I stand within the forest deep
Monday mist makes silence keep
I breathe in deep this misty air
And leave behind each past despair
Here I stand in morning's glow
Ready for this week to grow
["That's a question most of all muses asked themselves. We are adored, unconsciously, we recognize our tricks but how it appear to other people is a mistery. Sometimes we look at ourselves in the mirror and try to understand what exactly make them so obsessed? But that's something we could only feel. When muses aren't seeing themselves they lost the power of perception and project their light into a shadow. But when muses are seeing themselves, they are unmatched, they start living. That's the only way muses can live."] - by me.
how to romanticize your routine and how to build one 𓇢𓆸
THINGS YOU DONT NEED:
Wake up 5am;
Be productive or 'consistent';
Study so much or be a workaholic;
Someone else to recognize you;
Post on social media;
Cut the za 🍃;
- You dont need anything.
First of all sit with yourself and be real. C'mon, you are here reading something that was written for muses because the algoritm thought it matches you. Don't doubt it.
Now take a time for yourself and when you feel ready (no matter if you will be ready today, tomorrow, a week, a month, a year -) think about your past relationships. If you have tarot cards you can use it to help you with some insights! (and if you have za it can helps for your intuition). If you find necessary - write the insights you're having.
optional:
Light a candle;
Put a song, soundtrack or playlist;
Light a aroma;
Roll a za;
Use tarot;
Write the process in your diary or whatever.
pay attention to the 'rituals' your mind suggest to you, and build structures to build it as a hobby. ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꫂ ၴႅၴ ₊ ⊹
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꫂ ၴႅၴ ₊ ⊹ for example:
"I want to take care of my nails more often" - Remember doing your nails.
"I like to paint while I drink" - Remember prepare a drink and go painting, or to buy pincels and paiting items.
"I like eating [name of the food]" - Remember yourself to prepare this for you.
"I like watching [name of the show]" - Remember of get comfortable and watch it while do your nails, or hidratate your hair.
"I like studying" - Remember to grab your things, make the place comfortable and study
"I like fashion or clothing" - Remember to open your closet and make outifts with your clothes, make folds on pinterest and think what you can do or buy to improve your style.
"I like singing" - Remember to sing some karaoke songs, improving on your vocals. You can invest in microphones and good instruments too.
"I like reading book" - Remember of chose a book that matches with your conscious level, that support you to heal some pain, or to learn something that makes you better.
"I like recording" - Remember separate times to think how you wanna make other people feel.
All of this in the time you think you have to. ~ The thing you must do as a muse is to respect your own time to process things, it doesn't matter how long, what matters is to feel what you're doing.
Some yt channels I recommend if you are interested:
Beauty and Discipline
⊹ por luana ricco ⊹
spiritual bratz. the high priestess.
@luanaricco_ | insta & tiktok
☥
a comment asked where i got the info on what inspired my last whumpril entry (which i havent posted here yet, not bc i dont like it but bc i simply Havent) and it made me wanna share this
and yeah it talks about munky being diagnosed with viral meningitis, which is a sad thing to hear, but i wanna say the closing clips of korn with their video camera are worth watching if only for the :) feeling. it's also cool to see the other artists they had performing at lolla that year.
something i think that gets quite overlooked in the story that is 'nu metal' is the overlap between genres, not just in a music sense but in an artists meeting artists sense. we know songs like children of the korn and n 2 gether now, but we dont talk about what those collaborations actually meant for the different scenes at the time. idk i wasnt alive in 1997 i like sniffing around shit like this
Benn Beckman x Female reader x Platonic red-haired pirates
Synopsis: All the Red-Haired Pirates wanted was a normal day at sea. But the New World had other plans—specifically, a mystical fog, mermaids with ulterior motives, and hallucinations designed to destroy any man's dignity. Between Yasopp swearing vows of love to a rock, Benn Beckman battling nasal "climate anomalies," and an accidental kiss that will haunt Shanks for the rest of his days, you're the only one trying to keep the ship afloat.
The bad news? The crew is in moral mourning. The good news? Limejuice forgot to turn off the camera.
The day on the Red Force had begun with an almost irritating tranquility, the kind of morning where the New World sun shone with an intensity that made the deck reflect like gold.
You were leaning against the railing, dedicating much of your energy to "annoying" Benn Beckman, who was unsuccessfully trying to ignore your presence while studying a sea map.
"Did you know that the angle at which you’re holding that cigarette is mathematically inclined to drop ashes into my hair?"
you teased, blowing a strand of hair from your face and crossing your arms.
"It’s passive aggression, Beckman. I should take this to the captain."
Benn only released a puff of smoke, his eyes fixed on the traced routes, though the slight twitch in his eyebrow indicated he was hearing every word.
"The captain is busy trying to teach magic tricks to a seagull, you know that."
he replied, his voice raspy and monotonous. "And you’re too busy complaining to notice that the wind has changed."
Before you could retort with something even more acidic, the weather changed with supernatural speed.
The vibrant blue of the horizon was swallowed in seconds by a fog that was not natural;
it had a pinkish, almost metallic glow, and brought with it a sound of distant, crystalline laughter that made the hair on the back of anyone's neck stand up.
Lucky Roux, who was sitting on a nearby barrel, had just finished devouring a colossal leg of meat.
He stopped abruptly, his cheeks still full and the bone suspended in mid-air.
With a frown, he used the meat to point toward the sinuous silhouettes beginning to emerge over the coral reefs, outlined by the mystical mist.
The shadows on the rocks gained colors and curves. Yasopp took a stumbling step, letting his musket hang loose in his hand;
his eyes were wide, fixed on a dark-haired figure waving sweetly from the edge of a boulder.
It was Banchina, with the same gentle smile he had left in Syrup Village, but surrounded by a mystical and dangerous aura.
Beside her, other figures emerged: beautiful women in transparent silk outfits or simply naked, dancers from distant islands and barmaids the crew had met on their travels, all whispering promises of rest and pleasure that made even the most veteran pirates drool.
"Watch out, boys! Those are sirens. They’ll transform into any lustful form to lure you into the water!"
Roux warned with rare seriousness, but soon his alert expression was replaced by one of absolute confusion.
Curious to understand what had silenced Lucky Roux so abruptly, you stepped forward, narrowing your eyes against the metallic glare of the mist.
On the nearest rock, an aquatic creature flicked its shimmering scaled tail, but there was something about her silhouette that triggered an immediate alert in your mind: the body was strangely familiar.
Upon focusing on the creature's face, shock ran down your spine like an electric shock.
That was your face. The siren smiled with your lips, blinked with your eyes, and reproduced, with irritating precision, even the impatient habit of crossing your arms that you showed when you were out of patience.
The resemblance would be perfect if not for the fact that your copy wore a scandalously small amount of clothing and displayed a majestic tail where your legs should be.
It was like looking into a mirror that had decided, on its own, to embrace exhibitionism and marine life.
"Why does that one look like me?" you asked, your voice coming out shriller than expected.
Beside you, Benn Beckman released a puff of smoke, but missed the mark. He cleared his throat, trying to light his cigarette again, his hand trembling slightly.
His face, usually impassive, had a subtle shade of flush on his cheekbones.
He refused to look directly at the "siren-you" or at you.
"Hm... I don’t know. This could be for anyone, anyone here... and we don’t have to judge."
Benn replied, his voice excessively formal, while the siren identical to you blew a suggestive kiss in his direction.
"But... but she’s winking at you, Benn!" Yasopp pointed out, making a visible effort not to laugh.
"That wink is very specific!"
"Shut up, Yasopp!" Benn growled, which made Lucky Roux choke on his laughter.
"Let's just look away to, hum... wait." Beckman stopped speaking abruptly, his embarrassment being replaced by genuine confusion as he looked at the rock right behind your double.
"Why is that one just a bottle of sake?"
You blinked, shifting your gaze from your own distorted image to see what Benn was pointing at.
Indeed, on an isolated stone, there wasn't a woman, but an immense bottle of a rare Wano sake, swaying gracefully over a silver fish tail that slapped the water rhythmically.
It seemed to glow with a light of its own.
"Let me go to her, please!!"
Shanks's cry echoed across the deck, laden with a dramatic passion he usually reserved for grand speeches.
The captain already had his hand on the railing, eyes in the shape of hearts as he looked at the mystical drink, ready to throw himself into the sea.
"Shanks, come back here! It's an illusion!" you shouted, trying to grab the captain by his cloak before he launched himself overboard.
"You don't understand!" Shanks whined, struggling against your grip.
"That label... that curvature of the neck... she's calling me by name! It's my destiny!"
"It's sake, captain!"
Hongou intervened, trying to help you hold the Redhead, who was already almost climbing the railing.
"With a tail! You can't drink a tail!"
Meanwhile, the "siren-you" on the nearest rock began to act even more seductively, winking and blowing kisses to Benn, who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"Oh, Bennnnn..." she sang, her voice identical to yours, but with a honeyed tone that made you roll your eyes.
"Come swim with me, my love... I know you want me..."
Beckman's face turned scarlet red.
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, crushing it in the palm of his hand. "I... I don't want anything! It's a cheap illusion!"
"Cheap!? I think my hair and my smile are top quality, thank you very much!"
you retorted, dividing your attention between the captain and your siren version.
"I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about her!" Benn exploded, pointing at the siren with a trembling finger.
Yasopp burst out laughing, almost losing his balance. "Ah, Benn is embarrassed! The siren of his dreams is our crewmate!"
"She is not the siren of my dreams!" Benn bellowed, turning to the crew with a deadly look.
"My dreams are about battle strategies and weaponry! Not about... about... this!"
He gestured to the siren, who was now making a heart with her hands for him.
"Better stop looking, Benn," Lucky Roux warned, his mouth full of a biscuit he had inexplicably pulled out of nowhere.
"Or she'll drag you to the bottom of the sea for you to be her next meal!"
Meanwhile, Shanks, with surprising strength, managed to break free from you and Hongou.
He jumped onto the railing, arms outstretched.
"I love you, sake-chan!"
he shouted, before being abruptly pulled back by Monster, Bonk Punch's monkey, who grabbed him by the shirt with impressive dexterity.
"Captain, we can't lose you to a bottle of alcohol with fins!"
Rockstar implored, clinging to one of Shanks's legs, also trying to contain the red-haired man.
The confusion on the Red Force's deck was reaching catastrophic levels.
Lucky Roux was leaning dangerously over the parapet, trying to hook with a kitchen hook what appeared to be a floating boar ham that, in reality, was just the upper part of a siren with smoked-textured skin.
Meanwhile, Yasopp was living a moral and biological dilemma worthy of an elite sniper.
He alternated between pointing at your siren version and laughing hysterically at the first mate's panicked face, and turning his eyes, glazed and guilty, back to the vision of Banchina.
"Benn, look... her face... it's just like our nakama's!"
Yasopp fired off between laughs, but soon his voice faltered and he cleared his throat, his eyes involuntarily drifting down.
"But, by the gods, Banchina... I didn't remember that... I mean, the air in Syrup Village must be very dry, because this tropical climate did a world of good for your... cleavage."
He tried to maintain the dignity of a family man, but siren-Banchina leaned in a way that made the sniper lose his train of thought and his ability to breathe.
Benn Beckman, on the other hand, seemed to be having a silent stroke.
He was in a deep existential debate, trying to process the metaphysical logic of why the sea—a force of nature—decided that the most "lustful" form to seduce him was the annoying woman who spent the whole day complaining about his cigarette ashes on the map.
"This is statistically improbable." Benn murmured to himself, his voice coming out in a tone of absolute denial, although his eyes were treacherously fixed on every curve of your siren double.
He couldn't look away from the sinuous lines and the birthmarks that the illusion displayed with cruel precision, wondering, in a flash of pure sinful distraction, if your real body possessed each of those small and intimate details.
A thin stream of blood began to flow discreetly from his left nostril, staining his lip and betraying the logical battle he was trying, in vain, to wage against his own subconscious.
"It's just a random projection based on... on physical proximity. Yes, proximity. It has nothing to do with my subconscious. Nothing."
He wiped the scarlet trail quickly with the back of his hand, in a sharp gesture trying to erase the physical proof of his mental defeat.
However, Beckman's logic was useless against the stubbornness of his own body;
it was enough for him to look away for a second for the image of that siren—with your features and that sinful audacity—to flood his mind again, causing a new trickle of blood to emerge immediately.
The first mate huffed, wiping his nose again and again, but the bleeding was persistent and rebellious, a silent testament that his brain was, against all his will, processing details too specific of that illusion for a simple gesture of denial to contain them.
Your double on the rock seemed to catch Beckman's desperate attempt at denial.
In response, she let out a laugh that was the exact echo of yours, but loaded with a touch of seductive malice that you would never show in public.
With a calculated slowness, the creature repositioned herself on the stone, arching her body in a way that displayed, with sinful clarity, the curves of her breasts, leaving nothing to the imagination as those colored silks clung transparently over her soft flesh.
The sight was the final blow to the first mate's rationality;
Beckman squeezed the barrel of his musket so hard that his knuckles turned white, as he struggled not to let the weapon fall before that blatant display of his own subconscious weakness.
"Stop analyzing the anatomy of hallucinations!" You bellowed, kicking Yasopp's ankle to snap him out of the Banchina trance.
"You idiots, the captain is almost crossing the edge!"
Shanks, oblivious to any human or pirate logic, already had half of his body out of the ship.
He cried genuine tears, reaching his arm toward the sake-siren with the urgency of a man dying in the desert.
"Don't leave me here! Sake-chan, I will save you from this cruel reef!"
Shanks sobbed, his feet kicking the air while Monster, the monkey, grabbed his pants with his teeth in a heroic attempt to save the balance of power in the New World.
You let out a heavy sigh, feeling your patience drain away as you watched the most powerful crew in the world turn into a group of helpless grown men.
"For God's sake, stop this! Shanks, get back to the ship now! That sake isn't real, it has fins, you idiot! You're going to drink scales and regret!"
You shouted, trying to pull the captain by the belt while he whimpered the name of the bottle.
Looking to the side, you saw Yasopp trying to whistle at the vision of siren-Banchina, while Lucky Roux seemed to be deciding whether to eat the ham-siren or marry her.
"And you, Benn! Stop staring at the horizon like you're trying to calculate the meaning of life! I know you're looking at my siren version over there on that rock!"
You pointed to your double, who was now striking an exaggeratedly dramatic pose, tossing her hair to the side while displaying breasts covered only by a few pieces of almost transparent silk.
"That thing isn't me! I don't do that pout and I certainly don't have a sardine tail! Someone get the ropes and get us out of here before this ship turns into a seafood buffet and our captain drowns trying to kiss a sardine-flavored sake!"
As the chaos unfolded in a symphony of screams and splashing water, the siren disguised as you realized her time was running out.
With a fluid movement, she leaned over the rock, resting her chin in her hand and casting a final wink, loaded with an audacity you would never admit to having, directly at Benn Beckman.
The first mate, who until then seemed like an ice statue about to crack, let out a loud huff. He spun on his heels sharply, turning his back to the sea and that disturbingly familiar vision.
"Unbelievable..." he muttered to himself, fingers massaging his temples while trying to organize the thoughts the illusion had messed up.
"How annoying this woman can be... Even the ocean decided that the best way to get on my nerves is by creating an exact copy of her to provoke me."
When he turned around, the scene he encountered was pathetic.
You had your boots planted in the deck wood, you had changed positions and were now pulling Shanks by the collar of his shirt with all your strength, while he clawed at the air in the direction of the floating bottle.
"Let go! Let me go!" The red-haired captain yelled, his legs flailing like those of a child having a tantrum.
"She's saying goodbye! The sake is crying, don't you see?!"
"What I see is a bunch of grown men losing their heads over fish and booze!" you retorted, your face red from the effort.
"Yasopp, put those binoculars down and help me here! Banchina doesn't have scales and you know it!"
Yasopp, who was still discreetly trying to memorize the details of the siren-wife's anatomy "just for research purposes," jumped and almost let the equipment fall.
Meanwhile, Benn was desperately trying to recover his aura as the smartest man of the crew.
He cleared his throat, adjusted his weapon, and began giving orders robotically, without looking back for a second.
"Roux, drop that hook now! You are not going to fish a siren just because she smells like barbecue, that's marine cannibalism or something worse!"
Benn commanded, his voice sounding a bit sharper and more unstable than usual.
The chaos was absolute.
Lucky Roux ignored the orders, casting a kitchen hook toward the ham-siren floating nearby, while Limejuice, in a surge of audacity, tried to balance a photographic camera to register the most generous angles of the illusions.
"It's for scientific purposes, Benn! I need to document the... the anatomical structure of the upper scales!"
Limejuice justified, closing one eye to focus the zoom exactly where the siren-you's cleavage ended, before getting a slap on the back of the neck from you.
Benn ignored the flimsy excuse and turned to the navigator, who was leaning against the ship's wheel with an expression of pure ecstasy, watching the sirens dance in the mist.
"Snake! Stop drooling on the deck and take the helm before we hit one of these rocks!" the first mate bellowed, gesturing frantically.
"And Hongou, for the love of all that is sacred, apply a sedative or tie up our idiot captain before he manages to throw himself into the sea to embrace that cursed sake!"
Shanks, meanwhile, sobbed dramatically while Rockstar held him by the legs and you tried to force your weight to throw him back into the ship.
"She's so transparent... so pure... let me drink her love!"
"The only love you're going to drink is a cough syrup if you fall in that water, you idiot!"
you snapped back, digging your heels into the wood and pulling him with such force that your own face turned red, the veins in your neck bulging as you fought against the manic strength of an Emperor of the Sea in search of alcohol.
Shanks was practically hanging off, fingers clawing at the edge of the railing while screaming promises to the floating bottle.
Around you, the ship groaned under the thick mist, and the sound of waves crashing against the hidden rocks grew dangerously louder, mixing with the laughter of the sirens who seemed to celebrate the imminent shipwreck.
You felt the ship tilt dangerously to the side, the tip of a black rock emerging like a spear just a few meters from the hull.
At the height of the delirium and desperation not to hit the rocks, finally taking control of the ship and wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth, Snake gave a sharp blow to the helm, making the Red Force veer away from the reefs with a screech of protest from the wood.
The dry impact of the ship cutting the current generated a violent jolt, throwing the Red-Haired pirates back like domino pieces and abruptly interrupting all romantic dialogues with the air.
Even fallen on the deck, the trance did not abandon them. The sirens, realizing the prey was escaping, dived back into the sea in a chorus of crystalline laughter that echoed like mockery.
Yasopp, with his fingers dug into the wooden floor, crawled toward the railing, reciting desperate pleas of love to a now empty and cold rock.
"Don't go, Banchina! The coffee in Syrup Village will never be the same without you!"
Beside him, Lucky Roux still insisted on trying to lasso the air with a rope, whimpering as the "ham" of his dreams vanished beneath the waves.
Limejuice, still dizzy from the jolt, continued to fire off frantic flashes at nothing, trying to capture the trail of foam left by the creatures as if he were on a red carpet.
You and Beckman were the only ones trying to keep the ship and what remained of the crew's dignity intact, while the sickening smell of sake and cheap siren perfume still impregnated the air, threatening to swallow the Red Force in definitive madness.
Then, with a pop of pressure in the ears, the air changed.
When the Red Force finally emerged from the pearly mist, leaving behind the song of the sirens and the delusions of consumption, the thermal shock was almost physical.
As soon as the clean sun of the New World hit the deck, the magic dissipated instantly, taking with it the sirens, the bottles of sake with tails, and the floating hams.
The second impact of the Red Force veering away from the reefs was even more violent.
The ship tilted so sharply that gravity decided to take a vacation, throwing everyone to the opposite side in a tangle of arms and legs.
In the middle of the mess of bodies sliding across the deck, Shanks's "Sake-chan" had just dived, and he had his lips puckered forward in a pout of pure alcoholic longing, closing his eyes for what he swore would be the kiss of his life.
On the other side, Rockstar, who was trying to keep the captain restrained at all costs, tripped over a barrel and flew, arms outstretched in a desperate attempt to grab something.
The collision was inevitable.
With the jolt, Shanks and Rockstar collided head-on in the middle of the deck.
At the exact moment the captain expected the touch of cold glass from a premium sake bottle, he felt something much softer, hairier, and... smelly.
The two sealed in an accidental and loud kiss that echoed louder than the noise of the waves.
Time seemed to stop for an eternal second.
Shanks opened one eye, expecting to find the cold neck of a sake bottle or the mystical touch of a siren, but came face to face with the dilated pupils and pure panic of Rockstar millimeters from his own.
The recruit froze, the desperate cry for help dying in his throat as his brain tried to process the catastrophic error of trajectory that had brought him there.
At the same time, Shanks processed, with painful slowness, that the soft texture and the taste of "eternal love" of his dear Sake-chan were, in fact, the lips of the crew's recruit.
The two repelled each other instantly as if they had taken an Armament Haki shock, each rolling to one side of the deck with expressions of existential horror.
Shanks began to rub his mouth frantically with the sleeve of his shirt, eyes watering with pure regret.
"Rockstar..." Shanks began, his voice coming out as a raspy, trembling whisper, laden with a trauma that not even Blackbeard had been able to cause.
"Why... why did we kiss?"
Rockstar, who seemed to be a step away from jumping into the sea to wash himself with salt water and oblivion, looked away toward the deck planks, his face redder than the captain's own hair.
"Because... sailing is romantic?"
The recruit blurted out the excuse with the conviction of a man who knows his career and possibly his dignity had just shipwrecked in shallow waters.
Beside him, Benn Beckman closed his eyes and released a puff of smoke so dense it almost served as a new fog to hide the secondhand embarrassment.
He massaged his temples with his free hand, appearing seriously inclined to retire from piracy right then and there.
"No one talks about this." Benn decreed, his voice dark and deadly, as if he were reading an execution sentence.
"Never. If I hear a whisper about this incident in any tavern in the New World, I’ll sink the Red Force myself with everyone inside."
"Too late, Beckman." you said, finally managing to breathe between fits of laughter, while leaning against the mast so as not to fall again.
"I’m going to make sure Luffy knows his hero found a 'new kind' of treasure at sea."
"You wouldn't dare..." Shanks whimpered, still wiping his mouth and looking at Rockstar as if he were a sea monster.
While you recovered from the laughing fit, Snake kept his hands firm on the wheel, eyes fixed on a dead point on the horizon, refusing to admit that minutes ago he had been seconds away from taking the ship into a direct collision against a rock just to see a submarine hula dance.
Beside him, Limejuice seemed to have completely lost the ability to process reality.
He was so bewildered, eyes still glazed on the spot where the illusions had vanished, that he simply dropped the camera, leaving it forgotten on the deck planks, not even remembering the several photos taken.
Yasopp, for his part, was cleaning his musket with a morbid obsession.
He didn't dare look at you or Benn. The memory of having tried to flirt with an illusion of his own wife and failing miserably weighed like lead.
"So..." you began after finally stopping laughing, wiping the sweat from your forehead and straightening your clothes that had been crumpled in the struggle to hold the captain.
"Did the 'anatomical study' of the scales go well, Limejuice?"
The pirate let out a sound that seemed like a gasp; he turned his back on your laughing self and quickened his step in a desperate escape, avoiding eye contact with any human being within a ten-kilometer radius while trying to bury his own shame in his quarters.
"And the sake, captain? Was it... refreshing?" you teased, lightly kicking Shanks's boot while he still tried to merge with the deck planks.
"I heard the recruit aftertaste is the new trend in the New World."
"Don't talk to me." Shanks muttered against the wood, his voice muffled and laden with a melancholy worthy of a Greek tragedy.
"I am in mourning. I lost the woman of my life. She had a twenty-year label, a perfect curvature... And, instead, fate delivered Rockstar's lips to me."
He let out a dramatic sob, dragging his fingers across the floor as if trying to reach the ashes of a dead dream.
"I can still taste yesterday's dinner from his mouth, do you have any idea what that does to a man's soul?"
The captain continued, turning his face just enough to give you a betrayed and tearful look.
"My Sake-chan left me and now I am a marked man. I kissed a subordinate before tasting that legendary vintage. My pirate life is over. You can hand me over to the Navy, I have nothing left to lose."
In the background, Rockstar seemed to be trying to become invisible behind a barrel, while you let out a laugh that echoed through the whole ship.
"Ah, stop that! It was just a... diplomatic incident between captain and crew."
you said, wiping a tear of laughter from the corner of your eye.
"A diplomatic incident?!"
Shanks sat up abruptly, red hair messy and an expression of pure dread.
"I felt his stubble! If the newspaper finds out about this, I'll become a world-wide joke!"
You rolled your eyes and turned to Benn Beckman. The first mate was the one trying hardest to look like nothing had happened.
He had already lit a new cigarette and maintained impeccable posture, but the flush on his ears still hadn't completely disappeared.
"And you, Benn Beckman? Any conclusion about the 'statistically improbable' of the sea deciding to use my face to seduce you?"
Benn released a dense and heavy cloud of smoke, desperately trying to use it as a personal smoke screen to hide his own face.
He refused to look in your direction, keeping his eyes rigidly focused on the swaying of the sails high above.
Inside, the first mate fought a silent battle; he wasn't sure if he could face you at that moment without his treacherous brain starting to superimpose your real image over that illusion.
He wondered, with a curiosity that deeply ashamed him, how realistic that double really was compared to you, torturing himself trying to discern if every birthmark and every curve the sea had displayed with such audacity actually belonged to the annoying woman who was now standing right there beside him.
"It was just the atmospheric pressure of the mist affecting my neurotransmitters."
he replied with a voice too monotonous to be credible. "A weather anomaly. Nothing more."
"Right. A weather anomaly that caused you a sudden nosebleed and almost made you drop your weapon?"
you crossed your arms, arching an eyebrow and casting a suggestive look at the handkerchief he was still pressing against his face.
"I thought cold men like you didn't suffer from high pressure just by looking at the sea."
"I didn't have any hemorrhage." he retorted quickly, his voice coming out a bit nasal as he finally looked at you for a brief second before looking away again, the tips of his ears still betraying the flush.
"I was just having a severe allergic reaction to the pollen of that mist... and maybe a spasm caused by the irritation of having you around, even in fish format."
"Funny, I've never seen pollen make someone bleed from the nose while staring at the cleavage of an illusion."
you teased, stepping to the side to try and catch his gaze.
"It was the weather, I already said."
he grumbled, quickening his step toward the cabin with the haste of someone fleeing a battlefield.
"And don't you dare mention this in the navigation report."
You let out a nasal laugh, watching the rigid silhouette of the first mate who, in his haste to save what remained of his dignity, didn't even notice the new scarlet trail insisting on staining his upper lip.
Instead of answering with words, you took two quick steps and placed yourself in front of him, blocking his path.
Before he could protest, you brought a handkerchief slowly and deliberately to his face, pressing the fabric against Benn's treacherous nose.
"Of course, Beckman. Of course." you murmured, sustaining his gaze while wiping the evidence of his less 'statistical' thoughts.
"But if it was just the weather, I think the New World is trying to tell you that you need much more self-control... or a vacation."
He didn't answer, but his silence weighed more than any rhetoric, especially as he took your handkerchief with a haste that bordered on nervousness.
You turned your back on him with a victorious smile, only to face the rest of the deck, where the "post-battle" atmosphere was, in fact, a collective moral hangover.
The crew remained in a deathly silence, each lost in their own abyss of embarrassment and existential regret.
While most of the crew dealt with the moral hangover of having had perverted thoughts or vows of love for illusions, Lucky Roux was the only one who seemed to be genuinely in mourning, looking at his empty kitchen hook with deep melancholy.
Unlike Yasopp, who was still trying to process the shock of having almost offered his soul and his musket for a scaly and suspiciously attractive version of his own wife, or Benn, who was wiping traces of blood from his nose while trying to forget how detailed the semi-naked copy of your body was that the sea had projected for him, Roux had not been seduced by romance, curves, or affective memories.
He really, from the bottom of his hungry soul, wanted to devour his siren.
To him, the sea had not offered a woman, a double, or a wife;
it had offered a gastronomic miracle that defied the laws of biology: a colossal boar ham with a succulent tail, which he was ready to roast, smoke, and serve with a sweet and sour sauce he was already mentally seasoning.
While the others dealt with the weight of forbidden desires and sinful visions, Roux suffered the greatest of pains: the loss of a legendary meal that never reached the plate.
The cook let out a sigh that seemed to carry all the weight of the world's hunger, putting away the hook with a funeral reverence.
"She had the shine of a well-seared meat..." Roux whispered to the void, a solitary tear rolling down his chubby cheek.
"That marbled fat will never be forgotten. Why is fate so cruel to someone who just wants a good feast?"
You observed the scene, feeling that, in a way, his culinary obsession was the only genuine thing on that deck full of pirates pretending they hadn't just gone through the biggest embarrassment of their careers.
While Yasopp and Benn dealt with identity and biology crises, Roux suffered for an empty or rather broken stomach.
You felt a twinge of empathy for his genuine sorrow, but looking at the sea, you ended up letting out a sigh of relief for the creature.
Poor ham-siren, you thought with a contained smile, she has no idea how lucky she was.
If the mist had lasted five more minutes, she wouldn't have been seduced or courted;
she would have ended up in a pressure cooker with fine herbs and a bit of white wine.
And without you knowing, in the dark and silent depths of the ocean, far from the ship's keel, the group of sirens who had previously tried to devour the Red-Haired pirates swam away; in the middle of the formation, the siren who had assumed the form of a succulent sea boar stopped swimming abruptly.
She felt a gelid shiver run through her scales, a sinister premonition that had nothing to do with the water temperature.
Without understanding why, she looked up at the shadow of the Red Force moving away, and swam as fast as she could, passing her sisters and taking the lead of the group, feeling she had escaped a fate much more terrible than any bounty hunter could offer.
Back on the deck of the Red Force, the atmosphere was so dense it could be cut with one of Lucky Roux's knives.
Humiliation hung like a second mist, but this time, without any trace of perfume or magic—only the acrid smell of pirates realizing they had been made fools of by their own subconscious.
That would be a subject buried under seven keys; a silent pact of collective amnesia that no one would dare mention at dinner, nor the next day, nor even in the drunkest toasts of the next ten years.
If it were up to Benn, Yasopp, Rockstar, or any other member of the crew, that moment of weakness would be erased from the annals of pirate history.
However, you observed the scene with a dangerous and amused glint in your eyes.
As you saw the first mate still trying to hide the blood-stained handkerchief and the captain hugging the mast as if asking for the world's forgiveness, you realized you held the supreme power on board.
The crew might be feared in the four seas, but there, on that ship, each of their dignity was in the palm of your hand.
And you hadn't the slightest intention of letting them forget how "romantic" sailing could really be.
What you, and none of the crew members, yet knew—and that even Limejuice himself, in his desperate escape to the quarters, had no time to notice—was that technology is sometimes more persistent than sanity itself.
At the height of embarrassment, he had dropped the camera on the deck floor, forgetting it on while running to hide under the covers.
However, the device continued its work from the moment the confusion began until the moment it ended.
Thanks to the impact of the first jolt, the camera's shutter was locked in continuous shooting mode, and the lens, fallen at a miraculous angle, captured everything.
There, recorded on the memory card, was the most incriminating sequence of photos in the history of the New World: the exact millisecond in which Shanks's face collided with Rockstar's.
The automatic click immortalized the kiss with crystalline focus and poetic lighting provided by the last remnants of the mist in the background, making the moment look like it came out of an epic romance, not a nautical disaster.
The irrefutable proof of the "romantic kiss" remained there, forgotten on the deck while the camera's little light blinked silently, waiting for the moment someone—or you—found it to seal the fate of the captain's and the recruit's dignity forever when everyone's guard was too low.
END
Author's Notes: Hi!
This was a very short and simple fanfic, I hope you enjoyed it. I was inspired by the TikTok audio and that scene on the ship from Ice Age 4.
Maybe I'll write a similar scenario for other crews, let me know of any grammatical errors.
hellooo, for the summer vacation can i ask for titus danforth, fair/carnival, hurt/comfort, dealer’s choice (soulmate or hanahaki disease) and a willow dancing on air? congratulations for the anniversary!!🌟🎂🫂
okay I went a slightly spooky route for this one, I hope that's alright.
i was dead when i woke up this morning, and i'll be dead before the day is done (seven devils by florence and the machine)
Titus had searched tirelessly for you for the past 50 years and he'd finally found you again. He observed you from afar as you milled about through the fair, stopping at booths to admire the mystical wares that other witches were selling. This part hurt every time, seeing you just as you'd been the last time, happy and unaware of your fate. You had no idea about your tie to Titus and the tragedy that has followed you.
Titus continued to stay hidden as you moved along and he even watched you barter at one booth for some spell ingredients you needed. A fierce protectiveness rose in Titus' chest. Once you were his again, you wouldn't need to barter for anything, Titus would give you the world.
He followed you from a discreet distance, sticking to the shadows and letting his heightened senses do the work to keep tabs on you. You left the fair and trailed off into the woods with Titus close behind. His vampiric abilities meant he stayed silent and he was able to get in front of you quickly, pulling you from the path and caging you against a tree. He pressed his body against yours and held your head in between his palms as his heart fluttered at being this close to you again.
You struggled for a moment before realizing it was useless. The skin to skin contact meant your magic could feel things - who he was, what he was, and the sorrow in his heart that gave you pause.
"I know what you are." You said it like a warning.
"I know. Look deeper." Titus opened his mind to you, allowing your magic to reach into his mind and view his memories. The images flashed through your mind, moments you didn't recall but ones that featured you nonetheless. The different clothing and hair clued you into the long history of the memories that spanned over hundreds of years. Versions of yourself that you didn't recognize laughing and smiling with the vampire in front of you, moments where you two were tangled together in a lovers embrace as the words 'I love you' fell easily from your lips.
You saw more memories, darker ones that filled you with fear. You dying over and over again, the vampire always there, always trying to protect you and failing. You watched him cradle your body and scream in despair over losing you for the hundredth time.
You gasped, releasing his mind and staring at him with wide, confused eyes. Titus stared back, his eyes displaying his anguish and his hope of having you here. You were as beautiful as the last time he lost you, still full of fire and curiosity. He hated what he had to do next but he couldn't lose you again, he wouldn't.
"Forgive me my love." You didn't even have a moment to scream before Titus bit you and everything went dark.
