Smoker felt something crack in his hand as his punch landed, but the blow was true and the damned pirate who'd so badly hurt his Ensign went hurtling through the air, smashing through a wall. He glared at the armored soldiers. "Stay the hell out of this," he growled.
"Yeah, no," the closest of them said, drawing his sword and hefting a huge metal shield in the other hand. "Bring it, whitecoat."
"Leave our commodore alone!" one of his Marines shouted, levelling his rifle. Smoker's jutte practically leapt into his hands. The Huscarls stepped forwards, forming a shield wall. Bosque staggered out of the wreckage, already in half-beast form and with absolute murder in his eyes.
"Breaching the truce already, pirate?"
"Picking fights already, Marine?" the berserker growled.
"You hurt one of those under my command. I'll have you in chains, or dead, by the end of the day, Berserker Hound."
There was a chorus of growls from the Huscarl shield wall, and the Berserker Hound stepped forward, blade in hand. The man smiled. "You're a tough bastard. Cracked right through Forged Body, and that's pretty impressive."
A very small part of Smoker's brain distantly noted that a couple of medics were moving Tashigi out of the way, but the rest of him was focused on the Berserker Hound. He seemed completely nonchalant, despite the bloody cuts across his chest and face. He held his sword loosely in one clawed hand, the other hooked into his belt.
"Still," the Hound said softly. "Your boys seem to have more pride than sense. Figures you'd have the same. You pursue this, end of the day, won't be me in-"
"Shut up, and come quietly," Smoker ordered.
The Hound's eyes narrowed. Then he threw back his head, and laughed. "Wanahahahahahahahhahahaha! For self-defense? Me, an ordinary member of the community? Well, now I know why Kaneki bitches so much about Marine corruption."
"You are a pirate," Smoker said disbelievingly.
"Captain's pardon says otherwise."
"I don't care," Smoker said flatly, pointing his jutte at the Zoan. "I'm taking you in."
The Hound raised his sword, muzzle splitting to reveal a maw full of teeth. "Bring it, chimney."
Smoker launched himself forwards, his legs turning to smoke and propelling him faster than he could possibly go on foot, and the Hound leapt. Jutte and sword swung as one - but both stopped dead.
"Okay, this bullshit has gone on long enough," the Butcher Bird said calmly, one hand stopping the Hound's descending blow dead, and three tails straining against Smoker's jutte.
"The fuck, Kaneki?" the Hound asked.
"You were about to get your ass handed to you, unless you somehow developed the ability to shit seastone when I wasn't looking." The cannibal blinked. "Wait, have you? I mean, you adapted the Six Powers to your own technique when I wasn't paying attention, but…"
"No," the Hound growled.
"Oh, so you were definitely going to get your ass kicked, then. Cool. Get the fuck back to work, then." The Butcher Bird shoved the blade, and the Hound staggered back, before lowering his sword.
"Fine," he gritted out, stomping over to a nearby forge.
"And get those cuts seen to!" the Butcher Bird shouted at him. "I'm not gonna be held responsible if your face rots off!"
"Fuck off!"
Smoker tried to free his weapon, but he might as well have been trying to budge a mountain. The Butcher Bird glanced at him, then rolled his eyes and glared at the Huscarls instead. "You lot. Make sure he actually does what I told him. And stay the fuck out of trouble, or I'm setting Jack on you instead and letting him know you fucked up the first chance for an actual vacation he's had since he was in diapers."
Smoker had never seen a street empty so fast.
The Butcher Bird turned his eyes back on him. Smoker glared at him. "You going to let go?"
"You going to try to fight me if I let go?" the...creature...asked.
Smoker grit his teeth. "...No." Not until he knew he'd win.
The tails uncoiled and shrank back into the creature's back - and only just now, Smoker saw that he was wearing a Marine officer's coat, or at least a decent facsimile. The implicit mockery made bile rise in his throat, but he bit it back.
The Butcher Bird cocked his head. "Your ensign drew first, you know. Didn't see the why of it, but...well, I doubt it changes anything, but draw first she did," he said, in a deceptively soft tone. He looked over Smoker's shoulder. "And none of you thought to stop her?"
"And get between the two of them?" one of the Marines answered. "We'd be useless at best. Besides, by the time we got here, they were already going at it."
The Butcher Bird snorted. "Well, at least you've trained some of them to know when not to throw themselves into battle," he said, taking a step away from Smoker.
Smoker's fingers clenched. "Men," he said quietly. "Return to base. Barracks are being set up for you."
"But...sir…"
He looked at Kaneki. "Did you happen to bring seastone?"
The Butcher Bird laughed. "Kyakahahahaha...nah, wasn't expecting any trouble. Don't want any, either."
"Convenient for you," Smoker said, as his men took the hint and began to file away. "What do you want, cannibal?"
Something went very cold in the Butcher Bird's eyes, and the man walked past him. Smoker saw the ornate kanji on the back of the man's stolen coat - Retribution promised, instead of Justice. The cannibal knelt by the shattered remnants of Tashigi's prized blade, carefully avoiding the drying blood. He picked up the hilt, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. "Six, you mind taking a look at this?" he asked.
"It would be my pleasure," a soft voice said at Smoker's elbow, and it took every ounce of self-control not to whirl. A tall, scrawny-looking young man walked past him, the open white hoodie he wore not concealing at all the massive autopsy scar across his chest. What the hell was he, one of Grigori's experiments? The uncannily still expression on his face pointed in that direction even more than the scarring did.
The blue-haired man stood at the Butcher Bird's side, and the cannibal handed him Shigure's hilt. "You think…?" he half-asked.
The scrawny man paused, and then...blurred. Smoker blinked, and the man's form snapped back into reality.
"Broken, but not...broken," the blue-haired man said softly. "Interesting. The Blacksmith will want this."
"It's not his to take," Smoker snapped.
Cool blue eyes met Smoker's, Six's expression completely blank. "It is shattered, and so it is, Justicar," the man said, arms folded across his chest.
"You going to give your Ensign a bag full of bits, or do you want to see what happens when she gets a new blade?" the Butcher Bird asked, rising from his crouch and pulling out an ornate pipe.
"You..are trying to manipulate me."
"Is it working?"
"No." Yes.
The cannibal cocked his head. "Aw. Was hoping we could do things the easy way."
Smoker's hand was starting to throb, as the adrenaline ebbed out of his system. He focused on that, instead of the cannibal's mocking pity. "You didn't answer my question," he said, carefully ignoring Six moving past him - and only because trying to stop him was almost certainly what the Butcher Bird wanted, an excuse to start a fight, and not because Six and the Butcher Bird's words almost certainly meant Tashigi would have a new blade. "What do you want, cannibal?"
The Butcher Bird chuckled. "You know, that word pisses me off."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have decided to snack on human beings."
"You assume I had a choice," the creature hissed. "You want to play the assumption game, Commodore? Let's play, tyrant." The creature's eyes glittered, an icy blue. "After all...makes you wonder, what people see Marines as, when despite all the work you put in, all the pirates you saved Loguetown from, all the kindness and gentleness you showed...people still cleared themselves from their path, still begged you to spare their children when they inconvenienced you."
Smoker took a step back, laying a hand on his jutte as memories went through his mind. "I will not claim," he said evenly, "that Marines can't be corrupt. That people didn't have a good reason to think ill of me, especially with what the East Blue can be like. But I never raised my hand to someone who wasn't a criminal, or harmed people who didn't deserve it. Can you say the same?"
The Butcher Bird shrugged. "No. But I don't claim to be supporting Justice, do I? And I've fought pirates who step over the line and turn out to be complete jackasses. Can you say the same, for the Marines in the Blues?" He bared his teeth. "My eyes see far, Marine, and it's far enough to know that the Navy's rotten to the core. Least when pirates sack a town it's called that, rather than 'exceptional taxation'. And at least I police my own."
"You can claim that the Marines are rotten all you want," Smoker said flatly, glaring at the man. "But what have you done, that's not just slaughter? Killing someone without so much as a trial doesn't make you a hero."
"Oh, I know that. I'm a monster, Commodore, I own that. I've eaten people, and for all that my species didn't give me the slightest bit of choice in that, for all that I've found better ways since, it's still a sin." The creature laughed. "But if I'm a monster, at least I'm one that'll put down the things that are worse than I can ever hope to be. At least I fight. That's why, for all my respect for you, you still piss me the fuck off. You don't fight, you just...endure."
Smoker felt his lips peel back from his teeth. "You seem to think I'm knuckling under."
"Did Nezumi ever see 'justice' for his corruption?"
Smoker laughed, even as part of him took in the fact that a South Blue pirate knew names and details of an East Blue captain. "Oh, like you wouldn't believe," he said. "When the 'hero of Alabasta' adds his weight to the complaints of an entire island chain, when an entire crew of fishmen gives testimony that he was the one Arlong the Saw dealt with...the last damn thing that man accomplished was posting Straw Hat's bounty. Internal Affairs might grind long, but when that much weight lands it grinds very fine indeed."
"Well, how about that," the Butcher Bird said, lighting a match with a flick of his thumb and lighting his pipe in turn. "Only took, what, a decade, and how many dead at Arlong's hands?"
"You want to put blame for how long it took, blame the murderous pirate who set up in the weakest sea. We lost people, too, don't you forget."
"Isn't that how it always goes? The good and the eager and the idealists die, and that just leaves the monsters and the cynics to carry on," the Butcher Bird said quietly.
"Not always," Smoker said, the wide smile of the Straw Hat brat flitting through his brain for a moment. Then he focused. "And you're still avoiding answering. For the third and final time, what do you want?"
"Right now? Trying to figure out why you still follow a corrupt system. Long term?" The Butcher Bird exhaled a cloud of smoke, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, they were red, with black sclerae shot through with veins, those same veins standing out crimson under the skin around his eyes. "It says so on my coat, doesn't it? Retribution. Balance."
"That could mean anything."
"Then let me tell you a story, Commodore. There was a kingdom, once, seven islands linked as one, one deep below the earth, one far above it, the rest on the ocean as islands should be. Those who first colonized the centermost island named the formation Yggdrassil, after the Tree of Worlds of myth, and they had reason to, because different peoples came to each island, in time. Giants, dwarves, castaways of the Demon Tribe, the Angels of sky islands, snakenecks and longarms. And humans, most of all humans, who ruled in the center island, which they named Asgard. The Angels tried to conquer the other six, once, but the humans, led by their queen Arima Ali Zun, fought back. Such was the scale of the clash between her and the leader of the Angels, Nitoryu Michael, that it ripped the Sky island of Valhalla in twain, leaving the lesser part moored above Asgard and the greater a free-floating mass. Arima Ali Zun united the seven kingdoms into one, placed her son and heir to rule Asgard, and named each royal a Councillor, giving them a piece of her regalia to mark their position. And for centuries, there was peace." The Butcher Bird paused. "And then, of course, betrayal. An usurping heir, a king who wanted to remove his people from the heavy hand of the World Government - madness, of course, or so they claimed - and six other Councillors who the heir whispered to, until all of them fell upon the reigning King. He fought, of course, but was overcome, and fell from his tower on the highest peak of Asgard's mountains to the ocean below." The creature smiled. "The Councillors learned the price of treachery, that day. The relics of Ali Zun's line were not mere decoration. They were a mark of oaths given and bargains struck, and they turned on their wielders as only those most ancient of artifacts could. Not enough to kill them, no, but enough to inconvenience, to mark their betrayal to all who saw them. The heir left her kingdom, to wander the earth. The Angel became a conqueror once more, turning his eyes to islands in other skies and taking the free half of Valhalla with him. And the remaining five...festered, as rot set into the Sevenfold Kingdom, and the vultures who called themselves Emperors came to take what they could again and again and again."
The Butcher Bird exhaled. "But nobody reckoned that the old king had not died. Lost an eye, aye, but gained wisdom for it. And he wandered the earth as well...searching for something he could use, to take revenge."
"And he found you," Smoker said.
"Half-mad from hunger and hate, but yes. He cut me down in one blow, challenged me to seek him out, and then left. I found him once again, and thus was bargain struck. For him, revenge against the traitors. For me, training."
"So despite all your rhetoric, it's just murder, isn't it," Smoker said flatly.
The Butcher Bird's eyes blazed. "It would not end with those seven, Commodore."
"Then who? The population of the kingdom, for not overthrowing the Councillors in turn? The Marines in their entirety? Royals who didn't come to the old king's aid? Who would you kill next, and when would it stop? Would you keep going like a mad dog, always finding new justifications? Or would you finally see sense and stand trial for your crimes? When would it end?"
"It would end," the Butcher Bird said, something creeping into his voice, his shoulders hunching and his fingers curling into hooked claws. "When this world became just. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century we've seen you humans piss away the inheritance and wisdom of your ancestors, slowly sliding closer to war and self-made oblivion with every step, blind to reality. Your rulers are delusional children, spoiled so much they think themselves gods on earth, and I am tired of seeing the generations pass with so little to show for it. Eight centuries they've kept the world yoked, and it has reached the point where there is nothing worth salvaging from the decrepit corpse of their ideals." The Butcher Bird took a step forward, scales bulging from the veins around his eyes, too-sharp teeth bared in a snarl as the air around him rippled with heat. "I would see a just world replace this one of slaughter and corruption, see a system I can look upon without wanting to rend it to shreds, and if that day ever comes I will surrender myself to an impartial jury of my peers and go to whatever fate they decide gladly. And if I cannot change the world for the better...if even the removal of the cancer that you dare call leadership fails before the short-sightedness and idiocy of humankind, then I will gather what I deem precious to me close...and I will let that unjust world burn."
The Butcher Bird stopped, chest heaving, and took a step back, closing his eyes and visibly mastering himself. "That," he said, voice clear of the horrible, tearing snarl that had infused it, "is what I want, Commodore. Does that answer your question?"
Smoker sighed, and flicked ash off his cigar. "Yeah. Suppose it does." He chuckled. "It's funny."
"What is?"
"For a second there, you sounded almost like Akainu."
He turned, and walked away. The Butcher Bird did not follow him.
Beep...beep...beep…
Tashigi groaned. Her everything hurt. What had she gotten up to -
"Remember that, next time we meet."
Oh. That.
She shouldn't have lost her temper like that. Even if Herman hadn't been as strong as he was...urgh. Words didn't justify drawing on someone, even words that had practically been aimed at mocking her - and, she realized, aimed right at making her so pissed off it'd taken two broken ribs for her to get her act together.
Speaking of, said ribs weren't hurting nearly as much as she'd thought, and she couldn't feel stitches or anything in the injuries she knew she'd taken...how long had she been out?
She opened her eyes, squinting as the sudden influx of light seemed to sear straight into her brain, and immediately closed them because what the fuck was Alley Doc Vinci doing in her hospital room.
"Well that's just inconsiderate. Go to all this trouble to fix you, and you act like a rabbit in its burrow."
Tashigi's eyes snapped open, and she glared at the man. "What did you do?"
"Like I said, fixed you. Your Commodore and my blacksmith both wanted you up and about quickly, the doctors here are barely competent enough to boil water much less deal with what Herman did to you in a timely fashion, and despite your commanding officer's clear reluctance to let me work he eventually consented to having me do so under supervision. It's like he expected me to stick a bomb in you or something. No trust whatsoever. Eh, them both agreeing on something and then growling at each other like junkyard dogs was amusing enough it was worth it." The green-eyed man grinned. "So. How do you feel?"
"Worse than I want, better than I expected," she growled. "What did you do to me?"
"Same thing I give out to my own crew, for treating injuries. Quite safe, don't you worry. Actually, judging by how that Josef fellow was vibrating when I told him about it, I should probably see if I can patent and sell it, now that I'm not going to get arrested. The science behind it is quite beyond you, but the full-body ache should recede after we get some food into you, heavy on the proteins." The man paused, then tossed her a small object, which she barely caught. "Might want to check yourself over, though, preventing scarring was pretty low on the list of priorities."
She paused, one hand going to her face, and feeling a raised, hardened line tracing across the left side. She picked up the object - a small hand mirror - and opened it up to get a better look.
One of Shigure's pieces - and that hurt to even think, at the moment, worse than she ached physically - had clearly been quite jagged, judging from the roughness of the scar that twisted its way up from just past the left side of her mouth all the way to her ear. Said ear, she belatedly noticed, was missing its lobe.
"Well," she said. "At least I won't have to worry about people not taking me seriously anymore."
"Dahahahaha! That's the spirit."
"How long have I been out?" she asked.
"Eh, it took them what, ten minutes to get you here, another fifteen to argue the Marines into letting me help, thirty for the actual surgery...about two, three hours."
So fast…wait.
"It's an hour by rail to get here from the Center, and that's where you were," she said. "How on earth did you…?"
"Gonna tell you the same thing I told everyone else," the man said, grin wide and blinding. "Bitch, I can teleport."
"Been meaning to ask how that worked," a voice said from an open window, and Tashigi glared as the Butcher Bird's face popped into view, upside-down. "Seriously, you said yourself that you had to limit it to a hundred meters or less, or you'd risk brain damage."
"Yeah, sure, but I just reset my brain to how it was before I jumped, and it's fine."
Oh God, they'd let a crazy person operate on her.
Despite that, Tashigi found she couldn't muster up the energy for full-on panic.
"How are you captain again?" the Butcher Bird asked.
"I assumed it was because of my charming personality."
"Is that what we're calling gibbering lunacy these days?"
"Well, I say it is, so there. Are you going to stay there like a gargoyle?"
"Probably. I like it up here."
"I don't," another voice interjected, drifting in from outside. "It's cold up here."
"Use that giant woman's coat of yours. It makes you look like you're wearing a bear, you should be damn well warm enough under it."
"It's not a woman's coat, it's my coat, and I'm wearing it and it's still cold. You're not making Six stay out here."
"Six will probably literally die if I leave him out in the cold."
"Yeah, and so will I."
The Butcher Bird threw up - down? - his hands. "Siblings," he said flatly. "Well, that's my cue to leave, if only to stop C from whining so damn much."
"Shut up, Brother."
"No, you shut up."
Tashigi vaguely considered the possibility that she was, in fact, dead, and this some strange form of purgatory. That, or she was on the really good drugs.
The absolutely horrifying upside-down grin the Butcher Bird gave her did nothing to dispel that impression. "Oi, Tashigi. Get ready soon, Herman's taking an interest in you." His eyes flickered over her, and he sniffed. "Well, no accounting for taste, I suppose," he said, before he fell past the window and out of sight.
"Does he enjoy fucking with people?" Tashigi asked faintly.
Grigori just laughed.