Hansen tried to ignore Tom and inspected his surroundings. He was on the deck of a ship, probably the pirates', as Hansen did not recognize the ship. His hands and feet were tied up as he sat on the deck.
'At least I'm not alone,' thought Hansen as he looked at the Fatare knights who were sprawled out on the deck, tied up similarly to him.
Hansen looked at them and started counting them. As he let out a sigh of relief after he understood they were all there, one of the knights saw him looking around and said,
"Hansen, you're up!"
The exclamation from one of them made all the knights look at Hansen. Looking at him wake up, they all felt relieved and started talking.
"Thank god, you're up!"
"You were pretty banged up before; how are you feeling now?"
"Yeah, how're your injuries?"
Ignoring them, Hansen tried inspecting his body and surprisingly found that there was not much pain and he was even wrapped up in bandages in some places.
As he frowned in thought, Tom spoke from the side.
"No need to be surprised, I am a benevolent pirate. So I made sure to patch you up."
"You did?"
"That's right."
"...."
Now that Hansen looked at Tom, the latter appeared completely fine with no injuries whatsoever. When he voiced his thoughts, Tom said,
"Of course, no way a weakling like you can injure an awesome pirate like me."
As Hansen deadpanned at Tom, the latter picked up a plate of food from behind him and started eating. Hansen watched Tom slowly savor his food in front of them.
While Hansen gulped down his rising hunger, he heard a loud growl behind him. When he turned around, he saw that all the knights wore a disgruntled expression and were glaring at Tom.
"Damn it! He's been doing this for a whole day!"
"You bastard!"
"How can you call yourself a benevolent pirate and do this kind of stuff?!"
When Tom heard that, he scoffed before saying,
"Do you guys think I patched you idiots up for free? This is my payment. Ahhm." *Nom*
Hansen threw a glance at his people before looking at Tom and saying,
"Hey pirate, let's negotiate."
"Negotiate? Hah, don't kid around. I already checked your ship. You have nothing, you poor bastards!"
"...I have some stuff on me that I can give you for some food."
"No, you don't. I already took everything off you."
"...."
Hansen knew that trying to negotiate with a pirate like Tom would be a waste of time. But what could he do? The ship they took did not have a lot of food, so they were already going on empty stomachs when the Whisker pirates showed up.
As Hansen started thinking about what he could do in this situation, he saw a boy coming over.
"Tom-san, I'm bored."
"What do you want me to do? Go play in the corner."
"There's nothing to do in the corner."
"I don't care, Jerry. I'm busy, go away."
As Hansen watched the boy pout, he heard someone whimper behind him. When he looked back, he saw that all his knights who were glaring at Tom were now shaking while looking at Jerry.
Tilting his head, Hansen was wondering why they would be afraid of a little boy when he heard Tom clearing his throat.
"Well, hypothetically, how much food would you want if we made the deal?"
"Just a little bit for everyone here."
"Oh! So you're negotiating for your people and not yourself?! Kuh, I'm touched!"
"...."
"Here, you eat first! I'll get food for everyone after you're done!"
As Tom said that, he tried to feed Hansen a suspicious-looking fruit. Hansen recognized it, of course. It was a fruit from the crooked forest that would knock you out for a whole day if you ate it.
When Hansen refused to open his mouth, Tom frowned before asking,
"What? You're not gonna eat it?"
'I'll be an idiot if I eat that.'
Hansen did not say it out loud because he was afraid Tom might shove the fruit in his mouth if he opened it. As Tom tried to unsuccessfully feed Hansen the poisonous fruit, Jerry said,
"Tom-san, that's wrong."
When Hansen heard that, he looked at Jerry and thought,
'Hmm, he not only looks cute but is also kind. Why are these idiots afraid of him?'
"You should grind it into powder and put it in normal food."
"...."
**********
"Oohh, it's changing color."
"Just a little more now."
In a corner of the crooked forest, the Fatare knights were busy trying to cook some food. Hansen watched them roasting a fruit to remove the poison and thought back to the last couple of days.
They were first let go because, in Tom's own words, they were too weak to even pose a problem to his crew. Of course, Hansen was enraged when he heard that and tried to fight.
He ended up getting knocked out in a minute.
When he woke up again, he was in the forest surrounded by his knights. Lamenting the fact that Tom took all his Dials away, Hansen gritted his teeth and waited till nighttime to attack the pirates' ship.
This time, they could not even get near the ship before they were noticed by Jerry.
Having to run away while being chased by a small boy with sticks in his hands was embarrassing to say the least.
Although Hansen wanted to take revenge, he also understood that he was pretty much powerless before the pirates right now. So he decided to run away. But unfortunately for Hansen, Tom also took away his log pose.
He could try being crazy and just take his knights and set off on their ship with no log pose, but when Hansen saw their ship, it had no sails on it. And for some reason, it was getting smaller everyday.
The pirates were more thorough than he thought they would be. The only saving grace was that the pirates did not go out of their way to hurt them physically. Mentally though, none of them were fine.
The amount of edible things on this island that would not send you to heaven are few to begin with. And the few that they found tasted horrible after they were somehow able to remove the poison from them.
But still, they could endure that. What really broke them was having to watch somebody else eat delicious food while they were trying hard to chew through theirs.
Jerry, alongside Yuuki, always arrived when they were about to eat and ravenously devoured good-looking food in front of them with an evil smile on his face.
Letting out a sigh, Hansen looked to the side when he heard footsteps.
'Is that damn kid here again?'
As Hansen steeled his will to not let his stomach growl, he did not see Jerry but a woman with white hair coming towards them with an annoyed face. He also noticed that she was being followed by Tyke.
Della threw a glance at the Fatare group in front of her and looked behind her with an annoyed expression for the eighteenth time.
Unlike the previous seventeen times though, she asked,
"What are you doing?"
"...."
Unfortunately, Della got no reply as Tyke just stood still. She did not know why he was doing something like this, but she had enough. So, she turned around and immediately ran.
Tyke, startled, tried to chase her and ran into the woods.
Hansen watched all that happen and turned towards a tree before saying,
"Come out."
_____________________
Author's note : Well first of all, I'd like to apologize to the few readers that I have for taking a long break again. There's no excuses for it, honestly. Especially because, I don't even have any sort of job right now. That being said, I will try to focus on writing in the upcoming weeks, hopefully I can stay on track and pump out some chapters.