The Jungle Part 3

The Jungle Part 3

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The world faded in and out–

…

Voices..?

…

I hurt… in places. Like, all the places… even those places… why did I hurt in those places…?

There was a soft groan… from me…?

And the world faded again…

…

Light…?

I cringed before slowly forcing my eyes to flutter open… 'What… what's going on…?'

There were bright lights around me…?

My head fell to the side and I saw… Rei…? What was she doing here…? … wherever here is mind you…

The dark haired girl was sitting in a chair near my bed… which was a hospital bed…? No… not that I recognized… she was reading a book… "So…" her head jerked up from the book she was reading as I gave her a weak grin, "What'cha doin'…?"

"Jacob–!" the book was almost dropped as she surged to her feet, the miko's outfit fluttering about.

"Preeeetty sure neither of us are old enough for that to be a valid answer…" I snarked even as the edges of my vision started to fade.

"I–?! What-…?"

"Tcheheheh…" So that's what her 'Does Not Compute' face looks like, it's adorable, "Heh… hmmm… mmm…"

"You mean–?!" the normally stoic ten year old huffed in indignation, "You brute-!"

My eyes closed again as I smiled, just gonna rest them for a bit–

…

Consciousness returned to me again a bit more slowly this time, but the world was a little less of a mess of fuzz and cotton.

My eyes opened to an unfamiliar ceiling… I was in bed again, and I could see a blood bag off to the side as well as… morphine…? The lettering on the bag slowly came into focus as my eyes decided to function again, and yeah, morphine. I was hooked up to both… My eyes moved about the room, it was a small room in one of the hospitals on the island I was guessing…?

"Ami…?" I said without meaning to as my eyes landed on the mop of blue hair on the bed.

She made a little sound, shifting at the sound of her name.

With some effort, I lifted my hand, the motion making my chest ache. While I had sheets over most of my body, I could see a body cast on my chest even from here. But I put my hand atop her head as she stirred, "Hey…?"

"Mmph… wha-…?" she raised her head and blinked her blue eyes, rubbing sleep from them as she looked at me blearily.

"What'cha doin'?" I asked, weaker than I'd have liked, the words making my chest ache even as I grinned at her.

"Jacob…?" she asked sleepily, her eyes narrowing in disbelief.

"… still don't think that's an applicable answer given our ages…" Still wasn't even remotely attracted to girls yet at eight years old.

"Jacob!" there was a blur as she nearly tackled me, wrapping her arms around my neck as she hugged me tightly to her chest.

Which hurt like hell, "Ack!"

"Sorry-!" Ami nearly jumped off of me, arms out, "Sorry…"

While I didn't want to make her feel bad, it took some effort to get rid of the cringe on my face and weakly say, "S'alright…"

Ami stood over me, her hands bunching in the sheets of my bed, her blue eyes and bottom lip starting to quiver. A little weakly, I started to reach out towards her with my hand, "Hey-"

But she interrupted me by enveloping me in another hug, this one a lot gentler as she held my head to her chest, "You're awake…"

"Yeah… you okay?"

"I'm fine!" she exclaimed, pushing away as she almost glared down at me, "I barely cracked a rib! You were the one that was really injured!"

I cringed just a bit, "Sorry…"

"An open traumatic fracture to your entire sternum, Class III Hemorrhaging, lacerations to the small and large intestines, severed tendons and musculature, shock…"

Reaching out, I placed a hand over hers, making her pause. Ami's eyes glanced down at the point of contact, her hand clenching beneath mine as I said, "Sorry, I did try to stop that from happening…"

"Jacob…" she almost whispered, placing her other hand over mine, "You almost died…"

I opened my mouth briefly before closing it with a sigh, holding her gaze, "… yeah… I know."

"That's… it?" Ami asked in surprise, her mouth working silently before shaking her head in disbelief, "That's all you have to say about it? About almost dying?"

"Ami…" I started before giving her hand a squeeze as I looked up at her, my voice weak, "They were going to hurt you, maybe cut off a finger or something else absurd…" my friend cringed just a bit, her lips pressing into a thin line at the reminder of the moment as I softly pressed, "What else was I supposed to do?"

"I-…" she sighed, taking a seat again but keeping a grip on my hand with both of hers, "I know… but…" she looked up at me, her eyes pleading, "How can you be so blasé about it?"

With a sigh, I searched for words to try and express it… but four words from the doorway behind Ami made my blood run cold and my stomach drop out.

"Because he's a pirate."

"Makoto…"

-oOo-​

The smell of alcohol was strong in the scarf I'd untucked from my vest and wrapped around my mouth and nose… but it was definitely better than the overwhelming smell of blood. And I didn't really have a good way to get a sanitized breath mask or filter.

The dirt crunched beneath my boots as I walked through the streets. I'd been able to taste the blood in the air when I breathed in, mixed in with offal and decomposition…

"Oh god…" despite having her own jury-rigged facemask from the ship, Bonney covered her mouth as she walked a few steps behind me.

I pushed my hat further down on my head, keeping a hand tightly gripped on the handle of my saber and my face deliberately blank as I took point. I couldn't blame her, I was as close to 'used' to the smell of blood and offal as you could claim, but this…? Walking through the streets of the port town was an entirely different scale. It was another degree of magnitude worse than the worst I'd ever seen. You couldn't just blot it out, it overwhelmed your senses with that coppery taste…

Bile began to rise in my throat, but I tightened my grip on my saber hilt and swallowed it down, breathe in, breathe out, focus, "Come on, let's keep going."

The streets weren't truly red, they were this brownish color that anyone familiar with blood would recognize, and not every street was like this… but there were trails of blood across the ground from numerous places and a few of the throughways were just coated… and we were trying to follow it back towards the source.

"Are… are we sure there's no one else here?" Wallace asked from beside Bonney, staring at the buildings.

There were occasional smears of blood on the walls, but given that these were mostly grass huts there wasn't much to damage. The place looked looted at first glance, though not heavily.

"If someone's able to hide from my senses in a place as quiet as this, I'd be surprised." I said, looking about, "All that's out there is carrion feeders…"

Observation Haki is hard to describe using English terminology, or any terminology really. It doesn't have words in normal language, though I normally would qualify it as feeling more than any other sense. But in this case, I'd say it's more like listening and tasting, trying to find that unique… flavor… of humanity. The terminology was inexact at best, but it got the job done.

And I was picking up nothing but the carrion feeders. It was somewhat unsettling to be in a settlement without any settlers.

"You sure about that Ironhide?" Bonney asked through the medical mask she wore, warily eyeing the houses around us.

"Sure enough…" She'd insisted that I take point, and I hadn't been of the mind to disagree. I was the most durable even without my fruit, and I could dodge things before they needed to be dodged so long as I didn't lose focus. It made sense that I was in front of our little scout group. Jaime, Wallace, Bonney and myself were searching the town for clues.

'No Scooby Snacks required~'

My hand clenched at the hilt of my saber. Breathe in. Breathe out.

'… this is seriously unsettling.' I pulled my coat a bit tighter around myself as I stepped into the intersection, fighting back a shiver. The lack of sound aside from the occasional bird, the overwhelming smell of blood and offal, and the juxtaposition of surrounding civilization but no presence of people even at the edges of my senses…

I paused, staring down the street as the other three approached. A small frown appeared on my face. This port town was obviously not planned, much like the one previously… there weren't too many straight roads in it as it'd likely grown more organically like old European cities. But there was a straight shot down past these huts and the occasional adobe building to the park… and… was that a ball…? Or was that a boulder…?

Wallace nearly bumped into me as I came to a stop, "Ach, what is it?"

"Something…" I said, not yet knowing myself as I turned to walk towards the park. The park was a number of trees around a central fountain with a few benches scattered about and near the center of the port town. The trees didn't seem entirely native honestly, looking more like something you'd have found on another island, but that was probably for the visiting sailors and merchants… But a glance showed that the blood seemed to have been flowing from the park, and I could vaguely see the edge of a large ball peeking out around the edge of one of the buildings…

Using my free hand, I pulled my leather coat a bit tighter around me, letting it envelop me in a futile attempt to ward off the smell and unsettling silence.

The other three stayed close behind me as we walked down the street, and my lips pressed into a thin line as we got closer to the park.

"The heck is thaaaaa-oh god." Bonney's hand slapped over her covered mouth as the 'ball' came into sight.

A rolled ball of meat and men.

I continued around the corner, my hand resting on the hilt of my saber clenching tightly, swallowing down the bile rising in my throat as I examined the ball. Forcing myself to not turn away, to not ignore what I was seeing.

It was a ball of body parts and organs and people. Blood and bone and flesh and gore all tightly compacted into a ball almost twice as tall as me, though it was starting to deform from gravity. Buzzards and flies were swarming around the ball as it rested on the almost black grass.

Bonney swiped the hat off of Jaime's head and hurled into it just before the Mexican-esque man stumbled back away behind a hut to lose his own lunch. Wallace had blanched a pale white, the scar stretching across his right cheek turning a bright red in contrast as he covered his mouth, eyes wide in horror.

Flies swarmed towards me as a black mass as I approached the ball and I nearly snarled, swiping out my coat and sending a weak shockwave lashing out and pasting many of the flies, knocking the buzzards about. They gave some angry squawks at that, fluttering away, but it barely did more than ruffle their feathers.

There were faces, in a rictus of fear or pain, some half torn, some smashed, some broken, some whole… the handle of my saber creaked as my hand tightened, 'Who the fuck…'

Dragging my eyes away from the ball of horror, I looked about the park for clues… though it seemed we found where the blood was coming from. There were bodies hung by their feet from the trees, hands bound behind their backs, throats cut… a bleeding position. It wasn't all natives, there were some lighter skinned people, even merchants… they'd all been stripped. My chest felt hollow, and yet filled with heat, my stomach trying to rebel… but I forced it all down, I focused. Breathe in. Breathe out. Task: Discover what happened.

I frowned as I noticed something.

They were all men.

I looked back to the mass of gore and flesh. No female genitalia, no breasts, at least on this side… I began to walk around the ball in a circle, eyes narrowed as I searched.

"Ugh… fuck…" Bonney wiped her mouth, tossing the hat aside as she finished dry heaving into it. Even as she pulled the facemask back over her mouth, I could see the green to her cheeks over it, "What the fuck?!" She demanded before turning to Wallace, gesturing at the ball, "Who the fuck does shit like this?! Why the fuck?!"

"It's a message," I said, frowning behind my scarf as I completed my circuit of the ball. Nothing, all men.

"To who?!" Bonney shouted, not approaching.

"I don't know," I said, looking about at the surrounding buildings for further clues as I kept my grip on my saber. There was nothing on the walls around us aside from a few smatterings of blood, it seems they'd been deliberately bled… there was something on the fountain…?

I walked over towards the fountain, the waters were pink. Shouldn't have been surprised. But there was a symbol drawn on the broadest part of the central spout. A symbol drawn in… offal. A mix of blood and bodily juices and general nastiness. My chest felt hollow and yet filled with heat, that familiar horrified anger…

Breathe in. Breathe out. I didn't recognize the symbol, though it seemed to be a stylized… something? Animal…? A vertical oval, with a line bisecting it horizontally, and another vertical line splitting the bottom half into two sections. On either side of the oval were six lines and there was a seventh, longer line sticking out from the top of the oval, topped by a small perpendicular line.

"Bonney," I called over my shoulder, "Do you recognize this?"

"What-?" shocked from her horrified stare, she gave her head a little shake before turning to me, "Ironhide-? … the hell are you talking about?"

I turned back to the fountain, gesturing with my right hand, "Over here, this symbol, do you recognize it?"

My Captain stared at me like I was crazy, "How… how the fuck are you so damn calm?"

Images and sensations flashed through my head. Bits of brain beneath my fingernails– blood dripping from floorboards onto my head– a man exploding beside me as he was hit by cannonfire– a woman who'd seen the tender mercies of truly black-hearted pirates–…

*Crack!*

The wooden handle of the saber snapped in my clenching hand, the metal tang attached to the blade bending as my lips pressed into a thin line.

"I'm not," I looked down at the hilt of my saber that I'd ruined, "But I've had more practice keeping it under control."

Bonney glanced at my hip where I wore the saber, hidden by the length of my coat before glancing at my face. "And how are you staying in control?"

"Practice." I said simply, turning back to the symbol, "Do you recognize this?"

After a moment, she shook her head before really looking at the symbol, obviously frowning through her mask, "… maybe. It's familiar, but it's hard to tell with it being made out of shit." She ended with a snarl.

I grimaced, turning away from it and walking back towards the ball of horrors, "Fair enough. Pretty sure it's the actual message though, or at least a key part of it."

My eyes scanned the ground and the trees, searching for other clues as Jaime eased over towards us. I couldn't see anything I could interpret from the grass, it was too matted and coated with coagulated blood to discern any patterns… that might have been where the ball was rolled…? It was hard to tell.

I took a knee, my right hand touching the grass. It seemed to be more than a few hours old, but not more than a day or two… I looked up at the bodies in the ball… it was almost black from the remaining flies and coagulated blood… the body parts themselves were purple at the 'bottom'…

"This… this place is bad… we… we should leave." Wallace whispered.

One hand on her stomach, Bonney approached, the three of them standing in a loose circle as I stood and walked towards the ball. "This place is fucked up. And I agree… we should get gone." With another sweep of my coat I blasted the flies away from the ball and put my hand on it, "Florida, what are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out when this happened…" I said, my voice somewhat dead and dull. The mass was still a bit warmer than the ambient temperature, though that might be due to the sunlight… rigor mortis wasn't a thing though. So this is more than a day…?

"You can figure that out?" Bonney asked in morbid curiosity without approaching the… thing.

"In a general way…" I muttered, poking and prodding the various bits, trying to find other things I could check, "The lack of rigor mortis means it's more than a day and a half… but the blood is still… no, wait." I scowled, poking one of the arms bent at an odd angle in the ball, "This body part is still stiff… so this is at the tail end of it… probably within the last two days."

"All the more reason to get out of here," My captain growled, crossing her arms and glancing at the men hanging from the trees, "I don't want to run into whoever did this to a whole town."

"Not the whole town…" I said, "The women and children aren't here. This is all men."

"So what? It's a sexist mass-murdering fuckwad?" Bonney snarked, her hands planted firmly on her hips, "So I'll be safe but you guys are gonna end up in a ball if this fuck finds us?"

While Jaime and Wallace blanched at the thought, I merely scowled, "Fucks. Plural. This… something like this requires manpower. Deliberate, coordinated manpower in a planned way…" I backed away from the ball, my lips pressing into a thin line as I looked out towards the main part of the island, "This was probably an armed force. And the women and children were probably taken."

"Pirates…?" Jaime ventured.

"I doubt it…" I scowled, fly's trying to land on me, but getting blasted away with another swipe of my coat, "How big of a ship would you need to carry all of the women from this town?" Turning towards the three of them, I found that while the two men were looking at me curiously, Bonney had a distant look in her wide eyes, "… Bonney?"

She swallowed and spun on her heel, heading back towards the ship, "Come on."

Worried, I had to hurry to follow after, Jaime and Wallace hurrying beside us as well, "What is it?"

Her pink eyebrows drew down as she walked quickly and purposefully back down the street, the grass and then dirt crunching slightly beneath her feet, "I think I know what that symbol was."

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The Jungle Part 3