From one one-armed scarred redhead to another, Battleship 71 diverted course form pursuing Red Hair give attention to the Kidd pirates. Lyra hadn’t ever chased after a Super Rookie before; they hadn’t been in the New World very long, and her attention was taken up by the Yonko crew, but HQ said go.
While the battleship steamed across the waves, Rear Admiral Lyra read and re-read the files she had received on the targets. They were a powerful crew... There was a reason for their high bounties; they didn’t mind conducting atrocities against innocent people and defeated crews, apparently. The captain’s Devil Fruit would prove troublesome... very troublesome. Lyra’s battleship only had two Devil Fruit users on the crew; Lyra herself and a young Petty Officer who worked in navigation who had eaten a Devil Fruit granting them the mysterious power of rust... whatever that meant. This was to say --- Battleship 71 was comprised of gunmen and swordsmen and would be very vulnerable to the captain of the Kidd pirates, who had power over metal, like a magnet of sorts. Lyra had argued with HQ that her crew was not the best option, and she provided numerous other options and names of crews that would be better to send, but hey... At the end of the day, orders were orders and she turned her ship around.
Their mission was to lay siege to the stronghold, capture as many Kidd pirates as they could, subdue their more powerful members, and ultimately arrest them, removing them from the chessboard of the New World --- and they would do the best they could with what skills and equipment they had. Lyra spent hours on the way there planning the course of attack. Undoubtedly, the Kidd pirates wouldn’t expect anyone to directly attack their stronghold. Her plan was to take advantage of surprise and chaos, then present the adversary with a cascading series of disasters as their superior numbers made the difference. So long as her Marines held tight to their firearms and swords, there were far more Marines than there were Kidd pirates. If their captain got their weapons away from them, though, they would be vulnerable. Lyra had no doubts she could handle the young man, but how long would it take before so many of her unarmed Marines were killed? If they lost their weapons, they’d be fish in a barrel. She had to take that balance into consideration. Death was to be expected; a slaughter was to be avoided.
As the island came into view, Lyra was alerted and she put the files away in her desk, standing up and departing her office in favor of walking out onto the weatherdeck. She crossed the deck and climbed up onto the cannons on the bow, standing firm with her arms crossed over herself. Speed would be key. Get in, immediately create controlled chaos. Don’t give the enemy time at all to regroup. Do you job, and get out. She ensured the mission was communicated to the divisions of Marines while they armed up. The battle plan was the same as when they lay siege to the stronghold of the Seville pirates. They had done this before, and they’d do it again.. Ten minutes later, the Marines landed and began their amphibious assault.
The assault on the Kidd pirates went exactly as Lyra expected it to. They steamed through the nobody pirates immediately, capturing a great number of them, but the longer the fighting continued, the more time the adversary had to collect themselves and figure out just what the Hell was going on. She was losing Marines left and right in the fight to the stronger members of the Kidd pirates, like that son of a bitch with the scythes --- the number as climbing, but the mission hadn’t yet been accomplished. They had to push. And push they did, right up until the Marines of Battleship 71 entered a stalemate with the Kidd pirates.
The enemy was skilled, that was for sure. From what Lyra had observed, this fight was going to continue until both sides were completely dead --- and that didn’t work for her. If all her Marines died, then they wouldn’t be able to complete their mission tomorrow. Lyra was, in a word, pissed that the HQ sent them here. The Marines that remained were hunkered down behind her, guarding the groups of Kidd pirates they had claimed who were wrapped in reinforced ropes from their ship, knowing better than to use metal chain.
Lyra’s nose had a smudge of gun powder on it, and some of her long white hair stuck to her forehead from sweat. She held a man with stitching on his face and long blue hair down on his knees in front of her (his name was Heat, according to her files, and he meant something to the captain) her sword held aloft and pointed at the back of his neck in a threatening manner while she stared across the way at their captain, daring him to move a muscle. He was young, but his very appearance seemed to have been cut from violence and anarchy. In comparison, Lyra had entered her dramatic Hybrid Zoan form a long while ago, using her extra strength to keep her sword in her hand. Her shield hung on her arm that held Heat, and her four angel wings were flared out about her in a statement of aggression and domination.
“Captain Kidd,” she said, addressing the man across the way from her. It was INCREDIBLY RARE for Lyra to address a pirate captain with ‘captain’, but he had earned the respect through his tenacity. “Your crew can beat my Marines, but
you can’t beat me. So let’s call it here.”
It was dangerous to challenge him like that, but from her perspective, the longer this went on, the more his crew would slowly kill her Marines and the more she would kill his crew until only he and her remained. She didn’t want that, though. She wasn’t going to fight him and let her unprotected Marines die in the meantime. There was no point in fighting until all her Marines were dead along with the Kidd pirates. Each second that passed, Marines were dying from their wounds, the same as his men. She needed this to be over so she could heal them. He needed this to be over so he could save his men, too. If they continued... it would be devastating to both the Kidd Pirates and Battleship 71.
“If we keep going, both our crews will be decimated. Give me
back my Marines unharmed, and I’ll release the Kidd pirates we’ve
captured... and we’ll return to our battleship and go.”
