Motley (#Wattys2016)

6: Faster!!

In Fuoco, it was just the same. The Marziale avoided the main part of the portside town and decided to travel to the outskirts of the town. It was harder to find sufficient things to raid, but they wanted to stay away from the bodies. Satoru tried to convince them to go further into town, but they all just shook their heads, so he went alone. Indeed, when he came back, he had much more treasure than they had, but it didn't matter. He didn't talk about what he saw there, and nobody asked him.

Masa had been shut up in the cleaning closet, which had become his study, when they got back to the ship. He emerged a couple hours later, announcing that he had important information for them all.

"I'm not in the mood for a lecture," Reiko said in a very flat voice.

"Yeah, I don't much fancy hearing a speech myself," Nori said. "Nobody is in the mood, Masa. Go back to cleaning."

Masa straightened his glasses angrily. "For your information, I didn't choose my private study to be a mop storage. I only wanted to say that, according to my research, we should stay away from the Rose Marquis."

"We knew that already," Ryota said. "Look at what they did to those people; can you imagine what they'd do to a bunch of teenagers?"

"I mean that we can't pity them," Masa said. "I heard the captain talking about the general, am I correct? Showing our enemy mercy will not help our position."

"We have no position, you nutjob. We're neutral," Nori said.

"All the more reason why we might be targeted!" Masa told her urgently. "The inhabitants of Capriccio are also politically neutral. My guess is that when the Rose Marquis went to their island, they were promoting their Ivory Prince as a government leader for whatever reason. You know, to get the people on his side. When the people disagreed with him, his Rose Marquis naturally had to kill them before they spread the word to others that some lunatic in a mask was running around trying to be a dictator."

"So this is a political scandal?" Reiko asked. The crew looked faintly surprised that she knew what a political scandal even was.

"Not exactly. I think this Ivory Prince character just wants control; anyone who doesn't like what he does gets killed. I only hope that he doesn't seize control of a large city, or we'll all be done for."

"This is much more serious than some psychopaths going around murdering entire cities then," Satoru said.

"Exactly! You listened for a change!" Masa said in relief.

"Masa, there's a problem. We're very vulnerable, and if what you say is true, they'll have huge numbers, right?" Nori clarified. Masa gave a sign of acknowledgement. "Okay, then how are we supposed to evade them? What do you propose?"

"Move completely and go to Anima," Masa announced loudly.

"Absolutely not," everybody else said just as loudly altogether.

"Masa, that's thousands of leagues away!" Ryota said in alarm.

"I'm pretty sure they speak some weird language," Reiko said thoughtfully. "And I'm not in the mood for learning anything new. Masa's smartness is already starting to rub off on me."

"We'd leave everything behind! We have useful contacts everywhere around here- I'd hate to start from scratch," Satoru added.

"Next option?" Nori said hopefully.

"Well, I suppose we could disband, but I get the feeling you would rather go to Anima."

"Unbelievable. You're useless after all," Reiko said, shaking her head in mock grief.