Ch. 8- Hoof of the Celestial Dragon
One Piece © Oda
Blizzard, Daffodil, Hibiscus, and Buttercup © Me
"Forgive us, big sister!"
"Not only did we lose, but the man ended up saving us!"
After the coliseum had been cleared out, Sandersonia and Marigold had returned to their human forms and were now kneeling before their sister. If Luffy had not done what he did, there was no telling what else could've happened.
"So, uh…" Luffy muttered, looking to Hancock, "am I gonna have to fight you, next?"
It's almost as if you're looking for another fight, Blizzard thought as he sat next to Luffy.
"No," Hancock answered Luffy. "I'm not in the mood anymore."
"Okay," Luffy said before he went to look Marguerite over for any cracks or chips. "It doesn't look like she's broken anywhere. Good thing, huh, Blizzard?"
Blizzard nodded.
"Now," said Luffy as he turned to Hancock, "can you change these three back to normal? You CAN do that, can't you?"
There was a pause.
"Please!" Luffy said. "All they did was stand up for us! They didn't do anything wrong!"
Hancock heaved a sigh, and then she stood up from he throne.
"Yes," she said. "I can, indeed, easily turn them back to the way they once were. However…didn't you say that you and your wolf needed to go somewhere?"
"Yeah," Luffy replied. "Blizzard and I need to get back to our friends."
"Then I will only grant one of these requests," Hancock said.
Luffy let out a small gasp of surprise while Blizzard's jaw dropped.
Oh, come ON! he thought in frustration.
"Either you ask me to return these three to normal," Hancock began, "or we allow you and your beast to leave the island in peace. Choose one and abandon the other, forever."
Blizzard felt sweat seeping through his fur. On one hand, he and Luffy could leave this island and reunite with the rest of the crew on the Sabaody Archipelago. On the other hand, they could save Marguerite, Sweet Pea, and Aphelandra, who saved their lives first.
Which would Luffy choose?
A sickening smirk appeared on Hancock's face.
Now we will see your true nature, man, she thought.
Blizzard turned to Luffy, but what he saw soon shocked.
The raven-haired teen was down on his hands and knees, a wide smile upon his face.
"Thank you!" he said. "You can go ahead and turn them back, now!" He bowed his head down, his hat falling off his hair. "Thank you so much!"
The three sisters gasped, stunned. Once again, this young man had acted completely different from the way they had expected him to.
Blizzard was also left shocked, but then, Luffy grabbed him by his ear and pulled him down, too.
"C'mon, buddy," he said. "You gotta bow, too."
Blizzard stared at Luffy in disbelief, but reluctantly, he sat on his haunches and bowed his head, as well.
In the stands, it is revealed that one person did not leave. It was Nyon, and she had seen everything.
"He did nyot even hesitate," said the elderly woman. "A young man with such a powerful Haki would bow so readily for the sake of those that he is indebted to."
XXX
A few minutes later, at the coliseum exit…
"Marguerite!"
"Sweet Pea!"
"Aphelandra!"
The trio of women that were once stone statues were now back to flesh and blood and were being greeted by their friends.
"AUNTIE MARGUERITE!"
Marguerite turned to see her three nieces, Daffodil, Hibiscus, and Buttercup, all rushing to greet her.
"Girls!" Marguerite said as she knelt down to get a big hug from the triplets.
"Aunt Marguerite, we were so worried!" said Hibiscus.
"Yeah!" agreed Buttercup. "When Auntie Kikyo told us what happened, we were afraid that we'd end up losing you!"
"Yeah, just like Mom!" added Daffodil.
"It's all right, girls," Marguerite said in reassurance. "Your Auntie Marguerite's okay, see?"
"I can't believe it!" said one of the Kuja. "The Snake Princess reversed the petrifaction! We were so worried when you defended the man and his wolf."
"Yes," Kikyo said. "I don't know what I'd do if something awful happened to you three!"
"Petrifaction?" Marguerite repeated.
"What's going on?" asked Aphelandra.
"The saga of: I have no clue," answered Sweet Pea.
Flashback
Marguerite was standing before Luffy, who had his hands upon her arms, smiling happily. Aphelandra was holding Blizzard in her arms, receiving big, slobbery kisses.
"Thank goodness!" he said. "I don't what I'd do if something happened to you guys!"
Flashback end
"When I came to my senses," Marguerite started, "all I remember is seeing Luffy, and he seemed really happy for some reason."
"That's how it is with the Snake Princess's powers," said Ran. "When you return to normal, you don't remember anything before you were petrified. I'll explain everything later."
"So, Marguerite," said the fat Kuja, Cosmos, "what ever happened to the man and his wolf?"
"And where's the Snake Princess?" asked Daisy. "Did she man and the wolf to stone? ZAHAHAHA!"
"Well, for some odd reason," Marguerite said, "the Snake Princess invited him and Blizzard to the castle."
A silence.
"WHAAAAAAAAAAT?"
XXX
In the Kuja Castle, inside Hancock's throne room, Luffy and Blizzard were now sitting in between Marigold and Sandersonia, the latter of the two pirates fidgeting about in his place.
"So, what do you want with me and Blizzard?" asked Luffy. "Is there gonna be some kind of after-battle banquet or something? If that's the case, then Blizzard and I would be glad to-"
"I suppose I'm indebted to you for what you did, back there," Sandersonia said, cutting Luffy off. "Thank you, man."
"Aw, don't mention it," Luffy said. "Just gimme some food and we'll call it even."
Honestly, Blizzard thought. You really do with your stomach instead of your brain.
"If the people here ever saw the marks on our backs," Marigold said, "we'd be forced to leave this island forever."
"Man. You and your wolf may enter."
Luffy looked up to the curtain that Hancock had hidden herself behind.
"Come in here," the Warlord said. "Behind the curtain."
Luffy tilted his head in puzzlement, but then, he put on an excited face, a small sliver of drool escaping his lips.
"Oh!" he said. "You got food in there?"
With that in mind, Luffy got up, rushed to the curtain, and pulled it open. Blizzard soon followed, but when he entered, his mouth fell open, and he put his paws over his nose in an attempt to keep the blood from leaking out of his nostrils.
"Uh, hey, sorry to barge in, like this," Luffy said, "but where's the food? And why the heck are you naked?"
Luffy was right. Hancock, who was sitting against her snake throne, had stripped herself of her cape and blouse, revealing her bare upper half.
"You're as crude as ever," said Hancock.
"Huh?" Luffy mumbled.
"Never mind," Hancock said before she put hand to the back of her, and then turned away so that her back was facing Luffy. As she pulled her hair away, she revealed a dark red mark, burned into her skin.
Blizzard, now able to control his nosebleed, eased a bit closer with Luffy to get a better look at the mark.
It was a large circle with three triangles on top and one triangle on the bottom. It looked like some sort of footprint.
"This mark," Hancock said. "You said that you had seen it before, but…take a better look at it, just to make sure."
Luffy cocked his head, making an odd, questioning sound. Blizzard also seemed confused.
"Where did you first see this?" asked Hancock. "Do you have any idea what this mark means?"
"Hmm…" Luffy hummed, putting his thumb to his cheek, thinking.
"Well?" Hancock asked, getting more impatient by the second. "Answer me! This isn't very pleasant for me!"
A pause.
"Oh, wait," Luffy said. "That's not it. That mark is different than the one Blizzard and I saw."
"What?" Hancock questioned. "What do you mean?"
"Well, we have a Fishman friend named Hachi!" Luffy answered. "He had a mark pretty much like yours on his forehead. I guess I mistook it for that. I've never really seen a mark like yours, before. Sorry."
Blizzard nodded in agreement. He remembered seeing a Fishman on the island where he was born, when he and his brothers and sisters were being put up for adoption. The Fishman he saw also had a mark like Hachi's, only it was on the base of his neck and not on his forehead.
"If they really do nyot know what it means," came a familiar voice, "then you should explain it to them!"
Luffy, Blizzard, Sandersonia, and Marigold looked back and saw Nyon enter the room.
"Granny Nyon!" Sandersonia and Marigold said.
"How did you get back in here?" Hancock questioned, her anger taking over her insecurity.
"You've seen with your own eyes that he is a good man," said Nyon. "So just go and explain yourself to him." She then glanced to Luffy and Blizzard. "You two! Are you the pirates known as Monkey D. 'Straw Hat' Luffy and 'White Wolf' Blizzard?"
"Uh-huh," Luffy answered. "How do you know about us?"
Nyon held up a newspaper and said, "You both seem decent enough, in spite of all the chaos you've caused! Look at this paper! A few days ago, at the Sabaody Archipelago, this man was there…and he led a charge against the Celestial Dragons, brutally attacking them! These two fearless pirates have both caused a major incident!"
Hancock's eyes went wide, as did her sisters'.
"The…the Celestial Dragons?"
"After that," Nyon continued, "these two myiraculously escaped the most formidable forces that central had to offer with their lives! They traveled all the way from such a faraway place in just three days! There are things that are beyond my comprehension!"
"Like I said," Luffy said, "Blizzard and I got thrown here by some bear guy and he sent us flying here. We don't even know where we are! And another thing, we don't have any second thoughts about what we did to those damn Celestial Dragon bastards! They deserved it after what they did to Hachi!"
Blizzard snickered at the memory of attacking Salou and urinating on his face once he was unconscious.
"So it's true," Hancock said, her body quivering. "You really did strike the Celestial Dragons."
"Yup," Luffy said, confirming this fact, "and like I said, I don't have any second thoughts. I only punched this one jerk in the face, though. Blizzard attacked their dog and I think Usopp accidentally fell on the old man."
Hancock seemed to shake her head, as if she were refusing to believe one word of what she was hearing, and yet…everything seemed to make sense, now.
Luffy and Blizzard really had attacked the Celestial Dragons.
"I never thought," she began, "that such fools would exist in this world. You're just like him. The hero who challenged the heavens with no regard to his own life!"
Uh, I'm sorry, Blizzard thought. "Him?"
"'Him' who?" Luffy questioned.
There was a long silence. Nyon stood in her place. Marigold and Sandersonia shuddered. Blizzard looked around, confused at the sudden change in atmosphere. Luffy just stood next to the wolf-dog, simply waiting for a response from Hancock.
"I'll tell you everything," Hancock said. "Even the history behind the mark of your Fishman friend."
And so, Hancock went and explained everything to Luffy and Blizzard.
The mark on her back was known as the "Hoof of the Celestial Dragon", their crest. The mark is branded into the skin of slaves as a permanent that they were less than human.
Hancock revealed that she, Sandersonia, and Marigold were all once slaves to those pompous windbags, much to Luffy and Blizzard's surprise.
When they were children in their early teens, they had been spirited away from the Kuja Pirate ship and sold into servitude. After they were sold, horrible things began to happen to them. They were under constant torment by their master, the first man that Hancock had ever seen in her life.
It was he who branded her and her sisters with that mark.
Sandersonia broke out into tears as Hancock continued to tell Luffy and Blizzard more of their horrific past, even though Luffy had told her that she didn't have to push herself and say anything else, but the Warlord continued.
As the years, Hancock grew up knowing but hate, anger, fear, and despair, and she would go to sleep, praying that what she had experienced was an awful nightmare that she would wake up from it soon, but with each passing day, she felt that she wanted was Death's cold hand to take her and her sisters away.
Then…a miracle.
One fateful night, after four years of slavery, an incident had occurred that shocked the World Government. Despite the fact that no one could ever stand up against the Celestial Dragons, one sole being climbed up the Red Line with his bare hands and entered the Sacred Land of Mariejois.
He was known as the future leader of a band of Fishman Pirates: a great adventurer known as "Fisher Tiger". He came to the city where so many of his brethren were suffering as slaves. He wreaked great havoc throughout Mariejois, and even though he hated humans as a species, he saved thousands upon thousands of slaves, regardless of who or what they are. Among them, Hancock and her sisters, who fled the city and never looked back.
They owed a debt to Fisher Tiger that could never be repaid.
Afterwards, Tiger unleashed hordes of Fishmen upon the world's seas, but they would forever bear the mark of slavery. Tiger was an outlaw, constantly being dogged by the World Government, so he gathered the fugitives together and formed the Sunny Pirates before setting sail.
To erase the trace of their bondage, the former slaves turned the mark of the Celestial Dragons into the Sunny Pirates' insignia.
Luffy and Blizzard stood surprised, but their expressions were also mixed with understanding.
Wow, Blizzard thought. Who knew?
"You must've mistaken the brand on my back," Hancock began, "for the Sunny Pirates' Mark of the Sun."
"Yeah," Luffy said, pointing to his own forehead. "The mark I saw on Hachi's looked like a sun! Does that mean that he used to be a slave, too?"
"Not necessarily," replied Sandersonia.
"Yes," agreed Marigold. "All of Tiger's men took that mark to make it impossible to know which were slaves and which weren't, but he must've belonged to the Sunny Pirates at some point."
"Then, where's this Tiger guy?" Luffy asked.
"Alas, Fisher Tiger has long passed," said Nyon, "and his crew had split into smaller factions."
That does happen, sometimes, Blizzard thought.
"So Hachi must've had a lot of adventures before he met us," said Luffy.
"That's why the marks on our backs and the mark on the Fishman look the same," Marigold said.
"Yeah," Luffy agreed. "I get it…I think."
Yeah, I get it, too, Blizzard thought. To think that that Fishman I saw when I was little might've once been a slave or a former pirate. Gosh.
"When we were slaves," Hancock explained, "they fed my sisters and I the Love-Love Fruit and the Snake-Snake Fruits as a form of entertainment. Because of our Devil Fruit powers, we've been able to deceive the people of this nation and keep out secret. If you had not done what you did in the coliseum, young man….we would be forced to leave the island." At this, her voice began to break as her pet snake gently placed her blouse and cape upon her back. "I don't want…anyone to know about our past!" She lifted her head, revealing tears cascading from her eyes. "Even if it means that I must lie to my people, I MUST continue this pretense! I don't want ANYONE to control me, EVER AGAIN! That's what I'm truly afraid of! Of being vulnerable to anyone…and I will always will be afraid of that…!"
"Sister," Marigold and Sandersonia said, tears of their own also beginning to fall.
Blizzard felt his heart go out to the three. A slave, he may not have been, but he truly understand Hancock's fear. It was like when Rio and his underlings used to push him around and bully him before he met Luffy. That Doberman was trying to control through the use of fear and power, just like how the Celestial Dragons did to the Gorgon Sisters.
"But it's been such a long time since I've seen you like it," said Nyon. "In recent years, our great Snake Princess has hardly shown her true feelings at all. I was afraid that her heart had grown cyold and icy."
"Silence, you old hag!" Hancock yelled. "You are a TRAITOR to the Kuja!"
"You be silent!" Nyon spat. "Even though you and your sisters managed to escape from Mariejois, you had no clue how you were going to get home, again! When I found you three, you were all nothing but pathetic little wenches! WHO DO YOU THYINK BROUGHT YOU BACK HERE? LUCKY FOR YOU THAT I WAS IN THE OUTER SEAS! DO I NYOT LOVE YOU AS IF YOU WERE ALL MY DAUGHTERS?"
"Yes, yes," Sandersonia and Marigold said, smiling joyfully.
"And you never let us forget it," Hancock said as she turned away from Nyon.
"WHYAT WAS THYAT?" Nyon shouted.
Hancock then turned to Luffy and Blizzard.
"So," she said, "now that you know about our past…do you despise us?"
There was another pause.
"Are you kidding?" Luffy asked. "Of course not! I don't care about anyone's past! I just care about now and in the future!" He turned to Blizzard with a smile and placed his hand on his head. "Right, Blizzard?"
Yeah, Blizzard answered in thought, snickering aloud.
"Besides," Luffy began, "I told you, I don't have any second thoughts about what we did to those Celestial Dragon dudes!"
Hancock felt her heart rate increasing, and she also felt her cheeks gets warm as they flushed a light pink. She then turned to face Luffy again, but this time, instead of a cold, bitter expression that she always had…there was a blush on her cheeks and a soft, genuine smile on her face.
"Ha-ha…" Hancock laughed lightly. "I'm starting to like you! You said you had to go somewhere before, right? Tell me where it is and I shall lend you a ship!"
"REALLY?" Luffy asked, a wide smile appearing on his face and eyes twinkling.
Hancock nodded her head.
Blizzard smiled at Luffy's joy, and inside, he, too, was happy. It appeared that the crew reuniting was going to be inevitable…
…and yet…he couldn't shake this odd feeling that he could be wrong.
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