"Captain at the age of eighteen, offered a promotion to Vice Admiral the next year and a position at G-5, but he refused and asked to be assigned as a scout at the entrance of the Grand Line instead," Mihawk said, slamming his cards with an annoyed face on the small table they were sitting around playing a friendly game of poker.
"Heh, you suck at cards, mister Hawk-Eye," Jin sneered after looking at Mihawk's cards and revealed his straight cards. He was reaching for the pot money when Koujiro slapped his hand away while revealing his own cards which were a heart straight flush.
"Hah! You both suck! Stay away from my money, brats!" Koujiro grabbed the money then slammed a few thousand berry for the next game.
The three men had been playing poker for hours since Koujiro decided to forget his goal of collecting the Supreme Grade weapons, for now at least. Since Mihawk didn't carry any money with him, they decided that he could pay with information instead. The duo ex Yakuza easily beat Mihawk and extorted tons of information from him, they got to know who was commanding the marine scout party and his entire background that Mihawk knew about him.
The young Captain's name was William Kidd, a rising star among the recruits from 3 years ago, being the fifth son of royalty, he decided to leave his home and tried his luck as a Marine. Enlisted at the age of 16, promoted to Captain after serving as an ensign only for a year and a half. He was sent to G-5 immediately after his promotion, caught hundreds of pirates who just entered the New World in a span of a year, the rest were as Mihawk said after losing the game.
His meteoritic rise was not of pure luck, he ate a logia fruit called flame flame fruit making him a fire human. He was also able to master two of the six Rokushiki in the span of 3 years being a Marine with some basic knowledge of both observation and armament haki.
Koujiro was dealing the cards since he won the last game when a ship emerged from the sea beside the Queen Anne's Revenge. Seawater rained down from the towering figure of the Flying Dutchman parking beside the smaller Queen Anne's Revenge.
"Could you not park so close to us!?" Yelled Koujiro, drenched by the seawater pouring down from the Flying Dutchman.
"Sorry, capt. It's kinda hard to see from underwater," Marcus said, walking down the plank his crew put down to bridge the two ships.
"Whatever, so? Got any good loot from them?" Asked Koujiro, he sent Marcus to take care of the pirates Mihawk was chasing earlier.
"A few hundred million berry and some gold, but I found some weird fruit from the Marine who was watching us fighting the Sabre pirates though. I assume they are devil fruits? I don't know much about them, maybe you could tell if they are devil fruits or not." Marcus waved his hand towards his crew, one of his crew came and brought a small chest with him.
Marcus took the chest and opened it, there were two fruits with strange patterns inside the chest. One of the fruits had the appearance of a red fruit shaped like a bunch of bananas with various swirls on it and a light green stem holding the individual sections together, and the other fruit was a violet melon-shaped fruit with various swirls on it and a curly stem on top.
"Wait, you attacked the Marine?!" Jin asked while drying his hair with a towel.
"Uuhh … yeah, the Captain was a bitch to fight though, he can turn himself into fire and shoot fire from his hands like this," Marcus said while doing some punches.
"So, how do you defeat him then?" Jin asked again, since Marcus was just a weakling they found stranded on a beach months ago, even with his newfound immortality, he doubted Marcus could beat, hell even survive fighting a Marine Captain with a logia fruit.
"Well … I just sank his ship and let him drown. I heard that devil fruit users can't swim. But the motherfucker can fly, I mean not fly fly, but he was jumping around the air. He landed on my ship eventually since there's nowhere for him to land to, and we just went submarine mode on him, bhahaha," Marcus laughed out loud remembering the Captain's face when he dragged him towards the ocean floor with his ship.
"Well, you caught him then? Is he still alive?" Asked Koujiro.
"Yeah, I tied him to the mast, I don't know if he's still alive or not though since we were submerged for quite a while and had to loot the sinking Marine ship, come aboard and check him if you guys are curious," Marcus led them to his ship.
Koujiro, Jin and Mihawk boarded the Flying Dutchman. They found the young Captain tied to the middle mast and approached him while Mihawk looked around the ship, intrigued by the normal-looking ship that was able to submerge itself.
"So … how many did you lost fighting this guy," Koujiro nudged the Marine Captain with his sword.
"None actually, some boys got burned and had some nasty burns, some went overboard but we just picked them back up," Marcus pointed towards the crew who got nasty burn wounds huddling around in a corner groaning in pain.
"Welp … yo! You guys want me to patch you up? But you'll become zombies though, hehe," Koujiro shouted towards the wounded crew.
The crew turned their heads toward Koujiro but just shook their heads, declining the offer to become zombies.
"Aaah … fuck! I just remember that I have to fix the zombies the fucker butchered. You handle the fire dude, Jin. I'm going to do some voodoo," Koujiro walked back toward his ship then entered his cabin, some zombies who were still able to move crawled their way towards the cabin while the unharmed zombies carried the body parts littered across the deck.
"Interesting crew you found here, Jin," Mihawk said, approaching them after looking around the ship and found nothing special about it.
"It is what it is, we're just a normal crew you could find in the New World, except our eccentric Captain, of course," Jin just shrugged and squatted down in front of the tied Marine Captain.
He checked for any sign if the man was still alive or not, he heard a faint heartbeat coming from the young Captain in front of him. He slapped the young Captain a few times trying to wake him up to no avail then turned towards Mihawk.
Mihawk raised his eyebrows at Jin, Jin took out his dagger and raised it above one of the young Captain's hands laying on the floor. Mihawk just shrugged his shoulders not caring what Jin would do to the Marine despite his status as a Warlord.
Jin stabbed the dagger through the Marine Captain's hand waking him up from the pain. The Captain woke up, eyes wide from the pain. He turned his head towards his stabbed hand at first then towards his attacker, then he saw Mihawk standing behind his attacker with arms folded not caring of what was happening. Then he turned his head again towards his stabbed hand, with his logia fruit, it would be almost impossible to get hurt in this part of the Grand Line. Unless his attacker could use haki, and haki users in this part of the sea were very rare, his train of thought was interrupted when his attacker pulled out the dagger from his hand.
"What should we do with him?" Jin asked Mihawk while pointing at the tied Marine.
"I don't know, I'm not your Captain, ask him, he's the one who captured him," Mihawk shrugged and tilted his head towards Marcus.
"Eehh … kill him? Can we ask a ransom to the Marine for him?" Marcus rubbed his chin not knowing what to do with the man he captured, he just captured him because he was the commander of the Marine ship and thought Koujiro might be interested in him.
Jin, Mihawk and Marcus were looking at each other standing in front of the tied up Marine not knowing what to do to the tied up Marine.
*sigh* "I guess we just have to wait for Koujiro, you have any seastone with you? Just in case he goes fire on us and burns down the ship, you know," Jin sighed and turned towards Mihawk. Mihawk just shook his head.
"Just knock him out again?" Said Marcus not sure what to do with his captive.
"Wait! I won't try to burn down the ship or escape, getting knocked out sucks, I'll behave myself," Interrupted the young Captain when one of Jin's hands turned black from haki.
"Hawky?" Jin turned towards Mihawk confirming whether they can trust the Marine's words or not.
"Do whatever you want, you can easily catch him if he tries to escape," Mihawk just shrugged.
*sigh* "Sometimes I always wondering why I decided to become a pirate in the first place, and you, you better keep your words, or you'll have a bullet go through your head," Jin stood up then pulled out his gun pointing it at the Marine's head. The Marine just nodded.
Jin walked back to the Queen Anne's Revenge with Mihawk following him, they sat back again on the floor where they were playing cards earlier, opening a fresh bottle of beer, Jin handed one to Mihawk.
"So … care to tell me how you ended up as a pirate? With a Captain from Wano just like you no less," Mihawk sipped the beer.