A/N: Brief cutback to the straw hats here to lighten the mood, if only incrementally. I promise, guys, this story does have cheerful, romantic, and fluffy moments ahead. I've just got to get through all these dark chapters. Sorry it's taking me so long. Though all things considered, two chapters a month isn't bad, right?
Ch. 9 – Up in Smoke
"Calypso was my guard after that," Helena went on, staring into her now empty mug. Sanji offered to refill it, but she declined, feeling inexplicably queasy now that she had something in her stomach again. "They kept my father, Kuina and me tied up on a balcony atop the palace, where we could see everything. When I came to, Calypso bragged to me about how he'd killed Sirena for Orpheus, and about what had happened to Gloriadne and Agamemnon and the rest of Cipher Pol's families. He made sure I knew about every betrayer we'd had in our midst, and every loss."
"He wanted to make you feel it," Robin observed, and Helena nodded.
"That's how I know what type of people they are," she went on. "They have no regard for human life, not even for the people closest to them."
"We are sadly aware of that from our past experience with Cipher Pol," Robin pointed out. "And you said these people are still after you and Kuina? There are five of them, correct? Nysa, Diddy and Orpheus, with Calypso Blue as Head Agent, and Bags as their handler. And only Nysa has a devil fruit?"
"There were six in total, actually," Helena replied. "And two devil fruit users."
Robin cocked her head. Helena could see her mentally counting them all over again to see where she'd missed one.
"The sixth Nysa kept hidden until the last moment using her Hammer Hammer power," Helena clarified. "This agent is someone you know, actually. And he had a hidden army under his command…"
On the steps of the palace, Bags glanced sidelong at Nysa, who stood beside him, grinning her creepy grin.
"Humph. The Queen is confident that her people can take us down, like it's their job," he pronounced, grinning even as he said it. "Let's prove her wrong, shall we?"
Nysa nodded, retrieving the sporran from about her waist. Undoing the clasp, she overturned the fur purse, and from it spilled…
Mice.
Thousands upon thousands of mice.
Not just any mice. Malacoda. These rodents at their smallest easily outsized a household dog. At their largest they could be ridden like horses. Perhaps most disconcerting of all, they had hissing, poisonous snakes in place of tails.
An impossible amount of them spilled from the hammer space within Nysa's bag, staring unseeing about them with blind, milky eyes. Waves of them poured over the palace steps and into Ilium proper, scattering unsuspecting civilians in their wake.
Soon with the brown, furry waterfall came a mac 'n cheese colored chef's toque, and then a man with a cylindrical body. A dali-esque mustache twitched on his smirking face.
"Sacre bleu!" he cried with an outrrrrrrageous French accent, stumbling to his feet. "Zat time already? Go my loyal minions! – the only ones to truly appreciate my cooking! Bring Ilium to her knees!"
"CHEF FETA?!" the Straw Hats who knew him cried, interrupting Helena.
The deposed queen nodded.
"I KNEW that guy was no good!" Sanji seethed, curly eyebrow twitching in rage. "How can anyone trust a CHEF who creates INEDIBLE FOOD?"
"Well, I suppose we made the mistake of doing so," Helena admitted, and Zoro shot Sanji a warning glare.
"Who's Chef Feta?" Franky and Brook asked together.
"He used to work at the palace back around the time I was coronated," Helena explained. "He was a terrible cook, mostly because he relied on his Cheese Cheese fruit to, uh, garnish his dishes with Cheese Whiz..."
"Ow! Cheese Whiz isn't so bad," Franky interrupted with a shrug.
"…which he shot from his elbows," Sanji finished for her.
"And other parts of his body as well," Helena pointed out. "Fingers, toes…I've seen him shoot it from his nose before."
Sanji's face blotched purple with rage.
"Ok, that is superrrr gross," Franky conceded. "Though an elbow canon sounds kind of handy…"
"And Nysa kept Feta and his rodent army contained in that pouch she wears?" Robin asked, intrigued.
Helena nodded. "Yes. Now that you mention it, it's probably the pouch that has the Hammer Hammer fruit. I had forgotten that objects like that could have powers."
"A purse full of infinite hammer space, huh? Sounds really useful," Usopp observed, cocking his head. "So was Feta just hanging out in there with all the mice since last we saw him?"
"Who knows," Helena shrugged. "I think it more likely that he was living underground, winning over the queen of the Malacoda and ultimately dethroning her. They seem to regard him as their overlord or something."
"More like a god," Usopp snickered. "He can make it rain cheese, after all." His amusement faded when he saw that Helena wasn't smiling:
"As ridiculous as he is, with surprise and numbers on his side, I am ashamed to say that his rat army subdued my people all to easily. It happened before I came to, so I can't give you many details."
"I thought we helped you beat some of those things last time we were there," Sanji pointed out pensively.
"No, those were the malabranches – the lion things," Usopp reminded him. "The malacoda were on our side. From what I saw, the mice were actually more vicious than the cats."
"Perhaps," Helena agreed. "In this particular instance, it appears it was their numbers, and the poison in their tails that provided the biggest hinderance. The majority of my people are trained swordsmen, but no one expected an attack to begin from within the city."
"And Hector?" Zoro asked.
Helena sighed. "He wasn't there," she replied. "If he had been in town, he'd have been attending the party and subdued with the rest of us, but he was training up new recruits in Spathens to replace the men we lost in the last battle. Lieutenant General Achilles was in charge at the wall…"
Only in her nightmares could Helena de Zoro have ever imagined the scene spread before her after she finally came to. From the ever so gracious vantage Cipher Pol had granted her family, she watched as her beautiful city was completely overrun by enormous rats.
Above her, somewhere on the roof of the palace she could hear the sound of a sorrowful violin. Orpheus, Calypso had informed her, playing a lament for his lost love no doubt. Now that they had successfully secured the palace, the Cipher Pol agents apparently weren't needed in the battle below.
The lights of a small fleet had appeared out of nowhere out in the bay, their presence making it clear why Achilles and his soldiers hadn't turned their attention toward the main city. Anyway, the wave of rats had swooped in so quickly, they hadn't time to react.
"The perfect plan, mon," Calypso's voice came from behind her. He had taken to toying with a lock of hair at the nape of her neck. "We don't need a force like Regent's to secure you now. Just some decent firepower."
"The Navy?" Cygnus asked calmly, flatly, as though commenting on an opponent's chess strategy. Helena glanced at her father, where he stood with his arms still bound behind him, tall and proud despite their predicament. She imitated him, hoping to hide her own fear and awe, trying not to react to Calypso's continued lack of regard for her personal space.
"No, mon," Calypso replied, but he kept his attention on Helena as he spoke, not the king. "The Seven Warlords of the Sea. They are led by the Fleet Admiral, and a small regiment of his men."
"Not going for a Buster Call this time?" Cygnus observed.
"There's no need," Calypso replied, brushing the scar on Helena's neck with the backs of his fingers.
She forced herself not to flinch, feeling keenly her daughter's eyes on her. Kuina did not look over the railing like her mother and grandfather. The satin ribbon cocoon around her still held her bound, and she lay sniffling on the ground, too confused to make sense of what was going on.
"No need?" Helena replied to Calypso in as even a tone as she could manage. "The majority of the Schichibukai are devil fruit users. Our sea prism alone will be enough to…"
A loud explosion from the bay ripped through the night, announcing the collapse of the Sea Prism mines. The shockwave reached all the way to the palace, ruffling their hair and clothes, but it was the sheer horror of seeing and hearing the crux of her country's economy go up in smoke that made Helena step back.
Unfortunately, she stumbled right into Calypso, who caught her readily, pulling her tightly to him.
"You were saying, mon?" he murmured sadistically into her ear. "You can thank Diddy for that little explosion, by the way. No one thought anything of letting Agamemnon's grandmother wander through his property as she pleased. She sabotaged your shatter cannons too. I don't expect your sea prism weapons will be of much help."
She tried to wrench herself from his arms, but his grip was too strong. "Why?" she seethed, trying not to scream it in her shock and anger. "You've murdered the Sybil AND destroyed our mines. What good does conquering this country do the World Government now?"
"From what I hear, they finally got tired of this little dance you've been locked in," Calypso replied. "They figured if they couldn't have your goods," his arm tightened around her, "No one could."
Helena attempted to wrench herself free again. At the exact same moment Calypso released her, laughing as her own momentum drove her hard into the railing of the balcony before her. Winded, she sank to her knees.
She turned herself to face him as his booted footsteps approached her from behind. Her bound arms and stupid, tight dress kept her from staggering to her feet, but at least she could try to face him head on. He took to one knee over her, reached out and started toying with her chains of office.
"You've buzzed around the head of the bear for so long that you forgot your size, mon," he simpered, reeling her toward him link by link until he had her choking for breath, so close that their faces almost touched. "Now that you've lost your stinger, no one is afraid to crush you."
Helena glared at him, twitching in rage, daring him to kiss her.
Calypso smirked at her, "Have I told you how ravishing you look tonight, mon?" he said with sinister emphasis.
He pulled her face to his suddenly, forcing her lips apart. She'd been expecting it, but she hadn't expected something so passionate. It took her a moment to retaliate, but when she did she made sure he'd ever regret his decision:
He pushed her away suddenly, all seductive bravado evaporating in his shock.
"You bid mah tongue, mohn!" he exclaimed affectedly, as though he had a bubble in his mouth, "You bid through mah tongue!"
Helena raised both brows at him as if to question why he'd be so surprised. She sat up and spit blood at his feet.
"What, you didn't enjoy it?" she goaded. "I told you I like it rough."
Cygnus laughed, and Helena's cheeks flushed a bit to think that her father had been witness to all this, not to mention her daughter, but when he spoke he sounded immensely proud of her: "Her Majesty may have lost her sting, miscreant, but she still has teeth."
Calypso quickly drew his machete and pointed it toward her.
"I'w show you wough, mohn," he started, but then Kuina burst out laughing too.
"You tawk funny," she observed.
"Youw wone to tawk, mohn," Calypso retaliated before he realized he was arguing with a two-year-old. In a moment of epiphany, he seemed to realize how he could hurt Helena most. His blade flashed toward helpless little girl.
"STOP!" Helena screamed. She couldn't move her tied arms, her legs lacked leverage in the stupid pencil dress. She could do nothing but throw herself on top of her daughter, placing herself in the blade's trajectory.
The far more mobile Cygnus managed to catch the man's wrist between his toes with a loud, "HONK! Don't you touch them, dastard!"
He tried to disarm Calypso with a dexterous twist, but the swordsman easily swept his sword arm free. He rubbed his sore wrist a moment pensively, brow furrowed as his lip twitched in disgust.
Their row stopped short at another explosion. Helena chanced to straighten up and glance at the city below and gasped.
Great fists of molten lava rained down from the sky. One had just struck the indestructible sea stone walls of Ilium, melting a portion of it instantly. More fists followed, opening her city's ageless walls as easily as the curtain on a stage. A great, blue bubble appeared at another portion of her wall, and when it vanished that portion lay in pieces. She couldn't see clearly from her vantage, but it seemed to her that great squadrons of Achilles' men had stopped moving – frozen in stone. A slash bigger and stronger than even Calypso's had been tore through the city center and struck the palace itself, making it shake.
Orpheus' violin suddenly changed its tune to a mad dervish from above. He sounded positively insane.
"No…" Helena uttered, drowned out by the sound. Then more loudly, "NO!"
She whipped around toward Calypso with newfound fury, her one desire to rip into him the way Akainu and his small fleet were ripping into her city. Before her newfound fervor could drive her inexplicably to her feet, Calypso turned his machete on Cygnus, stabbing him deftly in the thigh.
Her father crumpled with a cry of pain, which he quickly bit back, looking at Kuina. "Grandpa's fine," he reassured the little girl through gritted teeth, now kneeling at her level. He forced a pained smile.
Kuina stared at him through wide eyes, taking everything in though she said nothing.
Before Helena could react, Calypso had the point of his freshly bloodied blade at her throat.
Orange light glanced off the palace as heat radiated from below. Helena could see fire reflected in Calypso's eyes and from his sword. Obviously realizing how stupid he now sounded, the livid swordsman didn't say anything more, just lifted his bloodied blade to her cheek, turning her face toward the city now aflame below. With sadistic satisfaction he watched the pain in her face as Ilium went up in smoke.
And all the while, Orpheus sawed away at his violin.