《The New Buggy Pirates》Chapter 9

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'How long have I been here? How many days has it been since I last felt the Sun on my skin? At this point I've lost count...somewhere around 53, I think. I wonder when they're taking us.' She sighed. 'Or maybe they've just forgotten all about us...about me. I've been tucked away in some corner so I guess it's possible.'

Just like that, Lilith sat alone, wrapped in her blanket, trapped within the confines of her cage day after day thinking, wondering, questioning, and doing anything else to keep her mind busy. Anything at all to keep the reality of her situation away from her foremost thoughts. She was afraid she might break if she didn't. She'd seen it happen not too long after she'd been locked in her cage.

The first few weeks of her enslavement were unbearable. The beatings and taunting the Nobles' servants gave her were brutal, to say the least. Night after night they would come in and viciously attack her. They never said a word as to why, either. Several of them would just appear out of nowhere and do their worst. The other prisoners, mostly the ones who had been recently captured, would yell and rattle their cages in protest.

Encouraged by their protests, she would resist their attacks as fiercely as she could. Her shackles had limited her movement, but she still managed to land a few, albeit accidental, Armament enhanced punches on some of them.

Unfortunately, she wasn't able to control her Armament Haki, and her resistance only made them beat her that much harder. Soon, the ones who had spoken up for her had fallen silent as they had one by one been on the receiving end of similar beatings.

Lilith had been crushed by this lack of support and subsequently closed herself off from the other prisoners. While those who still had their spirits intact discussed escaping and the kind of hellish lives they would lead if they didn't, Lilith chose to escape to recesses of her mind.

It wasn't like the thought of trying never occurred to her. She would definitely try if she ever felt confident in managing an escape, but with no control over her Haki, there was no telling what might happen.he retreated to the happier moments of her life, which at that point was anything before her enslavement.

Instead, she retreated to the happier moments of her life, which at that point was anything before her enslavement.

She remembered the times she spent playing beneath the trees at the edge of her island, how she spent most of her nights on rooftops watching the stars, the classes in the library she was forced to take, and even the day she went blind.

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Lilith found it funny that her time as a slave was so brutal that she was forced to go so far as to seek comfort in the day she lost her sight. 'It's almost as bad as comparing that wretched library to a refuge of peace and comfort.'

Pretty soon, after she stopped resisting and just let things happen, the servants began to beat her less and less. For a very brief period of time, she was left alone. No beatings, or insults, or taunts. Lilith assumed it was because they wanted her to look like a blank canvas for whoever had bought her. She was, to her immense disappointment, correct.

She'd overheard one of the servants talking about how Saint Roswald wanted to have his new slaves branded personally. 'No wonder they stopped the beatings. They're afraid of their masters finding out they've messed with their property.'

She rolled her eyes at their actions, looking down on how they fear a fatass, as she assumed that all World Nobles were obese, in a spacesuit. She was the one who was going to be branded, the one who would only live a short while longer, and the one who would most likely suffer the most seeing as she was a woman. If anyone had any right to be afraid, it was her.

As the days went by, she noticed that the number of voices in the room became smaller and smaller. Silently, she waited for her turn to come. For someone to open the door to her cage, drag her out, and bring her straight to Saint Roswald.

But it never happened. Soon the last of the other slaves were taken away until it was only her and one other. She could tell from the rough breathing and the occasional splashes of water coming from the other side of the room that there was still one other person, other than her, that had yet to be moved.

'Maybe they were also bought by Roswald. At least I won't be alone in this.' Part of her had meant it as a joke, but the rest of her had not. She was afraid. And like anyone who's ever felt fear, she didn't want to face it alone.

Not long after the other had been dropped off, the food had stopped coming. At first, Lilith had thought it meant that the ship was close enough to wherever Roswald was that the crew deemed their hunger to no longer be their problem. Unbeknownst to her, however, the ship was currently several months away from its final destination. And before that time, her captors would be putting the two remaining 'passengers' through a new form of hell.

Several days into their starvation, several men and women came down into cage filled room. Aside from giving her a single cup of water, they didn’t come to do anything else other than noisily eating their own food in front of her. Apparently being blind hadn't deterred them from taunting her. Although it didn’t bother her much, not that she would show them if it did, the man from the cage across the room was more than capable of being angry for the both of them.

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He'd bang and rattle the cage bars as they ate and laughed at him. At one point Lilith almost spoke up but thought better of it. And even though she felt ashamed of herself, she didn't want to bring any unnecessary trouble her way. Especially not when she was as vulnerable as she was.

In the end, it was eleven months of Hell. From the moment she had been picked up to the moment they'd docked at Loguetown. They'd made sure to tell her where she was, who would be picking her up, and what they would most likely do to her afterward. By the time they left to watch the execution, Lilith was shaking. "I need to get out of here... I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!!" She began to ram the cage door with everything she had. For hours she pounded against the door in a desperate attempt to escape.

But the door never gave. The Nobles had hundreds of years of slavery under their belt. They built their cages to last against everything short of Haki, which she, unfortunately, could not control.

She leaned against the wall and slid down with a whimper. 'Why...why me?...It's not fair!' "Motherfucker!" She punched the ground with tired arms. That was it, it was over. Her life was over, and there was nothing she could do about it. She sat quietly for a few minutes before getting up once again to try busting the door open.

As she stood up, her vision became blurry and her head developed a pulsing headache. It felt like every migraine she'd ever had compressed into one. The blood rushing to her ears was deafening, she had almost missed the sound of the cargo doors opening.

On any other day, the screech of the doors would be followed by pompous laughter. 'Are they back? So soon? I thought they'd be watching the execution. Damn it!' She didn't want to be anyone's slave. She could hear the steps of a child walking down the stairs. 'Is that a kid? Saint Roswald's a kid? Of course he's a kid, just my luck that I get to be a training doll for some Noble's kid to play with.'

She heard the footsteps come to a slow stop. She could only assume that he expected her to be in his sight right as he came down the stairs. 'He's probably angry at being inconvenienced. Probably angry enough to take it out on me...' Lilith felt out of breath. The cage she was in suddenly seemed so much smaller than it did before.

Before she knew it, she was on the floor breathing heavily, wrapping herself in her blanket, and gently rocking on her side. In her panicked state, she prayed for whoever was listening to help her. She didn't care how, Lilith just wanted the nightmare to be over.

In the midst of prayers, she heard the door open once again. This time the footsteps were heavy sounding. She knew that they could only belong to a grown man. She felt hot tears threatening to spill as she listened to who she assumed to be Roswald's father made it to the last step. Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest as she imagined all the different ways they'd probably have to torture her.

Lilith didn't hear much else after the older man made it down the stairs until she heard what sounded like something metal being ripped away from something else. 'Did a Noble just rip the lock off of a door? But if they were Nobles, then they should've had the key.'' She was right, and they would have had the key if they were Nobles.

She spaced out as she tried to think of who else would be down here. 'If not the servants or the Nobles...then, is someone trying to rescue us?' Her eyes widened at the possibility. Did she dare place her faith into something that might not be at all what she hoped for? As she tried to decide whether or not to risk calling out, she heard the two people making their way towards the stairs, without her. "Wait-" But before she could finish, the headache and the dizziness from earlier came back with a vengeance.

On the floor, deaf, and barely conscious, she felt cheated. Her one and only chance at escape was probably gone forever and she had no one to blame but herself. Why couldn't she have just taken the chance while she could? How much worse could the result have been compared to being in the hands of a Noble for the rest of her life?

Just like the one before it, the intense headache began to fade. And as she slipped into unconsciousness, Lilith could've sworn she saw a man with a big red nose standing over her and saying something.

'Please, God...let this be real.' She closed her eyes, unsure if she would ever wake up again.

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