"What do I do, what do I do?"
"No—can't just sit here and wait to die. I have to save myself!"
"Guys, give me something—anything!"
Xiao Kaka kept her voice low to the stream, then pretended to go invisible and scanned the barrage.
[If you're tied up head to toe, there's only one method: rub the ropes loose.]
[But that takes time. Based on my thirty-plus kidnappings of experience, you'll need at least four or five hours.]
[With that many pirates around you? Forget it.]
[Hold up—thirty-plus kidnappings?]
[Wait, is that the kind of kidnapping I'm imagining? Are you… a girl?]
As the chat spiraled off, Kaka was close to tears. Sponsor money or not, she really didn't want her character to GG right at the start—and definitely not by getting dragged off by pirates.
Through the wall of spam, one thread looked… sane.
[Staying on that ship is a dead end. They'll chew you up and spit you out.]
[Jump overboard.]
[Jump? In the open sea? That's just drowning with extra steps.]
[Drowning beats dying in humiliation.]
[…kind of true.]
[Kaka, jump. Heads or tails—you're getting cut either way. Might as well be brave.]
[Yeah—jumping might leave a sliver of hope.]
[Float on your back. Keep all four limbs spread and at the surface; you'll stay up.]
[True—I used to float like that as a kid.]
Resolve tinged her pale face. She glanced at the pirates around her.
The Hild Pirates were tallying their haul—the captain and sub-captains clustered together, counting loot. No one was watching the helpless, bound girl at the rail.
She inched sideways. By the time a deckhand shouted, the splash had already sounded.
Plop!
The sea swallowed her whole. Salt bit her tongue; the water felt endless, a blue-black abyss.
"She jumped!"
"Idiots—watch your prisoner!"
A sub-captain sprinted to the rail, ready to dive—but Captain Hild caught his arm, eyeing the sky. The clouds that had been brooding earlier had turned fully black.
The East Sea wasn't the Grand Line, but storms still blew up out of nowhere. With thunder about to break, diving after one girl wasn't worth it.
Grinding his teeth, the sub-captain pulled back. Hild barked, "Raise the sails! Storm's coming. We're leaving this patch of water."
"Aye, Captain!"
…
What came next aboard the pirate ship, Kaka didn't know. She hit the water and, following chat's advice, held her breath. Being a game helped—panic didn't crush her entirely. She didn't even choke much before her body rose and bobbed to the surface.
She blinked up at a sky gone pitch-dark, lightning flickering in the clouds.
Her face went white. "Guys, I'm terrified of thunder…"
Since childhood, thunder had sent her burrowing under blankets with her ears covered.
Time dripped by. She drifted, waves slapping her, sometimes gulping mouthfuls of brine. She could swim, but not well—and never out on the open sea.
"Guys… am I really going to GG like this? The storm's almost here. Out here on the surface, I either drown or get scared to death by lightning."
Despair chewed at her. From chat, she gathered the other Great Age of Sail streamers were also hitting weird events—but no one else had it this rough: merchant ship, pirates, jump, now a storm.
Then—crack, crack! Thunder split the sky. The low ceiling of cloud finally burst.
The storm fell fast. Rain hammered her face in hard pellets; she could barely keep her eyes open. Breathing, already difficult between swells, became a struggle under sheets of water.
"Guys, I… I don't think I can hold on."
Even saying it, she felt stubbornness spark—and remembered the line at login: This world is 100% real. Death is permanent for the character. If this avatar died, it would be for real.
Darkness pressed in. "I'm going to… rest my eyes… a bit."
Too many gulps of water, the drum of thunder—her instincts shut her eyes. As her consciousness blurred, she felt hands—arms—hauling her up out of the sea.
[What happened?]
[Why did the audio cut? The screen's black too!]
[No way—Kaka didn't actually die, right?]
[That was fast… talk about cursed luck.]
Hearts pounded across the stream. Then the picture snapped back.
From Kaka's POV, there wasn't much to see at first—only a racket in her ears.
"Idiot Captain, what'd you drag aboard this time?"
"Yeah, Idiot Captain—how're you this lucky?"
"We punish you by making you swim drunk in a storm, and you come back with a pretty girl?"
"Idiot Captain! Idiot Captain!"
The chorus went on and on. Kaka looked around, dazed.
She was sprawled on a deck, drenched, a heavy black cloak thrown over her shoulders. It was thick and warm; sensation returned to her fingers and toes. Her wrists and ankles were free. She turned her head.
Midships, a crowd of odd-looking men had gathered, laughing, drinking, tearing into meat. Overhead, the sky was… clear. Sun-bright, cloudless.
The storm was gone.
Which only meant she'd leapt from one danger straight into another.
She lifted her eyes—and froze at the massive sail above. A skull grinned down, two red-handled sabers crossed behind it in an X. Three long red scars slashed across the skull's left eye.
A pirate flag. A very, very famous one.
Her face went bloodless. "Guys… I think I just ran out of the wolf's den and into the tiger's maw."
Because the ship she was on now was the Red Force.
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