DISCLAIMER: All CLAMP stories were created by CLAMP. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.

Davy Jones (n) a name given to the evil spirit of the sea; the bottom of the sea, as personified in songs and stories.

"Red sky at morning, sailors take warning..." the Princess murmured. She'd cast her eyes away from the face she was painting with sticks and berry juice onto one of the rough, scarecrow decoys they'd made, gazing at the horizon as if looking at a dream. A battle that was unmistakably Kurogane against at least six of the pirate lords still raged on the 'Dragon of Heaven' under the russet and gold streaks of the rising sun, but Sakura's attention seemed to be in another place or another time.

"What's that, my Lady?"

"It's nothing," she answered, shaking her head with a bright smile. "I think I heard someone say that once, that's all. Is that the last one, there?"

Syaoran nodded, fixing in place the last of the darkened beach grass he'd used as hair. None of the three dummies they'd constructed from scraps on shore were a respectable match for Kurogane's appearance - despite the lively grimaces and smirks the Princess had painted onto their faces - but when they were moving fast, the pirates wouldn't have a chance to look closely. "This'll have to do. I hope they're good enough to draw the pirates below the waterline."

Princess Sakura had made an excellent point that, if they were trapped below, the pirates probably wouldn't use their more destructive techniques. Damage under sea-level would put the ship at risk of sinking, and the 'Dragon of Heaven' herself was one thing they'd go to any length to protect. That was evident at every rank. The sailors who'd climbed into the rigging to repair the holes left by Kurogane's fight with the Sumeragi ignored the streaks of lightning and fire shooting past them as if this sort of thing happened every Tuesday. They seemed to have as little fear that one of the shots would go awry as they had of the pirate lords themselves, leaping like brightly colored, cutlass-wielding grasshoppers through the fray. How the Lady Kishuu managed her jumps and brutally beautiful form in boots with four-inch heels was even more of a mystery than the source of the white feathers that did, in fact, follow Death Shirou everywhere he went. Syaoran simply couldn't fathom pirates. The attack seal barking and jumping around at Black Cat Yuzuriha's command was the most readily explicable thing he could see.

Except... the seal could only be Puppy, whom the Pirate Council had sent as messenger to retrieve the 'Dragon of Earth'. If he was back already, then...

Then they had to work quickly. There was no way to say how much faster the seal was than the vessel he'd summoned.

"And you can manage keeping the raft ready for us to get away?"

She made a salute and smiled at him brightly. "I'll be all right, I'm sure!"

Whenever she said that, he couldn't help believing it. And, usually, ended up in a daze as he stared at her for far too long without recognizing that time was passing or that the world was turning around him. He had to fight off the force of distraction with extra strength at the moment, since all three of their lives might be at stake if he made even a single slip. Unfortunately, his attempts to focus on doing something rather than being distracted by the Princess led to his last dummy sprouting a beard by mistake. Hoping she hadn't seen, he tore it off as quickly as he could and pushed the whole mess to where she could draw a face on that one as well.

"Let's get these loaded up quickly and shove off. I don't think we'll have until sunset after all."

"Going somewhere?" a deep voice called from a few feet offshore. Syaoran whipped his head around to look, and sure enough Kurogane was standing up out of the surf and walking toward them as calm as could be. He looked a proper shipwreck now, hair salted into peaks and bare feet picking up the sand, with a memory of a shirt on his back.

Princess Sakura dropped her berry-stained sticks, running over to give him a flying hug. "Kurogane-san! You're safe!"

"You bet your ass I am. Those pirates are a hundred years too early to take me out."

Syaoran grinned despite everything to hear his master blustering, even though he'd seen with his own eyes that the match-up was closer than that. Off in the distance, the pirate ship had stopped exploding and the pirates were yelling to check the waters, but they were too late now.

As he stepped forward to hand Kurogane a cloth to dry himself from what he'd pilfered of the pirates' supplies onshore, Syaoran saw more clearly the raw skin ringing his wrist and across his chest. It didn't surprise him that the Princess would have gotten kinder treatment, as a lady, but when the pirates hadn't asked him anything they might have seen fit to press Kurogane for, and when so little time had passed since they'd parted after the evening's battle... Why would they have...?

He stammered, with his mouth agape, "They... they didn't torture you?"

The older ninja shook his head to dismiss the question. "I wouldn't call it torture." Syaoran was accustomed to the man claiming that circumstances had been less difficult than objectively they must have been, but this was something else. His grin was more quiet than usual, as if he recalling some fond memory. "...Though I do think I saw my life flash before my eyes."

"... Huh?"

Kurogane didn't answer. Silently, he let the makeshift towel hang from his hand as he cast a long gaze back at the Pirate King's flagship. The Sumeragi had appeared at last, having sat out the team battle. He and a man in blue, whose coat and frame Syaoran didn't recall from the council, stood on the ship's forecastle looking out into the morning fog. Bringing all of his training to bear, he could see that their lips were moving in conversation, but not a word of it reached his ears. It was odd. He knew he was using his listening techniques properly, as he could hear the waves striking the side of the ship, but every word those two said was hushed.

His face, though...

"Is that..." Syaoran trailed off, the name 'Fai' falling off his tongue as he turned to Kurogane and noticed yet another mark - this one on his neck, and definitely not rope burn. "Is that a hickey?"

He was immediately sorry he'd asked. Not only did Kurogane turn to him with a shrug and a dismissive, "Probably," and not only did a thousand questions take over his brain (whose answers he didn't want to know!) of who, how, and - most importantly - when...

The question had made Sakura look for what he was seeing.

"What's a hickey?" she asked.

He managed to sputter, "P-Princess..." before all ability to form words left his tongue. How could he have ever dared to mention something so tawdry and trite when she was in earshot? And how was he going to explain without discussing topics he had no right to address with her? Would Princess Tomoyo have his head for this? Would the universe itself smite him for being crude in her presence? Was the universe smiting him at this very moment?

Was Kurogane laughing at him?

But all he could see was the Princess looking at him with wide, innocent eyes as she waited for an explanation he was certain he had no idea how to give. She was just so cute. And sweet. And perfect in every way. And... and he couldn't... Even if he understood that sex and making out (and the accompanying marks) were a well-known risk of covert ninja operations, and he'd blushed his way through all the unavoidable basics of theory, he couldn't tell that to Sakura! He only had to look at her, framed by the loose pink petals blowing on a sudden cherry-scented breeze, to know he never could.

"Why the hell does it keep raining flowers?"

Kurogane's voice startled Syaoran out of his trance, and he held out a hand to catch a few of the drifting petals. Sure enough, the sakura filling the air hadn't come from some out-of-season tree. They'd simply appeared out of nothing, just like they had the previous night. "The guards on the ship said the Sumeragi does it, when he's being dramatic," he reported, summoning his sword as he saw his master summoning Ginryuu to his hand. Goodness knew, if the petals could reach them at this distance, they might not be safe here on land.

All three of them turned their eyes back to the 'Dragon of Heaven' to see... no change whatsoever.

"It looks like he's just standing there," said Sakura.

The point was impossible to argue. He was. Just standing there.

But as Syaoran took her hand and nodded toward the road home, a dark silhouette rose between them and the red sun, hidden behind the fog. It appeared without warning, just as near to the shore as the vessel they'd escaped, and the fog fell away before their eyes. A ship, anyone with eyes could see, with the dark figure of a shapely woman carved into the wood of her prow that Syaoran could sense was the match to the red-eyed girl likewise adorning the 'Dragon of Heaven', white hair and flowing gown cascading around her.

The 'Dragon of Earth'. Where the crisp, white sails of the Pirate King's ship and the rounded wooden hull, weathered to a dull gold by the seas, were every inch the same as the pretty pictures all pirate vessels aspired to be, this vessel was everything he'd known a 'ghost ship' would have to be but could never imagine. The hull was coated in something black, and starting a few feet above the water it broke into gaps. Panels of wood rose like jagged teeth upward. He thought they might have been moving, but he didn't know what he was seeing well enough to be sure it was no mirage. The rigging was draped with seaweed and by the color the ropes and tightly furled sails looked soaked with saltwater. The strange shape of it breaking through the fog, however, wasn't what held his attention.

A single man stood at the wheel, feathered hat and green-black frock coat marking him as a pirate but not as anything beyond a lord on the council. Syaoran had expected a monster after hearing the Sumeragi say who steered the 'Dragon of Earth'. Maybe that wasn't him? Looking as closely as he could, all he saw was a man. A man with one glass eye, disconcertingly white next to the pale hazel of the other, but a man nonetheless.

Sakura watched the ship just as closely, though without a ninja's training she wouldn't have been able to see anything about him. She'd slipped into another strange trance, and Syaoran knew from the chill in his spine that, somehow, the man in the green coat was exactly what he feared.

"I cannot 'scape his talons when the barrow calls my name," she sang softly, pulling more words out of the memories locked away inside her. "He strikes from skies unclouded like a hawk no man can tame..."

Syaoran's breath caught as he saw what she couldn't. The man stepped forward to the edge of the ship, drawing a slip of paper from his pocket and a pouch to fill it with tobacco. While he rolled it into a cigarette and lit it with a match struck on the stern, he scanned the bit of shore where they were standing. He could hear her? He'd never met a pirate with skill at hearing or seeing across distances as ninja trained to do. But there he was, doing it.

"... As cold and wild as moonlight, the pale glint of his smile, and as sharp as any knife his golden gaze beguiles."

Before she could sing another line, he pulled her close to his chest. He'd heard the Barrows-guard could steal souls, and he'd be damned if the pirate or whatever he was would get his lady's. Even if he was scared, as the far-off man's one good eye focused in on them and seemed to shine an eerie gold just as Sakura's song had claimed. He grew more certain every second that nothing human could make a face that cold, but he'd fight until the end of time to protect his princess, from anyone or anything.

"Syaoran?"

As long as the Barrows-guard was staring at him, he didn't dare breathe or move, although he knew standing still wouldn't do him any good. The scene only grew more uncomfortable as the Sumeragi flicker-stepped into sight by the other pirate's side. Syaoran couldn't hear what they were saying to each other any more than he had heard what the Sumeragi had been saying to Fai, but he was just as happy for the silence. Anything the Barrows-guard might be saying to make a man who'd fought Kurogane evenly wear a face like a kicked puppy's wasn't something he wanted to hear. What mattered was that the Barrows-guard was looking somewhere else.

"We should leave."

Kurogane was watching the scene, too, and nodded with a frown as he gently pushed Syaoran and the princess down the path away from the beach.

"But Syaoran," Sakura asked him again as she walked at his side, hand in hand. "What's the matter?"

"You're safe now, Princess. There's nothing to worry about." The last thing he wanted to do was try to make her afraid of something he'd make certain wasn't a problem. Luckily, changing the subject was a skill every ninja learned in his first year of training. "Kurogane-san..." he called back. "I've never seen a pirate who does the things some of those pirates do."

"Welcome to the big leagues, kid. You're better off expecting surprises."

"But he was flying!" Syaoran protested. "And I'm certain I saw flicker-stepping, at least three times! Flicker-stepping is a ninja technique, not a..." Trailing off as something horrible sprang to mind, his feet rooted themselves to the spot. When Kurogane stopped by him, he looked up and whispered, "They couldn't be... ninja-pirates? Could they? If they have ninja-pirates, why don't we have pirate-ninjas?"

"Kid, don't make me laugh. There's no such thing as ninja-pirates," his master answered, flicking him in the forehead with a finger. "I don't know what's going on, but believe me... I'll find out."

Both of them turned around for one last look at the ships before they disappeared into the rocky pass leading them from the beach. Scattered conversations made it their way, unmuted by whatever skill some of them had. At least, it was clear no one was pursuing them.

"Kusanagi-san!" Lady Nekoi yelled happily, jumping across the distance between the ships to hug a colossus of a pirate who looked as rough as the ship he sailed.

Even Death Shirou had stopped searching the waters for a trace of Kurogane. He ran the length of the ship and jumped up on the raised lip of the side, holding onto one of the thick ropes rigged to the sails. "Fuuma! I changed my mind! I want to be on the hell ship. Get me off this fucking asshole's boat!" he yelled, pointing a finger at Fai as the blond snickered behind him.

Fai was the...

Wow. That explained so much.

A young man dressed in deep purple ascended out of the 'Dragon of Earth', laughing as he walked to the wall to answer. Before the man turned his head, Syaoran caught a flash of a smile on his face and rubbed his eyes hard, sure he couldn't have seen what he saw. He'd seemed to have Sakura's smile, one that was just hers, but Syaoran told himself it must have been lack of sleep playing tricks on his eyes. A pirate lord - especially a member of the dark, fearsome crew of that ship - could never look like Sakura.

"No take-backs, Kamui!"

"In the brig, Fuuma! The brig! I interrogate people in that brig!"

The blond pirate turned from the two arguing to look straight at the point where Syaoran and Kurogane were standing - and Syaoran really wished pirates would stop being able to do that. They were supposed to need telescopes to see that far, not to have access to secret techniques guarded by ninja masters! Then, with a wink, Fai blew a kiss. Not, Syaoran suspected, at him.

And not that Syaoran had needed to think too hard about who might have been making marks on his master's neck.

"I may owe Watanuki an apology," Kurogane sighed, turning back to the road.

Syaoran followed him, still holding the Princess's hand. "Who's Watanuki?"

A few steps ahead, the older ninja shook his head and threw a look over his shoulder.

"... Somebody who's takin' one for the team."

~/~

Here ends "Talk Like a Pirate Day", being the second installment in Fifteen Mokona on a Dead Man's Chest. Please look for a new story of ninjas and pirates around Christmas.