– Byron –
Not many would call being drugged and sold into slavery a good thing, but Byron reckoned that it had been one of the better outcomes. For one, his traitorous crew could have simply slit his throat and thrown him overboard to the sea kings as a midnight snack. Or damned him to another of a thousand and one possible and far more grisly fates. Instead, they had chosen to sell him for a quick buck, leading to Byron's current situation.
"The bombs are disarmed!"
"These ones too! We can keep going!"
That the chances of him meeting Bellamy and being rescued, freed, and supported in his quest for vengeance should have been laughably small needed not be said. Byron certainly hadn't been expecting that turn of events when he'd woken up in his cage that morning and after being purchased by a celestial dragon, he had resigned himself to a short life of agony before being released into the embrace of death. So, yes. Byron counted himself a lucky man.
"Ala..." Schlick
"Thanks, Mani!"
"You're welcome. Just don't get sloppy and remember to check the cracks for ambushes."
In addition to being a lucky man, Byron would consider himself a fairly instinctive individual, even if he obviously wasn't a very good judge of character. Otherwise, he probably would have strung up his traitorous first mate the second he stepped foot onto his ship. But something had told him that Bellamy would be different and for lack of a better word, one could almost say that he felt unique, even if Byron couldn't put his finger on exactly why he had gotten that feeling. Call him impulsive, but Byron had decided in that moment to go with his gut and signed on with Bellamy the Hyena and hence throwing in Byron's lot with his. So far, it looked like that gamble was going to pay off.
"Thanks for doing this for me. I really appreciate it." Byron told his fellow captain who acknowledged his words with a small nod, casually smashing a local, armed with a pick, into the tunnel wall.
"Huh? Yeah, don't worry about it. Part of my crew, part of my responsibility."
They continued to leisurely make their way deeper into the mine in silence, Bellamy's crew diligently dismantling all resistance. Not that it was much of a challenge as said resistance consisted entirely out of untrained, untested and poorly armed townsfolk. Even the miners amongst them were just no match for Bellamy's crew. Heck, Byron saw Mani knock three large, burly grown men bodily about as if they were children.
"Hmmm, I never did tell you my whole story, did I?" Byron hummed, "And you never asked."
"Didn't think it really mattered. You seemed like a trustworthy man and everyone has got some sort of past. Doesn't matter if it is objectively terrible, the effects on one's mind are often more subjective. It wasn't my place to pry." Bellamy shrugged indifferently, though Byron disagreed. If it were him, he definitely would have pried if only for his own peace of mind. "Plus, I believed you'd tell me when you were ready."
"In that case, I think I'm ready now." Byron answered, closing his eyes and taking a turn down memory lane. "I was born in the town of Toroa in West Blue, to a long line of musicians…"
----------------------------------------
My childhood was a good one as childhoods went. My father was a pianist and a composer of some renown, often being hired to ply his craft at the behest of the local nobility. He was paid generously if irregularly, but we had no problems paying the bills. The things that drove many of us to piracy? The poverty, the drugs, the broken families…all that didn't apply to me thanks to my father. Was it any wonder that he had been my hero growing up?
What made my life even better was that my mother didn't have to work on the side to put food on the table. My father took care of that, meaning she could focus on maintaining house and home. She taught me many things over the years. Things she had learned from her own father who was the principal of the local school. Contrary to what most might expect, I enjoyed those lessons. She had this wonderful gift of making even the driest topics seem marvellously interesting. Truly, I was blessed to have had a mother like her.
"Had?"
"I'm getting to that, have some patience."
My parents weren't without their flaws, no parents were, but they loved me and each other. I think one of the factors binding them so strongly together was their shared love of music. That was how they met, you know? My mother listening to an aspiring musician play in one of the town's many coffee shops. He dedicated one of his songs to her, she bought him a coffee and they…just hit it off. Fast forward five years and they were happily married with a son on the way.
Anyway, they passed that passion down to me and thankfully, I also inherited some of my father's talent. It wasn't long before I was following in his footsteps and playing simple tunes out on the streets. And soon after my thirteenth birthday, my father brought me along to work at one of his performances at a local noble's manor.
Of course, I wasn't going to perform. I wasn't some genius or something, like that one legendary musician from the now lost isle of Habsburg. No, I was there to turn pages on his music sheets and get my face out there for the future. This was my father's attempt at getting me "in the circle" so to speak, trying to make it easier to become his replacement once he retired.
"You say like that was a bad thing."
"You know the saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Children can be stupid. It's almost like it was in their blood not to listen to the adults and to seek to do the very thing that one's own parents explicitly told one not to do. I was a child. Worse, I was a child that loved music more than almost anything else. My father wasn't around to stop me, busy attending the after-concert gala and being shown off by his patron. I had been supposed to join him after cleaning up the music sheets and other instruments but seeing a piano of…such superior quality just standing there, I could not resist.
It was simply divine, the feeling of the keys, as I pressed them down, so radically different from any other piano I had ever played before. There was no going back after that first note. I played like a man possessed, like a man drinking his first sip of water after a treck through a scorching desert. Time lost all meaning as I lost myself in that glorious feeling.
"I'm guessing you got caught."
"I did. Though it wasn't by my father. Or the lord of the manor. In hindsight, it might have been better if it had been either of them instead of her."
"Her?"
It was the sound of a door slamming shut behind me that pulled me out of that near trance like state and back into reality and I whirled around, only to find the daughter of the lord staring at me with her mouth wide open. It wasn't very ladylike, but it was cute, and that was what slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
"This is beginning to sound suspiciously like a bad romantic tragedy."
"…"
Nothing happened during that first meeting. After a minute or so of staring at each other – remember I was just a child on my first real outing and very unfamiliar with proper etiquette – the girl left and I hurriedly joined my father. He did question me about my delay but didn't push me any further when I made up some excuse. I don't think he believed me but chose to give me space anyway. Now, I wish he hadn't and made me answer him honestly.
Things continued on like normal for the next couple of months. I refrained from touching the piano or at least I tried, but I was a man who had tasted heaven. How could I be satisfied with the shabby creation in my father's home any longer? I found myself lingering, giving the grand piano ever longer glances. I would take longer to clean it, wiping the individual keys with far more care than necessary, but never actually daring to press them.
It was during one such time that the girl came to see me again. She asked if I wanted to play. I answered that I did. She asked if I would play something for her. I told her I would. And I did. It was only a childish ditty of my own composition, but she clapped and told me it was beautiful.
"This is really starting to sound like a bad romantic tragedy. Like really."
"…in a way it was."
Over the next three years, I would play her something after every visit. Classics, contemporary music, folk songs, but what she enjoyed the most were the pieces I had composed myself. During that time, I must have churned out a song every week, studying music like there was no tomorrow, always striving to create something better than the last. I was happy. And I believed her happy as well.
Until one day, she asked me to compose something sad and melancholic. I didn't question it then and poured my heart and soul into my work. It took me two months, but I eventually presented her with my magnum opus on a night when both her parents were out and most of the servants on holiday leave.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
She cried when I was done and called it beautiful, just like the day I first played something for her. I didn't suspect a thing, congratulating myself on a job well done for composing and playing a piece music that could tug at someone's heartstrings in such a manner. Once her tears had dried, I bid her goodnight and returned home.
The next day, I found out she had thrown herself out her window.
"Hold up for a brief moment. She threw herself…out her window?"
"And left a suicide note."
It turned out that she had been due to marry one of her father's acquaintances, a very powerful man, but one double her father's age. Of course, with the bride now dead, people started looking for someone to blame. They found me.
Her suicide note had been very extensive, containing a detailed account of my encounters with her. Most damning of all was a short memo at the end, where she described how she was suddenly overcome by a deep feeling of sadness and melancholy…even dipping into despair after my last performance and how it had convinced her to end her own life.
The lord was understandably furious, but he wasn't a bad man. Rather, he was respected for his sense of justness and his generosity towards his people. And my father was a valued member of his court, who did everything to convince his lord that my music couldn't possibly have been responsible. After all, everybody knew that music had only a limited effect on one's emotions.
"I'm guessing your father didn't succeed."
"On the contrary, he did. Or at least enough to convince the lord to put me to the test."
I was ordered to demonstrate what I had done. This boiled down to performing my greatest composition before an audience who would judge its effects upon them. This audience included not only the lord and his remaining family, his guards and servants, but also most of his court. My father was also in attendance as a show of support, telling me to make it the best performance of my life. I think he still held out hope that I might become his successor, foolish as it was. But I gave it my all…with tragic consequences."
"Oh no. Don't tell me…"
"Every last one of them threw themselves off the castle walls or otherwise found a way to die. Unsurprisingly, the entire kingdom was up in arms, trying to catch the perpetrator. However, I managed to escape thanks to my mother, who distracted and held off the mob long enough for me to sneak out the back. They lynched her in my stead."
"…my condolences. I don't know what to say."
"It…it is an old wound, but thank you, nonetheless. I have dealt with it."
Admittedly, I was a wreck for years afterwards. After all, an experience like that was bound to leave lasting wounds and people dealt with those in different ways. Some escaped it via alcohol or gambling or violence or sex or any number other distractions. I tried those too, unable to look at music for a while, but they felt hollow. Superficial. So, I went crawling back to my first love and never left.
I explored her, trying to determine just exactly what had happened in Toroa, until I discovered the answer. Somehow, I had managed to amplify someone's emotions far beyond the normal spectrum. Of course, at the beginning it was uncontrolled and wild, but after years of practice, I managed to temper it into what you saw on Marineford.
Sadly, by then I no longer had the option of becoming a common musician. I was already a wanted man. That was when my former first mate found me and offered to found a pirate crew together. I agreed and the rest was, you could say, history.
"Captain, we found them!"
----------------------------------------
– Bellamy –
The Musical pirates were waiting for us in a large cavern, serving as a sort of hub for a dozen tunnels going deeper underground. A good two dozen men were arrayed in a half-circle, facing the entrance to the passage we emerged from and at the back was a man, whom I assumed was their new captain. My first impression of him was that he looked like he needed a good night's sleep.
"Byron. You're looking surprisingly well. Being a slave must have suited you."
"And you look like a sea king ran you over. Being a captain clearly didn't suit you."
"I admit, you and your cronies have been the cause of a lot of headaches these past few days, but that will pass once we've dealt with you lot." Excuse me? Cronies? I was nobody's crony. If anything, Byron was my crony.
"You think you can deal with me? Never mind Captain Bellamy?" Funny how Byron didn't mention Izou, but then again, the commander was disguised right now as a common pirate with a kabuki mask covering his entire face.
"I'm stronger than you Byron, I always have been." Markus bragged, slowly getting up from his seat. "All you ever did was play support on your stupid little instruments while I did all the fighting. Why do you think the crew chose to follow me instead of you?"
"…I don't see Thomas around nor Elias. What did you do to them?"
"Oh them? I had no choice you know? I tried to win them over, I really tried, but if they refuse to be loyal to me, they have no place on my ship." Markus said, his voice taking on an increasingly mocking tone. "It was a pain having to replace both the navigator and the doctor, but what can you do?"
"What. Did. You. Do to them?" Byron hissed out in barely suppressed fury.
"Do you want to know what their last words were? Captain save me! Please, captain! Wake up and save me!" Markus laughed, his crew joining him.
"I'm going to kill you, Markus." Byron promised, all that red-hot anger turning freezing cold, no longer as outwardly visible but no less dangerous.
"You're going to kill me when you're just a 70 million bounty? And most of that was because you had ME on your crew to do the heavy lifting. Without me, you'd have been worth 40 million at best and you know it!" Markus stated, shrugging off his captain's coat and stepping towards us. "I even have a higher bounty than you now, 80 million if you hadn't heard. That means I'm twice if not three times as strong as you!"
"Are those your last words?"
"No, not by a long shot. I've got years to live once I've killed you and the idiots behind you are gone. You want to know something else, Byron? I've got ear plugs, see? That music you are so proud of? It's useless!" Markus boasted, holding up a pair of rubber objects. But that was not what I focused on. Something about the way he said what he said bothered me. Once we were…gone? Why not: once he had killed us?
"You are as arrogant as ever. If you had those, you should have used them as soon as you saw me." Byron replied, stepping forward to meet his traitorous first mate. Simultaneously, Markus stumbled.
"When…when did you?" Markus stammered out in confusion, looking like the world had stopped making sense.
"When do you think I wasn't?" Byron on the other hand was completely relaxed, casually dusting off his coat.
"But you have no instruments!" Markus protested, only for Byron to easily refute his argument.
"Why do you think they called me the Bard? Singing is music too, and I've been singing ever since I got here."
I…never noticed. Gods, that ability was terrifying. Frantically, Marcus stuffed the earplugs into place and seemingly recovered some of his earlier bravado.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance, Byron. You fudged it!" he roared, dashing towards his former captain with a dagger in each hand. Byron just hummed a little to himself before rushing to meet him halfway. Markus was fairly fast, slower than Sarquiss but faster than some other members of my crew and his form suggested that he'd had at least some training. Objectively, I would say he deserved his new bounty of 80 million. He didn't stand a chance.
Byron easily danced around the many lunges of his opponent before breaking his sternum with a well-placed kick and caving in Markus's chest. Silence descended on the cavern as the Musical Pirates stared in terrified disbelief at their dying captain while my crew looked at Byron in a new light.
"H-how?" Markus rasped out, gurgling from his own blood. "Y-you weren't t-t-this…strong b-before…"
"You knew I could boost others. What made you think I couldn't boost myself?" Byron answered, removing the earplugs.
"H-heh. S-should have known. B-bastard."
"Any last words?"
"S-see you s-soon."
"Goodbye, Markus."
Byron's boot went crunch and Markus' body went limp. That had been...very anti-climactic. Where was the big duel? Wasn't that some sort of requirement for a rivalry like this to end? Also, what did he mean by see you soon? This was the second time that Markus had said something odd.
Then Izou tapped me on the shoulder.
"What is it, Izou-san?"
"You might want to get ready, Captain. They are coming."
Wait, who's they?