Ruin

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

Plans sometimes go wrong. Law knew this, had spent the last thirteen years making plans and watching at least half of them crumble away to dust as something went awry. He'd got better at improvising, and even better at making contingencies as experience taught him what failed him the most (his stamina, his nakama's inability to do as they were told if they thought it would leave him in danger). It didn't matter, he'd come to think, if a plan went wrong, because somehow they'd all pull through anyway.

Naïve.

Two years since he'd entered the New World, two years of stronger opponents, wilder fights and crazier possibilities, and he still thought he was ready for anything? Laughable.

Law wasn't laughing now. How could he, when his plans had gone so horribly wrong that his mind – his genius, never failed him, mind – had short-circuited. It was a simple reconnaissance, laying the groundwork for later. Nothing new, nothing his crew hadn't done many times before. There shouldn't have been anything to go wrong, not when he'd taken Penguin and Shachi with him, by far the most experienced in staying low and under the radar. Even if something had gone wrong, they'd been with him all those times before, when his plans crumbled to dust and it became improvise or die. They could handle it.

So why was Penguin frozen next to him, unable to even react, much like Law himself. Other members of his crew – a hand-picked minority of five in total – were in similar condition.

Plans went wrong, but never had a plan gone so horribly wrong.

The gorilla zoan in front of them laughed, a deep laugh that reverberated through his impressive chest and through the ground; Law could feel it through his feet. It wasn't a pleasant laugh. It was condescending, cruel and full of wicked malice, all at once. Beside him, chuckling along with similar sentiments, was the reason everything was wrong. Law didn't know what subtype it was, exactly, but the dog zoan was fast and vicious enough to catch them out, leaving them in their current situation.

Huge hands, far larger than an average gorilla but since when did zoans follow the laws of nature, almost entirely dwarfed the arms they held, the limbs looking like little more than frail twigs as they writhed, their owner desperately trying to worm his way loose, kicking at the air as if he could get enough purchase to wriggle out of the grip.

Shachi was having no success, his bids for freedom doing nothing more than providing a source of amusement for his captors. Of everyone, Shachi was the one Law had always thought (naively, he was too damn naïve) wouldn't be caught. He was the fastest, and had the best observation haki to match. Few opponents could even touch him in a fight (unless he was being a self-sacrificing idiot which was sadly all too common), so to see him bowled over by the canine zoan too fast for him to dodge, a vicious bite to his leg immobilising him just long enough for the dog's gorilla companion to scoop him up was something so incomprehensible Law couldn't react.

And so there they were, frozen in disbelief as the unforeseen, unimaginable scene unfolded before their eyes. Law's body wouldn't move, his eyes fixated on the struggling form of his nakama even as he cursed himself – too slow, too naïve, move you idiot – and from the unnatural stillness of his nakama behind him, he wasn't the only one.

"The Master doesn't appreciate you snooping around in his territory," the dog yapped self-importantly, chest puffed out. Law didn't particularly care, had never cared what his opponents did or did not appreciate. A pirate trying to please people was contradictory at best, and under normal circumstances, Law would take great pleasure in antagonising them further, just because he could.

These were not normal circumstances, and his brain had yet to restart from the mind-numbing shock of seeing Shachi captured so easily, so Law said nothing, trying to find a way to salvage the situation. One of his contingency plans would work, surely, if only he could remember them.

Shachi's flailing landed a solid kick to the gorilla's face, and the zoan's laughter stopped, his face morphing to a disgruntled scowl.

"We don't need them all?" he asked, the dog clearly running the show. (If Law could make observations like that, then why couldn't his brain stop being a blank slate?). The dog shrugged.

"One won't make a difference," he replied, and finally Law's blood started to boil as the implications forced their way in, his brain starting to whirr back into activity.

"Any funny business and you'll be next," the gorilla growled at them, the Heart Pirates still in varying states of frozen. It was cliché, Law managed to think. Clichés had a weakness, too well known, too obvious-

His brain screeched to a stop again as Shachi suddenly went rigid, legs stilling too fast, and the muscles in the gorilla's arms flexed.

The sound of fabric ripping cut harshly through the air, sleeves dividing roughly at the seams as the gorilla pulled. Two and two didn't add up for a moment, Law's brain back to numb as beads of red made themselves known around Shachi's upper arms, where the deltoid connected – had connected. No longer connected.

Shachi didn't scream, but the absence of vocal agony meant so much more. A small, choked-off noise, and clarity finally, finally, crashed over Law.

A flick of the fingers, then another, and Shachi was on the ground. Too close. Too close to the gorilla but that was where the dog had stood and Law wasn't a sadist despite his reputation, but the shriek as spindly limbs tore off and the armless body crashed to the ground in a pile of blood and agonised screams gave him a split second of satisfaction before he reached Shachi's side and reality sank in.

The ginger still had his arms, somehow. The skin was stretched and torn and Law could see a complex surgery in front of them to repair the damage, but they were still there, and that was a small victory he could take. Less victorious was the way he lay in the crumpled heap he'd landed in, still and unmoving. He wasn't unconscious, at least not by standard definitions. His eyes were open, unseeing through the shades and Law got the impression that even if he removed them Shachi wouldn't so much as blink. His breathing was shallow yet rapid and his skin quickly flushed.

Law wanted to finish off the gorilla too, leave him in pieces like he'd been about to do to Shachi and watch him squirm because he wasn't sadistic but he could be vindictive and if the doctor side of his brain wasn't so dominant he'd have done exactly that. He left it to his crew instead, hearing their irate roars as they, too, broke free from the mental numbness and unleashed their fury, because Shachi had gone into severe shock and needed treatment now before it became fatal.

Some back alley that couldn't even pretend to have a modicum of cleanliness was almost as far from ideal as it was possible to get, but that was where Law was and there wasn't time to relocate before he could begin to stabilise Shachi. He stripped off his coat, thankful that he'd chosen to wear it that day, and threw it over the ginger like a blanket before lifting his feet.

"Can you hear me?" he asked, hoping to incite some sort of reaction. "Shachi?" There was no response, as he'd feared, and he threw up another Room to use a Scan. Shachi's arms were a mess, as he'd already surmised. The muscles were frayed, and the humerus had been forced so far out of the socket that all the ligaments had snapped. It wouldn't be inaccurate to say his arms were hanging on by a thread, but impossibly, that wasn't Law's concern, nor the aim of his Scan. He needed Shachi's blood pressure to rise again, just enough to be able to move him and get back to the Tang, where he had access to everything he needed.

It wasn't rising, and Law wasn't willing to wait for it to get around to starting by itself, reaching in with his powers and forcing the blood around until it could sustain the pace without him. A cry tore itself from Shachi's throat, a painful broken sound that was the sweetest music Law could ever hear because it meant he wasn't gone yet, and he judged his patient as safe to move, wrapping the coat more firmly around him and lifting him into his arms.

"Shachi- Is he-?" Penguin was suddenly there in front of him, covered liberally with blood and the black of his haki not yet faded from his skin. The rest of the group of Heart Pirates were behind him in a similar state, dyed red and sporting numerous injuries that Law couldn't treat right then, because Shachi was safe to move but not out of danger and there was nothing else fatal in front of him.

"We need to get back," he said, his voice clipped and strained. Penguin's face fell, horror settling in as the implications struck him. Law, already moving as fast as he dared with his precious cargo, felt bad for him, but false hope was worse than the truth and he would never do that to his nakama.

His boots splashed through the blood on the ground, and while he wasn't consciously looking, he noticed the unmoving bloodied lumps and allowed himself a wry smile. Ordinarily he'd call such ferocity going overboard, but after what they'd done to Shachi it was simply penance and while part of him wished his nakama had left some for him, he was undeniably delighted to see the mangled corpses in his periphery as he hurried past.

Shachi was still breathing when they got back to the Tang, and he left the rest of his party to recount why, exactly, they were coated from head to toe in blood as he finally got the ginger settled in the infirmary, replacing makeshift field treatments with hospital grade equipment and coercing Shachi's body back to its regular performance.

Unsurprisingly, Penguin was first to follow him, silently obeying Law's instructions as the shock finally lifted and Law could safely sedate his patient enough to begin to repair the damage. There was a lot, the arms needing delicate treatment beyond anything conventional surgery could reliably offer and the long-lasting effects of the shock not easily reversed, but Law persevered in the end, allowing his Room to fall after he'd done everything he could.

A moment of black, and then he was on the floor, held awkwardly by Penguin, who had clearly managed to catch him before his head collided with the metal but only just.

"Get some rest, Law," the older man said, and Law absently noted the thickness in his voice that meant he was trying not to cry. He didn't get a chance to reorient himself before he was picked up, Penguin gently depositing him on the next bed over. "I'll wake you if anything changes."

Drained, Law didn't have much of a choice, exhausting forcibly overriding worry and dragging him back down into the realms of unconsciousness.

It's been a while since I went angsty, and this has been floating around in my mind for the last few days so I thought why not.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari