If Crocodile had possessed anything so childish as a conscience, she would have felt its pangs.
Part of it was the clues she'd gathered, the lockpicking, the scabs and bruises, the unorthodox education, that made her think Donquixote's life may not have been the upper-class pool party that she'd originally envisioned. Part of it was her own conviction that anyone who dreamt of blowing up the World Government could not be an entirely bad sort. Part of it, finally, was the indubitable financial appeal of his proposition.
Unbothered by her entirely non-existent conscience, Crocodile was simply troubled to realize that the sedative she'd fed Donquixote had not put him to sleep. Instead, whether due to his freakish constitution or some contraindicated mental health issue, it seemed to have made him as high as a kite.
The sedative was not the problem. She could testify to that, having ingested a fair amount of it herself.
Donquixote was still holding onto the doorframe and laughing like the lunatic that he was. "Pull yourself together," she said, which only made him laugh harder. She slapped him across the face, a bit harder than was strictly necessary.
His face went blank. She had the unnerving feeling that her name was being added to some internal list, and that someday, when she least expected it, a reckoning would come. "Don't do that again."
"Start taking things seriously and I won't have to." She grabbed both his arms and led him to the table, on which she compelled him to sit. "Can you make that clone of yours?"
"Great idea." He stuck out his tongue in concentration. Thread emerged from his fingers in long, elegant whorls and pooled at his feet. A hand emerged from the void and sank again, sucked in by a roiling mass of organs, intestinal ropes and pink feathers that coalesced, though only briefly, into something that looked almost human. Pink tentacles like eyeless flamingo heads emerged from corollas of tongues and reached for her boots.
Donquixote's powers had not been lessened by the medication. Instead, the sedative seemed to have severed whatever flimsy ties still anchored his mind to humanity.
"I don't think it's working," she said as he stared, mesmerized, at the growing expanse of his creation.
"It's not," he confirmed, immediately breaking into another bout of hilarity. She stared at him without a word. He subsided, a little sulkily, and waved his hands in dismissal. The mass disintegrated and melted into the ground.
The Marine repeated her announcement, sounding peeved this time. "If you don't walk out the front door within the next five minutes, we'll smoke you out. Please don't make us do it. The young lady would find it most unpleasant."
Crocodile leaned against the counter and fought against the urge to give up and go to sleep for a bit.
When Donquixote had presented her with the glass of adulterated whisky, her original, brilliant plan had been to drain the moisture from the alcohol without drinking it. Her second, still relatively intelligent plan had been to take advantage of Donquixote's reduced state to score an easy victory. At the last moment, her pride had not been able to resist the temptation to demonstrate, in yet another way, her superiority.
If this brat could guzzle down most of a heavily dosed bottle of whisky with hardly any side effects to show for it, then goddamn it, she could handle a glass. And she'd have no side effects whatsoever, to show him that a mature adult could still behave with poise while under the influence of mood-altering drugs.
She had not taken into account the residual dampness that permeated her hair and clothing, which significantly reduced her resistance to hostile influences. Including, apparently, drugs and alcohol.
"Four minutes," said the voice on the loudspeaker.
Donquixote was observing her without his usual shit-eating grin. Hard to tell with those idiotic sunglasses, but cogs seemed to be turning, somewhere in the depths of his addled mind.
"Let's go have a look at what we're dealing with," she said, uneager to see what new eldritch horrors he could summon once he figured out that she'd drugged him.
"Yes, let us look our demons in the face." He took the lantern and swept majestically into the living room.
Before following him, she knelt and picked up a shard of broken glass from the floor, which she used to make a large incision in the palm of her hand. Blood rushed out, followed by a spike of pain that ushered in some much-needed clarity of mind. Ah yes – the backup plan.
She reached into her pocket and brought out a syringe and a small bottle of stimulant, which she slid up her sleeve. The only challenge, now, would be to find enough time alone to inject the drug without him noticing.
"There's three officers that I can see," she said as she peered through the shutters. "They've got nets, probably seastone. A large gun of some sort."
"Interesting," Donquixote said soberly. "This may pose a challenge. I don't mean to alarm you, but I'm feeling a little under the weather."
Finally. She studied him as he stood swaying against the wall, leaning on the mantelpiece for support. Just a little encouragement, preferably from a sharp object, and he'd keel over. She reached for her knives. The sudden movement triggered a wave of nausea that made her stagger.
Donquixote was instantly at her side, an astonishing show of speed, given his condition. "Not a bubblegum martini, eh?"
She made it to a large potted plant, just in time, while he held her hair back with the blasé indifference of the habitual bar-hopper.
"Three minutes."
Inspiration struck. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up. "They think I'm your hostage."
He smiled. "They do, don't they?"
"Can you talk us out of this? Or at least, buy us some time." Long enough, hopefully, for him to pass out in her custody and earn her the bounty.
"Why, yes. I do have something of a talent for public speaking. I'm glad you noticed."
She grinned at him, relieved, and reached for the doorknob.
"Not there. On the roof. It will be more dramatic."
With any luck, he might even pass out before they reached the roof. "Sounds good to me."
An unfortunate decision, as it turned out, since the staircase had more steps than she remembered. This would not have been an issue if she had not been supporting Donquixote's weight (and, to be clear, she was supporting him, not the other way around). Still, by some miracle, they made it to the top in one try.
Donquixote stopped in the middle of the hallway and looked around, muttering something to himself. Then, without warning, he punched a hole through the ceiling. Plaster and wood rained down around them. When the dust cleared, she looked up and saw a large circle of night sky.
"Couldn't we take the fucking staircase?"
"I never want to see one of those again." He flexed his hand, which, outside of the lightly bloodied knuckles, seemed unaffected. "Humour me. What is it that you people believe in exactly?"
"You people?"
"You know, you and that gentleman you were speaking to earlier. You said something about a revolution."
"Why, what is it to you?"
"I'm feeling some revolutionary urges myself right about now." He turned to her with a grin. "Yes, that look of terror on your face, that's perfect. Keep that." She stiffened as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled them both to the roof using another of his threads.
Several light beams focused in their direction, blinding her.
"You know, when they said this gentleman looked like a lawn ornament, I expected something more along the lines of a garden gnome," said a woman's voice from below, sounding distinctly disappointed.
Another woman spoke, curt and emotionless. "May I shoot, Ma'am?"
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Donquixote called out. He rustled through his pockets and brought out an object that Crocodile could not immediately identify. "Do you see this?"
"It's a transponder snail," one of the Marines said in a bored tone of voice. She could see him now, some douchebag with gelled hair and a cigar. "There's something glued to it. Looks like a red button."
Blood rushed to her face. When had he managed to get a hold of that? She tried to elbow Donquixote in the gut, but he intercepted the blow without much trouble. "Be good, Crocodile, or I'm pressing the button right now," he whispered to her, unmoved, before returning his attention to the Marines. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Navy! I have recently learned that a large number of explosives has conveniently been stockpiled in your nearby base. These, through a mysterious mechanism, are linked to this red button that I currently hold. Do you care about your base? Then you'll listen to what I have to say."
General panic below. A few Marines began to run towards the base, others away from it. A dozen rifles were unshouldered and pointed in their direction. The light beams blinked off, then on again.
"Calm down. Don't leave your stations," said the woman who had first spoken. Crocodile identified the Loguetown captain, a middle-aged woman who seemed utterly unfazed by the situation.
Now that Crocodile thought about it, the threat had some bite to it, as long as he did not actually press the button. She willed herself to remain still.
"Listen to your captain," Donquixote said, ignoring her. "Don't move." The words were a little slurred, but he showed no other signs of his earlier indisposition. "I'm irritated, ladies and gentlemen. Your leader has rampaged and rioted through the whole island, laying waste to this lovely neighbourhood, and meanwhile, you give me a hard time if I want to join in with a little property destruction. All because he's an admiral of the Navy and I'm a pirate. Do you think it matters to the folks who'll return tomorrow and find their home destroyed, whether it was done by a Marine or by me? Well, I'm of a mind to change the way things are run around here, bring about a democracy of dynamite, so to speak. Slums, suburbs and castles, they all explode the same way, given the proper encouragement. I say, let's acknowledge the innate equality of all mankind, light a match to the world and blow the whole shit heap to the stars."
He paused and appealed mutely to her, as if to validate that he'd done justice to her ideology.
"Close enough," she said, resigned.
"Anyway, that's for another night," Donquixote continued. "For now, ladies and gentlemen, I have another proposition. Why don't you go home, and let this young lady and me do the same. It's been a long night and I could use some sleep."
Smoker took in the scene on the rooftop. The woman Donquixote had taken as a hostage, who seemed more aggravated than scared by the ordeal, and looked to the Marines as though she'd been cornered by an annoying acquaintance from whose conversation she desperately hoped to be rescued. The pirate himself, who grinned with delight at the sound of his own voice, while his coat floated in the wind, revealing a shirt that was open to the navel –
Smoker looked at Captain Allesia, who raised a loudspeaker to her mouth. He saw the catastrophe coming before he could avert it.
"Young man," she said. "I can't hear a single word you are saying while your shirt is unbuttoned."
Donquixote's smile froze, then disappeared. He swayed. Clearly, when he'd played out the scene in his head, this had not been part of the script. He looked at his hostage as though hoping for guidance. Whatever he saw in her face did not seem to help him.
The captain seemed to realize, a moment too late, that she'd made a tactical mistake. "Shoot him," she told Miss Cadiz.
The hostage produced a knife from one of her sleeves and jammed it between Donquixote's ribs. He staggered. She raised the knife to stab him again, though something, the release of tension, perhaps, or the stress of the evening, made her stumble backwards instead, close to the edge of the roof. The special bullet that had been meant for Donquixote closed around her hand. She dropped the knife.
At some point, Smoker assumed, the red button must have been pressed. A whistling sound came from the nearby base. He held his breath as a long luminous streak rose into the night sky, where it hovered delicately for one moment before exploding. White and gold stars blinked into existence and died, leaving behind a faint outline in white smoke. A detonation; the smell of gunpowder in the air.
Fireworks.
It had all been just a bluff, then. He wiped sweat from his forehead.
The sound of demented laughter came from the roof, where the pirate had collapsed. The hostage fell to her knees and seemed intent on beating him to death, which only seemed to increase his hilarity.
"Retrieve the hostage and secure him," the captain said without looking at him.
"Yes, Ma'am."
Then a wall of fire and smoke rushed towards him.
In the aftermath of the explosion, some would speculate about the reasons that had led half the buildings in Loguetown to collapse. Shoddy construction, soil erosion, and the insufficient funds that had been devoted to infrastructure were frequently cited. (The admiral's earlier rampage was politely omitted from these discussions, under the general assumption that the Marines could do no wrong, unless they did wrong, in which case they had very good reasons for it.)
At the time of the event, the base had been mostly deserted, except for a handful of Marines who had been playing cards in the infirmary, having come down with the sort of mysterious illness that often manifests itself in enrolled personnel on the eve of conflicts. A few pirates who had been jailed for further questioning were protected from the explosion by the blast-resistant walls of their cells, from which most subsequently escaped through various holes in the roof, hollering about freedom. The base mascot was also reported missing, but since it had been a chihuahua, it went mostly unmourned.
Except for the inhabitants of Loguetown, who were delighted to see their unremarkable island become the site of not just one, but two exciting events within the same day, no one particularly cared about the incident. There was, after all, treasure to be hunted and a crown to be claimed.
While Doflamingo lay under the burning wreckage of the house, he found himself having one of the experiences that his last therapist, before he had made her walk the plank, had called intrusive thoughts. There was no logic to them that he'd ever understood. Sometimes, he would have them at the sight of fire, pitchforks, rope. Sometimes, he'd just be minding his own business, enjoying a nice glass of wine, reading a book, occasionally poking a sharp object into some poor sap, and then bam! Intrusive thought.
His therapist had said she should just let them wash over him. It was the sort of advice that had led him to regretfully put an end to their business relationship.
All the same, here he was, stabbed, intoxicated, probably on fire, and lying under a house. Perhaps he ought to give it a try, in the absence of anything better to do.
It had been Immaculata Donquixote's birthday, or perhaps her favourite holiday, he couldn't remember. He'd caught a bird and presented it to her, for her aviary. It had lain quite still in his hands, the neck, he could see then, at an unnatural angle that he would have found comical in other circumstances.
He hadn't meant to kill the bird, of course. Even then, he had been good at catching things, not so good at letting them go. From the way his mother looked at him, though, he knew there was nothing he could say to convince her it had been an accident. That was how it always went for people like him: you tried to offer a gift to someone you cared about, put all your heart and soul into it, and all they would do is look at you in that judgemental way and wonder what strings you were trying to pull.
"For what it's worth, I think the fireworks were a nice touch," he said.
The fireworks had been a nice touch, hadn't they?
If Crocodile was honest with herself, she had to admit that at some point, she had started to believe in the Revolution. Not just as a reliable source of income, though there had been that, too. But she'd started to think they might have a chance of creating a less fucked-up world; a world that would, in the long term, produce fewer people like her.
That called for a celebration.
The small bottle of stimulant had rolled away from her, but it was still intact. With a shaking hand, she picked it up, used her teeth to fill her syringe and shot herself in the least bruised spot she could find on her arm. Her vision cleared. She sat up and looked around.
Donquixote had passed out. Not from his injuries nor from the blood loss, insofar as she could tell. No, after all this time, the sedative seemed to have finally kicked in. He was snoring.
"Not especially threatening," said the Marine douchebag as he cleared away some bricks from the pirate's body, "but this little asshole sure can take a beating."
She raised her left hand to her eyes. The strange bullet that they'd shot her with had turned into a seastone claw. When she poked it, long legs, like a crab's, tightened around her fingers. Was this thing alive?
Her knife had fallen next to her. She picked it up with her free hand and slipped it into her sleeve.
A smoke-blackened Marine came up to them and saluted the douchebag. "Corporal. We found the captain. Unconscious, but she'll be fine, I think."
"Good. Call the base – er. Never mind. Remind me, who was that one guy who passed first aid training last year?"
"I'll see if I can find out." The Marine threw a nervous glance at Donquixote's body and hurried away.
When the Marine was gone, Crocodile showed her captive hand to the douchebag. "Can you please tell me what I need to do to get this damn thing off me?"
"Ah, that's the beauty of it." He fished a cigar from an intact pocket, clearly glad for the excuse to take a break from his work. "There's nothing you can do. That thing was invented by our captain. She's a good person, see. Tries to find the best in people. Believes that if you can get a pirate to come up to the Navy and ask for help, you can get him to admit he has a problem. That this is the first step to rehabilitation, recovery, a whole bunch of other words starting with re that I don't particularly believe in, at least insofar as guys like this are concerned." He kicked Donquixote, who did not seem to mind. "If you take a closer look at the claw, you'll see that there's a keyhole somewhere. The captain has the key. She's in need of medical aid, though, so you'll have to wait."
"Great." She watched him slip a glove onto his right hand and use it to take a pair of seastone handcuffs out of his pocket. "I'm the one who captured him," she said. "The bounty should be mine."
"Sure. Once we get everything sorted out. There's a few questions I'd like to ask you."
The glove had given her an idea. She stood up and found, to her surprise, that she did not feel an immediate need to sit back down. "Would you happen to have one of those cigars for me?"
"I guess."
She reached out to him with the claw, and was pleased to see him shudder and grow pale when it touched him. He was, indeed, a devil fruit user. "Sorry, force of habit – I'm left-handed."
"Whatever." He turned his back to her and crouched to put the handcuffs on Donquixote.
She slipped behind him and pressed the seastone against his throat while she held the point of her knife to his back with her other hand. "Don't call for help or you're dead."
"I knew you were on his side," he said. She politely ignored this for the bullshit that it was. "What do you want?"
"Put one of those handcuffs on yourself. The other one on the beam, there."
"It's on fire."
"Everything is on fire." A few of the marines had gathered and were staring uncertainly at them. She pressed the knife to his back. "Give them a thumbs up and tell them to get back to work."
He gritted his teeth and raised his free hand in a devil's horns sign, which she allowed. The marines shrugged and resumed dragging the unconscious bodies of their fellows out of the wreckage.
Donquixote woke up briefly to cough up some blood and passed out again. The Marine douchebag, hoping to take advantage of the distraction, tried to throw her over his shoulder and, to be fair to him, almost succeeded. Unfortunately for him, she had a natural affinity for stabbing people in the back and an unusual lack of reluctance to demonstrate it. Already weakened by the seastone device she held to his throat, he fell to one knee.
Once the douchebag had handcuffed himself to the beam and given her the key, she picked up Donquixote by an ankle and began to run. "They're getting away," the douchebag called out to his squad. "After them! No, I'm fine, idiots, let me be!"
She ran towards the worst of the fire and destruction, not away from it. That would buy them some time. The ground was uneven, caved in some places, covered with bricks, stones and burning wood, but Donquixote continued to enjoy his nap as she dragged him by the leg. That was just great. Now she'd have to figure out another way to wake him up.
The Navy base rose before her, or what was left of it, all jagged white stone and iron bars, twisted under the unbearable heat. This was her doing, she told herself proudly, sparing an affectionate thought for the poor sucker who'd obeyed her instructions and remained in his tree with his hand on the switch, waiting for her call, even after things had started going to hell. Too bad he couldn't possibly have survived to pick up his compliance bonus.
She dragged Donquixote into a part of the building that was burning less noticeably than the rest and propped him against what was left of the wall. "Hey, asshole. Wake up." This had no effect. She made to kick him, reconsidered and nudged him with her foot instead. "Mr. Donquixote. Doflamingo." A pause. "Doffy."
No response, which was probably for the best, all things considered. She found herself growing annoyed again. If the idiot hadn't accepted a drink from someone he'd just met, they wouldn't be in this fix.
Her free hand sought the stimulant vial, which still contained enough for one shot. She'd planned to save it for herself, but that was one more plan that wouldn't work out as intended, wasn't it?
The needle sank into Donquixote's arm. He woke up with a gasp. The flames were reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses, and she knew that he only saw them and nothing else, not even her. His hands sought out something to hold and closed around her wrists with a strength that would have broken a weaker person's bones. For a moment, she thought she might be facing some new and exciting mental health crisis that she had neither the expertise nor the inclination to deal with, but her touch seemed to snap him out of it. He withdrew, looking, to his credit, a little embarrassed.
"Base exploded," she said. "Be quiet. They're looking for us."
He found enough energy to smile at her, though it was a wearier grin than his usual. "Would I be correct in assuming that you rescued me?"
"Look, they're even bigger douchebags than you are, that's all." She shoved the claw under his nose. "Can you pick the lock on this?"
"You're going to have to give me a moment." His face went slack. She thought he might have fainted, until she saw a white glow emerge from underneath his coat, near the location where she had stabbed him. He was using his strings to stitch himself up.
She lit herself the cigar she'd gotten from the Marine while she waited. "Most people would have died from that."
"Taking a beating is a skill. It's possible to get better at it, given enough practice. Pass me that lighter."
When he was done, he leaned over the side and threw up. She had to look away, since she was also starting to feel a nauseous again.
"All right, let's take a look." She was glad to see that he was, at last, taking the situation seriously. "I'm afraid that safety pins won't cut it, Miss Crocodile."
"How about this?" She held out one of her knives to him.
He inserted the blade into the aperture and felt his way around. The claw, growing agitated, wiggled its legs. "Give me the other one."
She hesitated, then passed him her last knife. Voices cut through the crackling sound of the flames, became louder, then faded away. It occurred to her that, if he did not succeed, she would have to cut her own hand off.
"I'm going to need some help," he said. "Hold it like this and press, hard, until you hear a click. Good."
With a squeal, the thing's legs loosened. She snatched her hand away, quickly, as the claw folded itself into a ball. "Living seastone bullets. How low can these people go?"
"Dreadful lack of principles in today's youth. Do you think you can get us out of here, Miss Crocodile? I don't know how much help I'll be."
"Where's your ship?"
He used the tip of her knife to draw a rough map into the ground. "Let's say we're here, that looks about right. My crew should be waiting with a rowboat around here. When you get to the dock, flash the lighter three times once you think it's safe. They'll come and pick us up."
"That won't be necessary," she said. He did not respond. She realized that he had passed out, really passed out, this time. She was on her own. Fantastic, just fantastic. That would serve her right for trying to do something nice to someone, for a change.
She walked over to the seastone creature and cautiously picked it up, using a glove to prevent herself from touching it. The legs wiggled but closed again when they found no purchase, and the thing grew still. She slipped it in one of her pockets with a slight shudder of distaste.
The ground trembled. Bits of plaster came loose and covered the two of them with white dust. She held her breath, praying that this was not what she suspected.
Another tremor followed, then another, and the earth quaked under the weight of a giant's footsteps.
At some point, the battle against Donquixote and his not-entirely unexpected ally had turned personal for Smoker. There was something about being viciously stabbed between the ribs that tended to put a real damper on a man's mood, especially when he was partially to blame for it.
Miss Cadiz had joined him while his wound was being tended to. She seemed unharmed, though a few hairs had escaped from her otherwise still-impeccable bun, and twin streaks of soot stained her cheeks. "Corporal," she said. "I am in a state of emotional turmoil that my usual standbys, 'gosh,' 'darn' and even gosh darn it,' are entirely unable to express."
"There's much better words out there for the situation," Smoker agreed, and as the Marine who was bandaging him prodded him in a sensitive spot, he provided an immediate demonstration.
"I would like to go after them," Miss Cadiz said, "though I am but a mere administrative assistant. What are your orders, Corporal?"
It occurred to him that, with the captain out of commission, he was now in charge of the squad. "Have you been able to get in touch with the admiral and vice-admiral?"
"Communication channels have been disrupted. I imagine they'll have heard the commotion and will come sooner or later to investigate."
Smoker stood up. "Jackson," he told the Marine who had provided him with first aid. "You're in charge. If Garp and Sengoku come by, let them know what happened."
"Noted, Corporal. Are you going anywhere?"
The wound throbbed. He managed a smile through gritted teeth. "Miss Cadiz and I are going pirate hunting."
The admiral was coming their way. One look down, and he would see them.
Crocodile pressed the palm of her hand against the ground and felt it drain the moisture from the soil, leaving lifeless sand in its wake. The ground yielded with a whisper, forming a primitive burrow through which she dragged the body and concealed herself as well as she could.
Loose soil came rattling down on their heads as the admiral took another step closer. She cursed under her breath. The whole thing could easily collapse on itself, and then they'd be buried alive.
A vast shadow covered the entrance of the burrow and obscured the sky.
From somewhere nearby, a small, annoying dog growled and yapped. The sound persisted, and she thought, for a moment, that the creature had found their location and was barking at them. Then she realized that it was barking at the admiral.
There was a squeal as the creature was picked up by gigantic fingers. "All right, little buddy, let's get you away from here," a deep voice rumbled. The dog growled, having apparently managed to latch its teeth into the admiral. He chuckled. "Oh, my boy is going to love you."
She remained tense, her back propped to the wall of the burrow, until the giant's footsteps faded away. Then she released her breath. "I suppose now's as good a time as any to attempt an escape," she told Donquixote.
He did not respond. How odd it was that when he'd been awake, she'd never wished anything more than for him to shut up; but now that he was unconscious, she rather missed the constant drivel. It had fed the sense of superiority that was her primary source of fuel. But not only that…
Solitude was her primary mode of operation, her comfort, her defence, but it had a way of slipping into loneliness, at times, without her noticing.
You're too young to be getting this goddamned sentimental, she reminded herself as she made her way towards the docks.
"Are you sure you should be doing this?" Miss Cadiz said as Smoker stepped off his motorcycle with a wince. His bandages were already soaked through.
"I've seen worse," he said, although he hadn't.
They had come in sight of the docks, where a group of Marines was lowering rowboats into the ocean. In the distance, the wreckage of a ship was burning. "We, uh, accidentally shot one of the merchant ships in which the civilians were evacuated," a Marine explained when they enquired. "Didn't get the memo, so we thought they were pirates. Now we have to go in and rescue the survivors, or the admiral will have our skins."
"I don't assume you can spare a few men to go hunt down a couple of pirates?" Smoker asked, without much hope.
As the Marine shook her head, Miss Cadiz smiled at him. "Looks like it's just the two of us, Corporal. This will be like the good old days for me." He'd heard that she and Captain Allesia had hunted bounties together back in their youth, though he'd found that hard to believe at first. The disturbing revelation came to him that even middle-aged people had, at some point, been cool.
He lit himself a cigar to clear his mind. "Well, I don't think we'll be seeing them around here. It's too crowded. I don't know this island all that well, Miss Cadiz. If you were a pirate looking to make a discrete getaway, where would you go?"
She stared at the horizon as she considered. "I have an idea. Follow me."
The docks gave way to a deserted beach. Crocodile jumped off the wooden boards into the sand, which sank beneath her boots with a comforting familiarity. After a moment of hesitation, she shoved Donquixote's body under the jetty and partly covered it with sand, so that it would not immediately be visible if any Marines found her location.
In the ocean, not far from the island, a large ship was burning. She feared, for a moment, that it might be Donquixote's, until she noted that it had been tastefully decorated.
Further at sea, a dim light glimmered. She flicked her lighter three times in its direction, as she had been instructed. It flickered back in response. Great – at least Donquixote's crew wasn't the type to abandon their captain at the first sign of trouble.
Except for the remote sound of shouts, all was still.
Her instinct warned her that she was no longer alone. She instructed her body to dematerialize and vanished into a cloud of sand. Another of the strange seastone bullets with which she'd been shot went through the space her left hand had occupied only a moment earlier and hit the ground instead.
The fire, at least, had finished drying her hair and clothing. She delighted at the familiar power that surged through her veins, along with the stimulant.
She reformed herself further down the beach, away from the place where she'd concealed Donquixote's body. The Marine douchebag stared back at her with a hateful grin, his hands clenched around the handle of a forked staff. His companion, a severe-looking woman, pressed the point of her rifle to the ground as she reloaded it. "Good heavens," she said. "Your kind are so terribly annoying to fight."
This was her chance. She dematerialized again, reappeared behind the douchebag and punched him in the same place where she had previously stabbed him. Her fist went through his body, which melted and coalesced into a strange, acrid smoke. Her breath caught in her throat.
The douchebag whirled around. "I knew you wouldn't resist a chance to fight dirty." The tip of his staff connected to her leg, with an impact that made her eyes water. A seastone weapon. Now, that was dirty.
She reached into her pocket with a gloved hand to whip out the seastone bullet she'd retrieved earlier and slam it into his gut. It connected, though its legs did not close around him. He staggered back, his eyes, for a brief moment, rolling back to show their whites. She sank a hand into her coat to retrieve one of her knives.
The cock of a rifle reminded her of his companion's existence. She dematerialized just in time, as yet another seastone bullet whizzed past her former location.
Two Logia users could easily battle each other for days on end, ghosts rising and fading past each other, until one, at last, tapped into some secret well of power that would end the fight. Against two seastone weapons, she did not think that it would be her. Already, the stimulant was wearing off and the effort to reform her body was growing onerous, her injured leg, in particular, showing reluctance to solidify into a shape that only meant pain. If he hit her with the tip of his weapon again, she did not think she would dodge the next shot.
The female Marine stooped to pick up one of the bullets she had shot earlier with a deft movement. She was running out of ammunition, then. "Wait for my signal," her companion said. "Let me hit her with the seastone first, or we'll be here all night."
They were hemming her in. She looked from one to the other and knew, then, what she would have to do.
As he lowered his staff towards her, she blew some sand in his eyes. He would feel the impact, but he would not see that she had raised her forearm to accept the blow, not from the seastone tip of the weapon, but from the wooden handle. She staggered back with a cry of pain that was not entirely feigned. "Now!" he shouted.
She dematerialized one last time, and the bullet that would have hit her struck her opponent instead.
The douchebag collapsed without a sound, having fought for a while on borrowed energy, as she had suspected.
"I know you're out of bullets," Crocodile told his companion as she picked up the man's cigar, which was still smoldering, and stuck it in her own mouth. "We can fight, if you want. Or, you can run off and get some help for your friend. He's going to need it." She dug the heel of her boot into his stab wound, just to drive her point home.
The female Marine considered her options and turned tail. Crocodile sent a knife flying after her to teach her a valuable lesson about turning your back on an opponent that you've only just recently tried to kill. She could not remember the last time that she'd had the opportunity to stab so many people in the back in one day. Perhaps this piracy business wasn't so bad, after all.
Donquixote's body, under the jetty, had in the meanwhile offered a very adequate nest to a family of crabs. She picked him up and, since she was in a good mood, dusted him off a little. "All right," she said, looking out to the ocean, where a small rowboat was approaching the shore. "Let's get you home."
Smoker knew that bringing flowers to the hospital would forever tarnish his reputation, and he therefore resolved to avoid it. Two hours of shopping later, the realization dawned upon him that the captain was unlikely to get as much joy as he would out of a leather jacket, a hard rock record, a fitness magazine (No Pain, No Gains: Special Abs Edition) and a bottle of bourbon whiskey. He bit the bullet and purchased a bouquet of daisies and white carnations, which the florist assured him translated to a wish for prompt recovery.
(At the entrance of the hospital, the corporal on guard duty, seeing him, said "Who's the special lady?" He did not dignify her with a reply.)
Captain Allesia was sitting up in her bed, hair bound in a tight knot, nightshirt buttoned all the way up to the collar. At her side, Miss Cadiz was reading her a pile of administrative forms, which seemed to be their idea of a bedtime story. "Ah, Corporal, how good of you to come," the captain said. "Although I'm sorry that you should see me in such a state. At my age, there are only so many buildings one can be buried under before one begins to show signs of wear."
"Not at all," Smoker said, becoming unpleasantly aware that half the buttons on his shirt were undone. Under the pretext of putting the flowers on the bedside table, he fixed himself up.
"By the way, Corporal, I owe you an apology. It seems that I have been over-cynical. Pirates do, indeed, show a capacity for collaboration when their backs are against the wall. This may come as a surprise to you, but I am glad to be proven wrong. The potential for goodness is there in these young, lost souls."
Smoker was not entirely convinced that a willingness to blow up half a city and stab innocent bystanders like himself demonstrated a potential for goodness, but he decided to keep his doubts to himself. "Uh, sure."
"Unfortunately, it seems that I won't be able to do anything with the knowledge. The admiral has learned of my plans to turn the Loguetown jail into the East Blue Institute for Pirate Reformation. He does not approve. I have been given an ultimatum, young Smoker. Wield the whip and the bullet like everyone else, or take an early retirement."
"That's bullshit," he said, and was surprised to find that he meant it.
"Is it? Perhaps he's right. If we were to show pirates mercy and teach them the value of discipline, they would no longer be pirates, and then why would we need the Navy? In any case, I've made my decision. Do you see that picture on the table?"
He looked next to the flowers, where a child's crayon drawing had been framed. Insofar as he could tell, it depicted a house in flames, children running or perhaps dancing around it, and in the sky, fireworks.
"The Loguetown Orphanage visited me earlier today and left it for me. It occurred to me, young Smoker, that the poor things are most frightfully neglected. Unbrushed hair, undone shirts, some even wore mismatched stockings. No wonder that they should all grow up and become pirates. I'd be inclined to sail the high seas myself, if I were in their shoes."
"Now, that I don't buy."
"Perhaps not. All the same, if we can give them all the love and discipline that they need before they grow up, then our job will be much easier, don't you think? This is to say, young Smoker, that Loguetown will be in need of new leadership. Captain Mühlberg will be moving in, but he'll need a reliable second-in-command. I've taken the liberty of making a recommendation."
"No fucking way," he said. "Er. Sorry." He looked at Miss Cadiz, who pretended to be absorbed in an equipment requisition form.
"Congratulations, Lieutenant Smoker. Don't let them get to you." Allesia leaned back in her pillow, exhausted.
Smoker left, trying not to grin. On his way out, he kicked the legs of the corporal's chair from under her and ran off before she could retaliate. His future was bright and unclouded, and he'd never let another pirate escape his grasp again.
Much later, he would remember Allesia's words and wonder if she had been warning him about the pirates, or his fellow Marines.
