Chapter Twenty-Two: Sabo

Sabo really wanted to go see his brothers. They were both headed to the hospital with, at least in Luffy's case, some serious and possibly lethal wounds, but the orange haired girl clutching his wrist was worrying him. Ever since he had told her he was talking to Ace, she had gone nearly catatonic, though her body was shaking violently. He worried that maybe shock or something was sending her into a seizure.

"Hey, can we move along to the hospital?" Sabo prodded. "I don't think she's doing so good."

"The debris from the building is blocking our way," one of the paramedics told him. "They're trying to clear us a place to drive but it may take a few minutes."

"She's probably in shock," said the other paramedic. "I'll be back in a minute to administer some meds and give her a blanket."

Sabo sent a dirty look to the paramedic who was so blasé about doing is fucking job. Besides, he didn't think it was simply shock. His gut was telling him—

His cell phone rang. How was the piece of shit still working? Sabo answered, but briefly considered ignoring it when he saw it was Koala calling. Last thing he wanted was to be bitched at right now.

"Yeah," he greeted unenthusiastically.

"You need to ditch that bitch you came out with and get to the hospital," Koala told him. "Your brother is being taken in for emergency surgery. You should at least have a good excuse to be shirking your responsibilities."

"Which brother?" Sabo asked, ignoring the bitch-fest and feeling a chill settle into his stomach.

"The younger," Koala replied. "Apparently the older needs blood transfusions and stitches, but no other serious injuries."

"Fuck me," he muttered, worried about Luffy. "I can't leave right now even if I wanted to. I'm in this ambulance to get to the hospital and we can't move due to debris."

"Not my problem you don't know when to blow a building," Koala retorted snappily.

Why was she being such a bitch? This was worse than normal. Yeah, they usually picked on each other, but this was a little bit much.

"What do you want from me, Koala?" Sabo asked point blank. "Stop pissing and moaning around the subject."

"Inazuma and Terry are unaccounted for," she snapped. "I can't get either of them to pick up, and no one's seen them since the blast."

"Fuck me!" he grumbled with more vigor. "Are we positive that they were not inside the building when it blew?"

"You think I'm an amateur?" Koala snapped again. "Of course they were out. But now we don't know where they are."

Shit. Bloody fucking rotten shit.

"Got it," Sabo replied, then ended the call. He looked at the orange haired girl, wondering if she would hear anything he had to say now. "Listen baby, I have to—"

"Oh, good, she's alive."

Sabo looked see the back door of the ambulance swinging open and a gangly looking guy climb into the ambulance. He was very tall and slim looking, but kind of edgy looking with dark hair and a ghost of a goatee. Sabo didn't know what to make of this guy, but he looked kind of concerned over the girl as he went straight to her and began looking her over.

"When I saw you come out of the building, I wasn't sure," the dark-haired man went on. But was he a man? He seemed kind of young looking. Probably not older than Sabo himself. "Well, that's a lot of blood loss."

He was peeking over the girl carefully and pulled up her eyelids to shine a light into her eyes.

"She's in shock," the guy said. "She needs to have her legs elevated and a shot of saline wouldn't hurt. Where's a blanket?"

The guy rummaged around the ambulance like he belonged there for a couple seconds before shouting up to the paramedics.

"Hey, Sol! Where are the blankets?" the guy called. One of the paramedics looked back at him in surprise.

"Trafalgar? What are you doing here?" the paramedic, Sol apparently, asked. "They're under the floor."

Trafalgar, the guy with the goatee, opened one of the cubbies built into the floor of the ambulance and pulled out two blankets. The first he rolled up and stuffed under the girl's legs to elevate them, the second he covered her with.

"I was in the area," Trafalgar answered. "I know this girl. She goes to my school."

"You know her?" Sabo repeated. Trafalgar gave him a look.

"Yeah. How do you know her?" Trafalgar asked.

"She's my…"

She's my what?

Girlfriend was not the word. One night stand was not a good description either. Obsession was accurate but also a little stalkerish.

"Your…?" Trafalgar prompted.

"My responsibility," Sabo finally got out. "If you know her, what's her name?"

Trafalgar smiled smugly. "Mikan. Named after that orange hair."

Sabo had no idea if this guy was lying or not, but he kind of felt like he was. But still, Sabo had never known the orange-haired girl's name. For all Sabo knew, Trafalgar could be right.

"Sol, can I hook up some saline? She looks deathly," Trafalgar called up front, ignoring Sabo again. Well, at least someone was trying to help the girl now.

"Be my guest," Sol replied. "I'm about to get out and move some debris myself. We're trying to get through this mess to go to the hospital, but Jed told us over the radio that traffic into the downtown area is at a standstill."

"Take her to my pop's place," Trafalgar suggested, now involved in hooking up a bag of fluid's to the girl's (Mikan's if the guy wasn't lying) arm. "She's been there before. We have her medical records on file. He can take care of her."

"Sounds good," Sol agreed. "I'll call it in."

Whoever this guy was, he had the trust of the paramedics. They didn't question him at all. Not to mention they didn't mind this guy just administering medical treatment. Maybe he wasn't as shady as his appearance made him look and feel. He seemed genuinely concerned that the girl be taken care of.

"Look, I got things I gotta do," Sabo said. "You can take care of her, right? I can trust you to leave her in your hands?"

"I ain't gonna take over your responsibility," Trafalgar replied. "But I'm not gonna let her die. Does that suffice?"

Sort of. But not really. Sabo needed something else to trust this guy. Something substantial.

"Where's your father's place?" Sabo asked.

"Flevance Clinic. Six or seven miles away," Trafalgar answered. "Look, if you're that worried, just come with."

"I told you, I got shit I gotta do," Sabo huffed. "Whatever. I'm gonna leave her with you, but I'm coming to that clinic tonight. I don't give a shit about visiting hours."

"Whatever," Trafalgar dismissed.

Sabo sighed in agitation and slipped his hand from the girl's grip. She still seemed comatose, except that she was silently crying now. It was weird to watch. Tears just fell from her eyes and dripped back into her hair while she stared at the ceiling of the ambulance.

On impulse, Sabo leaned over and kissed her forehead, running his hand through her mussed hair. She didn't even blink.

"Your responsibility, eh?" Trafalgar observed dryly.

"Fuck off," Sabo returned, hopping out of the back of the ambulance and closing the door. He had to find Terry and Inazuma. The ambulance finally started making some headway in the debris left in the wake of the blown building and Sabo got on his phone again.

"Give me an update," he instructed.

"It's been three minutes," Koala answered. "There are no updates other than it's nice to see the mission leader get his head out of his ass and do some damn work for a change."

"Cut the shit," Sabo snapped. "I want answers. Now."

Koala sighed. "Touchy, touchy. Hack has the perimeter. He's looking for known hostiles in the crowd. So far nothing. Bunny Joe is searching the wreckage just in case. Max is working on the outer streets but he's found nothing so far. Everyone else has been pulled by the boss for one of his 'special projects.'"

"What special project?" Sabo asked. Usually he knew about every project the boss had in line. Why didn't he know about this one?

"He didn't deign to tell me the details," Koala growled. Ah, there it was. The real reason she was so bitchy right now. She was also not 'in the know.' "He said he wanted to leave the finding of Inazuma and Terry to you, since they were your responsibility. Everyone else was to go with him for his special project and he'd see us at our East base tomorrow at seven in the morning."

Whatever. It couldn't be that important if he was leaving the remaining three of the top five agents (plus Koala) with him.

"Hack's calling," Koala told him. "Hold on a minute."

She must have put him on call-waiting. She was back in half a minute.

"Hack says he's spotted an ugly over by Goza Street," Koala reported to him.

"I'm on my way."

Sabo knew that Goza Street was a little more than three blocks away, just outside the perimeter, but it was close enough that it was of concern. Sabo jogged, half dodging (damn, he should have kept up with that parkour he and Ace used to do) debris as he went. He spared a brief glance behind him to see that the ambulance had finally cleared the debris field and was turning onto the street.

Hack was standing unobtrusively in the crowd a few blocks away, waiting for him. Sabo met up with him and Hack jutted his chin to the left. Sabo discreetly looked that way and saw a known boagie, Daz Bonez, lingering. He was talking on a cell phone as he observed the wreckage.

"Keep tight with him," Sabo instructed Hack.

Still on the phone with Koala, Sabo heard her tell him to hold on while he eyed the crowd for even more boagies. At one point Sabo thought he'd spotted the worst of them all, but when he tried to follow the fluffy pink coat as it glided through the crowd, he lost it. That was about the time he heard Koala come back to him.

"I've been in contact with both Terry and Inazuma," she told him, relief evident in her voice. "Both say they were knocked out by some sort of gas and dragged a couple blocks away. They're on their way to rendezvous with you now."

"Something's going on," Sabo murmured aloud. He could feel it in his bones.

"Yeah," Koala agreed. "Mighty convenient that Terry and Inazuma aren't harmed but were moved away from where they were assigned. Weren't they tailing you?"

"Yeah," Sabo confirmed. "Someone didn't want me to have protection."

"What do you think it—" Koala started, but Sabo's phone beeped to indicate he had another call.

"It's Hack, hold on a minute," Sabo told her. He switched calls. "Go ahead Hack."

"Daz left the scene and got into a car a few blocks away," Hack reported. "I didn't recognize the driver. It was a woman. They are headed south and I'm in pursuit."

"Don't engage," Sabo warned. "Just observe. If anything feels off, abort. Got it?"

"Got it," Hack agreed.

Sabo switched back to Koala and relayed what Hack had said. "Can you check the area for stoplight cameras and see if you can get a shot of the woman who was driving?"

"I'll work on it," she said, already typing.

By that time, Inazuma and Terry caught up with Sabo. They both relayed the exact same story. They were waiting on either side of the ambulance for Sabo to deposit the girl and split. Then they smelled a noxious gas and lost consciousness. Woke up in separate alleys two blocks from the blast scene. It was eerie.

"No sight of any known boagies?" Sabo asked. Both Terry and Inazuma shook their heads.

"Someone wanted you isolated, boss," Terry said. "It was too weird. No one came at you though?"

"No," Sabo confirmed. "I was uh, able to leave the girl in the hands of someone capable though, I think. Shit, that reminds me… Koala, you still there?"

"Uh-huh," Koala answered. "Almost ready to send a picture of the woman to your phone. What's up?"

"Can you check out the background on Flevance Clinic?" he asked. Koala sighed heavily over the phone.

"Seriously, Sabo, I've never seen you so fucking distracted. Can't you get your head in the game for one minute?" Koala criticized.

"Damn it, Koala," Sabo snapped into the phone. "This kid from the Flevance Clinic just happens to show up at the same time that Terry and Inazuma get knocked out and doesn't mention two unconscious men getting carried off? Just check it out and stop giving me shit. Fuck."

Sabo ended the call, frustrated.

"You think it was this kid?" Inazuma asked. Sabo shrugged.

"He didn't really look like a kid, but he knew the girl from school," Sabo explained. "I don't know. He kinda looked…edgy or something. I knew that something about him was off."

"It's worth checking out," Terry agreed. Sabo's phone rang.

"The Clinic's on the up and up," Koala snapped. "Worst it has is some under the table medical being issued to various gangs in the area."

She hung up on him this time. Didn't matter though, because Hack called about seven seconds later.

"They're at a school," Hack told him. "A high school about three or four miles away."

"A school?" Sabo repeated. His phone buzzed to indicate he had a new message. He briefly took the phone away from his ear and opened the message to see the picture Koala had sent. It was of a woman in sunglasses with long dark blue hair. No doubt in his mind that this was Paula Doublefinger.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird too," Hack confirmed. "And now that they're here, I can see that it's Paula. I wasn't sure before but now I am."

What were the number one man and woman in Baroque Works doing in a school?

"What school?" Sabo asked, feeling another one of those dread pangs in his stomach.

"Loguetown Senior High," Hack replied. Sabo felt the pangs of dread turn to ice. Just what the fuck was a branch of the Shichibukai doing in his brother's school?

"Let it be for the moment," Sabo decided, not wanting anything else to go wrong today. He just wanted this whole job to be over and done with. "I want you and everyone else to head back to the rendezvous and see if you can catch up with the Dragon. I'm going to the hospital to check on my brothers."

"Got it, boss," Hack answered and hung up. Inazuma and Terry nodded at their orders and took off as well. Sabo knew that trying to drive to the hospital in this chaos was a stupid notion and decided to walk to the hospital. It was only a mile or so away.

When he arrived a half an hour later, he was hoping for good news. He got half and half. Ace was still in the ER, but with non-life threatening injuries. He was going to be held overnight because he'd had to have blood transfusions, but otherwise he was in fair shape.

"Bro, I don't know who you sent, but holy hell was it effective," Ace praised him undeservingly. "One minute this hit man is getting ready to slice necks, the next he's walking off and pissing and moaning about being lucky to be paid in advance. That guy, the red-haired guy, I don't know who he was but he was perfect."

There were no redheads in the Dragon Revolutionaries except for Koala so Sabo was positive that she was not the one Ace was talking about. But there was no need to worry Ace about that right now since he was getting transfusions. In the meantime, his girlfriend was asleep on a chair in the corner and looking rather pale but fine too. Ace had hit the luck jackpot it seemed.

"I'm gonna go see if I can get some info about Luffy," Sabo told Ace. His brother's demeanor changed abruptly.

"They won't tell me anything except that he's in critical condition," Ace complained. "The old fuck told them that I'm not his biological brother. He probably told the nurses the same about you."

"I can fool them," Sabo assured him. "Luffy and I kind of look alike."

Ace half smiled. "Yeah. You kind of do."

Sabo headed up a couple floors to the ICU and saw the old fuck in question. Well, beating around the bush wasn't going to get him anywhere so he just went straight to the old man. Garp saw him and paused in talking to a nurse for a moment before resuming his conversation.

"And he will be in the ICU for how long?" Garp asked.

"At least twenty four hours after surgery," the nurse replied. "His wounds must be given time to heal and he will be on the ventilator for at least two days."

Sabo snorted a laugh. His brother wouldn't last two days with a ventilator unless he was unconscious. Otherwise he'd be pulling it out himself trying to get food in his stomach.

"And the other boy? Ussop?" Garp continued. Sabo couldn't remember which one Ussop was.

"Also in the ICU. The bone fragments from the splintered rib have been removed, but the damage it did to the lung needs to be closely monitored," the nurse replied. "The other two boys have been checked and discharged with minor injuries, but I believe both of them are still in the waiting room."

Garp nodded his thanks and finally deemed it time to address Sabo. Garp gave him a dissatisfied look.

"Was it really necessary to blow up the building?" Garp asked rhetorically. "Do you know how much that destruction is going to cost this city?"

"Do you know how many yakuza members were trapped in the garage?" Sabo returned as disdainfully. "How many pieces of shit won't be roaming the streets anymore or getting off on technicalities or probation?"

Garp hardly looked appeased.

"I suppose I shouldn't expect that much from a delinquent runaway who follows a terrorist," Garp surmised.

"Don't forget that terrorist is your son," Sabo returned. "And you know you're grateful. It's just your civic duty to be upset at me."

"A little notice of when this was going to start would have been nice as well," Garp nitpicked. "I had no time to scramble my men. Half of them had not even made it to our base of operations for a briefing when you started shooting up the building."

"Luffy kicked someone out the window first," Sabo tattled like a two year old. "You wanted me to let him fair on his own? He was doing a bang up job of that, if the bullet they pulled out of his lung is any indication."

Garp sighed heavily. "I did actually like you two boys, you know? But the bigger you got, the worse your attitudes became. I can only hope that Luffy doesn't follow in your delinquent footsteps and that Ace actually follows his little girlfriend to college."

"Because I'm a lost cause," Sabo surmised.

"You, son," Garp told him honestly, "were never a lost cause. Or unimportant to me. You just didn't want to see things a certain way anymore after the fire."

Sabo shook out his shoulders and stretched his neck at the reminder of the fire that burned half of his face off. It was a moment in his life he had a hard time thinking, let alone talking about. It always made him have to shake off the feelings of being trapped, even if he was standing in an open hallway like he was now.

"I was hoping to see you with a little yakuza brat," Garp changed the subject. "But you are alone. Tell me, is Nami down in the ER too by chance?"

Sabo shrugged. Who the fuck was Nami? What did this Nami person have to do with him? Wait, didn't Ace say something about a girl that Luffy was friends with? Maybe her name was Nami.

"I came here alone," Sabo informed him. "As far as I know, Ace is the only one in the ER right now."

"Don't tell me you blew the building without getting all of the Mermaids out," Garp supposed. "Because I have fifteen women accounted for, and Nami is not among them."

"Look I don't know," Sabo sighed in agitation. "My contact told me that all of the Mermaids were out of the building when it blew. So if you had someone on the ground after that rat-faced guy showed up and before the building blew, then you should have seen them come out."

"She wasn't accounted for with the other Mermaids," Garp insisted, that usual disapproval in his voice. Damn it, Sabo could never do anything right in that old man's eyes.

"Well then I don't know what to tell you," Sabo returned irritably. The green-haired kid came over towards them. Sabo was going to ignore him but he spoke up to say something that he couldn't ignore.

"Nami was on the sixteenth floor with us," the kid let them know. "She sacrificed herself so we could get on the elevator when it came."

Sabo gave the kid a look of utter disbelief. "No way. The only one up there with you guys was that orange-haired girl."

The kid gave him an exasperated look. "That was Nami."

No it wasn't. It couldn't have been. There was no way that the world was that small. That the girl that Sabo had been obsessing over for the last six weeks was Luffy's friend from school.

But they were the same age. And the orange-haired girl had stolen his phone to call someone to warn them about an assassin. Ace had been attacked by a hit-man while guarding this Nami's sister. The girl had seemed to lose her grip on reality when Sabo told her he was talking to Ace.

It must be her then. The orange-haired girl must be Nami.

"She's…she's at Flevance Clinic," Sabo stuttered, in a daze. "There was a kid there who said she'd been treated there before, and downtown was gridlocked, so they took her there."

Before he'd even finished speaking, Sabo was already heading for the lobby. He suddenly felt like there was something very wrong. Not just that he'd been totally shocked by Nami's identity. But that the fact that Garp was so concerned about her whereabouts and that she'd been so deep in the syndicate that something else was going on. Something that was giving off bad vibes.

Of course, Garp was on his heels. Sabo would have left the old man in the dust if it weren't for the fact that police lights made traffic get the fuck out of the way and that Garp seemed to know where this Flevance Clinic was.

Garp didn't bitch about Sabo hitching a ride with him, but Sabo suspected that was because Garp was on the phone with one of his subordinates, Smoker or something. They were well into the ride when Garp finally hung up the phone and actually spoke to him.

"You really had no idea?" Garp asked.

"I only met her once," Sabo told him. "I was finishing up a casing job and saw her on a park bench destroying a bottle of whiskey. I thought I'd steal her whiskey but she caught me off guard and I—"

What the hell did he think he was about to say? Was he really about to admit that he'd fucked her? Sabo shook his head and tried to pull his thoughts back together. He was not discussing his sex life with Garp.

"I found out she was supposed to become a Mermaid," Sabo finished, adjusting what he was about to say. "It bothered me because she was Luffy's age. That's why I started digging into this yakuza."

"That girl has been a part of that yakuza for at least six months," Garp replied. "We've been tracking her movements for that long, anyway. It might have been earlier than that."

"She was eight," Sabo blurted out. "She told me she was eight when she joined. That she was a Messenger until about six weeks ago. Then she got…promoted."

Garp sighed deeply. "Eight years old."

"That's what she told me, anyway," Sabo shook himself, still trying to get back his cool. He shouldn't be so shaken over something stupid like this. "She could have been lying."

"What else did she tell you?" Garp pumped for information.

"That's it," Sabo lamented. "Obviously, she didn't even tell me her name."

Garp was giving him a scrutinizing look. Sabo didn't like it. He hated how the old man was always so critical of the three of them. Always like he would have done something different if he were in their shoes. Well, the bastard wasn't and he could go to hell.

"How much longer?" Sabo snapped, tired of the eyeballing.

"Longer for you if I kick your sorry butt out of this car and let you walk the rest of the way," Garp replied. "If you calm down, I'll let you stay in the car and it will take about two minutes."

It was the longest two minutes of Sabo's life, it seemed. Not even when the burning building had collapsed on himself and he'd spent nine hours underneath burning embers and half of his face had been seared off had it seemed this long. Sabo felt another shudder run through his shoulders.

"Just so you know," Garp spoke up as he pulled up in front of a clinic and double parked, "my grandson is in love with that girl. Keep that in mind if you decide that you and your…organization are going to spirit her away."

"Fuck off, old man!" Sabo snapped, jumping out of the car before Garp had even turned if off.

Sabo had been trying to not think about that for the last fifteen minutes. Because it was obvious in the way that Ace spoke of Luffy and Nami together, that was the case. Luffy clearly loved Nami. Sabo didn't want to take something away from his little brother, but he also didn't want to let go of the orange-haired girl he was sure he'd fallen in love with too.

Sabo burst inside the clinic and saw that there was a man and woman already there questioning the man in a lab coat. Well, actually, it was the woman doing the questioning and the man trying to calm her down. The doctor wasn't getting a word in edgewise.

"Belle, he can't answer you if you don't give him a chance," the man was saying.

"Don't you dare fucking patronize me, Chaser," the woman, Belle, snapped at the man. "I'm not having a good day and you tell me my daughter is here and now he won't let me see her!"

Well, the Chaser guy must be Smoker or whatever, the man in charge of wrangling Nami's mother. Sabo was glad that he was not in charge of such a task.

"Ma'am, I will let you see her if you promise me that you will not wake her," the doctor was speaking though Belle was hollering right over him. "She's been through the worst kind of trauma and needs rest to help her mind and body recuperate."

"I am her mother and I know what she needs," Belle went on. "Don't you dare tell me how to raise my daughter. And she needs a chewing out! That girl—she should have never—thought to do such a thing!"

And now the woman was crying. Sabo didn't stick around to watch the water works. He just cleared the room in five long strides and headed for the door that led to the private rooms. There were two doors, neither marked, so he figured he had a fifty-fifty chance.

The first door he chose was locked. Sabo frowned but picked the lock in about twenty seconds. He opened the door to a dark room, but from the ambient light he could see that though there was a bed in this room and it had been used, there was no one in it. Sabo flipped on the light and looked around the room. There wasn't much in it aside from the bed and a few medical monitors. There was literally nowhere to hide.

Wrong room then.

Sabo left the room and moved onto the next door. It was unlocked and led to a hallway. Sabo followed it and came upon a kitchen area as well as a staircase heading up to presumably the second floor. This was the doctor's living quarters then.

"Excuse me, but just who are you?"

Sabo saw that he'd been spotted by one of the house's inhabitants. A mid-thirties looking woman was staring at him with a displeased expression on her face. Sabo briefly contemplated not answering her, but also needed information.

"Is there another way out of here besides the front door?" Sabo asked, ignoring her question. She didn't look happy at that.

"Just who do you think you—" she started, but Sabo cut her off.

"One of the patients is missing," Sabo interrupted. "She's not in the room she's supposed to be in. Is there another way out besides the front door?"

The woman frowned at him but seemed to listen this time. "The back door is that way."

She pointed around the side of the room where the refrigerator was and Sabo went for it. He saw a back door and went through it, but it ended in a fenced in yard.

Could a girl with three bullet wounds get herself out of a fenced in yard? Sabo didn't believe it, but Nami was gone.

"Fuck," he muttered, wishing he'd never let her go off without him.

A/N: Been awhile. Sorry 'bout that. I mentioned in the last chapter that I would be uploading less often. I intend from hereon out to post monthly.