thank you's to: YuiYua, calynrabka96, Asususasa, scars from the sun, Liltorgy, shethoughts, TaintedLetter, ansegiel, alexc123, Leynadoodles, Xielle Sky, Meno Melissa, Wisewhale, SuzyQBeats, tabi404, LiLy Resh, Lucinda M. H. Cheshir, Ladyktbaby, Alexel, and guests!
notes. this week has been kinda rough. some love would be sorely appreciated. i'm running on fumes right now, but i really wanted to knock this chapter out. (because my brain would not leave me alone until i did.)
—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #35
persephone ascends
—
Broken shackles dropped to the floor. Hands rubbed wrists, feeling infinitely lighter. Frantic voices conversed.
'Ace' was being repeated over and over, desperately.
She was being held upright by Jinbe as he yelled for medicine. Her much smaller frame looked hilariously baby-sized against the fishman Warlord's wide chest. She blinked slowly several times.
Okay, Sophie. Using your astute powers of observation, you have gathered that something is happening. Gauge the situation.
Sir Crocodile's indifferent, sandpaper voice was saying those who couldn't fight should be left behind. (He was lucky she was too incapacitated to leap on his back and bang on his head like a bongo drum.) Jinbe refused that with a growl, insisting Sophie tag along. (That was the sexiest thing she'd heard in a while. Jinbe was truly a man amongst men.)
"Do whatever you want," cut in a new voice, a younger voice, cold and quick. "This is wasting time. I'm going to Marineford. I'm saving Ace."
Him.
The little brother.
Straw Hat Luffy.
He paced a few scant feet away from her, turned away. She couldn't see his face, only the back of his head. A straw hat rested on his back. Beneath a pair of red shorts were skinny legs that had walked across a civil war in Alabasta. Those brown, scrawny hands had pummeled Enies Lobby to pieces. Dragon the Revolutionary's son. The boy who declared war on the World Government.
He was… smaller than all the rumors.
"If the Knight of the Sea vouches for you, who am I to refuse?" drawled an extravagant voice, and a giant face wearing full-glam makeup appeared. "You're going into septic shock, darling." Syringe-like fingers wiggled. "Big pinch, okay?"
"Wah da heck," Sophie managed to slur. "Emporio IvaAAAHHHH—"
The needles puncturing her side were so painful she blacked out for a minute.
When she came to, she was being carried on Jinbe's arm, tucked against his ragged kimono like a child. The darkness brightened slowly. The stale, mildewy air became… slightly less stale and mildewy.
Then she was being lowered to the ground. Someone tore her shirt off, and the stinging pain that followed was due to antiseptic poured across her back, over her bra. She screamed so hard she nearly blacked out again. Her ripped shorts joined the remains of her shirt, and after a bit of delirious struggling from Sophie, hands adorned with sparkly nail polish were cleaning the wounds she received from the minotaur.
They were gentle hands. These were people trying to help, she registered through the pain. Someone stuck a big tankard of water in her hands, and someone else was lifting her chin and helping her drink.
Her blurring vision began to settle. Disco balls. Tables. A whole lot of fishnet stockings and garter belts.
She gaped, forgetting for a moment how much pain she was in.
But a twinge of pain shot through her body, reminding her. An orange-and-white fur coat helped her up. The coat was attached to a face that could only be described as dignified and ineffable. Their other hand, the one that wasn't suffering the full weight of Sophie's body, was swirling a glass of burgundy wine.
"Iva's healing hormones," said the candy-corn individual, who introduced themself as Inazuma. "It sets in fast, but take care not to overexert yourself."
Iva. As in, Emporio Ivankov. As in, the Miracle Queen of Momoiro Island and the right-hand man of Dragon the Revolutionary. Sophie hadn't been dreaming.
Footsteps thundered. People tossed weapons at each other. Sir Crocodile was suiting up. Literally, he was wearing a sharp black suit. Someone procured for him a fur-lined coat. Muskets, sabers, flintlocks shifted in hands. They were arming themselves for an honest-to-god jailbreak.
On the edge of her vision, a yellow vest. A flash of black hair. Impatient, Straw Hat ignored the advice of Ivankov's candies to catch his breath.
"Jinbe-san." She grabbed the diamond-patterned sleeve of his kimono. "You gotta tell the kid about Sabo."
Out of decency, the Warlord had stuck by her side to make sure she was alright. She could tell how anxious he was to follow Straw Hat. "Not yet. This is neither the time nor place for distractions. Later. After this is all done with."
"But what if he dies?"
She forgot to specify which brother.
"I," the Warlord said, "will not let that happen."
Sophie exhaled through her nose, her headache returning in full-force. This stubbornness only existed in sexy pirates who were too strong to remember the last time they were told no. "If you're that confident… okay."
Preparations made, the small army began moving. Jinbe, Straw Hat, and Crocodile went ahead to clear the path. The tusky big boy glanced over at Sophie for her approval to lead the charge. With a little scoff (Jinbe was as considerate as he was handsome, how on earth was this guy a pirate?), she waved him on.
Okay, okay, okay. Everything was happening so fast, and no one bothered to give her a fancy suit. Sophie grabbed an unused bomber jacket and tugged it on over her sports bra. She was surrounded by candies wearing even less than her, and they had dressed themselves by choice. With heels, besides. Screw it. Her underwear was very sensible anyway, despite the big cherries printed on the cheeks.
She followed the back of Straw Hat's head through the barren winterscape of Level Five, and up the stairs into the boiling hell of Level Four.
The jailers, who had watched their fellows get bulldozed by a vanguard consisting of a Supernova captain and two Warlords, were now staring down a tsunami of sexually-liberated Newkama denizens. Keys were thrown in the air. Cell doors flung open. Inmates rejoiced.
Normally, Sophie would've raised a full-throated objection to the freeing of hundreds of violent offenders. But Ivankov had put it succinctly: the more prisoners they freed, the higher chance of survival they had of getting to the surface. There was strength in numbers. Throughout the bedlam, the newly-formed Let's Get the Fuck Outta Here Jailbreak Committee stampeded onwards.
"We runnin', lads! Hold off them curses and set loose the devils! THIS BE A FIGHTIN' DAY!"
From the depths of hell came a biblical uprising.
Sophie found herself squashed in the middle of the riot alongside Inazuma and their long scissor claws. A bandaged man with heavy mascara kicked through jailers and spun in pirouettes. The back of Straw Hat's head flashed between bloody swords, swirling sand, and eardrum-shattering gunfire. He was quick. She could barely keep him in her line of sight.
But suddenly her attention diverted. She came across something dearly beloved, that she missed very much.
She clenched her jaw, her fatigue vanishing in the force of all-encompassing fury.
—
In the interest of practicality, the jailers of Impel Down confiscated the weapons that their prisoners arrived with. They had a stockpile of standard Marine munitions—which was how Ivankov's people were so well-armed, having stolen many over the years—but occasionally the jailers also carried weapons that were too finely-crafted to toss away.
For example, a triple-barreled rifle with a scope and a lustrous walnut-wood stock gilded with the star of the greatest marksman in the world.
She darted through the chaos, staring so hard at Arsenic that lasers could've beamed out of her eyes and fried the jailer holding it. The absolute nerve of him, to take what she had rightfully stolen.
The jailer yanked the bolt-action, aiming at Sophie, and pulled the trigger.
Arsenic jammed. He slapped the barrels. "Piece of shit!"
"Get your dirty hands—" she plunged her knife in his throat, "—OFF HER!" She plunged it all the way through, blood spurting like a broken faucet. Her other hand came up to hold his head still; her Armament was all savage rage, and her thumb went straight through his eyeball. It popped like a ripe plum. His skull collapsed under her fingers, bone shattering, and she was ripping Sen away from a dead man's hands while covered in blood and brain goo.
Oh.
She considered her Armament a shield. She'd never been strong enough to punch down before, at someone weaker. (She had always been the weak one.) Her vision blurred greyly. Her legs wobbled.
"No time for that, love!" Inazuma yanked her away, but not before Sophie had the sense to grab the jailer's belt of ammunition.
Right. Save it for later. Compartmentalize.
Sen was back. Sophie hugged her tightly and gave her a little kiss, before slinging the belt of ammo across her chest and loading Arsenic up with fresh bullets.
The jailer beasts stepped out. Spiked clubs swung.
The world slowed—
(Her breathing echoed. The wounds on her body burned. She couldn't move.)
—and snapped back.
A giant, rubbery fist slammed—BAM—into a jailer beast's face, with its stupid blinking eyes and dribbly snot. It was the most satisfying sound she had heard in her life. The back of Straw Hat's head caught the light from the Boiling Hell's flames, turning his hair into a burning halo.
Sadi-chan snapped her whip as Emporio Ivankov took her on (in a much more curvaceous figure that Sophie would have no problem admiring under normal circumstances). The bridge over the pit of flames crumbled.
On the other side, she caught her balance from the jump. Ahead, protecting the gate to Level Three, Vice Warden Hannyabal spun his double-bladed spear. He was putting his life on the line to prevent the ocean's worst criminals from escaping.
Sophie found the highest pile of rubble and clambered on top, bare feet digging into stone, and got into sniping position.
The instant Jinbe noticed a jailer charging at him was the same instant said jailer crumpled. Crocodile, his arm a barchan-crescent of sand, paused to watch his opponents drop like flies. Three gunners aiming at Inazuma reeled backwards. One shot each to the cerebellum.
Perched like a guardian from above, Sophie kept firing, her eye pressed to the scope, her steady hand flying from trigger to bolt-action, ejecting empty casings. She aimed just above her targets' heads, making sure to overshoot, predicting where they'd move next, predicting how far the bullets would travel before gravity began to exert its effect. Gunnery was just weaponized physics. Her breaths were calm, creating a tempo like tapping fingers or counting in even numbers. Arsenic sang.
With a ferocious gasp, Hannyabal slammed his spear into the ground. Straw Hat had pummeled him into pulp, but he refused to go down.
"You want to save your brother!?" Blood sprayed from his mouth as he shouted. "You have no right to say such pretty things! This is the fortress of hell, built to shut away malicious criminals and protect peace for the masses!"
Sophie eased her finger off the trigger, watching him through the scope. Now that was a proper marine.
"Should Impel Down fall, the world will be thrown into a tumult of despair and fear!" His eyes burning with unshed tears of pain, Hannyabal howled, "I refuse to let you take one step into the light!"
Shadows swirled, devouring jailers.
"Give it a rest," came a growl from above. "Don't talk about 'justice' or 'evil' in this world. No matter where you look…"
Hannyabal cratered the ground. A man had landed on him, crushing the back of his skull.
A tornado of darkness exploded outwards.
A bespoke black pirate coat fluttered.
And Blackbeard roared, "THERE'S NO ANSWER, YOU IDIOT!"
The gate to Level Three had opened, and the rest of the Blackbeard Pirates' five-man crew appeared beside their captain. She watched them through the crosshairs. A sick man on horseback, a gunslinger, a wrestler, and a cane-wielding tap dancer.
Sophie lowered Arsenic from her shoulder, her whole body shaking.
"Ho, ho, we've got a helluva crowd here," Teach hooted, glancing about the commotion with eyes that were far shrewder than the relaxed airs he put on. "Looks like you were in the middle of somethin'! Zehahaha!"
"Teach! What are you doing here!?" Jinbe demanded. "Or should I call you Blackbeard now!?"
"Why don't you lower your fists, Jinbe?" Teach suggested cheerily. "I guess you were close with Ace, but you're barkin' up the wrong tree."
"Blackbeard," Straw Hat repeated. "You're Blackbeard?"
"It's been a while, Straw Hat Luffy!"
The chaotic riot grew louder, shouting in confusion. T he tone of Straw Hat's voice made it clear that he was pissed. The papers… they must've mentioned Ace's defeat at Teach's hands… surely, Straw Hat was aware he was responsible for this…
Grinning at his audience, Teach cleared his throat. "Hold on, let a man explain himself. The guy who took down the former Warlord over there…" He pointed at Crocodile, whose was puffing his cigar with an unamused sneer. "That was you, yeah? I was aiming for a spot in the Shichibukai then. The easiest way was to take your head and prove my strength to the Government."
"But fate," Teach laughed, "was kind to you! Y'see, Ace had been chasing me for what I did on my old man's ship. And he was your brother! When he learned what I was gonna do to you, he couldn't retreat! Get it? If he let us go, not only would Whitebeard's name be sullied, his little brother would be killed, too!"
The implication was clear: Straw Hat should have been imprisoned instead of Ace.
There was an impossible tautness in Sophie's chest. This wasn't Straw Hat's fault. He didn't know anything. He had two brothers still alive in this world. There was still hope. Before she knew what she was doing, she was shouting, "Hey—"
She slipped on a rock and fell flat on her face.
Teach squinted. "…Ducky? …That you?"
The mess of curls peeled itself off the rubble. Sophie pinched her bloody nose and hissed, "Ow, ow, ow…"
"Regret bringing her along yet?" Crocodile asked Jinbe. Inazuma decided this was the perfect time to pull out a bottle of wine and refill their glass.
"Well, I'll be!" Teach laughed uproariously, clapping his hands together. "Since we're all finally meetin', let's make some introductions! Take a good look, Straw Hat Luffy." His voice darkened. He lifted a ring-studded finger. "There's the lass who pointed your brother Ace to me. My sweet Fortuna, my own Lady Luck."
Her left hand twitched. A vein jumped in the skin between the XIII on her wrist.
Straw Hat turned.
For the first time, she saw him. Really saw him. Three years younger than Ace. Seventeen, then. He looked seventeen. He had a youthful face. A stubborn mouth. A scar on his cheek, beneath his left eye—oh, those eyes. They were unnervingly black, drilling straight into her.
Luffy seemed to be memorizing her face the same way she was memorizing his.
The tightness in her chest grew.
"You should thank her," Teach said with a cruel, delighted drawl, and horrified blue eyes flashed at him. "If she had never told Ace where I was, then you would be the dead one, Straw Hat."
Steam burst from rubber legs. "Why don't you try me now!"
The punch hit Teach square in the chest. But he was back on his feet in an instant, darkness swirling, and slammed Luffy into the ground. Jinbe moved fast, getting control of Luffy, shouting that Ace still needed to be saved. Sophie moved fast too; she jumped off the rubble, firing bullets at the Blackbeard Pirates, but then something grabbed her—
She swayed in midair, upside-down. Sand, tickly and oddly soft, was wrapped around her ankle. She attempted to kick it away, but the sand circled around her and flicked her in the forehead. "Wha—ow!"
"Simmer down, brats," Crocodile said with obvious distaste. "Is this a daycare?"
She aimed upside-down at Teach. The sand shook her like she was a particularly stupid jar of coins. It didn't occur to her that he was saving her butt, perhaps repaying her for the sniping. Her brain was an empty chalkboard, and Teach's voice raked nails down the slate.
Crocodile assessed Blackbeard. "So you're the no-name from Whitebeard's crew who took my place. Why are you here when Marine Headquarters should have summoned you? You've already thrown away the Warlord title you coveted."
"It's all part of my plan, though I've run into snags." Teach wiped his bloody mouth, still smiling. "But I see no need to tell you that, Crocodile-san."
"No, I guess not. And frankly, I'm not interested."
"You got no manners," Teach chided brightly.
Someone screamed, "MAGELLAN!"
The uproar immediately resumed. The Boss of Hell was on the move.
"We're lucky you broke through the defenses at the stairs," Jinbe acknowledged, catching Sophie after the sand flung her away.
"Same here!" Teach agreed bawdily. "This panic is perfect for us!"
They parted ways in mutual understanding that neither side would hinder the separate missions they were on. The jailbreak crew climbed the stairs while the Blackbeard Pirates went deeper into hell. Sophie twisted in Jinbe's arm, watching Teach's back as he said something to Luffy. She couldn't hear it, but then Teach threw his arms up in the air, making his next declaration loud and clear:
"Look forward to it, ya bastards! In just a few short hours, we'll put on a show that shakes the entire world!"
—
"Sophie-kun—"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"It wasn't your—"
She aimed and blasted a jailer off his feet. Sophie caught her balance on him, taking care not to elbow his gills. "It's okay, Jinbe-san. I'm okay."
She was the furthest thing from okay. But she was compartmentalizing.
The labyrinthine passages of Level Three fell behind Jinbe as he ran, his powerful stomps jolting through Sophie with every step. They were leaving it all behind—the jail cell, the dead rotting things, the stone ceiling that leaked phosphorescent algae. She held herself tight, fear and desperation and adrenaline nearly choking her. She could smell Magellan in the air. It was the bittersweet smell of decaying flesh.
Up the stairs to Level Two. Sand swirled from Crocodile's coat. Luffy was somewhere ahead.
A loud crash echoed. Once Inazuma made it onto Level Two, they had cut the entrance to papery shreds to block Magellan's path, or at least to slow him down. There was no sight of Magellan. There was no sight of a massive cloud of purple hair, either. Candies screamed at Inazuma for leaving Emporio Ivankov behind to fight the warden on his own.
She only caught a glimpse of Inazuma's expression, and despite it being half-covered by sunglasses—
I know that look.
Sophie leaped from Jinbe's shoulder, landing in a crouch. Escaping prisoners nearly bowled her over, and she shoved past them in the opposite direction. The fishman shouted after her, for he had stopped too to make sure she was okay. The chivalrous idiot.
"JINBE," she bellowed with all her might,"THE SUN!"
Don't look back, she meant, no matter what. Luffy had to escape Impel Down. Ace had to see his brother again.
Jinbe understood. His red coat and topknot vanished into the pandemonium. If she was more cynical, she would've wondered if it was because she wasn't a fishman, or because she was ex-World Government, that he was okay with leaving her behind.
But she wasn't cynical. Jinbe understood the dignity of choosing your death, and with one silent nod, he deemed her valiant. That was what she believed.
"What are you doing!?" Inazuma shouted at her. "Get going!"
"No way, carrotcakes," Sophie snapped, and jabbed an obstinate finger at them. "I'd get that exact look on my face whenever my captain did something stupid. Like order us to run while he threw himself in life-threatening danger. I'm staying right here. We're waiting for Emporio Ivankov together."
Inazuma's mouth trembled. They nodded.
She stood with them side-by-side, pointing her gun at the shredded remains of the stairs. Inazuma's Devil Fruit powers were curious. It seemed to be able to cut up anything and turn it into malleable paper. She assessed herself; her fever had long since gone down, and she had a fair bit of newfound stamina. Whatever Ivankov had injected her with was doing its job. Tomorrow might not be so pretty. But that was Tomorrow Sophie's problem.
The seconds ticked by. It was eerily quiet. All the cells around them had emptied. Level Two had cleared out; not a single soul was left.
"Can you defend yourself against his poison?"
She adjusted her stance, ready, military-trained. "Probably not. But I can throw myself at him as a distraction, and you can take his head."
Inazuma lifted their scissor-claws in an X across their chest. "It's an honor fighting with you."
The ground rumbled. Someone pushed through the debris.
"Iva," Inazuma began in relief—
No. It was Chief Warden Magellan who stood there, sixteen feet tall, dripping poison from his spotless Impel Down suit, his ebon wings and devil horns. His eyes glowed acid-green as he glared down at the two prisoners who presumed with tragic naivety they could take him on.
"I would advise you to pray," Magellan said, "but there are no gods left down here."
Yelling in fury, Inazuma sliced up huge chunks of stone floor that hurtled toward the Chief Warden. Useless bullets blasted through his head. Magellan narrowed his eyes at the pesky fly and sent his Hydra slamming mercilessly into the girl. Acid met flesh. She was devoured by its corrosive jaws with a gurgled scream.
She'd be dead within seconds. One down. One to go.
"No!" Inazuma shouted, and attempted to cut the walls down on top of him.
Scissors glinted. Poison ate.
Inazuma took longer to subdue, but eventually they succumbed to the Hydra as well. Magellan brushed off his suit with an annoyed exhale, adjusted his cap, and strode forward to subjugate the rest of the jailbreak.
He flinched to a stop.
Footsteps splashed. Magellan turned to see the Alchemist standing there, slinging her rifle across her back, poison pooling between her bare feet.
She kicked toxic sludge off her legs and wiped her eyes with a hand disfigured by a thousand old acid burns. She glanced at the steaming puddle that was Inazuma, and looked back at Magellan. Her breaths came out sharp and sticky and hot. An angry vein pulsed in her forehead.
"Your Haki has changed since you came in," Magellan remarked with an acid burp.
Ace's lessons had transmuted her anew.
"I had a good teacher," she said.
And Sophie, for what it was worth, had always been an exceptional student.
She dodged poison bubbles that burst and released tear gas. She rolled to her knees, holding her breath, Haki flashing black sparks in her eyes. The Color of Armament was not solid or rigid like a suit of armor. It flowed. Like a universal solvent; water or alkahest. Like an ocean, swallowing everything.
She centered it into her hands. Palms. Wrists. Metacarpals.
It wasn't anything like how she thought it would be. Her mind did not clear, empty, or enter a meditative zen state, all instinct. There was no instinct here. Her mind raced. This was calculated precision, twenty years' worth of knowledge. She'd been playing with strychnine since she was a baby. She had cut her teeth on red skies.
She looked at Magellan, and looked deeper, and looked until she saw him spread out in biological wonders. His bone marrow hollowed with ricin, his blood cells laced with scorpion venom. Organophosphates. Enzyme inhibitors. Sodium channel blockers.
Ace said that everyone's Haki was a little bit different. Hers was a chemist's Haki: a Haki that yearned to create and destroy all things.
When Magellan sent his Hydra at her, she caught it. She touched the hydrogen bonds of his tetrodotoxin, the diatomic molecules of his cyanide. Her Haki rearranged itself into atropine, antivenin, sodium nitrite. The poison went solid. All that narcotic violent purple, bulging and kicking. Sophie held it tenderly, for she too had sanctified her body to the god of plagues—and had come out the other side alchemizing antidotes.
"Gravity centered," Penguin reminded.
Anko gripped her shoulder. "Watch your feet."
"Follow through," Shachi added.
"Clench your butt," Bepo advised.
"And breathe," Law said.
She grabbed the Hydra by their necks and spun, pulling Magellan off his feet with a vicious yank, his poison dragons a long jelly line that wobbled. She threw him over her shoulder, just like how her crew taught her. His ebon body cracked the floor with a terrific slam!
Magellan was down for hardly five seconds. He circumvented her newfound Haki ability by bluntly punching Sophie straight through the ceiling.
They crashed into Level One.
She hit something softer than stone. A warm body. Knees met stomach. Blue hair. A crossbones tattoo. A big red nose that made an improbable honking noise.
"AAAHHH WHO THE HELL," screamed the floating clown.
"AHH SORRY," she screamed back, hanging on his torso in midair. She choked as she saw his detached head levitating above her, and immediately thought her captain was nearby. "Eh? Law?"
"What!? Get off the fuck off me!"
Oh, guess not. She struggled to hang on. "B-but you look so strong!"
"That's—" The clown that was almost certainly a Devil Fruit user paused. He chuckled with sneering arrogance, and struck a heroic, manly pose. "That's not wrong, little girl!"
The air smelled like bittersweet decay. Magellan landed nearby, more Hydras emerging.
"Welp, see ya," said the clown, and he tossed her to Magellan like a dirty, ripped-up chew toy meant to pacify a snarling bull.
Prisoners ran, the slowest among them succumbing to poison. Their jaws dropped as they watched a young woman soar over their heads and make full-body contact with the Hydra like a screaming boulder launching itself out of a trebuchet. She knocked the dragons aside, inadvertently saving the remaining prisoners.
"Merciful goddess!" they cried gleefully. "Deliver us to freedom!"
"Shut up and run!" Sophie shrieked, following her own advice.
"To think I would be forced to do this to my own prison." Magellan screwed his hand shut. "Very well."
He slammed his fist against the wall so hard it fractured from floor to ceiling. The foundation of Level One had already been weakened by the gaping hole they had crashed through. It was a straightforward but ingenious tactic.
The ceiling dropped right on top of her.
—
"…heave-ho!"
Rock creaked.
"Come on, damn it! Lift!"
Hands clutched stone, sweating purple.
"One… two… three!"
The weight vanished, pebbles crumbling through the crack. A tiny gap between the collapsed debris was enough space for Sophie to wiggle out. Harsh light hit her. For a minute, as she coughed on the rubble, striped with blood and dust, she couldn't see anything. But she smelled the salt breeze. Ocean?
Her vision slowly returned. The painfully bright light became a heavy grey mist rolling over the sky. She blinked watering eyes and inhaled loudly, again and again. After a week in the tomb of Level Six, breathing in fresh oxygen felt like hyperventilation. A dozen inmates stood around her; they had saved her life.
"Th-thank y—" She stopped, gratefulness warping into mute horror.
They smiled at her, melting from Magellan's poison. "Don't worry about us, merciful one. We're done for. But look! The ocean!"
Sophie couldn't speak. No. No. No, I need to make an antidote, I need my chem ingredients, I need to help you—
The prisoners staggered over the smoking rubble. The entrance to Impel Down was a pile of debris, the front gate and guard towers demolished. She moved automatically, following the amethyst puddles they left as they dragged themselves to the sea.
The… empty sea.
Jinbe and Straw Hat were gone. She screamed Inazuma's name and heard no answer, so maybe they were gone, too. The jailbreak crew must've commandeered a ship and were sailing towards Marineford. She hoped they were. She ignored her own despair and hoped sincerely that Straw Hat had made it.
"We made it!" The freed men hugged each other's shoulders, laughing joyously. "Aye, what a lovely day!"
Their legs collapsed, acid eating through bones.
She fell to their side. "Tell me your names!" Tell me so I can write them down. Tell me so I can remember.
She held a pox-marked, hoary face in her hands, a burst of frantic Haki disregarding the poison. He made a weak noise, his lips trembling and pursed together in pain; his wet eyes stared at her, sunlight reflecting in irises. His mouth struggled, and then with a small jerk, he went still all over.
The others had already stopped breathing, lying in a festering pile. But it didn't remain a pile, for Sophie, after she lowered his eyelids and gently straightened out his clothes, went to work arranging the dead in a neat line, set their arms at their sides, and closed their eyes.
When it was done, she sat on her knees and considered the bodies. She couldn't say the standard marine funeral rites. That would surely be inappropriate.
"Please guide them," she prayed to the sea, the words coming out easy after a lifetime of worship. "These were prisoners of Impel Down, which means they did terrible crimes… or what the World Government considers terrible crimes. But… they're dead now, and their bodies are returning to the eternal cycle. They're returning home."
Molecules rejoining the universe. Atoms reverting to primordial states. From decay to ammonium to nitrate to nitrogen. Becoming nutrients for something else. Mass-energy is neither created nor destroyed, only remade in a different state; in death, life continued. An eternal cycle.
The waves lapped, fog rolling in.
She hugged her knees, sitting in her bloodied, filthy underwear, and stared out at the misty ocean.
Ahead of her was the Calm Belt, filled with Sea Kings.
Behind her was Hell, its Chief Warden, and the distant screams of captured prisoners.
Sophie sniffled a little. She rubbed her eyes.
"I'm scared," she whispered to no one.
If Bepo was here, he would hoist her up by the armpits. He would hold her close and pat her head and ask if she wanted a nap. And when she'd hysterically wail no, I need some motivation, he would remind her that she still had so much to do, and she could rest after it was done. She would whine and grouse that he was too cute to ignore. Hai Xing would bonk her with his shamonji. Law would pinch her ear. Anko would offer his butt for her to smack.
She curled her hand around Arsenic's barrels, warming the cool metal. Kir was tucked nice and snug inside her sports bra. She imagined their voices, one low and smooth, the other sharp and bright. Comforting. Strong.
"…Right. I know. We have to go home, too."
Sophie pulled herself to her aching feet. Time to channel her guardian angel, the cockroach, and be irrationally stubborn yet again.
She started kicking through the rubble, looking for anything she could fashion into a makeshift dinghy. A broken beam here, a piece of rope there… She pushed aside stone and yanked out a big chunk of the ex-wooden gate. "Come on, Sophie! You're so close! Heave-ho, heave—"
Behind her, a throat cleared.
And it was then that she noticed a shadow had blotted out the sun.
"Hello again, ducky. Need a ride, do ya?"
—
Teach watched her eat, which was a little weird.
She bit through slabs of salt-cured Sea King meat. She stuffed cold rice and tough biscuits in her mouth. She ate like she was about to die, no noise but the awful, wet-noised, saliva-sticky pants between every bite. She sat on the left side of Teach at the end of the table, which was this wobbling, crappy thing that logically should've collapsed every time the ship bounced over a choppy wave. It was filled with food they had acquired from Impel Down's kitchen.
Speaking of pathetic things, the ship of the Blackbeard Pirates was a raft. Four huge logs attached together, with some sails sticking out of it. It churned through the turbulent waves of the Tarai Current, and nausea slammed into her in the middle of ripping through a mutton leg.
She grabbed the bowl of biscuits, upended the biscuits, and threw up everything, hot acid, gagging.
"Easy now, daffadowndilly," Teach chuckled.
She wiped her mouth, her returning stare twitchy and cold.
"Ignore these rascals, birdsweet," Teach said, because his crew was laughing. His black-and-gold coat rested over his shoulders. Brushing crumbs aside, he ran a thumb along his brown chin, where his beard tangled thick and wiry. "Eat to your filling. Aye, that's it. Try some of the potato. Good, ain't it?"
She ate slower this time, watching him carefully. Teach smiled back in brazen shamelessness. She pulled the zipper of her ragged bomber jacket higher. He had offered her a spare shirt, a white button-up still damp with seawater and sweat, simpering that he was a 'gentleman'. It smelled like it hadn't been washed in weeks, so that was a hard pass.
The pirates sat around the table with the freed prisoners of Level Six. Avalo Pizarro, the cannibal king from North Blue. Vasco Shot, the savage drunkard. Caterina Devon, who had a habit of capturing the hearts of women as well as their heads. Shiryu, the former Vice Warden of Impel Down, smoking a cigar.
The enormous giant Sanjuan Wolf was tied behind the raft. He was quite literally the size of a small mountain. Burgess tossed slabs of Sea King meat into his mouth, and Wolf giggled nervously every time Sophie peered over the raft to stare at him.
The strong salt breeze pushed the raft onwards. Sophie looked around at the pirates, who were bickering amongst each other over food or stretching their limbs under the free blue sky with a joyful laugh. These were some of the worst criminals the world has ever seen. And considering how they had killed their fellow prisoners for a chance at freedom, they were the strongest.
"Anyone got a cigarette?" she asked. Arsenic rested on her lap for easy accessibility.
Sitting like a hunched-up vulture beside her, Doc Q rustled up something in his straggly fur coat. His pale, trembling hand offered her a cigarette.
She took it and sniffed. Sophie sighed deeply, decided she had no energy for a panic attack, and tossed it. "Crushed hemlock. How generous."
"Didn't she smell out your apples?" Van Augur reminded.
"Clever girl," Doc Q rasped. "They say expertise is yet another shade of luck…"
"You got a normal one in there?" she inquired.
Doc Q coughed and handed one to her. After smelling and licking the (stale) tobacco, she lit the cigarette with a rusty lighter that Shiryu tossed at her. She gave him a wary look, which he returned impassively.
"These guys," she muttered to Teach, nodding at the freed prisoners. "They're your crew now?"
Teach brightened, as though he had expected her to ignore him the whole ride to Marineford. "We'll see how it plays out," he said with an oily grin. "First, I gotta prove myself a worthy captain for these sleazeballs. Zehahaha! I kid, I kid!"
She blew out a thin, strained stream of smoke. "I s…said something to you on Toa Sang Bay. About… inmates in Impel Down."
"That's right! You couldn't have imagined my shock when you figured it out so easy. Gave me a fright."
"Then—then I didn't…"
He frowned. Then his eyes went wide in realization. "Wait, wait, hold on a—" Teach guffawed and spat out chunks of chicken into Van Augur's monocled face. He thumped himself on the chest. "You think you gave me this idea? Ha! Good god, no!"
Sophie let out a powerful shaking breath of relief.
"Of course," he added, "it wouldn't have been possible if I weren't a Warlord. I still have that to thank you for."
Her insides turned ice-cold. Right.
"Heart Pirates, wasn't it?" Lafitte said, fiddling with his cane. "A rookie Supernova crew."
"Supernovas," Caterina Devon snorted. "This generation's going down the shitter. In my day, we got called mangy curs and bilge rats like real pirates."
"How long ago wuzzat, Devon?" Vasco Shot slurred. "Before or after y'watched de pyramids get built in Al'basta?"
"Keep talkin' and I'll knock ya so far back the impotent donkey your mother spread her legs for will feel it."
"Save it for the war!" Teach interrupted, because the world's most heinous criminals were standing up and reaching for sharp objects, while Burgess egged them on and Van Augur called them idiots. "The stage has been set. I'll give ya a show worth watchin'. We can squabble and celebrate to our heart's content when it's done."
Tension climbed up Sophie's neck. This pressure—it was the force of several terrifying Hakis being flexed. The wooden mast creaked threateningly.
"Oi," Shiryu said, looking up at the mast. "Not the damn ship."
Teach stared at them, smiling.
Devon snorted, sitting back down. "Fine."
"More booze," Shot drawled.
"Eat up, eat up!" Teach said jovially. "More than enough to go around!"
Sophie discovered that she could breathe again. She wiped the sweat dripping down her nose, trying to ease off her body's instinctive frozen reaction. Shiryu reached for the lighter next to her and she flinched at the sudden movement, and tried to pass that off by scratching her arm, keeping her head low.
She didn't know what to make of Blackbeard: if he was a fool or if he was charismatic, if he was genuinely intelligent or just a villainous hack copying his old man's epithet like a desperate cry for attention. He had a scraggly beard, broken teeth, and an enormous, hairy belly. He had a black coat tailored to perfection and gemstones dripping from his wrists and fingers. Opal, pearl, garnet.
"What are you p-planning?" Sophie said quietly, unable to hide the tremble in her voice.
Teach's eyes gleamed at her like a starless sky. "Ain't no fun in that. Go on. Eat more."
"I'm full."
"No, you're not," Teach said. "Eat."
She took a fried flour dumpling and nibbled.
"I like hungry women. I like smart women." His smile grew as his eyes raked over her face, her hair… and found her hands. The boiled skin, the lumpy joints, the self-mutilated fingers. His smile faded. His nose twitched, as if smelling something odious. "But I don't like ugliness."
Sophie held her tongue before she could spit back, Lucky me.
"Your taste is shit, Blackbeard," Devon said idly. "Everyone knows the ugly ones make the best pets."
That launched a riotous bout of laughter. Sophie stared at the plate of chicken bones. Beneath the table, her fingers dug into her knee. But tattooed hands slid over her shoulders, and Law's low voice murmured in her ear, Have you forgotten how I decapitated you? The only one who can mortify you is me.
She crushed the remains of her cigarette in the plate.
"You're sailing to Marineford," she said to Teach, calm and cold. "Why? Whitebeard will be there to save Ace. You're not afraid your old crew will kill you?"
His smile was wide and full of missing teeth; but most of all, she was starting to realize how enigmatic it was.
"I," Teach said, ripping into meat, "have been a son of Whitebeard for twenty-six years. He was greater than the sun to me, once. But he grew old. Soft. Family this, family that. What happened to real piracy? What happened to dreams? To One Piece? My former crew is full of soft-hearted fools like our old man."
"Ace loved you," Sophie told him, and his smile stalled.
Her insides were roiling with anger and disgust. She remembered the stories Ace told her, his soft smiles, his faraway gaze, on the cusp of vanishing into the light of his memories. She remembered his grief that nearly scorched her alive. Soft-hearted fool? Do you even know what you gave up?
"They'll write your name upon the stars," she said quietly, and hoped it cut into him, hoped it hurt so much that he choked to death on his regret. "Glowing like meteor fire. If I could catch some of that light, I'd be a happy man."
After a short silence, Teach delicately dabbed his mouth with a napkin. "Poetic, ain't it? I can compose some pretty words."
She had met her fair share of evil, cruel men.
She was starting to think none were as evil nor cruel as this one sitting before her.
Her breathing echoed in her ears. There was an immense darkness in Teach. It wanted to draw her in like a black hole, a gravitational collapse, a rotting corpse of a star. The abyss was huge. Not like a ship; like a sky. But darkness was simply a state of subjective perception. What sort of science was he made of? She touched the void, pressed against the dark matter—
"Enough Haki." Shiryu flicked the handle of his long nodachi Raiu from its sheathe. Steel flashed.
—carbonized lightning, iron atoms falling in a deluge of rain—
Sophie snapped awake, her senses shooting back—inward? Where had it gone? The edge of the table where her hand was gripping it had cracked.
"She can't control it," Van Augur said derisively. "How mediocre."
"Still a kid," Doc Q coughed.
"But there's potential," Lafitte hummed. "What a strange girl."
"Strange indeed." Teach regarded her thoughtfully. "You and Ace… you were close?"
"W… w-we…" Oh, pineapples. She could feel her mouth pulling, stretching, trying to climb the breathless barrier of her nervous stutter. Her face was twitching, too. The pirates stared at her, some of them snickering. Finally, she managed to force out, "We g-got to talking in our jail cell."
"Hm! You brought Ace to me. You and him in Impel Down together." Teach waggled his chicken drumstick at her. "There's a touch of destiny upon you."
She looked skyward, biting her lip to stop herself from retorting flatly, Okay.
"I remember you said you were an orphan." He chewed, eyeing her darkly. "Ocean child. No blood, no island."
"That stuff doesn't matter."
"It matters. Names. Fate. Bloodlines. Inheritance."
The skin around her eyes tightened. I recognize this tripping-on-shrooms fever talk. A three-eyed woman flashed through her mind. "You know something, don't you. Something about the V-Void Century. The Twenty Kingdoms."
"Now those," Teach relished, "are clever questions. Bravissimo, daffodil. Well done for getting this far."
Her foot tapped restlessly. "But you're not going to tell me, because that would be too convenient."
He merely smiled. "I'll let you in on this little secret." Teach leaned forward with one heavy arm braced on the table, the clouds lofty and oracular above him as his gaze drilled into Sophie. "Men with the name D have been selected by the heavens to rule the seas. You might call us destined kings."
Like Portgas D. Ace? Monkey D. Luffy? …Gol D. Roger?
He gestured at himself. "Marshall D. Teach."
A noise burst from her lips. She was too lightheaded to realize it was a laugh. "Um, I don't think so."
"…No?"
Ace had been an orphaned hooligan on Dawn Island. What did he have that no one else had? Nothing. Just a boatload of insecurities.
"No," she agreed. Mouthy women often invited tragedy, but she couldn't stop. "No, the ocean hates men like you. Think about it logically. You're a Devil Fruit user. Between you and me, if we were both drowning, who do you think the ocean would save?"
For a moment, Sophie thought she got him. Thought she made a crack appear in that egotistical Whitebeard traitor. But the look in his eye was almost kind. Pitying.
"There is so much of this world," Teach said, "that you neither know nor understand."
He turned to the Den Den Mushi on the table.
As if on cue, it found a broadcasting signal, and its little snail eyes popped open as a reporter's voice shouted frantically, "—it's happening! Whitebeard and his fleet of forty-three subordinates have appeared in Marineford Bay!"
Sophie jumped to her feet. "It already started!?"
"The Strongest Man in the World will be waging an all-out war to rescue Fire Fist! For those just tuning in, here's the insane news you missed! Fleet Admiral Sengoku has revealed that Fire Fist Ace is secretly the blood-related son of Gold Roger, the Pirate King!"
"Ain't that somethin'," Burgess said in awe.
"The blood of a king," Doc Q mused. "A cruel fate indeed."
"Gold Roger's descendent," Shiryu muttered. "And a Whitebeard son to boot. Are you lot prepared?"
"Gold Roger is dead," Teach said. "And Pops gets sicker by the day. Ghosts ain't nothin' to be feared."
Sophie was still staring at the Den Den Mushi, her heartbeat small and uneven, her mouth parted ever so slightly, her thoughts jumbled and confused and…
He never told me that.
—
"A battleship fell from the sky! Straw Hat Luffy has entered the war! Alongside the Knight of the Sea, Jinbe! Sir Crocodile! Ivankov of the Revolutionary Army! And Buggy the Clown leading a battalion of escaped convicts!"
The raft leaped through the Tarai Current.
"Not only was Straw Hat Luffy raised with Fire Fist as his adopted brother," Sengoku's voice boomed, "he is also the flesh-and-blood son of Dragon the Revolutionary!"
Over the horizon, smoke was rising.
"Whitebeard… WAS STABBED! By one of his own subordinates! A pirate from the New World, the Maelstrom Spider Squard!"
Appalled, Sophie clapped her hands over her mouth. That other pirates looked mildly amused.
"You sold out the forty-three captains following you in exchange for Ace's life!" came the Maelstrom Spider's voice, pained and full of rage. "Only your crew and Ace would be spared! You struck a deal with Sengoku! You betrayed us, Whitebeard!"
The communications suddenly cut off.
"That can't be true," she whispered.
Teach kicked his feet on the table, his dark gaze on the Den Den Mushi. "…Course it ain't. Pops is too damn soft for that. Sengoku's played a nasty little trick."
The Tarai Current brought them to the Gates of Justice. Lafitte tipped his hat at the slowly opening steel gates, which allowed the raft through. A little hypnosis went a long way, apparently. They reached the rear end of Marineford, far enough away that the watchtowers and scouts couldn't spot them. Burgess lowered the sails and the raft drifted to an idling stop.
Standing on the edge, Sophie peered out. Plumes of smoke hung over Marineford. Distant artillery fire. Booms that echoed over the water.
A long time ago, around a campfire in the forest of Kunlun, Law told her why he was at Vira. He wanted to watch a generation on the knife's edge of change, to see which way they'd tilt. The Hearts would be at Marineford. Maybe they already were. The entire world was watching.
And in any case… she had to clean up the mess that she unwittingly caused. Do whatever she could to help Straw Hat Luffy, if possible. Plus, she was a little peeved about Ace's secret. How dare that little trivia never come up in Impel Down! He might've given her forehead a big ol' smooch before he left, but if she had known, she would've gotten him to do something way cooler! Like autograph her breasts in his blood!
Well, the same goes for me, Sophie told herself huffily. I never told him about the dolls I used to make out of popsicle sticks, which I pretended were my friends. I glued them to my body so they'd never leave me, and I still have the scars. How's THAT for wild secrets, Habanero-kun? Totally the same as being the son of the Pirate King! …I wish I'd pried out one of your molars.
"Headin' off, ducky?" Teach called.
Glancing over her shoulder, she repetitively tapped the belt of ammo sitting over her bomber jacket. "Aren't you also…?"
"It ain't time for our show-stopping entrance yet."
Okay, drama queen. "I'm going," Sophie muttered, and then shot him a look of trepidation. "Will you… try to stop me?"
"Not at all!" He swaggered forward and stood at the edge beside her, taking a swig of the rum he kept in his sash. "Here ya are, a nameless little speck of nothin', having turned the wheel of destiny. Show me what you're capable of."
She shifted her weight. "On Toa Sang Bay, I thought you were a funny guy." Her murmur was a tad wistful. "You bought me pudding."
"A right proper gentleman, aren't I?"
"Did someone hurt you as a kid, Teach?"
He paused.
"Were you abandoned as a child? Did something terrible happen to you?"
His smile was as friendly as a bloodied knife.
She gazed back, cold and angry and hard. "Do you think power can fill the void in your heart? Have you tried yoga? Or journaling?"
"I see you," Teach said quietly, bending down to look her in the eye. The wind blew something fierce, tugging at his necklaces and his coarse black curls. "I see exactly what you're doing. We're more alike than you know. You defected from the World Government. I defected from Whitebeard. We were born from the same star, you and I."
Justice, evil, she thought. No matter where you look… there's no answer, you idiot.
On a grand, universal scale: Sure. The universe didn't care.
On a small, microcosmic scale: That was lazy thinking. Just because there was no definitive answer didn't mean people couldn't come up with one themselves. There was always an answer, so long as you were clever enough. Which Sophie was. Undeniably. Like countless anonymous women before her, she was too clever for the world she lived in.
She beamed radiantly, popped her hip out, and chirped, "You sure talk big for a grown man who can't swim, huh!"
His smile dropped.
Fell right through the floor, in fact.
His crew started chuckling. Clearly, they weren't above making fun of their own captain. Teach began laughing with them.
Then he seized Sophie by the throat and snarled, "The only reason I won't kill you today is because I am owed to you. You have the mighty Blackbeard as an indebted friend, now and forever."
He was crushing her windpipe. She tasted metal in her mouth, asphyxiating, and managed to choke out, "Don't—touch—me."
CRACK.
Teach backhanded her across the face so hard he left an agonizingly red imprint on her cheek. He roared in laughter and his crew watched in amusement. Sophie almost bit through her tongue to keep back a shriek.
Then he lifted her with one hand around the throat so her legs dangled in the air, and then kissed her violently on the mouth. Shock froze her. She didn't know what to do, couldn't open her mouth wide to scream before his sour tongue pushed inside, couldn't close her mouth to bite before his lips crushed hers. Couldn't do anything but feel it. The press of his teeth. The taste of his sweat. Skin smearing humiliatingly against skin.
Blackbeard wrenched her away, the violation done, his sneer wicked and satisfied.
Then he punted her off his raft.
to be continued