anything hidden in the discussion of internal battles only moments before. Dropping the newly acquired items into his jacket pocket, he looked to Bobbi again, clicking his tongue. “Looks like my contact was wrong, then,” he said. “You never saw the necklace. Real shame. I’ll have to tell the old woman it’s gone for good. Between you and me, it’s nothing she can’t afford to lose, anyway.”

She simply nodded, her lips barely curling into a smile. She knew the type, lived it as well. Internal battles were the most difficult to find yourself in. It’s much easier to lose yourself in the chaos of a physical fight, caught in the middle of a warring storm, with just yourself and a cutlass to rely on. Everyone else on that battlefield, on that ship, they’re fighting for themselves, too focused on their own survival to truly offer you a helping hand. The ones who try pay for it in blood, and that’s a worse outcome to live with than perishing yourself. Even if human lives are basically fleeting, Bobbi still misses her long-departed crew. Most of them brought sparks of excitement in her long life, worth more to her than her own tails.

“More or less…” She eyed him intently from where she sat, wondering if he had weapons concealed somewhere on him. It has always astounded her how in the past few centuries, they’ve managed to miniaturize death in ways that it’s now easily carried by just about anyone. Back in her day, a cannon required at least two people in her ship, one to load it and another to fire. Pistols that only needed a single hand were a feat that Bobbi attributed to how bloodthirsty humans can be, though to be fair they couldn’t call down a bolt of lightning from a stormy sky, so she could see why they needed that.

“There’s just something about gripping the katana’s handle or the cutlass’ grip tightly that…reassures me of my own survival.” She suddenly rose from her seat, gracefully making her way towards the katana on display on one side of her fishing boat. Bobbi had a better one on her houseboat, something more nostalgic and doused in history than this holiday gift of a replica from Mrs. Gao. With a smirk, she raised an eyebrow at him. It wasn’t too far-fetched of an idea, especially with his past, which she assumed was with the military in some aspect. “You must feel the same way with, let me guess, a gun?”

She nodded again, a more delighted smile this time, as he pocketed his chosen spoils. To her, they were but mere trinkets, but to him, they could be something else. What was that saying? Someone else’s trash is another man’s treasure? Bobbi has seen more treasure turn to trash over the years. She hoped he’d find use for them before they suffered the same fate. Moving towards the door, she gestured for him, for them, to leave, though she muttered something else once he was closer. “Pleasure doing business with you, Emilio. Maybe next time, it’ll be in a less professional manner.”

They were both warriors, she could see it in his eyes. Whether they could be allies or enemies, that was for time to decide. These days, however, the huxian preferred more allies than enemies. At least until she gets her ship back from the ghostly fleet, her greatest and only treasure.

He nodded as she confirmed the suspicion, glancing to the katana displayed on the wall. It was an older weapon, and Emilio got the feeling it wasn’t entirely decorative. When you’d been around as much weaponry as he had, you could get a feel for it just by looking. He got the feeling that the katana on Bobbi’s wall had tasted blood in the past. It was the sort of thing that piqued his curiosity, made him wonder what the captain of a fishing boat needed with such a thing. But Emilio had learned a long time ago only to ask questions he wanted answered, and right now… he was only interested in answering questions that got him off this boat and to the nearest bar.

Her observation surprised him just a little, and he smiled faintly. “I know my way around a gun,” he confirmed, “but it’s not my weapon of choice, either.” He took out the dull knife she’d offered him, flipping it and holding it against his arm in a manner that spoke of experience. “Guns are impersonal. They put too much distance between you and the person on the receiving end of the bullet. Things like that, they should never be easy.” There were hunters who’d found ways to utilize guns and other long distance weapons for their craft, and Emilio would be lying if he said he didn’t look down on them just a bit. Taking a life shouldn’t be as simple as a twitch of the finger, regardless of how much said life deserved to be taken. It should be a challenge. It should be a fight. Every enemy deserved the chance to fight back.

The knife went back into his jacket, Emilio’s hands joining it. He offered Bobbi a nod, migrating towards the office door and leaning against the wall for a moment. “I like unprofessional,” he offered. Digging a hand into his pocket, he produced a business card and stuck it in the doorknob. “You ever feel like getting unprofessional, you’re welcome to give me a call.” Then, he pushed himself off the wall and headed back towards the front of the ship, slipping his phone from his pocket as he did so. A quick text to his client, an apology and a claim that the police were right about her necklace being impossible to recover. Probably already gone through a pawn shop by now, he told her. Might as well just cut your losses. Cash the insurance check and move on with your life.

“Careful with that!” And then they were almost done, though it was already late in the night, and 

Bobbi didn’t want to be out there any longer. The contraband had a tough time arriving earlier, with all the hurdles they had to overcome. Even as the weight of the crates took a toll on her crew, everyone had a smile on their face. It was a pretty good haul, and everyone knew that. Everyone except John, aka tonight’s Mister Sourpuss with a small letter y. “Why do you trust that woman so much? You just met her a while back and we’re already risking our necks for her stuff. You sure she can keep her word?”

And Bobbi groaned. “Keep her word? Really, John?” She could almost laugh. But then she saw a couple of her men almost drop a crate, and Bobbi almost ran to them with eyes wide in fury and shock, but they managed to not do that, and all was right in the world again. She heaved a sigh of relief as she turned her attention back to John. “Since when do you care about people keeping their word? It’s just a quick load ‘em up delivery, our specialty.” Bobbi took a few seconds to look the boy over, head to toe, her quips suddenly dissipating in the air, replaced by actual concern. As much as they were her crew, loyal to a fault, as much as they were humans, short-lived and easily replaced by their descendants, Bobbi couldn’t help but feel a little…worried. “Do you want us to stop? Because we can stop. We can let another crew handle all this stuff. Sure, they’ll probably be more violent, but we can stop if you want.”

John shook her head and looked away, focusing on the last crate that needed to board the ship. He said nothing else, arms still crossed over his chest. Bobbi heaved another sigh, shaking her own head, if not out of disappointment. Not of John, but of herself. Was she dragging them down with her? They had options. They had choices. But none of them left. It was easy money, after all, and she could protect them. All of them. “You know why we do this, right?” It took John a few moments but he uttered a weak yeah. “Aside from the money, which we all need, if we’re not the ones doing this, some other crew will, and we’re the only ones responsible enough to never let things get out of hand.” Another weak yeah from John. “You understand, right? You can leave if you want. No one will touch you. We’re family. We don’t hurt each other. We never hurt each other.” 

John could only nod before giving Bobbi a big pat on the shoulder and helping the rest with the crates now onboard. “That’s the last one, cap’n!” Peter muttered as soon as he reached her side. “We should be good to go.” 

There was something going on at the docks. That was the general consensus on the streets, at least. It was a little surprising, if only for the mundaneness of it all. Lately, every time Cass spoke to her contacts on the street, they’d tell her something fantastical and clearly supernatural, even if they never said as much plainly. It was ‘someone went missing from the shelter and wound up in Nashville within the hour,’ or ‘people keep getting compelled to go check out something in the woods and then they don’t come back.’ It hadn’t been ‘I think someone’s smuggling something at the docks’ for months now, not since the tree business ended just after Stacy told Cass about the cup that could solve it. Word had gotten out, now, that the local vigilante was ‘in the know,’ and with no more concern that they would be written off or called crazy for sharing intel that sounded like something out of an episode of Buffy, Cass’s contacts were more willing to ask for her help with less ordinary problems.

But tonight, all she’d heard was that there was something going down at the docks. In a way, it felt like a return to the basics. This was the kind of thing she’d have been facing off against months ago, when she was newer to the superhero gig. It felt familiar in a comfortable kind of way, and Cass didn’t feel the need to bother Metzli or Clay or Levi or anyone else for backup because she didn’t think she’d need it. She’d probably just end up stealing whatever loot they were smuggling and redistributing the wealth, or scaring whoever was behind it enough to prevent them from finishing the job. It’d be pretty open and shut. She could go for pizza after. Her stomach rumbled at the idea.

She heard them long before she saw them. Talking amongst themselves, discussing the job at hand. Something about trust, about someone keeping their word. Something about money and other crews being less forgiving. Something about family that Cass pretended not to hear because it was easier that way, easier to bust them and do what she needed to do. 

And right now, she figured, what she needed to do was get on that boat and find out what was in those boxes.

Moving carefully, Cass stuck to the shadows as she moved towards the boat, hoping that the conversation the crew was clearly smack in the middle of would be enough of a distraction to keep her from being spotted.

From the corner of her eye, Bobbi saw something move where everything should be still. Was it just her imagination? Perhaps. But Bobbi had been at this for decades now, centuries even, and her imagination knew better, would always think twice, before it ever considered crossing the captain of this ship, or whatever ship the huxian would commandeer for herself. Bobbi placed a hand on Peter’s chest and gestured towards the questionable spot in her ship, eyes narrowed in the same direction, before calling out to the rest of her crew. “That’s all she wrote, boys! It’s time to set sail!”

As the crew replied with a merry cheer, and the anchor and sails prepared themselves for the journey ahead, Peter walked forward, grabbed two of their men, and gestured to where the unwanted visitor would be. Bobbi smirked at the sight of them before looking away, her eyes on John and his troubled faith. Peter was the best when it came to taking stock of inventory but not when defending the ship. The boys he took with him were a little green as well. They would not be able to put up much of a fight against their stowaway, which the captain wanted. Whoever this one is, it’s probably just another curious child.

The last time anyone dangerous had boarded her ship, she lost it. But the skies were clear tonight. There was no brewing storm, no ghostly fleet waiting to take them all down, to take what she had left, only the one in her head, the memory of that fateful day that made her scowl her worst. To most sailors, it would be a pleasant trip. To her, it was unfortunate. Bobbi had not encountered the vile haunts that took her ship, not them specifically, not since they had robbed her of the Jade Wind. She had tried to tempt fate, time and time again, but eventually realized they would not be tempted unless she waited. I have done so much waiting. She clenched her jaw at that thought, though the sight of John calmed her down. Patience is a virtue, his ancestor, her first mate all those centuries ago, once taught her. In time, the tide will turn in our favor once again.

Cass hadn’t exactly intended on stowing away on an actual sailing journey. She wasn’t familiar enough with ship to know the process of loading them up and, with her limited knowledge, she’d assumed that after loading it, the sailors would just… take a break. They’d go have a drink, they’d scurry off to feed their parrots, they’d do whatever stereotypical sailor things made sense with her assumption. But that wasn’t the case. As soon as she heard the captain announce that they were setting sail, she began to understand just how much of a mistake she’d probably made here. She’d never even been on a boat before. God, what if she got seasick? 

There wasn’t much time to spiral into the what-ifs and maybes. No sooner had Cass begun to take stock of her situation than she realized there was someone heading straight for her. Three someones, actually, with a determination in their step that told her they knew what they were looking for. Cass cursed, adjusting her mask over her face. All right. This was fine. Everything was fine.

She was surrounded in seconds, the leader of the man crossing his arms over his chest as he stared right at her. There was no hiding, no element of surprise. She was caught. She offered a sheepish wave. “What are you doing here?” The man asked, looking utterly unimpressed.

“Wouldn’t you know it, I took a wrong turn. This is not McDonald’s! Hey, do you guys have a drive thru?” Rolling his eyes, the man motioned for one of his two companions to grab Cass, and the panic set in. Months of lessons with Metzli coupled with the adrenaline flooding through her veins packed a pretty literal punch, as it turned out. She swept a leg at the knees of the closest man to her, sending him hurtling to the floor. When the second one reached for her, she threw a punch that hit him right in the nose, the resounding crack seeming the echo as the blood flowed out. “Sorry!” Cass winced. 

The apology, of course, didn’t do much to stem the men’s anger. The one who seemed to be in charge lunged for her, and Cass scrambled backwards. “Whoa,” she said, heart pounding as her back hit the wall. Backed into a corner, she fell back on the tried and true method of siren compulsion, voice taking on a rhythmic tone as she spoke again. “Why don’t you guys take a break? Go tell your captain there’s nothing to worry about.”

Immediately, the men’s eyes seemed to glaze over. Their movements were jerky and robotic as the one on the ground picked himself up and all three turned, walking back towards the part of the ship where the captain was lost in thought. Cass knew it wasn’t a long-term solution. Not with the blood from the man’s broken nose staining his skin and his shirt, or the limp the one she’d kicked was walking with. She was going to have to come up with a new plan fast. And plans had never been her strong suit. 

The captain’s reverie was ultimately by a set of shuffling feet, and when Bobbi turned to her right out of curiosity, shock and awe greeted her in the form of the shambling Peter, Tommy, a bloody Andrew. She didn’t expect them to win any fight, especially not against whatever curious creature had mistakenly stowed away in their ship, but she sure as hell didn’t expect any of them to be as brutalized either. “Captain?” Peter sounded strange as he spoke, though it was a familiar strange, something that she had encountered before in all her centuries of sailing. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

With a raised eyebrow, Bobbi looked them all over quickly, taking stock of all their injuries, if any, a motherly instinct on the surface but also that of a responsible captain. “Mm-hm,” she lingered on Andrew the most, checking his broken nose for a few moments before forcing it fixed with just a painful snap. The poor boy screamed in pain, alerting John to his younger brother’s suffering before the captain could take control of the situation. “Andrew? What the hell happened to you? Who did this?”

Bobbi sighed as she put a hand on the protective brother’s chest, gesturing for him to calm down, as if whatever fight Andrew was in didn’t matter. Not to her, of course, but to the boys? The boys were quick in anger when one of their own was in danger. “Relax, John. It’s nothing. Just got a stowaway, that’s all. Nothing serious.” John gave Bobbi a look of disbelief, his jaw slightly open as he held his glazed over brother and gestured to him to emphasize an obvious point. “Nothing? Nothing serious? My brother’s a bloody mess, B. This stowaway’s dangerous. We need to take him out. Where is he? I’ll handle him. I’ll make him pay!”

“Captain, please, calm down!” Bobbi suddenly screamed as loud as the entire ship could hear, confusing her own crew in the process. The rage in John’s eye seemed more dangerous to her than whatever the stowaway was. “It was probably just a misunderstanding! Let me talk to them first! Don’t hurt them!” She then gestured to the confused John to watch her back as she slowly walked to where she had seen them last. On her way, she checked for the pistol she wore on her back. Just in case. She had no intentions of using it, though, having things escalate that far. They just cleaned the ship of bloodstains. 

“Hello? Are you all right?” Bobbi kept her wits about her as she made her search for their stowaway, with John keeping watch from a safe distance. She’s memorized every nook and cranny of this ship, owing to the years she’s spent on them. Wherever they were, it wouldn’t take her long to find them. “The captain sent me to talk things out. We don’t mean you any harm, but you’re trespassing on a private fishing boat, and I’m afraid we can’t turn back now.” 

From the corner of her eye, Bobbi caught a glimpse of blood on the back of her hand. Andrew’s most likely. She frowned at the sight of it, feeling terrible that poor Andrew had to feel pain just because she was distracted. That can’t happen again. Her mind started to go through the possibilities of this creature’s identity, knowing full well that no boring human can ever calm Peter down. That boy’s always worried about one thing or another. No way in hell he’d be that calm, especially not when he was standing next to a bloodied crewmate. “Come on out, so we can help you. We’ve got food and warm clothes in the captain’s quarters.”

Cass was really starting to wish she’d brought backup along. Maybe Levi, who would have probably at least been able to tell her a thing or two about boats, or Marina, who could have used her oceanic abilities to their advantage. As it was, though, Cassidy was alone, and the only plan she could come up with was to hide. It was hardly the best idea she’d ever had, and it certainly wasn’t a long term solution to her problem. 

This became especially clear when she heard shouting from the deck. A man was angry, and Cass had had enough experiences with angry men to know that things like that never tended to end particularly well. She couldn’t compel more than a few people at a time, especially not in a row, and there was an entire crew of sailors to deal with here. And she’d definitely made them mad. Even if there hadn’t been yelling to confirm it, she would have known that. You didn’t break a guy’s nose without pissing a few people off. 

Someone else was yelling, telling the man to calm down, and Cass strained to hear. It sounded like she was calling the man Captain, which was both really bad — pissing off the Captain sounded like the worst case scenario here — and a little confusing. Hadn’t there been a woman giving orders on the docks? Was she just second in command? There wasn’t much time to ponder. Not long after the screaming died down, there were footsteps approaching. Slow, cautious, but not uncertain. The person coming knew Cass was here. 

When she spoke, Cass recognized the woman who’d been yelling at the captain before. It was the same one who’d been giving orders, she realized; she wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse for her. The men that had been sent to investigate before had clearly been a bit more inexperienced, but it was clear to Cass that this wasn’t the case with this woman. She knew what she was doing. People like that were always harder to compel, especially if she’d just used the ability. Unfortunately, they were even harder to con. 

“Didn’t sound like he was very interested in talking to me,” she replied cautiously, throwing her voice so it sounded like it was coming from somewhere off to the side. It wouldn’t buy her much time. She knew that. There were only so many places to hide on a ship like this, and she was willing to bet the crew knew all of them. But… if the woman was telling the truth, then Cass did have one thing going for her. Right now, they thought she was just trespassing on a fishing boat. They didn’t know she knew about the other things going on here. They probably figured she was just a dumb kid. 

Carefully, she slipped off her mask and tucked it into her pocket, doing the same with her gloves. Her cape, too, was abandoned. The rest of the outfit still looked unusual, but more like someone with a unique fashion sense than someone playing at being a superhero. When she was inevitably uncovered, she had to hope that it would look normal enough to keep questions from being asked. She could always come back and check out the shipments later, with backup, but only if she managed to make it off the ship in one piece. 

“Why should I trust you?” She threw her voice again, carefully clinging to her hiding spot for as long as she could.

“He’s not,” Bobbi replied as calmly as she could, channeling her inner Tepin. If anything good came out of that trip to Hanging Rock, aside from retrieving the chalice from Marina that saved the town, it was that she learned to appreciate another approach to things, a less violent one. In days old, Bobbi wouldn’t have thought twice about sending every member of her crew after a stowaway, flushing them out like the vermin that they always end up being. A broken nose or two, she even once believed, was a great way to build character. 

But those days are gone, and chances are, this confused child, from the sound of her, the request for proof of goodwill over a desperate swing of their fist, could just be of the docks herself. Bobbi had one rule when it came to these things, and that was to make sure anyone from the docks wouldn’t become collateral damage. At least from her end, that was always complied with. Those that made the foolish decision of hurting her people never get the chance to come back. To this part of the town or worse. “That’s why he sent me.”

“You did break his little brother’s nose,” Bobbi stopped approaching where she thought the stowaway was after a while, mostly when she realized there could be something odd about the voice, its quality and location. She was so sure that part of the ship wouldn’t have been an easy place to hide and still be heard so clearly. Maybe the creature wasn’t human after all. Or they could be really small. So many variables. “So he needs some time to cool off, think things through. Family can make you overprotective sometimes, you know? And on this ship, we’re all family.”

Bobbi didn’t know it then, when she spoke those words, but something else came to mind when she heard them herself. Maybe she should be angry. Andrew didn’t deserve that bloody nose. He was just following her orders. They were just trying to keep the docks a little safer. If not them, another crew would take their place, probably from out of this neighborhood, and in all of Bobbi’s centuries of piracy, that never ends well. It’s harder to care about a place you’re not a part of, never spent years knowing. Makes one careless, allowing their greed to sacrifice everything, especially strangers, willy nilly. Bobbi had been there, and she’s definitely done that.

But with her and her crew playing the role of smugglers, the casualties and the violence would be lessened. So far, that has been the case. Well, except for the more supernatural cases. That was what her electric rage was for. Bobbi raised her hands in the air, close to her own face, where she wore a smile Tepin would. For some strange reason, that strange girl who lived in the middle of the woods was a better diplomat than the guy from the Tourism Board. Probably just because girls get it done better. “Let me introduce you to our family. I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you. Cross my heart and hope to, well, we won’t have to go that far.”

Distrust sat heavy on Cass’s chest as the woman spoke. The situation seemed all wrong. These were smugglers, according to her info. A stowaway on their ship should instill more anger, more paranoia, more violence. They wouldn’t send someone just to talk to her. If she stepped out into view, she feared that she’d be attacked. And while she’d taken the men from earlier by surprise, they’d be more ready for her now. You could only count on people to underestimate you once, most of the time. 

Unless you played to your strengths.

Even without her powers, Cass was a hell of a con artist. She could do small and unassuming with ease; she’d spent over a decade relying on it in foster care, where everyone was a threat. This woman didn’t seem like one who would be easy to fool, but… maybe she could give it a try, anyway. It wasn’t like she had a lot of options left here. 

Shifting — and, this time, making sure the sound would be heard in a way that would allow her to be found — Cass let out a quiet sniff. “He scared me,” she replied, making her voice watery and more uncertain. Like a scared kid instead of a skilled con artist, like a child instead of a superhero. People often thought she was younger than she was. She’d learned how to use it to her advantage. “All of them did. They came at me like that, and I just — I didn’t want them to hurt me. I didn’t hit him on purpose.” It was a lie, of course, but nothing in her tone gave it away. This, more than anything, was what Cassidy excelled at. 

Slowly, she unfolded herself from her position and poked her head out, laying it on thick with red eyes and a terrified expression. She hunched enough to make herself look small and scared, hoping it would be enough. It allowed her to get a good look at the woman, too. She looked younger than Cass would have assumed she was, based on the power she seemed to yield with ease. She looked tough, too. There was a chance, Cass knew, that this wouldn’t work. This was a hardened smuggler, after all; she might have no qualms against tossing someone into the sea, no matter how young and afraid they seemed. Cass could only hope her gamble would pay off.

“I… I don’t want to go to where the rest of them are. Can’t I just stay here? They scare me.” She blinked back tears, biting at her bottom lip and averting her gaze as if she was afraid to meet the woman’s eye. She put on a front of guilt, like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. If she could limit her audience to one person, there was a better chance of her act being accepted as true. And besides, she’d like to avoid the screaming man and the three she’d compelled if she could. The fastest way for a con to fall apart was to involve too many big emotions at once, and those men, in particular, were bound to have more than a few. 

If Bobbi was right about one thing, the stowaway was most definitely just a lost kid. But was it a kid only for that point in time? Or was it an actual human kid? Bravado and arrogance often cloud her better judgments, her insight, especially right at this very moment. After all, they were on the huxian’s ship. She had an advantage in terms of territory, home court and all that jazz. Her only weakness would be her own crew, but the stowaway didn’t sound like she’d get close to any one of them. Not again. 

“He is a little bit hard on the eyes, isn’t he?” Bobbi tried to lighten the mood at the expense of Peter who’s never had much luck with the ladies since birth. Not just because he wasn’t traditionally pretty, though, but because the kid just has that scary aura. He means well, though. Just gets a little too excited at times. 

“It’s alright. I believe you.” Bobbi genuinely did. Why wouldn’t she? “People tend to do stupid things when they’re scared, and I think they were just scared, too. One time, when I was new on this boat, I slipped and knocked myself out, running away from my own shadow.” It was true, though the boat was now lost to the ghosts of this town and the then-shadow’s name was Fred. 

Fred was one of her then-captain’s newest deck hands, and he lived up to that name. Very handsy, Fred was, and very curious. He wanted to know what a younger Bobbi, then Baozhai, had under those rags, what she felt like, even though all bodies feel the same against each other. She was, however, a rare thing, not human. Fred didn’t live to satiate his curiosity, though, because when their captain found out what he was trying to do, he ended up tied butt-naked on a mast, at the sun’s mercy, dehydrated and mocked by his peers. Only the young huxian tried to help him, but the captain taught her a valuable lesson that day, right after he shot the boy with his own pistol: “Time is the worst torturer of us all.”

“What’s your name?” Bobbi asked with a smile as soon as the young girl poked her head out, though something quickly nagged her from the back of her mind. There was something about her, about her face, that seemed concerning. Have they met before? “Look, this isn’t the best place for anyone to be while sailing at night,” she tried to reassure the girl but she was more distracted by the familiarity in how she looked. Bobbi just couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Not yet. “But I can keep you company here for a little longer, if you’d like?”

Cass let a nervous chuckle slip between her lips, still trying to sell the image of a terrified kid who’d snuck onto the wrong ship on a dare. It seemed to be working, at least as far as she could tell; the woman’s voice was gentle, like she was talking to someone small and unassuming. It was the kind of thing that might irritate Cass in any other situation, but… small and unassuming did wonders when you were trying to sell a con. 

“That’s not very nice,” she said, though she let some faint amusement shine in her tone. Establish a relationship. It was the first rule of any grift. You laughed at your mark’s jokes, you agreed with what they said, you made yourself what they needed you to be. And then, when it came time to get what you wanted, you didn’t even have to ask them for it. They just handed it over, of their own free will and without prompting. 

The question, of course, was what did Cass want here? Answers, maybe, about what they had been loading onto the ship… but asking those questions would destroy the con she’d crafted and, if she was particularly unlucky, could get her thrown overboard. She was a strong swimmer, but she was pretty sure making it back to the docks would be a real no-go. “Really? You don’t seem like you’d be afraid of much.” Flattery, too, was an important aspect of any good con.

With her head out now, Cass was just as visible to the woman as the woman was to her. She felt eyes on her, felt the way she was studied. With any luck, she’d be written off as someone who wasn’t a threat, as a kid who’d gotten a couple lucky hits in with the element of surprise on her side. “Christie,” she lied, looking down at her the wooden planks at her feet. “My name is Christie.” It wouldn’t have been the end of the world to give the woman the name Cassidy — that wasn’t Cass’s legal name, either — but a good con artist made sure they were impossible to track down when the game was over, and anyone who knew Cass in White Crest knew her by that name. This way, there was still some semblance of a shield up between herself and the sailors, even if it was a thin one. 

Hesitantly, she nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed, “that sounds okay. Uh… Can I have your name, too?” Despite not being fae and having no ability to take the name, she worded the question carefully. How the woman answered it could tell Cass whether or not she knew about the supernatural side of White Crest. It would be good information to have.

Bobbi grinned at the flattery. Whether innocent or not, it was always the same. She’d heard it all before, already knew whatever they thought she did not. Having lived for so long made it so easy. That and having multiple identities through the years while actually changing so little, only the needed parts of her like the hair or the accent or the name. Flattery from the fearful was always her favorite. The way they scrambled to honor and put on a pedestal their very executioner just because they were desperate to escape, to live. As if a few words could change their fate. But flattery from a child? It was just, as John would put it, once he cools his head off at least, “mkay.”

“Well, to be fair, it was my very first time on a ship, over the seas,” Bobbi recalled how scared she was when she woke up inside a cage on a foreign vessel, the unstable ground a horrifying experience for someone who had spent of more her life before then on more solid footing. She remembered how she recalled, even at the touch of the cold steel bars that kept her from the rest of the crew. She wanted to indulge in her fury, to avenge her captivity, but at the time, she was more scared of ending up in the middle of the ocean, swallowed by the endless waves, when she didn’t even know if she could survive swimming that far and that long. “When I got used to it, learned my new environment, it became easy to deal with from then on. Fear isn’t forever.” 

So easy in fact that when the captain was close to retiring, he chose her as his preferred replacement, endorsed her much more capable self back then so the rest would follow Lin Baozhai, even to their watery grave. There were those that didn’t buy her as their new captain, though, and for good reason. She was, after all, an outsider, once a captive, taken from her home and forced in their world. Until she took control of her situation, surprised her own captors, became their better. But those who voiced their opposition to her rule were far and few in between. And easily killed.

“Christie?” Bobbi couldn’t help but narrow her eyes when she caught sight of the young girl’s face. It was much clearer now, but in her head, something was still a haze. Why did she seem so familiar? Why was her face making her feel things, as if they had met before, perhaps in another life? Whatever the case was, Bobbi was certain she was not from the docks. A girl that young, she would know. Whether through her parents or guardians or hell, even just John. Since the town’s founding, she has kept tabs on the people of the docks in her ultimate search for the crew that could help her take back the Jade Wind. Although the girl seemed familiar, Bobbi knew no Christie with that face. At least not at the docks. Who was she? “Pretty name. You’re not from the docks, are you? You look familiar, but I don’t think there’s a Christie with your face from our neighborhood.”

“I’m Bobbi,” the huxian offered her hand and a warm smile, channeling her inner Tepin with a touch of Teagan, the two people she believed could handle this very situation without turning violent. At least she hasn’t seen them turn violent yet. Or believed they could ever. Especially to a young woman. She would’ve added some Kitty, too, but that might be too illegal. “Bobbi Lin.” She felt it unnecessary to take on an alias. She’s already seen her face. Everyone at the docks knew her. Bobbi was never one to hide. With the sole exception of her true nature, her supernatural side. “You cold, Christie? Hungry? Might have some candy back there somewhere.”

Fear isn’t forever. The words resonated with Cass, even in a less-than-ideal situation like this one. Fear had always had a place in her life, finding her in a group home when she was too young to understand why all the other kids at school had parents to go home to at the end of the day and clinging to her as she grew into a young woman living on the streets, into a con artist paying the rent with pretty lies, into a bird who didn’t know how to fly. Fear had been the only constant in Cass’s life for as long as she could remember, growing and changing as she did. The idea that she’d be free of it entirely someday… It was certainly a comfort. 

“How long did it take you to get used to it? It must have been a big change.” There was a touch of honesty to the question that hadn’t been present in the conversation thus far, though it was impossible to tell it by her tone. Going from living on land to living at sea was a big shift in lifestyle, and it was hard not to be curious about it. It was hard not to wonder how other people dealt with such monumental changes when the methods Cass used seemed so rarely successful.

Being called a name that wasn’t your own was always a hard sell. People were conditioned to react a certain way to their names, after all. It was a subtle thing, but it could make or break any con. Cass, fortunately, had been doing this for a while now. As the name Christie passed through the woman’s lips, she relaxed her shoulders just slightly, leaned forward the smallest bit. It wasn’t anything significantly noticeable, but Cass had always been thorough. She knew how to sell things when she needed to. 

Of course, there were always bumps in the road. The woman said she looked familiar, and that… surprised her. Just a little. After all, Cass hadn’t done much work at the docks, and she’d certainly never spent enough time there to be recognizable. It could have been a play, of course, a subtle attempt at getting her to slip up, but she couldn’t imagine what the endgame was. To win trust that she was already pretending to have handed over freely? To fool her into slipping up when she was playing the part of a kid willing to answer any questions asked of her? It didn’t make any sense. “No,” she said, a little cautious, “I’m not from the docks. I don’t think we’ve met before.” She would have remembered. A good con artist remembered the faces of everyone they met in order to keep all their stories straight, and Cass was one of the best.

“Bobbi,” she repeated, making note of the way the woman answered the question. No suspicion. No hesitation. She committed the name to memory, wondering absently if it was a real one or an alias. “It’s nice to meet you, Bobbi.” At the question, Cass’s eyes darted passed Bobbi and towards the front of the ship, where the other sailors had been. “Do we have to go where everyone else is? I don’t want that.” Keep the audience small, keep the con under control. 

“To be honest? Very long,” Bobbi shrugged. It all felt like another lifetime to her now. Like it was someone else’s experience, memory, and sometimes, it all felt too foreign, too alien, like she was just watching a show about someone else’s life. Lin Baozhai’s infamous life of crime. Not to be confused with Bobbi Lin’s less murder-stabby life of crime. At least in this current one, no one that reeked of salt and vinegar tried to take her out permanently on a nightly basis. Life was a little less chaotic and more peaceful. Even with all things considered. “Though it was probably just longer than I expected. I always had this thing about mastering things quickly. Maybe I’m just impatient.”

Bobbi squinted at the child’s face when she revealed that she wasn’t from the docks. Truth be told, she was a little skeptical at that, too. What if she was just lying? What if she was trying to hide her identity because she already knew who she was, scared out of her wits to be in the presence of such a dangerous individual? Oh, wait, that was Baozhai. If she was really from the docks, she wouldn’t think twice about revealing it. Everyone knew she had a soft spot for them. They were, after all, the reason for all this. “Huh. I guess not.”

On any given night, Bobbi wouldn’t have turned her back on anyone. But this was just a kid, it seemed, and not even from the docks. There was no cause for her to be protective, defensive. Anyone who’s ever tried to attack her from behind before always found out what happens when you drop a toaster in the tub. Bobbi was both the toaster and the tub. “No, just pass them by. Bridge’s right over there. Where the blankets and,” she whispered the next part while continuing to point in the direction of the room where the boat is steered from. “...my personal stash of candy should be.” Bobbi even gave her a little wink before gesturing towards the same.

Cass could relate to that, to the need to master everything quickly. She had a bad habit of giving up on things that didn’t come to her right away. It was why she’d never finished school. The subjects were too hard, required too much work, and she had too little support. She nodded as Bobbi spoke. “It seems like you’ve got the hang of it now.” While Cass still felt unsteady on her feet with the unfamiliarity of the boat moving beneath her, Bobbi stood with as much certainty as Cass would on dry land. Like she was made for the sea. Like she belonged here. In spite of herself, Cass was almost jealous. 

She shifted as Bobbi looked at her, unsure how to respond. She’d never seen this woman before in her life, so why was she still looking at her like she was trying to figure out where she knew her from? Why was she squinting like Cass was someone familiar, someone she might know? It left her with an uneasy feeling in her gut. A con was a fragile thing; it could fall to pieces in a moment. And if this one fell apart, the stakes could be pretty high. They were out at sea, and no one knew where Cass was. She didn’t have to think too long or hard about how badly that could end. But Bobbi seemed to accept her answer, and Cass felt the relief wash over her like it was one of the waves beneath the boat crashing to shore. “Guess not,” she echoed with a small smile.

All in all, it was going all right. Bobbi wouldn’t make her face the rest of the crew, and Cass would only have to keep the lie going for one person instead of a group of them. She nodded as she moved herself from her hiding spot and out entirely into the open, pushing her hair out of her face as she looked in the direction Bobbi was indicating. “That sounds good,” she agreed. “Uh… When do we go back to shore?”

“After we meet our friends,” Bobbi answered her question nonchalantly, as if she were intimate with her so-called friends, as if they weren’t faceless goons she wouldn’t even trust with this strange new girl onboard. They shouldn’t flatter themselves, though. Bobbi never trusted anyone in this line of work. Well, except for her crew and her other new friend, the trader with no qualms for legalities. I wonder how Hikari’s doing right now.

Despite her aforementioned crew’s curious stares at her and the stowaway she was leading to the bridge, Bobbi made sure to put on an air of effortless control. After all, she was the captain here. Everyone else was secondary by natural law. That didn’t mean she was better than them. Of course not. If anything, she was the worst. It just meant she had her own responsibilities, and one of them was to make sure everything on the ship flowed smoothly. No matter the cost. Of course, these days, the huxian was trying to be less murder-stabby than before. The perks of meeting new friends, she guesses. Friends that were more inspiring and human.

Soon, they were where they needed to be, and Bobbi, true to her word, procured some blankets and candies for the girl. She smiled warmly at Christie as she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and put a bar of milk chocolate in her hands, still feeling a sort of familiarity with the girl despite everything they had established through words. Before she could say anything else, add more to those words, the sound of knocking, knuckles on wall, distracted her from outside the bridge, which was followed by John’s cold announcement: “They’re here.” 

Bobbi clenched her jaw, which would have been easily noticed by Christie. Not that she even tried to hide her disdain for their friends. Her eyes focusing on the girl, she gave her the same warm smile from before, trying to rein in the disgusted fox within her. “You wouldn’t mind staying here, would you? Plenty more chocolates and warm blankets! We just need to, uhh, deal with my friends, so we can go back home right away.”

Even from inside the bridge, Bobbi could already smell the figurative stench of these sea rats that were sent to deal with them. Their boss wouldn’t be around, of course. At least not their real boss. While Bobbi had no problem dealing with those beneath her (hell, she even enjoyed throwing her weight around with these goons), the rest of her station—the kingpins, the true brains of the operations—always felt differently. Bobbi preferred to attend to these dealings herself, not leave it to others and later pretend to be shocked when their greed inevitably dictates their downfall. 

Footsteps receding from just outside the bridge made it known to the captain that John was already taking care of it, however. Bobbi had been teaching him the ropes since the first time they met, as she had with his ancestors, as she would with his descendants. As a first mate, John was reliable, discreet, and loyal to a fault. As were his ancestors, as would be his descendants. John would be able to make the exchange without her, and Bobbi would need not worry about any discrepancy. Still, she did love seeing the goons’ reaction to her grand reveal, that the captain of this ship was a woman, and not some stereotypical villainess with scars or an unnecessary cleavage or thick gothic makeup or an out-of-place dress, just a random everyday girl with a loyal crew of fierce and protective men. Like what was said, she loved throwing her weight around.

“Your friends?” Those had to be the people they were smuggling for. Bobbi and her crew were middlemen; Cass had known that, even when she’d first snuck on board. There were bigger fish in this equation but, somehow, she hadn’t realized those fish would flop up on board of this particular boat. There was an opportunity here. A smarter person might have recognized the danger in it, might have acknowledged the fact that it was the kind of opportunity that could very well end poorly. But Cass had never been good at thinking ahead. She’d never been skilled in seeing the bigger picture, in taking precautions. You didn’t become a vigilante without some sense of impulsivity. 

Before she could dig into the situation further, the man who’d been yelling on the deck earlier — the one Bobbi had claimed was the captain — was barging in. Cass tensed, but her presence went largely ignored as the man announced that their ‘friends’ had arrived. Cass shifted under the blanket Bobbi had draped over her, chewing the chocolate and trying to look small and unassuming in the interest of luring the ‘captain’ into a sense of security strong enough to inspire him to say more, but he seemed like a stoic guy.

So did Bobbi, but her jaw still clenched in a way that didn’t go unnoticed by Cass. Despite the terminology she used, Bobbi didn’t like these people. And that probably meant that she was far from the ruthless smuggler Cass had assumed she was when she’d first snuck onto this boat. Curiosity tugged at her, even as she flashed a small smile. “I’ll stay here.” The lie flowed just as easily as they always did. “You go ahead.” 

But the ‘captain’ went instead. It would be impossible to sneak out and investigate with Bobbi sitting beside her, and Cass really wanted to at least catch a glimpse of the ‘friends’ that the crew was supposed to be meeting. Then she could go after them later, when she wasn’t stuck on a boat in the middle of nowhere. “If you need to go with him, you should go. I can hang out in here by myself for a bit.”

“All right then,” Bobbi grinned at ‘Christie,’ admiring her resolved. Being left all alone in a strange room on a fishing boat in the middle of the ocean wouldn’t be easy, especially if this was her first time on such a vessel, so the huxian couldn’t help but appreciate her bravery. Kids these days, they’re actually readier to face their fears than they let on. 

Or was she just projecting? Surely, in her own time, when there was no Bobbi Lin to care for a scared little girl on a strange pirate vessel, when Lin Baozhai had to face her fears alone to survive, that was more impressive? Or maybe she was just seeing that same little girl all those centuries ago in this strangely familiar looking one. “Stay safe. You hear anything bad, hide. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

And then Bobbi was back out, still wearing that fox-like grin as she approached the men she had to deal with, clearly the worst of the worst. In terms of appearance and smell anyway. Where do the rich hoity toity criminals get their goons? They always smelled, looked, and grunted the same. Was there some sort of henchmen app she didn’t know about? Ugh, none of them are even smiling. “Hello, gentlemen. I hope everything’s according to your boss’ liking? We need to go back to shore as soon as possible. I’m missing my favorite show.”

The three ugly grunts just looked at her in annoyance. One of them even sneered in the way that no woman ever would ever want to see from someone that seemed so devoid of morals, oblivious to the concept of personal space, no touchy-touchy. And just as she had expected, he really was touchy-touchy. “Whoa there, dude. You are too close. I can smell the hormones off of you,” Bobbi instinctively quipped before the same dude had his hand around hers, only for John to stand his grand and grab his hand in turn. 

“She’s off-limits,” John said as coldly as he could, his eyes calm but deadly, a trick Bobbi had taught him before, a trick he needed days to perfect, and now look at him, just as fierce as his ancestor, Bobbi’s first first mate, was. “You’ve got the paintings. You can leave now.” A pause, a moment of tense silence, and then the gross dude let Bobbi’s wrist go, only to suckerpunch John when he least expected it. Bobbi couldn’t even hide rolling her eyes. What a surprise. The rest of their so-called friends took out their guns next. Also a surprise. “Yeah, we’re taking the paintings all right,” Gollum licked his lips in an intentionally disgusting way. “And the hot chick.”

Ugh. I really am missing my favorite show.

Bobbi was kind. That was the most confusing part of all this. She genuinely seemed to care about what happened to Cass in a way not many people throughout her life had, much less strangers. She was kind and she was smuggling stolen goods on her ship and maybe those two things shouldn’t feel quite as contradictory to someone whose day job had her conning money out of people while her night job had her trying to stop people from smuggling stolen goods on their ships, but it was still hard for Cass to wrap her head around. Everyone liked to think they were the exception to the rule. She was no different. 

She waited a moment after Bobbi left to ensure that she’d really gone before getting to her feet, slipping out of the cabin and moving silently towards the front of the ship where the deal was going down. The interaction had already soured by the time she got there; maybe it had been sour from the start. Cass peered around the corner carefully, catching sight of a looming man standing a little too close to Bobbi and feeling her stomach bottom out. 

There were only a few options here. Letting things play out might be on the table — Bobbi could definitely take care of herself, Cass could tell — but it wasn’t her favorite idea. There were a lot of variables to account for, not the least of which being the presence of the man Bobbi had claimed was the captain, currently holding his bleeding nose. He made Cass uneasy, but Bobbi clearly cared about him. If he was threatened, she might let herself get hurt to save him. The other options were tried and true; fight or flight. There weren’t really a lot of places to ‘fly’ on the ship, even for a bird, but she wasn’t sure how much ‘fight’ she’d be able to put up. God. This was the worst. 

Clenching her jaw tightly, Cass resolved herself and squared her shoulders, mustering up all the energy she could find. Three men. She’d enthralled more than three men at a time before. She’d also enthralled three men earlier tonight, which meant her energy wasn’t all there, but… Bobbi was kind to her. Cass couldn’t let her get hurt. 

“Hey!” She drew the men’s attention to her, made sure they were all looking at her with bewildered expressions. And then she spoke, voice taking on a rhythmic quality. Like a song, almost. “Let go of her. Take your paintings, pay the captain, and go home. You’re done here.”

Charlotte. Her favorite harlot, even though she was far from actually being one. To Bobbi, the nickname just sounded nice to the ears, much like the young woman’s voice was whenever it left her lips. Even nicer was how, with just a few words, she could take control of any given situation. Well, except that one time with the deaf assassin, but that didn’t really count since she was more like a weapon pointed at the wrong folks. All they had to do was point her back at her slimy boss. Easier said than done.

The only thing that wasn’t easy with Charlotte, the only thing that wasn’t nice, was the asshole who for some miracle managed to snagged her heart. Whatever trickery it was, it kept the girl from seeing her true potential, her worth, her value. That was, until the child. Bobbi could still remember how happy Charlotte was when the child came into her life, how enlightened she was by the tiny human’s presence, how she realized with both awe and horror how the asshole was not someone she should be keeping around. Bobbi still owed her something, though, and that debt was easily paid by severing the unwanted tie. Painfully.

Charlotte was nineteen. Or at least around that age. Maybe in her early twenties. Hard to tell for someone who couldn’t pay much attention to the years until the obvious wrinkles and white hair slapped her silly, especially when it came to someone she romanticized in her head, made immortal, for so many reasons. Bobbi started to take walks around Charlotte’s old house, stealing glimpses of her her window regularly after that, hoping she’d appear again. But she didn’t. Not then. Not since.

Could this kid be— She cut her train of thought off, distracted by how peacefully the goons made the exchange and left her ship. “Huh,” Bobbi grinned, her lips curling into a playful smirk, as she intertwined her hand with…Christy’s. “That’s a fancy little trick, kid.” With narrowed eyes, she looked back at her crew, all of them staring at the girl with utmost curiosity. When her eyes met theirs, however, they scurried away, feigning disinterest, and went back into keeping their ship in top shape, making sure nothing was damaged or lost. It’s not their first rodeo, exchanging shit with criminals in the open sea, but Bobbi didn’t really trust said criminals. “Mom taught you that?” If you are who I think you are, hopefully not your dad.

To Cass’s relief, the move worked. The men got that glazed over look in their eyes, and the one holding on to Bobbi dropped her arm mechanically, robotically. The enthrallment, Cass knew from experience, would only last an hour or so at best, but by the time it wore off, they’d have put plenty of distance between themselves and these men and Cass doubted they’d come back around and try something similar when it wasn’t a spur of the moment type thing.

The rest of the deal was uneventful. The men did what Cass had told them to do and collected their paintings, paying Bobbi before they left. Cass watched with a critical eye, ready to step in again if need be even though she knew it was much less likely to be successful again, but it was unnecessary. It was only when the men were gone that she relaxed a little, shoulders slumping as the familiar exhaustion settled in. She’d overdone it a little bit, but it was fine. She’d done what she had to do.

Bobbi’s hand found hers, and Cass didn’t pull away from the touch, offering the woman a small, sheepish smile. It was a relief when the rest of the crew scattered; Cass had only just barely started to accept what she was, and acceptance came easier without anyone looking at her. At Bobbi’s question, Cass’s expression fell a little. “No,” she replied with a small shrug. “I, uh… I never met her. She ditched me at a fire station when I was a baby, so I don’t think she was really interested in teaching me anything.” There was a hint of bitterness to her tone. She was too worn to feign anything less, the way she normally might have. “I taught myself.” Just like she’d taught herself everything else she knew.

“Well, that sucks,” Bobbi told her, not really sure what else to say, though in her mind’s mind, she was still grappling with the thought that this child could be her old friend’s. Shame that old friend wasn’t in the picture, though. At least anymore. Guess old habits die hard. Before John could approach, Bobbi gave him a quick squint, a gesture that told him all he needed to know, a gesture that she had shared with all her first mates: He was the captain for the rest of the day. Well, the few hours left in the night. This wasn’t the first time Bobbi had to play second fiddle. Not everyone liked the idea of a female captain after all. She turned her full attention to “Christie” and started guiding her back to the bridge. “Not even a goodbye note? Been there, done that. Your mom must’ve had her reasons, though.”

“All hands on deck!” John’s voice reached them as they entered the safety of the ship’s only nest. The authority in his voice was obviously restrained, though by no other reason than the fact that he was still not over his brother getting bloodied by a little girl. Bobbi knew it was going to be one of those long talks later, but John and his brother were good guys. No way in hell would they ever lift a hand against a girl. Not even if she wasn’t just a girl. Soon, they would reach the docks, and that thought at least gave Bobbi a peace of mind. No one else got hurt tonight. It was a good night.

“What about your dad?” Bobbi asked once they were settled inside the bridge. She went back to the drawers to take out more candies. Some were offered to the girl. The rest were for herself. “Out of the picture, too?” A yawn escaped her lips as she stretched and made herself comfortable in the corner seat, not unlike the perfect dog bed for the electric fox. She kept both her eyes on “Christie,” though, still trying to figure out her identity in relation to her old friend. “Only seen something like that, like what you did, once before.” More than once, but it might spook her, so Bobbi kept the rest under wraps. “You remind me of her, too.”

“Yeah,” Cass agreed with a bitter chuckle, “it really does.” It was an understatement but, for this situation, everything was. There were no words that could accurately describe just how awful it was to know you’d been left behind by the people who were meant to raise you, the people who were supposed to love you unconditionally. It did suck. It really, really did. At Bobbi’s statement, that her mom must have had reasons, Cass shook her head. “Whatever reasons she had, it wasn’t enough.” Nothing could excuse it. Not when Cass had spent her whole life feeling like something was wrong with her because of it. 

But that wasn’t really something she could take out on Bobbi. Sighing, Cass followed the woman into the nest, feeling exhausted and drained. The whole experience had certainly been exciting, but the adrenaline was dying down now. For Bobbi, too, she figured. 

“Never met him, either,” she replied with a shrug, taking the candies with a small smile of thanks. Settling into the seat closest to Bobbi, she opened the wrapper and popped the candy into her mouth, twisting the paper between her fingers thoughtfully. Her eyes shot up to meet Bobbi’s at the mention that she’d seen something like the enthrallment Cass had utilized before in the past. For someone who’d still never met another siren, it felt like something to cling to. “Really?” She crumbled the candy wrapper into her fist absentmindedly. “Was she a siren, too?” It was the first time she’d actually mentioned to Bobbi what she was, but she figured the cat was pretty much out of the bag the moment she used her abilities, anyway.

“Nothing’s ever gonna be enough to make up for that shit,” the words rushed out of Bobbi’s lips even before she could think them through. A part of her was still bitter that Charlotte never came back, even though the other part was just glad her old friend was able to escape that doomed life with that asshole of a husband. She was never going to reach her full potential in this town. At least not back then. Charlotte was made for the world, and everyone but Charlotte seemed to know it. Realizing she may have spoken out of turn to the young girl, however, Bobbi quickly gave her an apologetic wince. “Sorry! Language. We normally don’t have young girls like you on board, so sailor’s talk isn’t that family-friendly.”

If her dad was really the same vicious waste of space Bobbi was thinking of then and there, having never met him was a good thing. The man, for the lack of a better term, was fun at the start, she had to at least admit that, but by the end of their story, he showed them his true colors: Not a palette worth an artist’s easel. His was an unbridled hunger for violence, irresponsible wastage of potential, a blind spot in Charlotte’s vision until the daughter came knocking at their door. Guess things really change when you get new responsibilities. “Eh, dads aren’t that great.”

“Yeah, she was,” Bobbi was a little surprised to find that the orphan who never met her siren parents at least knew what she was. Surprised, or more precisely, relieved. Not everyone who gets left behind, who never meets their parents, gets to remember where their roots were planted, mostly because it’s always hard to figure that out when you were born somewhere else, somewhere farther from your, well, roots. “They both were. Her and the lucky guy that wouldn’t stop following her. Been a long while since the last time I saw either of them, though.” With an open palm, she gestured for Christie to give her the wrapper. This was still her ship, and she prided herself in how clean it was. Well, as clean as a fishing boat could ever be. “You know what you are? That’s impressive.”

Cass let out a surprised little laugh at Bobbi’s outburst, shaking her head quickly at the apology. “It’s fine,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’m not a sailor, but I grew up in foster care. Trust me when I say I’ve heard a lot worse.” And with a lot less kindness, too. Bobbi’s outburst might have been a little vulgar, but it was… empathetic. And not untrue. “You’re right, anyway. Nothing could make up for that.” She’d spent a long time trying to justify her parents’ abandonment of her, a long time building them up in her head and assuring herself that they must have had a good reason for it, at least, but at the end of the day? The reasons didn’t even matter. They’d left her alone, with no idea what she was and no trauma-free way of figuring it out. That was a hard thing to justify, a hard thing to forgive.

And her father, whoever he’d been, was just as guilty as her mother had been. Cass was sure of that. Still, she felt a pang at Bobbi’s words. She would have liked to know him, would have liked to know both of them, even if it was only to confirm that they weren’t worth knowing. “Did you know yours? Your dad?” It was probably too personal a question for someone she’d only just met, and she offered a small, apologetic smile. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.” 

Curiosity caused her to lean forward, just a little. Bobbi was the first person Cass had met in White Crest who seemed to have known a siren well, and she had a million questions already. What had her friend been like? Had she been a good person or a bad one? Had she struggled with the abilities granted to her by her nature the way Cass did, or were they easy for her to master? But Bobbi hadn’t seen her — or her apparent boyfriend — in a long time, and there was something on her face at the mention of them. An old wound that hadn’t yet healed, maybe. Shrugging, Cass pushed the candy wrapper into Bobbi’s open palm, missing the distraction that fiddling with it had given her. “I kind of figured it out the hard way,” she admitted. “A, uh… a couple of rangers came after me. It was kind of hard to deny it after that.”

By now, Bobbi had found herself a little unsure on how to proceed with this conversation. On one hand, she could relate to the feeling of being abandoned by the ones you love the most. At least the part where your only friend for the longest time would be the deep, nagging loneliness that would never leave your side until a couple of years later, if ever. On the other? She couldn’t stop thinking about the girl’s mother’s fate, if she was even the same person the huxian was thinking about. Could she still be out there? Or did something happen to her, which was why she never came back for Christie? After all those years, why does Bobbi even care still? Some things, you just need closure for.

“My dad?” Bobbi couldn’t help but let out a chuckle, disbelief on her face. She was too old to remember her dad, let alone think about the man who was responsible for her existence in this world. What was he to him, anyway? A source of joy, someone she should be thankful for? Or a source of grief, one that did not ask for her consent to be born into all this? “I don’t think that matters, though if it helps, I met someone else, someone who was more of a father to me than my old man was.” His first and only captain, the same gruff and cruel man who captured her and others, only to unexpectedly soften in the days, weeks that followed. His second father was certainly a complicated man, and while she loved him for who he was, hoped no one else would go down his path, the same path she was on now. “Sadly, men in power are rarely ever not disappointing.”

“Rangers? Hunters?” Bobbi scoffed, still unimpressed with their ilk. How could she be? They attacked a friend of hers, and the few she has met were either all for show or broken men pretending to be whole. Even the woman from Hong Kong, the hunter in red, was quite disappointing. She crushed the wrapper in her hands before realizing what she was doing. “Seems this town has a plague of them. They didn’t hurt you, did they?” The huxian couldn’t help but clench her jaw at the thought that these mortals thought they could do what they wanted with them, with their lot, creatures that are far more superior, that deserve these lands more than them. Before she could say anything else, however, someone knocked on the door and a familiar voice let them know they were finally close to land. “Guess we’re back in town. See? No harm done to you, right? Captains always keep their word.”

“Sometimes the family you find is better than the family you’re born into, anyway.” That had been Cass’s experience, at least. She knew nothing of her mother, who had left her before she was old enough to know her face, or her father, who she didn’t know for sure if she’d ever met at all. But she knew Metzli, who treated her like an annoying kid sister in a way no one else ever had. She knew Marina, who offered to be her family without Cass even having to ask for it. She knew Levi, knew Ari, knew Marley and Teagan. They meant more to her than those faceless people who’d left her behind ever could. And it seemed like Bobbi could relate to that, just a little. 

It was clear that Bobbi knew a thing or two about hunters, too. Cass shrugged at the question, thinking of the ugly scar on her shoulder where the hunter’s knife had stabbed through and the lighter one on her side where his bullet had grazed her. “I got better,” she said, because she couldn’t say no without lying. It didn’t matter anymore, anyway. The hunters were gone now, and it made her ache a little, made guilt build up in her chest, but it meant she didn’t have to worry about them, either. The knock on the door drew her attention, and she let out a quiet sigh. She wasn’t quite as relieved as she thought she’d be to be back in White Crest. She was glad to be home, sure, but… She liked talking to Bobbi. “Th — uh, I appreciate you… not getting mad at me for stowing away.” She caught herself before she could say thank you, and she thought Marina would probably be proud of her for it. “Maybe we could… Hang out again sometime? If you wanted. I’d, um… I’d really like to hear more about your friend.” Bobbi was the first person she’d met who’d had real experience with another siren, and Cass wanted to know everything. 

“Huh,” Bobbi was genuinely surprised at the wisdom that spilled out of the much younger girl’s mouth. “That’s very smart of you to say.” For most of her life, the same was true for Bobbi, for Baozhai. Things never really seemed to mean anything to her until the day she found herself on a pirate ship, whisked away from all that she had ever known, forced to live a new life, one that was much more exciting and interesting than her original one. Sure, the beginnings of all that was a little strange, and not at all normal or safe, but she wouldn’t be who she was right now, where she was right now, if none of that ever happened. “Life’s not always going to be rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow, no matter how scary or painful it seems.”

Bobbi gritted her teeth at the realization that another acquaintance, though newly made, was victimized by these so-called hunters. The thought of getting back at them, hunting them all down like what they were doing to their far superior “prey,” made her a little excited, if not feeling justified, but the risks that would entail to her own crew calmed her down. As much as she’d enjoy making the audacious mortals extinct, there was a much bigger picture that didn’t involve them, that needed her and her crew at their best. 

“Don’t worry about it. I was curious, too, at your age,” Bobbi put a hand on Christie’s head before placing it on her back, slowly and calmly gesturing her to come outside and join the crew. It wasn’t quite morning yet, the dawn far from breaking, but the girl did insist on being brought back to shore as soon as possible. Hopefully, wherever she’s staying, whoever she’s staying with, they’d be just as patient with her return, this misguided adventure. “I’d like that. I think she’d like hearing about you, too, wherever she is.”

“You gonna be all right going back home at this hour? Could stay until first light or we could drive you home if you need a ride. Things have been a little weird in town,” Bobbi knew that was an understatement, but siren or not, she didn’t want to spook her. Not anyone else. “Don’t want you getting hurt or something.

“I learned from experience,” Cass shrugged. Something told her Bobbi had similar experiences, though she wouldn’t ask about them directly. Some things were easier when you didn’t say them aloud; Cass knew all about that. She smiled faintly as Bobbi continued, nodding her head in agreement. “All you can do is keep moving forward, right?” You couldn’t expect the world to be all good all the time. Cass had learned that a long, long time ago. But… That didn’t always mean that you had to accept that it was shit, either. You could make things decent if you tried hard enough. You could find family if you just kept looking for it. Even if it took you twenty-two years longer than it took most people. 

Something flashed across Bobbi’s face at the mention of hunters, and Cass wondered if she, too, had experience with them. She didn’t know if Bobbi was human or not, but it was clear that she was at least aware of the supernatural, given the fact that she’d known a siren in the past. Cass figured most people aware of the supernatural were aware of hunters, too. And most people aware of hunters were aware because they’d met one, one way or another. (Not usually in a good way.) 

She’d gotten pretty lucky, she knew, that Bobbi was as understanding as she had been. Any less kind and Cass might have been tossed overboard the moment she’d been revealed as a stowaway. But… Bobbi wasn’t what she’d thought she was. Better still, Bobbi had known people like Cass, people who she might be able to introduce her to, someday. “If you ever hear from her again, maybe you could give her my number?” She scribbled it on a piece of paper, offering it to the captain. “Or, you know, even if you don’t, you could still… use the number.” If Bobbi didn’t know where the siren she’d known was, the next best thing would be for Cass to ask her questions. And even if she didn’t want to answer them, Cass liked the idea of hanging out with Bobbi again. She was cool.

Flashing a quick grin, Cass shook her head. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.” By necessity, of course. She’d learned to watch her own back young, and that was still a skill she carried with her, even if she had plenty of other people watching it for her, these days. “I’ll be okay. I know you’ve probably got, like, a ton of work to do, anyway. But, hey… I’ll let you know when I get home, okay? So you don’t have to worry.”

Bobbi didn’t expect the young girl to take the initiative to stay in touch, especially after everything she’d seen tonight, but maybe the huxian should have. If the couple she knew were really the girl’s parents, then that apple would be just as terrible keeping contact. Then again, the girl wasn’t raised by them, it seemed, so whoever became her guardians most likely did a better job. Not that Bobbi was any better. Sure, she didn’t leave a child behind, but she never even tried to make the effort to reach that point. Ugh, too much effort. I already have a boatload of kids. 

Taking that piece of paper, Bobbi quickly memorized the number before stowing it in her pocket for safekeeping. Her memory of centuries past may be terrible, but she could still remember a numerical sequence for more than a day. Longevity and memories can be weird sometimes, especially when the supernatural is involved. “All right then, Christie,” Bobbi kept the girl company as she made her way off the ship, through the curious eyes of the rest of the crew, and especially John’s daggers-like stare, making sure she would suffer no other inconveniences as they parted ways. “Stay in touch, and stay safe.”

Bobbi watched Christie as she slowly disappeared from her view, latching on the many possibilities of her true identity. She wasn’t quite sure if she was the child of her old friend, though a lot of things sure point that way. How many sirens were in town playing heroes, anyway? Definitely did not get that from her dad. As she crossed her arms over her chest, standing tall like a mighty guardian on that deck, Bobbi didn’t even need to turn to him to realize John had taken his place beside his captain. “She gonna be a problem, Cap?”