Bab 41: Hello Marines
Four days later
In the ocean of the West Blue...
On the deck of a Marine warship, the officer in charge of the ship looked towards the horizon and sighed bitterly "I still can't believe it..."
"Well, I think you should start doing Lieutenant Francis
We found the same number of fresh corpses buried exactly where he indicated and the hideout was completely ransacked as well...
I doubt that everything else is a lie" Lieutenant Lex answered, the person who answered Fred's call in the first place, another officer wearing the same regulated Marine jacket… while trying to get his co-worker to acknowledge reality
A few minutes ago they came out of the former secret hideout of the Leech pirates, which had turned into a big empty rock full of fresh corpses of pirates and other not so fresh corpses of both pirates and non-pirates.
Everything was exactly as Frederic Freed, the strange ten-year-old boy who contacted them through Den Den Mushi, explained to them... something that exponentially increased his credibility to the point of being beyond doubt.
However, Lieutenant Francis was reluctant to accept this
"The guys who have caused so many massacres of civilians, who have killed dozens of marines
and that we haven't been able to catch in two years have been slaughtered by two elementary school children and a domestic cat
That makes us look ridiculous...
And are you still wondering why I can't believe it?" Lieutenant Francis said as he tried to contain his emotions, especially those related to frustration and anger.
"Not being able to believe it and not wanting to believe it are two very different things...
And what do you mean by [us]?
Catching the Leech Pirates is… was your job" Replied Lieutenant Lex without making any effort to hide his sarcasm and mocking tone
"I'm not in the mood Lex!" Francis yelled, unable to contain his rage any longer.
Lex wasn't unaware of the reason for his co-worker's anger, one more reason why this situation was hilarious to him.
Due to the great brutality with which the Leech pirates devastated the islands through which they passed the pressure that was placed by both the population and the West Blue governments on the Marines was enormous, disproportionately enormous compared to their reward
For this reason, the ambitious Lieutenant Francis voluntarily offered himself to lead the search and capture of the Leech pirates with the obvious objective of getting a promotion... however, until now he had only managed to waste time, resources, soldiers and credibility
And now it will be written in his record that some infants achieved in one night what he couldn't in years...
"Yes... yes..." Lex replied, ignoring Francis bad mood, trying not to annoy him more during the trip
Lieutenant Lex wasn't on the best possible terms with Lieutenant Francias nor did he often leave the base, as he was in charge of the base's security. For him to be aboard a ship captained by Francis and headed to a distant island to fulfill his mission was something truly unusual and even prohibitive in the chain of command.
However, because he was the one who took over Fred's entire case when he called him, his emotional involvement due to sympathy and empathy that Fred and his situation triggered in his father's heart… and that he was concerned about Francis's attitude when dealing with this case... made various efforts to be able to participate in this mission
And now, finally, after so many delays that had made them arrive two days later… they were finally in front of the pier on the island of Narhad, where he would finally meet the little great hero.
A great little hero whom Francisco began to hate more and more
"Fuck...
The ship is there too..." Francis grumbled as he saw another proof of his utter failure.
A failure that Lex began to tire of as they got closer to their destination "Seriously... enough..."
And after several somewhat complicated manoeuvrers, they managed to dock the huge warship at the small pier on the island, where someone was waiting for their arrival.
"Good afternoon
I'm Lieutenant Lex, from the 80th Marine Division.
With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?" Lieutenant Lex asked, greeting the huge man in a wheelchair who had come to receive them.
"Good afternoon
I am Marlon Steel, the mayor of the village of Narhad, where you're now
It's the first time we have spoken, due to my injuries I didn't wake up until yesterday, but the children have brought me up to date on everything" Said Marlon, who was so tall that he was able to shake the Lieutenant's left hand at the same height, even while sitting down, something that impressed the Marine officer.
Marlon managed to regain consciousness the day before the arrival of the marines and shortly after hearing the tragic and at the same time hopeful report from Fred and Stephen, despite the fact that his wounds hadn't fully healed, he jumped out of his bed to carry out the duties of mayor that his apprentices had assumed until now
"The arm and leg...
Did you lose them against leech pirates?" Lieutenant Lex asked with pity upon seeing Marlon's injuries and mutilations, serious to the point of forcing such a large and muscular man to go in a wheelchair
"Only the arm, I lost the leg years ago...
A tragedy, but I cannot allow myself to be saddened by this, many others have lost much more than that..." Marlon replied as he looked with sadness and guilt in the direction of the town cemetery, the place where many of the people he couldn't protect now resided, including his best friend whom he already missed infinitely.
However, Lieutenant Francis didn't give a shit about all that, his anger took precedence over everything today...
"Is what that ten-year-old brat named Frederic Freed said true or is it a fucking scam?" Lieutenant Shit asked with the least sensitivity possible. He preferred to believe that it was that man or the adults buried in the cemetery who had crushed the Leech pirates, but for some reason they gave the credit to the children.
After all, that version would be somewhat less humiliating for him.
"Francis!" Yelled Lieutenant Good, giving his companion a warning for that bad attitude, especially in the face of some victims of a pirate attack.
And he wasn't the only one who showed his anger at this lack of respect and sensitivity.
"That ten-year-old brat is my nephew…
The one who has kept us alive until now and who almost died saving his friends mothers on the same day as his birthday and his father's death, my best friend, who died precisely because he ignored his own wounds to tend to ours" Marlon said, not hiding his annoyance at all as he rose from the wheelchair, looking over his shoulder at Lieutenant Francis, showing his contempt and hostility.
Unnecessarily the atmosphere suddenly became tense, you could almost smell a future fight in the air and neither the villagers nor the soldiers knew how to react, except for...
"I apologize on behalf of Lieutenant Francis, he's somewhat upset today...
For… personal issues..." Said Lieutenant Good, trying to make peace to avoid unnecessary problems, although… like Marlon, it was extremely difficult for him not to look angrily at the navy officer.
And as expected, at least for Lieutenant Lex, Lieutenant Francis neither backed down nor apologized "And where's your nephew now?
We have many things to ask him and to discuss."
"...
Follow me" Marlon replied after repressing the urge to deform his face with his metal bat
At this point the marines would divide the tasks
The filler marines and the second level officers collaborated with the survivors of the pirate attacks, carrying out tasks such as meeting with the women who wanted to be returned to their islands, conducting medical examinations, conducting interviews with everyone they saw to clarify the facts and verify if everything they had been told was true and inspect the old pirate ship among other things
Meanwhile, the high-ranking officers and some minor soldiers followed Marlon to where Fred was, the basement of his house/hospital, from where you could hear even from outside a...
Innocent conversation between children?
"So thanks to these two that unreliable poison now works better?"
"Yes... but I repeat, that was an inferior version
And the only problem arose when it's ingested; by injection it's perfect..."
"That's what I said, it's unreliable"
"Do you think it's easy to make a sleeping and paralyzing poison that's also cheap, odorless, tasteless, and colourless, and that takes effect with less than one milligram when injected or ingested?
Try it yourself!"
"I may try, but I will only work with metallic poisons"
"Do you have a loose screw"
"Yes, but a metallic screw!"
"Totally crazy…"
An [Innocent] conversation between elementary school children about poisons that didn't leave any of the marines indifferent, who couldn't help but raise their eyebrows and interrupt them by opening the door
CLANK!
Upon entering, the first thing they saw was two boys who were too muscular for their age…
One nearly shaved with pink hair, with one arm in a cast, his stomach completely bandaged. He seemed quite injured but even so he was sitting on something that looked like an exercise bike, exercising the only part of his body without injuries and also the one with the least muscle, his legs.
And next to him another child who, unlike the previous one, had very long reddish hair, with no apparent recent injuries except for the one that seemed to be hidden under the bandage on his head. However, what most caught their attention about him was... that instead of sitting like his partner, he was performing the tortuous Horse Stance, who knows for how many hours, while he lifted over his head with his muscular arms over and over again at dizzying speed some colossal and surely extremely heavy metal weights
"What the... hell..."
When they heard that some 10-year-old children had managed to defeat the Leech pirates, they didn't believe it despite the evidence, in fact, they still found it hard to believe it even if it was explained to them that they had won mainly through cunning and poisons...
However, when they opened that door and saw that kid perform that crazy training that many of the Marines in that room would never be able to perform, they began to accept reality.
They were in front of one of those rare little monsters that couldn't be judged by conventional logic.
"Oh hello...
Sorry about my appearance" Fred said as he assumed a less awkward position, carefully placing the heavy weight larger than his body on the floor with one hand and wiping the sweat with a towel with the other hand
Due to the great first impression Stephen and Fred made on them... but especially Fred... they didn't pay attention to the other things in that warehouse, but now that those two had more or less stopped doing superhuman crazy things they could pay more attention to their surroundings.
And it didn't take long for them to realize that there were two more disturbing elements in that room
"H... HO... HOLY SHIT!"
In front of the two children there were two tables raised vertically and on each of those tables there was a person hanging...
Well, not a complete person...
Both had had their arms, legs, and genitals amputated, and from the neck down they were completely raw
Their muscles, bones, internal organs... everything was on display!
And was awful...
The muscle fibers were seriously damaged, either by blows, cuts, tears and... some type of injury that the sailors present couldn't diagnose.
Many of their bones were broken, cut, fractured, or just missing from where they belonged.
Their internal organs hadn't been damaged in the same way as the other parts, but... they had a horrible colour, an unnatural colour for those organs that had probably been caused by poisoning or some other substances.
A shocking, terrifying and disgusting image that even made experienced and trained Marines vomit
"PUAJ!
AAgh UUgh!!
Buaauuugghhh!!"
However, that wasn't all that made this scene disgusting or terrifying...
In one of the veins near the heart of these individuals protruded a tube that seemed to be attached to them… and that tube pumped blood to the heart, blood that was in a basin under the raw body that didn't stop filling every second with the blood that fell from each of their wounds, which were countless
A gruesome scene that seemed to have come from the imagination of a sadistic mad scientist.
"They are..."
And the only reason why the officers and the filler marines who weren't vomiting hadn't rushed to the rescue of those two people and arrested those who had committed this flagrant violation of all existing human rights was because they were able to recognize those people, since their face was the only area that still had skin...
Without a doubt they were the captain and vice captain of the infamous Leech pirates, the despicable monsters that every West Blue Marine would recognize on sight no matter how hard they tried to change their appearance. Although their faces were completely pale, wasted and dehydrated, their eyes had lost the will to live, their minds would have completely disconnected to evade reality and the only thing they could murmur without any strength was...
"Kill… me... kil..l me... k..ill... m..e..."
"K..ill... m..e … Kill… me… kil..l me..."
"Good morning, I'm Frederic Freed, the one from the calls.
Which one of you is Lieutenant Lex?" Said Fred, now completely dry of sweat as he walked up to the two completely pale-faced naval officers to shake hands with the guy he had spoken through the Den Den Mushi.
However, Fred didn't receive the expected response, not even from the person he expected.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" Shouted furious and horrified Lieutenant Francis, who was really considering whether or not it was appropriate to draw his weapon in that situation.
"Those two things? Hmm... I thought if I didn't rip the skin off their faces you would recognize them...
They're or at least were the captain and vice captain of the Leech pirates
What have I done? I have simply put them through some long and productive penance sessions with which I hope they have been able to feel even a fraction of the damage they have caused.
And... uh...
Are you talking about the tube that returns the blood they lose to their bodies? I just found it fitting that the Leech pirates, famous for bleeding their victims to death, could experience the same thing on their own bodies… but over a very long and exhausting interval of time in which his own blood returns to his veins again and again... but with less and less oxygen and nutrients...
Isn't that poetic?" Fred answered with a dark smile, showing pride in his own work. To immediately instruct Stephen to stop pedalling on his exercise bike, which made the blood pump that kept half-pirates between life and death work
With that explanation the Marines, who had been in shock until then, began to use their brains again and...
They understood...
They understood why someone who had suffered at the hands of those monsters, if he managed to capture them, would try to cause them as much pain as possible, even they felt like doing it every time they visited the towns that had been massacred
They understood, but still... something in some of them refused to accept such brutality...
Whether it's just for being a jerk…
"Mayor Steel! How could he allow your children to do something like this!?
Why haven't you stopped and punished them!?" Shouted Lieutenant Francis, demanding explanations among many other things from the legal guardian of those torturer children
An explanation that Marlon gave in a very polite way to that hateful Marine officer who seemed to be looking for a fight "First, I woke up yesterday and I had a lot of things to do.
Second, why should I have stopped them? Fred, being a doctor, has tortured him better than anyone on the island could
Three, why should I punish them? They have done everything extremely well! Look at them, they've been through hell"
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!" Shouted Francis and other marines in unison upon hearing Marlon's weird answer
Or for obvious moral reasons…
"But... how?
How could you do something so horrible to another human being?" Lieutenant Lex asked, finding it almost impossible to accept that someone and especially a little boy who hadn't killed anyone so far and who had sworn the Hippocratic oath would be able to show such disregard for human life.
Even if it was towards the people who had killed his family…
"Humans?
For what reason would I have to consider that these parasites and I have some kind of relationship?
They're only scum that must be exterminated" Fred said as he watched without any emotion in his eyes as the last two members of the Leech pirates slowly bled to death in the basement of his house.
And those words and that apathy towards other members of his own species uttered by a child set off all the alarms of Lieutenant Lex, who was forced to intervene to correct this dangerous way of thinking. "What the hell are you saying!?
You're just deceiving yourself to..."
"Self-deception?
Yes, it's likely...
It's likely that I am deceiving myself to consider other humans that I dislike as something inferior to me or maybe something alien or even antagonistic to what I am
And giving them that category anything I do to them, no matter how horrible it is, would be obviously justified.
Right?
Dehumanize, I think that's the term..." Fred responded, interrupting Lieutenant Lex in such an elaborate way, unbecoming for a boy his age, that it left everyone in the room speechless, allowing him to carry out his little monologue without interruptions "Humans who hunt other humans, whom they treated like the devil himself for having a different political or religious opinion than them... thus justifying any kind of torture and execution against them
Intelligent races that consider other races as intelligent as they're as inferior because they're somewhat different… and that therefore they should be exterminated for the world's sake
Even beings who deceive themselves into believing they're gods, superior beings or something similar and thus justify any barbarity against beings that are exactly like them, but... whom they don't consider gods like them…
Yes...
History is full of these horrible and dark examples perpetrated and promoted by the greatest scum of the scum"
And only when Fred finished that reflection, after swallowing enough saliva and internalizing that Fred had a horrible opinion of what he had just done... was when Lieutenant Lex asked again with less indignation and more incomprehension than before "...
If you know... then...
Why?"
"I know these two pieces of shit are human just like me… fuck, I'm a doctor I know a human when I see one and I don't have the human being so fucking idealized to believe that the only thing that characterizes us is goodness, rationality and other good characteristics
I don't have such stupid delusions just because I'm a child who had lived in peace until now.
But...
Are you really telling me that I have to give [humane] treatment to the scum whose way of life is stealing, killing, kidnapping, enslaving and torturing humans who don't do anything like that to anyone?
Parasites, monsters, demons...
That's the only thing they're for me and they will have the same treatment from me" Fred replied as he approached the corpses of John and Smith, still hanging upright from the tables.
"And what you've done doesn't turn you into another monster or demon?
Should I do to you the same thing that you have done to them?" Lieutenant Francis said sarcastically to mask his hostile attitude towards Fred, whom he no longer considered just a bastard who had screwed up his business and humiliated him professionally.
He also saw him as a great potential threat in the event that he became an enemy!
His strength, his strange abilities, his intelligence, his twisted mind, his vision of the world, his ability to act when others wouldn't dare, his great potential to grow… all this posed a great danger that the Marine had already seen in other individuals at an early age and that in the end they ended up becoming a big headache for the World Government.
"That makes me a monster that only feeds on other monsters.
In my opinion all ecosystems should be full of them and...
They should even be praised for their great social function" Fred answered while grabbing two swords and synchronously...
SLASH!
SLASH!
He decapitated the corpses of Smith and John, dropping said heads into the container filled with their own blood and...
PLAF!
PLAF!
Splashing blood at Lieutenant Francis, the one closest to them, getting angrier than he already was and yelling again "FUCK! Gross....
EVEN SO!
What you have done is disgusting and…"
"Why do you care so much about what I've done to these things?
Haven't you put a price on their heads for more than deserved reasons?
As far as I remember the poster said [Dead or Alive] and now..." Fred said, interrupting Lieutenant Francis' empty speech as he grabbed the heads of John and Smith into two jars, which he handed to Lieutenant Lex "They're already more than dead...
Can we put aside these absurd moral ramblings in which you ask me to treat between cottons some mass murderers who orphaned me a few days ago and talk about what you came to talk about?"
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You'll be able to see 8 chapters in advance in my Pa-treon
pa-treon.com/user?u=83938371
Chatper Edited By: The_Bored_Immortal
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Meralman
Meralman I hope you like reading this story as I do writing it and that you leave me your comment, review and vote if that's the case.
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