#amber lead

[bakkfity]

Those seemingly endless waits in hospitals….

(I saw a picture of Chris Evans with a kid, and all I could see was Corazon and Law….)

[strangerdcd]

What would be worse?

Being turned into a toy by Sugar.

Forced to eat a Smile Fruit.

Taken by a Celestial Dragon.

Being sick with Amber Lead.

Being Big Mom's kid.

Getting a Buster Call on your home island.

Drifting ar sea for decades w your friends' corpses.

Being turned into a zombie.

Getting impaled by Akainu.

Getting experimented on at Punk Hazard.

Getting boiled alive.

Having to eat your own leg to survive.

Voting ended onJan 27

[salmonwise]

snippet from a wip of a marine!law, amber lead au. doc titled sick sick sick. (references to all the horrible shit the WG does in canon, & cruelty towards animals & people)

SONGS;

Sick, Sick, Sick— Bayside

Help I’m Alive — Metric

Law woke up, tried to brush his teeth, and instead threw up chunks of semi-congealed blood into the sink.

“Gross,” said Helmeppo, who at this point was applying a whitening strip to his teeth at the sink beside him. Law flipped him off and threw up again. His day did not improve from there.

After going back to the dorms and trying and failing to stomach lightly mint-flavored toothpaste, Law committed to his stank breath by smoking a cigarette outside of the mess hall. He crushed up caffeine pills and took those instead of drinking anything, since clearly his GI system couldn’t handle the steaming tar they took for coffee on base. In addition to the caffeine pills, Law swallowed down his four day-of-the-week prescriptions as according to it being a Thursday. He then went back to his bunk, put on a uniform that didn’t reek of cheap cigarettes, and went to join the morning lineup.

Law didn’t exactly hate that he was alive, but he did have a weird relationship with it. He stood at attention next to petty officer Coby, who had been of a height with him when he started but had since overtaken him. Now all the marines on Garp’s ship were again taller than Law, and would always be so. In the stark comparison of a lineup, it was obvious where the malnutrition and sickness hit Law the hardest. He was much paler than the others, his hair duller, and the regulation uniform hung off his skeletal frame even at the smallest size they could make-to-order. In his earlier years of service, it had been a persistent question as to how he’d passed medical clearance. The answer was that he had not, but that Sengoku had argued there was no harm in letting a dying boy die for a cause.

Law looked to his left and to his right and felt like nothing as much as a ghost. Cora-san had fulfilled his promises to Law and gotten him to doctors that could help him— and did do so, with his new adopted grandfather’s connections easing the way. He was grateful to be alive, and always, incandescently happy that Cora wasn’t just another lying adult, but being alive sucked balls.

Today, the poor fool on training duty had no patience for them. They did four warm-up laps around the sandy courtyard, which turned the cold air in Law’s throat to hoarse glass. They proceeded to cycle into maintenance stations; one group at a time doing each exercise and then running over to the next area to tag the last group out and so on. Law did planks until he threw up and until he could keep it down, he did pull-ups until his arms truly gave out on him, he dragged a weight across the sand by his hips until it left the sort of bruising that made a nurse slip you a domestic violence pamphlet. After those came the real event of training, sparring, where he got the shit kicked out of him for over an hour to the point that even the real assholes started feeling bad about it. Then they went to lunch.

“I’m serious, man. You should quit,” said one such asshole, poking Law’s arm as he was slumped over one of the long tables in the mess. “Go live on a farm or something. Die in peace.”

Law mumbled something that would have been scathing if it hadn’t been said with a mouthful of wood varnish, and flipped Koki off. His offending hand was then nudged by the warm porcelain of a small bowl of rice, so that bird died a quick death as Law took the bowl and reeled it in towards his greedy mouth. Koby, who was always the one to charm the kitchen staff into allowing him extra portions, sat down across from Law and Koki. Helmeppo sat down next to him.

Law and Koki were in the same unit, as were Koby and Helmeppo. Law got the sense that Koby and Helmeppo had a friendship origin story of some kind of epic proportions, because he could really feel the devotion that Koby inspired in Helmeppo— mainly because Helmeppo was always verbally a dick to Law, but would see how Koby treated him and follow his example of overt kind actions and pity. Koby was just one of those people that being around made you want to be better, and Helmeppo absolutely wanted to be better.

Law and Koki had no such origins. Law was not allowed to learn medicine, despite his inclination and need for it, and as a newly enlisted chore boy this drove him to start dissecting the small pest animals he found around the base. Koki was the cadet that happened to stumble upon him.

Koki had said, “wow, you really are a freak, huh?” and then kicked Law’s hand with the vivisected rat away. He’d bullied Law, and constantly insisted he should leave the marines, but he hadn’t ever told anyone about it. Law didn’t have any friends, so he had Koki.

When they’d both grown up a bit, and Koki had started getting up to real fuckshit, Law had done him the favor of looking away. Koki returned the favor by showing up bloody-faced to the closet of the week that had become Law’s research lab with a half-alive body in tow. Law had done his best to fix them. The next ones Koki brought, Law fixed better.

Neither Koki or Law were the sort of marines that believed in justice or saving people; Law because of his entire country being slaughtered by the organization, and Koki likely because he was part of some kind of drug ring within the organization— Law wasn’t going to ask. But being around marines like Koby, and marines like Helmeppo who were trying to be marines like Koby, did make life feel a little lighter. It was also the sort of thing that was only possible while Garp’s command was stationed on base with them; he was the sort of guy the higher-ups liked to send to do their nice-people missions. Law’s unit did other things.

“I think it’s honestly great that you’re here, Law,” Koby said, reiterating Law’s point. Koby cheerfully shoveled his own rice portions into his pink-tinged face, getting some on his cheek. He looked like a cupcake with vanilla sprinkles. “It’s like; if you can do it, I can do it, you know?”

Helmeppo nodded, dabbing off the excess food around his own mouth with an honest-to-goodness monogrammed napkin. “Ah, because he’s so weak that if you can’t, it’s embarrassing?”

That was more-or-less how Law was taking it, but Koby vehemently denied this, making “‘o’muay, maw wuh eye wuh shain” noises with his rice-full mouth. Years of desperate hunger and post-training meals lead Law to decipher that to be some sort of defense. Koby chewed, mostly swallowed the white mush, and continued grossly, “I meant that seeing Law work so hard to be here shows me that I should be working that hard too! Training next to you makes me a better marine.”

Koki laughed, pointing his chopsticks at Law. “Yeah, for sure. Training next to you makes me look like a better marine.”

Law laughed too, if the small, dark sound he made could count as one of those. He did not work as hard as he did to be here of all places, stuck on the closest marine base to the Sabaody archipelago. He was here because the standard of medical care in all areas near Marie Geoise were by far better than in the wider world, and because here he could feel a measure of freedom away from Cora and Sengoku, as was appropriate for a twenty-something.

“Koby, my grandfather is the fleet admiral,” Law deadpanned, licking the blood off of his teeth as it seeped out of his gums. “Clearly, I’m just cruising along here on his good name. I have it the easiest of anyone here.”

Koki laughed again, and Hemeppo sighed, but Koby’s face puckered as he again tried to swallow that lemon. “No… I don’t think you do, actually.”

But that was Koby’s opinion, not that of Law’s own Superior Officer, who had been promised a quick turnover in Law as a cadet and spent every subsequent day disappointed he was still alive. When the bell rang, the pairs split off to report to their respective unit commanders, and Law’s, a tall, green-haired man named Louis, only shook his head to see him stumble into formation.

“Still here, Trafalgar?” Asked Louis’s second, a younger and far more agreeable man named Brandon. He was bald and had glasses and was honestly sort-of ugly, but Law had had a crush on him a few years back before the guy had found a longtime girlfriend on a neighboring island. Brandon was nice to him; not many people were.

Law nodded, and so Brandon smiled. “Well, there’s still a chance today. Don’t try and make too good on it, now.”

Apparently, Law’s unit was going off-base to Sabaody today. That was a special treat even for Law, who prided himself on his melancholy, so there was some happy murmuring among the ordered rectangle of marines he stood with until Louis blew loudly on the metal whistle strung around his neck.

“Be quiet when Brandon’s talking to you,” Louis ordered. The men, including Law, all bowed to Brandon. Brandon nodded to Louis and then continued;

“You’ll be guarding an auction house at the behest of the office of Marie Geoise. We’ve gotten scouting reports of some high-bounty pirate crews on Sabaody recently, and they’d like us to make sure none of the vacationing families run into any trouble on their visit down.”

Read, they were going to be the enforcing officers in a human trafficking operation so that the fucked up, entitled people that controlled the World Government could traipse around and buy slaves.

No one was happily murmuring then. But Brandon continued on, describing the intricacies of their mission, who would be doing what, and when and how they were shipping out. Law glanced around at the varied levels of comfort on the faces of the men he’d been working with since enlistment, and then at Koki, who seemed almost bored.

The men didn’t discuss their orders, grabbing their go-bags from their bunks and heading out for their assigned ship at C-dock. Law could hear Garp’s booming voice skip across the bobbing waves and knew that Koby, too, was shipping out to somewhere; probably somewhere more wonderful, somewhere he could save. Law was glad that they had gotten breakfast together; he genuinely did think Koby was a good person, and he’d probably be the last one of those Law would ever see again, since he was dying today

A cold feeling grew in Law’s throat and seeped down, down into his stomach. It was the feeling of incumbent sickness, of fever. No one spoke against their mission directives, or the nature of what they were doing. They prepared the ship and talked about breakfast, about home, about how stupid Louis’s hair looked, about the believability of Brandon having a girlfriend and the hopes that they themselves could find someone on this trip. Trip, like it was a vacation, like it was a trivial thing that they could leave behind after hours.

Law counted the supplies in the munitions closet and signed off on the checking sheet. He cleaned the canons and retrieved replacement rope for one that had broken and had not been logged for maintenance. He worked, and so the machine worked, and they got the ship well in order to set sail around an hour or so later.

When the marines wasted Flevance, they did so in an orderly, perfunctory fashion. They sorted the children into one area to die, and the adults into another. Some marines were set to digging large pits, some marines were set to filling them with bodies. They locked down towns and searched them meticulously, marking numbers on the buildings of the bodies they left to later be collected. Law knew these things because he had read the reports and learned the clinical history kept within them, his clearance to those documents had been his seventeenth birthday present. It had been all that he asked for.

At the beginning, Cora and Sengoku had been worried that Law’s continued existence as a survivor of Flevance would put him in the marines’ negative attention. It did do that, admittedly, but with Sengoku negotiating them down from immediate execution, they bought time for Law to become the biggest scapegoat in marine history.

If someone was to find out that Law had Amber Lead poisoning— which most people didn’t, simply because most people didn’t expect to see living sufferers of a nationwide fatal event— they would quickly thereafter realize it was not so contagious a disease as had been believed, and maybe they’d figure out that it was not actually a disease at all. Even still, just by existing in his withered state, Law became a justification for their actions.

“It was a well-intentioned mistake, and one we take full accountability for. But I shudder to think what would have happened to the people of Flevance if they had survived,” one of Sengoku’s colleagues said once, gesturing to Law. “I believe we saved them a lot of suffering.”

Most people in Flevance died knowing their families and friends were getting picked off in much the same way, their entire culture eradicated over a metal poisoning most hadn’t actually seriously contracted yet beyond the superficial symptoms. They died betrayed, confused, and alone. Law carried that fear and grief with him every day. They suffered, and he continued their suffering every time he slicked his hair back to don his uniform cap.

That would end today. If no one else was going to stop it, Law would. He had been a cog in the machine too long and no longer.

Marie Geoise was going to know Law’s name by the time the day was up.

[thesaurus-with-no-words]

Giving me lots of wonderful ideas about how to make Law suffer :3

[apiratefellinlovewithastar]

Maomao would kill to study Amber Lead. Wonder how she and Jinshi would fair if dropped into OP.

~🥜❦

SHE WOULD!!!! SHE WOULD!!!!!!!

DROP THEM PEANUT!!!!! DROP THEMMMMM

[anubislover]

Flevance and Law’s Goals

If I may offer a possible in-character justification for why Law would fixate more on avenging Cora over, say, his family and Flevance, it’s the fact that taking down Doffy is a goal he feels he can actually achieve. Murdering one man/taking down his kingdom and organization is a lot easier than bringing down the entire World Government who covered up the truth. Sure, he could try to expose the truth, but he’s one man with pretty limited proof. It would be easy for the WG to sweep any claims under the rug, and since everyone thinks the people of Flevance are all dead, it’s easy for them to say this is just some rabble-rouser spreading falsehoods.

In comparison, while Law’s plans for Doflamingo and Dressrosa were elaborate and suicidal, they were at least doable. He had enough contingencies where even if he failed to kill Doffy himself, he’d have screwed up his SMILE making operation enough to send Kaido’s wrath after him.

As for him holding Cora up to some lofty standard, of course I will never think he took the place of Law’s dad in his heart. But I can see why a traumatized 13 year old would cling to his sacrifice and put him on a pedestal. Cora was probably the closest thing to a father-figure Law had at the time, and most importantly, he was the first person in a long time who seemed to care about his well-being. Cora showed him genuine kindness and was willing to go to the ends of the earth to save him. He was the embodiment of what that nun told him. “A merciful hand will always reach out.”

And then Cora died saving him. Cora was that spark of hope he’d had when his life was dark and full of despair. Law had joined Doffy planning to kill as many people as he could before he died of Amber Lead. That was his way of avenging Flevance. It was small and ultimately meaningless but that was all a dying kid could really do.

Now Cora is dead, and Law’s no longer dying once he’s able to use his new powers to cut the Amber Lead out of his liver. And he still can’t avenge Flevance. Even with his epic new powers, there’s no amount of killing he could do to properly avenge them. But he CAN kill Doflamingo. He CAN avenge the man who saved his life by fulfilling his mission to take down his brother.

As for why Law’s now interested on the Will of D,. I think it’s still related to Flevance in its own way. He might want to know if it was fated that all that terrible stuff happened to him. But he also knows it’s something that the WG doesn’t want people to know about. That people that bore that initial, like himself, were considered the natural enemies of the Celestial Dragons. And the Celestial Dragons are a major part of the World Government.

For the first time, he might actually have a way to take down the World Government and avenge Flevance.

[onepiecesmosthated]

Underrated Hate Sinks: Flevance Royalty

Even though they don’t officially appear on-screen and the boat to take them shows only a hint at their presence, the Flevance royal family show themselves to be one of the worst royals around. Their biggest crime is keeping the populace ignorant about the harms of Amber Lead so they could profit off it. So for a century as the town mined the stuff, while not knowing that they would later pay with their lives for it. 

If that wasn’t enough, when the Amber Lead started to show and people started to die they hightailed it out of there, while leaving their populace to be quarantined and die without any hope. In other words, their whole nation was sacrificed for short term gain and they had the nerve to leave them to their doom with the help of the government. 

If they are ever seen in One Piece at all or survived Amber Lead, I have a feeling that Law would come with vengeance after them for what they did. 

[kyuunonana]

*clap clap clap* you are really awesome, but I have and other question, (sorry) Well you show me how Law remove the Amber LD and I think is rather right!! But what if Law just made the disease stop its process... And stop harming him... Now.. The question: The amber disease will pass to his children?! (if he has any)

That’s very unlikely, actually. If it somehow altered his genes then maybe, but according to the available information the children inherit the toxic exposure only. 

And the only substance that the father contributes to the child is a sperm which is tiny compared to the size of the egg and minuscule compared to what the child grows into. So even if that sperm is filled to the brink with amber lead, the dose the child receives would be negligible, and nowhere near enough to cause symptoms. 

If he were female, then it would be another story, because amber lead can cross the placenta and get into the baby, and possibly cause harm, because children are much smaller and can’t handle as high a dose of the substance as an adult (so this is potentially a thing to keep in mind for mpreg scenarios, if people who write them care about this aspect). 

(For those who are interested: My previous Amber Lead posts)