On our maiden voyage, back when we had to go look for some fruit called the shade of Amara, a fruit which now that I think about it, I never got to know it"s use. But none the less we had met a blockade, we rammed it, turning quite a few of them into a pile of rubble, and then we took the fight to a ma.s.sive white yacht, and lost, of rather we couldn"t even out a single dent on said s.h.i.+p. And now here it was asking towards me with a whole lot of people on board, and flying a guild flag that I now recognized. Qitar came up behind me and said.
"Captain it"s the Dragon G.o.d guild."
"I know Qitar, but whatever it is they want, they take it with a healthy dose of steel, flesh and blood. Keep your eyes peeled and keep the s.h.i.+p"s guns at the ready. Speaking of which how are they doing?" I asked her as I moved to the port side of the s.h.i.+p, watching as the yacht which still dwarfed my s.h.i.+p came close. If I had to be honest I would say the wasn"t a yacht but a luxury cruise liner.
"Most of them are offline and badly damaged from the way we"ve had to use them, but they"re being fixed quite rapidly by the s.h.i.+p, I reckon they"ll be online and ready for a fight in fifteen minutes." I nodded my head at her and shook it, telling her to move backwards as the ma.s.sive s.h.i.+p came to a stop besides ours.
For a second everything was quiet as we watched, our hearts stuck in our throat as we waited from the promised fight, however even if the situation did not seem to favor us, and having an elemental dragon sleeping on my s.h.i.+p"s deck more than made it seem like I was guilty of something. However we weren"t shaken, by this point I"m pretty sure we"ve all developed spines of steel due to the things we"ve all seen and experienced. Someone came up the side of the s.h.i.+p and looked down on us, he seemed like a dwarf, or a variation of a dwarf as he was a pit taller and he had elfin ears.
"Her Lords.h.i.+p Io Reyes of the Dragon G.o.d guild will like to invite Captain Aá Seven of the Acheron for lunch. To show our sincerity you can bring you weapons an two partners, no more no less." His voice was a bit nasally, almost as if his trust couldn"t decided whether he had a low baritone voice or a high pitched one.
"Captain don"t do it, it"s a trap!" Mack said from behind me.
"Of course it"s a trap Mack, but I"m still going anyway." I said to him with a smile.
"Darke, Persephone let"s go have lunch, the rest of you...… keep our s.h.i.+p safe."
My current crew was very unlike what I was the last time we went up against the dragon G.o.d guild, which if I should be honest was like 10 or twelve hours ago. Resp.a.w.n in the game doesn"t really take long unless there are special circ.u.mstances in involved, so I wasn"t surprised this Io girl was right back on my tail, but she never did die anyways, so there"s that to consider.
Anyway seeing as this might actually be a trap, it would be better to carry either Zareth or Raven Song along, since as it stands now, Raven Song might actually be the strongest person on the Acheron, however they would both be better suited to protecting the Acheron from any other threats. However Persephone didn"t seem all to keen on following me."Sorry Captain but I rather sit this one out." I narrowed my eyes in submission and maybe a little bit of anger, I"m not really used to having people question my commands on my own s.h.i.+p. But there"s nothing to be said, Persephone is not really a member of my crew, she"s just someone tagging along and soul actually have an equal standing to mine since she was also a dragon avatar.
But none the less she wasn"t coming, so it"s just going to be me and Darke on this s.h.i.+p. It would be even more dangerous now, but so far I"ve not seen anyone as good as Darke in hiding in plain sight. And even though my s.h.i.+ft skill was still on Cool down, I have other ways with which I can actually escape from these guys should things. .h.i.t the fan, we"ll be fine.
As Darke came closer, I placed a hand on his back and flapped my wings, flying into the sky and bringing him along. I landed softly in front of the dwarf that came to call us and gave him the most dull and uninterested look I could muster. I know I could have refused, but I doubted they would have left me alone, so it wouldn"t have made any difference if I say yes or no, this was just a situation where I had to go with the flow and make up plans and counter plans as I went.
The dwarf gave us a simple nod and led the way into the s.h.i.+p, here were multiple levels on it, and the one we had landed on seemed to be an infirmary of sorts. Darke an I ignored the scent of antiseptic and looks of injured AIs as we were led to an elevator that went up. We spent 30 seconds in it , before it doors opened up into the upper deck of the s.h.i.+p. There was a pool glistening under the sunlight, and after we moved forwards a bit, there was Io Reyes in all of her glory, glad in nothing but a purple bikini and dark shades. There was guy with wolf like features sitting next to her, he had a wolf head, a tail and cla.s.s, but he was very much humanoid. Probably a beast kin player.
Then Io turned to me and said In an annoyed voice that I didn"t think most of the players paying attention to her has ever had. "Aaron what the f.u.c.k are you doing messing with my guild!, Are you asking for a beating you idiot!"
So maybe when she called my name I was left shocked and caught off guard, but there was only one person with the guts to threaten me like that. I gave a loud groan as I moved forwards, Darke keeping pace with me and keeping his guard up. But apart from the five of us, there was no one else up here.
"Hey Penny! It"s a small world right?"
"There"s nothing small about this world Aaron, and quite honestly I would have loved to not have ran into you. You know I wasn"t exactly sure, I just thought some other players had modified their Avatar to look like you, but no, it turns out it"s just you, an idiot who didn"t see the need to alter his real looks. You"re so smart!"
Well she"s obviously angry about something, what it was only G.o.d knows, I"m sure she wasn"t still side about the fact I ma.s.sacred her entire Armada. That was all in good faith, plus she"s the bad guy, so it was justice. I rested my back on a seat and crossed my legs as I looked at her, without saying anything. Penny was a lot of things, but she would never have set this meeting just for us to catch up and know who was who in the game.
"Sell your s.h.i.+p to me, join my guild. We can give you a very lucrative offer, not just of in game money but real world money as well, though considering who you are, I doubt you"ll need real world money. We can make you much more powerful than you already are, we"ll pay you just so that you can join our guild, and pay your s.h.i.+p"s weight in gold so that it would fly out guild"s color. However you get to keep your s.h.i.+p, and allowed to do anything you want, as long as it"s not against the interests of the Dragon G.o.d guild. Plus there"s going to be a monthly salary for you and your crew, in fact we"ll happily pay the bounty on your head as a start."
I couldn"t help but whistle in astonishment, that was not what I was expecting, I thought that maybe the Dragon G.o.d guild and I have gotten a point where we became bitter enemies, which in most cases is true, however their mascot or the face of the guild turned out to be my childhood friend. She wouldn"t want to make things difficult for me, but even then with how juicy an offer this is, she must have bent over quite a bit for someone or someone"s.
But then again when you think about it, they"ll be gaining more than they"re loosing, not just the fact that they could gain a s.h.i.+p that"s super powerful and had quite a bit of potential to grow into something really great, there"s a captain that had just as much power as the main guild leaders on their guild. And he has one or two more crew members with the same power and abilities as he does. I and my crew, the Acheron included were more than worth our weight in gold, but unfortunately for her we"re not for sale, not to mention I don"t like the wolf guy sitting besides her, he"s a little too close for comfort.
"Let me just spare you the pain and say no. You"re a sin dragon Avatar and I"m an elemental dragon avatar, blah-blah-blah we"re mortal enemies that kind of s.h.i.+t so we can"t work together. However you know I"m not one t give a s.h.i.+t about labels, and I would happily work with you, however I don"t like your guild, I don"t like it"s members and I"m f.u.c.king Aaron Wade! No amount of money they offer can buy me, if I do wished I would be the one buying the f.u.c.king Dragon G.o.d guild.
But seems they offered money that means they have no idea who they were dealing with, which is nice, I"d rather no one knows who I am. However there"s a f.u.c.king dog-man sitting besides listening as you call my name. So it"s either you trust this guy, or I have to track him down in the real world and hang him by his ears from the top of the empire State building, so which is it."
Maybe that was a little overboard, especially with the threat. And giving that dog-man swallowed hard, he definitely knew who "I really was" and the kind of chaos I could cause. It was annoying, the guy was a player and Penny was so careless with my ident.i.ty, of course I could have pretended not to know her, but Penny was my friend, she"s family.
"Calm your horses Aaron, this is Jeremiah Kozuki, you can trust him to keep your secret." Penny said to me.
"I don"t trust anyone Penny!" I said with my voice getting a little bit higher than normal, there was just something about this guy that p.i.s.sed me off, it definitely wasn"t the way he was holding her hand, yeah it"s because of his face, it was so G.o.d d.a.m.n awful to look at it made my eyes water.
"Then trust me! I know you do. Jeremiah here is my fiancé, and not just my fiancé he"s the head of the Kozuki Yakuza clan, a clan that the Wade family has on it"s payroll and is one of the old families on it"s payroll."
I blinked my eyes at what Penny just said, there wasn"t really anything about the Wade dark empire that I didn"t know about already, including the families on our payroll and in partners.h.i.+p with us. I recognized his name, so he checks out, Bieber I"m still going to have some people watch him....just to be sure. I don"t need to ask how they met, Penny"s law firm was created by her grandfather and mine or rather my father to serve as advocates from the crime families, they had the best lawyers money can buy. And the firm was in even more contact with these families than the Wade family which created it, which room volumes of how much legal help crime families find themselves in a need for.
"If I find anything wrong Penny, even if he"s your fiancé I"m going to kill him an his entire family." I said to her, however those particular sequence of words seemed to set her off.
"What the h.e.l.l do you mean! Has your power gotten so far up your head that you would just kill anyone you"re remotely suspicious of! I told you he"s my fiancé, he man that"s going to be my husband and work with me In the firm! You can trust him! Does my words count for nothing in your ears! His can you threaten to kill my fiancé and keep a straight face about it! What"s wrong with you!"
I saw Darke tightening his hands on his swords, ready to make a move should Penny do so, however all that was here was an angry woman defending the man she loves. Maybe I might have gone a little too far with that, but I didn"t realize what I said would be such a trigger, or maybe I did, and I just didn"t care. For some reason I obviously wasn"t thinking straight. This conversation already fell through, I got up to my feet.
"It was a pleasure seeing you in-game Penny, the next time we meet Io, it might be on the battlefield. Thanks for the lunch, and tell your guild to back the f.u.c.k away from me or I"ll burn them to finders using every tool in my disposal. Have good day." Then I turned and left, but no before ducking the bottle of wine thrown as my head, which sailed and unfortunately smashed into the face of the dwarf who led us up here.
I resisted the urge to laugh at his sprawled out form, Darke was seriously confused about what was going on, but so was I. My reaction was quite weird even to myself, but none the less I meant everything I said, if that guy has anything suspicious on himself, I"m going to kill him. I spread my wings and grabbed Darke as we flew off the top deck of the ma.s.sive s.h.i.+p, and flew down until our feet was planted firmly on the deck of the Acheron. I was about to head in when I felt Darke"s hands on my shoulder.
"Captain? Are you alright?" I furrowed my brow in confusion, but still answered him with a laugh that sounded too fake, even to me.
"Of course I"m fine hahaha, come on let"s get to work." The only reply Darke gave me was a small hmmm, but I think both he and I knew I was definitely not okay, something"s wrong with me.