Spy Classroom - Volume 9 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Pirates

It was the fourth day of their vacation, and during their exploration of the island’s caves, Lily, Sybilla, and Monika made a huge discovery.

“We… We actually found it…,” Lily mumbled, with her mouth agape in the shape of a wide O.

Beside her, Sybilla and Monika rubbed their eyes as well in stark disbelief.

“No fuckin’ way…”

“You’re kidding, right…?”

The three of them turned their flashlight beams toward their find.

All of them were fully outfitted in spelunking gear. They had anti-skid hiking boots, they had pantyhose to protect their legs, and they had climbing outfits built for heat retention. Meanwhile, their backpacks were packed full of provisions, rope ladders, and other expedition equipment.

They’d spent the full day exploring the island’s caves. After finding a large grotto connected to the sea that wasn’t on any of their maps, they marched straight on in. Eventually, they arrived at a wide, open space not unlike a lake and were greeted by a most peculiar sight.

It was what one might call a carrack—a ship large enough they had to crane their necks to view it in its entirety. It was stout and roundish, with a demonic figurehead extending from its prow. The barnacles and moss coating its sides spoke to its two hundred years of history.

All three of them shouted in unison.

“““WE FOUND A PIRATE SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!!”””

Their voices echoed through the dark cavern, startling awake a group of sleeping bats.

Indeed: In just a mere four days, they’d already found their pirate ship.

Not a single one of them had been expecting to actually find the ship.

All they were motivated by was basic curiosity. They’d heard that the island was dotted with caves, so they wanted to go exploring. And hey, if they found pirate treasure while they were there, so much the better.

After Raftania told them about the pirate legend on the first evening of their vacation, that was the general vibe in the room when they went back to their boardinghouse and held their strategy meeting.

Sybilla smirked and jabbed Monika with her elbow. “You’re seriously gonna come treasure huntin’ with us? I gotta say, didn’t see that one comin’.”

“Really? It sounds like fun.” Monika gave her a small shrug. “Besides, I’m supposed to be staying out of public right now. And my wounds aren’t totally healed yet, so it’s not like I can just spend the whole time swimming.”

During their previous mission, Monika had become a notorious international criminal, and her mug shot had circulated widely. The official story was that she was dead, but she still wanted to avoid drawing any unnecessary attention.

“Anyways, I’m gonna hang out with you two for a bit, then bail if I get bored. We should gather some intel first, right?”

Lily was glaring at a map, and she gave Monika’s suggestion a nod. “Yeah, we’ll start by gathering local legends and getting the lay of the coastline!”

“Sounds good. Once we’ve narrowed down some caves of interest, we can head in.”

“If that’s the plan, then I guess we’ll need to buy some equipment, huh? I wonder if they sell spelunking stuff at any of the stores here.”

“…………………………?”

Sybilla tilted her head in confusion when she saw Lily and Monika cheerfully chatting away, but she specifically elected to cut into the conversation without questioning it. “What should we do if we actually find the treasure?”

Their expedition began as frivolously as could be.

At the time, none of them had any idea that they would end up actually encountering the Great Pirate Jackal’s ship.

Mouths agape, the three of them took another gawk at the vessel they’d stumbled upon.

“I never thought I’d get to see a real pirate ship…”

“Yeah, ditto. And it was just right fuckin’ there, too. That can’t seriously be the ship from the legend, right?”

Lily and Sybilla crossed their arms in dissatisfaction. It was bewildering how easy it had been to find. All they did was stroll into a large cave that wasn’t on any of their maps, and there it was. And they’d barely walked half an hour from their boardinghouse to get there, too. It didn’t make sense how close it was to civilization. Surely, one of the islanders would have found it by—

“It was that landslide two days back.”

Monika shone her flashlight over at the cavern wall.

“Huh?”

“The ship is normally sealed off from the world. There are probably dozens of deadly traps you have to evade, puzzles you have to solve, and devices you have to activate before you can board it. But the landslide from two days ago destroyed them all and sent the ship floating all the way over to this lake in a cavern connected to the sea.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Dang, we really hit the jackpot.”

Now that she mentioned it, there were broken cogs scattered about and signs that the nearby sediment had just collapsed. The walls that had once protected the ship were broken, and the water had carried it all the way to the grotto. Then, right before it drifted all the way out to sea, it had gotten caught on a cave wall.

In other words, the boat from before really was a long-lost pirate ship.

Lily cleared her throat and looked up at it.

“Then, I repeat…”

She and Sybilla sucked in big breaths.

“WE FOUND A PIRATE SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!!”

“PREPARE TO BE BOARDEEEEED!!”

The two of them tossed off their backpacks and began hopping around the ship. None of them were accustomed to making such a huge find, and they hollered “Whoo-hoo!” and “How’re we supposed to get on?!” as they ran circles around the ship’s perimeter. It was the same kind of glee as that of a child who’d just been given a new toy.

Monika shrugged in exasperation. “…I swear, you two are like little kids.”

“What the hell?” Sybilla scowled and took a break from rapping her fist on the boat’s hull. “Why you gotta be such a buzzkill? Are you sayin’ you’re not excited?”

“Seriously? That’s a stupid question.”

Monika sucked in a big breath, and her eyes went wide.

“HOW COULD I NOT BE EXCITED ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE THIS?!”

Monika abandoned her usual aloof demeanor and took off at a run.

After spotting a perfectly sloped section of the cave’s wall, she dashed up it and leaped onto the deck.

“Last one on is a rotten egg!” “Dammit, that’s not fair!” “Yeah, I was supposed to get on first!”

The others followed the wall and hopped on board as well. Then, without delay, they immediately began exploring the legendary pirate ship.

After landing on board, the first thing they spotted was the three masts looking so mighty, it was hard to believe they’d been sitting there for two hundred years.

“Holy shit, those things are huge!” Sybilla cried. “And they’re still in perfect condition.”

Lily nodded. “It’s amazing how well-preserved they are. This thing might actually still be seaworthy.”

Monika stared at them in shock. “Did we just stumble onto the discovery of the century…?”

Next, they headed below deck. The doors to the cabins had rotted through, but the girls forced them open. Their cheers of excitement were a good 50 percent louder than usual as they scanned around with their flashlights.

At the center of a large room that looked to be the captain’s cabin, they found something enshrined atop a lavish chair.

“S-skeleton alert!” Sybilla yelped.

“Th-that’s not a model or a decoration, either…,” Lily stammered. “Could that be Jackal himself?”

“Could be,” said Monika. “He is holding a jewel…”

The skeleton was wearing a cloak that had been all but completely devoured by insects.

The three girls offered the corpse a brief prayer, then headed over to another room.

Once they were done paying their respects to Jackal’s skeleton, they descended a set of stairs by his feet.

The aquatic stench was leagues more intense down there, but as soon as they plugged their noses and turned their flashlights toward the back of the room, thoughts about the stink were the furthest thing from their minds.

“TREASUUUUURE!”

“BOOOOOOOOTY!”

“What?! This is wild. Does this mean we’re millionaires now?!”

The room was so full of coins and jewels that the three of them couldn’t have carried it all off if they tried. There were diamonds and emeralds larger than you could find at any jewelry store in the world and chests overflowing with gold. The bounty gleamed majestically under the light of the girls’ flashlights.

It truly was the pirate ship from the legends.

There was a room that must have been the sleeping quarters, full of dangling tatters that had once been hammocks, and littered with beer bottles. It gave them a glimpse at what life must have been like on the ship. Right next door, there was an imposing gun deck that still had cannonballs and gunpowder off to the side. All the food in the galley was rotten, but the casks and bottles in the wine cellar were still intact, and when they popped one of the corks, they were greeted by the full-bodied aroma of two hundred years of fermentation.

They were on a pirate ship straight out of a legend!

Lily trembled with joy, and when she returned to the upper deck, she climbed all the way onto the ship’s prow. After planting her foot atop its demonic figurehead, she let out a bold shout. “’Tis I, the Great Pirate Lily!”

“Cap’n! What are your orders?!” “We await your command, cap’n!”

Sybilla and Monika were immediately ready to play pirates.

Their excitement melted their brains like a drug. Imagining that they’d truly become pirates, they raised their voices high.

“HARD TURN TO STARBOARD! RAM THE ENEMY SHIP!”

“AYE-AYE, CAP’N!!”

There was nothing in their minds but the heady thrill of adventure.

The delusion had fully taken hold. The vast blue sea surrounded them everywhere they looked, and before them sat a fleet of enemy ships trying to steal their treasure. The sinister nobles had forced their slaves to build them grand wooden ships packed with the latest innovations. However, no pirate worth their salt would yield to such scurvy foes.

“We’ll show those Fend Kingdom Trading Company dogs hell for invading our turf! The roar of our guns will mark the battle’s start!”

““Opening fire, cap’n!””

The three of them took their pistols and fired into the air.

Contrary to their delusions, though, they were in a cave rather than on the high seas.

Their bullets struck the roof of the cavern. It was already unstable from the landslide, and the shock from the impacts caused another section of the ceiling to collapse. It came crashing down toward the ship.

Just like that, a huge rock smashed right through the deck.

“““AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”””

That brought the girls crashing right back to their senses.

The three of them had been fortunate enough not to get hit by any rocks, but the ship wasn’t so lucky. The hole the rocks had torn in the hull was a good six feet across. It didn’t look like they’d penetrated the bilge, but the sleeping quarters area on the lower deck was completely destroyed.

The girls had thrown themselves onto the ground near the prow, and they gulped upon seeing the extent of the damage.

All of a sudden, the whole thing felt a lot more real.

“Th-there’s a hole in the priceless historical artifact…”

“…L-look, shit happens. For all anyone knows, that hole was there when we got here.”

Lily broke into a cold sweat, and Sybilla tried to calm her down.

They didn’t know if more rocks were going to start falling, so they took cover beneath the masts. All their excitement from earlier had just had a cold bucket of water splashed all over it.

Lily and Sybilla began calmly discussing their plans going forward.

“So what should we do?” Lily asked. “What can we do?”

“We’d better start by tellin’ the locals,” Sybilla replied. “The ship’s too important for us to just go finders keepers on it. Best case, they let us keep a bit of the treasure as a reward.”

“Yeah, you’re right. In that case, you wanna pocket some of the nicer stuff while we have the chance?”

“I dunno. Morally speakin’, that feels a little dodgy.”

“C’mon! We clearly deserve it for finding this thing.”

The girls might have discovered the ship, but not even they felt brazen enough to claim ownership of it. After all, this was the kind of discovery that would make its mark on human history. They needed to hand it over to the islanders so they could turn it into a new tourist attraction or donate it to a museum. It was only fair that they be the ones to decide its fate.

As the two of them chatted up a storm, Sybilla suddenly realized that Monika hadn’t said a word that whole time. “Huh? What’s up, Monika?”

Monika was clutching her head, and her face was as pale as a sheet. “I think…we might not want to tell the locals just yet…” Her voice was hoarse. It was like all the life had drained out of her. “I mean, I know they’ll find it eventually and it’s just a matter of time, but…we should still hold off…”

“Wait, why?”

“We’re the ones who broke it, right? We smashed up the ship…a priceless historical artifact…”

“Sure, but what’s done is done. Like, I get that it’d cause an international incident if anyone found out, but as long as we get our stories straight—”

Before Sybilla had a chance to say, “no one ever has to,” Monika’s lip trembled.

There was a little detail that was about to bring Lily’s and Sybilla’s optimism crashing down to the depths of hell and, in a sense, start off a much more difficult mission than the treasure hunt ever had been.

“We gotta find those bullets.”

It was the afternoon of the sixth day of their vacation, and the three morons were lying on the ground of the cavern with the ship. Their supply of food and water had run out, and they stared up at the ceiling in a daze to try to escape from reality.

Lily and Sybilla let out a pair of exhausted groans.

“We can’t find those bullets anywhere.”

“This shit’s impossible. They’re too damn small, and the cave’s too damn big.”

The three of them had spent the last two days straight sleeplessly searching for the bullets.

They’d fired three rounds off into the cavern roof, and they knew those shots had landed somewhere in the cave after bouncing off the ceiling. Either they’d sunk into the water, or they’d gotten wedged in rocks. They peeled their eyes and shone their flashlights around, but to no avail.

The girls tried borrowing Sara’s puppy Johnny on the fourth evening, but not even his canine olfactory senses could track them down. The scent of gunpowder smoke was completely drowned out by the smell of the sea permeating the cavern.

There was a key reason why they were going to such lengths in their search: Those three bullets were evidence they were the ones who’d damaged the ship.

The guns the girls used had been made in the Din Republic, and the same went for their bullets. What’s more, they’d been manufactured over the last few years. If any such bullets got found on the pirate ship, then as the people who found the ship, it would be obvious that the three of them were the ones who fired them.

Furthermore, the state of the wood’s rot would show that the hole in the deck was recent.

Now, there was always a chance that they might not get caught. The bullets might never get found, and even if they did, it would be hard to tie them to the hole in the deck. If anything, it was far more likely that they would get away with it.

However—the costs of getting found out were incalculable!

Visions of what the world’s news outlets would say flashed through their heads.

“A group of tourists from the Din Republic both discovered and destroyed a ship belonging to the Great Pirate Jackal. The cost of the damage has been estimated at around thirty billion dents. It’s unclear at this time why the tourists were armed, but evidence has been uncovered suggesting they discharged firearms. The Lylat Kingdom’s Ministry of Culture has joined historians the world over in condemning this malicious act of vandalism, and the Lylat people have even taken to the streets in protest against the Din Republic—”

“Shit, there’s no way we can apologize our way outta this!”

Sybilla’s cry echoed off the walls.

She’d pictured it more times than she could count, and it felt like the weight of it all was going to crush her. She got up and called over to Monika, who had massive bags under her eyes. “We gotta find ’em now! Before things get real ugly!”

“Yeah, duh. Tell me something I don’t know…”

“But what do we do? Searchin’ like this ain’t gettin’ us nowhere. Should we bring in more help?”

Monika shook her head. “Nah, that’s a bad idea. More people means more ways for the news to spread.”

The girls had taken precautions to make sure no one else came in and had placed DO NOT ENTER signs all around. They also didn’t want the boat drifting off to sea, so they’d tied it in place with loads of ropes.

However, all they were doing was delaying the inevitable. With how close the cave was to where people lived, it was only a matter of time before the islanders or navy found it.

“Then I guess all we can do is improve our equipment,” Lily said as she got up. “That means getting better lights and a generator. We need all the help we can get.”

“Good call,” Monika agreed with a nod. “These piddly flashlights aren’t going to cut it.”

The lights they were using were designed for basic spelunking. They were fine for lighting the path directly in front of them, but they lacked the output to illuminate the entire cavern at once. Some of the bullets might have ended up in the water, but as things stood, it was too dark to retrieve them.

“Let’s head into town and buy the best stuff they’ve got. All right, everyone, open up those wallets!”

On Lily’s orders, the three of them took stock of their cash on hand.

Lily had four bills on her. Sybilla, eight bills. Monika, six small coins.

Money like that was barely enough to cover their food expenses during their trip.

Monika sighed. “…Yeah, that figures.”

They’d paid for their lodgings up front, and buying all their spelunking gear locally had just about cleaned them out. Out on a remote island controlled by a foreign nation, it wasn’t like they could just go make a bank withdrawal.

“Step one is raisin’ funds, then. Do we need to get jobs or somethin’?”

“If we do, then we need to start quickly. We’re short on time here.”

Sybilla and Lily were at a loss for how to deal with the impasse.

They only had a week left. The most they could allot to raising money was three days, tops.

Monika let out a pained groan.

“I…I have an idea. It’s the easiest way to make money there is on the island.”

““Oh?””

Lily and Sybilla looked at her, their interests piqued.

For some reason, though, Monika was biting her lip in dismay. “Honestly, though, I’d rather not do it. It’s not a pleasant option.”

“J-just lay it out for us.” Sybilla waved off her concerns. “We don’t got much of a choice here. This is an emergency. We’re all ready to grit our teeth a little.”

“………From what I understand, Thea is crazy popular right now. The dudes here are showering her with gifts. There’s too many male sailors on the island and not enough chicks, so young women are valuable just for existing.”

The information she was presenting earned a simultaneous gasp of ““Wh—?”” from Lily and Sybilla.

Monika went on in a voice empty of emotion. “The market value of sexual stuff is inflated here—do you get my drift?”

Lily’s and Sybilla’s faces went bright red, and they bit their lips as well. They understood exactly what Monika was saying. Sure enough, no faster way to make money sprang to mind.

Sybilla’s gaze darted back and forth. “C-c’mon, now, you can’t really expect us to—”

“You think I WANT to do this?! We don’t have a choice. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

The determination in Monika’s voice left an oppressive silence in its wake that permeated every inch of the cavern.

The girls were silent for a good five minutes as they tried to come up with an alternative. No matter how hard they racked their brains, they couldn’t think of anything. Lily’s cheeks went redder still, but despite her trembling and cries of “Nooooo, I don’t wannnnna…,” no better solution presented itself.

Monika didn’t so much say the words as sigh them. “We’d better steel ourselves—we aren’t getting out of this as innocent as when we went in.”

It was the evening of the sixth day of their vacation and the morning of the seventh.

Lily, Sybilla, and Monika gave up on their bullet hunt in the cave for the time being and headed back toward civilization. After crashing at their boardinghouse and sleeping like logs, they waited for sundown to make their move.

In addition to Lily, Sybilla, and Monika, Thea was staying at that house as well.

According to the owner of the house, Thea had left early in the evening, dressed in some sort of hostess outfit. The girls didn’t know what Thea was doing, but that wasn’t really their problem right now.

Monika handled the negotiations with the owner.

“I promise we’ll pay you for the damages, so can we mess up one of the rooms a bit?”

With a carefully woven story about “wanting it to be a surprise” and “it being a religious thing,” they successfully got the owner to both give his permission and to promise his silence.

The three of them all got buckets and filled them with seawater.

“Heave!” “Ho!” “Hrah!”

Then they dumped the water all over Thea’s room.

For the finishing touches, they also strewed seaweed and small sea creatures around and tried to make it look like the room had been struck by a supernatural phenomenon.

The next morning, their efforts paid off.

Out in the hallway, Thea sounded bone-tired.

“I’m going to throw out all my clothes. This is too creepy for me to ever wear them again, even after I wash them.”

Thea was freaked out, just like they drew it up.

It was a reasonable reaction when something so seemingly unnatural had happened to her on an island with folklore about a pirate curse. And just like they planned, she tossed all her clothes in the garbage.

Monika sneakily took a creep shot of her doing it.

“I got the pics.”

Now the image of Thea throwing away her clothes was captured clear as day on film.

It was the evening of the seventh day of their vacation, and the three girls donned ski masks and moved out.

Their destination was a bar near the naval base. Its prices were cheap, but its seats were cramped, its decor was crude, and everything on its menu was the kind of greasy stuff guys loved.

Inside, there were nothing but men. The girls had chosen the time of day when the bar would be the most crowded, and there were nearly forty sailors there, standing nearly shoulder to shoulder as they poured beer from tankards into their gullets. The stench of tobacco filled the entire room.

Undaunted, the girls strode in.

“Hey, what do you people think you’re—?”

That was when the bar patrons took notice of them.

They were dressed more or less like burglars, and it didn’t take long before they had the attention of every man there. All the chatter immediately died down, and a peculiar tension filled the air.

Sybilla stepped forward. “The Raven-Haired Succubus cleaned out her room this morning. Here’s a photo of her dumpin’ out her wardrobe.”

The girls had just finished developing the film, and Sybilla held the photos aloft. They took the copies they’d made and began handing them out to the men nearby. On seeing the pictures, the men let out excited cries. “Oh hey, they’re right.” “God, she’s such a looker.”

That was precisely the reaction the girls had been looking for, and that was why they’d duped Thea into throwing out her clothes.

Once Sybilla had everyone’s attention again, she raised her voice loud.

“Now, let the Raven-Haired Succubus Secondhand Wardrobe Auction…BEGIN!!”

““““““WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!””””””

The foul men in the bar erupted into cheers. It wasn’t just the patrons, either. Even the male staff thrust their arms in the air as they hooted and hollered. These men were starved of the female touch, and their madness knew no bounds.

Thea’s secondhand clothes ended up selling for a full five times more than the girls expected.

SYBILLA got A SET OF THEA’S LINGERIE THEY HAD THE DECENCY NOT TO SELL!

THE GIRLS got SOME FLOODLIGHTS!

It was the eighth day of their vacation, and the three dumbasses’ dumbassery continued.

“So you’re tellin’ me we have money, but there’s nowhere on the island we can buy a generator?”

“Yeah, we forgot to check that. Pretty funny, huh?”

“You two need to quit gabbing like morons and get your rears in gear.”

Sybilla, Lily, and Monika commented in turn as they headed into the bowels of the pirate ship.

The girls had made plenty of money off their clothing auction, and even after paying a cleaning fee to the boardinghouse’s owner, they still had loads left over. That was what let them buy the large floodlights designed for ships, but sadly, all the generators were sold out.

If they wanted to use their floodlights in the cave, they needed to find a way to power them.

“We need to focus up,” Monika said as she rummaged through the ship. “There’s not a lot of places where we’d be able to find a generator.”

“You mean, the naval base?”

“They have to have one lying around somewhere. We’re just going to borrow it for a bit.”

Monika located the clothes piled up in the ship’s storage.

After lying there for two centuries, they were about as far from clean as you could get. Basically all of them were covered in holes from where bugs and mildew had eaten through them.

Lily scrunched up her face. “Okay, but why do we have to wear those rags? Ewww, they smell salty…”

“Look, it’s not like we can sneak in there wearing our own clothes or anything we bought locally.”

In the unlikely event they got caught, that would pose a huge problem.

Unlike with covert ops in urban areas, it was relatively easy to identify people by their clothes in places with small populations like remote islands. Furthermore, none of them had brought their mission uniforms with them on vacation.

The three of them picked out the nicest-looking shirts and cloaks they could find from among the pirate clothes, but the smell was still brutal.

“These should do for disguises. All we have to do is pop in tonight, grab it, and go, after all.”

With those optimistic words to carry them through, the three girls got to work preparing.

Monika’s predictions were on the mark, and they had no trouble at all finding a generator lying in a warehouse when they sneaked onto the naval base that night. After disabling all the defenses, they retrieved their prize without anyone spotting them. Sybilla hoisted it onto her back, and they quickly made to leave.

Compared to the brutal missions they’d survived in the past, this was like taking candy from a baby.

It was immediately after exiting the warehouse that trouble reared its ugly head.

“““………There’s no way we can get back.”””

A storm had just struck the island from out of nowhere.

The wind was raging, and the rain mercilessly battered them as it poured down at a sharp angle. With all the branches and trash flying through the air, the girls had serious misgivings about walking outside.

They hid in the warehouse for a bit, but the storm showed no signs of subsiding. If anything, it only grew stronger as time marched on.

“Shit. What do we do? Walk along the coastline with the generator on my back?”

“Nah, no way. For one, it’s liable to break if we did that.”

“Id’s doo cold. ATCHOO!”

As Sybilla and Monika whispered to each other in turn, Lily let out a tremendous sneeze.

All of them were dressed in the tatters the pirates had once worn, so their clothes offered them little protection against the cold. Due to the low-pressure system, the temperature had dropped precipitously.

Monika shot a glance over at Lily and sighed. “We need to find some hot water. At this rate, we’re all gonna catch colds.”

She began walking from the warehouse over toward the barracks.

Sybilla and Lily let out little gasps of surprise, but they quickly followed after her. Staying warm was their top priority at the moment.

All the curtains at the women’s barracks were drawn, and the building was quiet. Most of the people there had already gone to bed for the night. The building had four floors, and the first was a mess hall. When the girls peeked through the window, they spotted its water heater.

They circled around to the back entrance, used their picking tools to get past the lock, and silently sneaked inside.

Monika shrugged triumphantly. “Heh. There’s no way anyone in this dinky rural naval base could ever detect me.”

That there was hubris talking.

As soon as the girls set foot in the mess hall, they realized their mistake. As it turned out, there was someone in the barracks capable of detecting their intrusion.

The moment the girls sensed his presence, the individual in question flapped his way over like he’d heard them come in and landed on the table in the center of the mess hall.

“________?!”

They practically jumped out of their skin.

All three of them knew that person—or rather, that hawk—by name.

Monika looked at him in surprise. “…Bernard?”

That hawk was one of Sara’s pets. He was also a member of Lamplight, who’d been given the code name Insight. The question was, what was he doing there on the naval base?

The girls wondered if perhaps they were misidentifying him.

“That’s Bernard, right?” “I think that’s Bernard, yeah.” “That’s definitely Bernard.”

No matter how many times they looked at him, though, it was clearly him.

Illuminated by the back door’s night-light, the hawk stared at the three intruders. “……………”

“Dang, he’s really glaring at us.” “But why?” “I mean, we are acting pretty shady.”

Apparently, hawks could see perfectly well, even at night.

Then, all of a sudden, Bernard spread his wings out wide. He’d decided that they were suspicious. He flew across the mess hall, slammed into a stack of chairs piled up in the corner, and knocked it over. A loud crash rang out, and the girls heard women saying, “What was that?!” and “Burglars?!” from outside the mess hall.

“Ugh, stupid bird…!!” Monika snapped.

“Hey, no disrespecting Master Bernard!” Lily scolded her.

“Kill the breaker,” Sybilla said. “We need to grab somethin’ we can warm ourselves up with and skedaddle.”

From there, they acted fast.

Monika hurled a coin and flipped the mess hall’s circuit breaker, cutting off power to the entire barracks. Meanwhile, Sybilla scoured the shelves for matches and candles.

The female sailors were clearly confused, but they bravely began making their way toward the mess hall.

Lily responded by dashing over and planting herself in front of the hallway.

“Gah, you leave me no choice!”

She’d brought her classic paralyzing gas along, just in case, and she put it to work.

“I’m code name Flower Garden—and it’s time to bloom out of control!”

That was her trademark move, and in enclosed spaces, its power was absolute.

The gas she set off in the hallway robbed the incoming sailors of their mobility and sent them even deeper into a panic. “I can’t move…?!” they cried.

After that, they continued buying time as they looked around for matches and candles. Midway through their search, Sara showed up for reasons unbeknownst and kicked them away, and the girls fled the base.

MONIKA got A GENERATOR STOLEN FROM THE NAVAL BASE!

LILY got CHASED AROUND BY BERNARD THE HAWK!

It was the ninth day of their vacation, and after many trials and tribulations, the three of them had successfully secured lights and a generator. They spent a sleepless night tucked away in a corner of the naval base with nothing but matches and candles for heat, then left at the crack of dawn.

At that point, they didn’t have the energy left to return to their boardinghouse, so they changed into their regular outfits that they’d stashed by the road and collapsed on the beach. The sand was so dry, it was the like last night’s storm had never even happened. To them, the beach’s warmth felt gentler than any feather quilt.

“We’re supposed to be on an island vacation,” Monika groaned. “Why’re we out here working ourselves to the bone, again?”

“Hell if I know,” Sybilla replied. “I say we rest today, then startin’ tomorrow, we spend our last three days gettin’ this shit done.”

Lily looked up. “Um, just as an FYI, Master Bernard is still following us…”

The three of them were appalled at how stupid it was that they’d thrown their precious holiday down the drain, but given how irrevocable what they’d done was, it wasn’t like they had much of a choice. The storm had passed, and up in the clear blue sky, a hawk circled through the air and refused to let them escape his sight.

While they were lying there on the beach and staring up at the blue expanse above, Grete came by. “Whatever happened to you three?”

She looked down at them in concern.

They couldn’t bring themselves to tell her the truth, so they dodged the question. “What about you, Grete? Enjoyin’ your vacation?” Sybilla asked.

Grete gave them a bitter smile. “…I’m not sure I know how to answer that question.”

“Huh?” “Hmm?” “What?”

Grete’s response earned her a series of puzzled looks.

When the girls fixed their gazes on her, Grete told them the truth with resignation in her voice. “It’s just, I’m locked in a battle I can’t afford to lose. Just another day in the life, you know?”

From the sound of it, she was worried about the Klaus situation. The somber expression on her face made it clear just how dire things were. In all likelihood, this had something to do with the girl who’d shown up and declared herself Klaus’s fiancée.

“Look, Grete.” Monika rose to her feet and laid a hand on Grete’s shoulder. She looked Grete square in the eyes. “I don’t know all the details, but I’ve just got one piece of advice for you.”

Monika had a dead fish look in her eyes.

“If something’s important to you, make sure you don’t lose it.”

As someone who’d lost something important herself (the bullets), her words rang with a rare weight.

Lily and Sybilla smiled.

“She’s right. There’s nothing sadder than only realizing what you had once it’s already gone. All you’re left with are regrets, and you spend every night sobbing into your pillow…”

“But no matter how hard you wish, you can’t make time turn back. Don’t you go fuckin’ your thing up, Grete.”

All of their eyes were empty and hollow, but the emotion in their voices was true.

Upon receiving the warning from the girls who’d lost something so important, Grete was overcome with emotion. “Thank you, everyone…”

The three others exchanged a series of glances. “We’re basically the last people she should be taking any sort of advice from.” “Wait, Lily, you’ve been cryin’?” “Ten ounces a night.”

The whole thing seemed so ridiculous that in a way, it was almost relieving.

Sybilla hopped briskly to her feet. “Now, let’s go play our hearts out to pray for Grete’s success!” she said as she threw her arm around Grete’s shoulders.

“What, you mean now?” “But I’m not done resting yet…,” Monika and Lily protested, but Sybilla held firm. “Nah, screw that!! We’re on vacation, remember?!” The other two gave her a pair of exhausted smiles, then dived at Grete.

“What, what?!” Grete cried as they dragged her toward the sea.

“Let’s play like there’s no tomorrow!” “Preach it!” the girls cheered, and they continued screwing around all the way to sundown.

They’d maxed out their stress levels, and that was their way of letting loose.

SYBILLA got SOME WHITE FABRIC as thanks for cheering Grete up!

Grete made her way back to her boardinghouse at around nightfall, and the girls headed to a restaurant. It was a quiet seaside establishment with few customers. Its windows were open, and a sea breeze blew through the room.

It was their first decent meal in ages, and though Lily started out by guzzling seafood down with abandon, before long, she planted her face directly on the table and drifted off into a soft slumber. Her exhaustion had finally caught up with her. Even when their squid paella arrived, she simply mumbled “I can’t eat another bite” in her sleep. Coming from her, that was all but unthinkable. Perhaps the end-times were upon them.

Monika sighed as she divvied up the paella. “You could at least wait till we get back to the house before conking out. I swear…”

“………………”

After staring at Monika’s face for a bit, Sybilla took the back of an oily spoon and rapped it against Lily’s nose. However, she didn’t so much as stir. She was out like a light.

Having made doubly sure of that, Sybilla slid her chair over to Monika’s. “Hey, Monika. You mind if I ask you somethin’ I’ve been wonderin’ about for a while?”

“Like what?”

“What ended up happenin’ between you and Lily?”

Monika choked on her mouthful of paella. Sybilla handed her a glass of mineral water, and she grabbed it and chugged it down before taking a series of laborious breaths.

She shot Sybilla a reproachful glare. “You’re seriously gonna go there?”

From Sybilla’s perspective, though, it was a fair question.

There was a period right after their mission where things had gotten awkward between Lily and Monika. Monika had come out and told Lily straight up that she was in love with her, leaving Lily at a complete loss. They later talked things out at Heat Haze Palace, but only the two of them knew how that conversation ended.

Sybilla turned her palm upward. “Look, try puttin’ yourself in my shoes for a second. Bein’ stuck between you is awkward as hell.”

“I guess you have a point…”

“Can you at least bottom-line it for me? I dunno how I’m supposed to act around you two.”

The fact was, Sybilla had been devoting a lot of effort toward trying to figure that out.

It was unclear why Lily and Monika were acting like nothing had changed, but Sybilla had spent her entire time playing third wheel, wondering if she was supposed to be livening things up or if it would be better to give the two of them some time alone.

Monika took one of the mussel shells from the paella and carefully balanced it on Lily’s snoozing head. However, Lily still didn’t wake up.

“Don’t worry about it. Nothing’s changed between us—that’s what we agreed on.”

“Oh, huh. And whose idea was that?”

“Mine. It’s easiest for everyone that way. And Lily signed off.”

In other words, they’d chosen to maintain the status quo.

Monika ordered some tea to wash the meal down with, then planted her elbows on the table and stared out the window so she wouldn’t have to look Sybilla in the eye. She had no interest in going into detail. “That answer your question?”

“Yeah. But if anything happens, come talk to me. Don’t go bottlin’ it up.”

“…I’ll think about it.”

“Hey, better me than Thea.”

“Well, that goes without saying.”

Sybilla dumped Lily’s uneaten paella onto her plate and finished it off. Something about it tasted extra delicious.

For a while, the silence was only broken by the sound of the salty breeze.

When the tea arrived, Monika spoke softly. “You know how Klaus forbade us from all getting together?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure.”

Back on the first day of the vacation, Klaus had instituted a strange rule. Aside from the first, thirteenth, and fourteenth days, the girls weren’t allowed to all gather in one place. Sybilla still didn’t have any idea what that was about.

“This is Klaus we’re talking about. It’s probably a type of training.”

Lily was fast asleep, and Monika stared at the whorls in her hair.

“Odds are, Lamplight’s about to get separated.”

Sybilla gasped. “Wh—?”

“That’s my guess, based on how solemn he looked. Grete’s probably picked up on that, too.”

“Ah…and that’s why she’s freakin’ out about where she stands with him?”

Monika took a sip of tea, then exhaled. “This vacation is like a rehearsal. It might be a few months, it might be half a year, it might even be a whole year, but we’re going to be split up, and we’re not even going to be allowed to communicate.”

“……………”

“The world’s approaching a crisis. If we want to gather intel more efficiently, it’s the logical choice.”

Like it or not, Monika’s explanation made sense.

Lamplight had historically spent most of their time collectively staying in a single city for long periods of time, but in all likelihood, that was only because Klaus wanted to be able to protect them.

However, what if Lamplight spread out?

That would free Klaus up to move freely across the globe. He could take reports from Lamplight members stationed around the world, then devote his time exclusively to the hardest jobs before moving over to another country.

In terms of raw optimization, it was clearly the right thing to do.

“Now obviously, I have no idea how long we’re going to be separated for, or to what extent. But given how much Klaus is agonizing over it, I have to imagine it’s going to be major.”

“…Yeah, true enough.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little sad.”

Sybilla nodded in agreement.

Lamplight had certainly spent short periods living apart from each other. During their missions in both Galgad and Longchon, the team had spent nearly a month split into two or three groups. However, they’d all been staying in the same city, and they’d still been able to exchange information and meet up. And after just a short month or two, they’d been right back in Heat Haze Palace, horsing around like always.

Now they were being scattered to the winds.

It would have been all too easy to gripe and moan about the situation, but considering how much danger the world was in, they had no choice but to accept it.

Monika turned her gaze back to Lily’s whorls. Sybilla couldn’t tell what emotions lurked behind that face of hers, but the heart-rending warmth in her gaze was unmistakable.

Sybilla chose her next words with great care. “Y’know, the Great Pirate Jackal never got to go back to his homeland.”

“What’re you talking about?” Monika said with a small grin.

Sybilla shrugged. “I wonder what kinda thoughts went through that guy’s head?”

“Hey, don’t ask me.”

“It’d sure be cool if we could meet him.”

Unsure of what it was she was even trying to say, Sybilla went quiet.

However, when she thought about that ship back in the cave and about the skeleton that had breathed its last in the captain’s cabin, she couldn’t help but envision Jackal boldly sailing the ocean blue.

It was the tenth day of their vacation, and after restoring their energy by playing on the beach and getting a good night’s sleep at their boardinghouse, the girls returned once more to the cave with the pirate ship. Luckily, there were no signs that anyone had come in. The site had evaded detection.

The cave remained shrouded in darkness, but this time, they’d come prepared.

“All right! Let’s find those bullets in a flash so we can enjoy the rest of our vacation!”

On Lily’s command, Sybilla and Monika activated the device they’d brought along.

“The generator is a go!!” “Let there be light!!”

The floodlights had originally been designed to help fishing boats lure in squids and fish, and the girls installed them at five points on the ship’s deck and around the cave before turning them on. Each of the large lights was roughly twenty inches across, and by bouncing them off the mirrors they’d set up, they were able to illuminate the entire cavern.

The effects were immediate. No longer did they have to individually check every nook and cranny with their flashlights, and their field of view expanded dramatically. When they turned the floodlights toward the water, they could see all the way down to the bottom of the lake.

Their plan bore fruit just two hours after they began.

“Oh hey, I found one.”

“Nice, me too.”

Monika and Sybilla had each tracked down a bullet. Both of them had been resting at the bottom of the lake. Without the floodlights, the girls never would have spotted them there.

Lily nodded in satisfaction at their results. “Heh, that means there’s only one left. This is way more effective than what we were doing earlier. We’ll be done here in no time.”

“Don’t go tempting fate,” Monika scolded her as she continued searching. “Someone could come strolling in here at any moment, and the second that happens, we’re goners.”

“I—I do know that. But we hung DO NOT ENTER signs at the entrance, remember?”

“That’s the exact kind of overconfidence that gets you—”

Monika froze midsentence.

A vast darkness had just fallen over the cave. Someone was standing in front of their flood lamps. On the wall, there was a shadow of a girl with two ponytails, posing triumphantly.

The three of them raced over to the lights.

“I just made an AMAAAAAAAZING find, yo!!”

The girl who’d just arrived in the cavern was none other than Annette.

Her ash-pink ponytails bounced up and down, and her eyes gleamed. Her vocabulary had deteriorated just as much as the others’ had upon first laying eyes on the ship, and she chirped, “Gosh!” “Golly!” as she inspected it from every angle.

“That went perfectly, yo. My plan to follow them after I spotted them wearing weird outfits at the naval base totally paid off! And with Bernard flying above them, it was dead easy, too!”

Apparently, Annette had been present at the naval base, too. If there was one thing she was good at, it was staying undetected. Not a single one of them had noticed her stalking them.

After proudly revealing her trick, Annette whirled around. “I’d better go tell all the locals about this, yo!”

“““NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”””

The three girls lunged at her skirt to hold her down.

“Don’t!” Lily yelped in desperation. “You can’t! This’ll cause an international incident if we’re not careful, and if it does, Teach is gonna be furious with us!”

“That doesn’t sound like my problem, yo!”

“You’re the wooooorst!”

They’d been discovered by the worst interloper imaginable.

Annette’s thought processes worked differently from everyone else’s. She prioritized her own wants over everything else, and on top of that, she occasionally went out of her way to torment people. She was completely immune to reasonable arguments.

“Let’s negotiate, Annette!” Sybilla cried. “What is it you want? If you agree to keep quiet, we’ll do whatever you want!”

It was a shameless declaration of surrender.

As far as negotiating strategies went, it was hard to imagine one that was worse. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, writing her of all people a blank check?!” Monika interjected, but Sybilla snapped right back, “What fuckin’ choice do we have?!”

All of a sudden, Annette’s body relaxed. She cast an emotionless glance at the pleading trio—

“Ooh-hoo.”

—and when she did, the corners of her mouth curled upward more sharply than the three of them had ever seen.

They didn’t like where this was going.

“Prove that you mean it, then.”

The three girls let go of her skirt, and with a “““Yes, ma’am,””” they knelt on the cave floor.

“First off, you have to give me a tour of the ship. Then—”

Annette had conquered them, and she boldly made her demand.

“—if you gather up all the materials I ask for, I won’t tell a soul.”

It was the eleventh and twelfth days of their vacation, and Annette had spent both of them running the three of them ragged. She requested huge amounts of stuff like iron, tin, and silver, and the girls had to run all across the island to meet her demands.

What’s more, she also took a keen interest in the ship itself.

“I wanna check out the treasure, so go unload it for me! And that includes Jackal’s hat and sword, yo!”

“Yes, ma’aaaaam.”

With that, they had to take the oodles of treasure packed onto the ship and get it all off. The girls were stronger than average Joes and Janes, but it still took the three of them half a day to finish the job. That was a testament to the sheer quantity. The treasure had been packed into every inch of the ship.

Partway through, they stepped away from the cave. “Let’s just attack her.” “Yeah, and tie her up,” they plotted. Despite the odds being massively in their favor, though, they knew that as soon as they made a move against Annette, any screwup would spell their doom. They had no choice but to go along with her orders.

In the end, it wasn’t until the evening of the second day that she turned them loose.

Annette looked at the mountain of gold piled up in the cavern and nodded in satisfaction. “Now I’ve got all the materials I need!”

“Wh-what are you even planning on making?” Lily asked, with sweat pouring down her brow, but she got no reply.

Annette planted her hands on her hip. “You’re free now, yo!” she announced.

The three of them feebly hung their heads. “““Thank you, ma’am…”””

“Oh, right, and one other thing!” All of a sudden, Annette did a little hop and stuck her head right in front of theirs. “I found this on the deck, and you can have it!”

“““Huh………?”””

It was the bullet Lily had fired. Annette had already found it.

As the three of them stared at it in wordless shock, Annette strolled away.

The girls let out massive exhales and sank to the ground beside the ship. They sat back-to-back-to-back and held their balance by placing their weight on each other.

Then, in turn, Monika, Sybilla, and Lily grinned.

“Well, we’ve been through a lot—”

“But now our mission’s complete.”

“It was a long journey getting here, but it looks like we pulled through.”

They exchanged fist bumps to commend each other on a job well done.

They’d cut it a little too close for comfort, but they’d finally found all three bullets. Even if they spent the whole night sleeping, they still had plenty of time left to enjoy their holiday.

The girls gazed absentmindedly up at the ship.

Despite the damage it had suffered, it still dominated the cavern with its presence. They’d been staring at it for days, yet the sight had never gotten old. It was like looking at something unreal.

“We should probably report our big find, huh?” Lily said softly.

That was the final piece of work they needed to do. Once they told the police or the navy, they would come take care of the rest.

Sybilla nodded in agreement. “Man, this is gonna blow their minds. The whole island—hell, the whole world—is gonna lose it.”

“………”

Rather than join in their conversation, Monika slowly rose to her feet.

Their tripod had lost one of its legs, and Lily and Sybilla lost their balance and toppled over. ““Ow!”” they yelped.

Monika paid them no heed and walked over to the ship. “I think I’m gonna board it one last time.”

““Huh?””

“This is our final chance to say good-bye to the ship. We probably won’t be able to get near it again. Researchers are going to descend on it in droves, and the cave will become off-limits.”

The other two nodded. Her logic made sense.

The ship was a bona fide historical artifact, and once people knew it existed, the first thing they would do was take steps to preserve it. The cave would get locked down in no time, and boarding the ship would become a pipe dream.

“You know what, you’ve got a point,” Lily cheered. She hopped to her feet. “Once more, for the road! What do you say we play one last game of Pirates?”

Monika glared at her. “Don’t you dare pull out your gun,” she snapped as Lily ran off.

Right when Monika started walking after her, Sybilla wrapped her in a shoulder hug and whispered in her ear. “Hey, Monika. You want some time alone with Lily?”

“What? I told you, it’s not like that—”

“C’mon, we both know you wanna make some happy vacation memories. I’m gonna give you two some space.”

Sybilla’s mouth curled into a smirk, and she clapped Monika on the back.

Monika bit her lip like she wanted to mount a protest, but after watching Sybilla walk away for a bit, she just let out a sigh and climbed onto the ship’s deck.

Lily had beaten her there and was striking a dramatic pose with one foot planted on the prow. She swept back her hair with a courageous look in her eye. “Captain Lily, at your service!”

“Where’s this coming from?”

“I wanted to help cheer you two up. You both looked kinda anxious.”

“………”

Monika gasped a little at the unexpected answer.

She and Sybilla were anxious—about the possibility of Lamplight getting split up that they’d talked about on the ninth day.

They’d specifically avoided mentioning anything to Lily, but she’d sniffed them right out. The girl was nothing if not in touch with her teammates’ emotions.

“I notice that kinda thing. In case you forgot, I am Lamplight’s leader,” Lily said as she stared out beyond the ship’s prow. “I’m sure we’re about to be cast out into the great deep. We’ll have to weather the stormy seas of this tumultuous era without any maps to guide us.”

“True that…”

“But you know, we have nothing to fear. After all, we’re the mighty spies who tracked down the ship of the Great Pirate Jackal. Rooting out the world’s secrets will be a cakewalk, don’t you think?” She valiantly thrust her knife out before her. “We’re gonna see this long voyage through, no ifs, ands, or buts! That’s the Lamplight way!”

“…Sure. Yeah, maybe you’re right about that.”

Monika sighed in exasperation at Lily’s bold declaration, but her eyes crinkled in joy.

Down on the ground, Sybilla crossed her arms and nodded as she eavesdropped on their conversation. No matter how adverse the circumstances were, Lily’s bravery always came through. She might not have been the most talented spy around, but just hearing her say that was enough to fill the girls with a mysterious energy that gave them the confidence that they could complete any mission.

It sparked hope—hope that they could overcome the trials that awaited them after their vacation.

Lily went on, loud and proud. “Now, set saaaaail! The Lamplight Pirate Brigade is leaving port!”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, cap’n.”

Monika grinned sarcastically. There they were, pretending to be pirates again.

Lily was speaking metaphorically, of course. She was likening their next mission to the ocean from the age of pirates. Her saying “set sail” was her way of encouragingly saying “We’re gonna nail this next mission,” nothing more.

Yet all the same, the ship began slowly moving.

“““Huh?”””

The three of them let out their most dumbfounded cries yet.

Monika went over to the side of the deck and shouted down at Sybilla. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Hey, it wasn’t me! I didn’t do shit. The ropes are all cut!”

Sybilla rushed over to the five ropes tying the ship to the cavern. All of them had been sliced through. She grabbed the ropes and made a desperate attempt to throw them back onto the ship, but the ship had already begun drifting out to sea, and the ropes merely splashed into the water.

It didn’t make any sense. How did this happen?

“I helped you set sail, just like you asked, yo!”

A voice tinged with madness echoed through the cave.

When the girls all turned to look, they saw Annette wearing Jackal’s pirate hat and giving them a crisp salute. They hadn’t even realized she was still in the cave.

She was the culprit behind everything that was happening. She might have even installed some sort of device that was moving the ship.

“““ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEEEEE?!”””

All their screams were for naught, and little by little, the ship got pulled out toward open water.

The ship continued down the stream connecting the lake to the sea with Monika and Lily still aboard. Despite crashing into a couple of walls on its way there, it slowly but surely made its way to the mouth of the cave.

Sybilla ran after it and did everything in her power to halt the ship, but sadly, she lacked the resources to accomplish anything. The severed rope was too short to be useful, and the ship was far too large for Sybilla to stop it alone.

Unless they did something, the ship was going to escape the cave and float off into the sea.

Bottom line is, shit just got real!

This was no time to be standing around.

“I’ll go call for help!” Sybilla yelled. “You two, protect the ship!”

“G-got it!”

After shouting the plan to Lily and Monika, Sybilla ran back toward town. She didn’t have time to waste giving instructions to Annette. Sybilla left her behind and raced across the rugged coastline at top speed. It would have taken an average person thirty minutes to walk that path, but Sybilla cleared it in just ten.

After arriving at that familiar beach, she spotted a girl sitting in the sand.

Not only was it someone she knew, but luckily, it was the exact person she needed.

“Raftania!!”

“Hmm…? Who’s there?” The girl Sybilla had met on the first day—Raftania, the boardinghouse owner’s daughter—shot a confused look her way. She wiped the sand off her butt as she stood. “Oh, you’re one of Mr. Klaus’s students. What’s got you all worked up—?”

“I need a motorboat! You said you had one, right?!”

“What?”

“I don’t got time to explain! We’ve got people in distress. They’re driftin’ out to sea, and we gotta—!”

Midway through speaking, Sybilla raised an eyebrow. Raftania’s eyes were puffy, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks.

Huh? What was she cryin’ for?

Sybilla couldn’t make sense of it.

All she knew was that apparently, Raftania had been sobbing her eyes out on the beach. Even her shirt collar was soaked. She must have been there long enough for her big teardrops to trickle that far down. She was holding an extravagant wedding bouquet, but she’d been hugging it so tightly, all the flowers were crushed.

Raftania gave her a puzzled look. “…What do you mean, ‘in distress’?”

Hearing that snapped Sybilla back to the situation at hand. She didn’t have time to ask Raftania why she’d been crying.

“We got a bigger miracle than we bargained for,” she said, then grabbed Raftania by the hand and dragged her away.

Meanwhile, Lily and Monika were doing their absolute best to keep the ship they’d been stranded on in one piece.

If all they were worried about was their own lives, they could easily have dived off the side. However, doing that would leave the ship adrift without a crew, and it would surely sink.

They needed to figure out a way for the two of them to get the ship back to the island on their own.

However, the task was beyond them. Not only was the ship slowly being dragged away by the tide, but white fog was rolling in and making it hard to tell which direction the island was even in. They thought about turning the rudder, but it had broken ages ago. After all, the ship was two hundred years old. It was a wonder it even still floated.

“Should we just jump, Lily?!” Monika shouted as she searched the ship for anything that might help them. “There’s no way the two of us can control a ship this big!”

“But if we abandon it, think of what’ll happen to the ship!”

“I get that, but still…!”

“For now, let’s raise the sails! If we catch a wind heading toward the island, it might just work!”

“There’s no way. For one, the wind isn’t even blowing!”

“It’s better than sitting around doing nothing! This ship is the jewel of the island! We have to defend it!!”

They climbed the masts and cut the ropes that were keeping the sails furled. As it turned out, releasing sails in the correct order was no easy task with just two people. Gravity got the sails where they needed to be, but several of them ripped in the process. They were hardly in any state to catch the wind now.

Upon ringing a bell they found, they heard the sound of a motor from down beside the ship.

“How’re you two holdin’ up?!”

“I-it’s actually real. Y-you mean she was tellin’ me the truth?”

Sybilla gave them a big wave, and Raftania gawked.

Lily tossed them some of the rope lying on the ship, and Sybilla tied it tightly so the two boats wouldn’t lose each other. Then they used a rope ladder to get Sybilla and Raftania up onto the deck.

“I can’t believe you found us among all that fog.”

Monika was audibly impressed, and Raftania nodded. “Us islanders know the currents like the backs of our hands. It weren’t hard to get a rough bearing. Then we just followed the bell.”

“Well, we’re glad you’re here. Where’ll we end up if we keep drifting?”

“If we hold our current course…”

Raftania’s expression hardened.

“…then I wager we’ll end up roundabout the naval base. We ain’t far from it now.”

“Oh, dang. With all the fog, I had no idea.”

Monika was breathing a sigh of relief, when all of a sudden, Raftania dashed off and headed for the lower deck. Something had just dawned on her.

“Raftania, where you goin’?!”

Sybilla hurriedly tried to call her back, but Raftania didn’t return.

“She’s probably just excited to be on a pirate ship,” Monika said, then got to work putting together a plan. “We need to get in touch with the navy and have them escort us, ASAP. Does the boat have a radio? If not, we need to find something else we can send an SOS with.”

Either way, protecting the pirate ship was their top priority. Letting a cultural relic get into a shipwreck would be a huge loss for mankind.

As they wrapped up their discussion, they saw the hazy outline of land beyond the fog. Based on its shape, the huge structure they saw on the coast had to be the naval base.

“Wow, the base really was right in front of us all along. Look alive, people. The sooner they rescue us, the—”

A massive roar thundered out so hard, it shook the entire ship.

Their hull tilted, sending the girls tumbling across the deck.

“““Agh?!”””

They wondered for a moment what had caused it, but the only plausible answer was the now absent Raftania.

When they raced inside the cabin, they found her collapsed on her backside on the gun deck. There was smoke that smelled of gunpowder billowing from one of the cannons.

Raftania had just fired off a shot.

“…What? But how?” Monika mumbled. “Two-hundred-year-old cannons and gunpowder shouldn’t be usable… And plus, how did you even know how to fire that?”

“Wh-what’re you doing? WHAT THE FUCK?!” As Monika froze, Sybilla strode past her and grabbed Raftania. “What if that’d hit someone, huh?! Did no one ever teach you the difference between right and—?”

“I don’t give one rat’s ass no more!!”

Raftania violently shook Sybilla off of her.

On seeing a fresh wave of tears in Raftania’s eyes, Sybilla went quiet. Between that and the way she’d been crying earlier, it was obvious she was carrying a terrible grief.

“Thank you, Sybilla. Thanks for lettin’ me onto this here ship. I can’t think of no better place to die.”

Smoke hung over the gun deck as she went on.

“I done killed a man.”

“““You what?”””

“I was avengin’ my Ma. Did you know? That man—that fiend—Mercier was scopin’ you out while you played on the beach. He was lookin’ for his next target.”

The three girls thought back to the sketchy man they’d spotted back on the first day of their vacation. That must have been Ensign Mercier. They’d been cooped up in the caves for most of their trip there, but even they’d heard about the murder and knew the name of the man who’d been killed.

Raftania continued her lament. “I knew it all. I knew he butchered my Ma. I knew he’d been killin’ tourists and locals like it was nothin’—and I knew how to kill that madman, too! And so I didn’t hesitate. I needed to let my Ma rest in peace!”

She slammed her fist into a nearby wall to vent her rage. Years of rotting had weakened it, and the wood split open with ease.

“All I had left to do was get Mr. Klaus to marry me. I knew he’d take me away from here before my sins got exposed. Even if he knew what I’d really done, he’d still whisk me away! That was how it was supposed to go…”

She bit down on her lip so hard, it bled.

“But you know what he told me just now? ‘You’re a filthy killer,’ he said.”

“““……………………”””

The girls couldn’t even begin to process what it was they were hearing.

Raftania had just confessed to murder, but they didn’t know any of the context, so they had no idea what was going on. “What kind of lunatic did you bring with you, Sybilla?!” “Hell if I know! Like, she’s a killer? What is she talkin’ about?!” “…I mean, she does seem pretty torn up,” they said in hushed whispers.

Confused as they were, the one thing that was clear was that Raftania was harboring a deep anguish. The path that had led her there had been filled with harsh experiences.

The girl in question let out an exhale that sounded almost like a laugh. “Look, the base is turnin’ its guns.”

“What?”

“This ship ain’t long for the world.”

The girls looked over at the naval base through the cannon portholes. The fog was still dense, so it was hard to see, but they could tell that the base’s shoreside battery was slowly turning their way.

Its target was the pirate ship; of that there could be no doubt. There was no way a naval base would take cannon fire like that without retaliating.

“I’ll sink to the depths alongside the ship. There ain’t nothin’ back there for me but a pair of navy handcuffs.” The other three paled, and Raftania smiled at them. “Thank you all. This was nice, here at the end. Gettin’ to throw a punch at that rotten navy ain’t such a bad way to go.”

With that, she tossed them the key to the motorboat.

She had the bright, cheery smile of someone who’d already given up on life.

They didn’t have much time left. Getting bombarded from out of nowhere had likely caught the navy off guard, but the instant the order came down, their concentrated fire would come down on them in an instant. Once that happened, the worn-out old pirate ship would sink in no time.

“You’d best get a move on.” Raftania waved them away. “If you stay with me, you’ll die like—”

“Oh, shut up.”

It was Sybilla who cut her off.

Raftania let out a wide-eyed gasp, and Sybilla scratched her head in irritation as she stood across from her. “Like, seriously, what’re you sayin’? Not a single thing that’s come outta your mouth has made a lick of sense. You bad with words or somethin’?”

“No, really, they’re gonna sink the—”

“Nah, you don’t know that.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?”

“See, us, we haven’t given up yet.”

Monika and Lily followed her up. “Yeah. You don’t get to decide how this ends.” “Right? It’ll take a lot more than this to spook us,” they agreed.

Raftania blinked. What they were saying defied her comprehension.

Sybilla thumped her on the shoulder. “Look, Raftania, I don’t know what you’re goin’ through. Hell, I barely understand half of what’s goin’ on here.” Her next words rang with confidence. “But you’d better peel those eyes of yours. I’ll have you know there’s miracles in this world of ours.”

Acting fast, the girls got to work.

For the girls, letting the ship they’d gone to such lengths to uncover get lost again wasn’t an option. What’s more, they weren’t about to stand by and let Raftania die alongside it, either.

They needed to stop the navy from firing.

It was do-or-die. Lily suggested an absurd scheme, and though Monika balked—“Are you for real?”—Sybilla grinned. “It’s not like we’ve got any better plans. Time to avert us a disaster.”

Then they scattered and began gathering up what they needed.

Sybilla was the first to run off, and she snatched up the wedding bouquet lying by the cannons. “Oh, nice. This should work.” Raftania hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with it, and she’d brought it all the way down to the gun deck with her.

After the girls reassembled on the upper deck, they laid out the items they’d collected.

• There were the leather boots Erna had fished up on the first day.

• There was the lingerie they’d stolen from Thea’s room but decided not to sell.

• There was Bernard the hawk, Sara’s pet who’d doggedly followed them all the way there.

• There was the white cloth they’d gotten for comforting Grete.

• There was the huge wedding bouquet that Klaus had returned to Raftania.

• And finally, there was the generator and floodlights they’d worked together to track down.

Needless to say, it was all the miscellaneous stuff they’d accumulated over the course of their vacation.

“Wh-what’re you thinkin’ of doin’ with all that?”

Raftania had wandered up to the deck as well, and she stared at the miscellanea in confusion.

Lily grinned. “If you wanna protect a pirate ship, you’ve gotta call for its captain,” she said.

It was a deranged gambit to end all deranged gambits.

However, the trio carrying it were dead serious about it. “We’re outta time. It’s all or nothin’ here!” Sybilla said, to liven the others up, and Monika gave her a grim smile and bit her lip. “I just wish we had something better than this stupid idea!” “We’ve gotta believe in the memories we’ve collected during our time here!” Lily crowed.

They stood in a circle around their pile of stuff and cried out.

“““We call on you, Great Pirate Jackal! RISE!!”””

At the same time, over in the residential area near the naval base, the sudden tremor had thrown the islanders who lived there into a panic.

They mistakenly assumed that there had been some sort of explosion at the base, and they rushed out of their homes and looked out at the water in the direction the roar had come from.

Then they saw it—the silhouette of a pirate ship floating over the foggy sea.

“Wh-what is that thing…?!”

“G-go fetch some binoculars! C-could that thing be real?!”

They called each other outside, and before long, they all gathered on the beach.

Meanwhile, over at the naval base, the sailors were getting ready to shoot down the mysterious enemy vessel.

Spotting the pirate ship had thrown Grenier for a loop at first, but he promptly kicked the girls out of the command room and began relaying levelheaded instructions to his men via radio.

His message to them was thus: that there was no way the ship that had just shown up could actually be the pirate ship they’d spent all those years searching for.

It was the logical conclusion to draw. This was clearly the work of either terrorists or some rogue state. Surely, their plan was to use the ship’s unusual appearance as a distraction while they launched their attack. The ship had already fired a cannonball at them, after all.

If Grenier didn’t act now, he was going to get his men killed.

Right when he opened his mouth to give the order to fire, he spotted a change take place on the ship.

“Commander, there’s someone moving down on its prow!”

A powerful light was emanating from the pirate ship, and that light was illuminating the person standing on the prow and casting their shadow against the fog as if the fog was a gigantic screen.

Grenier took his binoculars and turned them toward the figure. They were being lit from behind, so he couldn’t make out who it was, but it looked like their mouth was moving.

“They’re saying something!” he yelled. “I need someone who can read lips to take notes!!”

However, every sailor who came to the command room bore the same look of disbelief. “B-but what they’re saying… That’s impossible!!”

All of them trembled as they stared at the figure on the prow.

Standing atop the ship’s prow was a pirate.

The pirate, who was wearing the exact same outfit as the Great Pirate Jackal had been wearing, was a white-haired girl with a mean look in her eyes.

“I am Jackal’s heir, the Great Pirate Sybillan!!”

Sybilla struck a daunting pose, faced the naval base, and made her declaration with pride.

“This is a warning to the depraved navy trying to defile this land! If you take any further steps to despoil our island, or if you attempt to harm this ship, then I shall bring a one-thousand-fold curse to bear against ye!”

In that moment, a genuine miracle occurred.

When Sybilla gallantly stood there, she was the spitting image of the legendary pirate Jackal himself.

For Bellmoon, the scimitar that had slain scores of pirates, she had a wedding bouquet. For the hook that mercilessly gouged any of her men who defied her, she had a leather boot. For the cruel parrot whose favorite food was the eyes of the dead, she had a large hawk. She’d constructed the tricorne hat that struck fear into all who beheld it with Thea’s bra and panties. And she’d imitated the cloak said to be covered in blood by taking the white cloth from Grete and soaking it in wine.

Then, the moment she took her position on the prow, they used the floodlights and generator to manifest the light that was said to have shone down from the heavens. What’s more, the backlight effect it created served to cover up all the subtle differences between Sybilla and a genuine pirate.

All the items they’d collected over their vacation lined up perfectly with the pirate legend, and thanks to those coincidences, there she was—the Great Pirate Sybillan.

And then, just like that, the naval base’s battery ground to a halt.

“Wha………………………………?”

“““THEY STOOOOOOOOPPED!!”””

That was the second miracle.

Grenier had stopped before giving the order to fire. The appearance of someone eccentric enough to recreate the legend, no matter how clumsily, had exceeded the bounds of his comprehension—so much so that it had created doubt in his mind whether sinking the ship was really the correct call.

Raftania was dumbfounded, and Monika, Lily, and Sybilla let out a cheer.

The girls weren’t sure what exactly was going on in the naval base, but they struck triumphant poses nonetheless.

“You think I scared ’em off?” Sybilla asked.

“What I think is that they were so confused, they didn’t know what to do,” Monika replied.

“The bottom line is, they didn’t blast us out of the water, and that means we can chalk this up as a win!” Lily said.

As things stood, the currents were going to carry the pirate ship back to the island where it would wash ashore right next to the naval base. When it did, the navy would take care of preserving it. The girls had successfully saved the ship. Now all they had left to do was to disappear without leaving any trace they’d been there.

Raftania was still standing in petrified disbelief, and Sybilla clapped her on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get outta here before things get messy.”

Raftania no longer had the willpower left to refuse. She gave a small nod, and Sybilla pulled her by the arm and disembarked from the ship.