(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N:

-x-X-x-

“First things first… let’s discuss consolidation.”

Leon smiles as Angelica’s voice rings out across the room, a confidence in her tone that makes him want to chuckle. Whether she’s feigning it or has simply decided that she’s going to do what needs to be done, it doesn’t really matter in the end. She’s doing a good job and despite being dressed in a maid uniform, she radiates a certain authority that has the rest of the people in the room all hesitating for a moment.

Finally though, one of them breaks the silence, a curious look in his eyes.

“Consolidation… Your Majesty?”

Leon sees the very slight stiffening in Angelica’s shoulders at being referred to as royalty. To be fair to her, living her entire life as a noblewoman of Holfort, she’s probably had loyalty to the Holfort Crown drilled into her skull a million times over. To suddenly be a Queen, even a Pirate Queen, probably feels like a dozen different forms of treason all at once.

Still, he’s confident that he’s the only one who notices the tension, even as Angelica forces a smirk onto her lips.

“That’s right. You will not find me to be an absentee ruler like my predecessor was. The Isle of Tortuga has been allowed to languish long enough. I intend to turn Port Paix into a place where even the proper authorities cannot find anything amiss.”

That gets a reaction out of the crowded room. Pirate Lords look left and right at one another, utterly bewildered by her words. Another one pipes up then, their tone incredulous.

“How could you possibly expect to manage that? We ran the last official administrator out of town ages ago, and while they were too afraid to inform House Redgrave of our actions, you’re still not going to be able to convince them or the Kingdom of Holfort to just turn a blind eye to you.”

Angelica’s smile drops, even as Leon’s amusement grows. He can tell she’s angry, that hearing about the actions taken against her family definitely pisses her off. Not only that this ‘administrator’ had been run out of town, but also that they didn’t bother to let her father know that Port Paix had become an utterly lawless place.

And lawless it was before Leon came along and instituted his own form of rule over the island. To be fair, the only thing he’d really cared about stopping was the slave trade. Tortuga used to have its own dedicated slave market before he came along, but Leon had very much put an end to that. And then he’d fucked off because actually being the Pirate King was a pain in the fucking ass.

“You can leave that to me. I assure you all, it won’t be a problem. What is a problem… is the lack of tribute you’ve all been paying to your King. Now that I’m Queen, that changes. Each and every one of you will pay me a lump sum and then a portion of your revenue going forward.”

There’s a brief pause at that… followed by one of the Pirate Lords rising from their seat with an angry growl.

“Fuck off! Like hell we’re going to do that! Who the fuck do you think you are, trying to trick us into paying fucking taxes?!”

The funny thing is, the Pirate Lord is right. That’s exactly what Angelica is doing. She’s smart enough to call it ‘tribute’ instead of taxes, but taxes is precisely what she intends to implement here in Port Paix. All part of the plan they’d come up with together, even if that plan hadn’t included Angelica becoming Pirate Queen as well.

The blonde stiffens in her seat at being called out so Leon decides to step in for a second, stepping forward and placing a hand on her shoulder. Then, he lifts his other hand and smiles, causing everyone in the room, including the Pirate Lord currently on their feet, to freeze up.

Leon’s smile grows at their tension… as he snaps his fingers. The standing Pirate Lord whips around, staring at Leon’s automatons as if expecting them to attack… but instead of that happening, there’s a distant explosion, one that reaches the room but barely rocks it.

Everyone still reacts with a curse though, whipping their heads back and forth, their eyes wide. Finally, the standing Pirate Lord looks to Leon.

“What the fuck was that?!”

With a chuckle, Leon shakes his head.

“What else? That was your ship, of course. It’s been… repossessed.”

In the ensuing shocked silence, Leon fixes the Pirate Lord with a look that is half baleful glare and half wicked grin. There’s a reason they call him Devil’s Smile, after all.

“Thank you for speaking up by the way. It made it all the easier to make an example of you. Or did you think I didn’t know that the Winged Sharks weren’t the only ones who had broken the code?”

Lazily, Leon sweeps his gaze around the table. Then, he starts to point. Each time he points at a Pirate Lord, a distant explosion sounds out, until he’s pointed at half a dozen in total. At which point, the final one stands up and pulls out their cutlass with a roar.

His automatons move then, taking down the would be assailant with swift efficiency and taking into custody the other Pirate Lords and the members of their crew they’ve been allowed to bring into the meeting with them. The ‘arrest’ is as swift as it is brutal, and while there’s some resistance, it ultimately doesn’t matter.

“You can’t do this! You aren’t the King anymore, you said it yourself!”

Leon chuckles as spittle flies from one Pirate Lord’s mouth as he’s apprehended.

“You’re right, I’m not the King. I’m her Chief Enforcer. And I do have to say… I think I’m going to enjoy this job a lot more than the last.”

He thrusts his thumb at Angelica with the ‘her’, prompting every eye in the room to turn back to the seated Pirate Queen. Angelica, to her credit, has recovered admirably while he was putting on a shock and distracting everyone from her. She’s projecting utter calm and poise now, sitting primly in her seat with a soft smile etched across her face.

“Good news, everyone. Seeing as ALL of the assets of these particular slaving miscreants have been seized by my enforcer, the rest of you will have to pay less tribute thanks to their generosity. Say… five percent less as a token of my good will.”

Then, she gestures imperiously to the automatons.

“Take them to the dungeons. I’ll deal with them later. Noose or block, we’ll see which they deserve.”

With that, the apprehended Pirate Lords are dragged from the room kicking and screaming and spitting mad. Leon watches them go with a lidded gaze and his usual smile on his face. If it had been him, he would have just killed them all… and truth be told, a few months more and he might have come back to Tortuga and done a purge himself even without meeting Angelica.

This was better though. So much more entertaining. The fear in the remaining Pirate Lords has definitely eclipsed any anger they might be feeling at this point. Now that they know Leon is going to be sticking around and helping Angelica with whatever she wants to do to Tortuga, any designs they might have had have gone up in smoke for the time being.

Taking their silence for compliance, Angelica lets her soft smile widen into something sharp.

“Now then… let’s discuss numbers, shall we?”

-x-X-x-

Hours later, after the meeting is over, Leon lounges back and can’t help but chuckle every time he remembers the looks on their faces. Today had been a productive day, to say the least.

“Proud of yourself, Master?”

Leon looks over to see one of the automatons glancing at him with glowing red eyes, a telltale sign that Luxion is ‘possessing’ the body directly. Luxion’s usual sphere form is back on the ship, since it’s a bit too ‘weird’ to just parade around on Tortuga.

Grinning lazily, Leon shrugs.

“Maybe a little. Shouldn’t I be? I finally shed that idiotic title… and Angelica is getting everything she wants. Not to mention, Olivia will be happy. Ah… I suppose I have a weakness for cute girls like them after all.”

Luxion makes the robotic equivalent of a scoff at that.

“You act like it’s all taken care of, but you’ve shackled yourself to their cause at this point. The other pirates are going to be testing things soon… to say nothing of what the Winged Sharks might try once they hear you’re back and gunning for them.”

Hm, yes. The only group of Sky Pirates absent from the meeting… to be fair, they’d been smart not to come. From what Leon had heard, the Winged Sharks were the most notorious in breaking his rules after he’d decided to fuck off and not actually directly rule as Pirate King. They’d almost immediately gone back to peddling flesh and engaging in the slave trade.

Given they were backed by a noble house, it made a little bit of sense. Leon had made quite the impact with his initial arrival on Tortuga and the subsequent establishment of the code, but once he was gone, who were the Winged Sharks going to listen to? An absentee King or the noble house bankrolling them?

That didn’t mean he didn’t still blame them, however. In fact, he hoped they did make a move once they heard the news. It would make it all the easier to destroy them outright and end their slaving ways once and for all.

“Let them come, Lux. Let them break themselves against you and I.”

The automaton’s eyes glow a bit brighter red for a moment and it lets out the electronic equivalent of a scoff.

“You’re much too poetic sometimes, Master.”

Leon rolls his eyes at that.

“I don’t want to hear that coming from you, Luxion. As though you can’t wax on from time to time yourself!”

Rather than dignify that accusation with a response, the AI promptly changes the subject.

“When do you intend to begin the propagation of more old human genetics, Master? Now that you have two fertile females of acceptable stock all but throwing themselves at you, you have no more excuses for not going about spawning some progeny.”

Leon lets out a loud sigh. This was a conversation he and Luxion had had multiple times before, after all. It was especially bad back when they were just starting out, because back then Luxion had taken Leon’s intentions of being a Sky Pirate to mean that he would be having his way with women left, right, and center.

Even once Leon made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to force himself on anyone, Luxion had still been obsessed with the idea of Leon having ‘a dame in every port’. That wasn’t pirates though, that was sailors, or so Leon had assured the overeager AI.

Finally, Leon had gotten Luxion to shut up about it by telling him he wasn’t going to waste his ‘precious old human genetics’ on just any woman. Most of the whores in Port Paix, for instance, simply weren’t worth the time of day. Luxion had agreed with that at least, and eventually begrudgingly accepted that Leon wasn’t going to be propositioning every single woman he came across to become his broodmares.

… However, that acceptance had gone out the window ever since Leon had that threesome with Olivia and Angelica. To say Luxion was displeased when Leon didn’t cum inside of either of them would be an understatement. And ever since, even as he and Olivia had shared a bed more nights than not, he’d been refraining as well.

He just wasn’t sure if he was ready to be a father, okay?! But of course, Luxion didn’t care about that sort of thing. All he wanted was for Leon to create more old humans like himself. The kind who could activate technology like Luxion. And Leon had promised he would… eventually. He’d had to in order to keep the AI from going on a rampage and trying to kill every single new human in existence.

… The entire situation with the old humans and new humans was a mess and a half that gave Leon a headache just thinking about. This world’s history was undeniably fucked up, a weird mixture of science fiction, post-apocalypse, magic, and fantasy altogether. Leon had honestly been happy to just fuck off and become a Sky Pirate… but it looked like his promise to Luxion couldn’t be put off forever.

“Look, Lux… I’ll consider it, okay? I just need… some time to think about it.”

The automaton that Luxion is possessing makes the electronic equivalent of a snort.

“Well, you’d better think fast, Master. Because you have a visitor.”

Leon blinks as the automaton’s eyes stop glowing red and it turns back to staring off into nothing, signaling Luxion’s attention receding. No sooner has this happened than the door opens and Angelica stands in the frame, staring at him heatedly.

Before he can say anything, the brand new Pirate Queen of Tortuga stomps forward, slaps him across the face, and then grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him into a tongue-filled kiss. Leon can’t help but be a little caught off guard, even as the kiss extends for several seconds before Angelica pulls back with a huff.

“You’ve helped me out quite a lot Leon… so now its time for me to repay you~”

Sheesh, and here he’d expected his little prank to cause Angelica to rescind the whole ‘reward’ thing. But apparently not… and as she gets more and more handsy, Leon finds himself contemplating Luxion’s demands…

-x-X-x-

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