Insistent Assistant 12 (Patreon)

Insistent Assistant

Chapter 12

-VB-

The ship that I bought was a merchant brig and I named her One Man’s Sail.

Because it’s a sailboat? It’s mine? One man?

Ah?

No?

Okay, I’ll shut up.

Typical brigs used by merchants were made to require as little crew as possible (profit and all that) and carry a lot of cargo. I had plenty of money (two-thirds of it stored with the Ilisian Royal Bank), but it was always a good idea to make more money.

It was why I had asked for a simple if decent trade route to transfer some Ilisian goods across the seas.

This was why I was now sailing the high seas with Jack manning the wheel, half a dozen sailors working the rigging, and me doing nothing. What? I wasn’t a sailor. I would make everyone’s jobs harder right now because they were in the middle of work. I could learn later when everyone’s doing something else.

As for what I was transferring…

Food.

See, Ilisia was a kingdom with rich fertile farmlands and forests. It made Ilisia an exporting powerhouse locally because the other nearby islands did not have either of those. Sure, some of them might have better ports or better fishing spots, but wood and grain remained the staple for ship construction and diet, respectively.

We also needed to get a heading, which we got compasses, maps, and tools for.

All of this I learned and more from Jack in detail. Now, all of it would not have stuck with me without some good experience and repetition. However, I was somehow getting them all in my head very quickly. I learned how to tie certain knots, why certain rigging was necessary in that specific manner, how to pull the sails up and down depending on the flow of the wind, watch the sky and sea to determine the weather pattern, and more.

There was a lot, but in the so-far week-long voyage that we’ve been on, I was beginning to get a hang of what it was like being a sailor.

Now, Jack was also very keen on teaching me how to be a pirate.

“So … black flag is actually the good flag for our victims?” I asked him with a raised eyebrow.

“Yup!” he grinned. “See, if you have a black flag, then you’re telling them that you just want their money, not their lives. It’s more likely to get them to stop than if you had a red flag. That’s the edgelord flag that says you want to kill everyone, enslave the survivor, and rape the girls.”

He paused and then narrowed his eyes.

“I expect we won’t need the red flag?”

“No?”

“Oh. Good!” he smiled again.

I actually had a list provided by the king on who we could rob because their kingdoms weren’t in good relations, so this particular information was not useless or irrelevant to me. I was, however, a little hesitant to attack people who might just be merchants trying to provide for their families.

I was okay with killing pirates and bandits.

Attacking regular merchants… not so much.

“... Anyways, how close are we to our destination?” I asked Jack.

Jack pulled out a little notebook and flipped around to the latest note. “Hrnn…. We should be … a week away.”

“Only a week?”

“Yes,” he replied. “The place we are going should be close to Alabasta, actually.”

I nodded solemnly.

Alabasta Kingdom was actually where I did want to go, because, well, it sucked that people lived shit lives because of Crocodile. I wanted to do something about it, and I thought that I may be strong enough to do something.

Perhaps not beat Crocodile like Luffy did but fuck with their peripheral operations? Oh yes, I could do that. Technically speaking, Baroque Works was considered “in bad standing” with the Ilisia Kingdom because the syndicate had attacked and threatened more than one of Ilisia’s allies and friends.

I didn’t mind attacking them. Oh no, I wanted to.

“Once we stop at the ‘Chocho’ island, we’ll drop off the ales and beers, pick up sugar canes, and then move onto Alabasta.”

I looked around and saw that none of the crew were on the deck right now. I leaned in and met Jack’s eyes with a meaningful gaze. “And on our way back to Ilisia, we’ll hit a few Baroque Works.”

“That is the plan, captain my captain,” he replied cheekily. “But before we talk anymore about that, we still have some sword training to do!” he said and then pulled out a sword out of nowhere. I was familiar with it because Jack used it to beat my ass every day for the past week on this ship.

He called it the Sword of Cortez. It wasn’t something I was familiar with (because I only ever saw the first three movies and no more), but it allowed Jack to do … crazy stuff that didn’t belong in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Because a sword shouldn’t be able to teleport its wielder, make wind out of nowhere, and transform a fishing boat into a grand frigate.

… Actually, the Flying Dutchman and Calypso invalidated my statement. It definitely belonged in the franchise.

REGARDLESS!

Jack used it to teach me how to fight with a sword, which I still sucked at, and also how to control the sword’s powers.

The most we were doing was using the sword’s aerokinetic feature to push our ship forward. It was why a journey that should take a month was only taking half of the time for us. Aren’t we lucky?

“Now, draw your sword, Alan! I will have your ass again!” Jack cackled, and I grumbled as I pulled out a saber.

“And I’ll be ecstatically happy when I finally smash your face in.”

He struck first. “En garde!” And then said that after.

“Cheater!”

“I’m a pirate~!”

I noticed that the crew of six had come up and looked at us like prime evening entertainment.

Bastards! Help your captain!