"Gum-Gum Homerun!"
"Typhoon Lash!"
"WATCH YOUR HEAD!"
"Jihahaha! Is that the best you—?!"
"LIGHTNING BOLT TEMPO!"
KEE-RACK!
"—GRAH!? Urgh… ack… alright… credit where it's due. That stung a bit. And more than that, it's pissed me off. So… congratulations, Straw Hats, you've made me decide to do the one thing I haven't had to do in twenty years."
"SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU SHITTY GOLDEN BASTARD! SKY WALK! MOUTON—! GAH!? WHAT THE— LET ME GO, YOU PIECE OF—!?"
CRUNCH!
"GAAAAGH!"
"I… am going to give you the courtesy… of actually putting some effort into crushing you all down into the size of a pebble. Honestly, you all should feel honored…"
A rumble, a heave, the earth itself crying out in tortured rage and agony.
"The last time I used this technique, it was to take care of a particularly stubborn member of Linlin's brood. Lion's Threat: Earth Bind."
"What the—ohfuckme EVERYONE MOVE, NOW!"
"No! Nonono! Guys! GUYS! GET OUT OF THERE!"
"DAMN IT, IT'S TOO THICK!"
"I CAN'T BREAK OUT!"
"OH, NOOOO!"
"SHIKI! GET BACK HERE!"
"How about… NOT ON YOUR LIFE, BRAT! NOW DO THE WORLD A FAVOR AND LET THE EARTH SWALLOW YOU AND YOUR DREAMS WITHOUT EVEN A TRACE! JIHAHAHA! JIIIIHAHAHA!"
"No… no… this… t-this can't…"
"Face reality, Miss Navigator. It has, and it is. Now… I suggest you think real hard about my proposal… and about what you really want right now."'
"You… you…"
"Think. Hard."
"…whatever I want?"
"Apart from that little stunt you pulled back in my palace? Yes."
"…alright. You leave the East Blue alone… and let my friends go."
"That's two wishes, Miss Navigator."
"Yeah, well… I'm a greedy bitch. And if my skills weren't worth that much, I wouldn't still be standing here. So now, you choose. Take it. Or. Leave it."
"…You drive a hard bargain. But your skills are not impressive enough to make me abandon twenty years of preparation. I will give you my word that I will not attack your home island, and I will even be generous and extend that promise to the rest of your former crew. But the rest of the East Blue… it burned my dreams twenty years ago, and now it burns in turn. Not even you can stop that."
Grinding teeth, pure frustration and rage. "F-Fine. Fine. You have a deal. Now let's go, a-and you'll let my crew go, right?"
"Heh. Exactly right. Buuuut, I would not have my newest crewmate think me without mercy. Or at least, completely without mercy. Here. I trust you know what to do with this?"
"I… yeah. Yeah, I do. Alright, just-just give me a second."
CLI—
SLAP! "—AKE UP, CROSS!"
"GAH!"
I shot upright, rubbing my stinging cheeks. "Ugh… Vivi, I'm not Usopp, and I'm not dying of hypothermia, what the heaaaargh?" My grumpy demand trailed off into a pained groan as the rest of me lodged their complaints all at once.
"Oi, don't remind me of that, especially not now," a nasally voice—Usopp's, I think, though the ringing and Doppler effect in my ears made that hard to tell—grumbled from nearby.
"Under normal circumstances, I'd want to hear that story, but right now we have bigger questions to handle," came a cooler female voice from beside me.
I blinked and looked towards the voice, the blur that was its source slowly coming into focus. "Robin…?"
"The same," Robin answered, her slightly fuzzy arm pointing over my shoulder. "Can you tell us what we just pulled you out of?"
Still dizzy as all get-out, I turned my head to follow her finger, and was confronted with the awe-inspiring sight of a titanic spiral pillar… of…
I clenched my eyes shut and clapped a hand to my throbbing forehead as it all came rushing back to me at once. "Oh damn it all to hell…" I hissed under my breath.
When I reopened my eyes, I was finally able to see the details that had escaped me just moments before.
I could see the annihilated and still-smouldering ruins that were all that was left of the village.
Of how deep a crater we were in at the bottom.
Of the rest of my friends being slowly, painstakingly drawn out of the pillar we'd all been entombed in.
And I became painfully, agonizingly aware of who was missing.
The last of the cobwebs faded from my mind, the last pieces of the utter clownstomping we'd been handed slotted into places, and I looked at Robin in despair.
"Shiki?" I croaked. "Nami?"
"They were long gone long before we got here," Franky's voice said from a short distance away. "We found out about his plans to level the village a second after Vivi left, and by then, we couldn't catch up in time to tell her. We took the time to put a plan together with Bartolomeo, but the second we saw Shiki about to face you guys, we were gone. We met Vivi halfway, and when we actually got here…"
"What the hell happened?!" Vivi cut in, gripping my shoulder and shaking me. Her expression cycled through emotion after emotion, and, dizzy as I still was, I had no chance to process them. "I-I thought you said, I thought—!"
"We weren't ready."
It said a damn lot that it was Luffy who growled out what we were all thinking.
"We underestimated him, we were all still tired, and we got our asses kicked because of it," Luffy bluntly summarized.
"It didn't help that he provoked us the way he did," Sanji literally fumed as he burned his way through his second cigarette since we'd woken up. "Objectifying Nami-swan and making himself out to be the victim… I want to explode just thinking about it. Grrrgh." Growling, he massaged his forehead. "Which, in retrospect, is exactly what he was going for."
"An-zzt-d it sure as he-kchk-ll didn't help that he went s-bzz-traight for Soundbite first," Su provided, her voice shaky and staticky. Soundbite was on her back, spiderweb cracks decorating his shell.
I did a bit of a double-take at seeing Soundbite somewhere other than on my shoulder, but the fact that our non-human crew members were talking told me it wasn't serious and kept me calm.
"I'll patch him up as soon as my body lets me," Chopper sighed from nearby, no doubt having noticed all the looking about I'd done. "I knew I was pushing myself too hard… and if I try anything else now, I don't know if my body will be able to keep up as long as I need it to."
"If Soundbite isn't in any danger, then that's fine," Luffy said, his hat shadowing his eyes as he surveyed the mountain, the ruins, and the state of his crew. "But Shiki is going to pay for this. Guards."
"Sir!" the five Dugongs saluted immediately.
"Take Merry and go ahead of us to the Sunny. As soon as we're ready to fight, we're going to Coup de Burst straight up to Shiki's palace. Make sure he's ready."
"Aye-a-zzt!-ye!" four of them barked, Boss already moving to grab Merry. The elder Dugong paused, though, when Donny spoke up, his expression clearly hesitant.
"A-Actually… I, uh…" Donny slowly withdrew a seashell from behind his back, a gold and somewhat ornate one. "I-I was look-krcht!-ng around once I got out and found th-zzt!-is. I… think it's a Tone Dial, but… I don't remember us hav-eeng!-ing one like this. Do… Do you guys think…?"
The discomfort on his face slowly transmitted to the rest of us, and we all stared at the shell with something approaching existential dread.
"Should… Should we listen to it?" Conis asked uncertainly.
"It could just be another attempt by Shiki to make us go out of our minds again," Vivi reasoned, slipping out one of her Cutters. "Maybe we should…?"
"Here, give it to me," Robin prompted, materializing an arm in front of Donny and gesturing invitingly. "I'll listen to it myself, and if it's not worth our time, I'll crush it immediately."
Donny glanced at Luffy. Our captain nodded, and the dugong handed off the Dial to her, new arms swiftly carrying it out of earshot.
Robin closed her eyes in concentration, and a second later, they snapped open, framed by a suddenly deathly pale face. "It's not Shiki."
"Are you—?"
"It's not Shiki," she repeated, purely desperate… I don't even know what emotion was etched on her face. The Dial soared back out of the bushes, and she caught it and played it in one smooth motion.
"Please forgive me for not being able to say farewell to you all directly."
Our hearts all practically stopped at Nami's voice coming from the shell, sounding more defeated and downtrodden than I'd ever heard her before.
And that 'stop' went outright frozen for me as she continued to speak, her every word just making… everything so very, very much worse.
~o~
With a grimace, eyes closed, Nami allowed the Tone Dial to fall from her grasp and settle on the altered earth below.
"Very good," Shiki sneered. "Now, let us be going. The ceremony will begin soon."
Nami so wanted to pin the bastard to the nearest intact wall, be it with her glare or her Eisen Tempo or even a physical bolt of lightning, but at the moment, that wasn't an option. As such, she settled for dredging up her memories of Arlong and giving the lion-bastard the least-obviously stiff nod she could manage. "Fine, let's go."
And so Nami started to march off in the direction the Shiki indicated—
"Wait."
And then froze as a very familiar voice spoke up, and both she and Shiki both turned their heads to face the source: a grim and gaunt goth, with her head bowed low and her expression shadowed by the… well, shadow of her umbrella.
"Perona?!" Nami gasped even as Shiki tilted his head curiously.
"So, you managed to survive the onslaught, hm?" the Float-human questioned. "What, are you looking for a round two or something? Fair warning." Three stones lifted off the ground to orbit above his palm. "I won't be quite so merciful with you as I was with my navigator's old crew."
Nami was about to either protest the threat or ask Perona what the hell she was thinking, but before she could do either…
"Will you allow me to join your crew?"
The navigator's brain stalled as the incongruent words hit her ears. "…what?" she whispered numbly.
Shiki, meanwhile, took the question much better. "Join me?" He leaned back in thought, a cloud of smoke spilling out of his mouth. "Hmm… well, your abilities are genuinely intriguing. But do you really expect me to believe that you, too, would so easily betray your crewmates? After you helped your friend… lose her way earlier at that?"
"N-No! No!" Nami hastily protested, shaking her head at her 'captain' before running to Perona's side, reaching out to her in desperation. "Perona, please, you don't have to—!"
SLAP!
Nami's words died in her throat, the cold and almost impersonal look that the Goth had shown her doing an even better job than the forceful strike that had knocked her hand away.
"'Have to'?" Perona repeated, her face and tone as expressionless as a statue. "Of course I do. I told you, remember? I am not, have never been, and never will be a part of your crew. The only reason I got on your ship was to find somewhere new I could live in luxury, and what do you know, I found it. Hell, I found my way onto the only hunk of rock that's not going to be burning in a week. Really, the only thing you should be asking is why I wouldn't want to join Shiki's crew, when the Straw Hats mean absolutely nothing to me."
"B-But…" Nami whispered numbly, her mind still playing catch-up. "Y-You're my friend…"
"Horo!" the ghost princess barked out a harsh laugh. "'Friend'?! Remind me, have I ever, even once, addressed you as my friend? Hm? Have I?"
The navigator tried to answer… but nothing came out.
"Thought not. And just to clarify things, let me tell you exactly why I hung out with you, even when I didn't think of you as a friend." Perona leaned in close, putting her scowl an inch from Nami's face. "You. Were. Convenient. A means to an end. And it would have been too much trouble to let you die while I was travelling with that crew. But now, I don't need them anymore, so now I don't need you. So, in short?"
Perona straightened up and adopted a most pleasant and innocent expression. "Thank you ever so much for helping me find a new home where I can live the rest of my days in peace and comfort." And then, just like that, all emotion fled. "Now please, leave me the hell alone."
Through it all, Shiki didn't move, not even when Perona looked him dead in the eye. He stared for several seconds, neither wavering, until finally, his face split into a grin.
"That was cold, girly," he remarked. "And I love it. Perona, was it? Welcome to my crew. You'll excuse me if I put your wish on hold until later. Now, if that's all, let's be going."
Perona nodded curtly and followed after him, making a point of bumping into Nami in the process. The navigator flinched and clutched at the struck shoulder as if it'd been hit much harder as she followed with a sad, sour expression on her face.
The action drew an inquisitive glance from Shiki, one that fell on the gauze wrapping the joint. "By the way, Miss Navigator, I noticed that you've been wearing that bandage all week. Did you contract that serious of an injury? I can have one of my doctors take a look at it."
Nami flinched again, her nails biting even harder into her shoulder. "No, it's not injured. It's just… not time yet."
Shiki cocked an eyebrow at the answer, but shrugged dismissively. "Whatever you say, Miss Navigator. Aaaanyways, you both go ahead, yeah? I'll be right behind you."
From their expressions, both women wanted to know why Shiki wanted to stay behind. But neither wanted to test their new captain's patience, and so trudged away.
Once they were past the intact section of the village and out of sight, Shiki's ever-present grin gained a particularly violent edge. "Should have thought things through a little bit longer, Miss Navigator," he whispered gleefully.
And so, with an almost dismissive flick of his hand, a veritable blast of earth erupted in front of the door to the bunker, which he'd torn open earlier.
Chuckling to himself, Shiki took to the air. "After all," he said. "Can't have a proper bloodbath without the slaughter."
A minute later, the Golden Lion landed next to his new crewmates. "Alright, all good. Let's go!"
So they went, Shiki hauling up a chunk of earth to transport them to their new home.
And as they rose to the air, Nami cast a final, mournful glance towards the monument her crew had been made into, and could only pray that everyone would understand the message she had left them.
~o~
A picture of grinding teeth, bleeding palms, and eyes reflecting every force of nature imaginable defined our crew as we listened to the tape.
Some of our reactions were more volatile than others: Chopper was twitching on his hooves, eyes flickering in and out of cyan madness; Conis had blood dripping from between her clenched fingers; and where Vivi's face was dead to the world, absent of all reaction, I could sense something swirling in the back of her mind, roiling off of her.
What that was, I didn't know. My mind was… busy.
"That's why…" Nami's voice choked out. "That's why I'm begging you to forgive me for—"
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?"
Everyone else flinched at the sudden, livid bellow Luffy let out, drowning out whatever the hell else Nami had been about to say.
And I… I didn't begrudge him. Because I… I just… I just couldn't. I-I literally couldn't.
For a few seconds, Luffy just stood there, snorting and growling as he glared bloody murder at the offending Dial. Until finally, something just snapped behind his eyes, and he spun on his heels, marching off.
Franky cast a worried look after Luffy, but then he shook his head and pointed at Robin. "Hey, play that again."
And that was when I snapped. "Do it without me," I hissed, fighting to keep my tone under control.
Usopp looked at me in surprise. "But, Cross, she was saying something at the end—!"
"I've heard enough," I bit out, daring anyone to dispute me.
If anybody wanted to, I didn't give them a chance. I just snatched Soundbite off of Su's back, slapped him onto my shoulder and stalked off, my teeth grinding like a chainsaw.
I just… it just… I could barely even think I was so… so…
No words. None. None.
We'd lost. Lost again. Lost so. Fucking. Badly.
And he hadn't even been trying. He ripped us apart.
Humiliated us. Laughed at us, like we were trash.
And then Nami.
Not only had he taken her…
But her voice was there. Summarizing it, emphasizing it.
Hammering. It. In.
Hammering in the fact that I had…
That we had…
That we'd…
We—!
"FUCK!"
SMASH!
I huffed and snarled as I came down from the peak of my unholy rage. My chest heaved and my throat ached from the roar I'd let loose, but I barely noticed as I yanked my foot out from the chunk of wall I'd demolished.
Soundbite eyed me warily, if still a bit dizzily. "That help? At all?"
I snorted derisively, my fingers twitching and jerking in my gauntlets. "No. And you know damn well the only thing that'll—!"
"GRAGH!"
S-SMASH!
I was cut off by a second roar of fury, one that was accompanied by two simultaneous crashes.
One source was obvious, Luffy withdrawing his arm from the rubble he'd just created, but the other was something of a surprise.
I looked at Zoro, standing in front of a mutilated track of land with all three of his swords drawn. His fists were strangling Shusui and Kitetsu, his teeth grinding into Wado, his body trembling with energy and emotions just waiting to be unleashed. Our eyes met…
And I realized that no, this wasn't a surprise. Rather, it was the only possible outcome.
And as the energy slowly drained from my body, and some of the edge on my emotions dulled, I knew there was only one way this could be done.
I huffed, taking my hat off to wipe the sweat from my brow. "…Captain."
Luffy snapped an immolating glare at me out of the corner of his eye. A glare I met without flinching.
"…I'm the tactician," I stated. "My job is to make the plans. And I can do that. I can give you a hundred and one different plans, right here, right now, but only you can tell us what direction we're headed. Only you can tell us our destination. So," I spread my arms out wide, indicating… everything around us. Everything that had happened. "What's the play?"
Luffy continued to stare at me, and without looking away, he slowly raised his hand and pointed at the island looming so high above us. "…I want," he whispered, honest to God murder in his voice. "To make him pay."
"Alright, then that's what we'll do…" I nodded slowly, the motion gaining momentum as I jammed my hat back into place, right way forward. "We'll make him pay."
Zoro snorted in agreement, finishing the knot of his bandana with an almost whip-like crack!. "Then let's get it done."
We made to go back to the crew—
FWOOM!
And we all came to a dead halt at the sudden and utterly incongruous blast of air that hit us. A surprise, yes, but when nothing else happened, we all brushed it off and continued on our way.
Nobody looked at us as we returned, because they were more concerned with the epicentre of the wave of air pressure.
With Princess Nefertari Vivi.
I gave her a once-over: hunched forward, hand clamped against her mouth, eyes screwed shut. Then suddenly they flew open, and I met the merciless steel in her gaze.
"…So," I asked as she straightened up and examined her hands in a whole new light. "How did it taste?"
Vivi clenched and unclenched her hands, as if to see if they still functioned properly. Satisfied, she snapped them into fists, giving me a determined nod.
"Delicious," she proudly declared.
Luffy's only response to that was a grave nod, following which he slowly panned his gaze over his crew, meeting their eyes one by one. He found exactly what he wanted and expected to see, and turned to face the continent that reigned over them all.
"No speeches," he stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "No waiting. No mercy. Let's go."
"Right," was our unanimous reply.
And that was all there was to be said on the matter.
-o-
Shiki the Golden Lion was on cloud nine in all but puffy white water. He had utterly devastated the crew of rookies that somehow thought that they stood a chance against him, conveniently ignoring the injuries that were loudly voicing their displeasure at their existence. He had his armies together, his macabre masterpiece was complete, and in only a matter of hours, his revenge, twenty years in the works, would begin. No force in Paradise could stop him now.
His eyes scanned the crews as they shuffled in and knelt, grinning as he took in each face. All of them were veteran Paradise pirates, save for one rookie crew. That they were formidable fighters was a given, but even a New World veteran like him couldn't help but be impressed at the act of getting away with attacking a Celestial Dragon. Nobody had ever done that publicly before, and when he thought back to his equally unprecedented feat of escaping from Impel Down… well, an exception had to be made.
As the crews continued to file in, he gave a cursory scan of his monitors. His newest recruit, Perona, was lying in a four-poster bed that matched the decor of her luxurious pink-and-black room, her face pulled wide in a grin as she rolled around, trying to get comfortable. The village was completely in ruins; only the visual snail watching had survived the carnage. The beasts were as savage as ever, and the ceremonial hall was filling up. Perfect.
Shiki observed as the last of the crews, the Barto Club Pirates, passed him with respectful nods that the captain somehow managed to make look crass. But he brushed it off; for allies as valuable as him, he was willing to overlook some eccentricities.
More importantly, now… now was the start of the age of his glorious—!
Shiki's grin dropped into an irritated glower as something caught his eye on another of the monitors: an incongruous lump of red on one of the Daft Green trees. The pieces put themselves together in his mind as fast as blinking.
"Damn it all," he growled to himself, striding down from his throne in an irritated huff, the underlings in the immediate area quailing away.
SQUEEK, SQUONK SQUEEK SQU-WONK!
Even the heavily bandaged Doctor Indigo stopped short after running all the way to see him. The imposing clown shifted uncomfortably on his rubbery shoes, his eyes darting back and forth in the gap in the gauze that was all but his second face. Finally, he lifted his finger up, took a deep breath—
"Don't bother, I'm already aware," Shiki said before Indigo could get the words out, gliding past him.
The chemist blinked, eyes tracking his commander as he stalked off. Once Shiki was out of sight, and with no retaliation coming, the doctor mentally shrugged and squeaked off to finish his preparations for the main event.
Unseen to anyone, on her screen, Perona's rolling had escalated into tossing and turning, and then into an outright fit. The ghost-ruler was shaking her head and rapping her knuckles against her skull, eyes scrunched shut and teeth grinding, rocking back and forth on crossed legs. She even appeared to be speaking, snarling at first, then screaming, but the lack of audio made it impossible to tell what. Comfort, at this point, was out of the question.
Finally, Perona's body snapped ramrod straight, muscles trembling as she loosed what could only be a blood-curdling shriek. White swirled into the video, and a second later, it snapped to static.
-o-
While Nami wasn't sure she'd ever truly forgive Kalifa for what she'd done to her crew, she had to admit that she owed the assassin at least one. If it weren't for the soap-based change in demeanour the assassin had inadvertently inflicted, it would be close to impossible for her to use her iron clouds to strap bundles of dynamite to the odious Daft Green trees surrounding the palace without slowing her Waver. Such was her pace that she had less than a minute's work left before she'd be able to take out Shiki's sole defence against his own creations with just one zap of lightning.
The only impediment to her work was the rancid smell of the trees. She had brought along a makeshift gas mask in the form of a wet cloth tied around the bottom of her face, but it had long since proven utterly inadequate for the task. But she'd be done soon, and then—
CRASH!
"Aaaaghh…"
A tortured groan crawled out of Nami's throat, her mind struggling to process what the hell had just happened to her. One second, she'd been speeding along on her Waver, preparing the last touches to bring Shiki's world crashing down around his head, and the next—now—she was lying face-down in the snow, her entire body screaming in pain. Obviously, something had happened in between, but damn if she knew what.
Moving slowly in an attempt to avoid aggravating her injuries any further, Nami pushed herself to her hands and knees and tried to find her Waver so that she could get back to work!
"…ah," Nami squeaked out, her brain stalling at the utterly impossible sight before her eyes.
Her Waver, Nami's Waver, her means of transportation, of tearing free across the waves without pause or hesitation, had just been destroyed.
Well, that was probably something of an exaggeration; the body was mostly intact, but the whole front wheel and the steering mechanism were straight-up gone. Ripped out of their frame, and a good chunk of the prow of her Waver with it. It wasn't irreparable damage, but that didn't help her when she needed it right this minute.
"Wh-What the hell…?" Nami breathed, weakly reaching out to her devastated possessions. "How did this—?"
"You have been insulting me without pause for seven days now, Miss Navigator."
Nami's blood, and all the rest of her, froze. It was with an almost corpse-like stiffness that she craned her head upward and stared evil in the eye.
"And the most infuriating part is these little stunts," Shiki continued, his deceptively calm tone betrayed a twitching, too-tight smile. "This is pushing my tolerance to the breaking point. I am a very patient man, Miss Navigator. And trust me…"
Trailing off, Shiki raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
SMASH!
A jaw rose from the earth and crunched down on the Waver's hull. Nami's heart twisted as the fangs did their work, grinding the craft into an unrecognizable mass of splinters. At least the glimpses she kept seeing of the bulb holding the Jet Dial gave her hope that her precious possession was salvageable.
But with Shiki still looming over her and a few twitches away from snapping and gutting Nami like a trout, that hope was small and not terribly comforting.
"Trust me, Miss Navigator," Shiki grimly repeated. "You do not want to see a very patient man lose that patience. So." The lion-man cracked his knuckles, one by one, his glare never leaving the younger woman. "Why don't you go ahead and tell me… just what the hell you think you were doing. And then, maybe, I won't break your legs, hm?"
Nami remained on her knees a little longer, letting the promise of pain and most likely death Shiki had delivered sink in. She considered what would happen to her if she did what she really, really wanted to do.
And then, she got to her feet, Clima-Tact still in hand and forming a crackling boa around her neck, and did exactly what she really, really wanted to do.
"What I was doing," Nami croaked, eyes drawn in grim determination. "And what I'm still planning on doing… is sending your twisted dreams crashing and burning to the bottom of the sea, where they belong, and then I'm going back to my crew." The final word was emphasized by a stray bolt of lightning from her Eisen Tempo, charring a chunk out of a nearby Daft Green.
Shiki huffed irritably at the decidedly unsatisfactory answer and raised his hand. But before he could gesture and mutilate his 'wayward' crewmate, he noticed something. Due to the intensification of Nami's lightning, she was better illuminated in the evening gloom, and Shiki's eyes were able to discern something new about her: her shoulder was no longer bandaged. And even with anger clouding his vision, Shiki found himself curious about the newly exposed flesh. Or rather, what that flesh bore.
Shiki vaguely knew of the tattoo on her shoulder. It was prominently displayed on her wanted poster, and he thought he may have caught her mentioning the motivation behind it on the SBS once or twice. But now, the once-simple pinwheel-and-tangerine combination had been dramatically changed. While the original tattoo was still in place, the ink that formed one of the larger arms of the pinwheel now coursed down her arm, covering a mess of deep, deep scars that he only saw so quickly thanks to his experience on the seas.
And the picture that the ink formed was one of a writhing, swirling storm. Tongues of lightning, wind, and clouds swirled among a multitude of dark-blue to grey-black spiral maelstroms, tinged and outlined in electric-yellow, coursing all the way down to her elbow.
The Golden Lion slowly turned his gaze back to her eyes. Eyes filled with something he dreaded recognizing. "You seem to have fully embraced your epithet, Weather Witch," he observed.
A flicker of eyes followed his stare, and then it was back to glaring at him. "My new tattoo, you mean?"
"Yesss," he drew out. "I can understand covering up such nasty scarring as that with something more… personal, I suppose… but I can't help but feel this goes beyond that. Or am I wrong?"
Nami's head bowed slightly, her bangs casting a shadow over her eyes. "…My mother. She… She was a Marine. Wonderful, kind, loving… and the strongest, bravest woman I've ever known. And I owe everything of who I am… to her. But recently… I decided… I'm going to take a little bit more… like the greedy pirate I am."
Nami's eyes snapped up, and Shiki could no longer downplay or deny the unmitigated fury crackling in her gaze. "I'm not just satisfied with her will to live anymore…" she breathed. "I'm taking up her will to fight. This tattoo represents my decision: From here on out, I am going to live the way she lived… and die the way she died. Never back down, and never surrender…"
The Weather Witch lashed her Clima-Tact out, and a barrage of lightning charred a line of blackened earth between herself and the Golden Lion.
"Not when everything you hold dear is on the line," she whispered, as much to herself as her enemy. "And especially not to someone like you."
For a solid minute, Shiki blankly stared at Nami before his face hardened into a mask of fury, his teeth bared in a snarl. "I severely underestimated you," he growled. "I crush the rest of your crew, I hold the lives of everyone dear to you in my hands, I overpower you in every conceivable way. And yet. You still fight. You never stopped fighting. It's clear that I've wasted my time trying to sway one with such a will. One such as you will never break, will never bow. Admirable, in a way. Truly strong female pirates are a rare thing nowadays. But still, a pity… If only you were the slightest bit weaker."
The Golden Lion's arm snapped skyward, and Nami could only watch in horror as a small mountain of dirt and rock ripped itself from the firmament and coalesced into a hovering ball, grinding against itself until it took shape as a single massive cone of stone, its point aimed directly at Nami.
"If only you'd broken like a good little girl," he rumbled, regret mixing with fury. "You might have lived a little longer."
Faced with her own impending doom, Nami's breath hitched, and for the briefest of moments, her mind reverted to her old mindset: a voice in the back of her skull screaming bloody murder at her to run, keep running and never stop, never look back, preserve her life.
And the moment Nami located where that voice was, she wrung its neck without a second thought.
The Weather Witch bared her teeth and spread her stance, spinning her Clima-Tact into a blur at her side. Her Eisen Tempo, all of it, began to glow.
"Never. Again," she swore, as much to herself as Shiki. "Now fry, you son of a—WHU-OAH!"
A sudden rush of… of something barreled through Nami's torso, comparable to what she assumed Luffy felt when someone punched him in the gut. Something you felt, but that didn't hurt. The force broke Nami's stance and concentration, loosening her grip on the Clima-Tact. It was a lapse of mere seconds.
"You're mine."
But unfortunately, as the pirate looming over her showed, those few seconds were the difference between life and death.
"Imperial Lion Talon," Shiki declared, and a sound of rushing earth reached her ears. She brought up her arms and staff to guard, praying she'd survive to counterattack, but though she heard a massive impact, she felt no pain.
"Hooooorooooo… missed me?…"
Oh, and her own voice was drifting through the air, something that made her blink in shock. And that was before she saw what looked for all the world like a floating bedsheet with concentric gray circles for eyes hovering right where Shiki's attack had ripped into the earth.
"Toooo sloooow, toooo sloooow," the bedsheet-thing taunted before drifting away.
"What the—YOU LITTLE BITCH!" Shiki roared, shooting into the air with an orbital belt of stone spikes. "YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST RUN AWAY FROM ME!? YOU GO WHERE I SAY YOU GO! GET BACK HERE!"
And before Nami could fully shake off her shock, Shiki the Golden Lion was out of sight, gallivanting off after the entity that despite looking nothing like her—!
The pieces clicked together, and Nami sucked in a ragged gasp. 'Stole the attention on me, looked like a ghost—!'
"Perona?"
An all-too-physical force slammed into her from behind, knocking her down to the ground hard enough to stun.
In those moments of stunned confusion, Nami found herself manhandled onto her back, staring up at a visage she barely recognized. Long, unstyled pink hair hung all around a face caked with running makeup, a ragged cloak draped around her as a makeshift defence against the Daft Green. Her eyes were wide, vessels peeking in at the corners, and her lips were spread to show teeth audibly grinding together. Perhaps most worryingly, the cloak and the flesh alike were rippling with half-formed Hollow bodies, roiling and twisting over each other.
"P-Perona?" the navigator repeated, confusion warring with concern.
"Why?" the Hollow-girl gasped in a—ironically—hollow tone.
When, after a few seconds, the non-sequitur failed to get a follow-up, Nami swallowed uncomfortably. "Wh-What are you—?"
Suddenly and without warning, something snapped behind Perona's eyes, and Nami came to the sobering conclusion that she may have fucked up.
"WHY!?" Perona outright shrieked at banshee-levels of volume, raising her fist and trying to slam it down on Nami's head. Of course, coming from an unathletic teenager half Nami's size, it was comically easy to block, but the next blows compensated for volume. "WHY, WHY, WHY!?" she screeched, over and over again, each word punctuated by another attack.
"Wha—Perona!" Nami yelped, squirming uncomfortably under the feeble punches. "What the hell are you—!?"
"WHY!?" Another ear-rending wail, only this time Perona raised her arms into the air, a roiling, screaming ball of malformed ectoplasm materializing between her clawed fingers.
The Straw Hat's eyes shot wide open in panic, and it was only years of cat-thievery that granted Nami the dexterity she needed to squirm out from under her aggressor and slip away. And none too soon, as the Hollow-whatever literally splashed against where she'd been barely a second later.
"What the hell, Perona!?" Nami demanded, opening her mouth to lambast the ghost girl for the blatant attempt on her life. The tirade promptly died in her throat when Perona conjured three more of the Hollow-things.
"WHY!?"
Nami dove for the nearest Daft Green, biting back a curse. The ecto-manace's grasping, wailing embrace fell on bare ground, while the sheer stench of the tree, combined with her terror and confusion, shaved away the last of Nami's patience.
"Why what!?" she demanded, her voice dripping with frustration.
"WHY DOES IT HURT SO BAD?" Perona shrieked back, and with that admission, everything seemed to freeze.
Slowly, fearful of another attack, Nami stepped out from behind her cover and beheld Perona standing still, eyes wide, staring at nothing, a hand clutching her collar in a white-knuckled grip.
"Why does it hurt?" Perona repeated, her voice raspy from her earlier shrieking. It was unclear if she was talking to or talking at Nami. "Why do I feel so bad? Why does it feel like I just got stabbed, like I want to throw up, like I want to scream and scream and scream and never stop?"
"Perona…"
Nami took a hesitant step towards the Hollow-girl, but Perona snapped her gaze up, locking the navigator in place. Only this time, it wasn't the fear of the rage in her eyes.
This time, it was because she recognized the abject terror tearing at the Ghost Princess's soul.
"Oh, Perona…" Nami breathed, sympathy flooding her voice.
"Why, why… WHY!?" And then, out of nowhere, Perona let out an agonized shriek and collapsed to her knees, clutching her head. "WHY DID IT HURT WHEN I TOLD YOU TO GO AWAY?! WHY DOES IT HURT WHENEVER I THINK ABOUT HOW YOU LOOKED AT ME?! WHY DID IT HURT WHEN I REALIZED THAT SHIKI ONLY FOUND US BECAUSE ONE OF HIS SNAILS SAW MY HOLLOW PLAYING WITH XIAO!"
More Hollows bubbled out from Perona's body—and yes, 'bubbled' was indeed the right word. Some were happy and giggling, others were sad, or angry, or wearing expressions that couldn't even be identified. And Nami knew how to read expressions.
"WHY DID I GO OUT OF MY WAY TO TELL THE VILLAGERS TO GET OUT OF THE BUNKER BEFORE SHIKI COULD KILL THEM ALL!?" the girl sobbed, terror wracking her slim frame. "WHY DID I LEAVE THE LAP OF LUXURY AND SECURITY, LEAVE EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WANTED, TO STEAL SHIKI'S ATTENTION AWAY FROM YOU?!"
The Hollows bubbling from Perona suddenly swelled, and Nami had a mere second in which to yelp and dive back behind the Daft Greens before the Hollows exploded off of Perona. By some miracle, none of them passed through Nami's hiding spot.
"WHY DID IT HURT WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT HOW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE?" Perona wailed. "WHY DID I RISK MY LIFE TO COME OUT HERE AND SAVE YOU?"
Risking a peek around the vines, Nami gaped. The Hollows were now flowing out of Perona in outright streams, forming currents of ghosts that giggled and sobbed and made all sorts of other noises as they circled around her.
"WHY DO I CARE ABOUT YOU GETTING KILLED?"
It was like a bomb went off in Nami's mind. She wasn't getting Hollowed because Perona wasn't letting that happen. Even in the throes of a panic-fueled meltdown, she didn't want to hurt Nami.
Then, all of a sudden, the Hollows dispersed, Perona going from shouting down to a broken croak, her head cradled in her hands.
"Why… Why does it hurt… like when they took away Bearsy… and he stopped playing with me…?" she wept weakly. "Why do I care… about something that… that isn't me?"
This was the opportunity she'd been waiting for. Nami exited her shelter and walked up to Perona, her mind's eye reflecting a dusty road on her home island and a phantom pain in the long-healed scar on her shoulder. She didn't have her captain's hat, but she knew what to do.
"Because."
Nami sank to her knees in front of Perona and gently drew the girl into a hug, pressing the Hollow-teen's face into her shoulder.
"We're friends."
And with that, the last vestiges of Perona's composure imploded, and she wept into Nami's shoulder with abandon, clinging to her like she was her last lifeline left in the world. A comparison that was a bit too close to reality for comfort, but there it was.
After several minutes, Perona's coughing sobs subsided into wet sniffling.
"I know exactly how you feel, Perona," Nami whispered comfortingly. "I know what you're going through. I know how scary it is. And I promise, I'll help you understand it all. But… we'll do it later. For right now…" The navigator leaned back and gave Perona a conspiratorial smirk. "Think you're feeling good enough to help me blast these Daft Greens to kingdom come, and Shiki's reign of terror along with them?"
"I'm thinking…" interrupted a most unwelcome voice, accompanied by the most unwelcome occurrence of a steel collar flying out of nowhere and clamping shut on Perona's neck. She immediately collapsed with barely a panicked wheeze, once more leaving Nami standing alone against the monster.
"Not," Shiki finished, his wide grin twitching some. "Perona, baby, you lied to my face. You told me that you had no attachment to the Straw Hat Pirates."
The Hollow-girl didn't respond, too busy trembling on the ground in a fetal position.
Satisfied, Shiki turned back to Nami, savouring the trembling the navigator was unable to… suppress… wait a minute. That wasn't fear.
Shiki's sadistic, furious grin grew even more as he put the pieces together.
"You know something, girls?" he remarked, one hand already gesturing and forming constructs out of the snow. "The logical side of my mind is practically screaming that I should just kill you now myself. It would be so easy, just a quick couple of slashes, and it would be done. But no… as much as I should do that, that's too fast and too merciful when you've forced me to expend this much of my energy! After all, there's quite a bit of tradition in piracy! Every crime has its punishment! And the crime here, whose punishment is very well-known…"
Cackling madly, Shiki shot his hands forward.
"IS MUTINY!"
Before either woman could react, the snow rose up, wrapped around them, and formed icy shackles around their wrists—
SNAP!
"ARGH!"/ "YEARGH!"
And then the women screamed in agony when the chains wrenched their arms out—nearly to the point of dislocating their shoulders—and bound them spread-eagled against opposite sides of the nearest Daft Green trunk.
"You two will remain in these bindings for what little remains of your lives. I'm going to leave you here, and soon some of my men will be here to keep an eye on you while you succumb to the cold." Shiki removed a gas mask from his jacket and slipped it over his face. He then rammed the nearest Daft Green with his fist, causing the off-colour vegetation to let loose a wispy cloud of green spores.
Spores that Nami and Perona couldn't help but inhale, which caused their hacking and wheezing to intensify as green bruises started to spread on their skin.
"And the Daft Green, whose potency you really shouldn't have underestimated." Shiki's sneer was obvious, even beneath his mask. "You will die slowly and painfully. And when life leaves your eyes, I am going to broadcast your lifeless visages to the entire world. Your loved ones will sob… and the Navy will realize how much of a favour I am doing for them. They'll realize how much better things will be when the world is under my control."
"G-g-grghk…" Nami choked out around her panicking respiratory system, shooting a bloodthirsty and bloodshot glare at the Golden Lion. "You… won't… win."
"Ahhh, but don't you see?" Shiki the Golden Lion spread his arms, indicating the white-washed hell around them. "I already have…"
He then floated in close and shoved his gas mask right up to her face.
"Baby. Girl."
Snarling, Nami attempted to lunge at Shiki, which in practice meant she tried to bite his nose off, but Shiki merely floated away and then back to his palace, cackling all the way.
Her vision increasingly blurry, the navigator stared after him until finally she no longer had the energy to hold up her head. "…he's dead once Luffy gets his hands on him…" she whispered to herself.
"But… what about… us?" Perona asked weakly.
To that… Nami had no response. She could only let her eyes slide shut in defeat, hoping beyond all hope that they'd come for her soon.
…no. No, not hoping, not hope.
They would come. She knew they would.
They'd come, because… because they had to.
They had to…
-o-
Near the highest point of Marineford, the Fleet Admiral sat sequestered in his office. He had sent out all the necessary orders, and mobilization was proceeding as quickly as possible. That left him only one thing to do.
"Shouldn't this be the part where you give a grand speech to inspire the Navy to defend the East Blue with their lives?" Tsuru asked quietly, sitting across from the Fleet Admiral alongside Garp.
"If I could do so without sounding hollow, I would," Sengoku replied, equal parts tired and bitter as he poured cups of sake for the three of them. "But Onigumo's words are still fresh in the world's memory. This may be the most righteous cause that the Marines have taken up in years, but there is no good way left to say 'serve Justice' or 'fulfill your duty' without sounding callous."
Tsuru's expression softened slightly.
"What about, eh…" Garp swirled his cup, frowning in thought. "I 'unno, talk about how we already beat him twenty years ago—!"
"And then, less than two years into his sentence in the until-then inescapable gaol, he broke out, picked right back up where he left off and put us in the position we're in today," Sengoku smoothly finished.
Garp briefly mulled that over before wincing sympathetically. "Eesh, when you put it that way, hand me the—"
Wordlessly, Sengoku handed the Vice Admiral the bottle, which Garp began chugging.
While Garp conducted that assault on his liver, Tsuru leaned back and reflected on the orders that the Navy had executed over the past week. Briefly, briefly, she toyed with throwing it back in Sengoku's face, but just as quickly dismissed the notion. Both because she recognized how callous it would be, given the situation, and because, as much as she hated to admit it, she knew that the Fleet Admiral's orders were the right ones.
The entire week after the Straw Hats had been defeated for the first time, there was little that the Navy could do. The location of Shiki's base was unknown, except for the fact that it was hidden somewhere in the sky, out of the Navy's reach. And with everything that had happened to the Navy during and since the disaster at Enies Lobby, they simply didn't have the resources to spare to seek out such a place, let alone destroy it.
And since they had only pieced together the enemy's plan earlier that day, their only option was to start evacuating civilians where they could and batten down the hatches where they couldn't. Anything else meant leaving entire islands undefended or stringing out the entire Navy to be defeated in detail. At least this plan meant they could concentrate their forces and maybe launch a counterattack.
Another idea flitted through her mind: this might be an opportunity to gently probe her friends about the possibility of joining the Masons. But that notion was dismissed as well, if only because such a tactic was guaranteed to leave an irrevocably bad taste in her mouth.
Which meant she was back to waiting for something to change. At least the wait proved brief.
"Don don—Puru—KA-LICK!"
After a moment's silence, Sengoku asked wearily, "It's time?"
"Yes, sir, the snails just started ringing," the soldier on the other end confirmed, the snail mirroring his grave expression. "Your orders?"
"Put them on the screens," Sengoku groaned tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Whatever comes to pass, we will not be ignorant of the threat we face."
The snail nodded in confirmation before the other side hung up.
With one final, colossal gulp, Garp drained the last of the sake and carelessly tossed the bottle aside. "Well, let's go out and face the music," he growled.
And with that, the three stood up and moved to Marineford's highest balcony, looking down over HQ's main plaza. More specifically, they were looking down at the trio of titanic screens that had been erected on the masts of the warships in harbour, and watched along with the rest of Marineford's standing forces for the broadcast about to play for the whole.
It wasn't long before the screens lit up and the broadcast began. On screen was a swiftly moving shot that soared above the churning sea. The snail was moving fast, headed for a tower of stone that pierced the clouds, and upon reaching said pillar, the view panned around the pillar as it circled upward.
Upon the pillar, a thriving torrent of humanity, easily numbering in the thousands, was climbing the tower via a path winding around the stone. And from the generally rough appearance, the weapons they carried, and just the demeanour of strength and malice they all shared, there was only one conclusion that could be drawn.
"Pirates," Tsuru bit out, her wrinkled knuckles whitening on the balcony railing. "A traditional army, to go with the bioweapons he's already bred. That bastard… he's truly hellbent on world domination, isn't he?"
"And he's put together the perfect team for it, too," Garp groused, leaning forward. "I recognize some of these faces. 'Blueblood' Bourgeois Benjamin, worth ฿68 Million, Captain of the Esquire Pirates. Tre 'Triple-Tap' Timothy, ฿75 Million, Captain of the Dead-Eye Pirates. Avery 'Big Ben' Everie, ฿85 Million, Captain of the Nevermore Pirates." Garp growled, eyes narrowing. "And they all have their crews with them. Not a person below ฿50 Million, and not a crew with fewer than a hundred members. He's gotten nearly all of Paradise's criminal underworld under his flag!"
The analysis, good as it was, missed one detail, a detail that nearly had Sengoku glowing. "The way they're wearing their coats," he ground out, the balcony slowly splintering under his fingers. "That's not a coincidence, is it?"
"Considering how they're all wearing the same thing and the last time I saw Bourgeois, he was wearing an actual royal cape?" Tsuru remarked. "Not a chance in hell."
The only response Sengoku had for that was a grunt of annoyance.
-o-
Apparently done taking in the rising army, the camera view suddenly ceased its circling and instead swung upward, breaking through the cloud cover and giving the world a view of the bottoms of the floating biomes that composed Merveille.
Even in this view, the looming shadow of the central fortress, upon which Shiki's palace was housed, dominated. One by one, crew by crew, the army of pirates marched up and into the central palace, entering via what appeared to be some sort of dock carved into the bottom of the island, which connected the island to the pillar.
The view flew up, around and over the edge of the island, providing the world with a head-on view of Shiki's golden palace, which was only emphasized by the camera swooping straight down the middle of the palace.
"Tsk, damn bastard," Red-Leg Zeff bit out. Though his scowling gaze was focused on the video screen, his hands didn't stop in their work. "Taunting us this much, this is insufferable… Salt!" Zeff snapped his hand up and caught the shaker that flew at him, laid out a layer of the preservative on the lunch he'd prepared, then boxed it up and passed it on to be stored with the other lunches he'd completed. "He never showed off like this before, but now that he has an audience, he's putting on a show for the whole damn world! That damn—Powder!"
Zeff held his hand out again, and he nodded when something was slapped into his palm… before glowering as he realized what he'd been handed.
"I SAID POWDER, NOT PEPPER!" Zeff roared, flinging the grinder back at the hapless cook who'd tossed it at him. Hissing irritably, he went to work cleaning out the gun he'd almost seasoned. "Morons."
The proper container came into his grasp, along with an excuse. "Sorry, Owner Zeff! We've never mixed cooking and fighting this much before!"
Zeff harrumphed but gave no more chastisement; after all, this was the first time in eight years that he'd had to work on preparing food and weapons simultaneously himself. But people needed to eat, and those monster-things needed to eat, leading to they inevitably coming for them.
The remainder of the chefs in the Baratie may not have been going at the masterful speed that their boss was, but with clear evidence of war on the horizon, they were at least efficiently preparing boxed lunches and weapons. And not just for themselves. With how widespread the Baratie's reputation was, the whole crew expected an influx of refugees.
"I swear," Zeff growled to himself as he continued his work. "If anything, that golden bastard's taste has rotted over the past twenty years, and it was already garbage back then."
Meanwhile, the snail's point-of-view had parked itself on a vantage point that gave the world a top-down view of the palace's front facade. After a minute to take it in, the view abruptly shifted, the screen suddenly displaying what could only be a grand throne room in the Wano style, bordered on all sides by paper walls.
"What the—!?" Patty squawked in confusion.
Zeff, meanwhile, just gave the sight a disinterested grunt. "Must have shifted the broadcast to a different Vis-snail. Keep working."
"R-Right," Patty nodded shakily, resuming his work but never taking an eye off the screen.
The chef's attention to the screen intensified when the doors to the chamber slid open, and a number of imposing, jacketed individuals filed in. One by one, the pirates sat themselves on opposite ends of the room behind lap-tables that bore saucers, waiting for their host to arrive.
That scene triggered something in Zeff's memory, and he paused in his work when it came to him, his scowl deepening. And if that wasn't enough, his thoughts were also voiced by one of the ex-pirates on staff. "Is that… a sake ceremony? Why the hell—?"
"He thinks he's already won," Zeff interrupted, his gaze back on the rifle he had been checking over. "This is his victory lap. Showing every step of his conquest in detail, while we all sit back and watch, he takes the world all for himself. It'd almost be impressive, if he didn't make one colossal mistake."
All the cooks paused and looked at their head chef in confusion. "Uh, chief?" Carne raised a finger hesitantly. "I don't know if you've noticed, but he's got the whole damn Blue by the throat. We're all pretty damn licked."
"Yeah!" Patty nodded in agreement. "What's the mistake?!"
K-CHK!
Zeff shot a glare at his men out of the corner of his eye, placing down the firearm he'd just cocked. "He gave us a warning, you idiots. That means that even if we're going down, we're taking as many of his hellbeasts down with us as we can. Right, men?!"
The answer was instant and unanimous.
"AYE-AYE, CHEF ZEFF!" the Baratie roared as one, before returning to their work with an almost possessed fervour.
Zeff nodded at his boys' enthusiasm before getting back to his own task.
But not before a brief pause. A pause was brought about by Zeff contemplating the second mistake that Shiki had made.
Or… at least, he hoped it was a mistake that Shiki had made that would come back to bite him in the ass.
He really, really hoped so. For all of the East Blue's sake, if not the world's.
-o-
"Hurry! The caves are this way!"
Dashing ahead, Carrot, Pepper, and Onion very loudly led their parents and the rest of the inhabitants of Syrup Village to the hiding places on the island that they had identified while playing with the captain over the years. And they had sought out even more after the clash with the Black Cat Pirates, ensuring that they knew of every good hiding place that they could use in the unlikely case of another pirate attack. And if their parents had wondered about the practicality of such a thing before, they would never breathe a word against it after this day.
And speaking of impractical acts…
"I… I think the captain would understand if we stopped yelling about pirates coming after this," Onion said, furiously swiping at the fog that had misted up his glasses.
His companions looked at him, both with expressions of guilt on their faces.
"It's not the same as it was before… I'm scared. This…" Onion shook his head, unwilling to meet his friends' eyes. "This is what it's like to be facing a real pirate invasion."
"…You're right. The captain would understand," Pepper sighed, grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead.
"W-We'll find something else to—!" Carrot began.
"STOP TALKING NONSENSE!"
All three boys practically jumped out of their skin as Kaya—who'd been at their sides through the whole ordeal, in spite of Merry's fervent protests—shouted at them, the look on her face bringing back uncomfortable memories from when she'd faced down Kuro.
"Don't even think about stopping!" Kaya demanded. "And even if you do, then I'll just start doing it instead!"
"B-But Kaya!" Onion protested, his lip trembling miserably. "I-If we keep going—!"
"Boys," the heiress interrupted, dropping to her knees in front of them and putting her hands on the shoulders of the two on the outside, accompanied by a kind smile. "Stop. Think. You're forgetting why you do that. Why do you always tell everyone that pirates are coming, and why is it a good thing?"
The boys blinked incredulously. "A good…?" Carrot sniffed deeply, rubbing at his eyes. "Whaddaya mean?"
Kaya cocked her head to the side. "If you don't tell everyone that pirates are coming," she explained patiently. "Then how will they know when Usopp comes home?"
The Veggies froze in shock at Kaya's gentle reminder, and after a second to process it they teared up.
Kaya spread her arms further and drew the children into a hug, letting them cry into her shirt. "There there, it's alright, it's going to be alright."
The remaining villagers passing around them each spared an understanding glance as they hurried toward their shelters. Kaya, for her part, smiled down at the boys.
SLAM!
Until a noise made her snap up a glare at the image projected by the Transponder Snail the villagers had brought with them, so that they could keep a watch on the proceedings.
The pirates on screen had finished filing into the meeting room and had taken their seats, forming two lines, one of twenty-five and the other of twenty-six. All of them were perfectly motionless and patient, the image of surprising professional courtesy.
As such, the noise that had drawn Kaya's attention was the sound of the room's paper doors slamming open, and Shiki the Golden Lion showing himself in all of his glory.
Kaya looked at the face of the man who aimed to destroy her entire world, and her mind flashed back to what she saw on the face of the man she'd trusted for three years who shattered her heart and aimed to kill her, and then of the man she trusted for three days who had repaid that trust a thousand times over from what little she knew of him. With those thoughts in mind, she steeled her nerves and spoke:
"No matter what happens, don't forget this: That man…" Her lips twisted into a hateful sneer. "That monster is no pirate at all!"
-o-
All across the East Blue, panic, terror, and some measure of anger gripped the hearts of its citizens, and though he could not see it himself, Shiki knew it and savoured it. So many people hiding and huddling… it would only make it that much sweeter when they died. The fools who thought that they could escape on the seas, he would handle himself. One touch to the hull under the cover of night, and the next thing they knew, their precious shelter would be flotsam on the surface of his island, at the mercy of his living weapons.
And for those fools who dared to fight back… well. Go after them first to give them some illusion of saving their ocean that he could crush, or last to undermine what they were fighting for? Decisions, decisions…
Regardless of how low his estimation of the sea was, he figured that there was, at best, one island that would resist him to their dying breaths.
The said island was currently in the process of vindicating those expectations, though neither the inhabitants nor Shiki knew it.
"Y'know, after that Straw Hat kid clobbered Arlong," Genzo growled as he sharpened his cutlass. "I'd hoped we could take all the weapons we'd stockpiled to fight him and just let them collect dust. So much for that idea. Asshole."
"It's not like the rest of us are any happier about it," Nojiko sourly responded, checking over one of the components of the old Marine-issue rifle she was reassembling. "But if we have a choice this time, between dying on our terms or his…" Cranking the bolt back, she grimly smiled as the weapon chambered a bullet with a final CLICK! "Then I choose ours."
Genzo grunted in agreement at the statement.
"MY COMRADES!"
And then Shiki's almighty bellow interrupted what he was going to say and drew everyone's attention to the screen. The would-be pirate lord was grinning from ear to ear, his arms spread wide, and his chest puffed out as he lorded himself over the assembled pirates, who returned carefully restrained respect.
Taking the cigar from his mouth and waving it about, Shiki's grin took on a savage edge. "I would like to thank you all for joining me here tonight! Know that your presence here is the ultimate indicator of your skill and aptitude, and that you have been deemed worthy to live in the new world that we are about to create! I trust you all understand just how honoured you should feel!"
Placing the cigar back in his jaws, the Golden Lion took a heavy drag, his expression gaining a morose quality. "Now, I will not lie to you; I do not expect this to be an easy task. Even with the weapons at our disposal and our own considerable strength, world conquest is no laughing matter. Even by our most hopeful estimates, it will take anywhere from one to two years to properly bring the world to heel, and I can guarantee you there will be casualties. Not all of you here will live to see our glorious future come to fruition.
"BUT! What I can also promise is that no matter how long it takes, be it a year, be it two, or even be it two hundred, we! Will! Stand! VICTORIOUS!" Shiki shot his fist into the air. "WE ARE THE GOLDEN LION PIRATES, AND THIS WORLD SHALL KNEEL BEFORE US!"
With hate burning in their chests, the villagers of Cocoyashi watched the other pirates raise their fists into the air and roar their agreement, from the depths of their blackened, tar-stained hearts.
-o-
"Ah… but, do note one little thing." Out of the blue, Shiki's entire demeanour shifted, his head bowed and shadows falling over his eyes. "While under my command, I will allow you to commit any evil, perpetrate any blasphemy, and indulge in whatever atrocities you so desire… save for one. One single, simple act… whose sentence is immediate execution. This act…"
Shiki slowly raised his head and gave each and every captain before him a glare that spoke of nothing but the purest of murder.
"Is mutiny," he rumbled, his voice a murderous growl. "If any of you betray me, at any point, for whatever reason, then my judgement will be instant and merciless." Shiki then quirked up a grin. "So try and keep on my good side, yeah?"
The captains all chuckled, but with an underlying nervousness that made it clear that the message had been received, read, and then framed on the metaphorical wall. With underlines. In a permanent marker.
[Hmph,] Captain Dugong snorted derisively. [I can't even respect that about him. If any of my crew tried something like that, I'd give them a chance to explain themselves before I tied them to the anchor chain and—]
[Captain, with all due respect, I still have nightmares from the last time you brainstormed punishments that would let you outdo Boss. Please shut up,] pleaded one of the many onlooking Dugongs.
[Or, if you have to think aloud, at least muse on what we'll do to them instead,] First Mate Dugong griped.
Captain Dugong winced at the admonishment, chuckling as he scratched the back of his head. [Ah… aheheh, fair 'nuff. Sorry, just got a lot of time on my flippers to think, you know? Not used to the sea being this calm.]
[Yeah, that's fair…] First Mate glanced out over the calm blue waters. [This place… it's nice. The commute's hell, obviously, but we should come back here sometime if we ever want to relax.]
Captain sobered up at that suggestion and repeatedly tapped the butt of his naginata on the deck. [Sounds good, but don't forget, we can only do that if this ocean's still standing after this mess. That's why we came here in the first place, remember?]
First Mate nodded back. [I remember, Captain. I remember.]
It was a difficult purpose to forget. Following the almost global identification of Shiki's primary target, the Dugongs of the Great Kung-Fu Fleet had unanimously voted to make a detour in their voyage down the Grand Line. Crossing the Calm Belt hadn't been easy due to the lack of currents to coast off of and the surplus of Sea Kings, but they'd managed. Now the Dugongs were floating as close to the dead center of the East Blue as they could manage, ready to deploy to wherever they were needed.
As such, all the Dugongs could do now was wait and watch the Vis-Snail they'd filched off a passing battleship and stuck in a waterproofed box. It was a tense wait, and the whole fleet was raring to go, but it was the best they could do, given the circumstances.
"Now!"
Though as Shiki's imperious bark garnered the Dugongs' attention again, odds were good that they'd get their wish sooner rather than later.
"I hope you all don't mind," Shiki drawled, his entire demeanour utterly nonchalant. "But before we properly start our campaign, there is a little indulgence of my own I'd like to satisfy." Shiki took his cigar from his mouth and waved it about in a lecturing manner. "For years now, one ocean in particular in our world has been nothing short of an utter embarrassment to the rest of the world."
The Golden Lion's expression shifted into an out-and-out scowl of the purest disgust. "This pathetic, worthless puddle of water of which I speak has never once failed to produce anything but disgusting and reprehensible pieces of filth, and any time someone of note crawls their way out of the mire and manages to survive for more than a day, they show themselves to be the ultimate disgrace to our kind."
"For the sake of piracy and pirates everywhere, this ocean must be exterminated, and the shame it has brought on the rest of the world through its existence properly cleansed… with blood."
Shiki concluded by flinging his arms out wide, his eyes bugged out in sheer, bloodshot insanity. "PEOPLE!" he roared. "AS OF THIS MOMENT, WE SET SAIL FOR THE REPREHENSIBLE SEA OF SCHEMES! WE SAIL TO LAY WASTE TO THE EAST BLUE!"
[Not if we can help it, bastard,] Captain Dugong growled, a sentiment echoed by the rest of his tribe hard enough to shake the ships.
-o-
"So," Raoul, bartender and owner of the Gold Roger Bar, stated casually as he polished his old, well-experienced shotgun. "Guess this is it then, eh?"
"You know it, old man," Gambia grunted, knocking back the dregs of the bottle of tequila in his hand before reaching over the bar for another bottle. "If that asshat wants to rip apart the ocean where it all began, then he's gonna start with the town where it began, which is here. And when he gets here?" The gangbanger leered murderously and tapped the butt of his gun on the bar. "He's gonna get the bona fide Loguetown welcome! ISN'T THAT RIGHT, BOYS!?"
"YEAH!" the gathered members of the Barto club roared, some of them firing off their pistols.
"Oi, oi!" Raoul shouted. "No shooting in the bar, we've been over this a million times already!"
"And you're gonna do it a million times more!" one of the gangbangers jeered back.
Sighing, Raoul reached over and deftly plucked a fresh bottle of tequila and placed it just out of reach of Gambia. "Control your men," he ordered.
"Yeah, yeah…" Gambia grumbled, standing and turning around. "KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY, YOU IDIOTS! YOU'RE WASTING POWDER AND BULLETS!"
Sheepishly, the men settled down and stowed their weapons, at which point Gambia nearly knocked over the bottle in his haste to grab it and pop the cork off. Taking a quick hit off the bottle, he sighed contentedly and nodded respectfully at the bartender. "Seriously, though, thanks for letting us clear your stocks, old man."
"Eh, well, you know what they say," the old man shrugged indifferently.
Gambia cocked an eyebrow curiously.
"First off." Raoul held up a bottle and took his own swig from it. "You can't take it with you. And second, if you're going down…" His smirk became an outright malevolent grin as he held up his shotgun and pumped it forcefully. "Go down swinging!"
"YEAH!" Gambia immediately roared along with a forceful fist pump, a gesture that his boys eagerly mimicked. "WE'LL SHOW THAT BASTARD WHAT WE'RE WORTH!"
"Not that I need to remind you."
And then, suddenly, the good mood died hard and fast, and everyone in the bar shot glares at the image projected by the snail the Barto Club had… appropriated from the town square.
Shiki's chin was raised proudly as he tapped his finger on the lip of the saucer he was holding while his bandaged science officer poured out the sake. "But the East Blue is the most defenceless and strategically expendable of the six seas. It'll be mourned, but there's nothing that'll be missed. So, be as thorough with your carnage as you like!"
"GONNA HAVE A HARD TIME RIDING THAT HIGH HORSE OF YOURS WITH ALL THE LEAD I'M GOING TO PUMP INTO YOUR ASS, YOU POMPOUS SHIT!" Raoul belted out, the rest of his 'patrons' cheering and roaring in agreement.
Heedless of—or more likely relishing in—the sheer amounts of pure hate being directed at him the world over, Golden Lion Shiki raised his saucer high, an honest grin on his face. "This is the birth of the Golden Lion Pirates!" he declared with—what else—pride.
"YEEEAAAH!" the other captains echoed, both in action and volume.
There was a moment of relative quiet, presumably from the pirates waiting for Shiki to drink his sake, when suddenly a new voice piped up.
"Y'know, so long as we're in such a celebratory mood…"
A very familiar voice. The eyes of the snail on Merveille snapped around and showcased a face that nobody in the bar could mistake.
"I-Is that…?" Raoul gaped in shock.
Gambia reeled so hard he almost fell out of his seat. "BOSS!?"
"I'd like to toast to something else," 'Black Bart' Bartolomeo politely requested, idly swirling his sake. "If'n you don't mind."
Raoul blinked in shock before slowly adopting a grin. "Well, looks like we might have a chance of seeing tomorrow after all. And you all know what that means, right?"
"Hell yeah!" Gambia cackled, pounding his fist on the countertop. "Pass the popcorn and prep the sake!"
"Well, that, yeah… buuut it also means that you all have to pay your tab after all."
"WHAAAAAAT?! SHIT-SHIT-SHIT!" Gambia leapt from his stool with a panicked yelp. "QUIT DRINKING, YOU SHITS, WE HAVE TO ACTUALLY PAY FOR THAT!"
"Heheheheh," the bartender chuckled, switching from polishing his shotgun to polishing a mug instead. "Ahhh, impressive as you younguns might be, looks like the old guard's still got some tricks of our own!"
-o-
Shiki stared at the rookie in mild irritation, but the sheer satisfaction from finally bringing his plan to fruition overpowered it. It was a most momentous occasion, and he had at least waited until he, Shiki, had said his piece. He exhaled briefly but managed to crack a smile as he gestured for him to go ahead.
Bartolomeo nodded in acknowledgment and raised his saucer high as he started to speak. "I wanna make a toast…" he started solemnly. "To an ocean. An ocean that has a reputation of weakness."
Wait a minute.
-o-
Dadan's jaw slowly dropped. She divined where the rookie was most likely going with this. "Holy shit, is he actually—!?"
Whatever question the mountain boss was about to ask, it choked off when the broadcast suddenly changed, showing the well-guarded front courtyard of the palace… and blaring a heart-pounding fanfare.
"I-Is that…?" Dogra breathed in awe.
For a second, the guards below the snail just milled about their business as usual, but suddenly they reacted to something and pointed towards the sky. The snail was quick to follow their line of sight, glancing up at a sky mostly covered by clouds, yet with a gap that let the full moon shine through.
A full moon that was silhouetting—!
"The Thousand Sunny!?" Magra gawked in shock.
"THAT'S LUFFY!" Dadan shot to her feet with a cackle and a roar. "HE'S STILL KICKING!"
"WE'RE NOT LICKED YET, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
The bar paused in shock at the outburst. Not the language, that was tame by Mount Corvo's standards, but the source, on the other hand?
"Makino!" Woop Slap gaped at the usually demure young woman.
"Cram it, geezer!" Makino growled at the mayor, fire blazing in her eyes. "I'm a bartender, of course, I know how to swear! Now shut up and cheer!" She then refocused her rage at the screen. "COME ON, LUFFY! PUNT THAT ARROGANT BASTARD'S HEAD OFF!"
They gaped for a second longer… and then, they all joined in with a roar.
But even over the music and the shouts of encouragement, they could all still hear Bartolomeo speaking.
"An ocean that has a reputation for a lack of power, lack of wealth, lack of resources… but at the same time, its people are rich."