Side A, Part 2

Chapter 2 - Linger there in prey of emptiness (of burned-out dreams)

Song - Eldorado Overture by Electric Light Orchestra

Learning Tashigi's age had actually been an odd push in a way. Besides it making it easier to dismiss her - nineteen-year old syndrome was an old but understood enemy in internet society -, it also gave me an idea of how much closer to canon I was, because…

Well, she was the same age as Kuina, who herself was only a few years ahead of Zoro, who was nineteen at the start of the main canon. Meaning that I was probably… one to two years away from Luffy kicking up problems in East Blue - I'd split the difference to a ballpark of 'one-and-a-half' for safety.

So… what was I going to do with that knowledge?

'Place bets' came up and was immediately dismissed. There was no 'betting' on pirates, at least not in the Blues and especially not in civilian circles. Bartolomeo's outfit might have done something with that - the mobs dabbled in a little bit of everything -, but his main focus at the moment was on the exchange of goods and information, when he and Deesire weren't kicking up turf wars with the local mob scene.

'Try to learn more' was reasonable, right up until you ran into the problem of 'how'. News Coo, sure, but everything was skewed and the information flow of the world was controlled by the Government. Without being directly at the scene of bullshit or being able to link up with someone trustworthy who had been, it was all a game of 'well, it could be… but it might not'.

And I didn't have the funds to go to the Baratie directly on a whim on the off chance that this was the week that they'd get attacked by the Krieg Pirates… not to mention not having the plot armor to survive said attack if I was caught in it.

'Avoid drama'? The world was drama and while some would be easy to miss, there would be other shit like Shiki's rabid kaiju air drops or whatever nightmare fuel the World Government was cooking up to worry about on a far more global scale.

'Jump feet first into the fray' wasn't so quickly pushed aside, I found, and that realization was… uncomfortable.

The part of me that was angry and wild and latched onto Murasame with a vice-grip liked it, but the cautious, realistic, and uncertain parts were doing everything they could to keep that on a leash.

What made me think I was anything close to being actual pirate material? I was physically disabled, mentally and emotionally unstable, not to mention afraid of deep water and drowning for over a decade before I'd gotten a Devil Fruit, goddamn it. Someone constantly on the verge of some sort of breakdown didn't make for an adventurer.

'But what good is a dream if you don't chase it?' a phantom voice asked, a dare hidden in the laugh. 'Surpass the limits of your doubts! Find your resolve! Free yourself! Take to the sea!'

My body shivered, not because of a chill - Loguetown was so consistently warm that I was pretty sure it was smack dab on the equator of this world - but something else. Some adrenal spark running down my spine that I couldn't quite smother.

I… wouldn't know anything about dreams, because I didn't have one anymore. It'd died long ago, broken in some forgotten corner of a house that'd never been a home. All I'd gotten from it was the lesson that getting your hopes and ambitions up was just a good way to see them smashed as any, either by your own failure or the actions of others. And I didn't…

I sighed, putting the inevitable depressive episode to the side to deal with later.

I had a timeline. Sure. That was something. Not a lot, but it was more of a 'security' net than before. The next best thing would be money, not… dreams of being important or relevant.

"'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,' after all," I said as I worked at painting a pegasus on the wall of a building, frowning at the legs before flexing my power through it to remove some of the misplaced paint.

Horses were put on this - and every other, I suspected - world just to make artists suffer.

Even with the Pedlar's certificate from Smoker and Tashigi staying off of my ass for the interim, there was only so much I could do - the main square street market was a weekend only affair and one that was pretty tightly packed to start with, leaving very little room for newcomers to stand out.

So, today, I was in the fish market off the docks, not as an artist, but 'helping' Dias with his stand - which wasn't all that much, genuinely. I'd never had much of a taste for fish and didn't know much about handling them live or dead, but the kid at least enjoyed my company and what effort I could put into sorting out his catch of the day. No shawl here, simply because it would be disgusting if the ends kept dragging through the fish slime.

"No, that one goes over here, not there," the twelve year old said as he corrected my latest attempt. He was small for his age, and slightly swamped in his hoodie - to the point where he kept the sleeves rolled up all the time, not just when he was at work -, but no less smart for it. There was a good brain for angles and weather calculation under that head of spiky brown hair, even if he spent most of it on sailing and his boomerang hobby.

I smiled and went along with it. This was his territory; he'd know better than me about it.

Out of the kids on the poor side of town, Dias was the one furthest away from the title of 'poor'. Oh, he was never going to be rich - Loguetown was too stratified for that, literally and figuratively, considering how many of the poor homes were sea level and carved into the cliffs compared to the richer manors that lay above and further away from the shore -, but he was gainfully employed and good at his job - enough that he could afford to keep his own house at age twelve, even if it'd been inherited from his parents, and keep it well taken care of on top of that.

'I want it to be in good shape for them when they come back,' he'd said when I'd asked, back when Dias had first found me and brought my boat to the island.

At first, I'd just assumed that they traveled - gone out further afield to get better catches or something like that. Later, it became clear it was one of those situations where 'when they come back' was wishful thinking. Not that I was going to be the person swinging a bat at the kid's coping mechanism. It wasn't my place to be that kind of bastard and Dias…

Well, I was pretty sure he knew already.

Soon, I wasn't really 'needed' - meaning that I could turn my attention to doodling, at least for a while. It wasn't the best place, but I didn't want to wander off on the off chance that Dias might need me later. Plus, it wasn't like I had much else to do today - I'd booked it for this just in case and most everyone else had their own lives to run before the afternoon.

Besides, it'd be just as peaceful here as back at my boat - Dias was a decent fisherman, true, but a lot of people shied away from a kid's wares on instinct, meaning that a fair bit of his stock would probably end up handed off at discount to the people of the poor district.

We'd probably be eating some of this fish for dinner.

"As soon as I get enough money pooled up," I told Dias as I stretched out, trying to get that persistent catch in my spine worked out. "I'm gonna get my hands on the first decent steak I can find and go hog."

The boy just smiled and shook his head before he grabbed a package of fish he'd set aside for one of his 'scheduled' customers and started running down the street, leaving me to watch the stand.

I could already taste it, the juicy meat served up alongside some gently steamed greens - string beans, broccoli, even spinach were all a divine delight when fresh - and mashed potatoes or maybe some pasta side… oh god, even without a good sauce or even if the steak was just on its own, it'd be worth dying for after a year of fish.

Wait. "Goddammit, would I even be able to get decent affordable beef on this island? There's no goddamn pasture," I realized out loud. "My steak…"

"Steak? That's such an old geezer sort of meal. Unless you're talking steak au tartare-" a voice I didn't recognize scoffed. Young, but post the most awkward sounds of puberty. British accent - sounded London, but as an American, I only had so much precision in pinning down the actual localities unless I'd heard a specific one on Doctor Who.

Absolutely fucking not. Raw mince steak topped with raw egg? That was so far off my scene it was on another fucking planet.

"Flank steak, marinated, medium to medium fucking rare, you fucking-" I shot back, turning to face this pretentious little foodie, only to stop short of announcing that anyone who took their steak 'bleu' should be shot.

He was pretty in the way that would have screamed 'this person's a model, or at least way too popular on Instagram' in another world… particularly his mouth, which had an almost infuriatingly perfect Cupid's bow, even when pulled into a boyish grin that probably had charmed its way into the good graces of most people its owner had flashed it at. Blond hair hung over the left side of his face in a delicate curtain, not completely obscuring his eye like the manga, but - let's be real, nobody with an actual job that involved both fire and sharp knives would willingly sacrifice binocular vision, even in the name of hiding half of a weird set of eyebrows.

Jesus fucking Christ. So I didn't have to even try going to go hunt for canon; it'd come around hunting for me.

"But you're not arguing for well done," Sanji said, looking slightly smug for a guy who was still absolutely fucking wrong.

"Because a well-done steak tastes like a tragedy and you should only order it if the alternative is starving but you're still worried about food poisoning," I pointed out, falling back into the rant. Canon master chef or not, beef was my domain. "Versus a raw steak, which you order when you trust the chef's fridge, but not their ability to handle anything in it, or if you're trying to get into a dick measuring contest with some other 'manly man' asshole."

Me, I was at least confident enough in my self-identity not to risk food poisoning over something as small as a slight against how 'cultured' I was.

"And that's why I'm a patissier," a black man with mint green hair and some rather gorgeously muscled arms said as he walked up behind Sanji. His signature outfit was so iconic, I knew it had to be Patty. "Cause my customers ain't asking me for raw dough."

"You also handle fish, Patty," Sanji pointed out, confirming my suspicion.

"Different animal, different rules. Raw fish is a delicacy."

"So is steak tartare-"

This was hell, that's what this was. "Are you going to buy some fish or what?" I said, trying to cut off the argument.

"I don't know," Sanji said, immediately flipping the switch back from 'argumentative teenager' to 'smooth operator'. "Is the beautiful mademoiselle selling them a mermaid? It would perhaps explain -"

"Not my fish and not a mermaid - I'm just watching the stand for my friend while he makes deliveries," I said, shutting him down. And certainly not 'beautiful' either. Pretty, maybe, but 'beautiful' was definitely a bridge too far. Besides, if Tashigi wasn't twenty, Sanji sure the hell wasn't. "Dude, how old even are you?"

Patty leaned over, apparently very invested in ruining Sanji's day. "He's seventeen."

Again, the teenage temper flared. "She wasn't asking you, Patty!"

Thought so. "Then I'm ten years too old for you, kid," I said, ready to drop this conversation completely.

Sure, a younger me had dallied with the concept that Sanji was attractive - most people into men in the fandom had -, but that was a me who was thinking about temporally nebulous fictional characters, not actual people and how profoundly fucked it felt to be hit on by a teenager as a much more seasoned adult, even if he was definitely pretty. It wasn't as bad as the pick up line 'you know you'll be safe with me, I have kids your age', but fuck did it make me feel dirty inside.

"Twenty-seven? You look so much younger-"

"Twenty-nine," I said, brushing off Sanji's attempt at a rebound attempt. "And no amount of flattery is going to change my mind. I've got a hard cut-off at twenty-four before I'll even think about considering it." Along with a whole cadre of other concerns that mostly kept me out of the dating scene, but that wasn't info for strangers.

…goddammit, where was Dias? It was a short run to Raoul's house and the kid was usually pretty quick on his feet, unless something…

I frowned.

Unless something or, more likely, someone had happened to him.

"Sapi, can you keep an eye on Dias' stand?" I asked, ignoring the fact that Sanji was still generally talking At Me, apparently having long missed the hint that I'd tuned out of the conversation for a full minute.

The neighboring fisherman - a hugely muscular mixed race human-Fishman fellow who was probably one of the friendliest of the neighborhood success stories - looked up, a bit of sweat gleaming off of the fin and the small smattering of scales on his head. "Sure, Laine, but why-?"

I was already running in the direction Dias had gone, Murasame in hand.

I could have said that it was because I had great instincts. Or maybe that it was prescience.

No. It was simply because if Dias had trouble in the fishmarket, it was almost always tied to two particular bozos by the name of 'Chip' and 'Mini'.

On the food chain of Loguetown's criminal ecosystem, they were the chump-change bottom feeders; low level schmucks who were known for three things; harassing the elderly, shaking down children for their pocket money, and being the absolute cheapest muscle you could buy if you were in the market for 'has no standards, but also no talent'.

Dias was one of their favorite targets - he, after all, was a kid with a regular job, not some beggar living off of community charity, and it certainly had never been lost on me that they felt comfortable going after Dias but drew the line at fucking with me.

They knew their fighting weight and I - neither a preteen or an octogenarian - was simply too close to being their size, and they didn't pick on someone who could actually stand a chance of fighting back.

Cowards to the quick. The only thing about today that broke their usual pattern was that Dias was hiding a trembling young girl behind him - not a familiar profile, with that lavender hair poking out from under her hat - but it wasn't like I knew every kid in Loguetown, local or visitor, and a bucket hat could hide a lot.

"Wow," I said, ladling out the sarcasm as I called their attention to me with a slow clap. "Attacking two kids at once. Feeling unusually brave today, boys?"

"Wah- Laine!" Dias yelled, clearly talking around a bruised mouth. Definitely a good thing I decided to come check on him - if he'd taken that kind of hit already, they'd probably been ready to escalate to worse. "What are you doing here? I thought you were watching the stand…"

"Well, you were taking too long, so I got worried," I said, projecting calm. Anger was to be used, not expended pointlessly. "Thought to come check on you. Looks like that was the right call, too."

Chip laughed. "And the poor town cripple is going to do something about it?" he asked.

I did a quick calculation and self-eval. While I had that little annoyance in my back, I was pretty good for energy levels. So yeah, I could handle a fight.

Would have been smarter to set up something with my Devil Fruit and play to my full range of strengths but… well, I hadn't thought about it. It wasn't an ingrained combat reflex yet, not like 'picking a physical fight was'.

"Yeah," I decided, hefting Murasame. "I think I am."

Chip's amusement abruptly brittle as he realized that I was serious, but that same realization had yet to dawn on his partner.

"Puh-leaze. I've heard about you - you don't know how to use that thing. You won't even duel that Marine bitch with the glasses, even though she's been gagging for it-" Mini's insults cut off as he watched me draw Murasame.

Once, this draw would have been sloppy. Awkward because of angles and lack of practical experience. But constantly taking lessons on basic sword handling - even in the non-combat aspect - with Ipponmatsu had taken off the rough edges, leaving only smooth motion as I unveiled gleaming black-purple-and-red steel.

I twisted Murasame around to rest against my shoulder in what looked like a sort of bastard parade rest - casual, to anyone who didn't have combat experience or, more specifically, hadn't been part of a certain wushu class twenty years and another world ago.

Despite that, Chip and Mini knew that I had just switched modes to something very far, far away from 'casual'. First, they'd picked up that I was no longer interested in 'avoidance'. And then, me actually drawing steel for once had definitely given them reason to sweat.

"You are right about one thing, Mini," I said, stepping closer to the pair, my tone deceptively light. "I was never formally trained for katana. It'd even be fair to say that I probably wouldn't be able to beat Tashigi in a duel."

I slid my feet apart by just six inches, falling into a stance that came as easily as breathing despite the years since learning it.

And then, as soon as I knew my grip on the ground was solid, I moved.

Chip didn't have time to react before I slammed Murasame's pommel into his solar plexus, followed up by a vicious stomp on the instep of his foot. While he was sinking to the ground, gasping for a breath that just wouldn't complete, I'd turned on Mini, unchambering Murasame from its place at my shoulder to scythe out at his head.

He, thanks to his friend's early sacrifice, had time to duck. But not enough of that time to avoid the low spinning kick I'd tied into that same spinning movement, because why wouldn't I hide another attack in the shadow of the first?

As Mini folded to the ground, hand clenched into his side - hopefully because I'd busted one of his ribs, but likely not -, I made a point of kicking him again so he'd fall on his back rather than on his side or front.

"Here's the thing, though," I said, leaning in to the stupid motherfucker, making a point to hold Murasame's tip right to his nose. That part of the sword, at least, was sharp as the Devil's own pitchfork. "I don't gotta be great. Hell, I don't even gotta be good - I just gotta be better than you. And that ain't particularly hard."

I made a point to leave a little pinprick of blood welling up on the man's nose before I disengaged, turning my attention - and smile - to Dias and the girl he was with, though I wouldn't completely dismiss Chip and Mini from my mind until they were well out of sight.

I'd probably be feeling this little stunt later, but… compared to a proper knock down, drag out fight? It wouldn't be much worse than the average day spent walking around a city that - quite literally - took up every inch of the island it was on and then some.

"You two alright?" I asked, moving to help Dias up. "None of your teeth feeling wiggly, Dias?"

"Jus' a lil bruised," Dias confirmed, even though his mouth was already puffing up a bit in the corner. "And nah, they're not wiggling."

Good. It'd be rough on the kid, losing any of his permanent teeth this early in life, especially with dentistry being the better part of non-existent in this world. Not that I missed going to the place that constantly told me my mouth was a shithole that needed to be attacked with drills and had me pay for the privilege, but there was something to be said about at least having the option of care.

"And you, Miss…?"

"Atoli, Miss Laine," the girl said shyly, hiding bruised wrists that looked like they also had rope burns behind her back quickly. "And… and Dias helped before they could hurt me."

"That's good." That did make me wonder who had hurt her before then. Most of the crime on the island didn't touch kids as a very deliberate move - Barto and Deesire were fucking messy as far as adults went, but they'd been street kids themselves and honored that background the best they could. So, by her testimony that Chip and Mini hadn't done it…

Well, it didn't mean anything good, to put it lightly.

Atoli watched with big, wary eyes from under the brim of her bucket hat as I treated her wounds the best I could - aloe wasn't a bad choice and I always carried it with me, but it felt horribly cheap in the face of these bruises and rope burns -, only occasionally looking over to Dias as if to make sure that he was still signing off in my trustworthiness.

I wouldn't comment on it, of course, because I understood it perfectly. The girl had clearly been through something traumatic and I was an adult stranger - a helpful one, sure, but still someone she didn't know.

That was part of why I'd taken this interaction to Raoul's bar - it was technically a 'public' space, but underused enough where there wouldn't be a high risk of Atoli getting overwhelmed with sensory information, and… well, to be perfectly honest, Raoul was a very old man who looked every inch the part; stooped with age, with sagging papery skin and almost no muscle left to his name. He definitely wasn't going to strike the little girl as a physical threat, even before he'd given her some juice to sip on.

I'd also painted a lot of stuff on the walls over my time here, but that was a concern for whoever was after this kid to find out about.

"Atoli," I began gently. "Can you tell us what happened?"

"I… there was… I…" Those big eyes started to well up with tears. "Ann…"

"You don't have to give me all the details," I said, maintaining that steady, gentle tone. I didn't want to stir up her emotions by going wild with mine. "Just… whatever you can share."

Atoli sat for a minute, her heavy breathing slowly evening out as she organized her thoughts.

"There… there was a pirate attack on my island," she said, starting slowly. "I don't know why, we never… we didn't have any treasure. Not anymore. But they came anyway. Demanding… things that Daddy had from before our people lived on Silver Arrow Island."

Part of me was tucking away facts, primed to put the puzzle together the best I could. Another part had already recognized this as being the start of an Indiana Jones plot - the pirates were clearly tracking down clues to some sort of hidden history thing, probably because there was some kind of McGuffin at the end. The rest of me was focused on sympathy and actually helping the child in front of me right now. "And they took you along with them."

"They told Daddy they'd kill me if they saw him following us, but… but Captain Drayke acted like there was something else he needed me for. Because he didn't like it when the… the gun girl, Dolce, shot my big sister." The tears finally started spilling. "A-Ann might be dead b-because of…"

"It's not because of you," I said, hugging her. Jesus Christ, this poor kid. "It's not your fault that bad people came to your home and started hurting people - it's on them for being cruel bastards."

"Especially when it comes to the likes of Drayke," Raoul chimed in.

"...you know the guy?" I mean, Raoul knew a shitload of people, particularly on the piratical side of things - Gol D. Roger included -, but somehow… somehow the sheer width and breadth of his knowledge constantly surprised me.

"Hm, yes, I know of him - never met him, but his reputation was bad in these waters, before the Big Rush to the Sea," Raoul confirmed, lighting up his pipe as he settled into his favorite chair. "Nasty piece of work. Torturer, blackmailer… educated too, by everything I ever heard, but sometimes intelligence only makes what's bad worse. I don't imagine the Grand Line has mellowed him out any."

Grand Line level, huh? "Most people who go to the Grand Line don't come back here," I observed. "Not unless they found it too hot there for whatever reason. This is the sea people pick if they want to disappear."

Arlong had done it, Buggy had done it. It wasn't hard to call the pattern. Most Marine muscle power was tied up in the Grand Line and everyone knew it - but most of them took it as a challenge. Not a promise of safety elsewhere.

"Aye, that's true. The exceptions tend to be either visiting home or after some treasure - usually Woonan's, since gold never gets old," the old barkeep said, tapping his fingers against the counter. "But Drayke… Drayke has always been about power. And there's not exactly an excess of that around here."

"Well, except for whatever the fuck they feed Monkey D.s over on Dawn Island."

Raoul barked a laugh. "That's true! If the Marines could bottle that, they would!" the old man agreed before going serious again. "But no, for the likes of Drayke, to come back to these waters means that there has to be something good laying in wait. Something with more teeth to its legend than the rumors about Woonan's gold island."

"I mean, the world is big and weird and it's not like the Marines have been bragging about putting the guy down, so there probably is an island that Woonan is on somewhere," I said. I actually could testify to that fact about Woonan… at least among fellow One Piece fans, because I was the person who loved the obscure early movies. "So what sort of thing would be a big enough deal for Drayke to come back to East Blue for?"

"Maybe Rainbow Island?" Dias offered.

The what now.

Atoli sniffled from her place in my arms. "Daddy… Daddy said that our people came from there. A long time ago."

"That old legend?" Raoul said, not sounding particularly convinced by a crying eleven year old. "They've made up all kinds of things about that place over the years. That the place was raided by pirates, but the ruins are loaded with treasure. That the king made himself immortal, but was somehow killed by pirates. That the beaches are made of diamond and pearls that cast rainbows whenever the sun and moon touched them. It's a fairy story island."

It sounded pretty wild but… "...I mean, I can't discount it. The world's a crazy place."

When it came to One Piece and anything was mentioned about some story dismissed as a 'legend' or 'folly', nine times out of ten, you were actually watching Oda personally load up Chekhov's Gun.

"Even without Devil Fruits, you know what kind of weird shit goes on in the New World?" I pointed out. "Hell, even Paradise. Sky Islands, the Florian Triangle… it's kind of crazy to discount a weird story out of hand considering all the stuff that's weird and true… though I'd still take it with a grain of salt."

Just because I didn't know the Lore didn't mean there wasn't plenty of room and precedent for it.

"...fair enough," Raoul said, giving me a slight sideways glance. "I suppose that most legends have a kernel of truth to them somewhere, and you are right that there are far stranger things in the world than most of us would give credit to. But do you think that Drayke would believe such stories enough to go after the place?"

I'd never made a secret of how much knowledge I had of the world, at least not with Raoul, and the old timer had picked up on how impossible that knowledge would be for a regular civilian to have. Whether he assumed I'd been to the New World or was simply stupidly well read - or even an isekai'd nerd -, he'd never said. But at least here, we could bounce our respective knowledge bases off of each other to great results.

"You said that he's a Grand Line pirate and has been one for several years," I said. "His ceiling for weird has got to be high by now. And if he got access to some convincing records, I could understand making moves on it. And if Drayke somehow found some sort of evidence that made him think that this Rainbow Island had something worth going after…"

I trailed off, letting Raoul fill in the rest of the sentence himself.

"...yes. Yes, that does seem like the best answer," the old man agreed after some thought. "But what do you even plan to do about it?"

"Rat to Smoker."

Raoul stared at me, deeply unimpressed.

"What? I know you don't like the guy, but he is Grand Line level - he only got placed in Loguetown because he's willing to break rules in favor of doing the right thing and the Marine higher ups fucking hate that. And he's paid and trained to handle this kind of shit, unlike me," I pointed out. "It'd literally just be telling him to do something he'd already be doing."

Far be it from me to blindly trust the authorities, but I knew who and what Smoker was. He wouldn't push aside Atoli's case just because it was 'weird' or 'inconvenient' - he was, fundamentally, that impossibly rare unicorn called a 'Decent Cop'.

And believe me, as someone who'd lived in a community with plenty of 'Good Cops' but not a single 'Decent' one, there was a hell of a world of difference between the two.

"Suppose you have a point," Raoul finally allowed, still not sounding particularly happy at giving the man who'd ruined his business even that much leeway. "Thought you were going to involve Bartolomeo and Deesire."

"Eh. Second choice for a lot of reasons," I said. Scheduling conflicts aside, I also just was leery of getting too comfortable trading favors with the two gangsters. They weren't the worst - far from it -, but they still delved into waters a bit too deep and intense for my liking, especially given that Arlong was one of Barto's big competitors right now. "But that does mean that I probably need to get moving and get her to Smoker before -"

"Before what, young lady?" an unfamiliar voice asked, already promising to belong to someone infinitely less pleasant than Sanji.

Two men had stepped into Raoul's bar - that they were strangers was a simple matter of course for the day, though I could see the familiar figures of Chip and Mini lurking outside behind them. Of course the pair had been tangled up in this. Like I'd noted earlier - they were always selling their services cheap. That those services included being 'tour guides slash tracking dogs' was no great leap.

The strangers themselves though… everything about them stank of both relevance and competence. And not the 'this person might be helpful' kind.

The first, who'd spoken, would have seemed harmless enough if he was in my old world - mostly because the only place you would ever see him was on TV at some big shot tennis tournament. Tall and dark skinned, with the trim build of a career athletic success story, my first impression of him was just that he gleamed. Gold jewelry - to match his golden curls -, wide smile so perfect that you could almost hear the 'ding' sound effect just looking at it, perfectly spotless blue and white tennis uniform… but his tennis racket, for all it was very much a tennis racket, had the lightest touches of battle damage on its rim… and a suspect bit of reddish-brown staining on the catgut mesh that didn't fit with the rest of the man's aesthetics.

The other? Oh, he was dressed to a different theme. Paler skinned, with flat, sunken eyes he had come in a deep lavender charro suit - though his bowler hat was an odd addition -, with a rose tucked through a button hole near the 'usual' place for such things. It was a romantic affectation that didn't do anything to distract from the expression of steady contempt for everything around him or the short sword - some manner of push dagger - he wore at his hip. Somehow, despite knowing that said blade would be cleaner than the racket, it would not be because of any lesser use as a weapon.

I trusted neither more than the other right now. "You two must be with the Drayk-"

At the behest of a shiver running down my spine, I moved, pushing Atoli behind me as I did- just in time to avoid the thrust of that mean short sword.

"You must forgive Garride for his impatience," the grinning tennis player said, as if his partner had simply cut ahead of us in line rather than tried to skewer me. "It's been something of a long day, hunting down the young lady behind you after she got away from us."

"Yeah, I'm sure it all could have been avoided if you were better at tying up small children," I replied dryly.

"If you plan on helping that girl," Garride said slowly. "You should know it will only lead to pain."

"To quote a better swordsman than me; life is pain, highness, anyone who says otherwise is selling something. And I'm not buying what you're laying down." I whipped Murasame out. "Dias - get Atoli to Smoker. Now!"

As the two rushed towards the back door, shepherded by Raoul, I calculated my odds.

This was not a good match-up. Closed in space with a lot of furniture, two-on-one against two guys bigger than me, huge gaps between their skill levels and mine…

But, I noted giddy as I remembered where I was; I had the home field advantage and, wittingly or not on the part of past me, a shitload of prep-time on my side. And if my win condition was simply 'keep these two too busy to go after Atoli'...

Yeah. I could win by that metric.

"Kaabo!" Garride yelled as I stretched my power into the painted walls around us and the figures on them began to peel themselves clear of the cracking plaster. "This one's a Devil Fruit user!"

Kaabo. Another name to note for future reference. If I had a future past this afternoon, anyway - you never knew.

I sidestepped another stab, dancing out of the way of Garride's attacks as I analyzed his patterns. Stabbing weapon, obviously; the grip was a horizontal affair that would make slashing a bit awkward, but not - I noted as one such attack skidded off of Murasame - impossible.

It was, however, limited to one plane of attack at a time. Meaning that the swordsman was having to make some pretty important tactical choices about what he was going to swing at; me or the horde of crawlings snakes, creeping skeletons, or rushing pirates that I was gradually flooding the bar space with.

Kaabo, for his part, was very much focused on the snakes, screaming as he stomped at them, even between remembering to deal with my armed creations.

A pale reflection of the Pirate King cackled as he clashed his blade against Kaabo's racket.

"What manner of pirates do they make these days?" 'Roger' asked, clearly guided by my own loose expectations of what a man I'd never met would say. "I should hope that there are better out there than this!"

…I didn't remember picking that voice, but it felt right. And I had bigger problems than depictional accuracy to worry about right now.

I brought Murasame back up in time to catch Garride's blade before he would have taken off my arm.

"Give up," the swordsman said, pushing me back with a steady, constant pressure against my blade. "I'm stronger than you - you won't win this fight, even with that Devil Fruit. And if you're dead, all the rest of these things will die too."

"Probably," I allowed, before flashing my crazy grin - the one that had gotten me the nickname 'psycho' during far too many childhood fights just as stacked against me as this one. "But that's on the assumption that my Devil Fruit is a one-trick pony."

Garride's eyes flashed wide - the first proper emotion I'd seen on the man being 'fear' was delicious - as I dropped to the floor and flattened myself to it with my power, removing all of the expected resistance while I relocated to the wall behind him, springing back into three-dimensional space with the intent to fucking impale this piece of shit -

He dodged, already running for the door after Kaabo as I tried to pull Murasame out of the inch of wood flooring I'd managed to sink it into, an effort that redoubled as I heard Atoli scream.

Dammit. So Dias hadn't managed to get her away.

"What are you going to do?" Raoul demanded as I finally pulled my sword free and started stalking towards the door, my mass of snakes and skeletons parting like the Red Sea as I commanded them all back to their original places.

"Something magnificent," 'Roger' said, cackling one last time before returning to his place on the wall near the bar counter, grin still squarely aimed at my back even as that borrowed life left it.

"Something stupid, more likely," I corrected, the white hot spark of spite burning in my chest catching and exploding into an even greater conflagration of pure, homicidal rage. It wasn't quite untempered - no, I still had a- a semblance of control - but it sure as hell wasn't a tame thing.

Which was great. I didn't want to be fucking tame on a goddamn murder spree.

I threw my power out sideways, latching onto my murals and graffiti with no particular target before pulling them to me.

A mild trace of red heat trailed down my nose to my lip as something in my head pulsed - I'd never actually used my power on so many images before… but now was definitely the time to start pushing limits.

The street filled with the sound of snarls and growls, even as a few citizens started to freak out. What had been creatures of fantasy for the enjoyment of children and my own pleasure had turned material - fearsome for their strangeness where before they'd simply been harmless static fairytales. Knights, dragons, griffons, great serpents, and more… were no longer 'just' that.

There would be no obscurity for me after this. But, personally? I was already mounting the pegasus I'd been painting yesterday, Murasame in hand. Sure, it had been twenty years since I'd had anything to do with a real horse. But, just like the idea of my own personal safety, I was past the point of caring about little logistical issues like that.

The Drayke Pirates wanted to play and I was going to dump an avalanche of fucking furious animals on their heads for it. There wasn't time to be fussing over 'can I actually do it'.

With a clatter of hooves on cobblestone, I rushed down the street, my horde howling at my heels.

There were many things my power could do that I didn't share with people.

They knew I could control them directly. They also knew that they could work independent of me, often tailored to the personality I 'chose' for them. They knew I could make my own paints at will in any color I like, and fix them so permanently that they'd never fade.

But they didn't know about the flattening trick. Or that I could hide myself inside of my creations if I wanted. Or that I could remotely 'possess' them.

Or, that, even without the possession trick, I could see out of their eyes and hear with their ears.

If that last bit had been common knowledge, this chase would have started out even more frantic. Because those bastards would have known that, as sure as the sun rose and the stars shined, they would not be able to evade me. Not in this city.

My head throbbed as I took in more information than a human brain was technically equipped to handle in such a short span of time, but that didn't matter right now.

Still, that didn't mean that this was going to be an automatic victory for me.

Garride had taken out some of the faster movers, the swordsman somewhat frantic in his attempts to destroy my creations. He'd mostly been successful so far, but one of the griffons had managed to maul one of his sleeves before bleeding ink all over Garride's legs, leaving that pretty charro suit not looking nearly as neat as it had earlier.

Kaabo, for his part, had turned smooth talk into a furious litany of loud cursing as he slammed that tennis racket against anything that came too close to him. That spotless blue and white uniform was anything but now, a splatter galaxy of different colors obscuring almost all of the original striped design.

It was good to know I'd gotten under their skin. Turning a confident enemy into a spooked one was always fun.

But there were more members of Drayke's crew to account for, I knew as I cornered onto a main street and started following their trail to the east docks. And all I knew was that there was Drayke and a markswoman named 'Dolce' to contend with.

At least my horde made two things about the situation easier; it told people to get out of the way while also making it very likely that Smoker was going to show up sooner than later-

Something zipped through the air, scoring a line down my mount's neck before splattering one of my other creatures into a mess of ink and paint on the road. A pointless wound on one of my creations - inklings? Needed a name for it - given that they couldn't bleed or feel pain, and thus couldn't be stopped with anything less than a direct hit. I couldn't either, at the moment, beyond the information that, following another bullet's 'zip', a line of 'brightness' was running along my thigh now.

Damn, whoever was shooting at me was bad at this.

On an unbidden reflex, my head jerked to the side, cracking my neckbones in a scary kind of way as another bullet zipped past, tearing through a chunk of my hair on its way.

Or maybe not.

Probably that 'Dolce' girl Atoli had mentioned, if that was the designated 'marksman' of Drayke's crew, a part of my brain completely disconnected from the narrow drive of the Mission noted. I was a good six blocks away from the docks - five now - so with the kind of guns this world dealt with, that wasn't bad accuracy.

Still not good enough, but still.

Pulling in my body closer to my pegasus, I pushed it to go faster - flight would be saved for the last minute, if Drayke's ship was far enough away. For now, hooves were plenty.

Three blocks.

Two.

There was a shout - but that didn't matter. This afternoon had been all shouting and it was genuinely starting to all blur together.

One block left. I was almost there-

Abruptly, I realized that I'd lost the sound of hoofbeats. And that the world was teetering forward.

I looked down, staring at the empty space where my pegasus' front legs had been. And then at Tashigi, who was standing there with her fucking stupid shit sword, stance perfect and acting as cool as a cucumber.

I had enough time to let the thought -

That.

Stupid.

Fucking.

BITCH.

-cross my mind in all caps, increasing in size and boldness with each word, before I hit the ground, rolling as my body bled off about forty five miles per hour worth of force into the pavement, my singular mercy being that my pegasus had disintegrated into paint several feet behind me instead of crushing me beneath its body.

As I rolled to a stop, tasting blood, I could just see the docks through my broken glasses - thankfully, I hadn't lost an eye to that fall - good enough to see a ship pulling away at speed, a small figure in yellow a struggling blur I could only just make out being carried inside.

Tashigi jumped back at the howl of inarticulate rage - not pain, pain was a later food - that crawled out of my throat as I punched the cobblestones over and over again in the face of all of my effort turning to shit, all the confidence she'd carried through her bone-head stupid fucking stunt evaporating in an instant.

Failure, failure, FAILURE. You fucking failed to keep such a small promise to a girl who needed it to be kept more than anything else.

"A-are you alright?" Tashigi asked, leaning down.

…and more than half of it was this stupid, self-obsessed, narrow-minded bitch's fault.

"DO YOU NEED TO GET YOUR FUCKING GLASSES CHECKED, YOU PETTY EXCUSE FOR AN OFFICER?" I snapped, managing to push myself halfway upright despite my body's many, many protests against that action. Even my teeth hurt - and I hoped to god I wasn't going to lose any of them for this. "ON WHAT FUCKING PLANET DOES THIS LOOK ALRIGHT?"

I was pretty sure there was at least one broken bone involved. And maybe a back sprain, given that I couldn't properly feel my fucking legs but could fucking move them… but only just.

Again, the idea of me actually being openly furious with her took the girl aback. "I -"

"What? Did you think cutting down a horse moving at speed wasn't going to have consequences?" I asked mockingly, dropping a few decibels in exchange for as much biting sarcasm as possible… also because I was pretty sure that I was on the verge of actually puking from raw rage. "Do the laws of physics go 'oh, ho hum, I guess we're going to take a little breaksy-wakesy today since Tashigi's on duty, that way she doesn't die from falling down the fucking stairs or some other stupid death by self-incflicted incompetence shit'?"

"You shouldn't have been running through town-" Tashigi tried again.

"And you probably should have stopped the pirates kidnapping that little girl, but I guess letting me do your fucking job for you was too much to bear for Little Miss 'Oh Everyone's Oppressing Me Because I'm A Girl'," I snapped back, no longer capable of containing a rant that had been building up for too fucking long. "If not for you being the worthless fucking self-victimizing busybody that you are and making this shit all about you, I could have caught up with them and saved her. But noooooooo. You just had to fucking ruin everything, JUST LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO."

Without thinking about it, I'd grabbed Murasame and lunged towards Tashigi - probably not too impressively, considering the injuries-, only to get pushed down to the ground by a deceptively gentle hand.

"Hey," Smoker said, right before something cold and solid pressed into my neck and stole all my strength away. "You need to calm the hell down."

Calm down? Fuck, I needed my… fucking adrenaline… just to function…

As I passed out, the nebulously large shadows of two strangers stepped closer.

And then I knew nothing else.

Garp looked down at the body sprawled out on the pavement, pinned almost gently beneath Captain Smoker's seastone jitte.

…skinny thing, to be tossing out whatever the fuck that just was. It wasn't quite Conqueror's Haki, but some sort of fucked up child of it, co-mingled with ill-focused killing intent and… something else. Something cursed.

"Clearly, this island has only gotten more interesting since my last visit," the Hero of the Marines noted.

From the sigh Smoker had just let out, the good Captain did not disagree.

Author's Notes

There's not a hard upload schedule for this fic, so I will be gone for while to catch up on some other work, but it probably shouldn't be an excessively long period of time. The first chapter of the Witt and Redux fic proper will also be posted on the 11th.

Tashigi… probably didn't deserve most of that rant, to be fair, but getting in the middle of that situation with those heightened emotions by pulling that kind of interruption? It kind of was destined to happen, even without the 'car crash' injury level. Thank god for the generosity of shonen physics or this story would be over.

Fucking Horse Legs. Learning to draw animals is hard, but how horse anatomy is put together is just… so counterintuitive when you're starting with it.

Sanji gets to pull up abruptly for an argument about steak (I have many opinions) - probably because the Loguetown fish market is an actually reasonable place to expect him in, but also because it's convenient for when he shows up later.

Why yes, the chapter that explicitly discusses Chekhov's Gun is full of me loading up some for later.

Dias, along with Atoli, the Drayke Pirates (so far with only Garride, Kaabo, and Dolce being named), and Rainbow Island, is taken from the video game One Piece: Legend of the Rainbow Island, which I name-dropped last chapter in the author's notes a bit more unspecifically. It's an odd game but not a bad one - I think my one big complaint is that it doesn't understand how Reverse Mountain works (which is one-way) in favor of RPG style world zone traveling. Still, it's an interesting little widget in terms of One Piece games and neat, so I figured I'd play with it as an East Blue based adventure.

Garride's sword is basically a slightly scaled up katar dagger - based on the art from the game, but I just wanted to pin down a real life equivalent for the sake of seeing the practical use of such a weapon.

The 'flattening' trick is one of Kanjuro's canon tricks, which I have been obsessed with using tactically. I don't know if it's going to be in every fight Laine gets into, but it's definitely going to get some great mileage. I did try to make it clear that, while Laine was very effective in this chapter, it was not an effectiveness that was paired with healthy habits. Ex: why a Psychic Nosebleed started immediately.