Natural Enemy 2-1

“I… I…” The words were thick in his throat, a single syllable all he could get out. Like chewing down a bunch of old pork jerky with no water or mango juice to wash it down, his mouth was dry as it had ever been. “Is… is this for real?

Nobody answered his question, so many eyes on him as he just kept staring while two of the biggest guys in the village came over his way. Kele — almost as tall as the chief with arms like tires — and Tano — wide where his brother was tall, and with a stomach like Kai’s — were two of the biggest guys in the village for different reasons, and the ones who usually hauled in the massive deep-sea nets that Kai knew would strain him a little bit.

Today, they were dragging in something different, a canvas-wrapped shape scraping forward across the sand as it carved a deep ditch behind both fishermen.

They stopped, maybe a dozen feet in front of him, the two looking right at the Chief.

With a smile, Chief Milo nodded at them and they pulled the canvas away.

Kai felt his eyes go wide, thoughts becoming reality as he stared right at it.

The skiff…

It was the prize.

The one from the competition, the same competition he never even had a chance to start. It was the skiff he’d thought about for weeks, daydreamed over while taking care of his board with coconut wax; the him in his head cutting through waves like a knife into Auntie’s soft-cooked sticky pork.

He took a step forward, unable to stop himself. Wow…

It was… 

Kai swallowed a mouth full of nothing as he just kept on staring. 

Well, it was just art, in every way possible.

Tall and thin, it was shaped like a too-tall surfboard almost but with a depth to its shape that no surfboard would ever have. The thing was hollowed out, the small boat carved from a single trunk of koa wood that looked heavy enough to sink like a rock. Even still, Kai had no doubt that the thing would float over the waves like a leaf. 

More than that, the grain of the wood glowed under the sun, a bright and buzzing orange that was so polished and glossy it looked wet even though it was bone-dry. Painted along the sides were stripes as blue as the seas, jagging back and forth like strong waves.

There was a mast, short and sturdy, atop the skiff; a white triangle sail folded up neat and crisp right over the little seat carved into the back. The seat itself was padded for comfort with woven mats and pedals at the feet, connected to… something.

Something at the stern of it, it looked like. A propeller, maybe?

Kai wasn’t sure what else it could be as his eyes trailed the boat. A propeller made sense, though, something to keep you moving on open water  just in case the wind died. Or in case you just wanted to use your legs to outrun a shark.

Yeah, it wasn’t just art.

It was beautiful.

It looked like the complete idea of freedom and power, carved out of wood and varnished with hope. Even still…

“You’re joking, right?” Kai blinked as he looked from the boat to the Chief, then back to the boat again, before snapping back to the Chief’s face, Lani’s dad doing a very bad job of hiding a massive, proud grin.

When was the last time he’d seen a grin like that on Chief Milo’s face?

Two weeks? Three maybe? Time had been weird since the Great Wave had turned into the Red Wave, from what the villagers called it. Days blurred into nights, blurring into half a month with sleep patchy even on the best of those nights.

The fear wasn’t there anymore, the fear of him. 

At least not on the Chief’s face.

Honestly, it was pretty much gone from the rest of the villagers too.

Or, well… not gone-gone. 

Just tucked away, it seemed; like winter clothes you shoved in a box under the bed. He knew it was still somewhere under the surface but he could almost forget it existed as long as he didn’t have a reason to go looking for it.

The big, immediate panic of a couple weeks ago; the one that had people eyeing him and a few pretending not to flinch when he walked by… All that had faded away as the days went by and the nights dragged on. Once people got their heads screwed back on a little tighter, once the blood washed out of the bay and the tide took the wreckage away, the gratitude of the first day was back on their faces and not nervously this time.

The new gratitude was weird, though, the feeling almost as heavy as the fear had been. Maybe heavier. 

Fear at least pushed you away. It gave you space, even. Having people even more eager to talk to him and thank him all the time felt like… like… quicksand almost; the way it just pulled you in and trapped you in a sweaty hug you didn’t want from someone whose name you didn’t even know.

Thankfully, the village had gotten most of that out of their system before the second week was over. But they definitely weren’t done showing their gratitude, from the looks of it. Not the way the whole village was on the beach today, a sea of brown skin in front of him wearing smiles aimed his way.

It was quiet, though.

Not sad.

Not the funeral quiet from the first few days when they buried the ones who didn’t make it, but they were still quiet as they looked at him standing in front of the skiff. 

In front of too many faces to count, Chief Milo stepped forward, the man towering like a cliff as he stood next to his wife, Sina; her own hand resting on the Chief’s massive forearm. 

And Lani…

Lani was there right beside her dad, hands clasped tight in front of her as her eyes stayed down at her feet. 

…Lani. Kai licked dry lips, eyes trailing off the skiff to look at the quiet girl. Lani, I…

“We no can repay what you do for us, Kai.” He blinked up at the bass drum voice of Chief Milo, the man’s tones so big and deep it was enough to shake fruit from the trees. “You stand when we fall. You fought for us when we ran.”

He gestured to the orange pedal-skiff with a hand the size of a shovel. “So, we want you take this. A boat for a boy who don’t wait on the wind.” The chief kept his eyes steady on Milo, Kai staring back as his eyes kept doing what it want and going back to the boat. “A boy who ride the water already.”

Kai’s mouth fell open as he locked back onto the boat, fingers opening and closing again. I…

He couldn’t touch it. “F… for me? Really?”

It was like dream rules, almost, the way none of this felt real. If he touched it, it might disappear into smoke or sea foam. “B-b-b-but I didn’t win.”

The words came out in a stupid stutter, his voice sounding more like a baby than a fourteen year old as it cracked high on the last word. Gah.

“Win?” The Chief’s laugh was the big boom that finally broke through the heavy silence of the beach like a rock thrown through glass, enough to make Kai wince again. “You save the island, boy! You win everything!”

…kinda feels like cheating a little. Even still, Kai wasn’t gonna say no in the first place. He wanted it like a man in a desert wanted water.

Milo stepped forward and clapped that shovel-hand hand on Kai’s shoulder, the weight of it enough to ground the boy in the sand.“ You think we gonna let your big butt have to swim everywhere? That take too long!” The chief laughed loud again, other villagers joining in as the silence broke a second time. “Take it, Kai-boy. It yours.”

Kai walked up, hand shaking more than he’d like the closer he got to the tall skiff.

He ran those same shaky fingertips over the orange hull. Smooth. Warm from the sun, he could almost see his reflection in the surface of the wood, the thing polished and waxed so well it shone like glass.

The words wouldn’t come, even as he looked back around at all the faces staring and smiling his way; Chief, Auntie, Lani, Mako, and all the others…

Guys, I… They’d taken him in when they didn’t have to. Some random stray who washed up on their island who was used to sleeping in alleys with dirt under his nails and nothing in his stomach; a nobody from nowhere with fear in his eyes. They fed him pork until he filled out and filled out and filled out some more, taught him to surf and treated him like a real person.

And even… even after he’d shown them the monster…

The ugly violent thing that had people chasing him down since they took his parents, even after all that, they weren’t kicking him out or reporting him to the Marines.

Blue eyes trailed the tall skiff again. Sure, they were giving him a way to leave, yeah, but Kai could tell it wasn’t a boot out the door. 

Nah, it was just a way to go out there and be something.

“Looks fast.”

Kai blinked back to look at the crowd, Mako standing there with his arms crossed. His back was against a palm tree, the surfer boy leaning back with practiced cool as he grinned wide and eager Kai’s way. “Faster than that piece of driftwood you usually got.”

Kai snorted. “Don’t be jealous.”

Mako snorted, patting the black surfboard at his side. “My Razor a good girl. Ain’t nothin’ to be jealous for. What a surfer gonna do with a thing like that anyway?”
“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s got pedals, brah.” The taller boy snorted back and rolled his eyes at Kai’s question. “You gonna need ‘em with that big gut. Sail ain’t gonna carry all that ego.”

“Hey!” Auntie Loa bustled forward, the big woman smacking Mako on the arm with a wooden spoon she apparently carried everywhere. “No more of that, you! Kai eats good. That’s why he’s so strong.”

Blue eyes glanced down, a gloved finger poking at his expansive gut under a white tea. Yeah, I’m not sure that’s why but…

“Kai-boy!” He blinked back up to see Auntie right in front of him and getting closer, her face softening into a smile. Big hands grabbed his face on both sides, squishing his cheeks together until his lips puckered fish-like.

“You a good boy, okay? And you stay a good boy, no matter what the Blue do to you. Big things out there for you, Kai-boy and you be bigger than them all.” She stared right into his soul with each command, voice quiet but still somehow managing to boom almost as loud as her little brother. “You take this boat, but you come back one day, you come back for sticky pork. If you get skinny again, Auntie will be very angry. You promise?”

“I promif, Auntie.” Kai managed to mumble through the cheek-squish, staring up into the wet eyes of the big woman he knew as Auntie. “Promif.”

She let him go, patting his cheek with a force that almost stung. As soon as she stepped back into the crowd, someone else — someone much smaller — stepped forward.

Lani.

The crowd seemed to fade back a little, the silence coming back as everyone somehow managed to give space without moving an inch. Staning next to him, she ran a finger along the blue stripe, tracing the jagged line. “What will you call her?” 

Her voice was soft, the simple sentence barely a whisper over the sound of the surf.

Kai leaned against the hull, the wood solid on his back as he thought about that and not about the fact that Lani wasn’t looking his way.

High-quality episodes at home that he wasn’t really allowed to watch turned into poor uploads he was able to catch on Youtube whenever he found a library; the face of a loud, eager, determined kid in a jumpsuit as orange as the boat behind him. Kai didn’t have any whiskers on his face and he wasn’t blond either but that kid had a monster inside him too that was even worse if let loose. 

Orange and blue stripes.

Perfect.

“The Naruto.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The Marine outpost was a joke.

The mustache guy with the Marines — who apparently wasn’t even a captain, just a lieutenant or something — had ordered it set up before he left, probably to make himself feel like he’d “secured” the island and earned his paycheck.

Kai stared the dusty little shack up and down as he stood in front of it, the place set up near the edge of the main docks. Something that used to be a storage shed for nets had gotten a coat of white and blue paint slapped on it (the job so shoddy, they barely even bothered with doing the sides right) and a flang hug atop it that was more gray than white, the thing limp in the humid air.

Kai let out a sigh, hand on the knobless door, and just walked in…

To the sound of snores.

Blue eyes blinked at the sight of a kid barely older than him and Mako, in a uniform that was too big for him and a hat all the way over his eyes, with his feet up on the desk, snoring loud enough to rattle the cheap planks used to replace the holes in this shed.

His eyes slid halfway down, the fourteen-year-old just staring at the new ensign assigned to Kaihua island already asleep on the job. Really, man? Those same eyes rolled themselves halfway out of his head at the sight of the line of drool connecting the young Marine’s lip to the paperwork in front of him. Just… just sad.

Shaking his head, Kai didn’t even try to be quiet as he let the door slam shut behind him, sandaled feet slapping on the floorboards. He knew what he was here for and if the guy woke up, it didn’t really matter anyway.

So, Kai walked right up to the one thing that mattered in the small room, that corkboard covered in layers of paper, and started pulling bounty posters down off the bulletin board.

Thumbtacks went flying; a bunch hitting the floor, a few hitting the desk, and one bouncing right off the ensign’s boot.

The guy never even stirred, just snorting and shifting and mumbling as he took his rest.

By the end of it, Kai took them all back to his hut.

A whole stack of bounties, thick as a deck of cards.

All of them were laid out on the floor in front of him now, covering the woven mats; each poster forming a mosaic of ugly faces and numbers too big to believe.

Grime Brothers, Patch and Stench.
3,000,000 Beri. 

Two ugly dudes who looked like they hadn’t bathed, ever in their life; hair as greasy as fish off the pan, teeth gone to who knows where and two sets of mean-looking eyes both pointing in completely different directions.

“Groggy” Gus of the Rum Raiders.
1,500,000 Beri.

Another poster had a fat guy front and center, the pirate wearing a stupid hat covering hair that looked like a beard’s nest. Considering his chin looked like it belonged in his pants, his beard being even more matted and coily also didn’t help with that mental image. Ball-chin and pube-beard beside the point, he was holding a bottle in the picture, grinning like an idiot.

“Barnacle Bill” of the Crusty Crew.
6,000,000 Beri.

This one looked meaner than the rest, too many scars criss-crossing his face made him look like he played tic-tac-toe for keeps and those eyes… more like a shark’s with how flat and dead they looked. 

But it wasn’t how they looked that mattered.

No, no, it was the numbers that Kai couldn’t pull his eyes away from. These… they gotta be fake, right? Honestly, he didn’t even know how much a Beri even was, but six million of anything was… well, it was no joke.

Still, they seemed way too big.

All that many zeroes on a paper.

One and a half million.

Three million.

Six million.

More money than he could even imagine and all he had to do to get it was… hurt people.

Bad people.

Kai picked up the poster of Barnacle Bill, five fingers tight around the bounty sheet as he slowly crunched the paper in his fist.

His grip tightened until his knuckles turned white, a smile wide and eager across his face. 

“Let’s do this.”