Pirates of the Skies

Chapter 28

The Box

Eri Misugi sat in his quiet room in the Lux Cruiser. He had not bothered to pull the curtains open, making the room dark. On a fine mahogany desk in front of him sat a communicator. It looked like a small jukebox and had a screen in the middle and a few nobs and buttons under it. On the side there was a handheld mouthpiece that one spoke to. This communicator was called telephone.

Eri picked up the receiver/microphone and pressed a button on the side. The screen flashed on in response, showing a face shrouded in heavy shadow, except for blue eyes.

"Greetings, Greed." Eri Misugi said.

"Ah son, good to hear from you!" The man shrouded in shadow said happily.

Eri stopped himself from sighing but there was a flash of annoyance that appeared on his usually nonchalant face. "Come now, Greed. I called you by your alias, the least you can do is show me enough respect as a professional and do the same for me."

"Come on, my boy. The line is secure so we don't need to be all formal.' The man said in good humour but upon seeing the unchanging look on Eri Misugi's face he sighed before complying. "Okay, Eri Misugi, what may be the reason for calling me? Are you close to delivering the item?"

"No," Eri began. "I'm messaging you to inform you that I lost the Box."

"What? Were you attacked?" Greed suddenly said with worry in his voice.

"You could say that," Eri said.

The man shrouded in shadow smiled angrily, his teeth opening a white wound into the shadow that had made a home on his face. "Don't worry my boy. I'll get some of my people and help you make the culprits pay… dearly."

"I don't need your assistance, Greed." Eri said. "I can recover the item on my own and don't forget to call me by my alias."

Greed shrugged in confusion. "Okay, Eri Misugi, so you say you'll retrieve the item without my help, I have no doubt that you'll be able to but… if so, why bother contacting me?"

This caused Eri to run a hand through his hair sheepishly, "Uhm… I kinda need your help."

"Ho ho ho, ask away, son!" Greed beamed.

Eri fought the urge to roll his eyes like a teenager talking to his father. "I don't need much. I need transport to catch up to the pirates who stole the box from me. I could have asked a few people but I want the best and you're the only one who can contact the people I have in mind."

"Oh, so you need me to contact them for you." Greed said with understanding shinning in his blue eyes."

"I'll pay them of course." Eri Musugi said. "I could also pay you a finders fee."

"Ever since you made your own small fortune you've been all independent." Greed commented to himself. "Okay! I'll contact them for you and don't insult me by offering to pay me. Who did you have in mind?"

/

Mary walked out onto the deck. The sun was still slowly climbing up into the sky but she already knew that she was not the first to wake. As usual, she found Riku training on the deck. She admired his muscles as he trained without his shirt and only a pair of knee length shorts.

She did not bother greeting him as he was focusing heavily on his the sequence of moves he was practicing with his katana. To make his training harder, he had tied some weights to his legs and forearms.

She looked around and was surprised that she had not seen the other early riser of the Otake family. She walked to the study below the helm where he usually was. Inside she saw Shuji, who was sleeping on the desk with one of his arms beneath his head as a makeshift pillow while his other one that was in a cast sat at his side.

She noted a box that was next to him on the desk. She recognised it immediately as the box that the Plundering Crew had stolen from Eri Musigi a few weeks ago. Without making a sound, she began approaching the item quietly until Shuji woke up. Mary was taken aback by this and wondered how Shuji could have heard her masterfully silent approach.

There was a look of confusion on Shuji's face until he straightened his skewed glasses so that he could see who was before him. "Mary?"

"Sorry to wake you," Mary said. "You looked so peaceful while you were sleeping."

"It's okay. You're not the one who woke me."

"Hey is that the box Mr. Otake stole from our last plunder?" Mary enquired.

"Yes," Shuji said picking up the box. "It's called a Cubix," Shuji began as Mary took a seat opposite him. "It was invented by the Tzar as a means of protecting precious things that had to be delivered. It's like a little puzzle that only someone with the answer to it can open. I'm trying to open it."

"Oh, so you know the answer to the cubix's puzzle?" She asked.

Shuji looked at the box critically. "No, not yet." Shuji laughed at this. "The funny thing is that if you don't know the answer to the puzzle of the cubix, the chances of you opening it dramatically decrease. As the more you try to figure it out the less likely you'll actually succeed. It's actually quite ingenious."

"But then doesn't that mean you won't be able to open it?" Mary asked, looking confused.

"Not in the way I'm doing it. Let me explain, see every cubix has this," Shuji said before turning the box around to show Mary a small hole at the bottom of the Cubix.

"A hole in the bottom?"

"A keyhole." Shuji corrected. "Imagine this, someone is carrying a cubix with something important inside and then it suddenly falls into enemy hands."

"Our hands," Mary said with a sly smile.

"Yes… I guess enemy hands would be us in this case." Shuji said, also smiling mischievously… or at least as mischievously as the mild mannered man could. "Now the person who the cubix belongs to can solve its puzzle provided that it is… hmmm… lets call it, its natural locked state. Yes, provided the cubix is in its natural locked state." Shuji said holding the brown box with silver patterns out to emphasis this. "But now the enemies who stole it try to gain access to it by trying to figure out the puzzle." Shuji demonstrated by twisting the top section of the cubix clockwise and then twisting a side section of the cubix towards him. With each twisting motion, there was a mechanical clicking sound coming from the cubix until the motion was done. "By doing this, the enemy has changed the state of the cubix from its natural locked state to a compromised locked state."

"Aaah, I get where you're going with this." Mary remarked. "So if the owner of the cubix were to somehow recover it from the enemy's hands, he would not be able to open it because he only knows how to solve the puzzle of the cubix if the cubix is in its natural locked state."

"Exactly," Shuji beamed at Mary. "So that would mean that the cubix would be both inaccessible to both the owner and the enemy. But you see, the Tzar saw how much of a disadvantage this was so when their technology advanced enough, they created a new feature in the cubix, a reset mechanism. See, each cubix is created with a reset key that when used will return it to its natural locked state. This would validate the solution to the puzzle to open the cubix again."

"But right now this cubix is in a compromised locked state since you've just moved parts of it around." Mary said.

"Yes but you see, if you can remember every move you make when trying to solve the puzzle," Shuji said before he turned the section at the side of the cubix away from him then the top in an anticlockwise motion, "then you can always manually reset it and try another cobination to open it."

"You've thought about this a lot haven't you?" Mary said impressed.

"I've thought about it for the whole night," Shuji said, stifling a yawn.

Mary looked around at the papers strewn about on the desk and at the Checkess board that was on the table with some of the board game pieces lying around the board. It became obvious that Shuji had been working for most of the night and also still had the time to play Checkess. She had always wondered who he played against as he always had the Checkess board out on the table every morning.

"It all seems a bit too complicated." She eventually said. "Why don't we just break the cubix apart and see what's inside?"

"Oh no we couldn't do that," Shuji said in horror. "Cubix's are made with a failsafe in case anyone tried to bypass it by brute force. In the olden days they were loaded with an acid so strong, it could eat through gold. These days, they're enchanted to disintegrate anything inside." Shuji looked at the cubix in admiration.

Mary sighed, feeling sad for the task ahead of Shuji. "So you're going to try and open it?"

Shuji placed the cubix on the table gently. "Yes."

"Because Mr. Otake told you to?"

"No. Father didn't tell me to open it. He didn't even know what it was nor did he seem to care much."

And yet he was willing to risk our lives to keep it, Mary grumbled at the thought as she rested her chin on her hand.

"I generally hate puzzles but I'm interested to see what's inside. Aren't you?"

Mary looked at the cubix. "I guess I am." Might as well find out what was worth Eri Musigi trying to kill us over.

"And if there's nothing, we could always use the cubix ourselves or sell it with its puzzle solution. Even without a reset key, it should fetch a high price provided we sell it with a puzzle solution."

Mary nodded.

"Hey, I bet you're good at puzzles. I've seen you pick a lock with skill so maybe you could help me figure the cubix out." Shuji said.

"Why not?" Mary said sitting straight up.

/

The morning had now truly arrived. Riku had ceased his training and was now sitting at the table madly eating a lot of breakfast food, joining him was the chef himself, Shinji. Kai, although not one to eat massive amounts of food like his father and Riku, wanted to prove he could be like his father so he too shoved large amounts of food into his mouth. It was not very hard as for the past few days his mother had been in charge of meals, which he had eaten only a little lest he poisons himself. This was a chance for him to regain the nutrients and calories he had not been getting on the past few days.

"Gees, boys have some table manners at the table." Yuki scolded.

"Sorry hon-hon." Shinji said with a full mouth.

"I blame you for the boy's bad manners." Yuki informed Shinji. "You always eat like an animal."

"That's what makes him such a great pirate, mom!" Kai said with an even fuller mouth, sputtering food out.

Yuki shook her head. "Great pirates can chew with their mouths closed." She said which Shinji immediately did. Kai noticed this and did the same while Riku piled on a third serving to his plate and went at it with the same unmannered gusto as before.

Yuki looked around and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Omoi was sitting quietly, eating and sometimes she would have short conversations with Kai. Lassie stood on the table, pecking at any food that was carelessly spilled on the table. Yuki felt like there was something missing, something she did not particularly like.

"Mary," she said. "Where's Mary?" She looked at Omoi.

"I-I don't know." Omoi honestly answered. "She was gone when I was awake like she usually is and I haven't seen her the whole day."

Yuki looked around and saw Shuji was also missing. Shuji not eating breakfast was a common thing as he would spend most of his mornings in the study, lost in the pages of a book or doing stock keeping and operation details for the ship and crew. Yuki became worried because unlike other times, both her son and a woman were nowhere to be found.

Yuki quickly ran to the study with such speed that she left a trail of white dust behind her.

"Aha!" Yuki said as she kicked the door open and inadvertently created a gust of wind which blew pages off the desk that Shuji was not fast enough to hold down. "What are you two doing?!"

"Oh," Mary began turning in her seat to look at Yuki, "we were just…"

"LIAR!" Yuki pointed accusingly at Mary. She raced to the desk and looked around. "What are these pages? Why are you sitting facing each other? Why does everything here look so suspicious?!" Yuki slammed her hand on the desk, summoning a wave of wind which flowed outward and blew Mary and Shuji to opposite sides of the room.

Mary was able to flip in mid air and land on her feet while the less graceful Shuji simply fell and tumbles backwards until the wall stopped his momentum. "Mother, Mary was just helping me with this." Shujji said raising the cubix.

"Well I know the perfect place where she can help you." Yuki said looking at Mary with distaste. A few minutes later Yuki had set up a table on the deck outside. "There now I can keep my eye… ehh… I mean you can work in the open and fresh air." Yuki said before she gave Mary a look of disdain and stalked off in a huff.

Mary sighed, "Uhm… where are we going to sit?"

"I'll get us chairs." Shuji said.

"No, I'll do it." Mary said. "You only have one good arm so I might as well help out."

"Yeah but I also want to fetch my rifle." Shuji said. "Maybe I can do some more work after we're done with the cubix… if we get done."

/

The passengers of the Lux Cruiser looked visibly worried when the pirate ship approached the luxury sky ship. Most decided to run to their rooms in a panic where they hoped to be safe if the pirates should ever board.

The pirate sky ship was made of dark wood with a blimp like object hanging above it and thrusters at its back to help it in its flight. The blimp had a picture of a skull with a sword and gun crossed instead of the traditional cross bones.

Eri Musigi stood at a balcony of the Lux Cruiser looking out to the expansive sky ahead of him. He jumped off. His hair fluttered upwards as he plummeted towards the pirate sky ship at an angle.

He landed on the deck, kicking up a ring of dust around him before straightening up and fixing his white tuxedo jacket. The pirates on the ship drew their swords and pointed their guns at the calm looking intruder who placed his hands back into his pocket.

"Stow yer weapons, men." A gruff voice rang out as there were sounds of two different sounding footsteps coming down stairs that led to the sky ship's helm. "This be our client." The man said as he came into sight.

He had a brown long beard and was dressed in traditional pirate attire with a dark brown overcoat and a pirate hat of the same colour. His right leg ended in a bronze stump.

The man showed his yellowing teeth to the newcomer. "Ye must be Eri Musigi. I be the cap'n of this vessel, Sky Rapier. Cap'n Mord."

"Captain Mord, nice to meet you." Eri said. "I take it you're here because you've found out where the pirates I'm looking for are?"

"Yes, its gonna cost ye' extra for havin me and me men doing recon work fer yer." Mord said.

"It's okay, I can pay." Eri said before walking past Mord. "Let's get going."

"Hey hey hey, I be the cap'n o' this ship." Mord scolded. "I say when we go. Yer'nt dealing with any ol' cap'n here. I be number 9 on GAPS most wanted list, yer know?"

"Well, I'm number 4 on GAPS most wanted list." Eri said as he found a seat. "So technically, I out rank you and that means I can tell you when we go."

Mord gritted his teeth at the man and the rest of the pirate felt uneasy about the situation. They all reached for their guns and swords again, just in case things got messy.

"And anyways," Eri continued, "I'm paying you a pretty penny so you can afford to take some direction from me."

A green parrot flew from the sky and landed on Mord's shoulder before the pirate captain laughed. "Ye right bout that! Set sail men! We be hunting today!"

Sky Rapier sped across the skies heading for the Otake family sky ship.