Lint Chapter 2: Angles and Dangles

A/N: Notes about any mistakes and reasons for choices about submarines and marine animals are in the endnotes. I'm not an expert in any of these fields. But, I'm running with Oda's initial alignment of Law with the Largha Seal in this from SBS Vol 76 (even though it was a fan's suggestion). It makes sense, considering his crew and outfit, although I love the snow leopard affinity too. Spotted seals and Largha seals are the same animal.

"Black Maria. Onigumo, right? That admiral."

"Something like that," Marco said, patted the top of his head, his hair was long dried. "Glasses?"

"You shoved them into your pants' pocket." Law fished them out of an inside compartment of his own jacket and passed them over. "The crew rescued them."

Marco wiped the lenses with the cardigan, picked a few wool threads from the glass. He fit them in place, then pushed them down his nose.

Law scribbled in a notebook, hands clean now, scrubbed free of battle. Gore branched his jacket like cracks in a creek-bed. Water was prized on a sub, especially one that operated as a surgery. Its use was measured, plus the main conflict was only a few knots away. No point in ruining more than one set of clothes.

For all their time together, which, to be fair, wasn't that much, Marco hadn't sailed on the Polar Tang. His fruit was suited to the sky and their rendezvous were usually arrived at separately.

He peered around at what he guessed was the sub's library. Ikkaku sat curled up in an armchair in the corner.

She'd held up the cover of her book Law's way when they'd entered, not looking at them. An apparent habit between them. A dead woman was splayed on the cover. Some crime novel.

"Read it," Law said.

Ikkaku nodded. Lowered the book, turned a page and kept reading.

"It's good," he'd continued, walked to a desk to the side of the room, placed Kikoku between it and the wall, pulled out a drawer and extracted the spiral binder. "But that librarian, keep an eye on her, she ain't all she's cracked up to be."

"Lah-la-lah!"

Marco guessed Ikkaku would've shoved her fingers in her ears if she hadn't needed them to hold the book open. She sure couldn't carry a tune.

"Red herring," she said.

"Law or the librarian?" Marco asked.

"Captain, of course," she glared at them. "Running interference."

Law scratched out his indifference onto the paper.

.

"What's this?" Marco asked now, tapping the pages.

"Like to keep track of the devil fruits." Law sketched the giant spider woman he'd seen as he'd sliced his way from one floor to the other to the roof of the castle on Onigashima. Black Maria.

She'd pinned Blackleg, and Law couldn't tell if the cook was in heaven or hell. He was a hard one to read at times. She was one of the six Hawkins had named at sword-point when Law 'escaped' the Flower Capital prison, Drake being another. Or was. One of the Tobi roppo.

"So that you know what you're up against?" Marco asked.

Law nodded. "Might be able to counter the properties when needed if I have enough information." He drew a stick-figure cook bound to a cross-shaped web. "There's an encyclopaedia out there somewhere."

"Yah." Marco removed his glasses, folded them and placed them in a side pocket of the scrub bottoms the Hearts had lent him. "Someone of my acquaintance memorised its contents once." The Moby Dick had carried a manual.

Law glanced up at the bitter tinge to Marco's tone, the light of the side lamps flickering across his face, then back to the book. He'd ask later.

A few people had memorised it, but he'd put his money on Blackbeard, considering the targeted harvesting of devil fruit users and his history with the Whitebeards.

Why hadn't Doflamingo, with his underground connections, kept an eye out for the yami-yami no mi, the dark-dark fruit? It could absorb the power of other fruits

Or perhaps he had. He'd successfully found Ace's fruit after all, but his luck (and Cora's) had run out with the ope-ope no mi. And it wouldn't have served Doflamingo to take on Law's power if he wanted him to perform the eternal youth operation. So if Law's fruit was sought by any holder of the yami-yami no mi, it wasn't for that purpose.

Law flipped the pages of the notebook to a section headlined Marine Bastards in fat bastard letters. He made a quick notation about Onigumo and closed it. The different kinds of fruits that let users take on the appearance or advantages of an animal were curious. The Smiles being the most bizarre. In result.

"Observatory?" Law asked across the room.

"Free," Ikkaku answered, again not looking up from her book. She had a few-seconds-break in all the chaos and goddamn she was going to take it. Law slipped the notebook back into the drawer, stood, pushed in the chair and turned to Marco. "I'll give you a tour."

Not that there was much to tour. Shachi had insisted on installing some glass floor sidings. Colourful kelp, sea anemone, and a few sea creatures grew and swam below, but not all the crew approved of the confinement.

The marine-life was pretty to look at, but the tanks were a bitch to maintain, particularly when a fish went belly-up. The sub got hot so it wasn't unheard of. Water really couldn't be wasted either but they weren't underwater all the time. Plus it was a seawater solution.

Law walked ahead of Marco, Kikoku against his shoulder, pinpricks of sweat dotting the creases of his neck. He wiped them with a small towel that he slid back into a pocket of the jacket. Only a few rooms in the sub were cooled.

In the observatory, round portals, a manometer to the side, looked out at darkness at this depth. Just as well. Corpses must have plummeted from the edges of the island floating on the clouds. Flashes of bioluminescence zipped by.

In the twilight-night zone the sub was cruising through now, the dysphotic zone, glow-in-the-dark creatures were more common than sunlight, and they gathered their food from the already-dead-and-sinking. Kaidou was laying out a banquet for them.

Law tapped the window, a dull knock. The thick flat acrylic glass was built to withstand the pressure. The flatness made things look much larger when they were closer to the surface where visibility was possible, or when the Hearts threw on the outside lights for a moment. Some things were so large they didn't need to be magnified.

Marco wandered around, half listening to Law drone about sonar. The Hearts could yak your ears off when it came to marine life and maritime talk, but Stella Maris did guide seafarers to safety. He should listen. He tried to integrate it along with the regulated hums and clicks of the pressure gauges and pipes overhead. Things seemed to be running smoothly.

"Most subs, don't have windows." Law sat on a ledge and gazed upwards, tried to detect some kind of motion or light in the surrounding body of water. The muted glow from this room attracted the curious. "But my team has an affinity for whales and dolphins, and a few other sea creatures."

"Penguins don't dive this deep," Marco said, sitting beside Law. Sure was gloomy out there.

"Orcas do. Narwhals. Narwhals dive much deeper than a sub can. Did y'know that?" The sub could dive to 300 metres, deeper than the Orca, minimally, but not as deep as the Narwhal or the Sperm whale. The amazing Cuvier went to depths of 3000.

The black of Law's nails hardly registered this time as Marco followed his finger tracing a pursuit on the translucent window.

"Had an Orca chase a Narwhal when we were closer to the top once—Shachi and Ikkaku can sense them—and Orcas are huge, anyway. Luckily Narwhals can really dive. We were up in the Far North Blue."

The sub lurched and Marco and Law held the edge of the platform. As it righted, Law homed in on the lights stationed in the room as they quickly changed from red to green. They must be nearer to upside than he'd thought. The surface waves batting the sub about. Maybe Kaidou had fallen. But he could fly. No shouts, no panic. He confirmed that Kikoku was where she should be, to the side, then settled back in.

"Got away?" Marco asked.

"Who?"

"The Narwhal." If there was anyone on this crew who could look after herself it was Ikkaku, especially facing down Shachi.

Law admired Marco's calm, but it wasn't as if he hadn't gone through a thousand storms. He shook his head free of Big Mom and Kaidou and the huge beasts of Onigashima and the strange barcode imprinted on their skin.

"Narwhals can dive to 1,200 plus metres."

Given that Law or himself or any fruit user could drown in a bathtub, Marco was impressed.

"Orcas are clever though. Might wait at the surface for the Narwhal, but ice can protect it."

"You don't collide?"

"We haven't. Like all subs we ping to find the location of animals and other vessels around us, Zunesha's legs, but not too often. Better to track by tuning in, than be tracked by emitting noise, and that kinda vibration from a sperm whale at the least can paralyse for a while, and maybe do worse. If it chose to. So our sonar has to affect things too."

"And so the window?" Marco placed a palm flat against it. It wasn't much cooler than any of the surfaces safe to touch on board.

"Shachi and Ikkaku like to sit and look and click and buzz, and the Narwhal even trumpets."

"Yeah?" Marco couldn't quite imagine Ikkaku trumpeting.

"Maybe more like a whistle. Better suited to topside, but the environment's obviously artificial here. Brings 'em in, keeps 'em away, and when we get to a certain depth it's only the Narwhal. We really don't want them and the Killer whales in the same body of water."

Speak of the devil. Ikkaku walked past, down the corridor, her break over. She popped her head in. Law glanced over his shoulder.

"It was the plumber."

"Yup. Told you the librarian wasn't all she appeared to be."

"She was the librarian," Ikkaku said, no nonsense.

"Disappointing, right?" Law replied, straight-faced.

"Yeah, yeah." Ikkaku waved, her back to them, and moseyed on to her duties.

Law faced the glass again, and Marco didn't miss the indent that deepened his cheek when he smiled, though he continued their conversation as if it hadn't been interrupted.

"It's not safe for the Narwhal, nor the Polar Tang, if Orcas are in the same area, and of course Ikkaku gets upset if one of them gets taken. Jean Bart too. It's not pretty."

"The blood?"

"Jean Bart's weeping."

Marco bet neither were rated highly on the scale of attractiveness.

"Sperm whales can dive about the same as the Narwhal. They're toothed whales too, but Narwhal aren't on the menu." In the new world, animals from all kinds of climates mixed.

Marco could bore Law with a few bird species at some time, but the bastard was plenty clever already and probably knew them all. A lot of his guard slipped away when he spoke about big fish and Sora Warrior of the Sea, though, and Marco didn't want to step on that. Not right now, particularly when there was a shit-tonne of water pressing down upon them. Freaked him out a bit.

Law touched the rim of his hat. "Even seals. Elephant seals, not Largha, but y'know. The males can dive to 1,500 metres, but usually stop at 500."

Largha seals, Spotted seals, had more class, he wanted to tell Marco, not protecting and enforcing a harem, or denying the younger male seals any potential choice of mate; not dominating the female seals, though the female Elephant seals chose the stretch of land that they beached on. They chose the owner of that land.

The largest of the male Elephant seals was taller than Doflamingo by a long shot. The female was much smaller, about Doflamingo's length. The male Largha—Law's people—ranged from Zoro's height to Marco's, if standing. You didn't survive in any of the oceans if you worried about it, but Law was most comfortable with those within a half metre of his own frame, Bepo and Jean Bart excepted. Cora.

"Does it matter that they're not Largha?" Marco leaned closer and pushed up the brim of Law's hat and breathed into the space of his own spotted seal, eyelash close, and Law smiled and spoke against the curve of his cheek.

"Yeah. You seen those ugly fuckers? Put the seal family to shame."

"But they're great divers."

"Gotta give credit where its due."

Law moved his head from Marco's and traced patterns on the glass again and Marco trapped his hand and brought it to the edge of his thigh.

"It's not like Spotted seals are the most handsome sea-mammal out there either."

Law brushed the peak of his cap with his free hand, the fur had been spared the worst of the fighting.

"The babies are cute."

Marco glanced up with one eye closed, still holding Law's hand, fished his glasses from his pocket, shook out the arms, one folding inwards, and jabbed his face a few times. Law leant across to settle them.

"Thanks," Marco said. He glanced back down at Law's fingers. "Then you club them to death to keep your head warm."

"Yeah," Law removed his hat and spun it in on a finger. "Well, not me." He replaced it. "The babies are pure white. This one was older." The meat was eaten, the skins used for other items of clothing.

"Pays to be ugly."

"Wouldn't know," Law said, and rested one palm on top of the other once Marco released his grip.

"Me neither," Marco laughed. And Law sat back, his head resting against the vibration of the window, his coat bunched behind him—it gave his spine a little support. Marco ran his fingers under Law's shirt, over the back tattoo that he knew covered some of the white marks from Flevance.

Law nestled into Marco. He'd tip over if the Commander suddenly moved.

"Did they call you monster?" he asked.

Marco thought better than kissing the top of his head, the fur was bound to be tacky. "Other hand," he said instead.

Law dropped it on Marco's lap, and Marco withdrew his touch from the contours of vertebrae and skin and Law straightened up and tugged down the edges of his shirt.

"Nah." Marco's flames flared over the nails. "You ever seen a Phoenix that was reviled?"

"I wasn't always the Surgeon of Death," Law said, clenching and releasing his fist under the heat. There was heat. "Whoa. Hot. Sure you've got control of everything?"

Marco dimmed the blaze. "Sorry. Hadn't switched off attack mode."

Law had witnessed the initial phases of the fight with Queen and King as he'd raced past. That was some power.

"This one's a bit more damaged than the other. I was a tad enthusiastic."

"I'd be fucking useless with a severed hand," Law said.

Marco rolled his eyes. Dramatic as always. Law wasn't doing a whole lot to pull his palm out of Marco's hold. "Y'can always sew it back on."

Law lit up a Room. "Not if it didn't happen in one of these." The blue dome dropped.

"That's not true," Marco leant into Law's neck, "And you know it."

"Not true, Cap!" Penguin sauntered past and raised a finger of the arm Law had reattached so long ago. All without the aid of his powers. Then he had saved their benefactor with his powers, his injury having been inflicted well out of a Room's scope.

Both men moved a little apart, but quiet grins seeded their features like sprouts breaking through a wasteland. Law's crew was loyal but weren't lackeys.

The flames flickered out and Law turned his wrist this way and that. "Don't think my nails have ever been so pearly."

Marco admired his work. "You really should get rid of the last manicurist you visited." He pressed the pad of Law's pinky. "Hope you didn't leave a tip."

"Oh, but I did."

The ledge was wide enough that Law could face the ocean again. He sat cross-legged like a schoolchild, coat flipped out behind him, back to the corridor. Despite skirmishes and the blue feathers crowding it, his shirt collar remained in line. With his fingers spidered behind him on the ledge, he glanced at Marco to his side.

"Left the tip of Kikoku at the point of his very elegant neck." Law uncurled again, and whipped his pointer under his chin in a cutting motion.

Marco's gangly limbs easily folded into a half-lotus and the two leaders leant into one another as if checking out the exchange potential of homemade school lunches.

"Pity you didn't decapitate him."

"I am a doctor."

Law stared at him. Marco knew. Law didn't really like killing. Did anyone?

He traced a line between Law's eyes and down his nose and Law shifted his head in annoyance.

"Thought you Larghas were all into that."

"With other Larghas, man, not Phoenixes. God knows where your feathers have been."

Marco laughed. "You're wearing human remains."

Law pulled his coat to him, his gaze a grumble of discontent.

"You like feathers."

Law rubbed his cheek against the neck of the garment. He did. "Nose is off limits," he mumbled into the fluff, "for now."

Marco raised his eyebrows. Fair enough. "Neko and Inu don't like having their noses touched either."

Law searched Marco's eyes to see what he knew or not. Not much more than Law himself. "Bad luck with the clouds over the moon."

"Yeah." Marco rubbed a hand along his arm and wished he could see something outside the portal. "You could sense a heartbeat?"

"When I shambled them to the lower floors of the castle? Yeah. The tall samurai wasn't in good shape."

"Izou's sister." They should be getting back. Yet he didn't uncross his legs. Not yet. They'd get there. What could they do from this low in the ocean?

He circled back to their previous conversation. "You understand then, Surgeon of Death, why the monsters of the sea deserve some respect. The same respect?"

Kawamatsu was a fishman, and Jinbei was good people. It was all subjective.

Law remained close, but folded into his coat, the hands Marco had fixed aligning with everything like the tone from a singing bowl. He didn't feel like physically sharing right now. "Precisely."

Marco hadn't told his story yet. Whitebeard had collected orphans. Maybe Marco had found family early and never had to avoid words about how abhorrent he was. How wrong it was for a human to be a phoenix. Law hoped so.

He also kinda hoped for a flash of a Lantern Fish or a Gulper Eel to scare the bejesus out of the commander. As if actually falling into the ocean wasn't enough, there were plenty of things that would feed on your corpse, and it might not be drowning that killed you, but the fright of meeting them face to very-toothed-face.

Then again, humans were far too large for them to prey upon. Law leaned, face first, forehead against the window. Tapping, even though the sound wouldn't carry. Envying, not for the first time, the tools of echolocation that Ikkaku and Shachi sometimes put into effect. The frequency and bandwidth of the Largha's own vocalisations were much lower, and limited to growls, snorts, drums, knocks and sweeps. It was something.

"It's the harem thing that turns me off the Elephant seals, not the fact that they show up Don Krieg," he said. Staring straight out, tracking a glint here or there. Or maybe he was jealous that they could dive a few thousand metres deeper than the Largha seal.

Marco's teacher's face in the reflection of the window wasn't as effective without his glasses. Considering how distorted it was.

"Don't look at me like that."

The nose was off-limits, but Marco could still run his hand up the back of Law's shirt and reach across and…what did eternal youth get you? Especially if those around you aged.

"Your cuticles are a mess, yoi."

"Not anymore," Law said.

"Hygiene's important." Relying only on their power left them as vulnerable as being without it. "From one practitioner to another."

"I'll keep it in mind."

And a moment of safety, a shared look, a moment of turning to face the interior of the sub, was all it took to miss the Gulper Eel and the Viper Fish, and even a Ghost Shark a few hundred metres higher than its usual depth as they swirled in front of the portal and away again.

And the glowing crustaceans and copepods. Chased and chaser. The elegant Sea butterfly and Red paper lantern jellyfish.

Both had fought to see past and into that which was in front of them, and Marco had flown widely and freely for many years. A raptor could pinpoint friend and foe at a great distance, and even discern the outer layer of a chakra like the violet shimmering around Law.

Marco's vision was enhanced when he wore his glasses. He wasn't lying when he told Neko and Inu about the millions of islands in the world. He'd somersaulted his way over archipelagos and islets and eyots and the edges of continents. Tidal, barrier, coral and oceanic.

And Law, while remaining low and hidden knew the beauty and poison that existed within water devoid even of refracted light.

The phoenix was born of the sun. Largha seals lived under the sea and on its surface, and hauled-out on ice floes for birth, and remained in the sea or shore in warmer months. But both men were more than their fruits, than their powers that others desired and despised. More than their ancestry. More than the pressure they applied to weaken foundations. Both were healers, and leaders and lovers.

Practiced, Law felt the angle of the sub change and hoped it just meant they were rising. He could imagine the crew conspiring to a round of angles and dangles to mess with Marco, but they were in the middle of war. He eyed a mug left out, not in its holder, and quickly shambled it to him so it wouldn't slide. He secured it and checked on Kikoku. Marco had been unconscious when brought aboard and hadn't experienced the degree change on descent.

Law took his hand. His crew had some of the sturdiest sea legs under the oceans, and the medical equipment had special compartments, fortunately. Jean Bart dove at an extreme angle at Marineford. This was standard though. About 15 degrees. Nothing to worry about.

Standing tall was almost impossible when footpaths were uneven and the earth liquefied. Towns had been destroyed for poor public upkeep. The World Government siphoning off tributes, the warlords demanding the same, maintenance wasn't possible.

It was better to go with the flow rather than against air and water currents. Point the vessel in such a way it could ride it out. Cracks could be stepped on, stepped over, widened. It was better to sway some, bend some, let gravity do its thing to maintain position and balance. In the face of greater foes, it was a necessity. You had to lean into the angle to remain upright, to surface.

Law unhooked one of his earrings and tied it one of Kikoku's tassels.

"Watch," he told Marco. "She's possessed, but it's not her. We're ascending."

A/N: The Tang class of submarines weren't nuclear, but most of the information out there on life in submarines comes from the US navy and is about the nuclear subs, so I've mixed elements here and there. OP shows the Polar Tang as being fairly spacious, I guess? Though we haven't seen much of it, so I've kinda maintained that. I imagined the portals from chapter 978 where Shachi's showing O-Kiku and Kawamatsu something outside of the portals. Subs don't have windows, apparently, but we all know the Polar Tang is special. And there aren't any ledges in front of those windows, but there are now.

That "eyelash close" section was lifted from an older story of mine, "Gambia's Granny". But it's no longer online, so it's recycled here. Also, sorry for the (random) capitalisation of animal names. I think they should be lowercase. Maybe for a future edit.

How'd it go? Would love to hear your thoughts, and thanks for reading