Hello again! Forever and a day since I began this series, we're finally on to the second fic! This one will contain more original content, as I have quite a bit more to play with now that I have two (technically three) characters aboard the Galleon.

Spoilers: None, unless you count the flashbacks in episodes 11 and 12. This chapter starts just after Joe is given the blue Gokaiger key and his own mobirate.

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There was no shortage of strange people among the Zangyack soldiers; a bizarre mix was inevitable with the variety of planets their recruits came from. Still, Joe didn't think any of them quite matched up to the bewildering stranger who'd just electrocuted himself for a man he'd known for all of nine minutes. Maybe that was why Joe had agreed to follow him so quickly... or maybe Joe himself was just as strange.

He looked at the device in his hand, the one the stranger had called a mobirate. "Kinda bulky, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I didn't build 'em." The pirate chuckled, head turning towards Joe again. "I'm Marvelous, by the way... Well, I guess Captain Marvelous, now."

Joe nodded. "I know who you are. I've seen the posters... one of the Red Pirates, right?"

A dark look flicked over Marvelous' face, and he looked back at the sky. "I was. They've been destroyed... I'm the Captain for a new crew now." He glanced at Joe... no, at the blue key Joe was holding. "The Gokaigers."

The former Zangyack knew when to leave a subject alone. "Small crew so far, with just two of us... My name's Joe. Joe Gibken. I'd shake your hand, but..." He tensed his muscles, managed to lift his free arm a few inches before it gave up and flopped to the dirt again.

Marvelous laughed. "Yeah. You weren't kidding about the electricity..." He twitched and clenched his fingers, apparently testing out the effects on his muscles. "Hope this wears off soon."

"Marvelous!" Joe blinked. The surprises were just piling up today, as a robotic parrot descended and landed with a thud on Marvelous' chest. "Marvelous! Are you okay?"

The captain sighed, making a half-hearted attempt to swat her away. "I'm fine, Bird. Don't make a fuss."

"I'm not a bird!" She hopped back to avoid his minimal movement before looking at Joe. "Hi! I heard you introduce yourself. Nice to meet you, Joe! I'm Navi!"

Okay. "Nice to meet you." Robot parrot. He'd seen stranger things, he supposed. None came to mind at the moment.

"We better get moving, though." Navi took off, flying small circles around the two of them. "There're more Zangyack patrols going around in the city. They might come looking."

"That's easy for you to say." Marvelous strained to move again, sighed. "Keep an eye out, Bird. We'll see about the whole moving thing."

It took the better part of eight minutes for the two men to be able to stand, but the more they moved, the easier it got. By the time they reached the mountain pass leading to Marvelous' ship, they'd fully recovered, though Joe kept lifting a hand to his neck and pausing. He couldn't quite believe it. He was free. Sure, Zangyack members would still leap at the chance to kill him, but they couldn't track him wherever he went. He had a chance.

"Oy, you spacing out?" Marvelous' voice brought him back to the present, his hand returning to his side.

"No, just thinking." It didn't take long for him to realize why Marvelous had known he wasn't paying attention: they'd reached the ship. And he couldn't deny its magnificence. No wonder the Red Pirates had been such trouble for Zangyack. He looked at Marvelous with a smile. "Impressive."

Marvelous grinned. "It's called the Gokai Galleon. Suitable for a couple space pirates, huh?" He flipped open his mobirate and tapped in a button sequence. The steel guard doors over the ship's exits slid open, and two chains dropped from the black circle on its belly. Marvelous grabbed one, Joe took the other, Navi flying up beside them as the chains drew them into the ship.

They ended up in a large storage and engine area, but Marvelous led him up past some of the crew cabins into the main quarters. Navi immediately flew to a console next to the stairs. Marvelous eyed her. "Well, Bird? Is the auto repair done?"

"Yep! We're good to go!"

She started tapping buttons, and Joe looked at his new captain. "Marvelous, something I wanted to ask."

"Hm?"

"You said you had a dream, but you didn't tell me what it was."

Marvelous smiled. "You're asking now, after you signed up? For all you know, you could've agreed to help me blow up a planet."

Figured he'd fall in with a comedian. Joe couldn't help smiling back. "Doesn't sound like your style."

"You're right." Marvelous' face turned serious, and he moved to stand beside a small table, his hand resting on a treasure chest that sat on top. "The greatest treasure in the universe... That's my dream." He smirked, then. "We're gonna find it."

Joe's eyebrows furrowed. He'd heard stories of it. Hell, there probably wasn't anyone who'd travelled in space and hadn't at least heard it mentioned. "I thought it was a myth."

"So did I, but it's real." Marvelous opened the chest and removed something... It was a key like the one he'd given Joe, but this one was white with red accents, a red spade on the helmet. "A friend of mine told me about it. These things... the ranger keys, they're the keys to obtaining it."

Joe picked up another of the keys, this one was blue with a claw emblem on the chest. "That's all they do?"

Marvelous frowned. "Well, apparently they were used originally to transform people into these suits, that's how the one I gave you works." He turned the spade headed key around in his hand. "Haven't tried using one of these ones yet."

"They'll work!" Both men jumped as Navi dropped between them to land on the captain's chair. "Any of the keys will work in the mobirates!"

"And when were you gonna tell me that, Bird?" Marvelous looked like he might swat the robot, but he paused. "How's that work? We can't carry them all with us."

"No problem!" She batted the two keys out of their hands and back into the chest before closing it. "I can connect your suit belts to the chest so you can summon them through your buckles! It's called Key Road."

This time Marvelous did knock her on the head, though it seemed more affectionate than anything. "Y'know, you've become awful useful lately."

"I've always been useful! You'd never have gotten them all without me!" She turned away with a huff, but only for a second before she looked back at them... At Joe specifically. She was grouchy with Marvelous, the ex-Zangyack figured. "You gotta transform for me to connect you."

Joe looked down at the key and mobirate, still in his hand, and opened the latter to find a keyhole. He then shot a glance at Marvelous, who'd taken out his own. "Like this. Gokai Change!" Barely a second later, he was GokaiRed.

Joe nodded, flipping the cover off his key's base. "Gokai Change!" It was a strange sensation, the sudden power that came with transforming. He had a feeling he'd have plenty of chances to get used to it.

"Looks good on you, Joe!" Navi flew a quick circle around him before heading to the chest. "Okay, let's get you connected!" Her beak tapped against the chest's lock, creating a rainbow string that she pulled to his buckle, and it disappeared. She did the same for Marvelous. "Now try summoning those keys you had earlier!"

Marvelous paused a moment, then tapped the button on top of the buckle. The gold section spun, revealing the spade-headed key. He grabbed it and turned it around in his hand. "Spade Ace, nice." He glanced at Joe. "The one you had is called AbareBlue."

Interesting name. Joe pictured the claw emblem, focusing on blue, and tapped the button. The AbareBlue ranger key was right where it was supposed to be. He took it out and studied it. "So we can use any of them?"

"Yep! As long as you know which key you want, you can summon it!" Navi opened the chest, and they returned the Spade Ace and AbareBlue keys to their place.

Joe eyed the sheer number of keys inside the chest. Guess he was going to be spending some time learning the names and abilities of each key... He glanced down at his own suit and, after a second, decided he'd start with the blue ones.

Marvelous clapped his hands. "Well, time to get off this rock." He pulled out the GokaiRed key and looked at Joe. "Just relax and you'll return to normal. I'll be in the cockpit. The bird'll teach you how to work the scanners. Keep an eye out for Zangyack in orbit." And he was up the stairs and gone.

Joe eyed the GokaiBlue suit, shut his eyes, and exhaled. When he looked again, the suit had vanished.

"Over here!" Navi had flown back to the console, and he moved to stand behind it as the ship rumbled to life under his feet. She tapped a few buttons and brought up a full scan of the space above them on the view screen. "Scanners are working perfectly now! We took some damage a little while ago, that's why we had to land on Novissimum."

Joe leaned over the console, studying the display and the buttons to figure out their function. "Lucky for me."

Navi paused. "… Yeah. I guess it was, wasn't it?"

Near as he could interpret a robot, she seemed intrigued. "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing! Just glad we were able to help out a stranger." … Well that response made no sense. Before he could say so, though, she tapped a few more buttons. "Marvelous, we're clear to leave!" That switch was the communication to the cockpit, then.

Marvelous' voice returned from a speaker in the console. "Hey, Joe, keep an eye on things. Don't let the bird boss you around, huh?"

"I'm not a bird!"

Joe smiled. Already he felt better taking orders from Marvelous than he ever had taking orders from his Zangyack superiors. "Right."

Leaving Novissimum was… strange. Joe watched it recede on the viewscreen for several long seconds, even after he'd confirmed that no Zangyack ships had come after them. It had been his first and last assignment as a member of the elite Imperial force. Now he was leaving the doomed planet as a pirate, rather than being left as a corpse on its dirt. Definitely not how he'd expected his day to go.

"You're spacing out again." His eyes snapped to the door to the cockpit, where Marvelous stood, out of his suit now.

"I guess so." Joe moved to sit on the couch while Marvelous sat in the captain's chair. Navi glanced between the two of them before flying to land on the back of the chair. "Mind if I ask you something?"

"Depends what it is."

Joe leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and keeping his eyes on his hands. "Why did you help me? It couldn't have just been the way I fought."

Silence for only a few seconds, then Marvelous chuckled a bit. "That was part of it. I guess I was curious, too… when I heard them call you a traitor."

Joe glanced up. "What?"

Marvelous shrugged. "Going against Zangyack is a pretty gutsy decision, even more so if you do it when you're working for them. Guess I wanted to get to know who else got on their bad side." He leaned back in the chair, shifting as if seeking comfort. "So, I'm a pirate and I screw them over every chance I get. What'd you do to piss 'em off?"

It was Joe's turn to go silent, his eyes returning to his hands. He felt a bit sick, remembering the order that had finally opened his eyes to the reality of Zangyack.

"Kill them all!"

He shook his head before the memory went any further. "They ordered me to kill children." From the corner of his eye, he saw Marvelous' gaze focus on him. "I refused, and attacked my commander when he tried to do it instead. So he beat me, branded me a traitor, and stuck the collar on my neck." None of these were pleasant memories, but he kept the rest of the story close to him. He didn't want to talk about Cid. "I don't even know what happened to those kids." The whole city had been crawling with soldiers. He'd probably only delayed the inevitable.

"These kids…" Something in Marvelous' tone made Joe look up again. "Two girls and a boy? About this high?" He held his hand, palm-down, at what would have been their hip height.

"Yes. How did you—"

"I met them." Marvelous looked at the wall, leaning back again with his fingertips resting against each other. "Funny. When they said a soldier saved them, I just assumed it was someone from the planet."

It took a while for that to sink in. They'd survived! "So they're okay?"

"Yeah. I was there when they found their parents at the evacuation site. A lot of the Novissians survived."

Joe couldn't believe what he was hearing, but Marvelous had no reason to lie. He leaned back, practically slumped into the back of the couch. "That's great…" So it hadn't been for nothing. Someone besides him had survived the mess he'd caused.

They sat in silence for a while longer, and then Marvelous stood up abruptly, headed for the console. "Anyway, we need to find a good, populated planet without a Zangyack presence."

Joe blinked, then stood up to better see the searches flicking across the view screen. "What for?"

Marvelous eyed him with disapproval… No, he was eyeing his uniform. "Well, we need to get you a new wardrobe."

#

And so begins Joe's adventure as GokaiBlue! Wanted to hit a few notes here, like Key Road and Joe and Marvelous learning each other's names, and just how the hell long is it gonna take the other four Gokaigers to figure out the ranger keys anyway.

Also, special bonus game: can anyone tell me what Marvelous does, on the Galleon, this chapter that he did not do throughout Lone Red? =D R&R!