Chapter 2: Vergo & Darger
Life on a fishing vessel was probably miserable even if you’d theoretically signed up for it. The quarters were cramped and uncomfortable, the food was bad, the work began before daybreak and ended after sundown. It was backbreaking labor, and it smelled. It smelled constantly.
And Vergo hadn’t even signed up for it.
Vergo was nine years old, going on ten.
The ‘orphanage’ he’d spent only a few years in before they decided to put him to work had all but sold him to the fishing vessel. He was a strong kid, they’d said to the captain. He must have agreed because next thing Vergo knew he’d been shipped out with nothing but the clothes on his back as he was thrust into a life of fish guts and brine.
He and the other kid who’d been dragged along— a boy somehow already both taller and wider than Vergo despite being a whole year younger— had been put to all the fiddly, uncomfortable, and disgusting tasks that were easier for small hands than for large. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t also put to grueling tasks of strength or endurance as well, and that wasn’t even considering the beatings.
Now, six months later was the first time since leaving the orphanage that Vergo had been near land. Three days in port where the bo’sun had put him to work cleaning the belly of the ship, seemingly intent that he wouldn’t even lay eyes on the port where they were docked.
Vergo stared down at the suds left behind as he pushed the dampened, stiff-bristled mop brush across the floor of the ship with the frustrated intensity of a boy desperate to be anywhere but here. His dark eyes glared daggers at the dirty old wood as he scrubbed harder.
“Wonder if we’ll get to see it at all,” he muttered half under his breath.
“They think we’ll try to escape,” Darger murmured. Vergo hadn’t heard the other boy approach, but now found him lingering behind him, scrub brush and bucket in hand. The tanned skin of his arms was pale up to his elbows and marked here and there with blisters from the caustic soaps.
Darger had always been quiet, even back at the orphanage. Unlike some of the other boys, Vergo had never been one to give him shit about it– he understood more than most people exactly how important staying quiet could be.
Anyone who’d felt the heavy hand of the bo’sun, or the orphanage’s madame would know that.
He looked down at his own arms, flecked with much of the same damage as his, and frowned.
“Sometimes I think we should try, Darger.”
Darger got down on his knees and started scrubbing the grimy corner of the hull near Vergo’s feet. He shook his head. “Too many of them. Another beating.”
On the first day they’d been brought onto the ship, Darger had tried to make an escape. He’d gotten through three full grown men before they’d restrained him. Vergo had heard the captain tell him he was lucky they put him to work instead of just throwing him overboard.
Vergo’s attempt a month or so later didn’t go any better. It was hopeless to even try. His brow furrowed as he stepped over Darger and leaned against his brush. “You need power to get through guys like that.”
“Yeah.”
Darger didn’t say anything more after that, just cleaning and scrubbing quietly as if a dark cloud hung over his head. Vergo couldn’t blame him— there was something hopeless about the belly of this ship, trapped among the smell of fish and the brutal fishermen, that sapped your will away.
He scrubbed a little harder as more caustic soap splattered his hands.
Misery and the smell of fish hung in the air for who knew how long. But at some point, Vergo noticed something was wrong. There was a strange sound.
Fishermen up on deck were shouting.
That wasn’t strange. But what was strange was how they were shouting. Like there was a commotion. Vergo had only rarely heard a cacophony of voices like this— once when a brawl had broken out on deck, and another time when one of the fishermen had fallen into the sea.
Given the fact that they were docked, it couldn’t have been someone fallen into the sea— though for a moment, Vergo’s thoughts hitched and stuttered. Ever since a particularly brutal hit from the captain, sometimes his thoughts drifted away. Sometimes he forgot key details, or found himself down long winding trains of thought that inevitably took him out of the moment.
In this case, in this moment— he snapped his head up. “Someone should tell the captain to stop the ship. I think someone’s fallen off.”
“Huh?” Darger stopped mud scrub and looked up at him with large, uncomprehending eyes. “We’re in port though.”
“….We’re in port?” Vergo blinked owlishly at him.
“Y-yeah. Remember? We were talking about trying to escape?” he reminded softly.
His voice was almost drowned out by the sound of the yelling getting louder. Some of it had turned to screaming, and the boat rocked in an unfamiliar way.
“Oh yeah…” Vergo rocked with the boat, and nearly hit his head against the wall of it as he caught his balance. He looked around. “Oh! Yeah!! ..are we under attack?”
Darger grabbed tightly to the handle of his brush. “What should we do, Vergo?”
The shouting and screaming had almost abruptly it stopped.
It was replaced by the sound of boot-steps on the stairs coming down into the below decks.
“I guess we got two choices.” Vergo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Die, or see if we can beat these guys up enough to make a break for it.”
“Right.” Darger nodded, and gripped his soap brush. “Let’s not die.”
Someone was whistling. “Do I hear somebody back here?”
The voice was unfamiliar. A little musical.
Vergo saw Darger’s eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. Like the day he’d taken his shot for freedom.
Vergo lifted his mop by the shaft, tucking one end under his arm and gripping the middle like it were a proper weapon as he nodded to Darger. “Go for the lower bits.” he murmured, “that’s the weak point.”
Darger nodded silently, and they both saw the shadow that crept over the wall as the figure came down the narrow ship’s corridor.
The figure turned and came into view– a tall and rather gaunt man with a narrow face and a cheerful hat.
He seemed surprised to see them. “Uh.”
And that’s when Vergo swung for his nuts with the end of his staff. The universal weak point among men.
“Whoa!”
For a second Vergo thought he’d connected— but something felt wrong. Instead of the man going limp, the scrub brush he was using as a staff went limp instead.
While he was grappling with that, a lot of things also happened at once. Darger was charging like a bull, even as the ground beneath their feet was starting to undulate like a snake.
And someone else was coming down the stairs.
“Hey, hey what the hell, Dia? Is somebody down here?”
Vergo stumbled on the rippling ground— and instead went to slap the floppy mop across the man’s face.
“I’m not gonna die like this! We’re gonna escape, right Darger??”
Darger said nothing– instead hurling himself directly at the man’s knees despite the wobbling floor.
Now the man went down— growling and swearing— and Darger exclaimed. “Get him, Vergo!”
“Whoa, whoa!”
Something started to flood the corridor around Vergo’s ankles.
It was probably seawater, if the ship was falling apart it made sense. He tried to rush forward and slap the limp makeshift staff across the man’s face again as a distraction.
Unfortunately, the ‘seawater’ seemed to be sticking him to the floor. He couldn’t move.
“Damn it, Tre! You’re gonna fucking drown me!” The first man swore.
“Hey, ease up. What the hell is going on?” The man who had thus far only been heard moved into view at the back of the corridor. From the ground, Vergo mostly could only see the ankles of his black boots and the hem of his heavy coat. “Dia, are those kids?”
“Yeah, kids who fucking attacked me!”
Vergo hissed softly through his teeth. “We weren’t just gonna roll over and die!”
Out of the corner of his eye he could just about see Darger thrashing in whatever muck was sticking him to the floor too.
The boots came forward, and the man leaned down just out of reach of Vergo’s arms, stuck as they might be. He proved himself to be a soft faced man in a pair of pince-nez glasses.
“Hey, kid, hey nobody’s going to kill you. What the hell are you doing on this ship?”
“Don’t promise anything, Tre. I might kill ’em,” the other man snapped. “Can you let me up now?”
“Not if you’re going to make threats, Dia.”
Vergo looked up at him, his face half stuck to the goop as he shifted and tried to stand despite it.
“They bought us from the orphanage. We’re…” he muttered. “We work here.”
“Orphans.” Tre’s soft face went hard, and he bent down further toward Vergo. “You’re slaves, then.”
“Oh no,” Dia murmured, once again trying to pull himself up. “Tre, I know that tone.”
Vergo twitched in the goop, looking up at him with a defiant stare. His dark eyes struggled to focus for a moment, another issue he’d started to have since the blow to his head. “…if you’re gonna hurt us, let Darger go. I can take it.”
“Vergo…” Darger struggled in the muck. “I can take ’em.”
“Hey, hey, we’re not going to hurt you, kid, we’re the good guys here!” Tre inisted. “You don’t want to be on this ship, right? Easy, we just took care of everybody on board. Right, Dia?”
“I mean, yeah, we did. Look, we came here to rob the place, not to kill kids, alright?”
Vergo stared at them from the muck, his brow furrowing. “…Darger? We’re not a treasure ship, are we? Did I forget that?”
“No, we’re not,” Darger said softly. He glared up at their captor. “Are you pirates?”
“Not exactly, not exactly,” Trebol murmured. He waved a hand, and Dia finally sat up. Vergo and Darger unfortunately remained stuck. “We’re more like gentlemen of fortune. Until recently, I was a slave like you.”
“We’re thieves,” Dia said plainly, tugging on his coat. It rippled as if in a phantom breeze and traces of goop fell off of it.
Vergo blinked dazedly at him.
“A slave too? Just like us.” He frowned for a moment before he spoke up again. “You thief guys chose a bad ship. This is a fisherman’s vessel. Are you looking to steal fish?”
“See, Trebol?” Dia gestured at his partner. “Nobody robs a fishing vessel.”
“And I told you it’s a rich fishing vessel,” Trebol said, standing up again, hands on his hips. “If you kids show us where the captain’s quarters are, we’ll get you out of here, and get you something for your trouble. How does that sound?”
Darger struggled to catch Vergo’s eye.
Vergo looked over to meet his eyes as best he could, before he flashed a broad smile. “Sure! Just let us out and we’ll lead the way— but if you try and chain us up again after…”
“Hey, hey, no need for that, right Dia? I don’t believe in chaining people up.”
“He really doesn’t,” Dia grumbled. “You’re safe with us.”
The men– Trebol and Diamante– turned out to be as good as their word. They stole a large metal chest from beneath the desk in the captain’s room, and then hurried up on deck where Vergo was treated to the sight of more than a dozen crewmen submerged and unmoving in the same thick, sticky substance which had held him down briefly in the hull.
“Are they dead?” Darger asked softly as they passed the captain, face down and identifiable only by his spurred boots.
“Well,” Trebol murmured, noncommittally.
“Yeah.” Diamante shrugged.
The spurs of those boots had bitten both Darger and Vergo more times than it was possible to count.
Vergo paused for a moment over the dead captain, squinting against the too-harsh light that sent his vision fussy and painful— before his face lit up in a vicious smile and he kicked the mostly-sunken back of his head as hard as he could.
“That’s for hittin’ me! For for beatin the shit out of Darger! And for being a prick!” He punctuated each exclamation with another kick to the dead man’s skull.
Darger’s eyes widened a little– and then he got in a kick of his own.
Trebol looked on with a rather satisfied smile. “Good riddance, eh? But come on, come on, we don’t want the patrols to catch us.”
Diamante was already making ready one of the rowboats on the harbor side of the ship.
Vergo hissed one more time, before he held his hand over his eyes with a big grin. “…come on? You’re not just gonna go?”
“And let them catch you, eh?” Trebol said. “Throw you on another ship or worse– maybe you get arrested. Or drafted. Come on! Don’t you want your freedom? I said we’d get you out of here.”
Darger looked at Vergo. “I like the sound of that.”
Vergo looked back at him under the shade of his hand, and nodded slowly.
“You know…I think I do too, Dar…don’t think we’ve had it before, right?”
Maybe it was sad that after they escaped rowing halfway around the island to Trebol and Diamante’s little ship, that Vergo was eating the best and largest meal of his life.
At the table in the little cabin, he and Darger had been given bread that was almost fresh, large slices of cheese and preserved meat, and a whole bowl of fresh fruit.
In the corner Diamante and Trebol were murmuring back and forth.
“They’re kids, Tre.”
“They’re strong. The big one rowed us halfway here after you complained about your arms getting tired.”
It was a spread for a king, or— at least what Vergo imagined a king might eat. Either way he tucked in without hesitation, until he looked up , a bit of preserved beef stuck to his face as he watched them talk.
“Darger’s one of the strongest kids I know.”
Darger looked up with wide eyes. “Me? I guess I’m pretty strong. You’re strong too, Vergo…”
Diamante glanced their way with a sigh, and waved his hand. “Fine, Tre, go ahead.”
Trebol grinned a wide, toothy grin as he bustled over to the table, pressing his hands against the edge of it.
“Dia and I were thinking, if you wanted, you two could stick with us.”
Vergo tilted his head to the side, beef still stuck to his cheek even as he put his finger to his temple to size them up.
“You guys are thieves, right?” They’d already said that…at least he was pretty sure.
“That’s right, that’s right,” Trebol said. He grabbed a napkin, and carefully peeled the bit of stuck on debris from Vergo’s face. “It’s a hard world out there. The only way to succeed is steal from the rich, right?”
“The rich definitely have more to take from,” Diamante drawled. “Not really much point in stealing from the poor. The bigwigs at the top are already squeezing us for all we’ve got.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Trebol nodded.
Vergo nodded slowly and thoughtfully, giving Trebol a smile.
“They do have a lot. I remember back at the orphanage the madam had a safe with all sorts of treasures in it. Mostly gold!” He closed his eyes. “That does sound…better than working on a fisherman’s ship…”
“It sounds a lot better,” Darger murmured in agreement..
Trebol clapped his hands together. “It is a lot better. I know from experience it’s at least better than being chained to a desk all day.”
Diamante shook his head and wandered by the table where Vergo heard the nearby crunch of fruit. “These kids are going to eat so fucking much, Tre.”
A few days later Vergo wasn’t sure if they were still on the same island that the fishing ship had been docked at or if they’d sailed to another island while he hadn’t been paying attention. Either way, Trebol had him bustling through the street alongside him on a task Vergo was pretty sure involved peeking glances at shop ledgers.
“Hey, hey Vergo, I’ve noticed you’ve been squinting a lot,” Trebol said, as they made their way down the busy, shop lined street.
Vergo looked up at him, but the sunlight looming above lanced through him like a shot and he quickly lowered his eyes with a squint and a nod.
“Sorry sir.” He waved his hand over his eyes. “Ever since the old captain took a bottle to my head I haven’t been able to see so good. The light’s too bright and sometimes it’s real fuzzy.”
Vergo felt Trebol grip his shoulder. “The bastard. He hit you on the head, did he? Might have knocked something a little loose in there. Wish I could drown him again just for that.”
Vergo nodded as he squinted up at him.
“Yeah, he hit me real hard. But I ain’t dead, so it can’t be that bad, right? I think.” He put his hand to his chin. “…when you say knocked loose…does that mean there’s something rattling around in there?”
“Maybe, maybe,” he murmured. Vergo watched him take the little dark glasses off his nose, and he handed them toward him. “Here. Look through these— does that make it easier?”
Vergo peered through them. They cut out the light— honestly, enough that it stopped bringing tears to his eyes at almost any moment. But on top of that, some of the fuzzier details almost swam into focus.
“Yeah, it does…it’s still kinda fuzzy but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“I thought so,” Trebol nodded. “Alright, let’s get you some glasses before we go to work.”
“You look really cool,” Darger said quietly when Vergo came back to the little room that they’d rented as a hideout.
It was kind of weird to be seeing everything in sharp clarity again. With the tinted lenses, the light no longer felt like a knife through his head, and with the fancy ‘pre-scribe son’ lenses Trebol had insisted on, it was almost like it was before the incident.
He grinned at his friend, pushing his glasses up with his finger, the oval lenses catching the light. “You think so? They’re pre-scribe son”
“Pre-scribe son,” Darger mouthed back. He seemed to think about it for a moment, and then he nodded. “They look good for pre-scribed.”
Trebol looked over from where he was talking with Diamante in the corner of the room. “It’s prescription, boys. It means it’s from a doctor.”
“….but didn’t the doctor make them after he scribed a bunch of stuff down?” Vergo asked.
“Well, yes,” Trebol admitted. He seemed a bit perturbed. “But that would make them post scribed.”
Diamante laughed and shook his head. “Can we forget the glasses? They do look good, Vergo. But we were talking about robbing a jewelry store before we get out of town.”
“Jewelry’s pretty,” Darger murmured.
“Thanks Dia!” Vergo grinned as he pushed up his glasses again “I saw a pretty nice one while we were walking. The led…Leader. It had a lot of entries on it, I think it got a big shipment, yeah?”
“Ledger. Exactly.” Trebol grinned. “And with the money we get from taking it, I have some ideas.”
The life of a thief was definitely better than being captive on a fishing boat. The food was better. Vergo got to sleep in. Diamante was teaching him how to use a sword, and he even got to practice on people.
The more he practiced, the better he got. That was the way of it, right? Everyone always said that practice made perfect. But did that mean that perfect made practice?
His thoughts drifted down another passageway before he corralled it back into something sensible.
Life as a thief was so much better than being captive on a fishing boat. The foo– the looping thought stopped with effort.
He’d been getting a lot of practice on people and dummies alike— and especially dumb people. Somewhere along the line he figured out a trick, some strange buzz inside himself that when he tapped into it; his sword hit twice as hard, and the return blows didn’t hurt half as much.
It made fighting really fun. The only time it wasn’t fun was when someone broke or knocked away his glasses, which just made him really mad.
At some point Trebol had noticed Vergo’s ‘trick’ and told him that it was something called ‘haki’. After that they’d stolen some books– presumably about the subject– and Trebol was giving him tips on how to improve.
All the while they must have been getting richer. The food was nicer. The clothes were nicer. Diamante’s new sword had jewels in it, and Darger had been allowed to keep some of the bracelets that came from the next jewelry store that they’d robbed.
And besides haki, Vergo had learned the secret behind the strange powers that Trebol and Diamante had. Something called devil fruits, which Trebol now had them sailing island to island looking for.
For the first time in his entire life Vergo felt like life was going well. Haki was surprisingly easy to pick up and mess around with, and he was getting better every day with Trebol’s help, and Darger looked happy with his shining bracelets.
But Vergo was interested in their quarry.
“What are you guys gonna do with the devil fruits when you find them?” he’d asked Trebol.
“Oh people will pay a lot of money for them,” Trebol explained with a grin. “More than they’ll pay for gold or jewels. But I was thinking it might be good to have a few more talents in the gang– if we find some good ones anyway. Hey, did you know there’s a whole encyclopedia for identifying them?”
Vergo rubbed his chin in the attempt to look as smart as Trebol.
“Hmmm…I did, I did know that.” He did not, as a matter of fact, so he continued. “But Darger didn’t. So you should tell me about it anyway.”
Trebol was more than happy to talk about it at length. Vergo even remembered some of it later.