A Fight in the West Blue Boonies

As Elaina made the short jog to Lumen she caught sight of smoke above the tree line. Her mood went from upbeat to somewhat panicked as she broke into a run while using her internal map of the port town's dock streets to calculate where the fire was originating and thinking of what could've possibly happened to cause it. Lumen city was almost entirely over water, built on wooden docks the oldest of which the citizens had long since been concerned would collapse eventually, so much so that local community leadership had recently started a few fundraising campaigns to hire a construction company from outside of town who could take up the task of renovating or, in the worst case, reconstructing those docks. Wooden houses lined the sides of the streets, built on both wood and stone foundations. Some were supported by large wood pillars that went under the water and to the bay's seafloor, others were simply founded upon giant stone cubes that had been brought from elsewhere and dropped into the bay, those, however, were reserved for larger public facilities as any actions that could damage the local reef were scrutinized for and strictly limited.

As Elaina stepped onto the beach that the dirt road led out to and was about to move to the start of the closest dock a bit away from the clearing, she caught a glimpse of two young boys that she recognized as two of the boys attending her father's dojo classes rushing off of the dock and towards her. As they got closer to her, Elaina called out to them, "Hey, what's goin on?" One of them promptly responded but did not stop running, "I don't know, pirates just suddenly started attacking and looting some shops in the market." and continued down the dirt path Elaina came from. Evidently, the boys intended to ask for help from her father. Elaina then started running on and through the docks that made up the streets. The people that Elaina saw standing out on the streets or by their homes as she got closer to the center market dock area had fearful looks on their faces which only intensified her worry as to the damage done by the pirates. Some of the people who recognized her though were relieved when they noticed one of the out-of-town dojo's better sword wielders make their way towards the ruckus, they, after all, had long helped with peacekeeping out here in the west blue boonies where marine deployment was slow to respond to pirates causing chaos.

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When she finally arrived near the market she slowed down seeing that blocking the way was a large crowd. She then approached it and started pushing herself through the crowd until she was called out to by someone she knew.

"Elaina!" He cried in an attempt to catch her attention.

"Stoker?! What are you doing here?" She recognized promptly the red mullet of her new crewmate who was wearing a loose, untucked, white button-up shirt with the top two buttons unfastened and a pair of black pants. He also had two silver ringed earrings on his left ear and wore some heavy, tightly fastened black, steel-toed boots.

"We were just looking around the market, I went off on my own and turned around to find Moria'd pissed off a crew of pirates," Stoker informed.

Elaina was a bit disappointed that her captain had gotten in a fight before they'd even gone out to sea... without her there. She paused a second before saying, "well we ought to do our part to end it then, shall we?"

Stoker's worry was not helped by the look he then saw his future crew's vice-captain make, but he simply sighed before smirking and following behind her as she continued to push through to the front of the crowd. As Elaina and Stoker came out the front they saw their captain bruised, beaten, and panting yet still standing. Several of the surrounding market stalls were collapsed or looted, the top of one of them which was on fire had been the source of the smoke that led Elaina here, by the 13 pirates who faced Moria several of which had fresh bruises and even small bite marks on their bodies. Three of them were unarmed, eight had modest blades of some kind, and two had guns. As Elaina and Stoker broke from the crowd, Elaina called to her future captain, "Moria, we're not even out to sea yet and you wanna cause trouble already?" This put everyone's attention on her and Stoker.

"I didn't know she was with a pirate crew dammit," Moria responded, his agitation clear.

The pirates all looked at Elaina following the ruckus and one of the goons who'd been closer to her and her crewmate responded by turning his simple, straight, double-edged Saber on her and asking a question of his own, "What do ya want girl, you this guys friend or somethin?"

"Yeah, I am. You got a problem?" at that statement Moria's face shifted slightly.

Instead of the man Elaina was speaking to, a blond-haired, tattooed man who was leading the fight against Moria responded "Yes we do. This man hurt my crewmate."

"Really?" Elaina responded and elaborated on her confusion, "I've known this gecko for most of my life, I don't think he's the type to do that unprompted."

Stoker then added, responding to Elaina's confusion "I think it was over something they both wanted to buy, I didn't catch what though."

"Huh, that right? Well, I can't fault you for defending your friend; after all, I came to do the same thing," Elaina said with sympathy. "So why don't one of you nobody's come at me?"

As she said this the guy with his saber pointed to Elaina and rushed at her while shouting "You asked for it!"

As he got closer Elaina took a step forward and took in both her hands the wooden practice sword she had at her hip and sidestepped an incoming, one-handed downward slash to the side of the hand he was holding his sword in. She then proceeded to hit him on the wrist as he passed by to loosen his grip and then, as he moved slightly behind her, almost instantaneously pulled her sword to hit him on the back of the neck. Despite the rush of this action, it was produced with wonderful finesse and the second strike carried surprising force, which managed to knock the man unconscious. Letting go of his blade, the man fell to the ground. The mood of the crowd was shocked, to say the least, as they watched this demonstration of skill that easily outclassed anything the pirates had done.

This action was seen by the captain with interest and as Elaina quickly turned around to pick up the pirate's blade he said "Now this'll be much more interesting."

He turned to walk toward Elaina and took some steps toward her. Elaina then turned back to look at the pirate at which point he stopped and called to her, "I'm Bryce L. Stark, What is your name swordmaster?"

"'Master' seems like a bit of an overstatement but... it's Elaina... soon to be no last name."

At this, the pirate raised an eyebrow, "Have you no pride? Why give up your name as a warrior?"

"Because I've plans to sail soon and I don't want my family here and at the dojo to be endangered because of whatever I get up to. Besides, the summit of the world of swordsmen wasn't really a goal of mine to begin with."

The pirate chuckled and agreed, "A decent idea, but one that will cost you some pride amongst swordsmen."

There was then a silence between them as they stared each other down, during which Stoker was approached by another of the faceless goons. This one was unarmed and as such came at Stoker with a punch. Stoker quickly raised his leg and kicked the guy's fist away, throwing him off to the side, off-balance, after which Stoker walked towards Moria to see if he could support him.

"Captain, how is this fight?" Stoker asked somewhat sheepishly, wondering about the strength of their opponents.

"Now that Elaina's got the captain alone and ready to duel, it's not bad. I could probably take them all without that guy up in my face." As Moria said this, 4 black flying figures of round-bodied, dot-eyed bats began to emerge from Moria's shadow. Stoker then took a stance and said, "Then we should get to work. Just, please don't steal any shadows in broad daylight again, you know how Elaina gets when you do that."

"No promises" Moria responded

Moria and Stoker rushed forward, two of Moria's bats rushed the gunslingers and two took to the other blade brandishers to keep them busy. Moria himself came up to a short, brown-haired, and unarmed woman who was standing near where the captain was before. She attempted to intercept what she perceived to be his attempt to charge in and hit her with a straight punch, but Moria defied her expectation. He had telegraphed a windup on the left but, as he got within distance, he struck from below on the right, hitting her hard upside the chin. As she fell back a man beside her rushed Moria with a sword and slashed high at Moria's chest which Moria dodged with a duck and then proceeded to tackle his midsection which threw him to the ground.

Stoker jumped into the middle of the crowd and knocked out one sword wielder with a flying kick. He was then approached by one unarmed man at his back and two female sword wielders to his front left and right. He turned and rushed to hit the man in the stomach with a hook to stun him without knocking him down but maintained his momentum to get behind him so as to leave the middle of the pirate's formation. As the girls came up to the sides of their comrade while aiming to attack Stoker, he turned and hit all of them in the head in a line with a spinning high kick knocking them all out.

Moria proceeded to charge the last undistracted guy, the one Stoker had kicked the hand of before he moved to Moria's side. Moria however wasted no time dealing with the decently burly man by simply punching him in the face to knock him out promptly.

Looking at the pirates that had previously been distracted trying to fend off Moria's bats, Stoker and Moria moved to take down the gunslingers before anything else. Moria grabbed one, a tanned young man with sunglasses, by the arm and threw him to the ground. Stoker was met by the barrel of the gun his target was holding. It fired once which startled Stoker but it very apparently, and luckily, missed him. Wasting no time once he realized nothing had happened, Stoker ran up and planted his foot firmly in the gunman's chest to kick him down and away, in the process of which he dropped his gun.

Stoker moved to then attack one of the last two swordsmen, the one he picked actually wielded a rapier. He dodged a forward stab to the left and grabbed his attacker's rapier handle before kicking him in the stomach, sending him flying but leaving his rapier in Stoker's hand. While this happened Moria called all of his now free-to-use shadow bats and swarmed the last pirate to distract him thoroughly before circling behind the guy and punching him in the back of the head to take him out.

Now that the fight was over the pirate's captain looked away from his stare down and frowned. "Not bad, I suppose," he said with respect despite the contempt present on his face.

"I know right," Elaina responded "Moria might be a lazy idiot, but he's pretty strong. Stoker's a pretty good fighter too. But I think we both know what you're really interested in 'Stark'."

The pirate turned once again to face Elaina and wordlessly drew his sword to a simple stance with his sword settled in front of him. Elaina, in turn, got into her stance wherein her left hand with the saber she'd picked up was brought over her torso and blade back behind her hip and her right hand with the wooden sword was above her shoulder pointing the wooden blade backward.

Stark was somewhat confused by her stance but didn't question it, simply choosing to exploit it instead. He took a few steps forward and then began running modestly so as to not jeopardize his sword's ability to block an incoming attack. When he got closer and saw no changes in Elaina's stance, he brought his sword up to prepare an attack and as he slashed down at what he believed to be a perfect time, Elaina moved

'Two sword style - ...'

Elaina intercepted Starks attack with the slash of her saber, deflecting the sword with excellent form, before swinging the wooden sword down precisely on his kneck in the hopes of knocking him down and out in one blow.

'...Evening cross slash'

With that, Stark fell to the ground, defeated soundly. Elaina had sweat dripping down her forhead, clearly tired despite the apparent brevity of the confrontation. She sighed with relief before turning and saying to Moria and Stoker, who had been watching this while sitting down to rest, "Yeah, he was pretty strong. I definitely couldn't have ended it that fast without this sword."