With immense thank you's: geckogal077, Opalescent Gold, oh nooo, Terikel, Mugiwara-Kaizokudan, SupremeGeneralJoker, Emily, Shiningheart of Thunderclan, Lucy Jacob, minty, Guest, luffys, Trashfalgar, Mari, AloeWera, yourhappyplace, breakable bird, sharkswillruledaWORLD, Tamago-ya, Lucinda M. H. Cheshir, Alkitty, helichopper, Guest, moonlit mage, hakuryu, PetiteBulle, VeraVera, Guest, Sheep, Meatzman2, Girl-luvs-manga, mrs eggplant, and shimamia!
—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #17
friend is an eight-letter word
—
After weeks of reckless, wild chaos, Sophie was finally finding some order in her life.
…And she knew the moment that thought popped into her brainspace, the universe began conspiring to disappoint her. She frantically glanced around for a vengeful ex-Princess Lisbeth to come crashing through the window or her ex-boss Lettidore grabbing her and locking her in her bedroom without any food. Not even any pudding. How awful!
And why did she have to make so many enemies? Why did her closest friends (and they were, they just didn't know it yet) consist only of pirates, of all the individuals in the world? Sophie had to hang out with better people. Better, boring people. Like accountants. Wait! No! Accountants were at the epicenter of white-collar crime. Like chocolate makers. Yes. This was going on her short-term goals list, of which also included: survive, live, be alive, continue to breathe, exist, keep soul in body.
Except (and here it was) there was a slight hitch to her newfound order.
The hitch was named Law. In particular, this Law who sorely needed a Don't Try This At Home, Kids warning tattooed on his face. Or a flashing neon HOMEWRECKER sign attached to his forehead. It didn't have to be accurate, just had to do the job. Because maybe, maybe then, Sophie might remember to exercise caution.
(Alas, he reserved his tattoos for his chest and arms, and she didn't glare at those places nearly enough—not for lack of trying, though.)
Sophie knew she shouldn't feel weird about working with him. He was the same irreverent, sleep-deprived punkapple as before. Even the revelation that he was a survivor of Flevance didn't do much to change her perception of him. And it certainly wasn't an excuse for his behavior, either, though it explained a lot…
He cracked his neck and stretched.
Law said something to her, and she grunted because she was tired, and he was doing terrible things to her blood pressure—like now, with the stretching, and the stretching, and sometimes when she slipped on beer bottles, he caught her around the waist and said the world's rudest come-ons, like your lack of warrior instinct is astonishing—
Sophie slapped herself across the face.
His head jerked up. "What was that?"
"I was getting a headache from looking at you," she explained calmly, rubbing her cheek. "But I staved it off."
His mouth crooked into a sneer. "Well done."
Whatever. Sophie wasn't thinking about it. It's what she did best: compartmentalize Bad and Uncomfortable Feelings by pulverizing them between her fists. Which has been working out great, except she still couldn't talk to Hippo without screaming into a pillow or think about Nellie and Lisbeth without wanting to rip her eyeballs out.
Perfectly A-OK.
She refocused her attention on the situation at hand. Law stabbed the lab rat with the Red Sky sample and Roomed it back in a cage. The basement/storage room wasn't equipped with much, but it had an old rat cage Sophie discovered beneath a life-size reproduction of a jaguar head (after screaming and throwing a chair at it). And, as luck did not have it, because this basement was dark and creepy and a perfect mice sanctuary, Law found one scuttling about in the hallway.
She squinted inside the cage. It kind of feral-looking and twitchy. Like it had seen some shit and maybe owed money to a rat mobster. "We need to name him."
"Subject One. Or, Rat."
"Goliath," Sophie decided. She tapped the cage. "Aw, it likes it."
Law peered inside the cage. "I think it just gave you the finger."
Yes, animals tended to do that around her. "It's an expression of love, I'm sure."
"Denial is a river in Alabasta."
"Isn't that the Sandora?"
"I've heard it both ways," he assured her.
Sophie rolled her eyes. "Why don't we get started?"
They did.
"There's a huge aberration in the nervous system. It matches up exactly with G-13's research." Goliath's heart, lungs, and brain floated around Law's head like some macabre planetary orbit. "Heart rate: steady. Respiratory rate: fifty breaths per minute. Significantly higher than average."
Sophie paced around the basement. "Whatever Red Sky is doing, one of the side effects is causing the lungs or the diaphragm to work in overdrive. Maybe it affects the alveoli?"
"Lung inflammation?" He rearranged Goliath and Roomed the rat back in the cage. "Chemical pneumonitis?"
She stepped over Law's legs without looking. "But that doesn't match the other symptoms…"
"I postulated from G-13's research that nerve agents affect the body in more chemical ways."
"Well… yeah, I mean, it's a chemical gas."
Law rubbed his chin. "In my case, the mineral properties of Amber Lead mimicked other metals like zinc and iron, metals our bodies actually need. So, involuntarily, the cells would substitute Amber Lead to do basic functions, and that… as you know, went fucking terribly. It even affected cells that produced melanin."
So the old legend that Amber Lead turned its victims into white zombies wasn't a total conspiracy theory.
"Amber Lead minerals also blocked neurotransmitters. Physically, not chemically. But perhaps it's the same in this case. A neurotransmitter."
"…An enzyme involved in neurotransmission?"
"Which Red Sky shuts down through chemical means."
"Oh!" Sophie shrieked, freezing on the spot.
After a pause, Law moved the coffee cups and Goliath's cage away from arm's reach. She had a tendency flail whenever she got excited.
"Okay. Wait." She gazed at the wall in a faraway trance, then violently shook her head. "But, but how would that work, like—medically?"
"Neurotransmitters are released at the end of a neuron's axon. They jump synapses and bind to the receiving neuron's dendrites to start the process again until they reach their mark, the resulting message of which could be something as simple as contracting a muscle."
"Or contracting a diaphragm!"
"Neurotransmitters don't impede body functions unless something's wrong with the signal transmissions. Like a chemical synapse that failed to communicate." He tapped his quill sharply on the table. "Explain how this hypothesis could work from a chemical standpoint."
"Um, um! Okay! So PSNOHC11, as the substrate in a substrate-enzyme complex, has this trait called phosphorylation, which is the addition of a phosphate group on a molecule. It basically becomes an o-o-on-off switch for the molecule—and, and, and it can alter their function, like make a hydrophobic protein hydrophilic, or, or, or just inhibit it—but an-anyway, it can a-also be reversed and the enzyme can be reactivated—"
"So if we figure out what enzyme is involved and reactivate it before it reaches the point where the victim can't breathe—"
"It's possible to reverse Red Sky!" Sophie finished, clapping her hands. "That's the game plan!"
Law nodded slowly, his mouth curling into a small, triumphant grin.
"Don't fuck with us, science," he said, raising his hand.
"Yeah! We're gonna kill you, science! Well, maybe not kill it, because that would set back civilization and life as we know it several million years, but—"
"Sophie."
"Right!" She slapped his hand in a hi-five. Today was the day! Her clutch performance! Her grand hurrah! Bards were going to sing about this day! Dancers would mime-dance how she so thoroughly wrote the words tryptophan hydroxide! They were going to make history!
—
"ANYONE KNOW AN EIGHT LETTER WORD FOR SPINY-SKINNED SEA URCHIN?"
A ménage of sleepy groans and curses yelled back. It was much too early for brains to string together sentences longer than 'five more minutes, mom', which was why Anko chose this particularly aggravating method to wake up his crewmates. Say what you wanted about him, but Law had a real knack for giving his crewmates jobs that played to their strengths. In Anko's case, he could transform into the world's most annoying rooster. The resemblance? Uncanny.
"COME ON, THERE'S A DOZEN BRAINS ON THIS SUB," the helmsman encouraged.
"Yeah, that's eleven and a half more than Anko!" Shachi contributed enthusiastically.
"It's barely past dawn, you bastards," someone sobbed.
"EVIL NEVER RESTS. UP AND AT 'EM, MATEYS."
"Did Anko say he was off to worship Satan?" came Bepo's voice.
"Free Satan!" Valross demanded. This led to several calls of support to Unleash the Antichrist, All Hail the Beast.
"I AM NOT EVEN SURE ANY OF YOU ARE TRYING TO HELP," Anko accused.
"Bears need a full seven months of hibernation," Bepo lamented. This was backed by a number of Heart Pirates who claimed they were officially bears from now on.
"Anko, shut your gob!" Penguin banged on the voice pipe with a wrench.
"OKAY, I'LL STOP."
A pause.
"BESIDES, IF I WANTED TO LISTEN TO AN ASSHOLE, I'D JUST FART." The control room's door slammed open. "Ack! Penguin! You can't just barge in—shit, man, wrenches aren't supposed to look that sharp—!"
Then came several bangs and thuds and abundant crashes, a muffled scream, and then silence.
Penguin's voice, eerily jovial, appeared over the voice pipes, "And now, the weather."
—
Sophie peeled her face off the table. She had passed out somewhere between five and seven am. What… happened… She blinked up at the window like a shriveled worm that hadn't seen light in years. Today was going to be the day, she remembered thinking, wiping drool from her chin. Bards were gonna sing… dancers were gonna mime-dance…
Law was reading on a pile of cardboard boxes, the poor man's couch. Had he been up all… night? Day? What time was it?
"Whuh time ih ih?"
"Morning."
"Mawnin? Sin when dih ih become mawnin…"
"The planet spins on its axis, orbiting the sun. I hear sunrises happen in twenty-four hour intervals—"
Sophie squeezed her eyes shut. Too early, she tapped.
Hold the pineapples up. Morning. And today's date was…
"Blue on a berry! I need to go to work!"
"Work?"
"D-didn't I mention? The thing President Ursa hired me to work on?" Sophie hopped frantically around the room, fixing her hair into a ponytail and searching for her backpack. "It's only three days a week, but I'm—ugh, I need to brush my teeth—I'm getting paid for a real job—mangos, why d-do I have i-ink all over my shirt!? I don't have t-time to deal with this! Take care of Goliath while I'm gone!"
"…So it finally happened. Somebody actually hired you to tell bad science jokes all day."
Law narrowly avoided the sandal thrown at his head.
—
There were certain agreements among the Pirates of Heart.
Fact: When it comes time to wingman, you gotta wingman. Unless you were there first, in which case it's completely within your right to bully the closest Heart to sell you like you're the goddamn King of the Pirates. If you're the unlucky bastard, them's the breaks. There's always next time.
Fact: In a fight, when things get mighty ugly-lookin', you jump in the fray even when it's not yours to jump into. Pirates don't play by rules, anyway. You get both your asses back to the submarine, back to Captain so he can fix you up. Sure, Kamasu'll be real sore at you for a week or two, and Anko's gonna start a fight soon as he can stand without wobbling. But no one gets left behind, and like Captain'll tell ya, nobody dies without his permission.
Fact: Hai Xing's cooking is the best show on the Grand Line.
On lazy mornings like today, the Hearts hung around the galley, eating breakfast and watching him perform magic. He juggled a flaming pan of seared fish, a bowl of guacamole, and diced a basket of papayas. The galley portholes gave a great view for Bepo, who was dive-bombing schools of fish. Full show.
Once breakfast was over, the thought of the ocean was too tempting not to join Bepo. Hai Xing went to work scrubbing down the countertop and tables. Washing plates—plates that over a dozen crewmates ate from three times a day, plates that built up in the cabins and grew mysterious fungi—took up a good amount of time. He was typically laboring over the sink if he wasn't prepping or cooking.
Footsteps of a late riser padded inside the galley.
"Hey, freak." Anko rummaged through the fridge, scratching his belly.
Hai Xing set a pot on the drying rack. "It's starfish."
"Huh?"
"The eight letter word."
"Anko, you finish laundry yet?" Manta yelled from the hall.
Anko leaned around and hollered, "I'm useless for half an hour after I wake up!"
"We're running out of underwear! Half the men are down to their speedos!"
"Well, fuck off! The more you pressure me the more I ain't gettin' to it!"
They heard Manta huff something about never letting Anko do laundry again as he stalked away.
"Fine by me, ya old fart!" Anko grabbed some leftovers and left, knuckling the lopsided star on his ribcage, near identical in placement to the scar on Hai Xing when the two of them got shish kabob'd by Teresa.
Outside, the seaweed and the beds of blooming coral casted blue ocean-shadows over the galley. This was his favorite part of the morning. When the submarine was anchored and only the lowest deck submerged in the turquoise shallows, he had the best view of the ocean.
A tomato-red mop of hair poked inside the galley. The self-proclaimed president of the Let's Make Hai Xing Go Outside and Have Fun Club.
Upon spotting the cook, Shachi smiled. "Hey there, Xing Xing. You're looking Vitamin D deficient."
Hai Xing raised a soapy ladle. "You're not taking me alive."
The ensuing scuffle was short. Hai Xing tried to escape into the vent shaft. Shachi dragged him out by the ankles, a limbless jellyfish in silent, futile protest. "I got him, boys! Let's go!"
—
Machinastein chocolate was priced at one thousand beli per pound, if you bought it inside the country.
That's three thousand a pound exported to foreign countries and merchants.
That's upwards of five, six thousand if it's from a real ritzy brand, pure high-grade goodness. Chocolate with bits of coconut. Chocolate squares with hot, molten chocolatey centers. Peppermint chocolate, milk chocolate, seventy-nine percent cacao, dark and…
"Bitter," Sophie mumbled, licking her fingers and looking into a microscope. "Let's see… synthesis of sugar and theobromine looking stable…"
Her workplace was the third floor of the Chemistry temple. The laboratory was beautiful and sterile, with marbled floors and high, arching windows. About twenty other scientists were also working, buzzing like dutiful bees around her.
Officially, Sophie's title was consultant. Her job was to examine various protein matrixes in the Dials and cut out or add different ions to optimize their chocolate-making capabilities. Quite simple once she got the hang of it. Plus, playing around with proper lab equipment again was fun.
Chocolate Dials were in an experimental stage, but funded and backed by Machinastein's government. Chocolate was their greatest export, after all. Dials that could harness solar energy and self-produce chocolate would be something of a minor economic revolution. Sophie didn't find it as interesting as Red Sky and in any other occasion would think of it as a waste of time, but she'd begged President Ursa for this gig, when the realization she had no money and no idea what she was going to do set in. The President was helpful and even gave her a room at her Jaguar Temple to stay in. That was three weeks ago. She had to admit tasting chocolate for a living wasn't the worst job a chemist could have.
Now that she was properly awake, memories of last night's discoveries were fresh on her mind. She couldn't wait to get back to the basement.
She loved the fire-flash-bang of chemistry—but ninety-eight percent of the time, science was just this: sitting down, attempting to make sense of data, and hammering out a hypothesis. Probably the most boring, menial work in the history of the universe. And Sophie was counting down the minutes until she could get back to that too-small table, to the smell of ink on parchment, burning a quill against the writer's callus on her middle finger. After all, science was for the curious, who loved the stars and searched for evidence for things unseen, who asked millennia-old questions and kept asking.
—
"Did you make a cure yet?" Penguin greeted.
Sophie stared at the three new pirates in her basement. "WHAT—"
"I didn't let them near the table or the rodent," Law said instantly.
"BUT—"
"And I made them wash their hands."
"Oh, okay." She closed the door and spun around. "Wait, what are you all doing—"
"Visiting because Captain looked lonely," said Shachi.
"I was dragged here against my will," announced Hai Xing. "Much like how life dragged me against my will out of utero."
"So did you make a cure yet?" Penguin asked again.
"No," she sighed, patting his red pompom as a hello.
"I've been monitoring the rat and researching enzymes involved in neurotransmission." Law passed over a stack of paper. "Acetylcholine looks interesting."
"Acetylcholine? Let me see…"
None of the Hearts knew the details of her project, only that something awful happened at Vira because of it. They weren't going to ask her, either, since Sophie had a tendency to make things go boom when she got real twitchy-like, but Penguin figured they were safe with Law around. "So… in simplest terms, what are you doing?"
"We're looking for the enzyme PSNOHC11 inhibits," their captain answered.
Shachi said to Penguin, "I like how he says it like he expects us to understand."
"I know; it's cute."
Sophie tapped a page of meaningless squiggles, according to Shachi. "But the formula for the dissociation constant for the inhibitor is useless since we don't know where the active site is. Measuring the rates of catalysis at different concentrations of substrate and inhibitor is a no-go."
"I said 'simple', right?" Penguin asked Shachi. "You heard me say that, right?"
Then Sophie shoved the papers back at Law, whining balefully, "What does this meaaaaannn, I don't geeet iiiiit."
Their captain went on a long description of complicated, funny-sounding words. At the end of it, he motioned to his own paper. "I need a diagram of NmU."
"A whole neuropeptide! Fun." She drew big hexagons and linked them together, chattering about the valence of atoms and covalent bonds. To the Hearts, the sight of their captain and their hitchhiker working in tandem was akin to a grand pirate battle. Extraordinary and, they got the feeling, not to be disturbed under the pain of death.
Hai Xing sliced a piece of papaya into thumbnail sizes, and had Law Room them inside Goliath's cage. The rat seemed quite happy with its snack.
Sophie went back to work, while quietly dealing with the side effect of all this coffee in her system… Why did coffee make one so gassy? Well, she knew why (coffee had an acidic nature, plus it increased gastrin and cholecystokinin hormones in the intestines), but it still begged the rhetorical question.
Law looked up. "I've been meaning to ask you something."
"I only farted a little bit," Sophie defended. "The rest was Penguin."
He kicked her foot.
"CP5 said you manufactured seastone bullets."
"Oh," she sighed deeply. "For the record, I really hated doing those. Okay, so. I was among the hundreds of scientists who produced seastone weapons for the World Government. Such a pain. I mean, it was simple. Mind-numbingly simple. You melt the stone down, separate some compounds, forge it into bullets or nets or plates to cover the bottom of ships—Vegapunk invented the recipe and all we did was follow the instructions. It was a mandatory quota we were forced to meet every month." She shrugged. "The science behind Devil Fruits and seastone are mega-classified. I hear only the scientists working at HQ know anything about it."
Law sighed. "I figured as much."
"If you have any more questions about World Government science, just ask," Sophie said, and when she returned to work, she saw the shared look of surprise among the pirates in her peripheral vision. It almost made her smile.
—
The next day, Sophie went to visit Hippo. The hospital was three stops away from the University.
A bag of fresh grapes sat in her lap. She rested her head against the windowpane, soft vibrations rattling her skull, and peered up at the clear blue sky. No sign of a flying cat here, either.
She closed her eyes, going through her to-do list. She still had to update President Ursa on the whole… pirate situation. Obviously, she didn't want Ursa to know too much about her experiment. It was safer that way. It was the sort of thing the World Government would, if they knew, use as an excuse to turn Machinastein into Ohara: The Sequel No One Ever Asked For.
Even though Machs were nothing like the Ohara demons, Sophie added mentally. Maybe that wasn't the best comparison.
Exhaustion sneaked up on her during the train ride. She dreamed of vast deserts, mountains connecting heaven and earth, and swamps with souls of the dead dancing about in circles. Gentle methane-blue flames that could look like anything. A dead king, a lost princess, or a beautiful woman smoking a long, elegant pipe.
Sophie reached for the will-o'-the-wisp, but just as she was about to catch it in her palm, it vanished with a sticky-sweet pop as the train jerked to a stop and she woke up.
—
Hai Xing's lunch was a timely affair. Precisely at noon, the men took a break from chores or otherwise came staggering back from a drunken night about town. The mechanics emerged like dehydrated vampires from the dark engine room whenever the hall started to smell good. Anko enjoyed announcing the day's menu on the speaker system; such timeless dishes included 'pan-fried misery noodles' and 'depressing bread buns, with a side of olive oil made from the tears of baby pangolins'.
"AND TODAY HAI XING WILL BE SERVING ROASTED SADNESS ON THE PILE OF CRAP THAT IS HIS LIFE," Anko announced, right on the dot.
When he came back after a long stretch of time, Law had a habit of Rooming all over Polar Tang to check on his crew. The engine room, the control room, the decks. He appeared inside the mess. "I have yet to woo a Machinastein dame," Anko was saying, "and we all know how noble ladies love pirates."
"Yes, because women love idiots who run away with their jewelry and pride," Bepo said sagely.
"Not always. Sophie-chan had a thing going with the cat princess—"
"But Sophie-chan ran away with her kingdom, so isn't that worse?"
"Ah, Captain." Hai Xing raised his hand, but Law had already Roomed away.
Bepo found him scavenging inside his cabin like a woodland ferret. Law kicked over blankets and pillows, searching for books. "Just came here to pick up a few things," he muttered. He stuffed a few heavy tomes under his arms and rummaged through his bookshelves. He'd meant to clean up his cabin after his two-week bout of lethargy, but he always ended up thinking about Red Sky and never did more than toss shirts into a 'to fold' pile before going back to research.
The bear watched him carefully, noting his tired, slightly unfocused gaze. "When did you last sleep, Captain?"
"Recently. I think. I forget."
Bepo clapped his paws. "Penguin! Shachi!"
They strode inside, rolling up their sleeves. Law's eyes narrowed, suddenly on guard. They nodded at each other and circled him.
"Captain, long time no sleep," Penguin said, wrapping his arm around Law's elbow. Shachi took his other side, and Bepo linked his paws around Law's stomach.
"Oi," Law said, threat curling in that monosyllable.
"Sleep is good for you," Shachi reminded gently.
"Oi!" Law protested again, actually starting to struggle now.
"Yes, yes, yes," Bepo, Penguin, and Shachi said cheerily as they strong-armed their captain to a proper bed.
—
"Sorry!" The nurse clapped both hands in front of him. "He was discharged yesterday. We tried calling the Jaguar Temple but they said you weren't there. We didn't know where else to contact you."
Sophie raised her bag of green fruit. "But. But Sensei told me to bring grapes."
The nurse didn't quite know what to say. "Yes, well…"
She could hardly believe it. Hippo, gone? Wandering about Machinastein? A marine bumming around a city that despised the World Government? Was he drunk again? "Did he at least say where he was staying?"
"Maybe he left a note for you…" The nurse rifled through a couple folders, then shook his head. "Sorry."
The Den Den Mushi rang and he scrambled to pick it up, leaving Sophie standing there, carrying a bag of grapes and feeling like a total idiot. What was she doing here at the hospital anyway? Why had she even come here in the first place?
"Okay," she said to no one, and turned on her heel.
—
Machinastein was an oddity among the great Paradise nations for one reason: they'd pick pirates and criminals over marines, any day.
Take a few centuries-old disputes and colonization attempts, toss in some cultural backlash, and the World Government was simply not wanted on the island. Pirates, at least, contributed to the economy. Pirates knew how to preserve the surface of order. Which was: no murders in broad daylight, no harming students or children, and absolutely no slavery. But even with its limitations, Machinastein's black market was rife.
Criminal activity was confined to the back streets and docks, and only a long grove of low-hanging lluvia de oro separated them from the city proper. It was here that Sophie wandered about in a blue mood after her shift at the chocolate labs ended.
There was something President Ursa had told her two weeks ago, when Sophie asked her to be a chocolate researcher. It was a simple thing. Don't parade around that you're working on Chocolate Dials. Especially not if you're walking in the bad part of town.
Sophie gave exactly zero turds about being inconscpicous and slouched inside the nearest chocolate shop, a quaint little store. She finished off the bag of grapes on the train ride back and, still hungry, used the rest of her money and ordered twenty bonbons and a bottle of honey beer. If all her teeth fell out, at least she could throw them at Hippo one by one for each time he'd disappointed her. She planned to fuel her rage with candy for the next foreseeable century.
Waiting for her order in the corner booth, she spotted a familiar face. The Heart's resident gloomy cook entered the shop to investigate the bonbons. Sophie waved at him. He ignored her until she started hollering at very loud volume and finally gave up, slouching over to her table.
"Can I see your hat for a second?"
Hai Xing tossed his newsboy cap at her. She nodded thanks in a clipped sort of way, pressed the hat over her mouth, and screamed. She forced all the air out of her lungs and screamed and screamed until she went blue in the face. Sophie straightened up, wiped the saliva off the brim, and graciously handed him back his hat. Hai Xing gingerly wiped it on his shirt before cramming it back on his head. It drooped over his eyes.
"As a close friend, can I ask you something?"
"You're not, though." Hai Xing flipped to a dog-eared page of his book, settling down at her table. Sophie sneaked a glance and read the top upside-down sentence. The Baron sauntered over to the bed, naked, glistening pectorals shimmering in the candlelight…
She squinted at Hai Xing. His expression was unmoving.
"Are you ever happy?"
"This is my happy face."
She tilted her head… and tilted, and tilted, until she was almost looking at him upside-down. "No one will ever want to be your friend if you don't pretend to smile and be friendly. That's etiquette lecture number—" Her face contorted for a quick second. "Anyway, even Law-san can do it. They'll think you're an unsociable creep."
"That's what my mother said to me before she left."
"…Didn't you say she died from a poisoned snake bite?"
"She was actually the lover of a baron, who swept her away to his kingdom." His touch trailed along Marcellus' flustered cheek, sending jolts of pleasure down his—
"…That's the summary of your steamy romance novel, isn't it?"
Hai Xing said nothing. Sophie sighed a little. Nothing could break him, could it? At least her food had arrived.
"Mmmm, the earthy smell of pyrazine. And is that a hint of vanillin I detect? Wanna try?" She tried to offer Hai Xing a fork, then threw it at him when he didn't want to take it. "Anyway, it's so weird where life will take you," she commented, taking a bite. "I never would've thought I'd be using chemistry knowledge to research Chocolate Dials."
"…Chocolate Dials… Dials… Dials…"
Her voice echoed strangely in the shop. Why… why were the other customers running away? Then it was just her and Hai Xing in the corner booth, and why… why were the chocolatiers edging in from behind the counter? Why were the waitresses pulling out flintlocks?
Here, Sophie remembered President Ursa's warning.
"Come around to this side of the counter, Miss," said the cashier, raising a rifle.
An incredulous expression crossed Sophie's face. "Is this really happening?"
"Stand up, miss," said the waitress. "What should we call you? Scientist? Doctor? The last one preferred doctor, right?"
"Before he tried to steal the chocolate fondant recipe and we had to ice him," said one chocolatier grimly.
Her nose wrinkled. "You iced him?"
"We drowned him in icing."
Sophie barely bit back a burst of laughter. She knew a guy who'd appreciate their lust for innovative murder.
It was becoming clear to her that the chocolatiers took her for a young, innocent, recent graduate who bragged about her job at the wrong place. A helpless target. Of course, 'Helpless' wasn't a totally incorrect description of Sophie in her present state. Weapons were banned in the College of Chemistry, for obvious safety reasons (physically and chemically: gunpowder was a fire hazard in laboratories). She had all her knives stored under her bed in the Jaguar Temple instead of her backpack.
The window looked too thick to jump out of, and the door was about fifteen feet away. The chocolate shop was desserted. Maybe this was just a tasteless nightmare. Ha ha… oh, Sophie, you really pick the worst times for jokes.
"Tell your friend to leave and get over here," a chocolatier said—the leader perhaps, who was wearing a pink, flowery Kiss the Cook apron.
She stood up slowly, raising her hands. "Actually, he's not my friend. I can't tell him to do anything."
The chocolatier aimed her rifle at Hai Xing.
The bell hanging above the door jingled. A chorus of guns aimed at the door.
Whistling, Anko walked in.
"Hey," he casually greeted. Sophie gaped at him. "You sell newspapers here? Ones with crosswords?"
"No, but we're having a ten percent sale on all cake and pies." The cashier waved at the display case.
"Ah, never mind." He waved at Sophie. "See ya."
She inhaled sharply. "NOW HOLD ON. Do you not see the situation we're in?"
Taking his sweet, deliberate time, he glanced at the wait staff pointing guns at Sophie and Hai Xing (who was still reading his book, how was he so relaxed?). "Yep. Major suck." Anko nodded thoughtfully. "Alright, well, don't die."
Plan B. "Go find your captain Trafalgar Law and tell him we're being threatened!" Sophie shouted.
"They can't be Heart Pirates," one chocolatier muttered to the other. "They're not wearing those silly uniforms."
"They're called boiler suits and this island is too hot to wear them, obviously!" she squeaked.
"Why would a chocolate researcher be in cahoots with pirates?" someone else asked, rather intelligently.
"Yeah… well, um… th-that's—that's a long, boring story—"
Anko swung open the door, but the chocolatiers weren't taking any chances. Their leader trained her gun on him. "Get back in here."
He raised his hands and turned on his heel, smirking leisurely, too compliant to not be up to no good. "I change my mind," he said to Sophie. "I'll take them all out, but it'll cost you a kiss."
"Feel free to kill him," Sophie flatly invited.
"Fine, fine," he sighed long-sufferingly, "you can grope me, too—"
"Tell you what," the chocolate chef said to Sophie, "one of Big Mom's pirates is arriving in two weeks to collect chocolate samples and I want to know everything about Chocolate Dials. I might even get promoted. We'll even let your friends go."
Sophie counted quickly. Three versus twelve. Each of them had to take out four chocolate gangsters. Anko could handle his share. Hai Xing, she wasn't sure. Maybe he could take down someone if he ever looked away from his erotica. As for herself… well… Sophie didn't want to work for them—she didn't even want to work on the Chocolate Dials, but money was money—but they weren't the worst people she could work for. They weren't going to kill her, at least, and they were going to spare Hai Xing and Anko.
"What's it going to be?"
"I'll join your stupid club." Law would break her out in a day or two. And reattach her feet, if necessary.
Anko made a disappointed noise, like he was upset he wasn't going to get beat up.
Hai Xing closed his book with a snap and stood up. Then he said to the chocolatiers, quite simply, "Nobody is joining you. The three of us are going to walk out of here."
"Such friendship warms my heart," the chocolatier sighed. "Knock her out and ice the rest."
She shot Anko in the head.
He staggered backwards and stumbled into a table, falling behind it. Sophie immediately threw over the nearest table in a loud crash, lobbed her bonbons at the nearest gangster's face with a big, "TAKE THAT!"
The waitress grabbed Sophie's shirt and in one swift move threw her on her back. All the wind knocked out of her and she curled up, coughing.
Her eyes flew open and she rolled away just as the waitress' heel landed in the space where her stomach had just been. Sophie jumped upright, grabbed the waitress' other leg when it came jutting forward to kick her in the chest, and threw her into an aesthetically-pleasing platter of cupcakes.
She stumbled backwards, scrabbling for a weapon, found the neck of her honey beer bottle. She shattered it into a gangster's head, then finished off the remaining liquor—would be a shame to waste it.
Leaping back into the fray with a bloody forehead, Anko grabbed an armful of desserts from the window display and fired off éclairs and pain au chocolat like a Gatling gun.
"You're not dead!" Sophie exclaimed in surprise, wiping her mouth.
"It's a flesh wound," Anko snapped, knocking a chocolatier unconscious with a plate of truffles. "Damn it! This always happens before I say something cool!"
Half a dozen chocolatiers advanced on her.
"Stay away from me!" she shrieked, fending them off with a chair with the menace of a rabid Chihuahua, "I know how to aim my pee!"
They nervously avoided her front. Sophie had no plan other than to cause as much destruction as possible and hope one of them slipped and landed badly on a fork. She started throwing tables and hurling chairs, backing towards the door. Almost there! Almost—then I can make a run for it!
Her gaze found a pink apron in the midst of the chaos, the color intensely bright.
The chocolate chef was aiming her gun at Hai Xing, who was a lithe blur dodging attacks. Anko didn't notice. He was chasing around a gangster, cackling and hurling plates at him like high-speed Frisbees. There were two chocolatiers surrounding the main chef, blasting bullets at Hai Xing.
Sophie ran full-speed at one chocolatier using a chair as a shield, slammed into him, rolled into a somersault, and tackled their leader to the ground.
Sophie was the first to get ahold of her senses. She wrestled the gun away and aimed between her eyes, two hands braced for the recoil—
And then all she could see was Teresa, dodging the bullet at point-blank range, Teresa, thrusting her swords through the pirates, Teresa, beheading her with an axe, unyielding, indomitable—
The chocolatier twisted and slammed Sophie into the ground, wrapping her in a chokehold between her knees. The gun slipped out of her hands. Sophie couldn't breathe. She clawed at the woman's extremely defined hamstrings and croaked, "Your—face is—so unsymmetrical."
She punched Sophie in the nose, which was not optimal, but then released her from the chokehold, which was what Sophie was going for. She rubbed her neck and took deep, gasping breaths.
A blinding pain shot through her face and her cheek felt ice cold; she was laying on the ground, her vision spinning, a wet warmness pooling under her forehead. Someone must've dropped a cake platter on her head. Her ears were ringing. She struggled to get up, spitting out chocolate icing. On reflex she checked herself for a concussion—today's date? Nausea? Headache? Okay, she was fine. Disorientated, but fine.
Someone grabbed her around the middle and she screamed, struggling and kicking… until she saw the familiar scar-like birthmark on Hai Xing's forehead—he'd lost his hat somewhere—as he dragged her upright. With a strength she didn't expect from someone so small, he threw her and Anko—when did he grab onto Anko?—over the side of an overturned table. She landed on Anko's stomach ("Oof!") and rolled onto the floor.
Sophie groaned, rubbing her aching rear.
"What did he do that for?" Anko snarled, clambering to his feet.
The next second made it all too clear. Bullets bangbangbanged into the table and several more pinged past them, ricocheting off the walls. She shoved Anko to the floor and ducked. It was a relentless barrage of gunshots, the sound of thirty waves crashing over you at once, the sound of crouching in a trench and wondering if the dead revolutionary in front of you was the last thing you were ever going to see. Sophie wanted to reach inside her ears and pull out her eardrums. Hai Xing was the only one still back there, the only one they must be aiming at—
She covered her ears, trying desperately to drown out the noise. A look of dark rage crossed Anko's face as he realized the fate of his crewmate, and he jumped into a mid-crouch, swearing softly.
"Oh, fuck!" someone screamed, and a dismembered foot whacked Sophie in the face.
"Oh my god, Hai Xing-san!" Sophie screamed at the foot, cradling it.
Anko peered at it. "That's not him."
She chucked it away from her with a disgusted screech. The gunfire became more sporadic, interjected with screams, then stopped completely. Gunpowder-smoke drifted past them in eerie silence. Anko was muttering something as he looked over the side of the table. She picked out words like 'break their fucking necks' and 'make them eat their own toenails'.
Sophie peered over the table.
Hai Xing had a hole or two blown in him, but he was miraculously alive. He was surrounded by twitching and groaning bodies.
"Shit, oh, shit…" Anko whispered.
A hedge of black thorns protruded from his forehead, his face, his back and arms. His breathing was harsh and guttural, and it sounded like a recording Hippo once showed her of an old, aching creature from the deep. Deep, discordant moans and watery echoes. His shirt had ripped open and Sophie's blood chilled at the sight of the brand on his chest. A giant, swirling sun. The symbol of Fisher Tiger… but warped like he burned it on himself without using a mirror.
"Don't go near him!" someone yelled. "Those things are poisonous!"
He was impaled by a black spine. Hai Xing shook out his shoulders, the things growing on him rustling like leaves on a branch.
"Holy fuck," Anko hissed, "holy fuck, the freak's a—"
"You d-didn't know?" Sophie hissed back.
"No! And if anyone else did, they never told me shit!"
The dust cleared, but something was wrong. Hai Xing's fingers scrabbled against his skull, as though he was trying to dig the spines out of his skin. He scratched until his nails and hair became matted with blood, and he stumbled around as though unbalanced. He started yelling, too, louder and louder until the very air trembled with his voice—
Anko leaped over the table, ran full speed at Hai Xing, and whacked him over the head with a chair. Sophie's hands flew to her mouth, barely holding back a horrified gasp.
He collapsed in a boneless heap, pieces of ex-chair clattering around him.
She walked slowly towards Anko as he backed away from Hai Xing, wary of the black spines that weren't disappearing. A discarded flintlock rested by her feet. She bent down and, after a moment's hesitation, picked it up. The remaining chocolatiers had fled, and the ones on the ground were not able to get up any time soon.
Anko nudged her. "Go see what's wrong."
She gaped. "Isn't he your friend?"
"Sure, if friend is someone you're forced to live near to. We might as well be prisoners who have an unspoken agreement to not go near each other's nether regions."
On principle, Sophie slapped him across the mouth. Twice.
She walked up to Hai Xing, the flintlock's handle cold against her sweaty palm.
"So, is he, like… dead or what?" Anko called a few paces back, nursing his cheeks.
His chest was rising and falling, slow but sure, though he was bleeding heavily. Sophie edged forward a few more paces. Hai Xing was poisonous, right? She didn't want to poke or nudge him…
"Hai Xing-san?" She winced at how high-pitched her voice was. "Are you… um… okay?"
Even in this form, he stuck with his habit of ignoring her. She was at a complete loss. What would Nellie do? Well, she hated pirates, so she'd probably blow Hai Xing into the stratosphere with her bazooka… And Law? He'd probably say something sarcastic and then offer to remove his thumbs.
Up close, she could see the brown of his skin through the patches of spines. It wasn't all black, now that she could see clearly. It was tinged with orange and blue and yellow, faintly iridescent in the light. It reminded her of the coral banks under G-13. She once went diving and found glittering sparkles hidden inside dull, dark rocks. How they shimmered different colors when she turned them in her hands. She'd cup them and press them to her eye and imagine she was peering inside a tiny world.
"We have to leave," Sophie said urgently. "We h-have to get back to the submarine. I… I c-can't drag you there when you're… you know? Can you stand?"
Silence.
And then Hai Xing suddenly made a noise that was somewhere between a snarl and a gasp. "Holy shit," Anko hissed from behind.
Sophie froze. Her hand on the gun twitched.
Then, after a long moment, she sat down, cross-legged. She set the gun on the ground and slid it away. This was Hai Xing, not some monster. He was the same quiet, dour cook who rescued her from Teresa and made snacks for a dying lab rat.
"Hai Xing-san!" Sophie sang, her voice as annoying as she could make it. "Hai Xing-san, Hai Xing-san, Hai Xing-san!"
The cook was lying on his side, his face half-covered by his arms. She saw a flicker of movement in the shadow of his face, like an eyelid slowly opening. Was he… glaring at her?
"You can h-hear me, can't you?" Sophie challenged, leaning forward. "W-what is this, a t-temper tantrum? Get up, or," she waved at the spines covering his skin, "put those things b-back so we can get you out of here."
Another slow wheeze. Hai Xing really was glaring at her.
Was this how he wanted it to end? Dying on the floor of a chocolate shop, with a ten percent sale on all cakes and pies? Sophie glanced at Anko, who was staring at them from a useless distance away, pale-faced and wide-eyed.
Then, she looked at the door. It was swinging on its hinges, its glass window shattered. Fine, if that's what Hai Xing wanted, she could leave. She could just leave, like how other people had a tendency to do to her. The gloomy muffinfudger wasn't her friend. She could pull a Hippo: go get drunk at a bar and tell stories about the War and How the War Made You a Man and then pass out in his bedroom in front of his student, who didn't yet understand what disappointment meant but only that she was filled with it.
The glint in Hai Xing's eye was familiar. It was angry and it was dangerous and, and she wondered if it wasn't just a little bit like pleading.
Oh, she thought with great reluctance, pineapples.
"Okay," Sophie said. With an air like she was rolling up her sleeves, she began doing one of the very few things she was good at: babbling incessantly. "Okay. So, listen. Listen. Just listen to me for a moment. I remember the first thing you made that I ate—oatmeal, I think, and biscuits and s-some kind of squid… Oh! But my favorite dish was something you made from Kunlun's cuisine! It was a spicy b-beansprout… thing. Sorry, I don't know the r-right word for it."
She worried her lip. Her head was aching. Maybe she did have a concussion.
"You know what the coolest thing about it is?" she pressed on. "I could taste the island in your cooking. I don't know how to describe it properly, but I can remember being on Kunlun, walking past the restaurants and the casinos when I eat your food, and the air, the smells, everything. I never even liked pudding before Nellie-san made me some, and now it reminds me of Crawfish Island, and her, and how much I miss her. Sense memory, right?"
She twisted the hem of her shirt. It occurred to her that Hai Xing didn't know who Nellie was.
"I d-don't know the right thing to say," she admitted. "I don't know why you're grumpy all the time, or why you never smile. But … I would—I would be so angry if you died, I'd become a ghost just to beat you up and you couldn't even kill me because we're both ghosts. And you know what? Who else is going to cook? Those useless buffoons would set your submarine on fire, and that—that would be so awful, you know? They'd be entirely lost without you. They'd be lost. You take care of everyone. You're the one everybody comes back to at the end of the day. I can't even imagine what it's like to be so important, I can't. You have to go back to your family, Hai Xing-san. They're waiting for you. Can't you hear them?"
Silence, but for a quiet "What the fuuuuuck," from Anko.
And then, the spines on his head started receding. Hai Xing was a man again, shivering and pale-faced.
"It's true," he muttered, his voice normal again. "My captain cooking is an exercise in self-immolation."
Sophie looked over her shoulder at Anko. He slumped against the wall and weakly shook his head. "Shit, man," he breathed.
Yeah, that sounded about right.
Sophie found Hai Xing's hat and stuck it back on his head, then bent over and threw up. Ah, so she was definitely concussed after all.
—
Hai Xing was part crown-of-thorns starfish, part human. It had been years since he last 'spiked out', he forgot how to pull himself back.
"I've never seen an echinoderm fishman before," Sophie said. "I've seen fishpeople with… gills, but not…"
"We're not common. I heard there are communities of us living in the New World, but I've never met one."
Sophie rested her back against the wall, careful not to make her mild concussion any worse.
Law had burst out of his cabin when he saw them limping back to the submarine. He didn't seem surprised when Sophie explained what happened to Hai Xing, a confirmation that he knew Hai Xing's secret. Luckily, most the crew was out in the city so there was no one around to ask questions. He bandaged Anko up, made Sophie choke down an anti-nausea pill, and ordered them to rest in the sick bay. After getting his bullet wounds treated, Hai Xing retired into the galley. But Sophie couldn't rest. As soon as Law left, she summersaulted out the sick bay (sick parkour optional, but totally necessary).
She found him in a mysterious room inside the pantry. If the cot was any indication, this must be where Hai Xing slept. An assortment of colorful yarn and sewing needles sat underneath an old nightstand. It was a minimal bedroom, smaller than the pantry itself. There was barely room for one person, much less two. Sophie squeezed into the corner, next to his shelf of romance fiction, and sat on the edge of the cot. He had a large amount of ocean-scented candles with names like 'seafoam' and 'coral blossom', which made the room smell like a flower-covered lagoon.
She wanted to ask him about Fisher Tiger's mark on his chest, but he started talking, and Hai Xing talking was so rare, and probably due to his pain meds. He grew up cooking in the brothel he was born in, preparing extravagant meals for rich clientele. It was alright until they started saying he was an 'exotic specimen' and 'ready to be sold', so he had to run away. He cooked for some other folks for a while, until they found out about the spines and tried to flambé him on a pitchfork.
"I was captured by slavers when I was sixteen," he carried on, speaking to the ceiling, "but I knew how to cook well, so I was more useful than being someone's pet. They put me to work on a Mariejois cruise liner."
No response came to mind but meaningless, empty platitudes. And coming from a World Government scientist, it would sound like a joke. She was gripped by a sudden and slightly masochistic question: did he ever hate her? Had he ever wanted to hurt her for what the World Nobles—and the World Government—did to him? What did he see when he looked at her? A symbol of unimaginable pain and torment?
Sophie swallowed. "You should get some rest."
"Okay." His eyes were already closing as the pain medication kicked in, and muttered, "It could be worse. I could've been born as a male anglerfish. Useless parasites destined to live as a bag of sperm for the more powerful female of the species."
Sure, it could be worse, but Sophie didn't think his life was anything close to rainbows and butterflies.
"I'm so sorry about everything you went through," she whispered, unable to meet his eyes.
"You have nothing to apologize for, Tenryuubito Slayer," he mumbled.
She glanced at him sharply. Her face reddened and she turned away.
A heavily bandaged Anko strode into the galley right as she left Hai Xing's room. She heard him call out, "Hey, Spikes! How are you holding up?" and spun around, about to scold him for being so loud about Hai Xing's secret. He was clearly treated as a pushover by some of his crewmates, because he was quiet and kinda weird and talked about death like an old lover, and Sophie wasn't going to put up with it. But then it became clear she didn't have to.
Hai Xing pulled himself to his feet with great effort, walked up to the door and, without a word, closed it in Anko's face. The ocean-scented candlelight from inside his room panned across Anko's surprised expression, illuminating half, then a sliver, and then nothing.
—
Law passed Anko on the way to the galley, but his helmsman brushed past him in uncharacteristic silence. It was dark inside. Hai Xing always had the lights on during dinner prep, but the galley was empty tonight and quiet without its cook. Only the golden flickers of nightlife on the harbor, glowing in the dusk, shone in from the portholes. His attention snapped to a blue shadow sitting at the table. He rested back on his heels when the shadow raised its head and a mess of curls became silhouetted against a porthole.
Sophie looked up as he stepped inside the galley.
"I don't believe I need to tell you to keep this a secret," Law said briskly.
"I can keep my mouth shut. You should be worried about the other, particularly loud person who knows."
"I already talked to Anko. He'll keep quiet."
"Why does Hai Xing hide it from his own crew?" she wondered aloud. "There's nothing wrong with being a fishman."
"Imagine someone whose hands are disfigured. There's nothing wrong with that, and still they wear gloves so nobody can see."
Glum, she rested her chin on her arms and traced abstract shapes on the wood grain with her gloved finger. She winced briefly as he opened the bright, blinding fridge to grab leftovers, and listened to him crank open the stove. She should be heading back to the basement. Sophie didn't like the thought of leaving Goliath unsupervised.
"Do you have any coffee?" She'd take a cup back to the lab. "I'm getting caffeine withdrawal headaches."
"The coffee maker's over there. We have medium and dark roast. Make it yourself."
A good idea, if she knew how to.
"Oh, the pain," she moaned, "I can't stand up… I still feel the phantom pain of when I was poisoned in the foot by a madman…"
Surprisingly, that got him over to the coffee maker. "I'm already preparing dinner," he acquiesced, taking out the dark roast from the cupboard, "might as well make something to drink."
"An exercise in self-immolation…" She hadn't meant for Law to hear, but his sharp hearing picked it up. He directed a scowl at her. She held her hands up, blinking innocently. "I'm just quoting your cook."
"I make a mean tuna onigiri, but I bet he never mentioned that," Law said gruffly, and Sophie could tell he'd been worried sick about Hai Xing.
But thinking of Hai Xing made her wonder if Law ever hated her because she was from G-13. He had good reason to. Flevance suffered a catastrophic ending because the World Government decided the pros of getting rich off of Amber Lead outweighed the cons of letting hundreds of thousands die.
"Why are you being nice to me?" she asked suddenly. "I get we're like… science teammates, but I not even in your crew."
"I can't be nice to people who aren't in my crew?" he replied, leaning back on the counter.
"That's not an answer."
"Anything can be an answer if you try hard enough."
He was teasing her again. As delightful as verbal sparring with Law could be, she wasn't up for it tonight. Sophie sighed, her cheek woefully swollen. "You don't have to force yourself to be nice. If you want to see G-13's research, I can bring it to you." Actually, she should've already shown him some projects; that had been the deal. But she couldn't say that, because Law's grin had fallen away, and his expression was—oh, god. Why was she so good at making herself feel like a pile of rotten mango slices? "I'm sorry," she said, resting her forehead on her palm. "I mean, if it had been me—I just don't get it."
"You're just—you," he said curtly, and for some reason glanced at Hai Xing's pantry. His voice quieted as he continued, "And if I—if we didn't like your company, we would've told you to fuck off."
"…But haven't you told me that before?"
Law thought about it, sitting down across from her. "In this case," he said finally, "it was good that you didn't listen."
Sophie didn't know how to respond to that. A shame it was so late, Law reflected. The dust of pink across her cheeks was wasted on the night.
"Well, then… okay." She looked out into the harbor with some sort of embarrassed determination.
This strange, quiet moment between them remained undisturbed for about three more seconds, and then Penguin shouted from the voice pipes, "Captain! We caught a stalker!"
Casting each other a bemused glance, Law and Sophie Roomed up to the deck where the Hearts were grappling with said stalker, dragging him over the submarine's railings.
"Get off me, pirate," Hippo snapped, shaking off Shachi, "I'm not a stalk—ah, Sophie-chan! Um. Bad time?"
Sophie was so overcome by surprise and righteous fury that she was left momentarily speechless. Law took this opportunity to catch his crew—and the marine dripping in the middle of his deck—off-guard.
"Sensei," he called over Sophie's steaming head, "would you like to stay for dinner?"
to be continued
trivia
friend is an eight-letter word: friend is a 'starfish'! anko loves his crosswords, though whether he's good at it or not is another thing.
amber lead: the metallurgy is based off of lead disease. (supposedly it resembles cadmium poisoning more, but… lead is in the name…)
goliath the mouse: a small buddy for a big undertaking.
neurotransmitters: i have too much knowledge of organophosphates and acetylcholinesterase that i don't know what to do with now.