Hiya, first of all I love both Casa Tidmouth and Fortezza Bigg City, they really inspired me to be honest. ^^
My question is: How did Zorran meet Captain Zero?
thank you :-) so glad to hear that because I’ve been liking your tugs AU too. I’ve been itching to explain the start of captain zero and zorran’s toxic family dynamic so……. cw for child abuse
supplementary reading: captain zero’s relationship with zorran and zip
somewhere in sicily in the early 1900s, a child was born out of wedlock — his mother died during childbirth and his father had to raise him himself. he was not a kind man by any means, in fact, he was rotten to the core. he would regularly whip his son with a belt or throw bottles at him whenever he’s stressed or drunk or, well, just wanted to. despite countless attempts to reach out for help to the police, none was truly willing to help. by the age of 7, the boy stopped talking to his father unless talked to first and became more observant to his surroundings.
in order to avoid the abuse he faced, the boy hung out at the livelier shipping docks and eventually the shadier parts of the city — bars, cabarets, entertainment districts, and so on. thanks to his opportunistic personality and silver tongue, he’s able to obtain necessities like food and education (he can even copy other people’s handwriting) and soon got his hands on the weapons and bootlegging industry. he caught the eyes of smugglers and local mobs and became some sort of informant to these men.
his old man knew that his son had been working and started taking his money. this enrages him, of course, but he’s already making plans to live on his own once he has enough money saved. however, coupled with the little money he has left, he ran out of patience one night after his drunk father hit him with a bottle again. using a pistol he obtained from work and a pillow as a silencer, he killed his father in a haze of rage, stole the money his old man’s been stashing, and ran away from home.
trying to not let the death of his father weigh on him, the boy sank deeper into the world of crime. a scheming, calculating, and cunning mercenary for hire, he’s now actively hired to smuggle goods and often times became a reliable spy due to his lack of bias regarding his employers. with his line of work, he began adopting different aliases for every place he stayed at. well, giuseppe’s not a sentimental person. nothing in his life was ever permanent, so why look for certainty now? no one has ever protected him. he has jobs to run and as long as he has money and a roof over his head, he’ll do just fine. he’ll be a weapon or a shield as long as he still gets to live.
at the age of 23, while staying at bigg city port, a man by the name of maximus zero approached giuseppe for a job offer. despite never meeting him in person prior, he knows who zero is — after all, he’s familiar with the ruthless world they both shared. so this wanted criminal actually quit and severed his connections to the crime world? and he’s founding a tugboat business? and he wants to employ giuseppe because of his skills? sure, why the hell not. this is the least weird job giuseppe has taken.
and so was the start of zorran’s life in zero marine bigg city. at that time, most of zorran’s work consist of managing the tugboats, winning contracts for the company, responding to unpleasant mails and telegrams from captain zero’s former associates, doing errands because captain zero is a paranoid man, taking care of the office, trying to prevent himself from becoming neurotic, and so on. the star tugs had established their own fleet as well, which zorran caught early on as the dawn of a heated business rivalry.
despite their professional start and zorran’s annoyance at captain zero’s tendency to yell and call him childlike phrases (“boy”, “son”), zorran quickly became captain zero’s most trusted confidant. to this day, only he knew of his boss’s deepest, oftentimes incriminating secrets, like his divorce with captain star, the fact some people want him dead, and so on. for once, zorran felt a strange mundanity to this new life. he doesn’t have to travel from place to place for work. hell, he even has someone to look up to! although as the years go by, captain zero’s personality gradually worsened due to his past catching up to him, and so does zorran’s admiration for the man that saved him. still, he still stuck around loyally as his captain’s right hand man, believing that he will eventually steer the z-stacks to a path of glory.
shortly later, the merry band of z-stacks gained its new members consisting of zebedee, zak, zug, and….. zip, who would change the trajectory of their relationship forever.