One Piece OC Oneshot - Beach Night
Summary: Jaciara and Miro find themselves being chased by pirates at night. Jaciara has a plan on how to tackle the situation.
Also read it on ToyHouse!
Cold air breezed through a tiny seaside town, while waves were gently crashing on the shore, reflecting the dark sky above. The town would be entirely quiet at this time of the night if not for two figures on the beach, running and flying away respectively. Behind them, at least five other, a lot noisier, figures followed, weapons glistening on the moonlight.
“What do they want with us?” the flying figure asked, clear desperation was easily inferred on her voice. She was a brown, humanoid bat, her massive wings flapping quickly to keep her afloat. “Did you do anything to them, Miro?!”
Next to her, a young man spoke in a hushed voice.
“I think they’re just violent pirates.” Miro clicked his tongue. “They saw our boat docked ashore, figured we were pirates, and decided to try to steal whatever we might have.”
“But we don’t even have ANYTHING!” Jaciara, the bat, cried out. “What can they even steal?!”
“Well, good luck telling them that.”
After a small pause, she thought out loud. “What do we do?” Jaciara wasn’t the best at leading, but she had to be. She won’t be able to be a good captain like that. A ship’s captain needs to think of the best solutions and orders to give, and fast.
Suddenly something clicked on her head about what her crewmate said just moments before. She turned around mid-air and landed, standing her ground against the assailants. The men and women that were chasing them stopped, grins barely visible on their faces. Oh, if only the moon were a little bit more full…
Miro slowly stopped running when he noticed Jaciara wasn’t following him, horror setting in when he realized what the mink was about to do.
“What do you guys want with us?” she questioned, trying her best to hide the slight tremble on her voice. Her chest was slightly puffed, but her size and fluff didn’t help to make her look more intimidating. “If it’s treasure you want, I’m afraid we don’t have anything to share.”
The pirates laughed, their swords still brandished on hand.
“Nothing? Not a single coin to your name? Don’t make me laugh. We saw you dock earlier today. You’re pirates, aren’t you?” a tall man in the crew said.
“I guess you can say that.” Jaciara answered. Miro closed in the distance, carefully vigilant of the pirates’ movement. “We’re new to the whole thing.”
“Well, sweetheart, this is our turf.” Another pirate retorted. “If you want to play pirate, you’ve chosen a terrible town to begin with. The boys won’t be happy to hear about a puny pirate duo going around stealing from OUR prey. Do you catch my drift?”
“Stealing?” Jaciara looked shocked for a second. “Oh no, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong. We don’t want to mess with your… business? We just stopped here to restock and we’ll be on our way.”
“Restock, eh?” A bulky woman approached Jaci, who hesitantly stepped back a bit. “With your ‘non-existent treasure’?”
Jaciara realized she fucked up. Miro covered up for her instead, answering from a distance.
“We had some pocket change we spent today. We figured we could work on a restaurant to get enough for our next trip tomorrow.”
The pirate woman pointed her sword towards Jaciara’s bag, a satchel hanging from her shoulder belt. “So I bet there’s nothing on this bag of yours? Nothing that would make any noise if I were to…”
The moment the pirate moved her sword underneath the bag to try to shake it, Jaciara jumped up into the air.
“Miro! NOW!” she yelled at the top of her jump. The man was confused for a spit second before realizing the opening the bat had opened to him. The moon had just hidden itself beneath a dark cloud, leaving the entire place a lot darker to the humans. Oh, so we're doing this. He mentally sighed.
With the benefit of his night vision, Miro swiftly moved towards the pirate lady. He hit her guts with an extremely precise movement from the tip of his fingers and she flopped onto the ground like a food sack.
The other pirates yelled her name, angrily springing into action for their fallen comrade. Miro used the darkness to his advantage – with every footstep as silent as a panther and every movement done precisely to dodge their moves and nothing more, he tried to locate their weak spots amidst the confusion. There were other four pirates he could see. Given enough time, he might be able to take all of them down, but he knew the cloud wouldn’t take too long to move out of the way.
Jaciara on the other hand was anything but silent – she was waving her wings as fast as she could to make enough noise to both disguise her friend on the ground and get some of the pirates’ attention. She wasn’t as strong as Miro to take them out without the bright moon, diving in wouldn’t have any effect… unless?
With a clear objective in mind she dove straight in, aiming for one of the pirates’ sword. She landed right on top of it, flailing her wings around to disorient the human. With her feet, she managed to get a good hold of the weapon; and after some pulling (and some wing slaps on the face), the man’s grasp finally let up. Jaci bolted upwards again with the blade dangling, once again out of reach from any of the humans.
“THAT WRETCHED MONSTER!” the pirate screeched. “She stole my sword!”
Jaciara threw the weapon as far as she could. With a distant splash sound, she took mental note of where it had landed. It didn’t take long for Miro to capitalize on the enraged pirate, and soon enough his shrieks were silenced by her shipmate.
She tried attempting the same weapon-“borrowing” strategy with another pirate, but this one was smarter than her colleague. Despite the bat thrashing around, she managed to snatch one of Jaciara’s legs. With surprising strength, the pirate flung her straight onto the sand.
The impact rung through her body as Jaciara rushed to be attentive of her attacker, perking her ears upwards despite the muffled ringing. Luckily, she didn’t need her eyes to know exactly where everyone was.
Miro glanced at the situation from a few meters away, and he analyzed his options posthaste. His partner was currently down and the pirate lady wouldn’t take long to try to stab her. Maybe she would be able to dodge, but does he really want to count on that rather than help her? Without the flap of her wings, his own movement was more likely to be heard – and, at the present, there were two guys viciously trying to get him. He was nimble enough to escape their blind attempts, but could he manage to get himself busy with a third one?
At the worst moment possible, the moon peeked back at the beach, taking away the duo’s upper hand. The pirate lady tried stabbing Jaciara, who rolled around to barely escape it.
Through her echolocation, she knew Miro was nearby, but so were the other two remaining pirates. Now that the light was back at the beach, he had no chance to come to her rescue, he would be too busy fending them off. Jaciara wasn’t scared for him, she knew he’d be fine. Even against two, the man still had an edge.
But would she be fine without his help?
The thought made her ashamed. While her friend was distracting two enemies, she was on the floor struggling against one. She’s a captain. Maybe she doesn’t have to be the strongest, but she has to fend off for herself. No captain asks to be saved.
While the pirate lady removed her sword from the sand to give her another strike, Jaciara rolled closer to her. She approached her arm and, with abandon, nested her bat fangs on it as hard as she could.
The woman screamed in pain, reflexively leaving the sword on the ground. Her other arm latched onto Jaciara’s head, trying to get the bat to release her limb. Many insults were thrown towards her, but Jaci didn’t pay any attention.
Jaciara felt in the air vibrations of one of the pirates turning to their direction. An opening! she mentally called to Miro, who was quick to act on it despite not knowing any mind reading. With a pair of fingertips to the jaw, he too was on the ground like his peers. One on one. We got this.
She grabbed the woman’s sword hastily as she finally managed to get the bat to let go of her arm. With a quick flung, Jaciara threw the blade far away.
The pirate lady burned with rage and tackled her. Miro will be done soon. He can paralyze her. She thought. No! I can’t rely on him all the time. I will conquer this on my own, I have to.
With newfound motivation, she braced herself for the tackle. The woman was physically stronger and taller, but she didn’t completely tower over Jaciara. She should be able to handle this.
Jaciara’s feet dragged along the sandy beach as she was pushed by the sheer strength of the pirate lady locking hands with her. Her tail was spread out behind her to help her balance.
“Too close to comfort, don’t you think?” she teased the human, huffing and struggling to keep up. Getting as much impulse as possible, Jaciara darted upwards, headbutting her assailant in the jaw, knocking her out cold.
The bat fell on her knees next to her, catching her breath. All her muscles felt weak as the adrenaline rushed off her body. She looked over at the fainted woman, astonished.
She heard some footsteps approaching her, but she didn’t even turn around. She knew it was Miro.
“Are you alright?” he asked meekly, even his voice was tired. Jaciara nodded, still speechless. She heard Miro grabbing some spare rope from the belt on his waist. “I think I’m going to tie them up.”
Jaciara looked around. Four other bodies laid on the beach. None of them were dead, of course – they were all paralyzed by Miro’s technique. If you squinted hard enough, you could see their furled eyebrows of frustration.
Miro inspected the pirate lady as he tied her up.
“Wow, you did knock her out cold-” he interrupted himself as a gasp escaped his mouth when he reached for her arm. He instinctively turned his face and covered his nose and mouth with the palm of his hand. “There’s some blood, too. I… will just tie her up very fast.”
With a display of immense skill and practice, he tied her up so fast the bat could barely understand what was going where. As he was tying her and the other pirates together on a light pole, Jaciara was puzzled about his reaction. Was her friend prone to getting lightheaded with blood?
With a sigh, Miro sat next to the bat after he was finished.
“That was very reckless. But I’m glad we managed to win with no major injuries.”
She only had the chance to look at him now. He had a few superficial cuts on one of his cheeks and both of his arms.
“I couldn’t let them take our spare money. We need to leave by tomorrow…”
“Maybe we could have escaped?”
“I’m sorry, I considered they might’ve been less violent people. When you told me to try talking to them, I thought maybe I could try to intimidate them away.” Jaciara admitted. “Well, I saw the cloud beforehand as well. In the case things didn't go well.”
Miro was surprised. “You planned that?”
“That was a fairly good contingence plan.”
“I guess. I still need so much to be a good leader. Are you sure I’m not just slowing you down?”
“We’ve got good synergy.” Miro said. “You make great openings for me all the time. And in any case, you’re the only person who also prefers the night.”
Jaciara smiled. He wasn't lying. She made so many openings for him to take advantage of during this battle. Their synergy was undeniable.
“I just need to get caught less.” She laughed it off even though it was true.
“If you can knock people unconscious when you do, I don’t mind.” Miro got up and extended his hand towards Jaciara. “Well, captain? How about we get out of here?”
“Great idea. I know there’s an inn nearby where we can take a shower and rest.”
“An inn? Do we have that extra money to spend?”
Jaciara smiled widely. She moved towards the sword that was sent to the sea, knowing exactly where it landed in the very shallow shore.
“As long as we can sell this by tomorrow, I know we do!”
“W-What?! Are you going to sell their sword?”
“Why not? Do you want to keep it?”
“N-No! But that’s not ours. We can’t sell it.”
“Well, it probably wasn’t theirs either. They’re rotten thiiiiieves!” Jaciara reminded Miro. “Let’s take that as a reward for our fight! They probably think it was thrown into the sea and lost forever anyway!”
After much convincing, Miro finally conceded to the idea of selling the weapon. Their walk to the inn was full of Jaciara trying to guess ‘what type of blade that was’ and ‘how much it would cost’. Miro didn’t know much about types of swords, but it looked so painfully standard it surely wouldn’t fetch a good price. But that didn’t matter. He was just glad they were fine despite everything. They deserved the long morning of rest.
