Battle Log Nine

Captain Caine vs Captain Lyza

He still remembered the final day of the war from three years earlier.

Their ship had arrived late to the party. By then, Whitebeard's fleet had escaped, and she was left to deal with the cleanup.

The ghastly sight that met his eyes had never quite been forgotten by him, nor by anybody else in her crew. It made the nervously waiting Rafael even more anxious.

"Wait for my report back to the ship. If there is none in the next hour...don't expect us to be alive."

Wait? How much longer must he wait like this, hoping against hope that she was still alive and breathing? He slammed his fist against the wheel of the ship. "Damn! If only I could use Ley. If only I was useful!" He said, furious at his own powerlessness.

All him and the crew could to now was fire at the wall and wait.

And that was what Lyza now did as well as she watched Caine approach. She observed his footsteps, his posture, the angle at which he held his head. And of course, it was hard to ignore the massive rod he balanced over his shoulder with ease.

His eyes were partly hidden in shadow underneath his massive white hat, but she could tell from his Ley alone that he was pissed.

Then again, so was she. She glanced rapidly at Cassian lying across her on an untouched part of the deck, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"What are you sighing for? I haven't killed you yet." He whispered, his face inches from hers.

She raised her arm with speedy reflexes, and just managed to block his swing.

He eased his grip on the handle of the relic and let her move away, now definitely on edge and ready.

This isn't an opponent I can fool around with. I spent too much energy on those damn brats! If only I had more Ley left...

She smiled. What was battle if not dangerous? Life-threatening? Deadly? It would hardly be fun if she won easily against one of Whitebeard's strongest Captains.

And besides, she still had the-

"Would you mind disabling that clever little technique you've got going there?" Caine murmured, now casually walking towards her with the rod in one hand. "Those orbs. I find their presence to be unpleasant." She couldn't believe it. She was barely using anything at all to move those around, and yet this freak managed to sense it?

She raised her fists and chuckled. "Speak for yourself. There's nothing more unpleasant than fighting a bloodhound like you!" Caine watched her swings approach. Slowly. Ever so slowly.

She slammed him forward, sending him rolling to the floor. He had rolled onto his back several feet away, and now stared at the cloudy sky above.

"How's that?" Lyza called, unsure of what to expect.

Caine tugged his hat on and got back to his feet with ease. "Weak." He said, raising his rod to point towards her.

Lyza felt his Ley soar and dodged to the side, avoiding the brambles that shot from the iron rod he pointed. The brambles curved towards her as he swung his weapon, directing the attack towards her. Based off what she had seen from towards the end of the war, she had a feeling she couldn't afford to come in contact with those thorns. She balanced her body on the palm of her hand and flipped away from the thorns, somewhat regretting the maneuver once pain began to shoot through it.

"You're unexpectedly fast for someone wearing a suit of armour. But that's all there is to you. Your protection is shattered, and you certainly don't surpass me in strength. This won't take long." Caine thought something was still off about the situation he had just found himself in, but decided to ignore it for the time being. His opponent was injured. There would be no better opportunity than this.

Well done, you three. I don't have to waste time thanks to your efforts.

He raised his relic to end this, but paused as he heard a weak voice call out to Lyza from a short way behind him. "Mo...m...are you-"

He swung his brambles instinctively. He didn't know why, but every nerve in his body screamed at him to attack, the boy was dangerous, he had to die now. But Caine was not a man who relied entirely on instinct. He thought about the grievous wounds on Keya and more importantly, the perfect cut on top of Gerard's head.

This boy...

He stopped the branches, with the thorns less than an inch away from piercing the boy's eye.

Lyza almost felt relieved when the branches stopped short. Even though that would have immediately killed Caine, she still felt relieved. What the fuck is wrong with me? She wondered, shaking her head. Why was she so...scared? Scared for Cassian's life?

Her jumbled thoughts were interrupted by Caine's voice. "This...is your son, correct?" He asked, keeping a wary eye on him. "Very interesting. It's faint, but there's traces of another Ley on his body."

"You used a Seal on him. I don't know how strong it is, but I'd much rather keep my research subjects alive than dead." He muttered, and resumed his attack on Lyza. She felt the thorns of his brambles graze her shoulder as she dodged, and ran towards Caine. Her fist hit the crossguard as he drew it back to block. Hit after hit, he blocked with the efficiency of a master swordsman.

That wasn't quite it though. His Basic Ley was just that superior to hers. Caine was far from a master at anything in terms of combat. It was his sheer stability and versatility at everything which made him lethal. He pushed her back slowly with each contact as the attacks persisted. In desperation, Lyza swiveled on one foot and swung the other at Caine, who just managed to raise the rod in time to stop the kick. Regardless, he skidded back a bit from Lyza and found himself standing next to the boy.

Though his legs were shaking, Cassian still stood against the unwavering presence of Caine. In his hand was a long shard of steel that had been chipped off the main mast in the fight with Jester. "I'll kill you!" He screamed, surprising himself with how strongly he spit that sentence out. "Come on! Just try and kill me, Caine! Try me!"

Caine remained utterly unmoved and unsurprised. And what reason would he have feel otherwise? Scarce was a time when that same boy standing before him went unseen throughout his life of battles and struggles to survive. He was absolutely nothing special or meaningful. Just another kid pushed neck deep into blood much too early.

He only stared back at Cassian with cold eyes. "Go ahead and try to stab me with that little metal scrap. You don't have the Ley to even scratch me." Cassian felt as though he was facing off against an entire battleship. The emotionless glare in Caine's eye made his hands shake and his knees weaken.

Lyza saw his confidence seep out, and knew it was over. "Enough. Step away from him. This is our fight, not yours." She said. "Just stay back. He won't touch you."

She wasn't sure he wouldn't, but something about his words told her Cassian was safe. Regardless, she didn't wait to find out. She hurled herself at Caine once more, and he swung his rod forward to meet her. The two engaged in combat once more, with Lyza weaving her way around the brambles Caine swung at her as he defended himself from her attacks with his rod simultaneously. Her knuckles were bleeding and the armour that was left was badly scratched and had been mostly carved away by Caine.

Caine dodged her fist without warning, and thrust his weapon into her waist with all the strength he could muster. Lyza choked on her own spit as she felt the impact and the crunching of the cracked armour covering her midsection. "Bastard..." She growled weakly as she stumbled back.

"You're not going to be the kind of person that resorts to blaming others for your loss here today, are you?" Caine asked as he lifted his rod behind him, with the tip pointing at Lyza. The slight smile that appeared on Lyza's face came as an unexpected reaction, but it gave him his answer.

Hm. You're certainly tougher than most.

"Partial Primis," He muttered. Lyza didn't see what happened next, and nor did Cassian. All she saw was a blur of white and brown. Caine landed on his feet smoothly, a few feet behind her.

"Single Nib." The end of his rod was now covered in brambles, with one, ten-inch long thorn jutting out from the end. Blood trickled down the tip of the thorn, splattering drip by drip to the floor. Cassian could have sworn something had grown at a side of Caine's face, but he never saw it properly. The brambles disintegrated as he relaxed himself, and Lyza stumbled forward with a perfectly circular hole the size of an orange in the center of her chest.

Even with the wound, she refused to fall. "I thought I could beat you at full strength, you know?" She said, wheezing slightly. The smile on her face was interrupted by a fountain of blood springing up from her lips.

"Mom!" Cassian cried as he ran up to her. "I-I was...I couldn't..." His voice trailed off as she embraced him for the first time in years. She had to bend down to do so, causing a great stabbing pain that almost brought her to her knees.

Her armour melted away as she hugged him, and she looked at him with the last bit of her helmet removed from her face. "You did everything you could. Everything. Do you think I could've finished off those two without you?" She asked, cautiously keeping her voice low to avoid spitting blood onto his head.

Cassian shook his head, rubbing his forehead on her waist as he did so. It made her smile, because it reminded her of how he used to be as a toddler. "You-"

She stopped, and realized the pain had gone from her chest. The hole was still there, but the pain was not. "Hey, Caine. What's the meaning of this?" She asked him, turning around. Something felt...odd about the wound. And her body.

Caine considered ignoring her, but decided there was no merit in doing so. She was dying anyway. "You said you had seen what I did back then. During the war. That should be sufficient enough explanation for you."

Cassian looked up and shrieked, making her heart skip a beat. "BRAMBLES!" She looked down and saw that he was right. There were brambles growing from the wound, spreading across the skin around it and growing further and further.

Humanoid figures made from bramble. Covered from head to toe in them. There were dozens of them, scattered around the empty, shattered vessels and littered around the seabed. Her crew, and the members of the Blackbeard fleet that had witnessed the horrific sight, had been forced to leave the ships be. Unable to touch the deadly, infectious brambles, the once glamorous ships that had belonged to her personal fleet became ghost ships, floating across the sea aimlessly. Either the ships were boarded by some poor souls who had no idea of its treacherous qualities, or they were wrecked in a storm. She hoped for the latter.

"This is a rather brutal way to kill someone, Caine. Is this how you do things?" She asked, somewhat teasingly. Strangely, she found that she bore no hate towards him, now that she had failed in her duty. There was no longer a responsibility weighing her down. Caine seemed quite the opposite, tugging down his hat over his eyes. "You will not die." He muttered, just barely loud enough for Lyza to hear.

"You will not die."

She frowned as the brambles began to spread even further, now reaching her neck and shoulders. Still she felt no pain from the thorns digging into her skin. There was oddly little blood, which was unexpected considering how thick the brambles were. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Caine sighed. "It means that those brambles will not kill you. Regardless of whether they cover your body entirely or not. You won't feel a thing, not at first. They are merging with your body, entwined with your skin and flesh. When it covers your body completely, you will feel it all at once. And by then, you won't have any vocal cords left to scream with. Those brambles will become your source of food and water."

"To put it simply, you are about to become a plant that cannot scream." He said with an eerie finality.

Lyza saw them begin to spread across her waist and pushed Cassian away. "Stay back. Unless you want to know what that bastard described will feel like." She said, still in that uncharacteristically bright tone.

The boy kneeled down in front of her and wailed, "I'm sorry! I was...I was completely useless! I couldn't do anything on my own apart from getting myself killed over and over. Nothing I did...nothing that helped you was because of my own will!" Lyza stared at him weep silently, unable to absorb his words.

And then she began to laugh, unable to stop herself. It was the irony that her son considered himself a failure to her when she herself was the biggest failure to him. She had ignored him, hurt him endlessly, encouraged him to risk his life for her sake, and because of her, he now had one less hand to work with. "Cassian. Don't cry over me. I'd rather have you loathe me for the rest of your life like any normal boy would. Whenever I see you smile after I did something horrible to you, it makes me sick. It always made me remember how special you are, how different you are from other children...and how I was treating a boy as special as you like an animal."

"I don't deserve your love or your forgiveness. I've been a failure of a mother that threw you into bad situations to save my own ass. The Seal I put on you doesn't change that." She doubted Cassian had listened to any of her words through his grief. He was still sobbing, and pounding his only hand on the floor over and over.

She looked down at her feet and sighed. "Caine. I know this is gonna sound ridiculous, but...I want you to return him to my ship, the Grand Dragoon for me. I don't have strength left, and these damn brambles are not gonna let me carry him anyway."

Caine adjusted his hat and shrugged. "I will be making my way there. But do you really expect me to let everyone on your ship go? How do you know I won't just kill them all off and call it a day?" Lyza turned her body to face him with great difficulty. There was still no pain, but movement had become increasingly difficult for her. "You're gonna want to save your strength for the Princess in the ship next to mine. She'll be pissed when my Ley disappears."

"I'll decide that for myself." He replied, and walked past her towards Cassian. "Sorry, kid." He said, and reached for the weeping boy's neck.

Lyza was somewhat impressed when Cassian passed out instantly, at the expert touch from Caine. "So you know about Ki, huh?" It was getting hard to speak now, and the brambles were getting thicker and thicker. Everything below her chest was just barely recognizable as human, and the growth was not stopping.

Caine did not answer her. He had spoken enough.