Marie D. Suesse And The Mystery New Pirate Age!
A Deconstruction, complete with a demonstration of how to fail utterly in hypothesis testing and logic in general.
Chapter 11: You All Meet In a Cell
"For the last time, it's impossible for me to be Monkey D. Madelyn!" Mar said exasperatedly to the marine captain interrogating her. "I mean, you just said she disappeared twenty years ago! If I were her I'd have to be at least be my mid-thirties and I'm obviously not that old!"
"You mean you just don't look that old," the captain replied, unimpressed. "But don't think we don't know you have a devil-fruit ability. I wouldn't be surprised if it gave you eternal youth!"
"That's ridiculous! I'm freaking sixteen!"
"Well let's test it out, shall we?" said the marine captain. Turning to his men, he instructed: "Throw her into the harbour. If she swims, she's innocent, if she sinks, she's obviously a devil-fruit user and the real thing."
Mar's headache wanted to point out that the illogical-ness of reasoning that being a devil-fruit user automatically made her the Pirate Queen, but before she could object to the inefficient experiment the marines had already tossed her into the water.
The results were as predictable as you would expect: she sank like a rock. Fortunately, before she drowned she was dragged out by two marines who had kindly consented to dive in after her.
It should be noted that if Father-Of-Mar hadn't been restrained by the other marines, he would have probably been in the middle of strangling the marine captain at this point.
"Well that settles it," said the idiotic marine captain, oblivious to the murderous looks (and Angrish) he was getting from the 'Pirate Queen's' slave. "Take them back to the base! We'll contact HQ that we have the Pirate Queen!"
And that was how Mar and her dad found themselves in the holding cells of the Sabaody Marine Base.
"The Disinfector greets Amusing Subject and would like to know why marines have detained Subject?"
The holding cells of the marine base was that last place Mar was expecting to run into the deranged Disinfector, but she supposed that it did make a lot of sense. A mad killer on the loose would be scooped up by by the marines before long.
"They think I'm the Pirate Queen, Monkey D. Madelyn," she said glumly. She had been placed in a cell next to the one the marines had placed her dad in. "Did they get you for the swordswoman thing?"
"NEGATIVE. The Disinfector already wanted. Allowed capture on purpose. Safest here because of impending forecast."
"You mean the weather?"
The Disinfector merely chuckled again. "WEATHER? HA! Amusing Subject is amusing."
"Mar? Who is that?" her dad was watching the exchange with increasing confusion.
"Long story dad." Mar decided that the less she said about her first encounter with the Disinfector, the better. "Just someone I ran into before I found you."
"Well, this is obviously all a case of mistaken identity, but what's going to happen next? You're getting cleared soon once someone more competent than that idiot captain comes along, right?"
"Well they think I'm the Pirate Queen, so I guess they're going to get their higher-ups involved. Hopefully they'll clear up the whole thing but they don't," (here Mar swallowed nervously), "they might—"
"Standard Marine procedure for infamous pirates is incarceration in Impel Down or immediate execution without trial," was the Disinfector's unsolicited contribution.
"WHAT? LIKE HELL THEY WILL! That's not an acceptable option for my daughter!"
Mar had never seen this side of her dad before. In fact she hadn't seen much of her dad before, come to think of it. He usually worked most of the time and when he was home she rarely spent much time with him.
"Dad... calm down..."
"No I won't! First your mother and now... I've had it with this—" (here he let out a word this narrator probably shouldn't repeat since it would push the rating of this fic up a bit too much) "—world and it's—" (here he repeated the word again) "—everything! We're getting out of here!" In his anger he snapped his glasses, which he had been in the middle of cleaning.
"But Dad, we're locked in a cell."
Mar's father simply walked up to the lock and knelt before it. "Marie Denise Suesse, do you even know what your father does for a living?"
"Uh... you work for a big company?"
"A security company. As a lock systems security consultant," her father stressed the words as he fiddled with the wire frames of his now-useless glasses. "And more importantly, before that, he trained as a locksmith."
At that point her thought process (which was lacking the influence of the Logic-Logic fruit and was therefore working much less efficiently than usual) finally comprehended what her father was trying to tell her, and she could only manage a flat 'oh' of understanding as the lock suddenly gave and the cell door swung open.
"Ha! And your mother said I was wasting money on titanium glasses frames! Pfft, what a lousy medieval-age mechanism. They should have hired a security consultant. Now show me those stone cuffs they have on you and I'll have them off in a jiffy— what...?"
Mar couldn't keep the cheesy grin off her face. "Dad, I may have never told you this, but you are awesome!"
Oddly enough, the reaction wasn't quite what she expected. He suddenly looked touched. "No, you haven't… I would have remembered. But, thank you. It sounds so good to hear you say it." Then he smiled again, looking incredibly goofy. "We've wasted enough time, let's break out of this place and find your mother!"
As excellent as Mar's dad was at picking simple locks, I think we have firmly established that he, like Mar, was not much of a fighter. As both of them quickly realized, this was going to be a bit of a problem with the marine guards they were bound to run into.
The prosaic solution to this would be to release the rest of the prisoners being held in the holding cells, in order to stage a break-out in which they could safely escape. But before releasing a prisoner, it is just as well that you check to make sure the actual releasing of them is a good idea. You wouldn't want to release someone who would promptly murder you on the way out.
Now let's take a moment to examine the makeup of the prisoners in the holding cells.
As you all know there was the sinisterly deranged Disinfector. He was calmly sitting in the cell, still completely encased in the hazard suit and not even remotely distressed about being imprisoned.
Next to him was a beautiful woman who for some bizarre reason, had cat-ears. She was curled up and crying to herself, looking extremely pitiful.
And then there was a dashing-looking man dressed in leather, who also like Mar had been, clad in a pair of seastone cuffs. He was mouthing off about how the marines would never be able to keep him there for long.
And the last of all was what looked remarkably like a giant black-and-grey rock sitting the the corner of the last cell. If it weren't for the two eyes on top of it, you wouldn't have thought that it wasn't an inanimate object.
"Do we release them all?" wondered Mar.
"Release me! I am the world government's secret experiment who barely managed to escape, but they have recaptured me again. I'm a lynx werewolf. I'll join you in your escape!" the cat-girl said, on noticing their escape.
"Is that a zoan-fruit?" Mar asked curiously, earning an odd glance from her dad in the process.
"No, I am a were-lynx. I am not affected by seastone or the ocean. I will be a powerful ally!"
Mar couldn't remember lycanthropy being existent in the One Piece universe.
"ANOMALY DETECTED!"
The Disinfector seemed to agree with her unspoken thought. A clay mug went flying through the air, shattering and knocking the cat-girl out. Considering the distance and the difficulty of throwing the object from the inside of his cell, through the bars and into the other cell, the aim and force of the Disinfector was rather impressive.
"Forget her! Take me with you!" the man with the seastone-cuffs interrupted. "I am Wyvernpants D. Draco! I have an extremely powerful mythical zoan devil-fruit—"
"Yeah, the Dragon-Dragon fruit, right?" said Mar, feeling a headache coming on. The sea-stone cuffs were off and once again her need to think logically was back in full force.
"You are a genius, gorgeous!" He followed it up with a smirk and a wink.
"No hitting on my daughter, punk!" Mar's dad informed him sternly. "We're not releasing THAT one," he said to Mar.
"INFESTATION DETECTED! TERMINATE! TERMINATE!" was the Disinfector's contribution. Well, that and a flying clay bowl this time. It too, made a loud crack against the devil-fruit user's skull, and he fell silent.
The sound unfortunately attracted the attention of the guard, who came in and immediately froze with an "Oh crap!" expression on his face. Then he turned to sound the alarm.
At least, he would have, if the Disinfector hadn't beaned him on the head with the clay plate that the prisoners had been given food on. The unfortunate marine slumped to the ground, unconscious.
"Well..." Mar's dad said in astonishment. "Thanks."
"LOCKSMITH IS WELCOME," the Disinfector said affably. "But Disinfector is out of crockery now."
"Give me a moment, I can get that lock open for you."
"Dad—" Mar was suddenly scared, remembering the Disinfector's homicidal tendencies.
Too late. The cell door swung open. But the Disinfector didn't seem to want to move.
"Not time to escape yet. Still waiting for forecast event in five minutes. The Disinfector advises Locksmith take fishman along. Least likely to be infected with enSuephalitis."
He was referring to the black rock-person-thing in the far cell. On hearing himself being mentioned, the rockman (or we should say fishman) raised his head and looked at them. In the process they got a much better look at him: a large hulking fishman, fascinatingly ugly with a curiously twisted torso and beady little black eyes. As we have mentioned before he looked remarkably like a black, sand-speckled rock, and could probably pass for one if he curled up, closed his eyes and kept still.
If this was the manga, there would be something the fandom calls an "Oda-Box" on display, which is a text box you immediately take notice of because you know this character is going to be important. In this case, the Oda-Box would have said something like this:
'Demon' Walker
Spiny Devilfish (Scorpionfish) Fishman
"Walker is not liking hunams," the fishman said at last. "Stupid hunams attacking Walker making him lost. Now not finding Gurnarde. And scared hunams lock seal Walker in jail even key not any using."
"Lock seal?" Mar parroted dumbly.
"That's going to be a problem," Mar's dad replied, peering at the lock through the broken frames of his glasses. Apparently he was somewhat better at deciphering the fishman's broken english. "They got scared of him and welded the lock shut. I won't be able to pick that."
"Hunams freeing Walker? Walker not being slave to hunams because."
"We're not looking for a slave. Hell I was a slave just earlier. We're just asking for a bit of help on breaking out."
"FORECASTED EVENT COMMENCING. Subjects should start leaving now," The Disinfector said suddenly.
"But Dad, if you can't pick the lock, how do we get him out?"
"I have an idea," her dad replied, scratching his neck where the slave collar was still chafing it. "Now, where did those marines put the controller to this thing?"
One lock-blowing explosion later, Mar found herself in the company of what could be considered one very bizarre group of prison escapees. In the front was the deranged Disinfector, flanked by the fishman Walker. She and her dad brought up the rear.
The halls of the Sabaody marine base were strangely deserted. The few guards that were there were very quickly taken care of by the two frontmen.
The Disinfector was ruthlessly dangerous, dispatching the marine grunts effortlessly with first a purloined crowbar and then a recently-despoiled sword in his other hand.
Walker on the other hand, needed no weapon, and when he uncurled himself to his full height, you could see why. Other than being huge and very powerful as was typical for a fishman, he also had extensible spine-spikes that he warned them to keep away from. Of couse they were venomous. Scorpionfish are not called scorpionfish just because the marine biologist who discovered them failed zoology.
As they fought their way out, Mar became aware that there seemed to be what sounded like continuous thunder rumbling coming from outside the building. When the Terrible Two (as her dad had quickly dubbed Walker and the Disinfector) in had cleared the last guard (the stupid marine captain was nowhere to be seen) and they stepped out the front door, they soon found out why.
"PERFECTLY TIMED. Stage one of forecasted event has concluded," announced the Disinfector.
The rest of them were too astonished to say anything. When they had been incarcerated in the holding cells, the base had been standing in the middle of a city built on giant mangroves.
But on their emergence, nothing looked like it had hours ago. In fact, almost all of the buildings on this side of Sabaody had been leveled. Some of the mangrove trees were down and destroyed. The rest that hadn't were in the process of being shelled into smithereens by the cannon-fire.
They weren't from the cannons of marine Buster Call ships. They were from a fleet of pirate ships that were anchored offshore.
"Walker seeing that flag before," grunted the fishman.
"T-that symbol on those ships..." stammered Mar as she, too recognized it. It was a smiley face, with little 'T's protruding from its circumference.
"What's that?" said Mar's father, the only person left in the dark.
"Flag is insignia of the New Heart Pirates," the Disinfector elaborated for the benefit of Mar's father. "As forecast, the armada of the Pirate Queen has returned."
End of Chapter 11