Lev & Kuroo, Piracy and sea monsters
As the fantastic, swashbuckling captain that he was, Kuroo was always fully prepared to fight tooth and sword to the bitter end and go down with his ship, should it ever come to that. Of course, when he’d sworn as much, to himself and his men, he was expecting more along the lines of a heroic battle with another pirate ship over a trunk or two brimming with treasure, or a desperate fight against the Royal Navy when the lawmakers finally caught up with him, as lawmakers always do.
But, well, he’d never actually excluded “attack by a giant sea monster” -- because really, everyone knew that monsters didn’t exist. Sirens and mermaids were a product of drunkenness and dugongs and horny sailors, and huge sea snakes were just hazy waves and overactive imaginations.
Or not.
“It’s been an honour plundering with you all,” Kuroo announced, sword in hand and giving a lazy salute. His men looked grim, but they were all battle-hardened pirates and they knew how to fight when it counted. And none of them were outwardly freaking out yet, which Kuroo counted as a definite plus.
Kenma sighed, like the entire situation was nothing more than a huge inconvenience. Still facing the crew, Kuroo ruffled his hair affectionately. The timbers of their ship creaked under the silvery-grey scales of the beast, where it wrapped around the bow of their ship, glittering in the sunlight.
“Well, time to go do a captain thing,” Kuroo said, and without further ado he raised his sword, charged for the bow, and stabbed with impunity into the fishlike creature.
The ship shuddered as the sea serpent flinched, and then it was moving, the coils sliding off the side, and something erupted from the water.
It was a giant eel-like face, with huge, emerald-green eyes, an upcurved mouth, and an affronted expression.
“Ouch!” it complained. “Why would you do that?”
Kuroo blinked. He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at his crew, who all wore expressions showing variable degrees of confusion. “Uh. Come again?”
The beast made a sound that he couldn’t interpret as anything but a petulant whine. “I wasn’t going to break it, geeze! I just have a really bad itch under my scales, right here, see?” It raised a hump of its body out of the water, waving it slowly back and forth as saltwater sluiced back into the sea and onto the deck of Kuroo’s ship. “I needed to scratch it on something! And, you know, there aren’t that many options out here unless you go way, way down to the bottom and it’s cold down there!”
The creature leaned down suddenly, tilting its head to the side like a puppy. “Say, will you scratch my scales for me?”
And Kuroo, because he had a brain and knew that refusing the bizarre request of a hundred-odd-meter sea beast might possibly be a bad idea, obliged. The serpent’s eyes closed and it let out a hiss that was frightening at first, until Kuroo realized that it was more like a purr than a hiss, and that the barbels around the giant mouth were quivering in what appeared to be pleasure.
Huh.
“I like you. I’m going to keep you,” it said, with all the macho confidence of a creature that nobody would ever dare oppose. Kuroo felt a faint flicker of alarm, but then the beast lowered its head to the deck, staring at him out of one giant eye, and said, “I’m Leviathan, but you can call me Lev, that’s what everyone calls me, what’s your name?”
“Er. Kuroo.”
“Kuroo,” Lev echoed with a distinctly satisfied tone. It dipped back into the water until only its head was above the surface, stretched out along the side of the ship. Its head was almost as long as the ship, and Kuroo wondered giddily just how big the thing was.
It scraped up against the side of the ship, causing it to heel slightly to the side and emit a somewhat disconcerting echoing creak. “Well, Kuroo,” Lev said, rolling over so its pale underbelly was briefly exposed to the sun. “Where are you going? I’m coming too!”
“This is going to make the whole piracy thing much easier,” Kenma murmured, and Kuroo agreed wholeheartedly.