four judges argue about which way a man should die.
…
At the break of dawn, two Grand Navy soldiers struggle to lift up a sleeping prisoner.
“Can’t we just wake him up-?”, says one, tired, hungry, and a bit drunk.
“Don’t you think it’d be a bit harder to bring him in even then? Don’t be so stupid. Why would he comply when he knows what awaits him in the cage?”, says the other. He frowns.
“Who am I kidding. Of course, they lump me in with Frederick the Drunkard- what kind of idiot gets drunk right before execution day?”
Frederick waves his hands in protest, letting the other soldier take the full might of his weight.
“I have needs, Boris! When you’re hungry, don’t you eat?”
Boris strains himself to keep the prisoner up but just lets go. The man falls to the ground with a thud.
“You have a problem! Multiple problems! This is why you’ve been a marine for the past four years, not only are you weak physically but mentally as well! This is why your wife left you and why your children didn’t ask for weekly visits! Soon I’ll be promoted and finally I’ll be rid of you.”
“That’s foul!”, Frederick yells.
The two bicker over pointless subjects and weak points in each other’s past, whilst also trying to carry the prisoner. Miraculously, their incessant yammering has failed to awake him. The bickering devolves into shameless insults- as all arguments tend to, which only makes the work last much longer than it ever needed to.
Their captain barges into the room.
“What are you fools doing? We’ve been waiting outside for the past hour!”
Boris achieves perfect saluting form, silently proud of himself for pulling it off on a whim. “Captain Archer, sir! I blame Frederick, sir! He went and got drunk again!”
Frederick slurs an insult before pointing at Boris accusingly. “You blame me? This is all your fault for insulting me! You just had to bring it up, didn’t you?”
“Four years, Boris. You’ve been a marine for four years! I wonder why.”
“And I’ll be one for another five if I have to! I swear, every year you kids get more and more-”
The captain sighs- rubbing his eyes and imagining he’s still in bed cuddling with his wife. The image calms him down a bit.
“That’s enough out of both of you. Move aside. I’ll bring him in myself.”
He positions himself behind the prisoner and lifts him up like a potato sack before tossing him into the cage. A loud clang resounds through the room.
The force of the toss was enough to stir the man. He groans in pain, before sitting up in the cage.
“C’mon, sir… you didn’t have to do all that. Today’s the day, hm?”
The captain ignores the prisoner. He scowls at the two marines before heading back outside.
“Bring him out here and on to the ship before I put the both of you on deck duty!”
Boris gets to work at once, chaining the cage and dragging it along outside. Frederick spits on the ground, muttering a few insults for good measure, before finally helping Boris out. The two marines then place the prisoners cage onto a mechanical lift- which finally brings him onto the ship.
The crew consists of four captains and twelve vice captains, with one lieutenant candidate and an official lieutenant officer. The vice captains haul the cage into the ship storage.
“Sails up!”, the lieutenant yells. The journey to Palo Town begins.
…
The man chases after a beautiful woman. She teases him, always just short of his reach. And she was fast- so unnaturally fast!
It bothered him, and yet thrilled him also. So he continued to chase.
Eventually, they reached a closing point. He grasps her within his embrace and notices that she feels uncharacteristically cold, like iron.
“What’s your name?”, he says.
“Prisoner Holden Adventos. Your execution has been delayed by one day due to a change in the Bronze Sea judicial system. Today, you will be placed on trial and evaluated by four judges, who will agree on the way you die.”
“…?”
He wakes up. A lieutenant and two captains stand before him. It was all a dream. They start to leave.
“Oh. Could you run that by me one more time? I was in a bit of a daze…”
“Your execution method will be decided by judges in the court.”
The prisoner smiles.
“You mean I have a chance to be set free?”
The lieutenant frowns.
“No. You have a chance of getting a quick and painless death.”
“…So, they’re holding a court session to decide how I’m executed…?”
One of the captains speak up, gesturing for no apparent reason. “It’s this new law. We can’t just execute you in front of a large crowd of people including women and children anymore. Apparently, it’s ‘inhumane’ and we’re ‘traumatizing the children’. According to the admiral, public executions only glorify the dead. So we’re trying to limit them as much as possible, starting with you.”
The lieutenant shakes the captain’s hand. “Good explanation. Well, we’re running out of time here. Up you go.”
They heave the prisoner inside of his cage up and out of the storage room, then proceed to chain him up starting from neck to arms to legs. Five vice captains volunteer to carry the prisoner into the judicial building.
The room is dark, and quiet. It smells of mothballs as well.
A raspy, old voice cries, “Lights!”- and a singular light focuses on the prisoners’ face. The sudden brightness causes him to shut his eyes.
Only where he is sitting has light. He guesses the judges are somewhere in front of him, watching.
“…I don’t like this one. His face is all roughed up- couldn’t they have cleaned him before bringing him in here? He’s getting dirt everywhere…”, says one of the judges- an old and whiny feminine voice. Referred to as the 1st.
“Why would we ever waste resources on cleaning the prisoners? I tell you, this ‘humane’ stuff is getting too expensive. No need for all this hullabaloo, I say we shoot the poor man in the head with a flintlock and get it over with!”, says another, with old voice clearly belonging to a man. Referred to as the 2nd.
A younger voice with an androgynous tone speaks up, referred to as the 3rd…
“Well… I think it’s quite nice, actuall-”
…But is quickly stomped out by an old voice, belonging to a lady- referred to as the 4th.
“Shut up, intern! Speak when spoken to!”
The prisoner sighs. What luck.
“So… can we get this over with? No matter what you all choose, it all ends with me dying anyways.”
The 2nd laughs, a bellowing, dying laugh. He coughs.
“Hah, see? Even this lowly prisoner sees what a waste of time and money this charade is! Give the poor man what he wants and end his suffering.”
The 1st interjects. “Well, I think it’d be nice to use the bronze bull every once and a while. It’s been twenty years since we boot’ up that old thing.”
“They want a more ‘humane’ execution. Did you even read the paper?”, says the 4th.
“I can’t read anything in this darkness. Why’d they have to put us in the dark, anyway? What good does that do?”
“We don’t ask questions; we just decide on a reasonable, entertaining, cost effective, nonetheless humane way for this poor man to die! Now, can we get along with already?”
The voices overlap with one another- an organized debate about which way would be the best way to kill the prisoner. The prisoner does his best to make himself comfortable- but with the glaring light and the tightly fastened chains, he finds it a bit difficult.
“How about poison?” the 1st says. “It’s quick, painless, and there’s no blood, guts, or screaming!”
The 2nd slams his fist on the table. “You’ve clearly never been poisoned before if you think it’s painless! The Juraserva will have our heads if they find out we fed the poor man poison and let his stomach implode on itself!”
The 4th lights a match to a cigar, briefly revealing her face- but only for a moment. This moment was missed by the squinting prisoner, who was really just focused on not being blinded.
“The Juraserva won’t be having anyones head. There’s no way for them to even clarify whether him drinking poison or not would have hurt.”
“Are you seriously agreeing with her?”, the 2nd says- feeling a bit betrayed.
“I’m just stating the obvious.”
The third mutters something under his breath.
“Well, I think a gun would be the best way…”
In the silence of the room, his effort to silently state his opinion was clearly heard. The fourth fumes in anger- or maybe that’s just the smoke, and the second claps his hands.
“See? The boy agrees with me. A gun is the quickest and simplest way to go about it! No need for debate.”
“Haven’t you ever used a firearm? They jam much too frequently for that to be reasonable. Why increase the psychological pain of the prisoner with a faulty weapon?”, says the first.
“Then we can test the guns beforehand!”, the second says.
“Who knows when a gun decides to jam?”
“You speak as if a gun has a mind of it’s own!”
“Maybe it does.”
The debate moves like a game of hot potato, with nobody either agreeing or disagreeing with a good method- however, everybody manages to find something wrong with each others idea.
“Guns are too expensive, too risky!”
“Poison is inhumane!”
“Well, why don’t we ask the man of the hour himself? I say the most humane way to go about this is to ask the prisoner how, if he were to be executed, how he’d like to go about it.”
The prisoner sneezes. That mothball smell was getting overwhelming.
“I’d prefer not to die at all.”
“I say blast it! Blast it all!”, the second says- at this point, reaching the end of his patience. Old age must be making him less reasonable.
The third raises his hand, despite the fact that nobody can see him anyway.
“Maybe that’s the answer. Explosives. It’s quick, entertaining, cheap, and most of all humane. No blood or extreme pain, just an instant death.”
The collection of judges nod in agreement, but are reluctant to finally carry out their decision, mostly because it was the third who suggested it and not one of them.
But nobody objected. They’re all too tired and too old to keep raising their blood pressure like this, over something so pointless.
And that’s how Holden Adventos was killed in a massive explosion on Harvest Island. Later, a designated area was made for the sole purpose of explosive executions. It soon became a form of entertainment among the wealthy.
The third was also given a promotion. The end.