As a general rule, pirates often possessed a supreme confidence that they were one of the strongest people in the room and could handle anything thrown at them; when dealing with any pirate you could expect bravado, grandstanding, posturing and a distinct impression that they thought themselves invincible. Young pirates thought this because they were brats who didn’t know any better, old pirates believed this because they had survived being young pirates. Shigeuchi considered himself to be one of the latter. He also considered most of the other pirates in the room, including Nikko, to be former; the difference being that his captain had the raw power to back it up.

Things escalated quickly after he called out as both eavesdroppers chose to respond to his bait; strange how only the people who were listening in felt the need to speak up, as if they thought that the comment was aimed at them somehow. The young girl spoke up first and Shigeuchi couldn’t help but notice the way she slipped a dagger into her hand as she did so; he considered taking it from her, replacing it with something else, but decided not to. Stealing her weapon would only serve to start a fight and when she had so many other weapons on her person trying to disarm her was pointless.

Nikko was the next to step forward, responding to the girl by revealing that Loguetown had in fact burned down mysteriously less than a week ago. It wasn’t surprising to find out that they had beat the news to Alabasta, their flying ship allowed them to skip some of the obstacles that lay between the two islands and get here faster than almost any other ship fleeing the inferno. Maybe some of the ships in the marine fleet could have done better but, unfortunately, most of the marine vessels docked at Loguetown were also caught in the fire. Somehow.

Their bounties would go up again once this information spread, he imagined.

The young man with the long hair was next to step forward, proving to be as loud as he was bad at being sneaky as he managed to insult everyone involved in a few sentences. What Shigeuchi thought about young and confident pirates seemed to apply double to this brat as he stepped forward confidently and with a challenging swagger to his walk to accept Nikko’s offer of recruitment.

In the midst of everything a dagger was thrown Nikko’s way and Shigeuchi let out a sigh as he watched things rapidly descend into chaos from that point onwards. He made no move to intervene at first, trusting the crew he and Nikko had assembled to protect their captain, if he even needed protecting, from the assault. The dagger was deftly knocked aside and Nikko responded to the attack by firing a concentrated beam of heat from his eyes at the girl, only to somewhat miss his mark when the white haired girl did something to cause the knife thrower to slip and fall.

Shigeuchi stood from the table, shot glass in one hand and whiskey bottle in the other, as the hooded girl pulled two items out of her jacket. The first she seemed to be trying to apply to herself, to the burning hole in her shoulder, so Shigeuchi used his Devil Fruit to swap it for the shot glass in his hand, the medicine appearing in his hand as the empty glass appeared in Lexi’s.

The pirate then swapped positions with the person standing closest to the assassin, other than the white haired girl, suddenly standing a couple feet behind both girls as a confused patron found himself halfway across the room. His hand lashed out and grabbed Lexi by the arm, hand wrapped around the wrist of the arm holding the shot glass and holding it steady as he poured a measure of whiskey into the glass with his other hand. [color=gray]“Settle down. Take and drink and relax, this isn’t a fight you want.”[/color] With the drink poured the bottle of alcohol in Shigeuchi’s hand was replaced with something else, the mysterious bottle in the assassin’s hand swapping places with the bottle of whiskey as the first mate turned the container so that he could examine its contents. [color=gray]“What’s this? Sea water? Not a bad idea; you sure you don’t want to join our crew?”[/color]

Turned away from Lexi, her hand still held in his strong grip, Shigeuchi turned to face the loud mouthed young man with the long hair. [color=gray]“You don’t seem to understand how recruitment works boy. We’re not here to impress you; you need to impress [i]us[/i] if you want to join our crew. He may be the captain, but I’m the one who keeps the ship running and I won’t accept less than the best, understand?”[/color]

Before things could escalate any further, yet another person stepped forward from the fleeing crowd and tried to add some sense to the chaos. It probably wouldn’t work, but he had to commend the boy the trying at least. [color=gray]“Fights over already; or it will be if anyone has any sense. We’ll be on our way if people are willing to let us be.”[/color]

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