(OPEN) Pirates, Chefs and Seafood dishes

[Obake]

“Mhh, maybe a little more water to dilute the salt taste.”

“Bout a cupful, boss?”

“Bring me two, I’ll gauge the amount. Go!”

While the boy, three years his junior, ran out the door to fetch the requested article Soma flipped the captain’s cut of fish and checked its surface. It had barely been three days and already he felt right at home in the caboose and bossing his assistant around. Maybe because at the end of the day this whole thing was still a kitchen, and he had twenty hungry customers to feed?

It’s almost surreal, the way I ended up here… he thought to himself. As he sprinkled some pepper over the fish fillet and took the cups of water from the just-returning boy’s hands he recapped how he had ended up here.

--- Three days ago ---

He’d just met the Totsuki Elite Ten Council during the Autumn Leaf Viewing event. They’d had tea and introduced themselves to each other. He had issued a challenge to them and been turned down. On their way back to the dormitory Megumi had told him about the Gekkyosai, the Moon Banquet festival. He’d gone to sleep thinking about all that. That was the last he saw of the Totsuki academy and, indeed, of his world.

When he woke up he was feeling queasy. First he thought it was something he’d eaten, but he quickly realized that it wasn’t coming from inside, but outside. The surface he’d been sleeping on was shifting back and forth beneath him, a glance around revealed that he was below the deck on some kind of ship. A wood ship. It was not food poisoning he was experiencing, but sea sickness.

His first thought was that his friends had maybe pulled a prank on him. The second was that it could have been some sort of secret first-year trial or camp done by the Totsuki. He rapidly dismissed both as he realized that the Moon Banquet festival was about to take place, it would not make sense to drag first-year students away. And his friends, while quirky, would never do something like this.

Shakily he stood up on his feet. Around him the ship was rocking back and forth but once he found his balance he was able to handle it. Not that the queasy feeling in his stomach got any better though… and it wasn’t aided by the smells filling his nose, of wood, tar, gunpowder, fish, the sea and many other smells. Amusedly he thought how Hayama would handle being somewhere like this with a nose as sensitive as his. But, where was he? He looked down. His pajamas were gone, replaced by his everyday clothes down to his shoes and the headband on his wrist. Whoever had done this must’ve gone to great lengths to get him changed. Though he’d been sleeping on a wooden floor his back didn’t hurt. Maybe he hadn’t been here for long?

Either way, he quickly concluded that the best thing to do was to figure out where he even was, and what was going on. It was daytime judging from the light that came through the floorboards, too. Shakily walking forward through the lower level of the ship he approached the staircase leading upwards. Kind of a ladder, really… he covered his eyes with his hand as he stepped upwards and climbed onto the deck. The bright light was still blinding him, but he started to look around when...

“Hey! HEY! Ye, jim lad! Who in ol’ Davy’s name are ye?! Wha' are ye doin' on our ship?!”

And that was how Soma first met the Davy Demons.

Probably the only reason they didn’t immediately toss him overboard was that the sailor who had called out to him first looked just as puzzled by how this stowaway could possibly have gotten on the ship and endured for weeks without anyone having caught a glimpse, only to climb onto deck like he owned the place, as Soma was puzzled to see that he was on a ship manned by people that looked like they were straight out of a pirate movie. The sailor quickly had a knife in hand and shoved Soma away from the hatch he had come out of and pushed him against the central mast. “One wrong move and I'll be damned if I don' slit yer gullet, jim lad”, he said.

“Wasn’t planning to”, Soma replied. “Here, I’ll even put my hands up like this so you can see I’m not going to try anything.”

“Ye had better not”, the sailor grunted. “And ye dogs better go aft to toil or I'll have ye keelhauled!” he added in a louder tone, aimed at the numerous sailors who had stopped their work to gawk. “And you, lass! Go fetch the cap'n, tell him we got a stowaway he's gonna want to see. And hurry up!”

While the sailor, probably the First Mate, barked orders Soma looked around. No two doubts about it, this place ticked every box in the book for a 1700’s pirate ship. The sailors looked like they were at most thirty-something, most of them dressed in ragged, unwashed clothing that didn’t match in the slightest, missing a shoe or both and in many cases several fingers and toes. All of them were missing teeth. There were a couple of women among them, he noted surprisedly. It was hard to tell at first glance since they were keeping their hair short, their clothes were the same as the men’s and their modest chests were bandaged, probably as a sort of bra. The ‘lass’ he’d yelled at was a young girl, no older than eleven or twelve, who hurried off to the back of the ship and disappeared into the cabin.

“Where am I anyway?” he asked the First Mate, a muscular man in his late twenties who was somewhat better dressed than the others and wasn’t missing nearly as many teeth. “This doesn’t look anything like Japan.”

“Shut yer gob, jim lad. The cap'n will deal with ye.” And that was all. Given how he was still holding that knife Soma decided to wait things out and see if the captain was any more reasonable.

He needed not wait for long. The door to the cabin the girl had disappeared into earlier opened and a creature stepped out with the girl following behind. Though he looked like an adult male it was hard to tell as he was not human but a shark walking on two legs. He easily reached two meters when standing straight, though he had to bend when walking through the small cabin door, holding it open with a clawed hand - or paw, rather. His skin was light, nearly white on the front but turned darker around the sides and was likely blue on the back, if his anatomy was like that of feral sharks. With each movement his muscles bulged, and since he was only wearing a loincloth adorned with human skulls, some legwraps, a scarf and some decoration made out of bones they were readily visible. And just like Soma was looking at him, the shark looked back, out of the black beads that were his eyes.

​

Though he looked quite intimidating both in stature and with the bones decorating his body the crew cheered loudly when they saw him and began working with greater vigor. It was not the kind of dishonest cheer one would give when tyrannized, but a genuine one. Which Soma took as a good sign.

“Peter”, the captain spoke. His voice was deep, very befitting of a creature his size. “What is going on here?”

“This jim lad here jus’ climbed onto the deck. No idea how he managed to hide in the lower decks fer so long, so I figured you'd want a word with him afore we toss ’im overboard. Yer better than me with words, cap'n.”

“I see… take the helm again, I’ll talk to him.” While the First Mate made off the shark turned to Soma and dismissively waved his hand at him. “You can quit that silly pose. If you wanted to hurt us you’d have done so long ago.”

“Thanks. My hands were starting to get sleepy”, Soma responded with a grin and let his hands down.

“So, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“I doubt you’re gonna believe me but I only just woke up on your ship fifteen minutes ago. Last time I went to sleep was in my bed away from the sea, in Japan.” When the captain didn’t respond, he continued: “I wondered where I was so I opened that… hatch over there”, he said and waved to the hatch leading to the middle and lower decks, “and your First Mate saw me. The rest you know about.”

“If you’re going to lie you should make up something believable, boy”, the shark responded calmly.

“If I were lying I’d make up something more believable, yeah”, Soma replied with a shrug. “I’m as clueless about this all as you are… where are we anyway? Anywhere near Japan?”

“You speak of this Japan as a city or island.”

“You mean you’ve never heard of it? Well… I guess that’d make sense given that we don’t have shark-people where I come from.” He eyed one of the sailors who was passing by with a length of rope and said: “The only explanation I can come up with, if this isn’t a dream, is that I’ve somehow ended up in another world while I was sleeping.”

“You came from another world”, the captain replied. “And in that world you don’t have fish-men?”

“Nope, only the animal kind that swim around. But say… I don’t mean to cause trouble, but I’d rather not be tossed into this endless ocean here. Could you maybe drop me off somewhere on the mainland? I’ll work to pay for the trip.”

The captain bared his teeth for a grin. “Shows you’re from a different world, boy. This is Opaelon, we don’t have no mainland here. The sea’s all there is on the surface.”

“Really? So it’s all ships, huh. Kurokiba would like this”, Soma thought aloud.

“You’re in luck though since we’re headed for a trade hub that we’re gonna be reaching in a week or so. I could drop you off there, but you’re not going to get fed on the way. We’ve lost our cook and his assistant so we’re rationing our dried supplies and rusk, and I won’t have an extra mouth to feed on my ship.”

“Hold on”, Soma said. “You say you lost your cook? What happened?”

“Seamonster attack is what happened. The beast sunk two of the fleet’s ships and killed everyone on board. The rest got scattered as we fled its wrath. We got attacked too and made it out but four of my best men got torn into the sea.”

“But can’t you fish?”

“I told you, boy: we lost our cook and his assistant. Fishing won’t do us any good if we can only eat raw and I can’t risk my whole crew coming down with food poisoning.”

“You mean, out of… what? Twenty men on your ship? None of them can cook a fish?”

The captain’s gills opened for a moment as he inhaled sharply. “Don’t make me reconsider my offer, boy. Mocking us won’t do you any good right now.”

Soma laughed and put up his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. Where I come from it’s more common for people to know the basics, that’s all. Besides, you’ll be happy to have me on board. I’m a chef, you see!”

For a few moments the captain didn’t answer, then he sceptically remarked: “It’s too much of a coincidence that you, a chef, show up out of nowhere the day after I lose the two people on my ship that know how to prepare food. I’m not buying your story.”

“My dish will speak for me then. I just need your kitchen and something to prepare”, Soma said confidently as he pulled the headband from his wrist and tied it around his head.

Again the captain’s gills widened but this time he inhaled more slowly. As if he was taking in the smell. “You seem confident in yourself. Very well, I will allow you one chance, but...” He leant in. “Do you know what planking is, boy?”

“That weird trend of laying face-down in a strange place with your body straightened? I thought that had died ages ago.”

“It’s when you get tied to a plank and tossed in the sea. If you’re lucky you’ll drown quickly, or you’ll get eaten by a sea-beast. If not, it’s the thirst that’ll get you. Mess up your chance and you’ll get to see first-hand what it’s like, because I don’t have any sympathy for liars who waste valuable food and poison my crew.”

“It’s not going to come to that, captain. The Yukihira has yet to disappoint a customer!”



While the captain sorted out the matter of ingredients Soma let himself be led to the kitchen - or caboose, as they called it on a ship. He quickly went through the cupboards and inspected the tools. A little disappointing… the cook hadn’t taken the best care of them and they were frequently used from what he could tell. On the plus side there were frying pans and pots large enough to cook food for thirty hungry sailors in one go. The worst were the knives, however: for a moment he wondered which side was the sharp one. Fortunately the handle’s positioning on the tool gave it away, but they were in dire need of a whetstone.

When he turned around to inspect the range he noticed that the boy who had brought him was still standing there, eyeing him with big eyes. “Shouldn’t you be going back to work?” he asked him in a friendly voice.

The boy shook his head. “Nu-uh. The cap’n says I gotta help.”

“Did he? Well, what can you do?”

“I can fetch you stuff, boss. I’m the best water-fetcher on the ship!” He proudly puffed out his chest saying that.

“Water-fetcher, eh.” Sounded like the captain had made up a role for the boy, but okay. He would humor it. “In that case… hup! Here, take this smaller pot, I’ll take the big one, and let’s fill both with water. You lead the way.” He expected to be led to somewhere below deck, where the crew kept their freshwater supply, but when the boy led him to the deck and to the side of the ship he got curious.

“Don’t tell me you cook with seawater?”

“O‘ course we do, boss!”

Just as Soma was about to ask how they could possibly eat something cooked with such amounts of salt in it, the boy thrusted his skinny arms forward in a dramatic fashion, his hands shaping into claws as if he was grabbing some invisible item. Below them the surface of the sea shifted and a long tentacle of water formed, rising as the boy moved his hands as if he dragged the water up by a string. As the water reached eye height he made a sweeping motion with one hand and “cut” the tentacle at its base, then pulled it up and formed it into a sphere floating in mid-air. Just like that.

“Wow… so you guys can practice magic around here?” asked Soma with wide eyes. The boy gave him a curious side glance.

“You can’t?”

“Nope. Where I come from we don’t have real magic. All we got are magicians who perform tricks to make it look like they’re doing magic.”

“Sounds weird.” Then he shook his hands back and forth and dozens of white crystals and various bits of other things fell out of the water ball. Salt! And other impurities, dirt and the like, from the looks of it. So this was how they desalinated seawater, and by the looks of it purified it in the process! When the boy was done he pulled his hands back and the water sphere flew over the deck before splashing into the larger pot. He was panting and his cheeks red, but he looked satisfied with himself.

“Great work. Let me try that…” Soma said as he took the smaller pot and filled it with a mouthful of water from the bigger one. Carefully he dripped some of it into his mouth. It was clearer than any mountain springwater. When he finished he noticed how the boy was already drawing another measure of water to fill the smaller pot. “Great work, lad! When you’re finished bring the pot to the caboose”, he said. Then he picked up the large, heavy pot with both hands and carried it back.

“Now the only thing left is the fish… if I want to make a good dashi he needed to use what they had, but there were painstakingly few vegetables and fruits in the cupboards. Fortunately he recognized several: apples, bananas, oranges, broccoli, algae… dried mushroom, onion, potatoes. Mostly food used in the western culture rather than what he was used to. Ahh, if Kurokiba was here, he had experience with seafood. And given that he’d grown up in Denmark he probably would know his way with potatoes. But of course, this was a good opportunity to learn!

While waiting for the fish to be brought Soma sampled the fruits and vegetables that were there. For a ship of sailors, maybe even pirates, they had surprisingly good food. He wondered where they got it all from. Some of the fruits had very strong sweet tastes, much like citrus but in a different direction of taste, and others left a good acid taste on the tongue. This was amazing! Magic, new and food and preparation methods he’d never heard of… it was a whole new culinary world filled with new lands of taste to explore, culinary secrets to uncover and groups of customers with their respective preferences to please.

All he had to do to access this world was to impress the captain. If he didn’t? He’d at least have had the chance to try one dish in this new world before his hopefully quick death.

A pair of men from the crew came in, one carrying a pair of meter-long fish on his shoulders and the other with a large trough-like container full of smaller seafood, colorfully mixed. “Here ye go. Better hope ye don’t screw it up, jim lad!” Then they turned around and prepared to leave.

“Hold on!” Soma called them back. He pointed at the stove. “There’s no wood or whetstones to start a cooking fire.”

The two men looked at each other, then turned back to Soma. “An open fire below decks? What, ye trying to blow everything up? Ye have to use the cooking stones!”

“These?” asked Soma and picked up a rectangular brick of stone with a single symbol carved into the surface. They weren’t very big, about the size of a pocket book, and like tiles were placed on the surface of the stove. “How are they used?”

“What, ye never seen magic ‘fore? Ye sure ye don’ wanna back out o’ the deal, jim lad? Ye ain’t wasted any food yet an’ ye can hunger fer two or three days.”

“Of course not! Just please, show me how these work. I’ll make it worth your while, you’ll see once lunch is served.”

“Ahh, fine. Gimme one of these.” One of the two came close and snagged up one of the stones. Introducing him to the concept of runic magic on the fly, he explained Soma that the symbol carved into the rock stood for ‘heat’. It needed to be touched to be activated, to start absorbing magic from its surroundings and turn it into heat. That heat would then go into the stone. To stop the magic all one needed to do was disrupt the flow, which they knew the cook used to do by splashing water onto the cooking surface. With just one or two of these stones you could save yourself a stove and the like and if you knew how to draw them you could even make them on the fly.

And that was just runic magic. As he had seen, people here were capable of using magic without the help of items, but both had their applications: Runic magic was good for using outside of one’s area of expertise and did not require concentration whereas regular spellcasting didn’t require extensive preparation - outside of learning the spell itself, of course - nor tools to draw or carve the rune with and the caster had greater control.

“I should try to learn about spellcasting”, Soma said to himself as he activated several of the cooking stones. Then he opened, gutted and cleaned out the fishes until he had enough for what he wanted to try and cut a few bits from each type - easier said than done given the state the knives were in. Finally he turned to the young boy who’d been observing his movements with big eyes. “Do you know which of these are edible?”

“All of ‘em. They just taste differently”, the boy answered. “But I bet the big fish is for the cap’n.”

“The whole thing?”

“Yup! The cap’n has a big appetite!”

“Well, we’ll just have to satisfy it then!” He put a pan on the now hot stones, added water and and put the bits of fish in, neatly lined up so that he would be able to tell later what bite in the pan corresponded to which fish on the board. “First I’ll need to taste each fish… if I toss everything in a pot and make stew the flavors will get mixed up and not every fish cooks well.”

“But what about the ones ye don’ use?” asked the boy curiously.

“We’ll find other ways to prepare those, of course.”

“Not throw them out?”

“Of course not, there’s no reason to waste them.” He picked the pieces up with a knife and tasted them, one after the other. Nothing too out of the ordinary - several reminded him of fish he knew from home, like salmon, japanese trout, mackarel and eel. The big fishes had a relatively bland taste that would need to be compensated for, though. And they had no spices, so he’d need to make broth with what he had.

“Alright, now we get started”, he announced. “But if you’re going to stick around, I need your help.”

“You got it!”

“First pick up a knife and help me shave the scales. I already gutted the fish so you don’t need to do that.”

Though the boy was young he was agile, and a quick learner. Perhaps he could be helpful in the days to come, if the captain allowed it? It would be helpful to have two people to handle the workload.

He began by tossing two of the lengthy blue-colored fish that had a particularly strong taste into a small pot with water and put a few extra cooking stones beneath to set a high heat. Into a larger pot he tossed the leftovers, including the fish bones, the heads and fins, like he had seen Kurokiba do. Then, while that was simmering, he cut the large fish into mouth-sized chunks. The captain could probably fit more in at a time than a human but there was no time to take that into consideration.

He next went through the pantry and picked out the fruits and vegetables that he could tell would go bad soon. Better to use them now than waste them! He sampled those too and settled for a number of vegetables of nice consistency: something chewable to go with the soft fish. Broccoli, lightly cooked maybe, to maintain the consistency and keep the nutrients? Plus some of that big red fruit with a sour taste, and a little lemon peel for a fresh note as the cherry on top.

The captain’s broth was meanwhile finished. He filtered the leftovers out and tossed the big fish in, adding the lemon’s pulp to complement the taste, and mixed everything to create a uniform taste.

Finally he made a sauteed vegetable mix in the pan using more water and everything left over, which was enough to feed everyone. The fruit, maybe he should make a dessert? Ah, but that was to be seen later. In either case there was a lot he shouldn’t let go to waste. It would be a pity for those perfectly good ingredients to be thrown out because someone forgot about them for too long.

He was surprised to see how quickly he was getting used to the back and forth on the waves. Even the frying pans had a higher lip to prevent spillage, and by focusing on his work he could keep his queasiness under control. Of course the sea was calm that day so he had it easy, but given enough time he should be able to get used to it, right?

“Okay, lunch is ready to serve. Now to turn those rocks off… how does everyone get a ration?”

“I’ll go tell the cap’n, boss!” And like a monkey the boy darted off as he said that. It took him not two minutes before he returned with the shark-man following closely behind.

“Hmm, a stew? I hope for you that it tastes better than it looks”, he said as he took a ladle from the rack and dunked it into the larger pot.

“I made a separate ration for you, captain, using the big fish that I was given”, Soma explained as the shark leaned his head back and poured the soup in. Without cheeks to hold in the liquid that had to be the only way for him to eat, huh... “What you’re trying is stew I made with mixed fish and ripe fruit and vegetables I found in the pantry, for everyone else.”

“Hm”, the captain answered. “What about this?”

“These are lightly fried vegetables as a side. They may be a bit bland as I lacked seasoning.”

The captain grabbed a fork and picked out a few bits that he tossed into his toothed maw, pushed back and forth with his tongue, then swallowed. “You said you are a chef, boy?”

“I did”, Soma replied with a broad grin.

“As a carnivore my sense of taste is negligible compared to that of a human, yet even I can taste that this was well made. I will allow the crew to judge your efforts.” He heaved the massive full cooking pot from the surface and carried it through the door, with Soma and the boy following closely behind with the pan and the sauteed vegetables respectively.

The crew was already waiting expectantly on the deck. They each had a bowl in hand and formed a line when the captain plonked the pot on the deck. Each got a ladle full, then as there were leftovers a second, half full one, until only enough was left for Soma and for the boy. “Next time you’ll help yourself first”, the captain pointed out as he took the frying pan and pushed a bit of the fish in it into Soma’s and the boy’s bowls. “The cook has the first taste.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Enjoy!”

The results didn’t take long to show. As soon as one of the crewmembers had taken the first bite and voiced their approval with a loud “Mmmmmh!” before starting to shovel it into his mouth the others were quick to follow suit. They ate bare-handed, probably because cutlery was a luxury on a ship like this. Another thing to take into consideration, if it worked differently from chopsticks or forks, knives and spoons.

As he ate he noticed that Peter, the First Mate, came closer with an empty bowl and a grin lacking numerous teeth. “Cap’n! That jim lad's grub be better than anythin’ ol’ Gunther e’er made! How ‘bout we keep ‘im in th' crew instead, eh?”

“I was about to suggest that. Boy, what’s your name?”

“I’m Soma. Soma Yukihira.”

“Rigur Sailfish, but starting now you can call me captain. Consider yourself enlisted as the cook of the Davy Demons. And the boy will be your assistant.”

“Happy to serve!” he said his catchphrase as he pulled off his headband to put it back around his wrist. However, he wondered if he had perhaps overshot his goal. The way the captain had worded those last three sentences implied that he planned on keeping him around as a cook permanently, not just until they reached somewhere they could drop him off at. And if there had been doubts now, the name of the crew - ‘Davy Demons’ - cleared up that these men were indeed pirates. They seemed like a jolly bunch but his plan wasn’t to stay on a small ship and prepare food for a group of criminals. On the other hand, saying that to the captain’s face would ensure that he either got tossed out or locked into the caboose. Probably the former given that entrusting the health of the crew and the scarce food supplies to someone unwilling to help was a risky move.

I might just have overshot this one, he thought to himself as he dug into the fish and veggies in his bowl while one of the crew began passing a bottle of cheap booze around. No point crying over spilled milk though. He'd just have to see where it got.