Sidestory — Decks of the World EX: Pt. 1
Cross-Brain AN: The following is a portion of the completed chapter we will be posting. When it is finished, we will replace this preview with the full work. Enjoy the taste of what's to come…
The Eternal Hell
The clang of the cell slamming and locking still echoed in their ears, far more than the din of the prisoners' yells around them.
Whitey Bay and Squard were livid for the expected reasons. But Ace… his tears hadn't stopped since he awakened. Not until now, when faced with the sheer shock of the figure that they had just added to his cell.
He had sunken into a meditation position when they locked him up, eyes closed and oblivious to the din around him. Or so it would seem; there were a handful of crooks that were simply too noisy. Such as a certain legless man nearby, restrained with great prejudice.
"JIHAHAHAHAHA! HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN! ALLIES OF THE GREAT WHITEBEARD BROUGHT THIS LOW?!"
Ace's temper flared at the insult to his captain and father—
"—you couldn't suck it up for ten fucking seconds and you died because of it!"
—and died a moment later as Cross's warning echoed in his mind once again, leaving him to slump again in defeat.
It was this, more than anything, that caused Jinbe to crack an eye open and snarl in the direction of the fallen lion.
"If you don't shut up, I'll come over there and shut you up myself."
"And how the hell do you intend to do that, you stupid fish?! You're imprisoned down here, just like the rest of—!"
CLANG!
The chain binding Jinbe to the wall came loose from the force he exerted, silencing the entire floor.
"Be. Quiet. I'm trying to meditate," Jinbe said calmly, returning to his previous serenity.
As the din picked up once more—even louder than before though mercifully Shiki's voice wasn't a part of it—Squard picked up his jaw long enough to comment on what he'd just seen, "You could have escaped at any time!?"
"Hmph, hardly," Jinbe murmured back, lightly rolling his shoulder. "That was the only limb I had enough motion in; I expect the wardens will be by to rectify that oversight soon enough. But it shut him up, at least."
He looked back at Ace, a wry half-smile tugging at his mouth. "By the way… I met your brother a couple of weeks ago. He and his have been up to a lot since Enies Lobby. As it seems I can't get any peace and quiet here, care to hear some of what you've missed?"
It was a good several minutes before Ace could muster the energy to nod.
-o-
? ?
"A war of earthshaking potential… a new living weapon in mass production… and a Warlord coming to visit. Things are certainly picking up. It seems we may have to leave this place soon."
The speaker turned away from the display before them and to their left, where a young man with dirty blond hair stared at the screens unblinkingly.
"I take it that you didn't see this coming, either?"
"I didn't think that those jackasses we beat would wind up working for the Government," he replied somberly. "This wasn't supposed to happen…"
"The end of the last SBS… what happened to provoke such anger?"
Jeremiah Cross's fists clenched furiously.
"Portgas D. Ace… I only met him once, in Alabasta. But he's Luffy's big brother. Can you imagine how much it's going to hurt him, when he grew up without any parents, for one of the only people he ever had to die? I can, because I saw it."
With eyes wide in horror as he stared at the multitude of malicious machinations in Impel Down's six floors, he finished his thought. "And I saw Luffy fighting tooth and nail to stop it, too… even through all of the hell that was here before these… 'BioMEGA' were added. Even if he had to do it… alone."
The chamber was silent at this revelation. The room's master, however, extended a hand and patted his shoulder.
"He won't be alone, boy. We will aid him as soon as we see him come."
Cross's face split into a wide grin, but the speaker held up their hand.
"But I think that that's enough. We know the plan now, and I think we can surmise that whatever future would have happened, we would have helped Straw Hat regardless. Now we only know that we need to be prepared."
Giving a wry smirk and a sigh, Cross nodded and raised his own hand…
…touching it to his left cheek to restore his true form.
Newkama Land
"Really, though, knowledge of the future as well?" Ivankov questioned, both weary and incredulous in the same sentence; the former bounty hunter before him had put more effort into imitating Cross than any of his other copied faces, and while it could often provide insight into his mind, sometimes the theories were just a little much.
"He knew about you and this place, knew I was coming to their ship in Alabasta, knew my real name, and he talked about a war like this back on one of his first broadcasts, the one about the Darwin Award," Bentham listed off with a heavy sigh, only finding the energy to spin himself into two and a half pirouettes. "If he doesn't know the future, or at least some version of it, I'll eat my swans."
"Not to mention his lack of concern regarding the prospect of your capture," Inazuma noted as she (at the moment) strode up to them, swirling her wine in her glass. "In fact, didn't you say that he all but insisted on your self-sacrifice?"
"Or as close to it as possible, yes," the multi-faced okama nodded in agreement, then swept back into a standing faint. "Oh, the poor dear! He must have been planning for just such an eventuality from the moment he set foot on the Straw Hats' deck! Such a terrible burden!"
"Mm… and one I don't doubt he already thought he'd managed to shrug, no less…" Ivankov declared in a grim tone. A statement that had their underlings looking up at them in shock.
"Come again?" Inazuma questioned, not without a hint of incredulity. "But how—?"
"That broadcast he made, following the fall of Enies Lobby, when his bounty picture was taken," Ivankov declared, waving a copy of said bounty indicatively. "When he made that broadcast, Cross-boy wasn't just happy, he was euphoric, long after the initial rush of the Enies battle should have worn off. The type of euphoria one might feel, say…"
"If one thought they'd managed to successfully avert a world-shattering war…" Bentham concluded the thought, his face a mask of grief. "Oh, that poor dear… and if that last broadcast was anything to go by, he only just learned that it failed. He'd just risen to the highest of heights!"
"And now," Inazuma continued morosely. "I would not be surprised if he has fallen so far as to be deeper than even us. Truly, the World Government's cruelty knows no bounds…" she knocked back her glass in a toast to the grim statement.
Cross-Brain AN: The good news? We have a few allies savvy enough to realize what's coming, waiting to support Luffy. And the bad news?
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Happy April Fools Day.
