Chapter Text
He’d first come across her on Mirror Ball Island, beginning a dangerous game of cat and mouse that would span a decade. They’d received word of the risk of high pirate activity during a masquerade on the island. Smoker had been determined and efficient even then, twenty-four years old and a rising star amongst his peers. While the idea of keeping an eye on a masquerade hadn’t seemed challenging, there was always the chance of pirates in masks. He was known for his success, apprehending pirates without a single one managing to evade his grasp.
Until her.
Morrin Mauve was the captain of the Lilac Lavender, an obnoxiously purple ship that boasted gaudy silks as sails. It was a name that Smoker had only heard of here and there before the masquerade, which was likely why he didn’t consider her seriously as a threat. She was known as Melody in show business circles, a pseudonym that Smoker only discovered far later, when he connected the two roles. Melody the jazz singer, and Morrin the pirate.
The masquerade spilled onto the streets of Mirror Ball Island, the entire town aglow with multicolour lanterns and flashing bright lights. The music was loud and overbearing, thrumming into Smoker’s head. He brought two cigars to his mouth and inhaled slowly, blowing out a plume of smoke, briefly obscuring his view of the stilt-walkers and street performers. In the centre of the congregation, masked people laughed and danced around a fountain, a stone dragon with water spewing from its open maw.
The scent of smoke from his cigar was overridden by thick incense billowing from multiple pillars, one of which Smoker leaned against with boredom. He had little interest in dancing, or celebrations. He was there for one reason: to apprehend any pirates that appeared to be causing trouble. He was beginning to wonder if it was a waste of a night’s work, until he saw the flash of vivid violet, heard the high trill of laughter amidst the incense and lanterns.
Despite all of the colour and glitter amongst the dancers, somehow she stood out. Her dress was a sparkling deep indigo, shining like stars beneath the lanterns, a layer of tulle glitter fabric over purple silk. Amethysts glittered in her ears and adorned her chocolate brown hair. A smile adorned her full lips as she twirled and spun with liquid grace, and Smoker found himself mesmerised for a moment, before he pulled himself together and remembered he wasn’t at the masquerade to stare at pretty young women.
The dancers moved and weaved as one, their steps somehow too perfect, too choreographed for a random group of citizens. Suspicion furrowed his brow as he brought his cigars to his lips once again, assessing each carefully constructed movement. Was it a troupe of dancers selected to perform? He was still puzzling over the answer when he watched the woman in purple spin away from her partner, and alarm coursed through him at how quickly her posture and demeanour changed.
Smoker recognised a hunter when he saw one, because it was what stared back at him whenever he looked into the mirror. The smile dropped from her lips, hard determination crossing her face in its place. Instead of the languid grace of a dancer, her movements were sharp and assured as she moved away from the fountain and into the shadows. He had only a heartbeat to decide on what he was going to do, and cursing around his cigars, he stalked off after the woman in purple.
She was good, he’d give her that. As the young woman dodged down a dark alley, Smoker almost lost her twice, flashes of purple managing to keep him locked on. Initially, he suspected that she was a common thief, before he saw the ship gliding toward the docks, slicing through the tranquil water like a knife through butter. Purple silk sails, a Jolly Roger with heart-shaped eyes rising to full mast.
He gritted his teeth. Pirates. Of course she was a pirate. He didn’t recognise the sails at the time, though he would later come to know them intimately, a taunt every time she managed to escape or evade him. His body shifted into smoke as if second nature, and he barrelled through the alley, knocking the young woman over. She hit the cobblestones with a soft groan, a tumble of silk and tulle.
“I don’t think so, little lady.”
Despite her face contorting with fury in the dim light, she was beautiful, perhaps a year or two younger than him. A heart-shaped face, full lips, eyes the same colour as the amethysts that glittered in her ears. Her lips twisted in derision as she stared up at him, chin tilted up, taking in the white hair and the cigars in his mouth. She didn’t attempt to struggle or fight back, she simply stared up at him with all the scorn in the world.
“Lieutenant Smoker.” Her voice was husky and lower than he’d expected, and her lips shifted from scorn into amusement as she tilted her head to examine him. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“Another good for nothing pirate.” Smoker said dismissively, fingers tightly gripping her shoulders. Her lack of resistance was baffling, but he never let up his hold. At his nonchalant response, her amethyst eyes brightened, her smile growing until she was baring her teeth. She wasn’t offended that he didn’t know her; she was delighted.
A giggle escaped her mouth. “Captain Morrin Mauve. Pleasure to meet you.”
A pirate captain, no less. The name was still unfamiliar to Smoker, which vexed him. He liked to know his enemy, but at least it meant the woman he was dealing with was a lesser-known pirate and therefore likely not a threat. Yet the way she stared up at him with expectant challenge in his eyes was unnerving. Most pirates were not so calm and collected when pinned to the ground by a Marine.
“Now that we’ve been formally introduced…” There was a playful edge to her tone, as if this wasn’t a matter she took seriously in the slightest. “Would you be kind enough to let me up off the ground? My crew and I are rather busy.”
Smoker scoffed. “Busy committing crimes? Yeah, I don’t think you’re going anywhere, Captain Mauve.”
She had the audacity to wink. “Call me Morrin.”
For a moment, he was so stunned that he had no response. Why was this woman winking at him? Did she not take the situation seriously? Unfortunately for Smoker, the moment was all it took for all the playful amusement to bleed out of Morrin, leaving only steely determination in its place, her expression changing suddenly yet again. He should have known after he’d seen how quickly she could shift at the dance.
“You’re going to let me go, Lieutenant Smoker.” Cold command rang through her voice, until it was all that he could hear, all that he could feel. “You’ll get up and walk away.”
He was so astonished that he couldn’t push against it, instead removing his hands from her as if burned, lurching to his feet with a stumble in his step like a drunkard. Morrin rose with smooth grace, in absolutely no hurry. He was rooted to the spot as she blew him a kiss and then sauntered off toward the docks, before his feet moved of their own accord, not toward the pirate captain, but away from her.
He would later learn that Morrin Mauve was in possession of Supreme King haki, only the rarest of the three haki, and that she was extremely proficient in it. Captain Mauve wasn’t an unknown because she wasn’t a threat; she was an unknown because she had used her power to convince people she wasn’t.
Morrin wasn’t just the first pirate to ever escape Smoker. She was the only pirate to ever escape Smoker, and his mind fixated on it, on the fact that some amethyst-eyed woman with a clever smile had managed to escape him where no one else had. It was a fixation, until it was something more. It was a fixation, until it was an obsession.
Captain Morrin Mauve of the Lilac Lavender was known for her style, thank you very much. When she had first engaged in piracy, a small girl with wide eyes and big dreams, she had learned an important lesson from the first captain she’d served under: every pirate needed flair, something that made them unique. So Morrin made herself purple, each and every shade she could find. Her captain’s cabin was adorned with violet ornaments and a deep indigo rug. Most of her clothes, if not purple, had the colour somewhere on them.
Yet the Marines could never catch Morrin. Not because she was especially clever, or a talented fighter. No, Morrin’s gift was that she was an extremely powerful Supreme King haki user. It was what kept her name off everyone’s lips. There was fun in being a notorious pirate, certainly, and yet ‘fun’ was little compared with the ability to slip into the seas like a siren. After her encounter with the infamous Lieutenant Smoker on Mirror Ball Island, Morrin could not help but preen.
They called him the White Hunter, and he prided himself on never having let a pirate escape his grasp. She had shattered that pride when she had been the first, something that made her gleeful as she shed her pirate captain skin to become something else entirely: the jazz singer Melody. After all, piracy was not always as profitable as she would like, and she had always been a musical girl.
Morrin was sharp-witted with a clever tongue. Melody giggled and flirted her way through whichever venue she was set to perform in, never too shy to tip a wink. She was extroverted and outgoing. She was a fiction, a mask that Morrin put on so that no one would ever guess that ‘Melody’ was the same person as Morrin. She let the customers buy her drinks, downing cocktails that fizzed and bubbled their way down her throat.
It was a few months after the Mirror Ball Island incident that she saw Smoker again. She couldn’t recall exactly how long; enough time that she had almost forgotten about the incident and her delight in evading him. So when Morrin went to perform and saw him sitting patiently in the back row of the audience, she almost let the mask slip entirely. She faltered only a brief moment, panic flashing through her eyes, before she pulled herself together.
Her performance was nothing less than perfect, but it was only because Morrin was a born liar. Trickery and deceit came naturally to her, after years of learning them from the best. She’d been lied to and heartbroken by so many people she trusted that she had pieced together the shattered edges and created Melody with them. Melody hadn’t grown up in an orphanage, staring out at the sea and dreaming of escape. Melody hadn’t gotten her knuckles rapped with the cane when she’d missed a spot cleaning the kitchens.
Once the curtain dropped, panic pulsed in every heartbeat as Morrin marched offstage. Her dress, silver and sparkling, constricted her chest and she reached up to rub at the hollow in her throat. She had managed to evade Smoker once; certainly she could get away with doing it a second time. Yet he would be smarting from the sting of her initial flight, and he wouldn’t fall for the same thing twice.
“Shit.” Morrin breathed as she gripped the edges of the backstage desk, bright white bulbs circling the cracked mirror like a halo.
Slow footsteps caught her attention, making her whirl away from the desk. She inhaled and exhaled, forcing herself to stay calm. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was simply performing, and she refused to go into a panic at the prospect of capture. Morrin saw the orange glow of the cigars and the waft of smoke first, as Smoker strode backstage at a leisurely pace. He examined Morrin with satisfaction, and it was clear that he thought she was a mouse caught in a trap, and he was the cat with a paw holding her down.
“Smoker.” Morrin’s lips, coated in crimson, twisted in a wry smile as she observed him. “I’m flattered that you thought to come to my show.”
“I knew the moment I heard about a singer with a voice like a siren that it was you.” His gruff voice sent chills racing up her spine, though Morrin was reluctant to delve into what sort of chills those might be. “Moonlighting as someone else, huh?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You have no idea who I am and what I do in my spare time.”
“You mean when you aren’t pirating?” He arched an eyebrow, and Morrin forced herself to ignore the way the dim light shimmered across his bare chest. Was it not Marine policy to wear a damn shirt, or did Smoker consider himself an exception? She hated him for it, and she hated herself for the momentary distraction that allowed him to turn his arms into smoke.
“Oh, honey.” Morrin tilted her head to the side, her heart thundering in her chest. Not with fear, but with excitement. Smoker was one of the few Marines who posed a challenge to her, and she might be wearing a dress that sparkled like a thousand shattered mirror shards, but it didn’t make her any less dangerous.
“I know your tricks now.” Smoker examined her with the air of a man who was about to get exactly what he wanted, eyes gleaming.
“Not all of them.” Morrin trilled, and when he sent the smoke her way, she ducked and rolled, reaching up the hem of her dress for the knife she kept strapped to her thigh. She was fast. She’d always had to be fast, because she was aware that she was small, and the moment someone seized a hold of her, she would struggle to weasel her way out.
The smoke swept through the room, whirling around her until she found herself trapped within it. If Smoker managed to cover her mouth, prevent her from using her haki…she couldn’t allow that to happen. Her knife would be useless against the smoke, so as the misty grey tendrils reached for her, she barked out a command.
“Stop.”
He did, the smoke fading away until he was just a man again, limbs frozen and eyes livid. It was the anger that excited Morrin most of all, coaxing a wide grin to her face.
“I wouldn’t judge yourself too harshly.” Morrin drawled, though she could see that Smoker was itching to resist her command. The first time, surprise had won her an advantage, but those with strong wills had the ability to push against her haki. Smoker may not have learned how yet, yet she was certain that he would. She could only rely on it for so long, before she was forced to demonstrate…other gifts. “Few manage to fully resist Supreme King haki. Perhaps Dracule Mihawk or another man of immense power…but you’re not quite there yet, are you?”
Fury contorted his face at the mention of one of the Warlords of the Sea, Morrin’s verbal backhand leaving its mark. She was digging her claws into her ego, and it enraged him. The ire of a powerful Marine might have scared most, but Morrin was not ‘most’. Taking advantage of having him right where she wanted him, unable to wrestle her down with his smoke, she blew him a kiss and fled out into the night.
Her haki was her most powerful asset, but it was also a mask for something far more insidious, a card that she kept close to her chest. As she let the shadows of a nearby alleyway swallow her whole, determination pulsed through her. Smoker had eaten a Devil Fruit to obtain his powers, that much was clear, and while she enjoyed messing with him, there would come a time when she worried her haki might not be enough.
So she feared what might happen when he found out about her Devil Fruit.