Taken

Characters: Penguin, Shachi, Law, Bepo. Rating: T. Warnings: character injury

Shachi hadn't made the rendezvous. Penguin looked around fervently, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of familiar ginger hair. Besides him, Law frowned, arms crossed as his eyes bored holes in everyone that passed as if one of them would magically transform into Shachi if he stared hard enough. No-one did.

"Something's wrong," Penguin eventually voiced, when ten minutes had passed and no ginger hair had graced his vision. "He's late."

"There's no need to state the obvious," Law retorted, one of his fingers twitching against his arm. "We're going back." Penguin stared at him in disbelief.

"We're doing what?" he asked, voice strangled against the lump in his throat. "But Shachi-"

"If he hasn't made the rendezvous either something prevented him and he returned to the Tang instead, or something prevented him and he's gone," Law said bluntly. "Either way, there is nothing to be gained from remaining here, except unwanted attention."

Shachi wasn't at the Tang. Penguin's gut told him that. If something was stopping him from reaching them, he'd have got a message across somehow. But there had been nothing. Everything was as it should be, nowhere was there anything that seemed even slightly out of place.

"Screw that!" he snarled as Law began to walk away, clearly believing that he'd meekly follow orders when Shachi was in trouble. The other teen clearly overestimated his loyalty to him versus his relationship with Shachi, and Penguin tore off in the opposite direction, not knowing where Shachi was but determined to find him.

"Oi! Penguin!" he heard Law shout from behind him, but there was no sound of running feet, no sign that Law was changing his mind about returning to the Tang. He quashed the sense of betrayal ruthlessly; Law didn't understand, would never understand. Penguin had lost everyone else. He would not lose Shachi.

It was more luck than judgement that found him sprinting down that one dark alleyway, where most of the shops were boarded up and those that weren't clearly didn't find the law worth following. Behind a pile of wonky crates, some tumbled over completely and spilling their rotting contents onto the ground, was a splatter of blood. It dyed the crates nearest to it with splashes of crimson, matching streaks on the wall and an erratic pattern on the ground.

Lying in one of the larger bloodstains on the ground were a pair of familiar black shades, lenses cracked and frames bent beyond all practicality, and Penguin's heart stuttered. He knelt down slowly, unwilling to believe his eyes, and gingerly picked up the shades, one of the lenses losing all of its glass at the movement.

"Shachi…" he rasped, feeling tears well. There was so much blood. Too much. But there was no body, so he had to be still alive, right? He swallowed back a sob, forcing it down past the lump in his throat, and looked around.

"They took the kid that way," a voice spoke from behind him and he whirled around to see an elderly man supporting himself on a rickety cane as his hand pointed shakily further into the alley. "Poor thing's probably dead by now." At the words, Penguin sprang to his feet and ran, narrowly avoiding knocking the man over in his haste. In his impatience, he missed the grin on the man's face, and the baby den den mushi he withdrew from his pocket.

With the initial guidance, the trail was clear to follow, blood leading the way with an uneven trail that had Penguin forcibly banishing all the memories of Law starting to teach them medicine – particularly the point at which blood loss became fatal – far from his mind. An ajar door greeted him at the end of the blood trail, and he burst through it with no thoughts for subtlety or reconnaissance.

The first thing he saw was Shachi's limp form, trussed up in the corner with his clothes torn and stained with far too much blood.

The second was the gang of men lined up and waiting for him, brandishing knives. Penguin drew his own, even though the odds were against him, and charged. They let him break through their line, putting him the same side of the room as Shachi, before turning to face him again. The door – the only exit – was behind them.

Penguin was trapped, but he'd found Shachi and nothing else mattered as he raised his knife again, positioning himself protectively in front of the ginger and waiting for the men to make their move. It was swift and brutal, the men clearly experienced with ganging up on a single opponent and not falling for any of Penguin's tricks aimed to make them hit each other.

They weren't using guns, maybe because the noise would bring unwanted attention, but they knew their way around knife-play as Penguin suffered gash after gash. His shoulder was the first thing to open, his forearm next and then his cheek in quick succession as he leaned back to avoid losing his eye. Each one opened with a fresh burst of pain but Penguin ignored them, because what else could he do. If he fell, Shachi would be in danger again and Penguin refused to let that happen as he scored a vicious hit on one of his assailants, gouging out an eye with his blade even as he kicked a knife out of another man's hand.

They were minor victories that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things as the blinded man lunged forwards violently, his knife still flailing wildly in his hand. It scored a direct hit on Penguin's shoulder, tearing through the muscle and forcing his fingers to drop his own weapon as the pain forced him to his knees. They converged on him, knives raised high, and he caught something that sounded like "another for Vergo-san" as his vision narrowed to just the knives, plummeting towards him, and Shachi, still limp behind him.

"Room," and suddenly the men went flying, their knives gone from their hands as an orange blur barrelled into them with a war cry. Penguin blinked, moving his less-injured arm to lift the peak of his hat out of his line of sight, to see half of them in pieces while the other half were being pummelled by an orange and white hurricane. Recognising what it meant – that they were saved – Penguin shifted towards Shachi, reaching for him.

The ginger hadn't moved the entire time, although his chest rose and fell in deep wet gasps. His hat was nowhere to be seen, leaving his hair to splay across his face and conceal his closed eyes from view. Needing to know he was okay, that all the blood wasn't actually his, Penguin's hand landed on his sleeve.

"Don't touch him!" Law barked suddenly, making him jump, and he turned to face him with a snarl on his face. Law hadn't helped him look, Law hadn't stormed the room with him, now Law didn't want him to check Shachi, Law-

Looked as white as a sheet, golden eyes flicking frantically towards Shachi's unmoving body as he finished off the men caught in his Amputate.

Law cared and Penguin realised that he had never even considered abandoning Shachi, had been thinking of plans and rescue missions ever since Shachi hadn't appeared at their rendezvous. He blinked and suddenly Law was there, kneeling by Shachi and oh so gently pressing two fingers to his neck to measure his pulse. Whatever he found wasn't bad news, as some of the tension eased from him.

"Shachi?" he asked, barely audible above Bepo's cries as he overpowered the remaining gang members with a crackle of electricity. "Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," Shachi replied, his voice tight with pain and breathy, to Penguin's surprised delight. He had thought Shachi unconscious with how still he'd been lying. "Sorry… I me- messed up."

"What hurts the most?" Law continued, not responding to Shachi's apology.

"Chest… burns…" Shachi managed, and from Law's curse that wasn't the answer he wanted to hear. Nor had he wanted to see the blood leaking from Shachi's mouth, Penguin realised as his captain shifted ginger hair to get a better look at his face.

"Shattered ribs," he diagnosed, his words clipped short. "And a punctured lung."

"What," Penguin choked. That was serious, right? A punctured lung could kill someone by drowning them in their own blood… If he'd carelessly moved Shachi, he might have killed him. He balled his trembling hands into a fist as a blood-splattered Bepo sat beside him, his fur a comforting presence.

Law's Room expanded again, enveloping Shachi in the light blue sheen Penguin had become familiar with. Their location was hardly the place for surgeries, but Penguin wasn't going to argue with Law. Certainly not when Shachi's punctured lung appeared in Law's hand, complete with the rib fragment responsible, to be cautiously separated and somehow patched up.

"It's not perfect," Law said once he'd finished, leaning forwards with a knife and working Shachi free from his bonds. "I need to finish on the Tang, but you're stable enough to be moved." Shachi smiled, the blood still trailing from his mouth, as Law turned to Bepo and gestured him closer. The mink obeyed, and between the pair of them they had Shachi manoeuvred into Bepo's arms for the journey back.

Penguin stumbled to his feet with a lot of help from Law, who took most of his weight to half-drag him along, past what were unmistakably corpses of the gang (and other people from the alley Penguin had seen, including the elderly man that had pointed him in the right direction although in hindsight that had been just a little too convenient).

"You're an idiot," Law grumbled as they headed for the Tang, Bepo following close behind with Shachi sheltered protectively in his arms, but there was no bite to his words, merely an exasperated fondness. His leg buckling as one of his injuries gave a particularly loud complaint, Penguin couldn't really argue with that.

I've had a couple of requests for a captured Heart Pirate, and apparently I really have it in for Shachi at the moment (I'm so sorry, Shachi!)

Thanks for reading!
Tsari