# **TRUE PIECE**
## **Chapter 1: Inside and Outside the Fridge**
The first thing Eullian Hound learned about the sea was that it had no favorite side.
It drowned pirates.
It drowned Marines.
It drowned children who had never chosen either.
The second thing he learned was that a refrigerator could float if enough air remained trapped inside it.
The third was that floating did not mean floating comfortably.
Eullian had spent two days folded between three jars of spoiled pickles, a cracked shelf, and a bottle of milk that had attacked his nose long before the sea attacked the door. The latch was broken, leaving a narrow gap for air, but every wave slammed it shut again.
He had survived.
His dignity had not.
Now the refrigerator leaned left as it drifted toward the burning harbor of Brinehook Island.
Inside, Eullian slept with his knees against his chest.
Outside, men were killing one another over fish.
Not treasure.
Not a legendary weapon.
Not a throne.
Fish.
Brinehook's fishermen had spent six days at sea. They had lost two boats to a storm, one woman to fever, and a fourteen-year-old deckhand to a snapped rope. The surviving crews returned with enough silverfin to feed the island for twelve days.
The Marines claimed half as emergency taxation.
The Red Jaw Pirates wanted all of it.
The merchants had already tripled their prices.
By sunrise, hungry families were searching beneath market stalls for scales and discarded heads.
By noon, the harbor was on fire.
Captain Orlen Vask of the 18th Marine Branch stood on the courthouse balcony. His white coat had never touched honest dirt.
"Brinehook remains under government protection!"
Below him, three Marines dragged an old fisherman through the street.
His name was Daro Pell.
His crime was hiding two baskets of silverfin beneath his daughter's floorboards.
His daughter had four children.
Vask called it theft from the World Treasury.
The Red Jaw Pirates called it poor planning.
Their captain, Nella Rusk, sat on a barrel while her crew emptied nearby homes. She was broad-shouldered, red-haired, and missing the lower half of her left ear.
"Protection?" she shouted. "You taxed them before we robbed them! At least we're honest."
Her pirates laughed.
Two Marines almost did.
Vask's smile tightened.
"You are surrounded."
Nella looked around.
Thirty-one Marines blocked the northern road.
Twenty pirates held the docks.
Nearly four hundred civilians were trapped between them.
"No," Nella said. "They are."
That ended the laughter.
The people of Brinehook understood the arrangement.
The Marines would fire through civilians to kill pirates.
The pirates would hide among civilians to survive the Marines.
Each side would blame the other afterward.
The official truth would belong to whoever still possessed paper, uniforms, and enough frightened witnesses willing to repeat it.
Then the refrigerator struck the dock.
**BONG.**
Everyone turned.
It drifted backward, spun once, and struck again.
**BONG.**
A little girl beside an overturned produce cart stopped crying.
"Mom, the sea brought us a cupboard."
"It's a refrigerator."
"What's the difference?"
"A refrigerator is colder."
The door burst open.
Eullian Hound fell out face-first.
He struck the dock, rolled over a dead pirate, slid through fish blood, and stopped with his cheek against a Marine's boot.
Eullian opened one eye.
"Do you have a blanket?"
The Marine kicked him through a stack of fish crates.
Wood exploded.
Silverfin filled the air like shining rain.
Eullian disappeared beneath them.
Nella raised an eyebrow.
"That seemed unnecessary."
A hand emerged from the fish pile.
Eullian sat up with a silverfin balanced on his head. He was seventeen, lean, dark-haired, pale from cold, and wearing a faded blue shirt missing one sleeve.
He looked at the Marine.
"You're scared."
The Marine's face hardened. "What?"
"You kicked me before asking who I was. People do that when they're scared someone might notice."
The Marine drew his saber.
Eullian pointed at it.
"That is also scared."
The Marine lunged.
Eullian leaned aside and punched him once.
The breastplate folded inward.
The Marine crossed the dock, shattered a mooring post, and vanished into the harbor.
Silence spread through Brinehook.
Eullian stared at his knuckles.
"Ow."
The civilians looked at him differently now.
Not hopefully.
Hope was expensive.
They looked at him the way starving people looked at an unlocked pantry: with painful calculation.
Eullian noticed.
His grin faded.
He saw Daro bleeding beside the courthouse.
He saw pirates carrying food from homes that had almost none.
He saw Marines aiming rifles with children behind their targets.
He saw the little girl holding a rotten onion against her stomach because pretending it was food hurt less than admitting it was not.
Eullian did not understand taxes.
He did not know what a treasury was.
He once tried to navigate north by following whichever cloud looked most confident.
But sadness made sense to him.
Fear made sense.
The tiny movements people made before deciding whether they were allowed to survive made more sense to him than maps ever had.
The little girl looked up at him.
"Are you a pirate?"
"No."
"A Marine?"
"No."
"Then what are you?"
Eullian thought very hard.
It showed.
"I'm Eullian."
"That wasn't what I asked."
"Oh."
She pointed toward the armed men. "Whose side are you on?"
Eullian looked at the Marines.
Then the pirates.
Then the civilians trapped between them.
"The side that didn't bring swords."
Nella laughed.
"And what exactly do you plan to do, Refrigerator Boy? Keep everyone peaceful?"
Eullian's expression became strangely serious.
Not smarter.
Just completely honest.
"That's my dream."
The harbor quieted.
Eullian rubbed his freezing hands together.
"I know peace doesn't mean nobody fights. People get angry. People get scared. Sometimes bad people need to be hit very hard."
He glanced toward the Marine floating beside the shattered post.
"Sometimes accidentally too hard."
The little girl almost smiled.
"But strong people keep making weak people pay for fights they didn't start," Eullian continued. "Pirates do it. Marines do it. Kings probably do it. I haven't met a king, but they sound expensive."
No one laughed.
"I can't protect everybody at once," he said. "I'm not that big. I don't know every island. I can't even read most maps."
That admission carried no shame.
Only truth.
"But wherever I am, people should get to eat their own food. Children shouldn't have to stand between guns. Nobody should need permission to stay alive."
He smiled.
"So I'll keep the peace until I die."
Daro stared at him.
Eullian scratched his cheek.
"Not perfect peace. Perfect peace sounds impossible. And a little boring. Just enough peace for people to sleep, eat, laugh, and choose tomorrow for themselves."
His smile widened.
"And when I die, I'll try to fall on someone causing trouble."
For one breath, nobody in Brinehook knew whether to laugh, cheer, or call him an idiot.
He was an idiot.
He was also telling the truth.
Vask drew his pistol.
"You are interfering with lawful Marine authority."
Eullian pointed at Daro.
"Why is the lawful authority bleeding?"
"He resisted taxation."
"Was he bleeding before you taxed him?"
"That is irrelevant."
"No. It happened, so it is relevant."
Nella laughed again. "I like him."
Eullian turned toward her.
"You're worse."
Her laughter stopped.
"You steal because someone stronger stole from you first," Eullian said. "Then you found weaker people and decided hurting them counted as revenge."
Nella's remaining ear reddened.
Her crew shifted.
Eullian could misunderstand a sentence and understand the person saying it perfectly.
Nella drew a curved blade.
"You talk too much."
"I was trapped in a refrigerator for two days."
"That explains nothing."
"I had time to think."
"It did not help."
"That happens."
Vask fired.
Eullian turned too late.
The bullet struck his left shoulder.
He spun and dropped to one knee.
Blood ran down his arm.
"Oh," he said. "Guns are faster when you aren't looking."
Eullian possessed monstrous strength, frightening speed, and a body durable enough to survive impacts that shattered stone.
He had no Devil Fruit.
Bullets did not bounce off him.
Blades opened him.
Cold slowed him.
Hunger weakened him.
Worst of all, his fighting instincts could be distracted by anyone suffering nearby.
Vask fired again.
This time Eullian moved.
He crossed the dock before the second gunshot finished echoing and landed on the courthouse balcony hard enough to crack it.
Vask widened his eyes.
Eullian struck him with an open palm.
The captain blasted through the courthouse doors, crossed the records chamber, and embedded himself in the wall behind his desk.
The building shuddered.
Eullian peered through the broken doorway.
"You're alive!"
Vask groaned.
"Good. I didn't know how hard your face was."
Nella attacked from behind.
Eullian heard the civilians shout and turned, but the cold had left his legs slower than his thoughts.
Her blade cut across his ribs.
Blood sprayed over the railing.
Eullian stumbled.
Nella slashed at his throat.
He ducked, caught her wrist, and drove his forehead into hers.
The balcony collapsed beneath them.
They crashed through the courthouse awning and struck the street.
Nella rolled first and swung again.
Eullian caught the flat of her blade between both palms.
The edge cut into his skin.
He twisted.
The sword snapped.
Nella stared at the broken weapon.
Eullian punched her in the stomach.
She crossed the harbor road, smashed through two confiscated fishing boats, and stopped inside a third.
Her crew froze.
Eullian swayed.
Blood ran from his shoulder, ribs, and hands. His fingers trembled from cold. His breathing had become ragged.
He could win this fight.
He could not keep winning forever.
More Marine boots thundered along the northern road.
Two Red Jaw ships waited beyond the harbor.
Brinehook was only one island.
Across the sea, other towns burned without anyone unusual falling from a refrigerator.
Eullian climbed onto Nella's abandoned barrel.
"Stop!"
Nobody obeyed.
He picked up the barrel and hurled it past the gathered fighters.
It tore through the mast of the nearest pirate ship.
Everyone stopped.
Eullian pointed toward the fish scattered across the dock.
"The people who caught those eat first."
A Marine officer raised his rifle.
Eullian pointed at him.
"You eat after them."
He pointed toward the pirates.
"You eat after him."
Nella lifted one weak finger from the wrecked boat.
"Why are we last?"
"Because you laughed more."
"That isn't law."
"It is now."
The little girl beside the cart began laughing.
One civilian joined her.
Then another.
It was not joyful laughter.
Not yet.
It was the shocked, dangerous sound people made when fear briefly forgot its job.
Eullian smiled down at them, bleeding onto the barrel.
"My name is Eullian Hound!"
No one had asked.
"I'm going to cross the whole sea!"
Daro stared at him.
"To find treasure?"
"No."
"To become famous?"
"No."
"Then why?"
Eullian looked at the burning harbor, the stolen food, the frightened soldiers, and the children waiting to learn which kind of cruelty would rule them next.
"I told you."
His smile returned.
"I'm going to keep the peace until I die."
Beyond Brinehook, Marine warships moved between islands.
Pirate fleets gathered beneath a hundred different flags.
Honest Marines protected villages under the orders of corrupt commanders.
Kind pirates fed one island with food stolen from another.
Merchants funded both sides.
Kings purchased cannons.
Rebels purchased graves.
Prison ships carried murderers beside people whose only crime was refusing to starve quietly.
Somewhere, men who had never smelled salt decided which islands deserved protection.
The sea had no favorite side.
Eullian Hound did.
He chose whoever had been forced beneath someone else's boot.
And for the first time that day, every armed person in Brinehook Harbor was more afraid of hurting the civilians than hiding behind them.