Shaska and Johnson stood at the entrance of the greenhouse that grew the Happy Happy Grass, looking over the crowd of people, upon which a hush had fallen. Schwarz was right next to them, having recovered from slamming his heel into Musetta's Iron Body.

"You… didn't defeat the leader?" Schwarz asked.

"'Thanks for coming to rescue us, Shaska!'" Shaska quipped mockingly before flicking ash off her cigar.

"Well, as you can see, we drove off the officer in charge here without you," Schwarz said.

"Actually, Ruth deserves the lion's share of the credit," Zinnia interjected, scratching her beloved snake's chin.

"What is this place, anyway?" Johnson asked, returning to his human form.

"Wait, aren't you that ostrich Marine?" Schwarz said.

The two groups exchanged info about the nature of the greenhouse and why Johnson was with Worldwide Smoke. Zinnia, Ren, and Puerco joined up with Shaska, Schwarz, and Johnson at the top of the greenhouse.

"Drugs, eh? Gotta say, not too fond of drugs," Shaska said, blowing smoke. The rest of Worldwide Smoke had unimpressed looks on their faces.

"Well, this 'Dear Leader' is probably on his or her way as we speak," she continued, voice curling around the title in disdain. "But, I got a pretty creative way to stick it to 'em."

"What's that s'pposed t'mean?" Ren asked.

"It means 'get these people out of here'," Shaska responded with a sinister smile on her face.

The greenhouse was soon on fire.

—-

As the ship with the greenhouse on it burned, Worldwide Smoke and quite a few of the prisoners stood on the next ship over, a large merchant ship, watching the flames and smoke climb high into the night. The prisoners cheered as one of the symbols of their oppression went up in smoke, eventually dispersing to go back to their families elsewhere in the complex. As this was going on, Mandy and the officers stood on the edge of the Señora Pomodoro, two ships across. The two crews locked eyes over the flames, as the greenhouse ship wasn't nearly as tall as the merchant ship or the Pomodoro. Puerco couldn't help but drool and make googly eyes over Mandy's beauty.

"So, which one of you is Dear Leader?" Shaska asked, arms crossed.

"Nyehehehe, that would be the perfect me," Mandy replied calmly, just loud enough to be heard over the fire. "You got a lot of balls, Shaska the Greedy, destroying Minus World's supply of Happy Happy Grass like that."

"Heh, I see my name precedes me!"

"We get the news here. We just don't share it with the rest of the collective," Mandy said. She closed her eyes and held her arms out with a smile on her face. "In the collective, the only news necessary is the news of my perfection."

"Must always be a slow news day, then," Shaska quipped.

Mandy's expression quickly shifted to a scowl, and she crossed her arms.

"To what does the perfect Mandy owe the pleasure, Shaska?"

"I ain't too pleased with the service around here, so I came to speak to the manager," Shaska said, flicking the ash off her cigar.

"Nyehehehe, oh, I assure you, everything is perfectly run here," Mandy responded. "Everyone is perfectly equal!"

"Equally poor!" Shaska shouted. "Everyone I've seen here has been skin and bones! Do you have any idea how many corpses there are on the outer ships?! You Minus World creeps are nuts! You can't force people to be equal!"

"Everyone is equally worthless before Mandy's perfection!" Phil shouted.

"Thank you, Comrade Phil, but I got it from here," said Mandy. "Minus World shall topple the World Government, and when Comrade von Esens sits on the world throne, the perfect Mandy shall strike him down and everyone will worship her!"

"God, your voice is annoying," said Shaska.

"Nyehehe... Looks like the time for pleasantries is over. Comrade Musetta, show her what we do to malcontents," Mandy ordered.

Musetta was hanging onto Phil for support, with her leg quickly becoming even more severely wounded by Ruth's poison. She coughed up blood and choked out "y-yes… Dear Leader M-Mandy…"

She held out her hand, and chains shot out at Shaska. Shaska, for her part, simply caught the chains and pulled. Musetta was too weak to resist this time, and came flying to the other ship, smacking her face on the hull. Shaska pulled her up and then shot a glance at Mandy that said "really?" without any words necessary.

"Hm, we should get her to the hospital when this is done," Mandy said. "Nyehehehe, I'll simply die if I don't get her to do that thing with her chains again…"

"Do I even want to know what you mean?" Shaska asked, blowing smoke.

Mandy began to explain, but she was cut off by Gattamelata hobbling past, screaming about the end times.

"DOOOOOOOM! DEATH COMES! THE STORM IS COMING!"

"Oh, for the love of me, someone shut that guy up!" she shouted.

As Gattamelata ran past, Phil picked him up high off the ground by the back of his collar; he continued to struggle and scream bloody murder.

"You pull this shit every now and again and the perfect me is sick of it. It was funny at first but now isn't the time, old man!" Mandy growled.

"But this time it's really happening! The STOOOOOOORM!" Gattamelata tried to explain. "Death as a bone white haze!"

"Comrade Phil, dispose of this malcontent," Mandy ordered.

"At once, Dear Perfect Leader!" Phil exclaimed.

"Good lord, he's the prettiest fishman I've ever seen," Shaska thought, blushing.

Phil casually tossed Gattamelata into the flames of the burning greenhouse, but Schwarz spawned a hole, teleporting the old man to Schwarz's arms.

"Hey, man, I'm not a fan of the lower classes as much as the next guy, but you shouldn't just kill them willy-nilly!" Schwarz exclaimed.

"Thank you, kindly, sonny," Gattamelata said, breathing a sigh of relief. Schwarz then dropped him.

Gattamelata got up, dusted himself off, then promptly resumed his rambling about the end of days. "DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! We must unlink the ships and head for the Sabaody Archipelago!"

It was then that a bone white haze began rolling in over the Mercury Collective.

"That could mean anything!" Mandy said, an unimpressed look on her face. "Comrade Setzer! Go find their ship and kill any of their other members! Six people hardly seems sufficient to sail the Grand Line!"

"At once, Dear Leader!" Setzer responded, before seemingly teleporting off with a Shave technique.

"Ah, crap," said Shaska.

—-

As the white haze rolled over the Mercury Collective, families and friends were reunited after years of being trapped in the forced labor facilities. Many didn't even notice the haze at first.

"Do… Do you think we'll actually be freed from Dear Leader's control?" Freddie's mother asked him.

"I don't know… that big lady seemed pretty strong. Or, she talked a big game at least…" Freddie said.

Delilah was reunited with her husband, Deacon. As they embraced, a freezing drizzle began to pour on them.

"I don't understand…" Delilah said. "There hasn't been a freezing rain here in years. Not that Dear Leader lets us know what day or month it is."

"The storm is coming! The big one!" Gattamelata cried as he hobbled past. "We must unlink the ships and head for the Sabaody Archipelago!"

"Quiet, you old fool!" shouted another old man. "We're about to be freed from our oppression and all you can talk about is the same nonsense you always talk about!"

The rain and wind picked up, and the temperature steadily dropped. The waves around the ships started to become choppy. The haze became more intense.

"What even IS the Sabaody Archipelago anyway?" asked a middle-aged woman.

"It's the location that came to me in my dreams! It's the last stop before Fishman Island in the Grand Line!" Gattamelata explained. "Every night since Dear Leader showed up… I see the same dreams of a great winter storm preceded by a white haze. We must sail to a new land!"

Hail began to fall, with a stone hitting the second old man in the head.

"Let's say I believe you…" said the second old man. "How do we even get to this archipelago?!"

"Surely the navigation equipment on the ships should suffice!" said Gattamelata. "Please, we'll all die if we don't raise the anchors now!"

"But we haven't raised the anchors in decades!" said another man. "What if we don't remember how to sail?"

"I miss President Farrokh…" said an older woman. "He would have known what to do…"

"I'm telling you what to do!" shouted Gattamelata. "We have to raise the anchors and sail to the new land!"

"But wouldn't it make more sense to just ride this storm out?" asked a young woman. "Surely, we'll be safer if we stick together."

"In my visions, the storm lasts for months and freezes the entire ocean around us. We can't fish, we can't even leave our cabins and head to the decks for the food bank because it's so cold. We have to leave before the temperature drops any further!"

"Well, I'm not buying it!" said Freddie's father, shivering. "There's no such thing as powers of prophecy! The storm that's rolling over now is just a coincidence!"

"Dad, I say we trust him…" said Freddie. "All I've known is this Collective… I want to see something else."

"He's cried wolf since before you were born, Freddie! How can we be so sure he's righ-OW!" Freddie's father tried to say before being interrupted by a hailstone. "We're not fighters! We can't survive in the Grand Line unless we stay as a whole! What if we run into pirates?!"

"Then we should put our trust in the new comrades who showed up not too long ago…" said Delilah. "I saw it myself. The big woman in the fancy suit… she was strong enough to resist being disappeared. She and her comrades might just be strong enough to defeat Dear… no… defeat Mandy."

The hail and freezing rain continued to fall, and the haze became thicker.

"Dad, I don't care what you think, I'm gonna raise the anchors and try to get out of here!" Freddie said. "I think the old man is right."

"It's suicide, Freddie! We were just reunited and you want to throw your life away by listening to an insane old man?!"

"We can't just sit here and do nothing!" Freddie shouted at his father. "This might be our only opportunity for our society to escape from Dear Leader and start anew somewhere else! While the big lady in the fancy clothes distracts her!"

Freddie's father was stunned.

"Please, dad… the least we could do is try to escape this hell…"

Freddie's father nodded, as did numerous other citizens. As the temperature continued to fall, the starving citizens scrambled to every ship they could and began raising the anchors and removing the planks that connected the ships. The Minus World guards that were stationed throughout the collective quickly found themselves overwhelmed by the sheer numbers no longer afraid of reprisal from Dear Leader.

The fireflies slowly started dying off due to the freezing weather.

—

Finished with her workout, Roxanne went up to the deck to head to the galley for a post-workout snack (and to refill her flask). Lulupo followed close behind. The temperature had fallen by over forty degrees Fahrenheit, which made her reflexively grab her arms the second she opened the door to the deck.

"H-Holy crap! W-W-When did it g-g-get so c-c-c-cold out here?!" she said.

"What's wrong, dar-" Lulupo asked before he, too, reflexively grabbed his arms and started to shiver. "I s-suppose this is a-another one of th-th-those random G-Grand Line st-st-st-storms…"

It was then that Roxanne felt something brush against her leg. She looked down and saw a large, gray house cat rubbing against her and purring.

"H-hey, L-L-Lulup-p-po… When d-did w-w-w-we get a c-cat…?" she asked, understandably confused.

Lulupo grew out all his body hair to keep himself warm. "I don't know, darling, but we should head back inside." He squatted down to pet the cat, who purred even louder. "And I guess we should bring this cat inside too until the storm blows over and we can find its owner."

He picked up the cat and scratched its head; neither of them noticed the cat somehow develop a crooked smile on its face.

—-

As Shaska stood on the deck of the merchant ship and cracked her knuckles, the rest of the ships attached to the Collective began moving. The rest of Worldwide Smoke prepared for combat: Ruth uncoiled from around Zinnia and assumed her bo staff form, Johnson assumed his half-ostrich form, Ren pulled out some grenades, Schwarz also cracked his knuckles, and Puerco… Puerco looked around for a place to hide.

"Let's get started, shall we?" Shaska asked.

"Nyehehehe…" Mandy began, crossing her arms. "You're seriously challenging Minus World, huh? You're challenging me? Perfection itself?"

"You're damn right," Shaska said. She grabbed Musetta and held her up. "And I got a hostage, too."

"Nyehehe… Much as I love that thing she does with her chains, Comrade Musetta is more than willing to die for me."

"She's… right…" Musetta choked out.

"I don't know if you heard me the first time, but I'm perfect in every conceivable way," said Mandy. "I can sense your power, Shaska. I'm stronger than you and hotter than you! I ate the Ogre Ogre Fruit, a Mythical Zoan type. Do you know how rare that is? Extremely rare, befitting perfection like me."

Shaska tossed Musetta behind her (she landed with a weak "ow") and with a smile said "you may be stronger than me… but you're certainly not smarter than me if you just told me your weakness like that."

Mandy was not amused by this, but Shaska blew smoke and continued. "So, here's what's going to happen: I'm going to beat you to a pulp until you tell me where your boss is, 'Dear Leader'. Balthasar von Esens and his creepy sister are worth a lot of berries and-"

Mandy grabbed the ship with the greenhouse on it, lifted it above her head, and jumped high. Phil dove into the water, and Eclair stayed where she was.

"Enough talk, Shaska! I'm gonna crush you and your crew into perfect pancakes!"

TO BE CONTINUED