"Actions have consequences. This is a fact. A law of this world, to which we are all, all beholden. So simple. So very simple… and yet, so often forgotten."
On your average day, the casino island-ship of Gran Tesoro was always raucous with the sounds of laughter, clinking gold, and just about every other breed of joy, jubilation and overall excess that one could imagine. An island home to a pure cacophony of noise, as it were.
But for close to a minute, all of those discordant noises had been utterly silenced and replaced with a single sound that easily put all the others to shame. Specifically…
"GURORORORO! GURORORO!"
A single laugh.
And while the owner of the laugh would have been concerning enough on a good day, it was the side effects of this sudden bout of jubilation that had the island-ship in something of a panic.
"Son of a—!" Baccarat snarled, the Lucky-woman narrowly catching herself on a 'conveniently' available pillar as the ground heaved beneath her feet, again. "What the hell is that crazy bastard's problem!?"
Hers was a question repeated across the island. With every bout of laughter from the island's owner, every surface of gold on the island shifted and roiled as though a tropical storm had found its way inside.
"I swear, I don't know what he's done or is doing," Baccarat bit out as she got her footing back during a momentary calm. "But if I ever get my hands around Jeremiah Cross's neck, I'm going to—!"
"Have to wait and see if he survives the personal attention of an Admiral first," Tanaka groused as he poked his head up through a nearby section of floor. "Trust me, you don't even want to know what they're pulling this time."
"Alright, then I won't ask," the concierge snapped back as she started walking again, the pit boss's head gliding along behind her. "And what are you doing here anyway? We have literally a dozen different fires raging across the island, so unless this is important, beat it!"
"I didn't bring up Cross without reason," Tanaka replied. "We miscalculated the latest odds, and as it stands, unless we act fast, we're set to lose billions in less than ten minutes."
"Shit!" Baccarat barked out, breaking into a run and bolting for the nearest staircase. "Alright, you go and stick the winners in solitary, I'll get security to start rounding up any witnesses and delete all the pertinent foot—!"
"GURORORORO!"
"—GYAH!" the concierge shrieked as the latest set of bucking nearly threw her clean down the staircase, her mouth spewing out a stream of instinctive profanity long before her brain caught up with it. "A gwine mash up dat mengkeh, mi jus drop near dung di stairs because him dead with lau—!?"
Baccarat clamped her free hand over her mouth as she became aware of her wide-faced coworker staring blankly at her.
"…you didn't see anything," she declared, firmly and clearly in her usual, un-accented voice. "Because if you did, then I will jinx you so bad that the Sea King that eats you will get eaten."
"See what? What are you lollygagging for? We have a bank-breaking to stop."
"Thought so."
And with that, they made tracks for their respective destinations, leaving the corridor completely abandoned. Save for a certain maid who was most definitely not supposed to be there, who peeked her head out to watch them in wide-eyed awe.
"Well, while that's not what I'd call useful, that's still some new intel…" she muttered to herself before glancing up towards the laughter with a wry grin. "On more than one front. Damn it all, Red, you make life as your rival just too damn hard. I'm almost not up to the challenge!"
She maintained her contemplative gaze for a bit before donning a Cheshire grin. "…well, almost." She clapped her hands together with a nod of certainty. "Looks like there's no other choice! Scratch taking just the tribute; one way or another, this island is mine!"
-o-
"Gurararara… you hear that? Brings back memories, doesn't it?"
Two snails connected on numbers he retained out of necessity, more than anything else, glowered back at him.
"But hey!" The largest snail on the Moby Dick belted out from its perch in the middle of the deck, its face twisted into the unhinged offspring of a grin and a scowl. "Hey, hey, hey, it's fine, it's fine, it's. Fine. That's what this is all about. To remind you all. To… To ingrain it all in your minds, once. And for all. Now please, kindly engrave this truth in your minds… and never forget it."
The World's Strongest Man bared a grin that showed more teeth than humour. "Is this sinking in, you two? You should take it to heart."
KALICK!
The snails slumped slightly from the sheer force behind the disconnection before perking back into awareness.
Whitebeard gave the suddenly recalcitrant-looking snails a final glance before sighing in defeat. "Yeah, I knew that was a long shot…" He then allowed an honest smile to cross his face. "Ah, well, with any luck, I'll live long enough to see them swallow their pride and teeth both! And if not, I can still laugh at them and save them a seat in hell! GURARARARA!"
The captain's good cheer led to a round of chuckles and chortles from his kids, enhanced by the glorious justice they were all about to witness. And the next piece of news they heard? Well, that just made them start cheering.
"Hey, I think Ace is finally coming home! His Vivre Card is pointing down!"
-o-
"Every action has a consequence," I repeated, my voice hoarse as I stared unerringly at him with complete, deadly focus. "And we must take responsibility for those consequences, because no one, no one can escape them. This holds true for everything and everyone on this planet. From the smallest piece of plankton, to the lowliest of bugs… to the mightiest, and most powerful, of gods. ALLOW US TO DEMONSTRATE."
Charloss remained oblivious as Luffy ascended the last few steps to reach him. Even with what I had said, even with what we had done, he still clung to the belief that nobody would dare touch him. Nobody could touch him.
Still, he fired his gun three times at Luffy as he approached. The rubber man dodged them effortlessly.
Then, with a grimace and snarl of rage, he brought back his fist…
And buried it into the self-proclaimed god's face.
I concede that it was probably my imagination and refreshed memories, but I swear that the world faded to black and white for an instant. Whether I imagined that or not, though, what definitely happened was that Charloss's bubble helmet disintegrated and his nose and jaw crumpled from Luffy's punch, sending him flying the full length of the room. Crashes sounded out one after another, a dozen every second as his body broke through wood and fabric that may have been stronger than he himself was. Then finally, in a warped sense of mercy, he crashed headfirst into the solid stone of the auction house's inner wall. Without so much as a gurgle, he slumped to the floor, Luffy's fistprint implanted on the side of his face.
Would that scar? Oh, I seriously hoped it would scar.
The echoes of the rattling debris were the only sound in the room; the brawl had slowed as I spoke, and now it had frozen in response to the 'blasphemy' my captain had performed. Somehow, the bulk of the room's inhabitants were still flabbergasted.
Oh, who am I kidding? It doesn't make any difference how many people knew that Luffy was willing and able to do this, consequences be damned. No, this was an action that shook the world when it was just in a newspaper. And now… I didn't doubt that even two years from now, this would be looked back on as 'The Punch Heard Around The World.'
The grim mood slowly lifted for us as Luffy looked back up at us, his expression a bit more regretful than sheepish. "Sorry, guys. This means that they'll be sending an admiral after us, right?" He paused and then tilted his head. "Oh, yeah, sorry to all of the other Supernovas, too. And Foxy. And—"
"And I think that's enough of implicating our accomplices, Captain," Sanji said, shaking his head. "Besides, you haven't finished apologizing to us yet."
"Why did you have to go and hit him so hard, Luffy? Now I can't cut him," Zoro groused, slamming Kitetsu III and Shusui back in their sheaths.
"Maybe I can still castrate him… You know, assuming he has balls," Vivi mused, glaring at the crumpled form as a sheen of razor-sharp wind danced over her Lion Cutter.
"…Under normal circumstances, I'd protest that to hell and back… but in this case?" Franky clenched his fists. "You'd do the whole world a favor cutting off his bloodline."
"I second that emotion with gusto," I deadpanned, pacing down the stairs through the still-frozen brawl and heading for Camie's cage. "But that aside, maybe start mopping things up, so to speak? We just put a time limit on getting out of here alive, after all."
"Hey, you really think we're just going to let you leave things at that!?"
I paused to shoot a scathing glare at the newly resensitized Soundbite as he piped in Kid's voice, the snail finding the decency to wince sheepishly. "HEY, THEY INSISTED."
"Damn right we insisted!" Kid barked, the bulging veins actually audible in his voice. "You sons of bitches kick the world in the crotch like that, and you think we're just going to let it go without another word?!"
"Think? No. But we hoped…" I muttered to myself.
"CRAM IT!" Bonney barked. "The point is that we've got a bone to pick with you!"
"What, you wanted us to not give that son of a bitch his divine retribution?" Vivi said.
"Psh, hell no," Apoo dimissively replied. "We could have stopped you if we wanted to, easy, we decided against it—"
"Wow, I physically felt my bounty bump up right there…" Drake deadpanned.
"—but that doesn't excuse the fact that you all cut the Sea King without us! You think you're the only guys who've wanted a swing at those raging monsters!?"
"It does feel somewhat unfair that you all have pulled ahead of us in such a manner…" Hawkins droned.
"We want our pounds of flesh, Straw Hat-ya. Literally, that putrid mass sells for millions at a time," Law capped off with a gruesome chuckle.
"Nobody's stopping you guys anymore, do whatever you want," Luffy nonchalantly retorted.
There was a moment of silence…
"DIBS ON FIRST KICKS!" Barto roared before everything cut off into a mishmash of confusion, and Soundbite cut the feed.
"Welp, I'd say that the BLOCKADE THE MARINES ARE TRYING TO SET UP IS GONNA LAST EVEN LESS TIME THAN THE LAST ONE!" he snickered impishly.
"Good," Luffy grunted, then turned towards me. "Cross, get Camie, free the slaves, get our coater, and let's get out of here."
…welp. Captain's orders or not, I was stunned into staring at him for a couple of seconds.
"Luffy? Just so you know, the smarter you are. THE SCARIER YOU ARE," Soundbite said.
"Cross."
"Right, on it," I grunted, wheeling around and marching back toward the stage. And really, I couldn't blame him. Even knowing what was coming, way too fast for comfort (and I was really going to have to process that later), we still had an objective to complete. And frankly, I was getting more and more sick and tired of this hellhole by the—
Kaclick. "Not one step further, mongrel."
…yeah. Yeah, that would be how this day would turn out, wouldn't it?
I slowly raised a hand to pinch the bridge of my nose, refusing to so much as look at the Roswald in my path, or the gun he had levelled at me, lest it aggravate my migraine. "I am so far beyond done with this shit…" I muttered to myself before raising my voice. "Move your ass, grandpa, before you make me do something you'll regret."
"You dare," Roswald hissed through his teeth, his gun rattling as he was so furious. "You dare to address me?! You worm, you insignificant—!"
Aaaand that was the last of my limit on bullshit today. Right, time to ruin this fuck's life.
"Okay, you know what?" I interrupted, finally willing myself to look at him dead-on and meet him glare to glare. "I could have just punched you out, given you some bruising and just been on my way, no harm, no foul, but we're well past that. So I'm going to summarize this all very nicely and neatly in a single word."
I raised my hand and jerked my thumb to the side.
"Move."
For a few seconds, there was blessed silence, but of course, all good things must come to an end.
"What?" Roswald spat, obviously not believing his own ears.
"I said move," I repeated, voice as dry as Alabasta. "Get. Out. Of my way."
Roswald twitched, pretty damn violently at that, but he kept his gun up, and more importantly, he didn't move from where he stood. "I am a god of this world," he hissed out, sounding on the verge of a stroke. "I am your ruler, your clear and undeniable superior. And you dare to order me? You dare?!"
I stared at him silently for a bit, my thoughts and words storming about my head. I took a slow, calm breath… and slowly, calmly let it out. And once my mind was calm and clear… I spoke.
"Back home, where I'm from?" I uttered, dispassionately staring at the man, the Noble, the God before me. "Well, a great man once said something about my country. He said it was a nation founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe in, no matter the odds or the consequences. What that means, is that when anyone, be it the mob, be it the press, be it even the World, tells you to move, to stand aside and let what you know, you know to be an injustice be committed... your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole World..."
I took a single, decisive step forward, right up to Roswald. And I kept staring. Kept staring even as his expression shifted from furious to apoplectic. Even as the gun pressed flush against my heart, and I looked him right in the eye - and spoke these words
"No. You move." And with that, I slowly tilted my head to the side. "So yes, Saint Roswald, I dare. Now move; move, or else."
To whatever credit Roswald was due? His gun didn't waver. I mean, it trembled in impotent rage… but it didn't waver.
"I could kill you where you stand," he said, combining 'calm' and 'enraged' in the same sentence.
I, however, just snorted incredulously at the notion. "Do you really think I'd die if you shot me?"
"People tend to die when they are killed, yes!" Roswald barked as his nerve suddenly buckled.
"Oh, yeah?" Luffy spoke up behind me, sounding as unimpressed as I was. "How'd that work out for you the last time?"
There was another weighty pause, during which Roswald's expression tightened up as he turned that over. The only noise came from the unfrozen guards trying and failing to gain any ground against the pirates in the building; the other nobles still hadn't snapped out of their stupor.
"Only three ways this is going to end, Roswald," I stated, giving him the facts. "None of them are going to be good for you, but only one puts the second Darkest Day squarely on your shoulders. So tell me… what's it going to be?"
Saint Roswald was enraged by what we had just done to his son. Any normal man would be. Roswald was also possessed by an inhuman level of pride and cruelty. But unfortunately for him - and for the first time, it was unfortunate for him - pride wasn't enough to make him a complete fool. Or perhaps pride was what kept him from becoming a complete fool, being compared to the other man to bring about the World Government's humiliation.
Either way, in the end…
"…damn you."
A God lowered his gun, every inch of him trembling with fury, and stepped aside for a mortal.
Satisfied and feeling really pleased with myself, I stepped right past Roswald and then decided that while I'd given his pride such a gaping wound, I might as well toss in some salt for good measure. As such, I paused, turned to give him an ear-to-ear smile, reached up, and tipped the brim of my hat just so. "Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate your courtesy."
And… yeah, that pretty much did it. I almost literally heard the almighty SNAP! inside Roswald's head, and watched with dull disinterest as he whipped his gun up at my head, pulled the trigger—
SHINK!
—and was left clicking a useless half-gun, the barrel and cylinder clattering to the floor.
Zoro tsked dismissively at the apoplectic and… honestly still a little insensate World Noble as he tried to piece together what had just happened. "Fair warning; Cross might be trying to be clever by not touching you, but I'm one of our crew's idiots. Try that again, and you'll lose the arm."
"You didn't need to do that," Nami deadpanned as she walked up next to him, rolling something over and over in her hand.
Zoro raised an eyebrow. "Their aim is bad, but not 'a drunk baby can do better' bad."
"Wrong reason why." Nami opened her hand to show a palmful of balls and powder. "I thought it was best the other two not get the chance."
Zoro gave her an impressed look. "Well, at least someone on this crew has half a brain."
"…hy…"
"Eh?" I inquired dryly, reluctantly looking back at the livid Noble.
A large part of my irritation melted into satisfaction at the look on his face. The look of someone who was trying desperately to find some semblance of sanity as his world crumbled to pieces around him. Over the course of the day's work, I had become very familiar with that look.
"Why are you doing all of this!?" Roswald demanded, annoyingly not losing the way he carried himself, but rather doubling down on his arrogant indignation. "Why have you ravaged our slave market? Why are you attacking us!?"
"My, my, you do have a brain, that you actually care to ask that. Why am I angry at you?" I looked him in the eyes with the same glare I'd given him hours before. "Because of a man you killed earlier today." A moment's confusion, and then I saw something light up behind his glasses. "Yeah, that's the one. You were right, I was right there. Just a few seconds after you shot him. I looked at you and didn't see a shred of remorse, a hint of thought, nothing. You just killed that man and walked off… like he didn't even matter."
"Because he didn't matter!" Roswald outright roared, a large chunk of whatever restraint and sanity he had left shattering away. "He was worthless! Pointless! Even among you mortals, he was a nobody! You don't even know his name!"
I slowly tilted my head as I stared straight at him. "You're right. You're absolutely right. He was a nobody man with a nobody life. Whose life you snuffed out like stepping on a bug. And quite frankly?"
I turned my back on the bastard and walked away. Dismissing him like the nobody he deserved to be.
"That's what pisses me off worst of all." Without a glance back, I shrugged and tacked on one more thing. "Though it may also be that in your son's last hours of delusion as one of my fans, he spent an hour telling me what kind of monsters you and all the rest of your compatriots really are. And the rest of the world, too, of course. So have fun with that when you get back to Mariejois. Toodles~!"
And as I marched towards the stage, leaving him finally breaking down into impotent ranting and raving and general gruesome death-threats, it was almost everything I could have hoped for.
"You idiot!"
Almost.
"Oh, now what?!" I heard Hachi snap at Kuroobi, and from what Soundbite was telling me, Chew was right next to the big-armed dumbass. "Even you can't make this into a problem!"
"Watch me!" the fishman snarled. "You think you've been fighting the world? This is going to make everything the World Government's done to try and catch you look like a children's game of tag. They will stop at nothing to get you, starting with the Admiral that World Noble is calling right now!"
"SHOULDN'T YOU BE BITING THEIR HEADS OFF ABOUT NOW?" Soundbite muttered as Kuroobi continued to rant.
"Meh," I shrugged indifferently, casually kicking the helmet of a downed knight whose twitching I didn't like the look of. "This isn't a conversation; they're just talking at us. Someone else will handle them."
"Excuse me."
When I heard Nami cut in, I perked up… maybe a bit too gleefully. Her voice was stormy, most likely with twenty thousand volts to sweeten the deal!
"But can I present a counterargument?" our navigator continued.
I could audibly hear Kuroobi's teeth grinding, followed by a disgruntled groan of surrender. "Yeah, sure."
It was at that point that I reached the stage and vaulted up onto it—
CLICK.
—and was struck by a raging sense of déjà-vu, as I noticed Shalria standing right in front of me, and the gun she was pointing at me. A gun she was… pointing at me from five feet away. I tilted my head and gave her a curious look. "Honest question, seeing as ruining daddy dearest's life helped work out a lot of my aggression, but can you even hit me at this distance? Because from what I've seen, apart from one or two flukes, you inbred bastards can't shoot for shit."
The sneer Shalria wore could go either way. "Please. If I had been my fool of a brother, you might have a point," she said. "I, however, actually put in some work. The better to shoot the more nimble slaves. Now, any last words?"
Her sneer was matched with my usual smirk, and I was gratified to see her lips twist in annoyance. "Yeah," I said. "To quote every action hero ever? 'They never look up'."
Shalria had time to blink and snap her head up - right before Vivi's foot planted itself in the middle of her bitch face, shattering her bubble and sending her smashing headfirst into Camie's tank.
"Never has fulfilling such a short-lived grudge been so satisfying," the Corsair Princess snorted to herself as she forcefully wiped the bottom of her shoe off on a nearby guard.
Glancing aside, I saw Nami flick her Eisen Tempo dismissively, even as she examined her fingernails with total contempt. "Fuck the World Nobles," she said, succinctly completing earlier summation.
Kuroobi gaped, blinking owlishly before choking down a heavy gulp. "… Checks out," he finally said after a solid half minute.
"We used to push her around?" Soundbite relayed from Chew, muttering under his breath.
"Now, then, back to the point of this?" I groused, finally stepping up to Camie's bowl and getting a good look at her expression. An expression that, between us being there to rescue her and the unparalleled acts of chaos we had just performed, positively screamed that she was… conflicted.
"Don't worry, we'll overshadow your presence in this completely!" I assured her. "Now, hang—well, just float there for a bit, alright?" I examined the top of the tank. "OK, let's see… so where's the seam on this thing so that we don't blow your head clean—eh?"
Then I felt something grab at me, and my side felt just a bit lighter as it came away. My… right side where I was keeping the detonator—! I snapped my head down to see Shalria leaning against the tank, very conscious and very angry, and clutching the detonator in one hand.
"Those who defy the gods must die," Shalria sneered, and before I could even move, she pressed the button.
…
…and then she pressed it again. And again. And then Vivi unfroze enough to slam the flat of her Lion Cutter against her right temple, knocking her out properly, while I scooped the detonator back up. Only now, where before I'd looked at it with relief, I could only feel fear and rapidly mounting terror.
Terror that hit a prime peak as I dug my fingers into the side of the little box's case and ripped it open, to reveal… nothing. Absolutely nothing. The detonator was… was empty?!
My mind running a mile a minute, I snapped my finger up at the tank. "ZORO, SLICE IT!"
"Didn't you explicitly tell me not to—?"
"HE SAID NOW, BUSHIDO!" Vivi backed me up forcefully.
"Sheesh," the swordsman groused, stepping up and swinging Wado almost dismissively. Water and mermaid spilled out as the tank split open, and I immediately knelt down and grabbed the collar around Camie's neck while she was still dizzy from her sudden spill.
"Soundbite?!"
My snail narrowed his eyes at the collar suspiciously, before snapping them wide open in alarm. "…it's a dud."
"Your tone of voice says you don't think we're just that lucky," Vivi said with mounting terror.
"Because this thing isn't a 'dumb luck dud', it's a DUD-dud!"Soundbite yowled in straight-up panic. "We're not talking about crossed wires here, THIS THING'S AS STERILE AS I ASSUME CHARLOSS IS! THIS BOMB WAS NEVER A BOMB TO BEGIN WITH!"
My hands moving faster than my mind, I took hold of the collar, yanked—!
SKRANG!
—and could only stare in horror as the collar ripped apart in my hands like worthless tinfoil. I mean, it was still metal, but nothing that would stand up to the abuse a panicked slave could inflict on it.
"Ah… isn't this a good thing, though? We knew the whole time that they were using her to lure us in, so what's the problem?" Billy posed.
"The problem," Soundbite said, gulping audibly. "Is that this was supposed to be the POINT. This was the game whoever did this was playing, OUR FRIEND'S LIFE ON THE LINE,US FIGHTING AND STRUGGLING AND SUFFERING TO FREE HER. BUT IF CAMIE'S LIFE WASN'T ON THE LINE, THE GAME CHANGES. It means that we weren't the targets here…AND THAT MEANS WE SUDDENLY HAVE FUCK-ALL IDEA OF WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!"
That killed whatever small, infinitesimal bit of good cheer we'd managed to salvage from what we'd thought was our victory. Even Roswald had the presence of mind to shut his hole, evidently brought up short by the fact that even we were at a loss for what was going on. And this stunned silence would have persisted for quite a bit…
CRASH!"ALRIGHT, WHO WANT'S THEIR SKULLS CAVED—!…eh?"
If it weren't for the dense atmosphere being shattered by… well, by the Supernovas abruptly shattering the front door, and most of the wall around it.
Barto had been leading the charge, a large Barrier-Fist raised and ready to break heads, only for both it and him to deflate as he saw us all standing around, no enemies left on their feet.
"Hey, what the fuck gives?" Bartolomeo demanded, walking down the stairs as he looked around in confusion. "I thought this was an all-you-could-smash fest, not a wake! Seriously, who died?! Heh, well, I mean," he snickered as he kicked the nearest body to him. "Apart from these chumps."
And it was there, right there, that shit hit the fan.
The body Barto had kicked, the body he and everyone else present had been certain was down for the count, suddenly shoved off the ground and surged to its feet, wrapping its arms around a stunned Barto in a bear hug before he could react. Metal struck flesh, shortly before the two crashed to the floor again in a heap, and then more blows rang out, joined by grunts of pain.
Now, normally, we'd have all gone to help him, except the scene was repeated all across the Auction House. Insensate bodies rising and fluidly attacking whoever was closest, all at the same goddamn time.
"THE ACTUAL FUCK!?" Kid raged, snapping up a large and rapidly growing hand of metal as fast as his powers could form it. To mine and Kid's astonishment, though, the people attacking him all smoothly rolled or dashed out of the way, and then pressed the attack from two directions at once. Kid, at worst, the second-strongest of the Supernovas, was quickly sent backpedalling from a bunch of mooks. Or sub-mooks, in the case of the two nobles joining in.
And then the ones closest to my little knot got in melee range, and I had no time to pay attention to the rest of the battle.
Between Zoro and Vivi, that shouldn't have happened. Those two, before this whole impossible situation, probably could've taken on the entire room and come out unscathed. But now Zoro was on the defensive under a hail of fisticuffs, and Vivi was frantically—and futilely—trying to hit somebody, anybody, with her gusts of wind.
And let's not forget Soundbite, either.
"CROSS, big trouble!I'M GASTRO-PHONYING these guys HARD ENOUGH THEY SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HEAR THEMSELVES THINK!"
"A little busy at the moment!" I grunted, quickly wrapping Funkfreed around me to get some damn breathing room. "Lassoo, they try climbing, blast 'em!"
"Don't need to tell me twice!" Lassoo barked, planting his front legs over my left shoulder. "And there's one! EAT IT!"
Satisfied I had at least a little time, I indicated Soundbite to connect with as many people as possible. "Alright, people, details! What are we dealing with here?"
"Impossible skill and a bit of a speed boost, but these suckers don't hit any harder than they used to," Boss grunted over the sound of flesh striking flesh. "Tank and counter, that would be my suggested strategy."
"Boss, not all of us punch rocks with our flippers every day!" Usopp snapped back. "Agh, stay still, dammit!"
"I don't understand your point."
Cutting across my throat, the conversation went silent. I felt a little relieved at that; if the crew was bantering, things weren't hopeless.
In that next moment, I was struck by how silent everything was. Well, as silent as a battlefield could be, anyway. I could still hear all the sounds of battle, of the crew and our Supernova allies shouting and grunting and cursing, but one sound was conspicuous in its absence:
Our opponents.
Frankly, it was creepy as all hell. Whatever it was that made them get up—drugs, or something more exotic and much more dangerous—it didn't give them any reason to speak. No, not just speak. There weren't even grunts and pants of exertion. That was just plain unnatural.
And from the chatter I was hearing from Soundbite, I wasn't the only one.
"Hmm, this is very strange," Law mused. "Usually, people scream when I do this sort of thing. Or at least panic and start yelling."
"Somebody get me blood samples! Or else prepare me an impromptu vivisec—ow! Thank you, Bepo."
"No problem!"
"Uh, Cross? You might wanna see this."
Funkfreed uncurled slightly, giving me a small window that Vivi cleared with a burst of air pressure. Through it, I could see Roswald getting held up in the air by the throat and repeatedly punched. Which, in literally any other circumstance, I would be gleefully recording.
Except that the people doing the punching were two of his own guards. Guards that had been knocked unconscious several minutes prior. One of whom had a leg that more resembled a corkscrew than a limb, and the other sporting a neck lolling at a ninety-degree angle.
My mind spun as I tried to piece things together, tried to figure out how the hell useless bodies could be moving against all reality, against their very wi—!
…no.
No… no, no, nononono—!
A dry heave surged up my gullet, then another. "No…. It can't be—!" I hissed. My already-racing mind sped up, scrambling for anything to disprove my hypothesis. I tapped Soundbite's shell. "Um… this might be an odd question, but are any of these guys injured? Like, cripplingly so?"
A brief pause, while everyone digested that. Then…
"Yeah, I see one guy in the back with a broken face."
"Three broken arms, a gushing head wound, and four twisted ankles. Two at 180 degrees."
"Spines aren't supposed to bend that direction, right? RIGHT?!"
Fuck. Slowly, agonizingly, I raised my left palm. I didn't want to do this. Didn't want to confirm my thoughts. My terrifying, pants-darkening thoughts. This wasn't the worst-case scenario. This laughed at the worst-case scenario and chopped it into pieces.
But not confirming it would be worse. For all of us. Reluctantly, and not unshakingly, my palm facing the ceiling, I flexed, triggering the Flash Dial in my gauntlet.
The illuminated ceiling bore exactly what I feared that I would see: a web.
A massive web, crisscrossing the ceiling and reaching down to the fighters—the bodies, hundreds of them, thousands all at once. A massive, swaying and twitching bundle of—of—!
"Hey, Cross~."
With the same agonizing slowness, I turned around. The face that met my eyes was framed by a mess of long gray hair beneath a flowery top hat. On his face was a pair of star-shaped spectacles and a grin that was almost too wide to fit. Ever-so-casually, he tapped the tip of his cane on the wall behind him… right on the Jolly Roger emblazoned there.
The smiling Jolly Roger.
Doflamingo's.
"You…" I breathed numbly before I felt a fire rage in me, and I snarled as I started to march for the pompous bastard. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU—!?"
Disco opened his mouth—
"How cute."
—And then I was a puppet dancing on a String.
That's all I was: a wooden marionette, no face, no name, no nothing. Just a puppet. A toy.
I was moving and dancing, twirling about on a stage for all to see, but only because of my String.
The String was everything. The String was how I stood. How I moved. How I lived.
I lived and died according to the string… and the smiling devil who held it, so far, far above me.
And then… scissors. Right there, right against the string, against my life.
Slowly, so slowly, the scissors closed.
The String frayed. My lifeline, my only reason to live, going, going—!
A final snip—
And then the world lurched, and for a brief second I was kneeling at a black throne, set at the foot of a crumbling yet still-regal monument—
And then, with a violent gasp, I was back. Back in the Grand Line. Sabaody. The Human Auction House. I… I was Jeremiah Cross, that was me, that's who I was, not… not…
"Hey, kid, you alright?"
I looked up. Tried to look at the speaker who'd put his hand on my shoulder. It was… hard, I had to blink a bit, get my eyes working properly, but once I did… white hair, glasses—
"…Rayleigh…"
The Dark King pulled me up to my feet, steadying my swaying with a hand on my shoulder, right next to my shivering and foaming snail. "Ah, damn it, this is not what I wanted…" he muttered, speaking to himself as much as to me. "I only wanted to play around, I didn't think I'd need to check… and now look where that's gotten us. I've felt some messed-up shit in my life, but that kid… he's definitely up there. I'm sorry I let things get this far… get this far at all, damn it…"
I barely parsed what he was saying. I was just too focused on what I had seen. The vision forced on my eyes by… by…
I didn't want to think it. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't want to make it real, but… but I couldn't deny the reality.
The reality shown… by a Conqueror's Haki.
I was only half-aware of jerking myself out of Raleigh's grip. I barely registered him shouting for me to wait, and I wasn't even halfway in control of my legs as they pumped and carried me down the hallway, where Disco was no longer anywhere to be seen.
I knew that what I was doing was suicide. I know it now, and I knew it then, but I had to… I-I had to… I don't know, damn it, I just had to do something!
And it was that desire, that drive, that need to move and actually act that carried me through the guts of that hellhole. That pushed me to the final, deepest door at the very back of the Auction House.
It was all that which pushed me to shoulder the door open… and there it all fled me, leaving me tired, empty… and alone with the horror before me.
I stared. And stared. And kept staring. Every second that ticked by, I absorbed more of the ramifications of exactly what I was looking at. And as Soundbite woke up, first with a snort and then a choked gurgle, it didn't take long for him to join me.
I had experienced not just fear, but honest-to-God pants-darkening terror only a handful of times since I'd arrived in the One Piece world. When I was first dropped into it. When I woke up from my cholera coma and learned I'd spilled the beans. Whenever I faced a Logia, when Merry almost died, when Moria awakened, when I first saw the Florian Obelisks, and when I had to face Jinbe.
But not one of those instances came close to the sheer mortal terror I felt now. This moment made me understand how fear can be so extreme that you lose control of your bowels, the kind of fear that comes from facing a monster completely out of your league or control and knowing that the only possible way you can survive is by their whim.
That is what I felt as I stared at the only other person in the room. The person who ran this auction house. The person I had seen mere minutes ago grandstanding on stage, putting on a show for everyone, indulging in the most despicable act imaginable.
…The person who was hanging from the ceiling by a length of piano wire. His eyes bulging, tongue sticking out, flesh an unhealthy shade of white, aside from the ruddy purple foot exposed by a fallen shoe, limbs stiff in unnatural positions, and bowels emptied onto the floor. The bloody scratch marks on his neck around the wire almost didn't register.
Almost.
"He… but he… he was just… wasn't he…?" Soundbite babbled quietly, staring up at Disco with wide eyes.
I shook my head in numb despair. "No… that wasn't him. It was never him. Hell, this isn't even recent. From the minute, the second we set foot on this island, this…" I waved at the body weakly. "Was a foregone conclusion. All of this… was just a game. And we've been played."
With that chipper and cheery thought, I moved to close the door, and then I did a double-take and paced over to the desk as something caught my eye. Pieces of paper… with my signature on them? But when had I—?
In my confusion, I flipped the papers over and saw… pictures of—! "Ah!" I uttered in shock, flipping them all over to see that, yes, they weren't just pictures of me; they were all the pictures I had taken earlier with those fans! And this close to his work… he… he couldn't have…
Had he… he… he…he…
And then… something clicked inside my brain. Pieces just… fit together. Context.
My horror multiplied as I looked over the pictures again… and put them in the context of him.
A flamboyant half-fishman hybrid… with an afro big enough to hide a giant pair of horns to match the pointed teeth…
An ill-tempered punk who kept his face covered at all times… who knew more about me than he should have, and was cracking… popping his bones every other second…
A flamboyant scientist… with a pair of coke-bottle glasses combined with a cheeky, flirting, handsy demeanour…
"…all along," I managed in a staggering whisper.
Then I went as still as a statue as I felt something touch me. Something on the edge of my nose… something very small… cold, wet… that nipped at my nose THAT RAGING BITCH—!
"All ALONG!"
-o-
"Kyahahaha!" Dellinger chortled, gleefully tossing a handful of popcorn into his thresher of a maw as he watched Jeremiah Cross enter a rage worthy of a Fighting Fish. The Visual Snail peering in the direction of the Archipelago through a telescope was earning its keep.
"Well, safe to say that he knows your fruit, Big Sis Monet! 'Cause he recognized that, and he is not happy!"
"Urgh… glad to know somebody appreciates the finer touch I put into things…" Monet grooaned, an icepack pressed to her forehead. "Honestly, seeing him jump out of his skin like that was completely worth it, but keeping control over a single flake from miles off? I'm going to have a migraine for a week…"
"More information for us, that gives your suffering value," Gladius grunted, punctuating his statement with a slurp from the straw he'd poked through his facemask. "That it helped make that pompous worm squirm? Worth it all the more."
His sentiment was met with chuckles from his two crewmates, but the mood immediately turned tense when the only noise from their leader—their lord, their master—was a grunt of acknowledgement.
"Young Master?" Gladius posed hesitantly, sweat cascading down his brow. "Is… Is everything alright?"
"Mm… yeah. Just thinking about how… funny fate is, you know?"
The demon in pink feathers leaned forward, bringing his typical grin out of the shadows for his underlings to see, and both relaxing them and setting them more on edge.
"I've been toying with killing those Straw Hats here and now for a while," Donquixote Doflamingo explained ever so casually, as though he were discussing merely reducing a village to slurry or kicking a child's head off their neck. "Tearing a D. to shreds would have been wonderful, and that brat's transceiver would have let me come out into the open as Joker. I could blow the Nobles' precious secret sky high on a moment's notice, and there's nothing that they could do to stop me. Just… set the world on fire."
A hand cradled his face as he chuckled, scratching beneath the leering lenses of his glasses, even as a couple of veins throbbed on his forehead.
"But they're just too good. Too good at keeping this world interesting and too good at even keeping me guessing how they'll top themselves next. The fact that they attacked those Nobles is no big surprise… but I never could have dreamed that one of them would be stupid enough to give Cross that much more firepower. Now I actually know how it feels to be laughing so hard that you can't breathe," he snickered, staring not at the spectacle of Cross being driven into a rampage, but at something only he could perceive.
"So you decided against sending us in to fight them?" Monet queried, forcing herself to follow lockstep with her Master's train of thought even through the migraine of the feat she'd had to put all of her concentration into, but which he had managed with total ease.
"Something like that," he grunted before correcting her. "I decided not to go there myself. To only be there via that Knight instead. They got lucky that I didn't give the order to attack; maybe, by some miracle, by the skin of their teeth, they may have been able to beat you three—"
Said three shivered as the implications of what the consequences for such a sin against their dark god would have been.
"—But they wouldn't walk out of here alive with an Admiral on their tail. Hell, they still probably won't. They've been lucky so far, though… let's see how far that takes them."
With that, Doflamingo turned his back on the display and strolled over to a porthole through which he could gaze at the fateful Archipelago that sat on the horizon. "But for now… fuffuffuffu…" The room echoed and shook with the laugh of pure evil. "I'm going to have to thank Cross for what he's done here today. I was about ready to replace my investments from trading slaves into SMILEs… but no. Now we're going to take advantage of how things have changed… and set up an export system."
"Kyahahaha!" Dellinger laughed, clapping his hands gleefully. "Hope that Sugar can handle it!" But as his admiration for his lord's brilliance passed, a single, untangled thread remained to be addressed. "Oh, but Young Master… what did you mean by how funny fate is, and by luck?"
Doflamingo turned his head back and raised a hand, a fist into view, before flicking a thumb upward, sending a coin spinning into the air, before catching it and flipping it again, over and over. "Don't you know, Dellinger? There's an old, old saying, tossed around the oceans. The most important thing needed to sail the ocean? It's luck. The luck to have a strong body, the luck to be smart, and the luck to be rich. The luck to escape from death, the luck to live a good life. The only reason anyone ever comes as far as they have is that their luck brought them there."
Doflamingo gave the coin a final, resounding flip and watched as it soared into the air. "Luck is as much a factor of making it on these seas as skill and power. And so… I decided to test the Straw Hats' right when I was giving you your orders."
A moment passed for that to sink in, and then three pairs of eyes cemented on the coin in the air, as though it were the most valuable thing in the world.
"If it had landed on heads, I would have ordered the attack. But instead…"
The Heavenly Yaksha caught the coin between his fingers and flashed his suddenly frozen executives the numbers emblazoned on the metal disc.
"They got tails. So they get a chance to live."
Doflamingo turned away from the window… and in the shadows, all that his underlings could see were those lenses… and that Smile.
"And I think that I'd like to see how far that little spark of hope can take them from here."
And with that, Donquixote Doflamingo walked past his frozen underlings and disappeared into the bowels of the ship to await whatever news might come. The three crewmates he left behind watched after him for a single moment before going about their duties.
But in that moment, the image of the coin turning over and over in the air, the idea, the concept of such a simple act dictating the passage of fate for the world itself, replayed in their minds. And in that moment, the crewmates watching him had the same thought as they looked after the man who had done it. The same realization occurred to each of them in the darkest corners of their minds, unknown even to their consciousness but indelible nonetheless.
On this day, Donquixote Doflamingo cemented the slightest shred of doubt in three of his most loyal crewmates, in the form of six simple words buried in their subconscious:
'He really is a World Noble.'
-o-
I must have blacked out at some point, because the next thing I knew, I was staring at the door to the room, which was now shut once more.
"You back with the land of the living?" Soundbite asked, all sarcasm and snark gone in favour of shell-deep weariness.
I slowly leaned forward, resting my forehead on the unyielding wood of the door… in total defeat. "Every step," I croaked. "Every step we took… every inch we gained… was by the whim of the devil. We lived because he willed it. We 'won' because he allowed it. Everything that we did today…" I weakly knocked my fist against the wood. "And it all amounts… to nothing…"
Soundbite was silent for a long, long minute before he released a chorus of moans and groans. "You're… You're wrong, and I know that academically for several reasons… but I don't have the will or energy to get into this right now. Let's… Let's just get out of here. CAN WE JUST DO THAT PLEASE?"
I stayed stuck there for just a few seconds more, just a few… and then I nodded and peeled myself away from the door, dragging myself back down the hall.
As I walked back into the main room, all of the events that had happened played back in my mind: someone who was willing to provoke the Straw Hats, the auction house, "Disco's" confidence, the way that those guards kept fighting back, the fact that they ever attacked us at all when they had no reason to… hell, tripping on a wire and falling right into Charloss's line of sight.
Every memory, every obvious thread dangling right in front of my nose… every one, a millstone dragging my neck lower and lower.
And the moment that I re-emerged onto the stage, the moment I raised my eyes to try and speak… I saw something else.
One thing. Just one last… parting gift that made my knees give out from beneath me.
Everyone's eyes snapped to me, but unfortunately, not everyone could read the mood.
"The hell was that, smartass?!" I heard Kid demand. "That thing you flashed, controlling everyone… what, some sort of Thread Fruit or something?! Who the hell would have the balls—!?"
"Not threads, Kid," I heard Law say, intense hate colouring his every word. "Strings. That was the String-String Fruit. And this was the least of its applications. We're only walking away because he wanted us to."
"Oh yeah?!" Barto scoffed, the smack of his fist striking his palm ringing out. "Well, trust me, that fuck will be regretting it when I get my hands on him!"
"Something tells me that that is, quite literally, the least of Doflamingo's concerns," Rayleigh intoned gravely.
Everyone present reacted to that, of course. Wide eyes were abundant on everyone but Law, Kid, Bege, and Bartolomeo, cursing up a blue streak. Drake, Apoo, Urouge, and Bonney locked eyes with me, opening their mouths to ask - and then closing them as they saw that, quite clearly, I was in no state to give answers anymore.
"Pff… pffhehehehehe…pffhahahahahaha…"
The pressure was just too much. I was vaguely aware of the rest of the crew coming up to me as I felt hysterical laughter bubble out of my throat, tears streaming down my face.
"Cross. What is it?" Luffy asked.
"It doesn't matter…"
"W-What—?" Conis asked, gently placing a hand on my shoulder.
"Nothing we did… nothing we've done… nothing we could do… none of it matters…"
"Cross, what do you mean? What the hell is wrong?!" Zoro demanded.
Still chuckling, tears trailing down my face, I raised my shaking left finger and pointed upward. Everyone's gaze, among my crew and the Supernovas, followed… and they saw what I did. The same words, carved a thousand times over the walls in string-thin letters:
DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING.
Patient AN: Never in my entire life, not once, have I laughed as hard and for as long as I did the day that we posted Chapter 65, when discussing the three fans who so very graciously helped us create a perfect expy of Miror B. And you wanna know when they found out it was really Dellinger in disguise?
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…well, aside from the one who joined our translation team, they found out at the same time that you did.
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Cross-Brain A.N.: Psh, come on, have you met us? Did you really think we'd let them get off that easy?
"Alright!" I barked as I barreled out the front doors, as my life depended on it (which you can damn well bet it and my sanity both did). "We can process all of this shit later, but right now we need to get the hell out of here before—!"
THUD! "GAH!"
I fell back as I ran into what felt like a tree, but what I realized very quickly was more likely a powerful human. I looked up, an apology ready on my lips - and then my heart stopped.
"Before what, Jeremiah Cross?" Admiral Kizaru asked casually.
"…before exactly this happens," I wheezed, my neurons firing and flailing miserably as I tried and failed to process that this was happening. "Before I break down in panic, why are you already here? I was expecting you in half an hour."
"You're thinking of Aokiji," the Light-monkey flippantly replied.
"…Right, you're the unpredictable one," I groaned, before breaking off into a gurgle when he lunged down and pinned my fucking throat to the ground.
"'Voice of Anarchy' Jeremiah Cross," Admiral 'Kizaru' Borsalino gravely intoned, his spotlight-like glasses glinting so heavily they became the only things I could see through the spots in my vision. "For crimes against the World Government and by the authority vested in me by the Justice of the Navy… I hereby place you under arrest."