Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

-

Law awoke before dawn to the low creak of timber and gentle buoy of the ocean. Despite his living as a decibar picaroon, tidal shift was actually impreceptable at depth which made shipside sensations all the more noteworthy. He lay on his back in the comfortable, liminal space between sleep and waking, observing the rare silence and stillness of the galley. Given that the ship in question was crewed by the most kaleidoscopically obstreperous tangle of buffoons in the history of human existence, it was pretty nice.

The kitchen on the Tang was entirely outside of his demesne of risk, and Law was more than content to leave the entire latitude, longitude, and altitude of its operation to Shachi’s command. It wasn’t that he had a poor relationship with food (don’t read into it) but it was easier to frame it as a consequence of living. His single, lingering vestige of Amber Lead disease manifested as a rude intolerance to gluten. And gluten was in every fucking food… thing, apparently. It made for difficult meal planning, frequent suspicion, and occasional - accidental - illness that, at worst, kept him abed for several days. 

So he avoided the kitchen as a rule. 

Aboard the Sunny-Go, the crew seemed to hum around the work of its cook. In all his time aboard, he never saw a mouth go unfed and he never successfully managed to eat by himself.  Sleeping in the kitchen was new, and the glitter vinyl-lined cushioned bench was - he discovered in the wobbly darkness of approximately three a.m., his body outraged at its physically medically-adjacent floor nap - indecently comfortable. 

Out of his line of sight, he heard a door open and shut. A body crossed behind the bar, threw a towel over his shoulder, and proceeded to perform various, practiced motions. There was a gentle clinking of dishware, the tick of a burner coming to life, then, a sharp squeak of rusty metal.

Law rolled onto his side - the vinyl peeling loudly from his back - and peered through the halflight toward the cook.

“What are you doing?” He swallowed around his dry mouth, voice like a rasp. 

A single, up-turned light in the corner illuminated the cook, who was setting up an ironing board in front of the stove. He stood in his A-line undershirt, fingers glinting with numerous baubles, and bent over the soft work surface.

“I,” The cook responded, flipping the garment and smoothing it over the board before resuming his task, “Am ironing my shirt for today.”

Law said nothing as the man worked a hot press over his blouse, in measured motions, mindful to pick up the iron with the cloth from his shoulder, back and forth, until he had finished. The cook held the garment up, assessing his work, then drew his sleeves into it and began to button it up. 

As he worked the buttons on the cuffs, he said, “My father taught me that presentation, in all things, makes for a great chef.”

Law hummed in response. 

“My father taught me calculus.” 

Sanji laughed. 

“Math is probably important, too.” The man muttered agreeably. “My shitty old man was a hard ass but he knew the value in appearances.”

Law decided at that moment that he regretted being awake. He regretted sleeping in the kitchen despite the fact that sleeping on the floor of the surgical suite would have most certainly killed him. Maybe he even regretted being born. Law remained horizontal, unwilling to sit up because it meant surrendering to the intimacy of this moment, which he found strange and terrible. He was unused to speaking to anyone about his family. He remembered so little about them and cared even less to poke the pitted scar of their memory. 

“I don’t remember what my father looked like.” He relinquished, despite his discomfort, because the Strawhats liked conversation, and were all too capable in unraveling his tightly bound wounds. Sometimes by force. “I probably look at him every day in the mirror and don’t realize it.”

Sanji hummed good naturedly, which Did Not Help. 

“I probably take after him in style. Flavor, too, is a memory.” 

Law grunted, unsure what to say to that. 

The chef unrolled a tie over the board and proceeded to press it as well. 

“Before I came to be on Luffy’s crew, I worked on a ship called the Baratie. The whole crew was staffed with ill-behaved chefs who were as willing to throw your ass into the sea as serve you a twelve plate tasting menu. If my time there was good for anything, it was learning how to listen.”

“Listening,” He continued, “To the head chef, of course, was paramount, but god forbid he needed to speak to a lowly prep-chef. ‘Think twice before you incorrectly tourné a potato or I’ll tourné your toes,’ he would say. Eventually worked my way up to sous chef,”

“Overseeing a kitchen is one thing, but preparing a meal is another. One can listen to the chef’s daily menu but can you listen for what brings the dishes together? It requires a deft hand to send a dish to table that will speak to a patron. Equally important is what a dish isn’t communicating,” He went on. “The earthy flavor of bay leaf, for example, is key to the success of avgolemono, and will certainly ruin the soup if left out. The sourness of the lemon is only refreshing when the bay leaf can lend its earthy support. It's subtle, but vital.”

“That’s - okay, uh-” Law garbled, utterly lost at this point. He was pretty sure that they weren’t actually talking about soup, but didn’t have enough situational awareness or spare brain cells to be sure. He squinted at the walls. There were no clocks. This fucking ship lacked clocks. 

“And that’s what I love about cooking. It's an integral form of communication from one person to another.”

Oh, Law realized with the guttural dread of an eel about to be de-boned, they’re talking about feelings . Because Law is obvious . 

“Yesterday, I saw something strange.”

“Really?” Law breathed through the stress accumulating in the spaces between his ribs like some sort of pernicious flesh eating disease. 

“I’ve seen many strange things on these seas, and I truly believe that anything can happen. It’s a wide world.” Unperturbed by Law’s mounting agony, or perhaps just apathetic to it, the chef plucked a cigarette carton from his pocket and tapped it against his palm. “But what I saw yesterday tested the elasticity of my suspension of disbelief.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to snap your belief suspenders.” 

In an achingly familiar motion, the chef slipped a slim cigarette into his mouth, moistening the paper without comment. 

“The only thing I’ve ever seen Luffy make is a mess. And I’ve certainly never seen him give anyone anything. Not out of greed, I'm sure I don't need to tell you. Piracy seems to fit everyone differently.”

Law, seemingly incapable of a single unanalytic moment, instantly examined the minutiae of this interaction through the strain of a grimace.

“As I’m sure you’re already well aware, the captain does not share food.” The cook finished shortly, and looped the tie around his neck. “So imagine my surprise when he comes to me with food sensitivities in mind. Sensitivities that he does not have.” 

Law does not want to imagine it. 

“Whatever it is that you’re alluding to, just say it.” He ground out. 

The cook sighed around the unlit cigarette and finished knotting his tie. He glanced over his shoulder to adjust a knob on the stove and gathered the ironing board back into its cabinet. Finally, as he approached the pair of steps leading down into dry storage, he glanced at Law and said, 

“Luffy talks a lot but there is more he doesn’t say. I suggest that you figure out what that is.” 

Law peeled himself off the vinyl bench, deciding that this conversation was over. 

“Breakfast’ll be about an hour.” Sanji called after him, smoothing an apron around his waist as he disappeared. 

-

The ease with which Law found himself falling back into the Strawhat rhythm was devastating. Bone-deep anxiety and general situational wariness had taught him that the bath house was empty before sunrise, and months later, that fact had not changed. Neither had he, and he kept his shower alert and brief.

He made due with throwing his miserable boiler suit back on and added yet another thing to his To Do List. Which, at this point, seemed less of a list and more of a bottomless well that one dropped pennies into to test the splash. 

He made his way to the library (And, like, what a ridiculous thing for a boat to have? He was utterly unpossessed of envy, because a collection of books on a boat was a ridiculous waste of space, even on a boat this large, not to mention heavy, and good god is that a copy of Arithmetica?-) and found the single person in the crew that was capable of a few minutes of uninterrupted sanity. 

The navigator stood over a drafting table at the center of the room, pouring over a series of maps. Her non-dominant arm which had suffered injury the day before was done up in an attractive sling made of a large handkerchief looped around her neck. A cup of coffee steamed by her inkwell. Law was not jealous of its existence because he was an adult and could find his own eventually. 

“Nami-ya.” He grunted, bracing his shoulders on the wall just inside the door. 

“What?” She gasped suspiciously, but then everything she did was cause for suspicion, which Law didn’t think was unfounded in the least. It meant he could afford to be straightforward with her. 

“There’s a secret naval base at Mont Haven. If we can head that direction, you can drop us off and we’ll be out of your hair.” 

“Oh,” She replied dismissively and turned back to her work. “But we’re already headed to Mont Haven.” 

“What, why? I thought you were going to Egghead Island.” 

“Well, Luffy wants to do that race so-” She rolled a little charting mechanism from one point to the next, then held it up to the light, like some sort of kaleidoscope.

“What race?” 

“We got a call before yours recruiting nearby vessels for the race.” She sighed. One map placed over another. She glanced over at a series of barometers and then seemed to compare whatever information she gleaned from them with another, more complicated looking glass instrument. Law waited for her to elaborate. She fiddled with a brass knob on the device’s base and scribbled a figure in the margin of a notebook. 

“The race.” he replied tersely, distantly recalling the way Luffy had curled in his lap, warm with delight at the prospect.

“Mont Haven has a regatta with a prize of a hundred million beri.” Her pointer finger landed on a topographical depiction labeled, ‘Bjerg Havn’, with an illustration beneath in a language he couldn’t read. 

He knew of the Mont Haven Grand Prix. You had to be stupid not to know about the Mont Haven Grand Prix. A regatta was a baby race for babies as far as the Mont Haven Grand Prix was concerned. Hell, it was as famous as the Dead End Race and twice as dangerous. If the Strawhats were ‘recruited’ to participate, it meant that there were talent scouts with their eyes set on accomplished sailors, i.e. head hunters. Hence the ‘secret’ Naval base and what with their propensity to arrest anyone caught engaging in piracy. 

“That is quite literally the definition of a trap.” He announced. 

“If we get caught.” 

“When you get caught.” 

Nami peered at him blankly. 

Law peered back. 

“It’ll be fine.” 

“All the better,” he conceded. “Your crew will participate in the Regatta, Luffy will inevitably insert himself into a simmering coup of some description - the fallout of which will provide a convenient cover for my crew to infiltrate the base and kick someone’s ass for setting their sights on my ship.” 

Nami hummed noncommittally as she set her pen aside. She turned, her ginger hair catching the morning sun, eyes sliding to half mast. 

“What do you want, Torao?” Her smile was dark and unloving. Typical. 

“From you? Nothing.” 

 “Oh, are you sure?” She tittered, doing so with such bald insouciance that Law very nearly laughed. “Everyone wants something. A taxi service to a nearby island, perhaps. Or - oh - what’s this?” 

She toed a basket from beneath the table, kicking into the no man’s land between them.

“What do we have here? Why, I think it’s freshly folded laundry. Torao, can I possibly interest you in a clean shirt?” 

This was obviously a trap. 

But goddammit, he really wanted to fall into it. 

“Christ, yes.” He frowned, but did not hesitate to pace over and take the topmost shirt from the pile. 

She returned to her chart with a self satisfied hum as he unfolded the garment for inspection. He glared at the star design on the t-shirt because it was a Very Famous Logo, and then he squinted at the navigator. 

“This is an obscenely expensive luxury brand,” He mentioned, trying to come off as nonchalant, but probably failing, just because of who he is as a person. 

“We know the designer.” She replied, peering up at him with a look on her face that said ‘I personally terrorized the designer, and I’d do it again’.

“I hear he’s a starfish.” Law intoned blithely. 

“And his best friend is a mermaid princess.” She supplied, with very-nearly successful indifference.

“That sounds made up.” He accused politely. 

“You can believe what you like. You can also go around shirtless, if it pleases you.” She smiled, which was more threatening than anything. “Actually, it may please-”

“I’m leaving.” He said, turning for the door, shirt in hand, uncaring to hear the remainder of the sentence. 

“I’ll put the shirt on your tab.” She called after him.

And that simply Would Not Do. 

“Oh,” he turned in the doorway and made a point of pulling the shirt over his head and across his shoulders as slowly as possible while maintaining uninterrupted eye contact (and if it caught on his scruff on the way down, a tantalizing, burlesque snag from here to there, then that was his business). “So you’d like to receive your crews’ outstanding medical bills, then? You are, of course, aware of the life saving treatment your captain received at Amazon Lily? I’ve been holding on to that particular invoice for a rainy day. I can have my people send it to your people.”

Nami’s face was carefully blank as she balanced a mental checkbook.

“...half.” She conceded, as if the mere suggestion wasn’t killing her on the slimy, black inside. 

“Goodbye.” He chuckled, with the intention of dropping the statement in the sea.

“You get what you pay for, Torao!” She called after him. 

“You didn’t pay for this!”

He traipsed down the staircase to the main lawn and looked over the bizarre collection of early risers, more than he’d ever anticipated, scattered about. His own gunner and current captain of the watch were perched at a cafe table enjoying a rare newspaper. 

“Morning,” Law greeted them evenly. He eyed their half empty saucers of coffee non-covetously. 

“Participating in theft, sir?” Shachi hummed over his crossword. 

“Oh my god, Captain,” Penguin clicked his tongue. “What size are your shirts? They’re way too big.” 

“I’ll remind you that your quarterly review is coming up and your sales numbers are down.”

“I can shuffle some numbers around. Schmooze some clients. Everybody wants paper.” 

“ Everybody wants paper.” Shachi agreed.

“I can’t keep up with this joke.” Law huffed. 

“Yeah, business is for the bourgeoisie.” The gunner laughed. “Is this child's size large? Jesus, your tits look incredible in that.”

“Please stop talking about my tits.” He said absently, looking down at where the shirt grazed at his belt line. “Whatever, it’s better than being half naked.” 

“Franky said he’d be ready to chat at the top of the hour.” Shachi adjusted the newspaper he was scrawling on, trying to catch the morning light better. Law noted that nineteen across was misspelled. 

“That’s just enough time. I’ll be right back.” Law nodded, lifted his hand to create a Room, and slipped into his office on the Polar Tang. 

The action was a practiced one, one that he’d thoughtlessly accomplished multiple times a day for over a decade. Nothing about the fluid motion and heat transference was unfamiliar. But when he dropped into the space between his chair and desk, a sharp, acidic taste flashed in his mouth. Ache shuttered into bright relief but a moment, and then was gone. He stood silently, waiting, scarcely daring to breathe, should it happen again. 

He counted to sixty before cataloging the bizarre event and resuming his task. 

Namely: retrieve the shotgun. 

The firearm was one given to him in his youth, shortly before stealing the Polar Tang. He brought it with him not as an after-thought but a ‘fore - should he need to make use of its antagonist qualities on the scientist against whom he was committing the theft. (Not that he ever really wanted to shoot Dr. Wolf, but piracy was piracy). He hadn’t made much use of it other than for various empty threats over the years, and it spent most of it’s life unloaded and hanging on the wall. 

Today, it will be used. He hoped it would be an enlightening tool of self improvement, especially since discovering an obvious, glaring hole in his repertoire.  

He shuttered Room once again and came to yet another strange, bitter stillness on the deck of the Sunny-go. He stood carefully, observing his body for any errant sensation. He counted the seconds it took for the bitterness to retreat. He considered running a chemistry panel on his blood. Because medicine was science and science required rigorous testing. He should probably be writing this down. He glanced at the shotgun in his hands but found no fault with its mechanism. 

On the foredeck at a little table beside his gunners, the archeologist and sharp shooter were seated and quietly drinking from steaming cups. Law decided he wasn’t thirsty. He paced over to Shachi and held out the firearm. 

“Shoot me.”

Predictably, the Strawhat’s sharp shooter turned in shock, face aghast. At his side, the archeologist was merely amused; Shachi, however, was unimpressed. 

“No.”

“As your captain, I order you to shoot me.” 

He adjusted the paper with a decisive snap. 

“Under no circumstances will I be doing that.” He muttered, entirely unbothered by the request.

“I’m sure there is someone on this boat who would delight in taking the opportunity to fire a gun in my general direction.” He offered, turning to Usopp and wiggling the firearm suggestively. Law watched his face go through a series of emotions - alarm, skepticism, something approaching the acute dawning of horror, until it finally settled on grim defeat.

“Get one of your guys to do it. Penguin would probably shoot you in a heartbeat.” 

“He’s not allowed to shoot me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he can’t do it anymore without crying.”

Usopp grimaced. 

“That seems like a perfectly normal response for humans.”

“What are you planning on doing?” The archeologist asked, slipping a leather pagemark into her book. 

“Observing.”

She cocked her head thoughtfully, and pinned him with a look that made him feel like a beetle under a glass cloche. 

“Observing? The shooter?”

“The bullet.”

“I’m intrigued. Is this an experiment?”

“Of a sort.” 

She held out her hand and accepted the firearm.

“Go on.” She smiled coldly, which was her best. Law took comfort in it.  

“Oh my god.” Usopp hissed, leaning so far into the table that his nose smooshed sideways.

“Just wait.” Shachi muttered, scribbling at his crossword judiciously.

“What is time?” Law posited. Robin paused to think, staring directly into the rising sun. 

“Physics describes time as a fundamental concept to define other quantities. One could simply define time operationally as what a clock reads. One dimensional.”

Law nodded. 

“The physical nature of time is addressed by general relativity with respect to events in spacetime; such as the collision of 2 particles, the arrival of a ship, or the impact of a bullet meeting an obstacle.”

“Assuming that time has a constant rate of passage.” She nodded.

“Assuming that space is Euclidean. It’s not. Rather, it doesn’t have to be. I have reason to suspect otherwise. Personally.” 

Robin blinked slowly, her head turning just barely perceptively as she digested the statement. Her hands came to rest on the wooden pistol-grip and forend of the shotgun. 

“So, the design of this experiment is based around the observation of time relative to a bullet?”

“The assumption being that space follows the geometry of common sense.” He amended. “I’m interested in relativistic effects itself - the ‘when’ and ‘where’ as witnessed by the viewer of the system as a whole. The manipulation of not its components, but the system itself.”

The archeologist inclined her chin gracefully, her attention alighting like a shrike on a fence post.

“So, what you’re after is the 4th dimensional tesseraction of time.” 

“Bingo.”

“This is a super normal conversation.” Usopp muttered to himself just loud enough for Shachi to overhear and hum in agreement.

“To what end?” Robin breathed, her hair fluttering in the cool ocean breeze. 

“With my ability, it is a simple procedure to touch a hail of bullets, redirect them, or switch them with a product of the environment. But rather than affect the bullet’s movement through spacetime, I want to know how I can affect spacetime around the bullet.” He traipsed across the lawn and sat with his back pressed firmly against the mast bench. 

Robin stood and placed herself across from him. She examined the stock of the rifle, finding the hinge release with ease. Popping it open, she peered at the ammunition.

“This is a live round.”

“Indeed.” 

“And you’re entirely sure this is how you would prefer to proceed? Perhaps we can ask Usopp to make up something less… ballistic.”

“No. This is easiest. I am familiar with the size, shape, and velocity of this specific cartridge. Additionally, it is one of my oldest possessions. I have confidence in its action.”

“Very well. But the moment you may come to harm, I will end this exercise.” She lifted the firearm and took aim. 

“Good luck.” 

The shot rang out, echoing down over the ocean. Law ripped open a Room and spiraled the fine expression of his focus down upon the movement of the bullet. He dug into the finest measure of its sensation, beholding every minute detail; the mass of the projectile, the heat and speed of the casing as it released from the chamber at the archeologist's shoulder. Surface level impressions. He ground down against his focus, looking for more; the pull of gravity against the speed of the munition, the give of air pressure around the hollow metal point, the astringent, exothermic release of its potential energy, the radiant shockwave, then - there. 

Law celebrated the performance of work that emanated around the explosion of a bullet; he lifted a hand as if to cradle the bullet physically, wrapping his brain around the sensation of its inertia, the convolution of its most diminutive frame of motion. 

Time could stand still, and he could hold it in his hand. 

He could gaze through that same window of timeless space where he looked up upon the shattering hull of the Blip, ethereal and extraplanar. He could become the window itself. 

The experience defied explanation. He attempted to rationalize to himself that there was some point where he, the human observer, and the plane of experience, the Room, could perhaps inhabit the same space. Or some such nonsense. He wasn’t that kind of doctor. 

In a moment of dazzling clarity, he could taste bittersweet plum in his mouth, bright and terrible. 

The Room quivered imperceptibly, shimmered with a haze he could feel like a sunburn. The bullet fluttered against his control, jumping like a muscle contracting around a dry needle, and divided once, twice, thrice, unfolding suddenly, instantly, a hundred, perhaps a thousand uniform pieces as if articulated with an assembly of invisible wires. 

He closed his eyes, and the de-articulated bullet rained upon the deck, shattering into stillness by his rubber boots. He ran his tongue against the back of his teeth in thought, chasing the phantom expression as the Room disappeared. 

He glanced up at Robin, still and sure, shotgun in hand observing him as if he were the experiment and not the scientist conducting it. 

-

“Are we done shooting each other?” Sanji shouted, peering out from behind the kitchen door. 

“I am content to stop.” Robin replied, folding herself back into her seat and resting the shotgun on the table between her coffee cup and Usopp’s scattering of tools. 

“I’m not cleaning that up.” Usopp muttered to himself, staring horrified at the pile of bullet bits at Law’s feet. 

“He’s always leaving a mess,” Shachi sighed. “Typical doctor.”

The gunners tripped over themselves to get to the kitchen, leaving an empty seat which Law slipped himself into. 

“Where is your shipwright?” He asked her. 

She laid a hand over her book and looked at him evenly. 

“I’ve just informed him of breakfast. He’ll be around presently.”

Law hummed. The coffee cups on the table were both empty. 

“Chopper says your patient is awake and well.” 

He nodded. Was there a self service bar he didn’t know about? 

“My, Torao, you’re lost in thought. If you’re not careful, someone will take advantage of you.”  

Law looked up from his musings to perceive the shape of her humor. 

“What?” 

A hand clapped his shoulder, and within an instant the backside of his chair met the lawn. A moment later, sixty-four kilos of rubber dropped onto his stomach. 

Law would have sworn something blue if he could breathe. 

“Torao! Did you have coffee?”

“Get off.” He wheezed. 

Luffy, the idiot, laughed. 

“Luffy, have my seat.” Robin said, walking away from Law with a smile on her face. 

“Okay! Torao, come on, you too!” He tumbled off Law like the world’s shittiest bicycle and into the un-toppled chair the archeologist left aside for him. 

“I’m going to invent a technique that turns human bones into acid, in corpore .” He huffed, staring up into the clouds for a moment longer, for the sake of being purposefully contrarian. He found this fulfilling. “And then drink it, just to spite everyone around me.” 

“You can’t drink acid, Torao.”

“Not with that attitude, you can’t.” 

“Okay.” He replied good-naturedly. “Are you going to watch the race, Torao?”

“No.” He said back, trying for ‘good-naturedly’ and landing somewhere in the realm of ‘human-cactus’. “I’m going to find whichever Marine is responsible for attacking my ship and kick their ass. And possibly blackmail them, time permitting.”

He watched the rubber man slink his foot forward and fiddle with the leg of the toppled chair. He stared with unabashed scientific inquiry as he managed to hook his toes around the rung and drag it close enough to turn upright. Was there some extra-elastic action happening in his foot, or was he simply dexterous? 

“What’s blackmail?”

“It’s between arms trafficking and bribery and twice the fun of whitemail.” Law grinned, looking up into his face. There, he found a peculiar moue to Luffy’s mouth. 

“I like your shirt.” Luffy deflected obviously. Law’s fingers drew up to its short hem, uselessly tugging it down where it had ridden up where he still lay in the grass. As he did so, Luffy’s eyes followed. 

Oh. 

“Thanks, I stole it.” He replied, letting his fingers slide beneath, drawing the hem higher this time. He watched Luffy carefully as he slowly rucked it up past his navel. The boy's eyes flickered between his face and his hand, lingering low, almost as if stuck, before finding Law’s face again. 

“It looks good on you, Torao.” He said, suddenly much quieter than before, eyes then cast to the side. Law tilted his head just so, glancing sidelong toward the far side of the deck where their crews shuffled about the galley door for breakfast call. No one was close enough to hear the admission. 

“It’s a little small,” He murmured, rolling his spine against the turf, breathing into the stretch in his back - feeling where the fabric strained across his shoulders. Luffy, seated above him, said nothing, eyes skittering about nervously. 

“Don’t you think?” 

“Huh?” Luffy snapped back to focus on Law, his shoulders drawn into a tense line. 

“Don’t you think this shirt is a little small for me?” Law said, drawing the question out, his hand trailing under his shirt entirely, and coming up to scratch as his shoulder casually. Luffy stared, and Law liked it. 

“Uh.” 

“Anyway,” he sighed and drew himself up into a sitting position and squinted across the deck. Penguin exited the kitchen and lifted a glass or orange juice in his direction, like an absolute bastard. “You could come with me, if you like.”

“Where-where are you going?” 

“To find a Marine, kick his ass?”

He watched as veritable smoke poured out of his ears, as Luffy’s brain worked between parallel desires. 

“I-uh-I-” He stuttered, and Law bit the inside of his cheek. 

“You don’t have to come.” He murmured, tucking into the chair and resting his elbows on the table. “Good luck on your race, though, Mr. Pirate King.” He winked. 

For a moment, the only sound between them was the wind billowing in the sheets and the water lapping at the hull. Luffy’s hands went to the legs of his denim shorts and clenched.

“You should kiss me for good luck.” Luffy murmured, the shade of his hat casting a charming cheshire curve along his cheek.

“You don’t need it.” Law huffed.

-

At no point in time did a cup of coffee make its way around to Law. He never even saw so much as a carafe. And that was fine, because he didn’t even like coffee. Coffee was for weak willed idiots as far as he was concerned. Probably has gluten in it, anyway. 

“Thank you for attending this important meeting concerning the Heart Pirate submarine.” Frankie announced to the gathered crews and gestured to a chalkboard that he and Usopp had arranged on the deck. There were diagrams and numbers written all over it, which Law feared. Not because he was afraid of information, but what the Strawhat crew would do in a fit of boredom from the inevitable lapse of their collective and infinitely vanishing attention spans.

His palms began to sweat in anticipation. Frankie, seemingly unaware of this imminent disaster, gestured with an enormous finger to the blackboard. 

“The nuclear engine of the Polar Tang is comprised of-” 

“Boo!” Shachi jeered, to Law’s immense relief. “Who cares! Get to the point!” 

“Yeah, I don’t need a lesson on my own boat!” Penguin chimed in. 

“This is science! The cornerstone of knowledge is the fundamental understanding of-”

“I can feel every cell in my body aging rapidly and sloughing off!” Penguin continued.

“What did you find out, Robo-ya?” Law settled for diplomacy, which for him was wild. 

“Well-” 

“Quickly.”

Law had never seen the cyborg turn red before.

“What we don’t have a lot of right now, is time. Repeat after me: ‘Because of boring nuclear science, what I know is…’-”

Frankie grimaced. Luffy laughed. 

“Because of boring nuclear science,” he replied, with no small amount of irritation (from which Law derived much satisfaction), “What I know is that the isotopic decay in the reactor is causing a temporary state within the core called ‘iodine pit’.”

“Every second the core is off, it becomes harder to turn back on because it's poisoning itself.” Usopp stepped in quickly, and circled a graph he’d illustrated. “According to the math, the build up of nuclear poison will cause power fluctuations to move through the core approximately every 15 hours.”

“Which is bad.” Frankie announced for the benefit of not the Heart pirates.  

“Because the power fluctuations will inevitably lead to power surges.” Usopp continued, circling a different graph on the board. 

“Which are bad-” 

“Because power surges will result in an explosion.”

“Explosions,” Feankie said, in no uncertain terms, “Are bad.” 

Shachi and Penguin stared at the blackboard mutely. 

“So you’re telling me my ship is now a nuclear bomb that could go off at literally any second?” Law asked. 

“No, not at all. We know exactly when it’s going to go off.”

“Great.” Law huffed, hand coming up in an attempt to wipe away the sheet of tension that had settled over his brow. “And when is that, exactly?”

“Uh, well.” Usopp inspected the working end of a screwdriver with great interest. “Never?”

Law quickly replayed the interaction in his head, just to be sure he experienced what he thought he experienced. When the result remained the same, he cocked his head and demanded, 

“What.”

“We can’t actually pinpoint where the decaying energy is going. It should be pooling uselessly in the fuel rod chamber but it’s just…not.” Usopp set the screwdriver next to the chalk, and then picked it back up, and then put it down again. Law watched this until it became apparent that the man was done speaking. 

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it has to go somewhere.” Law announced, citing the Well Known Laws of Physics because it seemed like the most obvious response. Leave it to the Strawhats to take it upon themselves to convince someone that the Well Known Laws of Physics were broken. 

“Yeah, our measurements with your geiger counter show that the device is periodically releasing particles,” The sharpshooter went on, “But then it sort of makes a ... slide whistle noise.” 

At this, Penguin launched to his feet and took up the mentioned device. Shachi approached the blackboard and considered some of the information on it. Law stared at Frankie like he announced he was going to design, build, and attach a second head to his left shoulder. 

“Maybe we should start with a factory reset or recalibration of the counter. I’m sure I’ve got a manual or something lying around in the Fin House-”

“Are you entirely sure about these data points along the y-axis for this chart? Who designed the parameters for this collection universe? I want to double check the reactivity levels you’ve got here-”

Law looked across the deck, where some of his crew sat observing the discussion without interaction. He hadn’t called for Options, so they kept their peace. He peered at the Strawhat crew - the chef was busy at a bar cart, crafting an enormous blue cocktail. The swordsman was sleeping (go figure). The navigator was at the helm.

He then stared directly into the sun in a hail-mary effort to simply go blind. When this attempt failed, and all he received was a sharp pain in his retina, he returned to the present and tried to come up with a list. Firstly, the Things he Could Do: Involve himself in the aching minutiae of science and bicker about the rate of xenon decay. Bad choice. Putter around for another day until the ship actually exploded because the Strawhat shipwright and marksmen were not, in fact, mathematicians or even armchair nuclear physicists. Bad choice.

Immediately weary of this, Law then moved on to things he Should Do: Find a productive path forward, namely: getting to the Mont Haven naval base. It would require appealing to the navigator’s sensibilities, and maybe that of the Captain’s. Law peered over at Luffy, and blankly contemplated the light tan setting in on his shoulders, the sheen of sunscreen across his biceps, the lovely coconut smell coming off of the sunscreen-  

Bad choice. 

Sidequests: Stow the gun back on his ship, walk down to the reactor and hit it with a wrench and then brain himself with the same wrench. Tempting. (Bad choice).  

Wants? The bitterness in the back of his mouth to fade. To chase it with the soft tangle of Luffy’s tongue. 

Re: See Sidequests. 

Re: Re: See Wants: Coffee was a myth invented by Big Caffeine as a means to trick the known population into capitalist flow-states of unethical productivity for the benefits of the bourgeoisie. 

Law, faced with a singular point of egress from this situation (being: arguing over Schrodinger's Newtonian Laws, apparently), swallowed around the bitter taste in his mouth. He opened his mouth, prepared to argue with each and every member of the Strawhats as needed, and instead, came to an odd point of stillness. He looked at Luffy, who looked at him. 

“Torao?”

Law replayed the interactions in his head. Every instance of strange sourness, every flash of supernatural illumination and bizarre entanglement of command and material, the dazzling full-body migraine that threatened to dissolve him at what felt like the molecular level-

He launched himself to his feet and toward Penguin. 

“Point it at me-”

“I know there’s a menu option on this thing - woah, Captain-”

“Point. It. At. Me!” He breathed, drawing a Room into the palm of his hand and spinning it into existence. 

The gunner complied, turning the geiger unit’s tube wand toward him and toggled the switch. Within an instant, the device shrieked with static, indicating amounts of pressure, flow, temperature, quantity, load, and strain that ideally shouldn’t have any business coming from a living human being. 

“Oh.” he said, bitter plum on the back of his tongue. 

10

Luffy marveled at the massive ship coming into dock on the other side of the Royal Dockyard. Its enormous sails full of the breeze, its dozen pennoncells trailing from the tops of its four masts like the legs of a big, weird octopus. 

Robin appeared at his shoulder. 

“Robin, look at that ship,” He nodded his chin in the direction of it. “What was that thing you were talking about?”

She looked at the ship quietly for many moments. Luffy enjoyed waiting for her answer.

“The Echidna of Hesoid’s Theogony ?” She guessed.

Luffy shrugged. 

“An octopus?”

“No, that’s what I thought it looked like. The other thing.” He tried.

She tilted her head, and Luffy imagined that Robin was imagining a tiny Robin inside her brain looking through piles and piles of books to find the exact thing he was thinking but couldn’t name.

“Perhaps, then, the Lernaean Hydra-”

“Oh, oh, oh! That’s the one - with the heads that grow back every time you cut them off, right?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Myth says that its blood is so virulent that even the smell is deadly.” 

“Their flags remind me of that.” He smiled.  “The heads, not the blood. Do you think we’ll fight them in the race?”

“Do you anticipate fighting the other participants?”

“Of course!” He laughed. “That’s how races are!”

“Then I expect that’s what shall come to pass.” 

Luffy turned back to the ship and watched as dock workers caught ropes thrown from the deck and guided the ship into dock. 

“Luffy,” Robin said, suddenly, because the look on her face had shifted into something blank, something guarded. A sharp breeze ripped through the flag-tails of the docked ship, catching on the standard waving over the dockmaster’s office, and straight through Robin’s hair, casting it back from her shoulders. “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.” He replied, and brought a hand up to catch his hat where the wind lifted it from his head.

Robin peered across the harbor, looking toward the castle at the top of the hill. Luffy waited while she gathered her thoughts. He imagined a tiny Robin in her head plucking bits of wool from a herd of sheep that had gathered around her. She would take each fluff and poke it into a cushion, and then put that cushion on the ground and sit upon it, and then proceeded to read a book to the tiny Luffy that he also imagined that she imagined, until he fell asleep.  

“I need to go to the bathroom.” She announced. 

“Oh,” He looked down at the grass between their feet and considered this. After a moment, he looked back up and asked,  “Number one or number two?”

“Both.” She replied evenly. 

He nodded. 

“Good luck.”

After she left, presumably to use the bathroom, Luffy admired the great towers of clouds racing across the sky. He watched Usopp and Nami speak to the dockmaster, then argue with the dockmaster rather loudly, and then Usopp mimed nearly tripping over a dock line. When the dockmaster was preoccupied with saving him, he watched as Nami lifted the wallet out of the back of his trousers. When this was no longer interesting, he leaned over the rail and watched as Sanji, Franky, and Penguin pulled the Mini-Merry out of storage. 

“Luffy! We’re almost ready to go.” Nami called out as she trudged up the gangplank, counting a fistful of bills. “Where’s Robin?” 

“She said she had to go to the bathroom.” Luffy called back, enjoying the way Franky and Penguin threw their heads back in laughter. 

Nami’s head revolved on her shoulders until she pinned him with a severe look and squinted. 

“Number one or number two?” 

Luffy squinted back. 

“Both?”

“She’s doing espionage shit.” Nami hissed. 

“What? How do you know that?” Zoro muttered, sitting up from his nap, eyes a tight, bleary line behind his sunglasses. 

“Women don’t go number two.” 

9

The Paradise Grand Prix, being the most prestigious boat race in the world, gathered crowds of thousands of spectators, gamblers, and socialites to the famous citadel of Mont Haven - an ‘international byword for its extravagant display and reckless dispersal of wealth’ if the newspaper was anything to go by.

Indeed, the coastal views of Mont Haven were beautiful to see - the fortified castle wall that encircled the city was dotted with numerous, conical topped towers; its cobblestoned alleys snaked up and around the picturesque lime-washed neighborhoods of the Castle Rock, leading up to the Haven Keep, an ancient fortress which presided over the landscape like a monarch in and of itself. 

The summer sun flashed between the towering clouds billowing across the midday sky. A jubilant breeze carded through the countless hundred strands of festive bunting - the proud alizarin and gold swallow-tailed standard of Haven Keep. The din of the spectators’ stands overlooking the harbor echoed up and down the hill and into the bay below, where a flotilla of small racing vessels paraded before the raving public. 

Distantly, Law was aware of an announcer broadcasting over the roar of the crowd, but his attention laid elsewhere. Of all of the battlements the city wall boasted, the most impressive was that of Dome Gate: a mighty gate house which - usually - controlled the flow of traffic from the luxury harbor neighborhood to the Mont Haven Naval Base.

The private military installation was as nearly as impressive as Mont Haven itself; as the Marine’s worst kept secret, the base was a renowned propaganda piece for the defense services' public commitment to technological advancement, and partnership with the World Government in its mission of ‘Safer Living Through Safer Sailing’. Law knew an attractive (read: bullshit) sell when he saw one, and could recognize the veneer finish on a shitbox with his back turned. 

The base was hiding a dirty little secret and Law intended to rip the lid off and expose it. 

“Captain,” Shachi, at his left, murmured, “I see my signal.”  

Law looked up and across the boulevard where an absent minded woman (Ikkaku, in a dress, which was hysterical) lost her wide brimmed sunhat from a nearby casino balcony. A collection of onlookers in the beer garden below threw up their hands or merely covered their beverages and stepped aside. 

“Excellent,” Law replied, “Careful in the access tunnels. I’ll see you inside the receiving bay.”

His crewman nodded and peeled off to perform his task. 

Law milled around the plaza a moment longer before sauntering down the road toward the Dome Gate. Its portcullis was raised out of sight, offering the race-goers full access to the waterfront. He referenced a handy pamphlet offered at a tourist information booth and provided him with a map of the racing commons. He traipsed in alongside a pair of men excitedly discussing the statistics of some of the racers, which he took no small pleasure in tuning out. 

The base was located on the leeward side of the island, sheltering the private port from the wind and sun. The various buildings - stand alone, regulation affairs - were unappealing half-spheres overlooking an empty shipyard. At the far end of the base, a lone campanile overlooked a trio of ornamental cannons on the cliff. The Port Haven standard waved proudly atop every flag pole, balconette, and unadorned windowsill, beneath which a navy gull on a white field waved silently. Nearby, a row of vendors cajoled the passersby to their stands, loaded with displays of portable confections and roasted meats.

He passed a coin to a vendor in exchange for a variety of kebabs, then continued toward the crowded pier. Several dozen onlookers had set up lawn chairs - perhaps locals unwilling to put out for the upcharge of the spectator stands. Out in the bay, some distance away, the parade of racers had come to an end. The announcer warbled indistinctly. 

Then, a klaxon moaned, followed by a round of boisterous cannonfire. The stands cheered uproariously. The race would soon begin. 

Law moved on. 

The long shadow of the castle rock loomed over the campus, casting the bright afternoon in a cool shade. Everywhere he looked, he could not spy a single Marine uniform. He peered back up at the gate house - the spaces of the crenellations stood empty. Then, he squinted across the grounds - nary a patrol in sight. 

Law spotted his point of entry - the open garage of the loading bay. Outside the bay, a series of small vessels had been put on display, where families with small children were milling around. He began his circumnavigation of the yard, keeping an eye on the open bay, seeking his opportunity. 

Which, of course, is when Fate tugged upon the red thread she’d tied around his brainstem.

“Torao!”

Law felt every sphincter in his body squeeze simultaneously as he realized that his desperately needed order of operations, his To Do List, and his hastily covered over Wants weren’t as carefully organized as he thought they were. 

“Ha ha, Torao, are you in disguise again?” A hand clapped him companionably on the shoulder. He turned to find Luffy standing next to him, compact and jubilant, his namesake hanging from his neck and rattling in the breeze.

“Luffy?” He hissed, stupidly. 

Because he was in disguise and in the middle of an infiltration operation. Law couldn’t afford to stand like an idiot in the middle of a Top Secret Security Clearance Naval Base and baldly swap niceties with the single most conspicuous pirate on the Grand Line. But being around Luffy had a terrible impact on Law - it made him Incredibly Stupid. 

“How did you know it was me?” He asked, like a fucking moron. 

Luffy’s face scrunched up in a laugh. He wore a pair of round, pink sunglasses and a loud floral shirt, unbuttoned because he apparently threw clothing on with little, to no thought whatsoever for his surroundings or dress policy of said surroundings. 

“What do you mean? You always wear a mustache when you’re undercover.” The younger man cocked his head to the side. “It’s pretty obvious.” 

“Obvious.” he parroted back, aghast at his growing penchant for transparency. 

“You wore a jacket with the name ‘Corizon’ on it when we were in Dressroba,” He replied. “Which, at first, I didn’t get. But you basically wore a flashing target that said, ‘Doffy, look at me!’.”

“I did want him to look at me.” 

“Yeah, but I thought you wanted to be sneaky about it.”

“Why are you here?” Law countered.

“I smelled meat!” Luffy grinned, demonstratively holding up his fish skewer. 

“No,” Law sighed, feeling his brain cells spin and collide and melt into one another. “What are you doing here ? As in, why aren’t you on the race boat? I thought you wanted to be in the race.” 

“Oh.” He puffed up his cheeks in a pout. “There’s a dumb, “Only Three People in the Boat” rule.” 

“Right-” He breathed, looking down from the great height of his order of operations, for which things were looking rather grim. 

Law was beginning to think that he needed to override the precedent conventions of his precious order of operations to account for the ambiguity that the Strawhats forced onto the system as a whole. Yes, he thought to himself in a feverish haze, perhaps Luffy could be accounted for as a zenzicubric polynomial. 

A square squared squarely away, Law figured, he could compartmentalize even this. He could put away his logical arguments and notions of pre-determined precedence, and instead infiltrate the semi-secret naval stronghold with the least subtle pirate on the Grand Line. He could be flexible. 

Maybe. Within reason. Potentially.

“But that’s okay because we’re going on a date instead!” Straw Hat said with the simplicity of an infinitely multiplying ratio. 

“Literally absolutely not.” Law hissed, feeling the back of his neck heat up like a whore at communion. “Just - shut up, possibly forever.”

He had tried to convince himself long ago that this feeling was merely indigestion, or perhaps some undiscovered species of brain-eating amoeba; after all, each time he was with Straw Hat, he felt like he was dying - the accompanying, soaring rush of euphoria was obviously a chemical signal in his brain, triggering a nerve response that felt devastatingly close to that clench in his chest when he pictured Cora-san’s smiling face.

A date , Jesus-blistering-Christ. 

“Those smell good,” He continued, looking at the still-steaming skewers Law was all but clutching in his fist. He stepped in closer, and pinched the bottom hem of his pilfered t-shirt between his thumb and forefinger.

The sudden drop of Law’s blood pressure felt like he was falling down an elevator shaft. 

“You smell good, Torao.” He smiled, looking up at Law through his eyelashes. 

“Thanks. I bathe.” Law breathed, and handed him the kebob. “Goodbye, Straw Hat-ya.” 

“Oh, thanks - Oi! Torao, wait!”

Law had figured there would be a chance that the boy would not be distracted by meat, but he had hoped it would have been slightly more effective in diverting his attention. After all, flirting certainly wasn’t part of any of Law’s order of operations, or his typical interaction with reality, really. He swallowed down his embarrassment and ducked into a convenient alley.

There, Law caught the boy by the wrist and pressed a finger to his lips. He crowded his against the building, peering back at the harbor. 

“This is not a date. Infiltrating a naval installation is not a date.” 

Pinned beneath his finger, Luffy blinked which Law took as implicit acquiescence. Another klaxon echoed from the harbor, accompanied by a flash of boats speeding by in the sliver of water he could see. 

“The race has started.” Law noted. “We need to get into that receiving bay.” 

To his credit, Straw Hat did not struggle. Law sighed and lifted the hand he used to silence the captain to strip the fake mustache off his upper lip. Luffy took the opportunity to smile wryly. 

“Torao, honestly, this isn’t even remotely the same color as the rest of your hair. Well, maybe it looks a little like the gray above your right ear-”

“Who do you think is responsible for that?” Law snapped and crammed the apparently dumb disguise in his pocket. 

“Is it me?”

“It’s not Bepo.” 

Luffy laughed, which was handsome and appealing. Law was drowning. 

“Listen to me,” He said with authority, because he needed to take control of the situation. He towered over the boy, crowding him against the cool brick, with the full, cold force of his ‘Surgeon of Death’ menace available to him.

Luffy nodded, mouth shut, the smile on his face entirely un-menaced.  

Law swallowed. 

“I’m listening.” Luffy said, resting his head on the wall at his back.

“Luffy, this is not a date .” Law tried, with decidedly less authority. Pleading, maybe. 

Luffy, with monstrous ease, slipped his forefinger into one of Law’s belt loops and tugged.  

“Don’t you want to date me, Torao?” 

Something something wants. Something something needs. 

After a moment’s hesitation, staring down into his face - only minutely overwhelmed by the playful expression he found there - he tucked Straw Hat’s straw hat onto his head, took him by the hand and led them back out the alley. 

Law paced them equally in stride, swinging their joined hands companionably, aiming for the crowded pier once again. Straw Hat, to his credit, leaned into his shoulder and played along.

He stationed them on a free bench and threw an arm over Straw Hat’s shoulders. He made a show of tucking himself against the younger man, playing (what he hoped appeared as) the part of a doting lover. He grabbed Straw Hat’s hand and stole the last bite of his skewer. At this, the boy laughed. 

“What are we doing?” The boy tossed the now kabobless skewer over the pier. 

“Inside that building there is an access tunnel that leads down to the secret base.” Law said quietly, gesturing from the map he had pocketed to the open bay doors of the receiving dock. “We’re going to meet some of my men inside, and figure out what the Navy is hiding.” 

“Is that where the Blips came from?”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”

“How do you know they’re hiding something if you don’t know if they’re hiding something?” Straw Hat frowned. 

“It’s the Navy. They’re always hiding something.”

“What, like a robot?” Straw Hat gasped. 

“We need a distraction,” He distracted.

“Right!”

At which point, an explosion sounded from the bay, sending a tower of water into the sky. 

“That’ll do. Quick.” He slipped off the bench and headed for the unguarded receiving bay. Luffy tripped behind him, and made up the distance of Law’s lead by slipping his hand into his back pocket.  

8

Miss Nami was a scary lady. 

However, this was not new information to Bepo. The Strawhat navigator declined a muscle relaxer offered by both doctors on board and insisted that she was able bodied. At which point she demanded that Law let her borrow Bepo and then forced him into a black suit and tie and proceeded to drag him from the Sunny-go by the ear.

All with one arm. 

Law had made him promise not to let her overexert the joint, but Bepo remained unsure how to actually stop her if she decided to - punch a dictator? Stab a shady dealer in the shadow of a side street? Considering the Strawhat’s history with, well, everything, nothing seemed too outlandish. 

He figured he would just wait and listen for his name. 

“Great cumulonimbus formations, huh?” Miss Nami shaded her eyes from the dazzling sun, peering up into the great, fluffy clouds sailing across the early afternoon sky. “If we’re lucky, we may even see some rain. I love a dramatic thunderstorm, don’t you?”

“Mm.” Bepo replied middlingly, unsure of what to say. He had read the newspaper which called for sun, and that was the extent of his weather knowledge. Would she get mad if he couldn’t tell the difference between clouds? He hadn't even known the clouds had names! He adjusted his sunglasses and stood in a way that he hoped made him look ‘professional’.

Professional what , he wasn’t sure. 

“Come on, Bepo,” Miss Nami turned to him with a pleasant sort of smile, with maybe only a hint of roguery. “Would you really rather be on the race boat?” 

“Mmm,” Bepo looked to the left and then to the right and then the left again before settling on Miss Nami with resignation. “I don’t know…” 

“Besides, if we do manage to run into trouble today, I’ll need someone to watch my back.” 

“The Captain did want me to do that…”

“Listen,” She laid a manicured hand on his sleeve, “My crew is very stupid, and sometimes they forget that they need to get out of the messes they get themselves into. I know your Captain is constantly worried about that. But you're with me, which means you don’t need to worry, okay?”

Bepo nodded despite his lingering skepticism. If he thought Miss Nami was a scary lady, it meant that other people did too. 

“Miss Nami will take care of you.”

Bepo didn’t know it was possible to feel fear and respect for a person in equal measure. He nodded again, to conceal this complex emotion. 

“For my plan to work, we need a distraction, Bepo. You’re vital to my plan.” 

“I am? Why?”

“Beacause you’re cute!” She announced with a grin. “And men are always distracted by what they consider cute!”

Bepo considered this for a moment, and found it to be true.

“Between you and me,” She winked, “We’re deadly.”

At which point she ducked into a shaded alley and consulted a pamphlet from the nearby tourism information booth. 

“Excellent, we just need to go… that way,” She adjusted her sunglasses and peeked around Bepo to examine the waterfront. “I’d estimate the wind somewhere between 17 and 21 knots,” she peered up at the clouds, “But the current cloud cover could stand to be improved.”

Bepo looked up at the clouds and then out at the sea. It was a nice, breezy day in his opinion. Miss Nami was constantly adjusting her hair, which seemed annoying but she hadn’t complained. The scarf that she was using as a sling fluttered against her shoulder. 

“Alright Bepo, all we need to do is execute my three step plan!” 

“Okay. Three steps.” He ground down into his sense of adventure (limited) and willed himself to have courage, if not for himself then for Miss Nami (vanishingly finite). 

“Step one!” She tucked her free hand against her hip, “Oh no!”

“Oh no!” Bepo replied with confidence. 

“Step two! Oh my!”

“Oh my?” Bepo asked, still stuck on step one which seemed to lack the details needed for execution. 

“Step Three! Oh dear!”  

“Oh,” Bepo mumbled, his confidence suddenly leaving him as quickly as it had appeared. “Dear.”

“That’s the spirit, Bepo!” She smacked him on the arm, which Bepo thought was a very Luffy-like thing to do. It did not make him feel better. “You’ve got to harvest oranges while the sun shines!”

At which point, she loosened the scarf knotted at her shoulder and released it into the breeze. 

“Oh no ,” She said with a smile, and watched it tumble down the waterfront. 

“Wouldn’t it be terrible if I lost my scarf?” She said, like she was sad but she didn’t seem sad at all. It was very confusing for Bepo. “Whatever will I do? Oh no .”

The gossamer scarf - which, now that Bepo thought about it, looked too thin to effectively immobilize and support the shoulder joint - sailed gaily along, rolling picturesquely along the cobbled street, catching the eyes of pedestrians from all sides. 

Miss Nami reached her hand out - the one with the shoulder injury, driving Bepo’s anxiety through the roof - and ineffectually moaned. “Ehhh,” as the distance between her and the scarf grew. 

Bepo was then overcome with the concern that maybe he should be chasing after it for her, but Miss Nami hadn’t told him to do so. Indecision twisted up his bear intestines, caught between intuition and instinct. 

Just as Bepo was preparing himself to consider thinking about breaking into a light jog at the very least, a man in a bright red, official-looking uniform stepped forward from where he had been loitering by a staircase, bent at the waist, and effortlessly snatched the scarf as it passed before him. 

“Oh my,” Miss Nami said under her breath. Bepo wasn’t sure how this was even a plan. 

The man - a guard of some kind, perhaps a member of a local militia given the decorative sword dangling from his baldric, the shiny blackening of his knee high boots - held the scarf in his white gloved hand, and glanced down the road, where Miss Nami was holding her dubiously injured arm to her chest and waiving the other over her head. 

“Uh, Miss Nami-”

“Stick to the plan. Bepo.” She hissed and hastened to meet the guardsman. 

“I take it this is yours, Miss?” He offered the scarf as he and Miss Nami drew close. 

“Goodness, thank you so much, sir! I was just fixing the knot - it’s given me such trouble today - and the silly thing flew right out of my hands!” She adjusted her hair with an exaggerated, stiff backed maneuver and exposed her neck and shoulder. “Could I convince you to do up the knot? It’s so difficult doing it one handed, you see, I injured myself playing pickleball with the Duke-”

Bepo watched as Miss Nami built a verbal wall that somehow compelled the man to do as she commanded. With a pleasant but dumbfounded expression, the guard nodded at her story, asked, “Oh, Duke Huntingdon is known for his love of sport,” and “The Miss has a fine taste for Mode par Lumineaux accessories,” which, like, what even is that.   

“This isn’t perhaps the Prince Regent’s box?” Nami peered up into the guardsman' s face, noticeably squeezing her armpits to flex her pectoral muscles - one of which should have been bruised and ideally immobile - causing her breasts to wobble in a way that Bepo presumed human males found attractive. 

“Does the young Miss have an invitation?” The guardsman asked in a strained tone, eyes tracing a circuitous path from Miss Nami’s decolletage, to the tropical flowers arranged in a nearby berm, to Miss Nami’s face and back down. 

“Oh, but, of course. Bepo, my invitation?” She held out the flat blade of her hand to the bear. He stared at it incredulously. What invitation? If he could sweat, like Shachi, he was sure that he would be doing so now. He began to furiously pat the pockets of his black suit hoping that he would remember if he touched the pocket it might be in. He couldn’t remember ever being handed an invitation or an envelope or letter or - 

“Oh, Bepo, you didn’t leave my invitation to the Prince Regent’s private viewing platform on the credenza at the chateau, did you? I’m so sorry about this, Bepo is usually so much more prescient about these things.” She continued, barreling right over Bepo’s small anxiety attack.   

The guard stared at Bepo unblinkingly, probably because he realized that Bepo was indeed not a man in sunglasses but a bear.

“This is my bear, Bepo.” She gestured to him, which was horrible. “He doesn’t talk.” 

“I… see.” Said the guard. “Apologies Miss, but the viewing platform is by invitation only-”

“Good afternoon young lady,” A stately man appeared over the railing bearing the exact likeness of a little illustrated man on a boardgame Bepo and Law used to play as children. It was a weird game about buying houses and visiting the houses and forcing other players to give you money for visiting the houses. This man looked like he owned many houses and coerced people to give him money to see them. 

“And a hot one at that, wouldn’t you say Sir?” Miss Nami smiled up into his face and brought her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. 

A guard appeared on either side of the Monopoly Man. 

“Please step away from the Prince Regent, Miss.” One announced loudly, staring directly at Bepo with barely concealed fear. 

“And the… bear.” The other announced, eyeing his suit and tie and claws and teeth. 

“My dear Bepo? Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly! He doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his teddy bear body!!” Miss Nami argued, taking a hold of his arm and pulling him toward the guards and their Very Pointy Ceremonial Halbards. Bepo poked the tip of his tongue out between his front teeth accommodatingly. 

“See?” Miss Nami gestured, “Blep-o.”

“Indeed,” The Prince Regent, apparently, said. His mouth was entirely hidden behind his big curly mustache. He was wearing a monocle. Bepo wondered if he knew. He had to know, right? “Reginald, Terrence, step down. Show the lady a seat, let us offer her refreshment. Be gentlemen, why don’t you.” 

And, bafflingly, the man - the Prince Regent himself, whom Bepo was pretty sure had no idea who Miss Nami even was -  waved them up. Bepo watched on as the two guards did as they were told and opened a nearby gate, allowing Miss Nami and Bepo up the little staircase into the private, and apparently Royal, Viewing Platform.

Bepo took a moment to review the plan. He wasn’t sure how they managed to find their way into the good graces of the single most wealthy and powerful men on the island. Miss Nami hadn’t even asked. Bepo decided that he would never understand the subtle complexities of human interaction, especially where Miss Nami was involved. 

The Monopoly Man gestured for Miss Nami to take a seat in a chair that was immediately supplied to her at his little table. As she did so, a servant moved the umbrella at his shoulder to accommodate Miss Nami beneath it. It bumped Bepo’s nose. He looked at the servant who looked at his suit, then his paws, and then up into his face, where Bepo watched as he realised he was a bear. 

Bepo never stopped enjoying it. 

“Allow me to start by saying what a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance, Miss…?”

“My name is Nami.”

“And I, of course, am Gottlieb Augustus Stottard, Prince Regent and appointed Steward of Mont Haven.” He relaxed back in his chair and rested one leg across his knee. Unlike his guardsmen in their stuffy looking woolen uniforms, the Prince Regent wore knee high socks and shorts in a middling shade of purple. Bepo didn’t have much of an opinion on the fashion of humans, but he was pretty sure that Shachi and Penguin would make fun of this guy. 

“The pleasure really is all mine, Your Grace.” Miss Nami sighed as the breeze fluttered across her shoulders. 

“Now, madam, I must confess - I asked you to join me for a very selfish reason, if you will indulge me.”

“And what indulgence is that, my Lord?” 

“I simply must know about your bear.”

Between having his eye nearly taken out by the umbrella and this moment, Bepo had taken to staring off into the clouds. They were large and fluffy and white, except for the little patch off to the east that was a little grey. The weather was really becoming very nice with that cool breeze that was beginning to blow. 

“You want to know about my bear?”

 If he could just loosen his tie a little, maybe slide the suit jacket off, and perhaps find a little corner, he could just lie down and have a nice little nap. The weather was just right for it. 

“It’s not every day a man sees a beautiful woman with a bear for a bodyguard. What did you say his name was? Boppi?”

“His name is Bepo.” Miss Nami corrected him and set her hand on Bepo’s arm. “As you can see, he doesn’t talk.” 

Bepo looked down at her hand, where it clutched at his sleeve like the talon of a golden eagle. At which point he realized she was trying to get him to pay attention. She was sending him a message.

Namely, shut the hell up. 

And, oh boy, could he shut up. He was aces at shutting up. 

The man threw his head back and laughed. He was wearing a double breasted, navy colored jacket with furry, gold mattes on the shoulders. Bepo wondered if the sovereign order on his breast was real. He wondered if the gold ropes on his one shoulder meant anything other than that he was wearing the ugliest outfit Bepo had seen on a human. 

“-Isn’t that right, Bepo?”

He looked up and opened his mouth- 

The nails of Miss Nami’s hand practically pierced through the fabric of his jacket and shirtsleeve, and if it weren’t for his fur, he figured she would have continued to bury her nails into his skin. Oh! Right - the signal from before. Bears don’t talk. He yawned widely, throwing in a dramatic growl at the end, one he knew the Prince Regent would find impressive.

“Impressive!” He announced predictably. 

Oh yeah, Bepo had this under control. 

“He’s trained to fetch, too. Bepo, go to the bar and bring Mommy her favorite drink.” 

Bepo looked across the private box towards the bar in question. There were couches and tables filled with fancy people who were all dressed in fancy clothing with lots of buttons and ribbons and sashes and hats. He noticed that when he looked up, many of the fancy people did too. If he wasn’t allowed to talk, how was he going to ask for a cocktail? Wait, what was Miss Nami’s favorite cocktail? Did it matter? Would she be cross with him if he brought back a Painkiller instead of a Blue Hawaiian? Did she like beer? Bepo couldn’t name a grape let alone a kind of wine. Don’t those come in colors? Was purple a kind of wine?

“Go on, Bepo, be a good boy. You know just how I like it.” She smiled, and it was very cold. 

So Bepo, the very good boy, went. 

He straightened his tie and walked purposefully through the throngs of fancy people to belly up to the bar. The bartender watched him with only a moderate amount of concern as he approached. He watched the bartender lock eyes with someone behind him. Miss Nami? Or worse, a sniper? The bartender smelled sweaty and also of lemon peels. 

“Good afternoon,” The bartender nodded anxiously. “What, uh, what can I get started for you?” 

Bepo stuck his tongue out again. The bartender went pale. 

“Perhaps Sir would like to peruse the menu?” The bartenders’ voice warbled slightly as he offered him a leather binder. 

Bepo could feel anxiety crawling under his skin like ants. If bears couldn’t talk, then they probably didn’t know how to read , right? Fuck fuck fuck-

In an effort to conceal his literacy, Bepo intentionally bumped his paw into the menu, knocking it to the floor. The bartender squeaked and stared at where it had fallen. Actually, that was good. Regular bears just knock shit around, right? Bepo turned to look for something else to knock to the ground - a line of champagne flutes?. No, that would be rude! And loud! And dangerous. Maybe the pile of napkins next to the line of champagne flutes-

“Please, Sir, how about the Lord Steward’s favorite?” With shaking hands, the bartender placed a cut-crystal rocks glass on his bar mat. In the bottom, he placed a sugar cube, doused it with something that smelled very bitter and muddled it so vigorously that Bepo was certain he was going to shatter the glass. The bartender then gathered an ice-filled mixing volume, poured a long shot of brown liquor from a dusty bottle and started to hyperventilate while stirring with a spoon the length of his arm. He strained the chilled liquid from the bigger glass into the smaller glass, dropped three neon green cherries on top and pinched an orange peel ineffectively between his thumb and forefinger. He tried to delicately throw the peel into the glass but missed. 

“O-o-old Fashioned, ala… ala…” He gasped, “Ala Gottlieb.”

Bepo blinked down at the drink. He sighed through his nose, like he imagined a very grumpy bear would. The bartender squealed like a deflating balloon and nearly collapsed, making a grab at the bar counter. 

Bepo picked up the cocktail and made his way back to Miss Nami without spilling a single drop, not because he was scared of her. 

“Why, thank you, Bepo,” She grinned up at him, offering her palm for the drink. “And three cherries? You spoil your mother.”

“It’s a particular favorite of mine,” Gottlieb offered, lifting his own half-drunk glass with a nod. “I confess I am a bit of a sweet tooth.” 

“I love cherries,” Miss Nami sighed, throwing her hair over her shoulder. She bent over her glass slightly and plucked a cherry by the stem and brought it to her lips. “But you have to be mindful of the stone.” 

She sucked it into her mouth with a pop. 

“Indeed.” The Steward replied, his hand tightening around his glass. 

Bepo put out his hand in an effort to play up his role as distraction-nee-helper. She understood the gesture immediately, and placed the stem in his paw. Before he could pull away, she grabbed his wrist and delicately spat the pit out next to the stem. 

Gross. 

“So helpful for Mommy, aren’t you?” She tugged at the button on his suit jacket. 

She then brought the cocktail to her lips, tilted her head back, and imbibed the whole thing in a long, impressive swallow. 

“What a superb whiskey, your Royal Highness.” 

“Yes,” He garbled, “Eighteen years.”

Miss Nami gasped. 

“Me too!”

Bepo was glad he was wearing sunglasses. He knew for a fact regular bears didn’t roll their eyes. 

Miss Nami fished an ice cube out of her empty glass and ran it from behind her ear and down her neck, over the ridge of her collar bones and then up the other side. She hummed in coquettish satisfaction and drew the cube back to rest just over her breast bone, letting the cube melt down between her breasts. 

Bepo considered that it might be sexy if Miss Nami  were a lady bear, but because she wasn’t, he couldn’t be exactly sure what the allure of this maneuver could possibly be. The Prince Regent Gottlieb, however, seemed to be very beguiled by the melting ice cube, as he proceeded to guzzle the glass of the cocktail in his hand and practically drop it onto a nearby servants’ awaiting tray.  

Bepo held out his paw and took the glass as well, adding it to the fleeing servant’s tray as they rushed past him. 

“Where does one find such an… accomplished animal?” Gottlieb tittered, flushed bright red behind his curly mustache. 

“I liberated sweet Bepo here from a Zoo,” Miss Nami lied cleanly, “With nothing but a smile and my little finger.” 

“Your little finger?”

“Oh yes. My little finger is capable of so many things,” She flipped her hair across her other shoulder and offered her hand for his inspection. He took it immediately and set his gaze upon it with intense focus. 

“It’s good at making promises,” She gestured accordingly, and the Steward offered his pinky to lock with hers. 

“It connects me to my soulmate,” She whispered, looking up through her eyelashes. “If you believe in that sort of thing, of course.” 

“Who wouldn’t?” The Steward whispered back, apparently deeply smitten.

“And, of course,” She leaned back and slipped her hand from her knee up her thigh, parting the high slit of her dress. “It allows me to play the flute!”

She slipped a hand beneath the fabric and revealed a length of blue steel that was apparently strapped to her thigh, somehow. 

“The… flute?” The Prince Regent blinked owlishly, his eyes skittering uselessly between the metal object in Miss Nami’s hand which was definitely not a flute and the exposed length of Miss Nami’s thigh. 

With her pinky finger, she depressed a button along the shaft of the not-flute, whereupon a hiss of air seemed to express itself and, in a flash of heat, Miss Nami disappeared. 

The Prince Regent looked at Bepo in alarm. Bepo threw the cocktail glass in his face, the force of it knocking him backwards off his chair, and leaving him unconscious on the floor. At this point, the rest of the fancy people in the viewing box started screaming and running and dramatically toppling chairs and tables. Bepo sniffed the air for Miss Nami’s perfume. No longer nearby.

He glanced up into the sky, where the darkening clouds were gathering with eerie speed. Speed which he assumed was all according to plan. Which part was this? ‘Oh my’? Now all he needed to do was escape the viewing platform and find where Miss Nami had hidden herself to create the clouds in the first place. 

He ripped off his sunglasses and stared across the waterfront from where they had come from, toward the strange pillar of clouds extending into the sky, like the funnel of a tornado. 

He supposed he should start there. 

7

Sanji peered coolly down the line of racing vessels from their location on the outermost edge of the starting line. He counted nineteen additional boats in their heat, some with diesel engines, others boasting sharp and colorful wedge-shaped sails. All of which seemed to be crewed by a handful of steely eyed tars who, between preparing their vessels for the course circumnavigating the island, were content to throw various jeers at their fellow contestants. 

Turning his back to the rabble, he busied himself by thumbing open the top of his packet of cigarettes and peering inside. Alongside his remaining three for the day was a curling, day-old tangerine peel imparting its moisture and fragrant oil to the tobacco. He brought the package up to his nose and relished in the play of zest, salt, and gasoline. 

“They’ve somehow got four people in the midget flier down the way - do you see it? I’m concerned why they need four people in a boat that size.” Penguin said, peering through a tiny set of binoculars from behind the steering wheel. 

“Yeah, what d’you think they’re hiding in the main mast? It looks like it hinges in the middle and I don’t believe for a second that it has anything to do with storage.” Usopp replied, bent over the exposed engine of the Mini-Merry. 

“Look at the rigging on that yawl,” Penguin whistled appreciatively. “I bet that mother turns on a dime. She’s a beauty.”

Sanji squinted across the water and attempted to find the beauty the gunner was referring to. What Penguin failed to mention was the crew of six, bikini-clad women flitting over her deck, cheerfully huddling for a pre-race chant to bolster their spirits. 

“Where’s Nami-swan?” He lifted his head in the breeze, luxuriating how the ocean-cold air shuffled up the back of his shirt and swept over the sweat cooling over his lower back. With a contented hum, he brought a cigarette into his mouth, moistening the orange scented rolling paper with his tongue. 

“I think she left us a note.” Usopp shouted back over the surge of boat engines and turbulent water. He slipped a folded piece of paper from his bib pocket and offered it to the chef.  

Sanji took it and brought it to his nose, hoping for a whiff of perfume or a lingering warmth of some divine feminine energy to reveal itself to his soul, but the creased sheet of paper simply held the faint odor of motor oil and the detergent they used for laundry day. 

He peered back into the stands, along the throngs of cheering spectators, wondering where the woman had placed herself, hoped her seat was well cushioned, prayed whatever beverage she was handed was half as sweet as she. 

He unfolded the note and took in her neat cursive, admiring the way it took up the page without pretense. The orange oil from his cigarette smelled sweet. He pressed the note into his breast pocket, carefully tucked between the nearly empty cigarette carton and his beating heart. 

“The note says she’s gone to the bathroom?”

Penguin looked up at him, face torn between discomfort and humor. 

“Does it say number one or number two?” He chuckled nervously. 

Sanji peered down at the Heart pirate absently. After a moment, he pulled the sheet back out of his pocket and read it again, actually read it this time, because actually he didn’t really read it the first time, caught up in the beauty of her prose and steadiness of hand. 

He blinked at it mildly. 

It was some of the worst handwriting he'd ever seen and it didn't smell like anything. 

“Number two?” 

Usopp tossed the spanner back into the toolbag at his knee and sighed, glancing furtively at their competition. 

“Nami didn’t leave that note.” He hissed and returned his attention to closing up the engine compartment.  

“How do you know?”

“Nami told me girls don't go number two.” 

“That’s…. I literally don’t know what to say to that.” Penguin coughed. 

“I don’t believe it, but I also have no way to prove it.” Sanji replied absently, staring at the note while he enjoyed the flush of nicotine warming his chest and shoulders. 

“If Nami didn’t leave it, then who did?”

“All it says is, ‘Going number 2, catch up later’. ” Sanji mumbled around his cigarette, his brain turning over on itself as he stared blankly at a nearby sailor raising a crimson flag bearing the image of a fish off the stern of their craft. Was it a mackerel? He titled his head to the side in an attempt to discern the name of their boat. Red… Herman? 

“Why didn’t your Captain join us? I could have sworn you said he wanted to participate in the race.” Penguin stuffed his binoculars into his boilersuit and clambered into the passenger seat.

“Who knows?” Usopp sighed, sitting back on his haunches. “He ran off before I could ask him about it.” 

From the waterfront where the spectator stands were raucously cheering, a klaxon sounded. Sanji squinted up at the red flag and the name of the boat and realized, somewhat belatedly, the name that was just out of sight was ‘Red Herring’. The name reminded him of blackened tilapia, maybe he could do something similar with gochu peppers or ancho chilies-

“That’s the two minute warning!” Usopp shouted, a nervous smile cleaving his face. He threw himself behind the wheel and adjusted his goggles over his eyes. “Are you ready, Penguin? Sanji, at least pretend to be interested!”

“Who would be interested in this? I have a beautiful raspberry granita that needs scraping.” Sanji sighed, expelling a cloud of smoke.

“We could have used, like, two other people.” Penguin complained, climbing over into the passenger seat. “Your Captain was literally perfect for this job.”

“Retrieving a rival flag is just a bonus,” Usopp replied, shaking their assigned race standard at the chef - a greyhound chasing a rabbit. “Oi, string this up, quick.” 

Sanji took the flag without complaint and made short work of hanging it from a short, hastily installed, rear gaff as directed. 

“What the fuck is that?” Penguin hissed, wheeling around and pointing at the women-manned yawl. 

“Well, it’s either a bazooka or a really aggressive t-shirt cannon.” Usopp muttered, taking it in before focusing on the starting line. 

“A bazooka.”

“A shoulder-fired, rocket propelled, anti-tank weapon. Or maybe a t-shirt gun.”

Penguin felt every sphincter in his body tense. 

“Are you a betting man?”

“Nami is my best friend. Absolutely not.”

Sanji looked up from where he was admiring the sextuple bikini-clad pirate women across the way and realized several of them were strapping themselves with various sized knives. One of them waved at him - beautiful brown skin, red hair, tall and entirely voluptuous in her gold lamé two-piece! Wielding a massive… t-shirt gun, probably - and he stopped thinking. 

“Hey,” Penguin mentioned slowly, watching the same woman crack open a bottle of liquor and pour it on her crewmate, “I think this is a death race.”

“Yeah,” Usopp replied, turning his attention back to the individuals waving the checkered flags and raising their starting pistols. “I got that impression too.”

“Cool cool cool cool cool.” Penguin sighed, resigning himself to his fate. 

“Sanji, at least warn us before you let that woman kill you.”

“No promises.” He smiled, as the pistols fired and the crowd roared. 

6

Zoro was standing in front of a vendor stall, pretending to observe the handmade knick knacks or whatever was on the table. This was odd because he had been headed for the harbor to watch the race, but ended up somewhere between the shopping district and the big castle at the top of the hill. He turned and squinted down at the harbor. Ostensibly he knew that there were, like, thirty boats down there right now.  He found that if he stared long enough, the impression of a sail would make itself known against the light flashing off the water. Sort of. 

Maybe he could cut through the lanes between the houses leading directly down the hill instead of keeping to the road. Just cut right through. 

Yeah.

Cutting stuff fixes everything . 

“Do you need help choosing, sir?” The woman behind the stall asked. 

Zoro turned back and stared blankly at the vendor. In her hand she clutched a wedge of soap. Upon slightly closer inspection, he realized she was a soap maker. It was all soap. 

“Uh-” He fumbled for the fistful of bills squirreled in his pocket, despite having no need for soap. 

“What do you recommend?” He asked. 

“Do you prefer French or English lavender?” She gestured with the soap at the pile of soap between them. 

Zoro stared miserably at the lot, incapable of distinguishing any discernible difference.  

“I don’t care what language it speaks.” 

At which point, he felt a hand tug on his pant leg. 

He looked down, expecting to see a small child and instead found the disembodied arm of a human woman had blossomed out of the cobblestones between his shoes. 

Entirely horrific. 

The hand waved and pointed off to the right.

Filled with the grim knowledge that he'll never really get over Robin's penchant for spawning her body parts in random places, he turned to see the rest of her body disappear around the path bending up the hill. 

“Sir?”

Zoro’s head snapped back up, his heart felt like it was about to fall out of his ass. Right. Soap. 

“Both.” He moved his mouth into the shape of a smile, or at least did his best to. “I, uh, yes, I’ll have both.” 

“His and hers.” She nodded. “Rather,” she paused, eyes flickering down and back up. “His and… his.” 

The hand between his feet formed a fist and started punching his boot impatiently. Zoro stifled the urge to bolt and exchanged his money for the paper sack. 

“Ahuh,” He replied, distracted by Robin’s Casual Body Horror Sideshow. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Come again.” The vendor said, with an air that belied that she would not, in fact, like to see him again. 

Zoro held the sack awkwardly in his fist and stomped down the road, following the series of hands that would pop up and wave him forward. As each one disappeared in a weird puff of flower petals, another would sprout further down, sometimes two, clapping for his attention. 

After twenty minutes of the creepiest game of hide and seek he’d ever played, another disembodied hand popped out of the hill’s retaining wall as he passed and snagged him by the collar. A second hand spun him around and a third dragged him into a shady alcove. Robin, unperturbed, looked up from where she was inspecting the retaining wall beneath an overhanging tree. 

“I think the soap lady thinks I like men.” He said abruptly, which wasn’t what he intended to say but it's what fell out of his mouth. 

“You do like men.” Robin mentioned, as if he forgot. 

“Yeah, but she was mean about it.” 

“What did you get?”

“Uh,” He shook the bag in an attempt to jog his memory. “Both.”

“Both what?”

“French and English.” 

“She was peddling soap made from French and English corpses?”

Zoro blinked at her. 

Robin blinked back.  

“Lavender. French and English lavender .” 

“What do you see when you look at this rock?” She turned back to her work, digging her thumbnail into the white stone where a demarcation between rough hewn and a patch of glossy smoothness met.

“Is it like that naturally?” He asked, compartmentalizing the ‘human soap’ thing, like he did with most weird things Robin said. 

Zoro watched as Robin inspected the dust on her thumb with keen interest before she stuck the whole thing in her mouth. He grimaced, only half concerned that she would start licking the wall. He saw her lick a bone once, one that she picked up off the ground. Out of the dirt. Said something about proving it was a bone, which he was certain she could do just by looking at it. 

“This,” She nodded at the rough hewn stone, “Is common karst carbonate. An amalgam of gypsum and limestone which is typical for this region. However, the abrupt smoothing of the stone is curious, and is a different composition altogether. It seems to have been affixed to the stone after the retaining wall was built. It seems too homogenous to be resin, and this tree above isn’t coniferous. Curious.”

“Yeah,” Zoro agreed blandly.

“Robin! I’m back. I didn’t see a single tree with needle-like leaves.” Chopper appeared around the corner, head low in traditional reindeer form so as to avoid entangling his antlers on low hanging foliage. “Ah, Zoro! You're here! What’s in that bag? It smells so good!” 

Zoro bit the inside of his cheek as the deer stuck his muzzle into his fist and snuffled furiously at the soap. 

“Thank you, Chopper. That’s very helpful. May I borrow these?” Zoro watched a pair of hands sprout out of the reindeer’s back and dig through his backpack for a set of binoculars. 

She walked back out into the castle road and drew a line of the ocean horizon with her pointer finger, following it with her eye for as much of the surrounding landscape would allow. Something must have sparked her interest as she drew the eyepiece up and stood quietly for many long seconds. 

“Zoro, come look at this.” She announced, handing them over.

He let her instruct him, until his eye landed on a crew of Marines at work on a building several hundred yards away. Each one held a pump sprayer, which they were using to apply some kind of dark liquid to the exterior. Then, a second team of people would follow up behind and throw handfuls of some kind of white powder onto the liquid. 

“What’s that powder?”

“It’s the reason I can’t get any closer - it’s sea stone. It’s everywhere.”

Zoro whistled lowly. “That’s a lot of powdered sea stone.”

“One of sea stones' more notable qualities is its’ hardness. The work alone needed to crush it into a uniform consistency must be fairly labor intensive. If the Navy has managed to secure a large quantity of it, I would not think they would deign to use it as a coating for civilian buildings.”

“Some medicines that are prepared in a powered form are cut with inert products as a means of bulking, binding, or stabilizing the drug.” Chopper offered, coming to stand next to Zoro, now bipedal and a third in size. “Like calcium carbonate in aspirin.”

“Or boric acid in cocaine.” Robin supplied helpfully.

“Boric acid?” Chopper blanched. 

“Cocaine?” Zoro hissed. 

“The… buildings here vary in age. It doesn’t seem like the island suffers much hurricane damage. Maybe they’re not coating the buildings to protect from environmental disaster.” Chopper continued, like a little gentleman, the look on his face only mildly concerned as he moved past Robin’s kingpin vocabulary. 

“I should very much like to think it has to do with the Naval research installation that our Torao is so intent on investigating. Perhaps they’re experimenting with a product to deter individuals who have eaten Devil Fruits.” 

“What does that have to do with the Regatta?” Zoro murmured, bringing the binoculars back up and counting the vessels zipping alongside one another in the bay.

“Perhaps the Keep is open for visitation.” Robin suggested, already making her way up the street. 

“The Keep?” He replied incredulously, but keeping pace with her nonetheless. “The big castle at the top of the hill? Castles which are famous for not letting people in? Pirate people?”

“In order to afford maintenance and avoid civil penalties, many grand homes are open to the public for consumption. It’s also good for PR. Keeps the wealthy class relatable.”

Zoro grunted, skeptical. Not 15 minutes later, they passed several vaguely animal-shaped topiaries on either side of the road, which were in turn flanked by guardsmen who paid them no heed. Then, they walked over a drawbridge - which, being at the top of a hill, was drawn over a sunken garden. He eyed the pair of staffers flanking the entrance - both wearing ID’s around their necks, handing out pamphlets to the few passersby that climbed to the top of the hill. 

“Thank you,” Robin murmured, taking two and handing one to Chopper. Zoro waved off the pamphlet with his fistful of soap and blinked as they stepped into the Keep. 

“I can’t believe they just let people in here.” He sighed, pacing past an acrylic case with a sign that read, ‘Donate to Our Museum!’. 

“How do you think the local ruling family benefits from their partnership with the Navy?” Robin posited, glancing between the map in the pamphlet and the signs by the exits. 

“Uh, the regular way?” Zoro guessed, following her up the grand flight of stairs. “They offer a portion of their land to the Navy in return for their military presence and the appearance of protection.”

“Perhaps,” She nodded. “Now think like a pirate. Marines serve and protect the law better than they do any civilian. Why would a well-established ruling body, like the Allencourt dynasty, deign to entertain a government facility on their previously sovereign land?” 

“Ah!” Chopper replied. “Money?” 

“Or sex,” She replied. “Or politics. Of course, nothing can be said for certain except for death and taxes.” Robin paused at a dim hallway whose entrance was barred with a velvet rope. 

“So we’re, what? Looking for dirty laundry?” Zoro said, frowning at an ornate credenza. 

Robin looked down at the far end of the room, where a guard stood by a doorway. The flower vase at his elbow conveniently tipped off the end table, and he scrambled to catch it. Zoro only just managed to see a collapse of flower petals where the guard managed to catch the case but not the water or the floral arrangement within. At which point, Robin lifted her leg and stepped over the rope and clipped down the hallway. 

“I don’t think this area is for public viewing.” He hissed, as she saddled up to the door at the end and tested the handle. It proved to be unlocked. “Are you joking?!”

He glanced back up the hall as Robin and Chopper found their way inside, and closed the door behind them. 

The door led to a lavishly appointed office, furnished in dark leathers and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Zoro ignored the trappings and stationed himself by the window as Robin started with the desk. He noted the storm clouds gathering over the harbor and the lone gardener trimming a bush in the sunken garden below. 

“There’s an awful lot of furniture in this place.” Chopper murmured, gesturing at the side board, which stood next to a grandfather clock, beside which a quartet of leather-cushioned chairs lined the wall down to the bookshelf at the opposite end of the room. 

“Their Keep is also operating as a museum,” Zoro sighed, “It’s going to have a lot of furniture.” 

“But it’s all the same furniture,” Chopper argued, “It all smells identical!” 

“They’re going to smell the same, they’re all in the same museum!” Zoro argued back. 

“No, I mean they smell exactly alike.”

“Exactly?” Robin looked up from where she had buried her nose in a stack of books. 

Chopper nodded, his expression moued and serious. Zoro pressed his mouth into a straight line and turned his focus back onto the lone gardner as he seemed to suddenly be fighting with a ghost.

“It must be the lacquer.” 

“That’s what makes the furniture shiny, right?” 

The gardener’s arms wheeled wildly, lashing out at his invisible assailant, at which point Zoro considered that perhaps it wasn’t a ghost but, like, a swarm of bees or something. 

“The resin base in most traditional lacquerware is produced by the tree toxicodendron vernicifluum . I didn’t necessarily see anything besides the abundance of juniper, palm, and olivewood.”

“Conifers,” Chopper nodded slowly, and then brightened all at once. “Trees with needle-like leaves! Robin, you’re right - there aren’t any here!”

“Sorry, what about trees with needle-like leaves?” Zoro looked up from his distraction, having decided that the gardener should have had a sword on his person, then he could just cut the ghost-bees or whatever in half. Idiot. 

“They tend to be trees which produce resin, which is needed for lacquer. And as Chopper has pointed out, almost all of the furniture here is lacquered. They’ve even started lacquering the buildings.” 

“But it smells funny.” Chopper nodded at a series of chairs elegantly lined up against a wall.

Robin glanced up at him, her eyes preternaturally still.

“Funny ha-ha, or funny weird?”

Chopper paused to think it over, crossing his little arms over his chest and resting a hooved hand on his chin. Zoro bit his tongue. 

“There was a lot of furniture like this in Wano, but it smelled different.”

“Perhaps it can be attributed to regional variance.” She nodded patiently.  

“Perhaps.”

Zoro stuffed one hand in his pocket, the other still clutching his packet of soaps. He watched the door, patiently waiting for the fool guard to figure out where they had gone, or worse, the wrath of whatever administrative power owned the office. He let a thought of Luffy pass over him, quietly glad he wasn’t here for this. The rubber boy wasn’t exactly known for passing without a trace. 

“What are you thinking?” Robin murmured, sitting down in the office chair and sliding open the drawer beneath the work surface. 

“Just wonder what Luffy got up to.” He replied, watching her pick through the various writing utensils in the desk drawer until she found a long, sharp letter opener. 

“I was under the pretense that Luffy was participating in the race?” She replied, not-so-delicately working the business end of the blade into the lock of a nearby cabinet. 

“Yeah, he begged off at the last minute - mentioned something to Nami before we left the ship.”

Something inside the mechanism snapped. Robin jiggled the handle until it pulled open and proceeded to rifle through the various files she found within. 

“You seem… very practiced at this.” He hummed, glancing out the window into the sunken garden below. 

“Why shouldn’t I be?” She replied, selecting a thick file and tossing it on the desk. “I was a top operative with Baroque Works for several years before we met.”

“What did you find?”

“Soap.” She flipped open the folder and flicked through the elaborate documents within, setting a few aside for Zoro’s inspection. He leaned over and examined them. 

“ ‘On the due date, and to pay interest on the principal sum from the date hereof, at the rate specified hereon’ - what is this?” He glanced at the large number across the top - 50,000 beri. 

“Treasury bonds. Frequently used by smaller governments to finance war. They’re used in place of hard currency, and can be weighed as debt instruments.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” 

“The local monarchy is being headed by a Prince Regent. I read in an article in this morning’s paper that the current King of Mont Haven, Bradford Allencourt, has been indisposed with an undisclosed illness for several years now. A period of time that just so happens to coincide with the publicised deeds of the Mont Haven Naval Research facility.”

She withdrew the aforementioned newspaper clipping from her pocket and laid it on the desk with the bonds.

“Before the naval base was installed by the Prince Regent, Mont Haven wasn’t much more than a footnote in the public record. As one might imagine, its proximity to the lucrative pleasure resort, Porto Secco, reduces Mont Haven’s economic chances of tourism and trade.” She gestured to an illustration on the newsprint, showing the smaller island of Mont Haven and its larger neighbor, Porto Secco.

“How much agricultural resources can an island kingdom with a high karst ecology export outside of feeding its own people? Can local artisans uphold an entire economy without a solid investment in tourism infrastructure? How can a community support themselves when their means of employment is for a more established hospitality industry, investing tax money into a system that manages resources back into its own pocket?”  

“You think the Prince Regent was feeling pushed into a corner and made a deal with the Navy to keep his temporary lease over the local government?”

Robin frowned, tracing her finger across the due date of the topmost bond. Zoro realized it was for the year previous.

“I think the stadtholder is embezzling funds from the local economy and washing them through the Naval base. The Navy has much larger coffers - what's a little minor financial default to a world military power?”

“And the race?” Chopper asked, examining a dark puddle on the floor. 

“It’s a trap.” Zoro groaned, a headache suddenly tightening across his forehead. 

“The stadtholder supplies the Naval base with pirate bounties in exchange for wiping their debt under the table.” 

5

So, the naval base was ridiculously deep underground, extending further below sea level than Law had anticipated. The doorway they had absconded through led them down through a cramped, white-washed staircase for nearly fifty feet to another porthole, this time opening up to a corrugated steel walkway suspended high above the floor of a grand cave.  

Below, a laboratory of sorts had been set up, like something directly out of a mid-century spy film. Law stifled an incredulous groan at the sheer ridiculousness of finding an actual lair hidden inside a secret sea-cave. A frame of lights had been strung beneath the catwalk, illuminating the workspace beneath it and the nearby dock, where several - what Law presumed to be - experimental water craft were moored. 

“Woah, look at that!” Luffy pointed at the several experimental water craft with a less-than-quiet gasp. Law grimaced and slapped his hand over the idiot’s mouth. 

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, do you come with a volume dial?” He murmured furiously, pulling them back into the doorway and watching for the imminent parade of Evil Military Scientists in lab coats to appear, brandishing Scientifically Enhanced Hand Guns or whatever. Plasma swords. Fucking… Hyperspace Cannon Bullshit. “What do I have to twist, spin, or manipulate to get you to use an inside voice?”

Luffy licked his palm. 

“You absolute brat,” He groaned, unable to keep the grin from his face. He relinquished the boy but not without smearing his hand across his face in retaliation. Luffy snickered but remained quiet and close. 

After a tense moment observing the silence of the cave, Law figured all the Over-Enthusiastic, Cross-Disciplinary Naval Engineers with Lasers and Bad Aim had been stationed elsewhere to perform some sort of Regatta-based duty. 

To his right, the catwalk ended before a segregated office-like space (dim, through the large plexiglass window), with a door (ajar) and deserted (did anyone fucking work here?). Peeking inside, he discovered it was a dry storage for what looked to be various kinds of PPE - shelves with helmets and boxes of goggles, rows and rows of single-packet nitrile and latex gloves, a wall of white rubber boots suspended upright on pegs, and more mundane Naval uniform goods. He snagged a boonie hat and jammed it over his head, tucking the sunguard over his ears. 

He stalked past Luffy to investigate the other end of the catwalk. 

“Is this your next disguise?” he snickered. “You look like a janitor.”

 “Disguises are important. Watch a spy movie. Discover culture.”

“You gonna take me to the movies?”

Law was grateful that the hat shielded his ears. 

“I’ll take you somewhere, alright. Over there.”

He tread carefully across the catwalk to get a closer look at the vessels - one of which seemed to be a steel rig that held a half dozen Blips. 

“Those are the things that attacked your boat.” 

“And these machines could be what controls them,” Law nodded, turning his gaze back to the series of cabinets, one which held a familiar panel of sonography equipment similar to what Bepo used on the Tang. 

“But why?”

“Why else? The Navy's in the business of hunting pirates. This is Santa’s workshop.” 

“I don’t think Santa visits my grandpa.” Luffy frowned, easily distracted.

“Whose your grandpa?” Law frowned back, fatally curious. He supposed it wasn’t all that strange that they should both have familial ties to the Navy, though he never quite managed to get the circles of the Venn diagram of ‘Cora-san’ and ‘the Navy’ to overlap in his mind.

“Garp.”

A series of mathematical functions lined up in Law’s mind and quickly resolved themselves in a manner that was fairly obvious in retrospect. Why wouldn’t it be the fucking Hero of the Marines? Which meant Dragon was his son and therefore Luffy’s father, the World’s Worst Criminal and Supreme Commander of the Revolutionary Army. Add (or perhaps subtract) his brother Ace, his other brother Sabo (unrelated?) - and then that tricky business with the pop star that he'd rather forget - Law quickly dismissed the equation from his mind, as its exponential growth was quickly expanding beyond his capacity to factor it. 

Cora-san had been an outlier, in all things. Sengoku was an incidental, twice-removed thorn in his side. End of family tree. Family bush. Family shitty-house-plant. A coincidence of Fate, if Law believed in such things, that he would become so inextricably bound to several Marines. 

“Although, I think he’s retired?” Luffy continued, absently. Law chose to ignore this variable for his own sanity. 

Somewhere below among the machinery, an alarm screamed, at which point simple instinct took over. In one hand, Law snatched Luffy’s wrist, and in the other, he slipped open a Room and dropped them in the shelter of a stack of shipping containers on the dock-side of the cave. 

Symptomatically, Law figured that if he was experiencing radiation poisoning, it would stand to reason that his augmented physiology would become a non-standard wedge in a semi-standard situation. The historical record regarding the effects of nuclear explosions on human health and presumptions of whole body exposure classically divided presentation of symptoms into three categories: hematopoietic (aplastic anemia, the body can’t make blood cells - you’re fucked), gastrointestinal (destroys the lining of the GI tract, interal bleeding, vomiting, death - you’re fucked), and neurovascular (headache, fever, dizziness, confusion, ataxia - re:you’re fucked examples 1 and 2). 

(Not to mention the DNA damage, the potential chromosomal aberrations, or those same damaged chromosomes cyclizing to each other or themselves - causing a cascade of dissolution from the molecular level. Triple fucked with a cherry hemangioma on top.)

Scientifically speaking, Law was doing a piss-poor job at monitoring his symptoms, other than passively noting that they existed outside of classically noted presentations. The fresh wave of bitter plum on the back of his tongue resonated like a gong straight through to his knees - an odd mixture of sensations bleeding into one another that didn’t bode well for his orbitofrontal cortex. He chewed on the tip of his tongue to make sure his mouth was still a part of his face, while observing a rainbow glaze over his vision like an oil slick, trying and failing to consecutively count the number of seconds it took for the visual and sensory ephemera to fade. Above all, the alarm shrieked rhythmically. 

“Do you feel that?” Law hummed around the haze of disorientation, slumping into the shipping container. Honestly, if he focused, there was a pleasant tingle underneath the burn of all of the grey damage to his cells.  

“Do I feel what?” Luffy responded, immediately turned and crowded against him, his hands firm on his waist. 

“Mmmgggh,” Law replied noncommittally, letting his eyes roll back and his head to droop off to one side. Perhaps the local radiation anomaly was just a Law-thing. It was nice being held like this. 

“It’s cold in here,” Luffy tried, which was cute, wow, so cute. “And kinda damp. I feel a little tired, like when I wear sea stone cuffs. Is that what you meant?” 

Law ground down into his heels, stiffened his shoulders and willed his brain to focus on the situation at hand - namely, for the approaching footsteps of Secret Military Laser Scientists yadda-yadda-yadda. That pleasant tingle was getting more rumble-y.

“I feel you,” Luffy continued, sliding his fingertips up, ever so slightly, into the space where the pilfered, designer t-shirt didn’t quite meet Law’s belt. “You’re warm, here.”

“I’m not ticklish.” Law announced, his brain suddenly functioning at maximum capacity. A shiver zipped through his belly button and wrapped around his spine, and Law was very hot indeed. The rumble wasn’t radiation annihilating his cells - it was coming from the dock. 

“I don’t think that’s true.” Luffy grinned, his wandering fingers tracing the edge of his jeans. 

“Fff-pay attention-look-” Law smeared a hand over his twitching mouth and peered around the edge of the shipping container barrier. Practically drowning out the noise of the alarm, the rush of displaced water in the docking area, from which arose a huge underwater craft.

The bow of the enormous vessel bore an elaborate face of a colossal fish. A blinding light from both eyes was shuttered as the vessel reached equilibrium, flashing against the cavern walls. Where the deck lacked the Finhouse of the Tang, there was a larger oblong glass sphere, atop which a walkway encircled. Most striking of all was the shade of the hull - a vivid and sparkling ultramarine blue. 

“That is a submarine.” Law stated stupidly. 

“It’s sparkly!” Luffy added helpfully. Which was true. It was literally sparkling. 

“Why is the Navy experimenting with submarine technology?” Law asked himself, trying very hard to be less stupid. 

“Why doesn’t your ship sparkle, Torao?”

“Because pirates don’t do tactical glitter,” He hissed, squinting against the shrill echo of the alarm, “Do you see an exterior hatch anywhere?”

At which point, a very obvious hatch proceeded to unlock on the side of the ship. The door swung back silently, and a pair of midshipmen clambered out onto the dock. 

“-hurry up, man!” The taller of the two held out an arm through the portal. A second man appeared, hauling something large and squarish, wrapped up in a beige tarpaulin. 

“Listen dude, if you want to earn yourself three weeks of double PT, be my guest-”

“We’ve got to hide this thing - there’s a chemical closet on the go-between that no one ever uses.” The dockside midshipmen reached for the flat object, struggling with its weight as the second marine found his footing on the dock. 

“Don’t fucking drop it-”

“I’m not going to fucking drop it-”

Law watched as the former of the two dropped the object. It hit the dockslab with a great shudder of metal, echoing up into the cavern. The two marines stared stupidly between their feet at the revealed quarterpanel as it slowly rattled to silence. Law nearly choked on his own tongue, the shade of canary yellow as familiar to him as the six bullet-hole shaped scars on his chest.

“Oh my fucking god,” Law gurgled, lurching to the side in a botched attempt to get a better look at the Marine’s faces. It was only for Luffy’s sake that he didn’t twist and flop immediately onto the ground. “That’s my ship-”

Luffy’s fingers tightened and loosened rapidly, almost as if he were oscillating between choices of action. Hesitation wasn’t exactly Luffy’s modus operandi. Law’s knees buckled at the sensation. 

“Your ship-” The boy breathed, and Law swore he could feel the temperature of his skin rising with indignation. 

At which point, Luffy reared his arm back and Law experienced what was undoubtedly a seizure which he could only reasonably attribute to temporal lobe epilepsy - and certainly not deja vu, an illusory pathological phenomenon invented by the French whose most notable contributions to medicine have been questionably fashionable, on-demand anal fistulas and broadcloth psychiatric quackery - because the epileptic electrical discharge in his brain was surely the only explanation for the sudden onslaught of humming, ringing, and buzzing in his ears as if all of the alarm systems in his body were going off simultaneously. 

Temporal lobe epilepsy seemed increasingly likely, as he reached out and wrapped a hand around Luffy’s wrist and opened his mouth to say any number of poignant questions, like, ‘Have you lost your mind?’, or ‘Have you considered exercising a modicum of self control, ever, in your entire life?’ or even, ‘Please stop throwing yourself at everything like a demented wrestler, I am begging you’, however, what ended up coming out of his mouth was an intelligent, if garbled, “Yarg.” 

Impaired language function notwithstanding, Law successfully managed to wrangle Luffy’s arm down and behind his back, where it turned and turned and turned, until his hand was resting against his own scapula through the supernormal, rubbery give of his shoulder joint complex. 

Law peered down at him from behind, his unoccupied hand clawed over the other shoulder. Encompassing. Possessive. Luffy, peering back up, only pouted. It made Law want to pull a little harder, a little closer, to see if he could make him gasp. If he could make him squirm. What was the limit? 

“Torao,” Luffy huffed, wriggling against his hold. “What are you doing?”

Law slowly relinquished the vice of his hand from the boy’s shoulder and let it find the curve of his cheek, cradling his chin, drawing it up until the back of Luffy’s head laid against his sternum. Law breathed and Luffy breathed with him. He brushed his thumb over his bottom lip just to see the dilation of his dark iris beneath his pink sunglasses. 

Luffy stopped wriggling.

“Torao, what do you want to do?”

Law could feel the pressure of his wants and needs closer to the surface than ever before. 

“Here’s the deal,” He breathed around the humming and ringing and buzzing in his ears and under his skin. 

“The deal?”

“The deal,” Law murmured, pinching the apple of his cheek and pulling it until it gave like bubblegum, “Is that these men have done something to my boat. What I want is to find out what that is and why. What I need ,”

Law ignored the fatigue welling in his joints like gout and the curl of nausea haunting his stomach. Communicating his desiderata was as foreign to him as South Blue patois. Luffy had a way of making things tangible, of speaking back in a language Law could understand. He could parse the bullshit minutiae that Law built up around him and filter through it like water through a sieve. Law was starting to enjoy the feeling. 

“I still need that cup of coffee,” he huffed. 

“I’ll get you that coffee,” Luffy smiled. “If you promise to take me to the movies.”

“Now that ,” Law smiled back, “Is a date.”

“Dude, is someone here?” One of the Marines called out. “Hanzaki, I swear to god, if that’s you-”

Law closed his eyes and flicked open a Room. His intention had been to get them back into the catwalk - high ground, the advantage of distance, the proximity to the surface. Inside the bubble, time felt like a thick, cold sludge against his skin. He wondered if Luffy could hear the articulated particles of matter crashing together like a thousand wind chimes. Law pulled Luffy’s body hard against him, a sudden moor against the onslaught of tintinnabulous reality. 

In an instant, the Room expanded until it encompassed the entirety of the cave, pressing into the stalactites hanging from the ceiling. He could taste the minerals of the rock in his mouth, pricking sharp around the bitter plum, like an entire umeboshi stuffed under his tongue. The Marines lit up like infrared images, heat and mass and density. Law shivered. 

 Law turned and took a step, trying to convince matter to move around him. 

The Room shunted off, surging through him with a tidal movement, ions colliding in his blood. It was as if he had managed to place his heel on the catwalk and his toes on the ceiling. Temporal omnishambles. He stared up at the face of the enormous blue fish, its glowing amber eyes unseeing. His body felt numb, his brain like jello. Luffy held him upright, because he wasn’t doing it himself. 

Somewhere in his periphery, the pair of Marines squawked in distress. 

Ostensibly, he knew the boat was just a boat. But he could swear its mouth was moving. That the fish was speaking to him. He squinted at it, dipping his chin and squinting from beneath the floppy brim of the boonie hat. 

“Dude, get the thing-”

“Is that Strawhat-?”

“Torao, stop doing that-”

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST the fish breathed into Law’s face.

Of course it would be in fucking Latin. Law knew Latin, partially because of his stupid Catholic primary school education, mostly because of his medical school education. Why the fucking fish knew Latin, Law had no idea-

When the quarterpanel met the back of his head, Law felt time and matter finally organize into something recognizable. Brilliant, familiar pain, easy to understand. The split that Penguin had kindly glued back together that morning popped open with a warm rush of blood. Law could have moaned in satisfaction, were he more in control of his body. 

Luffy’s hands on his body were warm. 

Above him, the fish blinked and Law slipped into darkness. 

4.5 

“Is that a hint of undergrowth I detect? The subtle fruiting bodies of arboreal fungi…”

One of the things that Brook liked most about Frankie was his appreciation for good tea. 

“The mild umami flavor is reminiscent of seafood, wouldn’t you agree?” 

The shipwright had an admirable palate and was a gentleman of surprisingly refined judgement. 

“When I was a living man, the flavor of Lion’s Mane mushroom was my favorite.” He sighed. “Examine the liquor - the proud amber so familiar but distinct from red or brown tea varieties. The aroma of mulch like standing in an arboretum of late autumn crabapples going to rot!” 

Oh yes, this was living. 

Well. 

An afterlife worth dying for. 

Just two individuals, who once could have been called men, drinking to one anothers’ longevity. (Health notwithstanding).

Brook beheld the teacup and sauce in his skeletal hand, a fine bone china that made him laugh just by looking at it. Deceptively heavy, despite its near-transculent quality, due to the silver lining upon the rim. Yes, this was a tea set befitting the King of the Pirates: made for dreamers, underdogs, and lost causes. 

As he contemplated the paradoxical nature of fungi - an extant form of life neither animal nor man, capable of possession, communication, psychedelia, an immortal enigma (a mirror?) - the ship heaved starboard as if it had been bumped by an enormous fish. He watched the tea in his cup mimic the water in perfect miniature. 

“What was that?” Frankie demanded, kicking back his chair and storming across the empty lawn. 

“What indeed? Perhaps another one of Torao-san’s ‘Blips’?” Brook laughed, because every one of his bones were funny. 

But Frankie did not laugh. He stalked to the other side of the ship and peered over the rail, doing a fairly good impression of a sailor about to toss his lunch. 

If Brook tilted his head just right, he could remember the sensation of eyelids sliding over his wet eyes, the pulling sensation of the stomach contracting, the swelling of nausea in the base of the skull, the acid-bile-burn of digestive fluid in the esophagus, the grit lingering on the gums - what bliss. 

“Tang’s gone.”

Brook was too far gone in his reverie to hear. 

He didn’t have ears, anyway. 

4

“Hey, this puddle seems bigger than it did a minute ago.” Chopper called out, watching its dark edges where it was slowly expanding across the floor. Was it coming from underneath? He produced a cotton swab from his pocket and slowly inched closer, testing his mettle against the creepy puddle.

“Chopper, get away from there!” Robin hissed, and he felt one of her hands pull him across the floor toward the door. 

The smell was incredibly distracting - it was so strong, like turpentine, and it clogged up his nose, giving him a headache. 

“Alright, we found what you were looking for.” Zoro griped, wretching the door open and ushering Robin and Chopper through. But once in the hall, he stopped, one hand flying up to guard Robin, and the other coming to rest on the swords at his side. 

A figure stood on the opposite side of the velvet rope at the end of the hall, but it was so dark that Chopper couldn’t see his face. 

“Yoo-hoo,” The figure waved, like his arm had a string attached to its wrist. The smell became so much louder.

“Is that… the guard?” Zoro muttered. 

“I’m not sure what that is.” Robin replied, bringing her arms up defensively.

The dark figure moved forward, his body slid straight through the velvet rope, leaving a slime trail on the floor behind him. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll come to you.” Its reedy voice echoed down the hall upon approach. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long - don’t be shy!”

The figure lurched forward, arms outstretched. Chopper glanced behind at the art on the wall, wondering if maybe there was a convenient window beneath it. Or maybe they could go back into the office, and jump out of the window there, into the garden - 

Dark, resinous goo dripped from the door handle, through the keyhole, and up and down the frame, pulling open like a horrible sticky maw. 

“My my, what is that, 930 million?” The voice seemed so close now, almost like it was coming from everywhere. Feeling bigger would make him feel a little safer, a little more powerful - like Zoro - so he shifted into what Usopp called ‘Gorilla Mode’ and took up space in the narrow hallway. 

At this point, he realized that Robin was no longer standing beside him. 

“Robin?” He hissed, his insides filling with dread as he stared down at the puddle of goo on the floor were Robin had been standing. 

“Don’t be a coward, show me your face.” Zoro growled, thumb notching the hilt of a sword on his hip. 

Chopper sniffed the air furiously, but all he could smell was that funny resin, thick and tangy and bitter. 

“And here’s daddy’s first billion! I can finally fund that space laser I’ve been telling Daniel about. He’ll be so impressed with me.”

“You don’t scare us!” Chopper continued, twisting back around to keep Zoro in his line of sight. 

Except Zoro was no longer within his line of sight. Just another puddle of goo at his feet. He fought the sudden urge to cry. 

He bent and picked up the brown paper sack and brought it to his nose, furiously trying to catch the scent of lavender beneath the oppressive odor of lacquer all around him. 

From the ceiling, a thin stream of liquid slipped through an impossibly small crack, landing on his antler and over the top of his hat. 

“Might as well complete the set.” The voice continued. “How many kabobs do you think he’s worth? Three? Four? Oh, let's spend it all!” 

Is the last thing Chopper heard before falling asleep. 

3

“This isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be!” Penguin screamed, punching a fully grown man in the face and watching as his body hit the water like a pebble skipping across a pond. “Oh my god, did I kill that man?” 

“Would it be the first time?” Sanji shouted back, working a large machine-style gun that was inexplicably in the shape of a shark. 

“Excuse me if I don’t make a habit of murder!” He hollered back. 

“Shut up and defend the flag!” Usopp screeched, shoulders hunched up by his ears as he maneuvered the speeding vessel around a series of buoys, alongside three other vessels trying to do the same with varying degrees of success. 

“I thought you said it was just a bonus!” Penguin grunted, peering over his shoulder to clock their dumb flag. It was still there, whipping angrily at his six. Also there was a yacht of outrageous proportion aiming a harpoon directly at them.   

“Cut the man some slack. To him, it’s a sphincter-tightening race through hell, but to us, it’s just Tuesday.” Sanji released another round of bullets into the hull of a passing ship. 

“Well now I’m invested! And so help me god, if you so much as lose sight of it-”

“Hey guys-”

“You think you can threaten me? Do you know who my Captain is? Have you ever had your balls replaced with squeaky toys?”

“You lot sure get up to some kinky shit.” Sanji growled, reaching down and grabbing the makeshift grenade from the bandolier Usopp had pilfered from the last unfortunate who had attempted to raid their little boat. He pulled the pin and threw it overhand into the deck of the rocker-powered clipper at their tail and stood bravely still as it exploded in a cloud of pink smoke.   

“It’s not kinky! It's traumatizing!” Penguin wailed. “That was seriously so cool, what the fuck.”

“Hate to interrupt, but do you see where that midget flier went?” Usopp grunted from behind the wheel.

Penguin wheeled to the left and then the right, and then behind where the corpse of the rocket-powered clipper was floating into the distance. Indeed he could not. “Do you think it sank?”

“Do you think I would stand here and let six women drown? Do you think I’m a monster?”  Sanji growled, tucking a pair of cigarettes into his mouth and tossing the empty carton overboard. 

“Sanji, they’re our opponents!” Penguin growled back, feeling at a strategic disadvantage without some cool, stolen weapon in his hands. He balled up his fist and readied for punching. “They were wearing swim suits, so I’m reasonably sure they know how to swim.” 

“You got a lot of fucking nerve, you shitty Heart-guy-”

“My name! Is literally written across my forehead!!”

“Hey, guys-”

“I would rather die than sit idly by and allow harm to befall a woman!”

“Listen, I’m only here because your captain wants to win this thing, and I’m not interested in the monumental pout my captain is going to put on if I make his boyfriend sad.”

“You know what, I’ve got a bone to pick with your captain about his little feelings for my captain -”

“Guys-”

From the stands, another klaxon went off, just in time for Penguin to look up to see a flotilla of Marine ships sailing into view from around the island, just behind the finish line. 

“Is this a fucking trap ?!” Penguin squealed, grabbing whatever was closest to him - which happened to be Usopps’ arm. 

“We’ve got bigger problems than the Marines.” Usopp patted his hand very accommodatingly, which was both insulting and comforting all at the same time. Ussop was his favorite Strawhat by far. 

“What on God’s earth is that?” He gripped the sharpshooter by his overall strap and pointed down the line of his arm, from the horizon and up, up, up, to the rapidly darkening, utterly colossal, violently gathering, swirling nightmare mass of clouds dwarfing the threat of the Marine blockade. 

Penguin was a submariner. He didn’t actually get very wet, compared to other pirates. But he wasn’t stupid, he knew what ‘weather’ was. His knees could detect rain with the best of them. 

Sanji grit around the pair of cigarettes clutched between his teeth. 

“That would be Nami.” He grinned madly. 

“She owes me such a pedicure after this.” Usopp hissed, and banked the little boat with a sudden sharp left turn, leading them away from the racing course. Then, he worked a key from his pocket and handed it to Penguin. “With the little bullshit flowers. And peppermint scrub.” 

“See that little box?” He pointed to the top of the dashboard. Penguin worked the key into the lock beneath it and ducked out of the way as the box released and suddenly went flying. He watched it clip Sanji in the shoulder as the chef dropped the shark-machine-gun into the water. 

“Put your fucking seat belt on, do you have a death wish?” The chef spat at him as he hunkered down into the back seat. 

“Uh,” Penguin replied intelligently and proceeded to fuck up strapping himself in pretty spectacularly. 

Usopp remained focused on dodging the sudden onslaught of cannonfire from the Marine blockade while continuing for the finish line, and also the big, horrible, swirling mass of death clouds. 

“Are you serious?” Sanji grumbled. 

“As a heart attack.” He wheezed, his hand gripping the wheel tighter as the sky darkened and rain began to pelt them.

“Peng, keep your hand on that button,” The sharpshooter smacked the dashboard for emphasis. Penguin reached up and placed his hand over the palm-sized red button that had been revealed by the locked box. It was kind of exciting, and also deeply terrible. Penguin liked the Strawhats. They were psychopaths. 

“On three!” Usopp called, shifting to sit on one butt cheek in a seemingly preparatory manner. Penguin glanced up where they raced past a man on a tall podium, waving a checkered flag. A broad banner with what Penguin took for the native language of Port Haven probably read, “Congratulations, Suckers!” as they passed underneath it and into the waiting arms of the Navy. 

“Three?” Penguin warbled, eyeing the towering wall of Marine vessels. 

“Three!!” Usopp wretched the wheel to the side, banking the boat so hard, Penguin was sure they were actually going to keel over. He slapped the button. 

In a frankly unreasonable fashion, the rear end of the Mini Merry split down the middle and slid open with a smooth, mechanical function. A large, hydraulic sort of cylinder lifted from the concealed compartment, made a strange whirring noise, and with a sound that was like the silence between one breath and another, launched into the sky.

2

Bepo found Miss Nami in the alleyway several blocks down from the Royal Viewing Platform, wielding a staff that emitted a steady stream of dark, staticky fog. Which seemed ridiculous. There were a few other Miss Nami’s as well - a tall one, and a chubby kid one, and a really muscular one that kind of looked like a wrestler. 

Bepo didn’t know he could feel fear like this. 

He hitched the unconscious body of the Prince Regent over his shoulder from where it was slipping. Maybe he could use it as a shield for something. 

“Oh, excellent, you’ve brought along leverage!” She cheered in quartet.

“He’s got a high net worth.” Bepo replied, squinting at the wrestler. She was sort of shimmery, like the air around her was hot, but the heat of the day was rapidly dissipating.   

“You’re speaking my language, Bepo.” Miss Nami twisted a mechanism along the shaft of the fog-emitter or whatever she was using to - well, when Bepo looked up he realized she was making clouds. 

“When you said you like dramatic thunderstorms-”

“I meant it. And we need a show stopper. There’s a fleet of Navy boats on the other side of the finish line and I need something that will cripple them while also destabilizing the ocean current around the island. Franky should have the Sunny-go ready on the other side of the shelf-”

Bepo began to tune her out because he was pretty sure she didn’t actually have a plan to begin with. Was it luck? Was she a witch? Was it some unholy combination of the two? The stormcell overhead was rotating with alarming speed, the wind buffeting him in threatening gusts, and pelting him with intermittent droplets of rain that were starting to sting his ears. The flanking line was spreading like molasses over the bay, and from within the tall central structure, he watched a flash of lightning which was followed by a bone-shattering, explosive clap of thunder. 

“Get ready to run, Bepo!” She laughed, and the first few drops of rain slipped down the lens of her sunglasses. 

“Run where?” 

“Probably toward the base!” She said, collapsing the polearm into itself, where it took up the flute-adjacent shape he had seen before. The four additional Nami’s shimmered out of existence. 

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?” He wheezed, staring at the spot where the wrestler had been. 

“Well, that’s where Luffy and Torao went.” She shrugged. “Who knows where Robin or Zoro are? And the race,” She gestured with a thumb over her shoulder without even looking, “Is totally fucked. So: base.”

Bepo figured that her logic was sound enough. 

“And then what?!” He cried, because the cold embrace of logic was neither affectionate nor accommodating. 

“Don’t think too far ahead, Bepo.” Miss Nami scoffed. 

The Prince Regent gurgled over his shoulder. 

“I think this guy is waking up.”

“Do you think anyone would pay a ransom for him?”

Bepo gripped the man by his belt as he came to, like he was about to come off of anesthesia. One of the Prince Regent’s waxed hair fell across his forehead in a droopy fan and his monocle was dangling from his neck by a little cord. There was a telltale lack of awareness, like a light behind his eyes, that had yet to fully form. He looked at Miss Nami, then at the gathering storm, and then back at Miss Nami. There was a moment between sleep and waking that Bepo was familiar with, where he couldn’t move his body and the vision of his sleep paralysis demon waited at the foot of his bed, swinging a metal hook on a chain. 

It was evident that he and the Prince Regent shared the same demon. 

Like a punchline, the Prince Regent’s jaw contracted as if a spatula had been stuffed into his mouth. If it weren’t for the 1200 pound bear holding him, he would have jackknifed into the air. It was like restraining a baby.  

“I demand you put me down at once!” He cowed, his waxed mustache like a crooked tail feather. 

Bepo cast a deferential look at Miss Nami. 

“Go ahead.” She nodded. 

Bepo paced the three feet over to the edge of the pier and tossed him in the water. He shrieked and floundered, but did not sink. Not a devil fruit user, then. 

“He’ll be fine. Oh, and would you look at that?” Miss Nami gestured to a manhole cover that conveniently popped up from the ground with the force of a minor explosion. Bepo trailed behind Miss Nami and considered that perhaps this was just par for the course, as far as Strawhats went. 

The back of a familiar head popped into view, and then turned and aimed a pistol in their general direction. 

“Hakugan!” Bepo cheered, elated to see the pilot. The man fumbled his pistol into his boilersuit and gripped the edge of the hole carefully. 

“Bepo! Perfect, we need to find the Captain - he’s somewhere deep in the base. Can you find him by smell?”

“Is Nami with him?” A voice called up from beneath ground level - Ikkaku. 

“Of course! The Captain told me to keep her safe!” 

“He’s wearing a suit, it’s super cute.” 

“Aw! Bepo, let me see!”

“Bepo here did great - but enough talk. I’ve set off a supercell that’s going to blow pretty soon. I’d say we’ve got about 20 minutes before it reaches bombogenesis. If you don’t fancy getting a concussion, move over and let’s go.”

“Why would I get a concussion?” 

At which point, an ice ball the size of a grape shattered on the paving stone by Bepo’s feet. 

“Imagine that, but the size of a pomelo.”

Bepo could imagine it but that didn’t mean he wanted to. 

“Pass. Now hurry up!” Hakugan disappeared. Bepo held out his obliging paw to the navigator and peered down the dark hole. Miss Nami gripped him tightly and smiled. 

“Come on, Bepo! Stick to the plan!”

“Right, the plan.” 

1

Law had anticipated their captors would string them up and dangle them from the cave ceiling, perhaps over the open water where technology-altered sea king pups would be swirling in wait. Or, like, being strapped to a conveyor belt and slowly lasered in twain, from taint to tits. A suitably mid-century spy film torture method that would allow for a lengthy, if informative, monologue as to the nature of the villain’s character, backstory, and odd coping mechanism for a childhood trauma. 

Instead, they had been locked in a janitorial closet. 

Normally, Law was not so easily thwarted by closets, janitorial or otherwise. But extenuating circumstances being what they were - the possibility of his body failing to adapt to the radiation poisoning of a full strength nuclear submarine reactor, because, really, he should very much be a corpse right now - he could barely hold his hand in a fist, let alone hold a conversation. 

But by the grace of God was he going to try .

They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, the length of their legs running practically the span of the makeshift holding cell. Luffy’s wrists were held fast by a set of seastone manacles, which was about as effective as trapping a cat in a paper sack. Law was off no better, but was at least feeling realistic about his recent maladaptive streak. The wound on the back of his head throbbed quite loudly, and the boonie hat he’d taken was long gone. 

“Listen-” Law huffed, feeling the strange hum of radiation somewhere inside his body. “If we fail to make it out of this base, I-”

In the light of the bare bulb overhead, Luffy’s calm, boyish expression soothed over him. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad to die by your side.” He murmured, tucking his chin to his chest, as if the honesty was a palm pressing into the crown of his head. “Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Luffy’s calm expression suddenly morphed into one of pinched displeasure. 

“What?” Law hissed, suddenly self conscious at his brazen utterance of affection. 

The boy sighed and dropped his head onto his shoulder. 

“You could just say ‘I love you’, you know.” 

Maybe the burning in his gut wasn’t radiation poison. Maybe it was contact embarrassment from simply existing near Luffy causing a gastric ulcer. 

“Shut. Up.” Law breathed, praying to the vanishing illusion that Catholicism held over his life that the lack of lighting was hiding the hideous blush he felt burning down his neck. 

“It would be easier.” He continued. “Do you want me to say it first?”

“I’m going to kill you and then myself.” 

Luffy laughed. 

“I love you too.”

Ah yes, this was it: The mortifying ordeal of being known. 

“Moving a little fast, aren’t we?” Law tried in an attempt to cover his exposed, well, everything. 

“My brother told me that there was an order to these things. You like order.”

“And what order is that?” Law turned his gaze to the shelf of cleaning chemicals. There was ammonia based toilet cleaner right next to a canister of bleach powder - everything he needed to make chlorine gas. 

“Kissing.” Luffy murmured, his lips ghosting over Law’s shoulder.

“That is not the first thing-!” Law nearly laughed, fighting the knee-jerk reaction to knock his head into the wall and reopen the cut for a third time. 

“And then you take them on a date.” He continued, knocking his foot into Law’s shin. “I liked this one, by the way.” 

“Which brother told you this?” Law squinted down at their feet, where he was maybe losing feeling in his toes. 

“Oh, and flirting is important.” Luffy continued, unbothered by Law’s concern for potential nerve damage. 

“Please tell me you don’t have a secret third brother.” Law curled his toes in his boots and began mentally reciting the names of the anterior, lateral, and superficial compartment muscles in alphabetical order. 

“Pretty sure there was another thing, but I forgot.”

“Pining, probably.” Law sighed, having gotten halfway through ‘gastrocnemius’ because the posterior aspect of the knee joint houses the two large muscle bellies and was the main plantarflexor of the ankle joint. It wasn’t in the fucking foot at all. 

“Torao,” The boy paused, biting the tip of his tongue between his front teeth, “Let's have sex!”

Finally, Law threw his head back and barked. 

“Fucking when?” He scoffed. “I’ve lost so much blood, I won’t have a boner for a month.” 

“No laughing!” A very nervous, young-sounding Marine commanded to the best of their ability from the other side of the door. 

“Yeah, alright,” Law acquiesced.  

“Yeah?” Luffy gasped. 

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Law hissed, knocking his foot into Luffy’s, which he felt just fine. He hadn’t lost his nerves just yet.

A shuffling of boots just outside, accompanied back a simultaneous ‘Sir!’. They were in for company. 

The door swung inward. The light bulb cast a shadow over the brimmed hat of the man in the doorway, an officer of some notable rank if his coat was anything to go by. Law glared up at him  through his headache to try and make sense of his face.  

“Well well, if it isn’t my darling Monkey D. Luffy.” The man crowed in delight. “Bless my eyes.” 

Law decided he wasn’t offended when the man turned on his head without addressing him. 

“Bring them to the parade ground.” 

-

The parade ground was lacking in conveyor belts and lasers. Law was almost disappointed. 

What it was not lacking in was direct sunlight. After spending several hours in an underground cave system and then being locked in a dim closet, the full concentrated power of the sun was certainly going to kill him. He squinted up through his sweaty bangs and did not think on Strawhat’s straw hat with even an ounce of jealousy.

The parade ground in question was a large, circular drainage gradient, paved at a slight angle to allow for standing water to flow away from the surrounding buildings of the base. A series of storm water grates striped the area like a giant bullseye, at the center of which stood the awaiting officer. 

Law allowed himself to be dragged by his armpits and dropped at his feet. Let them think he was enfeebled by their shitty cuffs and not a semi-explainable demi-plane of nuclear radiation turning his brain inside out. He looked up to find a narrow man in a great coat casually sipping from a martini glass. The nose on his face reminded Law rather a lot like that of a rat. His facial hair was decidedly sparse. 

“Salut, gentlemen.” The rat-faced man tippled, unhinging his jaw to chew on three ice cubes and a lone olive. Law enjoyed the bruises forming on his kneecaps while the man masticated luxuriously, humming and nodding in satisfaction, and winking at Law like an old friend. 

“Mr. Trafalgar,” he said around a swallow, and throwing the glass over his shoulder, ignoring where it shattered, “Thank you ever so much for bringing me the head of Strawhat Luffy!”

Having been successfully blinded by the sun, Law simply shut his eyes. The rat-man burped into his fist with a coy giggle. 

“I’m a stickler for a time table, so let us keep it brief! Staff Sergeant, if you would be so kind.”

He lifted his hand and waved a pair of white gloves. Across the way, at the man’s back, a troop of Marines at parade rest hurled themselves in marching formation with a loud call and response. 

“Chesty Puller was a good Marine and a good Marine was he!” They chorused as they clambered out of sight. 

“Don’t worry, they’ll be right back.” The rat officer sighed, plucking his hat by the bill and stuffing the gloves inside before tucking it on his head once more, tapping the top jauntily. 

“Now, I can hear the cogs in your brain catching on each other, Mr. Trafalgar, so I shan't keep you in suspense a moment longer. Perhaps you recognize this?” He bowed slightly and gestured with the flat of his hand toward a large industrial tent whose roller door was retracting on cue. 

Law shouldn’t have been surprised to see the vivisected remains of his ship scattered across the dry dock within, but it had been pointed out to him recently - repeatedly - that he had developed a bad habit of pinning his bleeding-fucking-heart to sleeve for the world to gawk at. 

“And, of course the tricky business with your - yes, Hanzaki, that was your cue, hand it over. Quickly. Good Lord, people will think you were raised in a dairy, what with the way you like to milk it -” A lance corporal tottered toward him, awkwardly gesturing with some object in his hand, as if he feared getting too close to the officer. “Be gone. I’m sure there’s an udder somewhere that requires your attention.”

Law zeroed in on the object that was passed between the two and felt a cold comfort grip him by the bowels. The officer noted his recognition as well, and waved the baton cheerfully. 

“I can see that you perhaps have some inkling as to the gravity of your situation.” The rat man nodded. “After the loss of my equipment, I couldn’t very well go and let some imminent environmental disaster fester within ear shot of a developing monarchy. A monarchy that has been very accommodating to the advancements of both technology and democratic safety. So, I had my men recover your little… fishing vessel.”

“How altruistic.” Law huffed, eyeing the baton. 

“I half expected it to be fashioned from driftwood. After all, I can’t have some defunct nuclear reactor leaking radiation across God’s ocean. Really, I don’t know how you managed to mishandle your reactor so badly. The fuel rods are completely without activity. Lucky for us, we were worried over nothing. ”

He tossed the rod at Law where it rolled to a stop near his knees. 

“Oh, but, our friends have returned - and they say ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’-”

The marching troops stomped around the barracks they had disappeared behind, producing individual members of both the Strawhat and Heart crews, lining them up against the shiny exterior wall. Law took a moment to visually assess the lot to assure himself that no one was seriously injured. The archaeologist, the second mate, the deer, the navigator, Bepo, Ikkaku, and Hakugan were bound in ropes but all seemed whole and breathing, no dramatic wounds, no missing eyes. Robin, most noticeably, sported both ropes and a pair of seastone cuffs. 

“As head of this installation,” The officer announced gallantly, “I say let’s start by eviscerating the crew, as all of them have rather sizable bounties-”

“Hey, Robin!” Luffy cheered at his side, predictably unbothered by the situation. To her credit, she seemed nonplussed by this and raised her chin in acknowledgement. “What’s 'eviscerating'?"

“Oh, but I’m feeling so changeable today!” He continued, as if Luffy hadn’t spoken out of turn. “I find myself filled with such aggressive whimsy! No. Let us start with the matter of your boat.” 

“Yes,” Law huffed, “Let’s start with my boat.” 

“Indeed,” The man smiled. “ Fuck your boat.”

Law felt the muscles in his face draw back toward his ears, drawing a ludicrous smile across his face like a trenchant blade. Profanity was an unusual provocation technique for a Marine, who generally dote on their own uptight morality. 

The Marine leaned down and gripped Law by the chin. 

“Mr. Trafalgar, it would do for you to learn this as early on as possible: this,” He twirled a finger in the air, as if he was gesturing to everything. “Isn’t about you. Your Polar Tang is merely a convenient honey pot. You, merely a byproduct of the situation. So I suggest you shut your trap and I won’t retreat to my initial plan to dispatch your colleagues one by one in front of you like the pack of wild dogs that they are.” 

He shoved Law aside, ensuring his shoulder made contact with one of the cast iron grates before smiling down at him.  

“Capiche?”

Law clenched his jaw and glanced back at where their crews were chain-ganged. The lot of them stood smooth-faced, each one calculating the situation. Good. 

“Next, is the little matter of my precious missiles. Imagine my surprise when I received a startling notification - rudely interrupting my morning ristretto and beguiling gianduja croissant - of a decently-sized radioactive signal suddenly within range of my beautiful and expensive research facility! I do what any responsible officer of a certain rank would do, and have my men send a few investigative, albeit experimental, AI-assisted torpedoes - only for their little robotic lives to be forfeit in the process!”

Law stared at Bepo. 

He was wearing a suit and sunglasses. 

Fuck, that was super cute. 

“But I can forgive all that. What are a couple of multi-million beri missiles between kissing cousins, hm?”

“Robin, what’s ‘kissing cousins’?” Luffy shouted.

The rat-man continued, with an alarming amount of patience for Luffy’s antics. He nodded and a pair of men surged forward and hauled Law back onto his knees. One was so kind as to assist him with a handful of hair, tugging joyfully and allowing for fresh blood sluice down his neck. Law dug into the acidulous euphoria that arose around his nausea. Obstinance was always his best fitting suit. Apparently satisfied, the officer withdrew a folding fan from his coat pocket, tapped it against his open palm and started pacing once again. 

“I am a philanthropic man. I do not crave violence, nor do I feel the need to exorcise power over others to get my jollies. Success in business can be achieved through the right transaction. Negotiation is key to resolving conflicts and disputes, and I have neither conflict nor dispute with you, Mr. Trafalgar. Therefore, I put it forth to you: tell me what you know of the Will of D and I’ll release your crew without impunity.” 

Law could not see the ocean from here. He listened for the distinct chatter of gulls, or the sound of water lapping against a floating dock. The clouds overhead were beginning to sweep across the sky, casting a dark shade over the grounds. Law sighed through his nose, grateful for the reprieve. 

“Tell me how you fit your balls in your mouth every morning so I can fit mine in there with them.” He sneered. 

The man sighed, opening the fan with a loud ‘thwip’.

“Disappointing,” He nodded, “But not surprising.”

“But if you sent the blips to hunt Torao’s boat, what do you want from me?” Luffy asked, blindsiding Law. 

“Oh, darling, what don’t I want from you? The illusion of your prestige, your international piratical acclaim - your bounty. The list goes on.”

“Yeah, but… why?”

“Why?” The man balked. “Strawhat, is that any way to speak to the progenitor of your fate?” 

Law felt an incredulous stab of fear between his fourth and fifth ribs. Was this Luffy’s secret third brother? 

“Hah?” 

“I understand that it’s been some time since we last met each other face to face, but can you say that you ever truly forgot Captain Nezumi?” 

Oh, thank fuck. 

“Uh-” Luffy glanced toward his crew members, as if one of them would simply shout out the information to him. 

“Commodore, now.” The man dipped his chin demurely, holding arms out in a gesture that Law presumed that he presumed to be impressive. 

“You know this guy?” Law muttered not so quietly. 

“Oh yes,” The commodore continued, “I am the man that issued our young Strawhat’s first arrest warrant. A paltry little bounty, thirty million mind you, but nonetheless fit for a rapscallion from the backwater East.” 

“Oh, for busting up Arlong Park.” Law inclined his chin, to stare at him down his nose. “Famous for racketeering and human slavery, despite the Navy’s presence.”

“What can I say? I was acquitted.” Nezumi chortled, inspecting his nail beds. 

“What’s ‘acquitted’?” Luffy mumbled. 

“Acquitted and reassigned to an experimental little base all the way on the other side of the world - a lateral punishment, in the Navy’s eyes. Rather, I saw it as an opportunity to rebrand!”

“Oh my god, he’s still monologuing.” Law mumbled back.

“Yes, all around you, the prosperity afforded to Mont Haven is all thanks to yours truly! I’ve become somewhat of a legend myself - what with the installation of my precious coating, bolstered by wondrous properties of sea stone - you’ve no doubt seen it.” He gestured to the slick buildings surrounding them. “Yes, I really am something of a commodity these days - durable and protective, perfect for high traffic areas, great for theft prevention, an absolute must in a hurricane, and it's even a boon to the environment! God, what can’t I do?”

“Sorry - what’s the wall stuff got to do with you?” Luffy sighed. 

“Have you not heard? One does not achieve greatness without change. An opportunity bestowed upon me via a war chest seized by the Prince Regent, thanks to his precious Regatta.”

The Commodore fanned himself faster.  

“Devil Fruits are common enough among all sailors - Navy and Pirate alike. A matter of serendipity that should happen across my dinner table. Yes, I stand before you as superhuman, a Grand Line rarity - a Lacquer Man.” 

Law’s insides bubbled and burned. Indigestion, maybe? He hadn’t had coffee in what felt like decades. 

“From my skin, I produce the beautiful lacquer that - once dry - is so dense, so durable, it cannot be shattered. The perfect, immutable shield.”

“Thanks so much for the backstory.” Law said. “Is there where you reveal the conveyor belt with the laser?”

“Eager to accept your punishment, Mr. Trafalgar?” The officer - Commodore Nezumi, apparently - spun on his heel and nailed him with a cool look.

“Yeah,” Law grit out, taking the opportunity to spit on his shiny, patent leather boot. “I’m kinky like that.” 

It seemed that Nezumi had finally had enough. He stopped in front of Law, pocketing his fan once more, and leaned over him, casting him in his shade. 

“The reality is this, Mr. Trafalgar: I have your crew, I have your ship, and I have you trussed up like a holiday capon. Do you really think you’re in any position to continue to goad me?” 

“What’s a ‘capon’?” Luffy muttered, knocking his knee against Law’s. 

“He’s implying that I’m a castrated rooster.” 

The boy stared at him with a slightly irritated moue, and Law delighted in his frustration in being forced to ask the same question a second time. A button, primed for pushing. Maybe another time. 

“He’s implying that I don’t have balls.”

Law could pinpoint the exact millisecond that the image manifested in Luffy’s brain because his eyes immediately dropped below Law’s belt line. 

“Stop it.” He hissed, furiously working his facial muscles to keep his embarrassed grin off his face. He did not squeeze his knees together like he was trying to hold a dime between them. 

“Torao-”

“I could give you a demonstration, if you like.” The Commodore announced, aiming his swordfish-tipped boot at the center of Law’s thigh and delivering to it an exquisitely painful blow. He went down like a bowling pin. “A process once medievally known as gilding, effective at turning you into furniture. A set piece, if you will, dressing the background, picturesque in the agony of your final moments, a spectre of a bygone era."

“Oh my god, shut up.” Law grunted, pressing his cheek against a pavingstone. He rationed a look at Luffy - his face was hidden in the brim of his hat. 

“Yes, that would be too good for the likes of you, wouldn’t it?” Nezumi said. “Too public, too opaque. No, Mr. Trafalgar, you require something a little more bespoke,”

“Observe,” He tittered, and indicated the manhole cover at the center of the circular parade ground. A small unit of marines jogged up to it and made a show of working the wheel of the mechanism and lifting the man-sized lid on its single hinge. 

The guards lifted Law and Luffy by their elbows and brought them closer to the opening. Law obliged the Commodore by looking down into it. 

“Now, this is a little what-have-you of my own making, and I know what you’re thinking-”

“That it’s a hole?”

Nezumi laughed, as if entirely charmed. Which didn’t bode well. Law bristled. 

“It’s not just a hole! It’s an oubliette!” He smiled, fanning himself once again. “Do you know the difference, Captain?”

“Can’t say I do.” He sighed. 

“You see, a hole is rather too much like a grave. You can mark a grave, people can visit the grave and pay respects - it’s all rather tedious. We can’t very well have pilgrims imagining  themselves crusaders, can we? No,”

The Commodore set the end of his fan against Luffy’s forehead and pushed it back and forth.

“Rather unlike a hole, an oubliette is a means of forgetting. I shall dispense with you down its tight, uncomfortable, exiguous shaft. After which, I shall instruct these fine sailors to disperse with the pesky wheel that opens its mechanism. Then - and this is the genius part - I shall produce my lovely lacquer and coat the lid and perhaps even this entire parade ground with it. I may even do it two or three times, just as pleases my ever changing whims! How tasteful!” 

“And once I’ve covered it over, it will remain undetectable until the end of time.”

Law glanced back down the dark, dark hole and back up at the Commodore.

“Unless you tell me what I want to know.” He wiggled an eyebrow, mouth twisting into an asymmetrical smirk. 

“Fuck you.” Law seethed. 

“Not enough incentive for you?” The Commodore sighed. “Well, then I suppose I’ll just start with the boy-”

He snapped his fingers and the men holding Luffy dragged him forward. The Commodore reached out and set a hand on his shoulder and looked to Law pointedly, at which point his hand began to melt into a thick, dark sludge and run over his arm. 

“Quickly, now, Mr. Trafalgar,” The Commodore shouted gleefully over Luffy’s scrabbling. “Tell me what you know about the Will of D!”

Luffy pinned him with a look with the voracity of a knife. 

“Go fuck yourself,” He heaved, incapable of looking away from where the ichor was spreading over Luffy’s chest. 

“Pity.” The Commodore frowned and pushed Luffy aside. He stepped away as Law was brought before the hole, and called over his shoulder, “The world will simply forget about you, Captain Trafalgar.” 

Law should have expected the boot in the center of his back, but he had still been holding out hope for the conveyor belt. It was hard to tell whose scream echoed down the shaft - his or Luffy’s. 

-

A hard lesson that Law had been impressed to learn again and again and again was that you can’t know how far you’ve fallen until you hit the ground. He didn’t know how deep this hole went but he knew it was narrow. His feet, knees, elbows, shoulders - mazel tov - abraded that wall all the way down. When he hit the floor several long, agonizing seconds later, he crumbled with a shout. The percussion of his body meeting the dark, shellacked surface of the chamber was muted by the rush of pain-snuff adrenaline rushing in his ears. 

An unknowable amount of time passed before the agony clouding his awareness finally began to recede, allowing him to attempt to take stock of the oubliette. He cranked his neck back and tried to make out the hole high above, trying to get a sense of depth but the opening had already been sealed shut. The darkness was absolute. He strained his ears, trying desperately to hear over his gasps and racing heart. Silence. Law was certain that if a gun went off, he would not be able to hear it. 

The sea stone shackles on his wrists were abhorrently heavy, passively comedically so in their ability to suck the strength right out of his body. He was exhausted without having done even a modicum of the work he exhibited yesterday. The bitterness in his mouth sickened all the way down to his core. He felt as if he were being eaten from the inside out, whatever strange exchange had locked the corrosive energy in his body was both consuming him and forcing its way out. 

“I wonder if this weirdo’s lacquer is radiation proof.” He sighed, cupping his hand, willing the feeling of a Room to spin into existence in his palm. 

The sour taste in his mouth spiked, he gagged. Suddenly, the sea stone shackles vibrated minutely, and Law felt their very atoms quiver, stretch, and then, shockingly, shatter. If he hadn’t been so focused on the feeling of radiation working its way through his body, he would have laughed at the pebbles in his palms. 

Lifting his hands, he reached out for the wall, attempting to make a picture in his mind of the space available to him. He could touch either side without extending his arms fully. The walls were smooth and exhausting. Seaprism here, too. 

Pressing his hand flat, he opened another Room. Again, the sensation of dying, then, the sound of the coating shattering. 

He brought his hand up to his face, trying to make sense of the now inert powder. Has the radiation affected the property of the sea stone? Hard to say, he wasn’t a scientist. He brushed the detritus off on his pant leg and spun another Room to life. He focused, down, down, down, drawing himself back to the narrow space-between-space that he found on the deck of the Sunny-go only hours before, searching for that window just outside of time.

Just as he was certain that his grasp on reality was sliding into the next reality, he found his view; he could see himself at the bottom of the hole; he could see the strange, somewhat liquid mass of Nezumi high above, oozing and deforming across the ground, sealing the hole just as he promised to do; he could see the flicker of Luffy’s luminous bones, where his form lacked vitality, where the elastomer bend of his spirit surged. There were the proximal shapes of their crews, frozen in action at the edge of his flagging recognition, each exploding with kinetic force, exchanging blows with the officers attempting to stop them. 

He could also see the lacquered fuel rods Nezumi had taunted him with, rolling away, having been cast aside.

Then, like the closing of a book, something inside of Law came to sudden, intense rest. 

Criticality. 

A flash of blue light, a pain so powerful that Law felt as if he were moving underwater. He imagined that this feeling was the degradation of his bones, as his molecules all pulled away from one another, like each little piece of him was being articulated on a wire, that when he dropped the Room, he too would fall apart.  

Everything after that appeared before him in flashes, like light couldn’t reach his retinas fast enough, like all the matter in the universe was standing between him and the object of his desolation, like he was time and everything else was the bullet. 

He didn’t need to breathe, he didn’t think his heart was even beating, didn’t feel for anything outside of the ravenous, greedy pull of radiation driving the shape of his power over the Room operating around him.

He looked down to find the begotten fuel rod in his hand, perhaps six inches long, black and glossy where the Commodore had coated it in the product of his devil fruit ability. Looking up, he can come to stand before the officer, gazing into the muddy impression of his face. Through the haze of quantum equilibrium, Room informed him that the figure was liquid all the way through. 

He looked at Luffy. His face was a mask of anger, body frozen in the moment of forcing himself to overcome the enthrallment of the shackles. Law had heard hearsay while locked up in Wano of the mining prisoner who broke free of their bondage. Why shouldn’t those rumors be about Strawhat Luffy? He was capable of so many wonders, of accepting pain and transmuting it into pure miracles. 

It was strange to experience a moment of clarity, while radiation was vaporizing his body from the inside out. His wants and needs had always seemed so tertiary in nature; the desire to love and be loved was an object outside the realm of his control, a variable beyond manipulation. As Law breathed, he willed his lungs to expand, his heart to contract, his blood to flow, his limbs to move, his fist to grasp the spent fuel rod. He felt the pull of the radiation in his bones as he willed it back into the rod, all too much like forcing an entire ocean’s worth of water into the mouth of a bottle. The Room pulsed around him, and he could feel his gaze through the window shift. The rod in his hand grew hot. Slowly, the world began to shift around him, as time adjusted itself around Law, a bullet on the verge of disassociation. 

When sound returned, Luffy’s shout of rage dopplered around him like a train in a hurricane. In front of him, he watched the gelatinous figure of Nezumi begin to harden, returning to a human consistency. Law fought the urge to swallow his tongue, mouth dry but faintly sweet, like champagne on a cold night. The feeling in his hand was loud, indescribable, a terrible fiery-pressure pulsing from a mathematical definition he was barely managing to contain. 

Wants and needs stood at the very forefront of his mind, which felt like it was dribbling out of his nose. All he needed to do was act. 

He dropped the Room. 

Full sound and fury, the explosion of bullets from guns, the clashing of swords, the meaty slap of bodies and fists. Law thrust his hand forward, burying it wrist deep within Nezumi’s half-formed chest. 

Nezumi, in his strange, in-between shape, wrapped a still-gooey hand around Law’s forearm.

“You’re a fool, Trafalgar Law. You’ve no crew, no boat - I’ll overlook this last act of defiance. Give me what I want.” The commodore laughed as thick, syrupy lacquer dripped onto Law’s shoes. “There’s nothing left for you here. Resign yourself to the fate I made for you.”

Law wretched his arm free, numb from the elbow down. He ignored it, having lost the whole damn limb in Dressrosa, he figured he could stand to lose it again. 

“I’ll decide fate for myself, thanks.” 

And, with a blue flash, the figure of the Commodore shuddered, and unzipped itself across hundreds of invisible leylines. The dark lacquer of his body hardened and then drooped, still for a moment as if upon a delirious exhale, and then crumbled into a pile of infinitesimal cubes. 

For a quiet moment, Law looked down upon the fractal remains of the Commodore and felt that he, too, could probably fall apart. 

-

Law was always reaching out for Luffy. 

He could be honest with himself about that. He wanted to touch him. Hold him. Feel him in his arms. Affection and lust were identical under a microscope. 

The sun had disappeared beneath a monstrous cloud that was spitting ice the size of golf balls. He tore his eyes from the discombobulated remains of the Commodore and reached out to Luffy. He was always within his reach. 

“I’m in trouble.” He huffed, gripping him by the bicep and hauling him upright. 

“Torao,” Luffy hissed, gripping him by the collar and hauling him down. They collided somewhere in the middle, hail shattering at their feet. “Are you done? Are you okay? Let’s go-”

Law let himself collapse into the feeling of his hands on him, for just a moment. Chilled to the core, he didn’t know he could burn so hot and survive it. The temperature of Luffy’s skin was a balm. 

“I accidentally off’ed a Commodore.” Law whispered into his hat. “I didn’t think shoving an unstable nuclear fuel rod into his chest would do that-”

“You’re an idiot-” Luffy huffed, and was he hauling Law over his shoulder like a bag of rice? Was this just a weird fucking play about Dressrosa come back to haunt him? 

“Are you injured?” Law asked unhelpfully, deciding that maybe his time to contribute to the situation had passed. 

“Torao, we need to get back to the cave.” He replied, somehow putting distance between them and the brawl in the parade grounds. 

Law flicked open a Room, and placed them among the machinery. Luffy, not prepared for this transition because Law was a stupid bastard who didn’t know how to use his words, collided with a cabinet and sent them sprawling to the floor. 

“Ow,” Law groaned, not actually in pain because he wasn’t sure he could feel anything any more. 

“Come on, we’re getting on the ship.” Luffy whispered to him, his hand cupped over Law’s shoulder. He could feel that. It was warm and even and wonderful. He supposed he could be convinced to peel himself off the floor if Luffy kept touching him like that. 

“What ship?” He sighed, taking stock of the familiar room once again. The alarm has stopped sounding but the lights continue to flash off the cave walls.

The boy, trying to drag him forward where he stood like a stupid pedestrian, dug a hand into his pocket and produced a single key with a charm that looked like a strawberry. 

“The sparkly one, Torao. Now come on !”

Law let Luffy drag him across the way to the dock where, somehow, the big, blue fish-faced submarine was still moored. The hatch was still open. The lights of its eyes still bright and unseeing. 

“You want to steal this submarine?” Law huffed, like he had forgotten how to laugh but was trying to remember. 

“It’s a cool date idea, right?” He replied, tugging Law by the wrist and hauling them into the boat. 

“Does everyone think I’m dead?” He said outloud, because he wasn’t sure. His mouth was moving without him having to think about it. “I think I’m dead. I think I would prefer to be dead somedays. This isn’t the first time I’ve started from zero. I’ve had a lifetime of practice.” 

“Torao, stop talking.” Luffy pushed him deeper into the ship. The door swung shut behind them and sealed itself, which Law chose not to examine too closely. Then, a pulsing glow began to emanate from a strip of lights along the floor, almost as if the ship was beckoning them deeper inside. 

“He thinks he destroyed my ship but I did it first,” Law continued, because he never liked Luffy telling him what to do anyway. Now that his heart was beating again, it was pumping blood through his brain and it was like all of his secrets and insecurities had been ejected from their hiding places and scattered across the floor. He could smell smoke. “He thought he had control over me but jokes on him, I don’t even have control of me. Hey, I need you to look after Bepo for me while I figure out what’s happening-”

Law slumped against the wall, his heart galloping between his lungs. He pushed his hands into chest, digging his fingers in. If he pressed hard enough, he could pull it out and examine it for stress. Acute myocardial infarction severely impacted the cardiac muscle by causing ischemia, leading to cell death and impaired function. Scar tissue. Arrhythmia, palpitations, dizziness - oh yeah, now that Law was alive, he was being killed by a heart attack. 

“You’re okay.” Luffy murmured, pressing him into the wall. He gathered Law’s clawing hands into his own and kissed them. “You’re not dying. Your bear is okay and your crew is okay.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve survived-” He sobbed, because he was dying anyway. “Everything I love I outlive. Every home I have is taken from me.”

“Torao,” The boy pressed the length of his body against Law’s, resting his forehead on his collar bone. The weight of him felt good. If he could be crushed to death before succumbing to his heart attack, that would be alright. “I’m alive. Can’t you feel me?”

He could feel him. His heart beat like a drum right up against his own. His body heat, his strength. His courage. Law wrapped his arms around his shoulders and held him tighter. He felt his heart jerk, his blood shudder, his brain douse the chemical slurry it was releasing like a spillway. 

“I can feel you.” Law murmured into his hair, eyes trained on the passageway wall but unseeing. The rope lights were warm. Was the ship… moving? 

“I can be your home.” The boy insisted. “It doesn’t have to be a place or a thing. It can just be me,”

He looked up into Law’s eyes and held him against the passage wall.

“Let me be that for you.” 

Law brought his hand up to hold him by the chin, to better examine the cut of his jaw and the assuredness of his brow. He never liked being told what to do but he also could not deny giving Luffy anything he asked for. 

“If that’s what you want.” Law sighed, starting to feel normal once again. 

“Yep.” Luffy pressed his face into his breastbone and nodded, once, twice, and, like a marionette, drooped against him. 

“You idiot.” Law groaned. “Don’t just do whatever you want.” 

He hefted him up and paced down the hall, unsure of what he would find. If the layout of this vessel was at all similar to the Tang, there would be a Mess, a Bridge, and Ready Room at the very least. 

Suddenly, a portal door swung open soundlessly and stopped just before making contact with the wall. Law pauses, watching for the appearance of a body, listening for the telltale sounds of Marine conversation. After a moment, nothing. 

Cautiously, he peered through the doorway. A bridge, of a sort, he presumed. A much larger space than the cockpit of the Polar Tang, it could support four or five bodies of varying tasks. The dim interior was aesthetically lit from below, with the same cool rope lighting, supported by the channel switches and toggles and sleeping touch screens of the various instruments within. 

For a second time that day, Law found himself in a Navy installation with the door ajar and room deserted. He considered the unmanned assault blips and began to wonder if the Marines were truly capable of creating all manner of underwater craft that was self-piloting. 

The bridge lacked the large, double acrylic viewport of the Tang. In fact, there were fewer portals than the Tang and therefore no way to verify if his suspicions were true - if the boat was moving, then someone had to be on board.

“Good afternoon, Commodore.”

“What the fuck-”

He threw open a Room, braced himself for the impact of radioactive media, then - nothing. Just the perfect spin and expansion of the operation into existence, like casting a net. Within his net, he found a girl - perhaps no older than eighteen - standing at the center of the bridge. He then dropped the Room like a hot rock, and it disappeared as pleasantly as it had formed. 

He pressed the same hand into the back of his head, over the patch of sticky blood matting in his hair. He sought the raised edges of the wound and found there to be none. His healing ability working in tandem with the Room, a return to normalcy, despite the circumstances. 

“Welcome Aboard, Commodore! I await your command.” She announced cheerfully, which was fucking weird.

“I command you to get off this boat immediately.” He replied, through an entirely transparent veil of contempt. 

“The Guidance System can be manually disabled with your passcode.” She bowed and gestured, somewhat vaguely, to any number of consoles that made up the cockpit - if it could be called a cockpit. The space was so multiplicitous with gadgetry that it seemed more like an over-engineered jewelry box than a utility room with a steering wheel. 

“The what.” 

“Would you like a hint?” 

What. 

“A hint?” 

“To remind you of your passcode?”

Law squinted. The girl smiled back, eyes like a black mirror. 

“Sure.” He grimaced. 

“The hint is: ‘Password’.” 

Law stared at the girl for a long, quiet moment and seriously considered if perhaps he was having a mental episode.

“Password?”

“Passcode accepted. Would you like to set the Guidance System to run the last known operation before disabling?” 

“Are,” He breathed around his amounting confusion, trying to stay calm as his brain melted out of his ears. “Are you the Guidance System?” 

“Firmware updated as of this morning, Commodore.” She bowed again, blonde pig tails falling over her shoulders. 

Like a cork suddenly springing free from a tub drain, Law drew up another Room. It relaxed open like a night bloom, easy and precise, a semi-permeable membrane that came to rest in perfect ratio. Finally unhindered by the noise of background radiation, he could observe her stunning lack of matter. She was without heat, volume, or any other physically observable thermodynamic. She wasn’t human. 

“What was the last known operation?” He asked, deciding it was best to simply be normal about this. 

“The last known operation logged is: ‘Pleasure Cruise’. Sixteen hours at cruising depth to Porto Secco.” Her voice modulated with shockingly human tones. 

Convenient, if suspicious. 

“What business does this vessel have making berth at Port Secco?” He adjusted his grip on Luffy and made a note of his breathing patterns, skin temperature, and rag-doll laxity. He slept like a damn toddler. 

“Manifest documentation reads: ‘Pleasure Cruise’, Commodore. All details regarding status of business have been redacted at your request.” 

“Of course they have.” He frowned, getting the lewd picture very quickly. “How many times has this vessel made the voyage?”

“Twice, Commodore.”

“Stop calling me Commodore. The late Commodore passed-” Law grimaced. “Command of this ship to me.” 

“Please enter a new form of address at your command.” 

“Where’s the Captain’s Quarters?” He dodged, peering down the low lit gangway leading out of the room. Dead weight was dead weight, and Luffy was heavy. 

“There are no Captain’s Quarters.” She provided effervescently. 

“Christ on a bike, where are the Commodore’s Quarters, then?”

“The Commodore’s Quarters can be located on the third level. Please follow me.” She bowed yet again and proceeded to walk through him to cross the threshold into the passageway. 

Law was a difficult bird to ruffle. He was not one to be easily flustered. He was once described by a newspaper as being ‘a ruthless bio-medical reductionist, a creeping pharmaceutical psychopomp masquerading as a privateer, whose medical misdeeds number into the thousands’ and so on (a robust clipping which, up until recently, hung on his office wall in a little frame Bepo found at a rummage sale). He did not shutter as if a ghost had walked through him, nor did he shout in a momentary lapse of terror. 

Sufficiently chilled, Law followed the girl down the dimly lit corridor. He watched her carefully, where her limbs were meant to articulate, how her hair fell across her shoulders as a consequence of gravity and air-pressure. She looked exactly like a human but was clearly a non-human entity - if his extra-sensory perception were to be believed (and it was, even if it had been pushed to its absolute limit in the last 24 hours) she seemed to be made of light, a sophisticated projection program. He cast an inquisitive eye to the ceiling for some mounted railing or other such device that might be producing the effect and found none. 

A flight of stairs and down another length of corridor, and they arrived at a stand alone portal on the stern of the submarine. She turned and bowed, gesturing at the door. 

“The Commodore’s Quarters are password locked.”

“Of course they are.” Law bit the inside of his cheek in an attempt to hold his tongue from spilling more vitriolic vocabulary. 

“Shall I disable the passlock command on all associated Command-level functions?” 

“That would be helpful.” 

The card reader on the portal flashed green and a pneumatic lock sounded within the frame. The door slid back into a pocket in the wall - jesus christ - and the ambient lighting warmed the room with a pink glow from within. The girl gestured vaguely. He was starting to wonder if she had been programmed with any other gestures. 

Law let himself in and slung the as of yet still unconscious body of the Strawhat captain into the bed. He pressed his fingers over the carotid artery pulsing evenly beneath his jaw and took comfort in its rhythmic expansion and contraction. Satisfied that the idiot was merely exhausted he turned back to the girl. She peered back at him, ambiguously. 

Her entire presence was an uncanny valley, he was discovering. Looking but not quite seeing. Moving but with no apparent effort. She bowed again and Law decided that the previous Commodore was a freak with a penchant for both adolescence and subservience and that he would, moving forward, feel much less remorse about killing him. 

“I have enabled mode: ‘Pleasure Cruise’. We are bearing north-northeast for Porto Secco, four hundred meters and diving. We will arrive in 954 minutes. Temperature at surface is dropping significantly, and barometric pressure is unusually low. Our sensors indicate a 96% possibility for bomb cyclone formation.”  

Law glanced around the room, entirely unable to perceive the movement of the sub. Fine. They’d figure out how to make contact with their crews later. 

“What, uh, what’s your name?” He tried, because he was starting from zero. Maybe New Law was courteous or something.

“I am the Guidance System.” She repeated, because the universe loved fucking with Law forever and ever. 

“Yeah, I got that, but what’s your name?” 

“I am the program that operates the Barracuda. If it would please the Commodore, you can call me Barracuda-chan.”

“I will not be doing that.” He grimaced. The status of the late Commodore was now demoted from Freak to Human Trash Compactor.

“Whatever pleases you best, Commodore.” 

“Alright, shut up with the ‘Commodore’ shit. It’s ‘Captain’. These are the Captain’s Quarters. You’re the Guidance System, so you have, like, a terminal or a… panel or something?” 

“There are three operation Cores located within the Barracuda. Cores A, B, and C, which in turn manage and monitor the Guidance System, Mechanical Operations, and On Board Server. They are housed within the Manifold Storage, conveniently within range of the room-temperature superconductor which cools the radioisotopic battery-”

“Oh my god, stop talking. Which core?” 

“Core A.” 

Law stared down at the little program and felt a funny little quiver of despair in his belly. 

“Cora?”

“If it pleases the Captain.” 

“Sure.” he breathed, winded at the suggestion. 

“I’ve opened a new user profile to allow for your specifications, Captain. We can begin adjusting  the configurations by updating the Manifest. As of now, there are no other crew members listed on my Manifest. Would you like to add them now?” 

Law squinted down at the strange blonde girl, and shook his head. 

“Do you see any crew members here?” 

She pointed at Luffy’s slumbering body, like a child pointing at the elderly. 

“There is one additional member in the Captain’s Quarters-”

“No, not him.” He hissed.  

“Then, no, I can locate no other crew members aboard the Barracuda.” 

“You keep saying the Barracuda. This ship cannot seriously be called the Barracuda. That’s embarrassing. That’s like naming your dick-”  

“The Commodore Nezumi christened my vessel as the Barracuda-”

“Well, I’m un-fucking-christening it because it blows-”

“On the contrary Captain, the name was chosen as a species indicative of the Commodore’s aggression and power-”

“But it doesn’t even look like a barracuda, does it?”

Law watched with glee as the image literally froze for several moments, its processing power lost in the argumentative shuffle, trying to answer the query Law put to it. Eventually, the girl shifted back into motion and nodded.

“The vessel bears a 32% likeness to the species Sphyraena.” 

“Exactly.”

“No, it is an approximation .”  

“You know what it looks like?” Law said, because he decided that he was going to fuck with the Universe right back. “It looks like a coelacanth. Big, blue. Older than Latin.”

“Vessel classification updated to ‘Coelcanth’, Captain.”

“You know what?” Law sighed, longing to be freed of this conversation. “Fine. Great, even. Where’s the bathroom?”

The girl - Cora, he supposed, though not without some mental gymnastics that left him winded -  gestured to another portal that pocketed itself within the wall. Stupid Navy scientists’ and their cool door technology. 

“Can you pilot?” he asked, looking between her and the door. 

“While my capabilities are limited, yes I can pilot.”

“What are your system limitations around piloting?” 

“My piloting functions are limited to steering, as I am an experimental vessel. No firmware updates have been scheduled to patch this.”

A beat.

“Steering is not piloting.” He pointed out, feeling a vein in his forehead beginning to pulse. 

“‘Pilot’ comes from the Greek word for ‘oar’ which can be used to steer-”

“Can you navigate?” He hissed, somehow completely unsurprised that even Secret Military Scientists were incapable of programming an artificial intelligence without machine learning semantics. 

“Oh, no, Captain. Actual navigation is far too complex for my current operating system.” 

“But you can steer.”

“Yes, Captain.” 

“And you can tell time?” 

“Yes, Captain.” 

“Then steer us away from Mont Haven and wake me up in four hours.” 

“Sir.” She bowed and blinked out of existence. 

He paused, scarcely daring to breathe as he waited for her to reappear. He strained to hear the whirr of a fan or the click of heated pipes or anything besides the gentle sound of Luffy breathing. Nothing. 

Alone, at last, he hoped. 

Law shuffled into the ensuite bath, a far nicer closet than even his was on the Tang. A single piece of stainless steel made up the sink with a generous countertop, affixed to the wall and beheld an ostentatious circular mirror, backlit with a ring of pink light. He glanced to the wall and found a little remote tucked in a magnetic cradle by the portal. He plucked it from the wall and pressed a button, watched as the pink changed to blue, then to green, then amber, and then a dancing rainbow pattern. He grimaced and worked the remote until the unobtrusive blue light filled the room once more. 

No cabinet under the sink, but a basket containing rolled towels. He snatched a hand cloth from the top and opened the hot tap, drenching the cloth. He glanced behind him and still found no cubby or even a rack of some variety attached to the back of the door. He turned back to the mirror and stared at his own face for a moment. He did not behold the bags under his eyes nor the blood curling down the side of his neck. He made quick work of the blood, rubbing the terrycloth over the mat of his hair.  

He dropped the cloth in the sink and paused, peering at the blue light bouncing onto the wall from the rear side of the mirror. 

“Oh.” He sighed, and ran his hand beneath the rim of the mirror. With a slight pull, it clicked open to reveal a tidy shelf of maintenance items, all neatly packaged and - most importantly - unopened. He glossed over various soaps and skin products, a curious pot of unguent with a tiger on the label, and landed on not a slick, branded box but one of brown cardboard and military stencil.  

He picked it up and skeptically turned it over, looking for some horrifying manufacturer instruction. 

“What on earth does the Navy issue prophylaxis for?”

“Excellent question!”

Nearly biting his tongue in half he jerked his eyes over to Cora, sitting on the toilet lid. Naked. 

“Why aren't you driving the ship .” He hissed, clutching the box of condoms to his chest. 

“It is a well documented fact that in an emergency situation, a non-lubricated latex condom can hold a gallon on water.” She supplied. 

“That is not the question I wanted you to answer.” He huffed. “Put on some clothes.”

“Which skin would you like me to apply? I have a vast library of clothing files to suit any taste. My most recent update contains some favorites of the late Commodore’s: would you like a preview of Private First Class, Yuka-chan?”

Law presses his mouth into a tightly welded seam that might prevent the churning in his gut to find an outlet. 

“Does Private First Class Yuka-chan have pants?”

Gleefully, she replied, “No.”

“Then apply whatever file most closely resembles a nun.” He sighed. Then, “Wait, fuck-”

“Searching for ‘Nun’.”

She looked off into the vicinity of Law’s left ear for a moment, and then met his eyes again. 

“Sorry, I don't know that one.”

“Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee.” He prayed, filled to his fucking knees with whatever feeling his body was capable of generating that shared a close approximation to gratitude. 

He slipped a finger into the package, which was blessedly previously unopened and plucked a pair of wrappers from within. He shoved it back into the cabinet and rounded on the still naked hologram perched expectantly on the toilet. 

“Unless otherwise explicitly ordered, you are not to… hologram or whatever inside the Captain’s Quarters. And especially not in the bathroom. Also, delete any clothing files that are lacking in actual clothes.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He blanched.

“It's ‘Aye Aye, Captain’.”

Cora blinked out of existence, leaving Law to stand awkwardly in the bathroom, a pair of condoms in his fist like some upper level Navy degenerate.

He shunted his boots into the corner and padded back to the bed. Luffy sprawled atop the duvet exactly as Law had left him. He tossed the condoms on the bedside table and fell onto the mattress next to him, and was asleep in an instant. 

-

Luffy was right.

(A phrase he would hesitate to say out loud.)

Napping together was great. 

Luffy was an excellent bedfellow. Unlike kissing, slumber wasn’t a fight. He didn’t blast body heat, he didn’t sweat, he didn’t even so much as talk in his sleep. 

An indeterminate period of time later, Law drifted into wakefulness. He turned to look at him on their shared pillow and remembered. Now, lying together in a foreign bunk, the quilted duvet drawn up to their chins to ward off the chill of the deep ocean. Law reveled in the bone deep comfort of sleep, of rest, the heavy weight of the actual goose-down comforter, of the leg thrown over his hip, the arms around him, the warm breath ghosting over his clavicle. 

The measure of losses and gains bearing down on him seemed far away for just this moment, and all that needed to be was right here. 

Law has always been prone to pessimism. Expectation of the worst meant that when his expectations were met, he didn’t have far to fall. Leave it to Luffy to raise those expectations. 

“You’re thinking so loud.” The boy slurred, rolling slightly, moving his body to cover Law’s. 

Law hummed back, noncommittally, enjoying himself. 

“What’re you thinking about?” He slurred into Law’s ear, his mouth hot against his skin. 

“Kissing you.” Law admitted, turned just enough to catch his lips cross his cheek. 

"Mmm," Luffy hummed against his cheek, rubbing up against him. "Scruffy."

"Yeah, yeah..." He sighed, rearing back in a once-in-a-lifetime attempt at consideration. Luffy's arm gripped him tight across the shoulders and tugged him back in. 

"I like it," He huffed, doing something with his tongue that turned Law's brain all the way off. "S'handsome. Smell good, too."

And somehow, they were making out. Law hummed at the lazy caress of their lips, reveling in the warmth of the tongue in his mouth, the indelible draw of sluggish lust cresting over his fatigue. 

He pressed his elbow into the bed, slipping Luffy onto his back and lazily rocked into him. He watched as his head lolled back against their shared pillow, as his mouth opened with a delicious groan.  

“What do you want?” He asked, enjoying the feeling of his cock hardening against his thigh. 

Luffy hid his eyes in the crook of his elbow, muttering something too low for Law to hear. 

“Tell me,” He breathed again, near delirious as he sucked a line of open mouth kisses down his neck.

“I want-”

“Yes-”

“I… I want whatever you want.” 

Law grunted in frustration and learned back to wrestle his shirt off. Diving back down he started with his hands. Luffy had lost his floral shirt at some point - Law spied it sticking out from between the bed and wall. His denim jeans surely must have been hell to sleep in. Better divest him of them posthaste. 

“That’s not an answer.” Law hissed, pressing his hands into his thighs, squeezing, holding him spread open, his hips allowing his knees to fold to the bed with ridiculous ease. 

“Torao!” He moaned, bucking up against Law’s hold. 

“Tell me.” 

He scrunched up his face, which Law thought was cute. He realised that maybe he could get exactly what he wanted and have it too. 

“I don’t-” He keened, distracted as Law spread his tongue flat over a nipple. He wondered how much sensation remained in the area, let alone within the mass of scar tissue. Not much, probably. He would need to find other potentially erogenous zones to tease. 

“You don’t, what?” He hummed, rolling the unresponsive bud of the other between his thumb and forefinger and watching carefully for his reaction. 

The boy fisted his hands in the bedsheets and grimaced. Maybe not that, then. 

“I don’t… I want - I want what you want-” 

Law shifted back up and pressed their noses together, breathing deeply against his cheek, dropping a lovely kunik there again and again.  

“What I want?” He breathed. “Seems a little generous for a pirate.” 

“Torao-”

“Then again, I suppose it might do for me to learn a little selfishness,” Law hummed against the half moon scar under his eye. “I want you , Mr. Pirate King.”

“ Law .”

Law grimaced against the throb of liquid pleasure that shot straight to his dick. Luffy was the goddamn sun. 

“I want to fuck you.” He admitted, like it hurt. The boy groaned in his ear. 

“Yep,” Luffy sighed against him, “I want that, too.”

Law kissed him again, “You sure?”

“I want you to want it,” Luffy huffed. “I want you to want me like I want you.” 

Law paused at this. He was prepared to feel disillusioned. Cautious. Distracted. But Luffy saw this moment of hesitation and must have decided it was a battle front. His hand slapped down on his naked shoulder and rolled Law onto his back. The boy hauled himself into Law’s lap, hands running up his chest, over his tattoos and settling on his face, which he grabbed with both hands. 

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t even say anything-”

“I want to tell you what I want.” Luffy grunted, knees pressing into Law’s sides like a runaway pony. “I want you to be comfortable. I want you to take what you need. The space you need, the time you need. I want you to be able to tell my cook what you want for dinner. I want you to feel the freedom to smile when you want to. When you mean it. When you want it,”

“I want you to be happy.” He heaved, rocking down against Law’s still clothed cock trapped between them. When had that happened? Law was so deliciously horny that he had skipped over ‘pleasant buzz’ to ‘slippery delirium’ without much preamble. 

“You’re asking for a lot.” He protested, gripping Luffy’s thighs.

“I can give it to you.” He insisted, “I want to give you happiness, Torao. Then, I want you to give it to yourself.”

“Fuck,” Law groaned. “Let’s try my idea first-”

“What idea was that-” Luffy interrupted, leaning down and working his tongue over Law’s hard palate, just to be obstentant. He could feel his eyes rolling back into his head so hard that they were going to bruise his brain. 

Before he could elucidate the boy, he nearly unseated him from his place astride his hips when his greedy fingers found his waistband for the umpteenth time that day and started pulling at the buttonfly. 

“Jesus fuck-”

“I’ve been thinking about this all day, Torao. Since yesterday, since last week-”

“You can wait thirty seconds-” Law sat up and clawed his hand over the back of his head, working against Luffy’s just to frustrate him. It worked instantly. 

“I don’t want to wait! Get your cock in me-” He groaned, thwarted by Law when he tried to get his hand on his dick through his boxer briefs. 

“You will let me put a condom on or I won’t fuck you at all.” Law hissed, snatching one from the nightstand. “I refuse to lecture you about safe sex-”

“Hurry-” He sighed, kicking off his shorts, underwear and all, and bumping into Law on the way down into the mattress, fumbling between where he wanted to lie down and where Law wanted to put his hands on him. 

“What’s the rush-” Law huffed sarconically, spitting into his hand and spreading it over the boy’s hole without thinking on it too hard. If he thought about it, he’d cum immediately and then pass away from the severity of the orgasm. 

“ Law -” The boy pressed back into the bed and hooked a leg over his hip, forcing Law right where he wanted him without having to say a word. Law felt hot all over and he made short work of rolling the condom onto his cock. He had never been so hard in his life. 

He rested his weight on one hand by the boy’s shoulder and guided his cock with the other into the welcoming, elastic heat of his hole. 

Luffy’s body is made for this, he thought, maybe even out loud, delirious with desire. Law bent him in half, his body going willingly, knees pressed into his shoulders. He managed to keep him there for a few, perfect thrusts before Luffy started fighting back again. 

“Laaaw-” he keened, high and lovely, “Wanna touch you-”

And how could Law resist, when he asked so sweet? The moment he loosened his grasp, Luffy pushed at his shoulders and tucked his heels into his lower back - directing Law without speaking, communicating exactly how he wanted to be fucked. 

“Christ-” He grit out, dropping to his elbow by Luffy’s head, the other hand fisted in his hair, lost in the easy roll of his hips, the perfect slap of his thighs against Luffy’s springboard ass meeting him with every cheerful thrust.

“That-that-that-” He chanted, angling his hips for Law to catch his sweet spot. 

Luffy running his hands over his chest and shoulders, his tattoos, gripping him had around his biceps. And god, he was loud, but somehow Law was unsurprised to discover him so exuberant about sex. He groaned, letting his head fall back in pleasure, sobbing freely, expressing his delight without reservation. Luffy was an engaging lover and enjoyed Law openly. 

Law felt nothing short of attractive in Luffy’s eyes. A heady realization.  

“Come on, Mr. Pirate King,” He murmured, luxuriating in the sweat cooling on his back and thrum of work warming him from the inside out. “Cum for me.”

To Law’s surprise, he did. 

He barely had time to gasp before bucking up against Law’s fist, trembling with the effort of it, back bending as Law ground against him.

“Fff-ugh-” The boy hissed, mouth slipping around the tempting fricative that Law knew so well. Law fucked him through it, rhythm faltering as his hole quivered around him, running on the very knife’s edge of his own climax. 

At which point, Luffy found a second wind because he muscled him over, falling into his shoulder, riding him hard - or at least, trying to. Law would not be a passive participant and certainly wouldn’t be bested by Luffy - although being ridden by the King of the Pirates had a wicked appeal, drawing itself up from the depths of his lizard brain. Law regained command from the lizard and gripped Luffy by the hips, pulling him onto his cock. He groaned through his teeth, only barely managing to get a foot against the mattress to fuck up into him, chasing his orgasm to it’s near instanteous resolution.

“I want it, I want it, I want it-” Tumbled like a mantra from Luffy’s spit slick mouth, his eyes glazed over in pleasure. Law was only a man. 

His orgasm snapped clean, like the ripcord of a parachute, filling and falling simultaneously. Luffy keened again, shuddering on his cock, driving him into blinding overstimulation.

“Inside, Torao, inside-” He wailed, a hand working over his pink cock. 

“Fucking hell, Luffy-” Law heaved, eyes fixed on the cum sluicing between Luffy’s fingers, dripping down and gathering in Law’s navel. 

He wretched himself up and wound his arms around the boy, keeping him on his dick, forcing him to stillness. Law groaned as his hole twitched around his cock, almost confused about whether it was going to stay hard. 

“Did you cum twice?” Law demanded incredulously. 

He mumbles back incoherently. “I think I died.” 

“You’ve survived worse than me.” Law huffed, and fell back into the mattress for a quick nap. 

-

The absurdly spacious kitchen was equipped with an espresso machine. Law could simply cry. 

He resolved to find coffee or die trying, after a second round of life-affirming sex, because life wasn’t worth living if he couldn’t batter his neurotransmitters into submission on a daily basis. He made a quick - and solo - trip the ensuite and then did not tip toe through the vessel like he was worried he might bump into someone. 

Not that he could bump into light projections, as he previously discovered. 

Cora remained out of sight. 

The espresso machine had one of those built in cones, with the grinder in the bottom. And there were beans in it. He pressed a series of buttons, and lo. 

There was a beautiful cup of espresso, topped with a creamy head of crema. He brought the cup to his lips and drank the entire thing in a single, blistering swallow. 

“Oh fuck,” He heaved, once he resurfaced. Was this better than sex? He paused, mentally checking in with his dick. Almost, yeah. 

By the time he had nearly finished making the second cup, Luffy had discovered his whereabouts. He turned where he rested against the stainless steel countertop and allowed the boy to rest his head against his shoulder. 

“Mr. Pirate King,” He greeted him magnanimously. The boy shivered and groaned incoherently in response. Law took this as a good thing and brought the cup up to his mouth and relished in the bitter mouthful as it sublimated across his palate. 

Law observed where a drop of coffee ran down the side of his cup and sighed. Swirling the dregs, observing a few grains of sugar that failed to dissolve, he brought the cup up to his mouth, and licked up the side of the cup. 

Too precious to waste. Too delicious to care. 

He set the cup back into the saucer. He caught Luffy’s hard gaze through his lashes.  

The boy reached over and helped himself to the last swallow in the cup - the grainy dregs - and winced. Then, he pressed himself up and kissed Law full on the mouth. Law hummed, extremely appreciative. He breathed on, spreading the flat of his hand over his shoulder, up to his neck, enjoying holding him. Enjoying the intimacy of it. 

Luffy drew back but Law didn’t let him get far, catching him with a hand cradling his ear. 

“Bitter.” He wheezed, sticking his tongue out. 

“Captain, we’re being hailed!” Cora called out from fucking nowhere. 

“What-” Luffy turned to find her. 

“It’s nothing - the ship talks-”

“The ship talks -” Luffy breathed, eyes sparkling with excitement. 

A familiar looking wall unit flashed within arms reach, so Law leaned over and toggled the switch. 

“Hello?” He tried, like he’d forgotten how to talk to other people. 

“Torao? Is that you? Where are you?” A woman’s voice sounded, through what he would assume is this ship’s version of standard interference. It was quite clean. 

“Say please.” He replied, absently running his hands through Luffy’s hair. He was being very obliging. 

“Fuck off.” The navigator hissed. 

“Nami! We’re-” Law clamped a hand over his mouth. He wasn’t quite ready to give this up just yet. Afterglow or whatever. He was allowing himself to be sentimental for the first time in a decade. 

“Luffy, please, I’m on the phone.” He chastised. “How on earth did you figure out the hailing frequency on this vessel?” He demanded, face turned toward the panel as if the woman was in the room with them. 

She scoffed, clear as crystal. 

“What kind of amateur do you take me for? There’s a transmitter in Luffy’s hat. That, and there are literally 6 sonographers on your crew. We worked backwards and plucked your signal out of the bottom of the sea. Because there was all of one signal on the bottom of the sea.” 

“Hey, can I just - sorry- Captain? It’s Penguin-”

“Go ahead,” Law sighed, quietly pleased to hear his voice. 

“How exactly are you at the bottom of the ocean? With all due respect, I saw the Tang literally torn apart-”

“We’re headed for Porto Secco.” He diverted, “Meet us there and you’ll find out.” 

“Luffy! Tell Torao that we are not a taxi service!” Nami demanded. 

Then, Cora appeared. Instead of simply popping into existence, she chose to appear as though she had walked through the wall - which was upsettingly weird, and Law decided to keep it because it was certain to freak Penguin out. Oh, Bepo would hate it. 

She was wearing a little sailor uniform, which was still ridiculously perverted. 

“ETA?” He asked. 

“90 minutes, Captain.” She said, dropping into her preprogrammed bow. 

“Eh, tomorrow sometime.” He lied. “Just head over and hail for us when you get there. We can discuss my demands to hand off your Captain.”

“Demands?!” The navigator hissed. “In what world do you think you are in a position to demand anything-”

Law toggled the switch, took one last look at his empty coffee cup and sighed. 

“You should have another one.” Luffy nodded. 

“Porto Secco is a pleasure resort, you know.” Law nodded, twisting out of his arms and tapping the puck out of the portafilter and then loading it with a fresh grind. “Plenty to see and do. I believe you said something about wanting to go to the movies-”

Luffy held him from behind and tucked his face between his shoulder blades. 

“Promise to meet me at Laugh Tale.” He whispered. 

Law held his hands where they met over his navel, brought one up to his mouth and dropped a kiss in the center of his palm. 

“It’s a date.” 

-

Please go and find Newttxt on Tumblr and Blsky for their 13 pg comic they illustrated! First page preview below <3