Thank you's to: Leynadoodles, Alkitty, NewCanvas, Nogly, Lucy Jacob, read a rainbow, Xielle Sky, GreenBelleWalker, and DreamsoftheDamn!
AN UPDATE IN THE SAME MONTH? WITHIN TWO WEEKS? WHO AM I? I really wanted to churn this chapter out, because it's been a real long fucking ride and honestly? You guys deserve it for sticking with me for so damn long.
—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #28
sword x gun
—
Sophie was running on fumes. More specifically, a bowl of cold noodles, caffeine, and an unhealthy but deeply reliable fear of failure.
She was vaguely aware of fire licking up her face. Law right next to her with his Armament, and feeling a mixture of 'I'm so proud' and 'hey, this is MY thunder you're stealing'. The cold metal of the extinguisher that she gripped, releasing the nozzle to smother the burning engine. Men shouting clean water, hurry! Freshwater splashing over Law's head, dousing the flames on his body. Grimy ocean spray hitting her in the face. Have to save clean water for Captain, sorry. Spitting out algae. The things she did for friendships. Somebody give her an award.
Someone—Shachi, she thought—was shouting that the main engine was ka-fucking-put, but the smaller steam turbines were still good for electricity and steering. Sophie lurched back into the hallway, the water coming up to her ankles. The ground swayed like the worst rollercoaster ride; the waves outside must be monsters. She puked up a little bit of coffee and stumbled into the wall, unable to stand straight from all her injuries.
Finally making it to her cabin, Sophie went about double-checking that she secured her chemicals. She put her hanging terrarium of bioluminescent Crawfish Island plants in her desk drawer.
Dragging herself back into the hallway, she was so tired it took her a moment to notice that the sky had turned into a dense, swirling fog. She couldn't see anything but mist outside of the portholes.
Her legs wobbled. A minute. She just needed a minute.
"Just a minute," Sophie mumbled to herself, somehow on the floor, her head sinking onto her chest, and went to sleep.
—
Armament Haki was weird.
She was overly conscious of every breath of her lungs, every twitch of her muscles, everything that her body was touching. The soft cloth of a blanket underneath her cheek. The texture of sand under her palms—oh, I'm not wearing my gloves—the grains rubbing against her feet. Her injuries. The hunger in her stomach and thirst in her throat.
Even though she didn't have Armament activated, she could still… feel it. An invisible flow of energy humming through her bloodstream and taking stock of all her scars. If she focused on it, if she stuck out a bare toe and touched it lightly, it rippled like the surface of an ocean across her whole body.
Her eyes were all grubby as she opened them. Sophie yawned beneath a cloth canopy, tied to sticks placed around her. Someone had changed her out of her burned boiler suit—or, more like, Roomed and switched it with her sleep clothes.
She eased her sore body upright, folded the blanket, and maneuvered under the canopy into grey, washed-out light.
The Polar Tang was marooned right on the sand. Pirates dangled down the side of the hull, rope tied around their waists and knotted to the deck railing. They were banging on metal with tools, their shouts indistinct.
More tents, very DIY-styled, surrounded this little camping site. They were made out of sticks, broad tropical leaves, and burlap potato sacks. Hai Xing sat on a large piece of driftwood, fanning a dented metal pot over a campfire.
"You're hungry," he said, and it wasn't a question. He spooned out soup into a tin bowl.
Her stomach lurched, queasy. She cleared her throat and rasped, "How long was I asleep?"
"Two days."
"Oh, that explains it," she squeaked, and ran off into a covered area of rocks and palm trees.
When she came back feeling much lighter, Sophie found a bar of soap in a pile of supplies left in the tents. She washed her hands, upended a skin of water over her face, and dug into the soup. Glittering eels swam through the air. It was the same type of eel in her soup, and it was so light in her mouth, like she was slurping down clouds.
"So… we crashed?" she asked, looking around at the atoll she found herself on.
It was a ring of sand around a lagoon. A dense jungle on a small island, around two or three miles wide, rose up in the middle of the water. The mist was heavy; she could barely see a mile off into the ocean.
"We're in the Florian Triangle. No one saw the island in the fog until it was too late. This is just like what happened to my mother when that feral chinchilla bit her out of the blue and turned her into an eldritch abomination…" He trailed off, looking out dramatically into the vista.
"Right, when that happened. Oh, you finished your scarf! You look so handsome, Hai Xing-sama!"
He patted the thick black knit around his neck. "I know."
"Wow, you stud."
A shout sounded from the submarine, and they watched a Bepo-shaped figure grab a hunk of busted metal before it could fall into the ocean. The Polar Tang was peeling like fish scales. Hai Xing returned to washing seaweed in a pail of water.
She glanced sideways. "Hey, are you… alright? After the whole 'corrupt marine in charge of a terrifying black market and delivered slaves to World Nobles' sort of… thing."
"I'm alright." He finished washing a handful of seaweed and set it in a basket. "Are you?"
Sophie spun her soup around, the mixture glimmering like iridescent oil. "Not… really. You know, I'm normally fine with people hating me. I'm used to it. But with Lisbeth, it's so… different. I hurt her so much and it… feels heavy." She set a hand over her chest. "Right in here."
Hai Xing didn't refute her. He didn't say she did nothing wrong, and nothing was her fault. All he said was, "What are you going to do about it?"
"…I don't know." Sophie bit her lip, and shrugged. "But I gotta figure it out. Just like with G-13 and Red Sky. Figure out what I want to do, and when the time comes, I need to do it."
He poured out the grimy water. Pearl-colored sand crabs scuttled away. "Good," he said, with a slight emphasis on end of that made good sound more decisive than his usual flat monotone, which meant he cared. Overcome with love, Sophie hugged his arm. "I need this hand to cook."
"No, we're having a moment of silence to appreciate our friendship."
Hai Xing made a noise like, "Nrghh." But then he let her hug him for another second before shaking her off, which made up for it.
Finished eating, she went over to the marooned Polar Tang and waved up at her crew. The mechanics, hammers in their hands and nails between their teeth, waved back. A figure on the deck noticed her and Roomed her onboard.
Law was holding a pile of metal on his shoulder, his raggedy shirt was soaked through with sweat. Sophie wasn't sure whether to indulge the fluttering in her chest or the irritated urge to ignore him until they both had the time and energy to talk.
He smartly made little attempt to start a conversation, though he did grab her and prod her injuries.
"I can check my own wounds. I am a trained medic."
"Barely," the insufferable man replied.
Irritation won. Sophie smacked his prying hands away and made a beeline for the bathroom.
She ducked inside her little shower area, the pink shower curtain around it, and yanked the faucet on hot. Sticking her head under the water, she let the warmth seep through her. The tension between her shoulders began lessening.
She gave her hair a thorough wash and furiously scrubbed all over her body like she was trying to peel away her own skin, not bothering to be careful around her wounds. They were all healing fine anyway, and a little pain was good to help one wake up.
Her hand slowed around her bare throat. The familiar weight of the dog tags that never belonged to her was gone.
Suddenly, she was envisioning every terrible thing that might happen. Lisbeth snapping her neck. The Hearts being killed by her, or marines. Just because Sophie had Haki now didn't mean she would let herself feel over-confident. If anything, there was even more to worry about. The ability to do more meant she was now compelled to actually doing more. She had a responsibility to be dependable, and what if she couldn't? What if this Haki was wasted on her? What if my Armament fails at a crucial moment and I watch everyone die around me, helpless and useless and—
Shut up.
Sophie rested her forehead against the warm tile of the wall, counting in prime numbers. You're doing this again, you neurotic mango. But you survived this far. That's worth something.
She let the water run all down her back, curving down her legs. Limp coils of yellow hung around her face. Hand on the faucet, she turned it little by little until the heat became excruciating. Without using Armament, she just basked in it. There was something cleansing about painfully hot water. An imagined promise that it could burn her clean.
She had no idea what she wanted to say to Law, only that there was a vague feeling of something bad is coming that was growing ever stronger. She didn't think this was something that could easily be talked out. But it wasn't irrational to want to know more about something that had put her and the crew's life in danger.
Sometimes the utter awareness of her own ignorance got too sad if she focused on it, but being a scientist, there was hardly any other option.
She wished there was a guide. 'Hey, Cappy Cap Captain, we should talk about this weird connection you and Teresa have to the Rosie Nonty guy, who I'm pretty sure vanished into the black market years ago and might've once been your ex-lover? Also, Joker. And what he might be planning to do with Lisbeth. And why you hate Joker so much—don't tell me, another ex-lover? Oh, you think it's weird that I care so much about your sordid past? Could be carbon monoxide poisoning. Or scarlet fever. I must be deathly ill.'
Sophie lifted her face the water, which was beginning to cool, waiting for her brain to come up with an answer to everything.
Mostly she just got soap in her eyes.
—
When night fell and it got too dark to keep working, the Hearts stripped off their smelly boiler suits and were all wearing casual clothes as they came clomping up to the campfire. The repairs would have to continue in the morning.
"We'll probably be here for another week," Penguin sighed as he collapsed on the sand. "The engines are fried."
"It's kind of nice to have downtime," Valross said, helping Hai Xing pass around bowls. "At least we didn't get stranded on, like, an island that eats sailors alive."
"Not so fast." Sophie held up a finger, squinting at her book. "The jury's still out on that one."
She was wearing a black tank top and shorts, a shirt wrapped around her damp curls like a scarf. In her hands was Mysteries of the Florian Triangle. She was scouring it for information about the atoll they were stranded on.
Though the heavy fog had covered the stars, the firelight on the beach was going strong. Anko chopped coconuts with a machete and passed them around. His open flowery shirt hung loose around him as he sat next to Hai Xing, dropping the other half of his coconut in the cook's lap.
"Echinoderm pals," Hai Xing was saying to Uni. "Sea urchin. Starfish." He pointed to Uni, then to himself. Dark spines rippled over his forehead then shivered back under his skin.
Uni stared. "Fishman," he realized. He rubbed his neck; his bandana was down, and the twisted mass of scars around his mouth contorted as he spoke. "Sorry. I was… in it for a few years, as a kid. Sold in the trade."
Hai Xing sipped his coconut juice. "It happens."
"Commodore Dormio saved me. I mean, I thought he did. But I was just another tool…"
Shachi slapped Uni on the back. "Cheer up, you big emo. Eat more seaweed. How tall are you? We gotta fix you up a boiler suit."
Sophie watched their conversation furtively over her book. After Shachi moved away to join Penguin, Uni noticed her, jolted a little, and pulled up his bandana over his mouth.
"You don't have to do that around me," she told him, reproachful.
"I ain't a pretty sight."
"Well," she shut her book for a moment and lit a cigarette with her burned hand, brazenly ugly in the light, "I happen to like unpretty things."
After a pause, Uni lowered his bandana again. His scarred mouth grinned, the bone and muscle shining.
Law remained on the Polar Tang. He was still checking it over and told everyone to rest first, Penguin relayed. The Hearts, sans captain, tucked into Hai Xing's dinner. Manta pulled several bottles of rum out of nowhere and added copious amounts to everyone's coconuts.
As they ate, the conversation briefly veered towards Lisbeth. Sophie felt several gazes land on her. But here was the good news: even if they were a little worried about something, the Hearts had boundaries when it came to personal matters. They minded their own business like adults. Which she appreciated. Because she could get away with a shrug and a vague, "I'll figure it out."
And it was telling, then, that even if they thought what happened with Law on San Faldo was weird, they simply weren't that concerned over it.
'Whatever will happen, will happen' seemed to be the general, unspoken consensus.
They went to sleep in their makeshift tents, Valross dragging Manta and Kamasu by their ankles and throwing a blanket over their drunk, snoring faces. Not wanting to turn in yet, Sophie called first watch and wrapped a blanket around her as she watched the fire dwindle.
Bepo slept next to her. She leaned against his side, appreciating the warmth emanating from him. It was a weird sort of comfort, listening to the occasional mumbles and snores as the dark tide ebbed and flowed down the beach.
At the sight of a blue flash, however, Sophie threw her cigarette on the sand, rolled on her side using Bepo as a pillow, and feigned sleep.
Footsteps crunched over to the camp. Law sat down next to her with a long, quiet exhale, warming his hands over the small fire.
She was turned away from him, the burnished-gold firelight flickering over her back. The fabric of her tank was the only thing covering her tense shoulders, and that was made obvious as she felt the cool touch of rough, callused fingers along her arm.
He pulled the blanket up over her shoulders, to her chin. Sophie mimed sleep as hard as she could. Terrible doctor with his terrible need to cover unsuspecting maidens with blankets. Vile man.
And then, as if the whole thing wasn't bad enough, his fingers swept across the back of her neck and tucked a loose curl back under the makeshift scarf over her hair. She had to dig her nails into her palm to repress a shiver. Was it just her, or was Law's finger lingering a bit too long on her neck? Surely he had to know she was awake, by the way she was twitching and her uneven breathing? It was infuriating and made her contemplate biting his finger. Which then disturbed her on several levels.
What did he want her to do, talk to him? Or maybe he wanted her to say that she realized the best thing to do was forget all about Joker, because her captain obviously had everything figured out? Sophie pressed her lips tight, glaring at the dark whorls in the sand, traced in patterns by the wind.
His touch left her skin and she heard the rustle of him sitting back down, leaning against Bepo as he took up the watch. Sophie curled into herself tighter, pulling the blanket up over her ears, and let the sound of the ocean lull her into a fitful sleep.
—
The Hearts were hard at work, the noise of hammering steel echoing over the beach.
She hadn't attempted to talk to Law yet; he had his hands full fixing the Polar Tang with his mechanics. And none of them seemed particularly eager for Sophie's help, no matter how much she offered to blow something up.
So she left her questions alone for now. Which was hard for a twitchy, trigger-happy scientist with a tendency to imagine the worst. At the very least she wanted everyone to know how magnanimous she was being, except everyone was busy and/or didn't care, and the annoyed-looking beach iguana she bore her soul to replied by biting her hand and chasing her around the beach as she screamed.
Well! It'll take more than a lifetime of misfortune to bring down the Great Chemist Strangways Sophie!
She decided to investigate the tropical jungle on the main island. She stuffed her boots in her backpack and swam through the clear, shallow lagoon. The sands at the bottom bloomed with ribbony eelgrass. Sea turtles swam together. Bat rays glided past her.
She spotted a yellow shark with a head shaped like a lemon, and almost gasped underwater. A lemon shark! She didn't know they migrated as far west as the Florian Triangle. They released a unique acid that could either be a handy cleaning solvent or dissolve through rock when mixed with vinegar. Sophie let the shark chomp on her Haki-covered elbow while she collected the acid in a flask, and patted its nose before swimming away.
She strolled through the leafy jungle, her backpack rustling and her logger boots stepping through the wet soil. Fan-shaped tropical leaves hung low, lizards scurrying away as she pushed them aside.
A moth with charcoal-grey wings lined with crimson markings flew by. Sophie found the page on insects in Mysteries of the Florian Triangle.
"Could this be… b-brimstone moths? The Great Chemist Strangways Sophie has done it again! With this, she can make more pyreflowers!" She spun and said to the air, "Ladies, please, no need for a-applause. Oh, fine, if you insist…"
The live ones had a self-destructive habit of exploding when she got too close, so she went around picking up all the dead moths she could find, carefully handling the wings. Some were trapped under a mossy log, which Sophie lifted with a loud, manly roar, and then giggled to herself as she stuffed more dead bugs inside a beaker.
This was how Sophie spent her days as the pirates fixed the Polar Tang. She explored the jungle, bringing her microscope along, and sometimes Hai Xing, who stuffed his bag full of bananas, guavas, and papayas. They shared the fruit back at camp, with Manta digging out his mandolin and Anko strumming his ukulele.
There was a species of tree that, according to Mysteries, was called a Lichtenburg and ate thunderbolts instead of sunlight. Sophie managed to find the grove on one of her explorations. Their branches were all jagged right-angles, looking like forked bolts of lightning. She had to attire herself in Armament as she dug her knife into the bark and collected the electrified sap in a jar.
When she came back to the camp after sundown, she wrote notes about her discoveries in a thick, leather-bound journal. It'd been sitting on her desk for a few weeks, untouched. She was too apprehensive to open it. When she wrote down her research before, G-13 used it to blow up islands. It turned her into what most people would agree was a reprehensible monster from the age of thirteen, and caused her a lot of dang trouble in getting those papers back.
But she was doing it for herself now.
What she loved about her chemistry wasn't its capacity for death. Her chemistry was an art, and art demanded practice.
With that in mind, Sophie went to work. Making an inventory of her new chemicals. Writing down theoretical mixtures. Testing it (in an empty area of the beach, gas mask on). Stumbling back to camp with ash crusted to her hair and beaming.
After another long day of exploring, she walked back through the jungle. It hit her on one of these walks, like it always did whenever she arrived on a new island.
She stopped for a moment, her mouth slightly open and filled with chewed papaya, the buttery sweet aftertaste in the back of her throat, her lips sticky with juice, and just breathed. Taking in the bird calls, the iridescent floating fish, the press of the humidity against her warm skin.
It was moments like these where she felt slightly detached from her own body, looking at her life as if she was a spectator.
The beauty of everything was unreal.
Even the occasional skeleton she passed had its charm. Their bones were overgrown with dewy flowers. Small green leaves twined around the ribcages. Sophie couldn't make out any indication from their clothing if they were pirate or marine or civilian, or what island they might've been from.
She couldn't bear to silently pass by, not after all her years of attending Marine funerals. It was different from seeing graves on islands with villages or cities. Here, they had clearly died so far away from… home.
She opened Mysteries of the Florian Triangle and flipped it to the dedication page. Sophie ran her hand across the words, feeling a quiet sort of sad.
To all lost explorers,
may you one day find the way back home,
where old friends and good music await you.
- Calico Yorki, Captain of the Rumbar Pirates*
*The author died shortly after compiling his notes and returning from the Florian Triangle. All rights reserved by the West Blue Publication Guild.
She kept the page open as she mumbled prayers over the book. Which was really just, "Hope you're sipping piña coladas somewhere. Please don't let whatever happened to you happen to me or my crew. Well, you're dead, so what can you do. Still, I'd appreciate any help. Mmkay. Thanks."
Sophie turned to keep going, paused, and pivoted back to the flowering bones. "I don't know your names, but. I know you're here. And I'll remember. So. Swim good, yeah?"
The jungle rustled its leaves after her.
—
About five days in, the engines were mostly fixed. The mechanics were starting safety tests, leaving the rest of the crew to relax on the beach.
It was Manta's turn to do laundry. He tied the line to the deck railing, then the other end to a piece of wood that he stuck firmly in the sand. Anko was teaching himself a new song on his ukulele and Hai Xing was patting sand over Bepo's lower half to make him a sand mermaid tail. There wasn't much to do on a civilization-less island.
"Hey, bro, I thought you used a sword," Anko said.
Uni looked up from sharpening a long piece of driftwood into a staff. "I use a buncha different things. More practical that way. You folks need a weapons master. Any pirate crew oughta have a stock of swords and flintlocks to use during battles. An armory. A proper weapons storage room."
"We have an organ storage room," Law said, lounging next to Bepo.
"Not the same."
"Hey."
The boys looked up at a figure blocking the sun. Sophie's hands were stuck on her hips as she glared.
After a beat, Law lowered her hot pink, heart-shaped sunglasses—how did he even get those, and how dare he pull them off better than me—and said, "Yes?"
She glared harder at his casual, lackadaisical behavior. The nerve! The least he could do was delight her with an observation about how tiny her shorts were—no, Sophie, that's not the point here.
"I have a thing to discuss with you. You're free now, right? And don't try to wiggle out of it, or I'll—"
"Fine," Law said, sitting up and tossing her plastic sunglasses to Hai Xing. "Follow me. Bring your weapons."
Anko twisted to run after them and join in the fun, but Hai Xing and Bepo stopped him. They sagely shook their heads. Uni just looked confused.
—
With Arsenic's weight across her back, Sophie glanced warily at the dark doctor. He'd Roomed them to the far side of the island, and stopped on a slight slope where the jungle ended and the beach began. Perhaps they were hunting game? She hadn't seen any predators on the jungle while she was exploring it…
"This is a decent place to practice our Haki," Law said.
"Wha—no way," she said immediately. "First, you're telling me about Joker. And w-why Lisbeth said he wants to kill you. Or why you want to kill him. And why it's like there's something terrible that's going to happen in the future—"
"I'll tell you if you can disarm me."
The invitation took Sophie by surprise, and she immediately wanted to laugh. But Law looked serious, and set his hat down on a large rock. Her smile died away. His expression was politely casual, waiting for her response.
Ah, so it was this kind of hunting game.
Like I'm so scared of you, she very nearly replied. I once carried you like a blushing bride down Kunlun. But she stopped herself. This was bait. He was countering her obstinacy with her own sense of integrity, because he knew she'd keep her word when she lost, and she would lose.
Or he knew that she'd blame herself for losing, and forget about the bigger picture of him for being all evasive about her perfectly reasonable questions, and that'd shut her up for at least another week or two.
Or maybe he just really did want to practice his stupid Haki, and this was the easiest way to goad her into helping.
Sophie considered these possible conclusions as she planted her hand on her cocked hip, her mouth pursed in irritation. "I'm not wasting bullets on a fight I can't win."
Law shrugged. "Alright. Let's go back."
She spluttered for an indignant moment, then said, "Wait. If I lose, then…"
"Then you'll leave it alone until you're strong enough to beat me."
She could try outwitting Law. Or throwing him into the ocean. Or overpowering him. Hm. He was the worst opponent she could have; his Devil Fruit was strong against ranged fighters like her. This was like a canary going up against a lean, mean snow leopard. She'd get mauled to death. No thank you.
"I refuse the terms of this match," Sophie announced, and swung around, stalking away. What would she gain out of being humiliated?
"Did you forget," came his voice, offhand, "that I poisoned you?"
Bait. Again. Sophie knew this. Yet she stopped, her foot twitching. The scar on her heel itched.
"But you must be used to getting your ass kicked. Like a punching bag. Turns out the Great Chemist Strangways Sophie is a pushover. By the way, you shout a lot when you talk to yourself."
She whirled around, outraged. "Hey—"
"Or maybe you're only a pushover for men," he said lightly.
She stared at him in disbelief. Overwhelming disgust and loathing curdled through Sophie, made her want to get sick all over her shoes.
"You're asking for it, Law-san," she muttered.
"No," he said, and smirked. "I'm begging."
In most of the superhuman fights she's witnessed as a bystander, the opponents took a moment to size each other up, mentally prepare, make a plan. But Sophie already knew she had no chance of winning, so she charged at him.
Kikoku hissed out of its sheath.
She threw her arms in an X over her head, and her Armament flared forth with hardly a nudge, almost knocking her off her feet.
It was as if the deep, often-concealed well of her fury manifested in her Haki, and it screamed through her blood, raging at how terrified and small she was so used to feeling, running for her life, getting shot, poisoned, buried alive. She'd been decapitated by that Devil Fruit before. She remembered every inch of how it felt. How dare they touch me, the anger roared, this tsunami. And how dare HE—
"Shambles."
But the ocean swallowed up Devil Fruits, and her saltwater Haki wanted him to drown.
Sophie crashed into Law, and his hand clamped on her wrist, which was inches away from shoving a knife into his throat. They hit the ground, her digging her knee into his chest. Not a single one of her limbs had been shambled apart; she was whole.
"Oh my god!" she shrieked, giddy, slapping her captain on the shoulder as he laid beneath her. Her other hand was still in the air, trembling as he kept her from stabbing him. "D-did you just see what I did!?"
How many times had she imagined this? Law staring up at her in surprise, and fascination, and an itty-bitty sprinkle of awe. Though her typical fantasy never had him… underneath her in such a scandalous manner, nor the rise and fall of his chest she felt through her bare leg.
"Huh," he breathed, those cunning grey eyes looking at her in a way that made Sophie swallow.
"Your sword, please," she said, businesslike, and reached for it.
Law disappeared in a blue flash, and she landed with an oof!, flat on her belly in the sand. He reappeared above her, and it was his turn to dig his knee on her knife-wielding arm, straddling her waist, and pinned her other arm to her back.
Sophie growled, kicking and spitting out sand, but he had both her arms restrained and wasn't budging.
"Is that all you got?" Law asked wryly.
"Trafalgar, you brute," she whined, her voice high and syrupy. "You'd hurt a poor, d-defenseless girl? You'd make an innocent maiden weep?"
He lowered his head so he could press his cheek against the messy sprawl of her curls, and murmured in her ear, "Cry harder."
Her toes curled. "Monster," she gasped, and finally got the knife flipped downward in her hand, her arm still trapped under Law's knee, and used the tip to snap off the pin of a flash grenade on her belt.
Law looked down, and was flooded with waves of light.
BOOM.
Blinking away splotchy afterimages, Sophie staggered over a thick network of tree roots and onto forest soil. She started to run, gloves on, wrangling her hair in a high ponytail. Her bones and blood felt turned to white-hot ore. Pure octane. If she placed Armament just right, on the flat of her feet, over her legs, into the core of her body, her strange new muscles shook themselves like a baby bird preparing for flight for the first time and she leaped through the air—
They came together with zero grace. She whipped Arsenic upwards, like a staff—Law blocked it with one arm, then swung Kikoku in his other hand, cutting diagonally across her chest. There was no gash.
"Your Armament's pretty good," he remarked.
"Flirting won't make me go easy on you," she chastised.
Her leg came up, whacking him in chest, and he grabbed her shin, his fingers digging into the skin as she shrieked, and cracked her neck against a palm tree. She bit her tongue and tasted copper; she spat on the dirt, rubbing out the crick in her neck. He killed her twice now. He had slit her throat and pierced her with a syringe full of death.
Sophie yanked Arsenic's bolt-action and loaded up the chamber. Law gripped Kikoku and slashed it down. He was grinning; they were both grinning like demons, like reflected choreography, smoking barrels and steel.
By the gun; by the sword.
She fired and he dodged easily. "That's not fair," she complained. "You can tell where I'll aim!"
Their weapons kissed again.
"You're too bright," he told her, sounding amused. "Like a lighthouse in a storm."
Sophie's thick eyebrows bunched together. "A-are you implying I'm phallic-shaped?"
They flew through the jungle, without wings—it wasn't flying, not technically, but, oh, the rush of wind catching up to her as she landed on a tree, and then rocketed off her feet again wasn't like anything she'd ever known. How long would it have taken her to climb to this height before? She wasn't used to moving this fast; twice she misjudged the distance and ran straight a tree, hollering and pinching the bridge of her stinging nose.
She fired off three more rounds. The first missed, bad aim. Law cut the second bullet in half.
The next bullet he cut exploded. Trick shot.
Sophie followed him to the ground, thrilled at the sight of him wiping a line of red from his nose. She did that to him. Her. To Trafalgar Law. She reloaded Arsenic and sucked in hot, almost painful breaths of air, punch-drunk on adrenaline.
Law wasn't using his full strength; he could've Roomed away all her weapons, but maybe he wanted a semblance of a fair fight. It didn't matter. She wasn't interested in setting the island on fire, and his Devil Fruit would make sure they wouldn't hit their target, anyway.
She discovered he couldn't use Observation very long in succession. She counted—he dodged every two bullets and Roomed away on the third—and on the third tap of her trigger, she threw herself forward with a war-scream, sending them barreling through trees. Law wanted vitriol? He'd get it.
She'd forgiven him, along the route of their friendship. She'd been nothing but a deluded marine to him, and he was nothing but the worst pirate she'd ever met to her; slowly they found respect for each other and came to terms. She didn't hate him for it, not at all. But if he begged her to make him pay, if he begged, knowing her aptitude for malice—
The way Arsenic dug into his ribs shouldn't surprise him, nor how she smashed her boot against his head with a wild-eyed yell of rage. He was chuckling as he shook it off, the dusty imprint of her boot still over his cheek, and it made her seethe with giddiness. She was poison incarnated, frothing at the mouth. It felt like she had so much power she didn't know what to do with it, and the only way she could release the burn was by hitting and bruising and kicking every square inch of flesh she could get her hands on. Law returned her punches, his hot breath snarling in her ear, digging his fingers into her hips—which was stirring up yet another, darker burn in her—and slammed her into a tree so hard the wood shattered under her back.
The pain was not a dim, echoing splash from far away on the ocean's surface; it hit her on the shoulder, scratching it to shreds. In an instant, it soured her adrenaline-high and snapped her out of the daze. She could punch Law for an eternity, but the only victory would be a win.
Sophie clawed onto a tree branch, taking a moment to roll her shoulders, and readied herself.
Arsenic crashed into Kikoku again. "Must be some t-terrible secret you're hiding," she hissed. "Last survivor of Flevance. Everyone dies, right? Is that what you're afraid of? Please don't tell me you're full of that tragical nonsense about never being strong enough."
His glare grew stormy. "You don't know," he said, and there was a weight in those words, a barrier that stood between them. "I put the crew in danger on St. Poplar."
"Oh my pineapples, it's part of the job. They probably got off on it."
"Speaking from experience, Sophie?"
"Shut u-up." She grabbed his neck, trying to throttle him, and his hand latched on her waist to shove her away. They rolled through wet ferns and that hand somehow maneuvered to cup her rear, right over her shorts. She was too exhilarated to blush, jammed Arsenic into the bottom of his jaw and blasted; the bullet ricocheted off his Armament with a ping!
His neck arched with the brunt force of it, and Law clutched his throat with a sharp grunt. Sophie kneed him in the gut and kicked him off her, and that felt good. Still nothing compared to the parathion, though.
He rolled to his feet, his black shirt and black hair and grimy jeans looking hobo chic, flipping Kikoku around in his hands.
"You don't know," he said again, rasping a little, "how it feels when everything dies."
"I don't know," Sophie agreed furiously. For god's sake, last survivors. So dramatic. "I had n-none of it to begin with. Did you get to grow up with your dear old pa? Did Mother bake you cookies when you came home from school? Tell me what having parents was like, you a-absolute prick—"
He sank his foot into her abdomen and kicked her soundly.
She landed with Haki absorbing all the shock, and the ground cratered under her boots. Like how Ursa and Teresa stomped on the earth. But where those women were all elegance, Sophie almost slipped and fell over. She was overcome with a sudden, dizzying exhaustion.
"You say I don't get it, but I lost my home, too," she reminded, her voice cracking a little.
"It's different."
"Why? B-because the World Government isn't an island? Because I chose to leave?"
"Because you did something about it," Law spat, and the way he looked at her wasn't at all like he thought she was lesser than him. It was the complete opposite. His gaze cut right through her, stirring something intensely feverish in her chest—
He flicked his hand; she held Arsenic one moment and air the next, her rifle dropped somewhere in the green. He was finishing this.
Sophie was bleeding. Little hot trickles over her arms, bruises across her legs. She didn't care. She had some Armament left in her, enough for one more shield. She peeled off her glove and flicked open a flask on her belt. She dipped her fingers in the Lichtenburg tree sap. It smelled of ozone; sweet, pre-storm. Static charge tingled up her arms, displacing protons and electrons. Her hand would be burning off from the voltage if not for Armament.
She didn't resist when he shoved her down into the dirt and slammed Kikoku in the soil next to her head. Her eyes were stark blue, oversaturated with energy.
Her sparking fingers pressed against the swell of Law's lips, and snapped.
Eat lightning.
The bolt that engulfed them was whiter than white, pushing their armor to the absolute limit. Heat swelled. Thunder clapped. It was so hot her eyes burned with tears. She was thrown to the trenches in Vira, the howling gale almost ripping her helmet off. A shadow in a top hat stood over her, one hand gripping a steel pipe wet with blood, his other hand a dragon claw.
But this wasn't Vira. Sophie, shaking, raised herself on her knees, blinking away water droplets. The sudden updraft of heat and water vapor condensed into rain. Her frizzy curls, blown out of its ponytail and the ends sticking up with static, flattened in the sudden downpour that was evaporating as quickly as it came.
Somehow still standing, Law blew out smoke. His mouth was lightly singed, and his shirt was torn to pieces. He was still holding Kikoku. Friggin' monster.
He broke the silence with an observed, "That's new."
A small giggle escaped her. Then another.
Sophie was too tired to laugh, but she was laughing. She couldn't stop. She and Law had just beat the snot out of each other, and she had almost blown them to bits, and god, she couldn't believe how much fun it all was.
Law's attention was drawn to the pleasant sound. The fog turned the forest into hazy shapes, but he wondered why she stood out in sharp relief; the mud on her elbows, looking like a drowned thing, the breathless laughter she was caught up in.
He looked down at Kikoku. Instead of continuing the fight, he stuck the sword in the ground.
Law backed up a step, and fell flat on his back. And just laid there. On the dirt.
She slowly stopped laughing and trundled over to him. She peered down at his relaxed, spread posture, examining the possible ways of sitting so as to not get her clothes dirtier, and sat right on top of his abdomen with her knees together because she wasn't obscene. Law allowed it without much more than an obligatory grimace. Sophie was not a small lady, but she definitely felt small as she tried measuring the girth of his chest with her spread palms, and wasn't even halfway close.
She leaned over so she filled his vision. They were drenched in rain and mingled sweat, and his hands came up to rest absently on her thighs. His knee crooked up, touching her back. She pulled a leaf from his untidy, spilled-ink hair, and blew it off her finger.
"You know, I appreciated that," she said with a sigh.
His eyes were closed. His fingers curled and uncurled over her thighs, tracing ticklish lines. "Yeah?"
"It felt good. I still have a scar from the parathion, you flea-bitten mango."
"I like that scar," he hummed.
Sophie's ears turned pink and her nose wrinkled. "Creep," she said, and Law shrugged. "You let go of Kikoku-san," she pointed out, leaning over to examine her reflection on the blade. The lightning didn't even make a crack on the metal. How irritating.
"'Kikoku-san'?"
"Oh, Law-san," she sighed, shaking her head. "I want cursed swords to know I respect them. I have enough bad luck in my life."
"It's weird you call my sword by the same honorific as me."
She swallowed, suddenly nervous. "Law…kun?"
"Try it without any," he suggested, his voice deeper and rougher than usual, thrumming through her hands on his chest and into her own.
Doing a splendid job of ignoring her own blush, Sophie stuck her knife under his jaw. He opened his eyes leisurely.
"We had a deal," she said. "I disarmed you."
"I disarmed myself."
"Technicalities." Sophie brushed that aside. "Joker knew the king of Cat's Eye was a World Noble. He knew about the old gigantification experiments of G-13. He did something to Lisbeth. Tell me his name."
Law looked up at the sky, his eyes reflecting its dusky hue. He said nothing for a long minute.
Then when he opened his mouth again, she thought she heard wrong. Maybe he meant some random guy named 'Domcoyote Dolf Amigo'. Or Law was joking. Wait, is that where Joker comes from—no, Sophie, focus! But Law wasn't grinning. He didn't look sad or angry, either. Just… tired.
"But… he was on Crawfish Island," she whispered, and those tattooed hands on her legs gently squeezed tighter. "He… he's a Warlord."
"His crew took me in," Law said to the sky. "After Flevance. They started out in North Blue, and I… joined because I had nothing else. He trained me to kill, like how G-13 trained you. I was ten."
A bird chirped overhead, small and lonely. His gaze came back down to earth, and locked onto hers. She could count every dark gold fleck in those eyes.
"But I was saved by a marine."
"…Rosie Nonty?"
"Yeah. But his name was Donquixote Rosinante."
Her eyes widened. "A… brother?"
Law nodded. "I knew him as Cora-san. He was an undercover agent in the Donquixote Pirates, but abandoned the operation to help me." His expression was detached, his voice, everything. His hand moved from her leg to her wrist, lightly tracing the dark thirteen inside. An unlucky number for both of them. "When I turned thirteen, Amber Lead was almost done killing me. We left the crew and he risked everything to find my Devil Fruit to save me. His mission, his family, everything. For me. Doflamingo found us, and murdered him."
Her hands flew to her mouth. His own brother.
"The whole time," Law continued, "I was hiding. I was fucking hiding."
Her vision went blurry with sudden tears. "You were a kid," she told him angrily. "What could you have done?"
With a laughing exhale that didn't sound like laughter at all, a grin trembled over his features. "I'm not a kid anymore. I'm going to kill Doflamingo."
Bruised and singed and ripped, his knee locked behind her back and her wiping her eyes as she tried to grasp all the tragedy that had bound itself to one boy, and the sounds of the jungle coming back alive around them, Sophie whispered, "For Cora-san?" and Law replied, just as quiet, "For Cora-san."
—
They trudged back to the beach area where Law had left his hat. Sophie found Arsenic along the way, brushing off leaves and hugging it to her chest in apology. They came to the nonverbal, unanimous decision that neither wanted to head back yet, and flopped on the sand in silence. The sunset through the ocean fog was a ghostly murky color, a faded persimmon hovering at the horizon.
The sunset left quickly, and night settled over the island. The tide rolled over the shore and when it ebbed back to sea, the waves left behind bright blue sea sparkles that glowed like stars all along the beach. Noctiluca scintillans, Sophie registered vaguely. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates. She'd read about them before in one of her books.
Her thoughts drifted back to the man lying next to her. She wondered (and knew it was a terrible thing to wonder) if he would trade his life now for the future he wanted as a kid; living with his Cora-san. But that would mean the Heart Pirates would've never existed. If she had Haki since the beginning, she probably wouldn't have made so many mistakes. On the other hand, those mistakes all led up to this Haki. What a paradox.
She kicked his leg. Law grunted. "Hey," she said, rolling over on her side, her honeywarm skin crusty with bits of sand and the slight stickiness of dried sweat, lips pursed in girlish judgment as she studied him. "Law," she began, and found herself choking on the emptiness that came after it, "…san." She couldn't look him in the eye, and drifted to the rather arresting display of ink over his chest and shoulders, his torn shirt having been left behind somewhere in the forest. She felt a profound lack of guilt for it. "Remember what you said to me on Machinastein? It stays, and you live. Are you—stop trying to nap, this is a serious conversation—are you gonna live?"
She supposed it was useless asking him that. It all felt useless, a warning for something that was inevitable.
"Studies would suggest I'm presently alive," Law answered, and blew on the stray wisps of gold falling over her face.
"Hm. Sources? Give me your cited bibliography, please."
There was something unhurried and deliberate about him, which she blamed on having godlike powers as a teenager 'cause ugh that must've been one endless ego stroke; the way he let his gaze drift across her face was slower than molasses.
She shot upright, shocked and pink, raising her knees and sticking her feet, boots and socks having been discarded, on the sand.
"I," she said, fumbling for words to say, "I think these are n-noctiluca algae." Oh my god, of course they are. Why can't I think of something else to say?
After a pause, Law raised himself on his elbows, looking out over the glowing lights on the shore. "Yeah, some parts of North Blue also get these blooms. Mostly islands near the Calm Belt."
"I think it's the same luciferin-luciferase process as the Crawfish Island mushrooms. They start with molecules that get oxidized and, and when the electrons get excited to a higher energy level, they release the energy in a ph-photon of this blue light! Basic spectroscopy, of course—oh, but I'm not trying to lecture you or anything, it's, it's just beautiful, isn't it? Nothing is ever ordinary in this world, and that's just, um…"
She was rambling now, trying not to look at Law and how the soft glow colored him all blue like water. He had pulled himself up fully, sitting next to her. The noctiluca were little beating hearts, pulsing turquoise. But he was watching her with that slow look again, and she was internally despairing because they had such a breathtaking sight in front of them, and she wasn't going anywhere at the moment, and he had no reason to be looking at her like way, and—
And before she could convince herself to stop, Sophie pressed a tiny kiss to the corner of his lip.
Law flinched slightly and she jerked back, flustered.
"Was that too f-forward?" she asked immediately, her gaze darting everywhere but him. She misread everything, hadn't she? She had no idea what she was supposed to be reading in the first place. Her cheeks were so hot she wouldn't be surprised if she was as luminescent as a Crawfish mushroom. "Um, that wasn't—I'm sor—I sh-should've asked."
His eyes were dark and heavy-lidded. "Then ask."
She lifted her eyes, turning redder. He was teasing her.
"May I," she huffed—
But Law had already pressed his mouth against hers. He pulled her to him, his hands skimming along her neck, and kissed her full of stars.
to be continued
happy new decade! thank you to all the readers who have been so patient with me and this fic.
trivia
noctiluca scintillans: is real!
brimstone moth: also real!
lemon shark: real as well, though sadly without a lemon for a head.
lichtenburg tree: named after the lichtenburg pattern.