"Over here!" The airship landed, a testament to the navigator's ability to transfer her experience in steering normal ships (as well as the general crew) to other modes of transport.
"Flying ship!" the kidnapped boys crowed, starry-eyes locked onto the flying vessel. Nami could spot the two adults standing behind them. One easily familiar, one rather difficult to place.
"Permission to board?" Tashigi was practically vibrating in her position with frustration and painfully maintained tolerance. No wonder, boarding a ship full of pirates in order to rescue kidnapped children. But Nami respected the woman; it took guts to disobey the orders one was given in order to do what was right. It was nice to see that at least this particular officer did not turn out to be an outright monster like the others were.
(Nami could not bear the thought of Bell-mere, or at least a proxy of her, killing whole islands.)
Nami hastily calculated the amount of weight. Thankfully, none of them had grown larger than the average adult, so she could easily make a rough estimation. Around twenty to thirty children, two females, a body...
Wait a minute. "Huh?" She peered at the beaten-up, heavily bruised figure that had been dismissively piled into a heap of flesh. "That's weird. Isn't that-"
"Caesar Clown. That's sea-stone, so get some non Devil-Fruit users to lug him up." Answered Usopp, who was busy assessing their new passengers. Then he froze, his jaw dropping to the ground.
"Got him." Thatch experimentally lifted the unconscious criminal scientist, before stopping.
"Feels lighter than I expected."
"I would be surprised if you hadn't." Smoker answered, chugging on probably the fifth cigar. "The Marine Science Department were able to get a good balance between effectiveness and weight."
"Sir, may I assume that we are in an alliance?" Tashigi asked, saluting Smoker as soon as the last of the children had boarded the airship. "Otherwise, I would prepare to arrest them."
"What?" Squawked the Whitebeard Pirates as one.
"Temporary alliance, Sniper." Smoker corrected her, as a collective sigh of relief hissed out. "Similar to our position about the Straw Hats."
"You're not the typical Marine, are you?" Thatch commented as he sat on the bruised figure. Nami might have felt a twinge of sympathy for him were it not for the fact he was probably the one who caused the massive explosion. And she still remembered what he did to the kids. Or his secretary for that matter!
"Hmph." Smoker grunted. "If I actually cared to count the number of times I've had to deal with Straw Hat helping the world at large, it far outweighed the times that Straw Hat was a pain in the posterior."
"What do you mean, pain in the ass?" Ace shot back. "How was Luffy-"
"Alabasta." An image of Smoker being thrown through several walls along with Luffy's brother was enough to make Nami barely choke back a giggle. "Loguetown, before that."
"What happened at Loguetown?" Asked Jiro in confusion as Zoro snickered.
"To make the story simple—Luffy, execution stand, Buggy with a sword, lightning strike, Dragon." Sanji flicked a finger with each point at Smoker, who grumbled and looked away. "What I'm more interested in is actually why you proposed this, Smoker. You're more of the kind who would try to do everything himself first, and the last time round it was pretty unofficial for an alliance."
Which was true, come to think about it. The alliance had been initiated by Trafalgar Law, only for Luffy to modify its terms to a friendship pact.
"Just a heads up guys! You don't have to bow your heads to us ever again! Or kneel! Being in an alliance means...being friends!"
"Not even close!" Trafalgar Law, still trying to retrieve the dregs of his dignity shot back, even as those who had been in Punk Hazard shared a giggle at the poor image-maintenance he was trying to carry out.
No one was safe from Luffy's influence. They could attest to that.
Come to think about it, when they were rescuing their captain from Marineford, Zoro and Usopp had caught no trace of Trafalgar Law. Would he still be allies with them, given the rapid changes of events? Nami was slightly worried; Trafalgar Law had been an excellent ally (read: friend, minion and general tagalong) throughout the quest for One Piece. Given that the current versions of them had not met since Sabaody, how was Luffy going to form the alliance in the first place.
"It's my choice on who I ally with. That's all there is to it." Smoker cryptically replied. Nami arched an eyebrow. Something was not right with how Smoker had phrased it. Add that to the suspcious behaviour that he had been exhibiting thus far, she was tempted to further question him, only for something else to capture her attention.
For one, Usopp had not spoken at all since spotting their newest series of passengers. For another, he was visibly wilting under the glare that the other woman was giving him.
"Usopp." A quiet cool retort rang out as curious onlookers hastily took several steps back from what looked like a growing scene of domestic violence. The calm before the storm, as it were.
"Hi, it's nice to see you?" Their sniper wrung his hands as he nervously backed away. The woman advanced towards him, her fists clenched, one raised at his head.
"You left me." Nami could practically feel the temperature drop a few degrees at the frigidity of her tone. Wordlessly, Usopp raised his hands in a conciliatory manner, only to wince as the other woman's eyes narrowed in a dangerous manner.
"I'm sorry. I truly am sorry for abandoning you." He quietly said. "I wasn't intending to be killed."
"Evidently." She replied. "I would have been more angry at you, if you had intentionally left me on the wedding altar." For once, Sanji did not appear distressed and about to defend the woman against another man who had harmed her. Instead, he was leaning against the railing, watching the scene with fatigued eyes.
He knows as well as I do that we have no right to intervene in this. Nami thought as the other woman tilted her head back, her nostrils flaring.
"Jinbe once told me that our captain wanted to die after his brother had died in front of him." She softly whispered. "what you did was even worse—how did you think he would react to seeing his closest crew members dead?"
"...We made a mistake." Usopp answered, closing his eyes, bowing his head. "We were more focused on rescuing him. Dying was not on our schedule."
"I know. But the cost was way too high, at least for him. Luffy has never dealt with losing his precious people, his nakama very well." She said, even as she levelled a glare aat all of the former Straw Hat Pirates. Nami felt as though she had been soundly rebuked with her eyes alone, and she wasn't the only one, judging from how Zoro had flinched even when he was asleep on deck.
The woman finally sighed, raking her hands through her hair. "It wasn't just him. Usopp, I forgave you a long time ago for skipping our wedding to rescue your captain." A shy yet bittersweet smile spread across her face, lovely and yet heartbreaking. "But you should have never left him alone."
"Hold on!" Haruta, one of Whitebeard's Commanders interrupted as she held out a palm. 'What do you mean, when Ace died." There were similar expressions of confusion and shock upon the faces of those surrounding them. Marco in particular had turned grey; Ace was blankly staring in horror at the woman.
Oh, they did not tell them. No wonder.
The grown, bitter woman that had replaced the kind-hearted girl that was the former master of Syrup Village grimly smiled.
"It's best that I explain. Hand me a large plate and some sake. Don't bother about the quality, I don't quite need it to be good."
"Was it alright for me to be born?"
"I can't be the strongest man in the world forever..."
"Thank you all for loving me..."
"Jinbe! Take Ace's little brother with you!"
"Oi! I'm coming in whether you're ready or not!" Whitebeard jolted as a clear and distinctive North Blue accented-voice rang out across the landscape.
He had been sitting in that field for what seemed like days, months even. A replay of events that had never happened. Could never happened. He didn't know what was truth, and what were illusions. But Whitebeard had never forgotten what existed on the outside, even as he saw the death of his family and his sons repeatedly.
Whitebeard knew that his sons were waiting for him. And he refused to give up.
The bright flash of metal, and the constantly replaying events (memories? Illusions? reality?) shattered into tiny pieces as a katana struck through the centre of the image.
"A hallucinatory cocktail designed to immobilize one's muscular system and distort one's sense of time and reality." The voice pronounced with disgust lacing his tone. A lanky man poked his head through the hole that his sword had made. "Impressive, but I've dealt with worst drugs."
"Who are you?" He rasped out, the effect of shouting for several hours taking its toll on him.
"One victim of an extremely pushy reindeer, if that actually makes sense to you." The cheeky brat answered as he lifted one foot into the area.
"Can you move? No, probably not." He muttered to himself. "I've gotten rid of most of the drug, but you'll need to do the hard part yourself."
Whitebeard gave him an incredulous look, complete with arched eyebrow. The man huffed, scratching at the back of his furry spotted hat.
"This is a drug-induced hallucination. I could give a far more detailed explanation, but simply put, I'm not allowed to do anything beyond breaking the hallucination. And in the flicks I've watched, you can probably do it yourself anyway."
"How exactly?" Whitebeard growled. Because he had tried to break the illusion. And his efforts evidently weren't successful.
"You're a 'Quake' man, are you not?" The brat rolled his eyes.
"That would require me to be able to move in the first place, brat." Whitebeard said wryly. The fellow had the gall to tut disapprovingly, shaking his head.
"Fair enough." A sharp, evil grin on par with the time Ace was still on his daily killing operation spread across the face of the kid from North Blue.
"Back-up plan it is. Enjoy the ride!" He whipped out his katana and threw it at the jar of sake barely inches away from Whitebeard. The world around them started to bend, distort, and warp around the edges, creeping ever closer to to their location.
"You cheeky brat!" Even as Whitebeard growled, the boy continued to cackle with laughter, and Whitebeard was inexplicably filled with a sense of relief that things were going to be alright.
"Ro?" Rosinante looked up as his boss sat down next to him. The various Whitebeard Commanders had crept to various spots, still filled with shock over what they had heard from the mouth of his time-travelling boss.
Time-travelling. Dear gods of the sea.
"Hmm?" He said, making space (distancing, his mind echoed traitorously) from the woman who had beaten all laws of physics and common sense. Not to mention the fact that she had hid that, only choosing to serve the customers with a warm smile without revealing the depths between.
"I'm sorry for keeping this from you, and Law. But we had to keep it close to our chest. There would have been terrible consequences if we hadn't kept silent."
"Hmm." He was determinedly not answering in words. Because Rosinante did not know how to feel about the fact that his lady boss had looked after the two of them when she could have been rescuing others. Or herself, if what he read between the lines of the argument that had taken place between her and her fiance.
Former fiance, as it turned out. Apparently, she did not take him abandoning her at the altar very lightly. Pettiness aside, there was the fact that he died before he could apologise. And was revived.
A thought occurred to him.
"Merry?" Rosinante asked quietly. "Was I supposed to die?" He turned to see his lady boss covering her face with her hands, revealing no part of her face to him. So she was also trying to hide her own feelings from him. Not that it mattered; her body emanated fatigue and sorrow like a shimmering lantern after all.
"...If captain wasn't walking by, then yes. You would have." She finally said, after a few minutes of silence. "He was good friends with Law, in the future. And he knew how important you were to Law. And the only thing that was stopping him was the fact that he didn't know how to look after you. I, who was sealed for a very long time, was his answer to the conundrum that he faced."
"Sealed?" Rosinante asked, trying to ignore the fact that his own existence was in question on that day. He was that close to dying? And to think it was only the altriustic motives of a pirate that he had survived past Minion Island. Were he the man fifteen years back, he would never have believed that a pirate could have have been that selfless.
But he had. He had Law, and Merry, and Shakky (even when the woman still scared him witless) and Rayleigh (he could still remember the sleepless nights, the bright office where Sengoku pored over papers, attempting to succeed in capturing Gold Roger and his men, and each failed plan where officers were wheeled into the Marine Hospital after each clash) and maybe even Kuma. His circle had downgraded in respectability, but when he tried to find his platoon mates, they had gone with honourable promotions to go with their dismal deaths.
Even if they were the worst scum of the sea, he could not think of Merry being part of that. She was always so gentle with others, polite and warm towards others. That was the first time he had seen her reveal a grudge.
How well did he know her then? What had necessitated her being sealed away?
"I was not quite in the right mind to make decisions." She hesitated, before revealing her face to bear tear tracks running down her cheeks.
"I hated the world for taking my fiance away just because of 'justice'." She shook her head. "I have never heard of such an empty value of justice. What justice?" She said, "It's always a matter of which side wins the propaganda battle. And those who win are the ones who write the history."
Rosinante winced, because that had come close to what he and Doffy had thought during their worst moments between mobs.
"Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!"
And that had rung throughout those who had watched the broadcast from Marineford. People discussed it behind closed doors. In quiet bars on the wayside. Even in the market place, when Merry and he were looking for supplies, he had heard the speech being discussed. Implications and all.
"I don't think that anyone could agree on their forms of justice." Sengoku had frequently rested upon Justice in order to justify some of the deeds he was forced to carry out on the behalf of the World Government. "But I believe justice should never be limited to what they think is right or wrong. Or that others have the right to control one's life." For he had seen the slave auction houses, and while not actively tearing them down, he had passed down information that could help free some slaves, a little at a time.
"When every man lives without law, every man lives without freedom." Rosinante found himself speaking. "And I think that law, rather than eliminating one's freedom, should enable it. And when injustice becomes law, resistance is no longer just a response, but a duty."
"You sound like quite the Revolutionary yourself when you say that." Merry laughed, wiping away her tears. "I think that's true as well." She looked at him thoughtfully.
"Hey, when I asked this of Law, he instantly rejected me." She pouted at the memory, and Rosinante couldn't bury the humour and started to chuckle. "Oh come on!"
"What did you ask him then?" There was a twinkle in her eye that heralded extremely bad luck.
