Chapter Text
It’s the fourth time in a month that they meet. Vauban has the distinct feeling it won’t be the last, and the month is nowhere near over yet.
What is unusual, though, is that Rouge and some of her crew are surrounded by what appears to be every single adults on the island.
Vauban exchanges a look with her second-in-command, before coming closer. Some villagers are throwing the usual insults at the pirates, and Rouge has a little grin on her face. A shit eating grin.
“What’s going on here ?” She asks, half to the villagers, half to Rouge.
“Cleia-chan !” Vauban’s left eye twitches at the use of her first name. “Nothing to worry about, it’s just a little misunderstanding.”
That gets her more insults and yells, from which Vauban gathers practically nothing. She only caught the words “girl”, “pirate”, “corruption” and “flowers” ? What the hell.
“Okay, everybody calm down please.” She has to raise her voice a little to be heard over the cacophony. The villagers’ volume dies down a little, but some are still insulting the pirates.
Vauban turns to Nuno, questioning them with her eyes. The Alceas’ navigator catches on quick, and they laugh a little before answering her question.
“Well, you see Vice Admiral, it appears Captain may have disturbed a very important event yesterday, and these lovely people have only managed to catch us today to talk about it.”
It still doesn’t answer her question. Vauban sighs a little, and is already opening her mouth to speak when an older man steps forth, an angry frown on his face.
“That scum crashed the wedding of my grandson ! She absconded with my daughter-in-law before the ceremony, leaving my poor Marius at the altar, waiting for his beloved !” Vauban blinks in surprise, turning slowly towards Rouge, who still has a shit eating grin on her face. “We only found her this morning, all dreamy eyed and spewing nonsense about following that riff-raff on the Seas !”
Vauban really, really wants to facepalm. She has too much dignity to do it, so instead she sighs and closes her eyes. She has a pretty good idea of what Rouge did to leave the girl in that state. Of course Rouge would do something like that.
“Alright everybody, lets just take a deep breath, I’ll handle this.” She says, her men herding the villagers back a few steps. “I promise I’ll deal with these pirates, but unfortunately, there is no law preventing a young woman from leaving before her wedding ceremony.” She raises her hands before the villagers can start loudly protesting again. “I’ll talk with the girl and try to appease things. In the meantime, my men will escort these pirates to our ship to deal with them.”
Rouge snorts behind her, and Vauban knows what she’s thinking. Yeah, riiiiiight. Like hell you’re going to deal with us.
But that seems to calm the villagers a bit, because they actually start to retreat towards their houses. She breathes a sigh of relief, because she really didn’t need an uproar to start again. It’ll just be a big mess.
And then, because of course nothing can be simple with these fucking Ds, a few younger girls and boys are running towards them, all bright smiles and stars in their eyes.
“Miss Rouge, take us on the Seas with you !”
“We want to be pirates just like you !”
“Yeah, take us with you please !”
“Your stories are amazing, we want to live crazy adventures too !”
The whole street is silent, the villagers slowly turning back towards them. Her men are frozen in place, and she’s pretty sure she heard one of her officers uttering a small prayer to the Gods. The Alcea Pirates all have innocent expressions, except for Rouge, whose smile only grew. The kids are right in the middle, staring at Rouge like she hung the stars in the sky.
Vauban is just done with Rouge’s bullshit.
“Got two words for you.” She mutters to Rouge.
“I bet they won’t be helpful.” Rouge replies, looking at her from the corner of her eye.
“Your problem.”
“I was right.” And she has the gal to laugh.
I need a fucking raise, Vauban thinks as the villagers descend in a righteous fury.