Episode of Grace
Even with every emotion sitting in her pocket, Grace didn't know what to feel as a missile of paw-shaped air carried her through the clouds. She had finally told Coby how she felt, releasing the beast that had been clawing at her heart since the first time they met Kuma -maybe since the first time they met on Little Garden- and he felt the same way.
He... They had tried to kiss. Twice, apparently! But everything got in their way. It had been Perona back on Thriller Bark, blowing them up and making Coby forget. Then on Sabaody, Zoro had to go be a moron and cut one of the few people he wasn't supposed to cut, which interrupted their moment on the Ferris wheel! Then Coby had to be all noble and let her and Gin get away when Drake confronted them.
And then Kuma happened, again. He must have only toyed with them after they beat Moria, because he decimated the crew this time. Him and Luffy's Marine grandfather who had Coby captive!
Grace heard herself growl. That pink-haired prehistoric moron! She told him not to fight a Supernova alone. She was going to give him a piece of her mind when they saw each other again!
...If they saw each other again.
Grace wouldn't have called herself an emotional person. Not before joining the Straw Hats, anyway. Baroque Works had mashed the ability to care from her until she could watch people turn to wax statues with nothing but deeply-buried fear, but one pirate crew had undone years of self-control exercises in the span of a few short months.
And so, Grace cried. She cried for Coby, who was a prisoner to the Marines. She cried for her big sister, who probably blamed herself for what happened. She cried for their crew, not knowing if they would bounce back, or if this was the end of their story, an incomplete painting ripped apart by critics.
Grace cried herself to sleep.
Today was a good day for the Leonardo Corporation of Encre Island. Stocks were up 17%, profit continued to flow, and the new synergy workshops were showing their merit. He shouldn't be disappointed that it was over 16%, even if a piece of him was. Everyone who knew Leonardo knew that he loved the number six.
Leonardo Rokuma, or Leo to his friends and closest co-workers, was a man of shorter stature, much to his silent ire. His lesser height made gaining respect in the world of business twice as difficult, but he made up for the difference with his powerful mane of black hair, a strong flare for the dramatic, cutthroat business practices, and the help of his lovely wife Mary.
The Devil Fruit powers Mary processed and the criminal syndicate they ruled didn't hurt either, he supposed.
No one truly knew where the Rokumas were from or why they were on Encre Island nearly a year ago, but the fall of their long-distance boss had opened doors and windows for the pair, a situation they had fully exploited as people of their position are wont to do. Thus, the Vinci Syndicate grew from the ashes of another. Smuggling, spying, stealing, and sabotage, Da Vinci was the undisputed underworld king of the North Blue, even making business dealing with Germa 66, much to Leo's excitement. All this happened while Leo and his wife sang the tune of the rich goodie-two-shoes, rubbing elbows with the nobles at balls and parties and plays in the name of the Leonardo Corporation.
From his plush swivel chair six stories up, the Mafioso smiled down on his secret empire, his wife leaning against his chair. Leo would be lying if he said he wasn't more than a little proud of their accomplishments.
"Boss!" one of their heads cried, interrupting the moment as he threw the door open, panting. "Madam! I bring news!"
"What is it, Barnum?" Mary asked in her melodious voice. The toxin she hid just below the surface made Leo shiver, every fiber of his being wanting to embrace the woman when she threatened their subordinates. Mary was tall with long, silky black hair that fell to her waist. She flaunted her figure with a tight dress striped yellow and black. The ensemble scared the men, making her more intimidating than her sharp nose and harsh green eyes, which was why she wore it. That she could also tease her husband was a bonus that paid off nearly every night. "We were basking in our glory."
"M-My apologies, Madam," Barnum muttered, holding out a telegram. "Th-There's a message from the West End. They say a g-girl fell from the sky. Our plants have kept the local police from acting currently, but they aren't sure how long that will last. Your orders?"
Leo snatched the page, reading the message quickly. His eyes widened at the description of the girl, passing the note to his wife. Her eyes narrowed.
"It can't be," she frowned. "You want to."
"Of course I want to, Dear."
"You know how I felt about that pair."
"I do, but they were powerful. She was a hidden gem he recognized. She would be incredibly helpful with our research into hypnosis, you know."
"And if she refuses?"
Leo paused. "Let's give a week," he offered. "Please, Honey?"
"She could turn on us. She is a pirate."
"Medium risk, high reward, I'd say."
"...One week," she relented, turning to the messenger. "Barnum, send word to the West. Collect the girl and make her comfortable. Leo and I will clear our schedules for the next week. Prepare a tram."
"Right away, Madam!" Barnum hurried out, leaving the powerful couple alone in their high rise office. There was silence for a moment as Barnum shouted at people outside the door.
"You really want her?" Mary confirmed. "Goldenweek? You know she joined the pirates that toppled Mr. 0."
"I know that, Honey," Leo replied, "but look at us now. Could we have come this far answering to him? And if she can further our influence, I don't mind repaying this debt."
"Very well," Mary sighed. "Shall I get your coat and sword?"
"Please. I think it's time the Mr. 6 pair stepped into the light for a day or two."
She laid in the softest bed Da Vinci could procure, the North Blue snow slowly building outside the windows of the safe house and into the streets outside. The bands that had held her hair had broken, leaving her braids half-loosed and thrown to the sides. Her clothing showed little damage, a bag held in one fist on reflex. Her breathing was slow and deep, her eyes moving under her eyelids.
"She's... older... than I thought," Mary commented to her husband as the two stared down on the pirate. "I thought she was ten."
"She's sixteen according to her poster," Leo corrected with a small smirk. Oh, how he loved the number six. "Studies have shown physical and mental trauma can stunt growth. I'm sure growing up around Baroque Works did her no justice. It seems that those pirates were far better for her health than one would think."
"Tch," Mary frowned. "Pirates."
"You're still mad about Mr. 0?"
"Of course I'm still mad about Mr. 0!" the woman scowled. "Taking orders from a government-sanctioned pirate for years, the thought makes my skin crawl."
"We wouldn't've met if not for Crocodile, you being from the West Blue and me from the South. And it was the crew that took her in that toppled Crocodile."
"I know that, Leo," Mary shot back.
"And we wouldn't be as successful as we are if they didn't-"
"I know, Leo," Mary sighed. "I know, the same way you know why I hate pirates."
"The question is, what do we do with her?" Leonardo turned back to the girl on the bed. "Yes, she's a pirate and a traitor to the organization we worked for, but we also owe her and her crew something of a debt. For freeing us from Crocodile's control and for opening the door for our growth."
"I say we save her life and make her join Da Vinci," Mary answered, Leo sending her a shocked look. "As much as I hate pirates and traitors, we do owe her and, as much as I hate to admit it, she is good at what she does. She was good enough to be picked up by Mr. 3, after all, but saving her life would make her owe us more than we owe her."
"You are evil, darling," Leo smiled. "She'll become quite the asset, as long as we don't let her hypnotize us."
"Oh she won't," Mary purred, something buzzing beneath her clothing. "The little butterfly can float all she wants, but my sting will keep her from floating away. Zzzzzehehe!"
"Yes, of course," Coby smiled, taking her smaller hand in one of his, their fingers intertwining as if to never let go. "I'll never leave you. Come on! The others are busy and I bribed Gin to keep your sister occupied. We have at least two hours to enjoy ourselves."
"That sounds wonderful," Grace responded with bright, half-lidded eyes.
"So what do you want to do? We could go shopping at the mall, swing by the amusement park, try some different foods..."
"Let's go to the park!" Grace beamed, tugging on the Zoan's hand. "They have plenty of food there and you can hold me when I'm scared!"
"Nothing will scare you," Coby protested. "If it does, I'll cut it to ribbons!"
Grace giggled as she she and Coby made their way to the park hand-in-hand, the nameless, faceless people parting for the young couple. In true pirate fashion, the two snuck their way into the park. The girl's smile never left her face as she and her date battled it out on the bumpercars, held each other on the rollercoaster, and challenged each other to carnival games. Like a true gentleman, he won her a giant rice-cracker-shaped pillow before the pair made their way to the Ferris wheel.
"This has been wonderful," Grace whispered, leaning on the pink-haired boy who had his arm around her shoulders. His body was warm and she snuggled deeper into him. "I wish we could do this whenever we wanted."
"Of course we can," Coby whispered into her scalp, nuzzling his nose deeper into her red hair. "We're pirates. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want to."
Grace shifted, wrapping her arms around the roset's neck. "Well, there's something I want to do that we haven't gotten to, yet."
"Oh?" he smirked, his hands drifting to her sides causing the girl to shiver. "What might that be, my flower?"
"This," she leaned forward while pulling him down, their lips millimeters apart when a cold wind washed over them. Grace paused, so close to what she wanted, but something didn't add up.
The Ferris wheel didn't have open windows...
"No no no!" Grace hissed as the world around her started to fade, the Coby in her arms turning to darkness and melting from her grasp. Another cold wind drifted through her, breaking her world even more.
Grace woke with a groan, shivering as she pulled the covers around her closer. She wasn't sure why it was so cold, but the temperature threatened to pull her from the nice dream she was having. In fact, her beautiful dream was already fading away, slipping through her metaphorical fingers the tighter the tried to hold it.
"Godadammit!" the artist muttered, a fist punching the warm pillow she'd been clutching to her chest. She was in a bed, and most certainly not in the arms of her crush, much to her ire. Why do dreams have to be so real yet vanish so quickly? And she'd lost her chance at a kiss -her first kiss- for the third time!
And why the Hell was it so cold? The Archipelago was a summer island...
Grace's eyes widened as she sat up, the covers falling away to expose her arms to the cold air. The room where she found herself was spacious, a bed and bedside table in her immediate area. On the table sat her hat, pallet, paintbrushes, and paints under the soft light of a lamp. A window let daylight into the room, part of it filtered through three inches worth of snow, which explained the cold. One door was left ajar to an unlit bathroom while another was shut. The wall opposite the outside window was a massive one-way mirror, and not aligned so she could look out.
Allowing her assassin's instincts to kick in for the first time in a long time, Grace scoped the room for cameras. One was hidden in the shadows of the corner to her right, another microphone was barely visible on the inside of the lampshade. Peeking under the bed, she noticed that the lampshade mic was a red herring, trying to hide the roach-shaped mic in the shadows. Whomever had her knew what they were doing and either who she was or, at least, suspected.
Carefully and quietly, the pirate slid out of the bed, noting that her clothes had not been removed. Her bag and shoes sat on the floor a footstep away, so her captors likely wanted her trust. The fools, not taking her weapons, even if she was under surveillance.
Or did they? Quietly as she could, Grace popped open her Sadness Blue paint, dabbing a tiny bit on her finger and having a taste. Yup, chemically-infused, not regular. She wiped the rest on the sheets, mentally listing the dangers of eating paint, not that that had ever stopped her before. Though now that she checked, her Acid and Betrayal Black was missing.
"Please relax, ma'am," a voice told her from a speaker hidden somewhere in the room. Grace jumped at the sudden death of the silence around her. "The bosses will be with you in a moment."
"Who are the bosses?" Grace asked the faceless voice.
"Old friends of yours, they said. Please relax on the bed."
"Yeah, sure," Grace muttered, collecting her things. "Because telling me to relax twice will make me relax. These signals are more mixed than my Befriending Yellow-Green." The door opened just as she finished, the girl turning to her visitors. Her eyes widened. "But CP9 said you were all captured!" she blurted.
"Zes-zes-zes!" the shorter figure laughed. "The rest of the idiots, maybe, but most of them where in Alabasta for the shitshow there. We were out of the way here in the North Blue maintaining the spy network. All the Marines caught were our most annoying subordinates."
"Zzzzehehehe!" the taller figure agreed. "Those billions were finally good for something. Now as for you," -she gestured to Grace- "perhaps you can be worth far more than any billion, Ms. Goldenweek."
"Mr. 6," Grace said, making her voice as flat as possible. "Ms. Saturday. How... nice to see you again."
"It is nice, is it not?" Mr. 6 replied.
Mr. 6's outfit was a tad more flamboyant than his usual business suit, coattails brushing the floor behind two-inch-heeled boots. A pair of dark glasses completely hid his eyes and his hair had been fashioned into a straight line with one huge curl at the bottom. Strapped at his hips were a pair of six-shooters and a kolpesh, a question-mark-shaped blade native to Alabasta.
Ms. Saturday's outfit still scared Grace, her curvy frame accented by her yellow and black striped dress that flared at the hips and left her back bare. A rapier hung at her hip, the blade painted black to camouflage with much of her dress. She smirked at Grace with an emotion the girl couldn't identify, something between dislike, disgust, and vicious hope.
"I suppose you didn't pick me up out of the goodness of your hearts," Grace commented.
"Pick you up?" Ms. Saturday parroted. "No no, girl. We saved your life. If we hadn't moved when we did, you would have frozen to death in the snow or been arrested by the local marines."
"What do you want?" Grace refused to thank her former co-workers.
"Join us," Mr. 6 answered, surprising the redhead. "We've done pretty well for ourselves, if I do say so myself, but we wouldn't protest one more in management. Having you on our side would make the expansion of both our legal and illegal operations far easier."
"And if I refuse?"
"Zzzzehehehe," Ms. Saturday giggled, sauntering toward the pirate as a horrid buzzing grew from her. Right before her eyes, the former agent became Grace's greatest fear. The basis of her deathly allergy.
"Silly Ms. Goldenweek," Ms. Saturday buzzed in the form of a human bee, now with fuzzy skin, four arms, mandibles, multi-lensed eyes, and a pair of chitin wings. "You don't have a choice."
Grace's reaction was immediate and far stronger than either of the Mr. 6 pair expected. She screamed, scrambling to get away from the Zoan as quickly as she could, never taking her eyes away. The pirate crabwalked into and along the base of the wall, scrunching into a ball in to corner, on the verge of hyperventilating. Her pallet trembled in her grip like a shield of wood, not that it would protect her much.
"Honey," Mr. 6 whispered. "I think you can stop."
Ms. Saturday didn't react for a second, equally stunned by the girl's reaction. Her Zoan transformation slowly reverted as she backed away.
"Let's go," Mr. 6 said, eyeing Grace with something between confusion, pity, and realization of opportunity. "Let her calm down until she's ready to talk calmly." The man knocked on the door, a guard outside opening in within a second to allow the Mafioso couple into the hallway.
"Keep her comfortable," Mr. 6 said, loud enough that Grace should be able to hear it. "We will return when she asks for us. Do not release her, but give her food. However, don't give her tea or rice crackers. Is that understood?"
"Understood!" the guard acknowledged. The door closed, leaving Grace alone with her thoughts, scrambled as they were. Slowly, she calmed her breathing until she was taking deep, if ragged, breaths.
"Stupid," Grace muttered to herself as her pulse finally slowed. "I haven't had an attack like that since the mission to Cherryplace." She'd known there was something off about Ms. Saturday, but she hadn't thought it would be something like her being, well, a bee.
"She puts the bee in bitch," the redhead finally coughed, tears leaking from her eyes despite trying to suppress them. "Everyone... where are you? I don't want to be alone."
(3 Days Later)
Grace's foot trapped against the tile floor, the sound echoing around the small room. The one-way mirror now sported a mural of her crew, the third in as many days despite knowing Mr. 6's henchmen would wash it off by the end of the day. It might be the last, too. She was running low on normal paints. They'll likely clean the camera's lens too, considering she'd covered it in a very bright, almost painful pink.
Other than the soul-crushing loneliness, captivity was rather nice. She didn't need to do anything. Meals came thrice a day at morning, noon, and evening. The bed was soft and she'd napped multiple times. Not that she wanted to anymore. Every dream included her Nakama, which made the captivity worse. She was starting to go stir crazy, her will to peacefully resist fading into a want to resist more violently.
"Fine!" Grace called, finally unable to sit by. "Fine! You want to talk to me? Come do it!"
It was silent for a moment before the speakers crackled.
"Thank you, ma'am," a lackie's voice sighed. "The bosses will be with you within the hour."
"Ugh." Grace flopped on the bed, but she supposed turnaround was fair play. And 6 and Saturday probably had other stuff to do than just waiting for her to break.
The Mafioso couple knocked to tell her they were there nearly an hour later, waiting for Grace to acknowledge them. She called them in with some surprise, Mr. 6 and Ms. Saturday entering in their Baroque Works attire.
"I hear you have finally come to your senses," Mr. 6 began. "Right, Ms. Goldenweek?"
"I'm still not going to work for you," the pirate replied. "I want you to let me go."
"Why ever would we do that?"
"Because my captain is going to be the King of the Pirates, and when we come around to make a map of the whole world, I'll ask him to be lenient on you." Grace knew it was a bluff. By the time the crew got back here, Luffy will have forgotten all about the codenames of Baroque Works, but these two didn't know that.
"Yeah, if," Ms. Saturday noted. "Try the other one."
"Fine." Grace tried to keep the waver out of her voice, dreading her backup plan for what was, admittedly, a long shot that would have even been a challenge for their sniper. They had no basis to believe her, having never met Luffy and only knowing he beat Crocodile. "F-Fight me. If I win, you have to take me to Sabaody. If you win, I'll work for you until I can pay my way out."
"Do you really think you can take us both on, Ms. Goldenweek?" Mr. 6 asked.
"Now now, dear," Ms. Saturday interrupted. "She was a higher number than us. Twice us, actually, but Mr. 3 was the powerhouse between them, as I am for us. So, Goldenweek, you will fight me one on one. And considering your reaction to my transformation, I'll even give you a fighting chance. While I get ready, you can do the same. I'll offer you unlimited, if observed, access to one of our chemical research laboratories to prepare."
"That's... surprisingly unfair for you," Grace blinked. "Why?"
Ms. Saturday's eyes shifted into her multi-lensed insectoid forms, giving the woman a terrifying stare that was not helped by her grin. "So when I beat you into the dirt, you'll know your true place, little ant."
Grace shifted, once again checking that her paints were at her waist, her pallet with colors in hand, and her Devil Fruit seed necklace around her neck. She stood in the center of a glass dome, an artificial biome created by the Leonardo Corporation called the Toei Garden. Officially, its purpose was to grow fruits and vegetables for the snowy island of Encre, but it also housed battlegrounds, training rooms, chemical research plants, and barracks for what Grace had learned was the underground syndicate of Da Vinci. She was now on one such battleground, Ms. Saturday standing across from her.
"Oh Ms. Goldenweek~!" Saturday called. "I hope you're ready. The harder you fight, the more satisfying your defeat will be for me."
"Yeah, I'm ready," Grace sighed, trying to release some of the tension from her body. Her paintbrush spun in her hand. "I hope you don't like those clothes, Saturday. They're about to get stained."
"Feisty. You've changed a lot since we last met. Maybe this will actually be fun."
"Both of you are ready?" Mr. 6 asked as he backed away. "Begin."
"Stinger!"
Grace jumped away instantly, narrowly dodging the rapier the now-insectoid Saturday stabbed where she had been. Saturday buzzed angrily, her wings fluttering.
"Color Trap," Grace called, trying to keep her breathing in check and succeeding only since she knew what to expect, "Betrayal Black!"
Saturday backflipped away from the flying paint that splattered on the ground. The bee-woman stayed airborne courtesy of her wings, her multi-lensed eyes staring down at the girl. Grace glared back, stashing her brush in a special slot of her pallet before reaching into her bag. Her hand pulled out a blue sphere.
"You're scared," Saturday buzzed, a pair of thin antennae twitching from her hair. "I can almost taste your pheromones. You're on the verge of hyperventilating."
"Shut up!" Grace yelled, throwing the sphere. "Color Bomb: Blue Ball!"
If Saturday had eyelids in her hybrid form, they would have widened as she quickly flew backward away from the attack, the sphere exploding before her. The cloud it produced was blue in color, obscuring the fighters from each other's sights.
"The Hell?" Saturday cried. "That wasn't paint!"
"You asked for it," Grace responded through the mist. "You gave me access to a lab. Unluckily for you," -the girl smirked, walking through the chemical fog- "I'm immune to most of my chemicals."
"What was that supposed to do, then?" the Zoan asked, buying time so the chemical fog could clear.
"It's the pure chemicals I use in my Sadness Blue paint," Grace explained as the air cleared, "but in an aerosol form. Spray paint, if you will, and there's more where that came from." She reached into her bag, pulling out two more spheres, one green and the other yellow. Meanwhile, her other hand brought her pallet by her mouth, freeing said hand to use the paintbrush. "Color Trap: Adrenaline Amber."
"I need to get that bag," Saturday buzzed to herself. Plotting a course, the Zoan rose a foot before diving toward her younger opponent. The pirate tried to retaliate, to slow her with the Green Ball or Yellow Ball, but Saturday was too nimble and Grace's lack of experience with said weapons was clear.
"Wasp Pair!" Saturday called, her rapier and physical stinger both aiming for the artist. Grace waited until the last second before shifting to the side, narrowly avoiding being impaled before socking the Zoan in the eye. "Son of a six-nippled sow!" Saturday screamed, unsteadily flying away.
"Heh," Grace grinned. "My understanding of time has slowed due to my paint. That and I've had hand-to-hand training since we last met. You're still using the same tricks."
"Cocky ginger ant," Saturday growled. She landed slowly, out of Grace's range. Never taking her eyes from her opponent, Saturday shifted out of her hybrid form. One eye, which was already showing signs of bruising, closed as the older woman took a deep breath. "I underestimated you, Ms. Goldenweek."
"I haven't even brought out my heaviest hitters," Grace smirked.
"Then I'll show you some new tricks of my own. Six Leg Step."
Grace's smirk only lasted for a second before her world flipped, her breath cut off as Saturday sped past far faster than her hybrid wings would allow. The pirate felt her breath knocked from her lungs as she hit the ground. She rose too slowly for her liking before realizing the familiar weight of her bag was missing.
"Looking for this?" Saturday taunted, Grace's bag in her hands with the strap cut through. Carelessly, the woman tossed it behind her, various unstable chemical compounds within exploding into mist. "Oops. I dropped it."
"It's fine," Grace told herself. "All fine. I've got my pallet. All good."
"Done talking to yourself?" Saturday questioned. "Here I come. Striped Death!"
Only the remaining effects of her Adrenaline Amber allowed Grace to dive away from the ballistic agent, each dodge causing Saturday's grin to widen.
"Stinger Barrage!"
Finally, Grace misjudged the distance, Saturday's rapier finding purchase in the redhead's shoulder. The girl screamed as the weapon pierced her. It was so painful, but Grace gritted her teeth through the pain. She had to endure, for her crew, for her sister, for that talk. Saturday pulled away, her smirk quickly failing as she stumbled, falling to one knee while her sword supported most of her weight.
"What did you do?" Saturday hissed.
"Color Trap: Off-Balance Olive," the Straw Hat grimaced, putting pressure on her stab wound with a wrist. Blood seeped from the wound, staining her clothes at a steady rate.
Ms. Saturday stumbled to her feet, her wings spouting from her back as an impromptu balancing aide. She charged with a scream, rapier aimed at her younger foe's heart. "Die, pirate traitor scum! Six Leg Step!"
"Shit!" Grace cursed, moving the only shield he had to take the blow. It was only the combination of Saturday's shotty balance and Grace's run-through pallet that kept the redhead from being stabbed in the heart. Even so, the tip of the blade pierced the skin between her breasts deep enough to draw blood, nicking her sternum.
The artist stepped back out of instinct, pulling the weapon out of her skin. Saturday wobbled, standing through willpower but not able to move immediately. Something tugged at Grace's neck, the young woman looking down to see the seed of her necklace had also been pierced. A quick mental inventory noted her as weaponless, so Grace felt she didn't have much choice at the moment.
Quickly, while Saturday was still trying to not fall over, Grace yanked the sword from her opponent's hand, pulled the seed off, and ate it.
It was the single most disgusting thing Grace had ever tasted, only its raisin-like size helping the young woman swallow the seed. She doubled over, idly noting that Saturday had smudged the Olive paint away and reclaimed her weapon, tossing the pallet away. A second later, Grace's understanding of the world expanded.
'There are chemicals everywhere,' she thought quickly, the pain in her chest and shoulder dulled by the surge of adrenaline that allowed her to spring away from Saturday's incoming Stinger. She could feel it, her body pumping the fight-or-flight response into her bloodstream, pure Power, but that wasn't all.
The edges of the world thrummed with concepts, many of which were stacked in her bag by the edge of the field. The air around her still held hints of Despair. Behind Saturday hung Humor and Calm in equal measure while Mr. 6 radiated Worry. The Power in her blood made Saturday seem to slow, Grace willing her adrenal glands to give her more until the Zoan seemed to crawl.
"It's over now," Grace breathed, almost too fast for Saturday to understand. The younger slipped under the older's guard and punched her in the solar plexus. The older woman coughed a little bit of blood from the force, the adrenaline allowing Grace to use the entirety of her muscles in the blow. Saturday stumbled backwards.
"Amazing," Grace muttered to herself, dragging a hand through the air. The particles from her original Blue Ball attack condensed around her fingers, flowing into a swirling ball of gas in the palm of her hand.
"W-What did you do?" Saturday coughed, clutching her stomach.
"There are chemicals all around us," Grace began, releasing the swirling orb of sedative gas into an orbit around her torso. Her hands idly pulled the laughing gas and calming gas from the air, repeating the process. She then did the same to each of her paints from her tossed-aside pallet, becoming the centerpoint for a galaxy of various colorful planets of emotion. "There is water in the air," - she formed a ball of water, adding it to the system - "hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and more, as well. But, to answer your question, I just ate the perfect Devil Fruit for my skills."
"Where the Hell were you keeping a Devil Fruit?" the Zoan demanded.
"The seed of my necklace," Grace answered easily. She could feel the various chemicals of confidence flooding her brain. "The Chem-Chem Fruit, allowing the user to control chemicals. We were forced to fight its previous user, Dr. Indigo of the Golden Lion Pirates. Perhaps you heard of him? He was good, but he was a biologist. He didn't have a chemist's touch. Either way, I'll give a nod to him. Just this once."
"What are you-?" Saturday faltered as Grace arrayed the floating orbs in an arc above her.
"Color Juggling: Rainbow of Pain."
Mr. 6 flinched as he watched the new Devil Fruit user step away from the downed, paint-splattered form of his wife.
"So..." he began, doing his best to not show the pirate that she had turned the tables on them. "You won. Congratulations there. I told Mary not to underestimate you."
"Are you going to take me to Sabaody?"
"Of course!" Mr. 6 nodded quickly. "We are mobsters, but we do not break our-!"
"Boss!" a pair of voices called, two men in the uniforms of the Toei Garden security force stumbling next to Mr. 6. "Boss! Today's paper!"
"Can't you see I'm busy here?"
"But Boss Leo! It's the pirate you told us to watch for! Straw Hat! He's in the paper!"
"Give me that!" Grace demanded, snatching the newspaper from the men. There, on the front page, was her captain. Her eyes widened. "So... about that job..."
End of Episode
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-SwordOfTheGods