Chapter 63

Xomniac AN: The following 'allosaurus' joke was made on December 2, 2017, well before X Drake's Devil Fruit was actually revealed to be an allosaurus. Said joke was supposed to be in the previous chapter. I'm actually quite pleased with the serendipity of how it turned out.

CV12Hornet AN: Also, for our reviewers, please stop asking if we're alive or assuming the story is dead. I know we spoiled you lot early in the fic's run with fast updates, but the fact is it takes us a couple months to write one of these now. More to the point, if This Bites! dies, we will tell you.

The Patient One AN: We want to be able to make a living purely off of our stories, but the fact is that it's likely to be another year—at the barest, most unrealistically optimistic—before our P-a-t-r-e-o-n income is close to allowing that. As such, we have to dedicate most of our time to work or college, and that doesn't leave us a lot of time or energy for writing.

Our apologies for the venting; we know that we've been testing your patience, but we are doing all that we can…now, then. Shall we?

It was late afternoon when the tired, sore, but satisfied group of pirates that was the closest we had to our 'best and brightest' (God help us) settled down in the disheveled remains of Helheim. Nary an individual was unscathed, and as much alcohol flowed on bodies as into them.

"Can I say something really quick?"

Several pairs of eyes fell on the orange-bandana'd dugong who'd spoken, an ice pack soothing his skull and a convenient ice block doing the same thing for his tail.

"I just want to correct something I've said in the past: if it's a stupid idea and it works… sometimes, it's still a really stupid idea, Cross."

"Hear hear," deadpanned the entirety of the main bar.

"Not my smartest idea, I'll admit," I mumbled out through the bandages that covered every unarmored inch of my body. Made me dread what I'd be going through soon that had my future self looking like this 24/7. "But it was the fastest way to get everyone to listen without anyone biting anyone's head off. More specifically, my head."

"Do we really look like we need the Voices of Anarchy rattling our skulls right now?" Drake snarled.

"You have a bad track record with TYRANNOSAURUSES," Soundbite chuckled.

"Actually, on closer inspection, I believe him to be an Allosaurus," Robin chimed in halfway across the room, surreptitiously hiding her smile behind her cup.

"I demand the opinion of a proctologist!"

"You mean a paleontologist."

"SOMEONE GET ME A LINGUIST!"

"The reason you want to listen to me," I cut in over the (mercifully) hushed conversation, very happy that my bandages made it easy to hide my smirk. "Is that if this is what we've been driven to after only one week of that blockade, I don't think any of us like the idea of being forced to sit around any longer. So, you want me to take charge of the discussion and actually help us all figure something out, or would you rather we keep ramming our heads against the iron curtain until something—be it them or usbreaks?"

The Supernovas exchanged looks. Finally, Kid snapped his fingers at me, grimacing and clutching the strained digits the next second.

"You get one chance, Cross," he spat.

"That's all I've ever needed," I smirked in response. "Now, let's start by looking at what we know about the blockade. Surgeon of Death."

Law cocked an eyebrow at me.

"Since you have a submarine, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're not here with us because of the good service, am I right?"

Law's eyes narrowed slightly, and he nodded. "Right on the money, Cross. Yeah, whoever put together this blockade? They were smart about it. The blockade ships have towed torpedoes attached to their hulls, which makes it hard enough to go under them." His gaze sharpened. "But their 'first line of defence' is an even bigger problem. Anyone here ever heard of Territorial Sea Slugs?"

"THOSE SHELL-LESS SLIME-RAGS!?" Soundbite roared out of nowhere, veins popping up on his eyestalks. "I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED THEM to be a part of something as underhanded as this!"

"So I take it you've heard of them," I deduced, digging my finger around in my ear to try and get rid of the ringing.

"I have too," Lola scowled, rubbing her chin in thought. "Aquatic cousins of Transponder Snails, they float beneath the waves and convey information on anything that comes past them. Any ship that tries to sail over them gets spotted instantly."

"And trust me on this, they are ARROGANT little shits about how they can suck saltwater without problem, ALWAYS RUBBING IT IN US TRANSPONDERS' EYESTALKS!" Soundbite spat, audibly grinding his teeth. "IF YOU'RE EXPECTING THEM TO LISTEN WHEN I TELL THEM TO CLAM IT, NO DICE."

"Couldn't you just rattle their fluid-based pseudo-skeletons with a Gastro-Phony?" Donny suggested.

"NEEEEERD!…and, no. Some of 'em, easily, BUT NOT ALL OF THEM, WHICH IS THE PROBLEM; the rest would just RAISE THE ALARM ON WHATEVER PART OF THE NET WENT DOWN. They're assholes, but coordinated assholes, I'll give them that."

"The Marines must really be putting their all into this blockade if they have enough of them to encircle the archipelago… and all of this just for little old us? I'm kind of flattered, really," Nami purred.

"So, evading detection is problem one. And Kid, how organized was their formation?"

The punk snorted and looked away. "Half and half, honestly. The first bastards I ran into were run-of-the-mill tar-flags: pretty tough, sure, but nothing dangerous." And then his scowl deepened. "The problem was that they managed to latch onto my ship and hold us up long enough for more ships to show up, only those ones were Marine battleships. They kept up such a hail of lead that even I couldn't clear us a path. We could have broken through, we even managed to sink a few of the privateers and a battleship, but they just. Kept. Coming. And right when they were really starting to piss me off…"

"Kizaru, right, right…" I waved him off, and this time it was without mockery. Seriously, if anyone here knew how little shame there is in booking it from an Admiral, it was our crew.

"I have to admit that I'm curious, Kid," Drake noted. "If memory serves, the ship you hijacked and renamed was originally a limited production Marine steamship, and if you're tolerating a child on your crew I can only assume it's because she knows what she's doing. How did a bunch of privateers hold you up when you had that on your side?"

"Because we were up against tar-flags and we wanted to be thorough, and that bought their reinforcements enough time," Killer growled out. "They were outright insane, shoved their ship in front of ours, kept grappling the Tramp with chains they had fixed to their own deck and around the masts, things like that. And whenever their ships started to give up the ghost, they just boarded their neighbors and kept it up. They did everything possible to slow us down and force us to a halt, no matter the costs, to their ships or themselves."

CRACK!

There was a brief lull in the conversation due to everyone trying to figure out where the sound of pure RAGE and destruction had come from. Everyone outside of my crew, anyway.

"Franky, Merry, I don't think we'll have time to get your complete pounds of flesh this time," I deadpanned without looking.

"You don't know that," came the dual snarls.

"He might not, but I do."

That broke through my feigned apathy, and I looked over to Drake, who was glaring intently at the center of the table through pyramided hands.

"What you don't quite grasp is that nobody likes privateers," the pseudo-saurian explained. "The Marines see them as just another brand of pirate to put down. It is only because of contracts with the World Government and the larger trading companies that privateer ships and fleets other than the Seven Warlords' are allowed to remain operational. If the Marines have been pushed into employing them directly, then it is only because they have a gun to the privateers' heads. Proverbial or literal. These privateers are going to such extreme lengths because they have no other choice. They can either chance death by putting their all into trying to stop us… or guarantee it by failing and earning themselves one-way tickets to Impel Down."

Drake then snarled and glanced aside. "Which, satisfying as it may be, honestly makes our chances worse, because we all know what they say about cornered rats. The privateers will be as dangerous as the battleships."

His piece said, he looked to cede the floor to me, but I waved him on again. "Hey, you seem to be on a roll. If you've got an insider's perspective on this whole thing then the floor is yours."

Drake suspiciously eyed me, but not for long. Instead, he moved his gaze to my immediate superior. "Weather Witch. Your clouds have proven versatile thus far. Could you provide—?"

Almost instantly, the table was swamped with a white mass, one that swiftly shifted from fluffy and formless into a swaying pane of 'water'. Smack in the middle was a miniature collection of trees I recognized as Sabaody, while on the edge was a hazy clump that could only be us.

Drake nodded stoically, high thanks coming from him, and continued on with his explanation. "As stated, the first concern is the Sea Slugs." The cloudy map shifted to display a line of squirming lumps a good distance out from the archipelago. "They won't impede us on their own, but they'll give our enemies first warning of any incoming vessels; by the time we reach the actual blockade, they'll have reinforcements ready to greet us."

"Hm… troublesome… meaning that by the time we actually start fighting, we're already halfway to getting swamped…" Apoo mused, raising a finger. "Just a thought, but could we spoof the slugs? Ya know, send a small ship somewhere to spook 'em, then when the blockade looks one way we go the other?"

A simple idea, and to my mind a good one, but unfortunately, Drake's response was a firm shake of his head. "Wouldn't work," he stated. "Because the slugs are only meant to act as a 'something here' sort of warning. To actually mobilize the blockade fleet, someone needs to get actual eyes on the target. Something like what you're proposing would either be dismissed as a false positive or raise the alert across the line, but either way, no gaps would open as a result. Which brings us to the fleet itself…"

Drake trailed off as he stared at the freshly cloud-crafted ships, and then he looked back at Nami. "You noticed it too, did you?"

"Of course," Nami replied matter-of-factly. "I'm a navigator worth my salt, I'd have to be blind to not notice."

"Eh? The hell are you talking about?" Bartolomeo demanded, giving the table an incredulous look. "And why'd you only show half the ships and slugs?"

And indeed, he seemed to be right: the lines of both vessels and mollusks seemed to be half-formed, depicting a horseshoe-shaped formation around the archipelago, leaving half the archipelago defended but the other half conspicuously open.

"Because that's exactly how they're arranged," Drake explained slowly, as though talking to a child, but before Barto's hackles could truly get up, he shook his head dismissively. "And before you ask, no, we can't go through the opening. Do I really need to explain why?"

"You only wish everyone else in this room was as smart as you and I," Nami answered in a long-suffering tone.

Drake let out a quiet snort of agreement, which got more than a few bulging veins from the other Supernovas, but thankfully Nami continued before anyone could protest.

"What most of you seem to be missing," our navigator stated, a bit too slowly. "Is that the unprotected side of the island is the northwest approach."

That got reactions from more than a few of the Supernovas, though the more clueless ones remained… well, clueless.

"What's the big deal about where the hell the gap is?!" Barto impatiently demanded.

"The Red Line lies on that side of the ocean, dumbass," Bege sighed in resignation, Nami helpfully providing a visual in the form of a mountainous wall of cloud. "And atop it—"

"Mariejois…" I finished with a disgusted grimace. "In all its resplendent, unholy glory. And I'm guessing that the defenses are as impressive as the city itself is ostentatious?"

"Hole in one, Cross," Vivi piped up from the sidelines. "We wouldn't even need to be within sight of the Red Line itself, their mortars are so powerful. All they'd need to do is spot us… and then they'd simply bury us in a rain of hot lead we wouldn't even have a chance of defending ourselves against."

"Alright, alright, so the only way in is to go through," Urouge mused, his ever-present grin becoming slightly strained. "Through the pack of faithless privateers who are selling their souls for the freedom to wreak unmitigated havoc."

"Made all the worse by the fact that those very same privateers have Marines commanding their formation," Hawkins quietly interjected. "Ultimately, we can only choose how we clash with the Government. Either we put ourselves at the mercy of Mariejois' defenses and hope we don't get blown to pieces, or we endeavor to pierce the strength of the blockade they've erected," was the bland summation. "A blockade with a balanced mix of quality and quantity that guarantees that, even if they cannot truly best any of us, they can stall us out until someone who can shows up. Meaning that unless we have someone who can fight an admiral here—"

"There are some, actually," Law airily interrupted, drumming his fingers on his devil-sword's sheath. "Word around the island is that the proprietor of Oden's Cottage is one of Whitebeard's Division Commanders. I doubt he would say no if—"

"No way."

All eyes turned to Luffy, hitherto silent and now glowering at the center of the table. "We didn't come this far just to ask someone for help getting into the New World," he stated in a voice that brooked no argument. "If we can't get there ourselves, we don't deserve it."

…I honestly had to move my gauntlet over my gut to make sure that I hadn't actually been stabbed, because geeze, that one hurt. It was a good thing everyone's focus was more on Luffy… especially Bartolomeo, who was biting his lip with glowing, teary eyes. Thankfully, the rest of the Supernovas seemed to be nodding in agreement, so that made things easier for us.

"…so, if we're doing this on our own," Law began again. "Then what's the plan of action?"

"…Mmrgh…" Bege grumbled. "Although it almost literally sickens me to say it, I must unfortunately agree with Eustass on this matter—"

"Up yours, shortstack!"

"—in that the simplest and most direct approach is most likely the correct one. All of us together have more firepower at our disposal than most people see in their lifetimes. If we concentrate it all into a single point of assault, then we should be able to break through with relative ease."

"FUCK YEAH!" Kid roared. Half the bar promptly joined him, shaking the room with their will to rampage until Bege sharply cleared his throat.

"Except," he growled, angling his fedora down to shade his eyes. "For the fact that every. Single. Time an operation like this goes down, somebody is left holding the bag. And that's more accurate than ever in this case, seeing as if we want to get past that blockade, we'll want somebody to stay back and tie down the privateers and Marines like they'll try and tie us up. I'm guessing nobody here volunteers for the position."

That killed everyone's enthusiasm dead in its tracks, and Helheim lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, nobody willing to look at the others in the eye. I grimaced as I silently admitted that the mobster had a point, and I was just starting to wrack my brain for a solution…

"We're not the only ones heading to this Super Body place, right?"

Only to be preempted by the last person any of us had expected.

"Eh?" I blinked in surprise at Luffy and his curious head tilt. "I, uh, yeah? Saba—The Archipelago is the first stop on the only route pirates can take to reach the New World. However many pirates are here on Skelter Bite, it's only a fraction of everyone who wants to get past that blockade."

"Okay," Luffy nodded. "Sooo, if we need to have someone stay behind, then what about all the other pirates that want to go there?"

That snapped everyone's attention to Luffy. Most in shock, sure, but others with dawning realization.

"Wait-wait-waaaaait…" Bonney drew out, waving her hands incredulously. "Are you—Is he saying—?!"

"He's… actually right!" Valentine breathed. "Even if we, the Bartos and the Straw Hats, managed to land the 1% of Paradise's scum in Impel Down, that still leaves the unwashed masses of the 99%, those below Shiki's standards, out roaming the waters! Weak as heck, no doubt… but when a lot of garbage gets piled up in one place at the same time, it can raise a hell of a stink."

That split the reactions in the room down the middle: half were eagerly optimistic, with a savage undertone for the schadenfreude of leaving the worst of our profession to hang… but the other half remained tense and doubtful.

The head of these doubters was, of course, the ever-gloomy Bege. "And how, exactly, do you propose we assemble said 'garbage' in order to bring about said 'stink'?" he asked through a cloud of smoke.

"The little angry man is right," Urouge nodded, completely ignoring the look of murder said little man shot at him. "It's a perfect solution, true, but I doubt that we can just invite all of them to come together and fight for us, especially if they're just going to be scapegoats. We would need to motivate them somehow, give them a reason to charge at a line of Marines, heedless of their own lives."

Another tense moment of disappointment as everyone acknowledged the point made…

"…well, hell, guess it's up to me to save all of our skins. Again."

And another moment of utter shock as everyone's incredulous eyes turned to Kid of all people, who glanced at Shuraiya and then back at the rest of us.

"Any of you dumbasses ever heard of the Dead End Race?"

-o-

The details poured out from there, and a solid plan took form. Details regarding the rules and regulations (if they could called as much) about the event in question were divulged and elaborated upon, and issues about the prize, the ignition, and the one to be trusted with the prize money were presented and resolved. Of course, the third one required calling in a rather significant debt, as evidenced by the octopus fishman cowering before our resident Weather Witch.

"A-Anyway, if you don't mind and don't need me for anything else, I'm just going to get back to handing out takoyaki. Does anyone else need anything?"

All of us gathered Supernovas turned our eyes from Hachi, instead looking over each other. Just waiting for someone to raise another objection. God knows there'd been enough of those during this discussion. And with Bonney and Luffy looking ready to gnaw at the table, we could finally, finally bring this discussion to an—

"From you? Nothing. From everyone else, though, I'll take a second of your time."

"Neptune's hairy ballsack, what now?!" Drake of all pirates snapped as all eyes turned to the speaker, Apis, who looked remarkably unfazed by the entire Worst Generation glaring at her for interrupting. That Lindy's head, a smug, toothy grin set in the jaws, was pointedly hovering over her probably had something to do with the lack of anything pointed flying at her head… yet.

"This had better be good, brat," Kid growled. Well, some things never change.

"Let me preface anything else with the fact that I ate the Whisper-Whisper Fruit," Apis announced, meeting Kid's and every other Supernova's eyes. "What that means is that I can mentally communicate with any animal alive. Including ones that even Soundbite can't translate."

Before anyone could question her, a sonorous "CROAK!" sounded out, and conversation in the bar died yet again. Most everyone—the Supernovas included—got up and looked over the nearest edge into the abyss. But rather than the abyss, it was a titanic yellow frog Sea King staring up at us crouched on the floor, his bulbous eyes patiently blinking out of synch.

"Including Sea Kings, as we found out during a little…" She snapped a sidelong glare at her unrepentant and snot-picking captain. "Adventure in the Calm Belt some time back." She then shook her head and nodded her head back towards the edge. "And that's important because down there is the Elder Triton of the Abyssal Court, the closest thing the Sea Kings have to a governing body, who's here as an envoy of one of the Court's Grand Elders, Eternal Okeanos." She cocked an expectant eyebrow. "You all interested in what I—and specifically he—has to say now?"

There was a respectful silence from the assembled captains, up until Hawkins politely cleared his throat. "I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we are most interested in what the honorable Elder has to share," he stated patiently. It really said something that even Kid and Luffy nodded along to that.

Apis looked back down to Triton, and after a brief pause the frog let out another sonorous croak and nodded respectfully. The titanic amphibian then started gesturing with its webbed fingers alongside a series of shorter but no-less rib-rattling croaks.

The Whisper-Girl nodded along to whatever it was the Sea King was saying, and once it finished she addressed the Supernovas again. "Elder Triton thanks you for agreeing to hear him out, and says that his presence here today is to act as a messenger for Eternal Okeanos. And he bears his message here, specifically, because what he has to say is for the ears of any and all who fly the Jolly Roger."

If anyone wasn't interested before, then they were now practically hanging on every word.

"Holy shit," I muttered under my breath.

"Didn't see this coming?" Merry hissed up at me.

"Well…" I shrugged. "I've always known Sea Kings were smarter than they let on and that they had some kind of relation with humanity way back when, but I'm talking Void 'way back'. I expected they'd come into play someday, but…"

"That's a no, then…" Merry donned an ear-to-ear grin. "In-teresting!"

"And what would the Grand Elder's message be?" Drake spoke up.

Apis straightened herself as imperiously as she could… with Lindy looming behind her, of course. "The Abyssal Court is an ancient and proud body, so they, um…" Apis paused, frowning cutely in thought. "Uh, that's a lot of big words… they take a long time to make decisions. The last time they made a decision at all it took a century, give or take a decade. So you can guess what a big deal it is that they have decided, near unanimously, to rearrange their kind's priorities over the past several months."

The Whisper-girl raised her head and swept her gaze over the assembled pirates. "It has been decided, by the Abyssal Court, that the Abyssal Ones—or as we know them, the Sea King species— have more to gain from tolerating the existence of pirate ships upon the surface of their domain, rather than removing them for their transgressions."

There was a rather pregnant pause as that sunk in.

"…Pardon me, but I find that phrasing to be a bit vague. What does that mean, exactly, for us?" Urouge asked.

Apis looked over her shoulder, speaking slowly as though to make sure that she was delivering the correct message. "The Abyssal Ones will no longer attack pirate ships… just on a whim. They're, ah, not completely safe from attack, because some of the Abyssal Ones will still attack; some because they're hungry, some because you've intruded on their territory, some… just they're mean sons of belug—ah, bitches… but they're safer."

There was a murmur of conversation and a great many traded glances among the table. Then, Bonney said, around a mouthful of takoyaki, "Sure, we'll take it."

"Does this mean that we're expected to show the 'Abyssal Ones' the same courtesy?" Law asked carefully.

"Ah…" Apis looked to Triton and then back to Law. "They expect you—us, to leave the younger ones alone, but they never leave the Calm Belts until they can take care of themselves, so in general, best to keep staying out of there like usual." She then shook her head. "Ah, but adults, not really; the Abyssal Ones live by the laws of nature, 'survival of the fittest' and 'might makes right.' Lose a fight, you only have yourself to blame.

"And like I said, while most of the Abyssals will follow the new decree for pirates unless they have some personal reason to attack, there will still be some who want to prove their strength against…" She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder briefly for confirmation before continuing. "Ah… against 'the ones who defy the world.' So, yeah. Might still be some attacks, but, uh, if they attack and then decide to break off and run, I think you can just leave them be, they won't come back."

"So, basically, pirates now have the choice to live and let live with Sea Kings?" Apoo incredulously clarified.

"Basically?" Apis shrugged patiently. "Yeah."

"And I'm guessing they're not interested in telling us why they've decided such a thing?" Hawkins inquired.

Apis shrugging helplessly was punctuated by the flat and guttural "CR-OAK" that echoed throughout the shaft. "I get a bit of clout because I made a good impression on them and I'm the first non-Abyssal entity to speak with them in centuries, but that's still something they'll take to the deepest trenches, so no."

"Reason or not, I think that that's everything. So, if I can make one more suggestion?"

And with that, the attention came back to me. This time, I tugged the bandages off to show off my grin. "We've got an armistice with the ocean's greatest predators and we've got a plan to bust up that blockade. It'll take another few days before we can actually do it, but we've got it. Am I the only one who thinks that this calls for a celebration?"

One second of silence.

Two.

"PARTY!" Luffy, Barto, Apoo, and Bonney all threw their fists up and roared in synch.

Aaaand boom goes the bar, the entire place roaring into new and, as usual, pretty damn violent life as everyone somehow got their second winds. Bottles flew and booze flowed like water, but thankfully, apart from the 'casual' scuffle here or there, the bar didn't reignite into another brawl. Just… a pirate's version of a good time.

But honestly, I had had enough of that for one day, crazy though it seemed for me to say that; there was only one thing between me and relaxation, and with the sudden crescendo in atmosphere, I was given the prime opportunity to take advantage of it. I moved casually to the edge of the platform, and the nearby Damned watched me in their peripheral vision, Soundbite filtering the exchange that followed to them.

"Apis, I need a quick word with Triton."

The young pirate looked away from where Bartolomeo was grabbing chopsticks and cast a subtle glance over her shoulder into the abyss, wherein the titanic frog loosed a low, easily unnoticed warble. "He's listening."

"If the Sea Kings are allowing that truce for 'the ones who defy the world,' then they should know that we have allies within 'the world' itself, acting to undermine them. We could use a way to extend the same protection they're giving us, to them."

Tashigi stepped up next to me, casting a wary glance down at the frog. "Speaking as one of those allies, I very much agree to wanting a way to keep Sea Kings off our back that doesn't include firing a full salvo, thank you very much."

I was treated to the wonderfully sanity-defying sight of a giga-frog heaving a sigh as it rubbed its head. "'Humans and their politics, always giving me such headaches. And that's after what that squishy one did to me.' That's what he said."

I hastily hid a cough in my fist before hastily locking that train of thought away to rot, where it couldn't get me smushed.

"Anyway, he also says that's doable. If you give him a password, he'll pass it on to Okeanos who'll pass it on to the rest of the Court," Apis continued unbothered. "Do you have anything memorable that comes to mind?"

The second the words 'memorable' and 'Sea King' processed through my brain, something immediately came to mind. "III've got something that should stick in their minds, yeah," I hedged, making doubly sure that my bandages were covering my mouth. I then hissed out two words as low as I could manage, trusting that Soundbite would maintain the secrecy.

"Joy Boy."

Tashigi didn't have the chance to even begin questioning my choice; the instant the second syllable was out of my mouth Triton's eyes bulged and snapped up to stare at me with the same expression Nami had when she found out about those two, and Apis snapped a hand to her head and damn near keeled over. "GAH! What the heck did you just say, Cross?! And whatever you have to say, say it fast because he's seconds away from swallowing you whole!"

"I don't know the details of the promise he made her," I hastily hissed, keeping my gaze firmly locked on Triton's eyes. "All I know is that he made one, that it involves Noah in some way, and that you have remained faithful to it all these years, in spite of the new world that has risen up. Anything else still rests with you and yours. Nobody else can discover his name the way that I did, and nobody unworthy of your trust will learn it from us. To our allies, they will just be words of salvation and nothing more. You have my oath."

We stared at each other for what felt like several eternities on end, the tension ratcheting up with every passing second, neither I, the puny human, or he, the titanic, ship-eating sea monster, giving the other an inch.

And then finally… Triton snapped his head down and started crawling away, determination set in his every movement.

"'I'll have all of this back to the Court by the end of the day'," Apis translated breathlessly, staring at Triton's retreating back with no small amount of trepidation. "'Your allies will be given our favor as well, just—" Apis choked mid-sentence, and had to audibly swallow before continuing. "—j-just know that should he ever suspect you spread his name frivolously… t-the Eternal Okeanos will… reduce you to so much chum.'"

That drew an uncertain grimace from me. "Riiiight, acknowledged… for the record, what would this 'Okeanos' look like exactly?"

"Black and white stripes."

Now that got me tugging fearfully at my collar. "Ah. The… biggest one I have ever seen in my entire life, who looks like he could and has eaten small islands. Right. We'll, ah…" I coughed into my fist. "We'll be discreet."

"Yeah, you do that," Apis sighed, not even looking up as she climbed onto Lindwyrm's back. "Meanwhile, I'm going to find the strongest thing I can drink without shutting down a kidney in an effort to erase the last few minutes from my memory. While you…" She waved her hand in dismissive surrender. "Well, frankly, until it affects me, I don't care what you do."

"Enjoy~!" Soundbite sang as a way of farewell.

And with that, while she moved to the bar, I began making my way out of Helheim—because Chaos knows that I'd had more than enough madness for the day; case in point, Brook walking past as he pulled Gif out of his skull—along with the half-dozen others on the crew that I think were looking for relaxation over revelry.

Also, well… better to get started on this planning sooner rather than later, right?

"So, everyone had fun?" I asked conversationally, my arms folded behind my head.

"Ohh, yes. I made out like a bandit," Nami hummed with a thoroughly satisfied voice and expression as she fell into step alongside me, looking every bit like a cat who'd sunk her fangs into a juicy canary, which was underlined by the way she kept flipping and snatching a doubloon with one hand.

Soundbite, however, was notably underwhelmed, judging from the dismissive glance he gave the doubloon. "BANDIT MY ASS, the only new money you've got on you IS THAT BERI!"

"Mmhm, you're ri~i~ght" the Weather Witch hummed in agreement, her grin widening visibly as she started dancing the coin through her fingers. "All I managed to get was a single beri."

She then turned her head and stared straight at Bege, catching the coin between her two fingers with a massive smile. "Just one. Measly. Spare. Beri." And then her hand flickered and the coin was just flat-out gone.

Bege blinked at Nami… before throwing his head back and outright roaring with laughter, going so far as to tip his hat to Nami in a gesture of what I could only interpret as a gesture of outright deference.

"…you just got us the eternal friendship of the Firetanks, didn't you?" I summarized incredulously.

"Eh," Nami shrugged in a faux-casual manner, her arms folded behind her back as she walked with just a little more swing to her hips. "At minimum, I got the eternal respect of their boss." She shot me an impish grin. "I do good?"

"Dahlin'," I drawled, slinging my arm around her shoulders as I led us out. "You did beautiful."

-o-

It was hard to say if the results of that meeting made things more or less active around Skelter Bite. On the one hand, having a possible way to get to Sabaody, and soon, helped everyone enjoy their forced shore leave a little more, because they now knew it would (with any luck) only be a matter of a few more days.

On the other, with Coo and his flock combing everywhere in a hundred-mile radius for pirate ships, invitations loaded in their saddlebags, Skelter Bite was experiencing a vast influx of clientele, much of which wasn't the kind of pirate we particularly wanted to be with. Lola had taken to spending much of the days at the docks to ensure that anyone who had ill intentions stayed on their ships, and she rarely needed help to keep the thugs in line, either. Hell, some of them didn't even get the chance to reach the docks, the Triangle turning them away outright at its borders.

Well, anyway, if there was one thing that was certain about recent events, it was this: this was going to be a race to remember. And half of the time that I had was spent making sure of that fact, putting in my expertise for all parts of the planning. The main listeners on my part were our resident passenger-capable birds—Chuchun and Billy—and the Dugongs, both those on our crew and off it; collectively, they would allow us a view of the blockade from every possible frontal angle. And the plans had already begun to take shape with a few scouting trips here and there.

And the other half? Well… quite honestly, I could fill a book or two with all of the happenings on Skelter Bite, and I wouldn't even have to remember all of them; with the outrageous and the mundane interchangeable, anyone could conceivably make up a ridiculous story of the happenings there and even people who'd been on the island would believe it in a heartbeat. But none of what happened or what I imagined happening compared to the main event, so I'll just give a few highlights for the week in-between.

Though, to be sure, it's not as if all that happened during this time was entirely alien…

-o-

SIX DAYS TILL START

The day's surprisingly calm lunch break found my partners and I seated across from our shanghaied cabin girl, at her own request. Or, well, 'partner', at least; Funkfreed was the only one with me, Lassoo and Soundbite hanging out with Pappug, for some reason they didn't deem share-worthy, a few blocks away. No idea why, but meh, Funkfreed's presence was all Tashigi cared about and so it was all I cared about.

And really, I should have expected this meeting; Tashigi was obsessed with swords, and now she had the unique opportunity to speak to one. Funkfreed may not have been legendary—to both their chagrins—but he still possessed the instincts and experience to answer any questions she had.

And the 'spar' (read: daily deathmatch) between Zoro and Sanji in the background was nice ambiance. It helped me try and ignore Tashigi's sparkling, fangirl expression.

I'm serious. I could see the sparkles around her and reflected in her eyes. Freaky as hell, it was.

"Alright, I'm ready!" the Marine declared.

"Er, just so you know…" Funkfreed awkwardly said, trunk rubbing the back of his head. "I may be part elephant, but the part of me that's a sword is also the part that handles reproductive instincts, and—"

"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!" Taking a deep breath, Tashigi recomposed herself, thankfully minus the sparkles. "I just… I think that it's such a shame that works of art are being used for petty violence. The 50 Skilled Swords, the 21 Great Swords, and the 12 Supreme Swords! They're things of beauty twisted into instruments of destruction. A sword should only be raised to keep the peace! Instead, they're used to perpetuate the cycle of violence that—!"

THWACK!

I flinched at the sound of flesh hitting flesh, but much to my surprise—and Funkfreed's, from the stiff, unnatural positioning of his trunk—it wasn't my pachyderm-sword that had cut off Tashigi's rant, but Tashigi herself, who'd just slammed one fist onto the other, which had been slowly clenching up on the table as her rant had gained steam.

She stayed frozen in that position for about half a minute, her teeth grinding together. Slowly, she forcibly relaxed herself and heaved a weary sigh before turning a determined look on Funkfreed.

"I… apologize for that," she sighed out, bringing her hand up to press against her temples. "I… I know that I was going somewhere wrong, saying what I shouldn't have. Those words, that… philosophy, was born from a black-and-white worldview, an ironclad belief that because we… because I was a Marine, what I believed was 'just'. That because they were pirates and I was a Marine, I had a duty, a… a right to take their swords because I didn't approve of how they were using them. A belief that I now realize is… completely divorced from reality, or at least any sense of honor or decency.

"I'm still going to seek out the named Swords," she continued. "That hasn't changed. But. I will judge their wielders based on their actions and their intents before I judge them by their flags. And when I take their blades, it won't be because I was right 'on principle', but because I was right because I won. And if they should win, well…" Her hand drifted down to rub her thumb on Shigure's guard. "I guess I won't have much reason to complain then, will I?"

We all lapsed into a moment of respectful silence (apart from the clash of Zoro's steel and Sanji's leather) as we processed Tashigi's words and her newfound—or perhaps, newly reforged?—determination.

Ultimately, it was Funkfreed who broke the silence, raising his trunk to his forehead with a chuckle. "Well, I'll be honest with you: I'm really impressed. I wasn't all that pleased when Cross told me about your original philosophy, especially because of my personal perspective… but this? This I can agree with. And I sincerely believe that any blade you manage to win? They'll be lucky to be in the hands of someone as dedicated as you."

The praise drew a gleeful grin from Tashigi, which swiftly evolved into a look of outright elation as she beamed eagerly at Funkfreed. "You mean like how Cross claimed you from Spandam after beating him down? I-I-I realize that that wasn't a swordfight, but then neither Cross nor Spandam were or are good swordsmen—"

"True on both counts, I can attest to that," Funkfreed nodded sagely.

"Wow, nicely done, direct hit. Want me to sharpen you before the next time you stab me in the back?" I deadpanned.

"—so does that mean that you accepted the defeat and Cross's right to wield you because neither of them was a sword-wielder? And how do swords in general interpret it when an actual swordsman is defeated by someone who's not one? Oh, oh, and also, most blade oils aren't that far off in quality, when you get down to it, but that's on the user end. How do they feel to the sword? And, and—!"

I rolled my eyes and looked away with a chuckle as Tashigi started to build herself a nice head of steam, Funkfreed himself—an entity who easily outweighed a full ten times over no less—leaning away from her with a sheepish grin. In the end, no matter how much I loved tormenting the ditzy swordswoman, she was still a valued friend and colleague, so it was nice to see her so eager and animated.

Whoosh…

"And speaking of ditzes…" I mused to myself, turning my attention to the seat next to me, where Vivi had just breezed(heh) in, and was watching the show of Zoro and Sanji's ongoing bra—spar, it was a spar, they'd been very insistent on that—with a thoughtful frown on her face.

Well, hell, Opportunity, you don't need to knock that hard on my door!

"Hoping for another sighting of beefcake, your highness?" I teased.

Vivi snapped up straight in her seat as her face went red, wind whistling out of her ears. "N-No! I mean, yes, I mean, that'd be nice, but that's not what I'm watching for!" Fanning herself, the princess managed to get herself mostly under control… though the blush still remained. "I was just noticing—and I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier—that those two are incredibly Kismet for each other."

"Ooookay, I've got nothing," I admitted, before blanching as a thought most horrific occurred to me. "Oh, for the love of all things holy, don't tell me you've joined the ranks of the shippers!"

"Wha—oh, Set no, nonono, never!" Vivi vehemently denied, her face the picture of indignation before turning thoughtful!? "Well, I mean, there was that thing with the olive oil, and logically two is better than—"

"Define the word so that I know whether to knock some sense into you or run!" I hissed frantically.

"R-Right, right," Vivi winced, coughing into her fist self-consciously. At least, that was what I could hear clearly. I dearly hope I simply misheard whatever it was she said under her breath, because otherwise, Kohza was in for a very… subjective wedding night.

"Aheh, ah, anyway, no, i-it's not anything loving at all. The… exact opposite really. It, uh… doesn't have a direct equivalent in this language, but a good approximation is 'destined loathing'. Though, ah…" She tapped a finger to her chin thoughtfully. "I think I remember Chaka calling it something like 'two souls determined to hatefuck each other in the personality'."

I actually needed a moment to pause and process that. "Really now," I mused, quirking an inquisitive eyebrow as I looked the clashing pair over. "'Hatefucking each other in the personality'…well, I can certainly see it…" I paused as my eye passed over a lonely bowl sitting on the table, and with nary a moment's hesitation I threw up my hands with a barely restrained grin. "But really, guys? In public? Right in front of my salad?"

"My salad," Tashigi snarled out of the blue, snapping right out of her conversation to grab the bowl and hug it close.

Huh, I hadn't even noticed what she'd ordered… well, if she was going to make it this easy for me—Plastering a smile on my face, I started reaching across the table. "Now Tashigi, I prefer to think of it as our sala—!"

THUNK!

"AGH, BITCH!" I howled as I scrabbled at the knife that had just nailed my hand to the table!

"HAHAHAHAHEEHEEHEEHOOHOOHOO!" Soundbite howled from out of nowhere.

"ROT IN HELL, YOU LITTLE SLIMESTAIN!"

"Wow, two at once," Vivi breathed, her hands covering her mouth as she stared at us with eyes glittering. "Truly this crew is blessed by fate."

"Yup," Funkfreed agreed as he nosed lettuce fronds into his mouth.

"WE'RE ALSO BLESSED WITH A WORLD-CLASS DOCTOR, SO SOMEONE CALL THE FURRY BASTARD ALREADY!"

"Oh, yeah, come to think of it, where did he go?" Funkfreed wondered—THWACK! "GWAH!?"—right before Tashigi uppercut him in the jaw with Shigure's hilt as he went for another mouthful of green.

"NOSE OFF THE SALAD, OR I'M GONNA TURN YOU INTO PIANO KEYS!" the undercover Marine erupted. "I HAVEN'T HAD LEAFY GREENS IN THREE WEEKS, I'M NOT LETTING THIS CHANCE GO!"

"SOMEONE PULL OUT THIS DAMN KNIFE ALREADY!"

"HOOHOOHOOheeheeheeHAHAHAHAHA!"

"AND I REPEAT, WHERE THE HELL IS CHOPPER?!"

-o-

Chopper's ears flicked, and he glanced up from his notepad. "Did you hear something?" he wondered.

"Sss-sss-ss!" hissed the large anaconda draped over the examination table he'd commandeered from a local clinic in exchange for a day's work, pinning the diminutive doctor with a gimlet eye as she waved the tip of her tail at her head.

"Oh, right. Sorry, you can change back now."

With as close to a sigh of relief as was physically possible, the snake shifted and morphed back into Sandersonia, squirming in place. "Whew, that's better," she muttered, rolling her arms and other joints. "Don't go full animal very often, it always feels weird to lose and regrow limbs."

"Meanwhile, I've never had any issues with shifting between ungulate and plantigrade anatomy… maybe just because I had more practice growing up? Either way, still interesting," Chopper noted, out loud and on paper. "Alright, and that concludes the physical examination. Now for the rest of the tests." With that, the little doctor ambled over to his knapsack and began rummaging through it.

"Yeah, should've figured there'd be more tests," Sandersonia groused, digging her finger into her newly re-grown ear. "And just what are those other tests, by the way?"

"Now I'm going to be using instruments. Some hard numbers to back up the observations." Straightening, Chopper turned around and revealed a blood-pressure cuff and two sizeable beakers balanced in his hooves. "For starters, I'm going to be taking your blood pressure, and then I'm need you to fill these up."

Sandersonia's eyes widened, and she pressed her legs a little tighter together. "With what? And, which I really should have asked sooner, why?" she asked in a strangled voice.

A grin spread over Chopper's face, and the Kuja Pirate's stomach dropped even further. She'd listened to the SBS, so she recognized what it meant when Chopper's eyes literally lit up with scientific glee. "You're doing what I'm telling you to because the data I have been collecting from all across this cobbled-together floating asylum has been pushing me closer and closer to a breakthrough, strand by scale by mucus, and you and your data points are the last pieces of data I require to solidify the theory I've been working on for months. And that will allow me to finally write and publish my treatise on the Psychoreactive Polymorphic Properties of Zoan Devil Fruits and the self-imposed limitations thereof!"

Before the Amazon could reach for the nearest heavy object, however, the spark went out of Chopper's eyes and he switched to his usual gleeful wiggling. "Oooh, it's going to be so great! The first paper of its kind, ever! I'll revolutionize the entire field! The entire paradigm, eeheeheehee!"

Sandersonia blinked in surprise at the abrupt turnaround, and slowly straightened back up to give the young doctor a curious look. "Could you… explain that for me, please? I don't quite understand what you're getting at."

Chopper paused mid-intellectual ecstasy and hastily re-composed himself, putting his tools aside to give the senior pirate his full attention. "It's, ah, kind of complicated… well, let's start with the basic principles and work our way up. Zoans: what do you know about the 'rules' of our fruits?"

"Uh…" Sandersonia tilted her head curiously. "It's… pretty obvious, isn't it? Besides the usual 'avoid the sea' stuff, Zoans have three forms they can take, animal, demi-animal and hu—er, original, right?"

Chopper cocked his eyebrow. "Is that so?" Without waiting for a response, he took a Rumble Ball from his bag, crunched it up, and shifted rapidly through the four forms it gave him: Arm, Guard, Horn, and then ending with Jumping. "But I'm capable of seven forms. So what does that tell you?"

"…that rules don't apply to the Straw Hats?" Sandersonia tried with a sheepish grin. Said grin melted clean off her face at the distinctly unimpressed look the re-Brain'd reindeer gave her. "But, uh, seriously, you do need chemicals to use those other forms, don't you?"

"And I needed them to achieve my higher mental faculties as well, yes…" Chopper nodded in admission. "But the fact that I am capable of these things at all implies that, at minimum, there is more to Zoans than modern science is aware of. And this fact is supported by the data and observations I've been gathering from all different sorts of Zoans recently."

"Data and observations such as…" the amazon rolled her hand inquisitively.

"Well, among others," Chopper began, flipping back through his notebook. "There's X Drake's distinctly saurian snarling, which the vocal cords and thoracic cavity of a human shouldn't be capable of. The falcon and jackal Zoans we met in Alabasta preen and clean themselves regularly, even in their human forms. Merry almost always acts like a child even though, if we go back to when her blueprints were drawn up, she's technically over twenty years old, combined with her eating habits somehow not wrecking her digestive tract. And that's a trait Lassoo and Funkfreed share; they like to snack on gunpowder and polish, respectively. I haven't even mentioned me yet; my Devil Fruit gave me human intelligence, and I never would have realized any of this if I hadn't realized that first."

He then flipped his book closed and pointed at Sandersonia. "And then we have you, with your foot-long tongue."

Sandersonia blinked in surprise, crossing her eyes to look down at the suddenly frozen tongue in question. "Guhhh…?"

"And then there's this."

"Wha—?" Sandersonia looked back at Chopper—Tunk! "HSSS!"—and promptly reeled away from him with an almost snarling hiss when the reindeer pegged her in the forehead with an ice cube of all things. "WHAT THE HELL, YOU LITTLE FURBALL!? I HATE THE COLD—!"

"—and you prefer it when it's warm, right? And your sister Marigold shares these preferences?"

"YE—ah… y-yes, actually, that's right. How did you—?"

"I deduced as much because your Zoans are reptilian, and thus ectothermic. That is to say, you're cold-blooded." As understanding bloomed across her face, he flipped to a blank page. "Now… when did you notice that your tongue remained serpentine even in human form?"

Sandersonia slowly bowed her head, her hands moving to grip her forearms as a different kind of chill settled across her. "It was… back when we were-were running. We got into the habit of using our hybrid forms to smell out enemies. Mmph…those days blur together, but at some point we realized we could still smell them without changing. We also noticed our tongues, but at that point we really couldn't bring ourselves to care."

Chopper buried a grimace at her reaction, and patted her knee. "Due to the stress you were undergoing, your mind blurred the boundaries between you and the snake. And because of that blurring, you're can bring out an aspect of the fruit's power without even thinking about it. Even when you thought it was impossible." His spine straightened, his gaze then flashing analytically. "Would you happen to recall any other elements of you and your sister's abilities that you considered inconsequential up until now?"

"Ah… well…" Sandersonia's tongue flicked nervously, and she sucked it back in. "There… is one thing, but I never…"

Chopper cracked a kind grin at her. "This is science, Sandersonia. There's no such… or at least, there are very few cases of inconsequential data."

The Amazon nodded her head at that, and so closed her eyes in concentration. And right before Chopper's amazed gaze, the amazon shrank in size. It was similar to a Zoan transition, but rather than redonning her verdant scales, Sandersonia remained fully human, save for the fact that she was now in possession of a normal, human stature. A seven-foot tall stature, perhaps, but still within the normal range.

"We… needed to hide a lot while we were running, and being big wasn't particularly helpful," Sandersonia explained with a slight grimace, examining her shrunken hands with equal parts uncertainty and newfound interest. "Night after night, we noticed it was easier for all of us to curl up together. Marigold and I never really thought it was that useful because, well, what good is it to a warrior to become smaller, but if this helps—?"

She stopped speaking then, because the spark in Chopper's eyes had returned, much brighter than before. His hooves were a blur, pen filling page after page.

"Just to confirm," the scientist muttered, almost absentmindedly. "Your primary size, was that—?"

"It's natural," Sandersonia clarified as she reverted to said size. "I've always been this big, we've always assumed that my father had giant's blood somewhere in his ancestry."

"Mmrgh," the reindeer scowled slightly as he flipped back and scratched a few things out. "Which means that you're likely simply transposing your animal state's size onto your human frame. Still interesting, but not quite what I was hoping for…" That done, he resumed filling out new pages. "But, nevertheless, this kind of transformation, combined with your demi-form's measurements, does lend credence to my theory…"

By now more than a little invested in the conversation, Sandersonia leaned forwards curiously. "Finally! What is this illustrious, revolutionary theory, exactly?"

The gleam in Chopper's eyes became almost dangerous. "Carnivorous Zoans, what do you know of them?"

"Vicious sons of bitches, both in the fur and out of it, pretty damn strong to boot," the serpent Zoan answered promptly, even proudly, though it was tinged with annoyance. "I mean, I should know, Marigold and I are Carnivores."

"Then you know that one other aspect of Carnivores is that you're always titanic," Chopper concurred, nodding fervently. "Their demi-forms—your demi-formsare always exponentially larger than either of your other two forms. A trend that is absent in all other breeds of Zoans, I might add! Up until now, it's been accepted that such a size simply is because 'that's the way things are'…"

He met Sandersonia's gaze with unmitigated glee. "But if my theory is correct, then the surge of instincts and adrenaline that Carnivores acquire from their animal selves, combined with their human mentalities, results in the mass-surge! This could mean that Carnivores could actually be capable of repressing their adrenaline and compressing themselves into far more humanoid states—a feat I have already heard of, no less—or that with the right mentality, non-Carnivores could actually be capable of taking on such frames for themselves! The possibilities are as limitless as they are fascinating!"

"So what's your theory? Get on with it!" Sandersonia hissed eagerly, by now quite literally on the edge of her seat.

Chopper matched her oversized grin tooth for tooth. "Boa Sandersonia, the drug you saw me take a few minutes ago that unlocked my other forms is an invention that I have made great usage of from the time I met the Straw Hat Pirates. It has helped me reach heights of my abilities that I never considered before. My theory…is that from the very beginning, it has been nothing more than a placebo. That-that-that from the very moment I ate my fruit, I was fully capable of achieving every one of my forms and more… and that the same holds true for every Zoan alive!"

The human-reindeer flung his arms out wide with a gleeful cackle. "Think about it, Sandersonia! What if! What if nothing about Zoans comes down to the fruits themselves, but the minds of their wielders! What if every Zoan in existence were capable of using their abilities in ways they never dared imagine, simply because up until then they'd thought those abilities to be unimaginable! The transformation of individual limbs, the manipulation of size in unprecedented manners! Transmogrification! Hybridization! Evolution, from the most constrained of the Devil Fruits to being as flexible as the mightiest and most creative of Paramecia!"

Sandersonia reeled back in her spot, awe written across her features. "That… if you manage to get even a fraction of that out to even a dozen Zoans… y-you could change the world!" The next moment found her sitting back up straight, her expression dimming. "Maybe too much… I mean, Kaidou's Beast Pirates alone are almost exclusively Zoans. And the number of other pirates with them, and Marines… Cross unleashes pandemonium on a regular basis, and if you published this paper of yours… you'll be setting loose an entirely new breed, all of your own making. Are-Are you sure you want to do that?"

Chopper's expression sobered as well, and Sonia almost wished that it hadn't. The human-reindeer's blazed with a quiet, subtle fury. "…I know that some people will abuse this knowledge. All knowledge has been perverted in some way or another throughout the course of history, and I'm not so naïve as to believe that my discovery would be any different. But at the same time, there will always be people who use it for good, too. And if my work can help one person, even just once, in even the slightest way, then this…" He slapped his hoof to the paper. "Will all have been worth it. So yes, Boa Sandersonia, I'm sure and certain. I intend to follow in my crew's footsteps, in my fellow Demons' footsteps, and rock the world something fierce."

Chopper's determined expression then fell flat as he jerked his head at the nearly-forgotten beakers he'd set down. "But I need more data before I can make anything solid out of this, which means that I need to run more tests. So, are you willing to keep going, or do I need to try finding someone else?"

Sandersonia's confidence faltered heavily, and she eyed the glassware warily. "This, ah… will be painless, yes?"

The way the doctor's eyes lit up did absolutely nothing to reassure her. "Oh yes, rest assured, you won't feel a thing," Chopper intoned. "Trust me. I'm a doctor."

"You do realize that's exactly why I don't trust you, right?!"

-o-

FOUR DAYS TILL START

"Jeremi-ya, I realize that this is almost certainly a ridiculous question, but… when are you going to stop giving your allies incentive to seriously injure you?"

"Well, since we're allies and—nnh—all, maybe I could convince you to—gnn—to perform that immortality surgery on me so at least I don't—MOTHERFUCK!"

"Sorry, hand slipped," Law stated, not sounding sorry in the least. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you know about that, too."

Silence, for a moment, as Law continued to work. "So, is that a yes or—?" I prompted.

The look Law gave me could have peeled paint. "There is only one person who I respect enough to do that operation for, and he died eleven years ago. No."

Pumping my free hand, I loosed a cry of defeat. "CURSES! Once more the secret to eternal youth has eluded me!"

Law's demeanor went from caustic to deadpan in two seconds flat. "…you only asked me that so you could have an excuse to say that, didn't you?"

"Number 6 on my List Of Things I Want To Say At Least Once In The Right Context™! Seemed like the best opportunity I'd ever get," I chuckled, shamelessly flashing him a V-sign.

That earned me yet another jab in my newly repaired nerves, though since I saw it coming this time I could get away with just gritting my teeth.

All things considered, maybe I would have been better off just keeping my mouth shut, but I had realized a while back that training over the next two years was going to be a complete nightmare with Chopper nowhere nearby and the nerves in my arms still damaged by Eneru's lightning torture… man, that was months ago, wasn't it?

Anyway, along with the gaping hole in my hand (and to think I had been entertaining the idea of letting up on the Marine's poor, fragile nerves. Fat chance now!), I had requested that Law fix the nerves, which was why he was currently restoring damaged connections and… kinda restoring the skin. Law'd told me at the start that he could have made my arms good as new—or even have given me brand-new ones—but I asked him to restrict himself to the barest minimum he could manage instead. Honestly, I didn't mind how gnarly my limbs looked, I even enjoyed the reactions I could get out of people at times; my only real problem was needing to keep them numbed and covered so they didn't feel like they were on fire. And just the nerve work Law was currently performing would cover that nicely.

…right now, though, it just hurt like the dickens. Dulled or not, getting the old nerves worked on hurt, and the rebuilt ones itched like mad. My legs and right arm, at least, were done and so had gotten some sort of cream that soothed it. My left? No such luck.

"So," Law dryly stated as he kept at it, fiddling around in my arm with way too much casual levity for my comfort. "Any other truth bombs you want to drop on me?"

I bit my lip for an entirely new reason. There were a couple… but at least one of them was liable to get Law to try and kill me. I glanced at my arm; then again, he was almost done. Welp, in for a beri and all that.

"Two things," I said, pointedly ignoring the weary sigh that drew from the doctor. "First… Bonney. Keep an eye on her, and if you can, try to be in a position to help her. I don't know much about her backstory, I don't know much for anyone else except for you, really… and Drake, I guess… but she's important. Somehow. Every Supernova must be, it's the only reason I'd know about them, I just know they are. But her more so, and more immediately. Particularly because there's a good chance she's going to run into Blackbeard and Akainu back-to-back… soon. Ish. And when Akainu specifically says that the World Government is in a panic over someone not being where they want them to be, then you'd better believe that's someone I very much want to keep out of their hands. Capiche?"

"How delightfully vague," Law drawled. "And the other."

I… honestly considered whether or not to pull a bait, switch, and abscond on him. Would have been funny, but the idea died as swiftly as it was born. Doing something like that would be potentially lethal and, more importantly, disgraceful to Corazon's memory. I took the time to make doubly sure nobody was nearby before speaking again.

"…Even with my knowledge, I can't claim to have known Donquixote Rocinante as well as you did, Law," I said slowly and deliberately, pausing for a few seconds as I waited for the 'good' doctor to get the flinch in his wrist under control. "But. There's one person left in the world who can. I mentioned before that when Doflamingo killed his father, Rocinante was shattered until he was found by a group of Marines, and joined them because their commander took him under his wing. What I glossed over was that that commander became a new father to Rocinante. Which makes him… the closest thing to a grandfather you have."

I tentatively glanced at Law, finding some comfort in the fact that his expression was only neutral. "I had already planned on recruiting him into the Masons farther down the line. But you're the only one who has any right to use that relationship as leverage. I'm not asking you to, of course!" I hastily amended as the corner of Law's jaw twitched into a subtle scowl. "That's a last resort, nothing more. I'm only telling you this because you have the right to know."

The way Law rolled his eyes was not subtle. "You've made your point on how scared of me you are, Jeremi-ya. Look, in case you've forgotten, I'm pretty numb; there's nothing you can say that would piss me enough to hurt you. So spill, who are you talking about?" he asked impatiently.

"…Sengoku."

Law deliberately snapped his hands away from my arm and slapped his scalpel flat against the table, eyes slightly glazed as he stared at nothing. "Addendum," he ground out slowly.

"Yeeeaaah…" I nodded slowly in agreement, scratching my jaw uncomfortably. Thankfully, however, after a few minutes' thought he took a deep, patient breath and resumed his usual, relatively dispassionate demeanor.

He then got back to work, and in a few short, silent minutes, he finished. Law pulled away, his Room falling the next moment. I began applying cream to my arm as he spoke again.

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"…How many spy thrillers have you read or do you think I've read?" I muttered, but I didn't give him time to take my head off and start using it as a kickball. "Some others in Marineford may know about it, but they'd be old guard who either would have known Rocinante themselves or who were confidants of Sengoku. Apart from them, the only ones who have heard it from me are Smoker, Tashigi, Nami, and Merry… oh, and Robin. It came up after Enies, and I told them not to spread it around."

Law remained quiet for another minute before letting out a quiet sigh. "I'm honestly not sure how to feel about this," he said at last.

"Well, you've got a couple of years to work it out; I seriously doubt that Sengoku will be open enough to talking about Corazon until he's finally avenged."

Law exhaled at that, sounding honestly relieved at the idea. Then he flicked his arm and closed up my limb with… an honestly almost insulting amount of ease. Seriously, I'd like to imagine it would take at least some amount of effort to fix up an injury that could be defined as 'crippling at best'. Still though… I couldn't help but smile gratefully as I flexed my fingers, moving the limb more freely than I ever had in, well, a long time.

"Seriously, Law, thanks for helping me," I said fervently.

"Mmm… I'd say 'don't make a habit out of it', but we both know there's not a chance of that. Just acknowledge that the next time I have to fix this much damage, it'll come with a price tag," he responded, packing away what few tools he'd needed. "Now, if we're done here, I'm going to get away from you as fast as I can so I can avoid getting dragged into your nonsense."

CRASH!

"Damn, too late."

"Hey, Brook," I said casually, not at all perturbed by the fact that my crewmate had just come crashing through the wall with a footprint on his back. "You do realize that one of these days, you're going to provoke someone in such a way that you'll be lucky to come out of it alive, right?"

"Too late by fifty years, Cross!" Brook chortled as he popped himself up, casually dusting himself off. "After all, I'm already dead! YOHOHOHO, SKULL JOKE!"

"What possible circumstance would allow you to say that to anyone, Jeremi-ya?" Law added, completely deadpan.

"The fact that I don't blatantly ask women to show me their underwear."

Law's eye twitched.

"Mmhm," I nodded in agreement. "Still, speaking of which, who'd you piss off this time, old man?"

"Oh, that delightful redhead who recently joined Bartolomeo's crew! His new co-first mate, I believe?" the skeleton chuckled as he re-adjusted his jaw. "Very feisty, she'll go far!"

"Clearly," Law scoffed, giving the both of us exasperated looks. "Well, at least this isn't too crazy by your crew's standards."

Heh, he could say that aga—

"Oh, now I wouldn't say that."

Wait, what?… why was Brook looming over me? Why did his brows look like they were frowning? Why was I seeing a ghostly aura spring up around him?

"You see, Cross, we have a conflict, you and I," Brook stated, starting to pace back and forth. "We are both wielders of a single sword, where Zoro wields three and Leo wields two. All well and good… except for one thing."

Aaaaand back to the looming.

"There can be only one, true master of the One-Sword Style upon our ship."

And just like that, he was all smiles again. So to speak.

"As such, I now officially challenge you, Jeremiah 'Voice of Anarchy' Cross, to a sword duel to determine who is truly the one-sword master on the crew! We meet at noon with swords drawn!" He maintained his proud demeanor for a few seconds before his head suddenly snapped to the side, a very familiar gleam in his eye sockets. "Oooh, is that white lace I detect thattaway?" Before I could do literally anything, he was back in the hole he'd made, one leg outside. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, talk to Usopp, he's arranging the bout! Wait for me, my silky darliiiings!"

Aaaand like that he was off.

"… is it too late to get you to put me into a medically induced coma for the rest of the week?" I weakly asked Law. "Or him, for that matter?"

"Sorry, Jeremi-ya," Law sneered, leaning back in his seat with a grin of utter doom. "But while I could do that… I just think this will be more fun to watch."

"Greeeaaat…" I groaned, thunking my head against the table in despair.

-o-

Meanwhile, several blocks away by now, Jewelry Bonney stalked down the streets, eyes narrowed and lips pursed in thought at what she had overheard.

He didn't know. Jeremiah Cross, the man who'd earned one of the biggest bounties in the world solely due to knowing a bunch of things he shouldn't while being completely willing to blare them to the world, didn't know about her, or even most of the other Supernovas for that matter!

Well. He didn't know the important things. He'd have mentioned her association with Kuma, if he'd known, or her ability to get into Mariejois at will. Hmm. Now that she thought about it, she was near the Red Line, maybe she could nip up there for a week and sneak out a cask of that excellent Century Soup they kept stockpiled, and maybe some of the Jewel Me—

Bonney shook her head. No, that wasn't important. What was important was that she was an enigma to Jeremiah fucking Cross—and that, apparently, she was cruising for a showdown with Akainu. And some dude named Blackbeard, but who cared about some nobody she'd never heard of? Regardless, an encounter with an Admiral, that Admiral in particular, was the last thing she wanted.

And there was an out just sitting there, about to be maimed by his own crewmate. Cross had knowledge, and allies; she had leverage. Information he didn't have. Yeah. Yeah, teaming up with the Straw Hats was looking more appealing the longer she thought about it.

But…

"Do I really wanna get hitched to another crew?" she wondered, idly swiping a half dozen meat skewers off a passing food cart and shoving a wad of bills in the face of said cart's owner before he could raise a stink. "I've got a good thing going solo. But… Akainu. Ugh." Scarfing down a hefty chunk of meat, she thought it over again, the familiar chewing helping her think. Sadly, it did not help her actually reach a conclusion. Which only really left one real solution.

"Daaaahhhh!" the pink-haired captain howled, scratching impatiently at her head. "Fuck it, where's the nearest restaurant!? I need to do some serious thinking!"

A flash caught her eye and a scent her nose at the same time, and she turned to notice that she'd inadvertently wandered into the unofficial-official 'Wano District' that had been slowly springing up around the Whitebeards' similarly themed inn, and she'd just come across one of the latest types of stores in the style. Expansive, homey, well-decorated, spic and span. The sign proclaimed "Goya's Noodles!", and looked to be brand new.

"What the heck," Bonney decided, before marching in.

The inside was as quaint and homey as the outside, but most of the tables were vacant… and only a momentary glance was needed to see why.

Sitting at opposite ends of one table in the center were Monkey D. Luffy and freaking Lucky Roux of the Red-Haired Pirates, menus up and hiding each other. Memories of both the time at the takoyaki stand and the bar brawl flashed through her head, and Bonney eagerly sat down at a table that gave a good view of the two.

One put their menu down briefly. Then they put it back up as another put the menu down. Then the inverse. Then they put their menus down and looked toward the kitchen, still not seeing each other. Then they drank their drinks and raised their menus simultaneously.

The entire exchange left Bonney half-collapsed out of her chair, quivering with laughter suppressed only because her guffaws would disturb the hilarious scene in front of her. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel within which the two pirates continued to trade off menus, drinks, and glances towards the kitchen.

Finally, after what might have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, Bonney felt a tap on her shoulder. Cheeks puffed out, she glanced up at a dead-eyed waiter.

"Your menu, ma'am," he intoned, voice as dead as his eyes.

"Fffffffffffffffff—"

Nodding, the waiter placed down the menu and trotted off. Bonney didn't so much as glance at it. Forget the noodles, this was way better!

Ultimately, however, all games had to come to an end sooner or later, and this one came to an end with the arrival of two massive bowls loaded down with noodles being placed in front of the world-famous/infamous gluttons. Luffy and Roux knocked their bowls back, gobbling down the massive amounts of noodles in a span of seconds at the same time, and when they thunked their bowls down, it was impossible for them to miss one another.

Their eyes met, Bonney held her breath intently as their eyes met, eagerly awaiting whatever would come from the meeting…

And then the pair just let out a pair of rafter-shaking belches and sagged in their seats with contented sighs.

"Maaaan, that tasted great!" Luffy chortled, patting his distended stomach in satisfaction. "These Wano-style noodles are delicious! And they're even better over there? I gotta swing by and try them sometimes!" He then tilted his head down and grinned… straight at the Red-Haired Pirate?! "Thanks a lot for bringing me to this place, Roux! It's been awesome hanging out with you again, you always know where to find the best grub!"

"Heheheh! Not even a morsel of a problem!" Roux laughed back, waving his hand dismissively. "What can I say, you remind me of this whiny little runt I used to hang out with, always underfoot and causing a racket and trying to steal my meat from me!…oh wait! That was you! HEHEHEHEHEEEH!" The rotund pirate roared with mirth, pounding the table with his fist.

"Shishishi! Yeah, you always had the best meat back in the day!" Luffy snickered, rubbing a finger beneath his nose and beaming happily. "It's really great to see you again, Roux, and I'm happy to hear that everyone else is doing alright too! I'm really happy that Shanks and Benn and you are having fun in the New World…" Luffy's smile died down to a more honest grin. "And I'm really happy about Yasopp. Thanks a lot for bringing that Tone Dial to Usopp, it meant a lot to him."

"Heheh! Moron!" Roux scoffed, picking up a bottle of soy sauce and casually bouncing it off his junior's head. "As if something like that could be a crumb of a problem! Your sniper is our sniper's kid, how could I not do something like that, eh? I'd, eh, have brought an actual number for the brat to call on, but…"

"Yasopp wants to see him in person like me and Shanks, I get it!" Luffy waved him off. "Usopp knows he's getting to him through the SBS, he can wait! Besides…" the Straw Hat captain leaned forwards intently, his smile taking on a distinctly predatory sheen. "It's not like we won't be seeing them soon anyways. We're gonna be past the Red Line before you know it!"

Roux's bravado… noticeably faltered at that declaration. Only for a moment, but he did flinch, and it was almost certainly the cause of the sudden coughing fit the pirate developed as he shoved himself away from the table. "A-Anyway! It's been real fun hanging out with you again, Luffy, but I really gotta bounce. Places to see, meat to eat, jackass's skulls to smack around, you know how it is!"

"Shishi, yeah, alright!" the rubber-man nodded, animatedly waving farewell. "Tell everyone I said hi, and thanks again for hanging out with me this week!"

"And thank you for picking up the tab!" the rotund buccaneer nodded back, shooting his younger friend a salute in farewell. "Seriously, out of everything I've heard of you doing over the SBS, this has to be the bravest thing by far."

Luffy blinked at his old mentor, tilting his head in honest confusion. "Eh? Why? What makes you say—?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE COVERED THE BILL?!"

The rubber-man winced sheepishly as a shriek of feminine outrage cracked through the air, without Soundbite's aid. "Uh-oh. I think the receipts just got back to Nami."

"Noooo, you think?" Roux scoffed, thumbing his goggles with a morbid chuckle. "Like I said, you're a brave idiot, Luffy."

"Eh… not that brave," Luffy shrugged, relaxing as he got over the shock of the outburst. "I mean, it's not like lightning can hurt me, remember?"

"HE OWES HOW MUCH?!"

"Excuse me, sir?" the establishment's dead-eyed waiter spoke up as he stepped up to the table, staring past Luffy as he addressed him. "I believe your crewmate would like a word with you, posthaste."

"Eh?" Luffy blinked at him in surprise. "How do you know that?"

"Because I can imagine no other reason for a twister reaching into the sky to have suddenly sprung into existence halfway across the city, sir."

Luffy paled dramatically, prompting a chuckle from Lucky Roux. "You forgot your navigator has more ways to kick ass than just lightning, didn't you?"

"Yup," Luffy nodded jerkily, shoving himself out of his seat. "Uhhh, remember all those times you told me stories about how you could dine and dash without a trace?"

"Need a refresher lesson, kid?"

"FACE ME LIKE A MAN, MONKEY D. LUFFY!"

"Yup!"

"Follow my lead, then," Roux chuckled, bounding out the door without a glance back to see if Luffy was indeed following him.

Bonney sat and stared for a while, once again weighing the pros and cons of approaching the Straw Hats. This time, however, she sighed, "I'll have what they were having, if there's any left."

The waiter nodded and turned away; Bonney shook her head to herself. Allying with them was the right way to go, but at this point, she'd wait until Trafalgar approached her. She had already allied with the Heart Pirates once before anyway, she could count on them to be saner. And perhaps more importantly, not as close to the spotlight.

"Jeeeeze…" she groaned, the heels of her palms moving up to rub her eyes. "And to think this shit used to be so fucking easy…" Thankfully, the migraine passed quickly, replaced by an eager smile.

"Zazaza… guess I really can't say it ain't fun though, that's for sure!"

-o-

THREE DAYS TILL START

"Bullshit! This is bullshit!"

"Oh, quit your whining, Cross, and just face your beating like a man."

I felt my face go through some… interesting spasms, and I pressed myself against the walls of the wire-mesh octagonal cage I currently found myself in. It wouldn't let me strangle Franky, and neither would the cyborg's metal neck, but dammit I could try!

"I am going to die!" I snarled—borderline wailed really—as I jabbed a finger at Brook. The skeletal bastard was doing the same thing he'd done since dumping me in this cage: practicing his thrusting techniques. In complete silence.

Oh, no, wait, my mistake, Brook wasn't being silent.

He was humming. The bastard.

"Eh, you're exaggerating," Franky said dismissively. "I'm pretty sure he'll only mostly kill you."

"Indeed!" Brook cheerily added. "I'm sure medical science has come a long way in the last fifty years. Why, I'll bet I could even cut off a limb and dear Chopper could reattach it!"

"That's not how anything works!" I howled.

"Aww, your praise totally doesn't make me happy, you bastard," Chopper said, doing his happy dance.

"WHY ARE YOU SO HAPPY ABOUT THAT?!"

"Cross."

I locked eyes with Nami with all the desperation of a starving man given a sumptuous feast. And then that hope crashed and burned from 80,000 feet when I saw her counting out the wad of Berries in her hand.

"Try not to die too quickly, okay?" she said, all smiles and not even glancing at me. "The odds work out best for us if you can last five or six minutes. After that though, feel free to keel over."

"I'LL PUT 5000 ON HIM LASTING FIVE AND A HALF MINUTES!" someone from the crowd shouted.

"Sanji, go take care of that, will you?"

"Of course, Nami-Swan!"

Hands quivering in repressed rage, I turned to Vivi and Carue who were handing out pamphlets!?

"Just a basic bio on the combatants and why they're fighting," the princess hummed patiently, casually floating one of said pamphlets over to someone who waved her down.

We made eye contact. I was promptly greeted by the smuggest, most evil grin I had ever seen on Vivi's face. No help from that quarter, though I suppose surprise should have been my last reaction, given how many bridges I'd burned with her, literally. Maybe Usopp and the dugongs?

They were on the other side of the cage, near Brook, and I had to pray that Brook would follow the rules. Needless to say, my progress was slow and halting, especially when that damn sword swished by. But eventually I got into earshot.

"I say, why do I need to play up my scariness? This is supposed to be a friendly match."

"Because have you seen the looks on Cross' face? Hilarious!" I heard Raphey cackle.

"Now, come on. Swishing your sword around is good, but I think sharpening it would be even better!" Usopp added. "And don't forget to be as threatening as possible once the fight actually starts!"

… Right. They were going to pay. I'm not sure how, but I'm sure there'd be plenty of opportunities during the Dead-End Race.

"Psst!"

A hissed whisper caught my attention, and I turned to find Leo standing a ways from his fellow Dugongs, waving me over. Well, I was desperate, so I walked over and kneeled down. "What is it?"

"Well, since you looked like you were kind of freaking out—"

"Freaking out?" I chuckled. "I'm totally not freaking out right now, because this is me not freaking out! What do I have to freak out over anyway?! Nothing! Because I'm not! I'm just… about two minutes away from getting fucking maimed by a crewmate while the rest of you assholes watch! And play it up! And profit off of it! I'm totally not—yow!"

"Where I come from, that's called freaking out," Leo deadpanned, pulling back one of his swords.

"Can you blame me?!"

Leo tilted his head in some bewilderment. "…Cross, you do know we're all just playing this up for a good show, right? If you really want out that bad, just throw Funkfreed against the cage. I can tell you right now that this thing is not rated for an elephant charge. Alternatively, there's a backup plan for Conis to bust open a hole in the cage if things go really bad. All part of the show, of course."

For a long moment, I was silent. And then…

"Let me get this straight," I said, very calmly. "You guys made me think you were going to have Brook eviscerate me… for the sake of a show… that you didn't ask me to participate in?"

The Dugong's bewildered expression flattened. "Two questions. First, would you or would you not try the same thing on any of us?"

I opened my mouth to say, no, of course not! … And then closed it, because that would be a bald-faced lie.

"And second, more importantly… do you really have that little faith in us? If memory serves, you haven't provoked anyone on the crew enough to justify this much payback. Lately."

…guess the TDWS hadn't slept in their hammocks recently, buuut if that's what they thought of me…

Still, in the interest of leaving them still thinking I was innocent, I heaved a sigh of defeat. "Alright, fine. I'm still pissed, but I'll go along with this little charade, and I'll consider not retaliating."

"That's all we ask," Leo sighed in relief. "Good luck out there."

"…and you get to tell that witch I'm taking a clean quarter of the profits for my personal cut, and nothing less."

That got a tortured grimace out of Leo's mug, but he still nodded. "I will go and get a stiff drink and get right on that."

We separated, me back towards my half of the arena and Leo back to the rest of the dugongs. Well, if I was going to do this… might as well do it right. So as I passed Zoro, I made sure to make eye contact with him. Pleading eye contact.

"It'll build character."

Yeah, that's about what I expected. I took a moment to tap my throat, and then, when I heard an electric whine (and even though I couldn't see him, I just knew that slimy little bastard was wrapped up in this too…) I sucked in a deeeep breath… and let loose.

"ASSHOLES!" I roared, swinging my hands out in as dramatic a manner as I could manage. "YOU'RE ALL ASSHOLES! I HOPE EVERY ONE OF YOU STEPS ON A LEGO AND DIES! BUT HEY!" I flung my arms up in a show of exasperated defeat. "YOU WANT A SHOW BEFORE I GUT YOU ALL LIKE FISH!? FINE BY ME! AND YOU!" I snapped a finger up at Brook, making him pause his posturing. "I HOPE YOU'VE RENEWED YOUR WILL, BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO NEED IT AGAIN!" And with that, I thrust my arm out. "SOMEONE GET ME MY SWORD!"

Honestly, pissed though I was, I do have to admit that the roar of approval that erupted from the crowd was undeniably invigorating.

"WELL, WHADDAYA KNOW, FOLKS, LOOKS LIKE THE OTHER HALF OF OUR ENTERTAINMENT FINALLY FOUND HIS BALLS! FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING, I GUESS! APAPAPA!"

"AT LEAST WE CAN ALL pretend we're watching a half-decent fight, INSTEAD OF AN OUT-AND-OUT SLAUGHTER! HEEHEEHEEhohohoHAHAHA!"

…the sound of yet more of my 'friends' riling up said crowd, however, put a bit of a damper on the subsequent cheers. Slimy little traitor, siding with my 'nemesis', he'd get his too, I swear to—

A flash in the corner of my vision snapped me out of my morbid thoughts, and I snapped my hand out, snatching Funkfreed mid-air. I gave the elephant-blade a few testing swings before regarding him with a firmly gimlet eye. "Be straight with me, ivory farm, or else I'll be polishing you with salt water for a week: did you have a trunk in this as well?"

The sword's extended silence did not inspire confidence. "I did not say no when they asked for my participation. Does that count?" he carefully posited.

I stared at him for a few seconds more letting out a sharp tsk. "Congratulations. You get deemed a 'bystander'."

"Oh thank you merciful elephant Buddha!"

"…there's an elephant—? No, wait, let me guess: you assume?"

"How'd you know?"

"Pattern recognition."

With that, I returned to my corner and went about making myself look as angry as possible as I limbered up. Which frankly wasn't that hard. Still, thinking about it, maybe I really wouldn't retaliate this time. After all, I had a nice, convenient target right there, didn't I? Brook was going to regret his part in this little charade; I would make sure of it… much as I reasonably could, at any rate. Seriously, half the reason I was so incensed about this display was how asinine it was! It was obvious who was going to win here, especially if we were going sword-on-sword, no matter what abilities mine might bring to the table. But hell, if I was going down, no reason I couldn't and try break a bone or two dozen on the way.

Of course, because the universe hates me, it was right when I'd made that conviction when a freaking bear crashed into the cage.

And not just any old random, average bear either, I'd seen a few of those wandering around the city already (don't ask) and this was not that. This was an 8-foot grizzly that weighed 900 pounds if it was an ounce, wearing a top hat, ascot with little bow tie, and a monocle. A monocle which it promptly removed along with the hat and tossed to a boy at the edge of the crowd before throwing its head back and roaring.

"Uh, he says that he agrees that this is bullshit," the boy translated, pausing as he listened to several more following growfs. "And that to make it more interesting, he declares that this shall be a three-man battle royale." Another growf. "Unless someone wants to make it a two-team tag battle?"

No response from the crowd, despite me trying to telepathically compel someone to take up the offer… which actually raised a serious question in my mind.

"Where the hell is Boss and why isn't he all over this?!" I hissed under my breath.

"Drinking contest with the giant squad," Mikey deadpanned right back via Soundbite. "He's up 2-and-1, so we won't be hearing from him for a while."

Yeah, that would be my luck, wouldn't it…

A few seconds after that hurried conversation, the bear roared again.

"Uh, Sir Bearington has just declared—in light of circumstances—his intentions to tear your heads off your shoulders and shove them up your… I, uh, think I won't translate that part."

And of course he was named Sir Bearington. I don't know what I expected.

"RIGHT!" I shouted to the crowd, my ire re-spiking to incandescent levels as I glared bloody murder at Nami, who actually had the decency to look honestly sorry and chastised. Not that she was actually doing anything to help me, damn witch. "SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLANS: WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE, I AM GOING TO RAIN DOWN SUFFERING ON YOU ALL SO GREAT THAT IT'LL BECOME A STORY TO FRIGHTEN CHILDREN FOR TEN GENERATIONS!" I then jabbed my sword at the bear, a twitching scowl on my face. "RIGHT AFTER I GET THROUGH SKINNING THIS WALKING RUG FOR OUR SHIP'S PARLOR!"

That got another growf from Bearington. This one didn't need translating: it sounded respectful. Lovely. At least I'd have this bear's respect when I was laid up after this whole mess. Yay me.

Shaking my head and forcing a calming snort out through my nostrils, I spun Funkfreed in my grip before falling into a ready stance. "Alright… alright, I'm good," I declared through clenched teeth. "Let's get this over with."

"Agreed," Brook solemnly answered, flourishing his blade in a proud salute.

Bearington growfed and nodded, and we all tensed for the bell—

"Hey, that guy's not a pirate captain, he's really just a bear!"

I turned around, saluting the poor fellow who'd shouted that as he was dogpiled and carried off kicking and screaming. Any sort of delay in this farce was welcome, after all. Alas, it wasn't long before the man was dragged away screaming obscenities. Nami, for her part, sighed and bowed politely at the offended party, "So sorry about that, Captain Bearington."

The bear grunted, shrugging. Yes, shrugging. Because somehow, to me of all people, that was still unbelievable.

Suddenly, the bell rang. Bearington and I whirled around, but there was no Brook about to skewer our asses. Instead, there was Brook, standing on guard but otherwise unperturbed.

"Ah, good," he remarked. "It was tempting to attack while you were distracted, but I—YOWIE!"

"Tsk, missed," I groused as Funkfreed pulled back.

"Honorless cur!" Brook roared, charging my way.

"You mean 'normal pira—' GRK!"

Right, size was deceiving because holy crap the bear was fast; I'd barely gotten the words out and Funkfreed up to block when Bearington swept in, raking the air with his claws. Brook frantically backpedalled, and when he was sufficiently far away I drew Funkfreed up and brought him down on my ursine opponent in an overhead chop.

The bear snorted, bringing his paws up to catch, at which point the elephant-sword transitioned into his hybrid form and brought his full mass to bear. Eyes wide, Bearington barely tumbled out of the way before several tons of elephant crashed onto the floor of the cage.

I had no time to savor that brief victory, because Brook was on me, jabbing relentlessly. Now it was my turn to backpedal, catching most of the stabs on my gauntlets and then the rest on Funkfreed once he'd snapped back. I collected a few nicks for my troubles, but it was better than getting fully skewered.

"Groar!"

"Yow!" I yelped, ducking under a paw swipe from Bearington. I felt my tailbone hit the wall of the cage, at which point I was made aware of a significant flaw in my earlier actions: namely, Bearington and Brook looked ready and willing to gang up on the 'unskilled powerhouse' of our trio. I did not like the look in their eyes, and I didn't miss the glance they sent at each other, either.

I tsked at the situation, and after taking a moment to consider my position, I decided I only had one viable course of option: flipping the script in the only guaranteed way possible. "As much as saying this is a bad idea…" I faux-grumbled to myself, raising my voice just enough so that my opponents could hear me. "I'd just like to point out that at least as long as none of the other Supernovas want to try curb-stomping all three of us at once, this situation cannot possibly get any worse."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far."

Jackpot and bust at the same time. And it really said something that my opponents also turned to look at the speaker.

"I have no interest in 'curb-stomping' you, as you put it," Basil Hawkins intoned from where he stood outside the border of the cage, the rest of the spectators giving him a wide berth. "But one of my crewmates has been looking for an opportunity to cast off his restraints. And as you have so kindly offered…" And with that he made a beckoning gesture.

Two of his robe-wearing crewmates stepped forwards, heaved something they were carrying and… tossed a man-sized Japanese straw doll into the ring? What the heck—?

Before I could voice my confusion, the infamous Magician brushed the edge of his coat back, and revealed that he had not one but two blades strapped to his side, the second previously hidden by his coat. He withdrew the second blade from his cloth-belt, sheath and all… which just raised further questions, because unless I was seeing things I couldn't think of a reason for a two-handed jian to be locked into a seal-tag covered sheath with what had to be three different kinds of rope!

Before I could question what the hell he was doing—or better yet, demand that he not do it period—the straw-man reeled his arm back and tossed the blade up and over into the cage as well—

SCHUNK!

—where it pierced the prone doll square through the back, sheath and all.

"I do hope that you're still eager to fight," Hawkins proclaimed. "Shichiseiken has been quite restless since I shanghaied him."

It didn't take three guesses to figure out who—or rather, what—Hawkins was talking about. After all, I'd grown somewhat used to what cursed swords by what felt like necessity after sailing with Zoro and Sandai Kitetsu for the better part of the last year. Heck, I'd even managed to pick up some kind of whisper from Kikoku whenever it came near me.

So in this instance, with a sword that obviously evil? The question wasn't 'is it cursed?', but rather 'how cursed is it?'

The question had barely left the proverbial station when every seal tag on the sheath suddenly burst alight and were incinerated by emerald flames. And the second the tags were ash, cracks splintered up and down the naked sheath before the entire damn thing burst off the sword like some kind of hellish verdant firecracker, displaying the sword's bare, malevolent, glowing blade to the world.

The spectacle wasn't slowing down, either; the glow slowly grew brighter and brighter, manifesting from the blade… no, at this point, it was on fire. And the fire was spreading into the scarecrow beneath it. Some part of me had an idea of what was going to happen next. The logical part of me, meanwhile, expected the supernatural flames to, you know, burn the doll?

But no. The flames seeped into the scarecrow, the scarecrow caught fire, and then the flames outright animated the straw, letting it crawl its way to a kneeling position. The head then snapped upright and the straw that made up the 'face' tore apart, a pair of squinting eyes and a jagged grin stretching from side to side of the head leering at us. And then, as the entire thing pushed itself to its feet, one blazing straw arm reached over its shoulder, grabbing the hilt of the sword and tearing it out of the doll's back. Sword removed, the entire thing rolled its 'muscles' in anticipation.

"You can take consolation in that Shichiseiken has not yet learned how to talk on its own, at least. I do believe that even the Voices of Anarchy would find his tongue to be quite… caustic," Hawkins drawled, one lilt away from chuckling. "So then. Who would like to try their luck first, hm?"

The blade-wielding flaming doll 'cackled' in silence as it spun itself into position with a degree of skill I could only describe as the work of a true master.

"…Well, this was fun, but I believe I have panties to raid. So long!"

The steel behind Brook neatly fell out of place, leaving a dust trail as the skeleton absconded.

"Gro-rargh!"

The bear wasn't far behind, literally ripping its way through its own section of wall. And the wall beyond that for that matter.

…which left me alone with what looked to be an actual blade from Hell.

I grimaced, tightening and re-tightening my grip on my sword's hilt. "Funkfreed… please tell me that you don't still want to fight," I said calmly. Said, and definitely did not plead.

"A minute ago, I would have somewhat minded, Cross," Funkfreed returned in the same tone. "Now, though…"

"Run like children?" I prompted, my eyes following every twitch of that glowing green blade.

"Unless you want to try your luck against him in no-sword style. Yes. As in, now!?"

"Go ahead and step back, then. I'll take this."

I barely glanced at Zoro—who already had all three swords drawn—before leaping through the hole he'd cut and shoving as many warm bodies between me and the stage as I could manage, Funkfreed's flat offering incentive to anyone too slow to move for good measure.

Zoro ignored us in favor of the Supernova standing beyond the twitchy scarecrow. "Shichiseiken, huh? A sword with a curse so strong that given a half-decent vessel, it can move on its own?"

"That's correct," Hawkins responded. Meanwhile, on stage Shichiseiken twitched in place and repeatedly and impatiently sliced itself back and force through the air. "The treasure of Asuka Island, possessed with an endless thirst for blood and carnage. It was attempting to become strong enough to bring about a minor apocalypse when I found it, but I thought it interesting enough to take along with me. Honestly, its last wielder seemed seemed rather glad to be rid of the thing." The straw-man tilted his head ponderously. "His name escapes me, however…"

"Sssss…"

"Hm?" he blinked in surprise. "What was-?"

"Sssssaaaagaaaaa…" the doll—or rather, Shichiseiken itself—hissed out, an infernal voice clawing its way from the sword's fleshless throat.

Hawkins grimaced and slapped a hand to his forehead. "Oh wonderful, he's devised a way to communicate. Now he's just going to be insuffera—hm?" His eyes shifted around, casting about for the source of the sudden change in atmosphere.

A sensation that everyone nearby shared. For no reason I could immediately discern, that unholy, literally demonic sword didn't seem all that concerning anymore.

"…what was that name, again?" Zoro asked dangerously, slight blurs forming around his arms and head.

"Saga, I now recall. A retired Marine, I believe? He and his fiancée were in good health—minus a nasty migraine and some inevitable bruising and bone breakage—when I left Asuka if that matters to you," Hawkins nonchalantly answered.

Zoro relaxed and turned his attention back to the possessed scarecrow, with a look of perfect calm and serenity.

And then, with that very same calm and serenity, Zoro started to untie his bandana from his arm.

Yeah, you'd better believe that I and every other Straw Hat watching took that as our collective cue to scram.

"Apapa, things are getting inte—! Eh? Why's everyone—?"

"RUN, YOU IDIOT!"

The shockwave that nearly knocked me off my feet two seconds later both vindicated my decision and made it clear that I needed to run much, much faster.

-o-

"I anticipated—purely the best case scenario, of course—that Skelter Bite would one day become popular enough that even New Worlders would flock to it. But you know, even after the Whitebeard Pirates set up Oden's Cottage, I thought that I'd at least have another couple of years before I needed to worry about that magnitude of collateral damage from a single fight."

Lola's palm slammed onto the table as exclamation to the glare she was already directing our way. "Straw Hats, I thought that only your enemies paid for underestimating you, not your allies."

I glanced around briefly before answering. We were in the lobby of the Lucky Rabbit—the rather crowded lobby—but Soundbite was blurring sound and everyone was very studiously and nervously ignoring us. Ah, the perks of reputation.

"The only reason you're having this much trouble is that the other Supernovas are here at the same time, and we'll all be out of here as soon as our preparations are complete," I said. "Still, in my defense?" I jabbed my fingers at the other two occupants of the room. "Blame these jagoffs, they're the ones who dragged me into their bullshit, as I so loudly proclaimed!"

"Not so fast," Zoro scoffed, waving his hand dismissively. "I only got involved because that bastard sword got involved in things. You want someone to blame?" He pointed at the last remaining suspect. "Blame the one who put this mess together to begin with so that the rich could get richer."

"Hey, that's not true!" Nami yelped indignantly, shooting to her feet and sweeping her finger out. "If you want to blame anyone, blame—! Ah…" She faltered as she realized that there was nobody else in the room to point to. At which point she collapsed back in her seat with a groan, her halo hanging dark and heavy over her head. "Crud…" She raised her head and stared at us, her eyes shimmering with tears. "I-It was all going so well until the bear got involved… why, why did the bear have to get involved?"

"That is a phrase I never wanted to hear in this office again, if ever," Lola deadpanned.

"And do you really THINK ANY OF US ARE BUYING THAT?" Soundbite asked with honest incredulity.

"Tch," the navigator snorted, her face instantly drying up. "Worth a shot…" She cast a resigned look at Lola. "Alright, how much do I owe you?"

The governor-captain wordlessly slid a sheaf of papers across her desk to the witch. Said witch flipped to the final page, took one look at the bottom line—

"GYARK!"

And froze up in her seat with a look of total terror, a hand clawing at her chest and her Eisen Tempo abruptly spiking like a hedgehog.

Zoro and I both glanced over her shoulder, and actually winced in sympathy.

"My advice?" Zoro 'comforted', as much as he could, patting her on the back. "Lie back and think of the prize."

"Hrrgrggk…" Nami… uttered pitifully.

"…you know, overall?" I idly noted. "Property damage aside, I'd say this ended pretty well."

"Gggh…"

-o-

TWO DAYS TILL START

Nami stared out over the crowd of assembled pirates. Assembled navigators. This was something she'd dreamed of, ever since the first time she'd dreamed of assembling a true world map: that one day, she could stand in front of an audience and share her findings.

Now, if only it wasn't a bunch of pirates, most of whom hated her and the rest of whom had a schadenfreudic desire to see her fail. But in all fairness, of those who hated her, half felt that way because she'd fleeced their crews over the past week and the other half because they envied just how damn good she was, and those who wanted her to fail only felt that way because it was their best shot at the grand prize too…

But to hell with all of them. She wasn't going to fail. And she knew just how to attack.

"You're all here," she announced, securing their attention with a sharp crack of thunder from her looming halo. "Because this is a race, and the entire point of a race is to reach the finish line in one piece. Something that will not happen if you go the wrong way and end up running face-first into the blockade on your own. That, and you all decided that I was too much of an advantage to the Straw Hats to keep to themselves." And now, to unbalance them. "Good thinking. I'd want to do the same if I were in your shoes."

The rabble all reeled back, shocked. The navigators for the Supernovas and a minority of the rest… they just smirked knowingly, having seen how she was trying to play the rest. Asses.

"But!" Nami forged on, clapping her hands primly. "Seeing as I am where I am, I guess if I have to do this, I'm going to do it right. So I suggest you all sit down, shut up, and listen. Because if on race day you wander off or get in our way?" She tilted her head ever so slightly, a perfectly serene smile on her face. "Then I'll either let the Marines hang your sorry hides from the gallows or kill you myself, m'kay?"

Now that sent a collective shiver through everyone present, and they all shoved their asses a little deeper into their seats, ears wide open.

Her audience properly focused, Nami flicked her wrist and sent white cloud billowing out of her Clima-Tact, forming the same map she'd shown Drake.

"Alright, so here's where we're all starting," Nami declared, tapping the map with the butt of her staff. "And these—" Here she traced several routes, most direct but one winding and snakelike. "Are the potential routes we could take."

No questions came her way, and Nami smiled, tracing a rather straight line to the archipelago. "This is the most direct route to Sabaody from the starting point that also takes proper advantage of the wind and currents, and it's the most lightly defended spot in the blockade." She promptly smudged the line out of existence. "We will not be using it. The reason being the sheer complexity of that route. That same current that makes it so fast is also incredibly narrow and decidedly vicious. If two ships try to take that route, they're liable to get smashed together. Oh, and did I mention the reefs you need to navigate?"

Several of the assembled navigators visibly winced at that. Her staff shifted, tracing the more serpentine, roundabout route.

"This is the route we're going to be using because, well, it's the one I intend to use." Nami paused to let a smattering of begrudging laughter and grumbles work its way through her audience. "It's not as fast as the direct route, but the current is large enough to hold all of us and, like the direct route it hits a weak spot in the blockade that our scouts have pointed out." The Weather Witch let out a faux-wistful sigh as she regarded the depiction of the blockade line with pity. "Poor privateers, they just don't have the knowledge of currents I do…"

A little muttering broke out at the wistful look on Nami's face, but it died in a hurry when she turned a glare on them. "Oh, and just a reminder? Since we're all going to using this route, that means we'll all be bunched together until we hit the blockade. As such, I have two words of warning for you: if you're gonna come for the king?"

Nami sent a minute bolt of lightning up to the roof. And then the roof-covering bank of clouds everyone had missed until then roared as it disgorged a true bolt of levin, obliterating her makeshift map in an instant.

"Don't miss."

With everyone recovering and reeling, Nami reverted to all smiles again. "And just for the record, the rest of the routes constitute the standard shipping lanes to Sabaody. These were the ones originally suggested, but because they're standard, they also have the tightest defenses, and they're not as fast as the race course, so I chucked them out. Of course, if anyone wants to try their luck off the main race course—and, of course, wants to leave the safety and comfort of the largest pirate fleet since the last time one of the Emperors got in a fleet action—they're free to. I'm sure you'll do fine, just ask the Kid Pirates how well that went for them."

From the shudders through the audience and the way the Kids' navigator looked all to ready and eager to shank anyone who even looked at him, nobody wanted to try that. Re-coalescing her map, Nami waved her hand, flowing lines springing up both on the map's surface and hovering just above.

"Alright, here's the shape of the currents and wind patterns…"

-o-

An hour later, a happy but satisfied Nami watched as the navigators filed out, most cowed and shivering but a select few simply impressed. That… was good. It felt good. Nothing could ruin her mood.

"Uh, N-Nami?"

Scratch that. One thing could ruin her mood, and it'd just showed up. "Hello, Hachi," she said as politely as she could. Which is to say, frigid enough to chill a Sea King, but not caustic.

"Hi," Hachi said weakly, waving the only hand not wringing its companion. "I… I know that I'm one of the last people that you want to see right now—"

"Hachi, I'm being cordial with you entirely because Cross, Keimi, and Koala vouch for you, but that is thin ice to be standing on. Get to the point," she snapped.

The octo-fishman visibly winced, his face twisted in guilt. "…I know that you still haven't forgiven me, and I know why… and I know that I deserve every bit of it."

Nami, mouth open to deliver a blistering tirade at the first part, choked as Hachi fell to his knees and actually prostrated himself before her, his brow pressed to the ground.

"But you also know me," he forged on, his voice sorrowful and pleading. "And you know that I wouldn't be apologizing to you, with everything that I have, everything I'm worth, unless I meant it. Meant it from the bottom of my heart. I am sorry for… for everything that I can apologize for. For everything that the others can't or won't apologize for. And I know… that what we did, we can never take back… but still. But still!" He shook his head miserably. "I just… there has to be more that I can do. Anything that I can do, anything at all… "

The navigator's implacable façade twitched minutely as she processed the proclamation, and after a moment she finally addressed him in an attempt to answer the question burning in the back of her mind. "Why?" she asked quietly, forcing her voice to remain low and calm. "Why does this matter so much to you?"

Hachi's squirming intensified briefly. Then, finally, he sagged. "…because I don't want to be the cause of any more hatred. Because I've always known that what… that what we did wasn't what Big Bro Tiger or Queen Otohime would have wanted, not in a million years. But after everything that had happened, after all we'd lost, I was just so angry, and what Arlong and the guys—my brothers—were saying sounded so right… but they were wrong, I was wrong."

The octo-fishman raised his head and clunked it against the floor with a miserable groan. "I can't live with this, Nami! I can't just let this rot at my soul! So… so I'll give anything I have to if it means clearing my conscience. Anything… to make the pain go away… please…"

And as Hachi lapsed into silence, Nami just stared at him. Stared at the sight of one of her biggest tormentors kneeling before her, miserable and begging for mercy. And for the barest moment… she considered saying no. She considered telling him to shove off, that he could rot and suffer for all she—

And then the image of a leering, spike-nosed monster shot through Nami's mind and she had to actively swallow down a retch.

Instead, she cleared her throat uncomfortably and addressed a different topic. "…Kuroobi and Chew. Why?" She then glanced away from him with a slight scowl. "And get up, would you?"

Hachi hastily pushed himself up, though he still remained on his knees. "I, uh, I-I only asked Jinbe to free them because they had the same dream that I did when we were kids, and I needed the extra help. I thought that if they were living their sentences out with me, catering to humans and fishmen both, they could move past their hatred and understand how far we all fell. I never thought for even a second about getting anyone else out."

Hachi then coughed heavily into his fist, wringing his other two pairs of hands. "Also, if it helps about those two, I'm pretty sure that ever since Cross blew up at them, they're at least starting to realize what utter bastards we all were too, so… progress?"

"Mrgh," Nami grumbled. She brought up a hand to massage her forehead, which had been throbbing for a while now. "Alright, look, Hachi. I get that you're making an effort, and I can… acknowledge that, if nothing else. I'd have to be blind and deaf to deny it…"

She then scowled heavily as her Eisen Tempo darkened to the heaviest, most lightning-choked black it could manage. "But you willingly followed the man who killed my mother and took a leading role in making my life, and my sister's life and dozens of others a living hell. Maybe I will one day find it in my heart to forgive you… but that day is not today, and I doubt it's anytime soon. And I don't know that there's anything else I can ask of you that will change that. "

She closed her eyes, reflecting on what she knew and how things stood now.

"But…" Nami's halo lightened slightly and curled around her as she turned away from the fishman, hugging herself slightly. "I will say that I… I am sorry that I can't forgive you. Because who you are now… is someone I would like talking with if I could."

Hachi slowly nodded, his eyes closing in a vain attempt to stop the tears gathering there. "I understand," he mumbled. "I'll… I'll just be going, then." And with that he got to his feet, started to walk away…

"…did any of you ever find him?"

And then froze as the question—so soft and hushed, he almost doubted he'd heard it—hit the back of his head like cannonfire. Hachi blinked several times, digging through his brain to put together what he was being asked, then his eyes closed with a sigh as he composed what he believed to be the correct answer. "…No. Arlong spread word of him, but… we never heard anything back."

Nami grunted slightly, in acknowledgement, if nothing else. "Good enough." She stood in silence for a moment before taking on a more businesslike tone. "Start preparing all of the food you've got; the pre-race party is tomorrow night. The prize money will be loaded onto your ship, so as soon as you've sold out, ship out for Sabaody."

"I will," Hachi nodded, resuming his exit.

"And Hachi?"

The octopus looked back, and Nami managed half of a sincere smile. "Be careful."

Hachi smiled back, and for a moment he honestly felt like maybe… things would be alright.

-o-

ONE DAY TILL START

"WE WERE PREPARED FOR TWO BOTTOMLESS STOMACHS, NOT THREE!"

Hearing Arlong's ex-lieutenants wail, I felt pity for Hachi… and almost felt it for those two too. Otherwise, I was a little preoccupied by the spectacle at hand; the pre-race party had gone into full swing when the sun went down, but it hadn't taken long for the focus to shift to Luffy and Bonney's eating contest.

But as the aforementioned wail pointed out, there was the slight problem of there being one more big eater to compete. And as our misfortune would have it, it was one of Kid's men.

Thank God it wasn't Kid or Killer themselves, but I still didn't fancy the idea of our crew directly clashing against the only crew besides ours to have more than one Supernova. But alas, here we were: straw hat, pink hair, and yellow jacket inhaling platter after platter, leaning towers of plates piling up around the center of the action, bets trading hands at a breakneck pace, and every skilled chef in a two-mile radius shanghaied into helping.

"You know, I actually think I missed the rush of preparing this much food," Lola mused as she handily spun the last dollop of whipped cream onto a deliciously jiggling pile of chocolate mousse.

"Speak for yourself!" Valentine groused, whipping a beater through a bowl like it owed her money. "How am I supposed to take any notes on your complete mastery of all things chocolate if I'm constantly putting down new plates for these thr—GWAH!?" she suddenly squawked as a blur shot past her head. She then squawked again in indignation. "HEY, MY EARRINGS!"

"Whoops! Sorry," Luffy said, not sounding sorry in the least as he offhandedly spat the saliva-soaked lemons onto the pile of dirty dishes nearby, leaving the yellow-clad woman positively steamed.

"Why did you even wear those when you knew you'd be serving someone who would try eating food that was made of wood? And looked like it?" Mikey distractedly pointed out, knife blurring to keep afloat in the constant stream of fruits and vegetables that needed chopping.

"Excuse me for only being used to crewmates with half their sanity left, instead none like you guys!" the ex-agent snapped, brandishing a bright-red squeeze bottle. "So unless you want me to serve you up in the next sweet-and-sour dish, cram it and get back to work!"

"What in Sebek's name do you think I'm doing!?" the chuck-wielder demanded, alternating between stirring and dicing ingredients with his flippers and tenderizing meat with his tail.

THWACK!

A feat that earned him a shoe upside his head from a passing Sanji.

"OW! Hey, what the hell—!?"

"Less flash, more substance, blubberbutt," the chef scoffed, casually balancing a half-dozen of the prepared dishes on his limbs. "Either work efficiently or become what we're working on."

The Dugong twitched violently, but shifted with only minor grumbling.

"HA!" Valentine cackled, shooting her fist skyward in victory.

"And as for you, Miss Valentine," Sanji continued, his tone rising fifteen degrees and acquiring a half-cup of sugar. "I'd appreciate it if you could try and remain focused as well."

"…eh?" the ex-agent, the dugong and… pretty much everyone else in hearing range uttered in confusion.

"I'm sorry, it's just that you're being a little bit distracting, is all," the Black-Legged cook politely apologized. "If you're not going to be able to keep up with our pace, I'll need you to excuse yourself from this kitchen. Or at least move yourself to a lower priority one? If you don't mind."

"…HA!" Mikey barked, breaking the stunned silence first, though he didn't slow down even an iota.

Despite similar arguments going on up and down the kitchen, the output wasn't slowing down, and the platters stacking up around the contestants was getting to the point you could build a house with them… and Merry and Apis were giving it the ol' college try in the form of three complex igloos.

And despite the arguments and the complaining, morale in the kitchen was surprisingly high. Heck, I even noticed Lola chuckling fondly to herself as she prepared a new batch of ingredients.

"What's so funny?" Soundbite inquired, apparently noticing the same thing.

"HEY, THAT'S MINE!"

"NUH-UH! LE' GO!"

"Pfft! BESIDES THE OBVIOUS, I MEAN," the snail snickered while Luffy and Shuraya paused briefly in their duel so that the yellow-wearing man could try and drag a massive leg of… something out of Luffy's jaws.

"Haaaah…" the corsair-governor sighed wistfully in reply, a slight flourish tingeing her actions now. "I'm feeling nostalgic from this, is all… happier memories of my family, see?"

I gave her a slightly dumbfounded look. "Er… you mean the family you yourself described as, and I quote, 'psychotic bastards'?"

"Mm…" Lola nodded noncommittally. "They were, they are, but at the same time, a lot of them weren't… nurture over nature, see? There were bad times, yeah… but. But they were still my brothers and sisters, and there are several that I miss dearly. Heck, even some of the more monstrous ones I wouldn't mind seeing one last time…"

"Aaaand this all..." I gestured at the barely restrained chaos of the cooking stations. "reminds you of them?"

"Of the good times, without any of the bad," Lola agreed with a light smile. Then the smile vanished, and she shook her head. "Do me a favor, Cross. When you get into a fight with them—"

"Don't you mean 'if'?" I couldn't help but needle.

Lola shot me an unamused look. "When you get into a fight with them," she repeated. "Put me in contact with my mother. If things keep going the way they are at this point, there's something that I want to tell her. Personally."

"…sure, why not. God knows I've always been fond of that last parting shot."

"But, ah, also, more importantly…" She set her utensils down for a moment so that she could give me her full attention, a very conflicted expression on her face. "When you fight my siblings… don't break them too bad? A lot of them are monsters, and there are even a few I wouldn't care if I saw dead, but even among the monsters…"

"They're still your siblings, I get it, I get it," I nodded patiently. "You have my word—"

"—which should make this a good stopping point for you."

"GRK!" I gagged as I was suddenly hauled up by the back of my collar.

"Watching is all well and good, Cross, but when you start distracting the staff, then we have a problem," Sanji huffed tiredly as he tossed away, eliciting an amused chuckle and wave farewell from Lola. Meanwhile, the cook himself heaved an aggrieved sigh and took a deep drag from his cigarette. "Ergh, so hectic… now I see why the one-legged bastard was so crabby all the time. And if this is what it's like now, the All Blue is going to be a nightmare…"

"HA! Looks like you've given someone an existential crisis yet again, CROSS!" Soundbite cackled ecstatically.

"Yip—Ergh!" I winced and rubbed at my neck where Sanji had tossed me out, though luckily not on my ass. "Yippee for me, what do I get when I get ten?"

"HOT FUDGE AND A BOOT upside your ass. NOW LET'S GET SOME DISTANCE, BOTH FROM HIM AND THE SPLASH ZONE, YEAH?"

"Yeah yeah," I grumbled, crossing my arms behind my head and wandering off so that I could see what there was to see.

It should be noted that not everyone was partying quite so rambunctiously. But rivals or not, most of the Supernovas' crews had into a... calmer relationship with each other, if only because of the forced proximity. Still, the only interaction that could be called "calm" was between Drake and Hawkins, who were steadfastly seated in the background, apparently determined to keep their status as the 'only sane ones' of our collective.

And while the others were louder and more active in their interactions, it was heartening to see that they were at least positive interactions. Besides Bonney and Luffy's intense but friendly competition, Killer was actually positioned among the several chefs facilitating the contest—his primary usage was as a living blender, admittedly, but it was a strong show of trust from Sanji. And a little ways away from the cooking area, Zoro, Urouge, and Boss were engaged in a comparatively tame (barrels at a time, how were they not dead I don't even…) drinking contest a short distance away.

Meanwhile, on the non-culinary front, Bege was watching Goldenweek work on a new painting some distance away from us, and from the way he was rolling a coin through his fingers, I think he was seriously considering making a few purchases. At another table, Kid and Apoo were talking animatedly about… something they had written in a pair of notebooks? Well, so long as they were happy—

"Oi, you two!" Soundbite whistled intently, garnering the pair's attention. "I advocate the usage of 'arsehole' myself, IT INJECTS A SENSE OF POSH TO MATTERS!"

"They're comparing notes on expletives, aren't they?" I deadpanned as the two captains grinned intently and started speaking with renewed vigor.

"It's a real learning experience, lemme tell ya!"

Oi… aaanyway… Law and Nami were huddled over a table, intently poring over… coins? For some reason? Really intently too, jewelry loups and everything.

Penguin and Sachi were hashing things out with Barto and his new co-first mate (Desire, I think he'd said?), and from the way they were all gesticulating and posturing I'd say they were either arguing quite aggressively or in the middle of some kind of rap battle. Really, it could be either.

Moving on from the Supernovas, the crews were all getting along pretty well too. At one table, I could spy Bepo speaking and gesticulating quite animatedly, with an eager audience in the form of the Kiddy Trio. Heck, Chopper was even chowing down on cotton-candy while he took liberal notes.

At another table, Hamburg and Gin were putting on an arm-wrestling show. Porche and a few crewmates had formed a cheering squad, Itomimizu MC'd… and Foxy himself took the bets, of course.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Vito holding a conversation with Conis, apparently over their weapons, based on the array of metal odds and ends they had arrayed before them. Quite surprising, but I suppose he wasn't as greasy as his suit made him look… still pretty greasy, though.

And then there was Lassoo… giving Su a ride as she chased after a low-flying Coo?…not even gonna try and ask.

Everyone else was sitting around, drinking, relaxing, chatting… overall, it was all very nice, very pleasant and friendly, very composed—

"Enough of this."

Soundbite filtered the mutter into my ear the same moment that Drake stood up and left; that's all he did, but it wasn't a subtle exit. I watched him go, then looked back at Hawkins, who gave a slight nod in his direction with a roll of his eyes that clearly said, 'deal with this, would you?'

Exhaling, I wandered after Drake, pondering what to do when I caught up with him. Really, if I was being honest, he was one of the biggest wildcards on the island: a former Rear Admiral, hanging out with pirates, who would then go out of his way to deliberately join Kaido's Beast Pirates? I might not have done the best in Trig back in college, but even I could tell that a few things didn't quite add up with the guy.

But still, standoffish as the guy was, he was one of us, meaning that it was in all of our best interests, that I cool him down from whatever head of hot air he was trying to build up.

As such, I mentally ran over what I knew regarding Oda's SBS had shared of Drake's backstory: grew up idolizing his Marine father, said father turned into a cruel, abusive 'pirate' (though really, 'gang of seafaring bandits' would be more accurate, even by fake-pirate standards) for unknown reasons, though from what glimpses I got of him I'd say that 'too corrupt for even Akainu' was written in a report somewhere. Drake escaped when he was 19, only just slipping free of the Bird Cage, climbed the ranks to Rear Admiral, and then turned pirate… as if resigning himself to fate, the story had said.

All very tragic, but no real help to me. I mean, that left years of in-between details that I could only begin to guess at. And frankly, nothing from what I did know explained why he would have gotten fed up with what was ultimately a pretty tame—

…party. The day the Barrels Pirates died, they were throwing a party.

"Yeah, that'd do it…" I groused, accelerating my pace, because I did not want to leave him in whatever headspace he was currently stewing in.

Thankfully, the dinosaur-human hadn't gone far. I found him sitting alone on a crate a few blocks over from the party… contemplating a bottle of rum.

Okay, this ends now. "You know," I piped up in a particularly flat voice, earning a sidelong glare. "Drinking alone is seriously risky business. Lot more fun when you do it with friends."

I had to suppress a flinch as Drake's gaze sharpened—as in, slit-pupils sharpened—but it wasn't long before he turned his scowl back on the bottle. "'Friends'… tch," he scoffed quietly, offhandedly tossing said bottle over his shoulder. "Do you actually think any of those thugs consider you or each other to be 'friends'? Besides—" He snapped impatiently when I opened my mouth. "The inscrutable exception that is your crew, I mean. Everyone else, once we walk away from this… whatever this all is, they'll be at each other's throats. It's inevitable."

I nodded my head to the side with a dismissive grunt. "Meh, personally I have more faith in them. But, call me an optimist if you must, I can understand where you're coming from."

The Ancient Zoan scowled at me flat out as he crossed his arms… aaaand started tapping a finger on the handle of his mace, so message received there. "So, what, did you simply follow me so you could bring me back and get me to link arms with the rest of the degenerates so that we all get along as one big happy family?"

"Psh, considering how I feel like I need to wash myself every time I hear Kid speak? Hardly," I dismissively replied. "Personally, I'm just aiming for 'tolerate' at the moment. Hence, me following you to at least find out the reason why you decided to bounce." I cocked an eyebrow at him inquiringly. "Sooo…?"

The ex-Marine bared and ground his teeth. "You're not going to go away until I give you an answer, are you."

"IIIIS THAT A REAL QUESTION?"

He had nothing to say to that, instead snapping his head away with a sharp tsk. "If you're fishing for some deep emotional reason, there isn't one. I just don't see the 'fun' in watching a bunch of idiots get drunk off their asses in celebration of violence."

My cheek twitched slightly at that ill-hidden venom. No reason, riiiight…

Still, externally? I settled for heaving a put-upon sigh as I slowly started to scratch the back of my head. "Ehhh… yeah, I get where you're coming from. The kind of parties you're talking about, not that great. Lot of other, less scrupulous people? They'd be doing just that, getting wasted for the sake of themselves, full stop. Hell, Shiki did the same thing, with slaves to boot."

I then put on a fond smile as I glanced back towards the party. "…but see, the difference here? Those sons of bitches only care about their own happiness, damn all else. Pure hedonism. But here—"

"REEEEE!" "YEEEEHAW!"

Drake and I slowly turned our heads to watch as Raphey galloped by on the back of a greased boar, hooting and hollering and—

"GET BACK HERE, YOU LITTLE TROGLODYTE!"

—aaand yes, that was definitely Robin's hat she was waving around, if the archaeologist booking it after her was anything to go by.

"…alright, still pretty hedonistic," I slowly admitted, reluctantly tearing my gaze away from the corner they'd just turned. "But! It's a selfless hedonism. We don't just want ourselves to be happy, we want everyone to be happy."

Drake snorted noncommittally. "And you're confident applying that to most of the other scum assembled as well?"

"I'm confident we're all tolerating one another, and that even Kid's making a positive acquaintance." I shrugged indifferently. "I mean, sure, we're planning to double-cross everyone tomorrow—"

"Tch."

"But, the same goes for everyone else. And yeah, it's over money, not blood and that's a thin line. Look, put it this way: have you done anything to anyone here worth getting gutted over?" I took his gruff silence… this instance of gruff silence as a no. "Then at least try and trust that nobody here is going to do so at the drop of a hat, alright?"

Still a gruff silence, but the way he inclined his head seemed to be in thought… maybe a slight push…?

"I mean…" I waved my hands slightly as I gathered my thoughts. "The thing is? People being utter bastards like that, full-on betraying someone for no good reason? They exist, sure… but they're certainly not everyone either, you know? Not all pirates, at least?"

My hand slapped to my face in a mirror to Drake's head snapping around to stare at me. "Aaaand I pushed the buck too far. Damn it." I clawed my hand down and met his intense gaze with a bored one of my own. "For the record, if you plan to rip my head off, remember you fall on the 'Luffy can kick your ass' side of the line. Fun fact, he thinks dino-steak is delicious."

Drake continued to stare at me intensely for what felt like a short eternity… and then, he just sagged. "I'm… just going to do away with the bullshit and ask you straight: How much do you know about me?"

I snapped my finger up as I started to concoct the perfect—bah, fuck it. "Enough to let you know that Doflamingo will be getting his sooner or later," I told him, blunt as a sledgehammer, before shrugging. "If you want in, door's open. Feel free to talk to Law about it."

"Though, we'll still be involved, SO THERE'S STILL NO ESCAPING US," Soundbite sing-sang.

Drake's face twisted up in a pained grimace and he pinched his brow in misery. "I need a fucking drink," he ground out miserably.

I… honestly couldn't help but chuckle sheepishly as I rubbed the side of my neck. "I know the feeling, yeah, only I don't drink so it's not so easy…"

We shared a patient moment of silence. In short order, it was broken by a chorus of shouts—victory, defeat, and incredulity alike—from back the way we came.

I glanced over my shoulder with a fond smirk. "Well, sounds like somebody's stomach finally gave out." I nodded my head invitingly. "Want to come along and get plastered while watching stupid people do stupid things?"

"…beats drinking alone," he grumbled, shoving off his makeshift seat and walking along side me.

"Heheheh…" I chuckled, slowly raising my arm. "Drake, my friend, I do believe that this is the start of a—"

"Don't touch me."

"Not there yet?"

"Not even close."

"Fair 'nuff."

"He's smiling!"

"I am not."

"You're right, you're smirking, and that counts."

"…tch."

And lo, the smirk did not go away.

BR-o-B

DAWN OF THE STARTING DAY

72 Hours Remain

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

oh, wrong series? My mistake~

DAWN OF THE STARTING DAY

"You… puss-ridden… flea-mangled…"

"Mange-peppered… rabies-carrying…"

"D-Duke Dogstorm! M-Master Catviper! The Transponder Snail just started ringing! The SBS will begin soon!"

Titan-Dog and Mega-Cat alike froze at the call from the Zou's lookout, Bariete. They stood, staring daggers at one another for a moment that felt like an eternity. Then, after a moment, they sagged.

"The truce stands," they sighed, and after waving for their retainers to go and wake up the rest of the nocturnal Minks they set off for the snail.

A one-eyed jaguar mink watched them go, and then looked back at the nearby dog mink that was sagging in relief.

"Soooo," he drawled slowly, cocking his functioning eyebrow. "Any chance that you'll stop with the Cross voodoo dolls, given that he can stop their fighting on a dime?"

And just like that the dog mink's relief evaporated. "When Zunisha grows wings and flies us to the moon," Wanda snarled in response.

"Oh come now, surely the situation hasn't escalated that far!" Pedro scoffed.

"You Musketeers are some real lucky sons of bitches," a passing reindeer mink grumbled, her arms crossed impudently. "One more ball and we could have scored a triple off your lazy—!" THWACK! "GYAH!?"

"SCORE OFF THIS, TICKS-FOR-BRAIN!" a white-furred rabbit mink snarled as she clung to the Guardian's back and gnawed at her head.

"GET OFF OF ME YOU COTTON-TAILED CLOD!"

Wanda's eye twitched viciously as she turned a baleful eye on the suddenly more reticent Pedro. "I. Am a royal aide," she bit out. "Which means that normally my only duty is to put up with the Duke and Master being at one another's throats. But now, thanks to that loud-mouthed prick, I have to deal with quarreling from both corps twenty-four seven. When the Straw Hats land here, I will rip his vile tongue out with my mouth."

Pedro started to nod in understanding, before pausing as a thought struck him. "Wait… isn't Carrot an Aide too?"

The glare Wanda shot at him was somehow flat and scathing at the same time, and the jaguar raised his hands in an admission of defeat.

A short while later, the majority of Zou's population were assembled around the communal snail. Cross seemed to be taking his time letting his audience call in, as was evidenced by the fact that he'd decided to put on a musical number, of all things, to avoid dead air.

"Some say that pirates steal and should be feared and hated~" the infamous loud-mouthed buccaneer sang, his voice rife with laughter.

"I say we're victims of bad press; it's all exaggerated

We'd never stab you in the back, we'd never lie or cheat

We're just about the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet!"

"…what the heck even?" Bariete questioned, his tail swishing in agitation.

"Hey, ho, ho!" a wild chorus of voices suddenly crowed out of the blue, all full of cheer and wild glee. "It's one for all for one

And we'll share-and-share-alike with you and love you like a son

We're gentlemen of fortune and that's what we're proud to be

And when you're a professional pirate!"

"Sounds like Cross is putting on a veritable ensemble performance!" Dogstorm chuckled fondly.

"You'll be honest, brave, and free!" a new, but simultaneously familiar voice crowed out.

Catviper blinked in surprise. "Wait a minute… I know that voice, isn't that—?"

"The announcer for the Foxy Pirates, Itomimizu!?" Pedro finished, just as incredulously.

"The soul of decency," the infamous wide-mouth continued.

"You'll be loyal and fair and on the square

And most importantly—!"

"When you're a professional pirate," the chorus cheered once more, as wild as ever. "You're always in the best of companyyy!"

The Duke and Master exchanged bemused looks as the song wound down to a close. "Well, Luffy's certainly proving himself a charismatic one, isn't he?" the hound chuckled.

The feline leered back with a snicker. "Depends on how many of those people at his back want his head, don't it?"

Before either of the biarchs could start anything, however, they were interrupted by their snail regaining its typical cheeky grin.

"Well, that was fun!" Cross said cheerfully. "Hell, never thought I'd ever get the chance to sing that song of all things! But! Seeing as I have had that chance, I'd say that means we've had enough time for our viewers to all sign on in! So, for those here, allow me to—!"

"Yo, Cross, have you started up and welcomed people to the SBS yet?" a most definitely unexpected voice cut in with a cackle.

"No, but—DAMMIT, not again!"

"Cut off even by Apoo! Oh, he's never going to live that down!" Carrot snickered into her paw-gauntlets.

"You three-limbed, monkey-faced, piano-toothed c* #&%r!" a far rougher and less familiar voice roared indignantly, getting cut off at the end of his sentence by the honk of a horn. "I was supposed to do that! We discussed this!"

"This is the sound of me not giving a fuck!" Apoo cackled, following up the taunt with a guitar riff. "In C Minor, I might add."

"And you, snotstain! Why the hell did you censor me but not him!?"

"Only I get to choose who goes blue, DIPWAD!"

"฿%*#&!"

"Lots of guests this time," Catviper observed. "Including that hijacker Apoo, they seem to be in close proximity."

"Did the Straw Hats make even more allies?" Carrot wondered.

"Their tones don't exactly scream 'friendly', though…" Dogstorm muttered thoughtfully.

"Ugh…" Cross made a long-suffering sound that was eminently familiar to all his listeners. "Well, people of the world, as you can already tell, emotions are running high for us. And 'us' doesn't just mean the Straw Hat Pirates this time. Let's set the tone for this whole thing by starting it off hard and fast: For those of you who've been keeping up with our voyages, my crew and I have reached the end of Paradise, which is to say, the first half of the Grand Line. And as such, to reach the other side of the Red Line and voyage forth into the New World, we and all other pirates who share our goal must first pass through the final locale of Paradise for pirates, the world-famous—" It was honestly a miracle that the snail didn't hurt something with the sheer amount of tension Cross packed into the word "—isles known as the Sabaody Archipelago.

"Unfortunately for us, this is easier said than done at the moment. For those of you who aren't following the news in the Grand Line—or at least the scuttlebutt, doubt Big Fop Morgan's been given permission for this piece—the Marines have set up a blockade around Sabaody to bar any pirates from reaching it or the New World on the other side. As you might imagine… we're not happy."

"You're not alone there," Wanda muttered.

"And we're not alone there."

The mink was caught between blushing and snarling in irritation as her words were mirrored.

"As you might have gathered already, we've formed some extremely vague semblance of an alliance with some other big names. We have with us the best, the brightest, the most fearsome, most powerful… and Kid and Apoo are here too, I guess."

"SWEAR TO #^ , GONNA KILL YOU!"

"Apapa, yeah, because that joke is so original, you've used it how many times now?"

"I've got a joke about that in mind involving your mother, but I'll refrain from using it because I have class. Unlike you."

"Girls, girls…" an unfamiliar female voice cut in, speaking in a nice and condescending tone. "You're both annoying bitches, now can we please move this the hell along? I want to get to Sabaody while you all are still young."

"… Right. Sorry about that, dear viewers. You know how it is with pirates. Especially antsy ones. As such, in the interest of ongoing entertainment, let the show go on! Now, in five, four, three—"

To the puzzlement of the gathered minks, Cross went silent… and then, to their surprise, the Visual Transponder Snail they'd snagged not two days prior went live, presenting an image on the chunk of sailcloth they'd rigged as a screen. There, on top of a very large sparrow with a blue-and-white hood and a mad-cap grinning snail seated on his shoulder, was Jeremiah Cross; next to him sat an unfamiliar man in a purple turtleneck, cream pants, and a striped hat. Or at least, he was unfamiliar until people noticed the widest mouth any one of them had seen in a normal-sized human.

"Hello, everybody, this is Jeremiah Cross and Soundbite," the Voice of Anarchy declared, throwing out a jaunty, two-fingered salute that his snail backed up with a snicker, then swept his arm out to indicate the man next to him. "And, with me in this special double edition of the SBS is returning guest and announcer, Itomimizu of the Foxy Pirates!"

"Pleasure to be back, Cross!" Itomimizu declared, waving his arm eagerly at the camera. "I'm happy to be here again, and you can be sure that me, my captain and crew in general are absolutely honored, honored, to be a part of what is surely the largest Dead End Race on record!"

Dogstorm and Catviper exchanged wary glances at that declaration. They'd been in one or two of the races in the past, and one and all they'd tended to end in a particularly… sticky manner.

"What's a Dead End Race?" Carrot wondered.

"An uncommon competition among pirates, an anything-goes race with a massive prize at the end," Dogstorm explained briefly.

"It tends to end about as well as you think it would," Catviper sighed wearily, massaging a migraine out of his brow. "And considering how the Straw Hats are involved, I'd say that the only real question about the fallout for this would be just how many other crews are involved."

"A pleasure to have you here as well! Though the pleasure will be much greater if it ends like the last competition we fought you guys in," Cross snarked, drawing ineffective leers from his companions. "Anyway, we can go into more details for those unaware later, but first, how's about we confirm that this is the largest Dead End Race on record?"

The camera view swung around from Cross and Itomimizu, and the Minks and the world alike gaped at the sight that was unveiled: a bird's-eye view of the sea, and the massive polyglot fleet spread out on top of it, blanketing the ocean with a cover of more floating wood and metal in one place than most people alive had ever seen. Rounding out the picture was a miniature but still massive storm cell brewing behind the fleet, the winds visibly churning the cloudy heavens on high.

"So…" Pedro dragged out slowly, scratching nervously at his scar. "With that many ships at once…?"

"I do believe the ocean is about to be lit on fire, yes," Wanda answered, her anger suppressed in favor of anticipatory dread tinged with bloody excitement.

"Now, those of you who know what a Dead End Race is, I'm sure you're wondering how we're going to give the ships the starting boost they need," Cross stated with a proud nod. "And for those of you who don't, normally Dead End Races use a convenient mountain river à la Reverse Mountain; the steeper the better. But, considering this is open ocean and there are no convenient mountains nearby… well, we had to come up with a solution on our own."

"A completely insane solution that's liable to kill us all and that personally I still think we're a bit close to…" the bird the humans were sitting on spoke up as it hesitantly stared down at the water below. "But, yeah, a plan if you want to call it that."

"So, standard fare for the Straw Hats then… still wonder what it is, though," Dogstorm mused.

"Yeah, you've really got to wond—whoa!" Carrot reeled back in shock when a stretch of ocean suddenly roiled and churned, a great and foamy cloud of bubbles smashing through the surface all at once. "What the heck was that?!"

"Ah, excellent, that'd be the solution in question getting under motion," Cross explained, his grin becoming distinctly wolfish as he watched the fleet below swiftly scramble into action. "Pop quiz to everyone back home: Who remembers the little climatological cataclysm we ran into earlier in our voyage… known as a Knock-Up Stream?"

Dogstorm and Catviper stiffened and paled in an uncharacteristic show of synchronization as the implications of what was happening struck them. "Uh-oh…" they chorused.

"What's wrong, my lo—hm?" Bariete cut himself off in confusion as he noted something on the screen. "Uh… h-hey… is it just me, or does the ocean behind those ships look a… bit…"

His words and every other ongoing conversation trailed off into stunned silence as out of nowhere, an entire stretch of ocean started to simply… collapse, as it were, water spiralling down towards the seafloor with alarming speed. Accelerating speed, as over the course of a minute, the hole expanded from a meager pit to a massive, yawning chasm that lead straight into a pitch-black abyss, audibly roaring from the sheer intensity of the suction.

The fleet pitched back from the outermost edges of the maelstrom, only their anchors holding the back from the getting sucked in. A scant few did get sucked down into the screaming abyss—or rather, sucked screaming into the abyss—but it seemed to be composed of either the poor bastards whose anchor chains had snapped, or the stupid bastards who hadn't put down an anchor at all.

"WOOHOOHOOOO!" Cross crowed, hanging onto Chuchun's plumage for dear life. "Aw, MAN! It's even bigger than last time! It's actually trying to suck us in from the sky! This is AWESOME!"

"Speak for yourself, you're not the one who has to fight against the natural impossibility here!" Chuchun squawked as he flapped his wings with manic vigor.

"Oh, but this is entirely 'natural,' my fine feathered friend, entirely natural! We just brought it about through artificial instigation!" Cross snapped a finger up to point at his tertiary co-host. "Care to elaborate for those at home, Itomimizu?"

"Certainly, Cross!" the wide-mouth saluted smartly before addressing the video-snail. "As you might recall from the Straw Hats' broadcast on the matter, the Knock-Up Stream is a massive geyser that can erupt in the middle of the ocean, sending a pillar of water high enough to reach into the sky! Very convenient for our cause at the moment! But, unfortunately, like all natural disasters extremely unpredictable!

"You see, the Knock-Up Stream is usually initiated when water drains into a subterranean cavern on the ocean bed, and is superheated by geothermal heat! Rather than wait for this sequence of events to play out naturally, however, we instead brought them about ourselves. All it took was some of our more aquatically aligned allies—"

"Shout out to Captain Dugong AND THE GREAT KUNG FU FLEET!" Soundbite cheered.

"—to dive down and set some explosives over a cavern they found themselves, and voila!" Itomimizu swept his arm out over the oceanic abyss. "One Knock Up Stream on demand! First comes the whirlpool…"

And then just as swiftly as it appeared, the maelstrom swirled shut with barely a gurgle, the water splashing back into a calm sea. And yet in spite of this apparent calm, the pirate fleet didn't relax an inch. Rather, they appeared to be even tenser than before, every inch of rigging drawn sharp and taut and the anchors raised out of the water like they were on fire.

"And then, once the cavern is filled to capacity, the ocean calms down to normal…" Cross picked up, his eagerness ramping up even further. "But not for long."

Catviper let out a choked gurgle as he watched the ocean start to bulge where the maelstrom had once swirled, surface tension straining under the immense amount of pressure rising from below. "And they did this on purpose…?"

"As you can see, the ocean is barely hanging on as the pressure mounts to astronomical levels!" Itomimizu declared in as grandiose a tone as he could achieve. "Any moment now, the pressure will be too much, and the Knock-Up Stream will erupt and reach the heavens in all its glory!"

"But why—" Wanda only got two words out before she clamped her hand over her muzzle.

"Now, some of you may be wondering why we'd be using a force of vertical thrust to accelerate ourselves, when what we need in this instance is lateral thrust instead, right?" Cross queried with an impish grin.

"Teeheehee! He's got your number down pat, Wanda! Teehee—GURK!" Carrot scrambled frantically at the paw her superior had offhandedly clamped around her throat.

"Did you really think now was the right time to push her?" Milky questioned in honest incredulity.

"Gmmph…"

"Well, simply put, it all comes down to a most simple and basic concept of life. What goes up… must come down."

"Unless it's a bounty," Ito interjected.

"Yes, yes, that. ANYWAY!" Cross clapped his hands eagerly. "As we've often repeated, the Knock-Up Stream is a titanic pillar of water, all the water we saw go down the maelstrom, a skyward current of the stuff! And when the initial force of that current ends, it'll all hang in place for a moment… before it all comes crashing back down. And all that water, crashing down in one place? Well, there'll be effects from it. Specifically… A ripple effect."

Wanda tilted her head in confusion. "A ripple effect? What is he—?" A tapping on her wrist drew her attention to Carrot, who was pointing her other paw frantically. Pointing it to the north… of Zunisha…

Wanda's eyes slowly widened as realization fell over her. "They couldn't possibly be that—!"

"Think very carefully about who you're talking about," Pedro deadpanned.

Wanda outright paled in anticipatory terror. "Ooooh, dear…"

-o-

"I'll let that sink in for a minute for those of you who can put the pieces together. For everyone else… well, we've got a bit of time before it happens, so let's go ahead and explain how a Dead End Race works."

"It's really quite simple: GATHER A BUNCH OF PIRATES, dangle a lot of money in front of their noses, AND THEN SEND THEM THROUGH AN OCEANIC OBSTACLE COURSE of deathtraps and SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE BETRAYALS!"

"Ah, sounds like a pleasant Saturday morning…" Itomimizu sighed.

"Of course, this is a little different from your usual Dead End Race, and I don't just mean the starting boost. Veterans out there, how many of you have heard of a Dead End Race with a pot of ฿8 billion?"

PFFFT!

King Dalton raised an eyebrow at the sputtering witch on the other side of the table. "Huh. You're the last person I expected to be shocked by… pretty much anything on Cross's show, you know."

"Growf," the witch's ogre-rabbit of an assistant nodded in agreement, kindly handing her off a new bottle of booze.

"Go make a cowpie, rawhide-ass!" Kureha hacked, booze still clearing her airways. "I've heard of or seen some ridiculous amounts of money, most of them from my own mouth, but this much from pirates? Seriously, is that an actual king's ransom or something?" She turned her attention on the fourth person in the room. "Well? I'm talking to you, big guy! You are the expert on bounties around here!"

"Bite my blazing incandescent ass, you wi…i…WAH-CHOO!" Don Accino shook the room with his roaring sneeze, glowering at the half-old half-young woman from his spot huddled in front of the fireplace. "I'll help you the second you help me! You're the so-called witch around here, cure this damn co… oh… WAH-CHOO!" A sneeze cut him off again, and he tried to wipe off the new mask of snot, sniffling to clear the airways.

"No chance, glow-pants," Kureha snickered as she gestured for her assistant to get the small giant another blanket. "I'm good, but not even I know how to cure a common cold. You're stuck with it until you can sneeze, sweat and—worst case scenario—puke it out. Sorry, not sorry because you almost barbecued my wayward apprentice."

"Grmph…" the newly minted Alabastian Guardian grumbled.

"Per-haps you shouldn't have come to a Winter Island in… less than appropriate clothing," Dalton mildly stated.

"I ate the Hot-Hot Fruit! I've spent the last three decades of my life living in an iceberg field! The cold has never bothered me… EE… WAH-CHOO!" Another sneeze cut off the burgeoning tirade, and a glower fixed itself on Accino's face.

"…um…" Dalton uncomfortably scratched at his chin. "Have you considered that your old home might have housed something of a 'dry' cold with just ice, whereas a snowy kingdom such as ours is a bit… wetter in nature?"

Accino stewed in place for a few seconds before snapping his head away, pointedly adjusting his sunglasses. "Shut up," he sniffed.

"So anyway, the money…?" Kureha prodded.

"Yeah, you heard me right!" Cross gloated as if in response. "Eight. Billion. Berries. That's nine zeroes. Think about that number. Let it sink in. We had to take some very special precautions to make sure that pot stays safe."

"And sorry, whitehats, we're not telling!"

"Yeah, that'd just be stupid. Anyway, the other main difference?" Cross's grin took on a particularly vicious sheen. "The obstacle here isn't preset traps, or other pirates. At least, mostly not other pirates. Instead, we have a whole blockade of privateers and Marines who have oh-so-kindly volunteered themselves for this duty!"

Accino's frustration slowly disappeared as a grin spread across his face. "Well, well. If this is going to be anything like a routine breakup of Alabasta's blockade, it should make quite a spectacle. Ah, speaking of which…?"

"Ah, right, right. You said you had a list…?"

Accino tossed an envelope to the witch-doctor. "It's been nothing serious so far, but Cobra is determined to take every precaution regarding his health. The Kingdom of Alabasta thanks you for service. For payment and necessary resources, the Royal coffers of Alabasta are open to you."

"Mmm… meh," Kureha scoffed dismissively, waving her hand. "Open, sure, but I won't plunder them too bad. Call it… remembrance for an old quack who never charged too much, I suppose."

"So… free?"

"Now hold your horses there, you walking space heater!"

-o-

The Marines' staffing issue had only somewhat improved since Enies Lobby's destruction, leaving them nowhere near the resources to pull of the blockade on their own. It was widely accepted that that was the sole reason that they had hired so many privateers to blockade Sabaody, but even outnumbered they remained the ones in charge when the situation called for it.

Naturally, however, with the average Marine being overall less capable than the average pirate even in the Grand Line, it required significant force to keep everything running smoothly and discourage any saps from mutiny or desertion. As such, three powerful Marines were in charge, each one individually capable of matching a ship full of privateers or more.

One handled the soldiers. One handled the ships. And one handled the strategies.

The former two were in a constant state of unease around the latter. Not because they were the only Devil Fruit users in the entire fleet, they had long since shown that they didn't need their powers to be strong. Nor because the man outranked them; he was amicable about everything despite his typical scorn towards ability users.

No, what unnerved them was that under their current assignment, they were required to cooperate constantly with someone who had managed to uncover the New World Masons four times already, and neither one was eager to report to the Divine's de facto leader that she'd need to wipe his mind a fifth time because one of them screwed up. He'd been a good sport about it, but Tsuru was starting to get annoyed.

Of course, that worry was presently taking a backseat to a much more immediate one: in the face of Cross's latest announcement, the man who could have passed for a Chinese emperor was completely and utterly unflummoxed, and was even sporting a slight smirk of intrigue.

"Ahhh, so that's your game then, mister Voice of Anarchy," Vice Admiral 'White Feather' Komei mused with an almost fond-sounding chuckle.

Smoker and Hina hid their flinches by clamping their teeth down on their tobacco bundles.

"Now, with all of that explained, back to the ripple effect. Just think for a moment, dear viewers," Cross crooned, nearly rapturous with anticipation as the aquatic bulge towered higher and higher, slowly starting to loom over the masts of even the biggest ships in the assembled fleet which had by now put a decent amount of distance between themselves and the building cataclysm. "Several hundred metric tons of water, slamming down at once into the ocean. That wouldn't really cause a ripple… so much as it would bring about a tsunami."

It took all the self-control Smoker had to keep from ashing his cigar any more than he had to. "He cannot be serious."

Cross dispelled that notion when he flung his arms out with an utterly mad cackle. "A tsunami that we're going to ride straight into the blockade, baby!"

"Harnessing the momentum from a natural disaster for their own causes. Come now, Commodore." Komei hid his chuckle behind his fan. "Shouldn't you, of all people, have been expecting something like this from the Straw Hat Pirates?"

While Smoker twitched at being called out on his skepticism, a ringing alarm sounded out from the broadcast. "IIIIT'S TIIIIIIIME!" Soundbite hollered ecstatically.

"YOU HEARD THE SNAIL, PEOPLE!" Itomimizu roared, pumping his fist into the air as his ride flapped its wings in terror. "BRACE YOURSELVES AND BRACE YOUR SAILS! THE FIRST EVER SKELTER BITE-SABAODY DEAD END RACE IS ABOUT TO BEGIN! ON YOUR MARKS!"

Komei's smirk stayed firmly in place as he snapped his fan aside, glancing towards his current subordinates as he stood from his seat and walked towards the cabin's door. "Captain Hina, if you would be so kind as to inform the… mercenaries to prepare themselves for combat?

"Of course, sir," she responded, then hesitated as she and Smoker followed him out onto the quarterdeck. "Are there any specific orders you'd like me to communicate?"

"GET SET!"

"Why, isn't it obvious, my dear?" Komei drawled as his eyes scanned the horizon.

KA-BLOOOOOSH!

Smoker and Hina both flinched in shock as a titanic wave of noise smashed over them, originating both from every snail in earshot and from beyond the horizon, and both could do nothing more than gape at the blue tower t rising on high, connecting heaven and ocean in a defiance of all logic.

And then, as that tower suddenly halted and started to fall, one word cut through the shock like a cannonball.

"GO!"

"Kindly inform our helping hands," Komei chuckled over the raucous round of roars that sounded out over the SBS, sounding genuinely eager for whatever was to come. "That the game is afoot."

Cross-Brain AN: Now, two things to say here. First, we initially planned on posting a full explanation on the details of the race further up, but it was just too much exposition at once, so we cut it down. We still have the scene written out, however, and will be publishing it at a later date so you can see one of our 'deleted scenes.' Probably more, if we can bring some past ones up.

And second, perhaps more importantly, we know that we said that we would be finishing up the Road to Sabaody this chapter, and because we promised that, we wouldn't not do it unless we had a very good reason…