57 To promise or to vow, what is the difference?

"…So that's what happened to the geezer in Ohara…" a somber toned and surprisingly sober Ragner said as he held a small unopened bottle of sake. Seated on a wooden barrel the old Pirate powerhouse stared unblinkingly at the mummified body of his son.

A small sigh escaped his mouth as he slowly looked out of the old and broken down room through the glass cracked window towards the morning mist that glowed in the dawn of a new day.

"The world is moving quickly boy, I know that you do not wish to so much as look at me, but nonetheless, the bastards of the land in the heavens seem keen on antagonizing what little family I have left. So even if, after all of this you cannot forgive me, at least confide in the boy jack…" he said before slowly walking out of the single roomed hut into the dewy mountain.

With the dull crunch of an old door hitting an even older doorframe, the shaking form of a weak and broken Raigar slowly stopped to be replaced with a host of repressed tears, 'this is the world, the world that will break the spirits of men, innocent and guilty, this is the world that consigns the nameless masses to an eternal depth of damnation, what world doth rise in wrathful indifference if not the host of the myriad of seas?

This world dares take, then what am I if I do not learn from its example, ye who sit and revel on your cloudy thrones on the peak of the world, brace and prepare your necks, for the wrath of a man behind whom an island is shall no more shatter, before you are dragged from ye olde and rotting seats!' he promised himself as sleets of blood drenched the sheets around him.

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"Is he alright?" jack asked as he looked gloomily at the fire in front of him, embers flying around his shaggy beard.

"As well as any civilian would be if they had to bear witness to an island wide genocide.." Ragner muttered darkly into his beard as he settled down onto a log beside the somber Jack.

"Tell me boy, was it right to leave him and little Roger when I did?" "Better someone who can care for a child care for them than you, beside whom it would be almost impossible for them to live past a few months.. I should know I retired and still those bastards found me, packing a walloping and sizeable army to bring me in.." he replied barely looking up from his place of brooding.

"The world is changing Jack, the end war draws closer… the World government has not made as many moves in the past century as it has done in the past decade. It's almost as if they feel as the old crone feels in his gizzard, the time of Joy Boy draws closer, the fool decided to leave things here that should only be pulled out when the end war begins….. I think it's time for a final scrub to remove the cob webs from them don't you?"

with a deep sigh, Ragner could not help but thank the lucky stars that were his crew members who had swiftly jumped at the mission to rescue 'little' Raigar, if it wasn't for them, he might have just been forced to swallow the loss of another son….

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"So tell me again father, why was it that you chose to place me on a crib on the footsteps of an old library on Ohara?" Raigar asked again for what could have been the fifteenth time had it not been that count of the actual number had already been lost at around the seventh iteration of the informative query whose answer had already been so overused that it might as well have been collecting stains of age.

"I told you brat, it was because I was too weak to be able to keep you around me without putting my crew and the both of you brats at risk!" he said, his temper fraying as he attempted to lessen the ginormous tick mark that had developed on his vein ridden face.

"If you could make a baby, then you might as well have sat around to care for them like a half decent parent!" he said back with a sting in his tone and an overdose of venom.

"It don't work like that you nincompoop! I amn't going to go as far as to do away with everything that makes me, me just so I can sit around and nanny a group of prospective annoyances!" he snapped back, steam rising through his erect beard that had straightened because of all of the muscles crawling within his face.

"And I don't see you giving your mother even half as much shit as you seem to think I deserve! Go bitch to the hag on the mountain and leave me with the war that is invariably going to happen, or, you can take a seat and discuss like a proper adult, which I hope that you are, or I might have to question your mother on whether she was cheating to get such a disgrace to the gene pool!" he finished, so riled up that spittle seemed to ricochet at the wooden seat.

"Now sit down or leave with the rising of the sun, I have to get the council to figure out how to save as many of these island chains as I can, shoo to the side" he said as he began to peruse the map of the entire line once more, jack sat next to him, looking at the same with a serious expression as Raigar fumed in the corner….