Stede Bonnet
"And so, I return!" I cry, thrusting out my chest. "I suppose you thought you were rid of me, Mr. Teach!"
"...Who?" Blackbeard asks, and all of my enthusiasm vanishes into nothingness.
I hate this guy so much.
"What do you mean, who!? It's me! Bonnet! Stede Bonnet! We captained a ship together! Your most famous ship is named after mine!" I shout.
"Tch, I'm not old enough to fall for 'it's me, it's me' scams! I may have a beard, but I'm still a little kid on the inside! You can't fool me!" The absolute jerk shouts, pointing at me.
"It's me! The gentleman pirate! Don't you remember my on-ship library!?" I moan.
"Uh, no? We're pirates. The only things we read are doujins, and those weren't around before the modern era, idiot," He says.
"You were there for my entire dramatic reading of the Iliad!"
"Not ringing a bell. Look, Steve, have you got any actually useful abilities?"
"Stede! It's Stede, with a 'd'!" I say. "And no! I have my ship, but I can't even summon it by myself because you made me look like such a fool in my legend! It's your fault, so take responsibility, Mr. Teach-!"
As I shout, his fist suddenly connects with my face, knocking me to the deck.
"Like hell I'll let a middle aged man tell me to take responsibility!" Blackbeard shouts, kicking me over and over. "Go get sent to another world as a little girl or make a suspicious contract that turns you into a magical girl and come back! Preferably with a blush on your cheeks!"
What.
"What the hell is that!? Wasn't your type supposed to be mature, confident women! No, beyond that, isn't that sort of scenario totally perverse!? Even if my body turned female, I'd still have the mind of a man! Wait, if I squint, actually it kind of resembles the 'childhood friend you thought was a boy grew up into a beautiful girl' genre, but reversed… no! It's still weird! And that aside, your taste still sucks anyway, since what's best is a woman who seems mean at first but as she opens her heart is in fact the caring motherly type who smothers you with love, in other words, the exact opposite of my ex-wife!?" I shout.
"...It's too bad. I think, in another life, we could have been friends," says Blackbeard, driving the last nail into the top of the barrel he stuffed me into while I was shouting.
"Liar! It always turns out like this! Every, single, tiiiiiiime-!" I scream as he lobs me off the Queen Anne's Revenge and I plunge into the ocean below.
***
"...After waiting a bit in the barrel to drift away from Mr. Teach's ship, I turned to spiritual form and escaped, flying towards the nearest island. From there, I was sure everything would work out. Somehow or another, I would be able to find some other Servant to join forces with and do… whatever I got summoned here for. No matter who I meet, I could somehow make friends with them. That's seriously what I thought…" I breathe in, catching just a little bit of the smoke from the fire below me. "So why did it have to turn out like this!?"
The Wereleopard holding the handle of the spit I'm tied to snarls at me. He doesn't stop turning it, though. The other lycanthropes clustered around the fire continue to look on, salivating.
"I don't want to get eateeeeen!" I moan.
However, there's nothing I can do. The Servant Stede Bonnet is a pathetic weakling who can't achieve a single thing on his own. His only strength is his charisma, and with me failing to even worm my way onto the crew of someone who knew me in life, even that one strength is looking to be a delusion of mine. I will be cooked alive by demi-humans who don't even understand that I'll disappear when I die, and that will be that. I never found out why I was summoned here, but in the end, it has to have been a fluke. Because, when you really think about it, there's not a single person in existence who would seek out a failure like me as their partner.
And yet-
"-Thank goodness, I made it in time."
In spite of all my self recriminations, he appears there. A Servant in a poorly maintained butler's uniform, carrying a pail of water in one hand. He has eyes like a drowned man, staring through the tribe of lycanthropes, straight into my own. With a practiced, polite smile, he continues in utter disregard of the demihumans turning towards him. "Sorry, Stede. I'd hoped to get here sooner, but it couldn't be helped - I'll save you now. Unsealing the Furnace. Attain a drop of truth."
Werewolves and Wereleopards alike snarl at him, raising clubs and spiked maces, but-
"[Incineration Ritual: Zepar]."
The fight is already over. All of the monsters that I was certain spelled my doom are consumed from the earth in a blinding flash of light. With practiced ease, my savior trods through the ashes and unceremoniously extinguishes the fire beneath me. Dropping his pail and drawing a knife, he sets to work on the rope binding me.
"Th…thank you~!" I shout through tears pouring down my face. "I was… so sure… I was going to die-!"
My heartfelt thanks don't even cause the slightest change in his facial expression, but after I manage to stifle my tears, he speaks again. "Servant, Alter Ego. My True Name is Natsuki Subaru. I'll be in your care."
…Never heard of him.
As I drop from the roasting spit, I brush the charcoal off of my coat and find my feet once more. "-Well! You find yourself in good company, Mister Natsuki! For you have daringly rescued-!"
"-Stede Bonnet, the Librarian Pirate," He says, a small smirk on his face.
"D-did Blackbeard send you!?" I blurt - but no, Blackbeard didn't recognize me! So how-!?
"-Anyway, as far as anyone else should know for now, I'm a Caster. So just call me Caster of the Stars when enemies are around," He says.
"...Wait, if you're going to use an alias, then why tell me-?"
"Because I trust you," He says, and I blink in shock. "Out of everyone in this singularity, you're the only one who would never betray me under any circumstances. Right, partner?"
I grab his outstretched hand with tears in my eyes. "...Yeah."
***
"I thought you said you trusted meeee!" I moan.
"I do, Stede. You're the best shot I've got at this. So… good luck, and don't get turned into a pig," says Mister Natsuki as he drives the last nail into the barrel he stuffed me into.
As he tosses me off the edge of my own ship, I can't help but scream. "Why does it always end up like thiiiiis!?"
***
"...I didn't really expect Subaru-sama to go through with it," Medea comments a few moments after Bonnet plunges over the side of the ship, as the two withdraw once more to the captain's cabin.
He turns towards her, his face finally going slack as he abandons his false smile. "Have I disappointed you?"
"No," The witch shakes her head, drawing closer to Natsuki Subaru. "If it's Subaru-sama, I'm sure he was telling the truth."
"I only swore never to deceive you. I can lie all I want to Stede," He says, but she only laughs in response.
"I'm not talking about your geas," Medea says. "...Although, I am wondering, what are you hoping to achieve by sending a man like him into Auntie's clutches?"
"It's not that complicated. Circe is the type who loves to spoil men, after all, to the point of turning them into pigs."
"Hm… I suppose Stede would be the sort to be happy about that treatment, but Auntie's type is strong, cool men…"
"If it's a question of winning people over, I'd never bet against Stede. He's already got you calling him by his first name, after all," The Alter Ego says, and Medea blinks with slight shock. "He's completely unreliable in just about everything else, of course. If you get him started, he'll rant for hours about what his nagging ex-wife put him through, but I'm sure the root cause of that was her growing frustration at his total inadequacy in all practical day to day affairs."
"Even when it comes to the books he's so proud of, he's basically just picked out the stuff that was most popular and famous in his era. It's amazing one guy could get that shallow." The Alter Ego sighs, turning to one of the bookshelves. After a moment, he picks out a thick volume, paging through it to roughly the two-thirds mark. With a faint smile, he takes a seat. "...But, if it's just interpersonal relationships, that guy is…"
***
"That's pretty cold, Edd." Reid Astrea notes as the barrel containing Stede Bonnet drifts further and further from the [Queen Anne's Revenge]. "He was telling the truth, you."
"I know that," says Blackbeard, gritting his teeth, his knuckles white on the railing. "...I had to get rid of him, though. That's what I decided back then, and it's what I have to do now. He'll get us all killed doing something stupid if he sticks around."
"Get you, killed, maybe," The Sword Saint of another world laughs. "Ain't never lost, on my end."
"...What, you've never done something stupid to help someone you care about? Taken a fight you shouldn't have to make them happy?" The pirate says, his eyes still trained on the retreating barrel.
"Wouldn't do something like that for a man, you," Reid replies, rolling his eyes.
"That's exactly what I thought, when I took him on," the Rider mutters. "I'll just take advantage of this idiot, exploit his crew, and that's that. But the next thing I knew, even my own men were ready to die for him. I was ready to die for him. I was only able to work myself up to ditching him after he was already away for a few weeks."
"What's he, some sort of Flugel type?" Reid mutters.
"Anyway, we've got no chance of picking up chicks with him around!" Blackbeard finally shouts with a shake of his head. "Because that guy's…"
***
"I should have known this would happen… this kind of thing always happens to me," Stede Bonnet mopes his way along the sunny beach. "Still, to keep that rain at bay… Miss Circe must really be a powerful witch."
-At that moment, a whirlwind erupts in front of him, kicking up sand and knocking the pirate off his feet. Pink and purple lightning arcs off, striking random portions of the beach and melting the sand to glass. As glowing eyes appear in the midst of the storm, a booming female voice rings out. "So! You knew this island was mine, and you were still brave enough to intrude! Should I take this as a challenge!?"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry Miss Circe! I just got thrown off my own ship and I've got no way to escape!
I really didn't mean to intrude, so please forgive me-!"
"-Oh, so you're a castaway, then. That's a different matter." In an instant, all the terrifying force of the storm disappears, and standing in its place is a pink-haired girl with long pointed ears and large bird wings stretching off her back. Her figure, accentuated by her light tunic and short skirt, is nonetheless on the smaller side, and her high-raised platform shoes do reveal an awareness of this. Elevating her chin slightly in a conscious decision to look down her nose at Stede, the witch continues, "I may be a witch, but I'm not so cruel as to turn away someone with nowhere else to go."
There's a brief moment of silence as the self-proclaimed Gentleman Pirate stares at her, wide-eyed.
"Heh. Were you stunned by my beauty, then?" Circe preens, her wings stretching out slightly wider. "I don't dislike being admired."
-Or so she says, but at this point she's already decided to turn him into a pig. But that decision, as quickly as it's made, can be reversed just as quickly. Especially if-
"Ah, that was improper of me," Stede catches his own error immediately. "I lost myself admiring the sunset in your eyes."
It's nowhere near to sunset, but nonetheless, he's telling the truth - Circe's eyes are two colors, the top portion pink and the lower bluish green, like a sunset over the ocean. And so, for the first time losing confidence, she breaks eye contact, a dusting of pink on her cheeks. "I- I see…"
"Ah, I should introduce myself - Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate, at your service, Miss Circe." Shifting to a kneeling position, he takes one of her hands in his, placing a chivalrous kiss on her knuckles.
"...I don't hate pirates, but they're just about the opposite of gentlemen," she says dubiously, but he merely smirks in response.
"If a chivalrous thief can exist, why not a gentleman pirate?" He asks, standing. "But it's enough for me to hear that you don't hate pirates on principle. I wouldn't want to make an enemy of a beautiful woman like you."
He offers his arm to the witch and after a moment's hesitation, she takes it, walking arm-in-arm with him back to her hut, deeper in the island. Naturally, she already has fresh food ready, of both enchanted and unenchanted variety - but as he gracefully accepts the meal that he surely knows could be cursed without any hesitation, she has to admit it.
"This guy, might actually be…
…A perfect gentleman."
***
"I don't know if that gives him such an advantage over Auntie, though," says Medea.
"I've already given him an advantage - he has absolutely no hope other than relying on her, and she'll realize that," Natsuki Subaru replies. "That's enough to at least get her to treat him with hospitality, and from there his natural talent for human interaction can take over. Circe gets attached to people easily; her preferred type aside, as long as he can survive her care for… two days or so, she'll probably latch onto him."
Of course, with this much knowledge of her personality, Natsuki Subaru could have won her over himself - but the balancing act of keeping the flighty witch happy was exhausting. Plus, for some reason or another him taking the primary diplomatic role with Circe kept leading to Medea losing it, so the Alter Ego decided to change tactics.
"What about [Return From Death]? Couldn't you have used that?" Medea asks.
"Of course not. You were already upset enough about Alcides. Putting your teacher through that would have been needlessly cruel to you," He says.
"You didn't even test it, though. Was turning Heracles really that bad? It's dangerous to move without considering all our options," Echidna's voice rings out in his head - but he ignores it.
"-In any case, if all I have to do is play cupid for two slightly shallow friends of ours, I don't mind," Subaru says.
"It's dangerous, Subaru-sama," Medea says, looking away. "A witch cannot fall in love. When we do… it always ends in tragedy."
"...That's how all love ends," He says. "No matter how happy it is, for how long… one always leaves the other behind. But while I'm here, I won't let anything too bad happen to them. It'll be a short-lived fling that disappears like seafoam, but…"
"...Maybe there's meaning in that, too," she says, hesitantly.
"...Who knows. The other guy would probably say so, but I don't know whether I believe that anymore," Alter Ego admits.
"Let me know once you've decided," she says, almost playfully. Light arms wrap around his neck from behind, and the Witch of Colchis presses her lips close to his ear. "We have two days, after all."
***
Class: Rider
Alternate Classes: None
True Name: Stede Bonnet
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Armaments: Sword, Pistol (Untrained in either)
Manifestation Cost: Low
Bio:
The self-proclaimed Gentleman Pirate. More of a punchline than a proper Heroic Spirit, in any location outside of American coastal waters (and also the Okeanos Singularity), he only manifests as a Phantom Spirit.
Notable mostly as a man of high status who threw it all away on a harebrained wish of piracy to get away from a nagging wife, his accomplishments mostly amount to playing second fiddle to Blackbeard during their partnership. After a brief technical return to the right side of the law as a Privateer, he separated from Blackbeard briefly to secure papers establishing their pardon for past crimes - but on his return, he found his partner had abandoned him and marooned his crew. After a short, unsuccessful career on his own, he was captured and hanged.
As far as Servants go, Stede Bonnet is close to the top of the list for 'people no one would ever want to summon'. Even a loose cannon villain or anti-hero could be forced to cooperate with Command Spells; Bonnet will not be useful even with all the command spells in the world. His only value is a boat he cannot summon without an allied Heroic Spirit, and his capacity for diplomacy. In all other regards, he is useless.
Parameters
Strength: E
Endurance: E
Agility: E
Mana: E
Luck: E
NP: D-
Class Skills:
Riding: E
Personal Skills:
Voyager of the Storm: -
The skill that provides the ability to sail a ship… is not actually present in Stede's Spirit Origin. In other words, this skill has only been listed to point out that he does not, in fact, possess it.
Gentleman Pirate (Bonnet): A
Not to be confused with Bartholomew Roberts' (much more useful) skill of the same name.
The unique charm of Stede Bonnet cannot be understated. His ability in combat is atrocious. His capacity for command is nonexistent. Even so, people will gladly join his cause and follow him.
Grants the effects of the Charisma skill, doubled against those of Chaotic alignment, and doubled again for those specifically recognized as 'Pirates'.
Noble Phantasms:
Noble Ship of my Dreams: Revenge
Rank: D-
Type: Anti-Army
Range: 1~20
Maximum number of targets: 30 people
Bonnet's ship, the [Revenge], is considerably less famous than Blackbeard's [Queen Anne's Revenge], though the latter is named after the former. A ship with forty cannons, manned by Bonnet's subordinates - they have no sense of self, though Bonnet can remember their names.
However, this Noble Phantasm can only be activated when Bonnet has an allied Servant to serve as his co-captain. Upon its invocation, both captains are granted the [Voyager of the Storm] skill, with its rank depending on the quality of the co-captain. For reference, Natsuki Subaru produces a D-rank skill, while Blackbeard would produce one at A+ rank.
By the way, unlike some other Pirates' ships, the [Revenge] cannot fly, no matter how much mana Bonnet pours into it.
***
Author's note:
Bonnet isn't a good person, but I personally like the guy.
Hopefully these romantic subplots aren't too cringe...