After Victorian changed out of the commoner’s outfit and into a pair of pants and a loose top, she gave herself one last look over in the mirror.

Lady Victorian of Azure is no longer. You are Tori, just Tori. Throw away everything you learned in those lessons. No more proper tone, no honorifics. You don’t need to have perfect posture or a smile on your face. You enjoy rum and singing off key. You can now laugh and cry to your heart’s content. You are Tori, Lady Victorian of Azure is no more. You. Are. Tori.

“That took a while,” Elena said as Victorian left the room. “Come on, move it.”

Elena took her to visit the doctor for some treatment to her arms. There were some marks from the chains and a scrape from when Alzono rescued her from falling earlier.

“Lane what brings you here?” The doctor asked. He had dark tanned skin, long black hair, and he looked 10 years older than Elena.

“Hey Kiyiya, can you check out her arm? She was caught in a scuffle earlier.” Elena, who was holding Victorian by the bicep, easily threw her towards the doctor.

Kiyiya examined Victorian’s hand and with a sad look on his face, he notified her, “I’m afraid that it’s infected. You’ll only have a few days to live unless we cut off your arm now.” He turned to his desk to grab a knife.

“What!” Her first chance at freedom and she was going to die?

“You stupid doctor!” Elena shouted as she punched the top of Kiyiya’s head so hard a bump appeared. “Your jokes aren’t funny.”

“What?” Cried Victorian.

“Ow, okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Kiyiya had one hand where Elena punched him and the other pleading her to stop.

“Wait am I al-okay?” Victorian asked, trying to be as informal as possible. Her eyes darted between the supposed joking doctor and the woman who tried to impale her with a knife less than five minutes ago.

“You’re fine. Don’t take anything the doc says seriously. He thinks jokes like that are funny.”

“That was a joke?”

Kiyiya cleared his throat and started dabbing a cotton ball coated in some brown solution along Victorian’s scratch.

“Oh my,” he said, looking at the bottle. “I used the wrong treatment. This was poison.”

“Why do you have poison lying around?” Victorian shouted. She wasn’t sure if she should be angry or if she should cry. She was questioning what sort of a ship she joined.

“Just kidding, kekekekeke,” Kiyiya said sticking his tongue out. He turned the label towards Victorian to reveal it was nothing special.

“Come on let’s go.” Elena dragged Victorian out of the room after one more punch to Kiyiya’s head.

Once outside, Victorian has to hold onto a wall to stop laughing. The crew was ridiculous and she loved every second of their interactions?

“Is something funny?” Elena asked, confused since before Victorian left the room, she looked like she was about to cry.

“Is this what freedom is supposed to be?”

“Come again.”

“My first taste and freedom and I end up on a ship that was funnier than anything I’ve seen in court. The captain who almost got killed by his first mate laughed it off as if it was a daily occurrence. A kid and a samurai betting on how much the first mate would injure the captain. Now a doctor who jokes around about a patient’s health. Freedom is beautiful.”

Even the serious Elena cracked a smile at Victorian’s words. The crew was a mess but it was an amazing mess.

Baise and Alzono appeared in the distance carrying two sacks of supplies each. As soon as they were spotted, the anchor was raised and the crew began to set sail. The four bags were thrown onto the deck and the duo jumped on shortly after. Baise began to give orders for their next destination while Victorian’s welcome party began preparation.

Eventually the crew gathered in the dining room as they sailed off into the night. A buffet of food was placed on the table and the crew had already drowned down a barrel of rum by the time Victorian and Elena arrived. The room was loud, food was flying all over the place, their singing was horrible, and Victorian was never happier to feel so out of place.

“Now, now we must introduce our guest of honour,” Baise said after drowning another mug of rum now. “This is Tori our new crew member and that’s about it.” Baise ended the introduction with a hiccup.

“I’m Thomas but call me Maes Tora,” the young boy with the accent from earlier introduced himself. “I got rejected from the navy and now I’m a pirate.”

“Wait you guys are pirates?” Victorian asked.

“We’re not pirates. We never declared ourselves to be. You see that flag out there,” Baise pointed to a black flag with a white crescent moon surrounded by sun flares design, “not a jolly roger. Although, we may have a bounty-hic so, yeah.”

“Oh okay,” Victorian said. She quickly accepted the fact since if she was going to be free, she might as well be a pirate, the freest type of man on earth.

“Back to introductions and more rum!”

“Tori-sama, I am Yuto.” Yuto was a man with dark hair tied up in a bun and he wore a dark blue kimono with a sword around his waist.

“I’m the ship’s navigator Morgan-boya,” An older blond man with a goatee introduced himself before he was cut off by a younger man with a charming smile.

“Senorita, Alzono wishes you call him anything but Prince is Alzono’s favourite,” Alzono said with a smile that, under the light, seemed to sparkle. He was about to kiss her hand when the chef kicked his hand away and placed a freshly cooked meal in front of her.

“Miss Tori please ignore Mr. Thief over there. You don’t need to bother yourself with such lowlife. I’m Julius, the chef. If you every have anything specific you want to eat just let me know, I love a challenge.”

“Lowlife? Alzono is the lowlife you Useless Chef?” Alzono’s charming smile left and instead a vein was popping from his forehead.

“You were nothing more than a woman loving thief who got conned by a man you Stupid Fox. You only joined the ship because you lost a stupid bet. I, on the other hand was named the King of Chefs and the King of Kicks.”

“King of Kicks? More like King of Dicks.”

“Boys,” Elena warned while she ate her steak. The two older men froze and quickly returned to what they were doing before their fight.

“And you’ve already met Elena and Kiyiya. So that’s everybody.” Baise jumped in.

“Um… what about me?” A quiet voice coming from the end of the table said. All eyes turned to a plain looking man with brown almost copper hair with his hand shyly up.

“Were you always sitting there L’Roux?”

“Yes captain. I waited for my turn but Julius interrupted me before I even opened my mouth. Then I waited until the end but then you forgot about me,” L’Roux mumbled before trailing off.

“Uh, Tori, that’s L’Roux our sniper. He’s always around somewhere. Yeah. Welcome to the Sundance Crew. Any questions?”

“So what do you guys exactly do if you’re not pirates but you still have bounties on your heads?”

“We’re one trip merchants while we wait for Baise-dono’s dream to be accomplished. We sail from island to island, delivering items.”

“What’s your dream Baise?”

His blue eyes lit up as he began to speak, “I want to find a place to call my home. I don’t know where it’ll be so as of now we’re going to find the lost island of Crohcus, it’s where my biological parents are from.”

“Miss Tori I have a question for you, why did you join this crew if you didn’t know what we did and who we are?” Julius asked.

“I needed to get away. I dream is to taste the freedom that the blue seas offer,” she said with a smile. “Why did you guys join?”

“The navy reject me,” Thomas said.

“I owe my life to Baise-dono, Lane-san, and Maes-kun. I will follow them until my life is over.”

“I lost a bet when the captain conned me. So I ended up joining the crew.”

“I got onto the wrong ship and I ended up staying-boya,” Morgan said as if it was nothing.

“I was here to treat Yuto but when they didn’t let me cut his arm to save him, I stayed around to find another way then before I knew it the ship had already set sail,” Victorian wondered if it was a joke or not.

“This crew was the first time in a long time I felt challenged. Plus I could sail around to different islands and learn new dishes.”

“Is there something wrong? Your face has been falling each time someone spoke,” Thomas asked.

Victorian wanted to ask if anyone joined the crew because they actually wanted to be a pirate but a voice interrupted her.

“Um…” All eyes turned to L’Roux.

“L’Roux, you’re here?”

“I’ve been here the whole time. I even introduced myself to Tori earlier.”

The others stopped and tried to recall the sniper’s introduction. A few minutes passed before they made a fist and hit their palm and said, in sync, “Oh yeah. He was there.”

“So how did you join L’Roux?” Victorian questioned.

“Yeah how did you join?” Baise, the captain, asked.

“When did you join L’Roo?” Thomas asked.

“How long have you been here-boya?” Morgan questioned.

“Wait,” Victorian said as she slammed down her rum, she was getting used to and enjoying this life, “does anyone know how he joined?”

The eight other crew members all paused and started to think. No one seemed to remember how their sniper joined.

“Nope not a clue.”

“It’s kind of like he appeared one day.”

“I think that’s how it happened anyway.”

“Yes, it does make sense.”

“Yeah, I’ll take it.”

“Then it’s settled. Mr. Sniper just appeared one day and joined the crew.”

The chaos returned to the living room and L’Roux who was trying to explain himself was quickly forgotten about again. Victorian downed another mug of rum as if she lived like them her whole life instead of being the Lady of Azure less than five hours ago.

The crew continued their celebrations under the moonlight as Lane and Yuto played Deadman’s Rum on the violin and piano respectively for the crew to dance and sing along to.

When the song ended, the crew collapsed onto the deck to admire the night sky. While it may be a regular occurrence to the Sundance Crew, to Victorian it was a dream she never wanted to wake up from.

“Julius, more food!” Baise shouted.

“No more food for the night and low on money.”

“But we still have four days until we reach Hibhiscus Jules. Cap do something.”

“You just had to spend all the money didn’t you?”

“At least we have a job in Hibhiscus,” Baise reminded the very angry Elena.

“We can always turn in Mr. Captain and use the reward to buy more food.”

“Julius!”

“I mean we do have enough food to survive the trip, just no more for today. So if we want more, we need to make a stop somewhere in between and turn in Mr. Captain.”

“This is troublesome,” Baise said.

“It’s all your fault!” The rest of the crew shouted at him.

Baise simply let out a hardy laugh and the rest of the crew, including Victorian, joined shortly later. Going Sunny simply sailed off into the night carrying its crew and a new dream.