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When they were boys, Heat and Wire would sit on the shoreline of their island and stare out at the vast horizon. They’d shared wild fantasies, tall tales of old legends or lore to scare and excite each other.
The world before them was a mystery they zealously wanted to discover. They scrawled scribbles in the dirt with long sticks that they would play-fight with, then sink them into the ground in truce til they met up the next day. They were starved for knowledge, bellies aching with curiosity alongside the very real pangs of hunger and dehydration that plagued them and the other street kids.
Then they got older. Life got so much harder. You do what you have to in order to survive the lawless nation of their birth. No world government affiliation, no kings or governors.
No, what they had was arguably worse.
Crime lords at the tip of society that seemingly reveled in chaos and misery. Forced the island citizens to pay tribute for protection that was never provided, conditioning children into gang soldiers, traffickers, and delivery mules.
That was their birthright. For Heat, Wire, and the countless orphaned and ravenous children that were dumped and littered in the streets and junkyards.
As they rose in ranks from underlings to bosses, there were fewer times when the two long-time friends found opportunities to meet up on that weathered shoreline; and even when they did, they found that their perception of the horizon changed. They had changed.
No longer was it a wondrous place to investigate. Now it was just nothing.
A void of nothing.
Nothing out there because if there was, surely they wouldn’t have had to live the way they did.
Haah! Live? They weren’t living, they were just… drifting . Barely there.
Nothing to look forward to, not something they found comfort in and started to resent. As if it was the sea that was the one guilty of breaking a promise to them.
Then they came face to face with Eustass Kid. Then they changed for the better.
Well, what was better for them was infinitely worse for literally everyone else. They found that they liked it that way.
They’d paid their dues and kept taking losses until Kid led them headfirst into the barricaded castle walls of those that had dared to crown themselves lords over the flies.
If you took from them, they’d take it back along with anything else they desired.
Fuck you right back.
That was the Kid Pirate motto, the phrase they cheered as they smashed a bottle of rum against the maiden Victoria Punk they lovingly crafted with bare hands and stolen-donated-gifted materials. Before they boarded her and set sail to that same horizon that once taunted them with its evasiveness.
They methodically designed their jolly rogers with bold styles and colors that would unmistakably challenge anyone who could see them from a distance. The Kid Pirates were coming; Death was the only option – whether you ran into them or they ran into you.
It’d probably be best to say your last prayers and kiss your
ass
gold goodbye.