Chapter 48

Cross-Brain AN: Just for the record, here's a key for the transitions in this chapter, and all future chapters:

-o- = Scene Change

~o~ = Entering/Exiting Flashback

Two hours of revelations, planning, and preparing later found us standing on the main deck of the Sunny, circled around the barrel we had picked up before we entered the Triangle. I looked around at the crew, my mouth turned up into a smirk. "So, who wants the honors?"

Several of the crew looked positively eager to crack it open; Luffy in particular looked to be a second away from ripping off the top. Then someone spoke.

"If I may?"

All eyes turned to Brook, his bony fingers clenched white-knuckled around his cane—not in fear, not with his expression, but in grim determination.

Even so…

"You sure about that, Brook?" I clarified. "I mean, the last time you did this—!"

"The first time I was presented with such a barrel," Brook interrupted me, his entire being devoid of emotion. "I went through a whirlwind of hope and despair that ultimately left me in a state worse off than my first forty-five years in this hell of fog and terrors. And now, five years later, you present me with another such barrel. And now that I have it before me, in all that it implies…"

In a flash, he was looming over the barrel, his fleshless digits digging into the wood.

"Now I feel more than I have in the past fifty years combined," he all but growled out. "Hope is there, yes, burning bright, along with elation, rage, anticipation, even fear, but above all else? I feel vindication. Because now, after having been violated so many years ago, after failing because of my own weakness, you have given me the opportunity I have longed for. You have given me the opportunity to take it all back. To take back everything that has been stolen from me…"

Brook wrenched his arms up, ripping the top off the barrel.

"WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS!" he roared to the world.

Not even a second later, the flare held within was loosed and roared into the heavens, burning a gaping hole in the mist.

"Alea jacta est…" Donny muttered grimly.

"Eh, that doesn't really make sense," Luffy said, digging his pinkie up his nostril. "'Cause we're not betting anything. We're going to win."

"…OK, I'd expect that kind of confidence from you," an unnerved Vivi said. "But since when do you know Latin?!"

"Eh, that's all I know; I remember Benn saying that every time they played a dice game," Luffy said, still picking his nose.

"Shanks' first mate," I tossed out in response to everyone's confused looks, which got 'ah's of understanding. "Still, there's no denying it: you've gotten a lot smarter, Captain."

"Shishishi! Thanks!" Luffy grinned ear-to-ear before tilting his head to the side. "So, now we just… wait?"

"Not that long, captain," Brook grimly answered, his cane briefly spinning before he grabbed the head and planted the tip in the ground. Brief nervous tic aside, he looked ready to go, thanks in no small part to Nami's surprisingly adept needlework restoring his once-tattered suit to its full glory. "Moria is an insatiable demon. None are safe from his greed and gluttony; he will fall upon any new shadows that enter the Triangle with the utmost swiftness. Of that, you can be completely certain."

And damn if Brook wasn't right. I suppose that if any credit were due to the Undead Island, it would be to their sharp awareness and strong work ethic. Because not even fifteen minutes after we unleashed that artificial star, a shadow loomed on the horizon, steadily approaching us with the details slowly becoming more distinct in the haze.

I swallowed heavily as I watched the largest moving object I'd ever seen approach us. An uneasy feeling started to rumble in my stomach as our objective, our opponent loomed over us, but I snapped my hands into trembling fists, and set my jaw in a scowl, burning determination reducing that fear to ash.

Any fear I held, it came from my knowledge of before. Before, Thriller Bark had been one of the closest near misses in Straw Hat history, their victory and their very lives coming down to the wire.

Before, the Straw Hats had stumbled into this hell of darkness and trickery without a clue to what awaited them. Before, the Mysterious Four had held all the cards and were able to run circles around the Straw Hats before they knew what was what.

But this… this wasn't before. This was now.

This was here and now, with a Straw Hat crew that included me and so many others. Now was a Straw Hat crew that was stronger than they'd ever been. Now was a Straw Hat crew that knew precisely what lay before them, in excruciating detail, and knew how to beat every trick, trump, and trap that Moria and his cadre could send at them.

Now… now was a Straw Hat crew with a plan.

~o~

-Two Hours Earlier-

After my dramatic announcement, we had proceeded with a brief round of introductions and explanations, including the explanation of how I knew all that I did. Brook took it rather well.

"Yohohohoho! That's one of the most outrageous stories I've ever heard!" Brook laughed. He then seemed to smile. "And it's one that I'm perfectly prepared to believe. I see that the rest of the crew believes you already, and you already know so much that you shouldn't. Besides, why should I doubt when I'm the living proof of how little the word 'impossible' applies in the Grand Line?"

"Good," I nodded. "That saves some time explaining things. Now, let's get down to business. Brook, start spilling your guts on Thriller Bark."

"Oh, wait!" Soundbite cackled, and I grinned alongside him as I pointed at the musician.

"You don't have guts!" we chorused.

"YOHOHOHOHO! SKULL JOKE!" Brook cackled, clapping his hands.

"Skull joke!" echoed the Kiddy Trio and TDWS.

"Really, Cross?" Nami groaned, slapping a hand to her forehead, a motion that most of the crew imitated, though I was gratified to see Robin hiding her giggling with her downturned hat.

"Oh, come off it, Nami! This?" I pointed at Brook. "This bony bastard's jokes are golden. You should try it sometime! No, wait, lemme guess." I smirked as I then pointed at her. "Over your dead body, right?"

"Right," Nami nodded in agreement. "Over my dead—!"

THWACK!

"HOOF!" I wheezed around the cloud-fist that had rammed itself into my gut.

"You done?" she asked dryly, her foot tapping on the deck.

I raised a shaky thumbs-up. "Just about…"

"Good," Zoro said in a bored tone. "Now, can we get back to this Thriller Bark place?"

"Mrph…" I grunted as I righted myself. "Brook, all yours."

"Ah, yes, yes, of course," Brook nodded in agreement, adjusting his collar slightly before standing up straight. "I believe I should start with the most pressing issue at hand. As you'll recall, earlier when I joined the crew, I said that I could not yet leave the Florian Triangle. Trust me when I say that this decision is not one I make of my own free will." His empty sockets somehow gained a far off, wistful look. "Oh… to but see the sun shining once more…"

He then shook his head with a scowl. "But. That is not possible. For you see, I am missing an intrinsic—!"

"Necessary," I informed a confused Luffy.

"—part of my being." He shot a glance at me. "Do you have a candle or—?"

"Funkfreed." I looked over at my sword. "Your blade is still pristine from when I polished it earlier today, right?"

"Uh…" the elephant-blade blinked in confusion. "Pretty much, yeah. Why?"

"Hang it behind Brook's head and you'll see."

"If… you say so?" Funkfreed complied, going half-and-half and positioning his nose above and behind Brook's skull, taking care to not touch his afro.

There was a moment of non-understanding from the crew, until Conis snapped her hands to her mouth with a gasp.

"B-Brook, you don't have a reflection!" she gasped.

The skeleton nodded solemnly, raising his cane up, inching out his blade and staring at the blank metal with sorrow. "Nor do I appear in any photographs taken of me. But both of these supernatural phenomena are mere symptoms of my greater and far more deadly affliction. An affliction that can kill me as dead as dust, in spite of already being so dead for many years."

Nobody even tried to laugh at that.

Brook slammed his cane shut and looked up, slowly sweeping his gaze over the crew. "I have no shadow."

A ripple of shock and, more importantly, confusion ran through the crew.

Brook sighed, crossed his arms behind his back, and started to pace across the lawn. "Allow me to start at the very beginning: As you all know by now, I've been trapped in the Florian Triangle for fifty years. The first forty-five of those were due to a broken rudder and lack of resources with which to fix it. But then, five years ago…" He raised a trembling fist before him. "I stumbled onto an island…"

And so his story went, telling us the highlights of his experience upon Thriller Bark: the nature of the walking dead that inhabited it, the mechanics of the Shadow-Shadow Fruit, including the consequences of sunlight without a shadow, his defeat at the hands of his own shadow-possessed zombie…

When he finished, the mood of the crew was variable. Some were scared, some were revolted, a few were violently eager, and pretty much the whole lot of them were livid. But I wanted to push things just a wee bit further, and so I spoke up.

"Lemme give you all a little context about the wielder of the Shadow-Shadow Fruit," I announced. "The zombies on this island? All of them, every single one has a number somewhere on their body. A serial number, to keep track of when they were produced. Granted, not all of the meat-puppet bodies are active at the same time, a lot are still in cold storage waiting for shadows, but the largest number I saw?" I scowled as I raised my left arm and pointed to my upper limb. "Was right here. And it read 900. And!" I spoke up when a wave of shock and rage emanated from my friends. "Those are just the Zombies. There are still 100 more assorted shadows trapped on that island, including however many more I didn't see from my admittedly limited perspective. So, in all? Over one thousand people around the world don't have shadows. One thousand people haven't seen the sun in years. One thousand people… condemned to fear and darkness."

The waves of palpable outrage radiating from my friends were impressive, yes, but hell if I wasn't gonna try and top it.

"And it. Gets. Worse," I chuckled darkly.

And now, more shock than actual anger.

"How," Vivi demanded incredulously.

"Simple." I crossed my arms behind my head in a faux-innocent gesture. "When the shadows were released in the story, we got a few flashes of their owners regaining them." My expression turned thunderous. "One of those owners was a maid. A civilian maid."

I practically heard my blood sing when I felt death itself appear before me again. Oh, yeah, now they all wanted blood.

"Why," Boss snarled murderously, pulping his cigar between his 'fingers'. "Have the Marines not terminated this bastard yet?"

"Because the user of the Shadow-Shadow Fruit is one Gecko Moria." I let that sink in with those of us who were in the know before raising my finger to give that one last crumb. "Once worth ฿320,000,000."

The penny dropped with everyone else, but it was Luffy who really got the message, his face darkening further as he slammed his fist into his palm.

"Warlord," he snarled.

"Mmhmm," I nodded solemnly. "Which makes the presence of even Marine shadows in his repertoire all the more damning. Pirate, civilian, Government… it doesn't who you are or where you're from, Thriller Bark is an equal-opportunity hellhole. And the World Government is perfectly content to let him go about his business, so long as his primary prey of choice is pirates." I swept my gaze over my friends. "Everyone nice and pissed off now?"

Luffy snorted menacingly in response. "We were pissed off enough when he only took one of our friends' shadows, Cross. Now?" Luffy reached over his back and slammed his newly forged and thoroughly reinforced pipe on the deck. "Now we're gonna make that Gecko bastard pay."

"Dearly," concurred several of the crew.

I slowly nodded, smirking. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Alright, gimme a bit and I'll outline the new and improved plan of attack I've come up with, but while I'm doing that… Usopp, Sanji, Chopper?"

"Prepare for sodium chloride warfare," Chopper nodded as he plopped down on the grass and started digging a field-lab from his bag.

"Start making Salt Stars," Usopp muttered as he went off to fetch a mortar and pestle.

"Salt-filled lunches to go," Sanji conceded. "I don't approve of using food as a weapon, but if a riceball could literally mean the difference between life and death…" He shook his head with a smoke-filled sigh as he walked towards the pavilion. "Well, I suppose someone'll be eating them either way."

I watched the sniper and cook walk away before a slight nudging at the side of my neck snagged my attention, and I glanced at my colleague, who had a cocked eyestalk.

"Just… wondering, but we are staying OUT OF THE ACTION THIS TIME, RIGHT?" Soundbite asked nervously.

I cocked my eyebrow at that. "What, you scared of a few zombies or something?"

"Mere walking dead? Pshaw! NOT ON YOUR LIFE!" Soundbite puffed out what little chest he had, then shrank in on himself. "It's the salt that has me pissing my shell…"

I started to open my mouth to reassure him, but then I shut it when I realized that the likes of Luffy was going to be flinging the stuff around as well, so… "Okay, justifiable paranoia right there. I'll get you some protection."

"Phew…" Soundbite sighed in relief before eyeing me curiously. "Still haven't answered MY QUESTION, THOUGH."

At that, I shot a smirk at the snail. "Well, where do you think we'll be, hmm?"

That got a smile from Soundbite that was all teeth. "RIGHT IN THE THICK OF IT! Just the way I damn well like it!"

I chuckled and held my fist up so that he could bump his eyes against my knuckles. "You damn well know it."

~o~

Soundbite gave a low whistle, most likely deliberately reverberating the noise to play along with the miniature suit of custom-made medieval armor he was clad in, his eyes peeking through his slightly raised visor. "STILL READY TO get into the thick of it?"

"Mrgrgh…" I grumbled beneath my breath in response as I watched our only escape route slide shut behind us.

To be perfectly honest? Up until we found ourselves looking at the island itself, I wasn't really worried at all. And it wasn't the island itself that changed that; we were strong enough and forearmed enough that I wasn't too worried. It wasn't the jaw-shaped gate that had just shut us off from the rest of the world, either; honestly, if you want to make a disembodied mouth intimidating, you don't give it square white teeth, you make them rotted or sharp, or at least add a few red stains.

No, no, the part that got me worrying?

It was when, mere seconds after entering the snare of Thriller Bark, one of our oldest and yet youngest crewmates suddenly dropped to her knees and clamped a hand over her mouth as she started dry-heaving.

"Merry!" I yelped, hastily running over and kneeling next to her and rubbing her coat-covered back. "Merry, what's wrong, what's—!?"

"Stillborn…"

"Eh?" I blinked in confusion. "Wha—?"

"This place…" Merry looked up with tears brimming in the corners of her eyes, her hand clamped firmly over her mouth. "It's… It's stillborn…"

"…bastard."

All eyes turned to look at Franky, who currently seemed to be doing his best impression of an angry Sanji, fire blazing in his eyes.

"It's not enough that he makes a mockery of life with all the people he curses and the zombies he makes," the cyborg snarled, his fists all but groaning from how tightly they were clenched. "But he curses his own ship, too?!"

"Wh-What awe you tawking about?" Carue asked nervously.

"This place…" Merry groaned in response, shuddering and spasming. "It's not… not really a ship. The spirits of ships… t-they're born of the love and care a-and compassion of their crews… b-but this… this…" She shook her head miserably. "It started as a ship, i-it was supposed to be one, but… but once it was done, no one showed it any love. No one cared, no one… no one's seen it as a ship. An island, a hell… never a ship. And because of that, Thriller Bark… it… it…" Merry hunched over with, letting out another gut-rattling wretch.

"Marine Battleships and some pirate ships…" Franky ground out, glaring daggers at the Jolly Roger-spangled sail that loomed on high through the mists. "Their ships can be stunted through lack of care, because their crews only see them as vessels of war or transportation or whatever. It's sad, but it's a fact of life, and they're still seen as ships. But whenever a ship this badly neglected ever came through Water 7…" Franky literally snorted a stream of fire. "Iceburg and I had our differences… but between us, we made sure that the bastards who did shit as heinous as this never did it again."

I frowned as I considered that. I had given thought to everything we'd do here except for the island itself; I thought we would just leave it abandoned as it was in the story. But with what Merry and Franky said…

"Alright, everyone, addendum to the plan: try to limit damage to the island proper and the parts that make it seaworthy, and we'll come up with something when the rest of this mess is over. But for the time being, they already know we're here. So, for starters…"

I clapped our brand-new musician on the back. "Brook, you're up."

"Gladly!" Brook nodded back before doffing his hat to the rest of the crew. "Well, my friends, I'm afraid I must be off! Fortune willing, we shall meet again on the other side! But for now!"

He leapt over the edge of the Sunny and, the moment he hit the top of the water, he shot off towards the dark island looming, blurred legs kicking up enough water for a motorboat and a cackle of "YOHOHOHOHOHOOO~!" trailing behind him.

I tried to keep my cool in place as my newest friend disappeared into the distance, but I couldn't help but start gnawing on my metal-encased thumb, which was most likely why Luffy clapped his hand on my shoulder and stuck his carefree grin in my face.

"Mah, don't worry about it!" he chuckled, melting away my worries. "He's following your plan, remember? And it's a good plan! After all, you made it, right?"

I hesitated for a second before matching his smile and nodding right back. "Yeah… yeah, it is a damn good plan."

~o~

"Alright, everyone, first thing you all need to understand about Thriller Bark?" I stated. "It's that this place is run like a nightmare funhouse. All of their tactics, all of their members, all of the abilities that they bring to bear, they're all intended to be used in subterfuge. Tricks, traps, illusions, the whole enchilada. Shadows are an integral part of Thriller Bark, and if we just run in guns blazing?" I slammed my fist into my palm. "This place will shank us clean between our ribs when we're least expecting it."

The crew exchanged uneasy looks at that, but Boss drew attention to himself with a hard snort.

"We get it, this place is gonna be tricky as all get-out," he grumbled as he gnawed on his cigar. "So what're we gonna do about it?"

"Simple…" I patted myself down for a second before withdrawing a stray piece of scrap paper from my pocket and holding it up with both hands. "They want to fight smart, we're going to fight smart right back. We're going to enter through the front door, and while they think we're falling for their tricks…" I tore the paper in half. "We're going to dismantle their entire operation, piece…" And then into quarters, "By piece," And then into eighths before casting aside the confetti. "Before they even have a chance to realize what's going on."

Everyone started to nod in agreement, until I spoke up again.

"But!" I hastily snapped my finger up. "If we're going to do this right, then everything has to be perfect. No deviations, no getting sidetracked. I'll try making sure no one has a job they can't handle or at least has someone nearby who knows what they're doing, but even so…" I shook my head slowly. "Moria may be the weakest of the Warlords, but he still has as much mastery of his Devil Fruit as Crocodile, and about as much tactical skill. As such, I cannot stress this enough: One slip up, one misstep, and this whole place will fall on us like a ton of bricks. Got it?"

"We've got it, Cross. We'll be as careful as we need to be," Sanji said, and similar sentiments came from the rest of the crew.

I looked Luffy dead in the eyes as I spoke again. "Captain, I'm going to plan things for your part in this the best way that I can. But I need you to try as hard as you can to follow through. You know how much is on the line here, and you remember what happened the last time you gave a Warlord an inch."

"…I still want to kick Moria's ass," Luffy grumbled.

"You'll have your chance once he's run out of tricks to hide behind," I promised. Thankfully, that seemed to mollify Luffy, and he nodded.

"Alright, then. Now, we'll be starting with taking care of the only living members of Thriller Bark's crew, the Mysterious Four, consisting of Moria and his three subordinates. More specifically, we'll be taking care of the two that actually have Devil Fruits, and who are even close to combat ready. Brook."

"Hm?" the skeleton replied, cocking his head to the side.

"Your first job upon us reaching the island will be to bamboozle the Ghost Princess of Thriller Bark, Perona." I paused for a moment before allowing myself a snicker. "I love the fact that I get the chance to use the word 'bamboozle'."

THWAP!

"Focus on the task at hand, got it," I winced apologetically as Robin's hand disintegrated.

~o~

"Yo-hohoho, Yo-ho-ho-ho~" Brook sang as he strolled through the woods, pausing slightly as he came upon a graveyard before bounding clear into the center of it and raising his voice. "Yo-hohoho, Yo-ho-ho-ho~"

As if on cue, all the graves around him began trembling, and dead hands began to claw their way to freedom. Brook came to a halt in the middle of the cemetery, casting his gaze about as the earth shifted and roiled beneath his feet.

Suddenly, the soil right beneath him split, and a half-rotted hand clamped down upon his shin, and a groaning zombie pulled itself up and out of the earth…

Before suddenly cutting itself off when it caught sight of the bleached white skull mere inches from his face.

"Hello there, mister zombie," Brook hummed politely, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. "Remember me?"

What little blood the zombie still had in its head shot out of it. "Oh, shi—!"

That was as far as the revenant got before Brook crammed his bony fingers down its throat, depositing a tiiiny amount of salt in the zombie's stomach.

Still, that small amount of salt was enough to push all of the shadow right out of the zombie's now truly lifeless jaws.

Then, the second that his leg was freed, Brook blurred around the graveyard, darting to and fro between the graves as the living dead tried to wrench themselves from the earth. By the time Brook came to a halt, all of the zombies were fully free, all standing at the ready…

But after a second, half of them collapsed into true lifelessness, their shadows ripping themselves free of their jaws and soaring away beneath their comrade's horrified gazes.

The surviving zombies only had a second to process what they'd just seen…

"Ahem."

Before a cough caused the embalming fluid in their veins to freeze. They jerkily turned their heads and stared in horror at the skeleton in their midst as he inspected his blade with the utmost casualness.

"I'm only," Brook mused offhandedly, "going to say this once."

He then glanced up from his blade at the zombies, his face a mask of pure, uninhibited murder.

"RUN."

And just like that, the zombies began fleeing as fast as their enhanced bodies would allow, raising the alarm that the scourge of Thriller Bark from five years past had returned to exact his vengeance.

As they ran, the zombies received simultaneous encouragement to flee and discouragement in the usefulness of it, as every other second it seemed that one of their number or another suddenly fell flat as their tendons were shredded, giving them each only a few moments to scream in terror before they were silenced by their ill-gotten souls fleeing their body. More joined the fleeing chase as it progressed through the woods, but their numbers were cut down as quickly as they were built up.

Eventually, the stampede of the once-living disgorged into yet another graveyard opening, scrambling to get away as their recently awakened comrades clawed their way to freedom and joined in the chaos.

Fortunately for them, upon reaching the new graveyard, Brook cut off his pursuit in favor of leaping upon the nearest crypt and slashing his sword out in a grandiose manner. "Accursed zombies of Thriller Bark! I am the dreaded Humming Swordsman, returned from the mists after five long years! There will be no survivors! For I am here! I am here! But soon, you will not be here! The dreaded Humming Swordsman is here for your souls!"

'I will have to ask Cross where he came up with that speech, it even sent shivers down my spine! Oh, but I don't… no, I do have a spine. Botched skull joke,' Brook reflected with a frown, even as the zombies cowered before him. Which was all well and good, but for his part of the plan to work, he still needed a—!

"Horohorohoro~"

Brook was silently grateful for the Negative Hollow that popped up from the stonework a foot in front of him. After all…

"GYAAAAAAH! GHOOOOOST!" he howled, flinching back and throwing his hands up in terror.

Now he didn't have to fake his shock.

The surrounding zombies all paused in their panic, exchanging shocked looks before staring up at their aggressor in confusion. "You're… afraid of ghosts?" one of them called up incredulously.

Brook exaggerated his panting and chest-clutching as he stared at the cartoonish spectre that was wagging its tongue at him. "Y-Y-Yes! Terrified! Deathly afraid, even—oh, but I'm already—Aheheh, getting off track, sorry. A-a-anyways, i-it was bad enough seeing just zombies the l-l-last time I was here, b-but now—!" Brook kept up his act for a bit before breathing a heavy sigh of relief. "W-W-Well, I suppose it could be worse… t-t-that thing barely looks r-r-real! S-S-So long as I d-don't see a human-looking g-g-ghost, I-I'll still be able to d-defeat you all, and reclaim my shadow!"

The zombies all slowly turned their heads to stare at one another, before slowly turning their heads back so that they could smile malevolently at the skeleton of their nightmares.

Brook immediately, though he actually already had a damned good idea of why they were all so chipper (for moving corpses, at any rate). "Whyyyy are you all staring at me like that?"

"Horohorohorohoro… I expect…"

Brook's spine went ramrod straight as a high-pitched voice chuckled echoingly behind him. He sloooowly turned on his heel…

And had to squash the surge of victory he felt when he came face to face with a pink-haired gothic Lolita who was clearly floating upside down in the air.

Perona smirked victoriously, entirely unaware of Brook's own sentiments. "They're all smiling because of me," she crooned.

She then snapped her face forwards with a smile that was all teeth. "BOO."

"GYAAAAAH!" Brook shot his hands in the air, shooting away from the Ghost Princess so fast that he actually left a dust trail hanging in his wake.

Perona righted herself, cocking an eyebrow after the fleeing skeleton before casting an incredulous look at the zombies. "So, that was the Humming Swordsman that's had you all shitting yourselves over skeletons for the past five years? Seriously!?"

"Hey, it's not our fault! He's really, really fast!" one of the zombies indignantly protested.

"Yeah!" another piped up. "Maybe if you hadn't slept through that shitshow five years ago, then we wouldn't be down a load a' zombies in the first place!"

"They're right!"

"Lazy princess!"

"Why dontcha do something useful?!"

Perona's head was bowed as the insults kept flowing out from the rapidly revolting (in both senses of the word) zombies, a vein throbbing on her forehead and her teeth grinding together…

"Yer not that cute!"

Until that particular comment caused her jaw to jerk to the side with a particularly sonorous SNAP!

"SHUT IIIT!" the suddenly gigantic Perona screeched at the zombies, cowing them all into submission while a few stray Negative Hollows put several down and out for good measure.

The Ghost Princess huffed and puffed as she marginally came down from the high of her rage, and turned her nose up in a derisive sniff. "You damn uncute bastards… I was going to have some fun chasing that sissy skeleton all over the woods, but now? I think I'll leave him to you clowns! Have fun sucking on salt, rot-for-brains!"

And with that, ignoring the panicked protests of her underlings, Perona turned to fly back to her room…

"…On second thought."

Only to spin around and see that the skeleton was back in the midst of the zombies, looking up at her with a blank face.

"You're actually too cute to be scary," he remarked.

Perona blinked, unsure how to react. On the one hand, she didn't like that he wasn't scared, but on the other hand, she could hardly take offense to someone calling her cu—

"Would you mind showing me your panties?"

All movement in the graveyard froze, the zombies staring at Brook in abject horror while Perona…

Perona's expression remained blank for all of ten seconds.

Then her eyes slooowly rolled up into her head, and a pair of gigantic, orb-shaped hollows appeared hovering at her sides.

"When you die this time…" she hissed malevolently. "There won't be enough left FOR YOU TO COME BACK TO!" The last phrase was screeched furiously, emphasized by the Ghost Princess flinging her cackling Special Hollows at the skeleton.

Said skeleton then proceeded to do the smart thing and vacate the area, not even sparing enough time to purify the remaining zombies. The giant ghosts exploded near him, but the resulting smokescreen only helped him to duck and cover behind a tree, following which he tugged on his jacket and brought a pocket that held a snail close to his jaws.

"The princess is chasing phantoms," he quickly hissed out. "I had to improvise to keep her interested, but she won't be bothering you for awhile."

"Roger roger, buy all the time you can," came the response. He resumed running with a not inconsiderate amount of real fear.

'Even so,' he reflected, glancing over his shoulder at the pursuing Hollow-Woman. 'Cross certainly earned his place as the tactician. Apart from the hiccup on her part, his plan is working perfectly so far!'

~o~

"Just to confirm…" Vivi started to raise her hand with a grim expression.

"No, Perona is not a legitimate princess," I assured her. "That's just what she likes to call herself."

Vivi heaved a sigh of relief, but it was wiped away by my own scowl. "But unfortunately, it's an apt epithet. Her power comes from the Hollow-Hollow Fruit, which is one of the most dangerous Devil Fruits I've ever seen. It lets the user create 'ghosts', or at least things very much like them. She has a few variations… but the most dangerous are also her most commonplace: her Negative Hollows."

I shuddered fearfully. "If one of those dopey-looking bastards touches you, it'll rob you of all will to live. It only lasts a few minutes at most, sometimes just a few seconds, but considering how she can slam you with one while you're getting bumrushed by a horde of zombies…" I trailed off, the uneasy looks on everyone's faces indicated they got what I was getting at.

"So, what's the weakness, Cross? It's not like she doesn't have one if we got past her in your story," Sanji inquired.

I shook my head with a regretful grimace. "That's the biggest problem, Sanji; I can't be sure that anybody on the crew as we are now has any chance of beating her in a straight-up fight. The only thing I know of that can protect you against the Negative Hollows…"

I turned my regretful look on Usopp. "Is being so pessimistic that they can't sink you any lower."

The sniper froze. "And… you've been boosting my confidence from the day you told us the truth," he breathed in horror.

I sighed again, massaging my face. "Yes, and I realize that the easy way out isn't an option because of that, but if you'd seen what I've seen, what would have happened if I hadn't done everything that I possibly could?" I snorted as I jabbed my thumb downwards. "If I had let it happen anyway just so we'd still have a trump card against Perona, you wouldn't have let me within a half-mile of Sunny, and that's not an exaggeration, meaning that that point is moot. Alright?"

I took in everyone's disconcerted expressions, many of them clearly wondering what could have possibly been that bad. But going off of the fact that a few members of the crew were bowing their heads or looking at me with resigned acceptance, they had figured out what the answer was.

I clapped my hands together to get their attention back. "Anyway, what's done is done, and we're getting off track. The Negative Hollows aren't even what I'm most worried about with Perona's abilities. No, the true threat…" I pointed at my eye. "Is her remote viewing. Perona can see through the eyes of her Hollows, and because they're intangible, she can make a lot of them, and her range is freaking huge…" I moved my finger to point at Soundbite. "We have a voyeur on our hands to match ours. If we want to try and pull any covert operations on Thriller Bark, our first order of business will be to disable Perona."

I tsk'd derisively as I started pacing, my hands folded behind my back. "An act easier said than done, unfortunately. Yet another tool in the Hollow-Hollow Fruit's varied arsenal is that of astral projection; she can leave her body as an intangible, invulnerable ghost herself, and go wherever she damn well chooses while leaving her real body locked up in the depths of Thriller Bark. Basically, this means that we can't touch it."

"So, if I have this right…" Conis started counting down on her fingers. "We can't hurt her, we can't counter her, can't even touch her…"

"AHA!" Su barked, jabbing her paw at me with a grin. "But she does leave her body, so that means we can still speak with her! You're going to distract her!"

"Or more specifically, I will distract her, is that right?" Brook confirmed.

"More than that, Brook. You're going to go ashore ahead of us, garner as much attention as you can, and the second you see a Hollow, you cement her attention on you so that she doesn't look anywhere else. How you do it is up to you, but if you want my advice? She's got something of a trickster-sadist streak in her. Play on that and let her think she can get a few screams out of you, and you'll have her undivided attention. After that…" I shrugged with a careless smirk. "It just comes down to two simple factors: keep ahead of her at all times and don't let the ghosts touch you."

"I believe I can manage, Cross," Brook nodded confidently. "Because as I'm sure you're aware, I can be very, very fast."

I nodded proudly. "Glad to hear it. Now! The distraction of Thriller Bark's surveillance will be phase one of our plan. Phase two, the infiltration, will begin once we're certain they're in the blind. And for that part…" I held up a quartet of fingers. "The rest of us will be splitting into four teams."

~o~

I took a calming breath as I prepared myself for what was coming before raising my voice so that everyone could hear. "Alright! Perona—and by extension, Thriller Bark—is blind! If we're going, then it's now or never! Everyone ready to rumble?"

"Let's go!" Luffy cheered eagerly.

"Thanks for the seat, Zoro," Chopper said gratefully.

"Mmph," the swordsman grunted, somehow managing to look dangerous despite having what resembled nothing so much as a reindeer plush on his lap.

"We're all good, Cross!" Franky said.

"And we're good here, too," I nodded in confirmation. I then proceeded to rap my fist against the wall. "Let's roll out!"

"You got it!" Merry announced from up top. "Alright everyone, brace yourselves, because we are doing this for the first time ever! Deploying Soldier Dock System, Channels 1 and 2!"

I grinned eagerly as the chamber we were in slowly rotated to the left, the gate of the dock sliding open and exposing us to the light.

"Oh, this is gonna be fuuun…" Soundbite squealed.

"From Channel 1!" Merry boasted. "Our Covert Ops deployment vessel…"

There was a jolt as the powered-launch apparatus Franky had installed in the SDS activated, and we were shot out of the berth like a cork from a bottle. The second our grinning white zodiac hit the water, I twisted the throttle and gunned its cola-powered engine so that we steered out and away from the Sunny.

"In homage to the Whitebeard Pirates, the Mini-Moby Motorboat!" Merry laughed from up top. Her laughter redoubled as a secondary clunk echoed from the opposite side of the Sunny. "And from Channel 2! Our Mass Troop Deployment vessel…"

There was an almighty roar from behind the Sunny, and then our other faithful metal steed shot into view, barely even skimming over the waves, it was moving so fast. Large enough to fit nearly a dozen people and powered by an impressive aircraft-grade propeller latched onto its back and piloted by Franky, the—

"Gator Glider!" Merry cheered eagerly.

—was nothing short of a lean, mean, speed machine. This description was only hammered home by how, even laden down with the vast majority of our crew, the vessel sped into the mists at a speed comparable to a non-Shaving Carue.

Once they were gone, I shot a final farewell salute at Merry before revving the Mini-Moby's motor and piloting my team towards the ghost island's shoreline. I slowed our speed when we actually hit the mists and started actually getting close to the island, and we came to a full halt once we bumped into the lip of the island's 'moat'.

And then, after taking a second to reassure my friends that the current would carry the Mini-Moby straight to the dock proper, we all jumped in.

It wasn't a small fall, that's for damn sure, and it was practically unclimbable from the bottom, but thanks to us willingly jumping into the abyss, we were able to control our falls by sliding down the damp and mossy walls of the crevice.

In my honest opinion, our flawless landing at the bottom was quite the feat of badassery.

I took a second to adjust the brim of my cap before glancing around at the rest of my team. "Alright, everyone good to go?"

Robin smiled confidently as she thumbed her Stetson up. "Of course."

Usopp was adjusting the collar of his cloak uncertainly as he glanced around, but ultimately he settled for plastering a shaky grin on his face as clamped one hand down on top of his new (and admittedly pretty cool) hat and used the other to shoot me a thumbs up. "Good to go!"

Conis beamed sunnily even as she tapped her knuckles against the barrel of the Burn Bazooka that was poking over her shoulder, alongside the rest of the armaments she was packing. "I didn't exactly choose to carry all of this to look pretty."

"We came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum!" Su announced with a flick of her tail. "And considering what that stuff does to my fur? I hate bubblegum."

"All in all, Cross?" Lassoo leered malevolently as he shoved himself off my back and licked his chops in anticipation. "I'd say we're good to go. So, let's go already! I want to see some zombies burn."

I stiffened as I processed that particular tidbit before shooting a look at my mutt. "Lassoo, I don't know how you've hung around Soundbite and I this long without picking up on this particular tidbit, but when it comes to zombies—!"

"GRRR!"

"CANI-BLAST!" Lassoo howled, spinning around and vomiting up a pillar of flames that engulfed the 'poor' Cerberus Zombie that had just showed its head.

"KAI!"/"KAI!"/"YIP!"

I sighed as said Cerberus Zombie switched to writhing around on the ground, attempting to bat out the flames crawling over its necrotized hide.

"Heheh!" Lassoo scratched his paw under his nose proudly. "Fire is and always will be the best solution!"

"Noooot really…" I slapped a hand to my forehead with a sigh. "Because see, the thing is? While it might think that it's feeling pain, it'll soon remember that it actually doesn't."

"Eh?" My dog-gun blinked up at me in confusion. "And what does that matter?"

"It matters," Soundbite explained dryly. "Because once it remembers, not only will the zombie continue to chase us…"

The two-thirds Cerberus chose that exact moment to roll back onto its feet and resume its mismatched snarling, only now it had flames burning all over and within it as well.

"BUT IT WILL DO SO WHILE STILL ON FIRE!"

"Ah…" Lassoo started backing away from his growling pyrrhic counterpart. "I… see your point."

"Glad to hear it," I sighed despondently, even as I prepared to run like a hellhound was on my heels. Oh, wait, it was. "So, are there any other questions anyone would like to ask?"

"Uh, actually, I have one."

All attention turned to Usopp as he squinted at the Cerberus. "That third head, the yellow one… is that a fox?"

My gut dropped out from within me, the Cerberus briefly looking stricken before it started snarling and growling louder than ever.

I slowly turned my head to pin Usopp with a cyanide-deadly glare. "You. Dumb. Fuck. I just went over this!"

"Aheheh…" The sniper backed away fearfully. "Sorry?"

"Apologize later," Conis sighed in defeat. "For now, unless I miss my guess—?"

"ROOOAAAR!" the immolating zombie howled in triplicate.

"RUN LIKE HELL, DIPSHITS!" Su yelped.

"DAMN STRAIGHT!" I yelled back, turning on a dime and running like hellfire from the revenant canine.

"Sonnuva-sonnuva-sonnuva—shit!" Lassoo yelped as he scrambled to keep up. "Of all the times for you to send that damn sword somewhere else! And Soundbite, weren't you working on some brand new badass move or something!? Can't you just blow it to damn pieces!?"

"Love to, can't!" Soundbite grimaced, his eyestalks pulling independent 180s. "TOO MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF FLESH FOR ME TO GET a common frequency! I'D ONLY BE ABLE TO BLAST A bit of the damn THING!"

"Is it just me, or has your Awakened Devil Fruit not been of any help at all since we left Enies Lobby?" Su snapped.

"…I CAN still use GASTRO-PHONY at a distance. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THE BISCUIT TREATMENT?!" Soundbite snapped. Conis and Su reacted only in confusion, but everyone else winced, and then I turned a glare on the snail.

"And you aren't doing that to the hellhound… why, exactly!?" I demanded.

"…PLEASE HOLD," Soundbite whistled to the side.

Before I could rip a chunk out of the snail's hide—or shell, as it were—the pursuing Cerberus suddenly stumbled in its pursuit, hacking and wheezing. It spent a few seconds like that before all three heads swung into one another and they resumed the pursuit, angrier than ever.

Soundbite blinked in honest shock. "Sonnuva bitch, SCARFACE BACK THERE JUST KNOCKED ITS hearing out of commission!"

I blinked in surprise before refocusing on my running for my life. "I will admit, I probably should have seen that coming." I glanced around, looking for something that I could use to fend off the mutts. Putting them down for good could send out the alert too soon, meaning we had to find some way to escape before—

I smirked as I saw an upcoming tree, and moved a hand to my belt. "That'll work," I muttered, shooting the grappling hook and locking it around the tree branch. "Everyone, after me!"

As Lassoo secured himself on my back, I pulled the cord, reeling myself in and onto the branch as Usopp mirrored me with his own belt and Robin provided makeshift ropes for everyone else. Within seconds, we were safe in the boughs of the perfectly normal (a metal heel to the closest thing I could find resembling an eye confirmed it) tree, with the Cerberus zombie circling angrily below. Ultimately, however, it snorted acridly before turning its back and padding away, presumably to either return to its den or to find someone to put it out, leaving behind a stench of burned fur. Eurgh.

Once we all hopped down and dusted ourselves off, I started to speak, but Soundbite snickering to himself grabbed my attention. "Care to share?"

"N-No no, NOTHING! Y-You just do whatever!" he managed to choke out through his giggling.

I cocked my eyebrow in blatant disbelief. "If… you say so…" I then shrugged the matter off in favor of properly addressing everyone else, starting by gesturing at the woods around us (once I was sure that Soundbite was properly Scrambling us, anyways). "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the haunted woods of Thriller Bark. They're dark, damp, fog-ridden… and absolutely packed to the gills with the living dead."

"An absolutely charming locale," Robin hummed with… way too much honest sincerity for comfort.

"One I really wanna get out of as fast as possible…" Usopp gulped as he strangled the staff of Kabuto. "Which way out of here?"

"Soundbite?"

"ROAD'S thattaway!" Soundbite indicated with his eyestalks.

"Thanks," I nodded gratefully as I started walking in the direction he indicated. "C'mon, gang!"

I dug my heels into the ground as I registered what I heard. "What just came out of my mouth!?"

"Heeheehee…" Soundbite snickered.

"Sounds like Soundbite's having some fun at your expense!" Lassoo raised his paw to his mouth and chuckled. "Reeheehee—eh!?"

I shot Soundbite a flat look as Lassoo clamped his muzzle shut. "Okay, once is you messing around, twice is a trend. What's the con?"

Soundbite opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything a flock of bats shot out of the trees, screeching and flapping. All of us tensed as they flew by—except Usopp, who let out a shriek and practically Shaved into Conis' arms, clutching her neck and shoulders like a life preserver.

Conis blinked at our sniper in surprise. "Uh…?"

"Drop him," Su deadpanned, prompting Conis to do so and unceremoniously drop to Usopp the ground.

"WOW, I DIDN'T EVEN plan that, but it still worked out PERFECTLY!" Soundbite snickered.

"OK, seriously?" I deadpanned, casting a sidelong glare at the snail. "Why are you—"

"HAVE YOU REALLY not noticed our group?!" Soundbite outright cackled.

I glanced around in confusion for a second before 'ah'ing and realization and pointing everyone out one by one.

"Male Coward—"

"Hey!" Usopp squawked indignantly.

"Female Beauty—"

"Uh… thank you?" Conis leaned away from me with a slightly uncertain look.

"Female Brainiac—"

Robin chuckled, though she was looking at me curiously.

"Male leader…" I pointed at myself before slowly looking down at an incredulous Lassoo. "…and a talking dog," I finished, disbelief evident in my voice. "Sonnuva bitch we're freaking Mystery Incorporated, One Piece Edition."

"HAHAHA! YES!" Soundbite howled maniacally. "And cue tree-assault in THREE, TWO—!"

"…meh."

"HOOHOOCOME AGAIN!?" Soundbite squawked incredulously.

"You heard me, meh," I said dismissively. "This isn't the universe playing merry hell with my sanity; it's me unintentionally making something happen. And honestly? It's actually a little funny."

Soundbite blinked a few times. Then he looked up at nothing. "You gonna take that lying down?" he asked.

A second or so later, a branch spontaneously snapped above me, clattering to the ground so that it was leaning against my torso, shoving its smaller branches at Soundbite's face. Said snail had snapped into his shell, and upon poking his eyestalks back out, looked for a moment, and then narrowed them.

I, however, couldn't help but snicker, given the fact that the branches directly in front of Soundbite's face were suspiciously arranged into what very much resembled a fist with the middle finger raised. "Looks like there's a fine line between driving me crazy and taking orders from a snail."

"Well, screw you too," the snail grumbled.

"Okay, watch it," I chuckled as I started walking towards the road. "Honestly, last thing I need is another close encounter of the electric kind, got it?"

"GURK!" Soundbite thankfully decided to shut himself up as he shot back into his shell, his eyes poking out and glancing at the sky fearfully before he suddenly tensed up. "Uh, Cross? I'm not the only one who should be LOOKING UP."

"Eh?" I glanced at him in confusion. "What are you—?"

"Well, isn't this quite the development?"

"GAH!" I jerked backward and fell on my ass, flinching on account of the freaking vampire bastard that had just dropped out of the branches and who was hanging upside down before me. "For the love of—! We already have someone on our crew who gets her kicks doing that, we don't need anyone else!"

"I'm inclined to agree with our… dubiously beloved tactician," Robin chuckled as she and my friends stepped up beside me, she herself helping me to my feet as they stared up at the squat bat-winged zombie.

"My humblest apologies," the vamp-zombie simpered through his ever-present grin. "My name is Hildon. I am something of the majordomo around these parts. It is an honor to welcome you to our humble horrifying home of Thriller Bark, Straw Hat Pirates."

I took a brief moment to appreciate nobody in our current group having the stupidity to ask how he knew who we were before responding. "Well, that's warmer a welcome than I was expecting," I remarked. "Can't really say I'm surprised you recognize us, though. Fans, huh? Or did you just get our wanted posters?"

"Oh, you've acquired a poster of your own, have you?" Hildon perked up—or down, as it were—eagerly. "How riveting! No, we were completely unaware of that! The News Coos haven't been coming around lately, for some reason. Really…" He tilted his head to the side with a sigh. "It's quite vexing if I'm being honest. What have we ever done to them?"

Coming to a likely conclusion, I sent a silent word of thanks to Coo before refocusing on the zombie as he continued.

"But anyways, yes! Fans!" Hildon nodded eagerly before tilting his head with a despondent frown. "Up until recently, anyways…"

"Recently?" Conis questioned curiously.

"Ah, well, you see…" Hildon crossed his arms over his chest and bowed his head despondently. "Our domicile is quite isolated, you see, and we're quite interconnected around here, so we've only ever had or needed a single Transponder Snail. But a few weeks back…" He spread his wings in dismay. "We were attacked!"

Conis, Su, and Usopp exchanged glances as they heard that, while I blinked in comprehension. A glance at Robin and Soundbite showed that they had come to the same conclusion, and I looked back at Hildon with a well-schooled expression of curiosity. "And… these attackers stole your Transponder Snail?"

"HA! If that were all that they did, we'd probably have just laughed it off, but no such luck! You see, a few weeks back, two different pirate crews joined in an alliance and, without any provocation whatsoever—!"

I only just managed to keep from coughing out a not-so-subtle 'bullshit'.

"—attacked the island without an inkling of remorse or hesitation!" Hildon swung his arm over his eyes in despair. "We didn't do a darned thing to them, and yet they started tearing our humble abode apart at the seams! Even going so far as to steal our only connection to the outside world! Oh, woe is us, woe says I!"

I rolled my eyes at the ham-tastic performance, but stayed silent.

Eventually, Hildon quit his fake blubbering and wiped the non-existent tears from his eyes, grinning widely. "Ah, but now you're here, and you can regale us with marvelous tales of your adventures in person! If you'd be so inclined, anyways."

Now that actually snagged my attention, and Robin's as well if her glance at me was anything to go by. "To confirm, when you say 'us'…?"

Without any warning, Hildon dropped from the canopy and flipped around to land on his feet. He then shoved his thumbs in his mouth, blew out a harsh whistle…

And with a clatter of hooves and grinding of wheels, an old-fashioned but well-designed horse-drawn carriage came rolling towards us, drawn by two things that were definitely not traditional horsemen. Seriously, what the fuck was sewn onto that second horse's neck!?

"By 'us'," Hildon chuckled in what I bet was meant to be an inviting tone. "I mean the master of the glorious manor where I serve. I refer to the illustrious home of the world's greatest medical mind…" His fangs glinted in the lantern-light. "Doctor Hogback."

"Yeah, because that's not suspicious at all," Lassoo muttered beneath his breath, before jumping with a yip of pain, presumably on account of a hand that was rapidly disintegrating from where it'd sprouted on his backside.

"Lead the way," Robin invited with all the casual ease someone who had the epithet 'Devil Child' should have.

Credit to Hildon, he didn't even twitch, though I suppose already being dead might have had something to do with it. "Please, allow me," he offered politely, swinging the carriage's door open and gesturing for us to step inside.

I climbed in with a nod of thanks and took a seat by the window, and I couldn't help but share a victorious grin with Robin as she sat next to me.

I wasn't foolish enough to think that everything would certainly be smooth sailing from here, but damn if it didn't feel good for my plan to be going right so far.

~o~

"Alright, here's how things are going to hash out," I said as I held up a single finger. "Team 1, a.k.a. 'Gatecrasher', will be the ones who walk in the front door, pretending to fall for the island's tricks, and when we get deep enough into the heart of it, sabotage. That team will consist of Conis, Su, Robin, Usopp, Lassoo, Soundbite, and myself. And before you say anything, Funkfreed," I added, holding up a reassuring hand to the elephant, "the only reason I won't have you with me is that I have something special in mind for you. You won't be acting as a sword, but you will definitely be right in the thick of the action."

"Works for me!" the elephant saluted with his trunk.

"Incidentally, Cross, I'm curious about something," Brook interjected. "One weapon that merged with a Zoan Devil Fruit is interesting, but two seems to be a pattern, and considering your secret… are you making a habit of collecting them?"

I blinked as the weapons in question looked at me in askance, and I shrugged. "Not intentionally, shit just lines up like that. Though I am happy with the results. And they were the only two Zoan weapons I can remember, so—" I frowned as a certain monstrous slime salamander came to mind. "…Strike that, there was one other, but 'weapon' doesn't begin to describe it, and I'm pretty certain that even 'properly sapient' is a stretch. Aaaand that's a long way off besides… Anyway, as I was saying, I don't think I can make a habit of it, so no."

Brook nodded, and I shifted back to what I was saying before. "Anyway, getting back on topic… First of all, Merry, now's the time to forego surprise in favor of strategy; what have we got in the Soldier Dock System?"

A slight air of disappointment brushed across Merry's face, but it was only for a second before she withdrew a pair of blueprints from her coat and laid them out. "Channel 1 is the Mini-Moby Motorboat, designed for covert ops or shopping trips. Carrying capacity is five fully grown humans plus baggage. And Channel 2 is the Gator Glider airboat. The giant fan engine sacrifices subtlety for speed, but it's big enough to load eight fully grown humans plus baggage."

"Perfect. Team 1 will take the Mini-Moby, then; we'll be heading for the island's moat and meeting up with their scout, which should lead us straight to the mansion in the middle of the island that the Mysterious Four use as their base. And once we're there…"

I slowly turned to look at our doctor. "Chopper, I'm going to guess that you can tell us all about one Doctor Hogback, right?"

"Doctor Hogback!?" our doctor squealed ecstatically, stars practically sparkling in his eyes. "Of course I can! He's the Vegapunk of medical science, the absolute most brilliant surgeon the whole world over! He's saved countless lives that many others thought to be completely forfeit! A bonafide genius without par, admired by all doctors bar none! But…" Chopper tilted his head to the side curiously. "One day he just disappeared, without any warning whatsoever. People have been wondering where he's been for years… unless…"

Chopper gasped deeply, and I felt a brief flare of hope in my chest… only for a renewed round of sparkling to dash my hopes to nothing. "Do you know where Doctor Hogback is, Cross? Can I meet him, can I, can I?"

"Ah…" I rubbed the back of my neck uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at those too-innocent eyes of his. Going by the way that everyone else—even Luffy—was exchanging uneasy looks, they'd put the pieces together, too. Unfortunately, none of the traitors decided to relieve me of the burden of breaking our poor reindeer's heart.

"Chopper… you remember that the Shadow-Shadow fruit works by animating cadavers with stolen shadows, right?" I asked quietly.

"Uh…" The sparkle died in Chopper's eyes in favor of confusion as he slowly nodded. "Yeah? Why, what does that matter?"

"It matters…" I dragged the words out painfully. "Because while the shadows can animate the bodies, they still need said bodies to actually work. They need working joints, connected tendons… basically, they need bodies that are dead, but in proper physical condition nonetheless."

Chopper frowned in confusion. "But… dead bodies decompose. They'd be unsuitable for… for anything!"

"Unless…" I sighed despondently, resigning myself to what I was about to do. "The person my team is targeting were to fix them up; retrofit them with new bones, new muscles, new everything… until they were better in death than they ever were in life."

Chopper 'ah'd and started to nod in agreement before his entire body froze, horrified realization obvious in his eyes. There was a tense silence as he just… stared at me.

"…you're—" he whispered softly, struggling to finish his sentence.

"Wrong?" I asked back, just as softly. "How? Lying? Why?"

Chopper's jaw silently opened and shut, until he swallowed heavily. "…why?" he parroted with a croak.

I grimaced at what I was about to say. "Hogback… was proud of his skills as a surgeon, but he was only ever in it for money. All the patients who came to him for his miraculous skills, he just saw them as annoyances, and looked down on any doctors who actually enjoyed helping others. Moria… he got him onboard by letting him resurrect a dead actress that he had a crush on. That civilian maid who lost her shadow… she's the one who has it. She's his…" I tried to find a term that didn't sound utterly horrible, but… "Let's go with 'personal assistant'."

Silence fell for a full minute as Chopper bowed his head, his body shuddering and shivering uncontrollably. Then, without warning, Chopper raised his head and I recoiled at the glowing cyan pits that his eyes had become.

"Calm down, Cross, I'm in full control this time," Chopper stated, though his tone made everyone shiver. "I should thank you, actually. After all, you've just shown me what's needed to tame the irrational part of my genius: focusing the entirety of my psychosis on a singular target."

"Is… that so…" Merry got out uncomfortably.

"Hogback…" Chopper muttered like a reindeer possessed, apparently ignoring us. "I looked up to him… I respected him… I admired him…" Chopper's hooves clenched and his eyes blazed with unholy fury. "AND I WANT TEN MINUTES ALONE WITH HIM."

I shuddered slightly at the pure murder in his voice, but I managed to steel my nerve enough to respond. "You'll get as long as you want, Chopper," I assured him. "Exact whatever pounds of flesh you want. Just let my team grab him and get him to spill his guts to the world first. He's the weakest of the Mysterious Four, but he still has all the knowledge of the godforsaken place in his head. So long as I can get him talking to the world, then they'll all be screwed to hell and back. After that, his fat ass is all yours. That sound good to you?"

Chopper kept trembling for a bit, his nostrils flaring with snorts of impotent rage, and then he slumped forwards with a defeated sigh, the shadows seeming to melt away from his face and leaving him just looking… drained.

The Zoan-reindeer took a few more calming breaths before looking up, his eyes pleading. "Cross… I-I just… I have to know. Did he… ever really succeed in resurrecting the dead? Was it all… just a lie?"

I slowly closed my eyes as I recalled a specific moment in the arc.

"…In the final showdown against him, you appealed to Cindry, trying to stir her memories. Logic says it shouldn't have worked, that there should have been nothing and nobody in her, but…" A wistful smile crossed my face. "For an instant… her heart beat again. She smiled like she did a thousand times before when she was alive, like she'd never done in death… and she found peace."

I stared off at nothing for a second before morosely focusing on Chopper. "Maybe there is a way to permanently fend off the Reaper, Chopper, maybe there is—!"

"But that's not it," he ground out immediately, his gaze as cold as steel. "What you described… that's not true life. It's not medicine. I'll keep looking for the solution the right way."

I nodded with some relief, and turned to regard the rest of the crew. "Anyway, the short version is that Team 1 will be responsible for meeting Hogback, capturing him, interrogating him, and then putting him out of commission so that he can't assume control of the zombies. Any objections?"

None were forthcoming.

"Perfect. Now, moving on to Team 2…" I grimaced uncomfortably. "Your task will be both more dangerous and more difficult."

~o~

"Well, this is certainly a hospitable welcome," Su deadpanned as she sat in the carriage's empty driver seat, staring at the equally vacant spot where the 'horses' had been.

"Mrgh, it's certainly standard fare for these parts…" I scratched my chin thoughtfully as I eyeballed the gate standing between us and the impressively large manor that stood in the distance. "Though… I don't get why he pulled it. I could have sworn that he only did it in the story because Nami, Chopper and, well…" I nodded at Usopp, who responded with a flat leer. "All chickened out because of that sideshow we rode by earlier."

"Now that doesn't make much sense," Robin hummed to herself. "After all, I didn't think that those zombies we saw earlier were all that frightening. Why, I'd even say they were quite cute."

"Um, Robin?" Conis scratched the back of her head with an uncomfortable grin. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but… that's because your mind is a very dark, scary, and wrong place. No offense."

Robin blinked at her in honest confusion. "Why would I take offense from that?"

A sweatdrop hung from Conis' brow. "Very, very wrong."

"Personally?" Lassoo panted as he licked his chops unabashedly. "All those aged meats just made me hungry."

"You're just wrong in so many ways, full-stop," Su stated flatly.

"If we could get back on topic please?" Usopp whimpered fearfully.

"It's Cross's fault!" Soundbite sang.

"Blow it out your shell," I deadpanned.

"Actually, I'M NOT KIDDING!" my snail leered impishly. "HILDY FLEW OFF cackling to himself over making Jeremiah Cross piss his pants IN TERROR!"

"…oh," I chuckled apologetically. "Ah… whoops? W-Well, if that's all the flighty bastard wants, then I say we get out of here fast, before—!"

CRACK!

We all stiffened fearfully as the sound of the earth splitting open rang out like shattered glass, punctuated by a faint but slowly rising groaning.

"…crap," Usopp whimpered fearfully, leading us all in slowly turning to face the source of the unholy noise.

There was a second or two of stillness as the ground cracked and shuddered, but before long, with a singular heave of movement, I got my first look at the living dead.

My first reaction upon seeing the zombies was to flinch away. Not in terror, mind you; their overall demeanor and superior numbers were rather concerning, sure, but my prior knowledge meant they weren't that scary. Rather, it was on account of a situation much similar to the first (and only, thus far) time I met a fishman: The dark and dismal devil lay in the unshown details.

And the detail of this day was that while Hogback was good, rotting flesh was still rotting. I hadn't seen it before in the horsemen or the denizens of the woods because of the fog and gloom being thicker there, but now? What I was being confronted with wasn't an array of the undead you'd find in normal anime or cartoons, but rather a full-blown horde that had just clawed its way off of the set of The Walking Dead! Missing tracts of skin and flesh, distorted and gaunt features, discolored musculature… and those were just the ones who still looked human. Others just looked… mismatched; too-large limbs, too-small heads, and everything in between.

And there was an army of these things on the island, with these guys the absolute least of their ranks?! I woefully resigned myself to the fact that we were in for a loooong day… Or night, I guess? Ergh, the sooner we got out of this damn fog…

Robin and Conis both snapped into ready positions, Robin crossing her arms and Conis grabbing at the grip of her Blaze Bazooka, only to pause uncertainly. "Ah…" they chorused.

"Yeah, not much we can do against an army of the undead!" I snapped. "Right now, there's only one thing we can do!"

"YEAH!" Soundbite cackled. "And you know what that is?!"

"Run like hell!?" Usopp choked in terror.

"Ye—!" I started to concur.

"NOPE!" Soundbite cut me off with a roar of laughter. "ROCK LIKE HECK!"

"Wait, wha—?" I stiffened as realization hit me upside the head with a crowbar. "Oh, nonono—!"

I tried to dissuade the little shit, I really, really did, but barely a second later all anyone or I could do was flinch and pause at the sound of wolves howling in the distance. Wolves that were almost immediately accompanied by a very familiar synth riff.

"IT'S CLOSE TO MIIIIIDNIGHT

SOMETHING EVIL'S LURKING IN THE DARK!"

"Oi vey…" I slapped a hand to my face with a groan. "Soundbite, your taste is officially deader than disco."

"WAIT UNTIL I Rick Roll your wake!" Soundbite chortled without missing so much as a single riff.

"Another off-color reference, I take it?" Robin asked dryly as she warily eyed the yet-paused horde of the undead.

"Eh…" I wavered my hand in a non-committal manner. "Not so much 'off-color' as 'supremely cheesy'…" I pegged my snail with a glare. "And also at the worst possible time."

"If not now, THEN FREAKING WHEN!?" Soundbite sniffed.

"Preferably at some point when I'm far, far away from here and we're not all in danger of being torn apart!" Usopp snapped irritably.

"NYEH!" Soundbite responded by sticking his tongue out in a veeeery mature manner.

"Ugh," I rolled my eyes in… more exasperation than disgust, really. It wasn't like this was that bad in the grand scheme of things. "Well, at least you've somehow managed to baffle the zombies with your bullshit. Once they snap out of it, though—!"

"Ah… Cross?"

"Hm?" I glanced at Su curiously.

"I… don't think that that's going to be much of a problem," she stated.

"What are… you…?" I trailed off as I looked back at the zombies.

"YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES

AND HOPE THAT THIS IS JUST IMAGINATION!"

I… really didn't want to believe what my eyes were telling me at the moment, but it wasn't like I really had a choice: I couldn't even begin to deny that the cadavers seemed to be all but sniffing the air as the song built to a crescendo.

'Could they?' I wondered. 'Nah, they can't be. That would be too much. It's just not—!'

"What are they doing?" Lassoo asked as the zombies started to move.

"They appear to be… getting into positions…" Conis summarized weakly.

And indeed, it appeared like the zombies were indeed shuffling around, slowly starting to form ranks… and… assemble into a triangle oh you have got to be kidding me.

"DARKNESS FALLS ACROSS THE LAND

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR IS CLOSE AT HAND!"

"Uh… Should we be worried?" Robin asked me quietly as the zombies all stared silently at us.

"Eeeheeheeheeeeee!" Soundbite giggled eagerly, clearly relishing in how what had started out as a mere off-color reference was spiraling beyond anything he could have predicted.

I wanted to respond in a more coherent manner, but the song switching up to Vincent-freaking-Price had killed any chance of that. After all, that meant…

Yup. The instant the voiceover ended (and good God having Vincent Price doing a voiceover for real life was absolutely chilling), the synth picked up again and the zombies began marching in step with the beat, twitching their heads to their right. Then they swung their arms out, shifting to the side and outright headbanging, their legs showing far more dexterity than they really should have. And then they started shuffling and swaying and stepping towards us.

It was right as they did a jumping jack and a slide move when Soundbite began cackling at a level that Price himself would have been proud of. "THIS. IS. PERFECT! HAHAHA! BETTER THAN I could have ever possibly conceived! Ohhh, I love-love-LOVE the Grand Line!"

I felt my hands and legs twitch as the zombies did the classic claw-handed sway. "It certainly is a… unique location."

"I gotta admit," Su whistled with no small amount of awe. "For a bunch of stiffs missing half their asses, these guys can shake what little they have left."

"It's like a Sea King attack…" Usopp muttered as he stared through his fingers. "So horrifying… but you can't look away."

"For the record, if you need a solid surface?" Soundbite whistled in faux innocence. "THE CARRIAGE IS EVER-READY FOR YOUR SKULL!"

I was still for a moment as I watched the still-boogying zombies before slowly turning my head to direct a blank stare at my partner. "And… why would I want to do that?" I asked flatly.

"…eh?" the snail blinked in confusion.

"Well, c'mon, like I said earlier: it's not the universe screwing with me, just you," I stated in a still-casual manner. "These zombies dancing? I kinda remember them doing this in the story, and them knowing this song and dance… is actually quite humorous. Awe-inspiring even."

"That's all well and good, Cross," Robin muttered subtly as she kept an eye on the display. "But if they're distracted, shouldn't we be going?"

I slowly turned my blank stare on her. "Why?" I asked, my tone still under lock and key. "They're not doing anything harmful, and giving the others more time to get in position only helps us."

"I… see…" she nodded hesitantly. "So… we're just going to stand here and watch these… meat-puppets dance?"

"Well," I jerked my head to the side. "You're going to watch them dance. I am going to be doing… something else."

Robin blinked in surprise. "And… that would be…?"

"Robin," I said as I started to work my arms out of my jacket and fold it up, placing a more-and-more eager Soundbite on top of the bundle. "We are currently in the presence of real live zombies dancing to the song 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson. This performance is one of the most iconic performances in my world, even though it was first performed nearly thirty years ago. There is only one thing I can do in this situation."

I shoved my jacket and partner into her arms. "Hold my snail."

As the zombies stomped around to face away from us, I joined in, moving in tandem.

"FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT!" I belted out as me and the mass of zombies stomped back. Right after the "EIGHT!" I whirled around, the entire crowd following me. And there it was.

"'CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER!

THRILLER NIGHT!"

It's amazing how easy it was to lead a pack of zombies in a professionally made dance routine. The zombies knew what they were doing, obviously, but I'd never done anything like this before, and to pull them off flawlessly?

Okay, not flawlessly. I got my feet tangled up once or twice on slide shuffles, and the spins always left me a bit disoriented afterward, but I was doing way better than I had any right to. But I had two things working in my favor. As I said, the zombies knew what they were doing, and if I got lost I could quickly catch up. More importantly, though? That song. That song.

"YOU'RE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE INSIDE A

KILLER

THRILLER

AH!"

All I needed to do was let the song take over. That's all. Somehow, my body knew what moves to make. The mistakes I mentioned earlier were mistakes of execution, not of ignorance. King of fucking Pop indeed.

Finally, one last spin after another stomp backwards put me facing back towards my team, somewhat hunched over, one arm held in front of me and the zombies crouched all around. At that point, there was really only one thing to say.

"EAT YOUR HEART OUT, JACKSON!" I belted out.

The original repetitive synth riffs sounded out again, Vincent Price doing his trademark evil laugh in the background, and I was all set to shuffle forward, crowd of zombies at my back and wide-eyed crewmates in front…

"GYAGH!"

When I was interrupted by a vicegrip clamping down onto my left ear and nearly tearing it clean off my head with a harsh yank, the music cutting out to the sound of a record scratch.

"You will ever and always find new ways to top yourself, brother mine," Robin grit out as she dragged me towards the blatantly haunted mansion that loomed over us, the zombies behind us too stunned by the development and the sudden stop of the music to do much more than stare.

"I wouldn't—AGH!—expect you of all people to stop—YEOW!—me from having a nice bit—OWOWOW!—of macabre fun, sister dear," I accused as I struggled to keep pace with her.

"There's a fine line between 'fun' and 'overkill,' especially in a situation like this," she replied.

"THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS OVERKILL! There is only 'DEAD' and 'NOT DEAD ENOUGH! HEEHEE—HURK!" Soundbite was cut off by a newly materialized hand grabbing his tongue.

"I usually handle my many and varied affairs with an open hand," Robin flatly informed him. "But I will become the first person in the world to willingly punch a snail if I have to. Understood?"

"…aheheh…" Soundbite chuckled warily as I took him back and put him back on my shoulder. "Too far, I TAKE IT?"

"Liiiittle bit," Lassoo pinched the toes of his paw together as he trotted alongside us.

"If it's any consolation?" Conis chuckled sheepishly as she and Usopp scrambled to keep up with our archaeologist. "I thought that you were quite good."

"Thank—ergh!—you," I said around the hand twisting my ear.

"Uhhh…" one of the zombies piped up uneasily, slowly raising its hand. "So…"

That turned out to be a mistake on his part, because it prompted Robin to release my ear and wheel around, shooting a positively lethal glare at the horde that caused them to flinch as one. "We are going ahead to the mansion now."

She narrowed her eyes and slowly crossed her arms over her chest. "Unless any of you would like to stand in our way?"

Almost in unison, the zombies all dove forward… right into the ground, burying their heads and shoulders and leaving their rotting forms sticking up in a grove of bodies.

Robin took a moment before turning around, her anger gone and nary a hint of bemusement betraying the cool satisfaction she displayed. "Good. Now, shall we?" She didn't wait for an answer before resuming her stride.

We were all quick to scramble after her, none of us willing to fall too far behind and risk drawing her wrath.

"She used to be your enemy!?" Conis hissed out of the corner of her mouth with nigh hysteric incredulity.

"Trust me, we liked that particular relationship as much as you'd possibly expect!" I hissed back.

"This really is a horror-house island…" Usopp whimpered miserably as he yanked his hat as far down as he could.

From there on, we continued down the fog-laden path in silence, slowly but steadily approaching the impressive (in scale, if nothing else) manor, nothing stirring from air or ground to disturb our progress. As such, we reached the front doors without any trouble. Or, well, front-archway, but same difference.

I let out a low whistle as we walked into the shadowy tunnel. Gothic house of nightmares or not, I couldn't deny that it had a certain air of unmistakable majesty to it.

I hid a smirk behind my fist. It was gonna be fun to put this place to the—! Heheheh, too close. Don't wanna spoil anything juuuust yet.

Of course, the mystique was kinda ruined by the old well situated next to the door that was being illuminated by a spotlight.

The well's rope started to creak, presumably from Cindry being pulled up by whatever mechanism she was currently hanging from, and I was patiently waiting for her to appear…

"I hear with my little ear, a STIFF hanging in a well!"

When Soundbite decided to pipe up and be… well, Soundbite.

"GAAAH!" Hogback shrieked as he slammed the mansion-door open, staring at us in naked terror. "H-H-HOW DID YOU KNOW!?"

"Soundbite!" I hissed incredulously.

"Whaaat?" he whined with an ear-to-ear grin. "I can tell that whoever's in the well is wound up tighter than a PERCUSSION BAND, WHY CAN'T I CALL HER A STIFF?"

Hogback and I both twitched (me more discreetly than him) before allowing ourselves to heave sighs of relief.

"Oh, so that's all he meant…" Hogback muttered beneath his breath.

"You're an ass…" I hissed at Soundbite.

"This should not be a surprise to you," he sneered back, completely unrepentant.

Anyway, after a second, Hogback managed to compose himself and adjusted his facemask a bit before pointing his nose in the air. "A-A-Anyways! Welcome, Straw Hat Pirates, to my humble abode!" He spread his hands out in a grandiose manner. "Please allow me to introduce myself! I am—!"

"The world-famous man renowned as a 'genius', Doctor Hogback," Robin blithely interrupted him.

Hogback's head bounced as a weight slammed down around his neck. "—geh…"

"Master of medicine, specialist of specialties, most prominently renowned for being a surgeon extraordinaire," our archaeologist continued. "And of course, he's also known as the greatest doctor in the world."

"Ah, no, wait…" Hogback's hands twitched slightly as he tried to reach out to Robin. "That-That's my introduction, y-you can't just—!"

"Though in my opinion?" Robin forged on, wavering her hand in a so-so manner. "I'd say that he's only the second greatest."

"EH!?" Hogback squawked indignantly as he snapped his spine straight. "Second best!? That is totally and utterly preposterous! Who could possibly surpass a genius such as I?!"

"Hm?" Robin blinked in a manner I could tell was fake, but I seriously doubted Hogback thought she was anything but genuine. "Why, Doctor Vegapunk, of course. After all, he is the smartest man in the world, is he not?"

"VEGAPUNK IS NOTHING BUT A TWO-BIT, HACKSHOP GREASE-MONKEY OF A—GRGGHH…!" Hogback trailed off into incoherent snarling, his hands strangling the air. This continued for several seconds before he descended into tired huffing. "Give me… a moment…" he wheezed. He then stepped back inside the manor and slid behind the yet-closed half of the doors, out of sight but not so far that we couldn't hear him ranting and snarling under his breath.

I cocked an eyebrow at the display before leaning towards Robin. "Well played."

"You may have a natural talent for invective, but I have plenty of experience on my own," Robin chuckled behind a loose fist. "I imagine that he'll be too flustered to analyze any further manipulations on your part."

"Which will be very—!" I snapped my mouth shut when a profusely sweating Hogback stepped back into sight.

"I… apologize for that little display just now," he choked out bitterly. "I… I acknowledge that you are perfectly entitled to your personal opinions. B-But anyway, I believe we are off-track." He straightened his back with what little dignity he had left. "Yes, I am Doctor Hogback, and this is my manor. And you all are the Straw Hat Pirates, correct?"

"We're a few of them, yeah," I nodded in confirmation. "We went on ahead to check this place out, but our friends are all back on the Sunny waiting to phone back in. Which is…" I made a show of grimacing uncomfortably. "Turning out to be a problem."

"I'd say the fog's playing merry hell WITH ME, but I'd prefer Merry TO THIS!" Soundbite gagged, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

I withheld a grin as I saw a glint shine in Hogback's glasses. "Is that so? Well, that's just awful, truly awful! Is there anything I can… oh, I know!" He stepped aside and gestured inwards. "Here, why don't you all step inside and enjoy a hot meal on my behalf? And while you're doing that, I'll send my manservant to inform your crew that you're waiting here."

"Are you sure? We wouldn't want you to trouble yourself—!" Conis began in a convincingly demure voice.

"FOSFOSFOSFOS!" Hogback cut her off as he threw his head back and laughed. "Trouble to welcome the most famous, infamous, and entertaining pirates of this generation? Quite the contrary, it's an honor. And besides…" His smile took on an acidic overtone. "My manservant could use the exercise. I swear, all he does is laze around all day, packing on the pounds without a care in the—!"

I tensed up furiously when Hogback suddenly flinched and cut himself off, plastering an apologetic smile on his face as he started to casually rub the back of his head. "I-I-I'm sorry, I got ahead of myself again. I really shouldn't speak ill of those who… aren't present." Even behind his thick glasses, his glance to the side was unmistakable.

I swallowed heavily as I processed the implications of this development. "Soundbite!?" I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.

"His heart only JUST beat, AND HE'S BARELY BREATHING!" Soundbite hissed back in a freaked out tone. "HELL, EVEN HIS body's voice is saying 'not here, not here' over and over! I ONLY NOTICED WHEN I COULDN'T DENY THE FACTS ANY LONGER!"

My jaw twitched a bit as I mulled that over, and then I swallowed and stretched a twitchy grin over my face. "Well, either way, thank you very much for the offer, Doctor. I imagine that our own doctor, Chopper, will be overjoyed to hear about your presence here." I let my grin perk up a bit with sadistic humor. "He dug out an old article about your work earlier today, you see. For the past few hours, you've been all he can talk about."

Well, at least one of those sentences was true.

"FOSFOSFOS! Well, isn't that just grand!" Hogback cackled. "I look forward to entertaining all of your friends, and treating you all to each and every last one of the countless splendors that Thriller Bark has to offer! But for now…" He stepped aside and swung his arms inward. "I shall settle for simply entertaining you. Right this way!"

And with that, we all made to file through the door, but we came to a halt when Robin jerked to a stop.

"Robin?" I questioned.

"…Perhaps this island is haunted, because it felt like something just grabbed my… backside." Robin bit out.

I felt a cold sense of calm come over me as I heard that, and my suspicions were only confirmed when Hogback discretely slapped his hand to his face. That… that just reinforced what I was feeling. "Let's hope that it is just the haunting," I said darkly. "Because if anyone really was stupid enough to do that, then I would have no choice but to find whoever was responsible and utterly. Fucking. Destroy them."

The uncomfortable silence that arose as a result of my 'idle musings' lasted for a second before it was broken by the distinctly not subtle sound of hastily retreating footfalls from somewhere nearby.

"…just have to love the spooky environment here, hm?" Hogback hummed in a tone of forced calm. "I find that the tricks it plays on one's mind are quite refreshing! Now come along, come along, we should be going!"

"Nice bluff," Usopp muttered nervously as he started walking again, glancing over his shoulder as he went.

"Who the hell's bluffing?" I growled back.

We entered the manor in silence, at least, until we were interrupted.

"Doctor Hogback," a disinterested voice echoed from the well. "Should I still come up?"

My frigid rage lightened up a bit at the sight of Hogback starting to squabble with the well, balancing over the edge as he shouted at the zombie within. My mood lightened even further as I considered matters up to this point.

Our aspect of the plan was going roughly 99% as well as I'd hoped, and in this case, that was more than enough.

Here's hoping that the second team was having just as much luck. Especially considering their target.

~o~

"Team 2, a.k.a. 'Honey Pot', will be the guard force that remains here on the Sunny," I said as I pointed down at the deck. "Their objective will be to deal with the fourth and final member of the Mysterious Four who will inevitably swing by while we're all away."

There was a wave of confusion before Merry raised her hand. "And… how exactly is dealing with an enemy on our home turf more difficult or dangerous than traipsing straight into enemy territory?" she asked.

I crossed my arms and scowled. "Because while Spandam is a scumbag unmatched by anyone short of a World Noble, Absalom is a close second who actually has the brawn to back up his inner bile."

I took in the rest of the crew's incredulous and disgusted looks before starting to tick off on my fingers. "In straight-up combat ability, Absalom is probably the strongest fighter on Thriller Bark. He's the only one who doesn't need Devil Fruit-based trickery to win, and the fact that he's an ability user anyway only heightens his threat level. He's been willingly subjected to countless surgeries under Hogback, giving him skin as thick as an elephant's (present company excluded) for extreme durability as well as a few hundred pounds of gorilla and bear muscle for crazy strength, and not only does he—to reiterate—have a Devil Fruit, he's wily in manipulating it, so while he can come off as an idiot at times, he can be smart when it counts. Oh, and by the by, that Devil Fruit I just mentioned? It's known as the Clear-Clear Fruit."

The tip of Sanji's cigarette burst into flames. "What," he snarled darkly.

I nodded regretfully at him before continuing. "For those of you who are unaware? The Clear-Clear Fruit grants the power of invisibility, to both the user and anything that they're touching, which Absalom usually uses in conjunction with a pair of wrist-mounted bazookas."

Boss ground his teeth in grim thought. "So, basically, not only is there going to be a juggernaut of ruthless strength and implacable resilience on board, but he's an invisible juggernaut too?!"

"And it's somehow accentuated by what he's like on the inside…" Funkfreed breathed, his eyes wide in sickened realization. "I've been with Spandam for… pretty much my entire life, so you know I speak from experience when I ask how anyone not a Noble could come close!"

I scowled murderously as several… images flashed through my head. "By being a pervert… actually, no," I corrected myself at the incredulous looks I was getting. "That's not really accurate. He's not a pervert…" My hands slowly curled into shaking fists. "He's a predator."

Conis gasped, her and Vivi's eyes widening in horror, while Raphey, Robin, and Nami's faces contorted murderously.

"Care to elaborate on that?" said navigator growled.

"Yeah, because I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here," an obliviously confused Merry added. "What do predators and perverts have to do with each other?"

"…Go figure, she does still have some innocence," Leo muttered.

"Well, I mean, I know about…" The ship-girl made a circle with one hand, and jabbed her index finger in, pulling it back and forth. "But not the whole 'predator' thing."

I grimaced at Merry's comment, but deadpanned, "If I told you guys what I saw him do in the story, Nami's subconscious would electrocute everyone, and I'm pretty sure Sanji would blow the roof off of the pavilion."

"Cross, I built that thing SUPER! tough. A million beris says it'll hold up," Franky scoffed as Nami grudgingly handed Conis her Clima-Tact.

I shrugged, and not-so-discreetly moved as far away from Nami as I could. "He molested Robin onboard while invisible, spied on Nami in the bath, molested her there, and eventually kidnapped her, put her in a chemical-coma, and then had her fitted in a wedding dress and attempted to marry her while she was still knocked out."

BOOM! CLATTER!

"Oh, that's what you meant by predator," Merry nodded, before her face twisted into a murderous snarl. "Can I punch him in the coconuts? I'd really like to punch him in the coconuts. Repeatedly."

"That can be arranged. Also, I win, Franky," I deadpanned as I watched Boss and Zoro wrestle a flaming demon to the lawn, only just managing to keep him from smashing our entry ticket to the Land of the Un-Living wide open before we were ready. Above him, a blazing hole smoldered in the pavilion's roof, which was just elevated and crooked enough to show that it had been blown off.

"Shave off a million beris from my debt, Nami," I added, looking back at the navigator who (along with Raphey) was currently making the same attempt to break open the barrel despite being bound in place by several disembodied arms.

"I'll add ten million more if your plan doesn't involve me pulling a Nimbus Tempo on that patchwork bastard," she snarled murderously.

"…that can also be arranged, but it may not do him much damage on its own," I warned.

"What about twenty in a row?"

"…more plausible," I admitted. "So, any further questions before I tell you all what I have in mind?"

"Just the one," Merry sighed, staring at the broken pavilion with regret. "When is Franky ever going to learn not to challenge you on shit like this?"

"Since when have you known me to be that smart…" Franky grumbled back.

~o~

Alongside the main entrance of Thriller Bark, a long and tall set of stairs stretched down to a pier. A pier that was very close to a gigantic spider's web. The web's creator was nowhere nearby, as far as anyone looking on could tell, which was good news for the Thousand Sunny, which was stuck in it by the side. Indeed, immobilization aside, the ship seemed to be rather tranquil.

Or so it seemed, until the grass deck suddenly compressed, first in one spot, then another, both in the shape of footprints but with nobody visible. And at the very next moment, every last one of the ship's timbers trembled and groaned, as though the Sunny itself was growling with fury.

The grassy imprints suddenly halted in place, shuffling about a bit like a person looking around before resuming their path across the lawn.

The footprints started to stride towards the doors to the Sunny's sleeping quarters, then, abruptly, halted in place and slowly turned around in a direction facing the Sunny's deckhouse.

The deckhouse whose top was currently emitting a large amount of steam, mind you.

The imprints started moving across the grass again, this times towards the Sunny's aft and this time twice as fast as before. The imprints halted once they reached the steps of the stairs to the upper deck, and were replaced by every other step groaning loudly due to some unseen pressure ascending them two at a time.

When the sourceless footprints stilled, they were directly before the door to what could only be the ship's bathhouse. Then, slowly, the door inside creaked open, and a quiet snort rang out, as though some predatory beast were tasting at the air.

The sight that the slightly opened door revealed was decidedly not a bathhouse. Books lined the shelves, a large desk topped with a map 80% drawn near the window on the other side, and watertight cases protected all sheets of paper in the room so that nary a speck of moisture could touch their fragile contents. Of course, the ladder on the right side of the room made it clear that the bathhouse was very close by.

There was just the slight issue of the giant, armor-clad duck sitting at the bottom of the ladder. 'Slight' being, for once, an appropriate adjective given the quiet snores coming from his mostly motionless body.

There was a brief moment of contemplative silence before the duck was half-shoved, half-nudged aside, and the soft sound of boots and hands on a ladder sounded out a moment later. The boards composing the room's walls seemed to snarl as they creaked and groaned, following the ladder's own creaking as it rose toward the ceiling.

Finally, the creaking stopped and the hatch at the top of the ladder was inched open, the gap between it and the door slowly widening before creaking shut just as slowly. The room the trapdoor opened into was filled to brim with steam, and the vapors slowly but surely coiled around a space in the air that was shaped like a human, but was most distinctly anything but.

The humanoid creature's muzzle turned back and forth as it contemplated its shrouded surroundings, its head lingering as it saw a doorway into a much wider room. It subtly glided over to it, and a pair of large heart-shaped protrusions came out from its eyes and its tongue lolled from its maw as it gazed inside, beholding what lay within.

Or at least, somewhat beholding it, due to the fact that the steam was hiding any exact details from him…

"Mmm… that feels so good…"

But really, the silhouette of a woman with long hair getting her back rubbed by a woman with shorter hair (and they were women, men didn't have hips like that) didn't need that many extra details.

"But of course it does…" the short-haired woman crooned as she rested her chin on her counterpart's shoulder. "After all, you have all this stress pent up inside, it's not good for you~"

"Well, then… think you can help me…" the long-haired figure's head slowly turned to the side. "Relieve some of this tension?"

"Certainly~"

The nonexistent figure's breathing accelerated, his heart jackhammering in his chest. This… This was just too good to be even remotely true. It was only that eentsy-weentsy hint of sneaking suspicion that held the figure back, his long-honed senses staying his base insti—!

Suddenly, something fell from the long-haired woman's grasp.

"Whoops, I dropped the soap. Pardon me~"

Something in the figure's brain snapped like a dry twig. Prudence could go screw itself, no way in hell was he passing up as golden an opportunity as this!

And so, with barely enough restraint to keep himself from roaring, the figure all but pounced into the fog, arms spread wide as he flew at the women—

CRACK! "GAH!"

—aaand rammed face first into the far wall of the bathroom.

Absalom hacked and snorted as he clawed his way to his feet, leaning on the wall as he massaged his throbbing snout. "W-What the—?!" he started to wheeze in confusion.

"I believe that the appropriate phrase for this situation," came a serene but smug voice from the doorway. "Would be 'reaping what you have sown'."

Absalom spun around, and saw the two women he had thought were bathing, fully clothed and smirking, plus a child he'd never seen before poking out of a panel in the floor he hadn't noticed, standing in the doorway of the bath waving at him. Before he could react, they slammed shut the (Absalom's eyes widened as he realized he'd missed it in the steam) metal bulkhead of a door, which then proceeded to seal with a very loud clunk.

The porthole in the bulkhead was then filled with the white-haired child's viciously smirking face. "In case you didn't quite pick up on what's going on?" she taunted through the door. She then rammed her fist against the door…

SKRANG!

Which first caused a pair of very thick steel shutters to slam shut over the once-open windows…

SPLOOSH!

And second—and far more distressingly to Absalom—caused just about every water fixture in the room to blow its top and start spraying out water by the gallon-full.

Water that with no place left to go, started to very rapidly fill the suddenly too-small room.

Going Merry bared her teeth as Absalom swept his panicked gaze over the room.

"Hold your fucking breath, pervert."

~o~

"Nami, Vivi, Carue, Merry," I started slowly, looking at them all in turn. "You'll be the ones dealing with this monster." I hastily raised my hands when they all recoiled in shock. "If you want out, I completely understand and I'll just have the Monsters ambush him, I just want to try and go for the most… subtle and painless method available to us is all."

The crew exchanged uncomfortable glances, and Sanji started to stalk towards me, fuming like a chimney. Nami, though, halted him with a hand on his chest even as she continued to coolly regard me.

"…Considering what I just asked for, we'll hear your plan out before we decide anything, Cross," Nami stated, though the edge lurking in her voice was unmistakable.

I tugged at my collar on account of the Weather Witch's Eisen-aura darkening to a subtle gray around her, but continued. "OK, so basically, my plan hinges around exploiting the two flaws Absalom has, and only Nami and Vivi can successfully use the first flaw to maximum effectiveness. And as for how they'll be doing it…"

I trailed off uncomfortably as I considered what I was about to say before swallowing heavily. "Alright, look. There's no right way to say this delicately, so I'll have to be blunt, but I swear to the both of you, in no way, shape or form will you be in actual, physical danger for even a moment. Got it?"

Our negotiator and navigator exchanged uneasy looks before nodding as one.

I sucked in a stilling breath… and then I whooshed out the only word applicable. "Bait."

I all but panicked at the looks of betrayal that flashed across their faces, and I hastily scrambled to specify. "Or at least! The general forms of your bodies will be the bait, while your actual, corporeal forms will be well away from Absalom!"

Vivi's heartbroken look broke in favor of confusion, but Nami slapped her hand to her face. "Mirage! You could have just opened with mirage! Damn it, you asshole, you nearly gave me a heart attack!"

I grimaced and nodded in acceptance even as my crewmates all relaxed from the tension that had beset us. "Yeah, you're right, sorry. I was just… really focused on the b-word. But yes, you'll be using a mirage to trick Absalom. And Vivi," I nodded at the princess, "You'll be involved for the dual reasons of your Sovereign's Will probably being of some use in controlling him if anything goes wrong and… well…" I shook my head with a sigh. "Absalom has a hard enough time controlling himself around one woman at a time. So I figure two women at once in a… compromising situation—!"

"His caution goes straight out the window and he'll charge headfirst into whatever trap we lay out for him, blah blah blah, I get the picture," Vivi finished for me, grimacing. "Don't worry, Cross, I did way worse while I was Miss Wednesday. So long as I stay fully clothed around that monster, I'll do what I need to see him get his comeuppance."

"So, uh… what's my part in this?" Merry asked as she raised her hand with a not unfearful look. "Am… I-I'm not going to be in—?"

"I neither know nor want to know if Absalom is willing to or has ever sunk to those levels of inhumanity, so no, preceded by a hell fucking," I growled, before allowing myself to smirk at her. "But I do have a couple of questions for you, Merry. Concerning good ol' Sunny, actually."

Merry's face morphed into a mask of confusion. "Uh… yeah, sure? Fire away."

"Well, first off…" I pointed up at our deckhouse, whose library I'd spent ample time in. "The bathroom. I'm assuming it's all caulked up to the nines?"

Merry started to reply and froze when a pair of bodiless hands clamped onto her shoulders, shuddering around her spine.

"For her sake?" Robin smiled in a too-serene manner as the fog around her seemed to darken malevolently. "It had better be."

Merry's rictus smile twitched as she tried to force herself to stay still. "Sealed up tighter than Akainu's molten ass, my mast to God! So, ah… please don't kill me?"

The darkness around Robin evaporated as swiftly as her hands. "For now."

I shook my head at our archaeologist's… somewhat teasing tone before continuing. "Anyway… next, question, how long would it take for you to replace the bathroom's door with a metal bulkhead that, oh, I dunno… even Luffy would have trouble punching through?"

I grinned as I saw the beginnings of a spark form in Merry's eyes. "Not… that long…"

"And I'm once again assuming that you could install a few armored covers over the windows—!"

"And then rig the pump to go into overdrive when I say so and flood the place, turning the entire room into a watery-grave fit to drown Franken-pervert! BRILLIANT!" Merry cackled in realization, jumping and clapping her hands gleefully at the prospect. "You're an absolute genius, Cross! I'll go get the preparations started right away!" And with that, she popped a trapdoor in the deck and dropped into it, laughing all the way.

I nodded contentedly as I turned back to Nami and Vivi. "You two'll project a mirage of yourselves in a… 'compromising' position into the bathroom once it's been filled to the rafters with steam, and once Absalom leaps in, you'll lock him in and take advantage of his second fatal flaw. The one thing that he can't possibly fight."

"His own powers…" Vivi breathed in realization.

"Hell, that'd even take care of a normal person…" Nami muttered into her knuckle before slowly nodding. "This is a really good plan, Cross!"

"No need to sound so surprised," I grumbled, turning to Carue. "And just for the record, you can contribute by pretending to sleep at the foot of the ladder, help sell that we're lax and off our guard. I know it's not much, but… well, given the situation, it's not like you'll be anywhere else but a room away from Vivi, right?"

"Damn stwaight!" Carue confirmed.

"Perfect!" I said, clapping my hands together. "Alright, I realize this might be hypocritical given what I said earlier, but still, it's worth saying: So long as we follow this plan and line things up right, with any luck we'll be able to remove Absalom of the Graveyard from play without any real trouble."

~o~

"I am so glad that this thing is holding up," Nami sighed in relief, staring through the porthole at the ferocious lion-faced man who was pounding at the steel door, even as the room continued filling with water.

The source of her boundless relief stemmed from the fact that despite knowing that the door was composed of several inches of strong steel, Absalom was still managing to put dents in the only barrier between him and his escape.

"Agreed," Vivi swallowed, rubbing at her neck fearfully and flinching as yet another dent was slammed into the metal. "He's… enraged. If he gets out, it won't matter if we're female or not, he'll rip us to pieces."

"Well he'ww haf ta get thwough me first!" Carue declared, before recoiling as another punch bent another spot in the door. "Though I weawwy hope it doeshn't come ta that…"

"And it won't, don't worry," Merry assured him, utterly relaxed. "I dug into some of the Wootz steel Franky splurged on to reinforce that door. Even Luffy would take at least five minutes to break through, and this guy doesn't even have two; if my calculations are correct—and considering how they involve Big Bro Sunny, they are—then the water will be reaching his knees in five, four, three, two…"

The ferocity in Absalom's face suddenly faltered and he grimaced in discomfort, slumping forward to lean against the door. For a few seconds, he looked like he was beaten.

Then he raised his head, murder in his eyes, and he started pounding anew. The dents he caused were significantly shallower than they were before, but they were definitely still there.

Merry's mask of confidence crumbled. "That's… unexpected…"

"Merryyy…" Nami grit out, bringing her Eisen Tempo to bear.

"Uh, uh, uh…" Merry hastily counted her fingers a few times as she muttered to herself before snapping her head up. "Reaching his waist… now!"

Absalom flinched again, his muzzle scrunching up in a sign of clear disgust, and he looked to be barely conscious. But still the pounding kept going, in spite of the fact that there was no clear progress in harming the door anymore.

"Meeeeerryyyyy." Vivi's knuckles turned white as she strangled her Lion Cutter's hilts.

"Oh, screw this asshole!" Merry snarled, hastily knocking a panel on the wall open and wrenching the pipes inside around. "I was going to try and keep the pump in one piece, but it looks like we'll be rebuilding it from scratch! Flooding the place now!"

Absalom's eyes widened in panic as a groaning-shuddering sound rocked the bathroom, but before he could react the porthole was obscured by a flood of white foam. When the bubbles cleared, Absalom's drowsy face floated in the water for a moment before a slew of bubbles spurted from his mouth and he sank down and out of sight.

The quartet allowed themselves to sag in relief, the tension draining out of them.

"Thank God…" Nami groaned, wiping the cold sweat from her brow while her clouds fanned her. "Cross wasn't kidding, that bastard was a monster inside and out!"

"Yeah…" Vivi mused, fingering her necklace as she peered into the porthole. "You know… honestly, looking at this? I wonder if it would even be worth it to have Devil Fruit powers. I mean, all of that power, even as a Logia… but then it becomes totally useless as soon as you fall in water. Isn't that… a bit useless?"

"Say dat again wid a stwaight face da next time you see Wuffy, Wobin and Choppah kick majah ass," Carue snickered into his wing.

Vivi considered that before nodding her head. "Yeah, and Crocodile certainly never suffered from that particular weakness much, either. Point taken."

"Well, trust me on this, weaknesses or not?" Merry snickered as she slowly counted down on her fingers. "I, for one, fully appreciate selling my soul to that little shit-tasting devil. Aaaanyway…" She started fiddling with the pipes again. "The room should be full up by now. I'm gonna shut the water down so that the whole place doesn't burst, and then we can let that patchwork punk stew until he's niiiice and dead to the world. Then I'll just drain the place and we can dip into the stash of sea prism cuffs and collars that Enies Lobby and the Accinos so graciously donated to our worthy cause, and—!"

BOOM!

The quartet froze when the whole of the deckhouse suddenly shook and, far more distressingly, the already-abused bulkhead suddenly bulged as though Sanji had taken his heel to it.

"What the hell was that?" Nami whispered numbly.

"Cannonfire…" Vivi breathed back, her pupils having shrunk to pinpricks. "That was cannonfire… h-he's still moving!?"

Merry shook her head in frantic denial. "E-Even if he is, I took those bazookas Cross talked about into account! The door is strong enough to take anything he could physically carry!"

BOOM!

Nami's gut dropped as there was another explosion, and the door bulged even further. "Did you take into account that his musculature is reinforced…" she whispered numbly. "And he can carry firepower that would blow a normal person's arms off?"

Merry paled. "Uh…"

"Owah that he'd onwy hafta knock da dowah halfway off its hinges befowah it'd have to deaw wid da watah pwessure?" Carue whimpered.

Silence reigned as the ship-girl slowly stumbled backwards fearfully. "No… No, I didn't…" she whispered in terror.

In the heart-pounding silence that followed, the click of metal on metal was like a gunshot.

"RU—!" Nami started to scream, shoving as many of her clouds forwards as she could.

Sadly, as swift as her iron clouds were…

BOOOOM!

The blast that blew the bulkhead off its hinges and the flood of water that followed were far, far faster. As such, none of the four were ready when the water and the blast struck them, smashing them clean through the opposite window of the deckhouse and launching them out onto the lawn of the deck.

Thankfully, the deck was covered in grass rather than wood, and Nami's subconscious managed to bend the clouds enough to provide something of a cushion. As such, they weren't hurt from the fall or landing. They were, however, left sputtering from the sudden assault of water on their senses. They had just managed to get their breath and balance back when a most unwelcome thing interrupted them.

"Clever little sneaks."

They looked up to see a very wet, very livid patchwork-man standing on the railing above them. His jaw was that of a lion, his wild golden hair only reinforcing that image, and the left and right thirds of his torso and his arms from the wrists up were covered in different colors of flesh very obviously stitched on, with a pair of bazookas strapped to his forearms. Most unnerving of all? Though his eyes promised murder, his mouth was curled into a smile.

"I thought I felt something off at first…" Absalom of the Graveyard grumbled, his hackles pulled back in a vicious scowl. "Why am I even surprised that someone like Jeremiah Cross knew about me ahead of time? You should be pleased with yourselves, that's the closest that anyone's ever come to beating me since I joined Moria." He clicked his very sharp teeth together. "But the simple fact is that I'm way out of your league now that you've lost the element of surprise. I'm going to take my sweet time with you three, and when I'm done—"

"Quiet."

Absalom faltered, his tongue catching in his mouth as Vivi glared up at him. Then she smiled sweetly, taking on a rather alluring pose. "Mister Absalom, why don't you just calm down and hold still?"

A choked noise tore its way out of Absalom's throat, the rage evident in his tone paradoxical to the way his body slumped forwards, the energy draining from his stance.

"Good, good," Vivi nodded in a faux-endearing manner, a frigid smile on her face. "Now, just for the record… you said the 'three' of us, but that's not quite correct. For you see… there aren't three of us here."

"HEADS AHP!"

Absalom's eyes darted to the side, just in time—

"SUBSAHNIC!"

For him to catch a faceful of armored talon moving almost faster than he could tell what hit him.

"KICK!" Carue quacked furiously as he practically leapt off of Absalom's face, transferring the entirety of his velocity to his target and bouncing him off the Sunny's railing before he fell out of sight.

Nami and Vivi both heaved relieved bursts of laughter, slapping their hands in a victorious high-five.

"Uh… guys?"

And then Merry's quivering voice cut through the mood.

"Merry…" Vivi whispered fearfully. "Please tell me you're not about to point out some minor but highly incriminating detail that means we're not done yet, please."

Merry shook her head regretfully, her eyes filled with terror. "Wish, I could, but… Carue kicked him overboard, right?"

Nami nodded slowly. "Yeeeaaah… why?"

"Well, then… where's the splash?"

Nami and Vivi both froze as they stared at the ship-girl. "What," they whispered in synch.

"Where's the splash?" she repeated. "If we were done, then wouldn't there be an ocean-shattering splash?"

"Uh…" the older women exchanged uncertain glances…

"So… you want a splash, you little brat?"

Before they all stiffened as a by-now far too familiar voice growled out, accompanied by a hand clamping onto the edge of the railing.

"I'LL GIVE YOU A SPLASH!" bellowed the positively deranged Absalom, forcefully shoving his torso back into view as he clawed his way back onto the Sunny—

BOOM! "WA-A-A-ACK…"

And then firing one of his bazookas at Carue, causing the unfortunate flash-cooked waterfowl to keel over, out cold and smoking, and leaving the three women alone with the madman. Said madman then turned his guns on them. "WHO'S NEXT?!"

But in contrast to the fear that he had been eagerly and viciously expecting, they had prepared themselves to fight before he'd even finished with Carue. Nami had surrounded herself in clouds, Vivi had started spinning her Lion Cutter, and Merry had hitched a rope ride straight to the helm.

As such, Absalom paused near the railing, scanning over his targets: Nami, wrapped up in her Iron Cloud; Merry, halfway across the ship; and Vivi, in striking range and protected by much more flimsy weapons.

"You," Absalom decided, pointing a clawed digit at Vivi. "You're next."

Before the former princess could in any way deny that, Absalom vanished from sight. Vivi pivoted in place, her eyes wide and shooting to every rustle of grass.

'I can't see him!' she mentally wailed. 'How am I supposed to fight him i—right, I'm an idiot.'

"Stop and show yourself!" she barked, and was rewarded by Absalom faceplanting a few feet behind her. A low thudding whip sound drew her attention to the lines, right as a whole mess of rope and pulleys fell on top of the Franken-bastard.

"Gotcha!" Merry crowed as she yanked the lines up, Absalom tangled up in as many hooks and snares as she could manage. "Not so tough when you're hanging up in the air, are ya?!"

Absalom's answer was to shoot a snarl and a glare at the helm before jerking his arm, which brought about the click!-BOOM! of the bazooka firing, followed milliseconds later by Vivi just barely ducking under the suddenly visible cannonball.

BOOM!

"AAAAH!"

A cannonball that, unfortunately, landed immediately behind Vivi before exploding, the blast and shrapnel knocking her off her feet and peppering her with metal shards.

"Ooooww…" Vivi groaned into the dirt, her world still a blur of blaze and pain.

"Vivi!" Nami and Merry howled as she went down, the navigator swinging out her Clima-Tact so that two chunks of black, crackling Eisen Cloud were flanking the strung-up Absalom. "Nimbus Tempo!"

Lightning tore through the struggling chimaera suspended between the two clouds, loosing a bevy of both electrical crackles and a symphony of sizzling meat. The rope, due to the considerable heat drawn from the metal hooks, gave up the ghost about a minute in, dumping their charbroiled assailant on the grass with another loud thump. The sight of a torrent of smoke curling up from his form was a veritable font of hope for the women.

"D-Did we get him?" Merry wondered as she peeked over the railing of the foredeck.

Seemingly in response, the exact source of the smoke became indistinct as Absalom's body faded from sight.

"Gonna take that as a no," Vivi grunted as she hauled herself to her feet, wincing as she picked out slivers of metal from her arms. "In my experience, Paramecia powers that rely on conscious activation don't persist after their user's lost consciousness in a violent manner."

"So… still kicking, got it," Nami said, spinning up her Clima-Tact again. "Let's fix that."

Eisen Cloud flowed out from Nami's defensive shell, wrapping around their still-smoking opponent, quickly flowing into a cross-hatched shell that immediately began turning black.

"Tempest Tempo."

Said crosshatches promptly came alive with lightning, jumping between the lattices to strike and charge every inch of space outlined by the shell. Once again, crackling lightning competed with sizzling on the target, and was also accompanied by a burning smell. Eventually, though, the lightning came to an end, and when Nami withdrew her clouds all that was left was a black form smoking on the circle of dead grass.

To everyone's surprise and—far more pressingly—horror, that form was not Absalom's body, but instead his bazookas and a pile of ash, bits of blue cloth still visible.

"How—!" Vivi began, but was cut off by an invisible fist slamming into the right side of her torso, reaching under her ribs. She immediately hunched over, groaning loudly in pain as she clutched at where her liver was.

Nami tried to respond to the sudden Absalom on her six, she really did, but with most of her Eisen Cloud still wrapped up where the Tempest Tempo had hit she was unable to stop an iron-hard grip from grasping her neck and slamming her into the mainmast.

"I crawled," Absalom growled as he faded back into view, somewhat scorched and now shirtless, but still fully functional. "Had to leave my bazookas behind so you wouldn't notice, and that's one more thing I need to pay you bitches back for." Reaching up with his other hand, he brandished his claws. "I'd say it'd be a shame to mess up that pretty face… but I'd be lying."

"DYNAMIC ENTRY!"

"Wha—" Absalom began, before a pair of rainboots slammed into the side of his head and sent him careening into the pavilion's counter. Growling, he shook his head, looked up, and saw Merry let go of the rope she had swung down to land on his torso.

"MERRY… PUNCH!" the ship-girl announced, rearing back a fist and then slamming it into his crotch, the impact shaking the Sunny from keel to crow's nest.

For a moment, there was silence… which a freaked Merry broke first.

"Uh, s-s-shouldn't you be screaming in pain right now?" she nervously asked.

Absalom's lips pulled back into a murderous leer. "You don't think that I chose to look like this for shits and giggles do you? I've been very thoroughly retrofitted. Among those improvements?"

He snapped his hand up to grab Merry's face, lifted her clean off the ground and then slammed her into the lawn with as much force as he could manage.

"A mental switch," Absalom growled. "For my sense of pain. Looks like something you could really use right now, huh?"

Merry let out a hacking cough, blood spurting from a squashed nose, cut lips, and a nasty scrape on her forehead.

"MERRY!" Vivi and Nami screamed, lashing out at Absalom with clouds and blades respectively, which Absalom was quick to roll out of the way of. Nami hastily ran to cradle Merry, while Vivi interposed herself between them and Absalom, though she was swaying on her feet and barely managing to stay upright.

Still, the Princess tried to take a few swings at the abomination with her Cutters, but she could only growl in frustration as they were easily dodged.

Vivi concentrated for a bit before lashing out again. "Hold sti—!"

Before she could finish her command, however, Absalom grabbed the chain of her weapon and gave it a firm tug, nearly taking her off her feet.

"Improvement the second," Absalom snorted, ramming his palm into the side of his head before grabbing the chain with both hands and giving it an almighty yank, dragging Vivi into melee range before she could react.

"Nononono, stop stop STO—!"

THWOCK!

"HURK!" A mouthful of blood forced its way through Vivi's teeth as Absalom buried his fist in almost the same exact spot Sharinguru had not too long ago. Still, even through her renewed haze of pain, she was conscious enough to be aware as the beast-hybrid grabbed the back of her head and forced her to look into his face.

"Detachable eardrums," he growled menacingly. That done, he lashed his arm out and cast Vivi aside like a ragdoll, her uncontrolled tumble terminating when she bodily slammed into the railing, where she lay still with only shuddering breaths to show that she was still kicking.

Absalom turned to face the last of the pirates, who was nowhere to be seen.

"Guess what, asshole?"

Absalom spun around, just catching sight of Nami standing behind him.

THUNK!

"GRK!"

Before staggering back as she rammed the orbless end of a section of her staff into and through a juncture of stitches on his chest.

"You're not the only one who can turn invisible," Nami snarled. "Now, let's see if your insides are as tough as your outsides when dealing with a sudden burst of lightning."

"More specifically!"

Absalom snapped his head around to catch sight of Merry painfully leaning against the mast, giving him a bloody grin.

"The amount of voltage a Thunder Dial gives off when shattered!" she leered, ramming her fist into the mast.

Before Absalom could react, a pulley swung down from the rigging and cracked into the orb at the end of the rod sticking out of his chest.

"Ride the lightning, asshole!" Merry cackled in triumph.

That was the last thing Absalom saw—

ZAP! "YEEEAAARGH!"

Before his world devolved into light and pain.

Merry and Nami both shielded their eyes, the lightning coursing through Absalom lighting up the deck from end to end. It only lasted a few seconds, but at the end of those seconds, the lion-faced man was exhaling smoke, his eyes white as snow and blood oozing out of the cavity in his chest. He keeled forward…

Then, to the women's horror, he ripped out the mangled remains of the Thunder Rod with one hand and rammed the other into his chest, hard enough that they heard a rib break and felt the resultant thump echoing in their own chests. Absalom was swaying on his feet now, but full functionality was clearly fast approaching.

"You… are… dead," he growled breathlessly.

The pair stared at him in slack-jawed awe before Merry clapped her hands together.

"Welp," she stated flatly. "I'm done. Done done done. We did good, we kicked his ass, we even stopped his heart, but I for one feel like shit. How about you guys?"

"I am very much regretting the series of decisions that led to this situation…" Vivi wheezed weakly as she stuck her finger in the air.

"Aye don't wike shmewwing dewicioush…" Carue concurred blearily.

"And I just broke my Thunder Dial, so I need to dig out one of my spares before I do any more serious fighting," Nami concluded, moving to slump against the side of the ship. "Guess you beat us, o King of Graveyards."

Despite all of the pain and anger that was coursing through every fiber of his being, Absalom's sheer confusion kept him from moving. This calm, even graceful surrender had him looking between them for some evidence of a bluff, but none of them were moving or attempting to set up any tricks. They were even closing their eyes.

If only because of what happened several minutes earlier, the last time he let his emotions get the better of a twinge of unease, he elected not to charge in blindly. His mind scanned over the situation: the four in front of him meant what they were saying, their actions made that a safe assumption. But even if they knew they had lost, if the SBS was any indication, the Straw Hats still would have kept fighting until the last breath, so how could the fight be—

Absalom stiffened in realization, recalling the exact reason that he'd come onboard the ship in the first place: to scout out the rest of the crew, which Cross said was still waiting onboard. Which could only mean that his quarry had surrendered because—

SLAM! "AAAGH!"

All at once, Absalom went flying backwards as a kick nailed him right in his snout, his much-abused body slamming against the wall of the ship as he completed his train of thought: they had reinforcements waiting.

It took a moment for Absalom's vision to unfuzz, but once it did, his heart stopped again at the sight of the individual looming before him.

The tall, blond, smoke-chuffing individual looming before him.

"You know, I had a whole bit lined up for this: the Bullshit Bistro, all-you-can-eat buffet, the whole nine yards. But after seeing this?" Sanji took a slow, long drag from his cigarette, and exhaled it just as slowly… right before searing the whiskers from Absalom's muzzle by bursting into flames. "I'm just going to kick your ass inside-out and be done with you."

~o~

"Hang on a second. I have a question, too."

All eyes turned to Sanji, who was still positively fuming, though apparently not explicitly at me. "Why am I not part of Team 2, Cross?" he tersely demanded.

I raised my hands placatingly at the sharp looks everyone pegged me with. "Because, to reiterate, Absalom, for all that he's a monster and has little to no leash on his… I'll be unduly polite and say 'libido', he's still smart. If he sees one of our Monster Trio still onboard, there isn't enough tail in the world to make him stick around longer than he has to. And the entire point of this risk we're undertaking—GAH!"

"'WE'!?" Nami snarled murderously, a veritable typhoon roiling around her as she tried to take my ear off, with Vivi tapping her Cutter in her palm right behind her.

"Owowowow, yes, 'we'!" I yelped in outraged agony. "For Roger's sake, if anything happens to you on the plan that I concocted, how the hell much do you think my life will be worth!?"

Nami's storm deflated with a sound akin to a balloon and Vivi's Lion Cutter vanished behind her back as the two exchanged uncertain looks before Nami released my ear with a sheepish grin. "Aheh… stress from the oncoming ordeal?"

I pinned the both of them with a glare and a growl as I massaged my aching ear. "In full cognizance of the demon on my shoulder, I bid the both of you to kindly bite me."

"YOU KNOW YOU'VE screwed up when even I give him a pass on using that!" Soundbite snorted.

I maintained my glare on the penitent women for a minute or two longer before continuing. "As I was saying… the point of all this is to make sure that once Absalom comes onboard the Sunny, he doesn't get back onto Thriller Bark before it falls. And for that, we need to make sure that there isn't a single loose thread for him to unravel."

Sanji snorted darkly, and shot me a harsh look. "Answer me this, Cross: am I vital anywhere else in your plan? Truly irreplaceable?"

"Well—! …ah…" I started to answer before reconsidering. Well, when he put it that way…

"Because if that's not the case, Cross," Sanji forged on. "Then I'm not setting a foot off this ship. Because unless you can give me a damn good reason, I'm not willing to take the risk that that monster could turn things against even one more woman in the world."

"Uh…" I glanced away uncertainly as I scratched behind my ear.

"Sanji."

The both of us snapped our attention to Vivi with equal incredulity, as much due to her calm authority as the fact that she'd spoken up at all.

"I know you're angry," Vivi assured him in a tone of barely restrained calm. "But I believe it's safe to say that we—" She gestured at the fuming females of the crew. "Are far angrier. If the bath trap does somehow fail, I doubt he'll be able to handle all of our collective skill sets at once."

"With all due respect, dear Vivi? You just said 'doubt'," Sanji growled. "And that means that there's still a chance that he could actually seriously hurt you all or worse." Before Vivi could respond, Sanji swept his arms out and addressed the crew. "Can I have a show of hands for anyone on this ship who's willing to take the risk of our friends being left to the mercies of someone like that with no backup plan?"

"…I hate to say it, but I have to agree with the cook, Cross," Zoro admitted after a tense moment. "When you look at our track record, our traps work maybe half the time. And if things land on the 'don't', no offense, but I don't know if I'd bet on these four to win against what you just described. They'd have a good chance, sure," he added nonchalantly in response to a few glares. "But speaking as someone who's actually fought a Warlord's top subordinate before, he has a good chance, too. And I'm not willing to take the risk of letting someone like that loose against our crew."

I… honestly couldn't find it in myself to argue against that. Sooo I didn't. "Alright," I conceded with a slow nod. "But… even so, that doesn't change the fact that you need to stay out of sight. Hell, more than out of sight, out of scent due to his enhancements. One whiff of you and Absalom will pull a runner, and then we'll all be in trouble. You'll need somewhere to hide…"

Sanji's dour mood finally broke in favor of a victorious smirk. "Already got that handled." He then jabbed his thumb off the side. "I'm sure Thriller Bark has derelicts drift in all the time, right?"

I followed the digit to the battered wreck of the Rumbar Pirates' old ship. With its higher sides, it would definitely allow good sight lines from its decks while also concealing Sanji from view. And considering how the old thing reeked to high heaven of mildew, salt and, well, death in general…

I slowly nodded in agreement. "Yeah… Yeah, that oughta do the trick. Alright, you've sold me: go ahead and act as backup if you want, but I hope you'll forgive me for hoping that it doesn't actually come to that."

"Considering how it's our necks on the line?" Nami concurred dryly. "I will second that sentiment with gusto."

"Well, you'll just have to deal with your Prince Charming being an overbearing protector either way," Sanji nodded. "For now, seeing as I doubt you'll need me for much else…"

I felt a chill run down my spine as Sanji smiled with a sadistic glee that should only have ever been directed at a certain giga-giant.

"I'm going to step away for a bit so that I can…" He hissed in a short breath before snarling out the next word. "Practice. Nothing but the finest for our customers here at the Crap Café, you understand."

"Aheheh…" I chuckled uneasily as I leaned back from the semi-demented chef.

"First step of any practice?" Soundbite deadpanned in a nonplussed tone. "NEW MATERIAL. That bit's gotten mouldy."

"Ah…" The menace siphoned out of Sanji as he considered that. "…yeah, fair enough. Anyway, carry on without me." And with that, he turned around and stalked off.

I watched him leap up onto the old derelict before refocusing on the rest of the crew. "Alright, now that that's handled, let's move on to Team 3."

Much later, once we were done with the accursed island that was our next adventure, I would kick myself for not noticing how… wavy Nami had gotten as I said that.

-o-

"Sanji."

The chef spun around suddenly as a stern-looking navigator looked at him, her clouds gray. "Yes, Nami dear? Do you need me back on the Sunny?"

"Not unless you haven't finished the lunchboxes yet," Nami said, shaking her head. "I want you to make me a promise."

"Anything for you, sweet Nami!" the chef sang exuberantly.

"Let us fight."

The chef froze, and Nami moved so that she was directly in front of him, darkening clouds and all, before he could say anything. "You heard what Cross said: if he sees you too soon, he'll run away and spill everything to the rest of Thriller Bark, and that'll spell pandemonium for the rest of us. And knowing you, you'd jump in as soon as he managed to land one hit on us. Which is why I'm here, not just for me, but with Vivi and Merry's support too."

She looked him dead in the eye as she jabbed him in the chest. "Promise us, Sanji: no matter how much we get hurt, no matter what Absalom does to us, do not intervene unless we acknowledge that he's beaten us, that we need your help. Even if he wasn't the worst kind of pervert, we've been training specifically so that we won't need to rely on the stronger members of the crew to be able to survive every opponent we meet, and this is our chance to find out whether it's been enough. Promise us that you'll let us have that chance."

The chef visibly warred with himself, and it took a full minute before he bowed his head with a weak sigh.

"…You have my word, Nami-swan."

The navigator nodded before returning to the ship. She didn't look back, and so she couldn't see as Sanji's expression contorted into a downright ferocious expression.

'Make that another thing to roast that patchwork bastard alive for: putting me in a situation where I might have to endure them screaming.' He sucked in as deep a drag as he dared from his cancer stick before letting the nicotine-laced fumes roil in his lungs. 'At least there's an upside… when I finally get my feet on this bastard, it's going to be all the more satisfying.'

~o~

For the first time in years, Absalom was truly terrified that he was going to die. He had taken enough damage already that the flaming demon before him made him think that the Grim Reaper itself had come for him. Then, like so many other brainless bastards before him, all he knew was pain.

Sanji's kicks flew without mercy, without hesitation, and shrouded in golden flames, his mind running through images as fast as he kicked. It didn't even take a minute before he reared his leg back for the final blow, his mind's eye coming to focus on a single distinct image:

A mask carved out of iron.

"HELL MEMORIES!"

KRACK-BOOM!

Literally white flames streaked behind the ship's intruder as he flew away and crashed far away from the Thousand Sunny. And with that, the hot, hot flames diminished, leaving the huffing but triumphant Sanji dusting off his hands.

"…Impressive," Merry said dumbly, staring through a telescope at the new flaming cavity in the mouth-shaped gate of Thriller Bark, in which Absalom was very deeply embedded and even more clearly unconscious.

"Is… that what you were practicing?" Vivi asked.

Sanji turned to her, for once not flying into love mode, his expression bleak. "…When I was a kid, I found an encyclopedia on the different identified Devil Fruits in the world. It seemed farfetched, and most of the powers I saw didn't seem worth the curse anyway… except for one. The Clear-Clear Fruit spoke to my very soul. And I made the decision that if I ever found it, I would embrace the curse. To let my anger burn as hot as I wanted to, all I had to do was focus on how much I could have done if I ever had the power of that fruit."

He looked back in the direction of the gate, and his next words were spoken softly.

"The power to disappear…"

What would have happened next might have been a solemn silence, in which the three of them wondered what Sanji could have meant, had Carue not narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"You just wanted tah be able tah peep just wike he could, didn't ya?"

And just like that, the atmosphere changed, Sanji stiffening as the three females looked at him. He smiled sheepishly. "N-No, no, I had other ideas. There was so much good that I could—NUDE GIR—!"

THWACK! THUD!

"I swear, he's completely hopeless," Nami groused, shaking her head and grinding the heel of her palm into her forehead as she and the rest of the women present stood over Sanji's insensate form.

"Incorrigible, utterly incorrigible." Vivi lowered her head and shook it with a sigh, her fists planted on her hips.

Merry, meanwhile, grinned from ear-to-ear as she shrugged in a 'what can you do' manner. "Buuut it's not like we'd have any of them any other way, riiight?"

The navigator and princess's dual silences and smiles were more telling than any verbal response they could have given. Nami then turned her smile towards the form of the cook, whose head was steaming but lacking a bump. "Still… Sanji, you saved us. We were… in over our heads—"

"Nami," Vivi interrupted. "This whole affair was an absolute, unmitigated disaster. And to make matters worse, this time we can't even think of blaming it on Cross. This was all on our heads."

"…right…" Nami eventually conceded with a wince. "This was… a disaster… that was our faults…" She then readopted a light smile. "And… you were smart enough to have our backs and be there to pull our asses out of the fire. And that… was not something I would have had a year ago and I… I really appreciate it. So… thank you. A lot."

"UOOOH, NAMI-SWAN!" Sanji roared energetically, poised on the Sunny's railing as he was wreathed in a whole new kind of fire.

"Wight, then," Carue squawked, wincing as the mere act of speaking aggravated his burns. "If dat's evewything, I move dat we waid Choppah's woom and stawt tweating ouw injuwies befoah phase thwee stawts."

"Seconded," Merry nodded, limping towards the room. "Sanji, give me a hand; I may have Chopper's skillset, but I'm fighting to stay conscious. You'll have to put on the bandages."

"Of course, Merry," Sanji nodded, moving to hold the door open as the four of them filed in.

"So, kind of off topic, but… given Cross' luck, who wants to bet that whatever he's doing is blowing up in his face just as much as this blew up in ours?" Vivi mused.

-o-

"And so the guy slaps the soldier clear across his face," I managed to get out through my laughter. "Puts his foot on the table, and proclaims for the whole bar to hear!" I leap to my feet and sweep my arms out in imitation. "'I, sir, am a Puritan!'"

"FOOOSFOSFOSFOS!" Hogback howled with laughter as he pounded the table, his clearly squashed lungs wheezing desperately. "P-Puritan! A-And after the donkey—! A-And the chandelier and the—! FOSFOSFOSFOS! T-That's a good one! Truly hilarious!"

I snickered as I came down from the high that a successful joke provided. Well, if Hogback wasn't genuinely laughing, then he was putting on a very good act. Buuut going by the slight rosiness in his cheeks (what little I could see under all that grease, anyway), it was not only genuine, but booze-enforced. Which served to assure me that our ruse was going perfectly.

Currently, we were all sitting comfortably in the dining room, all of us, two enemy sides content in their masquerade of friendliness for the sake of defeating the other when the time was right. Of course, the balance was rather firmly in our favor considering that they didn't know that we knew about their trap, or that we had one of our own.

…oooh, good lordy, I only just realized that we'd gotten ourselves into this kind of situation. Eesh. Well, on the bright side, at least the rabbit-hole didn't go down too deep.

Aaanyways, getting back on topic… while I was wining and dining Hogback to the best of my abilities (which I'm guessing were pretty good, seeing as he hadn't tried to leave yet and Cindry hadn't commented on how he'd drunk two bottles while my glass was untouched) the rest of my friends were occupied with their own affairs.

Currently, Soundbite had retreated into his shell so as to try and pierce the veil of the fog, Usopp and Lassoo were whiling away the time flicking napkin-footballs across the table at one another (picture perfect field goals every time, of course), Robin was laid out on a plush red velvet fainting couch with her arm draped over her face, claiming she needed a quick nap to recuperate from the island's teeeerrible airs, and Conis and Su were wandering around the border of the room separately, taking in the impressive pieces of art that adorned the room, from paintings to statues to suits of armor to gargoyles. Of course, Cindry had started to get on their case's about insisting on poking every little thing and leaping on every piece of furniture respectively, but she'd dropped it after Conis had stated that Skypieans had a more tactile appreciation for art and Su had said she needed the exercise.

These reasons were all, of course, steaming piles of Sea King shite.

In reality, Soundbite and Robin were cooperating in order to properly map out every last inch of the dining room, acquiring its layout, secret passages, and tagging any zombies that could be hiding themselves in plain sight. Conis was aiding in that endeavor via her prodding, giving away the zombie's locations by prodding them and causing them to twitch—which was a good thing, too, because as evidenced by the aforementioned various art, compared to the literal half dozen from canon, we were in the middle of a potential ambush. Su was merely waiting for Soundbite and Robin to give her her objective's location, and Usopp and Lassoo… well, actually, they really were whiling away the time, but mark my words, their game of finger football was vital to our success!

Now it was all just a question of—

"Foxhole acquired," Soundbite hissed in my ear.

—check that, looks like go-time was now-time.

"Do it," I hissed right back, though it wasn't Soundbite I was aiming it at.

Completely by coincidence, Conis chose that moment to sidle up next to a suit of armor, leaning in close to examine it before recoiling with an exaggerated gasp. "Oh, dear! It looks like your suit of armor has a dent in it! Oh, but don't worry, it's outwards! I'm fairly certain I can fix it."

"Please don't," Cindry deadpanned, with what I swear was a hint of long-suffering to her voice.

"No no, really." Conis adopted an ever so slightly too-innocent smile as she drew her fist back. "I insist."

And with that, her fist snapped forwards—

SKRANG!

—and the armor's chestpiece went flying, the arms and helmet hanging in place for a moment before smashing to the ground. That was intentional. The chestpiece smashing into and bowling over the next suit over, however? That was nothing short of gravy.

"Oops!" Conis gasped dramatically behind her hand, which she was using to hide her wide smile. "Sorry! Don't know my own strength sometimes!"

"I asked you not to." Yeah, now I really wasn't imagining the exasperation in Cindry's voice.

"I thought she was out of the clumsy stage by now," Usopp groaned with all the composure of a master liar.

"Poor fool! She's a woman! They never leave that stage! Fosfosfosfos!" Hogback wheezed, his blood-alcohol levels likely the reason behind his swaying.

"Very good, sir," Cindry droned before turning to leave the room. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to fetch a dustpan."

"Oh no, need to bother yourself, allow me," Robin sighed from her prone position, several arms blossoming on the armor pieces and starting to reassemble them.

"Oh, very nice. You're quite handy to have around."

Everyone paused to stare at Hogback, who was already thunking his forehead against the table. "Damn you, Absalom, you've infected me with your transparent sense of humor…" he grumbled. He then sat up with a groan, kneading his forehead. "Agh, and I'm already starting to get a hangover. We really should see about retiring…"

"Nonsense, sleep is for the weak!" I laughed exuberantly as I hastily refilled his glass. "Here, this'll kill your pain for you! And while you're drinking, I'll tell you all about a bit of fun our crew had a few weeks back involving a chicken, a quesadilla, and a chicken quesadilla."

That got the fat hog's attention, and he leaned in eagerly after taking a pull from his glass. "Oooh, tell me everything!"

In the midst of me regaling Hogback with yet another tale of our crew's antics (thank Drake and Hawkins for giving me a lot of backlog to work with) and Robin noisily redressing the downed suits of armor, a single fact went unnoticed by the inhabitants of the manor.

A member of our party was missing, and more pressingly, they weren't the cause of it.

Eh, not like I could blame them. After all, who'd miss a single snarky ball of fur?

-o-

Hidden away in the depths of the network of tunnels and passages that snaked throughout the manor's walls, a pair of spider-mouse hybrids were conversing idly as they awaited the signal to start their gruesome, morally deprived work with equally depraved glee.

"Do you think Master Moria will want any of the animals' shadows? Aside from the Dugongs, they're not really anything special if we take away the Devil Fruit powers," one of the mismatched abominations pondered, tapping its fingers together eagerly as it looked out into the parlor from a well-placed hole. "I mean, Hogback will probably want the doctor as a lab assistant or some such, but apart from that…"

"Honestly, I say it's fifty-fifty," his companion shrugged. "They're not that strong, no, but they're still shadows, and we can never have too many cold bodies. Though…" He adopted a flat look. "Unless I miss my guess, you're asking because you want permission to eat the white rat?"

"It's been so long since I've had fresh meat…" the other zombie moaned, though he was quick to slap his cheeks. "Bah, dreaming won't get me a meal and we're off topic. Where were we?"

"Well, apart from your intended snack," the second arachnid-rodent rolled his eyes. "We have a total of four targets. Nico Robin's Devil Fruit powers mean she'll be a bit tricky, but I imagine with an ample distraction—!"

"Liiiiike knocking over a suit of armor to get everyone's attention?"

"Yes, yes, like that," the zombie dismissively replied. "With a distraction like that, we'll be able to completely blindside her and take her out before she has… time to… wait a second…" The mouse trailed off into confusion as his brain caught up with what he was hearing. "Since when do female spider-mice exist?"

"Oh, they don't. 'Cause you see…"

Without warning, the zombie was wrenched around by its nose so that it was face-to-face with a snowy, pinch-eyed mask of fury.

"I'm not a mouse," 'Cottontail' Su hissed. That was the last thing the zombie heard before she shoved her paw into his mouth, forcing him to cough up a writhing mass of black a moment later.

The other zombie could only stare in horror as his friend's newly lifeless husk slumped to the floor of the passage. He started to stumble back before freezing as Su snapped her gaze at him.

"And I sure as hell," she hissed, cracking an eye open for emphasis. "Am no rat."

That was all the poor (for a given definition of the word) zombie's nerves could take. It spun on its many heels and… well, it's hard to say what it tried to do; run maybe, or perhaps even scream for its un-life. Honestly, it didn't matter, because whatever it tried to do, it failed to do it before Su was on him like white was on her, cramming her paw through its gap-toothed smile and liberating its unjustly acquired essence before it could issue so much as a peep.

Su took a moment to regain her breath before glancing into the room her friends were still in. "Snow White to Farmer Jeremiah, this is Snow White calling Farmer Jeremiah. Come in, Farmer Jeremiah."

She grinned impishly as Cross surreptitiously adopted what Soundbite had told her was called the 'Gendo Pose' in order to hide how rigid his smile had become. "This is Farmer Jeremiah kindly asking you to blow it out your ass," he bit out in her ear.

Su spared a moment to snicker to herself. "I've cleared the room of mice, and I'll take care of any others that head this way. Soundbite, any idea how many are left?"

"Too many by half. You really think you CAN TAKE THEM ALL?"

"All at once and head-on?" Su snorted sardonically. "Doubtful. But one at a time, in a labyrinth of secret passages with a living noise detector for a… what was it again?"

"GPS."

"Right, that. Well…" Su allowed a downright sadistic grin to slide across her muzzle. "They never caught me in Upper Yard, and they're as hell not gonna catch me down here. Their hodgepodge asses are mine."

"Heh, fair enough. Good luck to you, Snow White."

"Oh, I'm actually not going to be using that anymore. Call me…" Su slid her bandanna up over her muzzle. "Solid Fox."

"…you've been spending entirely too much time with Soundbite."

"Preposterous! ON AN UNRELATED NOTE, one coming from the left."

Su didn't even hesitate to jump straight up into a passage perpendicular to the one she was in. A second later, a spider-mouse ran nose-first into the long-cool corpses of its comrades.

Before it could even gibber, Su dropped onto its abdomen and snagged its neck in a chokehold. "Shhh…" she whispered soothingly, even as she pried its struggling jaws open. "No no, no tears… only dreams now."

"That. That right there is exactly what I'm talking ab—!"

"Whoa, heads-up."

-o-

"Hm?" I glanced briefly at my partner's shell before resuming my casual look forward. "What is it?"

"What it is, is that I JUST GOT CONFIRMATION from teams 2, 3 and 4. PHASE TWO COMPLETE WITH… one or two hiccups, but WE'RE GOOD TO GO." He poked his eyestalks out of his shell and glared at Hogback, who totally missed it on account of how hard he was laughing. "LET'S WASTE THESE DICKS."

I hid the bloodthirsty way I was baring my teeth. "Gladly. But first…" I drifted my hand to my side. "Let's cement our credibility. Say, Doctor!" I piped up. Hogback's head snapped up as I slapped a grin on my face and loudly thunked my transceiver on the table. "What would you say to an interview on the world's most popular—!"

"And only," Robin commented airily.

"—and only," I conceded with a nod. "An interview on the world's most popular and only talk show? I mean, after all…" I waved my hand at him, wearing a forced but hopefully convincing endearing grin. "You are one of the most famous people in the world, and you've been gone for twelve years! I would be remiss to pass up the chance to get an exclusive with you!"

While Hogback's expression rapidly morphed from one of surprise into one of eagerness, I had to hastily hide a smirk at the way Cindry visibly twitched.

"Doctor Hogback, I'm sorry for speaking out of turn, but the hour has grown quite late," Cindry bit out, a hollow tone of urgency underscoring her point. "If you'll kindly excuse yourself, I'll see that our guests are moved to…" I grinned even wider as she glared at me with what could have been scorn had it had even a spark of life to go with it. "Appropriate accommodations."

"Oh, now now, no need for that," Hogback waved her off, bubbling with energy as he kept his eyes latched on my gateway to the world. "Don't be so stuffy, Cindry! It's just one little interview. And besides…" I barely kept my disgust off my face as his drunken stupor was suddenly replaced by a smirk of barely hidden malevolence. "What reason has a genius such as I for holding my anonymity, hmm? Why, in fact…" His smirk widened as he started stroking his chin. "I imagine that if I let the world know where I was, we'd get faaar more visitors here at our humble abode. Doesn't that just sound smashing?"

Cindry's eyelid twitched minutely before she settled back in place, staring dead ahead. "Very good, sir," she droned. I was… actually quite surprised by the response. Thanks to my association with Soundbite, I was a bit more familiar with the nuances of the human voice than most. As such, I was able to hear the long-dead undertones of shame lurking in Cindry's voice. Well, looks like either Cindry actually was present in what remained of herself, or… Margarita, I believe? Was present in more than just her scorn for dinnerware.

Well, whatever it was, it wouldn't matter for much longer.

"Well, glad to hear it!" I bared my teeth at Hogback. "Just gimme oooone second…" I hastily patted myself down for a pen and scribbled something down on a napkin, which I pocketed before grabbing at the box's mic, causing my friends in the room to tense in anticipation. "And let's get this party started!"

-o-

"So, bringing this meeting to order," stated a Marine who looked like he hadn't gotten much sleep over the past couple of weeks. "We'll begin with the status reports."

Rear Admiral Brannew blinked blearily as he shuffled through his papers; he had received his 'promotion' to the recently created Straw Hat Anti-Fallout Task Force the day that the new bounties had been released into the Grand Line, for his 'years of faithful service'. He had come to realize over the past several weeks that in reality, it was just an excuse so that they could heap more work on his head. He knew he should have checked that bounty-confirmation order with Sengoku, he just knew it.

But still, he understood the higher ups' reasoning; with Jeremiah Cross responsible for so much damage already, they needed as much manpower as they could get to catalogue it. But that didn't make slogging through report after tedious report any more respectable or enjoyable. In fact, it was bad enough that he was finding a lot more comfort in the SBS broadcasts, which by unspoken agreement usually resulted in a pause to listen (and half the time, a bigger headache than he started with).

But either way, he had a meeting to provide answers for.

"According to compiled reports from the Four Blues and Paradise," Brannew sighed wearily. "Latest numbers say that approximately one-third of our bases have been left completely untouched since the Enies Lobby debacle due to the positive reputations that they've garnered in their nearest civilizations, and are in fact reporting a slow but constant growth in volunteer Marines enlisting into the Navy. Admittedly, we've had more than a few reports of…" He glanced to the side and he coughed into his fist. "Discipline issues with them, particularly in Paradise, but fortunately, the new training grounds in Navarone are fully established and molding those recruits into proper Marines. In fact, washout rates and discipline issues have halved compared to Blackarm Island's old statistics. Spring Island climates leading to calmer temperaments and all that."

Brannew then allowed himself to sag slightly, an action that he would never have performed while handling his duties as a Commodore. "That's the extent of the good news, however. With the number of resignations over the last several weeks combined with combat losses, we've lost 15% of our forces in the Blues, and 20% of our Grand Line forces, and that means the entire Line. 10% of the Blue bases have been overthrown, destroyed, or have defected, along with 8% of the Grand Line bases. A small percentage have even reported that they've ceded their affairs to…" He was silent for a bit before sighing wearily. "Pirate governments."

He waited for the groans that always arose from the news of pirate-islands erecting themselves to die down before continuing. "More problematic than the losses in manpower and bases, though both are severe and will take considerable time to make good, is the loss in warships. Between the attack on Enies Lobby, the actions of the rookies recently dubbed 'Supernovas', the concurrent actions in the New World, and far too many mutinies, latest numbers say that we've lost thirty-seven of our 258 battleships, with another eleven requiring full rebuilds before they can be made seaworthy again. We have suffered similar loss rates in cruisers and unrated warships, though we haven't been able to account for all of them."

A wave of mutterings, before one officer spoke up. "That… doesn't sound so bad?"

Brannew glared down the offending officer, annoyed at both the interruption and the ignorance displayed. "Those losses represent a tremendous loss in our ability to directly control the sea. More importantly, Water 7's decidedly hostile independence has cost us a full fifth of our global shipbuilding capacity. While our ability to build battleships has not diminished, thanks to the decision to build them at Government-run shipyards only, this dramatically hurts our construction of smaller warships that are, if anything, even more vital for sea control. Not to mention it costs us a major source of munitions and maritime supplies. I haven't run the numbers yet on how our reduced capacity will affect replacement of all those ships, but suffice to say that my preliminary estimates are grim."

The glare was extended to the rest of the room. "And before anyone suggests simply building more shipyards, I have here…" Reaching down, Brannew grabbed a massive stack of papers and slammed it onto the podium with a satisfying thud. "Every proposal from existing shipbuilders to expand their yards, including our own." Edging out a clipped sheaf from the stack, he gave it a waggle. "This is the proposal from the Government yards. It would take six years." He then tossed it behind him. "It would also cost the Government over ฿10 Billion, all of which would have to come out of the World Nobles' discretionary fund thanks to that thrice-damned Bege. So that's a non-starter."

The next set comprised almost half the stack. "These are most of the private proposals. They would take anywhere from seven to fifteen years to complete, come with mutually exclusive building rights contracts attached, and we'd need to sign multiple to get the capacity we need. The only point in their favor is that they won't cost us any money we wouldn't be spending anyway." The papers were stacked off to the side.

Reaching down, he pulled out another, thinner sheaf, holding it and its large-font first page up for everyone to see. "Here's the response we received from the Dordon & Sons Shipyards, situated in the New World, when we sent them a contract proposal."

One of the officers squinted at the paper before straightening in his seat, his eyes wide in disbelief. "…ah, sir, is this even anatomically possible?"

"It is if you're a Long-Arm."

"But… there aren't any Long-Arms in the Navy, sir."

Brannew scowled as he crumpled up the paper. "Trust me, they're fully aware of that."

Tossing that proposal with the Government one, Brannew pushed forward the thickest sheaf. "And finally, this is a proposal from Colvos Island to build an entirely new shipyard complex. It would take care of most of our capacity needs, and its location in East Blue means it should be easy to guard. It would take ten years to finish, but under the circumstances, that's damn good time."

"What's the catch?" one of the officers nervously asked.

"Seeing as you apparently took notes during Cross's lecture, you can expect a raise," Brannew nodded approvingly. "The catch, of course, is that they have only half the money they need. The Government would need to provide the rest."

"And we can't afford that," the officer sighed.

"Exactly. So, before we move on, the floor is open for any possible solutions you may have."

Before anybody was forced to offer a suggestion on how to help stop an entire military's shipbuilding infrastructure from imploding, they all were rescued by a sound the world now knew by heart.

"Don don don don!"

"Hold your thoughts," Brannew sighed as he reached for the receiver. "We'll spare a couple of minutes to see if this is something more demanding of our attention."

The officers nodded and turned their attention towards the snail.

"—seven, eight, nine O'Leary, ten O'Leary, gooot it! Ah, it's wonderful to see such a rapid response. Hello once again, people of the world! Jeremiah Cross, here as always—"

"Accompanied by Soundbite—"

"Personally welcoming you all… to the one and only SBS."

There was a single second of silence in which all of the Marine officers stiffened. Then Brannew broke it with a slam of his palm on the table.

"Meeting adjourned," he stated. "Half of you start transcribing this, the other half prepare the task force for running damage control. I want our battleships ready to sail within the hour."

The Rear Admiral shoved his seat back from the table as he stood up. "The Voices of Anarchy are speaking another island's eulogy, and I want to us to be there before there's nothing left of the place but ashes."

The other officers all rushed to obey.

Brannew stared after them for a moment before hanging his head and groaning. "Just another wonderful day in the Grand Line…"

-o-

"Today's show is going to be quite the spectacle," I promised my viewers, eagerness roiling in my gut like a live serpent. "And considering our track record, you know that's saying something. To kick off our line-up, we have an interview with an individual whom I'm told the global scientific and medical community is very interested in." I held my mic out to my eagerly awaiting 'guest'. "Care to introduce yourself?"

"Oooh, yes yes yes, I very much would!" the 'good' doctor declared as he leaned forward into the receiver. "Ah, to imagine that I would be given access to such a wondrous pulpit firsthand, rather than merely calling in! Ah, but enough digression!" He drew himself up to what height he had, his chin raised proudly. "People of the world, I am Doctor Huberto P. Hogback! For those of you who are of less, eh…" He took a moment to think about it before shrugging dismissively. "Educated upbringings, I am—" To what little credit he had, Hogback barely even twitched, and he certainly didn't miss a beat. "—one of the most acclaimed doctors the world over! It is an absolute pleasure to be here with you all today!"

I nodded in agreement as he sat back down. Then I slowly rolled my joints in preparation to speak. "To elaborate for those who are unaware, Doctor Hogback has been secluded from the public eye for the past twelve years. This interview will be his first public appearance in that time, and believe me when I tell you that it is my…" I lapsed into silence for a moment, stretching the corners of my mouth wide, putting every last one of my teeth on display. "Utmost honor to elucidate on just what Doctor Hogback has been working on all this time.

"Ah, but first!" I snapped my finger up, causing the doc to blink in confusion. "We're currently in the middle of having dinner, prepared by the Doctor's lovely maid, one Victoria Cindry. Spectacular food, truly, and I'd dearly love some seconds, but ah…" I donned a sheepish grin. "If I might make a humble request of our esteemed hostess?"

The undead maid-nee-actress graced me with her usual neutral look. "And what would that be, sir?"

I paused before answering, taking a second to glance around and confirm that my crewmates were all ready; the next phase relied on getting this perfect. But seeing as they were all in position, I spared a final glance between Usopp and the female zombie still standing at Hogback's side before opening my mouth.

"Could I have it served," I said with the utmost casualness. "On a plate?"

As expected, the actress turned to me with her eyes narrowed, opening her mouth to begin a tirade—

—and then slapped a hand to her throat and gagged as she inadvertently swallowed something that flew down her esophagus. Something small, triangular, papery… and chock-full of salt.

In the same moment, Lassoo snapped his head up and spat a pellet of halite straight into the yet-open mouth of the mounted boar head on the wall, which suddenly sprang to life and started gagging as well.

Their writhing didn't last long. Within seconds, Zombies 269 and 400, AKA Buhichuck and Victoria Cindry, both collapsed to the floor as their ill-acquired shadows roiled from their gaping mouths, their second leases on life revoked.

Hogback blinked slowly as he took in what had just occurred. "…Cindry?" he breathed. Then the gears all clicked into place and he shot to his feet with a pained howl. "CINDR—ARGH!"

The fat hog's scream was cut off by me shooting from my seat and ramming my forearm into his windpipe, pinning him in his chair. Soundbite then leapt into motion. Literally, he jumped off my shoulder and landed squarely on Hogback's baldspot, leering down at the bastard.

"Keep struggling," I snarled tersely. "And your genius brain is as good as jelly."

"Hoo. Hoo. …hoo?" Soundbite's dry-as-plaster laughter trailed off into confusion as he glanced around the room. I joined him and quickly realized what was wrong: we were still in a dining room, not a battlefield. Which, obviously, wasn't right. Seriously, I knew that cutting off the heads of their chain of command in the room would be effective, but this was a bit much.

"Uh… okay, hang on, gimme a second…" I held up a finger as I tried to think of a decent trigger.

"Lemme guess, they're not moving, huh?" Su's impish and disembodied voice chuckled in the air. "Here, broadcast me, I'll light a fire under their asses."

"You're live!" Soundbite promptly informed her.

"Great! Now, then…" She coughed for a second before raising her voice to a yowl. "BRING IT THE HELL ON, YOU PATHETIC PACK OF PATCHWORK PALAVERS!"

That did the trick: in less than a second, the room all but literally leaped to life. Paintings tore out of their frames (or dragged them with them), half the statues and suits of armor in the room leaped off their pedestals, brandishing their weapons, the gargoyles fell from the chandelier, and much to my consternation, the dining table was flipped when the bearskin rug reared up on its flattened paws and roared. That was disappointing, because honestly, plates or no, that was some damn good ravioli.

Ah, well. At least the spectacle that ensued more than made up for my loss.

And what a spectacle indeed. Ah, how best to put it, how best to put it… eh, simplicity holds its own beauty: My crewmates went Matrix on their revenant-asses.

To elaborate, Lassoo, Usopp, and Conis went back-to-back-to-back, arranging themselves in a triangle and blasting out a barrage of shot after salty shot around the room in a scene straight out of the Wachowski Brothers' vivid imaginations. Pellet after pellet of salt struck home with pinpoint accuracy, systematically and efficiently thinning the zombie horde. Gargoyles dropped out of the air, paintings faceplanted, and lifeless suits of armor bowled over their comrades as their heavy frames reverted to little more than ballistic corpses.

All fairness to the zombies, it wasn't like they were just trying to swarm us. Several of them tried to cover their mouths or slam their jaws shut, but Robin, yet to stir from her nonchalantly reclined position, handled their precautions with ease by blooming dozens of arms across the room that then proceeded to either wrench jaws open, rip hands away or tear helmets off, providing clear targets for our artillery experts, and artillery proper where Lassoo was concerned.

At that point, the zombies came to the understandable conclusion that their only hope really was to swarm us, and more annoyingly, that charging headlong at the people shooting them full of salt was perhaps not the best idea. Instead, they charged for the two people not shooting: me and Robin.

Chalk it up as the latest (and last) in a series of poor un-life choices. More hands sprouting from the floor immediately immobilized the zombies going for Robin (which was most of them) and wrenched their heads around so their mouths were facing Conis and Lassoo's artillery. Wham, bam, salted.

Several, though, were going for me. Thankfully, in order to get to me they had to run by Usopp, and if they thought presenting their sides to him would help, well, they clearly hadn't met Usopp. It was an amazing sight: our sniper was firing as fast as he could pull back his Kabuto, and he was curving his shots, and yet each batch of salt went straight down a zombie's gullet.

Only one zombie actually made it into grabbing range: a red-clad female zombie dragging her painting behind her through the remains of the dinner table, knocking some of it towards me and somehow leaping up to grab for my face.

Instead, my hand grabbed her face.

"Impact," I said around my smirk as the zombie flailed. With its usual BANG!, the Impact Dial… blew the entire top half of the zombie's head off.

"Eurgh," I groaned, flailing my gauntlet to try and get some of the gunk off of it before tossing a salt pellet down the thankfully still-intact throat. "Probably should've seen that coming…"

"Also, I FEEL LIKE we're missing something…" Soundbite added thoughtfully.

"GROAAAAR!"

"Right, THAT."

Despite the giant zombie bear rug looming over me, I didn't panic. See, I knew something it didn't. Leaning over, I picked up a little something that had been knocked my way when that painting zombie had come at me.

"Hey, Conis!" I called out, winding back my arm. "Catch!"

The bear rug zombie paused in its attack to watch the salt shaker fly through the air, leaving it wide open when Conis caught, loaded, and fired the shaker from her grenade launcher in one smooth motion. The rug collapsed back into a rug as she put said shaker clean down his maw, accompanied by a shadow wafting up into the sky.

And just like that, the room went silent, the newly freed shadows swirling and roiling about the ceiling in a mass of writhing black before seeming to squeeze their ways out of through cracks. It felt like a full minute before the silence broke.

"… is that all of them?" Usopp asked uneasily, strangling the shaft of his Kabuto.

"LEMME CHECK!" Soundbite leered eagerly before addressing the room. "BRING OUT YER DEAD!"

There was a moment of silence, and then a painting zombie pinned under a suit of armor's mass weakly raised its arm. "Ah'm not dead ye—!"

"Off the helmet aaaaand—!" I called, tossing out a pellet I was carrying. Said pellet bounced off the headgear I was aiming for as intended and—!

"GRK!"

"Nailed it!" I pumped my fist victoriously.

"YOU KEEK A TOUCHDOWN!" Soundbite crowed.

"Yes, yes, all very well and good," Robin sighed as she sat up on her couch, stretching her arms above her head while a different set of the limbs grew along the seam of the door and linked grips, effectively sealing the only way out shut. "In other news, I can confirm that the room is secure. No way in, no way out."

"AND NOBODY HEARD jack shit OF WHAT JUST WENT ON EITHER!" Soundbite informed me with a cackle. "We're free and clear!"

"Glad to hear it!" I smirked, flashing them all a thumbs-up.

"What…"

"Hm?" I turned my attention back to Hogback, who was rapidly starting to purple, and not from how hard I was pressing down on his throat.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE BLEEDING STYX IS GOING ON?!" he… more squeaked than yelled.

I blinked at him before grinning 'pleasantly' and sitting back down in my seat, which Robin had been kind enough to right for me. "Oh, just a little bit of crowd control, that's all. Couldn't have your goons jumping us and interrupting our fun, after all. 'Cause you see, Doctor Hogback…" I spat the name like the insult it was as I leaned my grin on my fist. "We're still going to have that interview, and it is going to be about the work you've been doing while you've been missing… but it's going to be the truth." I jabbed my finger in his face. "The whole truth, the honest truth, the only truth. And sure as heck not the two-bit bullshit you were planning on feeding the world."

And just like that, Hogback's attitude totally reversed, his indignant outrage draining away to pure, bowel-dropping terror. "W-What?" he breathed.

"You heard him, Doctor."

Hogback jumped in his seat, and twisted around to stare up at Robin as she leaned on the back of his seat, smiling down at him like a particularly demonic cat that had just bagged itself a rat.

"You're going to tell the world everything," she purred. "About this island, your endeavors here… and more importantly, about the involvement of your master."

Hogback was sweating like a stuck pig now, but I noticed that he was somewhat calmer. I could tell what he was planning, and that certainly wouldn't do, so I subsequently withdrew the napkin that I'd written on beforehand and held it up for him to read.

'Act like I'm holding up a script, and I'll turn Cindry into mulch.'

Hogback choked as he took in the words, his controlled facade crumbling in favor of shivering and gagging on his own tongue as he tried and failed to produce some kind of response. Finally, with what seemed like half his body's water content coating him in sweat, he gave me a pleading stare. "He will kill me," he managed, in a voice an octave above even his usual high tenor.

I chuckled dryly. "Ohhh, you poor degenerate bastard. You haven't realized yet? He already has."

Hogback tried to form a response to that, but he was too flustered for anything but confused fragments to come out. I casually leaned back in my chair, smirking at him as I gestured around the room.

"Twelve years you've been gone, Hogback," I drawled. "Twelve years, and no one has heard a word from you. And what do you have to show for it, hmm? Who knows where you are, what you've done? Your master may have provided you with the best possible outlet for your talents… but who's hearing about it? How can people praise you for your genius if they think you're dead? You're alone here in the darkness, and if he has his way, that's all you'll ever be. Nobody will ever know about your so-called greatest accomplishments."

The surgeon froze, even his fear stilling as my words sunk into his brain. I could see the conflict in his mind, his duty and loyalty to Moria slamming headlong into and buckling before the might of his titanic ego's wrath. When I saw that he was starting to tremble and fiddle with his glasses, I knew it was time to push him over the edge.

"Then again," I sighed with a cock of my head. "There's not really much to praise, is there?"

Hogback's focus snapped back to me so fast I swear he must have given himself whiplash.

I leaned forward with a savage grin on my face, gesturing at my mic. "Go on, Hogback, tell them! Tell the world about what you consider the crowning achievement of your career! The mockery of life you've created!"

And as the lens of Hogback's sunglasses fractured under his fingers, I knew that I had won.

"MOCKERY!?" the depraved physician bellowed as he tore out of his seat, somehow managing to make himself look imposing. "HOW DARE YOU!? I AM THE GREATEST MEDICAL MIND IN ALL THE WORLD! GREATER THAN YOUR MANGY RUG OF A PET, BETTER THAN THAT DRAGON-BRAINED HACK VEGAPUNK, BETTER THAN THAT BUTCHER OF A BRAT TRAFALGAR, OR ANY TWO-BIT BACK ALLEY QUACK WHO EVER SLITHERED OUT OF DRUM ISLAND! I AM… I AM…!"

"SAY IT!" I roared, shooting to my feet and shoving my face in his. "SAY IT, YOU POMPOUS HACK, SAY IT!"

"I AM THE GREATEST DOCTOR WHO EVER LIVED!" he screamed back. "I AM THE DOCTOR THAT CONQUERED DEATH ITSELF!"

-o-

"Yes, you heard me right, I conquered death!" Hogback laughed hysterically. "No… nonono, more than that, I cured death! I revealed it as the worthless disease that it is, and has always been!"

"It is… truly amazing just how far a few choice words can push someone," Marigold breathed as she clenched and unclenched her grip on her naginata. "I have to agree with that Kokoro woman: I am very glad that Cross is on our side."

"Nidhogg only knows what he'd have done to us if he wasn't," Sandersonia muttered back, uneasily twisting her hair through her fingers.

"But… But resurrecting the dead?" Marguerite protested, disbelief coloring her voice. "I-I realize that I've been sheltered living on Amazon Lily all my life, but…" She shook her head in denial. "Even by Grand Line standards, even with what you've told me of Devil Fruits, th-this sounds utterly insane!"

"Which is exactly why Cross had to ambush him nyon," Elder Nyon sighed grimly.

Marguerite and the Gorgon Sisters snapped confused looks at the recently accepted advisor of the Empress of Amazon Lily; a title which here meant that Hancock had stopped throwing Elder Nyon out the windows.

"Care to explain yourself, Granny?" the resident Warlord sniffed imperiously.

…quite as often, at any rate.

The Elder set her jaw with a dismissive tsk. "By starting the interview in his usual informal manner, Cross proved that Hogback's reaction was entirely natural, he proved that this isn't just some stunt. Insane as this might sound, Hogback is saying what he is of his own volition. This…" She shook her head slowly. "Insane though it might be, this is all very, very real."

"Great serpents above and below…" Marguerite breathed numbly.

"I might have been little better than average in my science class, but my teachers sure as heck managed to cram the scientific method into my skull," Cross continued coolly, venom bubbling just beneath the surface. "So, Doctor Hogback… care to communicate your results and process?"

"Gladly!" Hogback spat back, arrogance packed into his every word. "It's a simple process, really! And it all begins with my master: the lord of the Undead Isle of Thriller Bark, the man long renowned as the 'Umbral Allfather'! The greatest wielder of the Shadow-Shadow Fruit to ever live, Gecko Moria himself!"

Salome suddenly hissed in pain when his mistress's fingers unconsciously crushed his coils beneath their suddenly steely grip.

"…I never did like that pale bastard," Hancock breathed quietly, unaware of how the rest of the women in the room were all on their knees and gasping for air.

-o-

In his home in Bighorn, President Dalton shifted about uncomfortably as his country's surgeon general wrenched a song of tortured glass from the bottle she was strangling.

"Ah, Doctor Kureha, correct me if I'm wrong…" Dalton swallowed hesitantly. "But wasn't Doctor Hogback someone whose skills you acknowledged as equal to yours?"

CRACK!

The bison-human flinched as Kureha's thumb snapped the neck of the bottle clean off.

"Yes," the witch doctor bit out tersely. "He was. I respected him for his abilities as a medical expert and Chopper… Chopper looked up to him as a hero of our practice." She then held her hand out, snatched the cup her Lapahn assistant offered her and poured a glass, snarling all the while. "But I have the distinct impression that his idealized image of the man has been shattered, and that language of his means that mine isn't far from doing the exact same thing."

Before anything further could be said, Cross piped up. "Devil Fruit involvement," he sighed heavily. "Dunno what else I could have been expecting."

"Fosfosfosfos! Yeeees, the abilities granted by the Devils of the Sea are quite incredible, aren't they?" Hogback all but giggled, his temperament lightening as he delved into a topic of passion. "Ah, but I do believe that this is truly an application of abilities to trump all others! For you see, Master Moria has discovered many ways through which he can manipulate the shade… but his most innovative is to liberate others of their umbral selves!"

Kureha and Dalton both tensed as they parsed the meaning of the words.

"He… steals people's shadows…" Dalton breathed.

Kureha ground her teeth as she snapped her fingers, prompting her assistant to dig out a pair of bottles that he handed to both her and the president. "And it somehow ties into this resurrection business. Lovely."

"What you must understand is that shadows are with us our entire lives," Hogback ranted, buried in the depths of his own 'genius'. "Our entire lives are imprinted into them: our personalities, our mindsets, our abilities! They are, in essence, an external copy of our very beings! Astral projections of the soul! And Master Moria, he can coalesce that projection into a corporeal form! On their own, shadows can be implanted into living beings and thus impart the knowledge they've acquired upon the subject, but sooner or later the subject's actual soul rejects the implanted shadow, and forces them out! Ahhh… but what of subjects without souls of their own, hmmm? What of those who are empty inside? When a shadow is implanted into those devoid of the spark of life, that void is filled, and they return to life anew!"

SMASH!

Dalton ignored both the liquor dripping through his fingers and the glass embedded in his palm. "He's stealing shadows…" the normally calm man bit out. "And putting them in corpses."

"That bastard's not resurrecting the dead," Kureha snarled, shooting to her feet, grabbing the snail and punching in the numbers of as many doctors as she knew. "He's animating dead bodies!"

-o-

"You're making zombies," Cross stated, his voice as dry as a desert.

"Pfheh," Hogback scoffed dismissively. "Zombies, revenants, the walking-bloody-dead. Whatever you want to call them, the fact remains that I have accomplished what countless other inferior doctors have utterly failed to do: I've breathed life into the un-living!"

"Fascinating, truly fascinating!" Caesar Clown breathed, furiously scribbling in a notebook as he kept his attention cemented on the snail before him. "Ah, I always knew that Doctor Hogback was utterly brilliant in his field, but to think that his genius could have reached such heights over the years!" He threw his gaseous head back and cackled. "SHURORORORO! This may be my favorite SBS to date!"

"But… hang on a second…" the Straw Hats' gunner spoke up. "We were just assaulted by a host of zombies! And out of all of them, the only one that looked remotely like a human was Cindry, and even she was covered in stitches! But the rest… they were feasibly disguised as hunting trophies, paintings, gargoyles… even the bearskin rug was a zombie! These aren't corpses, they're… Su was right, these are patchwork things!"

"Yet more examples of my unmistakable genius!" Hogback preened. "To merely resurrect individuals into rotting husks would be nothing short of grievous negligence! As such, before Master Moria imparts a new shadow unto a corpse, I perform my due diligence by crafting their bodies into the best states for them to perform their duties! They are truly exemplary samples of creation! Perfection incarnate!"

"Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!" Caesar repeated extravagantly, pen all but tearing the paper with how fast he was writing. "Ah, it's tragic that he doesn't stand a chance against the Straw Hats, but at least in his final moments as an esteemed doctor, he's imparting some fragments of his genius. Fare thee well, Hogback! The world knows thee too much! SHURORORORO!"

-o-

"Wait, their 'duties'?" Cross's gun Lassoo piped up, a snarl slowly seeping into his voice. "Hang on… Moria… controls shadows and they're living through their shadows… son of a bitch, they're not actually alive, they're just puppets! Slaves to Moria, slaves to you!"

"Feh! You act as though free will is some prerequisite for animation. They walk on their own two feet, they speak their minds, they even have their own personalities! They are perfectly alive!"

"An existence without the ability to make one's own choices. Living a life you have no choice but to live." Nico Robin's voice dripped with icy contempt. "Trust me, Hogback. I have the authority here to tell you that that is not living."

"Tch," Hogback glanced away with a harsh scoff. "One person's opinion."

"Corroborated by the actions of another," Cross hissed coolly. "I read magazines, Hogback, I've seen pictures, I know the truth. I know who Cindry really was before you got your hands on her."

"You leave her out of this!" Hogback hissed back, his expression a mask of scorn.

"Heeere we go…" Trafalgar Law chuckled grimly, his fingers tapping out a staccato beat on his blade's hilt.

"Eh?" Shachi glanced at his captain in confusion. "What do you mean, boss?"

"Cross is done building him up, now he's actively winding him up," Law smirked. "And once he's done? Hogback's going to blow his shit, and he's going to do it in front of the whole damn world."

The rest of the Heart Pirates all blinked at him in surprise before slowly turning grins ranging from savage to eager on their slightly freaked snail.

"I really love these guys," Penguin chuckled.

-o-

"This has everything to do with her!" Cross snapped back at the doctor. "You stole her corpse from her grave! You forced a shadow into her, made her body move against her will! I saw pictures of her, saw her smile! But while she was still moving, I never saw her smile even once! Has she smiled even once in the past twelve years!?"

"Shut the hell up!" Hogback snarled.

"Like hell!" Nojiko cheered, pumping her fist in the air. "Come on, Cross, you haven't shut up even once in the past few months, no matter how much anyone's tried to make you! Don't stop now!"

"MAKE THAT MONSTER REGRET EVERY INSTANT OF HIS DISGRACEFUL LIFE!" Genzo bellowed in outrage.

"Then what about the shadows, huh?" Conis broke in, her scowl showing her to be angrier than the world had ever seen her. "You yourself said that they're integral parts of our beings! There have to be consequences to stealing them! And these zombies… they have serial numbers on them! And the highest I can see is Cindry's! Four hundred! Four hundred people's shadows, unjustly stolen from them! How many more are there? Who did you take them from!?"

"Criminals, of course!" the 'doctor' scoffed, but the tension in his voice was still steadily mounting. "Master Moria is a Warlord, it's his job to hunt the scum of the seas! We acquire the best skills from criminals such as you! From pirates, from Revolutionaries, from—!"

"But you still need to turn in heads to the Marines, and that means you can't take all their shadows!" Cross growled in interruption. "And if they're not all criminals, then you wouldn't have so many after twelve years. No… no, you're getting more on the side! You're not just stealing shadows from the best criminals, you're stealing them from everyone! You've stolen from the Marines! Hell, you've even stolen from civilians, haven't you, you fat bastard?!"

"THOSE WORTHLESS GNATS SHOULD FEEL HONORED FOR CONTRIBUTING TO MY EVERLASTING MASTERPIECE!"

"Whoa!" Genzo and Nojiko reeled back from their snail as it all but exploded in outrage.

"AND WHAT A MASTERPIECE IT IS!" Hogback continued to rant, on the verge of outright frothing. "I'VE CREATED DOZENS, HUNDREDS OF ZOMBIES OVER THE PAST TWELVE YEARS! DO YOU COMPREHEND WHAT I'M SAYING, YOU SIMPLETON?!"

"Cross's big mouth is the most dangerous weapon in the world," Chabo stated, wincing as he dug a finger in his ear. "In more ways than one."

-o-

"I'VE CREATED AN ARMY! AN ARMY OF SOLDIERS THAT KNOW NO FEAR, THAT KNOW NO PAIN, KNOW NO DEATH! THE SINGLE MIGHTIEST ARMY ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET! MIGHTIER THAN THE EMPERORS, MIGHTIER THAN THE MARINES, AND ABOVE ALL ELSE, MIGHTIER THAN YOU AND THE RAGTAG BAND OF MISFITS YOU CALL A PIRATE CREW! YOUR FATE WAS SEALED THE MOMENT YOU SET FOOT UPON THESE PROFANE SHORES!"

"Maneuvering exercises, everyone! We need to be ready to turn on a dime! Check the sails! Check the rudder! Check to make sure Attachan is looking for Moria's old poster and anything we have on Hogback!"

"Ah, b-but Rear Admiral Brannew, sir!"

"Hm?" The newly promoted bounty-officer paused in his barking of orders to glance at his subordinate. "Yes, what is it, Master Chief Petty Officer?"

"W-Well, sir…" the officer stammered. "I realize that what Doctor Hogback has done… is doing is…" He scowled grimly. "Morally repugnant… But the point remains that this task force was established for the sole purpose of tracking down the Straw Hat Pirates. We… We don't run maneuvering exercises!"

Brannew was silent for a moment before allowing himself a smirk. "Orders from above our pay grade say different. I just got confirmation from Vice Admiral Garp himself."

"Ah…" The officer blinked in surprise. "W-What? Seriously?"

"Seriously," Brannew nodded, turning his head away in order to hide the vicious smirk that was creeping across his face. "And if anyone comes asking, I have the paperwork to prove it."

'Turnabout is fair play, you old Monkey bastard.' The Rear Admiral then spared a glance at the snail on deck. 'And at least it gives me an excuse to leave the younger Monkey bastard be. That's one island I think I don't mind them burning.'

-o-

"AT THIS POINT, THERE'S ONLY ONE QUESTION THAT REMAINS!" Hogback roared in my face, struggling against the half-dozen arms that were holding him in his seat. "AND THAT QUESTION IS JUST WHAT WE'LL DO TO YOU ONCE WE'VE GROUND YOU INTO THE MUD LIKE THE PATHETIC SWINE YOU REALLY ARE! WHETHER YOU'LL BE FORCED TO COWER IN DARKNESS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WHILE YOUR SHADOW RETURNS MY CINDRY TO ME, OR IF I'LL HAVE THE HONOR OF LAYING YOU DOWN ON MY SLAB SO THAT I CAN RIP OUT YOUR TONGUE AND STUFF IT DOWN THE GULLET OF YOUR PET PEST!"

I blinked slowly, still reeling from the sheer force of the outburst. "…holy shit, dude."

Props to Hogback, I had not seen that rant coming. I mean, I expected a rant, but this? I'd had to both fight back a smirk to keep from giving the game away too early and ensure I didn't have a minor loss of bowel control. Still, we'd already won: he'd dug his own grave and all I'd had to do was hand him a shovel.

Hogback took a minute his breath back before glancing around at us, his face twisted in a rictus snarl. "Now, I believe it's time that you met Master Moria. I can only imagine that your assorted shadows and corpses will be among the most valuable new additions… to… our… why are you all looking at me like that?" he trailed off.

"I believe the more accurate question would be what we're looking at," Robin said in a glacial tone. "In my personal opinion, I'd say… scum."

"Tyrant," Conis spat.

"Moron," Lassoo contributed.

"Monster," Usopp bit out.

"Royally screwed?" I offered thoughtfully.

"Dead man walking," concurred—thaaaat wasn't one of us.

We all sloooowly turned our gazes upward to behold the pink-haired gothic Lolita hovering above us, glaring down at Hogback as though he were a particularly repugnant insect.

"Especially," Perona continued, shaking her head in disgust. "Once Master Moria hears about this particularly monumental fuck-up."

"P-P-P-Perona, I-I—" Hogback stammered, his fingers squashing together and cold sweat cascading down his face.

"Shut the hell up, you stupid, insufferable, arrogant little man," the Ghost Princess coldly interrupted. "You've said and done enough already. Until this moment, I never would have believed it were possible for anyone else in the world to have as big a mouth and as apathetic a view to the consequences of their actions as the hosts of the SBS. But you have now proven me wrong."

"W-W-What are you—!?"

"You just told the world what we've been doing, you monumental idiot!" Perona shrieked, shoving her astral face into Hogback's. "Our situation was already bad enough before you started spilling your guts; not only are the Straw Hat Pirates invading Thriller Bark while we're still licking our wounds from Drake and Hawkins, but the Humming Swordsman just came back at the same time as them, meaning that not only is our usual playbook in the toilet, but they know how to defeat our zombies!"

"Salt, by the way!" I announced with a shit-eating grin. "Or even salt-water! Sea prism stone most likely cuts it too! The shadow-corpse bond is tenuous at best, and all it takes is a wee little snap to break it!"

"SHUT UP AND WAIT YOUR TURN, YOU RAGING BASTARD!" she roared over her shoulder before resuming her tirade at the now sweat-soaked surgeon. "As I was saying, we've been played! I've been spending the past half hour chasing that perverted asshat all through the stinkin' forest! Your one saving grace is that the Swordsman was dumb enough to snatch up a Transponder Snail somewhere and stick it in his jacket; otherwise, I wouldn't have heard the SBS! Unfortunately, seeing as I'm still too damn late to the party…"

She spread her arms, and a quintet of smiling Negative Hollows coalesced and started swirling about, cackling in their spectral tones as Perona grinned sadistically. "It falls to me to clean up your mess. Honestly? I think the one bright spot in this whole shitfest is that if you survive what Master Moria does to you once he finds out what you've done, you'll owe me until you're on your own slab. Anyway… you've done a lot of damage… buuut I'd bet that the World Government will be able to pardon it if we hand them the Straw Hat Pirates. Now then, NEGATI—eh?"

Perona cut herself off as she glanced down at her quarry, i.e. us. The reason for her distraction was that we were… kiiinda sorta occupied with other affairs at the moment. Affairs concerning the dining room table and its contents, to be precise.

"Lassoo, stop eating all the ravioli!" Usopp objected.

"Why? I don't see any of you willing to eat food off the floor," the dachshund huffed, continuing to gobble down the dislodged pasta.

"Here, Usopp, there's still some mushrooms over here," Conis offered.

"…Have I really never told you even once over the last couple of months that I hate mushrooms?"

"Is there any vanilla ice cream left?" I asked hopefully, scouring the area.

"To your left, Cross," Robin gestured, her many arms already gathering a cup and a pitcher to pour herself a drink.

"Oh, yeah, thanks! Good thing Cindry didn't have an issue with cartons. Oh, and the salad's still pretty intact, too."

"Yay!" Soundbite cheered. "But, ah… THERE'S NOT ANY SALT IN IT from all that fighting, IS THERE?"

I looked over the leaves, frowning in contemplation. "Nah, I think it's safe. But if you'd rather not take the risk, I can just eat it my—"

"STOP IGNORING ME, YOU LOUD-MOUTHED SON OF A—!" Perona started to howl with all the rage of a woman pose—! PFHAHAHAHA! Haaaaa, I love how that shit just lines up… anyway, back to work!

"I'd recommend saving your strength, Perona," I interrupted. I then proceeded to grin up at her, and despite herself, she actually seemed nervous at the look on my face. "After all… I don't know how much longer you'll be a fake ghost."

"Wh-Wh-What?" the princess stuttered, her face paling quite nicely.

I widened my grin to sadistic levels. "Did you know," I started tauntingly. "That our whole crew recently acquired bounties? Epithets, too. Our doctor's particularly proud of his." I then made a show of putting my finger to my ear. "'Spark of Genius', Tony Tony Chopper, status report."

"I~ spy~ with my little eye~" Chopper's demented voice sang as it bounced around the room. "A sma~ll room within a ma~ssive floor filled~ with pillars. And in the bed that's in that room, a gothic Lolita lies, utterly dead to the world. My initial diagnosis?"

Soundbite's grin practically split his face in half, and his eyes shone with cyan insanity.

"This should be… FUN."

I had just enough time to see Perona's face completely drain of color before she shot through the walls, shrieking like a positively unearthly banshee.

-o-

"—ONONONONONONOOOOOOOOOO!"

Perona capped off her panicked shrieking as she tore into her room like a bat out of hell, slamming herself through and into her body as fast as she could manage. The impact was forceful enough that she actually tumbled backward on her bed, slamming her back into and plastering herself against the headboard. She panted frantically, darting her gaze to and fro to spot any mad-eyed reindeer preparing to do hell-knows-what to her body.

In her mind, Hogback could go hang for all she cared on account of her panic being wholly justified. After all, she was the only female on the island (with a pulse, anyway) whose location was common knowledge to the likes of Hogback and Absalom. That is, a demented death-obsessed (and she suspected necrophiliac, UGH) surgeon doctor and a superhumanly strong and invisible pervert. Her room was the best hidden and most reinforced, to the point that it would take a barrage of explosives to breach it.

So the idea that an enemy psycho-doctor could be looming over her feeble, innocent body and ready to do who knows what to it? The irony was not lost on the Ghost Princess that the whole situation was her worst nightmare come to life.

Or, then again, her adrenaline-addled mind slowly conceded as she looked around and fully took stock of her room, maybe not.

Because as she looked around at her pink-and-plush-filled room, she slowly came to accept that, at first blush, nothing of hers was disturbed. Not a sheet, not a doll, nothing. It was… totally…

"Horohorohoro…" Perona allowed a relieved chuckle to whoosh out of her, the panicked energy draining from her body. For good measure, she pulled up the nearest plushie she could grab and buried her face in its fluffy top hat with an ecstatic giggle. "It was just a trick… oh, thank God it was just a trick… I'm going to make that big-mouthed bastard pay for almost making me piss myself, but oh my God I'm so happy it was just a tri—!"

In that instant, two separate things hit Perona at once.

First, she didn't own any plushies that wore top hats.

And second, a sharp prick in her neck, and a numbing sensation to go with it that killed her nascent panic cold.

"Night-night, princess," taunted Tony Tony Chopper.

As darkness invaded Perona's perception of reality, a final thought managed to run through her head before Morpheus claimed her.

'Why… did it have… to be… the… Straw…?'

-o-

I chuckled grimly as I made a show of examining my armored fingertips. "Remind me, Soundbite: what was it you said back in Alabasta, when I tricked Miss Friday into thinking that a simple mug was a grenade?"

"That would be, you are DA BLUFF MASTAH!" Soundbite chuckled.

"W-What are you talking about!? What did you just do?" Hogback demanded incredulously. "O-Once she gets her hands on your friend—!"

"Status update, Cross: sedative injected. Perona is dead to the world. Exactly as you planned," Chopper's voice said, causing Hogback to fall into a wordless wheeze.

"I love hearing those words," I nodded before looking back at Hogback. "We couldn't guarantee that the Hollow-Hollow Fruit wouldn't actually turn her into a real ghost, and besides that, we don't like killing, period. Much more reliable to trick her into returning to her corporeal form and then locking her inside her own flesh, ne?"

"Ge-bwuh-vrgrgh…" I think Hoggy's brain was kinda sorta fried by this point. Good thing we had a way of snapping him back to reality!

"Now, then!" I said, eagerly clapping my hands together. "Real quick tangent here… Chopper, Hogback is directly in front of me. Anything that you'd like to say to him?"

Chopper didn't answer at first, and the silence stretched on, to the point where it actually became kinda sorta uncomfortable.

Astoundingly, Hogback actually had the audacity to swallow heavily and speak up. "Ah… t-t-this is Doctor Chopper, yes? D-Doctor Tony Tony Chopper? I-I've listened to segments on the SBS before, I-I-I really must say, y-y-your work on, on handling the short-term effects of c-c-concussions is revolutionary! M-M-Might I offer you some advice, a-a-about—?"

"'I will remember'."

Hogback choked off when Chopper suddenly spoke up, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.

"'That there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug'. That's only a piece of the oath, Hogback. Only a fragment of the oath that you and I both swore, but I feel like it's particularly pertinent in this specific instance."

"I-I, t-t-that's—!" Hogback tried to stammer out.

"That oath is long and winding, and it has a lot of sections and specifics to it… but in the end, it all boils down to three simple words: Do. No. Harm."

That actually got a snarl out of Hogback, bristling like a startled boar. "Oh, and you're innocent of breaching medical ethics, you literal rugrat?" he spat. "I tested out a few of your formulae! Your explosives aren't exactly what I'd call 'traditional medicine', and that alter-ego of yours isn't very conducive to an appropriate 'bedside manner' either!"

"Wrong, Hogback," Chopper frigidly countered. "I didn't forget my oath, I found one that takes precedence: my flag. Out here on the sea, we doctors can't afford to be so lax. We need to put preventing harm coming to our friends before undoing it. And in the pursuit of that duty, all bets are off; no limits that cannot be crossed, no actions that will not be undertaken."

"…And what is your rationalization for holding anything against me if you believe that?" Hogback demanded. "If rules are to be trampled upon when necessary, what is your argument against what I've done? Why would you not attempt something just as 'monstrous' yourself!?"

For a long moment, Chopper was silent, and I almost worried that he didn't have an answer.

"Because even as I step beyond my oath, I have others to bring me back."

Hogback squealed in terror as Chopper's voice took on a distinct overtone of madness that was nonetheless appropriately chained and shackled.

"Even in my… shall we say, enhanced state, my crewmates, my friends are the one line I refuse to cross," Chopper continued coldly. "And more importantly, they are the ones who bring me back when I do teeter on that precipice. How long has it been, Hogback, since you could say that? Have you ever been able to say that?"

Hogback spluttered indignantly as he tried to formulate a response.

"Do you recognize the best part of being a pirate doctor, Hogback?" Chopper forged on, his frigid calm thawing into blazing outrage with his every word. "I imagine you do, seeing as you've liberally practiced it over the past twelve years, but let me say it anyway: there are no limitations on how we choose to apply our skills. Be it for good or for ill, our knowledge can be utilized as either a tool or a weapon at our own discretion. But where you chose to abuse your skills, where you maliciously broke your oath on the backs of the innocent people you were supposed to help, I FULLY INTEND TO BREAK MY HIPPOCRATIC OATH CLEAN OVER YOUR HEINOUS CRANIUM THE MOMENT I GET MY HANDS ON YOU!" Our doctor finished in an animalistic roar of fury, his sheer hatred so loud and so prominent that it shook the very walls of the room.

We were stuck in stunned silence until I finally got the wherewithal to shoot a deadly grin at the by now half-dead hog, who was currently trembling in his chair. "I've honestly never heard him this pissed before now. In a word?"

"YOU BE SCROOD, dood!" Soundbite cackled ecstatically.

Hogback's jaw worked itself silently for almost a solid minute before he finally raised his head to give me a dead look. "When Master Moria finds out what you've done," he breathed listlessly. "There will be no force on this planet that will be able to save you."

The fact that I could hear how he barely even believed in that statement? Glorious beyond all words.

I put on a show of thinking intently before shooting another soul-crushing smirk his way. "Then we'll just need to make sure that 'Master Moria' doesn't find out about this, won't we?" I put my finger to my ear before he could respond. "Boys, how we doin'?"

"Just waiting on the guests of honor…" Leo breathed before allowing a grin to slide across his face. "And here they come and here we go."

-o-

"MASTER!"/"MASTER MORIAAA!"/"IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP, MASTER!"

This was the three-part chorus being caterwauled by the diminutive zombies Nin, Bao and Gyoro as they tore into the quintuple-XL sized bedroom that the island's master was sleeping away the night in.

"Master, Master!" the blue samurai, Bao, hollered at the top of his lungs as he hopped in place. "We've got guests! It's time for you to wake up! Wake up!"

"Gotta pop the bubble, gotta pop the bubble!" The yellow bucket-head, Gyoro, spun one arm eagerly as he pointed at Gecko Moria's colossal snot-bubble with the other. "Pop it, Nin, pop it!"

"You got it!" the pinkish archer, Nin, nodded eagerly. He unslung his bow, nocked an arrow and drew it back in a second. "C'mon, Master! Time to wake—!"

It was at that exact moment that everything went wrong.

SLAM!

More specifically, it all started with the double-doors to the room getting slammed shut behind the trio, each zombie snapping their heads around to look.

"Eh—?"/"Wha—?"/"Hu—?"

That was all the three midgets managed to get out before they were frozen, both by shock and by the cold steel they could feel on both the front and back of their necks.

"Medusa Mitigation," Leo intoned, glaring bloody murder at the undead over his crossed arms. Then, in a single surge of strength, he un-crossed his arms—

SHINK!

And sent the trio's craniums flying.

That was the signal for Donny to fling a trio of kunai at the headless corpses from where he'd been standing behind the second door. The knives flew true, and their salt-coated tips slammed into the bottoms of the three's throats.

Donny's face broke out into a grin, and he pumped his fist triumphantly as the trio's shadows escaped their corpses like bats out of hell. "Hell yes!" he crowed. "Haha, how's that for bada—!"

TWANG!

"—Urk…"

Donny's victorious exultations turned into a choked gurgle on account of Nin's body suddenly falling slack, loosing the nocked arrow in the process. The arrow that was still aimed in the general direction of Moria's snot bubble.

All Leo and Donny could do was stare in horror as the arrow flew up-up-up, hanging at the apex of its arc for what felt like an eternity before gravity took hold and flung it down-down-down, right at the snot bubble—

CLANG! "Sonnuva—!"

And right into a link of the suddenly present chain of Mikey's nunchuk, arresting the arrow's momentum right when its very tip was millimeters away from the dugong's fearfully quivering eye.

Mikey panted furiously for a minute, fighting desperately to get his heart rate under control while also holding the arrow in place and maintaining his Tidal Swim above the Warlord's quivering bubble. Once he was certain that his heart wasn't going to explode, however, the orange-bandanna'd dugong shot a murderous snarl at his fellow students. "And you sons-of-bitches have the gall to call me a fucking idiot!?"

The bo and katana wielders exchanged uneasy looks before shooting their brother-in-training dual thumbs up.

"Nice catch, Mikey!"

"Yeah, great work!"

"STOP COMPLIMENTING ME AND HELP ME GET THE HELL DOWN! I'M STARTING TO LOSE FEELING IN MY DAMN TAIL!"

While Leo hastily jumped up to help the nunchuk-wielder down, Donny carefully began loading the syringes he had been given as he gave the scene before him a contemplative look. "Thank Sebek that this worked; if he hadn't taken our heads off when he woke up, Cross would have for screwing his plan!"

~o~

"Alright, guys, Team 3, a.k.a. 'Needle', will consist of Chopper and the TDWS," I pointed them all out, causing them to straighten in anticipation. "Your assignments will be crucial to Team 1's success. Specifically, you'll be removing Perona and Gecko Moria himself from the equation."

The dugongs paled in horror. "Ah… come again?" Raphey squeaked fearfully.

"Er… Cross?" Boss cut in. "I may have faith in my boys, but even I'd say that expecting them to beat a Warlord with just Chopper for backup would be a suicide mission. No offense, Chopper."

"Considering how I've seen what the last two Warlords we met did to our crew? None taken," Chopper gulped, looking at me. "Please say that you have just as good a reason for trusting that we can handle this as you do with Team 2."

I smiled calmly. "You guys are not going to be attacking them. You're going to be attacking their unconscious bodies."

Their reaction was half of relief, half of confusion.

I leaned back against the mast as I spread my arms out. "As I said, Perona leaves her body sleeping in her room whenever she goes out on patrol. And similarly, Moria is an absurdly heavy sleeper, to the point where it takes an arrow to his snot bubble (just go with it) to wake him up. You'll be locating the both of them while they're K.O., and then guaranteeing that they stay K.O. Got it?"

Team 3 all exchanged looks before nodding in agreement.

"Perfect. Alright, things start off with our new Musician." I indicated our new skeletal crewmate. "Brook will be entrusted with either Pinkie or the Brain, but not just so that he's always in communication with us. He'll also have a running line between him and Soundbite, meaning that once I get the SBS started, Perona's most likely going to abandon Brook in favor of us. But before that happens, you four—" I pointed at the TDWS. "Are going to sneak into the manor undetected, taking Chopper with you, and locate her body."

"I… don't need to hurt her, do I?" our doctor asked uncomfortably.

"No…" I said, shaking my head and then putting up a finger. "But you're going to do your best to make it sound like you are. Once Perona gets to the dining hall, I'll call you, and you'll put the fear of hell in her so that she shoots back to her body. And once she's back inside?" I slammed my fist into my palm. "You're going to sedate her with the heaviest soporific you've got. So long as her mind's asleep, Perona will be out of commission for the rest of our fight. Got it?"

"Hm…" Chopper scratched his chin in thought before nodding. "Yeah, that works for me."

"Good. Now, for the rest of you…" I said, refocusing on the dugongs. "One of you's going to have to stick with Chopper to deal with the dedicated bear-zombie bodyguard Perona has covering her, but the other three are going to locate Moria and wait in the shadows around him. He's got a dedicated trio of zombies acting as his alarm clock, and I'd bet hard cash that those three are the only ones who ever wake him up. So long as you can take them out without anyone finding out? Moria'll be left to snooze for the entirety of our assault."

Leo and Donny shared shocked looks before giving me a wide-eyed stare.

"That's… a pretty good idea, Cross!" Leo exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's genius!" Donny concurred.

My grin became rigid and I felt a vein start to pulse on my forehead. "And you two sound so surprised about this why, exactly?!"

The pair promptly snapped their heads away, whistling very innocently.

"Hm… hey, wait a second…" Mikey mumbled, his head bowed, before snapping his 'fingers'. "I got an idea! If we're gonna be sneaking up on Moria while he's sleeping really, really deep, why not make sure it's an extra deep sleep by sticking him with some of Chopper's drugs too?" He maintained his victorious stance for a second before flushing furiously at the incredulous looks pinning him. "Why the blue hell are you all looking at me like that!?"

That cued another round of hastily averted gazes and overly innocent whistles.

"Eheh… ah, still, if we're doing this…" Chopper sent me a curious look. "Cross, about how big would you say that Moria is? I need it for the dosage."

"Mmm… 25 feet, maybe? Aaaand I have no idea if he's a huge human or a weird giant or what, sooooo…" I shrugged uncertainly.

Chopper's skin promptly paled beneath his fur. "I'll just… go and prepare the Luffy amount then."

Once the Zoan-reindeer wandered off, I regarded the last of our crew, meaning Luffy, Zoro, Franky, Boss and Funkfreed. "Anyways, you guys are Team 4. And trust me, your job's entirely appropriate for your skillset."

~o~

"'Disciple Purple' reporting in, Cross," Donny informed me. "The three undead alarm clocks have been silenced before they could rouse the Warlord—and credit where it's due, that's thanks to Orange catching the arrow—and the Luffy-grade sedative is applied. I don't know what the hell Moria is, but there's no way he's waking up short of a mortar shell going off in his ear."

"And with confirmation from Team 2, that makes us three for three on the fighters of the Mysterious Four!" I confidently declared. "Thriller Bark has fallen in all but name and army." I then shot a sidelong glance at the Four's barely twitching remainder. "Anything you'd like to say, Hogback?"

For a minute, the man couldn't bring himself to do more than sputter in horror. Then, finally, he looked at me with a pleading expression. "Why are you doing this?" he wheezed. "What did we ever do to you? What… What did we do to deserve this?"

I stared impassively at him for a second before scratching my cheek and chuckling. "What did you do… oooh, where to even start…" I made a show of snapping my fingers in realization. "The beginning. That works. And the beginning here would be a fact Conis pegged onto earlier: Shadows. 'Cause… she's right, see. Shadows are integral to a human being. And losing one, the consequences of it, the symptoms…" I shook my head. "They are deadly. Not immediately, but long-term?"

I was silent for a bit before continuing. "I could tell them to the world… but I won't. Rather…" I pinned Hogback with a cold glare. "I'll let your victims handle that. And yes, you heard me right!" I addressed that at my mic. "Right here, right now, I'm inviting victims of Thriller Bark the world over to share their plight with the world. Just to remind you all, the number to call is 432-782-762. Punch it in now… and let the world know of how unjustly you've been treated all these years."

The room fell silent for the next thirty seconds. During those thirty seconds, I had complete faith that this part of the plan would work. And at the end of those thirty seconds…

"Dot dot dot dot!"

My faith and hopes were vindicated, while what little hopes Hogback had left crumbled.

"Dot dot dot—KA-LICK! Um, hello?" came a somewhat nervous female voice.

"You're live on the SBS," I said with a smirk. "No filter, then?"

"I-I…" The voice's face faltered briefly before she steeled herself quite admirably. "No… no, absolutely not. I've spent too long hiding in the shadows, a-a-and… and I won't stay silent for even one second longer! My name is Margarita, and I am a maid serving in Egana Manor on Torodana Island in the Grand Line. Ten years ago, the ship I was on was attacked by the Moria Pirates, and that monster, Gecko Moria, he… he stole my shadow. I lost consciousness from it, and I didn't wake up until a few days after, but once I did…" The maid's expression grew grim. "My life was a living hell.

"Cross is right: The effects of losing a shadow are horrific. To go without a shadow is unnatural, and there are a lot of consequences. You can't be seen in mirrors, your image doesn't appear in photographs… but worst of all… without a shadow…" Margarita drew in a shuddering breath before forging on. "After the attack, a friend of mine who was with me, she… she stepped out into the morning sun, and before I knew what was happening, before she could even scream, she…" The maid pinched her eyes shut, her face twisted in misery. "S-She burst into flames… and was gone from this world without a trace!"

There was a moment of tense silence punctuated only by Margarita's pained sobbing, until finally I chose to speak up. "If you want, I can—?"

"No!" she protested, even as more tears shone in her eyes. "They… stole my life from me! I need to see this through! I… I need to tell the world of the hell they forced me into! A hell of shadows, of darkness! For ten years, I haven't been able to step into the light for fear of death! For ten years, all I've known is cold and terror. For ten years… I haven't even been able to see the sun…" She paused, audibly panting, and then her angry facade broke into a wide, tearful smile. "Until today. Until a few scant minutes ago, when I saw my reflection in the mirror. When I chose to stand by a candle, and I saw that my shadow had returned! As soon as I realized it, t-the master of the house, he threw a party, a-a-and I can't wait for the dawn, because for the first time in years, I can finally see the sun rise on a new day, and it's all thanks to you!"

"Good for you!" Conis smiled pleasantly.

"Hmm…" Robin, meanwhile, was scratching her chin. "Margarita… you said you're a maid, yes? You wouldn't happen to have a pathological hatred for dishware, would you?"

"…Ah… I got over that a long time ago? Why do you ask?"

"Simply confirming the identity of the zombie who had your shadow," Robin smiled. "She was acting quite psychotic. I imagine you must have been in quite a state back then. I'm glad to hear you've regained some measure of sanity."

"Uh… thank you?"

"Among the first we actually took down, in fact!" I confirmed. "If it's any consolation, either your shadow or what little remained of Cindry's spirit were fighting tooth and nail!"

"Oh, thank you… but concerning Cindry… y-you said her serial number was 400, right? And… and that bastard Hogback, he said… that he'd made even more than that, right?"

"Uh… yes?" Usopp answered.

Margarita's eyes hardened like steel. "…Nobody, not a Marine, not a Revolutionary, not even other pirates deserve the kind of purgatory that I've been forced to endure for the last decade. Straw Hats… please, free them all. Lift Moria's curse. End the evil that is Thriller Bark, once and for all!"

"Mark my words, Margarita: by daybreak, Thriller Bark won't even exist anymore," I stated menacingly, my blood thundering through my veins.

She smiled, tears coming down her face. "Thank you… for everything. KA-LICK!"

"Well, I think that about covers it," I said, preparing to stow my transceiver away again. "If any of you other shadowless would like to add anything more, I'll be broadcasting again for the Straw Hats' traditional victory party in a few hours. Until then, however, we'll be going anonymous. Can't have the Marines ambushing us and all that! But for now… light a candle, pull up a mirror, and wait with bated breath. Because at last, your long night has come to an end!"

And with that triumphant note, I hung up the transceiver and returned it to hanging at my side. I then turned towards Hogback, who was staring at me in horror.

"I know that look," I said with a smirk. "I've seen that look more times than I can count, that 'how the hell could you possibly know about that' look. Yeah… after all that, I imagine you would be wondering how we found out about all of this in the first place, huh? Well, it's simple."

I leaned in and put my grin right in Hogback's terrified face. "Did you honestly think," I whispered. "That the Humming Swordsman returning at this exact point in time, at just the worst possible moment… is a coincidence?"

What little blood Hogback had left evacuated his face. "You… can't be serious…" he choked out.

I couldn't help but chuckle grimly as I stood up and loomed over him. "You took our new musician's shadow, Hogback," I intoned darkly. "You stole everything from him, and he didn't have much left to begin with. And now… we're going to take every little last thing from you."

Yeah, that little revelation was finally too much for Hogback; with a final gargle of horror, he passed out, foam fountaining from his slack maw.

I leaned back in surprise before shooting a bemused look at Robin. "I'm getting better at this, huh?"

"At this point, Cross?" Robin dryly replied. "I wouldn't be surprised if Dragon himself dreaded getting on your bad side."

"…taking that as a compliment!" I said cheerily.

"It was meant as one," she smiled back.

"Ahem?" Lassoo chuffed in an effort to get attention. "If you're done having fun…?"

"Ah, right, right!" I nodded as I got back on track before glancing over at Soundbite. "Alright, let's rumble. Team 4, do you read me?"

"Team 4, 'Smokescreen', in position," came a female voice. "Speaking is Lola, second in command of the Thriller Bark Victim's Association, all of which are armed and ready for combat. We are awaiting your order, Jeremiah Cross."

"Proceed to Phase 3, and commence Operation 'Nightmare Luffy.'" I turned a demonic grin towards the wall that was towards the front of the mansion. I could practically see them now…

-o-

A veritable army decked out in pitchforks, swords, and torches.

A cyborg with a giant pair of nunchucks made from a pair of trees that were currently burning to charcoal.

A three-headed, six-armed demon with nine swords, wreathed in blue fire.

A shell-clad dugong, spinning a nigh-flaming weapon and swimming in the air through a cloud of smoke he was spewing.

And in the center of them all? A giant, muscular, blue-skinned behemoth, clad in a hockey mask, riding an elephant with a sword for its trunk, with one hand holding an oversized sword and the other holding a pipe that had a mechanized blade strapped to the end. With said blade being on fire.

Such was the sight that met the undead army of Thriller Bark when they emerged before the island's main gate, and such was the sight that sent them all running, in absolute, bowel-dropping terror to get as many reinforcements as inhumanly possible.

-o-

"PFFHAHAHAHA!" I cackled ecstatically, bending over in my mirth. "Ohhh, God, that's hilarious! They'd better damn well get pictures of Franken-Luffy before he lets the shadows out, or I swear I'm going to rip their faces off! PFFHAHAHA!"

"I will admit, Cross," Robin chuckled in amusement. "This aspect of your plan, while simplistic, is quite ingenious. With our friends garnering the entirety of the zombies' attention, bar very few, we're left free to roam about the manor as we please."

"But, ah…" Usopp glanced around the corpse-filled room uncertainly. "Why would we want to do that exactly? You, ah… never really said."

"Usopp's right," Conis nodded in agreement. "Shouldn't we head for the front gate immediately, so that we can help our friends fight?"

I promptly sobered up and adopted a scowl. "Because we're in here for a far more pressing matter. Chopper, you're on your way to Hogback's lab, right?"

"I just helped Raphey finish exorcising Perona's bear, so yes. I expect you'll be taking Hogback there so that I can… deal with him?"

"Soundbite?" I asked my snail. "You find what I asked you to?"

"Yeah, I did…" Soundbite winced fearfully. "WISH I HADN'T, THOUGH… but the lab's in a tower, and that thing ain't. HELL OF DETOUR."

"Hrmph…" I rubbed my chin thoughtfully for a second before snapping my fingers in realization. "What about the base of the tower?"

"Huh?" Soundbite blinked in surprise before grinning sheepishly. "AH… YEAH, I'D SAY THAT THAT SHOULD WORK."

"Great," I nodded before regarding our friends. "Guys, get Hogback on his feet and let's get moving. Chopper, we'll meet you at the base of his tower so that we can drop him off."

"And… after that?" Usopp asked uncertainly.

I grinned as I strode to the doors of the room and slowly pushed them open. "We're going to go and terminate the final possible threat remaining on this accursed island once and for all. We're going to go and pay our respects… to Number 900 himself."

Hornet AN: For the benefit of our FFN readers, let me explain a few things: I work a full-time job, and Xomniac and The Patient One are both college students. This often leaves us two hours a day - at best! - to work on this fic. So if you're wondering what's taking a chapter so long, this is probably why.

Patient AN: We can only do so much when time will not cooperate. We ask for you to please be patient, and refrain from asking what's taking so long. If there is something more severe than scheduling issues preventing us from updating, we will inform you. Otherwise, however, we ask that you allow us to take the time needed to get our writing to the quality that we pride ourselves on.

Xomniac AN: And even besides all that, there were just sections of this whole thing that just refused to be written. *Shrugs* Shit happens.

Cross-Brain AN: Regardless, however… we've said this before, and we have no doubts that we'll say it again at least once before we're through, but this may be our best work yet.