Book 1: Chapter 31: Patch 6.0: The Voyage South

Fenrir gets some good distance between the ship and the coast. He wants to be able to relax and enjoy the scenery, maybe practice casting his fishing rod some more, while letting the ship just sail on its own. The more distance between the ship and the coast, the less he has to worry about accidentally beaching it on something.

“Wait, something is wrong here,” Fenrir says, looking over the ship. Rock tilts her head while following behind him. “Emergency, Rock,” he says despite his voice not sounding too worried. “She doesn’t have a name yet. Every ship needs a name!”

Rock doesn’t understand what’s happening, but she’s happy and wagging her tail anyway!

“Alright, let’s brainstorm. How about… The Sea Rock?” he asks, looking down at Rock. She’s wagging her tail still and gives a happy bark. However, he thinks it’s just because she heard her name. “I don’t think I’d want to be on a ship named after something that sinks to the bottom of water, actually. How about… The Penguin? Nah. I can’t double up on names like that, my TV might get jealous.”

Rock stops paying attention and licks her paws instead.

“Should I name her something badass? She’s not quite on the same level as The Divine Citadel was, so maybe… The Divine… Shack? Yeah, she’s only a shack in comparison to The Divine Citadel, so maybe something else.”

Fenrir’s face lights up.

“I’ve got it! From now on, you’re named The Shoebill,” he declares, patting the side of the ship’s hull. “You might not be as awesome as a shoebill is yet, but you’ll get there. I’ll build you up and make you worthy of the name!”

“Aren’t you just naming the ship after a shoebill because you saw an anthropomorphized shoebill anime girl?” Saya asks.

“You’re… not wrong, but shoebills themselves are awesome. They’re like modern dinosaurs! And they make really cool noises. They’re like… the alligators of birds,” Fenrir explains.

“If you say so, Onii-chan.”

“What do you think, Rock? Isn’t The Shoebill a great name?” Fenrir asks, crouching down to get Rock’s opinion.

Rock gives a happy little bark and then goes back to doing puppy things.

“Two against one, Saya.”

“I never said I was against it!”

“Too late, you lose, we win.”

“You know, I’m technically part you, so if you win then I also win.”

“Yeah, well, the part of you that isn’t part of me loses.”

Saya mentally facepalms.

“The hell are you talking to yourself for, bastard?” Cassiel asks from the entrance to the cabin.

Fenrir’s ears and tail shoot up as he spins around to look at her, blush on his cheeks. He was talking out loud to Saya, but she was only talking in his head.

Rock hops up and runs over to her. She jumps up and down against Cassiel’s leg as if wanting to get lifted up, but Cassiel resists.

“Ah, I was, uhh, talking to my virtual assistant,” Fenrir explains.

“You know you can do that in your head, right?” Cassiel asks.

“Yeah, but – you know, nobody else was here, so I figured I’d just talk normally.”

She shrugs.

“What’re you doing on – oh, didn’t you say you had work yesterday? How was it?”

“I’m on to take my mind off of how shitty my shift was. That’s why I’m on, and that’s how work was,” she explains.

“Relax and take it easy then. I’ll be up here if you need anything from me,” he says, figuring that she’d rather have some space from him if she had such a bad shift and just wants to relax.

Instead, she walks up to him and leans over the side of the ship.

“Can I rant?” she asks.

Fenrir is surprised to hear her ask that. He really figured she’d just want some peace and quiet, and he hasn’t pegged her as the kind of girl to really talk about real life – assuming that’s what she wants to talk about. “Go for it,” he says.

“Guys are fucking assholes.”

Oh, it’s one of those kinds of rants.

“Yeah, we can be sometimes.”

“My boss makes me wear this skimpy shitty little thing that barely covers anything up, and then he says I’m overreacting whenever I complain about guys constantly hitting on me and trying to grope me. Like, what a fucking piece of shit. He’s lucky that I need the job or else I’d be out of there.”

Fenrir wants to say something, but he isn’t sure what to say. He could always try that “just listen” thing that he always hears relationships experts say to do. “That sucks,” he confirms her feelings.

“And then when one of the customers finally actually stands up for me, he gets kicked out and banned from the bar. You know what’s really messed up? The bastard who screwed with me isn’t banned because my boss says that he was just drunk and ‘being a guy,’ but the guy who punched him for me is banned. I told him that he shouldn’t be banned and he said that he isn’t allowed to come back for trying to start a fight. Then he tells me the bastard isn’t banned because it would hurt the bar’s reputation.”

“That sounds really shitty. At least somebody tried sticking up for you.”

“Yeah, but it just pisses me off even more when I think about how some random guy defended me more than any of my ex’s ever did. Some random guy I don’t even know treated me better than every single one of those shitheads I dated, and then he gets in trouble for it. I almost wish he didn’t just so that I could think all guys are pieces of shit instead of reminding me I just make shitty decisions.”

“Sounds like you should ask him out if you ever see him again,” Fenrir teases.

She turns to look at him and glares. “Shut up, bastard. Doubt I’d ever see him again anyways. Besides, he was probably just defending me to try and get my clothes off.”

“He sounds like a pretty nice guy. He just wanted to defend your honor, m’lady. Did he tip his fedora to you after backing you up?”

To Fenrir’s surprise, he actually sees Cassiel smile and look like she’s holding back a laugh.

“Shut up,” she repeats herself, voice clearly faltering and wanting to laugh. “God, guys like that are the worst. Every single guy I meet is either some perverted asshole who wants to try and act like some dominant ‘alpha’ and thinks he’s hot shit because he knows how to flirt, or they’re spineless ‘nice guys’ who only act nice to try and get into my pants since they’re too self-conscious to just flirt with me directly, or they don’t know how to.”

“Which one am I?” Fenrir asks.

“The annoying one.”

Fenrir chuckles. “Fair enough. Anyways, I know what you mean. I cringe every single time I see guys like that. It’s like almost every guy I know thinks they have to either treat girls like shit because they ‘subconsciously like it because of evolution,’ or they put them on a pedestal and treat them like goddesses to prove that they’re more devoted than every other guy.”

“God, I know, right?”

“They don’t know that all you have to do is treat a girl like she’s just another person. If you just treat every guy and girl the same – with respect and like a normal human being, it works out better. That’s how it is with every successful relationship I know.”

“Exactly! At least one of you bastards gets it.”

“I think it’s pretty interesting to think about, though. I mean – why do guys act that way? I do think being alpha and dominant has its place, but that doesn’t mean to be an asshole. I think it’d be more fair to just say be confident instead of trying to be alpha or dominant. Then you’ve got nice guys who are basically the result of romantic comedies being pumped out by the dozen every year.”

“What do romantic comedies have to do with creepy guys?”

“Think about it. How many times are the guys in romantic comedies obsessed with the girl, willing to do anything to win her over, act like borderline stalkers, act up in front of everybody and do like huge public confessions, and then win the girl? Those movies basically condition guys to act like creepy, obsessive stalkers where if they’re just persistent enough, they get rewarded.”

“…huh. Yeah, I can see your point. Shit, now I’m not going to be able to enjoy those movies anymore.”

“I didn’t think you were a romantic comedy type of girl.”

Cassiel looks at him again, this time with reddened cheeks. “I will throw you overboard if you tell anybody.”

“Tell anybody what? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says with exaggerated confusion.

The ocean breeze brushes against Cassiel’s face, blowing her hair back and causing her to squint her eyes. The way that she raises her hand up as if to shield herself from the salty wind is the first time he sees her feminine side. It’s nice. “Sorry you had to deal with all of that,” he says.

“It’s fine, I’m over it now. Thanks for listening to me rant. I know how much you guys hate that sort of thing.”

“Nah, it’s nothing. I like talking and listening to people. You get to learn more about them that way, and the more you learn about them, the closer you can get to them. Makes relationships more personal.”

Fenrir swears he can see a slight smile on her lips, but she turns her head away before he can confirm it.

“Didn’t you go out with that deer boy? What was his name again?” she changes the subject.

“Yeah, we live a few hours away from each other. He comes and visits me twice a month to go out drinking downtown. His name is Oleander – well, his character name is.”

“How was it? You listened to me and my shitty problems, so it’s only fair to listen to how your day was.”

“It was pretty good. I got really drunk so I can’t remember much, but I remember punching some guy in the face and then getting kicked out.”

Cassiel snaps back around to look at him. “The hell did you punch a guy for? You trying to start random bar fights?” She sounds like a scolding mother.

“Nah, nothing like that. I just remember him being an asshole to our waitress and harassing her, so I walked up and punched him. Probably should have just waited for the bouncer to do that since I’m probably banned now, but – Cass? What’s with that look?”

Cassiel doesn’t realize she’s blatantly staring up at his face. She just now remembers that they said they were going to The One-Eyed Pirate, and he apparently punched a guy and then got kicked out. He doesn’t look anything like the guy in the bar… but there weren’t any other violent incidents at the bar yesterday. She curses herself for forgetting that he was supposedly going to be there. Her hatred for her job just consumes her and overrides logical thought most of the time. Now that she’s vented her hatred out and is putting pieces together – he has to be that guy from the bar.

“You – what’s with that look?” she asks.

Fenrir doesn’t realize that he’s blatantly staring down at her face. He just now realizes that their stories sound almost the exact same, and knowing what he knows about that bar’s management, he begins putting the pieces together. She was wearing a skimpy outfit, had to deal with asshole customers, had some guy defend her whom was then kicked out, and – wait, doesn’t she look almost the exact same as his waitress did?

The two continue staring at each other, now pointing fingers at one another.

Rock ignores them to continue doing Rock things.