Sol Invictus
Chapter Sixteen: Tachypsychia
"Eggplant."
"Stop calling me that, you - "
"Sanji." The blond teen stilled, acknowledging the gravitas in Zeff's voice. "The years are setting into my bones, and the sea is not a kind mistress. I'll have to keel over at some point, and we won't be able to do anything about it. You know it too. I want you to swear one thing to me. I want you to promise that you're not gonna let yourself be killed before that. You're gonna leave Baratie to its fate, whatever that may be. You're gonna go find All Blue. And I don't want to hear any bullshit from the afterlife about how you're doing it for me. You're gonna do it for yourself, whether you want to or not, you hear?"
"No fucking way. You shitty old geezer, are you crazy? You're not going to die, do you think I'd let you?!"
"The hell are you calling a shitty old geezer, you little shit," she huffed back, but there was little fire to her words. "Just get on with it."
And though Sanji protested even the mention of her death, swore up and down a mad frenzy, she ignored him as if he had never spoken until finally,
"Fine," Sanji spat. "But if you don't die, then it doesn't matter anyway. So don't you dare kick the bucket over something stupid like a heart attack, old hag."
"Just for that, I'm gonna have steak for dinner this whole week."
"That's - that's cheating!"
"Pirate," she told the boy smugly, turning and clunking back into the kitchen.
Fifteen year old Sanji seethed and went to pick a fight with Patty, his eyes hot and uncomfortable.
The two bounty hunters paddled their boat towards her vigorously, tears streaming from their eyes.
"Luffy-aneki! We saw it all!" Yosaku sobbed. "Is Zoro-aniki alright?"
"Alright is a bit of a stretch, but he's still alive," she told them, and then pointedly continued, "He'd be even more alive if he gets some medical attention soon."
They jumped to action; Johnny and Yosaku delicately transferred Zoro into the boat, away from the major threat at her back, and a box of first aid materials was snatched from the cabin. In the aftermath of their frantic movements, a single feather drifted to rest beside her hand, cut cleanly at its stem. She stared at it.
Mihawk wasn't like Shanks. He wouldn't bother with such trivial shows of sentiment... but without a doubt, this was from the Shichibukai's plume. Had Zoro actually managed to…? Luffy cautiously picked the feather up with two fingers and bent her head back to see Mihawk watching her thoughtfully. "Such a bond is not easily forged," he remarked. "Much time must have passed since your first meeting, or else a trial of great peril."
"Not really," she replied, though truthfully she meant 'Not yet'. "I found Zoro less than a month ago, and we've only met weaklings so far."
Ringed yellow irises narrowed on her, and in a low voice Mihawk murmured, "Then… that power, if cultivated properly… Yes, it may even be possible for this one."
"What?" Luffy asked, confused.
"It is of no concern to you," the Shichibukai intoned. He tilted his head towards her in farewell and turned abruptly on his heel. "I shall inform Akagami of your current status. If you have strength enough, you will survive the tumult of the Grand Line. I shall look forward to the day we find one another again, for I have faith we will meet once more on that sea."
"We will," she agreed, managing another half-grin before Don Krieg jumped in and attempted to goad Mihawk into a confrontation. In the chaos, she bent towards Johnny and murmured, "The Going Merry is anchored approximately a mile towards the north. Take Zoro and go tell Nami and Usopp to sail back in fifteen minutes. I'll be done by then."
Panic making his voice rise, Johnny replied, "Luffy-aneki, you mean to fight Don Krieg by yourself? And you think it'll only take fifteen minutes?!"
"Oh no," she told him, with a cheeky smirk. "Krieg'll only take me ten minutes. I just need another five for the clearing up."
Johnny's mouth opened and closed in an attempt to offer response to her brazen claim; finding nothing, he merely blinked and passed the message to Yosaku. The both of them began to row off as Mihawk forced the sea airborne with his sword. Masked by the spray of water and falling debris, Luffy pulled herself towards the porch of the Baratie with a single stretch of arms, Zoro's new souvenir tucked into her hat ribbon.
"Sooo," she began, her face and arms propped up on the railing as the rest of her dangled over the ocean. "If I get rid of these guys, I can stop working here, right?"
"Do what you want," Zeff told her. The woman's dark eyes flicked once to Sanji, and Luffy nodded. She could indeed leave, but the head chef was still relying on her to free Sanji from his own shackles.
Fair enough. She already had no intention of getting back on Merry without Sanji as her new chef.
Luffy observed the cooks milling around the dining room, confirming with her own eyes that each and every one of them was unharmed and at full strength. Half the reason she'd stopped Krieg from his counter attack against Patty was because of this, because she didn't want to concern herself over these guys when she was focused on the other captain.
The other half was to get him riled up right and proper.
Satisfied with what she saw, Luffy hopped over the railing and grabbed the quietly departing Patty and Carne by their sleeves.
"Say, aren't you two amongst the best fighters of Baratie?" she asked innocently.
Patty puffed up in pride, and Carne nodded empathically. "We are indeed!"
"But you aren't gonna fight?"
"Of course we are," Patty scoffed. "What do you take us for, cowards? We have a secret weapons, so don't worry yourself, kid."
Luffy twitched but nonetheless continued with her coaxing. "But is it a weapon that any other of the cooks can operate? I would personally think it best for the top fighters to be leading the frontal attack, don't you?"
The both of them paused and stared at each other.
"It's true that Mackerel Head No. One could technically be operated by anyone - "
"Who knows what trouble these guys could get into with us gone - "
"We're definitely gonna be needed out here - "
"And who'll protect Owner Zeff? Certainly not Sanji - "
The duo stared at each other for a beat longer and then simultaneously turned and each grabbed cooks of their own preference.
"Hey, you…"
Luffy snickered to herself before shuffling off and sidling up next to Zeff.
"Unlike those two idiots, I actually have a brain. You're not as subtle as you think you are, kid," the older woman said, shooting her a look that was two parts amused and one part exasperated. "I don't need it."
"I am too subtle," Luffy sulked. "And - just in case, okay?" Zeff grunted noncommittally, but still did not return the stolen item Luffy had slipped into her chef's coat.
Her side of the chessboard was set.
Ten minutes. That was the maximum length of time Luffy was willing to spend on this asshole. It was also the maximum length of time she could continue to stave off her faltering strength. After that, her body would begin to actively protest its abuse, and at fifteen minutes she would be facing imminent collapse. She'd much prefer to make sure all of the threats were neutralized by then, including Gin and Pearl.
Shoving large chunks of meat from customer's abandoned plates into her mouth, Luffy rolled her shoulders and shook out her limbs. Her body wasn't optimized for Gear Second, not as it was right now; resources went largely squandered as the pressure of her bloodstream forced her cells to absorb more nutrients than could be used at any one time, and then to expel them as waste from an inefficient production of excess energy. Her cells hadn't yet learned how to maximize the efficiency of the technique, and she'd never had a battle that would forcefully beat the lesson into them. She'd wasted a lot of the stores in her body on that short spurt, and she didn't have any time for the feast she'd need to replenish them. This would have to do.
"Little girl," Krieg growled when Luffy emerged, hatless, from the doorway. A faint bruise was beginning to swell rosy red along his cheekbone and she felt oddly gratified by the sight. "You should have run when you had the chance."
"The one who should've run is you," Luffy threw back, stepping onto the raised fins of the restaurant. "You say you're the strongest man, but you know, you ran away from Grand Line like a wimp. My gramps could send you flying you with a pinky."
Which was the truth, now that she thought of it.
"You dare... You dare..."
She interrupted him with a scoff, and watched as the noise visibly set Don Krieg's blood to boiling. "Sure I dare. Why should I be afraid of you? You're just a weak bully. You only think you're strong cos' you have a lot of people on your side, and because of your cheap tricks. By yourself, in a fair match, you're nothing."
Krieg thrust his shoulders back and roared as he brandished double-barreled pistols at her. The plates on his shoulders and along his torso burst open, and mounted machine guns began to spew bullets at her.
Luffy charged directly into the projectiles with both arms extending behind her, ignoring the alarmed cries of, "Her arms are stretching!" from behind and Krieg's shocked bark of, "A devil fruit user!" The sight of her stretching limbs prompted him to quickly change tactics; he snatched a handful of black spheres from within his cloak and flung them at her en masse. The impact shook her foothold, forcing her to leap forward onto another plank of wood to maintain momentum; in doing so, however, one of the small pellets grazed her side and detonated.
Luffy did not stumble, did not allow it to slow her pace even as Don Krieg burst into raucous laughter. She merely grinned into the resulting shroud of smoke and continued forth, blood running in a thin stream over her hip, down her leg, and slipping through the twined straw of her sandals to leave a faint red print against the wood.
When she cut the distance between the two of them to a mere few feet, she hissed, "Gomu gomu no bazooka," and burst out of the smoke, driving both her arms forward as hard as she could. They hurtled through the air, bringing along bullets hidden in the nooks and crannies of her skin that returned to Krieg with more force than they had been shot. He had less than a breath to cover his face with both arms but it was futile in the end: that wasn't where she was aiming. At the very last moment, she crooked her elbows, and her palms flew past each other to slam into the open plates on his shoulders.
The moment the machine guns had emerged, Luffy had realized something. In order for these shoulder plates to swing open as they did, they had to be attached to the armor main through some sort of hinge or latch or clasp. She already knew they were detachable, which told her that the aforementioned clasps were designed to give way under sufficient force. While the plates themselves may be extremely sturdy, they were constructed with the purpose of separating from their perch, and that spoke volumes of the strength of their fastenings or the relative lack thereof. Most importantly, the left plate had quivered upon springing open. She must have struck it by accident earlier, when she had accidentally allowed her temper to grab ahold of her, and if a stray fist was enough to do such damage, her next strike may even...
There.
Her nerves sparked when she felt the plate under her right palm give way, but not quite enough to remove it entirely. Luffy grabbed the furred rim with a hand and her entire body surged onto Krieg's shoulder, hopping easily over a thrown fist. She managed to finally tear the plate from its cracked latchings and hurl it into the sea, as far as she could. Her other hand, braced against the other plate, she drove palm first into the broken deck, her foot crooked over Krieg's throat…
Only to greet iron spikes with the back of her head.
Both Luffy and her opponent slammed onto wood, the noirette from the impact against her skull and Krieg from the foot hooked across his neck and the hand still caught in his remaining shoulder plate.
Luffy was quickly forced to roll away to avoid a glut of fire to the face. In exchange, she wrapped her hand around the chain to the morning star and yanked as she vaulted onto a fallen mast. Having not expected this, Krieg's grip was looser than it would have been, and she managed to tear the entire length away from his hands.
She had a split second to determine whether to throw the weapon back at him or to discard it altogether, realized that the spikes would have little to no effect on the Wootz Steel, and decided that she had no desire to participate in the tug-of-war that would likely result. Instead she swung it at a congregation of pirates piled on a piece of deck, breaking their foothold and probably several bones as the spiked iron sphere collided into them and sunk into the sea.
The noirette promptly hopped to her feet and scrambled back along the mast to avoid the spikes flying at her legs and feet.
"You…" Krieg snarled. "You… you…" His face was an unhealthy hue, and he seemed to have been made inarticulate with rage, either unable to choose between the flood of vulgarities to curse her with or having nothing at all that would sufficiently express the state of his wrath.
Luffy took a moment to catch her breath and gauge her next plan of action.
For all of Krieg's physical strength, he had none of the speed or dexterity that Kuro, or even Buggy, did. Two of the bullets she had collected from his onslaught had grazed his face, leaving one shallow cut across the burgeoning bruise on his cheek and another over his eyebrow, oozing blood that would catch in his lashes and leak into his eyes. Another deep red mark, soon to turn a shade of purple, bloomed under his jaw where her foot had caught him, and lazy brooks of blood ran vibrant through the dull tint of his hair.
She had rid him of his greatest weapon - bar the poison gas - before he'd even had the chance to use it, rid him of another weapon after a single strike, and had proved two other weapons to be entirely impotent against her. And yes, the back of her head was bleeding, but so was his. She'd dragged his pride through the dirt, left a loud, rude mark on his face, and slammed his head into the pieces of his own deck, but the two wounds he had given her barely even bled, had not even been enough to make her flinch - or so he would believe.
Without knowing her specific abilities, he wouldn't know that she was tightening the strands of rubber-skin around and under the wound in her side to staunch the bleeding, nor that she was capable of temporarily suppressing any and all pain. It would be enough to drive anyone mad with anger, let alone such a volatile tyrant.
Not too shabby for a four minute interval. What she needed, now, was to enrage him so completely that he would use the MH5 regardless of any consideration towards worth or waste. She needed the poison to dissipate before her nakama returned, and most preferentially before her ten minutes were up.
"Me," Luffy finally chirped, giving Krieg a smug smirk.
She rapidly scuttled back further to avoid another furious tempest of spikes, twisted to hang upside down from the mast when several spikes sped too close to her ear, and dropped to her feet onto a piece of driftwood near enough to Baratie that she could leap back onto the fins if she needed. Krieg wouldn't be able to reach her unless he was willing to follow after her, which would provide her with a good gauge of how angry she'd really made him, or if he chose to utilize his gas bomb, which was what she wanted anyway. In the meantime she allowed herself a quick scan of the battle being waged on the restaurant proper.
The cooks had maintained an extremely efficient front, with Patty and Carne continuing to lead a brigade of chefs in a mass attack against the remaining two-thirds of Krieg's skeleton crew, the Mackerel Head cleverly keeping its distance and bombarding isolated groups of pirates from afar, and Sanji occupying Pearl and Gin simultaneously with a battery of kicks and the intermittent pirate to the face. Any stray enemy who managed to make it past the army of cooks, circumvent the volley of cannonballs, and avoid being made into collateral by the three-person affray were met with a wooden leg to the head, neck, or groin - or all three. And while there were bodies adorned in white coats among the fallen, still the Baratie chefs were doing quite well for themselves.
Gin and Pearl glanced at each other, and a sense of disquiet suddenly burst to life somewhere deep in Luffy's belly. She hopped onto the restaurant deck and made to approach either Sanji or Zeff - she wasn't sure which of the two warranted this uneasiness but she had to do something, anything - when several black pellets landed around her. She instinctively leapt away, eyes shooting to the side - and, indeed, Krieg was now far closer than he had been before. The deck where she had been standing exploded in a spray of wood and water, and rather than risk an unseen attack, she reached towards the lowest corner of Baratie's sail, high over her head, and pulled herself away. Below, she could see the disaster beginning to unfold. As Pearl burst into flames in an attempt to distract Sanji, Gin shot to Zeff with a weighed tonfa spinning in one hand and a pistol hanging off the other.
Luffy scuttled onto the railing of a balcony and launched herself towards the battle on the deck, barely scrambling between the spears that broke through the curtain of wet debris and left weeping red welts on her skin as they passed. "Come-on-come-on-come-on," she hissed under her breath, her heart thundering like feet against wooden planks.
She could see Sanji's attempts to follow Gin's sudden leave being foiled by a flaming hand-shield. His lips curled around words that were likely more uncomplimentary than not, and he lashed out with a black boot that slid like water between Pearl's raised shields and smashed directly into the pirate's uncovered face. Pearl shrieked and promptly descended into hysterics at the blood leaking from his new injury, but Sanji ignored him to chase Gin, who was raising the pistol and aiming it at Zeff's wooden leg. Something gave a sharp crack.
Everything around Luffy slowed to a crawl.
Zeff's prosthetic fractured and fell away at its base. Luffy finally reached the end of the veranda and leapt off; behind Sanji, Pearl smashed his flaming hand-shields against his main body and howled, "DANGER!", flinging his arms open in preparation to bombard flaming pellets at Sanji's exposed back. Gin, now only a few feet away, raised his tonfa, knowing that when Zeff dodged the blow she would have no choice but to fall to her hands and knees, putting her in enough of a vulnerable position to give him an easy hostage. Sanji cussed and put on a burst of speed, parts of the deck splintering under the force of his feet.
Zeff made no move to avoid Gin's oncoming attack and instead raised an arm, fingers curled comfortably around Luffy's earlier gift. Several booming reports rang out as Sanji finally reached Gin and bodily tackled him to the floor.
The world sped back up as three things happened, all at once.
One, Pearl tottered for a moment and then crumpled to the ground, his body limp.
Two, Krieg, his face twisted in a snarl, fired several rounds of stakes at Zeff.
Three, Luffy slammed into the deck, feet first.
A trickle of blood dripped onto wood, and Luffy's mouth curled into a feral grin.
AN
SOL IS AT OVER 1K FOLLOWERS, IT HAS A TV TROPES PAGE, HOW IS THIS REALITY, PEOPLE WHY ARE YOU ALL SO BEAUTIFUL
I freaking love you all so much, you have no idea how much I love you guys, you're the absolute best and I have no clue what I've done to deserve this with my shitty ass writing gaaAAHHH
BUT SERIOUSLY HOW IS THIS REALITY THANK YOU FOR LOVING THIS STORY I LOVE YOU SO MUCH I COULD KISS YOU MWAHH
Sorry for the huge wait, and also for how short this chapter is in relation to that length of time, AND ALSO THE CLIFFY, I just wanted to get it up quickly while I'm still all hyped up about this.
Notes:
- I haven't double checked the last bit of this before posting, so there may be some typos.
- Red meat increases your chances of a heart attack.
- About that Zeff scene…. haha think what you want I bask in your panic
- I was suddenly struck by a thought while doing the dishes. What if Alvida was actually a male (in this fic)? The reason everyone calls her Lady Alvida is because she's transgender, and since she's originally really monstrous looking (so ugly she transcends gender), no one can tell the difference anyway. And then she eats the slip slip fruit and reappears in Logue Town looking very pretty-boy/handsome and hitting on Luffy because she's a masochist in canon, apparently. So Luffy's like, "Huh. Interesting." And everyone else who knows of Iron Mace Alvida would know her as a woman (including Smoker) and they would also be all, "What." And then she would pose dramatically and bask in the attention (read: chaos and confusion). Of course I won't actually do this because… it sounds like a lot of work and I don't know anything about being a transgender person so don't want to mess things up. (BUT THIS REALLY APPEALS TO ME SO MAYBE I WILL?)
- I have a toraffles main tumblr now, purely for personal use and separate from Queen Luffles. Username 'toraffles' [link on my profile]. If you're a fan of KHR, or a fan of Sol Invictus, or a fan of my writing in general, come talk to me! I need friends, it's so lonely over there. Jokes aside, there are some Sol and La Conflagrazione (my newest KHR fem!Tsuna fic) notes over on my blog, as well as new story ideas, little scenes, etc. so come check it out if you want.