A.N.: Can I just take a minute to say that you all are awesome? Seriously. You really blew me away with the views this week. I had over a thousand only three days after posting last week's chapter. You are amazing and I love you all. Your support of my story means the world to me.
That being said, this chapter was almost physically painful for me to write. I'm good about writing tragic things in hindsight, but I actually really dislike writing them as they happen. This chapter continues Geraldo's flashback and covers his perspective of Karmen's initial escape and the events that happen afterward.
KeturahDaine and I agree that Pierce just needs to be swaddled in bubble wrap some days and that I'm a horrible person for putting him through the things I have. Unfortunately for my conscience, in this chapter arc, it only gets worse from here. I profoundly apologize.
After shooting his mentor between the eyes, Antwan Geraldo became the head of the DavenGallow bounty hunters and snipers. He was allowed to keep Zaytsev's rifle and hung it above his bed as a reminder of all his hard work to reach this point. He was Willow's right-hand guard and he loved every reward that came with it. He got to sleep in the main house and attend the fancy parties leading up to the wedding. He ate the best food and wore better outfits than he'd ever been able to afford. He received the biggest cut on the bounties and got to blame his mistakes on those in lower standing. Later, along the grapevine, he heard it rumored that it was Karmen herself who had forced Zaytsev's hand. She'd been paying close attention to the changes in security measures Geraldo put in place. Well, he could put down a little pressure of his own.
It's amazing how information can get a man recognition. All he had to do was remind a certain someone that they had leverage on them. Geraldo always found it interesting that enough pressure in the right places, or even the threat of pain and loss, can make even the strongest people beg for mercy. The morning before Karmen was to be married, his reluctant source, Oliver, came to him with gold dripping from his tongue. He grabbed the man by his shirt and drug him to Ikaika's study, ordering him to tell the master of the house what he had told Geraldo. When the information was repeated, Geraldo offered up a plan.
Karmen and her rat would try to sneak out through the side gate in the garden. Ikaika would head them off and make her regret her decision. Pierce would be tortured in front of her before he was skinned alive and left to die, writhing in agony and infection. She would have to sit there watching for hours or days until he expired. It would be her wedding gift, one that would ensure she would never be disloyal again.
That was the plan anyway. Geraldo went into his bedroom after dinner and took the rifle from over his bed. Even though he was the one who pulled the trigger, deep down he'd always blamed the girl for his mentor's death. He couldn't be sure how accurate the rumor had been, but he needed someone to blame. He'd just pulled the trigger. He hadn't been the cause. He'd get his revenge. No one was untouchable.
Geraldo and his snipers had set themselves up strategically across the grounds. A heavy storm had set in, but it didn't keep Geraldo from taking Zaytsev's favorite perch up on the roof. He'd been taught how to climb without slipping and where to sit without being struck by lightning. He'd set his eye against the scope of his rifle and waited. If that Warlord hadn't shown up the plan would have been flawless. He and his snipers must have shot a hundred rounds at the bear-man, but his paw-paw powers reflected most of them back. It was Geraldo who saw what Kuma was planning to do. He'd seen the man preparing to take off dozens of times. He shifted his rifle slightly, changing his target, waiting for when he knew the others would be firing as well. Kuma couldn't deflect them all. He measured the wind strength, the arc his bullet would need to make to counteract gravity, and the distance, and fired. He watched his bullet tear through the side of Karmen's head right before the pair of them disappeared.
It took him only two minutes to climb down the balconies and reach the place where Ikaika stood, pleased to see that the Warlord and girl had left the rat behind. Pierce was bent over, breathing heavily. Ikaika had shot him in the shoulder and his shirt was sticky with blood. He had the pearl-handled pistol leveled at the bodyguard's head. Still, the boy was grinning, not showing an ounce of fear. Geraldo passed them both and stepped to where Kuma had been standing. He leaned down and inspected the ground. It may be raining heavily, but the blood on the cobbles was still evident. He ran his fingers through it and held them up to the bodyguard. "Well would you look at that," he said in his most mocking tone. "Your precious mistress can bleed after all."
Pierce's eyes widened and his smile faded. It was as satisfying as shooting Karmen. "You should choose your pets more wisely, Sir," he said, breathing heavily from the pain in his chest. "This one seems to take pleasure in tearing up valuable assets." A look passed between them, like Pierce knew something Geraldo didn't and it gave him power over the men with the guns. It was somewhat unsettling.
Ikaika looked at the blood on his fingers too. "Is she dead?"
Geraldo wiped his hand on his pants and shrugged. "I doubt it," he said honestly. "I think I just grazed her head. Kuma was blocking most of the fatal shots. I barely got mine in." He squared up to the man. "I'll call our outposts and have them be on the lookout. Surely he can't go far with her being injured."
"No." His master seemed to relax slightly and he grinned down at Pierce. "If she survives, she'll come back on her own. We have something she wants." The bodyguard glared back at the lord but kept his mouth smartly shut. Whatever that knowledge had been, it's power faded with the remark and the rat was once again on the defensive.
At that moment Willow ran out in her nightgown. She stared wide-eyed at Pierce, then her husband. "Where is she?" she asked. When no one answered she asked again. "Where is she?!"
"Gone," Pierce said, giving a triumphant laugh. "Kuma's taken her far, far away, where you'll never find her. You lose."
Willow took the pistol from Ikaika, her pistol, and hit Pierce hard on the temple with the handle. He fell to the ground, unmoving.
"Check in on your units and meet me in the sub-basement," Ikaika said, waving one of Geraldo's men to begin dragging the crumpled body towards the house. "In the meantime, I'll notify the admirals of tonight's events and will handle the spy."
Kuma had killed nearly half Geraldo's men, simply by reflecting their bullets back at them. He woke Dr. Saaresto along with a couple of slaves and had them cover the cleanup and treating the wounded. He was curious to see what Ikaika had planned. Obviously he wasn't going to kill the rat now, but there were so many other ways to punish insubordinates. Maybe he would take a page out of Ludovic's book and dip his extremities in acid. A gleeful shiver ran down his spine. How purposeless would a bodyguard without limbs be? It would drive Pierce mad. Sadly acid didn't carry the personal touches Ikaika likes to put on his work. He did have a whole torture kit down there. Any one of those sharp objects would be fun to see punched through his skin.
He was still daydreaming about it as he walked down the stairs into the hidden room beneath the basement. He found Pierce suspended from the ceiling by chains, stripped down to just his pants, feet barely touching the ground. The stretch of his shoulders looked painful on his bullet wound. With his shirt removed, Geraldo could see the wound better. It was obvious that it was Willow who had the killer instinct when it came to guns. Ikaika had completely missed the lung and arteries that ran to the arm. It had entered just under the collarbone and was probably lodged in his scapula. Painful, but far from fatal. Maybe Ikaika just had bad aim. Maybe he hadn't been shooting to kill. Either way, Geraldo wasn't going to bring it up, he was enjoying seeing Pierce in pain too much to risk being kicked out. He was rewarded when Ikaika held his hand out to the defenseless man. "You did well today, despite the outcome," he said as he rolled up his sleeves to the elbow. "I'll let you have the first crack at him. Fists only, if you'd please. I want him to last a good long while yet."
Geraldo didn't need to be asked twice. He unbuttoned his cuffs and pushed his sleeves back, bouncing in place like a boxer while he decided where he wanted to swing first. He went for the gut, quickly followed by a punch to the left kidney. Pierce cried out in pain. His gray eyes flashed with anger as he pulled himself up by the shackles and kicked Geraldo square in the chest, and then his shoulder, causing him to spin on his feet. Pierce swung forward and wrapped his legs around Geraldo's neck, fitting his knee under his chin and squeezing with both legs, cutting off his air and blood flow to his brain. The pressure made it painfully impossible to breathe and Geraldo struggled to find a hold on the man that would release him, all the while he was constricted harder and harder until he felt his windpipe might be crushed. Ikaika whipped Pierce sharply across the back once, causing him to cry out in pain again as he dropped back down. He released Geraldo in with the shock but managed to land one more kick that sent him into the wall. Geraldo coughed air back into his lungs and turned around. He could see the blood dripping off the thin rope of braided leather hanging limply in Ikaika's hand and knew the whip had cut deeply into his flesh. It would be even more painful for the bodyguard to pull himself up now. He used the delay caused by Pierce's pain to deliver a punch to his jaw. The snap of Pierce's face into his bicep brought the grin back to Geraldo's face. He threw a few more punches and felt a rib crack. The bodyguard wouldn't be pulling himself up again any time soon. He laughed and continued, reveling in the idea of what the bruises will look like tomorrow. Pierce tried his best to guard himself with haki, but the boy had never been able to maintain it for a prolonged period, something that Karmen had often chided him on and now something he most likely regretted. Geraldo kept punching until he was sweating and Ikaika put a hand on his shoulder.
"That'll do for now," he said. "Doctor, you can come in."
Geraldo looked at Saaresto coming down the stairs, confused. "You're patching him up?"
"Just bind his wounds," Ikaika continued, speaking directly to the doctor. "No pain medicine. We want him to last."
After this day Geraldo often caught Ikaika watching him with an appraising expression on his face. He started giving him a few missions outside of the normal collect and kills. Kuma had gone back to his regular activities as if nothing had happened. The admirals said he'd maintained an air of stone-faced silence throughout a brutal interrogation and had been subjected to more surgeries as a consequence. At some point during these, they implanted a tracking device. Whatever he'd done with her, after it became obvious that he wasn't going to visit and lead them straight to her, the Marines made sure he was too busy to offer her any kind of support. Ikaika left for Galaval after a month of hearing nothing regarding Karmen. He brought Saaresto with him to keep his bait alive and told Willow that Geraldo should go with him to organize search parties in the New World. Willow offered little argument and Geraldo was eager to do something other than read reports on unsuccessful searches. He wanted back out in the field. He wasn't meant to sit around shuffling papers. Even regular patrol around the grounds was better than that. It wasn't that Willow wasn't giving him missions, but he hadn't expected being the team leader to be so... tedious. He wanted power, not paperwork.
Ikaika could care less about reports and charts. One general survey file a month was enough for him. Most of it were things he could set one of his underlings on, which he did. Little Hanssen had joined up out of fear, the alternative being joining the ranks of slaves. He was soft and showed little skill for combat. A desk job was just perfect for him. He debriefed the bounty hunters, kept cost estimates, damage reports, death tolls, and kept ammo ordered. He also started taking Willow's calls and assigning men to carry out the orders she gave. Geraldo went on most of them, but occasionally he was too busy to be bothered.
Most days he was burning the wires, making visit after visit to different satellite posts on different islands, looking for any leads that might bring the prodigal daughter back. For Geraldo, it was almost like being back on the streets again, only this time he ruled them. He used the Gallowcomb name like a double-edged sword, striking fear and loyalty wherever he went and killing those who resisted. Nothing significant ever came of it, but their influence spread in the underground. Many of their leads came from Doflamingo's partners and underlings, who were all too willing to help "family." They found some short, snooty girls with dark curly hair, but none of them were ever Karmen. They infiltrated other organizations, making sure they had spies in all the major countries and islands.
Every few months, Geraldo visited Dressrosa to ask Doflamingo in person if he had any fresh leads. Each time the man would smile that Joker grin and say, "Not yet." He never liked those brief visits. He always felt that the eyes hidden behind those rose-colored glasses could see into his soul. Like he could see Geraldo's hunger, his ambition, and he was waiting for something. He felt like a fruit, ripening on the branch, waiting to see if he'd be devoured or transformed. Whatever the man was thinking, Geraldo was always happy to leave Dressrosa behind.