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From her hiding spot in a narrow alley between two collapsed market stalls, Raven watched the entire scene unfold like a masterclass in political theater. She pressed her back against the cool stone wall, her cat-like eyes tracking every movent in the square while her mind cataloged each detail.
Brilliant, she thought, admiration and disgust warring in her chest. Absolutely brilliant.
Jack stood in the center of the destruction like a golden retriever who’d brought ho a dead bird, confused by the lack of praise for his obvious success. His blue hair caught the light filtering through the dust clouds, and even from a distance, Raven could see the bewildered hurt in his expression. He’d done exactly what the heroes in her children’s stories were supposed to do, defeat the villains, save the innocent—yet sohow he’d beco the villain in his own story.
anwhile, Moreau’s crew moved through the chaos with the practiced grace of perforrs in a well-rehearsed play. Every action seed ticulously calculated for maximum psychological impact. They didn’t just offer compensation; they offered generous compensation with warm smiles and reassuring tones. They didn’t just provide dical care; they provided it with such tenderness and expertise that made the Navy’s field dics look like amateur butchers hacking away at flesh.
She doesn’t need them to love her, Raven realized, watching Henrik bandage a child’s scraped knee with gentle hands while the child’s mother looked on with grateful tears streaming down her weathered face. She just needs them to trust her more than they trust the alternatives.
The beauty of the strategy made Raven’s professional instincts sing with appreciation even as it made her stomach twist with revulsion. Moreau hadn’t needed to orchestrate this disaster—Jack had handed it to her wrapped in explosions and good intentions. Now every person in Orellia would rember that when chaos erupted, the pirates brought order while the self-proclaid hero brought only destruction and heartache.
A subtle movent caught Raven’s attention. Near the fountain where Luis Torres still lay groaning in pain, a small girl had approached one of the Black Serpent pirates. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old, with amber dust coating her dark hair and a torn dress that suggested she’d been knocked down during Jack’s explosive battle.
The pirate—a young man who looked barely out of his teens himself—knelt down to the girl’s eye level and spoke in words too quiet for Raven to hear from her position. Whatever he said made the child nod solemnly and point toward a mountain of rubble that had once been a colorful toy vendor’s stall. The pirate followed her, and together they began carefully digging through the debris, removing pieces one by one.
After several minutes of searching, they erged with a small wooden doll, its painted face chipped but largely intact. The girl clutched it to her chest as though it were made of gold and threw her arms around the pirate’s neck in a hug that made the young man’s eyes widen with genuine surprise. Then she skipped away toward her anxious parents, her earlier trauma apparently forgotten in the pure joy of recovering her treasured possession.
The pirate watched her go, and for just a mont, his professional mask slipped. Raven saw sothing raw and vulnerable cross his features—the expression of soone rembering what it felt like to be protected rather than feared, to be the hero in soone’s story rather than the villain.
She’s not just buying their loyalty with coin, Raven understood with growing unease as she observed similar scenes throughout the square. She’s making them complicit in her vision. Every kindness they show, every problem they solve, makes them more invested in maintaining her version of order.
"This is what happens when heroes act without thinking," the speaking pirate announced, his voice carrying across the square as he gestured toward the widespread destruction. "Captain Moreau believes in sustainable solutions, not empty gestures. She builds communities rather than destroys them."
Jack’s face flushed bright red, his hands clenching into tight fists at his sides. "I was trying to help these people! Those guys were criminals threatening innocent people!"
"And now they’re criminals in custody," Saxe Webb’s lieutenant replied with infuriating smoothness. "The difference is that Captain Moreau’s thods leave the innocent unhard and their livelihoods intact."
The crowd’s murmur of agreent seed to physically strike Jack, his confidence visibly crumbling. Raven could see him struggling to process what was happening, his simple black-and-white worldview fracturing under the weight of unintended consequences.
Poor bastard, she thought, surprised by the sudden sympathy she felt for the blue-haired protagonist. He really believes that good intentions alone are enough in this world.
But sympathy was a luxury Raven couldn’t afford right now. She had her own problems to solve, starting with the fact that Moreau’s perfectly orchestrated response to this disaster would make escaping Orellia significantly more difficult than before. The captain’s reputation for maintaining order would be stronger than ever, and anyone who disrupted that order—anyone like Raven and her crew—would face a population that had just been powerfully reminded why they needed Moreau’s protection.
The sound of approaching footsteps made Raven press deeper into the shadows of her hiding spot. Two Black Serpent pirates were making their way down the alley, probably conducting a sweep to ensure no other "heroes" were lurking nearby to cause more trouble.
Ti to move. She had a crew to rescue and a serpent to outmaneuver before things got even worse.
But as she slipped away from the square, Raven carried with her the image of Jack’s confused face and the grateful tears of people who’d just learned to fear their would-be savior. Moreau had won this round before the fight even began, simply by understanding that in a world drowning in chaos, competent tyranny would always triumph over incompetent heroism.
The question that burned in Raven’s mind now was whether she could use that sa understanding to beat them both at their own ga.
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