"Well, that was easy," Luffy exclaims, lower lip jutting out. "I thought it was going to give me a fight!"
Leaning against the wall and taking in deep breaths to calm her racing heart, she's overcome with the urge to shake Luffy while demanding, "What's wrong with you?" She doesn't have the energy to go through with it. She imagines the burner in her hands as his face and shakes it instead.
True to form, her decorative sword broke on the first use. She maybe could have done some actual damage if she hadn't used the blade to keep Luffy from waving goodbye to his head.
After that, not even a knife on fire did anything against the creature; she almost died trying to dislodge her blade from the creature's shoulder. It took Luffy pummeling that thing through a wall to take it out.
It's frustrating. She's completely reliant on Luffy to protect her, but his only interest lies in a good fight. Nevermind that her head was nearly squashed like a berry: woe is the Luffy who can't continue to beat on things.
He continues to sulk next to her, making her eye twitch. The burner squeaks in her tightening grip.
"You are really," her words die in her throat as she registers movement in the dark. "Get down!"
She falls to the floor and something cuts the air above her. A large boot enters her field of vision, and she slides the burner out of harm's way before scrambling to move herself. That same boot comes down where her head used to be.
"Looks like he's not dead! This guy is kind of creepy," Luffy comments from above where he's stretched out against the ceiling.
The light from the burner now lying behind the creature gives its fishbowl head a malicious glow. The hunk of metal clutched in a spiked glove is barely visible, and one of its eyes won't stop staring at her.
Rubbing the hilt of her knife, she makes a quick decision.
"I'm going to leave him with you," she tells Luffy candidly.
The creature is so large that it takes up most of the corridor. She'll have to time it right to safely dance around it.
"But you'll take the lamp with you!" Luffy whines before his voice changes to something dangerous. "I'll just have to beat him harder! Stand back."
There's a thump as Luffy falls to the ground, and she hesitates as the creature lifts its blade for another swing. The creature is slow to the point it can't stop its momentum. If she moves now, she can make it to the burner.
She takes a couple of steps back.
Being in the dark means she has no idea what's going on, but she can hear Luffy...blowing up a balloon?
Something shoots out of the darkness and knocks into the creature. She gets a glimpse of Luffy's oddly bloated hand before the fist continues on, taking the creature with it.
"Wado, the light!" Luffy says.
She dashes for the burner as Luffy reels in his arm. There's no sign of the creature, but she can feel its hostile intent clearer than before.
With the burner back in her hands, she can now get a good look at Luffy. Seems she wasn't imagining it; Luffy's hand is inflated like a balloon. Is that part of his Devil Fruit powers? She can't say she remembers the technique.
"It's coming back," she warns before an ear-piercing shriek echoes down the corridor.
"No problem," Luffy boasts.
Clenching his deformed fist, Luffy's hand loses its inflated shape. His wrist now bulges like a balloon before the puffed up skin travels down to his leg, causing it to expand in a similar fashion.
If she didn't know any better, she'd say there's a pocket of air trapped in Luffy's rubber body.
The moment the creature appears in the light, Luffy kicks it away as if it weighs nothing. Shoulder to shoulder, they walk down the corridor with Luffy swatting the creature away every time it comes back.
The creature doesn't seem to be taking any damage, but since it poses no real threat to Luffy, she starts to foolishly relax. She realizes her mistake when the corridor ends at a large, round hallway filled with doors.
Luffy slugs the creature into the ceiling as she tries to choose between the doors. If she doesn't hurry, Luffy will pick one at random, and that will undoubtedly lead to certain death.
The unmistakable sound of a balloon deflating startles her. One look at Luffy causes her to take a step back. What the hell, he's shrinking.
She doesn't mean Luffy folds in on himself. She means his body parts are shriveling up to the point his hat now rests over his eyes. Luffy's height decreases rapidly, only coming to a stop around her waist.
"Oops. Guess I overdid it too much," says the now tiny Luffy.
Just a moment ago, she'd been a sliver taller than Luffy. Staring down at what looks like a child clone of the Straw Hat captain, she can safely say that she is now much taller than him.
She opens her mouth and closes it. She tries again.
"Why did you suddenly grow smaller?" Her voice cracks with how high it goes.
"The air left my bones!" Luffy tells her. "It'll be awhile before they reinflate."
"What?"
In what world did that make sense?
A sudden sound of metal scraping against metal chills her to the bones. She doesn't have time to stand here, gaping like a moron. Her only line of defense now only comes up to her waist.
"Quick question. Can you still fight?" She dares to hope.
"Nope!" Luffy immediately shreds that hope.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Spinning around, she picks the door closest to them. Panicking as the sounds of the creature get closer, she flails before managing to find the lever to open the door.
"That's a closet," Luffy says.
Opening the second closest door, she grabs Luffy by the hand—it's so small and isn't stretching, oh this is bad—and runs. No point in shutting the door behind them; the creature has to have some way of getting around closed doors.
All she has is a knife that can't do anything, a burner-lamp thing she can't put down, and an ever increasing headache. Just how is she supposed to defend the two of them like this?
(She never notices that Luffy, unable to keep up with her, is flapping behind her like a flag in the wind. Luffy, unbothered by it, doesn't speak up.)
She comes to halt when presented with two doors going in opposite directions. One door looks like any other. The other door has a giant lock made of colorful sliders.
"Let's open this one," Luffy says, poking the locked door.
Perhaps there's something wrong with her brain, but she agrees with Luffy. It makes sense in a weird way. Monsters roam these halls, and if there's something locked away, then it might be something they fear.
She should have put enough distance between them and the creature to at least see what's in this room.
The lock puzzle doesn't take too long to figure out, though she has to slap Luffy's hand away more than once, and the door opens after lining up all the sliders in the correct sequence. Luffy bounces through before she can stop him.
"It's dark in here!" Luffy complains.
As obvious as that statement is, she's pretty sure that's Luffy-speak for "Hurry up and get in here with the lamp."
"Don't run ahead until you re-" her mouth refuses to work for a second, "-inflate."
Holding up the burner shows numerous filthy fish tanks and an astounding amount of dried out starfish scattered throughout the room. A table full of dissecting tools is pushed against one wall, and an expensive desk bearing a large fish tank lies on the opposite side.
The polished wood of the desk is striking when she considers the rest of the station's furniture. The floating ball of scum resting on top of it is completely out of place. Perhaps the scientists had requisitioned their boss' office for their DF85 project.
"Looks like there's some meat that escaped the hook!" A voice jeers with a heavy accent.
Whoever is speaking is in this room. They're behind the desk where her light doesn't reach, she's guessing.
"Who are you?" She holds a knife out, stepping in front of Luffy.
Her attempts to keep Luffy behind her fail as he squirms around her to get a better look. She holds out her arm to prevent him from running over to the desk.
The lights suddenly come on, and she sees nothing but an empty office chair. Glancing around tells her there is no one in this room but Luffy and her. How many more disembodied voices are there? And why can't she sense them?
There's movement from the fish tank on top of the desk. The floating ball of scum spins in place before unfolding, and she's looking at a mess of seaweed and algae shaped like a star. It has human lips and eyes.
"I am the world famous scientist, Jac!" The star-shaped creature brags.
Luffy and she stare at Jac uncomprehendingly. Jac wiggles one of its appendages at them. As one, they both tilt their heads.
"You're a plant," Luffy says matter of factly.
"I think he's a starfish?" Perhaps a filthy one considering the starfish in the room. It doesn't explain the human eyes and lips however.
"He's got seaweed for hands! He's a plant," Luffy argues.
"Non! I am a man," the starfish-plant thing says.
They both give Jac looks to convey their non-belief of his human status. Jac puffs up with indignation.
"Do you not see my handsome face, and think, what a man that Jac is!"
"No," they say to the angry starfish-plant floating in the fish tank.
Luffy is content to mash his face against Jac's fish tank to make silly expressions, but she's acutely aware of the hostile presence moving towards them at a steady pace.
"Either tell us something important, or we're gone. We've wasted enough time as it is. That thing is still chasing after us," she says.
"Oh, you've made Edwin mad then? Sent the Boss after you then?" Jac spins in place.
"Boss?"
"We were turned into these wretched states by playing with something we didn't understand. Our boss was a monster of a man, but now he is a man-like monster. Take my advice, stay away from giant black cubes and Devil Fruit."
The scientists, Jac explains, resorted to desperate measures to ensure their survival once cut off from the surface completely. When the attempts to replicate the Devil Fruit failed, Edwin had been tied down and force-fed the Devil Fruit.
Angry beyond belief, Edwin hadn't spared anyone his wrath.
Jac, while vague on the details, persists that the Boss is invincible. Only Edwin can call off the creature. They'll have to pacify Edwin if they want it to stop chasing them.
"And do you know where we can find Edwin?" She asks, keeping a bored Luffy in a headlock.
"You, my friend, are in luck! There is an emergency tunnel in this very room that goes to the center of the station," Jac says before his voice lowers. "That is where Edwin is." There's a strange emphasis on the name.
The emergency tunnel is easy to find, and Luffy is already crawling through it before she can stop him. Every part of her is screaming to chase after him, but that's only because her brain takes one look at him and sees a helpless child. Stupid brain.
"One last thing," she says before entering the tunnel herself, "who were you to Edwin?"
"I was responsible for giving him the Devil Fruit that started this mess," Jac says sadly. "I didn't know what would happen, and I only ever wanted to tell him I was sorry. Wesley and Al didn't deserve what happened to them."
JON I'M SORRY
"I see."
With the burner extinguished and placed inside her obi, she crawls through the emergency tunnel and back into the darkness. The worst part is figuring out there are ladders she has to blindly climb.
The more the tunnel takes her upwards, the more she feels like that this is not taking her to the center of the station.
She hears Luffy's stupid laughter ahead of her and takes comfort in it. Even someone as moronic as him wouldn't laugh while being eaten alive.
She still feels like she's walking into a trap though.
When she exits the tunnel, the first thing she sees are busted diving suits. The next thing she sees is Luffy flailing around with a giant diving helmet on his small head. She debates leaving him like that.
"When are you going back to normal?" She asks, freeing Luffy with a sigh.
"Mm," Luffy tilts his head, "right now!"
On cue, Luffy's body expands with a pop. She blinks at the fully-grown man standing in front of her. Luffy stretches his rubbery limbs with a wide grin.
"Let's go kick Bedend's ass!" Luffy pumps a fist.
"He won't know what hit him," she nods.
...
Several minutes later, she's sitting in what can only be described as a poor man's birdcage, dangling over a pool of water. Edwin is pacing somewhere below her, and she has no idea where Luffy is.
"I don't know what I was thinking." She clutches her aching head. "Why did I think we could win?"
"Luffy does that," Nami says dryly from the cage beside her.
Robin and Chopper are together on the other side of Nami, but their cage has been lowered into the pool of water. They are only shallowly submerged—the water doesn't go above Chopper's waist—but it keeps them frozen and unable to speak.
If Chopper had the foresight to sit on Robin's shoulders, perhaps he could have avoided his fate, but then Edwin might have done something far more drastic in response.
Facing Edwin head on is a mistake she won't make for a third time.
Luffy's attacks had done nothing to Edwin just as they did nothing to the Boss. She'd been next to useless without her sword, and that intense pressure had caused her to pass out once more.
Under the light, she was able to confirm that there was no one else around when she suddenly became unable to breathe. She feels like she's missing the final piece of the puzzle.
What exactly is Edwin's Devil Fruit? Jac wouldn't say.
"All my friends call me Jon," she hums. "I'm sorry Jon."
