Chapter 6: Road Trip
Summary: When it rains...
Notes: Art by CrowSizna!
Smoker:
"Lieutenant Bog and Dumitrescu would be good to take with you, Gunner would be better off staying with me. The children like him... Petrovski, Cola, Bucket, and Dootoo can fill in as both riflemen and cannoneers." Tashigi placed three different stacks of personnel files on his desk, which was already piled high with folders of information: supplies, weather patterns, intel.
He'd never been as anal as this when he was a Captain. Over preparation was a weakness too.
"Are you sure you want me to stay at G-14, Sir?" Smoker blinked, looking away from the piles of paper he was just going to bin and up at Tashigi's worried face. His least favorite face of hers, an expression she had only begun tossing his way after Punk Hazard.
"The brats need stability." His tone brooked no argument. Tashigi bit her lip, a new habit she had when about to speak up. But she said nothing, only nodded.
The next few hours passed quickly as they always did when preparing for launch. Soon, he was standing on deck, the men staying behind clattering down the gangplank, duffels thrown over their shoulders. Cold wind blew across Smoker's face, sucking away the smoke from his cigars out over the ocean. Tashigi emerged from the Officers' quarters, pink coat pulled tight across her chest to keep the cold at bay.
In the quiet moment between offloading and onloading, she pressed her lips to his. "Watch your back, Smoker-san."
He nodded. Time to go deal justice to some pirates.
Drake:
Drake saw her outside Doll's office. She did not glance his way.
He walked in on her speaking with Kujaku. She did not acknowledge his presence.
Drake passed her overseeing a training drill. He may as well have been the wind.
But it was the way Hina glared at Drake in the Archives that truly hurt. This place had once been their space. Just his and hers, even without Smoker. Her only acknowledgement was scorn, and there was nothing he could do about it. Hadn't Smoker used to warn him as cadets not to get on her bad side? Though he himself had often dwelled on the wrong side of Hina's bed.
This wasn't like that. This… Drake squeezed the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. He had yet to receive new orders so Kujaku had begun foisting SWORD backlogs on him. Read through reports, summarize them, pass them on. Drudge work, not meant for officers in the field.
Had he truly enjoyed doing this once, long ago? Late nights with coffee, Hina across from him at a table, her feet entangled with his, Smoker snoring on the couch nearby. How many nights had they had just like that? For a moment he was seized with the desperate urge to reach through his own head, plunge himself into that picture. Throw himself into another time, another place.
Another life.
Drake blinked slowly, taking in the scratched table, the folder under his right hand, the hard yet brittle feel of the pen in his left. The strange fluorescent glow of the lights overhead that made everything gray and cold, the way the chair dug into the small of his back.
That wasn't his life anymore.
The doctor, a man with a bushy mustache and hands as large as melons poked and prodded at Hawkins. Hawkins himself didn't flinch, complain, or bat so much as an eye, though Drake felt a twinge of discomfort looking at the place his arm once was.
"Healing well?" he asked the doctor, watching Hawkins' jailor in his peripheral vision.
The man glanced at him, wariness in his eyes. "Yes, the cut was clean and signs of infection have cleared." With that, he got up to leave, letting a nurse take over, the same one who had overseen Drake's care.
Hawkins ignored her as much as he had the doctor, instead opting to gaze at Drake himself. For some reason, Drake felt like apologizing for the doctor's behavior. For the jail. For the guard. For the Navy's treatment, though, it was better than anything received from Kaido by far. Still, somehow it left Drake with a sour taste in his mouth.
"You have something to ask me," Hawkins monotoned. The nurse startled. Perhaps she had never heard his voice before.
Drake shifted his weight onto his heels. "You said you wanted to choose your own fate." Hawkins crossed his legs, ignoring the squeak from the nurse, looking at Drake with sudden interest. "I might be able to offer you something more than Impel Down."
"Cooperation for a lessened sentence I suppose," Hawkins drawled, the spark in his eyes dimming. Something twisted in Drake's stomach. Hawkins eyes were far more interesting with a spark of life in them.
"Maybe, but I had something else in mind," Drake pressed closer to the bars. In that split second, Hawkins tensed as if waiting for something. Expecting something. His brow furrowed. "Are you dead set on being a pirate, or would you be interested in giving something else a try?"
Hawkins' eyes narrowed, gazing at him now with shrewd intensity. "A spy, like yourself?" His voice bordered on mocking. The nurse looked uncomfortable, the jailor was now openly staring at Drake. Drake didn't feel the need to confirm. Why put the final nail in the coffin himself?
The nurse appeared to be done with rewrapping his bandages, moving swiftly like it was some great relief to put space between herself and Hawkins. Drake supposed it was, though he found that he did not feel the same. She left, heels clattering up the stone stairs. The jailor watched her go, eyes off of Drake for a blessed moment.
"I would prefer to know where my loyalties lie," Hawkins answered, leaving Drake to sit with the implications.
Grus' office was empty of Grus, his compatriot having sidled off somewhere. No doubt hiding from Kujaku. This meant that his office was blessedly empty and quiet. No clay soldiers making noise in the corner, no snide remarks from Grus to bounce off his psyche.
Drake spread out the papers on the table. Informants like himself engaged in various operations across the blues. The majority of the tasks Kujaku has pushed on him appeared to be the kind of things a traditional spymaster or master handler would tackle. Her hopes for him were not subtle.
Stay strictly within the Navy, let others do the spying, face the danger. Engage in normal missions and ops with an assigned platoon. But she didn't seem to realize that that was not so easy. Would non-SWORD officers see him as one of theirs? Momonga? Gamakiji? Based on Smoker and Hina, no. No, he would forever be X Drake on the wanted posters.
Traditional brass had never seen him without a veneer of suspicion as it was, his father forever souring his image. Drake fingered a missive about sex trafficking being laundered by the Umit Shipping Consortium. No, no, unlike Kujaku, who aspired to uphold her family's legacy, he'd joined SWORD in order to work within the confines of his.
Grus' office door opened abruptly. Drake glanced up, eyebrows rising. A lanky blonde stepped in, sunglasses tucked high into his hair, purple lined cloak of Justice wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes were red and puffy, face drawn like he'd been under high levels of stress for an extended period of time.
His face was familiar.
The blonde stared at Grus' empty desk with a look of utter despair. "Not here? He said he'd be here!" He yanked at his hair wildly, lip pulled between his teeth in distress.
"Can I help you?" Would he regret asking? Probably, but he felt for someone who looked even more miserable than himself. The blonde leapt about a foot in the air, whirling on Drake, wicked kukri held shakily in hand.
They stared at one another for a beat before the blade dropped to the ground with a clatter as the blonde rushed towards him, dropping to his knees to deathgrip the arm of Drake's chair. "You're him! You're X Drake! You have to help me!" he cried, shoving his face so close that Drake could see the tears prickling in the corner of his baby blue eyes.
"Uh–" He had no idea who this man was.
"You can do it right?! You're powerful!"
"I don-"
"You owe it to him to help surely!" Desperate fingers clambered onto Drake's arm. Yeah okay, that was enough. He pushed the blonde away with one palm, sending the man sprawling. It was like knocking over a sapling. He looked up at Drake tearfully.
"What are you talking about?" Drake straightened his tie, or maybe unstraightened it. It never felt like it was in the correct position.
"Koby!" the blonde choked out, "Captain Koby!"
Koby? Drake blinked, and suddenly a few pieces of the puzzle came together. This man must be Helmeppo, Koby's right hand. Sympathy flooded through him. Koby was a good young man, sound of mind and heart. His faith in Mugiwara had undoubtedly saved Drake's life.
"You're Helmeppo," Drake mumbled, about to offer his hand to help him up except Helmeppo jumped to his feet and saluted.
"Yes Sir, Rear Admiral, Lieutenant Helmeppo!" Drake almost winced. "But that's not important, what is important is that we have to save Koby!" He stared at Drake imploringly, on the verge of begging again.
Drake sighed. "He's been captured right? By Blackbeard." Helmeppo's eyes lit up.
"Yes! He needs help! You've dealt with Yonko before!"
What was he expecting Drake to do…? This wasn't a simple rescue mission from some no name pirates. Blackbeard had amassed a powerful force on the seas since the Paramount War, enough to riffle even Kaido's feathers. The two of them had been competing for powerful mythical fruits in the underworld and had come to blows more than once. Drake himself had had to retrieve weapons and a cache of smile fruits from one of Blackbeard's tribute ships, getting a nice beating in the process.
He was not a pirate to trifle with, especially not on Hachinosu. Drake would prefer Wano over that place. He sighed. "It's not that simple."
"Of course it is! Koby is our comrade and we need to rescue him! He'd rescue you!" Helmeppo was actually crying this time, snot clogging his words. Drake opened his mouth, then closed it, lips thinning into a grim line. Part of being SWORD was accepting that help wasn't coming, and while Koby wasn't a double agent like himself, that rule still applied. That didn't stop guilt poking him in the ribs. Or the way the words stabbed deep, because no one had come for him.
"And I told you! We haven't been given the go ahead for a strike force yet!" Came Grus' annoyed shout from the doorway. The young blonde girl with the camo pants was following behind him. "Bad enough I have to deal with your blubbering, but you've got Hibari doing it too!" Grus tossed his thumb over his shoulder at the girl as he dropped into the chair behind his desk.
"Seriously you two, pull yourselves together! I told you it ain't a simple rescue. This is Blackbeard we're talking about. The guy with Whitebeard's devil fruit!" Grus scolded, before launching into a long tirade about the dangers of Hachinosu.
Drake rubbed his temples, nerves fraying. Without notice by Grus or the now begging Helmeppo and Hibari, he left the office, needing some air.
Infiltrating Kaido had taken years, and his single misstep with freeing Law had nearly cost Drake his life. Infiltrating the Blackbeard pirates was twice as dangerous, especially since the fall of Kaido. They would be watching out for stragglers to join them, suspicious of loyalties. And if someone like Whos Who, or Queen (if he ever escaped Wano) joined them? They'd have Drake keelhauled before he had a chance to even run.
But… if he couldn't help his people, then what was he even doing? Drake looked out toward the setting sun, but the sky held no answers.
He wiped sweat from his brow, muscles steaming in the early morning air. Guinevere sung in his palm, steel cutting through the air like a surgeon's scalpel. The training ground he'd destroyed more than nine days prior had been, well, not fixed, but repaired into a usable state.
And became Drake's personal training grounds simply because other soldiers now avoided it. Slate colored clouds sat overhead, heralding more snow. He swung out again, taking care to keep in proper form. Returning to the basics on occasion was helpful in pointing out where he had gotten sloppy, adopted other styles. Gotten…unconventional and dirty.
After all, few pirates cared about style and rules. To the victor goes the spoils, though he would be lying to himself if the Navy didn't operate that way from a sideways approach.
Guinevere's point stabbed through the air, hilt digging into the space between thumb and forefinger. A correction he'd need to make. It was then that the sound of hurried footsteps met his ears. Drake turned, eyebrows edging up. Captain Tashigi was rushing towards him, the look on her face boding ill will.
That was before she face planted in the dirt. He jogged the few remaining steps toward her to help her up. "Rear Admiral Drake!" she gasped, panting between breaths. She'd come running all the way here? For him? A sense of foreboding filled his stomach.
"I need your help!"
"Rear Admiral Doll is bu–!" Barbie jumped up from her desk to try to stop him, but he ignored her, instead shoving Doll's door open.
Doll looked up, cigarette dangling from her mouth, boots up on her desk. A folder with a fat photo of Buggy the Clown was open on the tabletop. "You've got some nerve Lizard Boy. Shut the damn door."
He kicked it closed and settled into the chair across from her desk. "The On Air Pirates got a couple new big names huh?" Drake steepled his fingers together. Doll sighed.
"And how'd that cat escape the bag?" He gave her a look. She pinched the bridge of her nose before taking a long drag on her cigarette. "Guess it doesn't matter. But yeah, we have a Navy hostage situation on Verrater now."
"When were you going to bring me in?" He'd worked with Ulti, Page One and Apoo for a long while now, knew their strengths, their weaknesses.
"Not SWORD's business," she shrugged. A muscle in his jaw clenched.
"What's the good of being a double agent if you don't make use of my intel?" He hissed. Now she had the decency to look abashed.
"Look, Diez, truthfully, figured we should leave you out of this one. We didn't know Scratchmen had recruited the Tyrannical Duo. Without them, this would have been a piece of cake," she put her cigarette out. "But you have a point. The Navy can't afford to take another blow like a Vice Admiral getting dispatched by those Cross Guild fuckers."
Drake said nothing. He would need to play his cards right here. Let her think of the solution herself.
"So, what info do you have for me, Rear Admiral?" She eyed him over the top of her polished black combat boots. Like Hina, no flaws to be seen.
"I can tell you that negotiating with them won't work. And direct confrontation will only result in casualties." Apoo was an underhanded slimy bastard, and Ulti and Page One were raised with Kaido's particular brand of mercy.
"Well what would you suggest?"
"Something they wouldn't suspect." Like him and Hawkins. They would just be two more Kaido stragglers looking for a piece of the pie. Yeah, Apoo wouldn't trust him, but Apoo did trust money, and enjoyed power. Himself alone would be wasted, but Hawkins? The two of them would draw Apoo like a fly to shit. Besides, Page One liked him if only because he didn't tolerate Ulti's bullshit.
"Tch, the Navy doesn't do subtle. Kinda goes against our big white sails and coats."
"The traditional Navy, sure." He watched the pieces click into place. Doll leaned forward now, a cook studying her boiling pot.
"So eager to leave, Diez?"
"Weapons are pointless if you don't use them." He could see he'd won by the way she settled back in her chair, lips puckered like she'd tasted something sour.
"Fine. How fast can you get out of my hair?" Now the negotiations.
"I can't pull this off alone," Drake leaned back in the chair, running his fingers through his hair. It still felt strange to not be wearing his eye mask. Not for much longer.
"Oh, how many men do you need? I'm short staffed at the moment," Doll smiled like ice.
"Just one. Basil Hawkins."
Her face shut down, anger igniting under her skin. Her boots hit the floor, leaning forward aggressively, eyes dark. "Oh hell no, I don't trust that pirate farther than I can spit!" Doll slammed her hands on the table. He supposed it would be more intimidating if he hadn't faced death recently.
"Look, I need him. Scratchmen won't trust me on my own. But both of us will be something he'll go for. Once we're in, we pull a Dressrosan Horse maneuver. They won't expect an attack from within."
"And if Hawkins betrays you, Diez? Which he certainly will." Doll lobbied forth, her little dig itching under his skin. She didn't know Hawkins like he did. He'd expect betrayal from Smoker first. The thought made his stomach turn.
"Then Smoker and I will fight our way out." That was a weak volley, even he knew that. Drake himself could take on two of some combo of Apoo, Ulti and Page One, but all three? And whatever crew members they had? Even with Smoker, the odds weren't great. Smoker wouldn't leave men behind, or any civilians. That, Drake knew, had not changed.
Doll gave him a look that could curdle milk.
"Look, I can help or not. Your call." Technically Drake could go without her blessing, but that would almost certainly be a bad idea. It didn't hurt to extend the olive branch. She studied him, the clouds beyond her window bunching up. They'd drop their payload soon, cover G-14 once again in pure white.
"...Alright," she muttered. The sweet taste of victory ran down his tongue. Drake made to get to his feet. "But it won't just be you and Hawkins." He stiffened, eyes following her fingers as they folded on her desk.
"Rear Admiral Hina will oversee this operation. Dismissed."
Notes:
For future POV shifts in a chapter, I'll add the heading since FF doesn't let me do 2 break lines (unlike AO3).
This is gonna go so well