Hans smiles at Elizabeth and takes the coins. "Keep your share, I'm sure you'll find a use for it. If nothing else, to get some new clothes next time we make port - we're both still growing." Sweeping the coins into his pocket, he pats her on the shoulder and head towards deck again. "It's about time we set off, I think. I better take some initiative, start fixing the broken riggings and all that." With that, he bounds up the stairs towards deck and starts replacing rope while the rest of the crew takes a drink to celebrate.<br/><br/>Over the course of the next few years, Hans grew steadily and well, growing to be a man of respectable height and build. He took up carpentry after a while, and soon learned about all the things that made a ship solid and watertight, slowly but steadily learning the art of the shipwright. He practised his fencing, rigging, carpentry, gunmanship, and even navigation as the years flew by - learning faster than most of his elder crewmates. At thirteen, he began joining boarding parties, and became a man before the mast instead of a mere deck boy. As his muscles grew to be slender, sinewy masses of speed and power, he also got renown as a skilled fencer, if only a mediocre brawler. With an undying thirst for knowledge about the workings of a ship, he soon became the go-to-guy whenever a simple repair or the like was required. And he never once forgot Elizabeth.<br/><br/>As the years went by, he made a point of always standing by her side in order to make her a full-fledged member of the crew - while still making sure she was respected as a girl as well as a crew member. Arranging for her privacy as well as her combat training, Hans keeps defending her interests even at the cost of his relationship with the rest of the crew. however, his dilligence and ability to reason means that the small faction opposing him are always kept in check by the people who like him. In this manner, he also becomes skilled in diplomatic balancing acts, his only failure being defusing his shipmate's comments about how he and Elizabeth are inseperable, causing more than a few akward situations for him. The fact that both of them grow is not helping much, however, and by the time he turns fifteen, he's beginning to grow conflicted. What does he really think of the girl? And more to the point, what did she think of him?