thank you's to: Asususasa, NewCanvas, Tea-Madness, shethoughts, EthaGrinndt, GlaresThatKill, Xielle Sky, Leynadoodles, LaniSky0108, GreenLilly, calynrabka96, minty, ansegiel, luffys, tabi404, TaintedLetter, Lucinda M. H. Cheshir, meno melissa, Alkitty, Wisewhale, sarge1130, and guests!
notes. i posted an additional scene last chapter because i'm an idiot who got confused about the days during the impel down arc. also, i should mention there is some fantastic gift art i've received on my tumblr (ohpineapples) recently. you guys are awesome. i love you, my little fruit loops, and i hope you're all staying safe. now, without further ado!
—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #34
one degree of separation
—
"You're shittin' me, Boss!"
Jinbe was not, in fact, shitting Ace. He was being imprisoned for refusing to answer the World Government's call to war.
(Ah, yes. Apparently, Ace's impending execution would likely start a war. Of the 'grand international scale' variety. What a kerfuffle.)
Ace was positively steaming. She didn't think he could look more pissed off since being boiled raw and then trapped in an undersea gaol, but the five-hundred-mil pirate proved her wrong. "You're jeopardizing Fishman Island's safety! They need you as a Warlord!"
"And what about Whitebeard's flag should he die? Ryugyu Kingdom will be overrun by pirates and slavers that very instant!" Jinbe reminded her of an old-school mobster boss. The traditional, chivalrous kind, with his stern gruffness, jagged thunderbolt scar, and the formal inflection.
"But telling Sengoku to his face you won't fight for him? And demanding my release? You're mad, old man!"
"I hear I wasn't the only one." Jinbe turned his eye on the third inmate, who had been awkwardly watching like a spectator on the side of a wrestling ring.
Sophie started. But before she could reply, something heard their voices and came inside their cell to beat the snot out of them.
That wasn't an exaggeration.
The cell door scraped open. A shadow entered. Bull horns. Cute, unblinking eyes. An adorable minotaur with a runny nose. It hit Jinbe first. The sound of metal slamming into flesh echoed sickly. There were keys on its belt—it had keys. She grabbed her knife, but it moved fast and cracked its spiked club against her skull, beating her brains into applesauce, and Ace was shouting, "Put your Haki up!"
After a while, the jailer beast decided it had its fun and left. The spiked club dragged behind it, leaving a trail of red.
Sophie filed away the beating to emotionally process later. The trauma nightmares were going to be so annoying. She'd get the keys next time.
Her voice nasally from a bloody nose, she introduced herself to Jinbe. She and Ace took turns, in-between spitting blood from their mouths, to summarize everything—Banaro Island, Blackbeard, Marineford. Jinbe turned purple in rage, practically vibrating with hatred towards Teach, and only calmed down to say that he'd heard how Alchemist Sophie broke into Sengoku's office and proceeded to verbally abuse his entire life's work.
"It seems we share similar roots," he said, "being dogs of the World Government."
"It's n-nice to see a friendly face, Jinbe-san." She nodded amicably, her cheeks swollen, chipmunk-like.
"Indeed. So…" Jinbe looked around the jail cell. "How have you kept yourselves from going crazy in here?"
Sophie and Ace glanced at each other, then turned to the Knight of the Sea with grins.
—
THE FOURTH DAY
ash wednesday
—
Several days earlier, a certain event occurred on the Sabaody Archipelago that has shaken the world. A Celestial Dragon, decked right in the face. A slave auction, erupting into chaos. Three Supernova captains—Straw Hat, Captain Kidd, and the Surgeon of Death—faced the Pacifistas and Admiral Kizaru. The Straw Hat crew was scattered to the winds by Bartholomew the Tyrant.
Today, Vice Admiral Momonga's warship is en route to Impel Down with Amazon Lily's Hebihime onboard. The marines believe they are accompanying the Warlord Boa Hancock on her whim to see the imprisoned Fire Fist Ace, before she is to agree to the World Government's summons. None are aware there is not one pirate on their ship, but two.
As for the Heart Pirates, they have decided that Sabaody is too dangerous to keep waiting for their chemist. It has been days since she promised to return, and for someone so violently punctual, it is… concerning. They sail the seas between Marineford and Sabaody, sending up signal flares for a lost boat. Trafalgar Law broods at the bow of his ship with a bad feeling that grows ever larger.
Though they have arrived at the end of Paradise from different seas across the world, the Supernova crews are charting a course to Marineford with the same objective in mind. They will observe a war the likes of which this young generation has never seen before. It will be a turning point for these rookies, in an era where Gold Roger's shadow still looms large and the old guard—Whitebeard, Big Mom, Kaido, and Shanks—still command the seas.
Now, as the world continues to rush towards the future, let us return to Impel Down, where three cellmates are dreaming of a little village in East Blue…
—
Foosha Village was lovely. Windmills dotted the pastoral landscape. The houses were few and sparse, scattered between sunlit-dappled pastures. The wind was an East Blue wind; mild and promising spring. The village's only tavern was owned by a woman with a fair smile; she brought out a tray full of lemonade for the children playing on the dirt road. Sophie found herself staring, wondering if this was what it was like to grow up normal.
Jinbe mentioned it reminded him of the meadows on Fishman Island, and Ace thanked him for that, as if it was the highest compliment. It probably was. The Whitebeard son swung his hands up behind his head, ambling in tandem with the cows and their ringing silver bells. He was relaxed among his childhood memories. His demeanor was… different, compared to when he was telling her stories of his Grand Line adventures. Calmer. More pensive. Maybe he was feeling wistful over a place he might never go back to.
No, Sophie thought stubbornly, forcing that thought away. No, he's Thee Fire Fist Ace. He can't die.
The slow, meandering uphill path ended at the foot of the mountain Ace called Mt. Colubo. From their vantage point, she could see the windmills turning slowly in the breeze and the ocean waves beyond the little port…
"This is an island filled with stories." Jinbe nearly blended in with the vibrantly blue sky. Daises swayed by his feet. "Or so the sea breeze tells me."
Ace's mouth slid into a little smirk. He asked them if they wanted to listen.
Jinbe replied that time was all they had, and Sophie nodded.
The rustic serenity was broken by an ear-splitting shout.
"AAAAAACE!"
A gangly ball of rubber limbs flew over Jinbe's head and crashed into Ace, knocking him right off his feet.
Red vest. Sandals. Straw hat.
The world spun in reverse.
The brothers rolled on the grass, laughing uproariously. Skinny legs and elbows dug into stomachs and the same shade of deep, deep black hair that made it hard to believe they weren't blood-related. Ace was younger here. Around fifteen or sixteen, and his kid brother was younger still. They were punching each other so hard it was like they were aiming to break bones. Sophie cried out for them to stop, and they pulled apart with identical, don't-give-us-orders, unruly gremlin grins.
"Make us," Straw Hat challenged. She imagined he had a silly, effulgent face, like his bounty poster.
They were the Guttersnipe Kings of the Forest, wearing sticks for crowns and wielding junkyard pipes as scepters. They were creatures wilder than wild beasts, and Sophie couldn't conjure it fast enough with how rapidly Ace was telling it; diving butt-naked off waterfalls, brown muddy faces snarling back at tigers, spending afternoons climbing up canyons and hunting raptor eggs for a snack. Bare feet running faster and faster, racing over the grass, leaping on trees—
They nearly tumbled off a cliff, and caught themselves on the giant, gnarled tree roots that marked the forest's edge. A rotten stench clung to the air. Below was a massive, smoking pit that smelled so foul it would've seared the eyes of every eyeless bandit in the mountains. That's how Ace put it. She covered her nose, imagining the awful stench.
He sat on his haunches, looking out over the hills and hills of burning trash. "Here's where the kingdom threw out anything unwanted. Garbage, junk, people too poor to pay their taxes."
"While the rich live comfortably in their fancy houses, ignoring the suffering of everyone else," Sophie murmured, her heart going out to the trash heap. It was so cruel. Living amongst garbage was her own personal nightmare. "It's always the same story."
"What a perfect metaphor for humanity," Jinbe growled. "Such a sight would've brought Queen Otohime to enraged tears."
"Her and me both, Boss," said Ace.
The Gray Terminal had been a rough place. Disease-ridden and hungry. Filled with criminals and crooks who stole from the poor, leaving them poorer. Proper robbin' hoods. But, Ace recounted, there had also been churches in the slums. Scrapper shops and tents to huddle under and eat a warm dinner with raccoons. That was before the Great Fire. Now, it was garbage and the occasional vagrant digging through it.
Whatever sadness there was in the ashes, Ace didn't dwell on it.
"Time passes." He stood up. "The forest regrows. What is dead stays buried."
Sophie watched his back. The curve of his neck seemed very sad.
"Every day was an adventure." Ace waved them onwards, lifting his metal pipe to the sky. "Come on!"
—
The Guttersnipe Kings of the Forest lived in a castle made of wood and old scrap metal and shoddy carpentry. Night came. The woods were alive with chirping crickets and wind rustling through trees.
Sophie collapsed by the window. Fighting bears and dine-and-dashing and getting beat up by Vice Admiral Garp—she was a daring person by all rights, but listening to Ace's nonstop adventures made her want to barricade herself in her study, lights out at nine pm, no feral boys allowed. "How can two kids get into… so… much… trouble?"
"Huh, is it weird?" Ace asked.
"It was the same for me." Jinbe's head was tilted quizzically in the same angle as Ace's. "I educated quite a few gangs with my fist back in the day."
"Hey, we did that too! There was a pirate crew called Bluejam that once…"
Sophie rested her head on the crooked windowsill as Ace and Jinbe conversed about their similar wild upbringings. Lightheaded from hunger, she was starting to doze off when she heard her name being called. Dark eyes and freckles appeared in her vision.
"What do you think?" Ace nodded at his ramshackle castle, the forest, everything. "About this. Does it fit with the Fire Fist mythos?"
There was a strange power that Ace had since he was a kid, that he mentioned casually while telling stories of the bandits and animals he used to fight. It was that thing he did on the battleship that made marines cascade like dominos. The thing that reminded Sophie of the invisible, choking pressure Sengoku hit her with. Jinbe gave it a name. Conqueror's Haki. The ambition of a destined king. It wasn't like Observation or Armament. It wasn't something a normal person could learn. It was something you had to be born with.
She rested her cheek against her hand, one finger pulled up the skin near her eyebrow, measuring Ace with a mildly annoyed look. Her philosophy of merit and hard work did not go hand-in-hand with this 'destined, innate ability' nonsense. It kind of irritated her, actually.
"Hello," he said, as she continued silently inspecting him instead of responding. He booped her on the nose. "Hey. Hi." Sometimes Ace was like a puppy searching for attention. Which was very odd, considering he was capable of setting entire islands on fire and generally upending the world.
Once (okay, like, three days ago) she would've stammered and flushed and squeaked. Now, Sophie just scoffed, "Boy fights wild animals, becomes king of the forest, grows up to be a strong pirate. That's how all the legends begin. You're practically a trope."
"Are you calling me unoriginal?"
"I would never." She tapped his chin lightly with her fist.
Ace smiled. Then he blew a raspberry.
"Ew! What the—gross!"
"No, you're gross," he chirped, licking his palm and trying to smear it on her face.
Sophie wrestled with him, kicking futilely. "You nasty pineapple, you are literally terrorizing me—"
Far in the distance, a wolf howled. Laughing, Ace cupped a hand around his mouth and howled back. The pack answered as if they understood his call. King of the forest, freckled and sun-brown and more beast-blood in him than man.
"The papers never said how weird you are," she informed primly.
He pressed closer. "The papers never said a lot of things about me."
"Obviously. But they got your lopsided head right."
"I don't have a—fuck you," he wheezed.
Satisfied she had one-upped him, she returned to leaning against the window. Ace plopped his chin on her shoulder. Over his head, she met eyes with Jinbe. He leaned back in flummoxed amusement, saying nothing and allowing her to suffer her fate.
Resigned to being Ace's headrest, she watched the moon rise over the dense forest. A little backwater village in East Blue. It was nothing like G-13, where Captains and Commodores and Vice Admirals visited day in and day out, where world politics could happen at breakneck speed. Here, it was… so peaceful.
Something tugged at her memories… wasn't this place where Sabo said he was from? "I know a guy from Dawn Island. I mentioned him before. The Revolutionary Army's Chief of Staff? He must've had a good childhood, growing up here."
"Depends if he lived in High Town or the Gray Terminal."
"What about Foosha Village?" She prodded his head. Unconcerned, he blew his lips at her. "Or here, on Mt. Colubo?"
"Nah. There was only ever three of us."
"Three?"
"Three." Ace made himself comfortable and started to snore. She allowed this with a sigh. Clearly, the blood loss was getting to him.
"Said he lost his memories in an accident. But he's pretty sure he was a former noble. So High Town, I guess.
Drifting off to sleep, Ace mumbled, "Huh… I once knew a guy like that…"
"His name's Sabo," she said, still gazing up at the moon. "Who knows, maybe you've met."
—
THE FIFTH DAY
maundy thursday
—
Um. Okay. Right.
…Honestly, she wanted to know where Ace kept finding brothers. Did he put ads out in the newspaper or something?
"He's dead," he kept repeating, "he's dead, he's dead, he died nine years ago, he's dead—"
They had gone over this. Blond, former noble, top hat. It all checked out. Ace approached this revelation with the stupor of someone being simultaneously kneed in the crotch and bludgeoned over the head.
Jinbe likewise did not know what to make of this. He and Sophie locked eyes, sharing a moment of mutual… not bewilderment, but what else did one feel when your cellmate just discovered the dead brother he'd been mourning for a decade was not, in fact, dead? And was an amnesic political radical who went around the world toppling monarchies? Baffled… compassion? Whatever emotion 'that's rough, buddy' called forth?
"How did you meet him?" Ace demanded. "Tell me more about him!"
Him, he said. Him, he, his—never Sabo's name. As if he couldn't believe Sabo was still alive, or that he was the right Sabo.
Sophie didn't know, either. But she showed him everything.
The fierce winds of Vira howled past Ace, snatching at his necklace and whipping up his hair. He scanned the barren landscape, where dust twisters and dry thunder chewed up the remaining scraps of life.
Beneath a hail of gunfire was the commander in a top hat, who was leading the rebel charge.
"He's one of the Revolutionary Army's strongest soldiers," she explained. "The Tiburon rebellion four years ago, Greatcastle two years ago, Centaurea last year… the reports passed around to Vice Admirals—which I read, naturally—all mentioned a young man in a top hat, wielding a metal pipe. Sabo's been active for years. Fighting corrupt nobles, helping countries rewrite their constitutions… his footsteps can be traced around the world."
The rebels charged in slow-motion, and as Ace walked through them, they scattered like raindrops. He reached the man in the forefront, whose expression was frozen in a resolute grimace as he bellowed orders. A black top hat was perched on his head, over long, wavy blond hair that was styled—or rather, unstyled—in a way indistinguishable to Ace's.
"Bullshit," Ace choked out. "If he's been alive this whole time… then he really forgot about me and Luffy?"
"I don't think it was a voluntary choice," Sophie said, very softly.
"He never had a scar," Ace said immediately, finding the scaly red clump of distorted flesh on Sabo's face. "No. Can't be him."
"He said that was how he lost his memories. Got hit by a mortar shell."
Ace stared at the burn scar. The nose, the forehead, the off-colored eyes. He gripped Sabo's face so tight his knuckles whitened. "I should've looked for him." Nose against nose, burning man against burned man. "How'd I miss it? We never found his body—thought it went into the sea. Thought the sharks got him."
Like a quiet exhale, the dream faded. Ace was left holding dust and wind in his empty palms.
But they weren't done yet. "I saw him again in Omiramba…"
She painted the savannah country's watchful stone giants, the tall cogongrass, the army's tents outside Impala Noka. And him, with his fake gentlemanly smile and the top hat he flipped around in his hands. As she described his fighting style, he reached behind his back and lunged forward. With a bright clang! his pipe crashed against Ace's fist.
Ace recognized it.
"Hey, Sabo," his words caught in his throat, "you still fight like you used to."
The dream solidified. The Chief of Staff, the lost brother, the most irritating revolutionary in the world stepped across the grass, straightening out his coat lapels. Sabo flicked his hand at Sophie like she was a little bug and wrapped a conspiratorial arm around Ace's shoulders. "Don't touch her. Ex-warmonger, you know. You'll get dirty."
Staring open-mouthed at this strange new Sabo, Ace raised his brows. "He said that to you?"
Sophie turned her nose up. "Your brother is among the worst people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. But unfortunately for both of us, I have a tendency to become friends with people whom I'm in mutual hatred with."
Sabo's shrewd grin softened a tad, clearly teasing. She stuck her tongue out and grinned back. She had so much dirt on this half-burned banana now. She couldn't wait to debate again.
"He stole my canteen in Vira," she added. "And in Omiramba, he spat on my face and took me hostage to interrogate me."
Ace's whole face brimmed with light. "That's my brother, alright."
She tried not to roll her eyes. Ace was Having a Moment or whatever. The whole 'my dead brother is not actually dead' plot twist was pretty unremarkable for Sophie; she had never thought Sabo was dead. In fact, she quite vividly remembered all the times he nearly killed her. But good for Ace.
Jinbe, who had been keeping respectfully silent this whole time, mused, "Ace-san seems to have an uncanny pull towards brothers."
"Picks them up like stray dogs," she agreed. "I think he has a problem."
They shared another glance. Sophie beamed at the big blueberry, batting her lashes in a manner Penguin once described as unhinged. Jinbe regarded her as one might regard a particularly enthusiastic bird chirping outside one's window at an ungodly hour in the morning. Which was to say, the more she stared at him, silently communicating they should be best friends, the more Jinbe searched for a windowpane to shut in her face.
He turned to the sweeping grassland scenery. Revolutionary officers drifted by them like ephemeral ghosts on the edge of Sophie's memories.
"I have nothing against the Revolutionary Army," Jinbe said. "I heard they even have some of my brothers among their ranks. But only time will tell if they can commit to true equality between all species."
A young woman with amberglass hair stood among the reeds. Round eyes and a knowing smile and a sun on her…
Wait.
Jinbe. Jinbe of the Ryugyu Kingdom. Jinbe of the Sun Pirates. The right-hand man of Fisher Tiger. What were the chances? Sophie swallowed hard, baffled by the realization. How was it possible that she, of all people, had one degree of separation from angels and lost friends?
"Jinbe-san," she said in a tiny voice, hardly daring to believe it, "d-do you… perhaps… um, know Koala?"
…
…
…
He did, in fact, know Koala.
"She joined the Revolutionary Army?" Jinbe laughed with tears in his eyes. "We spent so long getting her home, and she went back to the ocean to go to war?"
He was so proud. It was sweeter than cotton candy seeing a rough-n-tough fishman get all watery-eyed over Koala. Jinbe couldn't ask enough questions about her, if she was happy ("Sure, she gets to punch a lot of marines!"), if she was doing well ("She's an assistant fishman karate instructor!"), and he boomed, "Fishman karate instructor! Big Bro Tai, if you could've seen this!"
Jinbe shook with deep belly-laughter, his mouth wide open and his shark teeth gleaming. Ace noticed the conversation had shifted away from an in-depth discussion of Sabo, and demanded her to keep talking about him.
Flushing pink at the unexpected happiness she brought her two cellmates, Sophie complied without a moment's hesitation.
—
"Did I… abandon Sabo?"
Ace was in the guilt stage of whatever this was. The opposite of grieving. Anti-grief.
"Resist the existential despair spiral," groaned the chemist, pinching the bridge of her nose with an uncanny resemblance to one Trafalgar Law. "Please."
Ace did not. "What if he thinks we left him behind? And we should've gone looking for him?"
Sophie was busy catching water droplets that dripped from the ceiling, her mouth open and her tongue sticking out. "Good thing being amnesic means there's not much to remember in the first place."
"He must've heard about me. Seen my bounty poster. I'm Fire Fist Ace; there's no way the Revolutionary Army doesn't know about me."
"Someone thinks highly of himself." (He was also right, which was more annoying.) "Sabo said he's heard of you. But he's not interested in pirates."
"He was supposed to be one!" Ace was either going to start laughing again or start shaking out of his bones. He was building palaces out of frantic speculation. "Sabo knows who I am, but doesn't remember me? That's can't—what if he never remembers?"
"Seems likely."
The palace collapsed. "Hey."
"Oh, that was rude. Sorry. I forgot people like hearing illogical fantasies instead of hard truths. Hit him over the head with a frying pan and maybe his memory will come back?"
Ace made a groaning, beached-manatee noise that lamented the woeful vicissitudes of fate. Much like the mystique of Trafalgar Law, Red Hair Shanks, Yasopp, and Sabo, the mystique of Fire Fist Ace had vanished. As mature and confident and charming as he was, Ace was also kind of a huge, emotionally volatile dork. "Nine years. That's enough time to start another family."
"…Is Sabo a middle-aged divorcee and are you his ex that got saddled with the kids?"
"Sophie-kun, perhaps this isn't the best time for a joke," Jinbe interrupted in a voice that. Uh. The only good descriptor for it would be Dad-like.
"Ah—sorry." She twiddled her thumbs, mutely embarrassed. "But… um, isn't it an apt comparison? Ace, y-you have a new family too, right?"
Ace sat upright, staring at her like she had uncovered a secret to the universe. "Right," he breathed, nodding. "Right! Sabo's alive. That's all that matters. I'm a Whitebeard pirate. Luffy's got his own crew that looks after him. And Sabo… he's found a home, too. That's great. That's really…"
He had that pensive look again, and it made Sophie think of Foosha Village's dreamscape. The three of them sat on a grassy cliff overlooking the village, sitting among dandelions and honeysuckle. She swung her legs over the cliff, letting her feet dangle. Windmills turned in perpetuity.
"It's great," Ace tried again, shaking his black bangs across his face. "I'm happy, but… shit, I can't believe the three of us have been living under the same stars and didn't even know it."
Jinbe somberly examined the constellations. "It's a tragedy all the same. Grieve, Ace-san."
"Thanks, but I've spent a decade grieving. I'm done with that." Clutching the tattooed S on his arm, Ace turned to her. "He's really alive?" he whispered, searching Sophie's eyes for a trace of—a lie, of uncertainty, of anything that might point to false hope.
She gripped the back of his head in that Son of Whitebeard way he was so fond of. Their foreheads touched. "And he doesn't shut up about politics. It's soobnoxious."
—
THE SIXTH DAY
good friday
—
On the sixth day, Sophie stopped trying to cut through the chains. She was so tired. She laid on the floor in a manner that was less Dramatically Widowed Dowager and more 'slice of pizza dropped face-down on the street', and picked out the tiny flies and crawly things that made a home in her hair. She slept to conserve energy and woke up occasionally to the quiet sounds of Ace and Jinbe passing the time by telling stories.
Ace, ever the big brother, always invited her to join in. He might've been getting worried about her. Humans could survive for weeks without food, but that didn't make the process of starvation any nicer. Unlike the other two, she was feeling the hunger. Their superpowered guts probably made them more starvation-resistant or something. That sounded ridiculous, but this was a ridiculous world.
Whenever she woke up, Ace greeted her with a good morning, sunshine and a droll smile. Jinbe asked what type of story she wanted to hear today: make-you-cry-with-laughter, make-you-shiver-with-danger, or both. The third option was, naturally, always the best. She was grateful for her two companions.
The camaraderie that grew in this jail cell was born from mutual suffering… but at least they were in it together.
—
And then there was another type of team-building exercise they took part in.
—
"Hit me instead!" Ace was yelling. "Come on, hit me—"
Blood splattered from Jinbe's mouth.
Sophie was dry heaving up on the ground, her face swollen purple. A spiked club lifted to hit Jinbe again. Rolling upright, she lunged forward and reached for the ring of keys.
Her chains snapped straight. She lurched, arms flailing in the air, unable to make contact.
The thing sniffled, a glob of snot wiggling beneath its nose. It was too stupid to notice she had a knife in her hand. Or it just didn't care.
The club struck the side of her ribs. Starbursts of pain exploded through her.
—
"Ow!" Shachi blew on his fingers. "Hot!"
Out on the sunny deck, the Hearts were testing their chemist's experiments. She laid on her belly, surrounded by beakers and a microscope and her notes. Giggling to herself, she watched them fool around with her toys (only the mostly harmless ones, of course).
Shachi played with the experimental pyreflowers, which nearly blew off his eyebrows. Tossing a pineapple grenade up and down, Anko was yelling at Valross and Manta to play catch with him. Kamasu muttered at Hai Xing to get the popcorn. The cook was already on it. Law and Penguin were wrestling a small jar of zap sap away from Bepo, who was yelping that it stung even as he kept nibbling on the electricity like honey.
She laughed harder, which got their attention.
"Sophie! Are you laughing at our pain?"
"She is! Look at her, being all giggly and evil!"
"Are you taking notes!? Are we your guinea pigs!?"
"No, I'm n-not!" She was. And she couldn't stop laughing as her crew advanced on her, rolling up their sleeves in exaggerated menace. "I'm not, promise—"
—
There was a peculiar shape lying in the cell. It may have once resembled a girl. Water from the ceiling plonked on her unresponsive cheek.
No one said anything for a long time.
Then, Jinbe started telling a story. It was a story of Fishman Island. Of strong fishfolk and sunlit trees and a brilliant, compassionate merqueen who pointed to the surface and told her people to continue to the sun.
Ever so slowly, her eyes peeled open. She floated in a turquoise world, aimless like a broken piece of flotsam, before getting her bearings right. Anemone waved to and fro. Colorful staghorn coral bloomed in the sea. She touched down in the forest Jinbe was describing, filled with shipwrecks and tombs and ethereal light. The world shimmered, nothing quite real. Not the soft coral beneath her, or the pod of whales swimming languidly overhead.
"You hanging in there?" Ace asked, watching her struggling breaths.
She wiped away the blood slipping down her chin. "Yep. I bleed more on my period anyway."
It was Ace and Jinbe's turn to glance at each other over Sophie's head.
The three of them sat in silence, in their manacles and chains. No one seemed to be in the mood for more talking. Perhaps they had finally run out of things to talk about. Even Sophie's never-ending list of puns and jokes was in short supply. She wracked her brain and came up with nothing. Granted, that might be because a large percentage of her thoughts was devoted to a sentence on repeat: Can I please, can I please, can I please go home. Please, please, can I please, can I go home. Please can I—
A knee knocked against her leg, breaking her depressive trance. "Curls. The pineapple thing. Why do you do that?"
His question caught her off guard. "Eh?"
Ace looked confused by her surprise, but he couldn't have known no one had asked her that before. A weird quirk from a weird girl didn't need to be explained. Something on the horizon caught her eye. A white castle over the ocean, tower battlements flying with Marine flags.
"Every good story begins with an intriguing question," Jinbe invited.
Scratching her head—taking care to avoid the gashes along her hairline—she gave them both a furtive look. "It's pretty boring, but…"
In the blink of an eye, they were inside the white castle. Clean stucco walls, long wooden bookshelves, an early morning training drill echoing outside. Soft golden light pooled on dusty pages. A doctor and his adopted student were searching through the stacks.
It started with a book. That was it. Hippo showed her the encyclopedia of strange fruits, which gave her an idea. If Devil Fruits were curses, wouldn't it be funny to use them as curse words? End of story.
Well, no.
The library shrank into a bare, simple bedroom. His brow knitted together, Ace looked over the neatly-arranged towers of books and cups of coffee and not much else. Jinbe looked out the small window at the ocean. At this height, it seemed very distant.
It started with a girl. She wanted to laugh. She wanted Hippo to laugh. Sensei, don't be a moldy mango. And he did. See? She could be a normal child, not the child adults called an idiot savant as if she couldn't hear them. End of story.
That wasn't right, either.
The walls of the bedroom shrank until it was four walls surrounding Sophie and her desk. She sat with her knees drawn up on her chair, fingers tapping, muttering, plotting over her endless experiments, endless weapons to manufacture, infinite everlasting work that everyone told her she loved (of course she loved it, why would she still be here if she didn't love it?).
It started with hunger. She would've cut her guts out for a friend, but the problem was, she never learned how to acquire one. She learned social etiquette and got better at talking respectfully, learned how to calm down when Hippo did something crazy like move her socks one drawer up. She learned all the good stuff. Maybe she was the problem, maybe it was her face, the way it twitched when she got excited, or her stutter, or how she liked to clean her desk a million times a day to relax. Murder isn't dirty work if you clean up after it, wondergirl. That smell on your hands, that's not blood, that's lavender soap. You like soap. You like rubbing your skin away until you can't feel your own contamination. But that wasn't the question—
She made a game plan. She rebranded herself. She was funny now; cute crazy instead of weird crazy. The people who laughed at her kept laughing when she yelled fruit names, but now it felt like they were laughing with her. Nothing really changed. She asked herself why, if she was so special and gifted and smart, she still felt unbearably lonely. She could never come up with an answer. But when she smiled, when she made others smile, it felt nice. Felt like connection.
The pineapples were a calculation. Deliberate humor in order to be liked. It was the lamest reason in the universe.
"Oh," she realized. "Sorry, I rambled."
The dream faded away, and they were back in their cell.
She felt like a magician with all her tricks revealed; smoke, mirrors, duct tape, everything. She hugged her knees, too tired to be embarrassed. "My teacher used to tell me making friends is supposed to come natural. But it was never like that for me. I still don't fully understand why it's… always been so hard."
"Man…" Ace trailed off, and exhaled. "You've been through some shit."
She clicked her tongue. "Law's island was practically blown off the face of the earth. Comparatively, my life was a blessing."
"It must have been difficult," Jinbe said in a calm, steady voice that she didn't like.
"It must be difficult being a fishman in a world where humans hate you just for being different from us," Sophie shot back. Her expression said plainly: don't try to feel sorry for me.
"Yes, and I've learned that humans love sowing division among themselves. Class, faith, ancestry, color. They hate you for being different, too. There are fishfolk like you on Fishman Island. They are inventors and poets and artists. That the World Government thought your destined skill was for war engineering… that you were incapable of wanting anything more, or that your emotional understanding was limited in some way… that is the true horror."
As Sophie heard that, she wished—not for the first time—that she could've had another life. A reset. If only she could've grown up in a place like Foosha Village or Fishman Island. If only she could have a second chance at living, she would do everything right, no mistakes, ever. If she had been born with that… Conqueror's Haki, would it have made a difference? Would it have made her beloved, made it so talking and living and—just—existing would come easy to her? She would never say this to Law, but sometimes… in the night, in secret, she would wish that she had had a Cora-san of her own. Someone who had kicked down her door, grabbed her, and yelled, "You are a wretched little lump of misery and you must leave the things that hurt you! Now run!"
Enough self-pity. The answer was simple, as always. It stays, and you live.
She felt… a little lighter. Sophie's cut, cracked lips pulled into a little smile. "Thanks, Jinbe-san. You're sweet."
Jinbe started a little, unused to be called sweet. His cheeks turned a delicate shade of seafoam.
"Aww, Boss," Ace heckled, "you gettin' flustered?"
"Quiet," the Knight of the Sea groused. "Let me bleed out in peace."
—
THE SEVENTH DAY
sabbath
—
When Sophie woke up, her head was in a fog.
Her hunger pangs had spread throughout her entire body. A dull, thick pain. Lying on her side, she wasn't even sure if she could force herself upright. She felt so… weak. She flinched as a spiked club dragged over the ground. On instinct, she caged her arms over her head, panting against the ground with full-body tremors, and heard the cell door close and lock.
…Oh. Her body relaxed. It was already done. Must've thought she was dead.
Jinbe bled stoically. "Didn't even scratch my itch!"
"Looks like you got it pretty good again, old man," Ace rasped, who was likewise bleeding from his nose and mouth.
"It's not my body that hurts! Ace-san, what hurts is my heart that can't enforce my justice!" Jinbe banged the back of his head against the wall. "At this rate, even death won't take me! What good is my title? I have no need for it! And if I can't stop this war, I have no need for my life, either!"
She struggled into a sitting position, breathing labored. "You big blueberry, come on. It's Whitebeard. If the Marines could kill him, they would've done it a long time ago."
"You alright, Sophie?" she heard Ace mutter. He had obviously noted something was off.
"Mm. Just need a smoke. Nicotine withdrawal…" It had been seven days without food. Her blood glucose levels were now maintained by slowly-depleting glycerol and fatty acids. Her liver was metabolizing ketone bodies to use as a source of energy for her brain. After that was used up, her body would start breaking down protein in her muscles, and she'd eventually waste away into a skeleton. The biochemistry behind starvation was so brilliant… and so miserable.
As Ace and Jinbe kept talking amongst themselves, Sophie inspected her wounds. She uncurled her left palm. The scar on her middle finger was crusted with black blood. It wasn't a clean thunderbolt scar like what Jinbe had. It branched out, fern-like, a Lichtenberg figure, cutting down from the tip to where her finger ended at the palm. It looked unlucky. Suitable for a Hexhead.
"I haven't given up hope yet," Jinbe asserted. "I still have faith that a miracle will present itself."
Ace bowed his head without a response, his eyes squeezed shut.
"That's right, we h-have to keep looking for a way out," she said as she examined her shirt for any clean patch she could rip off and bandage around her cuts. Her clothes were soiled with grime, blood, and sweat, nearly brown where it used to be white.
A laugh came from the pitch-black. It was coarse and rough like sandpaper. "Things are getting pretty interesting. You're telling me there's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to kill Whitebeard? That gets my blood pumping!"
Recognizing the voice, Jinbe looked sharply into the darkness. "You."
Some life appeared back in Ace's eyes as he snarled, "You think you'll take my old man's head?"
"Not just me," replied the gravelly shadow, and like a building crescendo, the inmates of Level Six pounded their cell bars, shrieking and howling over the opportunity to kill Whitebeard. "Jinbe, Fire Fist, remember this well. There's no shortage of silver medalists shedding tears because they couldn't overcome Whitebeard and Roger!"
"Yoo-hoo," said Sophie. "I'm here, too."
The former Warlord Sir Crocodile ignored her.
Normally, she wouldn't care. But as it were, she was starving, despondent, and filled with homicidal rage about the state of her clothes. Her lips moved quick and she needled, "That coup almost worked, Sir Prickly Pear. Too bad you got your butt kicked by a kid half your age."
"Damn right he did," Ace muttered.
A menacing glare emanated from the darkness. Bah. He talked big words about killing Whitebeard, but she'd bet he was just bored out of his mind with nothing better to do. As were they all.
—
But then, on the seventh day, something different occurred.
With thirty-odd hours left before Ace's execution… a visitor arrived in Impel Down.
—
The echo of high heels click-clacking was heard throughout the Eternal Hell. A woman strode in alongside Chief Warden Magellan and Vice Admiral Momonga, passing by jail cells where fascinated eyes ogled her. Those heels stopped in front of the cell holding Fire Fist Ace.
She was beautiful. No, beautiful was an understatement. She had hair like the darkest night and eyes like the cruelest obsidian. A nine-headed snake patterned her dress and her wrists were locked with seastone cuffs—a necessary precaution for someone so powerful. She was elegant and willowy, with a tattoo of a hissing snake coiling around the left eye of her regal, unsmiling face. An enormous pink-and-white snake wearing a horned skull trailed behind her.
Her name was Boa Hancock, Captain of the Kuja Pirates and Queen of Amazon Lily, and she had come to see the man who was sparking the war she would be joining.
Thee Boa Hancock, Sophie thought dimly, her eyes bloodshot and unfocused between matted strands of hair. The Pirate Empress's existence was as mysterious as Amazon Lily itself. Not even her face was known to the world, as dazzling as it was. Ace and Jinbe's shock was palpable.
The distraction was easy. A small blush, taking advantage of the prisoners' vulgarity, and Magellan's Hydra emerged. Virulent, pestilential, blisteringly purple.
As the spotlight left her, Boa Hancock stepped closer to the cell and looked down her nose at Ace. And then like a spring breeze from East Blue gusting through their cell, she breathed, "Luffy is here. He has come to set you free."
Sophie's pupils constricted in a half-second of clarity. What.
With the message relayed, Boa Hancock turned to leave.
Ace went very still. Then he started shaking all over. "Hey. Is what you said true!?"
"I have no reason to lie," the Warlord replied with a small curve of her mouth. "Oh, yes… and he was worried you would be mad at him."
Her svelte figure began swaying away… before it stopped, as her eyes landed on a straggly prisoner. It was a pathetic pile of curly hair and chains attached to bloody limbs. Not worth even a moment of the Warlord Hancock's consideration. But evidently there was something off about a prisoner being in the same cell as those two…
"One moment," the Empress said, and pointed at the two famous pirates. "Jinbe. Fire Fist." Her imperial gaze slid to the third prisoner. "And that dirty runt?"
Vice Admiral Momonga, no doubt informed of the Marineford incident, answered. "Alchemist Sophie. A traitor who attacked Fleet Admiral Sengoku. Criminally insane."
Sophie's fettered hands hit the ground between her thighs as she leaned forward. She smiled as charmingly as she could, looking deranged with bloody teeth, and made her grand introduction to the most beautiful woman in the world by slurring, "W-with respect, Empress, you really razz my berries."
Magellan tilted his head. "Razz… what? What is that?"
"It's just how the kids talk today, sir," Hannyabal informed.
"Nearly blew up Marineford, the knave," said a jailer.
"I heard she was a follower of Fisher Tiger," said another.
"And I turned a World Noble into g-gold," said the inmate.
"Quiet." Magellan, snappish, intolerable to harmless jokes. To Hancock, he said, "She's been jailed for her extremist beliefs. Denouncements against god-sanctioned slavery, abolishing the sainthood of the Tenryuubito. Insurrection against heaven."
"Is that… right?" The Empress's mouth was a ghost of a sneer, like she was forcing herself to repress it. And she did not seem to be someone who repressed sneers very often.
Magellan assured her there was no need to worry. Thousands of political insurgents had passed through these walls. They never lasted long. "Come along now, Lady Hancock. You are awaited in Marineford."
Sophie felt a sharp shiver up her back. Like a dagger digging into her skin. When she raised her head to squint at the torchlight as it entered the lift, she was sure the Pirate Empress was staring at her. Then the doors closed, and they were gone.
—
The three of them sat there, shell-shocked by a promise of sunlight that was making its way through Impel Down.
Jinbe was at a loss for words, stunned that there was someone insane enough to attempt to rescue Ace—but it was the same kid who destroyed Enies Lobby, so it shouldn't have been a surprise. Ace was muttering for his little brother to stay away, his voice a cracked whisper and his head drooping over his chest as blood dripped down his chin. Sophie was chewing on her hair like it was a bag of pasta noodles.
She peered at Ace, his clenched jaw, his eyes that glowed with a desperate light that he struggled to cram down. She spat out her hair and reached for Kirkira Iska's lacquered handle. Seven inches, lustrous and sharp, forged in the burning sun of Omiramba.
"If your brother's coming to save you," she whispered, flipping her knife around. "Then we gotta fight, yeah?"
"With Magellan on patrol?" Jinbe returned. "Easier said than done. Who knows if Straw Hat will…" He trailed off gracelessly.
"Die?" Ace finished.
"That does tend to happen in here."
"Luffy's made of stronger stuff than that." But his shoulders were trembling. "If you see him, tell him about Sabo."
Jinbe declined. "That duty falls on your shoulders."
"Yes," Sophie agreed.
Ace got it loud and clear. His mouth tugged in a tiny, tired grin. "Tellin' me not to die until I see him again, huh? Crafty bastards."
She gestured with her knife. "Worst-case scenario, Straw Hat is killed and this is all for nothing. But best-case scenario, he makes his way down here and frees you. And me, by association. But more importantly, you. But me, that's also important. Jinbe-san too."
"Thank you," Jinbe said wryly.
"We can't give up hope. We just… have to wait and…" Her head fell forward. Sophie sprawled across the floor in a boneless heap. "Hai Xing, a m-mushroom and cheese omelet, please," she mumbled in Jinbe's direction. "Yes, I would like a happy face drawn in ketchup…"
"Uh, Curls?"
She rolled on her side, her eyes dull and her face shiny with sweat. "Anko, when did you get freckles?"
"Boss," Ace said, "does she seem ill to you?"
She lifted a weak hand to her forehead. "Just a light fever. Good news: fevers are a symptom for something worse. So it won't kill me. What will kill me is whatever bacterial infection I probably have." Sophie held out her hand at the air, beaming. "Law! I did a good answer! Sticker, please."
"Oi! Oi, jailer! Anyone!?" Ace shouted.
"Save your breath," Jinbe said quietly. "It won't do her any good."
She smacked the back of her hand against Ace's leg and told him groggily that she remembered another reason why he couldn't die. On St. Poplar, he had promised her he'd let her experiment on his fire. That fight with Aokiji didn't count.
"I've made a lot of promises," Ace sighed.
"Poo-poo. Shut up. You gave me that coupon and I am going to cash in. Don't forget it."
She didn't remember much after that. Hours later, when she woke up, her head was resting on Ace's knee. Jinbe had dozed off, his snores reminding her of rumbly ocean waves. But Ace was still awake, breathing slowly, staring out at that primordial darkness for a sign of his brother. He hadn't slept much over the past week—hardly at all. Whenever he fell into a light nap, it only took a few minutes before he woke himself up, sweating and shivering.
"Habanero-kun," she mumbled, catching his attention, "another story."
In a dream, they clasped hands once more, dancing slowly.
"Sure," Ace whispered back, and began again.
—
THE FINAL DAY
armageddon
—
"Salmon donburi with mozuku seaweed," Jinbe decided. "Yes. That's what I'd have for my last meal on earth."
"Ghost peppers for me," Ace said.
"Just peppers?" Sophie laughed weakly. "On its own? Like an insane person?"
He looked down at her; she was using Ace's leg as a pillow, her long curls fanning out. "No one can arrest me for it. I'm already in jail. And you?"
Holding Kir to her chest like a baby, she considered the algae on the ceiling between slow blinks. "First, whatever Hai Xing wants to cook. Second… Nellie-san's homemade jambalaya…"
The end was anticlimactic. They spent the last few hours rambling about food; Ryugyu-style, Machinastein, Crawfish, East Blue. It could've been any other day. There were no inspiring words of wisdom about life and death and god, or a lack thereof. No one mentioned that it had been over a day since the Pirate Empress's visit, and Straw Hat had had still not appeared. Ace didn't cry. Neither did Sophie nor Jinbe. At the end of it, they talked. They cracked jokes. They made fun of Ace for putting hot sauce on everything.
And then it was time.
—
The Chief Warden came to escort Ace out of Impel Down.
He whispered at her to wake up, and as the iron key scraped into the lock, Sophie did, jerking away from him with a small, bewildered noise. She looked at the jailers and then back at him in terror, the realization setting in that their adventure together was at its close. They unhooked his cuffs from the wall and hauled Ace upright.
It took a moment for him to adjust to being back on his legs. Ace stood tall with his hands shackled in front of him, and looked up at Magellan. "I'll come quietly, but I'd like to say a few last words."
"Thirty seconds," Magellan allowed. "Any sudden moves and that one dies." His poison bubbled ominously as he glanced at Sophie.
Ace didn't allow any emotion to show on his face. "Boss, take care of yourself," he said, and Jinbe restrained his anguish as he bowed his head. The fishman knew this was inevitable. Jinbe was always sharp like that.
Then Ace knelt down in front of Sophie, who was raring for a good fight.
"Kir's right next to me," she whispered, her face twitchy-red and feverish. She looked significantly behind her leg, where she hid her knife. "I'm dying anyway. Forget about me. You have to see your brothers again."
A few days ago, she had been the one saying this is my ocean, too. Now, she told him forget about me. Luffy, Pops, Jinbe… and this strange, fearless girl who told him about Sabo. What had he ever done to deserve this? Ace grasped her chin and pressed their foreheads together.
He could feel Magellan's gaze on them. The streets of heaven were too crowded with the people he couldn't save. "Sophie."
"Yeah."
"I should've told you this earlier…"
She inhaled shakily, eyes narrowed, ready to make a last stand with him, to do whatever he asked. "Yeah?"
"But you have really great hair." He touched his mouth to her forehead, right on her small, scrunched-up brow. It was a brief, chaste kiss for the girl who called him Habanero-kun with complete sincerity. The way she looked at him hadn't changed since Idyll Island. Ace could see it clear as daybreak: she adored him. It was so obvious. Poor Trafalgar.
He pulled back, and they stared at each other. And he smiled.
"Ace," she said, and meant: no.
He tweaked her nose. "Catch you on the flip side, Curls."
At the end of it, here was the whole truth: Ace stood, nodded at Magellan, and allowed himself to be led to his execution. Sophie outstretched her hands, watching him leave between her fingers. The cross-and-crescent Whitebeard tattoo between his shoulders. The unflinching lift of his head.
He never looked back.
—
"Stay awake… you cannot succumb here, Sophie-kun… you must see the sun again…"
Her eyelids were already half-closed and her head sank onto her chest. Jinbe's voice faded away. The taste of salt between her lips was all that she was aware of. She didn't want to hope anymore. She didn't want to feel anything anymore. She wanted to sleep for a very long time.
…But then.
"AAAAAACE!"
Her eyes opened. Somewhere in the nothingness… came light.
Yellow vest. Sandals. Bloodied face.
A boy stopped in front of their cell. A young, dark-haired boy, with a straw hat hanging from his neck.
to be continued
notes. almost there.