This really too way longer than it should have. After the last update I decided to get out of the way the chapters I had left of my Yu Yu Hakusho fic so I could go back to writing this full time and starting another story on the side without worries.
I didn't count on: 1) The last few chapters being so hard to write and 2) Getting so absurdly sad after finishing it that I couldn't find the will to write for a couple weeks. I'm not sure I'm back to full strength yet, but I've done what I could.
Excuses aside, I hope you've all been well! Thanks a lot for support! (And maybe take a look at the YYH story if you like the series? It's finished and all, so I won't make you wait for more. /shameful self-plug.)
Jag: Thanks! Things have been looking better lately!
Guest: Thank you! Sorry I made you wait so long!
Guest-22: Law's making baby steps. And now I've stretched this arc for so long that it's become winter! Hope the imagery kept you cool in warmer months. As for Catalonia, we're still at a political stalemate, and it looks like it's going to take longer than this fic has so far. Oh well!
Guest (2): Thank you! Don't worry, even though I'm slow at updating, chapters will keep coming! I don't plan on leaving this story unfinished.
21. In loving memory
(It's the fall before the climb)
Heavy puffs of misty breath came out from Saki's mouth as she trudged on with her companions, trying to find the exit of the gorge. She couldn't tell if a long time had passed since the avalanche had thrown them off its edge, because it sure felt like it every time she took a step forward with her aching muscles, but the sun was still well up in the sky. That was a good sign. The worst thing that could happen to them at the moment was getting stuck there overnight with no refuge in sight, and the more they advanced, the more the suspicion that they were going in the wrong direction solidified in her mind.
Well, to be fair, the worst-worst thing that could happen was that a replica of the earthquake would manage to trigger another avalanche and drop a metric fuckton of snow on top of them, but this was a factor they couldn't control, and the only thing they could do to avoid it was finding their way out, the sooner, the better.
She was secretly glad that the rest of the mechanic crew hadn't fallen alongside them, though. Even though they had gotten better about it during those weeks, they weren't made for snowy weather, and what was now a relatively silent trek following a frozen stream would have become an unstoppable string of complaints about the cold.
"It's lunchtime," Shachi said, and Saki had to wonder for a second if she had actually been speaking her thoughts out loud.
"How do you know?" She asked.
"Because I'm so hungry I could eat a bear."
"A bear coated in coconut."
"And sneezing, if it came to it."
Penguin snorted. "Hope you never get stranded in a desert island with Bepo."
"I don't know; he'd last a long time as rations."
"Dude."
"I mean, if we're looking at this strictly from a survival point—"
"I wish he was here," Saki mumbled tiredly. "With the inner compass he has, we'd be at the village by now."
"You want a piggyback ride, don't you?"
She kicked white at him. "Stuff some snow in your mouth, please."
"Guys," Penguin said, "look ahead."
Following Penguin's prompt, they turned to pay attention to where they were heading instead of each other, and found that the path was no more. A wall of rock blocked the way, and climbing was out of the question.
Saki threw her arms up weakly. "Yaaay! A dead end!"
Penguin wasn't up to faking energy. "I wonder if we can ever take a fifty-fifty chance and come up on top."
"Well, we're pretty much at the bottom, so—"
"I totally called that," Shachi interrupted before she could finish the pun.
"Not out loud," Penguin replied.
"You'd have told me I jinxed it."
Saki approached the crag in front of them them, its bottom covered by piled up snow that seemed to have fallen recently from the plants growing on its surface, if them being devoid of any was an indication. The ice of the stream disappeared under it, but she couldn't see its source.
"Looking for something?" Penguin asked.
The river should have had its origin around there. "The spring, actually."
"Must be under all the snow."
Saki hummed quietly and tried to step back when Shachi, frustrated, kicked a small rock next to him and started a chain reaction when hit a bigger rock at the base of the crag, which became unstable and fell, making the piled up snow slide and knock Saki down, burying her from waist down.
She lay down on the ground after faceplanting, arms stretched in front of her to break the fall, and she only lifted her head to say, "Shachi, I hate you."
There was a small moment of silence where the two men looked at the crag with surprise written all over their faces, but then they hurried up to her to help her out of the snow pile by her arms.
"Look at this the positive way—" Shachi started.
"Shachi, I don't know if you're trying to get punched, but—"
"Look behind you first, punch later," Penguin said with a curious smile.
Turning her head when she was upright, still held by the arms, she saw that there was an opening at the base of the rock, only too big to be a spring. It was wide enough to allow two people to pass, and the source of the stream's water was nowhere in sight. Rather, it continued its course into the darkness, undisturbed.
"Nice, huh?"
"I'm trying to decide if it was worth getting avalanche'd again."
"Come on, it wasn't that bad."
The last word had barely left Shachi's mouth when, deadly serious, Saki jumped him and tackled him down, only to take a handful of snow and smack it on his face before rolling away and making a colossal effort to get up on her own.
"That was worth it," she said, dusting off white powder from her coat with a pained expression.
"Everything hurts," Shachi complained.
"Don't be dramatic," Penguin replied, taking a few steps forward to check out the cave. "I can't see a thing."
Saki skipped after him and poked her head inside with Shachi following right behind. She went deeper in than them, struggling to see, though she was being more successful than the guy with no eyes and the asshole who never took his sunglasses off.
The floor of the cave was completely frozen, but, on the bright side, the ice broke every time she stepped on it, so she could move forward as long as it wasn't too fast.
After a brief inspection, she located an elongated shape above her head. She made a grab for it, but when she pulled, she found it was stuck and it wouldn't budge. Maybe pulling up—
The thought died as soon as it was about to be born, short arms and legs completely to blame.
She contemplated if her dignity was worth sacrificing for this discovery, and she wondered what would be worse, asking for help or starting hopping in the spot to dislodge the thing, but she didn't have time to decide before Shachi spoke.
"Need help reaching something?" Shachi said, seemingly innocent if it weren't for the grin he was sporting.
"Yeah, Mr. Sunglasses in the dark. Think you can give me a hand?"
"Honestly," he said, unfazed, as he walked up to her with caution and reached up, "You should consider carrying a portable ladder around. You can't count on having us around all the time."
"Thankfully," she said in a monotone.
As Shachi brought the object down, Penguin got closer and something clicked in his hand.
The small flame of a silver lighter illuminated the torch that had been on the wall and that Shachi was currently holding.
"Think it will still light up?" Saki asked, poking it tentatively with a finger. It was cold to the touch and kind of humid, but it appeared to be in a good state, otherwise.
"It doesn't seem to be wet," Shachi said. "Maybe that's why it was so high up."
"Oh, of course. The water would ruin it."
"No way to know other than trying," Penguin said, and immediately put the flame on the tip of the torch. It took him a few seconds, a curse when he burned his thumb from holding the lighter too long, and Shachi fumbling to miraculously catch it in the air, but after the second try the torch caught fire, and the flame kept growing until the walls of the cave around them became completely visible.
The stream they had followed to the cave continued through a tunnel heading towards the depths of the mountain, and the walls were lined with more torches like the one they'd found.
It was clear that the place had seen frequent use, or else they wouldn't have bothered with the lighting. What was more, it couldn't have been abandoned for too long, if the torches weren't crumbling to the touch.
What mere instants before had been a fortuitous discovery suddenly became something else.
The three shared a look full of anticipation and childhood dreams threatening to come true.
It wasn't hard to guess that Penguin and Shachi were thinking that they had stumbled into something related to the treasure. If the cave did indeed continue to the center of the island, there was a good chance that they'd end up at the marked spot in the lake.
But after talking to Hilda and reading her mother's letters, Saki had to wonder if they were actually getting closer to what the Oharan scientists had found and what it was.
She needed to at least try.
She attempted to not sound overly excited when she commented, hopeful, "So, we could do the sensible thing and turn around, or…" She trailed off.
"Or be pirates," Shachi said with a grin.
"Treasure hunters," Penguin added.
"Loot seekers."
"Booty chasers."
A very unladylike snort escaped her. "Okay, okay, I get it," Saki said between snickers. "Let's go?"
"To the adventure!" Shachi declared, lifting the torch up high.
—
Law set out of the Polar Tang with Bepo leading the way and Mack in tow and enough rope to supply every cowboy in the West Blue. The rest had been told to wait in case they didn't come back in due time and someone needed to ask the townspeople for reinforcements. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, because if there was something worse than civilians asking pirates favors, it was pirates doing the asking, but knowing how things usually rolled for them, he wasn't going to discard any options outright.
Once they reached the forest, it wasn't difficult to find the spot where the crew had gotten separated – a massive slope made by the snow the avalanche had dragged down, marred by panicked footprints scattered everywhere, and Law had to wonder how much time they had wasted running in circles and screaming before going back to town for help.
"They were pushed off the cliff," Bepo said. There was only snow and a freefall where the avalanche had torn off the trees in its wake, and at the bottom, a frozen river that in less cold weather, Law assumed, ran through the gorge. "We couldn't see them and we couldn't get down, and that's when we went to warn you."
Law looked down. There was a thirty feet drop to the bottom, and no way to get there without jumping or walking up the entire length of the gorge from the sea.
"Mack, is there anywhere—"
"Already on it," he replied, and Law looked back to see him testing the stability of a robust-looking tree and tying the rope around it.
"I think there's a trail on the snow," Bepo said, squinting at the bottom.
Law felt some relief, because that meant that they had been healthy enough after the fall to move. "They must have gone to find a place they could climb or take refuge in."
Bepo was more expressive and let out a big sigh. "That means they're okay?"
He didn't want to say yes in case they weren't. "Worried?"
"Of course I am!" He said, swinging his paws frantically. "They were my responsibility! I can't let them get hurt!"
"They'll be fine," Law said, though he wasn't certain if he was trying to reassure Bepo or himself. "And if they aren't, I'll fix them."
That wasn't what Bepo had wanted to hear, though. He fell to his knees, utterly defeated. "I-I didn't want to give you more work…"
"It's not your fault, Bepo," he said.
"Captain," Mack called, either unaware or uncaring of Bepo's crisis, "the rope is ready."
"Alright," Law replied. "Bepo, you go first."
"Is that a punishment?!"
"…If the rope snaps with your weight, it will be easier to rescue you if we're still up here."
"Oh. Right. Sorry."
Law gave Bepo a few pats of encouragement on his back, and with Mack's assistance, they helped Bepo rappel his way down the wall.
Thinking back, it had probably been a bad idea to tell the polar bear to go first when it was just two puny humans holding the rope, and they should have thought their move through before, but it was too late when they realized that they couldn't slow down Bepo's descent even if they put all their strength into the task, and to make matters even better, the rope tugged at them with so much force that it made them trip over the edge of the cliff.
Thus, three more pirates made their way to the bottom of the gorge the same way their predecessors had, though avoiding the risk of dying buried and clubbed by falling trees.
Law slammed against the fallen snow and rolled until he was stopped by the opposite wall of rock. He picked himself up, listening to his entire body protest and telling it to shut up, and asked, "Is everybody all right?"
Mack grunted and Bepo made a weak affirmative sound.
He lifted his hat and shook off the snow on his hair. He saw the rope still hanging from the tree and tied around Bepo's waist, which he supposed could still be used as a way up. Several feet away from where they had landed, he could also see the trail Bepo had mentioned before. Mack cut the extra rope and rolled it up.
Accidental landing aside, it didn't look like they would have a very difficult job, unless his crewmates had done something unspeakably dumb.
A possibility that was certainly likely, but that he didn't want to entertain, for the sake of his own sanity.
—
Torches lined the course of the tunnel, and that confirmed without a sliver of doubt that, at some point in time, people had had business there. Shachi was in front of the group, holding his up to light the way.
As Saki listened to them talk about the riches they expected to find when they reached the surface, because the way went slowly but steadily upwards through the mountain, she had to admit that the situation felt sort of magical, and at that moment she felt like a kid playing at being a treasure hunter.
In the meantime, she observed their surroundings, because someone had to do the job when two thirds of the team were made up of someone who only took off his sunglasses in the shower and a guy whose cap was screwed so tightly on his head that his eyes had disappeared into it, never to be seen by mere mortals again.
Though the cave was natural, someone had taken the effort to seal some turns with rocks and mark the walls with signs whose significance she didn't know.
The marks didn't look very ancient. The rocks blocking the passages had jagged ends, unlike the smooth walls of the tunnel, which meant they hadn't been there for long, either. Just to be safe, they kept following the main course of the stream.
Speaking of which, Saki was suspecting that the frozen pittance that reached the outside was probably an honest-to-god river when the snow melted and that it filled most of that passage. The mystery was where all the water came from.
Only a few minutes had passed when Penguin accidentally kicked something that went flying and rebounded with a metallic sound.
"What's that?" Shachi asked.
Penguin and Saki hurried to the source of the noise, and after a moment of confusion looking at the floor, Penguin picked up something among a few stones.
It was a carefully crafted brooch, made by entwined threads of gold, with a stone at the center that gleamed red under the light of the flame.
"…Wow," Saki said.
"There's really a treasure?" Penguin said, not believing what he was seeing.
Shachi started swinging the torch around to illuminate more parts of the passage.
"Watch out, dude, you're gonna catch us on fire!"
"Uh, sorry," he said sheepishly, staying his hand holding the instrument of doom. "But do you see anything else?"
"Maybe the water washed it up from somewhere else?" Saki suggested.
"That means there's more ahead!" Penguin said, grinning. "Let's go!"
"Look at the one who's usually the sensible guy," Shachi joked.
"It's called character development."
"Don't bother with him, Penguin, he's flat, we already determined that."
"I told you I'm fully developed!"
It didn't take long to find the source of the brooch. Following the frozen stream, they arrived at a chamber littered with treasure. Literal heaps of gold and silver coins and jewelry.
Saki stood at the entrance of the chamber, dumbfounded. The two guys recovered faster from the impact and rushed to look at their discovery from up close.
"It's the real deal!" Shachi exclaimed, kneeling to inspect the treasure.
"Pass the torch," said Penguin, "I want to see this."
Saki walked around the chamber with a hand on the wall, trying to find out how big it was. The floor was covered by a thin sheet of ice that broke under her heels with each step. The water had to come from somewhere, but where? And what was all that treasure doing there?
"Saki, don't you wanna see?"
"I'm trying to find out where the secret mechanism that's going to kill us all is hidden."
"You read too much."
She saw something over her head, mounted on the wall, a shape like the ones lining the whole cave. "I think there are more torches."
"I'll light them so we can see."
Not all of them caught fire, but when Shachi was done making the rounds along the wall, it was enough for them to see the entirety of the chamber without having to wave the first torch all over the place.
The walls were slick, worn down by a water current, like the rest of the cave, and a few ice stalactites hung over their heads like swords ready to drop. They looked quite solid, and they had been fortunate that none reached low enough for them to have walked into them while the room was mostly dark.
There was nothing on the surface of the walls other than the torches, not even markings like those scrawled along the tunnel. Saki had been expecting a tomb or something of the sort, but it was just as if someone had dumped an obscene amount of riches on the floor of the chamber and left them there for someone to find.
"What's wrong?" Penguin asked.
She didn't reply right away, because it wasn't like she had seen something undeniably weird, but still… something wasn't quite right. "Don't you think it's fishy?"
"Why do you say that?"
"What is this doing here?" She said, gesturing at the nearest pile.
"Someone must have hid it and never came back. You are a pirate. Ever heard of pirate treasures?" Shachi said like she was particularly slow.
"We even had a map," Penguin agreed. "This must be what it was marking!"
"So… they dumped it here? No chests, no bags, just dropped everything and left?"
"Maybe the container broke or decomposed. These look old."
"Or maybe someone found the treasure before and only took a part," Shachi offered.
"But there are torches built on the walls. You don't do that if you aren't going to come and go into a place often."
"Who's to say this wasn't a hideout?"
She didn't reply. It could have been, but was that really the answer? It was safe to assume the snow had blocked the entrance to the cave before the earthquake that had loosened it, and if a river ran its course through it, the warmer months would make it even harder to walk into it. That would make it a good spot to hide, yeah, but not so much to reach in case of need.
Feeling increasingly silly after the conversation, but still not budging, because her instincts were telling her that something about the place was iffy and she knew better than not to trust them, she kept inspecting the cave while the others rummaged through the treasure and put some pieces inside their coats to show the rest of the crew when they got back.
But try as she might, there was nothing suspicious other than the sensation that something wasn't quite right. She walked to one of the still shadowed parts of the chamber, careful not to trip where she could not see, but of course, she managed to slip on the ice anyway, and when she tried to lean on the wall she supposed was in front of her to stop the fall, only one of her hands hit solid rock.
She remained glued to the wall for a confused second, waving her right hand in front of her and touching only air. She realized that there was an opening between the wall she was leaning against and the one she could see to the right. Trying her darnedest not to lose her balance again, she advanced literally hugging the wall to test her theory. It seemed there was a passage behind that went to somewhere else, and it was kind of slippery.
She guessed she had found where the stream of water came from.
"Guys!" she said before walking further ahead. Her voice echoed, which automatically made her lower it. "There's a passage."
"Where are you?"
"Behind the part of the wall you can see. I'm going to walk up ahead and tell you if it's a dead end or—" She took an unsure step, another, then a firmer one, but then the floor of the passage did something odd, and when she set foot on the ice that covered it, she fell to her butt and downwards she went. "AAAAAARGH!"
Saki heard her friends yelling her name in a panic, but she was too busy screaming her lungs out and covering her head until she stopped on a dip on the floor. It seemed like the path continued, again, upwards.
The reverberating voices of her friends spoke of how much faith they had in her. "ARE YOU DEAD?"
Other than the inevitable bruises that would form, she had come out of the trip fairly unscathed. It was okay, just a few more to add to the collection. "You wish!"
It took her a moment to realize that she could see where she had landed, which meant that, against all odds, there was light. A cold, expansive light that cast strange shadows on the floor at the end of the tunnel. She crawled her way towards the source of the light, and when the passage gave way to another chamber, she wasn't sure she was seeing right. If the discovery from before had been difficult to believe, this one was straight up taken from a strange dream.
The chamber was twice as big as the other one, bathed by the light that filtered through a block of ice that covered the entire ceiling and stretched beyond. There was something between the ice and the chamber, transparent and thick, maybe glass or a material she didn't know, that prevented what was on top of it from falling down. Beams of ice connected the ceiling with the rock; running water that had filtered through several holes in the glass and had frozen mid-fall due to the low temperatures. The floor was covered by more ice, and in a platform in the middle of the room, there was a stone cube.
"Can you climb back up?" Penguin asked.
"I don't know," she said after a moment's contemplation, "but this is awesome."
She definitely would go back up right away if she could and drag them down with her.
"What? Did you find something else?"
"More treasure?"
She stared up. "I think I'm under the bottom of the lake."
That was the only explanation.
"How do you know? Water leaks?"
"It's…" She kept looking between the ice columns and at the icy ceiling. "It's kind of hard to describe, honestly."
"Is there any light over there?" Shachi asked.
"Yeah, it's almost like I'm outside."
"'Kay, wait for me, I'm going with you."
"Wait, what if you can't get—" She realized it was too late when she heard something sliding through the passage. She also knew it was too late to get out of the way, so Shachi got to the end of the slide ride to crash against her.
"Ow," he said. "Why didn't you move as—"
"I just want to stop getting hit," she whined.
"What is that?!" Shachi yelled.
"...Yeah, I told you it was kind of hard to explain."
Shachi stood up and slid to the closest ice column. "Dude, this is awesome."
"I said that first."
"Are you okay?" Penguin shouted from above.
"Yeah, he just lunged at me like the sad thirsty man he is."
"Don't listen to her!"
"Shachi, have some shame," Penguin said.
"Honestly."
"Screw you two!" He skated deeper into the room, using the ice columns to push himself further in.
Saki, meanwhile, tried to get up the slide again, but it was proving to be pretty difficult. "Penguin, try not to fall down. This thing is hard to climb."
"I'm going to look around and see if there's any rope."
"Alright!"
"Hey, this thing has something written on it."
Saki walked into the room once again and saw Shachi standing up in front of the stone cube. She skated towards him, using the ice columns for stability, until she was by Shachi's side and before the stone.
She vaguely recalled a drawing of something similar between her mother's documents, but she had never asked much about her research. Anxiety, anticipation, excitement and disbelief welled at once inside of her as she saw the strange symbols etched on the surface, from top to bottom, telling a story that she was unable to read, but that must have been important enough to be immortalized in stone and hidden.
Important enough, perhaps, to give up lives for it. Important enough for the World Government, at least, to kill for it.
The thought made her stomach sink, and she placed a hand on the letters, tracing over the lines with her fingers in an attempt to jog her memory. She was sure she had seen some of those at her old home, mixed in her mother's books and papers, but those were gone along with Asteria, and the only people who knew the truth of what had happened had died many years ago in Ohara.
'You have on board one of the last links to those archaeologists,' Hilda had said. 'To Du's research.'
But she didn't know anything. For obvious reasons, her mother had kept her away from her findings, and Saki hadn't insisted.
It was a grown up thing, she used to think. She had assumed she would learn when she was older, and she had been content to let time pass in ignorance, because surely her mother would tell her one day, if it was important.
But Dubia had disappeared, and with her, the last hope to solve the mystery.
Or…
Fully aware that it was a long shot that she'd likely miss, she remembered that woman whose bounty had begun to circulate again, the Devil Child who had fled Ohara, accused of sinking several warships. Her new picture. That face that was so much alike one of the woman's in the picture Saki had.
If those two women were related, if there was something else behind the claims of a government who had placed a ridiculous bounty on a child's head, if she knew what the stone before Saki and Shachi was… would she be able to do anything with this finding?
Saki didn't have any strong feelings about the contents of the text. She could have turned her back on it and lived with the curiosity of yet another thing she would never know, leave it as just another anecdote of her wacky trip through the Grand Line.
But it had mattered to her mother, if her assumptions were right. It had been relevant to her investigation, even time after leaving for the North Blue, a quest that had absorbed her for as many years as Saki was able to recall by her side, and, now she knew, had probably been left unfinished.
Saki felt like she had done so many things wrong regarding her family, and had let so many opportunities escape, that she didn't think she could forgiven herself if she abandoned this lead that had remained hidden from the world since her mother and her friends had been in Niva, over twenty-three years ago.
"You are very quiet," Shachi said, eyeing her with uncertainty, and then, not bothering to hide his suspicion. "What are you scheming?"
She debated whether to come clean or not, but that was a conversation she didn't feel like having at the moment. It was… too personal. And she had no solid proof of anything she was assuming. For an instant, she wished it had been Law asking so she could tell him and ask him, in return, what he thought. She would have saved her many explanations.
Instead, Saki said another possibility that had crossed her mind. "You think the treasure back there was planted to hide this?"
"Still overthinking that?" He replied. "Now that you mention it, I guess it makes more sense to leave all that treasure on the ground it it's supposed to be a distraction, but… I don't know, why wouldn't they have taken the gold anyway?"
"Maybe they took a part. Or whoever was here wasn't interested in the money."
Shachi took another good look at the stone. "Does that mean it's valuable? It looks ancient."
"Depends on what you're looking for, I guess," she said without much energy. She was confused about how to proceed, and was more inside her mind than in the conversation.
"That's for sure. Have you looked at the ceiling?"
She had, but she did again when prompted, wondering why he was bringing it up. "What about it?"
"What about it?" He was offended by the question and made no effort to hide it. "Are you for real?"
She looked down as she scratched her head, which was a pretty good to hide her flushing face behind a hand. She hadn't thought anything of it, other than it was pretty. "What's going on with it? Is that glass?"
Shachi's mood got instantaneously better when she asked. It seemed like he just wanted an opportunity to share his thoughts. "That's what it looks like. But, pay close attention: if what we're seeing is the bottom of the lake, it means somebody brought this huge thing here from above after crafting it. By the way, I have no idea what it's made of, but anyway, unless it was here to begin with, there's no way it would fit through the tunnel we've come from. And after that, that somebody made what amounts to a glass lid that perfectly fit the rock walls in order to create a chamber here, and also thought of making those holes so water could still flow and the river didn't dry out completely. Do you know how difficult this would be with current technology?"
"A lot?"
He ignored her. "And this was supposedly done so long ago that nobody in the archipelago remembers it's here." Then he declared solemnly, "The people here had some fine engineers."
"And so it turns out that Captain isn't our only resident nerd."
Shachi huffed and turned slightly pink. "Hey, what would you know? It's damn awesome, is what I'm saying. Penguin should get down here too."
"If he does, there's a chance none of us go up again."
"Yeah, I know. We need to come back later and better equipped." He seemed to think something over, and then said, "Looking at it like this, this place is worth marking on a map."
Saki smiled a little. "See, it depends."
Shachi hummed, looking as happy as if he hadn't been beaten to submission by a gang of enraged snowflakes earlier. "Are you going to draw this?"
It hadn't crossed her mind, though she probably would have found it worth drawing later, when she could settle down for a while. "Sure. I'll need some time to memorize everything, though, and that isn't something we have a lot of…" The last word left her lips so weakly that it was barely audible, because she had lost track of her thoughts when a sudden idea occurred to her.
Shachi said something, but she wasn't listening, lost in her little world. Even if the possibility was so small it was laughable, there was something she could do, instead of lamenting she didn't know anything useful.
Because it was obvious that she didn't have the knowledge to make out what the stone said, nor the means to decipher it. She could try to come back later, but nobody could guarantee the cave would still be accessible by then, and the Heart Pirates would be long gone by the time the snow melted.
So really, there was just one option left, and it had taken Shachi of all people to make her realize.
There could be a person out there able to do the job, and Saki could bring it to her.
"Why don't you try to join up with Penguin? I need to do something first."
"Here?"
"Don't worry, it'll only be…" She glanced at the stone appraisingly. "Oh, who am I kidding, this is going to take a while."
He didn't insist, which surprised her, but maybe he was learning what that strange concept called tact was. "Whatever. But if I get out, you come with us too."
"Uh-huh," she said, intent on not following through if she wasn't done by then. "Sure thing. Now let me concentrate."
Shachi turned his nose, unconvinced, and knowing after all this time that Saki was stubborn as a mule and moving her would take an angry Mack warning her to show up in the kitchen if she didn't want to be stabbed with the blunt side of a butter knife. But that only happened in days when she was really, really tired, and really, really lazy and hiding in the boiler room with them. He half walked, half slid away, leaving her alone in front of that stone whose significance she didn't know, but with a lot of luck she could eventually learn.
—
The trail the Idiot Trio had left led Law's group to a cave, half hidden by a hill of fallen snow. The tracks left nearby suggested that someone had been caught under it and dragged out, and Law wondered who of the three had been the walking disaster it had dropped on.
The footsteps disappeared there, but Bepo was already sniffing inside of the cave. "They've been here recently. It smells like something burnt, too."
Mack followed after him and Law did so right after, which was when he took note of the size of the footprints that had run to the rescue of the buried person, and concluded the victim by process of elimination. As much as Saki said she liked the cold, he didn't think the sentiment was mutual.
"They can't have gone much farther in," Mack said. "It's dark."
"But…" Bepo smelled the air again. "I'm sure the scent goes inside."
"They aren't dumb enough to go into a cave without a light source," Law said, and this time he was sure he wasn't just saying it to convince himself. "Close, but not enough," he added, to be fair. "If you say it smells like something burning, they may have a torch."
"You're right!" Bepo exclaimed, surprised. "I wonder if there's anything lying around?" He strained to see the floor of the cave and advanced very slowly. With each step, the ice coat that covered it cracked loudly. "I can't really—OW!"
"Bepo?" Law asked quickly.
"I bonked my head against something," he said, voice pained as he held his head.
Law walked to his side waving an arm above his head until he hit something metallic. He felt about the object until he managed to dislodge something long from the wall and hold it to the light.
"There's your torch," Mack said, tapping a finger against his chin. "So they really are inside."
"Told you so," Bepo replied.
"Don't get smug with your elders."
"Sorry."
"But why would they do it?" Mack continued without acknowledging the apology. "It's not like they need to take refuge. The weather's fine and there's sun outside."
Law could think of an obvious reason, but not a smart one. "Why would they set out into the mountains in the first place, knowing the path was blocked by snow?"
"Ah."
"Sorry," Bepo repeated in a guilty tone, and Law, who had forgotten that Bepo had captained the expedition, regretted his remark immediately.
"Do you have anything to light this with?" Law changed the subject quickly.
"I should have matchsticks," Mack said, reaching into one of his pockets and pulling out a box along with a handful of snow. He stared silently at them. "Wet matchsticks," he said, and unceremoniously tossed them aside.
Law tried to say 'great,' but was came out instead was a grunt.
"I could make a fire with sticks and dry leaves," Bepo offered.
"Dry leaves," Mack repeated.
"Oh. Um, I'm—"
A familiar voice coming from inside the cave interrupted Bepo mid-apology.
"Hellooooo?"
"Penguin?" Law tried.
As soon as he did, the echoing sound of footsteps filled the cave, soon to be followed by a resounding 'OOPS' and a crash that made everybody wince, but before anybody found the will to ask if he was fine, the running resumed, and soon a warm light appeared from behind a turn, carried by Penguin, who smiled after looking at them. "You okay? I could hear you from all the way in the back."
"Yes," Bepo said. "Why are you here?"
"We kind of, uh, found some treasure," Penguin said, avoiding the self-incriminating part of why they had actually entered the cave.
Bepo beamed when he heard that. "Really?! The treasure?!"
"There is something…?" Law said quietly, but after that momentary lapse, he recovered and said, thinking that at least one of them had to make an effort to keep his priorities straight, "Are the others back there?"
"Yeah, and it's a good thing you came, because I'm having trouble fishing them out."
His brow furrowed. "They fell into a hole?"
"Nah," said Penguin, sounding absolutely unconcerned. "More like they slipped down a hidden tunnel. They're okay, it's just kind of hard to walk back up."
"We can pull them up," Mack said, moving the arm where he was carrying the coiled rope.
"Good thing Captain recruited someone reliable," he said, unknowingly putting into words Law's train of thought. "Here, let me light your torch." Penguin offered his, and Law approached the tip until it caught fire. "Let's go. I'm sure you'll like what's in there. Oh, and Shachi says there's something awesome where he landed, too…"
Penguin talked all the way to the treasure chamber, which only took them a couple of minutes to reach at a quick pace.
"There you go!" Penguin announced with a theatrical wave of the arm.
"It's an actual treasure!" Bepo said, and then ran towards a pile of jewels.
It was difficult to tell what Mack was thinking, but the hum he made seemed to angle towards approval, rather than annoyance.
Law picked up the closest thing on the floor; a fat gold coin with the face of a man and some sort of star on the other side. He had never seen anything of the sort in any catalogues, and Law had read a lot of coin catalogues.
Not that anybody knew or had to.
He pocketed the coin while no one was looking, and his attention was directed to the back of the room when he heard Shachi's voice, kind of muted, coming from a spot that wasn't illuminated. He guessed that there was a pathway there, instead of the expected wall.
"Yo, Peng! What's going on?"
"The rescue team is here!"
"Good, cause my ass is sort of freezing and every time I try to speak to her she tells me to shut up and leave her alone. Everything is cold here. Not a single trace of warmth."
Law deduced from the casual and barb-filled exchange that, as Penguin said, nobody was too injured.
"What is she doing anyway?" Penguin asked.
"Hell if I know."
Law approached the spot where Penguin was standing. "I take it you aren't hurt?" He asked.
"Oh, hey, Captain!" Shachi's voice saluted. "Yeah, we're fine if you don't count the bruises."
"I should give you more than bruises for getting stuck here," he said with a deadpan.
Shachi laughed nervously from up ahead. Law couldn't see inside, but he guessed he was nearby.
"Wait a second, we'll throw you a rope."
"Roger. And by the way, if anyone wants to see what's here, you should do it before it gets dark."
"Is it really that great?" Penguin asked. One didn't need to be a genius to see that he wasn't looking forward to going down that tunnel.
"You seriously need to see it."
While they talked, Law motioned at Mack to come over with the rope, threw it into the tunnel, and after just a few seconds, Shachi appeared looking completely unruffled.
"Thanks, guys." He flashed them a smile.
"Is Saki okay, too?" Bepo asked, trying to peek behind Shachi.
"She's acting like she hit her head on the way there, so I guess everything's normal. Though you may, uh, need to convince her to come out," Shachi suggested, looking at Law.
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Beats me. But even if she wasn't there, it's worth a look."
Law, who after so much insistence was curious about what lay beyond, edged closer towards the path and tentatively set a foot on it. It seemed safe.
"Why couldn't you come out by yourself?"
"The way actually goes up, but there's a stupid dip in the middle of the tunnel and it's really easy to slide because it's—"
Law took one, two, three steps further, and tried to take a fourth but instead he went down rather ridiculously.
"—pretty steep," finished Shachi with a sigh.
"I see," Law said, blandly, from the floor. Fortunately, the others had not been able to see his descent and landing.
Getting up and looking ahead, he noticed light at the end of the tunnel, and doing what most people would recommend not to, because that was the basis he had built his life on, he walked towards it.
He saw ice covering the floor and dripping from a clear ceiling. It took him a moment to realize that they were frozen water columns, and another to notice the stone cube in the middle of the room, in front of which his last missing crew member was sitting.
Saki's eyebrows were knit together as she stared at the stone and made strokes with her index finger in the air. If she had noticed Law's arrival, she was doing a superb job ignoring him.
The most efficient way to get closer seemed skating, so he did. He stopped near her, and when he saw the symbols on the stone's surface, he wondered if she could make something out of it. At this point, it wouldn't surprise him much if that was the case. "Are you reading it?"
She didn't reply right away, but when she did, her forehead lost its wrinkles. Her eyes didn't move from the stone, though. "Can't. I'm memorizing the symbols."
"You are…" He started, glanced at the stone and then back at her with disbelief written all over his face. "You are what?"
"I won't remember for long, so I want to write it down as soon as I'm at the village, but I think I've got it down pretty well already, so if you can give me a couple minutes—"
They were looking at what was basically a small wall full of symbols. It was absurd to even make the attempt to memorize it, but of course such an ordinary notion wouldn't stop her. "Do you know these letters?"
"No. Well, to be fair, I must have seen them when I was little because they look very familiar, but I never paid any attention, so…"
"No, that isn't what I meant. How…?" He sighed, because he felt too tired to ask and she seemed to be fine, which was what he had come to check in the first place. "Whatever."
"It's good that you're here. I wanted to run a theory by you."
He looked at her with interest, in silence. Her hands were now hidden in her pockets and her hair under the hood of her coat, and her cheeks had taken on a red shade from the cold.
"I think this was what my mother and her companions found in this island," she said. "Remember the letter I showed you? She said there was no way they could have moved it." And she pointed at the rock. "I don't think she would have said that if they meant the treasure back there, and let's be honest, how many secrets like these can one tiny island hold? I don't believe we've happened upon this and it has nothing to do with them."
He didn't remember, really. He hadn't put any stock into the contents of the letter because he didn't think they'd end up stumbling into anything before they left for the next island. He had taken the ongoing treasure hunt as a benign pastime for his men while the only thing they could do was wait for weeks in the middle of nowhere with no means of entertainment.
But he made an effort, because whatever his thoughts were on the matter, this was important to her, and if it was true that she had been waiting to speak to him, it meant that she hadn't told the guys about her mother's identity. And while, considering the circumstances, it was probably the safest thing to do, it left Saki with nobody but him to talk to about it.
"She… said something about the lake in it, right?"
"Yup," she confirmed, and he felt a tinge of relief that he had remembered at least that much. "Whatever it was, it was nearby. And there's also the treasure back there…"
"Like someone put it in a visible place on purpose."
At last she looked up at him, and her eyes were shining with gratefulness. "I knew you'd get it. Those two kept saying there was nothing fishy about it."
He didn't know what to do with her sudden appreciation, so he diverted the subject from him. "They aren't the most perceptive guys out there."
"They haven't really needed it." There wasn't any disapproval in her tone. Law understood what she was getting at. Their circumstances had been different. Safer. It wasn't their job to think of all the ways that a seemingly harmless situation could go wrong. "They know their stuff really well, though. I just thought the ceiling was nice, but Shachi was geeking out hardcore about it."
A smile tugged at the corner of Law's lips. "That goes to show how much he likes his job."
"Yeah, I thought so too!" She said with a grin, and then, a bit more seriously. "Sooo… Do you think I'm way off the mark thinking this may be the thing my mother wanted to keep hidden?"
She looked at him like what he chose to reply would actually matter. Law was unsure how to feel about that. Someone so single-minded and decisive should have had no business seeking reassurance from others. Every time that insecurity showed up he ended up wondering where the blazes it had come from.
"I don't think you are," he said, and he thought he saw a smidgen of surprise in her expression. "What I don't know is what you mean to accomplish by trying to memorize this. Can you even?"
It was a colossal waste of time, and no one could reasonably expect her to do it.
She pouted slightly when he asked, and she tugged on the cords of her hood. Law thought she was trying to hide from sight. "I keep telling you guys that I have a good memory. How do you think I'm doing the drawings for the logbook?"
Come to think of it, he'd never seen her drawing at the actual location since Indent Bay. "I thought you were just winging it."
She grimaced, and he knew he had made a mistake saying that.
"What would be the point of drawing them, then? I like to do things the best I can, you know…" She looked kind of disappointed as she spoke, but she took a long breath and that was gone to be replaced with determination. "Anyway, I don't have a Cameko Den Den Mushi or sheets to make a carbon copy, and there's no guarantee I'll be able to come back here at a later time. This is not a matter of being able to do it or not. I don't have any other option, so I will."
"…You have a point." He admitted. "But that only answers one of the questions."
For some reason, she looked away from him and sounded almost shy when she replied. "It's not that I can do anything with this, you're right… but… what if someone else could?"
"Someone."
"…Yes?"
"You are doing this on the off chance that you randomly find someone who can read the text."
She pursed her lips. "Um… Have you looked at bounties lately?"
Law had to think for a while before he recalled anything relevant. "…The woman from Ohara that's with the Straw Hats," he said, an affirmation, not a question. "Are you serious?"
"I know there's a very small chance, but maybe—" She stopped in her tracks. "Well, it's the best I could come up with. And I suppose I won't do anything if you don't want me to."
"Now you are deferring to me?"
"That's what a captain's for, isn't it?" She said with a smile that didn't ring completely true. "I know that that woman's in a rival crew and ours comes first. And if the World Government was trying to cover up so badly what the scientists found out that they'd destroy an entire island, it's going to be dangerous." It was as if she was making a list of everything that was wrong with her idea before Law could raise any of those objections. "It doesn't concern you or any or the others. But I can't… I can't just forget about this and move on."
Law didn't know what to say, because he may very well have said the same about his own situation. He'd be a hypocrite if he tried to argue.
But she continued, unaware of his internal dilemma. "I know it's silly, because my mother's been dead for so long, and I don't care about her goal, but… I think I owe her memory this much."
That was the last nail in the coffin.
"Two minutes," he said.
He should have told her that she was thinking too much and to forget about it, even if he didn't want to. A good captain would have done that.
"Huh?"
"You said you needed a couple of minutes to finish. We're getting out of here then."
Her perplex expression gave way to a brilliant smile. "Thanks, Law. I promise I won't bother you with this anymore."
"I don't mind. Just don't do anything stupid."
If only he could take his own advice.
—
The sun was starting to set by the time the pirates reached the village with pockets full of treasure, and the only plans Saki had for the evening were showering, stuffing her mouth with every meal she had missed during the day, and dropping dead on the first available bed she came across.
However, the urge to strangle whoever had come up with the idea of telling impressionable little kids that dreams came true arose when they saw the state of things at the docks.
Tuttu was lying down on the middle of the pavement, big as he was, surrounded by a few locals that looked absolutely terrified.
Silent and imposing, mostly because he was frowning more than usual, Law walked briskly to the group and crept behind them like a tall shadow to ask, "What happened here?"
Despite it looking like there had been a chain of heart attacks among the villagers, all of them had the sense to take a few steps back, one of them shaking like a leaf and proclaiming very loudly that they hadn't done anything, and another few declaring that they had forgotten something on the stove. One of them, in his hurry to get away from Law, walked backwards over the edge of the dock and fell to the water.
It was after the splash caught their attention and made them look towards the ship that Saki and the rest of them saw something far more egregious than a crewmate suspiciously napping in the middle of the street.
Someone had scrawled on the side of the sub, next to their Jolly Roger and taking all the space above and below the row of windows, 'YOU SUCK.'
Saki's mouth fell open wide enough to be confused with a mailbox. When she looked at her companions, she found them in a similar state, though Shachi was white, Penguin's hands were trembling, Mack's expression was more incredulous than indignant, and Law… Saki wasn't aware until then that mouths could go rectangular with surprise.
She thought that he was such a square all the time, and though she had enough sense to not mention it out loud, she regretted missing the chance to unleash such a witty pun.
Tearing her eyes off from the offending statement, she looked down at Tuttu and went to crouch near him when she saw him twitch.
"Hey," she gave him light taps on the shoulder, "hey, big guy. Wake up."
He mumbled something groggily, but that was the extent of his response.
"I asked you a question," Law said at their remaining audience somewhere behind her.
The villagers were absolutely terrified. But although, yes, Law sounded really angry, Kikoku was still safely tucked between Bepo's arms, and Law wasn't a fan of using his bare hands to inflict grievous injury. Saki was sure they were safe.
One of them started spluttering, "W-we don't kn-kn-know—"
"It was the other guys!" A high-pitched voice said.
Between the legs of two horrified adults appeared the same kid that had thrown a snowball at Bepo while he was down. Saki thought he had a lot of guts and very little self-preservation.
"Which guys?" Bepo asked him.
The boy was quiet for a beat, staring at every Heart Pirate, as if attempting to identify whose voice that had been. Then, very, very slowly, his mouth opened so wide it put Saki's earlier attempt to fit in all the letters of the Grand Line to shame, and said with unbridled excitement, "You're a bear! And you can talk! Can you talk again? Please?!"
"Oh, er," Bepo wasn't sure what to do when put in the spotlight. "Okay?"
"Wooooooaaaaaaaah—!"
"Boy," Saki said, "can you tell us what happened? You can talk to Bepo later."
He whipped his head towards her. "I can? You promise?" He then gave a fleeting glance to the spot where Saki supposed Law was standing, and his smile fell a bit. "It was the guys on the other ship," he pointed at a spot in the docks that was now vacant. It was where the suspicious vessel had been. "A bunch of them came out, argued with the boiler suit guys, beat them up and took away two of them."
"They took them?" Law repeated.
The way he sounded, Saki was not so sure about being safe anymore. The villagers seemed to think the same, and while it was good to see that their Captain could terrify civilians with a sentence, it was decidedly unpractical when they needed information from them.
Thankfully, after just a moment of uncomfortable silence, the gods smiled upon them and Ruddy appeared among the crowd, parting it by slapping everybody with his cap until they got out of the way. "Hello, lads! I went to the town hall to get you a map."
"A map," Saki repeated, and glanced at Bepo in case he knew what Ruddy meant, but he seemed to be as lost as her.
Ruddy had expected more enthusiasm. "Oh, you had one already? But this one's the latest edition, it came out a month a—"
"Why do we need a map?" Saki said.
"What do you—" And he turned to the crowd. "Useless whippersnappers, you haven't told them yet?!" And before any Heart Pirate had to ask again, he said, "They took two of your guys to a small island in the archipelago and said that if you want them back unharmed, they want something you took from them, too."
"Tomorrow at dawn," a woman who hadn't spoken up until then said. "They said that you need to show up then."
Law's hat obscured his eyes from the angle Saki was, making him look more unnerving, if that was possible. "It isn't far, I assume?"
"Just around the corner. Here, who's in charge of…" Ruddy held the map towards the pirates, and Bepo reached for it. "Hm. I knew you looked like a dependable person."
"Shachi, go get a stretcher," Law said, and Saki got out of the way when he stepped up to Tuttu to check his pulse. "As soon as I give him a checkup, we're going after them."
"Won't it be too early?" Saki asked.
"There isn't any guarantee that they'll keep to their word, and I'm not going to stick to their terms. If they've got the nerve to mess with us, they'll face the consequences."
Saki hadn't seen Law this serious in a while. It was easy to imagine that some of that contained anger was directed towards himself, not just the attackers, for letting harm come to his crew, and she was especially aware at the moment of how lucky they were to have someone like him watching their backs.
"And I don't know about the rest of you," Mack piped up, "but even if I don't give a steamed broccoli about that stupid map, hell if I feel like giving it back now."
"We'll make them pay," Penguin said as he stared at the ship. His face was hidden from sight, but he sounded like he was going to cry. Saki thought he must have really bonded with the rest of the guys in a short time when she realized that he was likely more affected by the state of the Polar Tang.
Shachi came back, and mainly thanks to Bepo, they loaded Tuttu onto the stretcher and boarded the ship. When they left him in the infirmary with Law, Bepo went to the bridge, Mack left for the kitchen, from where immediately the sound of sharpening blades started to come, and Saki went downstairs with the other two.
Penguin was still pallid with indignation, and Shachi punched the railing of the stairs when they got to their floor.
"We'll take care of it," he said. "'Sides, you didn't get to do the first paint job because you couldn't even hold up the brush, remember? So we can beat up those assholes and then stick it up to the hippos."
Some of the pent up tension seemed to leave Penguin. "Yeah, that sounds good."
They made for their shared quarters as Saki thought how nice it was to have someone who understood you so well that only a handful of words could make you feel better.
She walked to her own room, and for the first time, upon opening it, she thought it felt the slightest bit lonely.
Then again, it wasn't like she had to go very far if she wanted company.
Taking off her coat, if only to unload the weight from the treasure for a while – note to self: collect the rest from the other guys, because she was supposed to take care of the crew's money and she wasn't going to make any unapproved concessions – she reached for the sword leaning against her desk and unsheathed it, inspecting the blade to make sure it wasn't damaged from lack of use. Funny how it had been seeing much less action than before she was a pirate, but maybe that meant that she was doing something right. She wanted to think so, at least.
She put the sword back in the sheath and left it at the end of her bed, and contemplating it briefly before slipping into the bathroom, she thought that, if she had to put it to use, it felt undeniably better to do it for someone else's sake.