piratejournal | [Voice & Written]

[Switches to flicking Natsuno's forehead.] Of course it hurts.

It means you're alive.

People take it for granted. Living without the pain or the feel like you're drowning just to keep breathing.

This island just accentuates it. It makes it easier for them. ["And harder for us" he seems to imply.]

If a happy ending isn't going to happen, don't bother worrying about it. Take the happiness wherever you can. That's what it means to be a pirate. You don't have to let someone else decide your path. Only you do.

If you want Riku around, then don't give up. Hold your head up and keep moving forward until you're walking step and step again.

[He spreads both hands with a shrug.] What that means will change with time, but for now it means figuring yourself out. Whatever Riku needs he may not even know yet. It'll only come to you with time and watching.

Don't focus on what you have or decide you can't have something you want. The world's too big for that kind of small thinking. It'll get you lost. Focus on what you want, find it, and don't lose it. Come at it from all angles. Protect it.

Mah. I told you Ace tried to kill Pops long before he ever agreed to join the crew, eh? [He folds his arms and tilts his head to the side.] Sometimes the thing we want is on the same path, but the obstacles we think are there are actually allies all along. And sometimes what we think we want is really what we want.

Don't give up. [Light shove to Natsuno's forehead again.]

I hate this island.

[He rubs his forehead.]

I don't know, I don't know what I want anymore. Nothing. Something...I just don't know.

Honestly...I gave up before I came here. I was days away from my end. I accepted that even.

[He can't even deny it, it's flat out true. He intended on dying, he pushed everything down and ignored it.]

I was beginning to feel happy with him...I feel guilty about that too. It isn't like it's been ages since everyone died.

Ugh, I'm a mess, rambling on about nothing.

Relax, yoi.

[Ruffles Natsuno's head carefully around the flower crown.] You're reaching out for a liferaft, but you don't see it.

You're already on a ship.

It's okay to be happy. Do you think those who've died would want you to be miserable just because they died?

I hate this island too, but it does have a point. What's alive has its own voice. I don't like how it's drowning out the undercurrent. It's nauseating for me because I teeter the brink I guess. All the same, you are here. You are now. What has happened can't be changed, can't be replaced. This ship doesn't go backwards. All you can do is charge through the storms, might as well enjoy the ride.

Don't beat yourself up for that. Like I said, kid. Hold your head high and keep going.

[Maybe that analogy is pretty apt. Natsuno feels like he's struggling and it's frustrating. He doesn't want to fight anymore.]

I don't know. Some people I knew might think that way.

[He takes a deep breath and sighs.]

I really don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix it or how to change how I feel or anything like that. I try and think about it, but there's...nothing. I'm on a ship but...

Then those aren't worth doing what they want, eh. [Waves a hand.]

Mah.... you're still looking too far ahead of yourself.

Start with the very basics.

You're here. Now. You don't want to be miserable.

Keep it simple.

You want to hold your own. You want to give something back to your nakama.

Here. [Hands over his wrist.] Drink and maybe it'll help at least with how much this island is crowding in on you, eh?

[It is entirely possible that the island is having more of an effect rather than just crippling fear, if he was honest about it. He was not freaking out about this before they were there. Not like this. Hadn't he resolved to get past things?]

I don't want to be a burden on the crew.

[It's so enticing. He wants to protest, but realistically, shouldn't he just do it? Isn't that what Riku is getting at?

He licks his teeth and takes Marco's wrist in his hands gingerly. There isn't any point in asking for permission when it's already been granted.]

Lean forward a bit...the wrist is actually pretty dangerous.

[Indeed, Marco had a full out panic attack about the idea of Thatch leaving him, even though he knows Thatch never would by choice. The island really does affect them, unfortunately.]

[Marco's eyes prickle with amusement.]

Phoenix, remember?

[But he bows his head, leaning the neck forward easily enough.] Just don't be surprised if you sparkle for a week. It'll probably boost your regeneration too, I'd expect.

[He's kind of doing it to spite the island too. His own form of rebelling against it, along with the intense manic moods.]

[Natsuno doesn't need to move up too far on his arm before it's safer to sink his teeth in. When the blood touches his tongue he can't help but let his reflexes kick in. It's one of the rare times he's not needing it, but he can actually enjoy it, as horrible as that seems.

Even if Marco is a Phoenix, it doesn't stop him from glancing up with his eyes. If Marco decides to faint on him, he'll have to move quickly like he did for Selphie.]

[No chance.]

[Marco isn't fazed, and if anything, his incredibly masochistic side tries to repress his own instinctive healing... a little.]

[He can't fully stop it though, and the blood probably tastes weird as hell since it's at least partially blue flames and sparkles.]

[Marco is sooooooo not normal.]

[It's strange, but not entirely unpleasant either. It only needs to last a moment or two more before he retracts his teeth, draws his tongue over the remaining blood and lean back.

Somehow he feels a little more clear headed. It isn't entirely gone, the panic and the horror brewing under the surface, but for the moment it's a little easier to take.

Sitting up in that confined space the entire time they're there is probably not helping. It's getting to him.]

[Marco is also a little clearer, or at least feeling less like a yin-yang that's been spinning so fast everything looks almost gray to the outside viewer, but to him just looks nauseating.]

[He keeps the sleeve rolled up though since it's the one with his Spade tattoo and quirks his eyebrows in amusement.]

Better?

Yeah, actually I feel a little better.

[That realization in itself is a little welcome, although unsettling.]

And I didn't even go on the island.

Oi.

Don't either.

There are a lot of rules about nakama I keep forgetting you're all new to even the concepts of, but letting your nakama do the shit that will fuck you up instead of you is one of the biggest rules, eh.

[Runs a hand through his hair. It's the only reason Marco's there and goes back. Because his brothers can't, and he needs to face it because it's hard. The more unpleasant it is the more he's got to deal with it. Even though he doesn't really want to.]

Come on chore boy. What do you say you get started on those things you've been neglecting? Before you know it, once you can start looking around you and saying "Aha, I did that," you'll be able to hold your head up a little more each and every time.

If you want, I'll even stick around a little longer, yoi.

[He shudders visibly.]

No, the deck is too close to the island. If I could get further away from it, I would. This was as far as I could get.

[It will have to wait until they put this place behind them.]

You don't have to. I'm...well I'll be relatively okay here.

I know I don't have to, but we're nakama.

If it'll help, I'll stay.

Yeah, okay.

[He nods a little bit.]

All right, Prince. Let's go.

[You've been crowned so now you're royalty.]

[Enjoy it, even though he's still gonna make you clean up.]

You can tell me stories about your world and I'll see if I can't find one from mine with happier days too.

Stories, huh.

[He thinks about it, musing a little.]

Let me see...

Tohru really believed some of the strangest things. My father would say it's because of small town superstitions. All the same, he did.

So the story he told me was there was this spring in town. The water would come through the forest and they built kind of like a well for the water to sit in.

The water is always cool and people believed it would make you smarter if you drank it. So kids would drink the water before tests or things like that.

I never believed in anything like that because to me it's just something that seems to be unproven. So one night we were walking by and he tells me this story. In the water is this spider and he says the spider is like a guardian, always living in the water and it had been there for generations.

I can't say I was listening in detail, because he's going on and on about this spider and the next thing I know cold water is being splash in my face and he grins at me and says.

'Well you want to get into university don't you?'

[Natsuno can't hide the fond smile. Tohru was something else.]

So did it make you smarter?

[Sticks his tongue out.]

[Small town superstitions or not, Marco comes from a world and place where such things almost always come true.]

Of course not! I don't think that's how these things work.

Hmm. Who else can I tell you about...

[Because Marco must be tired of hearing about Tohru's nonsense by now.]

I could tell you about Shimizu.

This girl was crazy. I'm not even talking about when she was a vampire, she was completely crazy before then.

So I move to town and Shimizu Megumi is in my class. So this girl had some kind of fixation on the city. She really wanted to go there, I guess. I tuned out half the things she said to me.

She would come up to me and say 'Yuuki-kun' and then just stare at me. At first it didn't seem more then just a crush but then, then this girl starts stalking me.

I don't mind she'd follow me to school, which she would, I mean she would come at night and sit outside my window, staring at me from the bushes. She wasn't exactly covert. It got to the point I couldn't even open the shades on my window. She was always there.

I wasn't sure what to do about her so I resorted to ignoring her altogether. This did not deter her in any way. Not even a little bit. I looked at her once and man did she read that the wrong way.

It was like she cast herself as this tragic heroine or something. I don't know, like I was in a love story I didn't ask to be in.

Honestly, when she died, I wasn't the least bit sorry about that.

That's.... pretty damn odd.

I mean I got some girls who put together the whole phoenix and Whitebeard thing so they were after the fame, but even then...

Was she trying to tell you something?

She never confessed to me. I mean, I wouldn't have been surprised. I think she liked the dramatic effect, being the person who loved someone from afar. I really didn't know what to do about it.

[He snorts.]

She came back as a vampire and that night I was at Tohru's, it was never more clear just how nuts she was. I was frozen, hypnotized. She wanted me to see it. She told me how much she hated Tohru because I liked him much better than her. She was right, but that's irrelevant.

When she died, her friend Kaori tried to give me a summer greeting card she left behind, but I wanted nothing more to do with her. I wouldn't have been at the funeral, except my mother made me go. It came in the mail awhile later, just before I died. She was still stalking me as a vampire and she made sure I knew it too. I felt like I was going crazy, but I know I wasn't. I opened the window, ripped it up and threw it outside for her to find.

She took my best friend away. Even if she were sane at some point, there's no way I could forgive her.

[His eyes narrow.]

Aye.

If a woman tried to come between me and Thatch I don't know which of us would rip her apart first, but it wouldn't be pretty.

[Shakes his head.]

I still don't suppose I get it. If she wanted to be close to you so badly, why go about it the worst way possible?

I really don't have an explanation for that. There was someone that Tohru liked. She was nice enough and sane. I didn't like it, but there's not much I could do. She wouldn't have tried to kill me just because we were friends.

Shimizu was just crazy and being a vampire after that, well, she seemed to like it a lot.

[He shuffles a little.]

It's bad luck for her I suppose. Even if I did like women, her stalking was beyond enough to turn a person off, I would think.

What a psycho, yoi.

I guess I'm just glad none of my brother's girlfriends have been that bad.

Although don't even get me started on the whole thing between Vista and Yassopp, that is such a headache.

[Snaps his fingers, and grabs a seat on a counter, checking through inventories now that they're resupplying everything, might as well run a quick checklist while he's sane enough and before he starts going ~~batty~~ birdie.]

Vista had some pretty crazy moments though. Flower sword Vista. He's our strongest swordsman, even a little more than Thatch, but don't tell Thatch I said so, yoi.

Vista is about ten feet tall, uses two swords, and has an unfortunate habit of tying maidens to seatrain railroad tracks. That's how we got Izou.

[All of this is probably a lie because Marco is Marco.]

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