—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #44
xeranthemum everlasting immortelle
—
The first time, the chief of Cipher Pol 5 sent them running on Kunlun.
The second time, they survived by the skin of their teeth on Machinastein.
The third time, Teresa pulverized her into the side of a limestone cliff, white gulls squalling into the air, and Sophie pulled herself out of the salt-crust with nothing more than scraped elbows. Waves crushed up on the rocks, and there was a vicious, grieving heartbeat running on fumes that tore like pincers beneath her skin, so she shut her Observation off. Shut it down. Didn't want to feel that.
Teresa had been tracking them for weeks. Ever since Marineford. She found the Heart Pirates and the flying island that the World Government tasked her to find so long ago, and looking at Law after losing so many comrades in the war made her wretched once again.
So: they fought.
The marram grass was waist-high and Sophie got sand in her underwear. Law moved like a half-stunned scarecrow, swaying in the wind, nodachi dragging beside him. Until Teresa moved and he moved faster, his eyes still half-closed—
Sophie always knew he was strong, but sometimes she couldn't believe by how much. He signed up and the sand rose like a wave. He signed disappear and Teresa's axe vanished from her fingertips and dropped twenty feet away. A seastone bullet shot Law in the head, and his neck arced back from the impact and he muttered, "Fucking hell."
He reached through the distance and Shambled the Cipher Pol sniper into tiny, bite-sized chunks. The cubes of muscle and bone and startled eye rotated slowly in the air, then dropped to the ground like scattering raindrops. He'd been wanting to do that since Kunlun.
Wordless, he stepped back through the distance and drove Kikoku through Teresa's liver.
Sophie watched the blood splatter, wondering how the pineapples she'd ever managed to escape Law when he tried to kill her so long ago. If he'd been at full health, CP5 would've been decimated.
"Rosinante would be ashamed." Teresa said this calmly, lying flat on the sand. Her chin was held high, as if she was the one who just kicked them down. "How dare you become a pirate instead of a marine. How dare you."
Law informed her that she lost the high ground when the World Government decided to let Flevance die. Teresa, just as cold, informed him that he wasted Rosinante's death, just as he wasted his life. Sophie yelled back that maybe they should go get virgin piña coladas and talk it out. She yelled it as loud as she could, because she didn't want to hear Law's reply, a little knife between her ribs: "You don't think I know that?"
She heard it anyway. She wanted a whiskey.
A bazooka exploded on the Polar Tang.
About time for a mid-battle shakeup, and it came with big claws and big fangs. As expected, the former princess of Cat's Eye Island had arrived.
How did she get here without a ship? Sophie heard the whistle-clank of two voices in the sky, moving against the dark storm clouds. One thrumming fast as a propeller, the other jovial and bright as polished metal. She and Law both looked up at the people who'd given Lisbeth her artificial Devil Fruit.
Law said, "My old crew."
Teresa cracked the bottom of her shoe against Law's jaw. As he went down, he pointed at Sophie, and then up at the sky.
Sophie breathed in. On her next exhale, she was tearing upwards and bare seconds away from a three-way collision, screaming in the wind: "Baby 5! Buffalo! Don't b-be shy! Come play with the rest of us!"
Baby 5, kneeling on Buffalo's back, yelped in surprise. In two mechanical clicks, she transformed her arm into a cannon and fired bare inches from Sophie.
The mortar shell grazed her nose. Her hand was already outstretched, the tip of Peri nicking Baby 5's red bow. Sophie overshot them by several feet and swung around in the air as the explosion blew apart a raincloud. She flipped Ace's curved dagger around.
"We've been made," Baby 5 tsked.
"She got you, nnniin!" A Donquixote jolly roger was splashed across Buffalo's teeth as he laughed.
"Barely." Baby 5 pouted, touching her torn bow. She called around the cigarette in her mouth, "Oh, don't look so mad! We're not here to be nefarious, honest! We just wanted to make sure our long-lost brother got our gift!"
Baby 5 was cute. Cute, cute, cute, cute. And she could change her body into weapons, which automatically made her the coolest girl in the world. This filled Sophie with fanatical loathing. "You th-think—Law is—your family?"
"Of course, silly!" Baby 5 beamed with no malice whatsoever. "Sorry to tell you, but he was ours first."
Sophie shifted gears to V8. Sen hummed, going supersonic. "Sorry to tell you," she bit out with the world's nastiest snarl, "but I'm going to kill you now."
"That's cute." Baby 5 patted Buffalo. A signal to leave. "But Doffy doesn't want you dead yet, Crawfish marine."
Sophie bucked forward, Arsenic's star glowing—
The skies blazed white.
A bolt of lightning cracked her over the head.
Jean Bart caught her on her way back to earth, but he had to set her down because enormous claws swung at them and hit Jean Bart right in his chest. The ground rumbled. The shadow that fell over Sophie as she gasped for breath, her hair smoking and her brain frazzled, was Lisbeth. She was bigger than Jean Bart—she was as big as a lighthouse, as big as Whitebeard as he strode past Sophie towards Admiral Akainu.
The object of her anger was Teresa. Teresa, who was trying to calm her down. "We're agents of the Five Elders! We support the World Nobles! As soon as I neutralize this island, I can bring you to Mary Geoise! I've been trying to find you and your father for—"
"Fuck—" The beast struck Teresa and threw her like a ragdoll, "—YOUR NOBLES!"
She threw her so hard into the rocky cliff face that dust and rock exploded on impact. Her hatred clanged cathedral bells in Sophie's head. Lisbeth had no enemy but the enemies of her people, and the enemies of her justice, because she was still an ex-princess who allied herself with the revolution. She turned to the pirates, fur bristling, hackles raised.
Hai Xing kicked open the Polar Tang's deck door. "Pre-death coffee break?"
"Motherfuckers!" Anko added, banging a ladle on a pan.
Law dropped the crew on the Polar Tang. The wind pushed the ship farther into the sea, which gave them a brief respite. There was a rush for coffee that Iruka helpfully passed around as the Hearts regrouped.
"You're alive!"
Sophie was wrapped in black curls and a big, squeezing hug. The clanging bells in her head vanished. She slowly hugged Ikkaku back, and her mouth stretched open in a manic smile. Ikkaku was going to be her friend forever and they were going to share the girl's shower together, even if Sophie had to poison everyone else on the planet to make this happen.
Clione, who'd been trying to crawl away, adopted a submissive rabbit pose when he saw Law. "Oh, my weak Amber Lead bones," he moaned.
Releasing a great, irritated sigh, Law hauled him to his feet. "If you had Amber Lead, you'd be in so much pain you wouldn't be able to stand, sleep, or even feel hunger anymore. Eventually you'd either waste away or put a bullet in your skull to make the pain stop."
"Th-that's not what I read—"
"I was born in Flevance," Law told him, and Clione turned the exact shade of white ore.
He gaped at the rest of the Hearts, who were all chuckling and smirking. "You're terrible," he said faintly. "You're all a bunch of—"
"Saints?" Penguin offered.
"You knew, and you let me ramble like some—"
"Enough gaping, Clione-ya. If you can fight, then fight. Would your island want to see their best swordsman acting so pathetically?"
Clione sniffled. Then he picked up his sword.
Ikkaku apologized, disentangling herself from the hug (and Sophie's needy limbs) and looking embarrassed. CP5's warship began firing, and she winced suddenly, but not from the Polar Tang lurching about. "That voice again!"
They all heard it. It was high and childlike, like an angry kid gritting their teeth.
"Come and get it, cheese breath."
"Was that," Sophie said—
The sail on the Polar Tang's mast released on its own, and the strong wind adjusted the submarine straight-on the warship. Anko was yelling that this wasn't him, he'd lost control of the wheel, and a torpedo fired. High waves crashed over the deck. Law appeared at the top of the Polar Tang's mast. He stood on the sail, looking out at the burning warship, as Sophie flew next to him with binoculars pressed to her eyes and her tongue poking out between her lips.
She touched down beside him. She pushed back her hair, laughing in amazement about the mariners' legend. But Law knew. He'd heard that voice before, and that wasn't the fever talking. Or maybe it was. The world tilted, and Sophie was staggering as she tried to hold him, and his cheek was pressed to her hair as he murmured, "Limetta."
"Eh?" She tried to shove him upright, grunting, "Get it together, you—stupidly tall—beanstalk! We're not in bed right now."
"Is that supposed to increase my will to live?" Law sarcastically inquired.
Sophie flushed and kicked him in the ankle. "D-do you want to find out more about Joker or not?" she hissed, clutching him as he doubled over.
Law was a responsible, pragmatic man. Thus, it seemed perfectly reasonable to catch his balance by positioning his hands over his lab partner's rear end. Sophie responded by shoving him off the mast. He vanished in mid-air and dropped himself in Bepo's arms. Flying above him, Sophie stuck her tongue out. If Law could bottle the feeling of exchanging barbs with his chemist in the middle of a fight, he'd get drunk on it every night.
"Captain! On your mark!" The Hearts were reenergized and feeling invincible with a seafaring spirit on their side.
At Law's signal, Anko steered the submarine back to land, where Lisbeth was throwing aside the rest of CP5 to keep them from stepping on her island. Sophie gripped Sen tightly.
It was dumb—or naïve—or both, but she wished she never developed her Observation. There were some emotions, she realized now, that she couldn't even name. She was physically unable to describe them, and it was that facet of Observation—that this superhuman ability could also be an illusion, a false projection of your own narratives onto other people that you were voyeuristically listening to—that terrified her.
Lisbeth wasn't feeling anger. She wasn't feeling pain.
She was feeling the color of a sunken shipwreck quietly disintegrating at the bottom of the ocean. She was feeling the final crackle of a radio turning off in a vacant lot in a vacant town in a vacant country. She was feeling the way the last remaining member of an extinct species feels as it looks at its own reflection in the water. She was feeling all of that in perpetuity, with no end and no beginning.
It sucked.
Carnivorous Zoans were especially ferocious, and that probably applied to SMILEs too, but there were so many of them and only one of Lisbeth. She fought valiantly, which was more than Sophie could say for a lot of people she'd met on the Grand Line. She fought even with her limbs shambled apart, even when she seized up and started spewing blood. She remained a roaring lion with the face of a girl standing at mind-boggling enormity even as Jean Bart grabbed onto her leg—his arms could barely circle it—and threw her over his shoulder. And Sophie was glad for it, because she didn't know what they would do if she reverted back to a young woman with her ribs poking out beneath her shirt.
At one point, near the end, she gave up attacking and went running for the tall slope of marram grass that led to the city of Anatole. City cannons fired—not close enough to hit Lisbeth, but enough to startle. She went sprawling back on the sand, but tried again and again and again, until finally she stilled, and the rain kept falling, and then it was over.
Lisbeth was still alive. Sophie could hear her voice, though it was dim. She hit her palm against Law's chest. She did this because his killing intent was like the cold edge of a scalpel pressed to her throat.
"Don't be naïve," he told her, so close she could feel his shivering warmth.
"I know you think this is merciful, but it isn't."
They were soaked to the bone like drowned rats. Law had the audacity to mime cogent leadership even while swaying like a stalk of wheat. "He sent her here to taunt me. Because I did to her what he did to me. In her mind, it's kill or be killed."
"They're gone." She pointed up at the sky. "If you kill her now, you won't get any answers about SMILEs or Joker. Also—Lisbeth isn't you."
Law gripped her chin in one hand. "No, she isn't. She has nothing, no family, just vengeance. I remember what you once said to me on Kunlun. You said you'd make things even. You'd let her hurt you. But she's completely gone. That's an empty—"
Law's face went blank. Sophie heard it too.
The rustle of bespoke fabric. Heartbeat running on fumes. The axe slid cleanly along Bepo's chest, slicing him open.
Survival instinct switched off her Observation. Sophie disconnected.
—the burst of blue was Law clapping his hands together, Kikoku dropping to the ground and rolling away—
—so much blood on white fur. No one told her that when you get a hole shoved right through your chest it turns you into a fucking geyser, blood gushing everywhere in a once-in-a-million-year eruption, rivers on the ground, across Luffy's entire body. She should've moved faster. She should've—she leaned over and threw up. No poet ever sang of pirates puking their way to glory. One day, Sophie was going to have a properly dignified fight. That day was not today.
"Depolarization of the heart—charges of sodium and potassium ions—calcium overload to sinoatrial nodes, and the electrical impulses of the heart will malfunction—" His hands pressed against Bepo's chest like a defibrillator, theory formed, and Law said like a prayer, "Countershock."
Clione swung his sword against Teresa's bloody axe. His blade shattered, but he held on for precisely three seconds after that, parrying with the hilt of his broken sword to stop her from advancing, and that was all that mattered.
Electricity crawled through Bepo's fur, raising it on end. The high voltage field around him shimmered blue. With a red gash across his chest, the bear with a 500 beri bounty—a price cheaper than a bowl of Sabaody ramen—fired up his Electro, the ancient power of the Mink Tribe, for the first time in years. He struck Teresa faster than a blink of an eye, and every single Heart lost their shit.
How unlucky do you have to be, to get hit twice by lightning?
The only one who saw Sophie was Iruka. Iruka, who no one noticed had been crouched in the sand the whole time. Everyone was yelling and jumping up and down, but he saw her sign the word, and he grabbed Kikoku and hurled it with all his strength.
She caught the nodachi on her way up and vanished in the sky. Anatole was a flying city of sunflowers and lightning rods, powered by the storms they chased. Every single rod was sparking. From within the glowing black clouds, a tiny figure reemerged.
As if in slow-motion, a hundred jagged thunderbolts descended. They came forking from every direction and coalesced into a single point, as if the god of storms himself had thrown them to strike Sophie dead. The cursed sword was raised in her hand like a war banner. She hurtled straight down, chased by lightning and thunderclaps so loud she heard only silence.
She threw on her strongest Armament and collided into Teresa. Her world exploded into light, the light of Idyll Island and its cerulean waves, and a voice chuckled, "Now that was a show for the ages, Curls. Heard you all the way up here…"
—
When Sophie came to on the sand, she couldn't explain why she was crying. The adrenaline, probably, combined with the espresso.
She nudged Bepo as their crew shouted around them, Law working as fast as he could while yelling at them for being reckless idiots. The rain was ebbing away and she could taste the snot on her lips. She was crying and laughing, because she recalled a time where Bepo told her of Zou, and Electro, and memories he could never quite see clear anymore.
"See, Zepo?" Bepo said up to the sky, his eyes closed. "Told you I'd figure it out again. I'll show you when I get back to Zou."
"Don't be so quick to celebrate, kids." Teresa pulled herself out of the sand, her long hair falling out of its ponytail and fanning around her like black kelp. She was singed and bloody all over, but this was the woman who sent the Hearts fleeing twice before. "I am an agent of Cipher Pol! And this island will return to the World Government's hands! No object will impede me from—"
"You BITCH!"
The object was shiny. The object was a tad rusty. The object was a watering can, and it smacked Teresa's head with a dull thunk!
The can's lethal accuracy was nothing compared to its owner storming down the beach, her sun-speckled face dark with rage. "The polar bear!? The polar bear!? You got some nerve! Get off this island, or I swear on my mama's jambalaya recipe I will cut you!"
"Nellie-san!" said the Hearts who'd met her before, which quickly turned into, "What are you doing!? Stay back, stay back!"
Nellie tore out a pair of gardening shears from her flannel shirt. She stood there in her rubber boots and denim jeans, a shapely woman in her thirties who spent the morning wrestling with dandelion weeds and now knew no fear. She held up the shears like a primordial goddess of war. Teresa stared. The Hearts stared. The hermit crabs stared, then tunneled into sand for safety.
"You'n me, Cipher Pol!" Nellie challenged. "Let's go! Mano-a-mano!"
"We should save her, right?" Shachi whispered. "Manly men save damsels in distress, right?"
"Who's the damsel in this situation?" Penguin whispered back.
"Shhh," Sophie said urgently, because she knew full well what the innkeeper of Pantano Town was capable of.
Teresa dusted off her suit and adjusted her tie. "Ma'am," she began hoarsely, then cleared her throat and said in a much more genteel voice, "Miss—" Nellie threw her shears with a war cry. Teresa ducked and tried to explain, "This island is the property of the World Government."
"Where's your proof?" Nellie demanded.
"…Proof?"
"Who said this is the island you're looking for?" Nellie jabbed her finger into Teresa's chest. The agent was seven feet tall, so she had to crane her neck. "I've never heard of a World Government-allied sky island! Is life a free-for-all where we can just say stupid things now? Well, I claim your ship! And I claim your shoes! Give me your shoes! Gimme them! Right now! My property!"
"Yeah, take 'em!" the Hearts clamored. "Kick her ass, lady!"
Unbelievably, Teresa hesitated. "Well… it's true we have no islands in the White Sea, but—but this was originally—miss, please stop trying to take my shoes—miss, why do you have a butcher's knife—alright, settle down!" She caught the knife and said with patronizing calm, "This is very dangerou—"
Nellie slapped her across the cheek. Teresa didn't flinch. She looked concerned.
"Mmmmrghshit," Nellie squeaked, shaking her stinging hand.
"Ooooooh," the Hearts winced.
"Of course I can prove it," Teresa chided as she gallantly took Nellie's hand and patted it. "Don't be ridiculous. Any one of you will break under torture."
"You want to try all of us?" Law called. "You sure about that?"
Teresa frowned at the pirates, then up the beach slope, where brave citizens were clamoring with pot lids raised like shields. She looked back at Nellie, who snatched her hand back and flushed in outrage. Nellie was also, it should be said, big-bosomed, notoriously attractive, and not wearing a wedding ring.
Then Teresa caught Sophie's eye, nodded at Nellie, and mouthed, 'You know her?' Sophie glared and mouthed back, 'I'll kill you.' No poet would ever sing of this fight, but it was well-known what the face of a pretty woman could do to pirates, marines, and ancient heroes alike.
"Alright." Sighing, Teresa touched her bloodied shirt with annoyed acceptance. "No more of this."
She asked how he died.
"You're a part of the most sophisticated intelligence gathering organization in the world. Do you have to ask?"
The tide washed up to their feet at the far end of the shore. "The World Nobles are pleased with Dressrosa's Heavenly Tribute. There's been massive economic growth since the Donquixote rule began. Instead of using human labor, they have an army of automatons that can work without rest. If we went after him, we'd be destroying one of our richest islands. The profit loss would be… untenable."
"Ask me again why I became a pirate instead of a marine," Law said, and they were both ice-cold. He was still angry about Bepo, so he wasn't quite sure how to say this. "Have you and Cora-san ever… were you two…"
Teresa looked startled. "No. No. Ew. No, we were friends."
"Oh." He felt extreme relief.
"Rosinante… didn't have many friends. He was too awkward and too cunning and too simple. He was an idiot," Teresa said grumpily, and Law knew she'd loved him. "I was his handler in North Blue. I knew how to sign, so I could keep up with his vow of silence. My job was to watch over him and get him out safe if there was any trouble. When he went rogue, he didn't even… he never said goodbye."
"Cora-san probably thought he'd return to Marineford soon." It had been easier to imagine Rosinante as a solitary figure, with no real family—than to think of him with a family of marines, who'd been waiting for him to come home. This hurt.
"You call him Cora-san," Teresa noted. "Not Rosinante?"
"Habit," he said honestly.
"Hm. You might not know him as well as you think you do. Everyone has their secrets."
"I'm aware I hardly know anything about him. But what I do know is all that matters to me." Law felt rough hands curling around his arm. It was a gesture that leaned less towards protectiveness and more towards shaking him to see if he was going to collapse like a soufflé. Still, he found himself calming.
Sophie scowled suspiciously at Teresa. "You're really leaving?"
"Consider my debt repaid, for giving back my heart. Now, the World Noble's kid. I could take her back to Mary Geoise."
"You could drag her there, but she'd probably have you executed." Sophie paused. "You should do it. You totally try it."
Teresa pinched her brow. "Damn it. My report is going to be so fucked…"
Teresa was the last thing that reminded Sophie of G-13. A woman who was chewed up by the great pasta grinder called Life, believing all she had to do was work within the system and one day the top brass might promote her instead of some bozo half as qualified. She began, "Hippo-sensei sounded pretty happy on Vira, the last time we spoke."
Teresa let out a long sigh. "And Lettidore's dead, so that balances things out. We all saw it on the broadcast. Blackbeard killed him to save you."
"If you think I feel any sense of obligation to Teach for that, you're mistaken."
"He's making waves in the New World. Gathering a bigger crew, taking over Whitebeard territory. All signs point to him as the next Emperor. Just something to chew over if you're thinking about taking him on. I like it when pirates kill other pirates. Makes my job easier."
"Hey. I meant it when I said Hippo's happy. And you could be too. I mean…" Sophie shrugged meaningfully. "You know?"
"Let's not do that," Teresa said with a faint smile. "Let's not get into regrets."
Well. That was a sentiment they could both agree on.
"Enjoy your youth, kids. It won't last forever." Teresa went off towards a boat tied to the shore, her agents limping after her. CP5's beleaguered ship was waiting. "I'll see you again when I'm chief of CP9! Promotion's comin' any day now!"
At the edge of the water, Teresa turned. She held her ruined jacket over one shoulder, looking dashing and windblown. "You tell that lovely Nellie-san if she ever wants to see me again, I'd be happy to take her out to a fine dinner! I won't even report to my superiors about it!"
Perhaps Teresa could daydream after all.
Law leaned against his chemist. "What are you going to do about her?"
"Rip her heart out for real and mail it to President Ursa if she keeps bein' fresh," Sophie said darkly.
"I meant the other her. Can you get her to talk before she dies?"
Sophie chewed on her bottom lip. Honestly, she didn't know. To be more honest, she was telling herself that Lisbeth at least wanted to stay on this island, and being buried here was pretty much the same.
—
She picked something out of the grass on her way up the hill. The hill was on the edge of the sunflower fields and the city of Anatole, and Lisbeth sat with her knees drawn up beneath a grove of sunflowers. This was as far as she could go, or else the cannons would start firing again.
She had just finished sticking her leg on and swiveling it so it faced the right direction. "Fie upon you, onion-eyed canker-blossom."
"Thank you. Onions are rich in fiber and folic acid." Sophie sat beside her. Once, she confessed to Shakky that there was something dark about Observation, something slimy-oil-disgusting about feeling someone else's emotions. There had to be so many powerful people who believed they knew everything because they could slyly peer into others and imagine their own truth.
Then don't be like those people, was Shakky's reply. Use your own eyes and ears and voice. There's no rule that says you need a superhuman ability to understand others. That'll be five thousand beri.
Her hair was shorn and dirty where it was once copper-red. The bones on her wrist stuck out as she dug her palms into her eyes. And her voice was hollow as she said, "I made about a thousand plans."
Sophie nodded in understanding. "We didn't out-plan you. We didn't plan at all, really, for how this day was gonna go. You and CP5 caught us completely vulnerable, with most of us recovering from an illness. There was no structure." She had a whole crew waiting for her, down at the beach. But Lisbeth was alone. "There were just more of us than there are of you."
"But that's not how the fucking stories go. I'm right. I'm right. I'm not terrible. I'm not cruel. Not to people who don't deserve it. I rose from adversity. I was wronged and the pain made me righteous and I rose from the ashes like a goddamn—"
"I know, I know—"
"Yes, you know, because you wronged me!" Lisbeth snapped, her hands curling into claws.
"I'm sorry!"
"Say it better! Grovel!"
"I'm sowwy, nyaaa," Sophie meowed, and Lisbeth clawed her across the face.
Bleeding on the ground, Sophie mumbled, "Your dad made a whole war because he wanted you to follow a script. He wanted you to be The People's divinely chosen queen, or whatever that means. If you still believe that story, you'll go insane."
"I'm not here to be queen. I hate nobility. I hate everything that I am. I'm humble. I am not deluded by power. I've spent months training in order to kill Trafalgar, eat a slightly burnt croissant, and go to sleep in my old bed. Are these evil things to want?"
"Ah… a-about that… they tore down the castle. There's nothing left."
"…Good. Good. It's what it deserves. Stupid. Stupid, of course it was." Lisbeth dug her hands through her hair. "I planned. I schemed. I—the sleepless nights, the obsessive preparation! For what?" She started laughing. "Oh my god. I have cat ears." And she started laughing more.
"Lisbeth—"
"Oh, god! God! Kill me! I want to go home!"
"You're having a panic attack! Luckily, this is my field of expertise."
"I want to go home," she sobbed.
"Inhale for four seconds with me. One, two, three—"
"Stop counting, you fucking maniac!" Lisbeth shoved Sophie away and flopped over on the grass. She laid there, utterly still, hugging her tail. "I'm dying. Joker said my Devil Fruit is experimental. I won't have long to live. I can feel it." Her nose was bleeding. She wiped it. It kept bleeding. "Inside me. Rotten."
Doflamingo again. Sophie tore a blade of grass, imagining it was his heart. "You're not going to die. Shut up, listen to me. Trafalgar Law is rather famously good at saving people."
"…Why would he help me?"
"Because you're going to tell him everything you know about Joker and SMILEs."
Lisbeth slowly blinked her large, gaunt eyes. "No."
Sophie raised her voice. "You're going to let Doflamingo get away with hurting you?"
"I asked him to give me power!" Lisbeth shouted over her. "He said we were the same! He said he… understood me. Understood my pain and my—my vengeance. He said if I wanted to kill Trafalgar Law, he'd lend me Baby 5 and Buffalo to search for—" She stopped to hack out blood. Red stained the grass. "So I took his deal. I shook his hand. Metaphorically."
It had been a game to Doflamingo from the beginning. Violins screeched in Sophie's ears. The townsfolk of Pantano Town danced, clapping their hands and kicking their heels, as fire blazed around them. The smiling man in the pink feather coat.
"Stop that," Lisbeth said suddenly, edging away from her. "Why do you look like that?"
"Like—what?" Sophie felt her face. She rearranged it and smiled brightly. "Sorry. Better?"
The terrified silence didn't feel great. Sophie held out her hand, and a chain with dog tags dangled from her fingers. It had fallen from Lisbeth's neck, and she snatched it back from her. The gigantified soldier, who G-13 had called Odin, had been her only friend.
Sophie braced her palms behind her, considering the fat yellow flowers that were like torches in the sky. "Man, this is hard. I made a thousand plans too, ya know. Wondering what I'd say when we met again. Maybe I'd talk about how the Red Sky project killed a lot of people, but the cure we made with the cells from his organs saved a lot more. I'd say that Law killed him in honorable combat—which isn't the point, I know, but he didn't have long regardless, and he went out protecting you. I'd say he died as a gigantification experiment. You're going to die because you're a SMILE experiment. Isn't that too cruel?"
"Or," Sophie went on, "I'd tell you about the dreams I have of you. The ones where I die on Vira and everything continues without me. Law saves you from your father and you join the Hearts. You see the hanging temples of Kunlun and meet Emperors on Lunetuktu. You go to Marineford to argue for the elimination of the World Nobles—because you are one, and that's lineage, baby—and you free Fire Fist Ace. You save him. The whole world is in your debt. You fall in love with people who love you back. And you never meet Blackbeard. Or maybe you do, but he's nothing real, just… a shadow on the ground… a cardboard villain."
She thought about it often: how different the world would be if she'd died on Vira. How much better it may have been.
"Pretty words," Lisbeth said bitterly. "But you just want me alive for information."
"And because I owe you. I only started traveling with the Hearts because I wanted to see this island. On St. Poplar, you made my Haki bloom. Because of that, I survived Impel Down."
"And you went on to become the Alchemist who turned the wheel of the world. I've read the papers. Do you have a point?"
"I need you to understand this," Sophie said. "I've spent eight days in a jail cell with Fire Fist Ace and Jinbe, the Knight of the Sea. I've met Supernovas and Warlords and Emperors. Red-Haired Shanks came to my rescue on Marineford. I've witnessed Whitebeard's funeral. I have become entirely transmuted. But the turning point of my life began here. With you. I don't forget what I owe the people who've changed my life."
They looked at each other. Lisbeth's mouth dripped blood. She wiped her chin and said, "But you won't help me kill Trafalgar Law?"
"I love how brazen that is. But no."
"Fine. You want to help me? Then convince my country to take me back. Tell them I'm not my father and I want to come home."
"They fired mortar shells at you."
Her hands bunched in her shirt. "They're good people. I fought for them. I stood with the revolution. Remind them!"
"Maybe a place that looks at you and still sees your father doesn't deserve you. Have you considered that? Do you want to live the rest of your life in his shadow? Why does home have to be a place that hurts you?"
Lisbeth smiled, just a little bit, up at nothing. Sophie's resolve weakened for the tiniest instant and she reached out with Observation. She saw herself on a grassy ledge with the ocean crashing against rocks far below, perfectly at peace with letting go—
"CUT THAT OUT," Sophie bellowed, shaking a startled Lisbeth by the shoulders. "You're so annoying. You were exiled from your country, you've been severely traumatized, and you got no friends or family. How about you start getting angry enough to live? Why can't your vengeance be living well, you little turd!" She looked sideways at her companion, and it was a thirteen-year-old Law, his too-large hat falling over his eyes. "You're not a waste of anyone's life. That's enough with hating yourself. You need to stop now."
He wiped his nose, his shoulders small and hunched. She patted him over his hat, and he flinched at the touch.
"I know you're not going to listen to me, but I still have to say it." She ruffled the hair of a young, grubby, feral-mountain-boy Ace. He sniffled, his mouth creased in a stubborn grimace to keep his eyes from watering. "I couldn't save you. I'm sorry. That's on me. But I'm here now. Can we talk? You can say anything. You can tell me a story. I'll listen."
She knew herself too well to think highly of her oratory skills, but saying this felt right. It felt like—the imitation of a savior, but it was the best she could do, and she prayed that would be enough. A wind from the east blew in, sunflowers bowing, leaves rustling in salute.
"A few nice words won't make you stop leeching arsenic."
Her eyes stung with useless shame. A king stared back at her. A blood-king, a real king, born a one-in-a-million conqueror. He sat like a farm boy and wore his straw hat like a crown.
"How can you save anyone," said Luffy, "when everything you touch dies?"
—
If you seal a cat in a box with a flask of poison, the cat is both alive and dead until you open that box again.
Both realities exist simultaneously.
If Sophie were to write a happy ending for Lisbeth, it would go thusly.
They would go down the hill and Lisbeth would meet Nellie on the beach, and they would look each other over, and they'd nod. Lisbeth would pause and study Nellie again, because both their eyes were a close shade of xeranthemum. Then the people of Anatole would arrive over the crest of the hill.
"You don't have to say anything," Sophie would murmur.
"I do." Lisbeth held her chin high. "It will be magnificent and historically significant." Dirty, haggard, and entirely transmuted from the bumbling, soft-spoken princess they once knew, she lifted her hand in peace. "Be happy! Eat your vegetables!"
The townspeople started clapping. They were the sort of people who would never again applaud royalty, but they cheered on their former princess as she finally left her father's house. Sophie hugged Nellie, whispering thank you in her ear, and left for the ocean.
In the Polar Tang, hooked up to several machines in the operation room, Lisbeth told them about the abandoned factory on Punk Hazard, where Doflamingo was producing a substance known as SAD to manufacture SMILEs. She told them about Caesar Clown, the failed genius-turned-Government-fugitive chemist, and Sophie swore to herself she was going to personally punch that clown in the face. Doflamingo had allied himself with one of the Yonkou; he was making artificial Devil Fruits for the mighty and reclusive Emperor, Kaido of the Beast Pirates.
She told them about the Human Auction on Sabaody, and how Baby 5 and Buffalo had bought her on Doflamingo's orders. She spoke with him several times over a mushi, and he'd been so helpful and conciliatory. She confided in him everything about herself and her country and meeting Trafalgar Law and the Heart Pirates one fateful night, and he listened so kindly. He'd stopped being Joker at that point. He told her his name, and he told her the truth about her family, because he knew many secrets and he also hated World Nobles. He told her she was special.
Law listened. The operation wouldn't—it couldn't—be a permanent fix because the SMILE altered her very DNA, but at the end, he left Lisbeth to rest in painless slumber with an oxygen mask over her face. Outside, Sophie caught him right as everything darkened.
"How much do I owe you, doctor?" he murmured hazily.
"It's on the house today. Are you still dreaming of the sweet lemons?"
Limetta, he wanted to say while brushing her sunbright hair back. We called them limetta.
.
.
.
He slept for a long time, and when he awoke, Ikkaku was sitting on a chair next to his bed. She was flipping an Eternal Pose to Flevance around in her hands, and jumped a little when she saw him staring at her. She set the glass compass back on his desk and gave him a wry salute.
He wondered if Sophie was a harbinger of women in his life. An influx of women who were, suddenly, everywhere. Who rifled through his things.
"Your coin collection. One's missing." She pointed at his bookshelf. "Right there."
It wasn't missing. At first, in the depths of his fever, Law thought he'd hallucinated the smiling white mask staring at him from the vent. But Law had plenty experience talking with someone who didn't talk, and Ikkaku nodded as if she already knew about the captain's fondness for monstrous creatures. Hai Xing had Iruka working in the galley with him and Anko was showing him the ropes in the control room. The kid was eager to help.
"No one's bombing us anymore," she added. "You talk in your sleep."
Law blinked, and where Ikkaku sat was a burning hospital bed. Lami was alight in the blaze, her low pigtails on fire as she burned from the inside out and the walls collapsed from the bombardment. He shut his eyes for a moment. He had a thing about siblings. (Especially ones who used to talk his ear off about adventuring out at sea, insisting she'd be the one to protect him once they sailed off together, while he listened beneath the shade of the lemon trees, perfectly content to stay in Flevance forever—)
"This crew is full of monsters." Ikkaku smiled brilliantly. "I mean that in a good way. The best way."
Law looked out his cabin porthole. It was dark outside, and from a distance, he heard himself tell Sophie that sentimentality was for suckers. Without turning his head, he said, "Ask me about the miracle you're here for. Then stay for as long as you like. All of you."
"Good thing we don't really have anywhere else to be." Clione grinned, standing with Iruka by the door. "Captain."
.
.
.
Nobody answered when Penguin called out, "Polar Tang?"
"I think it's good we can't hear her anymore." A pensive Shachi slung his arm around Penguin's shoulders, and so did Valross and Kamasu. "Klabautermann only appear on doomed ships, or so the legend goes. Seems like the winds are fair now."
Their one and only female mechanic spotted the island and called out that the beach looked excellent. The men glanced at each other, and scrambled to be the first one to offer to help Ikkaku rub sunscreen on her back. In the wake of their footsteps, the engines hummed the tune of a North Blue hymn. For an instant, a small figure holding a hammer wavered in the underwater light, low pigtails bobbing in the air.
.
.
.
Just like the last time Sophie was here, the weather was warm and temperate, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.
She looked back at Lisbeth. "Are you sure?"
Lisbeth set her shoulders. "Yes."
.
.
.
The Queen of Amazon Lily, Pirate Empress Boa Hancock was a flurry of red silk as she hurled her silver goblet at the visitors. It smashed against the wall. Wine dripped from the intricate latticework. Her long, slender shadow heaved with the effort to keep in her disgust, and her Kuja warriors aimed their arrows at Sophie and Lisbeth.
Lisbeth told the whole truth about who she was, and the Pirate Empress was not taking this well. Specifically, she called Sophie an ugly little mangy pug baby, and added, "Here I was, thinking that you finally tired of that boorish crew of men and you wished to seek refuge in my country. But you're not here to swear eternal loyalty to me. Even worse, you bring a mutt of that brood into my palace." And then she told Sandersonia to bring out Bacura for an execution.
"Right in the throne room, dear sister?" the green-haired Sandersonia pushed back. "Surely, we can execute her properly in the arena."
"O Gentle, Benevolent Empress," Sophie squeaked out through Marigold's king cobra tail playfully attempting to suffocate her, "p-please, before you try to kill us—wow, what kind of poison is that? Is that cobra venom? How fascinating, could I get a sampl—no no! Quit distracting me! I t-told you before that I k-killed a Saint."
"Yes, I remember that joke," Hancock said.
"It was no joke," Lisbeth replied quietly. "It was my father. Good riddance, too."
Gloriosa tapped her snake-cane on the ground. "What are you doing on this island, child? What do you want?"
Lisbeth glanced at Sophie, who nodded at her to go on. "I know the reputation of your hatred for the World Government. I want you to teach me how to be strong. It would be nice to kill a World Noble of my own. A cousin, maybe. I want to be as strong as you, Boa Hancock."
The most beautiful woman in the world narrowed her black eyes. The snake tattoo around her left eye seemed to come alive. Boa Hancock called for a trial by combat.
"If I win, I can stay?" Lisbeth asked.
"If you win," Hancock said coldly, "I'll save your imminent execution for another date."
Sophie leaped at the chance. "Perfect! Together, we can—" She was dragged kicking and screaming away.
Sophie was forced to watch from the shaded pavilion where the Boa Sisters sat. The white-stoned arena was drenched in humid sunlight. Hancock bit into a round, yellow pear as she leaned across Salome, her legs crossed and one thigh bare between the slit of her qipao.
"Be grateful I even gave her the honor of dying in my arena. Queens are extremely busy, you know. We don't have time to indulge all the ridiculous drivel that washes up on our shores." Hancock touched her forehead as if to ward off a headache that troubled her frail, delicate constitution, and her whole court swooned.
"A-hem." Gloriosa whacked Hancock's ankle with her cane. "You spent the whole day eating fried radish cakes."
"Remind me to banish her again," Hancock muttered to her sisters.
Sophie was sweating. Obviously, she couldn't call Law for help. She had to think of something to abate the Empress's temper. But what? What was a topic someone as powerful and famous as her would respond well—nay, positively—to?
…Ugh.
"How's Luffy doing?" Sophie asked desperately.
Hancock's chilly demeanor shifted. She beamed at the mention of Luffy, then pouted in such a lovely way that it made a few attendants faint with adoration. Sophie's heart did the salsa. No no no! She slapped her cheeks and stapled Law's scruffy, deadpan glare to the frontal lobe of her brain. She was already in love with someone scary and terrible!
"I'm not sure," Hancock sighed. "Rayleigh says we mustn't sail to Ruskaina or else we would distract him from his training. What a booooore."
One day, Sophie was going to throttle that rubber monkey and compel him to explain how everyone he ran into seemed to love him. Even if she had to chase him all the way to One Piece. She wanted the secrets in his brain. Whatever. This still worked for her.
"He's such a great fella," she gushed in a chipper, squirrel-like voice. "So kind and f-forgiving and… compassionate! Did I mention compassionate?"
"Oh? I remember him flogging you black and blue until Jinbe intervened." Hancock took another bite of her pear.
Sophie decided she would just keep her mouth shut from now on.
"But," Hancock braced her delicate chin on one graceful hand, "I saw you in Marineford carrying his dead brother. Perhaps it would have been a different story if he had also seen that."
Below, Lisbeth scuffed her bare feet on the arena floor as she waited for Bacura's entrance. She was only given one weapon to defend herself with: a beret-wearing snake. Law helped her for now, but her SMILE was still unstable. If she tried to shift into a lion, she could bleed out permanently. Which was a problem, because Lisbeth was a sack of bones currently and she couldn't take on a piece of lint in her state. Sophie had to try again.
"O Bountiful Booby Goddess, are you really going to kill her for being a World Noble's kid?" She attempted to clamber over Salome to reach Hancock's high perch. "For being something she can't help?"
"Whether she lives or dies is up to her," Hancock stated, neither gentle nor cruel. "This is the rule of law on Amazon Lily. Strength is everything here. You're too close, you little gnat." She threw the rest of her wine in Sophie's face.
Jasmine vines grew around the arena, heavy with white blossoms and promise. The executioner of the Kujas was an enormous jaguar, her black fur rippling with monstrous strength. Lisbeth shook her snake. It hissed at her. Lisbeth hissed back, and the snake cowered and shifted into a bow. She dodged the first strike and rolled up to one knee, and Sophie was hit with the memory of Lisbeth telling her she'd trained her whole life with a bow.
With ease, she nocked the arrow on her Kuja snake like she'd been born for it.
The arrow whistled through the air and—
crunch.
—impaled the pear that had been in Boa Hancock's hand to the wall.
She lowered her bow. Now that she had demonstrated her archery was as good as any Kuja's, she let Bacura leap onto her. They rolled across the arena and Bacura's heavy tongue licked her as a mother would lick a baby kitten and Lisbeth scratched the jaguar's ears, both their tails swinging.
Sophie threw her fists to the sky, hollering until her voice broke. Several Kuja were still trying to pull the pear and arrow out from the wall. Strength was everything on Amazon Lily, but a victory was a victory, no matter how underhanded it was, and she was seized by the inexplicable feeling that everything in Lisbeth's life—and hers—had let them to this moment.
.
.
.
It was while walking to the valley edge that she suspected something was wrong.
The dread grew, like cyanide eating at her bones. She breathed in for four seconds, held it, and exhaled for four seconds. The dread was still there. She made a census of her emotions. What was this alien feeling that was making her paranoid?
"This is where we part ways." Lisbeth slowed to a stop between the thicket of bamboo trees, crickets chirping as day faded to the blue of early evening. They scrubbed her clean after the match, burned her grimy clothes while fussing over how scrawny she was, and clothed her in proper scanty Kuja gear. She rubbed her new pet snake. It wiggled as it slithered around her waist.
"How do you feel?" Sophie asked.
"Different," Lisbeth admitted, looking down at herself. "Changed. I feel that I should have died, so perhaps that's made me deathless."
Ah. There it was.
Joy. Relief.
That couldn't be right. She was never this lucky. Something was very wrong.
"This might be a dream." The realization was a whisper. "This is a dream, isn't it?"
The scent of jasmine—the persimmons—the fields of rice—the sounds of metalsmithing, the smell of fish roasting in houses, was any of this real? Had she made it all up in her mind? Had they buried Lisbeth beneath the sunflowers, in that place where Law had buried the dead king? Of course. Nothing ever went so easy in her life. She was too used to suffering for the right to feel happy. She had been a Hexhead since birth.
"I'm going to wake up soon," Sophie said blankly. "I failed you. Again. I imagined all of this." The moment that left her mouth, she waited for the bloom of darkness that usually heralded Teach's arrival in her dreams. She wanted to hide her face and cry.
"Give me your book," Lisbeth instructed. She was talking about the journal in Sophie's backpack.
Bored during the ride over, she demanded to read about Sophie's adventures. She was the first person Sophie allowed to take her book. She was too embarrassed to even show Law. Now Lisbeth opened it to the first page and scribbled something above the 'A compendium of discoveries, recipes, and islands visited on my Romantic Adventure of Fruitastic Fabulosity!'
She shoved it back into Sophie's hands and said, "This needed a proper title. Tomorrow, when you wake up, if you still think this was a dream, look inside. You said I could have easily had your life, Sophie. You're wrong. You are a singular existence. And this book will write itself into history, if you let it. I still wish we had never met, but somehow, I am glad that we did."
With no further words, Lisbeth vanished through the trees into the village hidden in the mountain of the nine-headed snake—a fleur-de-lis, a lily among lilies.
—
Sophie woke up with her cheek in the crook of Law's neck.
His slow, deep breathing shifted as she moved. He didn't need to open his eyes to grasp her hand. She tapped him to let him know she wasn't going far, and reached over to his desk. Her journal sat on the corner, tattered and worn to hell with ripped pages and taped back up.
If you don't open the box, then the cat is both alive and dead. Both realities exist simultaneously. It can exist forever in that state, in the easiness of unknowing.
Until you're brave enough to look inside.
She opened the cover of her book.
There, at the top of the page, written in elegant, ex-princesslike script, were the words: Methyl Nitrate Pineapples.
to be continued
one last time