The marketplace was bustling as usual, and Flint found it difficult to keep himself from getting sidetracked by all the exotic curios lining the abundance of colorful stalls. More than once, Aika had to forcefully pull him back from veering off to examine a row of expertly crafted swords that hailed from the New World, or a set of spices that he claimed could really give his explosives the punch he'd been looking for.

They'd docked an hour ago on Nikko. Valor - who'd since regained dominance over Vesper - had elected to watch the ship. Neither Aika nor Flint bothered to argue with him, knowing he was staying behind more because of his hatred of crowds than loyalty to their vessel or their crew. That left the task of trekking out to the twins' home to Aika and Flint alone. Flint, of course, didn't mind. He saw this as something that would be delegated to the captain anyway, and he'd be lying if he said he preferred Valor's company to Aika's.

The twins lived a fair distance away from the marketplace, closer to the eternally shadowed forest that made this island infamous. He'd never learned why, exactly, their parents had chosen that specific location for the family's home, though he'd often assumed it was because Aoi didn't like people. Timor wouldn't have minded the isolation, and the twins, he knew, thrived in it. But, for all he knew, their reasoning could have had more substance than that.

"Flint, you haven't reconsidered your plan on our to get the twins to join, have you?"

"Not a bit," he grinned, to which Aika lifted a brow, doubt present in the curve of her lips and the set of her eyes.

"Then you're going to be disappointed."

"Aw, don't be like that, Aika! Have some faith in this cap'n of yours!"

"I have plenty of faith in you. Just not with this."

Flint continued his campaign to convince Aika of his dependability throughout their journey across the island, without much success. She knew him better than most, and his faults were more prominent to her than he would have liked. She didn't often call him out on them, though; usually she seemed content to go along with his foolishness, so long as it didn't horribly endanger them.

They skimmed the edge of the Eternal, the locals' name for their bewitching forest of night, wary of the beasts that roamed it and the wrath they'd face from the villagers if it came to defending themselves. Well, that was how Flint thought of the coexistence between the human residents of the Eternal and their beastly counterparts. It made little sense to him how they could live in relative peace, and he somehow rationalized it by assuming the humans admired, even worshipped, the animals. He didn't bring this up to Aika during their work, as the last time he'd mentioned it, she only gave him a pitying look.

The house was simplistic, a stark contrast to the vibrance of the island's market and the people that frequented it. Two stories, with a thatched roof and a solid oak door, painted with a glossy cream color that seemed appropriate for all of its occupants despite their individual oddities. The few times Flint had been here, the sight of this house - alone against the backdrop of a menacing forest - had somehow comforted him, especially when he was younger.

Aika took the liberty of knocking, and it wasn't long until the door swung inward, revealing a man in his late thirties leaning against the frame. He raised a brow at their arrival but said nothing.

"Timor!" Flint greeted excitedly. The legendary assassin-turned-pirate was one of his heroes, as he'd grown drunk with fascination on the stories his mother would tell him at night, tales of the brave man who thought nothing of himself and gave everything for those he deemed worthy of his consideration. She'd tempered those same tales by preluding them with the same lines: "Look, this guy - he's great, really, I swear - but he wasn't a hero, or a savior, or anything like that. He was - and is - a friend, Flint. One of the best friends I've ever had."

"Flint," Timor returned, nodding his own greeting. He then cocked his head, curious as to why they'd suddenly shown up. He was used to receiving a letter at least a week in advance (written, usually, by Nami, as she was the only one still on that crew who had any semblance of courtesy towards him or Aoi). "And Aika. It's unusual to see you here without your parents."

They took this as an opportunity to explain themselves, though Aika took the reigns for most of the conversation. Timor followed along, mildly intrigued. Their dreams sounded interesting, if nothing else, and he had nothing against their plans. He couldn't say the same for the twins, however.

"They're gonna join us," Flint said, and not an inkling of doubt framed his words.

"We hope, anyway," Aika amended.

Timor shrugged. It wasn't any of his concern, really. The twins were free to do as they wished with their lives, he'd made that clear to them long ago. For now, they were content on the island, but if that should change, he wasn't going to stop them from leaving.

Timor stripped a ribbon from around his wrist and tied up his near-shoulder-length hair with it instead, waving a hand once he'd finished for the two teens to come inside.

"Lynx and Corin are upstairs."

"They were," a voice cut in, bringing attention to the white-haired man seated on a stool in the kitchen, visible through the connecting doorway in the living room. He flicked the newcomers a blue-eyed glance but, disinterested as he was, he soon returned to cleaning the pistol in his lap. "Those brats snuck out the bathroom window an hour ago."

"Did you yell because they called you "Ma" again?" Timor asked simply.

Aoi bristled. "Of course I yelled! What the hell is with them, calling me Ma? I'm a man, dammit! And they call you Pa so why don't I get the same treatment?!"

"There's nothing wrong with it."

"Everything's wrong with it!"

Flint and Aika exchanged a bewildered glance. This fight had been going on for as long as they could remember, or, at least, as long as the twins had been around. For whatever reason, Corin always identified Aoi as Ma and Timor as Pa, and Lynx didn't take long to start copying. Even when Aoi swore and hollered they weren't swayed in any way, and kept up the practice, apparently to this day.

"...If they've left, try the forest," Timor suggested, effectively ending the feud with Aoi, who huffed irritably but knew better by now than to try and restart an argument with Timor. The man had an iron will that hadn't ever moved an inch, even as he'd gradually changed from the "inhuman bastard" he'd been in his younger years. "Or just outside it. They've taken to training there at this time of day."

"Wait, what do you want with them?" Aoi questioned before the teens could leave.

Flint flashed one of his prize-winning grins, puffing out his chest proudly.

"I'm starting my own crew, to match my Ma's!" he exclaimed, disregarding the disheartening volume of his voice and nearly shattering Aika's eardrum (as she'd yet to move from her place at his side) in the process. She shot him a one-eyed glare, the other scrunched close in pain, which he blissfully ignored and rambled on. "See, I've been wanting to have all sorts of adventures myself, without Ma's crew there to protect me and all, so I thought I'd get my own crew together. Aika here volunteered to come with me, seeing as my folks weren't too keen to let me go by myself, and Val... er, Vesper tagged along, too."

"He stole onto our ship without us knowing and surprised us once we'd left port," Aika supplied helpfully.

Flint nodded.

"Now we're looking to get the twins on board."

"...Yeah. Good luck with that," Aoi muttered dryly, unimpressed with his enthusiasm.

He couldn't help it; Flint's shoulders sagged in defeat. Did no one think him capable of convincing the twins to call him their captain? Even his parents had told him not to bother with Corin and Lynx, that he should focus on people who actually wanted to come with him. Now, with Aoi just confirming all those suspicions he'd been determined to dismiss as mere paranoia, Flint felt himself growing angry.

"You'll see!" he snapped, causing Aika to jump and Aoi to narrow his eyes. Timor, unconcerned, walked past where Aoi was seated and set about fixing something on the stove. "Ya'll think I'm just an incompetent rookie, that I'm in over my head, but I swear to ya, by the time I come back, Lynx and Corin are gonna be begging to come with me!"

And with that, he whirled around and stormed from the house, slamming the door shut behind him, so forcefully that it shook the photos hanging on the wall to either side of it. Aika winced; her captain's temper rarely showed itself, even rarer was it that it come out to this degree, but she'd been through a number of his tantrums and tried to make the best of an uncomfortable situation. Apologizing to Timor and Aoi, she bid them farewell for both herself and Flint, then hurried after her captain.

"...What did I say?"

Timor, leaning back against the countertop, arms loosely folded over his chest, offered Aoi a look that said the snow-haired man should know exactly what he'd done. Annoyed, Aoi mulled the matter over in his head, thinking over what he'd said. Nothing too bad, he concluded, though perhaps he could have been a bit more encouraging. But what did he care? Flint wasn't his kid, he had no obligation to coddle him. Besides, if he couldn't take a bit of criticism now, how was he going to handle himself when his position as captain was called into question down the line?

"Whatever," Aoi sighed, dismissing the problem as he swiveled around so that he faced Timor head-on. He set his pistol to the side, propping his elbow up on the counter, chin nestled in his palm, zeroing in on the pot Timor had left to boil on the stove. "What's for lunch?"

"Flint! Captain! You have to calm down, Aoi didn't mean anything by it! You're blowing this way out of proportion!"

Flint didn't slow his pace as Aika caught up to him, but he didn't break out into a run to escape her, allowing her to walk beside him while he made his way around the edge of the Eternal, eyes peeled for any sight of the blue-haired twins. Aika, worried by his continued silence (as it wasn't like Flint to keep anything to himself), grabbed for his hand, swinging him around to face her.

"Flint," she said again, "calm down. Please."

"I...I'm calm," he mumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck, his gaze lowered to their shoes. "Sorta. I'm just... I'm tired of people looking down on me, ya know? Just sick an' tired of it, all the time. Ma and Pa didn't think I was ready, even though I'm Ma's age when she went off with Uncle Luffy, Vesper and Valor don't trust me, and Aoi..." A sigh escaped him, and he ran a hand down his face, trying to smooth away the irritable expression that had taken up residence there. It felt... wrong not to smile. "He was the last straw, I guess... Sorry, Aika, I didn't mean to go off like that and scare ya."

"I wasn't..." She decided not to correct him. "It's fine, Captain. Let's just find the twins."

He agreed to that rather eagerly, wanting to move past the recent incident as much as Aika did. It didn't take as long as Flint would have guessed to come across either Lynx or Corin, given their habit of disappearing together (he'd never once beaten them in a game of hide-and-seek, much to his chagrin). In fact, it was almost disappointing easy, seeing as the twins were the ones who found them.

As Flint and Aika were resting, discussing what to do if it ended up being that they needed to enter the forest after all, Flint let out quite the manly caterwaul as he flung himself away from the knife that had come heart-stoppingly close to imbedding itself in his neck. While Aika helped her captain stand up from where he'd landed, sprawled out comically in the thorny branches of a bush, disembodied laughter drifted down from the treetops.

"He needs to work on his reflexes," a familiar voice noted.

"He does," another voice agreed. "But it could have been a fluke."

"Should I throw another one?"

"No, it wouldn't tell us anything. They know we're here."

"True. We'll try again another time."

"Dammit, Corin, Lynx," Flint growled, spitting out a waxy leaf, "ya coulda lopped my head clean off!"

"Seems unlikely," Corin observed, at the time same materializing like a ghostly apparition from the shadows entwining the tree branch both twins crouched on. "Halfway off, maybe."

"That knife was dull," Lynx added from his position beside Corin.

"Doesn't change the fact you were trying to kill me," Flint muttered crossly, his fingers skimming the hollow of his neck. Warm blood met his fingertips; a thin, shallow cut was etched along his throat, curving down from the side of his neck. Had he not moved, Aika would have had to inform their tiny crew that their captain had fallen in the line of duty. He could imagine that would immediately be followed by Vesper pitching for himself to take over as captain. The thought made his stomach churn.

"The answer's no, by the way."

Bothered more by the fact that they hadn't offered an apology for trying to murder him than he was by the unprompted response, Flint took a moment to understand what Corin was saying.

"But I haven't asked ya anything yet," he protested.

"It's still no," Lynx shrugged. Nudging his twin, he gripped their shared branch with both hands, angling himself backwards so that when his weight sent him over the edge of the branch, he could swing himself forward as he released his hold on the branch and land squarely in front of Flint and Aika. To their credit, they only flinched instead of emitting the shrill noise Flint had earlier. Lynx retrieved Corin's knife from where it lay among the dirt, cleaning it on the hem of his shirt before tossing it upwards blindly; Corin snatched it from the air and sheathed it at their hip, then reached down to pull Lynx back up into the branches.

"We're not coming with you," Corin said, with an out-of-place tone of finality that made Flint's heart sink into his stomach. "It's annoying."

"Too annoying."

"Troublesome, too."

"Definitely."

"So no?"

"Nope."

"That's that."

Flint's head was going to start spinning, he knew it. He dug the heel of his palm into his temple as a precaution. The twins' roundabout way of talking always did this to him, having to keep track of who was speaking at what time. It shouldn't have been this difficult, but the twins were infuriating because they were conscious of how disorienting they were and reveled in the fact. He shook himself free of his stupor just in time to witness the twins merging again with the shadows, going beyond his reach.

"Wait! What do I gotta do to get you to join my crew?" he demanded, just shy of desperate, as he scrambled to his feet, toeing the border between here and the forest, between light and dark, known and unknown.

The twins paused, sharing a look in silence. Easily able to interpret one another's thoughts from just a glance, words were unnecessary for them, though they frequently indulged in the spoken word just for the hell of it. Now, though, their silence made Flint's skin crawl, and he waited with bated breath for a reply.

"...Anything?" Corin prompted eventually.

"I'll do anything," Flint confirmed, much to Aika's annoyance. There he went again, not consulting her or anyone, or really considering the consequences of his rash actions.

"Then we'll make it a game," Corin said, looking to Lynx, who nodded his agreement.

"We'll hide in the Eternal--"

"--and you'll have to find us."

"If you win, we'll join."

"If you lose..."

"...we'll leave you in the forest," the twins trilled together.

And that's the moment when Flint realized he really should learn to consult others before blindly agreeing to challenges, because Aika looked about ready to stow her prized knife in his jugular, and sadly, this wasn't the first time.