Not long following the incident's resolution at the hands of the soon-to-be Gecko pirates, the pirates new to town were all restrained and the burning market stall had been dealt with.
Elaina had asked the crowd for help binding the pirates which came in the form of a few men coming to offer their hands as well as a generous shopkeep who donated some rope. Stoker had taken to collecting their weapons and wrapping them in a blanket that he took from the ruins of one of the destroyed market stalls. Once he was done he brought them before Moria, Elaina, and the men who had come to help and laid the blanket out.
Elaina then placed the blade she still held in her hand on the pile and asked no one in particular, "So, what do we do with all this?"
One of the volunteer helpers responded by saying, "I'm not sure of the legal technicalities, but I'm pretty sure it's all just property of the marines who come to take them in."
"Hm... well that's a little annoying. I was hoping to get my dad to take a look at the captain's sword."
One of the other volunteers then interjected, "Well it looks like you don't have to worry about that."
All of them looked at the gruff man and noticed he was looking at the crowd while saying that. Elaina stood up and looked back through the crowd which was clearing the way for two men to reach the scene. One was the mayor of Lumen, an elderly man walking with a cane and with a bald head covered by a wide brim straw hat. The other was her father, a middle-aged-looking man with noticeable gray hairs amongst his head of brown wearing a white kosode with a black hakama, wooden clog sandals, and a dignified look about him.
As he came out of the crowd, the mayor started to speak to the people in the crowd, "Break it up people, just go back to your day we'll have these ruffians taken care of. George, Leonard come here and help assess the damages!" It didn't take much more than that to disperse the crowd, some of them went away to their homes and some looked to the market inspecting certain stalls while George and Leonard came from the crowd and got to assessing the destruction. George was in the business of construction consultation and Leonard in accounting, they were the mayor's prime call for assessing costs of reconstructing in the close to thrice yearly affairs of pirates rolling into port and causing damages. Elaina's father however came over to her side and inspected the assailants.
"So these are the pirates this time. Viktor told me that he'd scared off some belligerent kids before you left. I guess they must have been in a bad mood," he said sternly.
"That's not exactly true." Elaina clarified before she look up at her pale-skinned friend "You wanna tell him Moria or should I?"
Moria then said to the man, "There was this antique silver compass with a design that I liked on sale, I got into an argument with one of them over who should get it and they took exception to me."
"No!" Elaina said with frustration "tell him the truth."
"Ok ok, she taunted me and I punched her."
Elaina's father caressed his chin as though he was contemplating something and said, "not a great move but I suppose that's expected. I can overlook it since she was a pirate but you should really consider training yourself to resist such taunts."
"Yes sir," Moria answered dejectedly.
"Well, we have an hour or two before the marines arrive." He then turned to the volunteers and said, "I thank you gentlemen for your help but whatever work is needed here will be done at a later date, I need to talk to my daughter and her friends about something privately so if you'd all like to return home I would appreciate if you went ahead and did it now."
The men then went away without so much as a word, aside from two who took the time to bow to Elaina's father in respect before following the others. From that, Elaina understood what happened, they were amongst the men that her father and maybe even grandfather had disciplined in the basics of combat and swordsmanship.
The mayor walked from where he stood to announce to the crowd over to Elaina's father to speak with him, clearly showing he trusted his advice, "So what do you make of these kids, Iasus?"
"Typical pirates, their captain's got a bounty but you'll have to persuade the ones who earned it to give it up if you want it. I actually recognize the kid from my visit to port angel in the Ballywood kingdom, he was the son of another dojo master who I met there." Elaina's father (Iasus) explained.
"Too bad such a fine gift of bloodline went to waste."
"No, not necessarily. He did what seemed right to him, it was his responsibility to live with the consequence." At this, the mayor sighed, though he knew the situation with Viktor and had a decent impression of the old-timer it still was foreign to him and many others the way that the family who hosted Vik tended to sympathize with outlaws.
Turning to the young men and woman who Iasus referred to, the mayor opened the discussion by asking Moria outright, "Would you be willing to share some of this bounty with us?"
Moria had considered for a while whether to donate some of the bounty for the town's reconstruction costs. However, he knew that he and his crew would need money for necessities and to arm any peons that they picked up once they sailed. He'd already spent most of their original budget to commission their ship. With this in mind, he was struck by a difficult choice and ultimately decided.
"Sorry but we can't give this away, we need it for a personal project," Moria carefully dodged outright declaring their intentions to raise a jolly roger. But it was a harsh denial nonetheless and while he expected some further pressing, the Mayor only hmpfed in annoyance before walking away to see what George and Leonard had to tell him.
Iasus walked over to the pile of weapons and picked up Stark's weapon without a second glance, clearly, its quality stood out to him amongst the weapons. When he began eyeing the blade up close it became clear to him exactly what this was when he noticed some mixed Kanji and katakana characters engraved near the base of the hilt before he read them aloud.
"Hāpī Tsume, 'harpy's claw'"
[Author's note: I don't know crap about Japanese language, spoken or written, this is just the English name I came up with run through google translate. If someone reading has a better understanding of how those English words could be translated then by all means say so]
"That the swords name?" Elaina asked.
"Yes, and as I've told you it would be helpful to actually learn to read these characters so you can Identify a named blade when you see one, not just remember all the meito weapons by heart," Iasus replied, frustrated by his daughter's inaction.
"Right... so is it any good?" Elaina continued, attempting to get out of her scolding for slacking on her homeschooling of that particular subject.
Iasus sighed regarding his daughter's attempt before explaining, "It's no meito but any weapon of a good enough quality to be named should serve any decent, self-respecting swordsman well."
At that Stoker proceeded to ask, "Then, can we have it?"
"No, I'll be putting this one in storage, I also might give it to Price later if he wants it. It's Better in my opinion that Elaina gets some practice fighting without a sword before finding something for herself to use when you all head out. Moria, I'll let you go to the base later and claim the bounty yourself but since the marines know me it might be better to let me take the fall on this by claiming that he ran from the confrontation and came my way. You just have to tell the marines at the base that I entrusted you to collect it. That way I can show the marines that come here his sword and wave away any more questions since his named blade is probably already a part of the marine's profile on him." Iasus replied.
Moria and Stoker weren't surprised, they'd heard him talking about this before, but they were still irked by the need to intentionally handicap Elaina for their own journey. Elaina however was pretty much indifferent because she already agreed with her father.
"Then I suppose we should leave. Since they're gonna identify us as pirates in a week or two, Stoker and I will hide further inland and make sure the marines don't know we're related," Moria commented, gesturing to Elaina and Iasus.
"Yes," Iasus replied, turning to leave and gesturing for his daughter to follow him.
"Alright, alright." She didn't complain to follow the order of her 'captain' especially since he'd made a good call in doing so. Her family was already taking a risk by harboring Uncle Vik. Things could get ugly if the marines learned everything. She proceeded to get up and walk away with Moria and Stoker following closely behind, intending to split up once they reached Iasus and Elaina's home.
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The ending to this chapter is edited to lead better into the next events