Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece
Rayleigh stands a dozen yards away—the only unscathed figure among the carnage. His eyes bore into Nao's soul, but she doesn't flinch; this is no longer a man who frightens her to her core. The familiarity between them is giving her the courage to be more obstinate—the dog revolting against its owner.
Rosinante stands between the two, ready to engage in a fruitless battle with the legendary Dark King for the sake of the monster behind him.
Nao clenches her teeth, using every bit of will left in her body to force herself to drop the tiny dagger she has so desperately clung onto. She grabs onto the back of Rosinante's shirt, staining it with the blood of who knows how many people as she tugs him out of the way. He spares her a confused glance—probably wondering whether or not she knew what the hell she was doing, or if she was just damn crazy enough to test Rayleigh's mercy by going up against him herself (admittedly, both were pretty fuckin' plausible considering the circumstances)—but luckily, she seems somewhat pacified.
"Rayleigh," she addresses, laughing despite the grim situation that she's found herself caught up in. "You have some impeccable timing. It must be Fate."
He quirks an eyebrow. "Impeccable timing? Fate? What a silly thing to say. I just didn't have enough faith in you to assume you'd sit back and relax while in Mariejois."
She points at the billows of smoke rising from where the office had once been. "If I had been sitting back and relaxing, I'd probably be a pile of ashes right now."
Rosinante looks at the two incredulously, not believing the exchange that he's witnessing. She doesn't blame him, though. Here they are, standing among a pile of malnourished corpses while in the presence of a man who could—and should, considering they are marines—add them to that very pile. The mere thought of it makes him grab onto the hilt of his sword.
"Relax." Rayleigh waves his hand, dismissing Rosinante and scaring the wits out of him as he moves closer. "I'm just a ship coater who just so happened to have stumbled upon this wreck while looking for a particularly annoying brat."
Rayleigh's eyes scan over the result of Nao's killing spree, assessing the situation. "Nao, hurry and dispose of the bodies. Throw them overboard if you have to," he commands once he's thought out a somewhat-viable plan.
Disregarding her injuries, Nao moves out of muscle memory alone.
This is, after all, how life had gone for the past decade or so with Rayleigh. It was like a law of nature for her; he calls the shots, and things usually turn out alright. She's gotten so used to following along with his commands that she doesn't even question why the ship must be clear of any evidence of the massacre.
But this time is different—it isn't just the two of them doing whatever is needed to survive.
Rosinante is here too.
"Stop," Rosinante barks the order at Nao, startling her as he grabs ahold of her shoulder. He doesn't care to acknowledge the vast difference in strength between him and the man standing before him; all he thinks about is his duty—his justice. "I understand that you're one of Garp-san's… acquaintances, but what do you intend to do now, Rayleigh-san?"
"Why, isn't it obvious?" Rayleigh looks at him, bemused. "Nao's going to clean up her mess, and we're going to smuggle the slaves out of this hellhole."
Rosinante's face reflects his internal strife, but eventually he chooses his course of action. Strengthening his hold on his sword, he takes an aggressive stance. "I'm sorry, Rayleigh-san, but that's not something I can allow here. Please, I hate to ask this favor of you, but I'll turn a blind eye if you find a different way to help the slaves escape. Garp's… grandson is below deck. He asked me to watch over him as a… favor."
Everyone stills at this revelation.
"Why is his grandson in Mariejois?" Rayleigh asks delicately, attempting to not sound too infuriated at Garp's carelessness.
"He was experiencing Garp's idea of training." Rosinante sounds sheepish as he begins to explain. "We were supposed to return to Foosha Village to drop him off with another one of Garp-san's acquaintances, but we weren't given enough time between the visit to Sabaody and the call for backup in Mariejois because…"
"Because Garp had to talk with Rayleigh," Nao finishes, spitting out a wad of blood and cursing her luck. She gives Rayleigh a look to see if they'd come to the same conclusion, and he nods in confirmation. "Since this is one falls on me, I'll take care of it."
Before Rosinante can comprehend what she means by her words, he is crumpled on the floor.
Nao stands above him, shaking the bloodied hand she had used to subdue the naively kind blond. One she's determined that he's actually unconscious, she begins a short inspection of her handiwork—drinking in the images of splattered blood and murdered children. Somehow, she feels no pangs of guilt at the sight.
This one truly does fall on her.
"You did that quickly," Rayleigh comments, taking comfortable strides towards her now that Rosinante is out of the picture.
"He wouldn't have stood a chance against you, and I need him alive," she defends her actions, not forfeiting the full truth to the man who had practically raised her. There's a time and place for everything, and in the very middle of a battlefield isn't it for a sudden confession of misplaced guilt.
"Another key piece in your visions?" Rayleigh inquires as he begins to dispose of the bodies.
She nods. "Something like that."
In truth, she just feels responsible, in a way, for Rosinante's presence in Mariejois. Her tiniest actions in the world had somehow pushed his mission further back, and now here this guy was—about to face off with the goddamned Dark King of all people—out of pure happenstance. It'd be strange if Nao didn't feel the least bit accountable for all the shit luck that had surrounded Rosinante since meeting her.
Caught up in their own thoughts, Nao and Rayleigh lapse into a comfortable silence as they work; time is limited, after all. The most prominent threat to their ability to aid the escapees is the speed of the escapees themselves. If the bodies weren't cleared by the time another wave came, they'd be seen as more of a threat than anything.
There is, however, yet another threat—one that Nao has never even thought of accounting for so early in the timeline. Ace—the unexpected guest in their shitshow.
As the number of bodies diminishes, Rayleigh gives them closer inspection. Finally, he settles onto one of a young girl—the very same one that had first charged at Nao with such vigor. She now lay motionless at the very end of the long line of corpses—so devoid of life that it's almost inconceivable that she was ever alive at all.
"Nao," he starts, calling for the young girl's attention. He already looks apprehensive about what he's about to say. Pointing at the teen's corpse, he speaks. "Remove the uniform the marines gave you, and put on whatever salvageable clothing she has."
Nao wants to puke.
"No," she refuses.
There are many, many things Nao would do for Rayleigh's sake—she does trust him with every bit of her being—but this bullshit isn't one of them.
"Nao," he repeats, his voice stern.
"I'm not wearing a dead girl's tunic."
"I went ahead of the slaves to find an escape route, but they won't take much longer. I won't be able to subdue them and help them slip away if they mistake you for a marine." Rayleigh spares a glance at the knocked out blond. "Find spare clothes for him too, and go down to wherever Garp's grandson is. I'll pass you three off as slaves."
Rayleigh vanishes before she can argue against his instructions, leaving her with no option other than to obey.
Nao makes her way over to where her first victim lay dead, holding in her bile as she practically defiles the corpse. No longer running with adrenaline alone, Nao studies the girl through calmer eyes.
She is—was—pretty. Nao entertains the thought that, had the girl not been born of slave, she might've been a real beauty to marvel at, as opposed to the malnourished frame that took away from a delicate face. Porcelain skin and dull eyes that may have once been capable of making hearts skip beats—so serene in death that it's creepy.
Out of respect, Nao slowly closes the girl's eyelids. It's all she can do for her.
There is no time for Nao to feel something as human as remorse.
She begins to pull the raggedy clothes off of the girl, grimacing as she does so. Despite how rare it is for Nao to feel disturbed, something about the idea of adorning her murder victim's clothes made her shiver. She does it as quickly as she can, peeling off her blood-soaked uniform and throwing on the dirtied tunic in its place. Pushing the thought of who the clothes had once belonged to out of her mind, she randomly grabs more rags from another nearby corpse for Rosinante.
Satisfied with the haul that she never wanted in the first place, Nao begins to head towards the ship's hold. It's a pain in the ass to drag the lanky man back into the ship, but Nao finds herself wishing she had taken longer to do it when she finally achieves the feat.
She has to get rid of Rosinante's uniform.
She doesn't want to do it. (Defiling the dead for her own self interest is one matter; sullying Rosinante's good boy image by forcing him to do so while he's unconscious is a whole other level of wrongness.)
But she also doesn't want the future of the world to be totally fucked because of badly timed abashedness. So, reluctantly, she does as ordered, wincing as she uses her injured hand to unbutton Rosinante's tattered clothes.
Only then does she realize how screwed they would've been had Rayleigh not shown up when he did. Both of them are riddled with cuts and scrapes—it's an actual, god-given miracle that they haven't collapsed yet. At a certain point while she's redressing him, she can no longer discern whether the blood pooling beneath them is hers or his.
"Don't die on me now," she coughs out, spitting out more blood. She doesn't know if she's talking to him or herself.
Using any spare pieces of cloth that she can rip from both of their clothes, she clumsily patches him together, dyeing the strips a deep red with the blood oozing out of her hand. They, she decides, are probably more screwed than they've ever been in their lives, but there's not a second she can spare with looking sullen. Once Rosinante is adequately disguised (a pretty easy thing to accomplish when the two are already smeared with soot and blood), Nao awkwardly places him on her back.
They look as awkward as it gets—the image of a young girl carrying a ridiculously leggy man would've been laughable if they hadn't just finished a slaughter. He's too tall to be completely off the ground, and the dragging of his legs creates an eerie squeak.
Finally, she reaches the end of the stupidly lengthy hallway, coming to the shady entrance into the hull. The door is rusted, indicating that few people enter the room. With the knowledge of what it's being used as—a makeshift bedroom for the world's most despised child—it's not hard to see why it's untouched territory.
It's unbelievable, really, how things could go so awry. All she had done was suggest to Rayleigh that she was skilled enough to wander off on her own; he took it upon himself to ask Garp for the favor, and now the whole damned world is screwed. (With the lives of two irrefutably important characters in her hands, she suddenly feels a lot like someone with Parkinson's disease.)
Creating a noise so atrocious it could make a deaf man's ears bleed, Nao is astounded that she receives no greeting when she opens the metal door. She tentatively takes a step in, then two. As light floods into the dark chamber, she finds herself relaxing at the scene that awaits her.
The young boy lays on a cargo crate, sleeping away the day. He appears to be the epitome of aloofness, however unintentional it may be. He's completely unaware of the world that's falling apart around him. Somehow, in a way that defies all logic, Ace had slept through the Armageddon-esque battle that had happened on the deck.
Now he snores softly, not hearing Nao's loud entrance.
Attempting to find a sufficient hiding place, Nao does her damndest to tiptoe around the cramped space. She isn't ready—both physically and emotionally—to deal with Ace just yet. His state of unconsciousness appears to be a blessing. All Nao has to do is wait for more slaves to arrive, and she'd be in the clear—Ace would never notice her presence.
But Fate has a way of having things go the exact opposite way Nao wants them to, and a soft collision—barely one at all, really—creates the quietest of echos in the hull. She finds herself not at all worried. Thus far, Ace has slept through an explosion, gunfire, and a goddamn massacre. Surely such a tiny sound wouldn't be enough to disturb the kid's sleep.
And then the bubble blowing out of his nostril pops.
He bolts awake, rubbing his eyes as they focus in on the bloodied, battered girl standing before him. Scrunching his face together, he frowns as she freezes in place. (Jesus fuckin' Christ, she hates this damn world.)
"Who're you?"
Woohoo another update! Sooo guys, summer classes start tomorroe for me, and I'm going to be super busy. I will continue to update this fanfic, but the updates would come once a week rather than the five or so days I've been usually doing. Not a change that's too drastic, but I hope you guys can understand. :)
Anyways, did you guys enjoy the chapter? Honestly, I've felt like I've somewhat lost your attention recently. If there's anything at all you want to say about the fanfic, please feel free to do so with a review!
As always, have great day!~