Chapter Text
Astraea Island; East Blue
Age 15
Her father left when she was 2. Though most of her memories from then had faded with age, she could clearly remember when he left. Her mom had been taken, men in uniforms snatching her right out of the kitchen during Casey’s nap. She had woken up alone, the front door wide open and the kitchen a mess. Her father, smelling like ocean and earth had come home and then left again minutes later. Her memory skips then, straight to when they both returned together, blood on their clothes. The coppery smell still stood out vividly in her mind, though the fear of it had diminished as she grew older. He had hugged her when they came back then turned his back and left.
She had never seen him again. She had asked her mom as she grew up why he had left, and all she ever said was that he left to protect them. Casey had never learned what he was protecting them from.
Now at the age of 15, the smell of fresh turned earth and the breeze from the sea always reminded her of the figure she remembered as her father. She couldn’t remember what he looked like, but he always smelled like sea and earth, with the feeling of a beard against her cheek when he had kissed her. That’s the only things she could remember of him.
Casey shook her head, focusing on the path in front of her. She couldn’t stop thinking about her father. She had just finished loading up a ship at the docks, and someone had been passing around a bounty paper. They hadn’t let her see it, but they were talking about a man called the Gardener, a man she believed to be her father. He had just become a Yonko.
She reached the end of the path, a small hut surrounded on all sides by rows and rows of plants, all different sizes and shapes. She stepped up to the door and opened it moving into her family home.
“Mom? You here?” She called out, passing from the kitchen into the small common area before the doors to their rooms.
A voice called through the door of her mother’s room and she moved to the door and opened it slowly. Standing near a small set of drawers was her mother. A tall thin woman, carrying her age well, though there was gray hair visible in the head of blonde hair pulled into a bun.
“What is it Casey?” Katalina DuVal turned to look at her daughter, taking in the messy spikes of her hair and her rumpled clothes. The expression on Casey’s face was both nervous and excited, but Katalina could see something deeper beneath that caused her worry. That look in Casey’s bright orange eyes always meant another talk about her father. Katalina had hoarded all the new she could about James when he had first left, but had started ignoring it as Casey got older, wanting to distance the girl from her father turned pirate before she snuck off on a ship to go find him.
“A pirate named The Gardener just became a Yonko. It’s Dad, isn’t it? The Gardener is Dad…” Casey was always nervous about bringing up her dad to her mom. She remembered when she was younger and her mom would talk openly about her father, but as she grew up, those stories stopped, and her mom avoided talking about her dad at all costs.
Her mother quickly dismissed the idea, waving a hand as if to brush the thought completely from Casey’s mind. “Of course it isn’t your dad. He probably hasn’t even left the East Blue, let alone gotten to the New World.” She knew she wasn’t wrong though, the widening of her mom’s eyes had given the woman’s lie away in an instant. Casey held down a growl of frustration at her mom’s avoidance of these talks.
“Whatever you say.” Casey huffed out quickly before turning around and storming from the house. She stomped away from the building and into the woods that edged their garden, ignoring the way the sky was darkening for a storm. Katalina followed her to the door and watched the teenager disappear into the trees before glancing at the sky in worry. The clouds were an angry purple, and moving fast.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The paths under the trees were well traveled and clear of debris, allowing Casey a clear path to stomp down until her anger had subsided. She hated that her mom tried to lie about her dad. She knew that her father had become a pirate because of something that happened before Casey was even born, but she had every right to learn more about him now. She sighed as the last of her anger drained out of her. She knew her mom meant well, that she wanted Casey to grow up without trying to run away to find him. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t learn about him anyways.
A rumble of thunder made her realize how dark the sky had become. She looked up and watched the clouds roll darkly above her. The first drop of rain fell on her cheek and then the downpour started. She ran to the closest tree and stood against its trunk, trying to stay as close to the tree as possible while watching the rain pour down. A flash of lightning in the trees to her left made her jump, the sound deafening this close. She watched in awe as 3 more bolts struck the same place. She had never seen lightning do that before. Two more strikes and she was running in the opposite direction, back towards home. The rain was pounding on her head and shoulders as she ran, soaking her clothes and hair, making her steps slippery to the point where she worried she would break something if she fell.
She reached her home without falling, though there were a few rather close calls that only the trees around had saved her from face planting. She slammed through the door and shut it behind her just as quickly, attempting to catch her breath as she leaned against the solid wood. Her mom looked up from the paper in her hands from where she sat at the table in the kitchen.
“Casey! Are you okay?” Katalina asked quickly, her eyes scanning over the mud covered girl, looking for blood or bruises.
“The lightning! I-it struck the same place in the woods! Like 5 times at least!” Casey spoke quickly, her eyes wide in either fright or excitement, her mother couldn’t tell for sure. “I’ve never heard of it doing that before! Is there a lightning rod or something out there?” Ah, her logical daughter had already thought of the most likely reason for the lightning, but Katalina couldn’t remember anyone building anything like that out in the middle of the island. She shook her head in answer to Casey’s question and Casey looked even more excited, the expression clearer now that she had started breathing normally again.
“I need to see what happened!” Casey was excited. This was something new. She loved her life here with her mom, despite their differences, but it was also boring. They did the same things every day, and the merchants only came once a month, so she knew pretty much everyone on the island by name, and didn’t really care about the local gossip.
“It can wait until the storm passes.” Katalina said as they heard another roll of thunder coming from the same direction the previous ones had. Casey’s head turned in that direction, like she was trying to stare through the wall and all of the space between her and her new target. “Sit.” Katalina’s voice commanded, pointing to the chair opposite her at the table.
Casey sat, though she kept looking over her shoulder at the door like she was preparing to bolt. Katalina waved the paper in her hand in front of Casey’s eyes before she could turn her head back to the door again.
That caught Casey’s attention so completely that she turned to face her mom, putting the storm out of her mind for the moment. “That’s the Gardener’s wanted poster. I saw the merchants with it earlier.”
“I thought it was about time we talked. You scared me half to death running out into that weather, and I decided it was time we stopped fighting about this.” Casey nodded along as her mother talked, wanting to know everything that she had hidden from her. “This is your father. I didn’t want to tell you what I knew about him, and what he’s done because I was worried it would fill your head with ideas. But it seems like you have them anyways, so we might as well talk about him.”
“Really?” Casey’s voice held all of the excitement in her body. She was practically vibrating with energy, but she managed to contain herself in her seat.
“Yeah.” Katalina sighed. “You remember when he left? He had a bounty placed on him for fighting a marine before you were born. They had taken me as hostage to catch him. Petty, I know, but the marines around here all are. He had brought what friends he had with him to rescue me. Those friends became his crew, and they left after saving me. He knew that if he stayed that we would be targeted again. When he broke into the marine compound he found one of the Devil’s Fruits. From what I’ve heard, it gave him the power over plants.” At this statement she chuckled slightly. “Not that he needed that to be called the Gardener. They left East Blue about 5 years ago from what I heard, and well, this news of him becoming a Yonko is definitely new to me. I didn’t think he had made it to the far side of the Grand Line yet.” Katalina sighed and looked back over the paper. His bounty was so high now, it was scary to think what his enemies would do to him. She handed the paper over to Casey after a moment more staring into the image of her long gone husband.
Casey absorbed all of the information her mom was sharing, and then clung to the paper she was given like a lifeline. She stared at the image of her dad, trying to imagine him when he was 13 years younger, the lines of age not quite as pronounced as they were in the sketch. He looked so alive in the image though. Whoever had drawn it had really seen him, not just had him described to them. She could see a bit of herself in him, her nose was the same as his and the shape of her eyes. She couldn’t look away from the image for a moment, her thoughts flying through everything her mother had told her.
“Do you think he’s forgotten about us?” Casey asked suddenly, looking up at her mom, worry ringing her eyes.
“No. I know he hasn’t forgotten about us. He just has no way to come back home to us any more. He is too long out at sea too ever come back here.”
Casey clung to her words, looking back down at the paper. She nodded to herself, coming to a decision that would change the course of her life. She didn’t know when, or how, but she would find her father in the new world and tell him about their lives without him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The storm went all night, and Katalina had to force Casey to go to bed after a while. Casey had been trying to stay up until the rain finally stopped, but Katalina put her foot down when it had been hours since the sun went down and Casey’s head had been drooping every few minutes only to shoot up again in semi-alertness a moment later.
Between the storm and their discussion of James, Casey had a lot of things running around in her head and even after being forced to lay down it had taken a long time before she finally fell asleep.
The sun through her window woke her up the next morning, shining bright and clear. Casey was up and getting dressed as soon as she realized that the storm had passed completely while she was asleep. She rushed out of her room a moment later, almost running directly into her mom, who was standing in her way from the common area to the kitchen.
“Wait just a moment there, Casey.” Katalina said, hands on her hips in that authoritative way all mothers had.
“What? The storm is over, it's perfectly safe!”
“You don’t know that. Any number of trees could have been damaged in that storm last night. I’ll be going with you, just to be safe.” Katalina’s tone brokered no argument from her daughter.
Casey huffed and then shrugged. “Fine, but we’re going now, I don’t think I can wait any longer.” Katalina smiled and dropped her arms to her sides, moving out of Casey’s way so the young girl could take the lead.
Casey led the way into the woods, following the same trail that she had stomped down the day before, stepping carefully on the more muddy spots that have yet to completely dry from the rain. The path was just as clear as it had been, which made Casey suspect that all of the lightning had struck the same place all night. She couldn’t figure out what would cause such a reaction. Since neither her nor her mom could remember someone putting a lightning rod out this far in the woods, there was no logical reason for lightning to strike so many times in the same place. Even just the 5 she had seen herself.
The path they followed ended in a circle of trees with several more trees in the center of the small clearing, though these ones were smaller, and looked to have been groomed at some point.
“I didn’t know there was an orchard out here.” Katalina said confused. She hadn’t come out this far in a long time. She could only assume that one of the villages on the other side of their island had started this grove for one reason or another.
Casey shrugged, it didn’t matter to her why it was there, it just mattered why the lightning had struck this place so much. She could tell that this was the epicenter of the storm. Most of the trees in the small orchard seemed to almost be burned from the inside out, with small marks in the grass as well from where the lightning had missed its actual target and hit a spot nearby. She moved closer to the burned trees, looking for the one with the most damage. Katalina followed close behind her, looking over the damage with the careful eye she learned from her husband. Some of the trees just had curved strips of bark missing, but as they got deeper into the orchard, more and more of them seemed to still be glowing with ciders burning inside of their trunks.
Casey followed the damage further into the orchard until they came to the tree that seemed to be the main target of the lightning. It was split down the middle, both sides leaning away from the center at dangerous angles, like they were about to topple over. Katalina put her hand on Casey’s shoulder before the girl could move any closer to the tree.
“Be careful. It looks like the inside of that tree is still burning.” What she said was true, the inside parts that were closer to the base were still hot enough to glow with a reddish tinge of fire, though they couldn't see actual flames. Casey nodded and moved forward carefully, stepping to one side of the tree to look around the other side.
As she stepped around the tree, there was something on the ground that confused her for a moment. Laying there as if it had just fallen off the tree naturally was a fruit. It didn’t look like any fruit she had ever see before. It had swirls on it, and spiked points, almost like a pineapple, but the spikes stuck out more than a normal pineapple and the swirls seemed to reach to the ends of the spikes. The stem also differed from the standard, because instead of spiked leaves sticking up from the top, it seems that all of the leaves came up and wove together to form a single very curved stem.
Casey approached the fruit and called out to her mom at the same time. “Mom? What is this?” She picked up the strange fruit and brought it back around to show Katalina. Her mom gasped and put her hand to her mouth, eyes glancing between the fruit and Casey.
“It's a devil’s fruit.” Katalina said worry written clearly across her features. Casey’s eyes widened at that statement and held the fruit farther from her body, looking at it with a little more care.
“You said dad ate one, didn’t you?” Casey asked, wondering what kind of powers this one would give to the person who ate it.
“Yes. He had stolen one from the marines when he was rescuing me, and he ate it not long after he left.” Katalina replied, watching her daughter carefully. She worried that Casey would just take a bite out of it right now, without thinking about it first. When Casey put her mind to something, it was hard to get her to change her mind.
“Do… Do you think I should eat it?” Casey asked nervously, still holding the fruit in her hand and considering it. She knew that there were downsides to the fruits, though she had only met one fruit user in her life. He had been a passing traveler that had a rather stupid ability, though she couldn’t remember what it was anymore. She just remembered losing interest in him rather quickly once she had learned a bit about the fruits themselves.
“I’m not sure you should.” Katalina knew a bit about the fruits, but she didn’t know enough to ever feel comfortable with this situation. She didn’t want Casey to eat it. She knew if she did, that Casey would leave her, and their home. Her daughter had always been an adventurous spirit, and it was only a matter of time before she would want to travel away from their small island, but Katalina had always thought it would be a long time away. This fruit changed everything. “These fruits are unpredictable and dangerous, Casey. They make it so you can never swim again. If you fall in the sea you would drown without someone saving you. And you never know what kind of power it might give you.”
“I know that, but… I could find Dad.” Casey was already steps ahead in her thoughts. If she ate the fruit it would make travelling alone much safer, since she would have some kind of ability to protect her. And if the storm was anything to go off of, she has at least some idea of what the fruit might give her.
“You would never make it to the grand line, Casey!” Katalina snapped, her tone going angry. “Not by yourself, no matter what power this fruit might give you!”
“You don’t know that! And it's not like I would leave right away! I would need to learn what I can do first.” Casey countered, holding the fruit close to her chest now, afraid her mother would snatch it out of her hands and get rid of it. Casey loved her mom, but her missing father had always been a thought in her mind, nagging her. Now she had a chance to go find him. He was a Yonko, and they were well known and easy to locate in the far side of the Grand Line, compared to the no-name pirates in other parts of the world.
Katalina knew that there was nothing she could do to stop Casey from seriously considering leaving. She didn’t want to see her daughter take the same route that her husband had. She already worried enough about him and she didn’t think she could worry for both of them without going mad. She sighed, the fight leaving her completely as she looked at Casey’s determined expression. “I don’t want you to leave me too.” Her voice was soft, not quite a whisper, but close.
Casey froze at that. She thought she would have to argue for days with her mother on this, but that tone killed all the fight in her. She dropped her protective stance and took a deep breath. “It won’t be right away. I don’t want to leave you either, but I know this is what I’m meant to do.”
At that statement, Casey took the largest bite she could from the fruit in her hand. It was disgusting. The worst tasting thing she had ever put in her mouth. She almost spit it right back out, but she swallowed. Her face pinched at the flavor that continued after that first bite, lingering in her mouth for a few moments. She didn’t feel any different at all initially.She thought maybe she needed to finish the fruit and brought it back up to take another bite when she noticed the sparks jumping from her hand to the skin of the fruit. She was surprised she noticed it, considering that it was bright daylight out. She dropped the fruit on to the ground and studied her hands, noticing sparks jumping from finger to finger without any control from her. She didn’t feel the shocks at all, it felt almost like a tingle in each finger as the spark jumped.
Katalina watched her daughter eat the fruit. She knew now that Casey was going to leave, just like James had. It was only a matter of time. And who knew if she would ever hear from Casey once she left. It was just like James. He had never contacted her after he left. She knew he had done that to protect them, but he was her husband and she loved him, even after so many years.
She watched as Casey realized that the fruit had taken effect. She almost laughed, because along with the sparks on Casey’s fingers, the girl’s hair had started floating upwards like it would have if someone rubbed a balloon over it. “Well, at least we know it has something to do with electricity.” Katalina said, choking back a laugh. Casey smiled at her, her eyes wide, and brighter than Katalina had ever seen them. The orange was now highlighted with a golden color that could only be attributed to the fruit she had eaten.
“I’m not hugging you until you get that power under control Casey.” Katalina said as Casey stepped forward with a devilish grin on her face and small sparks jumping off of her fingers. Casey pouted and then shrugged, concentrating to stop the sparks. Instantly the girl’s hair stopped its static-y floating and settled back on her head normally. Casey and Katalina did hug after that, needing the confirmation that everything would okay, even though this would change everything.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From then on Casey would disappear into the woods for hours at a time every day. The villagers that lived near the DuVal’s would think that the two of them were arguing more than before, but Katalina knew exactly what her daughter was doing. Casey started training her control of her abilities. She would use them at all in their home, afraid that it would damage the house or something, so she went deep into the woods where no one would see her.
Casey didn’t want the other people on the island to know that she had eaten a devil’s fruit. She loved her new power, but she was afraid that someone would tell the marines and she would have to enlist or be watched from then on out.
It took months before she learned to regulate how much electricity she released at any given time. At first it all came out in a rush, even when she was only trying for a small jolt, but with time came an understanding of the power. Then she learned she could pass through objects that conduct electricity, if she wanted to. She had been on her way home at the time and wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and ran into a tree, except she passed through it, her whole body shifting to complete energy for a moment before coming back out the other side. That had stopped her in her tracks and she had to try it again. From there she learned how carefully melt metals to reform them into something different. It was leaps and bounds of learning as the years passed.
She begged and pleaded with her mother until the older woman finally gave in and said that she would accompany Casey in her search for her father. They decided they would leave when Casey was 20. But that was never meant to be.
~~~~~~~~
Astraea Island; East Blue
Age 19
With her power growing little by little, and the eagerness to find her father growing as well, the feeling of sleep had not come easy to her in the last year. She had been out of the house at all hours, practicing her powers every chance she got. She was still being careful not to be seen by the villagers, but she had started traveling farther and farther into the woods, the trees closer to their house starting to show more damage than she wanted. She was farther into the woods than she had ever been before, almost to the center of their island when she decided to head home.
She had been out since before dawn and it was now almost mid-afternoon. Her mom would be looking for her soon, and she knew better than to worry her mom by being gone until dark. She had done that once and her mother had scolded her so much that she had felt like a 5 year old again.
As she made it through the more recognizable trees close to home a noise made her pause. It had sounded like a scream, but muffled by something. The fact that she could hear it, even this far away from the village made her worried. If it had been one of the kids playing a prank in town she wouldn’t have heard it at all, considering how far away their house was from the rest. She could only assume that it had come from her own house. That thought made her start into a sprint, using her fruit abilities to run straight through the trees, cutting down the time it would take her to get home.
As she came up to the building she could hear a couple of different voices, muffled by the walls of their hut, but Casey could tell they were yelling inside. No one came up to their house without a reason, and even muffled she would have recognized anyone that typically came to see them. She kicked open the door, looking inside, eyes filled with worry and fear.
The first thing she saw was the white of marine uniforms. There were 4 of them standing in their kitchen, in a semi-circle around another figure tied to a chair. One of the marines turned towards her and Casey could see that the person in the chair was her mother. That froze Casey like ice in her veins. Her mother was slumped in the chair, blood covering parts of her face, bruises covering the rest. There was even blood drying in the gray-blonde hair, like someone had struck her unconscious with a blow, but it had hit too hard.
“Shit!” The marine’s cuss brought Casey out of her frozen thoughts and made her focus once again on the people standing around her mom. Sparks flew from Casey’s hands and arms, not completely controlled by the girl. Her protective instincts kicking in as two of the marines charged towards her. She shot one bolt of electricity towards the one coming up on her right and stepped farther into the house to dodge the second one. She stopped short at the pistol held by one of the ones still near her mom’s body.
“You must be the daughter that she had been talking about.” The marine said almost conversationally, gun pointed at Casey’s head. “She kept going on and on about how you were coming back soon and that she didn’t know anything. She was so loud.”
Casey gritted her teeth, the electricity in her body building up to crackle around her like a storm about to break. “What do you want?” She managed to strangle out. She wanted to know why they were here. They had stayed out of the way of marines any time they had come to this side of the island, Katalina’s fear of them palpable when they were close by.
“Your father has made quite a name for himself, after leaving you both here. We wanted to know what he planned to do next, and we thought he would have been in contact with you two, his dearest family members.” The marine responded, his confidence and cockyness oozing from his voice.
Casey launched herself at him the energy buzzing under her skin, her powers agitated by her rage. A burst of electricity launched from her fist to connect with the jaw of the marine, his body seizing at the high voltage. The gun in his hand went off and the bullet passed right through her, her body shifting to electricity and back to solid with fluidity. She kept pumping more and more of her power into the man as she landed on him, her hand touching him almost lightly as her power fried his brain. Once he stopped twitching she turned to the other three that were standing there in shock. The one she had struck earlier was still recovering, but even he was watching her with wide eyes. The one closest to her mom moved away from the restrained woman quickly, almost running for the door. Casey kicked out a leg as he passed her in the small space and struck him in the back of the knee, dropping him to the ground. She pounced on him a moment later, using her whole body to hold him down for a moment, long enough for her electricity to once again unleash itself on her enemy.
The two marines close to the door bolted at that point, running away from the small house as quickly as they could, given one of them was still injured. Casey didn’t pay them any mind, focused on the one under her, electricity leaving her hands and lighting the marine up from the inside out. The smell of burning flesh was what brought Casey to a stop. She got up after a moment, ensuring that the man wasn’t breathing first. She moved to the chair that her mother was tied to, crouching down. She reached up to shake the woman’s shoulder softly. Casey thought she was just unconscious from the blow to the head that Casey could tell had been one of the most recent of the wounds.
“Mom?” Casey called out, shaking her again with just a little more force. “Mom, wake up. They’re gone now, it’s okay, you’re safe now.” Casey said softly, moving her other hand to her mom’s face, her palm soft against the damaged skin. She froze as she realized something she hadn’t before. Her mother wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing at all. Casey’s hand moved from the woman’s shoulder to her throat, praying to feel a pulse. Her fingers only rested there a moment before she moved away quickly, curling up in a ball in the far corner of the kitchen, tears filling her eyes completely. She didn’t know what to do, what she could do. She didn’t know how to help her mom. She couldn’t leave her either though, even to get help from someone else.
Casey didn’t move from her spot in the far corner for what felt like hours to her. She couldn’t look away from her mom, tears falling freely from her eyes, the image of her mom blurred by them to the point where Casey could pretend that Katalina had just fallen asleep in the chair, rather than the reality of what had happened. When the light in the room got dark, she finally moved, the sun having gone down and no lights in the house were on. She ignored the two bodies on the floor and moved to Katalina once again, hands moving with care and caution as she untied the ropes holding her mother’s body to the chair. Once those were removed, her body slumped forwards and almost fell, but Casey caught her easily. With a little effort Casey picked her up and moved her to the couch in their small common space, laying her down carefully. Casey was completely numb at this point, her eyes finally dried and her body stiff from sitting in a corner on the hard floor for so long. She covered the body with a blanket from her room. From there she also grabbed a small bag with a change of clothes and a few small items that were important, like her father’s wanted poster. She put the bag by the door and stepped over the bodies in the kitchen to get to the small cooking stove they had. She turned on the gas to the stove, but didn’t start the flame, letting the gas spread in the air.
She made sure all of the windows in the house were closed as the gas kept spreading from the stove slowly through the rest of the house. She stepped outside with her bag after a few moments and looked at the garden that they had cared for her entire life. It wouldn’t be left alone for long, she was sure, considering how much their neighbors had coveted it over the years. The others’ gardens had never grown quite like theirs had. Casey always thought that perhaps her father had something to do with that, but she couldn’t say how. She waited another 10 minutes, leaning against the wall of the house before opening the door again. The smell of natural gas had filled the room so completely that she knew it would go up quickly. She held the door barely open and put her hand in, snapping her finger and sparking. The gas caught a moment later and a flame exploded through the building, spreading to every room, lighting random things on fire all at once. She closed the door and walked away, feeling the heat of the flames spread against her back after a moment. She kept walking and didn’t look back, her hand closed in a fist so tight that her knuckles were white. She let her anger take her over again as she broke into a run, headed straight for the woods. Her bag tapped lightly against her side as she ran, but she barely noticed, phasing through trees as fast as she could, pushing her limits, her limbs becoming more lightning and less skin. She was headed straight for the far side of the island. Typically it would take a few hours to reach the marine base on the far side, but that was if you followed the regular roads that circled the forest in the middle of the island. Casey was cutting straight through, moving at speed she had never had even tried to reach before. Her thoughts were focused on the two marines that had gotten away before, and whoever had lead them to believe they would get answers from her mother.
Now Casey wanted answers herself, but more than that, she wanted to wipe these marines off the face of the world.
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ᕮ᙭ᙅᕮᖇᖘTᔕ ℱᖇ〇ᙢ THE ᗰᓮᔓᑌ ᙢᓰᔓᘮ ᘉᕮᙡᔕᖘᗩᑭᕮᖇ
“The marine base on Astraea Island has suffered heavy casualties after an attack from a pirate. This pirate was previously unknown to the marines, but her name is now known. Casey DuVal, daughter of one of the current Yonkos was seen escaping the base after the alarms were sounded. She has now been dubbed the 'Thunder Goddess' by the marines and her bounty has been started at 5,000,000 Beli to be brought in alive or dead.
It has also been reported that the DuVal home has burned to the ground. There has been 3 reported dead from that incident. Two were marines, but the third was an unidentified woman.”
James finished reading the paper that had been delivered to their ship and frowned. This news wasn’t good. He ran his hand down his face and sighed, handing off the paper to one of his crew members to pass around to the rest of the crew. Casey was off on her own, and Katalina was dead. James reached into his pocket and pulled out the one picture he had of Casey, when she was only 1 and barely toddling. She had been such a sweet kid, and now she would be faced with more difficulty than she had ever seen before.
He put the picture back into his pocket and made his way towards the bow of his ship. The Little Eden was a miniature tropical paradise, but James couldn’t even look at the plants right now. He stood on the figurehead of the ship and watched the sea for a while, letting himself mourn for a moment. His wife was dead, he was positive. There was no other reason Casey would have done something as drastic as she had. He didn’t let himself cry, but his breath was shaky with the force of it, knowing that he would never see the love of his life again. Another thought made him smile through it. Perhaps he would see his daughter again. She was on her way to him now, and maybe some day they would stand on the same deck, breath the same sea air and share some of the bounty of his ship. He turned away from the sea and farther back onto his ship, needing to get back to work.