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My goals are aimed at a destination beyond the capabilities of this crew. As of now, I am disbanding the Starcatcher Pirates.
Max wakes with a painful ache in his heart.
He rolls out of his hammock and stumbles to the far wall of the sleeping cabin, fumbling in the dark until he finds his personal locker by feel, and then a set of clean clothes to pull out. It’s early hours yet, not an unusual time for him to be starting the day - what is unusual would be the stirrings and mutterings around the room, indications his crewmates are enduring poor dreams of their own. Perhaps something was off with dinner last night? Not that Max would ever say as much out loud; maybe Alec wouldn’t take big enough offense to kill him, but the poisoner could still slip all sorts of nasty things into Max’s dishes to give him alone more miserable nights.
As of now, I am disbanding-
Max shakes his head and steps out of the cabin. A bad dream. Just a bad dream, something spinning off of how oddly their captain has been acting the past couple of days. He’s halfway down the hall towards the larger of their ship’s two bathrooms when the door of their first mate’s cabin is abruptly ripped open, and a furious looking woman stalks out.
Goldfinger Auric is not someone to be taken lightly, and the only reason Max considers her the second most threatening person on this ship, a step down from their captain, is the fact Auric’s Midas-Midas Devil Fruit powers are temporary. So to see her on an obvious warpath like this, well. The bathroom can wait.
Low, hissed obscenities mark Auric’s path as she strides towards the stern of the Spectre, and the captain’s cabin. At one point Grigori, likely coming off the night watch, takes one look at her expression and pulls an immediately about-face to head back the way he’d come. Max doesn’t blame him - whatever has Auric in this foul a mood, before dawn, with nary an external emergency to be seen, is going to be laid at the feet of the only higher ranked member of the crew with all the explosive outburst of a grenade landing inside a keg of gunpowder.
Maybe that’s why Max is inexplicably tagging along. Ship’s doctor, after all, even if his qualifications are technically only those of an easily bribed veterinarian with a useful Devil Fruit. A destination beyond the capabilities of this crew- Blues, but that dream is really sticking in his head. Shaking it once more, Max almost misses Auric arriving at her target, and sure enough, the cabin door is kicked in without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
“CROCODILE!”
Inside, there’s an aggrieved noise. “Good morning, Auric.”
“Don’t ‘good morning’ me, you thrice-damned overly ambitious son of a-” She keeps going, hurling out ringing insult after insult, continuing for a good two solid minutes without once repeating herself. “-and don’t get me started on whatever nonsense you must have swirled into NOW to cause this-! This- WHATEVER this is!”
Max finally judges it safe enough to poke his head through the broken doorway. He very rarely enters this particular room of the Spectre; it is after all very rare that Sir Crocodile ever takes a wound, let alone one severe enough to require Max’s services. As such he spends half a moment admiring the elegant array of stolen furniture and treasure, before focusing on where Auric has both hands braced against her hips, glaring down the man still sitting on the edge of his bed.
Crocodile looks rather like he’s been walloped over the head.
Which- Max doesn’t think he heard the sound of Auric actually hitting the man, and usually their captain is the unflappable sort to remain either blank-faced or a touch amused in the face of foul language, so there must be something else in what Auric said-
“Dreams about the future,” Auric hisses. Disbanding the Starcatcher Pirates rings again in Max’s mind. “Which is damn well NOT going to work out the same way this time, do I make myself clear?”
Their captain lets out a stunned noise. Neither agreement nor disagreement, Max thinks. But- he’s also thinking quickly now, running back all the odd moments around Crocodile the past two days: blatantly staring at Grigori and his twin brother Mikhail, grasping both their shoulders for an oddly long if touching moment. Thanking Hugo for some small task, and then adding an uncharacteristic compliment to the good work their den-den specialist always provides. Telling Max, of all people, how valuable he is to the crew, which came as such a surprise that Max nearly spilled his coffee.
Almost as if Crocodile- hasn’t seen the crew. In a long time. Has missed them, possibly.
Or- grieved for them.
“Last night,” Max says aloud, causing both captain and first mate to jump, “I dreamed you became something called a Warlord, for the government, and disbanded the crew.” Auric makes a furious noise. Crocodile looks at the floor. “That- happened. Happens?”
“Will not happen,” Auric snaps.
“No,” their captain agrees. Apparently staring at the carpet below his feet isn’t good enough; his eyes slide shut with a pained grimace. “My plans- ended in failure. And not long after, the Warlord system was abolished entirely. It would be far more expedient this time around to seek out my business partners of a later, vastly more profitable venture, and get a jumpstart on-”
“The twins died,” Max interrupts. Crocodile’s mouth snaps shut. “In a Sea King attack. And Chiffre was shot, when he and I were looking for new work. Point blank to the head. Dead before I could fix him. And I-” I think I died too, but it won’t come out, that last bit of the nightmare just before he woke up. The flicker-flash of someone grinning, sliding him a drink, Max already far too deep in his cups to think twice about accepting it.
There’s a soft rush of sand. Max opens his eyes, uncertain of when he closed them. Crocodile only hesitates for a moment before grasping his shoulder, firm, steadying. “It won’t be the same, this time,” the man says. “I swear it.”
And somehow, Max believes him.
“Oh, ‘it won’t be the same’, he said, and yet, a demand we set course for fucking Alabasta.”
Auric has continued to fuss and snarl for a straight week, insistent on making damn certain Crocodile doesn’t get a single moment to hide from his sins. By this point, the rest of them know all about the disappointing future, dragged out of their captain one growled explanation at a time; some details they’ll be able to make use of, earn a bit of profit from, but for the most part? There is a general, shared consensus that Crocodile would have been better off keeping their crew together, a core of loyalty that he isn’t going to be able to disband this time around.
Sure, there’s no small amount of bitterness, but they all figure the captain has learned his lesson about abandoning those who would’ve sailed to the end of the world with him. Not least because Auric keeps reminding him every minute of the day.
And yet - Alabasta.
Max is one of the few crewmembers allowed on shore, as he insists they could stand to stock up on supplies for the Spectre’s infirmary. His Devil Fruit allows him to put things back where they were, such as re-aligning broken bones and sending blood back into the body that spilled it - or removing performance-enhancing drugs from a horse that’s just won big at the races - but any injuries he repairs still need to be splinted or bandaged afterwards. Which leads him here, to the far side of the market of a town more willing to tolerate customers of dubious ethics than others in Alabasta, arms full of carefully packaged goods. Gauze, bandage rolls, tranquilizers and painkillers of assorted strength, and few other odds and ends, nearly at the far end of how much Max can carry by himself. Elsewhere in the market, Alec is gathering fresh produce for the galley, and while the twins are seeking out a depot to purchase extra ammunition. Rather than attempt to track any of them down, though, Max mentally reviews his route back to the Spectre and sets off - with any luck he can make it back before true sundown and thus reduce the risk of being pickpocketed. (A consequence or cause of this port being more friendly to pirates, almost certainly.)
Just as he’s coming within sight of the docks, however, and his crew’s Jolly Roger, Max nearly trips over two small figures who burst from an alleyway - two children and a- duck?
“That is the one, right?” The first of the children says, a little taller and dressed in the typical garb of Alabasta’s true desert dwellers. “Crocodile’s old ship? With the star and hook?”
Max, in the process of stepping around them, freezes.
“It is,” the other child agrees, a tiny girl with blue hair pulled into a ponytail. She’s wearing an outer robe to match her companion, but underneath it- well. Max recognizes a tailored dress of considerably high quality silk when he sees one. “If he’s here this soon, it can’t be for anything good. We need to inform my father, before Baroque Works can begin its task all over again-”
“Um, pardon me?” Two- no, three little heads snap around to face him, the duck included. “How in the world do you know about my captain and Baroque Works?” At least he’s fairly certain that’s the name of the bounty hunting organization Crocodile founded, yet another thing Auric yelled at him over.
The boy’s dark skin tone abruptly lightens a few shades as he blanches. The girl, though- she draws herself up to her full height, all of three apples tall, and in a dramatic fashion that has to come from wealth and power, states: “Because I’m one of the ones who stopped him.”
...huh. Crocodile belligerently muttered about a group of upstart pirates messing with his plans, in the past-future. He didn’t mention they were young upstarts. “Well,” Max replies, bemused, “He’s not going to bother, this time around. Not after the ear-ringing lecture our first mate gave him about how stupid it was to join the Warlords and disband our crew.” Now the girl looks almost as startled as her friend. The duck makes a surprised noise too. “So, um, if you’ll excuse me, I’d best be getting these supplies back, and telling Crocodile we need to leave before anyone arrives to chase us off with emphasis-”
“Wait!” He pauses, and peers down at the girl again. “What is he going to do, then?”
Max shrugs as well as he can with his arms full. “We’re still figuring that out. Might go find another couple of fellows he joined forces with after the Warlords were disbanded; might just go back to being ordinary pirates.” Probably not, but it’s still a possibility on the table. At least for a year or two, until Auric cools off and Crocodile gets a new scheme in mind.
He starts to offer something of an awkward ‘nice talking to you, goodbye’, only to be interrupted by someone calling his name.
A very particular someone.
The girl sucks in a sharp breath, as her duck squawks in alarm, and the boy makes a furious noise. Striding up the path, Crocodile (clearly running away from Auric but moving just nonchalantly enough to hide it) gives them an absent, disinterested glance. At least until recognition hits, and suddenly Max’s captain goes dangerously still.
Everything holds, for a bare moment.
Then the boy shouts, “Vivi, RUN-!” and Crocodile erupts into a dizzying sandstorm, filling the air with himself, cutting off their escape route back down the alleyway. Max, bewildered, simply stays where he is. At least until the sand condenses somewhat, into a more solid, spherical form - ah. With the children inside.
And then Crocodile starts heading for the Spectre.
“Ohh, Auric is not going to like this,” Max mutters, a split second before he begins jogging as quickly as he can towards the ship, a duck as tall as his knees running after him making distressed noises.