—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #42
doldrums
(under the weather montage)
—
Shakky applauded. "I always suspected you were a trendsetter, Doctor-chan."
"This," Law said through his surgical mask, "is a safety precaution."
"Is the rest of your crew out sick? Poor things. How about I make them chicken soup for the low, low price of fifty thousand beli?"
"No, thanks."
The Hearts had spent a long day playing around in Fensalir snow, and tracked in wet footprints and a flu that proceeded to raze through the Polar Tang as if it were keeping to a tight schedule. Nobody took this well. The mechanics insisted it was but seasonal allergies. Hai Xing maintained that fishmen naturally have a stronger immune system, then discreetly threw up in the kitchen sink. "Sour milk," he had the audacity to say.
Sophie, who was in theory someone Law respected, was made horrible by the fever. When he tried to force-feed her medicine, she bit his hand and roared, "I've found the key to the universe! The golden ratio is in the spiral pattern of pineapples! Paint my likeness on the temple walls!"
Jean Bart, who had giants blood in him, merely developed a case of the sniffles, so he was on duty washing blankets and changing sheets. Minks were resistant to human-transmitted illnesses, so Bepo was left in charge of the med bay. The Hearts laid on the bed, surly with runny noses and ice packs on their heads.
So here Law was alone, fighting off a migraine as he paid Shakky for more info on pirates with good bounties. Well—mostly alone.
"You're the Surgeon, aren't you?" Someone with a friendly Omiramban lilt sidled up to his arm. Law would've paid more attention if his head wasn't so foggy. As it happened, he only noted her curly brown hair. Not even prickly pirate doctors were immune to Pavlovian response.
He tucked the bounty posters in his jacket. "No."
"Oh. Must've mistaken you for the mean grouch who lives in the trash can outside Shakky's bar…"
Law glanced sideways and found himself looking at a kid in a plain white mask, who ducked behind the girl.
"Okay, okay, I see you don't like the funnies. Any room on your ship for an extra engineer?"
Just then, Law had been thinking about his mechanics, who had all fallen like dominos. "No."
"Didn't you say your crew is sick? Don't you need—"
"No." He cleared his throat, then coughed into his elbow.
"Get out before you blight my customers." Shakky shooed him away, then told the girl in a stage whisper that they didn't want his help anyway—the captain of the Hearts only had one word in his vocabulary, and he also stole toes for fun.
Law sent a glare at her customers before leaving. He had a reputation to maintain, and sometimes that meant making the bar's patrons—a leather-clad biker gang, including one who was strikingly handsome—cling to the wall in his presence and worry over the state of their toes.
—
Sophie didn't remember much while feverish. The last clear thing in her memory was instructing everyone in her most Marine voice to remain still for the medicine to run its course, and if they weren't being good patients, she was going to tattle on them to Law. The guys told her to stop being such a teacher's pet and threw their snotty, crumpled-up tissues at her.
Everything else was a blur. She faintly remembered trying to keep Bepo as a snuggle buddy, and Law had to put his entire hand on her face and push her away. This made her start chanting, "Bear cuddles! Bear cuddles! The revolution is now!" until everyone joined in and/or threw up on themselves. She also remembered drinking watery vegetable soup and Hai Xing making a break for the galley. Bepo tackled him and hauled him back to bed.
Her fever broke two days later, and Sophie spent the next day sleeping off the meds. On the third day, she sat up. The med bay was washed over with the dark-blue of water.
"Who's alive?" Sophie asked the room, her throat hoarse from coughing. "Sound off."
"Boobies," Valross whimpered.
"Butts," said Kamasu.
"Badonka-donks," said Shachi.
She gave them a thumbs-up. "Nasty. Regret that."
"If you wake up screaming about cherry pies and habanero peppers one more time, 'm gonna throw Penguin at you," muttered the Anko-shaped lump.
"Do I get a say in this," said the Penguin-shaped lump.
Sophie patted her stomach. "Sorry, must be hungry…"
Hai Xing sat up as if summoned.
"You sleep," she said, and Hai Xing did.
Sophie took the Polar Tang's new viral passenger in stride. A runaway flu happened every so often in G-13, where all the marines were crammed in their barracks like tightly-packed sardines. Hardly anything to make a fuss over, and Hippo had beaten into her the basics of not being an idiot while sick. She drank her weight in water, slept, and recovered in no time. And that meant she was cogent enough to discern the faint snap of fire and breaking lumber.
Sophie almost crashed into Bepo as she rushed out of the med bay. Through the portholes in the corridor she saw the wooden debris of a shipwreck floating past. Beneath the Polar Tang's stale, recycled air she smelled smoke coming in from outside.
It figured.
Law sat in the helmsman's chair, spinning the wheel as the Polar Tang dove underwater. A heart in a clear cube was beating on the control panel, and blood (not his) was smeared across the side of his face and over his mask. The only indication he gave when a hand came sliding over the back of his chair was a glance in its direction, but otherwise Law remained at ease when the hand spun his chair around.
Sophie stood over him, caging him there in her baggy sleep clothes, wild hair, and crunching on cough drops. The blue underglow of the control panels lit her face with threatening menace. This was unusual. Normally, Sophie's threatening face resembled a sweaty bowl of gravy. Now when she looked down at him, she was cold as a serene statue, and she said nothing.
"Hi," Law said pleasantly. "How are you feeling?"
Sophie continued to say nothing. She drummed her fingers against the chair. Without taking his eyes off her, Law adjusted the wheel and when the ship hit a rough current, politely braced her by the hip before she stumbled.
"You should lie down," he suggested. "You sound stuffy."
"I didn't say anything yet," Sophie snapped stuffily, then glared and wiped her nose. "Shut up. Post-nasal drip. Listen, you're being so predictable about this."
"Enlighten me."
"You're shouldering all the responsibility because the crew's sick, because that's exactly the kind of idiot thing you'd do. Doctoring, helming, cooking, heart-stealing. We should've waited on Sabaody for Anko to recover before you set sail without a working helmsman. Here, let's fast-forward and get to the good part. Do you need to collapse into my arms and murmur in a fever-haze about your childhood traumas while I tuck you into bed?" Sophie held her arms out, tapping her foot, impatient and irascible.
"I'm not sick," Law pointed out.
"Would you even care if you were?" Sophie retorted without a moment's thought. "And how would you know? Did you take your own temperature yet?"
"A good chemist believes her captain when he says he can take care of himself." A long, pensive finger waggled. "A well-behaved crew is a happy crew."
"You've never been well-behaved a day in your life. But fine." Sophie spun around. "I'll get Bepo."
Law lunged forward and caught her hand. The play of blue light and shadow collided and she turned slowly, lifting a brow. Making up for the awkward movement, he brushed his thumb across her knuckles. "You're right. I am a little tired. I'll rest after I take up the ship to cruise."
She weighed his promise, mouth pursed.
"I'm glad to see you up," Law added in a quieter voice, and pressed a light kiss to her fingertips through his mask.
To the shadow watching, Sophie endured this as one endured a kiss from a deadly viper. This made him nervous, because he knew the reputation of her temper, and if his presence hadn't already been noticed, that sharp uneasiness would've been a beacon for any users of Observation. The silhouettes backlit by gently oscillating blue light broke apart. Law called, "Jean Bart."
"Ah, forgive me—the crew is hungry so I, I thought I'd try to cook, but I don't know what to—actually, this can wait." Jean Bart tried to move back, cursing his broad shoulders.
"I'll cook." Brisk and businesslike in her cheap acid-green slippers, Sophie strode past him. Her smile was a loaded pistol. "Jean Bart, when our workaholic captain falls over, drag him to bed. And while you drag him, you may bang his head against the floor if you like."
Law intentionally raised his voice: "We're putting a lot of faith in someone who used to brew poison for a living."
"'Used to'?" she replied, and left him with that.
—
"Captain," Jean Bart said naively, "you said you were going to rest."
"I lied." Law checked Shachi's temperature and made him chug a glass of water.
The eight other Hearts were dealing with the flu the way all bored men with too much time on their hands dealt with the flu. A few of the guys went to shower, and others were reading or listening to the record player spinning in the corner. If they weren't sleeping, they were grumbling about how bored or tired they were, in-between emptying the contents of their stomachs into buckets. Not poison, of course.
Jean Bart carefully watched his captain. He showed zero signs of the illness as he went from bed to bed, his eyes lucid and concentrating, and spent the whole time explaining to Jean Bart the science behind fever-reducing medication. He understood none of it, but decided it was very impressive for a young man to dedicate his whole life to things the human eye couldn't even see. He liked having a bookworm for a captain.
Jean Bart's needling suspicion lessened, then abated. In fact, as he replaced sweaty bedcovers with clean ones, he forgot about Sophie's words until he reached Penguin's bed. As he changed the sheets, Penguin pulled him in with a hoarse whisper: "Ten paces. Then go after him."
Jean Bart leaned back, puzzled.
He wanted to ask what that meant, but Penguin dropped back asleep. He glanced over his shoulder. His captain was across the med bay, checking on Hai Xing and absently flipping a quill around his fingers.
With nothing else to do, Jean Bart sat in the corner with his knees up next to the record player. It was North Blue music, he couldn't tell from which region, but the plucked strings were soothing. He looked up when Law was finally done with the check-ups. His captain cracked his neck, nodded at his patients, dimmed the lights, and ambled out of the med bay.
After counting the fading footsteps, Jean Bart got up and trailed after him.
There was a sound down the passage, like a cat dying. He tried not to make too much noise as he approached, but his big clumsy steps shook the ground like an avalanche. The figure at the end of the passage was hunched over, pulling down his surgical mask and hacking out dinner.
At the sight of his captain getting sick all over the floor, Jean Bart rushed forward.
Law wiped his mouth. "Sour milk," he said.
"I wonder about that," said Jean Bart.
A sound left him, a gasp or a chuckle. Catching his breath, his captain slid down the wall to sit on the floor. "Damn it. Now I have to clean this fucking mess."
"Please, let me—" Law cut Jean Bart off with a forceful raised hand. He rubbed his neck, then reminded, "You have a janitor."
His captain angled him a vicious glare. "Over my dead body."
Jean Bart wondered if this was because he didn't want Sophie to shout, "Vindication!" at him, or he didn't want her to clean up after him like a mother. Possibly a little of both. A towel and a bucket of water appeared in a pop of blue, and the Surgeon of Death, Captain of the Heart Pirates, feared Supernova, rolled up his sleeves with a sigh and cleaned the floor.
"When I was a captain," Jean Bart said slowly, "it was difficult for me to show any weakness in front of my crewmates, too."
"I'm not afraid of that," Law muttered, and paused. "It's not just that."
Jean Bart waited.
He wrung out the towel, so focused on his task that for a moment Jean Bart was certain the conversation was over. Then his captain said, "Sometimes I don't want to see what's right in front of me. I convince myself I can escape anything. Even death." His hand waved uselessly. "Even… other things."
Jean Bart thought back to Sophie, who during the argument that morning tapped the knife in the waistband of her shorts a little too often for his liking. "I don't understand. Why not choose to see it?"
His captain laughed. It was a dry laugh, and if Jean Bart was twenty years younger he would've found it an insult. Now he found it rather amusing.
"I see." Jean Bart nodded. "You're what's known as a bastard."
"Takes one to… no, I can't accuse you of anything. You speak better than all the gutters I've been in."
"Believe me, it hadn't always been that way." He pitched his voice higher, mimicking the voices he still heard every time his thoughts wandered astray. "'If you don't have good breeding, you should at least have good manners.' I once spent a year muzzled."
Law's gaze had dulled into a fevered haze, but his words were calm. "There were lots of World Nobles on Sabaody that day. Would've been easy to grab one and do a little torturing."
"That's one way to start a world war."
"Sophie says they bleed red and die. Just people. Just pathetic, pusillanimous, piece of shit humans."
Jean Bart noted the tiny grin, and further amended his assumptions about his captain's penchant for temperamental chemists.
"What happened to your crew when you were taken?" Law asked this with the universal shrugging gesture of it being okay if Jean Bart avoided answering.
He was sitting cross-legged, and his hands tightened on his knees. "We were all taken together. Half of us survived the ship ride to Mary Geoise. Of those, half perished in the first three days. On the fourth day, Saint Rosward decided he only wanted to keep me. He gave me a sword and said to choose for the rest a quick death or a long one, for dinner entertainment."
In the silence, they could hear Sophie singing off-tune as she washed the dishes.
"It's what I would've done," Law said.
Jean Bart turned his head.
"I'm not saying it was brave or good. I'm just saying I would have done the same."
He pinched the corners of his eyes, flame tattoos moving as the skin pulled. Finally, he said, "They would've liked you, kid."
"You don't have to lie," Law coolly told him. "They would've called me a fucking bastard." Then he grinned, and Jean Bart grinned back, and the pirates started chuckling until the captain covered his mouth, looking pained.
Jean Bart stood with a small grunt, walked over, and picked his captain up in his arms. Law's head was propped up against his arm, and Jean Bart tucked his other arm beneath his knees. "Forgive me for embarrassing you, Captain."
"Actually, Jean Bart…" His captain closed his eyes. "This is the least emasculating way I've been bridal-carried."
—
Sophie listened as Bepo flayed their captain, wincing as the voices escalated and there was a sound like Bepo thumping Law over the head with a pillow. Then an offended shout, an angry silence, and a grumpy noise of assent. She lingered outside the cabin door, biting off whatever was left of her pinky nail and taking some burned skin along with it.
She pressed her ear to the door, then jumped back as Bepo threw it open and squeezed out into the hallway yelling, "Again! Again! This always happens!"
Sophie, who'd been engrossed in the wall, raised her eyebrows in aghast surprise.
With grave seriousness, Bepo took her by the shoulders. "Don't feel guilty. Captain always overworks himself. Penguin, Shachi, and me have never gotten him to stay still when people are sick, no matter how many times we hit him over the head with stuff." Bepo pressed his big furry face right to her nose and pleaded, "Don't cry, okay? None of this is your fault."
In reality, Sophie had planned to burst into Law's cabin yelling, "Vindication, suckaaa!"
She nodded, eyes cast down. "Yes. Wise words, Bepo-sama."
"He's been allergic to asking for help since he was born," Bepo harrumphed. "Like a thousand years ago."
"He's not that old."
"He's older than me, which means I get to call him a dinosaur."
"You know what? That makes sense."
"I can hear you, assholes," called a voice through the door.
"Good!" Bepo called back. "I'm leaving and taking my big snuggly self with me so you can settle for a normal pillow!"
Not that Law cared about being snuggled. He was arranged on his bed as if this were a prison sentence and he was a beleaguered duchess under house arrest, his shirt petulantly rumpled, the covers kicked up around him, an IV drip attached to his right elbow that he splayed outwards. His other arm rested over his eyes, as if the candlelight was hurting him.
When Sophie entered, he sighed at length. "Here to yell at me too?"
She sat on the edge of his bed and thought about how she had reached the last page of her journal. She finished her book still flushed with warmth from Fensalir, read it over, and was satisfied. But looking at her captain, it was from then on that she understood how difficult things were going to be. Life didn't end when the greasy doctor kissed you and you promised him stardust and entropy. Life went on, and so did all the troubles.
"Being chastised by Bepo is punishment enough, I think," she said. "He was frightening."
"Frightening? You'd stick grenades down my throat if that would scare away this fever."
She tenderly cupped his face. "The square-foot radius damage would be too extensive. Hemlock is cleaner and works just as well."
"Don't make me blush."
At the very least she knew Law had eaten. A mostly-empty bowl of rice with leftover fish sat on his desk. The books he'd been reading before the flu finally dragged him down were still lying open. There was a notebook filled with chicken scratch that was no doubt about the crew's health. "Are you in much pain?"
Law twisted away from her so he could smush his face into the pillow. He didn't look exhausted so much as annoyed and angry. Sophie expected this behavior from any other Heart, not her captain. Whenever Law acted childish, it usually had something to do with competition or commemorative coins. "I feel nothing. Nothing at all. I am a void where good things go to die."
"Poor you," she teased. "Are you sulking?"
"No," he moped, and tried to sit up. "We should sail back to Sabaody. Where are we? Give me a map."
Sophie stifled a laugh and said sternly, "Lie down."
"Fuck lying down."
Quick as a snake bite, she had Perihelion to his throat.
Law held still, his eyes glassy and bright with fever, his jaw raised. "This is treachery."
"This is them apples, partner." She was leaning over him, a bedridden man, with a knife touching his jugular, which was just a terrible abuse of power that neither of them minded. "We got turned around into the Calm Belt a little earlier today, but we're out of it now and heading to Sabaody. Okay?"
He made a vaguely affirmative noise, then said with malice, "If you're not going to use this position to do something interesting, put that knife away."
The blade traced the sneer of his mouth, then up to the deep groove where his brow met the bridge of his sharp nose. She stuck Peri back on her waist and Law glared at her—but not at her, that was a crucial concept—and it made her want to laugh even more.
He motioned for her to come closer. Their foreheads bumped, and he said, "I don't like being ill."
"No one does. I can call Bepo back in. You want some bear cuddles?"
Law whispered in her ear, "Get out."
He let her kiss him on the head before leaving.
—
It was a strange, quiet night on the Polar Tang. Sophie walked through the engine room alone, making sure nothing had combusted while her mechanics were sick. Lately, in-between falling asleep and waking up, she thought she heard someone singing a whispered sea shanty between the metal walls. Most likely it was Shachi singing in the shower, but it was still creepy to think about.
She needn't have bothered to check the engines; everything was in its place, and the main engine was gleaming. She admired how the metal shone as if Penguin had just oiled it. Gunk was even scraped out of the buttons and pistons.
"They're right, you are the prettiest thing on this ship." Sophie patted the engine. She grinned and said in her best cocky Surgeon of Death voice, "How are you doing this fine evening, Polar Tang-ya? Yeah, you're lonely without the boys around." She sashayed her hips. "Well, I'm here to keep you company. Tell me all about your latest spa day. Who's got you looking so nice?"
Something clinked behind her, like a tool belt, a whispered hush—
Sophie spun around.
No one was in the engine room but her. Her Observation confirmed there was not a single other living soul, but she didn't lower her knife. She backed up, nearly tripping on her slippers, the shadows warping like darkness come alive. Without any of her mechanics moving about, with the stillness of a quiet submarine, the engine room became a cavernous maw.
"Hello?" Sophie breathed, limned by the dim engine lights. The blade was a clouded-moon shine, barely visible in front of her nose. "Teach?"
Metal beneath her feet creaked. Her eyes flickered side-to-side.
Her voice was a small, whispered thing: "…Ace?"
A breeze brushed her neck, maybe a sputter from the oxygen generator, maybe a breath.
Sophie was out the door and running through the upper passageways, telling herself she was going crazy. She was crazy and there were no ghosts haunting the engine room, but if there were, oh my god, of course the Polar Tang would have a ghost attack right in the middle of an influenza attack right when she told herself only good things were gonna happen from now on and how stupid was that, really—
"What is Sophie on? Steroids? Cocaine?"
Her hand froze against the med bay's door.
"Is it the Haki that makes her recover so quick?"
"Nah, nah. Chick's got marine blood cells that scared the virus right outta her. Hup two three four, roger, wilco!"
How embarrassing; Sophie needed to give them a lecture on proper marine slang. She moved to the side and slid down the wall until she hit the floor. Her heart was still racing as she rubbed her hands on her knees. It couldn't be that her whole life she'd been an outsider because she was a failure as a human being, and now she was an outsider because she was over-succeeding at being a pirate. It couldn't be what was happening.
"D'you think that sleeping a lot and drinking water is the best medicine?" Valross asked. "Instead of playing dice when Captain ain't looking?"
Sophie forced herself not to sit them down for a five-hour lecture.
"We should be up, too," said Penguin, and there were some shuffling movements as he stopped the record player, and the dice, and the beli exchanging hands. "Come on. At this rate, Cap's only gonna bring Bepo, the big guy, and our ex-hitchhiker to Dressrosa with him. He needs us, remember. They all do."
Shachi declared, "The buzzkill is right—ow! Peng, I'm agreeing with you! Men, let's sleep and get over this damn flu."
There was a chorus of manly agreement. Sophie released the breath she held, her hands digging into her shorts. She loved her crew to pieces. Sometimes—she was getting better at it, but sometimes—she didn't know where the line fell between asking for reassurances that everything was okay, and giving her friends room to grow and learn and figure things out for themselves. This felt like the latter.
She hadn't known that they worried about Law leaving them behind. She thought of Magellan's acid burning Inazuma into an orange creamsicle puddle. Mihawk and his golden eyes, his emotionless categorization of her lack of ability cutting through a decade of being hailed as a child prodigy. She understood Law's reasoning when he took on every burden himself. He didn't want his crew to go through the horrors he went through. He was the strongest, the most cunning. He wanted the lion's share of everything.
"I should've taken you with me," she'd said to Hai Xing and Anko one night after coming back. They were crammed in Hai Xing's room, lying over each other and peeling oranges and she told them something she would never, ever say in Law's presence. "I know it's selfish and terrible. But in Impel Down, I wanted you guys with me even if you'd die. Sorry."
Hai Xing touched her hand and Anko said with poignant candor, "Thank you."
There were some things pirates valued more than life. She knew this because all marines knew this.
As Sophie lit a chamomile cigarette, Jean Bart walked past. She gestured with her shoulders to say that she was sitting on the floor because she was having a breakthrough about herself, and Jean Bart gestured back with his eyebrows to say that he understood this very well.
"When Anko wakes up," he said, "please tell him I'm keeping his seat warm for him."
"Tell him yourself. He'd like it. Actually, he might think you're flirting with him."
Jean Bart shuffled his feet awkwardly, but chuckled once she giggled and shook her head. "Ah. Yes, perhaps I will. Goodnight."
When she finished her cigarette, Sophie picked herself up. She walked first to Law's cabin, stopped outside it, then went all the way back across the ship to the engine room. Not because she wasn't afraid of ghosts—she was, but she was more afraid of leaving them alone in the Polar Tang's empty heart. And when she rolled on her side to sleep, she imagined she felt them curling up against her and closing their eyes to dream.
—
It was early next morning when Sophie shook the last medicine bottle over her hand. Two pills fell out.
—
They spread out a map across the control panel, blue light glowing through the parchment fabric.
Bepo circled a spot on the map, denoting the Polar Tang's position in open water. "We're three days' sail away from Sabaody and a week from Amazon Lily. But we can make it to Port Dogwood this evening."
Sophie shook her head. "There's a civil war going on. The papers say the whole coast is blockaded."
"The Revolutionary Army?" Bepo perked up. "Maybe Sabo's there?"
"No, it's not an uprising. The oligarchs are squabbling and it turned into a whole thing." Sophie didn't add that she doubted Sabo wanted to see her again, ever. She tried not to think of him anymore.
"Fayruz is to the southeast of us," Bepo said. "We can make it there tomorrow night."
"If we come in to Fayruz from the north, we will be blocked by Zaratan's Fire." Jean Bart traced his finger around a section of the map. "It's dangerous. We'd have to sail around a landmine of active underwater volcanos."
The three pirates looked at each other, grim.
"Let's go back to Sabaody," Bepo decided.
"We should take our chances with the fire," Sophie argued, thinking of their med bay filled with sick crewmates.
"We don't have a helmsman!" Bepo cried.
"I'm inclined to agree with him," Jean Bart weighed in. "I still don't feel comfortable steering a submarine and Bepo barely has opposable thumbs."
"Bearly?" she shouted. "We have no time for your puns, Jean Bart! I'll still allow it. But no time!"
A stack of bounty posters was Roomed onto Bepo's lap and their captain's voice predictably interrupted them from a speaking tube. "We're in pirate-infested waters. If we run across any ships, use this opportunity to get their hearts."
"GO BACK TO BED!" Bepo roared.
"Bepo, I may be mildly incapacitated at the moment—" Law paused to hack out a lung,"—but I'm still the captain."
"I'll tell them stories about you as an adolescent teenager," Bepo said without emotion.
Law left the conversation.
"My god, man." Jean Bart was horrified. "How could you sink so low?"
Bepo fell to his knees. "It had to be done," he said bitterly, and threw his paws up to the sky. "Damn you, Captain! I had no other choice!"
"Sophie," Jean Bart said. "You must have a better plan."
Bepo jumped to his feet. "That's right! You helped Blackbeard kill Fire Fist and Whitebeard! Use that big brain and strategize!"
Sophie glared.
"Too soon for pithy jokes, I see," Bepo observed, and sighed. "I guess we're screwed. I'll go get Anko. He always said he wants to die as he lived: laying on the bow of the Polar Tang, completely naked, washed by the tears of a hundred dolphins."
"Bepo. Stop. Anko's clothes are staying on." Sophie flipped through the bounty posters, no longer panicking. Bepo's pithy joke reminded her that Teach had recognized something in her. He had said they were born under the same star. What kind of troubled genius was she if she let her crew die here? "Our captain may be right. If we chase down a ship, they'll have medicine aboard."
"Do we have the time to play tag?" Jean Bart asked.
"I have a plan. Jean Bart, take us up. Bepo, strike our colors."
When the Polar Tang surfaced, the black sail with the Hearts' jolly roger was furled up, and their flag was lowered. Sophie lifted Arsenic and a signal flare exploded high into the sky, telling every ship nearby that this was an SOS emergency. The flare lit their faces in deep red, and they watched the searing light fizz out into smoke.
"I see," Jean Bart said. "No self-respecting sailor would come close to a ship with her colors struck, but vultures aren't picky about their carrion."
She brushed off her hands. "Shouldn't take more than a few hours. Let's get ready."
—
Sophie was on her way to bring her captain dinner—more thin vegetable soup with a side of rice that lacked the fluffy charm of Hai Xing's touch—when she heard his voice floating out from his cabin: "Look carefully. If there's even a single trace, I need to cut it out."
In the crack of light, she saw him showing his bare back to his closest friend. He was sitting upright on his bed and Bepo was behind him, looking with a candle raised in the air. His eyes were closed, shoulders drooped, and his head was bowed like his whole body ached.
Sophie thought about how she'd been deceived by dramatics and banter.
Bepo caught her scent and said, "Captain."
"What?" he snapped, raising his head. Law saw her standing in the doorway and froze for a moment, looking nauseous, then lowered his shirt. A glance in Bepo's direction told her that Law's fever had worsened and the bear was worried.
She pried her mouth open. "How are you feeling?"
"A few more days and I'll be back on my feet to terrorize you," Law assured, his vision unfocused.
Sophie tried to give an equally casual reply and found that no words could come out. She dropped the food harder than she intended on his desk and left. How stupid of her to say no one likes being ill to a survivor of Amber Lead. How stupid, how stupid, how stupid.
—
She flew through gunfire. Around her, would-be slaves ran for the lifeboats or shot at pirates with commandeered flintlocks.
She had no energy to look presentable, so the wind whipped against her sleep clothes with Law's sickeningly-yellow jacket pulled over it. She looked like she was heading to the supermarket to pick up milk, but Sophie was too exhausted to care. One of her slippers had fallen off.
She glanced at the bounty poster—the drenched, wrinkled paper in her hand—and combed through the mayhem for that face. The medicine she had ransacked from the captain's cabin was secured in her backpack. Now there was just the matter of his heart.
She found him up on the quarterdeck. The man who had licked his lips as he spotted Sophie waving from the top spire of the Polar Tang, screaming that her ship was sinking. For effect, Jean Bart eased the submarine lower. As soon as she boarded the slaver ship, a sunshine behemoth rose up from the ocean and rammed into them with a crash that echoed like a cannon blast.
He yelled when he saw her, and danced the uncertain dance of wanting to run and wanting to fight. As soon as Sophie's glare came into view, though, and he saw her riding a flying rifle, he ran for the side of the ship.
She touched down with a small jump carrying her momentum, Law's too-big jacket falling down one shoulder, its black fur trim tickling her skin as she yanked it back up. It slipped right back down again and she gave up.
"Take any of them!" the captain yelled. "Take any you want! You can have all my cargo!"
His cargo was currently running helter-skelter across the burning ship. Sophie stepped forward unevenly on one slippered foot and one bare foot. "Any of them experts in quantum mechanics and want to be my friend? If not, then I disrespectfully decline."
"Mercy, Alchemist," he said, one hand behind his back, "I have a family."
Before he could shoot, a blur knocked him to the side and wrestled his arms behind his back. Sophie hung back for a second, startled by the unarmed young woman who just tackled a pirate captain and kicked away his gun while handcuffed.
"And that makes you special, punk?" she snarled. "Alchemist! Do it!"
Sophie didn't possess the Ope Ope Fruit, so there was no elegance to this organ harvest. She shoved her hands into the slaver, right through his ribs. It was easy. Her Armament might be in a crippled state, but his was even weaker. She ripped through flesh and artery, all the while looking beyond the spray of blood to her captain shuddering as he scratched at his skin, as if trying to claw away the traces of sickness only he could see.
The woman stepped back, letting the body fall. Her long hair whipped behind her like dark brown waves, and when she asked with snappish irony, "Guess all witches eat hearts, yeah?" she sounded Omiramban.
"Oh," Sophie realized, gripping the dead heart in one bloody hand. Law's jacket slipped down both shoulders and she shrugged it back up. "Pineapples. I think this has to still be beating."
"That's, like, a super weird thing to say." The woman caught a ring of keys thrown at her from a compatriot and unlocked her cuffs.
"Maybe this still counts…" Sophie bit her lip with a frown. "Oh—where are my manners? Thank you muchly for the help!"
She took Sophie's clean hand and shook it. "Name's Ikkaku. That's my little brother, Iruka." She nodded at the boy who was wearing a white mask over his face. He squeezed an acid-green slipper to his chest as if it would shield him from gunfire. "And that's, uh, some guy we met."
"Clione. Hi. Just happy to be here." The guy who'd thrown Ikkaku the keys grinned at Sophie. She didn't trust that grin in the slightest.
Ikkaku turned her gaze to the Polar Tang, which was smoking on her starboard side. "Do you happen to need a mechanic? Coincidentally, we need a way off a sinking ship."
to be continued