WARNING: Daniel

"Everyone below deck! Now!" Rose called as the wind whipped at her hair and screamed through the masts.

Patton didn't think he'd ever seen Rose this scared before. She was good at hiding it, but she was still definitely scared. And why wouldn't she be? This crew was her family and they'd never sailed into a storm this bad before. Of course she would be scared for them.

"Pat! Come on!" It was Virgil, blurry through Patton's rain-splattered glasses. He grabbed Patton by the arm and hauled him below deck, where the rest of the crew were waiting.

"But Rose-"

"Rose told us to go below deck." Virgil said, shaking his sopping fringe out of his eyes. "And Rose is our Captain, remember?"

"But she could get hurt or-"

"She won't." Janus said from over in a corner. "Rose has been out at sea since she could walk. Rose's death won't be from sea or storm."

Patton bit the inside of his cheek and didn't say anything else.

"Well, what are we going to do?" Daniel asked, pushing his hair out of his face only for it to fall back into place.

"Rose said that we should just wait, so I think that's what we should do." Janus ran his hands over his scars as he said this, trying to stop their burning and itching.

"Are you kidding? Just stay here?" Daniel asked disbelievingly. "This is the perfect weather and time for certain creatures aboard this ship to escape."

"And how are they going to do that? There's no windows in the brig and even if there were, they're locked in glass cages." Janus snapped.

"You broke one of those cages." Daniel growled. "What's to say you aren't on their side?"

"It was a hairline crack!" Janus protested. "And how did you know that?"

"He confesses it!" Daniel declared.

"I confessed nothing. You've been where you shouldn't be and I was provoked by the thing in the cage. Don't know if you noticed when you went sneaking around behind everyone's backs, Daniel, but Remus is quite an infuriating-"

"Oh, so I'm the one who's been sneaking around behind everyone's backs but you took enough care to learn the merman's name-"

"That doesn't mean anything!" Janus yelled.

"Janus, Daniel, stop it." Patton snapped. Everyone turned to look at him. "Uh, you need to stop arguing. Fighting amongst ourselves isn't the way to wait out the storm." Patton rubbed the back of his neck. "Um, Janus, you're the first mate. Well, when Captain Rose is out there saving our butts, I think we should listen to Janus the same way we would listen to a captain. Just for the time being."

Daniel scoffed.

"Do you have something to add, Daniel?" Patton asked. Daniel looked down at him. He rolled his eyes and looked away. "As I thought." Patton said, trying not to make his sigh of relief too obvious. "Okay, um, everyone agreed that we should listen to Janus for the time being?"

There was a ripple of agreement around the crew.

"Great. Um, Kiddo, what should we do?"

Janus looked out at all the faces turned towards him and swallowed. "Uhm-" Daniel laughed.

"Of course he has no plan." Daniel muttered. Janus felt a spark of dark anger in his chest.

"I'm sorry, Daniel, that it takes me more than a second to rack my brain for an idea. Do you have a plan that you would like to share?"

Daniel's eyes widened in slight panic.

"That's what I thought." Janus turned back to the crew. "I think, if you can, try do any jobs you can below deck. If you can't, just consider this as free time to read or something."

Unsure of what else to do, Janus made a little shooing motion with his hands. Through the moving pirate crew, Janus managed to make his way to Patton.

"I think we'd better check on the mermaids." He hissed.

"You don't actually believe what Daniel said, do you?"

"What? No." Janus ran a hand halfway through his hair. "Still good to check on them though, right?"

This was fun and surprisingly quick to write. Daniel getting his comuppance (no matter how small) is always fun to write.
Bye,
Blaize