[01] Naval Battle!

[Belle Hibiki]

Belle stood upon the bow of the Maiden's Dream, straight-backed and bedecked in his finest as the elegantly constructed galleon cut across the waves like a blade through water. She was a stout, fast ship, and had served Belle faithfully in his service to the Queen's navy. For over ten years, ever since he was a little boy mopping decks, he had stood upon the decks of many vessels, but none quite so fine and sturdy as the one he mastered now.

He took a deep breath and tasted the tangy, salty air, feeling rejuvenated. The smell reminded him of Central City...

Wait. What was Central City?

There was a moment of pregnant silence, and then three things hit him very quickly. First, was that he was not an officer of the Maiden's Dream, or indeed of any ship. Second, was that he didn't know what a navy was. And third, he had no intention of serving a queen ever - in this life or the next.

Belle looked up towards the foreboding bank of clouds that had gathered in the distance, feeling fingers of wind caressing his face and playing with his hair. A dark shadow of something loomed over his brow, and it was a few seconds before Belle realized what it was.

Reaching up, Belle swept off his tricorn hat, examined it briefly, then tossed it to the deck.

His captor was behind this... Whatever this was. Belle wasn't sure what to call it; illusion, hallucination, dream? All of them seemed true, but none of them seemed adequate. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that he was inside a computer, but the effort was like trying to stretch a tennis ball around a house.

He gave up the futile mental exercise. Although the details of his situation had changed, his overall goal had not: find the man that had planned his attack and defeat him. Until that chance arose, however, it looked like Belle was going to have to play along with whatever game was put in front of him.

Or he would die.

Belle frowned, squinting his eyes towards the horizon. He thought he saw something there, but he couldn't be too sure. If only he could get a closer look...

As if guided by invisible strings, his hand drifted down to his pant leg and extracted a thin, felt-lined case from his pocket that Belle had somehow known would be there. He popped it open, extracted the spyglass snugged inside, extended it, and peered out across the choppy waves.

No mistaking it: there was another ship out there. His eye narrowed, tweaking the lens and trying to get the distant vessel into clearer focus.

A deep peal of thunder trembled the distant sky. The image resolved, and Belle sucked in a breath. Black sails.

There was only kind of ship that flew black sails.

"Pirates," Belle whispered the word like a curse. He turned his head and shouted towards the aftcastle: "Ten degrees to starboard, Mister Lynch."

The swarthy pilot of the galleon nodded and spun the wheel to the right. There was a soft creaking of wood as the Maiden's Dream drifted in the appropriate direction, angling on an intercept course for the dark blob in the distance.

Belle worked his way back from the bow as he re-pocketed his spyglass, wondering how he could have known half of the things he had just spewed. He had never set sail once in his short life, unless he counted the actual Maiden's Dream, which had been more of a mutated zeppelin than anything else. Cog had used words like port and starboard, but Belle had never gotten them straight - until now. Everything was confused.

One thing he knew for sure, though: he had to report this to the captain.

He hopped down the short flight of steps to the poop deck, clomped across it in his heavy boots, opened the door to the aftcastle, bypassed the stairs that led to the lower decks, and made for the door to the captain's quarters.

He rapped three times with his knuckles, waited for a response, then opened the door and glanced inside. A dark shape lay slumped in the plush chair behind the captain's stately desk. "Sir," Belle started to say without thinking, entering the room completely and starting forward, one hand on the pommel of the sheathed cutlass at his hip. "We've just spotted a pirate ship, ten miles distant. I can't be sure at this range, but it seems to match the description of the one that raided port Solsmoth two months ago. I think that we - " He stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes widened"You?!"

Captain Alexander Trafford lifted his head, recognition flickering in his eyes, and straightened in his seat. He appeared to think for a moment, then nodded, as if to himself. "Belle." He met his eyes. "Right?"

Belle was momentarily taken aback. "Yes," he muttered.

The last time he had seen Alexander Trafford had been in the Dante's Abyss coliseum. They had fought each other, and Belle had lost. It had only been a couple of months since that fateful day for the psychokinetic, but for Belle it had been over a year. He barely recognized Trafford, though he remembered his actions all too well.

His jaw tensed. He supposed it was mildly better than being teamed up with Kaden, but not by much. Trafford's conduct during the fight - especially the part where he had tried to kill Birdie as a ploy to get Belle to drop his guard - had earned him several black marks with the half-saiyan. The sting of Belle's anger was, in this rare case, slow to fade, and his normally tempestuous anger had settled down to brood like a thundercloud over that moment.

Trafford stood up. "Let's get this over with," he said, sounding supremely disinterested in the whole affair. Maybe he hadn't heard that his life was on the line.

Maybe he just didn't care.

~+~+~+~+~

Two miles out and closing fast, Belle checked the spyglass again. When he had first checked, all he had been able to make out was black sails. Now that he was closer, however, he could make out more details.

The ship was of an older model, but still dangerous. It he guessed right, it could field nearly the same gun they could, and although its hull looked very dirty, it was obvious that the ship itself was well tended. In fact it seemed modified, outstripping his expectations for speed. Although the Maiden's Dream was slightly faster, it would only be so as long as the storm's winds were on their side.

Again, Belle wondered where all this knowledge was coming from. "Shit," he grunted.

Or at least, that's what he wanted to say. All that came out instead was: "Bollocks."

"Commander," one of the crew came running up to the bow. He spotted Trafford and sprang to a quick salute. "All cannon are armed and ready. What are your orders?"

Belle looked from the man to Trafford, then back again. "Uh," he stalled, his repository of sea knowledge suddenly coming up dry. It was apparently only enough to get him started, but not enough to tell him how to win the game.

The crewman waited. When no answer was forthcoming, he looked hesitantly towards the captain, but Trafford was much more interested in contemplating the cigar that had apparently replaced his ever-present cigarettes.

"It's not the same thing," Trafford growled.

"Let's, uh," Belle wracked his mind for an idea. Sayana had showed him a movie about pirates, once. What had they done, again...?

Then he remembered. "Fire a warning shot across their port side," he ordered, feeling relieved as the man seemed to understand and hurried off to carry out the instructions.

A minute later one of the cannons on the deck boomed, vibrations shuddering through the ship as a dark blur raced into the sky, angling towards the pirate ship.

There was a collective intake of breath, and someone muttered "incompetent." Belle didn't understand, but realized what the problem was a heartbeat later when there was a sharp, sudden crack in the distance. Slowly, the pirate ship began to turn.

"Well," Belle rubbed his head, "I guess we got their attention?"

"Whoopee," Alexander rolled his shoulders.