Chapter 13: Now Is That Gratitude, Or Is It Really Love?
Orsin stood outside the town, near one of the few bits of tree cover the island had to its name. This was the day that his usual contact with the higher Revolutionary cause was scheduled to come in, but…
He resisted the urge to check his watch. Oberon Eleghast made his own time, as did every other Revolutionary, because shackling themselves to hard schedules was an excellent way to get caught in a trap.
Still, that didn't mean he couldn't get annoyed with Oberon's antics-
…suddenly, a large spotted big cat with pants, top hat, and a tank top dropped out of a tree behind him, growling.
Orsin's gun was already clear of its holster before he realized that he was looking at a jaguar and not a leopard.
"Jumpy today, are we?" the strangely dressed jaguar asked smugly.
"You know, if I wasn't used to your shit," Orsin hissed as he reholstered his gun. "I could have continued to mistake you for Rob Lucci and shot you. And then where would you be?"
"Like bullets would do any good in either case," the jaguar replied. "Everyone knows CP9 agents don't get shot. And ya'd be dead before you knew it."
Suddenly, the jaguar stood upright, turning into a man who much more fit the pants and tank top that he had on. He stretched luxuriantly, making mewling noises while doing so.
Orsin grimaced. "...you know that I've known enough Zoans to know that those… bits aren't part of the transformation."
The smile that Oberon flashed was that of carefully practiced innocence. "What bits?"
He couldn't be serious. "You know - the…" Orsin found himself being forced to mime a cat's pawing gesture. "That."
"Ah yes, Orsin - daddy, please, play the part of the No Fun Police, it's so enjoyable. I love it," he rolled his eyes. "Yer so repressed, I've no idea how ya function."
"By pretending to be someone not named Orsin, mostly," Orsin said before slipping back behind Holliday's mask. "It's worked out well enough so far."
Oberon clicked his tongue. "I can't understand how a man can willingly repress himself. It's torture on the soul, cowboy."
"The name's currently Holliday, if you'd please."
"I think I'll stick with cowboy, par'ner."
"And I picked it because 'Holliday' was a cowboy- never mind. I waste my references on you." Holliday sighed. "Anyway, you wanted my report?"
"Over lunch?"
"Well, you usually are more tolerable around food." Sometimes because his handler would just have his mouth too full to keep talking.
Oberon smirked. "Show me the way, ol' boy."
It was a quiet day for Ravenspurn - between the condition of 'early morning' an island known for its bar culture, the clammy grasp of a fading winter, and the generally murky weather of Ravenser Odd, most wouldn't be out until closer to noon.
On one hand, that meant things were generally peaceful and that there wasn't much reason to blunt the edges of their conversation beyond the basic precautions.
On the other hand, that meant there was very little to distract Oberon Eleghast - and an understimulated Oberon was a proven recipe for trouble in Holliday's experience, which was being proven right as the man immediately latched on the Man in Green.
"Old eyes, young body - and not quite the right fit on yer skin." Oberon's eyes were bright, the way that they got when the man felt like he'd snagged the start of a good lead. "So what's yer story, old soul?"
The Man in Green fixed a glare on Oberon and Holliday could feel the temperature of the air drop.
"Leave him be, Oberon," he said, pulling his fellow Revolutionary back by the arm. "He's just the man who raises musimouflon away from town - he doesn't need to add you to his list of daily tangles."
Oberon grumbled, but switched direction to keep pace with Holliday.
"What do ya know about that one?" Oberon asked as they continued their way to the Dead Admiral.
Holliday shrugged. "Not much. I don't have a name, but he has been on Marshalsea's… hmm. It's not so much of a Shit List as such, but it's close enough where I know of him and that he's banned from going into certain places and speaking to certain people."
Of course, when it came to Meryl Dacey, Seasea tended towards the territorial, despite not having much to do with the girl. It was why the 'interview' with Raine even happened - any other arrival to the island for any other reason wouldn't have been worth the time or attention, but Marshalsea took the safety of her old crew seriously… and Meryl had apparently inherited that two-fold thanks to Enda Dacey and her Aunt Brenda.
"Interestin'."
"That's not an invitation to track him back to his home." Marshalsea had cultivated a delicately balanced ecosystem of interactions on her island and he was not going to be the person responsible - directly or not - for throwing that all out of balance.
Oberon threw his hand back against his forehead, leaning back dramatically as if struck. "Ya think so poorly of me."
"I know that what they say about curiosity and cats applies double where you're concerned," Holliday shot back.
"Cowboy, the man's a ghoul."
"No, that would be that bastard Crowley - you know, the graverobber."
That got the Revolutionary's attention. "Thought they executed him over in Las Camp a month back?"
"And it took as well as the last six times it happened," Holliday muttered. "Half tempted to put him down myself just to make sure I don't have to correct the reports of his demise at the last minute again."
"I wish ya would. Ye'd be putting yourself to good use then."
"Marshalsea still has a use for him, so he's protected for the moment," Holliday said, not particularly happy with the fact. Yes, the man was useful, but not every 'useful' thing made up for its cost - even if he was good for getting rid of bodies on the island, the man was every kind of rat rolled up into one. "Rumor is he's tied up in Warlord business - which one, hard to say. Might be Moriah, might be Doflamingo, but either way, he's confident enough to walk wherever he wants at his pleasure."
"Protected by yerr…what is she to ya anyway?"
"...I'd rather keep my personal life private."
Oberon nodded. "Ah, fuck buddy. Never thought it'd happen - but at least ya held out fer a hell of a vintage…"
Holliday bit his tongue. The extent of his relationship with Seasea was kept private for a reason, but Oberon had always had a talent for getting under his skin at remarkable speeds… which made him wonder sometimes if being assigned to the man was Dragon getting back at him for something, rather than a matter of geographical convenience.
…no, Dragon wouldn't do that. Ivankov would though.
"Judging by yer face, I hit the nail hard on its head," the Revolutionary said, despite doing no such thing. "Anyway, we close to the Dead Admiral? I haven't actually decided to memorize this place, I need to save my brain storage for more important things."
"Well then you're in luck - we're here," Holliday said, gesturing at the clear signage. "So unfortunate that you can't dedicate any of that brain storage to reading."
"Hee-Haw-Hoolarious, cowboy," Oberon scoffed as he opened the door. The day's still early so there weren't as many customers as there are at peak dinner time hours.
Raine was eating breakfast in the corner. It'd been three days since the 'duel' with Marshalsea and it was clear the girl was still feeling it from how slow she was taking even the process of moving her fork from her plate to her mouth and back again.
Over at the counter, Zahlia was chatting with who seemed to be the town's less popular doctor, Shimon Shelley. What they were talking about couldn't be made out by the door, though it would be interrupted anyway Zahlia spotting the revolutionary Duo and beckoning them to come to the counter.
"Mmm, prime treatment, cowboy?" Oberon asked, raising an eyebrow. "Ya really must be good in bed."
"I think he does well enough," Marshalsea said as she descended the staircase. "And you must be the annoying asshole friend my favorite sidepiece keeps complaining about."
"Aww, he calls me his friend? Ya should just tell me that sort of thing to my face, cowboy-"
"We're not. And you don't even bother to try denying the rest, do you?"
"That's not what you told me, Holliday. You did say friend."
Holliday sighed. Of course this was what he got for letting this pair get into a proper conversation with each other - a pincer attack on everything he did and didn't say to either of them.
Oberon laughed loudly to himself. "I won't deny it, no. I know I come off quite abrasive to many. 'Sa part of me as is everything else I do."
"Regardless, I'm glad to personally meet yer BBAK Girlfriend, instead of just seeing her from afar." Oberon bent down to give Marshalsea a friendly cheek kiss as a greeting.
Did Holliday want to ask? Well, he had to, whether or not he wanted to. "...and what's a 'BBAK', Oberon?"
Marshalsea giggled. "I'd wager a guess at it being 'Big Beautiful Admiral Killer', Is that right, Oberon?"
"Of course. Cuz what's sexier than a lady who can mulch one of the most powerful men the world has to offer, right?"
Marshalsea smiled. "Absolutely right, Oberon!" she returned his greeting to him, giving him a cheek kiss as well.
She pointed at an empty table near the counter. "Let's sit down and have that conversation you boys came here for."
As I watched Marshalsea sit down with that cowboy Holliday and his dramatic looking friend with the horns - I'd seen him back the first time I'd come into the Dead Admiral, I think -, Shelley shuffled over to my table.
"How's that prescription treating you?" he asked, sitting down.
"Pretty well," I said, doing a little stretch. My joints were hurting less, which meant mixing in old stretches was easier and had better effect on my mobility - I was still feeling what Marshalsea did to me a few days ago, but it wasn't nearly as bad as some shit I'd suffered through in the past. "Still have a bit of pain, but I can function for longer without breaks now, which is the important part."
"Ideally, you should be in no pain," the doctor insisted.
"Yeah, but y'know, after a certain point, you're so used to it that even 'less' is a hell of an improvement," I pointed out. "I can walk, I can use my hands, I can sit upright and sleep without too many problems… that's all pretty good so far as my standards of living go."
"...Hm, well. I suppose that's fair. I should have all the supplies for a back surgery within the next month. Are you ready?"
"As much as I really can be when the subject of getting cut open and having my interior shuffled around comes up," I said honestly. I'd always been hospital shy and medical procedures intimidated me on principle. "But hey, it needs doing and you're definitely not going to let me get out of it."
Shelley nodded. "I'd like to see your quality of life improve and I want to do what I can to help it, and this is something I can do." Shelley reached out his hand to rub my shoulder - and for a guy as touch adverse as him to initiate contact outside of a medical context, it meant something more than it might have coming from someone else. "Eventually you should get a hold of a Transponder Snail so you don't need to always meet me in person."
Televisits were a thing even in One Piece. Hah. "I'll think about it."
Shelley gave me a warm smile and got up, briefly greeting the other table with Marshalsea and company before heading out of the Dead Admiral.
I spared Marshalsea's table a glance. What the old woman got up to really wasn't my business… but Shelley had dropped a hint about the entire reason why he knew about my medication in the first place was that the mysterious Holliday was involved with the matter somehow, despite my having nothing to do with the man.
It probably meant that, at some point, he'd gotten access to stuff of mine that Meryl hadn't touched - but what exactly that was, beyond my meds, was a bit of a mystery until I went to check out the boat myself. And I'd been avoiding that, for some reason beyond 'well I just don't care for boatly activities'.
Eventually, I'd find out why he was snooping. But off of guesses? It wasn't for anything good.
"Now, what is it you wanted to ask us, Oberon?" Holliday asked, staring daggers into him.
The man grinned, spraying a bit of crumbled bread as he did so. "For a score I'd like yer help with, of course."
Of course. Holliday let out a defeated sigh. "How bad is it?"
"Nothing bad enough to disrupt yer life on this cozy lil rock, cowboy, to that I can attest."
"You say that, but if you're asking for my help…"
Oberon shrugged. "It could be an archeology problem, ya know. Don't underestimate the possibilities, Mister Legs."
"Look, I've been working with you for almost ten years, Oberon," Holliday said. "I know that it's never an archeology problem with you."
"Usually not. But ya know those things ya call 'Outsider Tech?' This thing's full of 'em. Thought ye'd be interested, gramps."
"Outsider tech?" Marshalsea interjected, eyebrow raised at the mention.
"Ya know - like that little black shiny thing he has. The No-ki-ah."
Across the room, Raine choked on her drink.
As a show of proof, he dropped a large, featureless slab with a silver backing onto the table.
"I don't see what's useful or even important about this. It just looks like a flat plane of glass that doesn't do anything." Marshalsea scoffed.
Oberon smirked, double tapped the screen, unveiling a picture of himself on it and a display of the time, completely wrong, but still impressive. "Ya still sure about that?"
Marshalsea looked at the display and then back up at the pair. "...alright, now I'm starting to get why this is a big deal. This is… MADS-level technology. And y'all know what the WG did to them."
"Yeah. This little ol' thing here isn't that dangerous, but there's a mix of different things in this collection from what I've heard. Weapons, information, materials…" Oberon listed off. "So, I figured, might as well get the closest thing to an expert I've got on the subject involved."
That all made sense but…"...What's in it for you?" Holliday asked. Oberon didn't often initiate missions that didn't achieve some secondary goal of his, though what those goals were tended to be unpredictable even at the best of times.
"Hanging out with my old, emphasis on old, friend again, and the satisfaction of taking down another one of these ships. Plus maybe one of those 'Outsider Tech' pieces will be useful to my groove. Y'never know."
…that was true, he rarely did know what was going on in Oberon's thought process.
"Old? He's twenty years younger than me!" Marshalsea griped.
"And I'm only ten years older than him," Holliday said. "He's not good at scaling."
For the very first time in his life, Holliday saw Oberon look embarrassed. "Sorry, Captain." he said in the softest voice he was capable of to Marshalsea.
"Anyway," Oberon said, finally getting to the 'catch' Holiday had been waiting on. "The mission is time sensitive - need to catch that transport before it hits the Calm Belt, because after that, it's headed straight to Egghead and you know that place ain't one for the RA to walk into as they please."
"Egghead transport means guards, Oberon. Marine and Cipher Pol."
"So? It's only supposed to be CP-3, so it's not as if we're snubbing the nose of the real dangerous set."
"...fine." It would attract attention, but such was the nature of being a Revolutionary anyway. "Are there any other team members you'd want to read in on this?"
Marshalsea smiled. "Y'know, I might have a name for you."
She got up from her seat and called Raine over to the mission table.
"Captain, Forgive me for saying this, but the tired looking stray that's washed up here?" Oberon looked at Marshalsea puzzled.
"Oh, don't you know?" she said. "That kid's -"
Holliday sighed. "She's only just under thirty, Seasea, she told you that -"
"-like I said, that kid's the first live Outsider our favorite mutual nerd's turned up," Marshalsea said. "She's something of a… you could say, special side project. So much as I'm letting him check things. It's a balancing act between getting in the know and goin' a little too far into the personals, you get me?"
Oberon reacted with a face with equal amounts disgust and worry. "Well. I guess beggars can't be choosers. Anything I should know? She's taking her time coming here."
"That's cause I kicked her shit in a few days ago - sparring for pleasure, not because it was personal," Marshalsea clarified. "She got a decent hit on me - not enough to hurt, but it's better than some people manage."
The disgust in Oberon's face lessened, now it just read as more uncertainty. "Well, hopefully the dame will be a good help to us and not slow us down."
"I'd just as well leave her out of this," Holliday said. "Do you know how much work I've put into not startling her? The last thing I need is for my best lead to -" He clammed up as Raine finally made it to the table, sitting down.
"You wanted something, Marshalsea?" she asked.
"Mm, Yes, We all would like to discuss something with you, Miss…?" Oberon looked directly at her, flashing a catlike smile.
Raine didn't look particularly impressed by the quick display of charm. "Raine. Which I think you should know, given that Marshalsea called me over by name barely a minute ago."
"My apologies, Raine. I only focus on the most important details, and that didn't seem like one at the time. Plus, I like the personal introduction." The smile flashed again. "As it were - I'm Oberon and I think yer already familiar with the ol' cowboy here."
"The Not-Doc Holliday, yeah. I remember."
And of course the one person he didn't want to understand the reference had caught it. Holliday nodded. "I know we've met before, but it is nice to be properly introduced rather than simply showing up at the same dinner."
"Glad to have you here kid, I imagine Oberon will start you off on why you were called here." Marshalsea responded, happily.
"Right Captain. Cuttin' to the chase, Yer an Outsider, are ya not?" Oberon was pretty brazen in asking this almost immediately.
Holliday sighed. "...yes, it's that. Despite me at least aiming at the pretense of subtlety."
Raine almost looked like she wanted to argue the accusation, but instead, leaned back and crossed her arms. "...alright, so what? So 'I'm not from around here' means a lot more than you'd expect. Is this the part where I'm interrogated or killed for knowing too much? Because I've gotta say, I'm not exactly like - the most informed person on any subject, so you're not gaining or losing anything by just leaving me alone."
"I think… that you're misunderstanding our interest." Holliday - no, Orsin said, leaned forward. "I think you're neglecting the raw advantage a native's understanding is. How many things we have that we lack context for because we don't have the cultural background or unwritten knowledge that can recontextualize an entire conversation-"
"...the Punt problem," Raine said, tone lightening with dawning understanding.
"Excuse me?" The word was strange, pronounced in a way that felt…
"It was… it was an ancient trading partner to Egypt - another ancient kingdom in… my world," she said awkwardly before finding a stride. "They always referenced it with regards to fabulous wealth and valued them as a trade partner for a thousand years… but never, in all the records preserved from those times, did they write down where it actually was. Three thousand years later, everyone's just left guessing based on context clues."
Again, it was Orsin that fell forward in interest, excited in a way he hadn't felt in years. "You were a student of history?"
"As a hobby," Raine said. "I'm not - educated or trained in any proper sense. I'm just good at remembering stories, that's all."
"Still!"
Oberon and Marshalsea chuckled quietly together.
"Cowboy here's an archaeologist," Oberon explained. "So ya start talking fossils and ruins and the like, yer gonna get his attention, even without being one of his hobby subjects."
And there was the discomfort and caginess back again.
"It's not - I study the technology and literature of your people," Holliday explained. "At least, what I can find of it - it tends to show up at random and not all of it survives the journey - as you know, much of our world is ocean… and even the land isn't guaranteed to be safe either."
Not just because of the natural dangers of beasts and weather either.
"It's only safe when you have people like me looking out for you, but there's not many of me left, and well, I'm getting old." Marshalsea added.
Oberon chuckled a bit again, then leaned forward to speak. "And specifically, we've gotten word of a large stash of those types of trinkets from yer world being transported by a governmental ship. We'd like ya to help us intercept it, if ye'd please, dame."
"...fine," Raine said after a minute. "But only because I don't seem to have much choice in the matter."
Elsewhere, the Man in Green waited for the day to pass.
He didn't need to eat or sleep, really - it was all just… habit, one he was long out of practice with -, so instead he just… closed his eyes and waited, listening to the musimouflon graze and bray the day away.
Existing was mostly out of habit - again, one he was out of practice with -, but…
He watched a familiar girl make her way towards Stonecutter Island, to the sacred ground held by the local part of her family. Somehow, despite having a full respect for her adherence to tradition, the fact that Meryl had almost none of that from her other mother…
He sighed. "At the very least, she's doing better," he decided, standing up to take his flock somewhere else. It wouldn't do to cross Marshalsea again by getting too close to the girl - even if he couldn't feel pain, this body could still be destroyed and, despite all the complicated feelings he had towards Meryl, he still had reasons to linger on the peripherals.
He tilted his head up, tasting the wind and the faint shift of color in the sky. "...there's a storm on its way. And not just the kind that rides the wind."
As we slowly and quietly made our way out into the ocean, darkness falling around us as night fell further - and no light on our own boat because stealth -, I had plenty of time to think about how this was all a terrible idea.
I wasn't just thinking that because it seemed like an incredibly risk-happy venture - really, existing in the One Piece world tended to be that by default - or because I hated being out in open water in a boat this small, but the really bad idea was bringing me along.
I was a regular ass person. Pedestrian at best on most days of the week. I didn't have a single skillset they could use outside of being able to walk quietly and my ability to point at objects from my world and go 'yep, I know what that is'. The only 'thefts' I'd ever partaken in were moving spare change and random junk nobody actually cared about around my childhood house and even those had been minimal because the consequences for trying and failing didn't bear thinking about.
This? There was pretty much one consequence I could think of, but it was 'death', so yeah. Not exactly a confidence booster.
On the other hand, I was pretty sure Marshalsea had threatened me with the complete withdrawal of her protection, because apparently being an 'Outsider' was something people would kill me for.
Glad to know now at least that there were others like me. Dead, probably, but at least there was precedent. It took a little bit of the probability of 'protagonist' off my shoulders.
Oberon looked over to me, an evaluating look quickly passing over his face before he immediately opened his mouth. "Dame, ye'll be safe with us. Well, I can understand ya might not trust lil ol' me, but ya trust Mister Holliday, don't ya?"
I stole a look at the man helming our boat. "I don't even know him."
"Mmm." The red-haired revolutionary didn't seem particularly convinced. "That's not exactly true, I can tell by how ya act around him. Or maybe it's just the vibes. Regardless, he's at least more familiar to ya, so I take no offense. But I am serious when I say we'll all be alright."
Oddly enough, that was a bit of a comfort. They - probably? - didn't just let any idiots into the Revolutionary Army. The Marines, maybe, but the Revolutionaries had never come off as an organization just interested in the power of infinite disposable bodies to throw at problems.
I mean, we still could die, but at least it would be an incidental event rather than a purposeful one.
…god, my bar for 'decent' was low.
Oberon looked onto the goal. Holliday tilted his head back from the wheel for a moment.
"We'll be landing in two minutes, be ready when I tell you to."
Abruptly, there was a meow and the sensation of a small, warm, fuzzy body winding around my ankles.
"Jeanne," I hissed, grabbing my cat - less and less of a kitten now, but still very small. "You're not supposed to -"
Jeanne, like most cats, didn't care about what she was and wasn't supposed to do. "Meh."
"...fine, fine. Too late to turn around," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Oh, she'll work out fine. Black cats are lucky, don't ya know?" Oberon said, grinning. "Keep her on ya and ya shouldn't have any problem."
"...Say, Dame, do ya happen to know what devil fruit are?"
"Yeah, I do," I said. At Oberon's raised eyebrow, I added, "Meryl has one."
"Ah."
"Well, thank Ivankov's fishnets!" Oberon changed his head and arms rather quickly into its Jaguar like state, and waved his huge paw at me, beans and all. It was rather abrupt and made me jump for how I wasn't expecting a Zoan. "So I don't have to explain to ya why I can't go into the water which makes this a lot faster."
I snorted. "Well I can't go in the water either for the reasons of 'I'm a shit swimmer'," I replied. "Y'ain't special."
"I used to be a great swimmer. But life choices to make, ya know. Cowboy goes first, since he has the stealthiest option of being able to actually touch the water and get us on board."
Oberon bent down in front of me, back towards me. "Hop on!" he said. "Ya can touch the fur if you like, just hold on tight to anything except the red stuff - you wouldn't want me pulling yer hair, would ya?"
"Yeah, no hair pulling unless it's a knock-down drag out fight."
Oberon chuffed. "Or something else."
"Yeah, you're not getting 'something else' from me, goth boy."
"Not my type, but y'know, I like to remind all parties of all possibilities of what may happen. Helps keep them thinking of ways out of things. Ya cat coming too?"
Jeanne answered for me, jumping up onto my shoulders and holding on.
"...I guess that answers that question," I said as I started to climb onto Oberon's back.
This part was a bit like a fever dream. Every bit of responsible Earth-resident was reminding me about the rules about petting big cats right now - like they somehow applied to 'magic fruit gave me furry superpowers' -, but the rest was like 'holy fuck, rare kitty'.
Unfortunate that the 'kitty' had to be a really fucking annoying person who was having way too much fun being equal parts too open and too cryptic, but hey. Such was the nature of life.
"Cowboy, ya ready to work yer magic?"
While I'd been focused on the two cats, Holliday had stripped down to the bare essentials, kicking off his boots and most of the layers of his outfit to the bare minimum… though he had kept a gun on him, strapped to his speedo. "I've been ready - I just know better than to interrupt your banter."
Oberon smiled. "Let's go!"
Holliday dove into the water, heading for the ship a few hundred feet away from them at a fast but not superhuman pace.
We waited. And waited.
15 minutes later, a light was being blinked on and off of Oberon's chest.
He brought the dingy we were both in closer to the marine boat, as close as he could make it without crashing into it anyway.
"That looks like our signal, now dame, I mean it when I say hold tight, this ride will be a little bumpy. I know ya don't like me the best, but I'm being as kind as I can."
He grabbed a firm hold onto my legs that were wrapped around him and instantly sprang a good 25 feet into the air, landing with claws firmly locked into the side of the ship. And then, as if he wasn't carrying another person at all on his back, he climbed.
It took barely any time at all to make it on deck, despite how fuck-huge marine ships were, where we were greeted by…
"Stop it, I can see your faces." Holliday said, annoyed. He was dressed now in a slightly oversized for his body Marine outfit.
"I'm not saying anything," I said.
"I will!" Oberon said, grinning. "But I can save it for later." He let me and Jeanne down, after which he stretched…in ways most normal people aren't able to either. After which, he reverted to full human form.
"Our target is a few decks down, our goal is hopefully to pull this off as unseen as possible. I'd appreciate you, Oberon, not making that harder than it needs to be."
"What? Lil ol' me, cause problems?" Oberon cooed, putting on an outrageous Southern accent. "Why I do declare, that doesn't sound like me at all."
Holliday grimaced, and lead them around the deck to grab some more of the marine shirts and hats before they went down for their goal.
"Using the uniforms temporarily should help with us going unnoticed, so pick whoever looks closest to your size. And don't worry, this deck isn't waking up any time soon.
I slipped into a uniform labeled 'Recruit' and pulled a hat down over my hair. It wouldn't stand up to inspection, but most people had a tendency to overlook the menial workers of even their own organization. Jeanne would be memorable though, as would Murasame, so my main defense was simply 'don't get caught'.
Oberon, on the other hand, seemed to have gone with the stealth approach of 'if you act like you belong in a place, people will believe you', which I suppose was his only option, given his bright hair, horns, and tattoos didn't lend themselves to being forgettable anytime soon.
We followed Holliday down into the interior of the boat, slipping past people none the wiser about the main deck.
Oberon, Holliday and me kept an ear out for conversations happening on the ship as we traveled further in.
"What's a 'Shazam'?"
"That old bitch has it coming if I have anything to say about it."
That one seemed worrying, but there was no time to linger on it.
"No sir, I still don't understand the purpose of whatever 'Candy Crush Saga' is."
"It's… it's bread and circuses. A distraction to keep people nice and docile, focused on something shiny instead of other things."
Oh good, a brain cell. Wonder how long that would last in Government service.
"Oberon, Raine, I think it's best if we split up at this point, we can cover some more ground that way. Plus the path that way looks clearer, so you shouldn't have as much trouble. I'll take the other angle with Oberon over here."
Obediently, I took the direction, though I had every misgiving in the world about splitting the party. Nothing good came from doing that, in tabletop games or real life, not unless you knew the place you were dealing with well… and me? I didn't know dick about Marine ships except for the color scheme and general size of 'bigger than whatever the Straw Hats are sailing'.
But I did know how to be quiet.
There was a trick to breathing while sneaking. Most of it was taking it slow - slow in, slow out, slower and shallower than even a sleeping person would. No sniffing, snorting, or sneezing, no sucking in or holding a breath until it threatened to burst your lungs - all of that would lead to noise either coming or going. Stealth was a long game best done slowly, carefully, and with a carefully deflated ego paired with a cultivated sense of at least superficial calmness.
The last bit, which was always the one that got people, was to keep your mouth either entirely closed or, if you were breathing out of it, to keep it open - fairly wide and open, and without tensing your lips. Less chance of whistling on accident.
The problem was that all of that took focus. And Jeanne wasn't letting me have any of it.
"Jeanne," I hissed, chasing the cat down the hall as quickly as I dared.
After a minute, I caught her… but that also came with the realization that I was lost now.
"Great job, 'Raine'," I whispered to myself as I hugged Jeanne to my chest. "First super special secret mission and you are already officially dead."
At least, I was if I couldn't think my way out of the situation.
Moving down the hallway, staying as close to the wall as I dared, I looked for signs. Stairs, directions to locations like 'poop deck' or 'mess', hell even 'hey valuable thingy in here' could be useful. But I was getting nothing.
I paused, listening for any ambient noise.
Someone was coming. Not in a rush, but anything coming in my direction was bad.
I tried to press myself further against the wall, as if I would somehow awaken the power to phase through it.
Nonononononono-
I stumbled backwards, catching myself one second before I crashed into a table.
What? This wasn't - no. That shouldn't have been possible - the wall behind me had been solid… and this wasn't anywhere I'd been so far - least, so far as I could tell in the dark.
"What did you do?" I asked Jeanne in a hushed whisper, grabbing her from her perch on my shoulders.
The kitten had changed - mundane black fur had turned into a semi-solid tarry smoke that threatened to slip between my fingers if I squeezed any harder, the near perfect black interrupted by neon blue stripes that glowed in the way only the supernatural could.
The sky blue eyes though. Those hadn't really changed at all, for all there was a faint glow to them.
"Devil Fruit bullshit, I presume," I murmured, my voice sounding incredibly blaise and calm despite the hammering in my chest.
No, no. For all this adventure wasn't doing wonders for my stress levels, this part was good. Devil Fruit bullshit on my side was nothing but a plus, especially if it kept me not dead for the run of this little adventure in stealing from the World Government.
Jeanne shifted back to a softer, more familiar form and gave a very small, almost apologetic mrpp at me.
"This does explain how you manage to get into all kinds of places," I murmured, giving her a soothing pet between the ears. Surprise reveal or not, that didn't excuse manhandling her like that, even for a second. "Should figure out what power you have properly - but that's a problem for later."
For now, our priority was surviving this mission, ideally with whatever random semi-useful crap from home we could get our hands on… but I'd need a light first to be able to tell where the fuck we'd ended up.
"Shouldn't we be minding Raine? Since you promised her safety?" Holliday asked, having second thoughts about splitting the party.
Oberon waved his concern off. "Ah, she'll be fine. That dame seems to have herself in order, even if she's a bit battered and skittish."
Holliday wasn't so sure of that himself, but it wasn't like he was in much of a position to go and look - his hands were rather full, quite literally, with choking the life out of a member of the night watch.
"Anyway, how's the girlfriend in bed?" Oberon asked with a very unsettling grin on his face. "Ya deserve to have a good time after all ye've been through, daddy-o."
"Is this really the time or place for gossip?" He'd just gotten done killing a man and was working on the next one.
"I rarely get to see ya, so yes it is. I am being sincere here." Oberon said, thoughtlessly handling a guard.
Alright, Holliday would give him what he wanted then. Even if the sound of a man fruitlessly trying to fight his way out of a sleeper hold ruined the atmosphere a bit. "...she's very good. Lot more experience than I have and it shows."
"...what, like that's hard? Daddy-o, ye've barely ever held hands with a woman since ya-know-what. I'm happy for ya, sincerely. Ye've needed to start healin' yerself sometime after all." He looked directly at Holliday with a look of concern mixed with reassurance, all the while breaking the sternum of a guy.
"Let's talk about 'healing' after we deal with the rest of the Cipher Pol agents," Holliday replied, rolling his eyes. "This whole mission was meant to be a smash and grab, after all…"
"Yer so dull! And besides, I'm not staying on the island long!" Oberon said, annoyed, transforming into his more jaguar-like form to take a bite out of another one of the guards. "Let me get some socializin' in, cowboy!"
A quick pistol whip took out a Marine recruit - Holliday always felt a bit bad about killing the young ones, so hopefully this bit of mercy wouldn't backfire too badly. "Only you could be a social animal while having a famously solitary Zoan ability."
"That's stereotyping!" Oberon scoffed, bending seemingly unnaturally to dodge a hit before spitting fire at the opponent who took aim at him.
Holliday sighed. "...and there's any sense of stealth gone." At least that meant that he could finally use his guns properly.
"Only cuz ye pissed me off!" Oberon snarled directly in Holliday's face
"What, like that's hard?" Holliday shot back.
Oberon narrowed his eyes angrily and took a deep breath, drawing fire at his mouth, then in a snap spat it at the wall of marines heading toward them.
At this rate, they were going to end up fighting everyone on the boat.
Holliday did hope that Raine wasn't caught up in their nonsense. It'd be a pity to lose his first live Outsider to his and Oberon's… usual dynamics, even if it was indirectly.
"There should be about 10 more, giv'r'take, cowboy." Oberon said disapprovingly. "10 more big guys. Ready to handle that, or are ya too rusty for that?"
Holliday unloaded the empty shells from his revolver, replaced the bullets, and gave the cylinder a spin. "Nah, I've kept up my practice."
"Outside of the bedroom?"
Holliday planted his next bullet between a Cipher Pol agent's eyes. "The bedroom was for a different kind of money shot, Oberon."
Oberon smirked and let out a loud long laugh at the remark. "Now that's the cowboy I know!"
Whatever this room was, they hadn't made it easy to navigate. No windows, lots of clutter - I'd almost tripped over a couple different boxes - and I was still trying to feel my way along the wall to a hypothetical location of a light switch…
Wait, was this a fucking car I was touching? What the fuck -
I moved around it, incredibly aware of how delicate - and loud - car alarm systems could be… and soon after I'd found the wall again, I found the door.
Okay, not a light switch, but it was a way out. A locked one, but hey.
"Light this up a little for me," I told Jeanne.
She obliged, shifting into her glowy-smokey form so I could use the light cast by her stripes to navigate. Oh yeah, this was definitely where we wanted to be, going by all the locks… but, like most locks, they were only meant to be a pain from one side, which was the one I wasn't on.
So, that meant safety. Ish. For the moment at least, unless-
The sound of talking outside cut that train of thought off. Someone was coming, again. Hopefully not to come in here, please don't -…wait. I knew those voices.
Releasing the locks on the door to the storage room, I pushed them open to let Oberon and Holliday in. "Where have you been?"
"Oh, there's where ya got off to," Oberon said as the door swung open. His mouth, I noted, was smeared with blood, as were his hands… but none of it seemed to actually be his. "Now, how'd ya manage to slip in here without a key?"
Jeanne had slipped back into the form of a regular kitten, curled up around my shoulders and staring out, innocent as anything.
Well, if she wasn't going to play Show And Tell, neither was I.
"Turns out my cat was good luck after all," I said, not clarifying.
The man grinned. "Had a feelin'," he said as he reached over and hit a lightswitch I'd consistently missed, giving all of us the first proper look at the storage room.
Wow.
This was what the World Government considered valuable resources?
The room read like the autopsy of a hoarder's house, a cult compound, and the three grab-bag storage units the likes of which ended up on the second most boring kind of reality TV - it was organized, yes, but the variety of stuff and the range of valuable and impressive to utterly worthless kind of cheapened the entire vibe of our mission to get it.
Holliday headed over to the clothing pile, he seemed to be itching to get out of his now-stained Marine outfit. He disappeared into the pile from my view almost instantly… but my next priority was finding the pile of backpacks and sport totes that had been thrown into the corner once their contents were removed.
Because now, we were going to be stuffing them full again. Even if they were made to look like Kermit the Frog, complete with dangly arms and legs, or had blindingly bright grandma patterns with the words 'DICK APPOINTMENT BAG' stamped on them.
Looking around elsewhere, there were guns - too many guns -, there were computers, there was medicine… and then there were piles of books - fiction and fact and everything in between - and magazines, toys and knick knacks, photographs, and other little things that just said 'hey, I used to belong to someone'.
And between all of that was the most random junk imaginable.
Why did the World Government feel the need to seize a small collection of vacuum cleaners? No idea. Where had they gotten a whole ass, mint-condition mid-90's Toyota Corolla? No idea. Were flashlights really that impressive in terms of technology that they needed to have thirty different ones on hand? No fucking clue, but I was absolutely taking some of them, including the most impressive looking one of the batch, because that many LED bulbs in that kind of pattern with that kind of mirror set-up only promised greatness… and it came with a recharging cable and handy carrying bag.
Convenient.
As a near afterthought on my way to the electronic section, I pawed through the books. Paperbacks mostly, a few familiar titles…
…including more than a few volumes of Shonen Jump.
Looking at that magazine should not have made me break out into a cold sweat.
Not all of them were in English - after all, the American printed version had stopped publication back in 2012 and some of these, after a little careful squinting to find the date label, were from far after that point. Some were even ahead of the year I'd come from - the Weekly Jump I was holding was from 2022.
Not that I could make sense of what it was covering - the cover had… a white-haired Luffy with frankly unsettling eyes laughing away at something, and the chapter inside looked like the kind of breather chapter that immediately preceded a huge 'Oh Crap' development, like the discovery of Ace's fading Vivre Card back at the end of Thriller Bark… but without the text, all I knew was that Vivi, King Cobra, and Sabo were all somehow involved and that something was stirring within the World Government, with even Imu stepping out onto the page for… something.
Was this a follow up to the Levely Arc? Just loosely going over whatever drama went on while Wano was cooking?
And then I turned the page to see an entire island evaporate under… I didn't know. My closest comparison was the Death Star.
Which left the question; why did One Piece have a Death Star?!
I didn't imagine there'd be any explanations forthcoming, given that I couldn't read a lick of Japanese, but hell! That was scary shit! There was a fucking Death Star in this world? Was it a Devil Fruit ability? Was it an Ancient Weapon? Was it some Vegapunk bullshit? I had no fucking idea and that terrified me.
So, obviously, I was stealing that. And the rest of them, because even if - I spun through the pages quickly, watching Robin scream and the World Government flag get lit up like the Fourth of July - Enies Lobby was old news for me, it probably wasn't for the Government. They didn't need a go-ahead on going after Robin, not now.
Also they didn't deserve JoJo or Dragonball, I thought somewhat manically. Nobody who had and used a fucking Death Star deserved such things.
If I was smarter, if I was better or bolder, I would have tried to leave some kind of coded message in one of the books I wasn't taking. But everything I could think of relied on a key of knowledge that only I - or someone with knowledge and experiences close to mine - had.
In the slim chance that Vegapunk or any other person of note found such a message, would they understand what I meant by putting a newspaper article about an 'empty-chair' debate as a bookmark in the Odyssey, marking the place where Polyphemus found himself blinded by 'Nobody'? Would they get that someone had given them one of the great and terrible secrets of the world?
And even if it was understood - that there was a hidden monster sat upon the Empty Throne, a person who would do nothing but kill and kill and kill for no reason other than because they could - would it do any good?
The answer was probably 'no'. Just like how anything I could possibly say about the danger of my world's weapons would just… be dismissed. Because this was a world that was already violent - how much worse could it get?
A lot, I figured, but that had never stopped anyone back home either.
So I focused on what I could do - take as much stuff that looked like potentially sensitive information away from the World Government as possible.
I avoided the gun table. Cognitively, it would have been the right choice to make sure that the World Government didn't get their hands on machine guns or whatever other high powered nonsense your average gun nut worshiped, but between my lack of training and lack of trust in the damn things, I wasn't going to grab them. With my luck, I'd manage to shoot myself in the foot and bring every agent on the boat crashing down on my head.
Oberon however had no such qualms. He started picking directly at the gun table, pulling almost every small firearm off it and shoveling it into a medium sized pink backpack he had found elsewhere in the room. Multiple pistols, two Uzis, he broke down about 3 machine guns into smaller parts to fit them in there. And then he emptied out everything left on the table of its bullets and dropped them into another pocket in his backpack.
Well, at least he had a sense of priorities.
If I had the tools and know-how, I would have dismantled the computers and made off with whatever held their data storage for the sake of saving space and weight, but as it were…
"What are you looking at there?" Holliday asked, passing me on his way to another part of what I was mentally calling the 'Best Buy' section of the vault.
"Trying to gamble on which ones of these might be useful," I said, checking out the USB sticks and external harddrives. Yes, they were potentially useful, but when it came to strangers' data storage, you never knew if you were going to end up with nothing, something sensitive, something dangerous… or a terabyte of highly specific porn. Or illegal in-any-sane-world nightmare fuel.
But such was the nature of humanity, I figured, grabbing as many as I could and shoving them into a bag. If anything required the use of brain-bleach, I could just delete the contents. At least they were generally lightweight.
…And only now did I process what Holliday had chosen to wear from the clothing pile. He had swapped into neon green crocs, a pink velveteen pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that had the nutritional facts of mashed potatoes on it.
While I was considering swapping my own clothes out for the wonders of the shiftiest thrifting, Orsin was grabbing a TV - not a flat screen, but one of the old monstrous CRT box sets, which meant the slight groan of pain as he tried to lift it clear of the table was no surprise to me.
"Yeah, those suckers are heavier than you expect. Most of the weight is the glass," I explained. Trying to help my brother move a 35 incher back in the day had probably helped ruin my spine in the first place. "Also be careful - the insides can zap you dead if you don't have the proper protections. And I'm pretty sure that you're not made of rubber."
That privilege belonged to a different anti-Government individual.
I grabbed an LED flat screen, partially out of spite but mostly out of practicality; the one I'd grabbed had come with the full cadre of input types instead of just being limited to HDMI, so the odds of it being able to interface with anything else we grabbed - like, say, the computer tower I was also taking - were pretty good.
…wait, did I have any HDMI cables?
I grabbed some from the table. Even if I did have some mixed in with my stuff back home - weird to think of Ravenser Odd as 'home' but it was true -, it never hurt to have spares.
Holliday graciously took them and put them in his psychedelic red DAP bag he picked up to carry his loot in.
While we weren't looking, Oberon also had visited the Pile Of Questionable Threads and returned with…
"Are those fucking Hot Topic bondage pants?" I asked.
"Well, I imagine these would be a hot topic at any soiree…" he said, kicking up his heels to show them off, jangling as he went. "How do ya like them?"
The fact that I had once - and still did, a little - coveted such things was not the point of the conversation. "You know that those are specifically made to be hard to run in, right?"
"Only if yer a quitter, I think."
…fuck it, it was my turn to get my silly on.
I grabbed a good pair of stomping boots and a wonderfully warm, oversized hoodie that had bulbous 'eyes' on the top that would look utterly adorable whenever I had the hood up… not to mention a nice 'fanny pack' like pocket - also made up to look like a frog - that lay horizontal across the chest besides the usual hand warming one near the stomach.
Pants could wait for another day at another store, where there was more room and time to try things on for size.
"I think we've all got a decent pile of stuff we can carry off the ship, meaning now is time for our exit strategy. Everybody ready?" Holliday said, straightening the Anaheim Angels baseball cap on his head that he picked up last minute.
Yes. This was going to be the worst dressed escape party ever and it was going to be fantastic.
Of course it couldn't have been clean. It hadn't been going in, why would it have been going out?
"Oop, got a couple a' stragglers-" Oberon said, halfway leaning over the side of the boat, caught in the act of unloading his loot into our getaway vessel. "Ya think ye can handle it?"
"No? What the hell do you think I do -"
I flinched as a gun went off right behind me, firing five rounds rapid that took down… seven Marines. Goddamn shonen battle efficiency.
"Not used to guns?" Holliday asked, not unkindly as he switched back to passing our ill-gotten gains to Oberon.
Used to them? I was an American, I was used to them - but I'd stayed the hell away from them because of this.
"Not next to my fucking ear," I said, the hysteria coming back.
"What about yer non-fucking ear?" Oberon said, instantly taking advantage of the opening.
This was batshit. This was scary. I was so out of my depth that it wasn't even funny; people were dead and not the kind of dead I was used to and I was absolutely helpless to do anything about any aspect of the situation and I was doing all of that while wearing an adorable frog-themed outfit. That was more than enough reason to freak out-
Movement caught my attention, and I turned to see a black suited man running towards me.
Cipher Pol!
I had enough time to flinch before that strange sense of unreality from earlier pulled me sideways, Jeanne's smoky presence around my neck telling me all I had to know - the cat had used her power to pull me out of the way.
…and the least I could do to repay that was to stop being useless and start using my brain.
Thankfully, I didn't have to think very hard to make use of a tool I'd picked up earlier. A great, near guaranteed equalizer.
Cipher Pol - at least, CP-9 - trained their people to be human weapons. Muscles to be like iron, nerves to be like steel, every weakness hammered out as much as possible.
But if there was one thing I knew about the human body -
I aimed the flashlight I'd stolen earlier at the agent's face and pressed my thumb to the trigger, abruptly turning the dark hallway to high noon as a beam of pure fucking daylight lit up the space and blasted the unfortunate and a few Marines that had managed to catch up behind him head on.
-it was that no matter how hard you worked on perfecting it, you couldn't do shit about your eyes.
As Holliday carried me down to the boat and we started rowing away, I hoped the CP-whatever guy had to explain to someone important that he'd been obliterated by a frog holding the power of a miniaturized sun.
Raine after getting home:
Meryl: oh hey u were gone a long-
Raine: cat's magic
Meryl: what?
Raine: *kicking off shoes and heading up to her room* cat's magic
Author's Notes
The 1999 Toyota Corolla
Exterior: gray
Interior: grey
Oil: optional
Old enough to vote: yes
Old enough to rent a car: it IS a car!
Old enough to consent to sex: yes. It has seen some shit. People have done straight shit in this car, people have done gay shit in this car, it's not going to judge you like some Volkswagen would - okay I think I ran out the mileage on this joke. Just look up the original craigslist ad, it's so much funnier.
The 1999 Toyota Corolla wasn't the first choice for the random car - that was, for some reason, the Kia Sorento, while the second one was Wet Nellie, the Lotus Esprit James Bond submarine… mostly because it would have been the fun kind of weird and also call back to the fact it was found in a random storage locker once upon a time, but then I realized that since the thing was an actual functional submarine, I would have had to make that aspect relevant and we weren't really set up for that with the rest of the plot (plus it's a wet submarine and nobody has scuba gear + the right operating skills in this party) for this bit.
So I tried again and so landed on, not on the car you wanted, but the car you deserved: the fucking 1999 Toyota Corolla.
There are multiple flashlights that are nearly as bright as the sun (at least as visible from through Earth's atmosphere). The specific model I was thinking of was the current brightest flashlight in the world - the Imalent MS18, but that's not terribly relevant to the story beyond the brightness + rechargeability + the fact it's waterproof.
The real inspiration was a Reddit story from a few months back about getting revenge on a tailgating asshole w/ too bright headlights.
Been a while since I've done anything One Piece related, but the release and watching of the One Piece Live Action series really lit a fire of enthusiasm in me and now I've just been hauling away at this and my Witt rewrite - though that one might take a little bit to be releasable into the wild.
Both me and my co-writer are going to try to get into a rhythm of 'hiatus - fic writing stock up - scheduled release' because that's what I'm doing on my other, non-One Piece projects, so we'll see how that shakes out for making things more reliable in the future. There shouldn't be anything like a year long gap again, as my personal life has smoothed out for now and there's a clearer plan moving forward, but we'll see what happens and hope for the best.
Monica notes:
So the original break was my choice as I didn't want to get burnt out getting this to the end, but we would've had this sooner if it then didn't become a problem on Nvz's end. I've been ready to get back to this for a bit but I wasn't gonna write a whole portion of this by myself at this stage.
Also, this chapter has the most writing I've done so far just by me, compared to normally just outlining and editing Nvz's work like I have the previous ones.
I got to make use of my constant tech-youtube watching knowledge in editing this to make it flow better, since Nvz's tech issues are real but for sake of story I gotta grant some stat points into Raine just a tiny bit.
There's four chapters left of this arc, I'm hoping we can get that done in a timely fashion and FINALLY work on the second arc some as it's been planned for a while.
Also all of Oberon's Dialogue is my doing.
The Live Action Adaptation of One Piece finally came out in the wait. I enjoyed it a lot and it finally inspired me to commit to reading the manga lol
