Chapter 3: Vegapunk's Latest Invention
Summary: Ace tries to bring back the dead.
Notes: For Pirate Plunder! Thank you for donating to Gaza!
"Come on…come on, come on," Ace hissed under his breath, squinting in concentration through the visor at the sodder burning under the torch in his hand. Just a bit more and the wires should be properly encased and he could hit the on switch.
And maybe, just maybe, for once in his whole stupid, worthless damn life, he'd get a break. Sweat dripped into his eyes, his fringe of black hair plastered to his forehead. Calloused fingers shook with a slight tremor, trying to get the seam into as fine a line as possible. If he had a damn CNC, this would have been a cinch. He would have been done weeks ago.
Tch, if he had a CNC, he would have just got the damn prosethesis new. No point in scrounging for the circuits, the right joint cables, the bio-batteries that would keep the thing functioning until he got the prize.
Vegapunk's S.O.U.L. Capture.
He reached the end of the wires connecting to the neck, stomach lurching as he turned off the soldering iron. With shaking fingers, he carefully resettled the bioskyn, watching anxiously as the nanobots worked quickly to regrow it until the encasement was fully covered once again.
He stepped back to look over his work. It wasn't pretty, the two arms were from different grow labs, and… Ace clenched his fists. He hadn't been able to get them to the preservation baths quickly enough, the bioskyn too young to be exposed to oxygen, leaving wicked scars across the hands and up the forearms.
But they worked still. Marco had tested them that much, at the cost of having him run a two year long stint in the asteroid fields encircling the Sphinx Nebula. A shit job, but required, if the Whitebeards wanted to remain top dog in the quadrant. Mining sucked, but someone had to do it.
And for this, he would do anything.
His eyes travelled across the torso, undefined as yet. It would take some time before he got the right synthetics to get that right, but it would do for now. The legs were fine, a bit on the thin side, that would change with use.
Finally, he dragged his eyes back up to the head, the container for the brain case, and within the brain case…the S.O.U.L. No hair, not yet, Ace still needed to sniff out that bastard clown for something decent, but again, that could wait.
The eyes stared at nothing, vacant, waiting for life to enter them. If he wanted, he could have activated the Prosthesis already, had it help him around like one of those cyborgs. But that wasn't the prosthesis' purpose.
No, its purpose was…
"Okay, guess it's time, huh Sabo?" Ace murmured. All he had to do was activate the S.O.U.L. He'd seen it in action on the vids, everyone had. Vegapunk's miracle invention, bringing people back from the dead. Some science beyond what Ace understood, but something about how somewhere in the universe, the light, the essence, the memory or whatever it was that made you, was still travelling, still there. Like if Ace got far enough away from the shittiness of Goa, he could look back at it and see it the way it was years prior.
And the genius, the noble, craziest, most cutting edge scientist in the known universe, had figured out how to grab that energy, that life, that soul, and store it in a circuit that could be plugged into a Prosthesis.
Bring back the dead, not just some copy uploaded to the Net.
All he needed to do was fiddle around with the controls to lock onto the right signature and finally… finally he'd have his brother back. It would be the three of them again, and the mistakes of the past would be fixed at last.
He clenched his hand, intensely aware of the way he still felt uneven on one side of his body, flesh and blood right arm and leg traded for the S.O.U.L. circuit. If this didn't work… Ace swallowed. No. It would work. It had to.
Sound. A rushing, ticking, buzzing. Beeping?
What was that? What was–?
Something opened. Or were open. Or…
A room, a tank in the corner, rust on the thermals, boxes full of stuff, solder on the floor, metal sheets stacked by the door. The compression locks on the door were broken. They shouldn't be broken. Didn't they know that was dangerous?
They? They who? Who? Hold on. Hold on wait, hold on wait!
Where was this? Where was–! Something moved, five, no ten wiggly sticks, wait those have a name. Fingers! Fingers on hands on arms on shoulders on–! What? What was? This was–?
"Sabo? Sabo? Sabo, can you hear me?"
A face, a mouth, a nose, eyes, freckles. Black hair. Those things all have names. Names, she knew names, she knew she was she! But–!
"Sabo? It's me, it's Ace." Hopeful brown eyes, language. A name for the thoughts in her head. In her head? But how did she have a head? Wasn't she blown away? The plasma containers failed! The Striker had been hit, the core vaporizing! Yes, she had seen the hit! Where was the ship? Where was Vice Admiral Draw?!
"Where am I?"
God fucking DAMMIT! Of course. Of fucking course. NOTHING could ever go right just fucking once in his life. This was his punishment for being born, the father's sins passing to the son. Just fuck up after fuck up! A furious scream tore up Ace's throat as he hurled his metal fist against the scrap pile of corroborated steel outside. Again and again and again.
The years of effort, the years of cryosleep, the sacrifice. His arm, his leg, Luffy's fury that he couldn't just leave well enough alone (but he didn't get it! It was Ace's fault! He was supposed to be there with Sabo, he was supposed to–!). All of it! For WHAT?! He'd failed, and now some… some, some random dead girl was there in the body he'd built for Sabo! A star streaked overhead, the thin atmosphere of the small moon, Mera, making it burn bright before it whacked somewhere on the surface.
Ace glared up at space, the sheer empty blackness of it punctuated by all the stars and nebulas and galaxies, their lights and colors just blurry splotches. He rubbed furiously at his eyes, tears streaking through synth oil and sweat.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Isuka stared blankly at the dirty floor. The East Blue Asteroid Belt Wars had ended four centuries before, the culminating battle burning most of the belt up in the plasma explosion that killed her. Her commander had been killed in action and awarded some medal of honor until it came to light that the sacrifice of the belt had been his fault. Now he was just a little black mark in history that ultimately was just one tiny locale in a thousand billion locales across the Mariejois galaxy. There was only a single book written on the history of the asteroid belt that had been her everything. Her home, her life.
And now she was just some… echo. Not even a copy, just some light and sound and bits that the device in her new skull had pulled out of the ether and some stupid boy had activated. A… quasi human with no home, no family, no world, no nothing. They wouldn't let her enlist like this, the technology too strange, too new, too anything to be trusted with a weapon, to be entrusted to care for others! Something wet dripped onto her scarred palms and it took Isuka a moment to realize that the eyes in the skull were crying, her eyes now, her skull now.
What was she supposed to do now?
"I want hair." That was the first thing the dead girl in his brother's prosthesis said to him. Well, not the first thing, but the first in days. Ace looked up from where he'd been typing to Marco, hoping to get the damn bird bastard out here to tell him how to fix this. Her. Reboot, whatever.
Except Marco was a good person, and told him to shove it. Whether Ace liked it or not, he couldn't just turn her off, that'd be… killing her. Again.
She was looking at him, big brown eyes irritated, like she'd been crying.
"Fine," Ace grumbled.
"Where are you going?" she asks, panting from walking haltingly back and forth through the scrap heap piles. She must learn how to use this body, must get the legs to work the way she wants. Or she'll fade away and return to nothing, which she has decided she must not do.
The boy, Ace, is packing. He spends most of his time during the day locked away in his little science hut, leaving her alone. But this time he is packing which means a long trip. Isuka's stomach lurches. She has no one and nothing and this boy, who looks at her like she's ruined his life, is her only… anything.
"Leaving for a few weeks," he grumbles.
"Are you coming back?" she asks, which he ignores to continue putting a collection of tools into a case. The silence makes her feel sick, makes her want to wilt away. The empty nothingness of death would be easier than the loneliness. But she doesn't want that either.
"I'll come with you."
This makes him stop and look up at her with a scowl on his face.
"No."
"Yes."
"You're not coming with me."
"Yes I am," Isuka says through clenched teeth. She wants to sit down, her body is tired, her muscles twinging. Growing new fibers is hard work. Getting a new life is hard work. But Isuka can do hard work.
She can, or she dies.
"No you're not, you're too weak, and I don't need you slowing me down, just wait for me here until I get back!" the boy argues, and Isuka is ready to yell back except–
"You'll come back?" her voice almost shakes with relief.
He blinks and she can see pink rise high in his cheeks as he looks away. "Yeah, I'll come back."
She vows to be stronger by the time he returns.
"Wow," Isuka breathes as she fiddles with the straps she's supposed to be buckling to prepare for landing. The hyperbend flight has put them in orbit above a planet called Moby, its bright blue ocean surface a glittering jewel.
The Boy for his part doesn't say anything, just lets her be, which is an improvement over his arguing with her about whether or not she could come with him on this trip, the fifth trip he'd taken and left her behind on.
But this time, she was strong enough, and she wouldn't lose again.
Time flies when one is preoccupied. And Isuka is certainly preoccupied. The Boy is part of a large company that operates across a significant part of the galaxy. Not a government, not a religion. A crime syndicate that is more invested in economic gains than with crime.
And it is here that Isuka finds she can apply herself.
It takes a year for her to have bioengineers adjust her limbs and torso to finally look familiar, to look like her, or the her she remembers. It takes a year for the hair implants that she finds delivered at her door to grow in, the most important part. She spends hours strengthening the dexterity of her fingers to take care of her shiny red locks, just like it takes hundreds of hours for her to learn to walk and run and jump again. Time passes as she relearns what foods she likes and doesn't like and what foods this body doesn't care for that differ from the body she'd been born in.
One entire revolution around Moby's sun as she throws herself into becoming an excellent pilot like she was before she died. In her time, artificial intelligence wasn't advanced enough to make pilots obsolete. In the now, AI is its own species that left humanity for good a long time ago. Some things change, some things stay the same.
And it takes all that time for the boy, Ace, to finally stop looking at her like she was the worst thing that ever happened to him. But, perhaps that is because she gets assigned far from him. Perhaps that is because she makes friends of her own. Perhaps it is because she learns to have a new life and to live it.
Or perhaps, it's because he is going to try again.
"You can't do this to yourself, or to us another time," Marco crosses his arms, glaring at him. Ace glares back.
"This time it'll work." He knew he just needed better parts, better bioskyn, a S.O.U.L. for a higher price. This time, it would work!
"It should have worked last time, I looked over your work, Ace," the blue birdman sighs. "You think your brother would want this for you?"
The Boy is sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest among the scrap heaps. Mera hasn't changed at all in the time she has been gone. A moon outside the Mariejois Hegemony, a place where anything goes. A place that allowed for her rebirth, because other places have banned S.O.U.L. now. Too much abuse, too many people looking for revenge, for love, for personal gain.
Too many enemies of the Hegemony brought back to wreak havoc.
And then there was her. Why had she been brought back? Her, not even a footnote in history. She knew now what The Boy had paid for her S.O.U.L. Technology like that was only the kind of thing the extremely wealthy could even contemplate, and still, most of them couldn't get their hands on it either.
She tucks a lock of red hair behind her ear, marching forward to stand behind the boy.
"Doctor Marco called me," she says. The Boy doesn't answer. She can see laser scars across his skin. All his natural born limbs gone. The problem with removing limbs this way is that they can't be regrown. The buyers want exclusivity, they want those limbs to be theirs and no one else's, and they do what they need to ensure it. Prosthetics take their place, but they'll never work the same way his natural limbs would. Her body is similar, a hodge podge of scars from this boy trying to put her together.
She huffs and goes inside. There, she comes face to face with another person brought back from the dead. This one's name is Rosinante, and he is as lost and confused as she was and sometimes still is.
Isuka stomps back outside to The Boy.
"Wasn't one enough for you?!" she yells. Wasn't throwing another life into chaos enough?! He shrinks even smaller. He really looks like a boy now, a very lost one, but Isuka doesn't feel much sympathy for him.
"You don't even have anything to say?" she clenches her hand into a fist. "You can't just… play god! You can't just bring people back! We didn't ask for it!" Her first death has been relatively painless, had even seemed honorable at the time. It was only now that she knew it was totally avoidable if her commander hadn't been a fanatic.
A hurt that felt… indescribable. How can she be angry at someone for something that happened four hundred years prior, that no one but her was even alive to recall, or care?
And who the hell was this boy to decide to drag her back to the realm of the living?! And now to do it to a second person?! He still says nothing.
"Why is it so important that you've done this not just once, but twice?" Isuka mutters darkly.
Three times he'd failed Sabo. The first time when he was supposed to meet him at the shipyard. But Ace hadn't gone, too mad at Sabo over finding out the blonde's family was rich and powerful and not at all like what Sabo had made him and Luffy believe.
Then the second time, with the dead girl. The very girl now shouting at him, pouting with pink lips and brown eyes and a body that looked so different from the one he'd put together for Sabo. Her red hair looked like roses in the light of Mera's closest sun. She looked more alive than Ace could remember feeling.
And now, the third time with some random dead guy. He really, really shouldn't have been born, and Luffy was right, he should have left well enough alone, but Luffy… had a life, with friends who loved him, loved his dream. But him? His relationship with the Whitebeards had never been on equal footing despite Pops' intentions because he was so goddamn focused on just fixing this ONE fucking wrong! If he could just fix this one thing, then he could fix things with Deuce, could fix things with Pops over Thatch, could fix things with Luffy and Gramps and–
But he couldn't even do this right, and maybe, maybe it wasn't because he'd built the prosthesis wrong.
"Why doesn't he want to come back?" he breathed as the girl turned away.
"Huh?"
"Is he that angry with me?" Ace squeezed out of his throat. "Is that why he won't come back?"
Isuka stared at The Boy for a long, long moment. Something from her past life pushed at her. Like the time she'd pulled a little girl from a burning wreckage, having to break it to her that her parents hadn't made it.
She folded her legs beneath her to sit beside him. His hands were white knuckled where they wrapped around his knees.
"Who are you talking about?" she asked gently.
"Sabo... My brother." Oh, that name. Of course she had known whomever Sabo was must have been important for The Boy to give up so much. If she… If she didn't know what it was like to be a lost S.O.U.L., maybe she would have tried to bring her parents back, but… she didn't want to inflict that upon them.
"Your brother huh?" she twisted a lock between her fingers, chewing her bottom lip. "I… don't remember anything from when I was dead… one second I was on my ship and there was a bright light and then, well, I woke up to you, looking at me."
Isuka looked up at the stars. "If there is some… decision making process, some knowledge in the afterlife, I don't remember it." From here, she could look in the direction of where her original home was still a burning plasma mess in space. One day, long after she'd died again, perhaps it would turn into a new planet.
"I didn't know your brother, but I don't think anyone could stay mad enough after all the… attempts you've made." Well, she was, but not in the same way. She was mad that he'd try again after making her. Mad that he was throwing away a perfectly good life, a perfectly good body, to chase after someone who was long gone.
She could tell he was listening. "If someone loved me as much as you do your brother, then I wouldn't stay away, no matter what."
A wretched little noise tore from his throat. Sabo had never been so petty as to be mad forever. Sabo loved him and Luffy, loved the stars and the world and all the things in it. Even him. Even him with his worthless hide that couldn't let him go.
"If… if there's anything I've learned in all this time I've been alive, it's that life is for the living and you have to live it. Move forward and keep going even when… even when it hurts, or you make mistakes, or weird boys accidentally bring you back from the dead." Her hand landed gently on his shoulder.
Okay, dead girl was funny.
He nodded into his knees, finally looking up to wipe his eyes. The sun was setting on the edge of Mera and turning the scrap heap into a riot of glittery metallic bronze, gold and silver. Rusty reds and bejeweled oranges, and at that moment, Dead Girl looked like she'd never died.
Move forward… "What's your name?" he finally said through the lump in his throat.
"Isuka," she smiled, and for the first time in a long time, Ace felt something beneath the grief, beneath the anger, beneath the hurt.
"Nice to meet you, Isuka. I'm Ace, and … sorry about being the weird guy who brought you back from the dead."
She laughed, and maybe moving forward was something he could do. Maybe, just maybe.
Notes:
I like to think that in this universe, they discover that Sabo is still alive lol
