Cold. The night on the ship was insatiably, and irrevocably, fucking cold. To an unbearable point to the average person, almost. But Uzui Tengen didn't fear the cold of his ship. Not the glossy, wet, slickness of the salty and greasy boating-dock. Not his crew, in the nightly hour, consisting of a blonde man with dyed, firey red hair at the tips, and a shorter woman with large, pink and sage curls pulled back in a tightly-knit braid. The two of them working to pull the anchor for the night.

They carefully watched the large, coppery bouts of rust bleed off of the old chains and into the salty water when the steel was lifted out of the thick, sludgy, wet sand dunes in the deep sea below. Ensuring nothing happened as the large gears turned to automatically hoist the hundreds of pounds upwards.

"About 40 feet left!" Kanroji's feminine voice called out. Her wind breaker slick with downpour and rain. And her heavy, water-resistant pants grew glossier by the passing seconds.

But the man beside her, Rengoku, his eyes were focused on something far off in the distance. His hearing aid beeping with a glow, while his pupils dilated. A chafing frequency played back in his head. The cochlear implant within his other ear was picking up on a low-frequency transmission. One that didn't belong to his ship or his captains. In the dark, though, he could see nothing. His first thought was to alert the captain. To alert him of pirates, However, that dread never came. Not when a frantic Kanroji suddenly shouted, "Captain!"

The dock fell quiet. Boat swaying on the unforgiving waters of the deep, blue sea.

"LIFEBOAT!"

Tengen was quick down from his post. Radio jockied to the leather of his belt, and his rain boots thick, heavy against the iron-cast, boating floors. "Where?" He questioned. Cigarette between his lips, and binoculars strapped to his jacket pocket.

"East." Rengoku spoke. "I can't see a light."

...

"But that's a damn lifeboat."