Hoard

Characters: Shachi, Law. Rating: K. Warnings: None

Law always made it a point to keep a definitive line between himself and the other rabble that classified as 'pirates'. For the most part, Shachi thought he did a pretty good job at it – having a fully functioning brain and something that almost passed for morals went a long way, even if the so-called 'morals' could only really be seen from the Heart Pirates' point of view. Leaving people alive but diced up in pieces was hardly a conventional way of sparing lives.

But despite that, he acquired a stereotype that, while well hidden, couldn't really be denied.

Law liked shiny things.

Well, that wasn't quite fair to him. He wasn't a magpie that would descend upon anything that glittered; Law had standards. But, well, if those standards were met, then Law was getting that shiny thing, come hell or high water.

Shachi didn't know what, exactly, drew his captain to coins – specifically special commemorative coins, that is to say, the rare expensive ones – but he did know that there was a steadily-growing pile on the desk in his bedroom, which Law would sort through every so often, when his duties gave him the chance. He kept a log book, recording all the details of each coin. Shachi had watched him on occasion, more often when they were teenagers, before they had an entire twenty strong crew to keep under some semblance of control, but sometimes, when Shachi wanted some quiet but not necessarily solitude, Law recording coins quietly in his room was an ideal solution.

Law was meticulous in his records. Date, condition, and what event it commemorated were documented in great detail, in that scrawling doctor's handwriting that Shachi could only read because he'd been exposed to it ever since he was fourteen, watching it change and evolve from something arguably-legible when Law was a teenager to an all out chaos of strokes that supposedly made words in adulthood.

Sometimes, duplicates happened. Law never paid too much attention beyond whether or not it was a commemorative coin when he initially liberated it (and Shachi would always be amused that a fruit like Law's, which was supposed to be used for the better good, could lend itself so easily to petty acts of subtle thievery), so sometimes he ended up with two or three of the same one. Only the best conditioned one was filed away in the special chest they'd made specially for Law's collection – each coin had its own slot, a work of mastery that took three teenagers and a mink a year to carve, leaving Shachi to dread the day Law ran out of space and they'd need to make a bigger one. The others were left on his desk, not quite carelessly strewn around.

To the casual observer it might seem an uncharacteristic mess, but to Shachi's informed eye they were still organised in an approximation of date order, starting with the earliest at the back and the newest at the front.

Rarely, the duplicates served another purpose. While Law could and would teleport items from across the Tang to his room at will, he claimed it was less tiring if he could switch it with something else, rather than having to displace air. The coins were a good way of marking where that book had gone, or that plate of food.

To discourage Law from using it too much, Shachi, Penguin, Bepo, and some of the other longer term Heart Pirates would pick up coins they'd found and wander back to his room, placing them in Law's hand or back on the desk so he'd actually have to leave his room to return the item. Shachi himself would accompany the action with a sighed scolding about using his abilities unnecessarily; he didn't know if the others did the same. Penguin likely did, but Shachi wouldn't be surprised to learn the others didn't.

He still didn't know what drew Law to that particular hobby, and even found it ironic that he was be so interested in something created by the World Government – and therefore full of World Government propaganda – without a clear ulterior motive. He just seemed to genuinely enjoy the past time, and Shachi never bothered to ask him.

There weren't many things Law could focus on that didn't bring some sort of shadow over him, so Shachi was content to just accept that Law simply had a hobby that wasn't clearly Doflamingo or Flevance influenced.

One of the two hobbies Oda listed for Law, and one I honestly find quite interesting considering nothing we've seen him do so far in canon seems to have any sort of relationship to it, so I have to wonder what interests him about coins. I don't have any hard and fast theories yet, although I have some loose ideas floating around.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari