The smoke parted and gave way to the silhouette of a tall, lean, muscular man.
The burly pirate's blind eyes seemed to blur as he mumbled "Cap'n…"
"I'm here." The man behind the distant silhouette answered, his demeanour was distant, inhuman, almost.
But his cold voice seemed to have somewhat alleviated the burning wounds of the bodies around him. The three pirates were astonishingly relieved despite their horrifying state.
The grey smoke parted, and darkness emerged along the man they knew as their only saviour.
He was pale, impossibly so. His hair was grey, almost white, yet he looked young, probably in his twenties. His gaze was distant, his left eye was covered in an eyepatch, while the other was entirely black, as if no light escaped the two black holes.
Terror walked forward, his single eye refusing to reflect the world he observed.
He bent down and slowly placed his hand on the burly pirate's shoulder.
The pirate grimaced but didn't let a whimper escape his lips.
He could endure the pain of getting touched on his carbonised skin, but then something happened that made him grit his teeth and shake in pain.
A faint emerald glow emanated from the silver-haired man's body.
It convulsed and moved like wisps of smoke and gathered around his arm like a glowing, pulsating ball of viridescent flame.
Then it flowed onto the charred body of the once-tall pirate.
After a single moment of being covered with the green flame, the pirate screamed in agony.
But not because he was being burnt. On the contrary, his charred skin lost its rough texture and dark colour and slowly returned to its natural characteristics.
The boiling blood flowed back into the burnt veins and arteries.
But while this happened, the man felt every moment, every injury that was reversed brought him pain equal to that of when he received it.
Unable to bear the pain, he tried to roll around and extinguish the emerald flame covering his body. But the firm hand of his captain held him in place, his single dark eye bringing a hint of solace to his soul
Eventually, all of his wounds and injuries receded.
His broken bones were rejoined, his limbs lay naturally attached to his body, and his skin was back to being a tanned shade of white. Even the scar across his face, which had been received long ago, seemed less pronounced.
But even still, the burly pirate lay unconscious, his eyes soullessly staring at the stars.
The captain took his pale hand off the burly body. For a moment, the man caught his breath, his silver hair glowing even more stark in the night. The emerald flame converged back into his hand, and then he moved to the other crewmates nearby…
One by one, everyone who wasn't dead was rejuvenated from the doorstep of doom and brought back to life.
The fat pirate and the scrawny pirate were treated by their captain soon after and were returned to their natural state before the explosion happened; they even looked slightly younger than they did before.
The captain walked to the middle of the ship and repeated his procedure on other severely injured crewmates, tending to each of them with his miraculous ability to reverse their injuries as if they never existed in the first place.
The more dire the injuries were, the more time it took to heal them, but fortunately for the Crimson Pirates, the captain only needed a few dozen seconds at most to finish each job.
Just a minute after the explosion, the first crewmate broke out of his sleep.
It was the burly pirate; he sat straight up, his body sweating through the cold night, and his chest expanding and contracting at an accelerated rate while he was huffing and puffing in his breaths.
In his discombobulated state, he looked around and saw the scene of carnage on the ship and his unconscious crewmates lying still on the deck.
'What in the sea happened here…' he thought to himself as he was unaware of what was going on.
As Terror White's miraculous ability reverses the injuries on one's body, it also reverts a person's memories back to the past, effectively erasing them permanently.
As soon as he gained clarity in his mind, he instinctively stood up fast and assumed a battle position.
But to his surprise, no enemy attacks followed him. All he perceived was a single whisper.
He turned his head in the direction of the sound and saw the silhouette of a man standing in between emerald light and dark grey smoke.
"Kill."
A single whisper was what he heard, but his wandering eyes immediately grew still. His demeanour changed; he seemed to grow even bigger than he was. He smiled, and replied to the command as if it held absolute authority, "With pleasure, Cap'n…" his deep and rough voice responded throughout the ship, and following it, the remaining two pirates—scrawny and fatso—rose from their graves.
They heard the whisper from their captain, too, and immediately took arms, the ones they could find.
They didn't know what was happening. They didn't know why the rear of the ship looked like the carcass of a leviathan, they didn't know why they were surrounded by fire, they didn't know why the rest of their crewmates were unconscious and slowly waking up one by one.
All they knew were the words their captain spoke, and they followed his command without a second thought.
Coordinating with each other, they took on firearms—guns and cannons—and stood on watch around the remaining part of the deck. Numerous other pirates joined their lookout and stood with rifles and cannons loaded.
A minute passed, and no one noticed a thing except the dark ocean and the unholy night.
The burly man took command and instructed the entire crew at the top of his voice, "Our ship suffered from a great explosion, all our asses were dead or not for Cap'n savin' em at the last moment. We don't know or have possibly forgotten what the source of the explosions was due to being blessed with the emerald flame.
"So we don't have any information on the enemy, it's possible they are a devil fruit user who could go invisible or maybe someone using a cheap trick to blend in with the night. For either possibility, half of us will shoot a full round randomly into the air with blind hopes to catch the enemy by luck.
"After the first half has exhausted a full round, the second half must take their turn in blind shootin' while the first takes their time to reload. We will do this till Cap'n orders us to stop. So on three, get your honeys ready, choose yer half, and get shootin"
He took a breath,
"One…"
The pirates chose among themselves which turn to take.
"Two…"
They readied their guns.
"Three! SHOOT!"
Bang!Bang!Bang!Bang!...
Sounds of countless bullets tearing through the air filled the night, while at the same time, the pale man with silver hair stood in the middle, unfazed.
His eyes seemed to narrow. He lingered for a moment and then whispered to himself in a chilling voice.
"Invisible…" he audibly scoffed and let out a small chuckle.
Following the echoes of his laughter, all the wisps of glowing emerald light imploded and converged into a single point, directly atop the darkness within his right eye.