Chapter 14 - Change
Words: ~8600
Updated: 01/2018
Published: 01/2017
AN: Sorry for the delay on this so here's a long one. On a related note, if the words Intel, Spectre, and Meltdown mean anything to you then you know what my life has been at work for the last month. :)
~o0o~
The crew was back on the Grand Line from Skypiea.
Her bond with Ace was empty static.
Sea queens were specific and finicky about optional pit. An epsilon did not carry the full connection she shared with her core pit but meant giving all the same protection.
Riyo knew she could pass and receive emotion thanks to Ace—guesswork and stubbornness on her part—but it wasn't anything close to the clarity with the others. Riyo did not get constant feedback, only strong emotion or near-death injury.
Riyo was afraid the hothead was too stubborn to recognize when he needed help.
The waves whispered change.
~o0o~
Riyo was splitting. Bits and pieces of the mask floated away.
She had been slipping since before somnum—long before Luffy found her.
Her choice to claim Ace and Robin as epsilon proved the cracks, even if only she knew it.
Now they were face to face with an admiral and his devil fruit and the truth of the slipping was a bitter pill to swallow.
Admiral Kuzan, better known as Aokiji, had tracked down the crew under the guise of monitoring Robin. Staring at the admiral, Riyo's every instinct was screaming it was too much and too soon. They were all too weak.
Riyo was more than weak; she was a fool if she fought a man made of ice after neglecting herself to the point of somnum. Somnum was as demanding as the healing required. Riyo had done nothing to promote her recovery afterward.
Riyo was honest with herself; she knew the lapse was intentional. She took respite in the dream of adventure and freedom with the rookies. Luffy had the gravity of the sun; he pulled them all into his orbit and made it easy to forget the world every time he burned away the darkness.
Riyo was facing her lack of action as she stared down the lazy-eyed admiral. She couldn't avoid the truth when she wanted to—
{KILL; raze-eviscerate-exterminate—}
RAGE; hate-scream-destroy—
[DECOY; distract-hide-mislead—]
the threat before it could touch her pit, and—
She couldn't.
Her mind was being pulled between all the voices inside and she couldn't do a damned thing.
She wasn't strong enough, not without collateral damage to the crew and ship. Tied by Alpha's promise, a fight would end in her own death and the death of the crew if Aokiji went all out.
Her aura or haki could reveal her as a sea queen. It would break her promise and send more marines crashing down on their head—a delayed death sentence for the crew.
Her rational brain knew they were out of options. Ryuko and the Other disagreed.
Riyo was holding onto her promise to Luffy like it was the air she breathed. Every inhale—the affirmation of her words to her Alpha. Every exhale—another moment the weight of the words held against the instincts.
Riyo was so focused on not losing herself outside she didn't realize she had curled into her own mind. She watched the crew interact with Aokiji with a distant sort of horror.
She wasn't in control.
The Straw Hats had no idea. Aokiji was the ideal choice of the three with his lazy justice but that did not make him any less of a danger. He was a navy admiral for a reason.
Riyo gathered all her pit bonds into herself. As if shielding the tether points of the bonds in her mind could stop the admiral from attacking.
It was a backward attempt to protect her pit when she couldn't risk the outright assault all three of them wanted.
With her mental focus on the bonds and all her instincts on overdrive, Riyo left her body open for Ryuko and the Other.
The two personalities did not fight as they surfaced. Not like Riyo had come to expect. There was a wordless truce as the threat took priority over the usual disdain.
Riyo was a co-pilot; she made the decisions but was open to the suggestions and influences of Ryuko and the Other.
A few minutes passed. The atmosphere shifted. Aokiji was no longer humoring the crew. Only Luffy, Zoro, and Robin seemed to notice any change.
The Other and Ryuko surged up and synced with Riyo. It was the first moment of true cooperation between them she could remember since the Break.
Riyo turned her eyes from the bonds to the physical world and froze. A small stutter of breath was the only outward sign of her shock.
The world was ablaze with auras.
The land, plants, people, and sea all around them were a riot of not-color, like a living haze of heat in the air. Invisible but there. The haze darted and flashed like a school of fish across the horizon.
Riyo hadn't seen auras since the Before. She could manipulate her own aura as a weapon or tool. It was one of the first things a hatchling knew. But visualizing auras was a skill earned with age.
It was a mark of distinction for sea queens. It was a rite of passage and a point of pride Riyo had lost when she fell apart. Auras were a part of the sea queen she had locked behind the wall with the Other for the last two decades.
Riyo should never have seen them again.
A garbled sound, something between a laugh and sob, escaped past the knot in her throat. Riyo choked down anything further. Later. She would think about what this meant later.
She focused on the haze surrounding the admiral. Apathy, neutrality. Aokiji was cold as the ice he commanded.
Riyo knew what happened at Ohara. It was one of the last reports she took from the marine spy network she kept in the New World. Ohara was an island genocide buster call with a single survivor: Nico 'Devil Child' Robin.
Ohara had occurred a couple short years after the Break. Riyo didn't remember much from that time, but she did remember the rage at such a loss of life. She remembered the thought of the hatchlings on the island (Robin, alone and weak) who had done nothing to deserve the sentence. All for the poneglyphs the World Government hid out of arrogance and fear.
Riyo knew Robin's past with Aokiji. Riyo knew facts meant little in the reality of surviving such a life-defining event. The emotional scars were stronger than any curt fact or report.
Seeing them together, Riyo knew Robin feared Aokiji. Air sucking, nausea-inducing, mind stopping terror. The reaction seemed to be a Pavlovian response to Aokiji's presence. It was as real to Robin as a punch to the gut. Aokiji was the embodiment of Robin's personal boogeyman, but not the true source of the terror.
Riyo pushed deeper into Robin's bond. She should feel ashamed to be using the bond this way. She was, a little, but Ryuko and the Other had no qualms using any facet of the bonds. A threat, internal or external, would always take precedence over human personal boundaries. In the end, Ryuko and the Other were Riyo, and they all needed to know what to kill to make Robin feel safe again.
They pushed deeper and deeper into the bond with her epsilon. Deeper than an epsilon bond should go, but what should or should not be possible was a footnote for later. Riyo pushed past Robin's fear and dawning despair, past the rushing torrent of childhood traumas, through the backstabbing and betrayals, and into—
There.
The instant fury froze them. Riyo, the Other, and Ryuko snarled at the truth in Robin's core.
Robin feared living. She feared her every moment of happiness razed to nothing but screams, bodies, and ash. Nico Robin feared laughing and loving and seeing it all ripped away. She never wanted to see herself become a burden to those she cared for.
Ryuko's first response was to mourn. A keening cry for an epsilon conditioned by disloyalty and loss.
The beast knew how they hated living every day before old Alpha found them. They hated every day for over twenty years after old Alpha left and until new Alpha arrived.
Riyo felt the cry like a blow. She curled their body against the pain. The heartbreak of the beast's call was a physical ache echoing through her chest. It bounced and grew until Riyo did not know how anyone could miss it.
"Riyo, what's wrong?"
Chopper's voice was distant, cottoned and muted while Riyo pulled in and out of focus between the world, Ryuko, and the Other.
The Other rose, took the pain of the sound and turned it to hate; it tore through the human's body fueled by furor and fury. The Other bellowed and snarled and its outrage burned up its throat in a bugle of revenge—
Human vocal chords contorted against her will. Riyo coughed out a painful snarl-grunt-growl, the sound a too-large lump choking up and out of her throat.
There were small hooves against her thigh. They pressed comfort into the pain and tension.
Confusion and concern all tinged with fear bled over the pit bonds into her mind.
The Other fought.
{It would show the ice-human-threat epsilon was not alone. It would not betray epsilon. It would not abandon epsilon. Epsilon was its and it would not let epsilon go—}
"Riyo. Riyo, you need to breathe."
Theta's voice, tangerines and paper and the sea breeze filling her nose while warm arms wrapped her safe—
Ryuko mourned for their epsilon and the Other wanted to rip out Aokiji's throat for making Robin face the memories.
Aokiji. Aokiji was a marine, a soldier. Soldiers followed orders from the World Government.
Riyo would eradicate the World Government.
Riyo would rip the World Government apart island by island. She would light it all on fire. She would watch it burn and toast marshmallows over the smoldering corpses for epsilon to savor.
In a rush of protective rage, fed by the grief, hate, and revenge of all three personalities in tandem, the bond to Robin pulsed and thickened.
Strands curled out like the seeking, fingerling tendrils of a climbing plant. The strands formed knots and braids and interlocking patterns as the bond drew Robin's essence closer.
Robin flinched away, glancing at Riyo with too-wide eyes before taking a step back.
"Riyo?"
Alpha. Alpha knew. Alpha could feel what they did.
Epsilon would live. She could not leave. They would not let her go.
Riyo snarled at Robin, the sound edged in Ryuko's growl. They were too far gone to care what it sounded like or that Aokiji was watching them.
Riyo-Other-Ryuko pulled. The bond pulsed with a flow of love-home-safe-ours-trust-protect-mine. It was the first time they allowed Robin to feel the emotion. The shock of it left the woman reeling.
They pushed and pushed and the final strands of the bond snapped into place. Riyo felt the new connection solidify at the core of her mind where she hoarded her pit bonds.
Robin was theirs. Forever. As deep and intrinsic to them as her true pit.
Riyo blinked. Ryuko purred.
She let out a long breath and took true control for the first time since they saw Aokiji.
Riyo tilted her head to stare at Luffy's swimming face next to her. Nami was holding her up.
"She's mine, now," Riyo muttered. She was drunk on the new connection. "Its. Theirs. All ours."
The entire crew was within a few feet of Riyo and Nami. Only Robin stood on the outskirts next to them but still back from the admiral.
Luffy seemed to understand immediately going by his smile. Everyone else had a furled frown.
Heh, that rhymed. No, allitere-alloter-
Words.
Riyo felt Aokiji staring at the group from some feet away. She glanced over through Nami's hair.
He had an unreadable expression. His aura was muted and muddled with confusion and impatience and a hair too much of someone considering a puzzle.
Luffy clapped a hand on her shoulder hard enough to draw her attention back to her crew.
"Good." Luffy grinned brighter. "She needed that."
Yes, Robin did. And why couldn't Riyo claim Robin as her pit? Riyo had twisted every other aspect of the bonds. Turning an epsilon bond into a core part of her survival was the least of the sins on her list as a defective sea queen.
"Um, can you explain what just happened?" Chopper piped up.
Riyo dropped a hand on his hat and patted him. He lurched sideways with a startled sound before catching his footing.
Maybe she was still having issues after the new bond.
"S'good thing, fuzzy. Fuzzy cuddle, nice curl heater."
Someone snickered.
"All right." Nami hauled her up straight. "Riyo needs to sober up from whatever the heck she did. Give her some space, people."
Alphas were the embodiment of strength and Will. Betas were the physical shield; Thetas were the emotional. Omegas healed and nurtured the pit. An epsilon was a companion, unnecessary for a sound mind or survival but wanted nonetheless.
Riyo would always want Robin. Perseveringly fragile as a coral reef. Ephemerally dangerous as the most venomous jellyfish. Robin was a kindred spirit in as many ways as the others of her pit.
Riyo was in pieces. Perhaps she needed more than four to suit all the new bits and bobbles inside.
One day Riyo would be able to speak of all the ways they matched. All the small moments and characterizations that led a sea queen to choose her pit.
Not today. Today Riyo's mind was full of tripwires, garrotes, and mines.
Riyo had been clinging to the new bond with Robin like a child with a favored toy. Riyo met Robin's eyes. The woman's gaze was glassy and lost.
The Other's rage, banked in the glow of the new bond, roared into an inferno.
Robin, surrounded by friends who would die for her, and she couldn't pull herself from the past. Isolation was her reality until she met the Straw Hat pirates. Riyo knew how much it hurt.
At the same time, Robin would sooner see herself die than put the crew in danger. Because Robin cared, as much as she had tried to avoid it while sailing with them. Nico Robin cared for the Straw Hat pirates, and Robin would leave them before she saw that care twisted against them and abused. Robin would leave before her care destroyed them.
Riyo pulled herself from Nami's arms, ready to drag Robin into the group much as she had the bond.
Riyo made it a single step towards her.
"Pardon me. I do hate to intrude," Aokiji drawled, "but I'm only here to check on Nico Robin's whereabouts."
Riyo's focus snapped to the admiral.
Poor timing for him. Riyo was in the mood to gouge out Aokiji's eyes and make him eat them like bloody grapes. Then she'd ask how his search was going.
They could cut out his tongue depending on the answer.
[Dangerous.]
{Watch. Wait.}
Riyo wanted to growl at the reminder. Aokiji was the one admiral who could kill her. One of the few still living today who had a chance, anyway. She could count them on one hand.
Riyo had heard the stories of Aokiji's devastating strength. She knew of his ability to freeze the sea that despised him with his power. Standing in his presence she could feel the casual confidence. No one was so calm alone on the Grand Line unless they had earned it.
At her age, cold was the most prominent danger for her. Had she been at full strength, even before the Break, the cold was a threat. Sea queens were born of fire in the deepest trenches on the sea floor. They hardened like a diamond in the volcanic vents and buckled crust. They grew stronger under the weight of the water. Darkness, heat, and poison was their life long before they ever saw the surface.
Give the cold sentience with the weight of an admiral and there were going to be problems when they crossed paths.
Her crew was worse. No haki, no experience, and no concept of the world's dark corners and cruel twists. The Straw Hat's were laughable in New World terms.
Their luck was beyond comprehension. Their stubborn determination and unwavering focus got them a nod.
A nod wouldn't keep them alive.
"Are you really an admiral?"
Riyo whipped her head back to stare at Luffy. She was going to get whiplash from this. She knew it.
"You fell asleep standing up while we were talking. You've been lazy and boring. You've upset Riyo and Robin. Go away before I kick your ass."
Riyo stood there. Blinked.
There was a puff of disbelief from Ryuko followed by a rumble of dark amusement from the Other. Riyo wanted to facepalm.
Seas dammit, Luffy.
"You do not insult Admirals, Luffy."
She glanced up. Everyone was staring at her.
"Oops."
Luffy's scowl didn't move. "I do when he's being a jerk."
She facepalmed.
These wonderful idiots really would be the death of her.
Riyo watched the shift in Aokiji's aura between her fingers. It was a subtle change to a barely discernible hardness in the haze.
"Oh, my." Aokiji frowned at Luffy. "It's rude to judge someone by appearance alone."
Riyo bristled as Aokiji focused on her captain. She wanted to say the same to the admiral.
Luffy didn't catch the threat in the words. Or he did and didn't care. It was Luffy; he had yet to meet a threat he couldn't beat into submission.
Her scales shifted under her purple sun dress. They displayed slow warning bands of deep red, orange, and yellow in a cascade down her torso, hidden by the dark fabric. She could feel the micro shift of muscle and nerves in each wave.
Luffy stuck his tongue out at the admiral.
"I don't like you. Go away."
Riyo finally took notice of her captain's aura.
Riyo fingers spasmed around air. She wanted flesh and bone between her claws. Or her captain's throat.
Luffy was the stupidest, smartest person she knew. She realized in that moment Luffy was very aware of what he was courting taunting the admiral.
He was doing it for the crew. He was going to tank a fight with an admiral to give the rest of them a chance.
The hardness in Aokiji aura thickened, the haze becoming a light fog of warning.
Riyo laughed. It was a rough, bitter chuckle.
"We're so screwed," she muttered too quiet for anyone else to hear.
Aokiji watched her, but after a few seconds the chuckle tapered off. His aura had not lessened at all due to that lapse of decorum.
"The government is still taking you lightly, Straw Hat Luffy. If we leave you to grow you'll be a problem later. Especially with Nico Robin. She'll only use you as she has all the others. She's the only one who walks away from the organizations that take her in. The rest die. Then again, the problem would resolve itself….Hmmm, but I should take care of you before it becomes a bother."
Riyo felt the emotion a second before the attack.
It was too late. Like a cornered animal her epsilon went on the defensive.
It was futile. The admiral was far beyond the crew's skill set. Worse, Riyo knew how hard it was to fight back when you had nothing to live for but misery and memories.
Aokiji's aura pulsed as he fell to ice out of the clutch, reforming whole and healthy from the pile.
Riyo's fingers curled, her fists clenched, and she let out the low growl trickling up. Riyo could feel their eyesight sharpening, the tight cuff of control slipping.
The auras snapped into focus, the layers discernible. Riyo knew her eyes would be a slit pupil surrounded by mottled acid greens. Reptilian. Not human.
[Epsilon. Help epsilon. Protect. Hide.]
{Weak. Stupid human. Stupid beast. Can't protect,} the Other hissed.
The Other shoved at Riyo and Ryuko for control, snarling with ineffectual fury. They had lost more than their hope in those years wandering. Even with somnum, their muscle tone was gone, their skills were rusty, and their senses were dull.
Riyo was complacent; they had lost their New World edge.
She was formidable by birthright and nature. It was no excuse for her willful lapse in training. She had a pit to protect again. She had a purpose and a duty to her new captain and his crew.
It was time she accepted her responsibility. Age did not mean maturity, but it was a hell of an excuse to use at 358.
It was time to stop running.
I am weak. We can't beat him and protect the pit.
{Human is a fool. Selfish.}
I am, she agreed. She failed her pit. We need to rebuild what we lost. We will train. Grow as strong as before. Stronger.
{Like newborn hatchling. Useless. Pathetic.}
The Other snapped and paced and pushed in her mind. A caged predator. It aimed memories of when they were a hatchling too weak to fight like blades.
Riyo snarled at the Other. She stumbled in their body as she lost control for a moment. A rumble of warning vibrated the air around her from the Other.
Nami noticed. Of course, Theta noticed. Theta would always notice the pain.
"Riyo?"
Theta reached a hand out to them.
Riyo stared at it. Riyo wasn't alone. Not anymore. She wasn't a hatchling, too weak to fight her enemies head on. She wasn't useless. She had a purpose.
She could fight.
[Stop. Stopstopstop. Protect,] Ryuko begged as Riyo and the Other turned memories and words and pain on each other.
The Other shoved forward until it was Ryuko who had to grab their head against the pain. It was Ryuko in control as Riyo and the Other traded blows. It felt like the Other was trying to rip through their skull, far worse than what had happened at Mocktown.
Ryuko snarled out loud, twisting their neck to snap at the Other when it came too close. The Other lunged at them and then there was a full-blown, three-way civil war over the body and mind.
Over three and a half centuries of the good, the bad, and the worst ripped open. Memories were ammunition; barbed arrows and countered defenses between Ryuko and the Other. Riyo threw up her own shields, thrown down and caught in the crossfire between her personalities. She threw her mental punches where she could.
The Other no longer had the wall. The uncontained instincts made Ryuko more prominent.
The two parts jostled Riyo's mind in their battle for dominance. It didn't take long before Riyo was overwhelmed. The Other and Ryuko ripped into each other like rabid dogs, truce long gone.
"Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop..." she muttered over and over and over. The desperate sound of her own voice startled her. She didn't realize she had taken control of her body again.
She crouched down, hands over her ears as she hummed over the sounds of the fight. She dug fingers into her hair hoping the bite of pain would help ground her. She tried to shake the memories away.
Riyo felt Nami place a gentle hand on her shoulder. She leaned into the touch, shoving her face into her Theta's shoulder. She felt a small ball of warmth and hooves press into her back.
If the Other took over it would only stop when Aokiji was dead. Or it was dead—she was dead. Whatever came first. The crew would be collateral damage when it was all done.
If Ryuko took over it would break their promise to Luffy. It would reveal itself as a sea queen and trade itself rather than fight Aokiji to the death.
Riyo knew Luffy wouldn't let them go. It was only a delayed sentence for the crew.
Robin, Luffy, her pit—they had to know they could not win this battle. Rubber turned brittle in the cold. Panicked rabbits screamed as they died. They would all shatter under the weight of the ice.
Riyo nudged Chopper and stood back from Nami. She closed her eyes against the fear and confusion on her Theta's face. She closed out Chopper's frightened voice.
Standing alone Riyo could feel the invisible chains of her promise to her Alpha. She could feel the weight dragging against her.
It was a limit chosen for the good of her family. It was a prison tolerated for them.
Riyo knew the day the chains broke, the day her Alpha opened the door, she would be facing the death of one or more of her pit.
Seeing the potential of that choice today, she wasn't sure what was worse: the cage of words or the loss of control.
The crew knew she was a sea queen. They knew the stories. They had a taste of the Other the day it attacked Vivi. But they hadn't seen her at her full size. They hadn't seen her at the apex of a hunt when she channeled the dark places the other hid.
They hadn't seen her when she was a monster.
Riyo jolted back to reality at the touch of haki brushing over her. Her eyes landed unerringly on Aokiji. The admiral was scanning them all, blanketing the battlefield in his aura.
Riyo hated the feel of someone else's haki and aura in her space when she was this keyed up. It was like a cat having its fur rubbed backward.
Aokiji seemed unsettled by her complete lack of presence; he kept sweeping over her. The void was more telling than a weak signature but she couldn't pretend for his sake. It was nothing or everything if she let her control go an inch right now.
Aokiji turned to face her. His haki focused on her. Riyo was running out of choices.
The crew destroyed every one of the few sensible options she had left.
The selfless idiots rushed at Aokiji in defense of Robin and herself. The older woman stood there as lost and docile as a lamb going to slaughter after her clutch failed.
Riyo tried to warn Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro. She began to shout, but the Other buckled down for control as it threw Ryuko aside in her mind. The warning turned into a pained hiss. Nami hadn't moved. The navigator's arms reached out to wrap around Riyo's shoulders.
Aokiji froze Sanji's leg. Zoro's arm. Luffy's fist.
Riyo lost track of the farce of a fight as the pain rushed across the bonds.
Riyo expected feedback. She didn't expect to feel like she was mule kicked by an iceberg.
Blinded by the feedback, Riyo did not see Aokiji turn.
The jitter of alarm from her instincts was enough to shove Nami out of danger.
The ice surged up her body in a wave of debilitating agony. It was a cold so pure it burned its path up her skin and scales. It crested into prickling misery at her hips.
Aokiji had struck the ground with a fist. He punched a run of ice across the earth, up from her bare feet, to encase her entire lower half.
There was a stalled moment before the pain registered. Then she understood why the monster trio had screamed with a part of a limb frozen.
Her cry was high and piercing, an octave outside human hearing that startled all the animal life around them into silence.
Pain fed into the war inside her head. The weaponized past flayed her mind. The constricting hold of the promise pressurized in her skull.
Of all the admirals, they fucking got the one with ice.
"You aren't like the others," Aokiji's words were clear in the sudden emptiness of her mind. The eerie stillness of the land. "You always have to be cautious."
That was it.
Aokiji turned away.
"You have good friends here, Nico Robin. But it will always be the same."
The admiral ignored Riyo. He discarded her as a threat to dare talk to her epsilon.
Aokiji's aura pulsed with a murky darkness. Lethal.
Riyo forced herself to watch as Aokiji froze her Epsilon solid. She felt distant. Fuzzy. Was this what shock felt like?
Aokiji iced Robin over in a mockery of a comforting embrace.
The feedback from the fresh bond layered over her own body's nerves until her breath felt like jagged shards of glass down her throat. Every inhale brittle.
Riyo screamed, hoarse and human.
She screamed because she could. Because it took everything she was not to let her aura bleed out across the island and pin every sentient creature down in terror. It took everything to tell herself not to give the Other control and watch the blood rain.
Her limbs were blocks of nerveless ice attached to her torso, but she was no stranger to pain. Riyo did not—would not—give in to the Other. She would not stop fighting.
Claws slid out. Dainty ebony at her fingertips, strong enough to tear through sea stone.
She scrabbled against her scales, ripping the ice off in chunks, gouging herself and tearing through her dress. She turned the ankle length into midthigh. She left the tattered ends to the ice as she ripped herself forward out of the cold cage.
On her knees, she clutched the fabric at her chest. Her primary heart thudded against the drop in temperature.
Somehow her scales had repelled the ice around her legs, making it a shell rather than a part of her limbs. The cold still numbed her senses and sent her temperature plummeting, but she had legs.
Good. She could use them to kill Ao—
No. No, can't do that. Too dangerous for the pit.
"Oh, my. I had no idea someone so strong was on the crew," Aokiji deadpanned. "That is a rare devil fruit. I've never seen anything quite like it before. A mythical zoan, perhaps? I apologize, but I'll have to report this news to headquarters. We don't come across your kind very often."
Devil fruit? Riyo would never...oh.
She remembered claws and scales against the ice. She remembered the smooth slide of shifting bone and muscle, but not the same. A parody of her hybrid form, smaller, too long limbs and too many joints. She was not human or sea queen. She was something hidden in plain sight to shatter the shell and remove the hated ice.
Luffy's incandescent anger for the admiral was rippling across the bond. Luffy who wormed his way into her mind and heart, his presence as necessary as heat and the sea. The force of Luffy's Will behind the wave of emotion matched her own fury.
She stilled. The Other stopped fighting.
She explored the Alpha bond again. Yes. She should have expected something like this. It was complex enough they could share the emotions. Somehow Luffy was feeding off Riyo's rage, and her the same with his. They were amplifying the raw emotion from them both.
She set one foot on the ground. She would stand. Ignore the pain. She would put herself between Aokiji and her epsilon.
But the Other was regrouping and Ryuko lay crushed under the memories. The beast's mind had broken beneath the weight, cracked from the strain of the struggle.
[Our kind,] the beast cackled, high pitched and unhinged in the back of her mind. Riyo ushered it into its room. She shut the door on the choked laughter like an unruly toddler. The door would stay shut until it came back to itself. Only Riyo and the Other remained.
The Other was fighting back again. Riyo could not lose control. She wouldn't.
Riyo dug clawed fingers into frozen ground. She let the cold burn against her skin.
The beast had a point. Our kind. What kind? What was Riyo anymore?
"May I ask what is so funny?" Aokiji raised one eyebrow.
"Did you hear the laughing too?" she asked without thinking.
The admiral frowned at her.
"You were laughing. Quite madly, I must say."
"Yes," Riyo grinned. "We do that, sometimes."
The admiral was too close to Robin. Too close to her pit.
Aokiji living was too close.
"It was poor word choice for you, really." She laughed again—
{Slipping. Human sliding away. Broken beast, human weak. It will rise.}
—when she saw Aokiji's aura stir with a fog of unease.
No, not slipping. Couldn't slip when there was nothing to lose slitting Aokiji's throat to watch the snow come out.
"Watch the red flakes fall," she sung. "Stick them in your craw. Catch them on your tongue. Come on, it's all in fun!"
"Riyo?" Nami's soft voice interrupted the song. Theta braved Aokiji's presence to creep closer.
Nami should be nervous.
Riyo was falling off the edge.
She knew this was coming the moment she accepted Luffy as her Alpha. The day she decided to live rather than fade from the world completely.
Timing could have been better, but this was necessary. She had to fall to learn to walk again. They had to become new. They had to learn to be what their pit needed.
She could feel Nami's hand hovering over her shoulder, unsure if touch was welcome. Riyo leaned back to push into Theta's legs. She tried to take what calming comfort she could in the warmth of Theta's skin.
The cold was a clouding, suffocating haze as her mind floated away.
She had Aokiji's full attention. He had about half of hers.
His face did not change but she did not need his body to see the muddled aura. She knew how thrown he was. His gut said threat while she hid in a void of any haki signature.
Riyo hadn't attacked him. Yet. Aokiji could make his report, make it clear she was a danger.
Riyo stood as a shield for her pit. She followed her Alpha. She kept watch at his side. She was the bulwark at his back.
She had done nothing for a bounty—unless Aokiji was the vindictive type. She doubted it. His lazy justice would avoid the paperwork. Aokiji could wonder and report but she would stay hidden in Alpha's shadow, the dagger at his side.
"Give Robin back."
Thinking of Alpha and there he went.
Riyo stood, testing muscles as they groaned against the stiff cold. She shifted on her feet, settled against Theta when the navigator steadied the world with a touch.
Warm.
Riyo didn't expect the lunge of the Other. Her hand clenched in her dress. Fabric shredded. She had forgotten the predator in her mind—
{It jerked, snapped, and sped past human. Its voice rumbled from its chest, "Run, ice man. Pray to hide," it snarled.
It struggled to rise further, rip control from human and—}
Riyo pulled the Other back. She pantomimed her hand clawing at the air before her, catching the Other's head in her mind to retract it back inside. The Other came to heel but it was too late.
Aokiji watched.
"No need to worry. She's still alive."
If epsilon had been dead Aokiji wouldn't have a tongue for speaking. Riyo would have ripped his head from his shoulders, logia or not.
Aokiji's aura hardened, darkened, thickened.
The Other pushed.
Riyo's heart lurched. The Other reared up. Fins, scales, and spikes mantled in a full threat display in her mind.
Death.
"...stay alive if you defrost her, but she's fragile. And she'll—"
Riyo did not lose control.
She gave it to the Other.
~o0o~
It burst into movement as ice man's aura shot through with intent near solid.
Lethal. Dead. Gone.
No epsilon.
It flooded the bonds with warning.
Alpha's shout was in sync with its own.
"—die if as small as a limb breaks."
Ice man underestimated it.
It underestimated Alpha.
Low expectations were the name of the day.
Alpha clutched epsilon away from harm. Alpha had used a burst of something. Not haki, but a step towards it. Learning. Growing. Stronger.
It was staring at ice man's fist.
Ice man's punch stopped. It felt the cold on his skin before it retracted.
In the new not-hybrid form it was chest high on ice man. It tipped its head back. It flashed the blade-sharp teeth ice man would have been shoving his fingers into.
And it had been looking forward to the blood, too.
"My." Aokiji frowned at her. Aura shocked, voice flat. It did not like this ice human that lied to easily. "You are quite persistent over someone who will betray you in the end."
It growled.
As if epsilon enjoyed using and discarding those around her; epsilon was a monument to the strength needed to survive. The choices necessary to live. Epsilon forced herself into a mold until her life was the bruise and callus she required to face each day.
It would keep Nico Robin alive.
"Ice man snack. Promise bound. These are mine you dare to touch!"
Ice man did not stop. He raised one leg, as if to crush it on his way to epsilon.
A low rumble started deep in its chest, a subvocal warning that vibrated the ground around them.
Its teeth dropped further. Scales shimmered into spotty black patches across their body. Its claws lengthened and it began pooling venom.
Ice man wanted to crush epsilon.
He would go through it first.
Ice man kicked. Would have killed her pit.
It took the blow, caught the leg in claws, and did not flinch.
"It carries the weight of words," it seethed. "They are mine to protect," it snarled into ice man's widened eyes.
Ice man would understand. It was stronger. It had fought longer.
Ice man would not live.
It twisted the leg and threw. Forced off balance, ice man had to retreat or fall at their feet.
"It will pluck your eyes to feed the fish and dismember you for the sea kings! It will lay your corpse out for carrion feed!"
"It's back."
It ignored Chew Toy's whimper. It did take notice of the auras. Chew Toy and omega holding epsilon. Alpha was standing at its back.
Ice man caught his footing. He tucked his hands into his pockets and watched it. Assessing. Calculating. Ice man would fight it, remove it in the name of his justice.
It could read it in his stance. It was in his eyes and aura.
It would kill ice man. Slaughter him. It would bathe in his blood for daring to touch what was—
Hers. The pit were hers, theirs, and the Other would lose them if it fought. Riyo knew it would—
Destroy ice man, eradicate his existence—
Protect the pit, from Aokiji, from themselves—
Human is weak of will and mind, weak of body—
The Other was a monster. Her pit would not survive the fallout. They would not live; Riyo would not lose them to her own hate—
Fool! Weak! Useless waste!—
Riyo staggered back a step. She pulled herself through the Other's control. She forced her will over the emotion and shoved the Other down, away—
—it snarled at human, snapped and clawed. It left burning furrows and hot blood on human's mind for daring to cage it.
It would break human. It would crush human beneath its own Will for believing human could separate it.
It was human, it was beast, it was predator and protector, conqueror and ruler and queen—
~o0o~
Riyo snapped into place in her body. Her head pounded, her limbs were weak, but the Other was contained. Riyo had let it go too far.
She glared at Aokiji, who stared back. He seemed to know something was going on, if not what.
That was already too much for an admiral to know.
Riyo forced herself to relax.
"This is your fault," she said, for lack of anything better to say. "I'm going to hear about this for weeks."
She forced a casual pose, hands at her side.
Aokiji blinked.
"The Straw Hats are mine," she added, because that would always be true. "Don't ever dare touch them again. I won't stop the Other from fulfilling the frankly disturbing fantasies it has around killing you."
She could feel the crew retreating. Finally.
Only one presence remained. The stupidest, smartest person she knew. Apparently he'd get his wish.
Alpha.
Luffy's hand rested on her shoulder from behind. It was warm; she didn't realize how cold she still was until then.
Her limbs ached and her temples pounded in tandem with her heartbeats. She wanted to fall into the crushing darkness of the sea, drop the cracking mask, and lose herself in the misery churning in her gut.
Alpha should not be here.
Riyo couldn't stop the thought now.
"Luffy. Luffy, Luffy. We-I. I hurt." Alpha was not safe here. "Ryuko. The Other. Not safe. We—"
"I know." Alpha squeezed her shoulder. "You did good. You all kept your promise. I'll take care of it now."
Luffy looked at Aokiji. Alpha did not take his hand off Riyo's shoulder.
"Duel me one on one, Ow-jiji."
Aokiji tilted his head at Luffy. Looked at her. Aokiji's face was blank, devoid of any trace of emotion as he considered.
Riyo felt torn when she realized she lost the auras when she locked down the Other.
"It's Aokiji. I accept."
Luffy's grip tightened, enough Riyo noticed, before he let go.
"Riyo, go back to the ship. Wait for me. I'll win this while you check on Robin and everyone else for me."
Riyo's scales flared and settled beneath the dress.
Alpha was lying.
"Yes, captain."
Luffy knew he couldn't win.
She backed up one step. Then another.
"You promised."
Luffy had promised to live for her. His life was her life. Luffy was the glue and the sun and the gravity of the crew; the rubber-brained idiot would give everything for them all.
Everything.
Luffy grinned. Impossibly wide.
It did not match his shadowed eyes.
"I always keep my promises."
Riyo abhorred that smile.
She took another step back. If she didn't she was afraid of what she'd do.
"Go."
Captain's-Alpha's-Luffy's order.
Riyo turned and left.
Her Alpha would live for her. Fight for her.
Even if it cost him his life.
~o0o~
Riyo sat on the deck of the Merry, eyes open but unseeing as she followed the signatures of Luffy and Aokiji.
The blow was more breath stealing when she saw it coming.
The burning chill pierced her heart and raced through her veins across the Alpha bond.
Riyo did not try to curb the shuddering roar to match the racing ice or the sharp whine at the end.
Her hearts stuttered.
Beat.
It was done.
"Riyo?!"
"Shit. Luffy."
"What happened?"
"We need a doctor!"
"What's going on?"
The voices rose and fell, a blend of fear and confusion and concern across the deck and over the bonds.
Riyo stood on shaky legs. She was still in the not-quite-hybrid form they had created.
She ensured Aokiji's retreating presence.
She met Zoro's eyes.
She shoved the tangled ball of pain across the Beta bond with the resounding command to keep them safe while she fractured.
He nodded, a bastion of calm in the maelstrom.
She stepped to the edge of Merry's deck and tumbled over the railing. She fell into the sea to the sounds of the crew's voices.
She made a promise to Alpha.
This was not a pain to hide.
~o0o~
Water engulfed her. Sun warmed. Soothing.
The cold was far deeper than skin, scale, and muscle. It had burrowed into her core and nestled into the crevices between the organs.
The burning pain of the cold turned to numbness as she sank.
Her mind and chest felt empty. The ice had frosted all the anger, fear, and self-recrimination and melted away in the salty water until there was only a hole dug through her ribs.
Riyo stared up at the wavering sun filtering through the surface. She watched it dim second by second as her body sank deeper.
She relaxed into the dark comfort of the waves and deeper into the ocean's hold.
The world turned to twilight.
Midnight.
The darkness of the abyss.
She Changed.
Her weight pulled her down as quick as she grew. She settled on the sea floor thousands of meters beneath the surface, her true size for the first time in more than twenty years.
She burrowed into the sand like a frightened hatchling.
She was pathetic.
Her streamlined snout shoveled into the shale and sediment. Her body followed.
In the quiet darkness, buried in the dirt of her home, she could think of shattered pretenses. Under the weight of thousands of meters of water it was safe to think about the melted emotion in her chest.
This form was large enough to swallow the Merry as an afterthought. She could swallow the Red Force and the Moby Dick without a thought. She could make tsunamis large enough to sink islands and crush entire cities under her feet.
She chose to run. She hid away from the surface and buried herself in the sand.
Her pit was a distant blip miles away. She had drifted farther than expected on the currents.
The lack of any reaction to the thought sparked the first emotion since she sank.
Riyo considered the spark of anger, a child seeing an ember for the first time.
She should be angry. She should be angry she was not stronger. Angry she had not tried harder. Angry at Luffy for sacrificing himself. Angry at Robin for not trusting them. Angry at the crew for not knowing the limits.
The spark sputtered, caught, and grew. Riyo's emotion came rushing back like a tidal wave in reverse.
The mask fell away.
Riyo shot up out of the sand and let the pain ring out in a bellow. She fueled the sound with her aura. She let the pent up intent to kill-maim-protect out in a shockwave.
Sea kings fled. Ocean life scattered.
The water was silent. Empty. Lifeless.
She kept roaring. Keening. Screaming. She let the emotion she had restrained bleed out like lancing an infected wound.
Her body coiled over and around and through itself, a knot of muscle, scale, fin, and fury.
The water and silt bubbled and churned around her.
When screaming wasn't enough claws tore into the sea floor. She swiped valleys and trenches into sand and stone. Jaws and teeth tore through boulders. A forming range of underwater mountains bore the brunt of her anger.
During the destruction Ryuko woke enough to reach out for the Sigma. It was instinctive to seek the comfort of the possibility. It was natural to draw on the potential when lost in the fury.
The Other violently turned on the beast. Riyo shoved Ryuko back into the room-cage.
None of them could bear the flash of the maybe-Sigma they received.
He was close. Closer than they had ever imagined or hoped. This one may actually survive the courting.
The Other snarled.
Riyo fractured further.
They did not deserve a Sigma. They did not deserve the potential of one like this.
{Weak.}
Weak, warped, broken.
Riyo was tired.
She stopped fighting. Stopped pretending. She sunk into their mind and let the Other take control. Ryuko howled in the cage.
The Other's rage was far from done. It ripped into the seabed and stone; destruction was the only outlet without blood and bone between its teeth.
With no prey it could hunt, it turned itself to the desolation of the sea floor. It could pretend the rumble of the shattered mountain range was enough to slake the violence.
Riyo could pretend she wasn't a useless relic who never should have survived her birth. She should never have survived her Alpha.
She was something secondhand, the pieces glued back over and over, crooked and chipped. Sea queen shaped, but the parts ground and wore inside.
She was an abomination of her species. An aberration.
She was the only sea queen left in the world and she wasn't even that anymore.
~o0o~
A man was riding a bicycle on the sea.
Aokiji was miles from the island where he had confronted the Straw Hat pirates, but his mind was still on the rookie crew and their unknown zoan user.
He had paid his debt to Garp by sparing the boy's life. He could not ignore the zoan woman.
There was something about her that set him on edge, which was rather hard to do. He had heard or seen her somewhere befo—
There was a distant rumble.
Aokiji stopped pedaling.
Bubbles rose around him. Waves sloshed from some sort of activity far beneath the surface.
The killing intent shot up from the water and straight up his back. His muscles seized. For a moment his mind blanked with the need to flee.
The feeling passed as quickly as it came.
The panic faded, unfocused as it had been.
Aokiji shook his head. He stared down into the water but saw nothing.
Odd. The area was well known for its vibrant sea life.
He rode out the waves as he watched for any hint of the beast behind the intent.
The water settled some time later with nothing to show for it. Aokiji did a final sweep of haki confirming the absence of all sea life as far out as he could reach.
He shrugged and continued pedaling.
~o0o~
Riyo was not sure how long she stayed on the seafloor.
When she finally surfaced it was well past dark. The moon was high. The shadows thrown by the meager light disguised her leaden climb onto the Merry's deck.
Zoro was keeping watch from the deep shadows below the mast.
The first mate and her Beta took in her scales, the dress long gone, and her tangled hair. Riyo had no idea what may have carried over the bonds.
She could hardly bring herself to meet his eyes. She fidgeted before finally glancing at him.
He nodded.
Riyo gathered what dignity she had left and nodded back.
A shield and sword never had to share words to understand their purpose together.