Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ocean was not a home. It was a throat that swallowed sound and light alike.

For three unending weeks, the Polar Tang had drifted beneath that suffocating expanse, its hull groaning like a creature that had forgotten what the sun looked like. Every breath inside the submarine came with the taste of metal and oil, the reek of recycled air that clung to lungs and skin alike.

The first days were bearable—quiet in a way that suggested recovery. Law told himself that stillness meant control. The crew needed time to stabilize after leaving Baltigo. The Revolution had been a storm of ideals; now, they were alone, and silence pressed against them like a vice.

Bepo tried to fill it. He played cards with the other crew member, cracked jokes that barely earned smirks, and made a habit of knocking twice on Law’s door before asking, “Captain, are you eating?”
He never received a yes.

Law spent most hours in the navigation chamber, poring over maps illuminated by the blue glow of dials. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. He’d stopped marking time in days—it was all just the hum of the engines, the tremor of the hull, the long dark stretches of thought.

---

By the end of the first week, even laughter had turned brittle.

The Polar Tang’s walls carried the ghosts of every conversation—each argument bounced between metal panels until it became unbearable. A misplaced wrench could start a fight. A wrong look could end one.

Bepo’s fur was matted with condensation. He’d stopped grooming. Penguin’s patience snapped after three hours of failed repairs on the heating line. “I swear this thing hates us!” he yelled, slamming the wrench.

“It’s not the engine that hates you,” Ikkaku shot back. “You just don’t know how to fix it.”

Law appeared without sound. “Enough.”

They turned like schoolchildren caught mid-theft. Law’s gaze was cold, but not cruel—just enough to halt movement.

He knelt by the open engine panel, checking the fractured coolant line with gloved hands. “Next time, you argue less and listen more.” He didn’t raise his tone, but the room felt smaller for it.

Penguin exhaled. “You don’t sleep, do you, Captain?”

“Not when I’m surrounded by amateurs,” Law murmured, but the faintest hint of irony laced his voice.

Shachi caught it. “Was that… a joke?”

“Don’t test me.”

But it was—barely—and for a moment, the submarine felt lighter.

---

By the tenth day, Law’s exhaustion showed in quieter ways. He’d stopped drinking coffee; it made his hands shake. He ate standing, often in silence while flipping through medical notes or sketching structural designs on the margin of his logbook.

Late one night, Bepo caught him dozing at the navigation table, head resting on folded arms. The bear stood still, torn between waking him and leaving him be. Law hadn’t looked that human in weeks.

The bear chose silence.

He fetched a blanket and covered him.

When Law stirred minutes later, eyes half-open, he didn’t say a word. He let the blanket stay. That small act—so mundane, so human—hung in the submarine’s air like a miracle no one dared acknowledge.

---

Week two brought storms. Not above, but inside.

A minor electrical fault plunged them into darkness for seven minutes. In that pitch black, every sound was magnified: someone’s ragged breathing, a drip echoing against metal, the faraway pulse of the ocean pressing in.

When lights returned, Bepo was gripping the railing so tightly his claws had scratched the paint.

Law checked the generator output calmly. “If it happens again, we surface.”

“Surface where?” Shachi muttered. “We don’t even know what’s up there anymore.”

“Anywhere is better than drowning in the dark.” Law glanced at him. “Anywhere is where people are.”

The words lingered. He didn’t mean them to sound as lonely as they did.

That night, the crew gathered in the galley for warmth. Shachi brewed something approximating soup. They ate together. Penguin remembered a funny story from Swallow island. Bepo laughed so hard he almost spilled the pot.

Law stayed silent through most of it, just listening—the sound of normalcy, the heartbeat of a crew that still believed he could get them through anything. He realized he needed that sound more than he would ever admit.

When the laughter faded, Shachi leaned back. “You know, Captain, you could sit with us more often. You might remember how to smile.”

Law raised an eyebrow. “My facial muscles are reserved for emergencies.”

Bepo chuckled. “That was almost funny.”

“Almost,” Law echoed softly.

The tension that had haunted them since Baltigo loosened, if only slightly.

---

By the third week, sleep deprivation and confinement blurred the edges between irritation and camaraderie. They’d learned to anticipate each other’s rhythms.

When Law was quiet, Penguin filled the silence with humming. When Bepo’s claustrophobia spiked, Shachi challenged him to push-up contests. When the engines rattled, the crew gathered instinctively, as if proximity alone could keep the vessel alive.

The Polar Tang became something more than a ship—it became their bloodstream, pulsing with stubborn endurance.

And though Law never said it aloud, the crew began to feel like a single organism, sustained by his relentless focus and their shared defiance of the void.

Still, the ocean’s darkness crept in. Law sometimes caught his reflection in the glass of the periscope—eyes hollowed, skin pale, his face almost ghostly.

Dragon’s words echoed from memory: “Isolation is a weapon, if you can wield it without bleeding.”

He wasn’t sure if he was wielding it—or being consumed by it.

When the sonar finally picked up a coastline on the twenty-first day, no one spoke for several seconds. The rhythmic beep sounded unreal.

Then Bepo whispered, almost reverently, “Land.”

Ikkaku and Hakugan exhaled in unison.

Law straightened from his seat, the tension in his shoulders coiling tighter instead of relaxing.

“Prepare to surface,” he said. “We dock quietly. We don’t know what’s waiting above.”

The Polar Tang rose through the water, breaking the surface with a hiss like a held breath being released.

Sunlight poured through the observation slit, blinding after so long in artificial light.

For the first time in three weeks, Law saw the world again—and it was gray, wrapped in mist, the faint outline of an island sitting silent on the horizon.

He squinted, as if looking into something that might judge him back.

“Set course for the northern dock,” he ordered.

Penguin’s hands trembled slightly on the controls. “Aye, Captain.”

As the submarine glided toward land, the crew exchanged quiet looks—part relief, part apprehension.

Three weeks in darkness had forged something in them—an understanding that went deeper than orders or hierarchy.

They were still breathing. Still together.

And none of them realized yet that what waited on that quiet island would test the very humanity they had just begun to rediscover.

---

They reached the island at 10 o’clock in the morning.

The mist still clung to the sea like something alive, a heavy curtain that muffled the sound of waves. As the Polar Tang surfaced, the world reintroduced itself in fragments — the call of a gull somewhere in the haze, the wooden groan of a lonely dock, the faint rustle of wind over grass gone yellow.

The northern pier looked abandoned. Boats rocked gently, half-tethered, ropes dragging in the water. Law stepped out first, coat snapping in the chill wind. The others followed, boots crunching on damp planks.

Something was wrong...

The air didn’t smell like life — no scent of bread, no woodfire smoke, no human rhythm. The shutters were closed on every house they passed. Shops stood open but empty, fruit wilting on stands. Even the dogs lay silent.

Shachi muttered, “Looks like the island forgot how to breathe.”

“Or someone told it not to,” Penguin answered.

Law’s gaze moved from door to door, noting the drawn curtains, the faces peeking from cracks, the fear that seemed to hang like dust. “Stay alert,” he said. “Something’s keeping them inside.”

They walked deeper into the village until they reached the central square. A stage had been erected there — large, ornate, surrounded by iron railings. Above it, banners fluttered with both the Marine insignia and the crest of a noble house: a peacock with jeweled feathers, tail spread wide in arrogant display.

Bepo frowned. “Captain, look at that.”

At the center of the platform stood five transparent tanks, bottom-filled with water. Sunlight caught the glass, turning it into five mirrors of doom. Law’s reflection blinked back at him, fragmented across them.

Hakugan read aloud a poster nailed nearby. “Public Execution at Three Bells — Attendance Mandatory.”

“Execution?” Shachi repeated. “For what?”

Law didn’t answer immediately. His eyes lingered on the tanks. The method was deliberate — slow drowning in clear glass. Death as spectacle. Sadism pretending to be law.

He turned sharply. “We split up. Quietly. I want to know who’s dying and why.”

---

By noon, the crew had returned to the narrow alley behind an abandoned tavern. The fog had thinned, revealing the village’s rot in sharper detail — cracked walls, soldiers patrolling with rifles, and a church bell tolling every hour as though counting down to sin.

Penguin was first to speak. “Five of them. Accused of high treason.”

Bepo’s fur bristled. “Treason? They look like villagers. What could they have done?”

“Spoken the wrong words,” Ikkaku said. “Someone overheard them criticizing taxes, calling the governor cruel. That was enough.”

Law’s jaw flexed. “And the Marines enforce it.”

“More than that,” Hakugan added. “It’s not just Marines. The noble family demanded it personally. The eldest son is the Marine Captain here — Captain Renard Pavone. He wanted to make an example.”

The name hung in the air like poison.

Shachi spat. “A peacock bastard in uniform.”

Law didn’t speak. His gaze dropped to the folded notes the crew had gathered. Each held a fragment of a life condemned. He read them one by one.

---

Dr. Lendon Varrick.
Age twenty-seven. The village doctor. They said he was stubborn, the kind of man who never left his patients. He’d stay long after dark, treating farmers who couldn’t pay and hiding the cost in hospital books. He’d saved a child once — the noble's grandson, who's also the Marine Captain's son — but when he later spoke against the taxes that kept medicine unaffordable, he was accused of poisoning minds.

---

Nurse Sera Halden.
Twenty-four. Worked under Lendon. Known for her patience. When others refused to treat the poor, she opened the back door after hours and used whatever supplies she could find. She was caught once using bandages marked “property of the Crown Hospital.” The noble family called it theft. She called it mercy.

---

Tarin Voss.
Twenty-eight. Fisherman and boatwright. A father of two small boys. When a storm took half the village’s boats, he built replacements by hand and gave them away.

---

Lira Noen.
Twenty-three. A quiet woman who lived with her grandparents. Polite to a fault, the kind of soul who apologized to stones she tripped over. Every morning she brought food to the old and sick — not because anyone asked, but because hunger offended her sense of peace. Her only crime was speaking aloud that “no one should starve while the nobles feast.”

---

Jonas Mirel.
Twenty-five. A baker’s apprentice. Gave leftover bread to beggars. His master warned him that charity was bad for business. The day before the arrest, Jonas threw half a loaf at a soldier who mocked an old woman for begging. He was laughing when they dragged him away.

---

The silence that followed was heavy.

Bepo spoke softly. “They’re… good people.”

Law didn’t reply. His hands were shaking slightly — not from fear, but memory. He could almost hear the echo of his father’s laughter, his mother’s soft scolding as she wiped blood from his cheek. He saw the faces of Flevance’s dying — good, innocent people executed by greed disguised as order.

He turned away sharply, voice low and cutting. “They call this treason. I call it treatment.”

“Captain?” Shachi asked.

Law looked back toward the square where the tanks shimmered under the growing sun. “This island is infected. We remove the infection at three bells.”

He didn’t smile. He didn’t have to. The crew knew that tone.
The Surgeon of Death had made his diagnosis.

---

By the time the church bell struck three, the village had gathered in the square under a gray, merciless sky.
No one came willingly. Marines stood at every intersection, forcing even the sick and the elderly out of their homes. The streets stank of fear and saltwater; the weight of inevitability pressed down like an invisible storm.

The stage was set for death.

Five transparent tanks stood in a neat line upon the platform—monuments to cruelty disguised as justice. The water inside glimmered coldly, a mirror to the villagers’ despair. Chains hung from the sides, their steel glinting in the weak sunlight. Around the platform, soldiers barked orders and adjusted rifles, ensuring no one could look away.

And on the raised dais above them sat Captain Renard Pavone—the island’s peacock god.

His uniform shimmered with gold thread and jeweled buttons that caught every ray of light. A cape of iridescent blue feathers spilled across his shoulders, more ornament than armor. His face was carved into a permanent smirk, eyes bright with self-worship. The Zoan fruit he had consumed—the Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Peacock—had not only given him wings, but an excuse to believe himself divine.

He stood and extended one hand to the crowd. “Citizens of Sibilance Island!” His voice carried like oil on water. “Behold the price of rebellion. These five dared question His Majesty’s order. They will now serve as the lesson your children will remember.”

The villagers flinched. An old woman stumbled forward and was shoved into line by a Marine’s rifle. A child began to cry, only to be silenced by a slap from his trembling mother.

Law stood hidden among the rooftops on the square’s edge, his coat whipping in the cold wind. The Heart Pirates had scattered through the crowd, invisible but ready. Every word Pavone spoke pressed harder against Law’s ribs, each syllable like a needle through memory.

Penguin murmured through a den den mushi, “Everyone’s in position, Captain. You give the word.”

Law didn’t respond right away. His eyes were locked on the condemned—five figures in chains, forced onto the stage.

Lendon, the doctor, lifted his chin despite the shackles. Sera stood beside him, her hands trembling but her gaze steady. Tarin’s jaw was set, eyes flicking toward the crowd as though searching for his children. Lira wept silently, a tear sliding down her cheek without sound. Jonas mouthed something—a prayer, maybe, or a curse.

They looked human. Too human.

Law’s grip on Kikoku tightened. “We don’t wait for the first body to fall,” he said, voice low, controlled. “Once the water reaches their knees… we move.”

Shachi’s whisper crackled back. “Aye, Captain.”

---

On the stage, the valves beneath the tanks groaned. Water began to pour in—slowly, deliberately. Pavone smiled, watching the level rise as though admiring his reflection.

“Observe, my loyal subjects,” he declared, spreading his arms. “The transparency of justice! Watch as their sins are cleansed before your eyes.”

Marines chuckled behind him.

A villager sobbed aloud. Pavone turned, feathers shimmering as he descended the steps to the tanks. His voice softened, almost tender. “Do not cry for them. They chose this. Doubt is treason, and treason must drown.”

Law closed his eyes briefly, the pulse in his temple steady as a clock. “Now.”

The word left his lips barely above a whisper, but the air itself seemed to obey.

“Room.”

The sky dimmed to blue. A soft hum rippled through the square, a pulse no one could name. Within a single heartbeat, an azure sphere expanded from Law’s hand.

The moment it reached the stage, sound fractured. The flow of water froze mid-pour, droplets hanging suspended like jewels in the air.

Then everything shifted.

The five prisoners vanished from inside their tanks—simply gone. In their place stood five figures in boiler-suit apparel with their Jolly Roger emblazoned on the left side of the chest: Bepo, Shachi, Penguin, Hakugan, and Ikkaku.

The Marines blinked, confused, rifles half-raised. The nobles gasped. Pavone’s mouth hung open in disbelief.

“Who dares interrupt an official execution?! Identify yourself!”

Law’s golden eyes lifted. “Trafalgar Law. Captain of the Heart Pirates.”

Recognition flashed in the captain’s eyes. “So the rumors were true… the Surgeon of Death still breathes.”

The noble family shrieked for protection as Marines surrounded the platform.

Law unsheathed Kikoku, its blade whispering against its sheath. “You’ll wish I didn’t.”
Pavone’s shock turned to rage. His body shifted, feathers bursting from his arms, talons forming where hands once were. A peacock’s cry split the sky as iridescent wings unfolded from his back.

“You dare interrupt the execution of the Crown, pirate?”

Law’s expression didn’t change. “You mistake cruelty for law. I’m simply correcting the error.”

Pavone screeched, his voice warping into avian fury. “Then die with them.”

Feathers hardened to metal, shooting toward Law in a glittering storm.

The Surgeon of Death didn’t flinch.

“Shambles.”

The air itself folded as Law vanished, reappearing behind Pavone with Kikoku gleaming in hand. The Marine’s attack struck only the ground, slicing the stage apart.

Gasps erupted from the villagers.

Marines opened fire. Law’s Room expanded again—bullets stopped midair, spinning lazily before redirecting back into their owners. They fell screaming.

Shachi and Penguin moved in perfect sync, using smoke grenades to blind the riflemen. Bepo slammed into a group of soldiers, his claws raking through their weapons, tossing them aside like rag dolls. Hakugan’s knifes gleamed as he parried a saber and twisted the man’s wrist until it snapped.

Pavone turned, feathers shimmering into a dazzling fan that caught the sun and threw light like blades. He grinned—a mask of divine arrogance.

“You think you can wound divinity, boy?”

Law raised Kikoku. “I’ve operated on worse gods than you.”

Their blades met in the air, sparks raining like broken stars.

---

The first feather cut the air with a whistle so sharp it split the silence like glass.

A streak of light tore through the square, grazing a villager’s sleeve before burying itself in the stone wall behind. The impact hissed, molten edges glowing with impossible heat.

Pavone’s wings fanned wide — iridescent blades refracting the afternoon sun into a thousand dazzling shards. He moved with predatory grace, half man, half divine parody, the embodiment of vanity weaponized.

“Behold the light of judgment!” he screamed.
Hundreds of feathers exploded from his wings, raining down in radiant arcs.

Villagers scattered, shrieking. The cobblestones sparked where each feather struck, slicing through barrels, doors, and flesh alike.

Law moved first.
“Room.”

The air thickened with blue light. Feathers froze mid-flight, spinning harmlessly within the shimmering sphere.

“Takt.”
He raised his finger, and the feathers flipped, turning back on their master.

They struck Pavone’s wing in a flurry of silver and blood. He screamed as his own quills tore across his wings, slashing open ribbons of green and crimson.

He crashed to the ground, feathers scattering.

But he was resilient. He rose again, blood dripping from his arms, laughter bubbling through his beak. “You’ll have to do better than that!”

Then, his feathers regrew with a sound like silk tearing. His Zoan form expanded further — wings stretching into the full plumage of a monstrous peacock, tail feathers forming a jeweled fan that shimmered blindingly.

When he spread them, the entire square was bathed in colors so intense they distorted sight itself.

Bepo shielded his eyes. “I can’t see!”

“Stay behind cover!” Law ordered.

But Pavone was already in the air, his silhouette haloed in radiant fire. The feathers he launched this time weren’t blades — they were mirrors, each refracting light into searing beams that lanced through the air.

Law’s Room absorbed some, but the reflection blinded even him for a second. He could hear the screams, the crash of collapsing wood, the desperate scrambling of civilians.

Then — a roar.

Bepo had broken formation, lunging toward a cluster of villagers who’d been cornered by stray Marines. A feather whistled past Law’s ear — straight toward them.

“Bepo!”

The bear turned at the last instant, intercepting the feather with his own body. The blade tore across his shoulder, blood spraying the cobblestones. He collapsed, clutching the wound, teeth bared in pain.

Law’s pulse went cold. His focus narrowed to a single point — Pavone above, laughing through the light.

“You care for these animals?” Pavone sneered. “Compassion is the first step to weakness!”

Law’s reply was barely a whisper. “Then I’ll show you how weakness kills.”

“Room.”

The field expanded, swallowing half the square. Within it, Law’s every motion became law itself. Gravity bent to him; space bowed.

Pavone dove, wings beating hurricane winds. Law shifted aside without moving his feet, swapping positions with one of the Marine soldiers. Pavone’s claws ripped through his own man.

“Where are you?!” Pavone shrieked.

“Here.”

Law appeared above him, body suspended in the air like a blade descending from heaven.

Kikokku stabbed his shoulder. The peacock’s scream was inhuman — a shrill mixture of fury and disbelief.

Feathers exploded outward, filling the sky with a storm of glass and fire. The villagers ducked behind rubble; the Heart Pirates shielded their faces.

Through the chaos, Law fell to one knee beside Bepo to check on him.

Bepo’s voice was hoarse. “Captain I am fine… finish it.”

Law stood again, eyes burning gold under the fading light. “Gladly.”

Pavone staggered, blood running down his jeweled shoulder. His wings flickered, feathers falling like dying stars. Yet his arrogance still stood tall. “You… think you can kill a god?”

Law stepped closer. “No. I can leave you to live with what you are.”

He swung Kikoku once more—clean and decisive.

He turned his back as Pavone dropped to one knee, gasping, half-transformed, eyes wide with disbelief. Blood trickled from his mouth — bright red against his feathers.

“You… monster…”

Law didn’t answer. His boots echoed through the square as Marines began dragging their fallen commander away. Pavone’s scream rose again, a final, broken note that turned to a laugh.

“I’ll remember you, Surgeon of Death… every scar, every breath…”

Law stopped once, looking over his shoulder. The sunlight caught the wound he had left — a deep gash across Pavone’s face, running from cheek to chest, carving through his pride.

“That’s the idea,” he said.

The Marines retreated in chaos, half-carrying their mutilated captain toward the harbor. His blood trailed behind them in gleaming drops, like dying feathers.

The square fell still.

Villagers crawled out from hiding, dazed, weeping, staring at the man who had just rewritten their fate.

Law turned to his crew. “Check for any civilians with injuries.”

They obeyed without question. The Surgeon of Death walked through the wreckage of the execution ground, his expression unreadable.

Each step left a faint crimson print on the stones — a reminder that justice, when wielded by human hands, was never clean.

---

The air smelled of salt, smoke, and blood. The square that had been an altar of execution now lay in ruin—broken glass, shattered weapons, and the faint shimmer of feathers scattered like fallen stars. The sun had slipped behind the hills, bleeding orange light through the mist.

Law knelt beside Bepo, his coat streaked with dust and crimson. The wound along the bear’s shoulder was deep but clean; the blade had missed the vital arteries by an inch. Law’s fingers glowed blue as he worked, the soft hum of his ability wrapping the wound in warmth.

Bepo winced but didn’t flinch. “You look worse than I do, Captain.”

Law didn’t answer, though the corner of his mouth twitched. “Hold still.” He adjusted the field around the torn muscle, sealing blood vessels with surgical precision. Each pulse of light drew more color back into Bepo’s face.

The sound of footsteps approached. It was Dr. Lendon and Nurse Sera, both freshly freed from their chains. Their clothes were soaked, their wrists bruised, but their eyes—those eyes still carried the will to heal.

“Let us help,” Lendon said, kneeling beside Law. “You’ve done enough alone.”

Law looked up. For a heartbeat, something like disbelief flickered in his gaze. In another life, in another time, these two could have been his colleagues, the kind of people who built hope out of scraps.

He nodded once. “He’s stable. Clean the wound and keep him under pressure for an hour.”

Sera fetched linen torn from the nobles’ banners, dipping it in antiseptic. “A fitting use,” she murmured, pressing it gently against Bepo’s shoulder.

Law rose, stepping back, watching the two work. Around them, the villagers began to move—hesitant at first, then faster. They pulled the wounded from rubble, gathered the fallen Marines to the side, and lit torches. The smell of burnt powder gave way to the warmth of woodsmoke.

A little girl approached Law, her hands clutching a loaf of bread. It was uneven, hastily baked, still warm. “For you, mister,” she said shyly.

Law stared down at it, uncertain what to do with something so small, so human. “Keep it,” he said finally, voice quieter than he meant. “You’ll need it more.”

She shook her head. “Mama said you saved everyone. Heroes eat first.”

He almost smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Heroes die young. I prefer doctors.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, but she giggled before running back to her mother.

---

By nightfall, the village had transformed from a scene of terror into a camp of quiet gratitude. People gathered around fires, passing food to the Heart Pirates, offering bandages and thanks. For many, it was the first time they had seen Marines defeated—and the first time they had dared to hope it could happen.

Penguin leaned back against a broken barrel, chewing on bread. “We’re never paying for meals again, huh?”

Shachi snorted. “We’ll be lucky if we ever get to pay for anything. Look at them—they’re about to start a religion.”

Law sat at the edge of the firelight, gaze fixed on the ruined stage where the tanks still stood, cracked and empty. His hands rested on his knees, the faint shimmer of exhaustion clinging to his movements.

Lendon approached, wiping his hands on a cloth. “They’ll remember this day... What you did here—it changed something.”

Law’s tone was steady, but the words came slow. “Change isn’t always good.”

Sera stepped forward. “You gave us back our voice. That’s good enough.”

Law didn’t respond. Compliments were scalpel cuts he didn’t know how to stitch shut.

He looked away instead, watching Bepo sleeping beside the fire, bandaged and snoring softly.

---

Later that night, as the Heart Pirates were getting ready to leave the next morning, two people waited near the dock. Jonas, the baker’s apprentice, still in his torn apron, and a broad-shouldered man with soot on his hands—a welder named Coren, known for repairing ships at the harbor.

Jonas stepped forward first. “Captain Trafalgar,” he said, the title uncertain on his tongue, “I can’t stay here. I’d rather die at sea than watch this place rot again.”

Coren nodded beside him. “I know ships, engines, steel. If you’ll have me, I’ll make your vessel unbreakable.”

The crew looked at Law. The wind off the sea tugged at his coat, making the Jolly roger ripple faintly.

He studied them both, weighing their resolve. Then he gave a single nod. “If you’re ready to work and bleed under my flag, then you’re welcome aboard. But understand this—out there, the world doesn’t reward kindness.”

Jonas smiled faintly. “Neither did this one.”

That answer seemed enough.

As the villagers loaded the last crates of supplies onto the Polar Tang, an old man clasped Law’s hand with trembling fingers. “We will never forget what you’ve done. You’ve given us back our courage.”

Law looked down at the clasped hands, the lines of age and gratitude written into them. “Courage isn’t something I can give,” he said. “It’s something you already had. You just remembered it.”

---

The news reached the island before dawn.

A single gull dropped the crumpled paper onto the pier, its wings slicing through the mist as it vanished toward the horizon. By the time the villagers gathered for morning work, the headlines had already spread like a curse.

“THE SURGEON OF DEATH RETURNS: WREAKING HAVOC IN A PEACEFUL VILLAGE OF THE NORTH.”
Below the bold letters, a new wanted poster with a blurred image showed the square in ruins—burned banners, shattered glass, and Law himself mid-strike, Kikoku raised and face half in shadow. To the untrained eye, it looked like a massacre.
140,000,000 berries – ALIVE ONL

Someone had rewritten salvation into violence.

---

In the inn where the Heart Pirates had stopped for breakfast before departure, the paper hit the table with a slap.

“What the hell is this?!” Shachi barked, nearly knocking over his cup.

Penguin snatched the paper, scanning the lines aloud. " ‘Pirate Trafalgar Law leads unprovoked assault, leaves twenty Marines injured, and spreads terror among civilians!’ What—what terror? We saved those people!"

Bepo’s ears drooped, eyes wide. “But the villagers… they were happy.”

“They still are,” Ikkaku said sharply. “But this isn’t written for them. It’s written for the ones who need a monster to hate.”

Law sat at the end of the table, quiet. His tea steamed untouched. The corners of his mouth curved in a faint, sardonic smile.

“Did you expect applause?” he asked softly.

Jonas slammed the table. “you stopped an execution! You protected civilians! How can they twist it like this?”

Law looked up, eyes calm but distant. “Because stories are easier to control than people. And heroes… they don’t exist outside the headlines.”

Penguin smirked. “So we’re the villains now”

Law’s smile widened, humorless. “We were always going to be. The minute we chose freedom.”

He leaned back, voice steady but low, carrying through the room like cold wind. “Get used to it. The Surgeon of Death doesn’t heal reputations.”

The crew fell silent, anger curdling into something sharper—resolve.

Outside, villagers were tearing copies of the newspaper apart, shouting that the reports were lies. Some brought baskets of food to the inn, others stood by the door in silent solidarity. To them, the pirates were not destroyers—they were the reason their children were still alive.

Law watched them from the window, unreadable. “The world will never thank us for the right reasons,” he murmured. “But it will remember.”

---

When the crew was aboard, the engines hummed to life. The submarine began to sink beneath the waves, torches above dwindling into scattered fireflies on the dock.

Inside, the silence was different from before—no longer oppressive, but heavy with reflection. Jonas and Coren sat quietly among the others, still absorbing the reality of the sea.

Law stood near the viewport, watching the dark waters envelop them. His reflection merged with the deep.

Bepo stirred behind him. “You think they’ll be all right, Captain?”

Law’s answer came after a long pause. “If they learned anything from today… they’ll stop waiting for saviors.”

He touched the glass lightly, leaving a faint smudge that vanished as the current moved.

“Justice doesn’t need a flag,” he said, voice low. “Just a scalpel.”

The ocean swallowed the last trace of light, and the Polar Tang disappeared into its element—silent, unseen, alive.

---

By noon, the same paper reached every major corner of the world.
And in faraway places, people who knew the Surgeon of Death in different ways unfolded it in silence.

---

Marine HQ

Vice Admiral Tsuru read the report in silence. “He’s back.”

Fleet Admiral Sengoku frowned. “And not just back—louder than ever. That picture…”

“It’s almost identical to the first one,” Tsuru said. “Except now his eyes are… crueler... Less grief... More intent.”

---

Far away in Dressrosa:

Doflamingo lounged on his throne, newspaper in hand, laughter echoing through the chamber.

“Fuffuffuffuffu…” His grin split wide, eyes gleaming behind his shades. “The little surgeon’s finally making noise...I almost didn’t recognize you, Corazon’s little ghost”

Trebol leaned forward, curious. “Should we be worried, Doffy?”

“Worried?” Doflamingo tossed the paper aside, watching it flutter down like a broken bird. “He’s dancing exactly as he should. Every cut he makes, every Marine he humiliates—it all feeds the chaos.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, smile twisting darker. “But the irony, Trebol… the irony is delicious.”

“What irony, young master?”

Doflamingo’s grin widened, teeth catching the light. “Fuffuffuffu… The little surgeon thinks he’s cutting the world apart. But the world’s cutting back.”

He snapped his fingers, and the laughter that followed was sharp enough to wound.

---

Somewhere, in Alabasta..

Robin sat by the window, the paper folded neatly beside her untouched cup of coffee. Her dark hair framed a face too calm to betray emotion.

She read the headline again, slowly, as though tasting it.

The Surgeon of Death Returns.

The article’s tone amused her—it painted Law as a monster, but between the lines, she saw precision. The rescue, the substitution, the tactics. It wasn’t chaos. It was a surgeon’s method.

“Detached compassion,” she murmured to herself. “He cuts to save, not to comfort.”

Her contact arrived and slid into the seat opposite her. “You’re interested in this pirate?”

Robin smiled faintly. “Interested in patterns.” She folded the newspaper. “He doesn’t fight for fame, but his name spreads like a plague. People like that change history—quietly.”

Her companion frowned. “Dangerous man to admire.”

“Admire?” She stood, pulling on her cloak. “No. But I’d like to understand the anatomy of his mind.”

---

In Baltigo...

Koala burst into the meeting room. “He did it! He’s back!”

They set the old poster beside the new one.

The first was the infamous picture from Swallow Island’s chaos — Law’s hair longer and unkempt, his hood down, eyes hollow and shadowed with exhaustion. His expression was more ghost than man, lips pressed in a thin line, as if even breathing was a chore.

The new poster, however…
Same man. Same general pose.
But the gaze was different — cutting and deliberate, a blade dipped in venom. His head was tilted slightly, the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes carried a glint that was less “broken” and more “I dare you.”

Sabo grabbed the new poster, holding it beside the old one. “Alright—spot the differences. Old Law: broken eyes. New Law: ‘come and get me’ eyes.”

Koala nodded. “Same surgeon—sharper scalpel!”

Ivankov laughed. "The gaze, darling. Before, his eyes were empty, void of hope. Now, they’re brimming with something dangerous. Almost flirty… if your type is death itself.”

Koala snorted. “That’s not flirting, Iva, that’s a threat with good bone structure.”

Even Dragon, who had been watching silently with his arms crossed, finally spoke. “The posture. The old one sagged forward slightly. The new one is upright, squared. That’s a man making a point.”
He stopped for seconds. then, he added. “He’s provoking them. And now they’ll come for him harder than ever.”

But under his stern tone was something else—pride.

Sabo crossed his arms. “He’s giving the world something to talk about. The villagers are defending him. You’ve seen the reports—people are calling him a ghost doctor.”

Dragon’s lips curved faintly, something between pride and warning. “A symbol like that doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s only a matter of time before the world decides whether to worship him or destroy him.”

Sabo smirked. “Maybe both.”

The faintest breath of amusement left Dragon’s chest. “He’s carving his own path. Let’s hope he survives it.”

---

Back aboard the Polar Tang:

Law sat in the dim glow of the control room, the same newspaper folded neatly on his desk. The others had gone to rest, but he hadn’t moved for an hour.

The words Wreaking Havoc stared back at him like an accusation, but there was no anger in his eyes. Only quiet acceptance.

He lifted the cup beside him and spoke to the reflection in the glass.

“If this is the world’s version of truth,” he murmured, “then let them choke on it.”

He smiled faintly—sharp, tired, unafraid.

The Surgeon of Death had returned, and the sea had started whispering his name again.

Chapter Text

The submarine rested on the surface like a sleeping beast. It yellow hull glinted faintly through the mist, streaked with salt and rust — the kind of vessel that looked less like a ship and more like a creature drawn from the depths.
The sea was calm, though the clouds hung low, painting everything in muted grey. To the untrained eye, it was just a shadow drifting with the tide. To those inside, it was a world — one born from pain, knowledge, and defiance.

The new recruits stood on deck. The salt air tasted strange. Their boots clanged on metal as they followed Shachi and Penguin toward the open hatch, where warm light spilled up from the depths below.

Jonas squinted at the submarine. “It looks smaller than I expected.”

Penguin smirked. “It’s like Law — looks calm from the outside, but wait till you see what’s inside.”

Shachi laughed. “And once you’re inside, it’s too late to escape.”

Coren didn’t smile. “I’ve had worse prisons.”

Something in his voice made them both glance at him —not pitying, but understanding.

“Then you’ll fit right in,” Penguin said, and motioned to the hatch. “Welcome aboard the Polar Tang. Home, heart, and sometimes battlefield.”

They descended into the submarine, the hum of machinery growing louder. The air was cooler here, tinged with oil, metal, and something else — the faint sharpness of antiseptic that seemed to linger no matter how much the ventilation ran.

“This way,” Shachi said.

---

The narrow corridor opened into a surprisingly bright space. The dining room was compact but warm — wooden panels lined the lower walls, carved with marks and initials, and an oval table filled the center. Scratches from knives, stains from spilled tea, and scorch marks from failed experiments told more stories than words could.

On the far side, a small kitchen gleamed under soft yellow light. Pots hung neatly above the stove. An old refrigerator rattled faintly, its door plastered with drawings Bepo had made — mostly crooked polar bears holding swords.

Jonas looked around, his fingers brushing a burn mark on the table. “Feels… homey,” he murmured.

“Homey’s one word for it,” Shachi said. “Law eats here sometimes when he remembers that food exists.”

Penguin chuckled. “Once he spent three days straight in the clinic and came out thinking it was still Tuesday.”

From the far end, a calm voice echoed: “It was Tuesday.”

Law was standing in the doorway, sleeves rolled to his elbows, eyes steady. “Get on with the tour,” he said quietly, then turned and walked off.

The recruits exchanged a glance — that presence alone silenced them more than any order could.

Coren exhaled once he was gone. “That’s… not a man you want to lie to.”

“Exactly,” Penguin said, clapping him on the back. “You’ll learn fast.”

---

The next room felt almost sacred. Glass-fronted shelves curved around the circular chamber, filled sparsely with books that seemed to hum with quiet authority.

The library smelled faintly of paper and salt. Books filled only a quarter of the space — medical texts, engineering manuals, navigation guides, and several well-thumbed novels that seemed almost out of place.

“He reads everything,” Penguin said. “Keeps a log of what each of us likes too.”

Shachi pointed to the empty shelves. “He said these are for the future — books from every island we visit. Wants to fill the world inside this ship.”

Jonas grinned faintly. “That’s… kind of beautiful.”

Coren frowned. “Why not just fill them all now?”

Penguin smiled faintly. “Because if everything’s full, there’s nothing left to search for.”

On one shelf, Jonas spotted handwritten tags — Anatomy, Marine Medicine, Weapon Mechanics, Fables from the North Blue. Another bore a label that made him pause: Bepo’s Stories.

The bear’s handwriting — crooked and childlike — filled a few pages of an open notebook. The recruits didn’t ask. They felt it wasn’t their place.

---

Metal doors groaned as they entered the next section. The training room was a cavern of steel and echoing clangs. Mats covered the floor, and weapon racks lined the walls. Shachi grabbed a wrench from the wall and twirled it. “This is where Ikkaku yells at us for breaking her machines.”

The engineer herself was crouched by an open panel, sparks flashing as she tightened a valve. She looked up briefly, a streak of grease across her cheek. “If you break anything, fix it. That’s the rule.”

“Don’t mind her,” Penguin whispered. “She’s friendlier to metal than people.”

Beside the gym stood a smaller, sealed chamber — reinforced glass, heavy bolts, and a faint mechanical hiss from within.

“What’s that?” Jonas asked.

Ikkaku’s voice answered from behind them. “The pressure room.”

Shachi continued. “High pressure strengthens the lungs, heart, and vessels. Low pressure forces adaptation. The human body bends under stress — but if trained properly, it learns not to break... Most people last a few minutes before blacking out.”

Penguin then said “Law says that training the body to endure the impossible sharpens the mind... He uses it everyday”

“Why?” Jonas asked, hesitating

“Because he can’t afford to break before the world does.”

“Do you use it too?” Coren asked.

Ikkaku muttered, “We try to push our limits every time... But Law is the only one who lasts more than an hour without collapsing.”

Coren murmured, “That’s not training. That’s punishment.”

Penguin sighed. “You’re starting to get it.”

---

This one came as a surprise — a burst of color after all the steel. Posters of ships and sea creatures lined the walls. A battered sofa sat beside a small card table, where half a deck was perpetually scattered.

Bepo was curled in the corner with a blanket, snoring softly.

“Welcome to paradise,” Shachi declared. “Where we pretend the captain doesn’t exist.”

Jonas smiled. “He lets you relax?”

“He doesn’t let us,” Penguin said. “He just doesn’t come here.”

Shachi grinned. “Last time he did, he beat us all at poker in five minutes and left.”

“Without saying anything?”

“Only said, ‘You shouldn’t gamble if you can’t count.’”

Jonas laughed, tension easing. “He’s terrifying.”

“He’s not so bad once you know him. Just serious.” Bepo murmured in his way to the clinic.

---

The narrow hall branched into two compartments. The first was tidy and quiet — maps pinned neatly to the wall, tools hung on hooks.

“Bepo and Ikkaku’s room,” Penguin explained. “Don’t disturb them unless the ship’s sinking.”

The second compartment was chaos incarnate. Bunks covered in clothes, half-built weapons, and a torpedo core used as a coffee table.

Jonas blinked. “This looks… unsafe.”

“Exactly,” Shachi said proudly. “It’s home.”

Coren chuckled — the first real smile they’d seen on him. “You people are insane.”

“Welcome to the crew,” Penguin replied.

---

They stopped before a closed door marked with a small engraved heart. None of the crew moved to open it.

“Not part of the tour,” Shachi said.

Jonas tilted his head. “Why?”

Penguin replied quietly, “Because the only one who enters that room leaves carrying more than they brought.”

The recruits didn’t ask again.

---

The corridor curved toward a larger, domed chamber filled with glowing instruments and flickering charts projected across the ceiling. Constellations swirled above them, recreated through a delicate system of lenses and mirrors.

“Navigation room,” Penguin said with pride. “Bepo designed half the system. We navigate by sonar, current, and stars — sometimes all three at once.”

Jonas blinked. “He did that alone?”

Shachi smiled shyly. “Wolf taught him, but… he likes the stars.” He pointed at one of the glowing projections. “That’s how we stay close to the surface without being seen. Captain says we move like whispers — quiet, but everywhere.”

The recruits felt the submarine shift slightly — a living creature responding to command.

---

The smell of disinfectant hit them before the door opened. The clinic gleamed under white light. Cabinets of glass displayed neatly arranged vials and instruments. On a steel bed, Bepo sat obediently while Law changed his bandages.

Shachi gestured dramatically. “And here’s our emotional support pet.”

Bepo’s ears twitched.

Law didn’t look up. “Don’t call him that.”

“Relax, Captain, it was—”

“Don’t make jokes about it,” Law interrupted quietly. His tone wasn’t sharp, but something in it made everyone stand still. “He’s not a pet. He’s our navigator.”

The silence stretched until Penguin clapped Coren’s shoulder. “And that, my friends, is why you never joke about our dear navigator.”

Bepo smiled, tail flicking. “It’s okay, Captain. I don’t mind.”

Law’s voice softened. “I do.”

Then he tied the last bandage and stepped back. “That’ll heal fine. Keep it dry.”

Jonas, eyes wide, whispered to Penguin, “He’s terrifying.”

Penguin grinned. “Wait until you see him operate.”

---

The final door opened with a hiss. The room inside was immaculate — walls of brushed steel, lights so bright they turned everything white, and a faint vibration that made it feel alive. Tables lined the sides, each tool perfectly placed.

“This is where it happens,” Shachi said quietly. “The real magic.”

Law entered behind them, coat unbuttoned, taking off his gloves. “Precision, not magic,” he corrected. “Every incision is measured. Every mistake, permanent.”

Jonas’s breath caught. “It’s like a temple.”

“For him, it is,” Penguin said softly.

Coren stepped forward, eyes reflecting the sterile lights. “You built this?”

“Designed it. Built by people who owed me favors.”

Coren ran a hand along the cold metal. “Feels… alive.”

Law watched him. “You said you were a welder.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Then you understand creation through control.”

Coren hesitated, then nodded. “And destruction through fear.”

Law tilted his head slightly, almost curious. “You sound like someone who’s lived both.”

Coren exhaled. “I have.”

He turned to the crew, voice low. “I once had a dream... to be a Marine, to save people and serve justice, so I joined the Marines and was a trainee under Pavone's command.” His jaw tightened. “My girlfriend was on my unit... Her name was Mina. She was… better than me. Braver. Pavone wanted her. When she refused, he made an example of her.” His knuckles whitened. “Shot her in front of us. Said her defiance was treason... "

Shachi’s grin faded.

Silence. Even the engines seemed to pause.

"I was standing right there,” Coren said, quieter now. “Weapon in hand. And I did nothing. I let her die because I was afraid.” He looked up, meeting Law’s gaze. “You defeated him, didn’t you? Pavone.”

“I did ... I left him with a large scar befitting his vanity..”

Coren nodded once, slowly. “When I heard what you’d done… I felt something I hadn’t felt in years. Relief. Like someone finally burned the rot I’d been living in.” His voice thickened. “I’ve been dreaming of revenge ever since that day, but I never had the courage. You did what I couldn’t. So when I saw your ship leave the island, I knew where I belonged.”

Jonas murmured, “You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

Coren shook his head. “I do.” Then looked at Law. “If you can’t accept that kind of cowardice on your crew, I’ll leave now. I’m not looking for forgiveness — just a place to build something decent again.”

For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Then Law’s voice was quiet, but it filled the room.

“Cowardice isn’t the absence of courage. It’s what you do with it afterward that matters.” His gaze was sharp, but not cruel. “You stayed alive. That’s enough. Redemption doesn’t start by dying.”

Coren’s shoulders eased. “Then you’ll have me?”

Law inclined his head once. “Until you give me a reason not to.”

---

The dining room had gone quiet except for the steady hum of the submarine beneath their feet — the kind of silence that felt alive. The long table was crowded: cups of steaming tea, half-eaten rations, Bepo’s pawprints on the wood. The faint sway of the ship made the lights above tremble, throwing shadows across faces both old and new.

Law stood at the head of the table, hands resting on the chair before him. His voice, when it came, was even and low, carrying through the room like a tide pulling everyone to attention.

“Since we’re carrying new blood,” he began, “we’ll reintroduce ourselves properly. Everyone speaks for themselves. Keep it brief.”

Bepo was the first to rise. “I’m Bepo, the navigator,” he said cheerfully. “I’m a mink from Zou. Martial artist... and I use Electro in combat and help the captain read the currents. If you get lost, I can find you. Probably.”

Jonas smiled. “Nice to meet you, Bepo.”

“Likewise!” The bear’s ears twitched proudly. “Also, I make the tea.”

“Too much sugar,” Penguin murmured.

Bepo’s ears drooped.

“Next,” Law said.

Shachi leaned back in his chair. “Name’s Shachi. Diver, mechanic, part-time explosives enthusiast.”

“Full-time idiot,” Penguin corrected.

Shachi raised a finger. “And comic relief. I fight with dual knives, good for close range or underwater. If you see bubbles coming from below, it’s probably me — or something about to explode.”

“Usually both,” Ikkaku muttered, earning a snort from Bepo.

Penguin adjusted his cap. “Penguin. Tactical engineer. I handle sonar systems, communication lines, and precision shooting. I don’t miss. I also don’t cook, clean, or volunteer for suicide missions.”

“Liar,” Shachi said. “You volunteered for the cannon test.”

“I was bribed.”

Law interjected, “By who?”

Penguin pointed at Shachi. “Him.”

Law sighed through his nose. “Unsurprising. Continue.”

Ikkaku stood next, wiping her hands on her work pants. “Ikkaku. Chief engineer and weapons designer. I make sure this ship doesn’t fall apart — and when it does, I fix it before you all drown. Also, occasional babysitter.”

Hakugan spoke last among the veterans, his voice quiet but sharp as a wire. “Hakugan. Sniper. I don’t talk much. I hit what I aim at.”

Jonas nodded respectfully. “Got it.”

“Good,” he said, and leaned back, conversation closed.

Law gestured to the newcomers. “Your turn.”

Jonas straightened. "I'm Jonas. I'm a baker and a fighter, though I fought before I baked. My grandpa, a high-ranking Marine before he retired due to injury, raised me. He was super close with Fleet Admiral Sengoku; they were buddies since they were kids."

Penguin raised an eyebrow, asking, "Seriously?"

Jonas nodded. "Yep. My grandpa always said a guy should know how to defend himself before he learns to bake. I learned Armament Haki through tough training, taking hits until I could stand strong. Seems like it worked."

A murmur went through the room.

Shachi commented, "That's pretty interesting, but I think by 'seriously,' he was talking about you knowing Sengoku."

Jonas shrugged. "Indirectly. I've only heard stories about him, and I've seen him twice. The first was when he visited my grandpa, grieving his son's loss; he was totally devastated. The second was when he went to my grandpa's funeral."

"Son?" Shachi frowned. "Sengoku has a son?"

"Adopted, I think," Jonas replied. "He died on a mission a long time ago."

Everyone nodded politely — everyone except Law, who stood motionless at the end of the table. His expression didn’t change, but inside, something deep twisted.

An adopted son.
A mission.
A father’s grief.

He could almost see Rosinante’s pale face again — the gentle smile, the voice that whispered, I wanted to save you. The sound of a dying heart under the snow.

For a moment, Law wasn’t standing in the Polar Tang — he was back in that chest ... screaming.

He looked down at the table, forcing breath through lungs that had gone too tight. “Go on,” he said softly.

Then all eyes turned to Coren.

He hadn’t spoken much since stepping aboard — a broad, quiet man, eyes like old iron. He sat still for a long moment, as if deciding whether to speak at all. Finally, he stood.

“Coren,” he said simply. “Welder. Devil fruit user.”

The room shifted.

Coren continued. “Tetsu Tetsu no Mi. I can create and control molten metal — shape it, solidify it and weaponize it.”

Shachi whistled. “So, our own walking forge.”

Coren gave a faint smile. “Still learning control. But yeah — something like that.”

Ikkaku whistled softly. “You could reinforce the hull during dives.”

“Or melt it by accident,” Penguin muttered.

“Don’t tempt me,” Coren said with the ghost of a smile.

---

“You’ll find your rhythm soon enough,” Law said. “Every man and woman aboard this vessel has a function. This ship is alive because of that balance.”

He let his gaze sweep over them — from the grinning Shachi to the new recruits still wide-eyed with awe.

“There are three rules on my ship,” he continued. “First: follow orders when they’re given. Second: no one is left behind. Third…” He paused, voice softening. “…you treat this vessel as you’d treat your own heart. Break either, and you’ll answer to me.”

The room fell silent. Even the hum of the engines seemed to bow to that voice.

Jonas swallowed. “Understood, Captain.”

Law nodded once. “Good. Now eat. We dive in ten minutes.”

Penguin leaned back, crossing his arms. “Well, guess that’s official. Welcome to the heart pirates”

---

The lights dimmed as they descended. The Polar Tang slid beneath the surface, silent as a thought. Pressure built around them, groaning faintly through the walls.

Law stood in the navigation room, hands on the railing, watching the radar’s heartbeat pulse across the screen. But, his head was spinning with Jonas’s words — Sengoku’s adopted son… died on a mission... He was devistated...
A different man... Same wound... Same grief

Penguin voice snapped him back. “You know, Captain… the deeper we go, the quieter it gets.”

Law’s gaze stayed on the dark water beyond the glass. “Good. That’s where hearts beat the loudest.”

And with that, the Polar Tang disappeared into the depths — carrying the weight of its captain’s silence, the warmth of his crew’s laughter, and the pulse of something fragile but alive — a heart forged in shadow, still daring to beat.

Chapter Text

The world had begun whispering again.
The name “Surgeon of Death” crawled across newspapers and tavern gossip like smoke after a cannon blast, thick and inescapable. Law read every rumor, every lie, every photograph. He tore the papers apart, threaded them to his wall, linked headlines with strings until his cabin looked less like a captain’s quarters and more like the crime board of a man trying to solve himself.

For three months, each morning began with the rustle of another newspaper tossed at his door. Each night ended in the faint hum of the pressure chamber, his breath echoing through the metal walls as he pushed his body past exhaustion. Pain had become a kind of rhythm — the sound of control slipping from his hands.

His goals were simple, and impossibly distant.
One: the black market, and the man who ruled it from the shadows — the Joker.
Two: any fragment of truth that could lead him back to the erased name Water.

The second one burned deeper. It wasn’t vengeance; it was compulsion. An invisible thread tied around his heart, tightening each time he heard that name whispered in the wind.

---

When he wasn’t dissecting information, he joined his crew — though “joined” was perhaps too generous a word. He’d sit with Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo during their downtime, silently enduring their antics. They played cards often, and Law, unsurprisingly, never lost. Penguin had given him a new nickname after another hopeless defeat: “The Poker War Criminal.” The others laughed.

“Can’t you lose just once, Captain?” Penguin grumbled, tossing his cards.
“I did,” Law said without looking up. “I lost everything once.”
The words fell heavy. The laughter stopped.

They resupplied every ten days or so, stopping briefly at ports scattered across the North Blue. Law preferred the poorer towns — places where the world’s rot was most visible. He knew that’s where the real information lived, whispered among the sick and hungry. In every slum, he treated those too poor to be noticed. He stitched wounds, reset bones, and listened. And sometimes, quietly, he reported names to Dragon — ordinary men and women who still dared to dream of freedom. Revolutionaries in waiting.

The plan had been spontaneous at first, born out of instinct rather than strategy. Dragon was surprised when he realized what Law was doing. He never asked him to stop.

---

One evening, inside the submarine’s humming pressure chamber, Law sat cross-legged, his chest rising and falling with sharp precision. His body glistened with sweat. His mind wasn’t still — it never was — but something cut through the noise this time, something old and unhealed.

The Water Tribe.
The phrase surfaced again — “The sea does not kneel.”

He slammed his fist into the metal floor.
“What the hell does that even mean!?” he spat under his breath.

The government had hunted his people for generations, erasing every trace of their existence. But why? What had they done to deserve extinction? He needed to know. The not knowing was a wound that refused to close.

And then, through the fog of obsession, a possibility sparked — a connection he should have made long ago.
Flevance.

Of course.
If the Water bloodline had passed through any land, it was there. His family had lived in Flevance for generations, long before the sickness, long before the fire. They were rooted there. And yet, they were wiped out all the same.

He stood up abruptly, heart pounding. The realization both thrilled and terrified him. Somewhere beneath the ashes of that city, beneath the ruins and lies, there might still be answers — archives, records, research. Even whispers carved in stone.

He exhaled sharply. “Flevance… I’m going back.”

---

The announcement came the next morning, over breakfast.

“We’re heading north,” Law said flatly. “To Astera.” Which is the nation bordering Flevance.

Penguin nearly choked on his food. “Wait — what? Captain, are you—”
“Don’t,” Law interrupted. “Don’t finish that sentence.”

Bepo’s ears drooped. He exchanged a worried glance with Shachi. They all knew what this meant. Law was planning something reckless, and he wasn’t planning to tell them everything.

Jonas, the newest recruit, leaned forward with curiosity. “Why there, Captain? There’s nothing in that region except abandoned ports and… well, the ghost of Flevance.”

Law didn’t answer. His silence said enough.

Jonas continued, his tone casual, too casual for the room. “You know, I’ve heard stories about that place. People say the disease was contagious — like a curse. The government had to quarantine the whole city. Some of them tried to escape anyway.” He shrugged. “Guess some people don’t care who they infect before they die.”

The room froze.
Bepo’s fur bristled. Shachi and Penguin turned pale. Law’s eyes darkened, pupils shrinking into cold, razor-thin slits.

“Jonas…” Penguin whispered, “shut up.”

But it was too late.
Law’s hand was already gripping Kikoku, knuckles white. The faint hum of his power resonated through the room. For a heartbeat, everyone saw it — death, poised on a blade’s edge.

Before Law could move, a loud crack filled the room.
Jonas staggered backward, clutching his face. Blood spilled between his fingers. Ikkaku stood before him, her fist still trembling.

“How dare you?” she shouted, eyes burning. “How dare you talk like that about people who suffered? Do you know what it’s like to watch everyone you love die while the world turns its back? Do you know what it means to be abandoned and called a monster because of something you didn’t choose?”

Jonas blinked, stunned. “What the hell, Ikkaku? Why are you acting like I’m the villain here?”

Coren stepped in, placing a firm hand on Jonas’s shoulder. “Stop talking. Now.”

But Ikkaku wasn’t finished. “I know what it means because I lived it. I had a disease once too. We were all left to die until someone — him,” she pointed at Law, her voice cracking, “refused to give up on us. He risked his life to cure us when everyone else wanted us dead. So if you ever mock victims again — if you ever speak of Flevance like that again — I swear I’ll break more than your jaw.”

The room was silent except for the ringing in Jonas’s ears.
He turned toward Law, half furious, half humiliated. “You tolerate this kind of behavior, Captain?”

Penguin groaned, “Oh, for God’s sake…”
Shachi muttered, “Dead man walking…”

Law’s voice came low and cold, slicing through the tension.
“No. I don’t tolerate behavior like that.”

Jonas’s expression flickered with relief — until Law continued.
“You should thank her. You were a second away from losing your tongue. And I wasn’t joking.”

Jonas paled.
Law leaned closer, his gaze sharp as a scalpel. “Perhaps it’s time for a fourth rule aboard this ship: Flevance and any other tragedy are red lines. Cross them… and you’ll find yourself beyond this submarine’s limits — even underwater.”

No one breathed.
Law stood, Kikoku still sheathed, and walked out without another word. Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin followed silently, leaving the others to sit in stunned quiet.

---

Inside his cabin, the air felt heavy, thick with unspoken memories.
“Captain…” Bepo began softly, “are you alright?”

Law didn’t look up. “No.”

Shachi frowned. “You shouldn’t take what Jonas said to heart. He doesn’t know—”
“He doesn’t have to know,” Law interrupted. His voice was calm, but distant. “People fear what they don’t understand. I’ll hear worse than that in Astera. I need to be ready.”

Penguin crossed his arms. “And you still plan to go there?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“I don’t want anyone else to get dragged into it.”

The three of them exchanged glances — the kind only brothers could share — and shook their heads almost in unison.

“No way,” Shachi said.
“You’re not sneaking off again,” Penguin added.
“We’re coming,” Bepo finished.

Law sighed. “Only one of you, maybe. The rest stay here.”

They argued. They pleaded. Eventually, to settle it, they did what the Heart Pirates always did — a game of rock-paper-scissors.

Bepo won.
He jumped up with a soft cheer while Penguin groaned into his hands.

Law exhaled. “I wouldn’t call that a win.”

Penguin muttered, “You’ll regret saying that later.”

Before they left, Penguin asked, “Captain… why hide this from the crew? You’re not afraid of the government knowing. So what’s the real reason?”

Law hesitated for a long time. The submarine hummed around them, filling the silence.
“Because I’m not ready,” he said finally. “When I tell them I’m from Flevance, I’ll need to face every ghost that comes with that truth. And I can’t… not yet. Not until I come back.”

---

Two days later, they arrived.
From the deck, Astera looked deceptively alive — docks busy with trade ships, lanterns glowing in the dusk. It wasn’t the lifeless ruin Jonas had described. But there was something rotten underneath the surface, a hollowness Law could smell like blood in water.

He pulled up his hood, voice steady but sharp.
“Keep your faces hidden. No uniforms. We move like ghosts.”

And with that, the Surgeon of Death set foot once more on the path back to the city that killed him.

---

The first thing Law noticed about Astera was how loud it was.
Laughter, the clatter of carts, the shrill whistles of merchants calling out their prices — it was obscene in its cheerfulness. The sea wind carried the scent of spices and grilled fish, but beneath that, Law caught a faint metallic tang, like old blood that refused to wash away.

From the harbor, banners rippled with bright goldand white fabric, each stitched with a sword and flame. They bore the same slogan, painted in grand, defiant letters:
“Salvation Through Purity.”

Penguin had said once that the world always finds ways to profit from tragedy. He had been right.

Astera had turned Flevance into a business.

Tourists swarmed the port, laughing and snapping photographs beside souvenir stands that sold fragments of “Flevance soil” sealed in glass jars — at least, that’s what they claimed. There were even snow globes shaped like the city’s silhouette before its fall. Law’s jaw clenched at the sight.

Bepo, walking beside him in a heavy cloak, frowned. “Captain… are they… celebrating?”

Law’s voice was flat. “Exploiting.”

He could hear the mockery in every sound — the children playing tag near stalls that sold “replica quarantine masks,” the musicians singing songs about heroes who “saved the North Blue” from the plague. And at the center of it all, a huge wooden stage was being built. Posters nearby advertised The Salvation Festival — Honoring the Brave Who Contained the Disease of Flevance.

Law’s fingers twitched. For a moment, his power stirred, almost involuntarily. He could feel the outlines of every person in the square.
One pulse of ROOM and this whole mockery could vanish in silence.

“Captain,” Bepo whispered, noticing the faint blue aura forming around his hand. “Don’t.”

Law blinked. The glow faded. He exhaled slowly.
“I’m fine,” he lied.

---

That evening, Ikkaku approached him cautiously.
“Captain,” she said, her voice soft but firm, “some of us want to go to the border. To… pay respects. Nothing more.”

Law’s eyes studied her for a moment, searching for any hint of morbid curiosity. He found none — only sincerity.
“Go,” he said. “But stay out of trouble. And take Coren with you.”

Ikkaku nodded in gratitude. She didn't know that this was his way of saying thank you for earlier — for stopping Jonas from saying what Law would never forgive himself for hearing.

As she left, Law turned to Bepo. “You stay. We’re leaving tonight.”

Bepo’s ears perked. “To Flevance?”

Law nodded. “Once the festival starts, the guards will be distracted. We move then.”

---

The streets of Astera transformed at night. Fireworks burst over the harbor, their red light washing over faces full of joy and ignorance. The main square echoed with cheers as actors took the stage to reenact “the heroic containment.” They wore costumes of soldiers and scientists, raising wooden rifles as fake “plague victims” fell to the ground in overacted agony. The crowd applauded.

Bepo looked away. “This is horrible.”

Law’s voice was low, controlled only by sheer will. “Let them have their theatre. The truth burns deeper than any play.”

He waited until the laughter and music reached their peak before slipping away into the alleyways, his footsteps silent. Bepo followed, clutching a lantern they wouldn’t light until they were inside the ruins.

At the city’s northern edge stood the border — a rusted barbed-wire fence with a few long-dead electric nodes. Once it had crackled with deadly voltage; now it was only a monument to fear. Behind it, Flevance slept, untouched, buried in white dust that glimmered under the moonlight.

There were no guards. No need for them.
No one sane would ever enter that grave.

Law and Bepo crossed the fence in silence.
The wind changed — colder, heavier. The air itself seemed to hum with ghosts.

---

Flevance had once been called the White City of Hope. Its streets had shimmered like snow, its people proud of the beauty of their homeland. Now it was an endless field of ash. The buildings leaned like broken ribs. The moonlight reflected on the white dust covering everything — the residue of amber lead — giving the ruins a ghostly glow, as if the city itself was still trying to breathe.

Law took a few steps forward and stopped. His knees felt weak. His pulse echoed in his ears, a drumbeat of dread and memory.

He could hear them.
The laughter of children. The chatter of his neighbors. His mother humming in the kitchen. Lami’s voice asking for a bedtime story.

He was ten again, running through the streets, clutching a book and a dream. And then — screams, the smell of burning wood, soldiers’ boots, his parents’ blood pooling under sterile light.

He stumbled forward, clutching his chest.
Bepo reached for him. “Captain?”

Law didn’t respond. His eyes were fixed ahead, but they saw something far beyond the ruins — something that wasn’t there anymore. He whispered, barely audible, “I’m home.”

---

They reached what was left of the library first.
The walls had collapsed inward, the roof gone. Only a few blackened pillars remained, like tombstones. Law stepped through the debris and activated his ROOM, the pale blue sphere expanding around them with a low hum. Within it, he could feel the city’s skeleton — every fragment, every buried thing.

“There’s something below,” he murmured. “A sealed space.”

He extended his hand, focusing. The air shimmered. A moment later, he and Bepo vanished in a flicker and reappeared underground.

The space was suffocating — a vault of stone and rusted metal. The air was so stale it burned their lungs. Law’s flashlight flickered, catching shapes — crates, shelves, collapsed beams.

Nothing.
Empty.

Except…

He felt it — a small dead zone, a place his ability couldn’t sense.
“Sea stone,” he muttered. “Someone didn’t want this found.”

He drew Kikoku and began cutting carefully through the stone pillar, slow and precise. Sparks flew. After minutes of silence, a rectangular safe revealed itself — black, cold, and smooth to the touch. Inside, wrapped in a corroded sheath, was a small metallic case containing old papers and a bound manuscript written in coded symbols.

Law held it gently, as though it were fragile glass. “Encrypted… they hid it for a reason.”

Bepo tilted his head. “Can you read it?”

“Not yet,” Law said quietly. “But I will.”

He slipped it into his coat and stood, the faint glow of the ROOM fading around them.

“Next,” he said. “The hospital.”

---

If the library was a grave, the hospital was hell reborn.
The building stood half-buried under the weight of collapsed wings and charred rubble. The smell of ash and decay still lingered even after ten years. Law walked through the broken entrance like a man entering a mausoleum.

Each step echoed on burnt tile.
He could almost see the past layered over the present — white coats running through the corridors, the sound of coughing, the metallic clang of dropped instruments. His father’s voice shouting orders. His mother’s hand pulling him toward the closet. Lami’s tears.

He stopped in front of a wall cabinet.

Bepo, sensing the shift in his breathing, spoke softly. “Captain…?”

Law’s hand trembled as it reached for the handle. “I’m afraid, Bepo.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Lami,” he whispered. “I left her here. I… have to open it.”

“Do you want me to—”

“No.” His voice cracked. “This is my demon.”

He pulled the handle. The hinges groaned.
Inside, nothing but black ash — a shape too small to be anything else.

The world fell silent.

Law dropped to his knees, the box in his hands trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice broke, then rose into a hoarse scream that filled the ruins. “I’m sorry, Lami! I should’ve stayed! I should’ve died with you!”

The words dissolved into sobs. He buried his face in his hands, his body shaking uncontrollably.
Time lost meaning.
When he came back to himself, he was in Bepo’s arms. The mink’s fur was wet — from tears, or from the ash that covered them both.

“I couldn’t wake you,” Bepo murmured. “You were… gone.”

Law swallowed hard, eyes red. He pulled away slowly, then took a small metal box from his coat, filled it carefully with the ashes from the closet.
“I’ll free you,” he said softly, “from this prison.”

---

They continued in silence to the next destination — his father’s office.
The room was half-intact, though everything inside was charred beyond recognition. Burnt shelves. Melted instruments. The remains of a fireproof safe embedded in the wall.

He heard his parents’ voices again — faint echoes. His mother laughing, his father explaining chemical formulas. He could almost see himself sitting at the desk, listening with wide eyes. The ghost of warmth hurt more than any flame.

He broke the lock on the safe. Inside were stacks of old papers — their handwriting still visible beneath the soot. Medical research. Notes on amber lead toxicity. His father’s life work, preserved by steel and stubbornness.

Law took them wordlessly. Some answers might live here too.

Bepo glanced at him nervously. “Can we go back now?”

Law hesitated. “No. There’s one last place.”

He didn’t say what. But Bepo understood. The house.

---

The road home felt endless. Each step pulled something out of him — a memory, a heartbeat, a piece of what little peace he’d rebuilt.

When they reached the door, Law paused. The house was barely standing, its roof caved in, the walls streaked with soot. The doorway yawned open like a mouth swallowing darkness.

“Bepo,” Law said quietly. “If I lose myself in there… if I stop being me… bring me back. Whatever it takes.”

Bepo’s voice trembled. “Captain!'”

“If you have to hurt me — do it.”

They entered.
Inside, it was quiet. Too quiet. The silence had weight. Law’s flashlight cut through dust and memories.

And then he heard them — the voices.
“Let’s go buy ice cream.”
“Brother, read me a story.”
“Stop studying, Law, come play outside.”
“You’re such good kids.”

He stood frozen, eyes wide, breathing shallow. The past had come alive, wrapping around him like smoke. He whispered, “Mother?” and took a step forward.

Then a sharp pain exploded in his hand.
He gasped, snapping back to reality. Bepo stood before him, tears streaming down his fur, claws trembling and bloody.

“You told me to,” Bepo said, sobbing. “You told me to bring you back.”

Law stared at the wound, then at Bepo. For a moment, all he could do was breathe — ragged, uneven breaths. Then he smiled weakly, the kind that looked more like defeat. “Good job, Bepo.”

He pulled the bear into an embrace, one hand pressing the wound to stay awake. “I’m fine,” he murmured. “Don’t cry.”

Down in the basement, they found a final safe — smaller, hidden behind a collapsed beam. Inside were old journals and letters sealed in wax. Law tucked them away, his face unreadable.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

 

---

By the time they returned to the submarine, it was near ten o’clock. The crew had been pacing the deck, waiting. When they saw Law bleeding and Bepo’s face streaked with tears, the noise died instantly.

Penguin stepped forward, his voice a whisper. “Captain…”

Law didn’t answer. He just said, “Set sail.”

No one argued.

As the Polar Tang slipped silently back into the dark sea, the ruins of Flevance faded behind them — a ghost swallowed by fog and distance.

Law stood at the window of his cabin, the small metal box resting on his desk, his hands trembling. The white dust still clung to his gloves.

He whispered, “I'll free you, Lami.”

And, Trafalgar Law let the tears fall freely — not as the Surgeon of Death, but as a brother, and as a boy who had finally walked through hell to bury what remained of his heart.

Chapter Text

When Law returned to his quarters, the door closed behind him with a quiet click that sounded like the sealing of a tomb.

He stood still for a moment, gripping the handle, his reflection in the metal faint and trembling. Then his legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees. The air felt heavy, pressing against his chest. He tried to breathe, but every inhalation scraped like glass. Oxygen levels were fine — he knew that. The problem wasn’t the air. It was the flood inside him.

His body was sweating, yet his skin felt like ice. The tremors began in his hands and climbed up his arms. His pulse was erratic. Every time he blinked, he saw Lami’s ashes, her small shape in his hands, her voice echoing from a decade ago.

He pressed his palm against his wound — the one Bepo had made — pressing harder, harder, until pain bloomed like fire. The sting grounded him, pulled him back from the edge for a heartbeat. But the abyss was patient.

Stay awake. Stay here.
He repeated it like a mantra.
Still, he was drowning.

---

Outside his room, the crew was in chaos.

Bepo was sitting on the floor, trembling, his white fur soaked with tears. “I hurt him,” he kept saying, voice cracking. “I hurt Captain… he told me to, but… I did.”

Jonas, confused and pale, looked between the others. “Bepo? What do you mean you hurt him? You can’t even squish a fly!”

Shachi and Penguin exchanged glances. Neither of them had seen Bepo this broken.

Ikkaku crossed her arms, anxiety written on her face. “Maybe we should go check on him. It’s been a while.”

“Not yet,” Penguin said quickly. “Law doesn’t want company when he’s… like that. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

But as the minutes dragged into hours, even Penguin’s voice lost its confidence. They went to checononn him and could hear faint sounds from behind the door — the scrape of something against the floor, the ragged rhythm of breathing that didn’t sound right.

Shachi knocked. “Captain? You alive in there?”
No answer.

Penguin frowned. “If you don’t open the door, we’ll break it down.”

Still nothing. Usually that threat earned them a sarcastic ‘Try it and you’ll regret it.’
Silence instead. That was worse than shouting.

“Alright,” Shachi muttered. “You asked for it.”

They open the door.

---

The room looked like a battlefield.

Law lay sprawled on the floor, drenched in sweat and tears. His hand was pressed against his wound — or what was left of it. Blood had pooled beneath him. The edges of the injury were ragged and torn, as if he’d clawed at it himself. His fingers had sunk into the flesh.

Shachi froze. “What the hell—”

Penguin dropped to his knees beside Law, checking his pulse. Still there. Faint but steady.

“Why did you do this to yourself?” he muttered, voice shaking. “Are you trying to die?”

Bepo’s voice came from the doorway, barely audible. “No… he was trying to live.”

“What are you talking about?” Shachi demanded. “This looks like anything but survival.”

Bepo shook his head. “He told me… if he lost himself, I should stab him... I did... It brought him back... The pain brought him back. I think… he was trying to stay in the present. He pressed on it to stay awake.”

Penguin’s throat tightened. He swallowed the surge of emotion. “We don’t have time to argue. Shachi, antiseptic and antibiotics. Now. Bepo, sutures and bandages.”

They worked quickly, falling into the rhythm of crisis. Penguin cleaned the wound, Shachi steadied Law’s arm, Bepo stitched through tears. The smell of blood mixed with the sharp scent of disinfectant.

When it was over, Law’s breathing had steadied, shallow but rhythmic. They washed his face and laid him on the bed. His skin was cold, but the feverish tremor had eased.

Penguin sighed, rubbing his forehead. “He’s stable. For now.”

Then he looked at Bepo. “When you said he was trying to survive… I get it now.”

Bepo nodded, sniffling. “He didn’t want to die in his head again.”

Penguin’s voice softened. “Don’t worry. He’ll wake up soon. Probably grumpy and asking for coffee.”

He said it with a shaky smile. None of them believed it — but they needed to.

---

Law woke before dawn.

His throat was dry, his body heavy. Three shapes lay slumped beside his bed — Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin, asleep in a tangle of exhaustion. Law stared at them quietly for a long time. His chest ached, not from the wound, but from something deeper.

He rose slowly, wincing at the pull of stitches. He didn’t wake them.

The submarine was silent except for the hum of the engines and the distant sigh of the sea. He made himself a cup of coffee, black and bitter, and carried it to the small library.

There, on the desk, lay the objects he had brought from Flevance — the manuscript from the vault, the coded papers from his house, and his parents’ sealed research. They sat there like ghosts waiting to be read.

He stared at them for a long time. He wasn’t ready for the last one. Not yet. The thought of reading his parents’ handwriting — their voices preserved in ink — made his hands shake.

So he started with the manuscript from the vault. The one sealed in sea stone, hidden for generations.

He unfolded the brittle pages carefully. The ink had faded, but the script was elegant — disciplined, almost reverent. Lines of strange characters intertwined with sketches of human anatomy and geometric patterns that looked like constellations.

The language of the dead, Law thought grimly.

He began the painstaking process of deciphering.

---

For five hours, the submarine’s library was filled with the scratch of his pen, the occasional sound of paper turning, and the steady tick of the wall clock.

By the time morning light filtered through the portholes, the crew was stirring. The smell of fresh pastries drifted through the halls — Jonas’s attempt at an apology to Ikkaku.

Law didn’t notice. His coffee was cold, his eyes bloodshot, but something in him had steadied. The words on the manuscript were beginning to take shape, their meaning slowly unraveling.

He was finally reading what the world had tried to erase.

---

At breakfast, he appeared without warning. Everyone looked up in surprise — not because he was there, but because he smiled. It was small, strained, but real.

“I’m fine,” he said before anyone could ask. The lie was gentle this time.

Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin arrived a few minutes later, still half-asleep, their worry visible even behind forced grins. The crew ate together, silence hanging heavy like fog.

Then Law stood. His voice was calm, steady, but every word was weighted.

“There’s something I need to tell you. Don’t interrupt and don’t ask questions.”

Every head turned. No one spoke.

“I went to Flevance,” he said. “It wasn’t just another mission. It was… where I came from.”

The words hit like a shockwave. Eyes widened. Forks froze midair.

“I’m a survivor,” he continued, his tone clinical — the only way he could speak it without breaking. “Ten years old when it burned. My family died there. My sister… myparents… everyone. The ‘heroes’ they celebrated in Astera last night? They missed one. Me. Though, truth be told, I sometimes wish they hadn’t.”

Jonas’s face turned white.

Law’s gaze swept the table, hard and unflinching. “You’ve all heard the story — that amber lead was contagious. That the government quarantined the city to protect the world. That’s a lie. It wasn’t disease. It was poisoning. Metal buried in our bones. And they killed us because the truth was inconvenient.”

Silence. Only the hum of the submarine.

“I hid under corpses until the soldiers left,” Law said softly. “That’s how I survived. That’s the kind of survivor I am.”

No one dared speak. Not even Shachi or Penguin, who already knew.

Jonas lowered his head, shame burning across his face. His throat tightened, the words I’m sorry stuck somewhere he couldn’t reach.

Law’s voice turned quieter. “If any of you can’t sail under a flag led by someone from that city, you can disembark at the next port. No questions asked.”

No one moved.

He turned to Bepo. “Tell me when we surface. I need to… free someone.”

The crew didn’t understand at first. But Bepo did. He nodded silently.

Law left the room, carrying the small metal box with him.

---

The library was silent except for the slow turning of pages and the soft hum of the sea.
Law sat hunched at his desk, the dim lamp casting a pale glow across scattered notes. The air was heavy with ink, salt, and exhaustion.

Outside his door, the world continued as usual — laughter echoing faintly from the galley, footsteps on metal floors, the quiet hum of life. But inside, time dissolved.

Day bled into night, and night bled into another morning.

He barely moved, except to refill his coffee or sharpen his pen. His wound ached, his stitches throbbed, but the pain was background noise now — a metronome keeping him anchored to the present.

---

By the end of the third day, the manuscript had begun to speak.

At first, it was fragmented — phrases and diagrams that hinted at something larger.
Then, as the code gave way under his disciplined mind, a pattern emerged.

And within that pattern — a truth.

He sat back, exhaling, eyes flicking between lines of translated text.

>“The Purge was not born of fear of plague, nor of ambition for land, but of terror — terror of an idea.”

“The Waters believed that healing was freedom — that to heal is to return to balance, not obedience.”

“They defied the heavens by saying the world does not need permission to live.”

 

Law’s fingers tightened around the edge of the paper.

The Water philosophy had been a dangerous one. To them, life was a self-sustaining equilibrium. The body healed not because of divine decree or government control, but because nature itself willed it.
The Waters rejected the notion of divine authority. They saw medicine as liberation — not a tool of the powerful.
They believed that the “disease of the world” wasn’t illness… it was domination.

And that was unforgivable.

Their work was branded biological heresy. The texts spoke of holy inquisitions that burned their libraries, erased their names, and turned their philosophy into myth.

Law’s jaw tightened. He read the last line of one section again and again until the words blurred.

>“The sea does not kneel.”

It wasn’t a motto of pride. It was defiance — a declaration that nature itself bows to no ruler, no god, no Celestial Dragons.

He whispered it aloud, voice barely above a breath. “The sea does not kneel… because it cannot.”

---

When the next morning came, the others found him asleep at the desk, face half-buried in papers. His coffee had gone cold again.
They didn’t wake him.

Law’s expression in sleep wasn’t anger or exhaustion. It was peace — fragile, fleeting, but real.

---

When he woke, he returned immediately to work.
The next pile of papers was from his house — the ones written in his father’s hand.

The handwriting was firm, confident. In the margins were sketches of medical diagrams — veins, organs, and something else: concentric circles drawn over human forms, annotated with impossible equations.

The title page read:
“The Codex of Dawn — Interpreted and Annotated by Trafalgar Luthar.”

His father’s name.

Law’s throat tightened.

He turned the pages carefully, reverently, and began to read.

---

The Codex of Dawn was older than he’d imagined — written centuries ago by someone called Aurelion Water, a physician-philosopher who believed the human body was not a fixed vessel but a field of energy, a configuration of life that could be reshaped if one understood its balance.

The Codex described how the boundaries of the body — skin, bone, organ — were suggestions, not absolutes.
It spoke of shifting anatomy without death, of separating the self from its physical form while preserving consciousness.

To the untrained eye, it was lunacy. To Law, it was eerily familiar.

>“If the world is made of rooms,” Aurelion wrote, “then life is the first Room — invisible, vast, and endless. To heal is to rearrange the Room without breaking its walls.”

Law’s breath caught.
Room.

He stared at the passage, heart pounding.
He flipped to another page.

>“Matter is obedient to intent. When the healer’s will becomes clear enough to see through flesh, the world itself will yield.”

It was uncanny — a poetic description of what his Devil Fruit allowed him to do.

He leaned in and whispered, "Aurelion water, did you actually have the Ope Ope no Mi? Or were you just spitballing ideas?"

His father’s notes in the margins interpreted the Codex with scientific caution. There were formulas, anatomical studies, and at the end, a single underlined conclusion:

>“The theory may hold truth — but to test it would require bloodshed.”

Law sat still for a long moment, reading that line over and over. His father had known — had felt the pull between science and sin, between saving and destroying.

And now, Law was living proof of that paradox. His Devil Fruit had given him what generations of Waters could only dream of — the power to move within that boundary, to heal and to kill with equal precision.

He wasn’t just carrying their name.
He was their culmination.
Their curse — and their answer.

---

He leaned back, rubbing his temples. His mind was a storm of revelation and grief.
Aurelion Water had written about a future healer who could “walk the boundary between life and death — the Surgeon who opens the Room of the world.”
It had been myth.
Now, that myth had flesh, breath, and a name.

---

Three days later, he felt ready to face the last of the documents — his parents’ research.
He held the folder for a long time before opening it, tracing his father’s handwriting on the cover, the smudge of his mother’s fingerprint in one corner.

The pages smelled faintly of smoke — survivors of a fire that had tried and failed to erase them.

He opened them slowly, and the weight of his parents’ minds poured out.

Charts of amber lead poisoning. Cellular decay studies. The chemical formula of the metal compound that had destroyed Flevance.
But unlike the official reports, their research didn’t end in hopelessness.

They had found resistance patterns — anomalies in a few blood samples. His father had written that these anomalies appeared in families with distinct genetic markers. One of them matched their own.

His mother’s notes described experiments to replicate the effect — trying to create a treatment using the body’s own equilibrium. She called it resonant healing — a process where energy within the body rebalanced to neutralize the poison.

The last page was unfinished.
A sentence stopped mid-word, the ink blotched as if the pen had been dropped in haste.

>“If the body can harmonize with the metal — then it is not death we fear, but disharmony. ”

The line ended there.

Law stared at it until his vision blurred.

They had been so close.
They hadn’t died from ignorance — they had died because they had discovered too much.

When he finally closed the file, the sound was soft, but it echoed in his chest like thunder.

---

He stayed in the library until the next dawn.
When he stepped out, his crew saw the calm in his eyes — a calm that wasn’t peace but purpose.

Chapter Text

Trafalgar Law sat hunched over Aurelion’s Codex as though it were not a book, but a living creature whispering secrets only he could hear.

The ancient manuscript didn’t describe the body as a stable thing — not as a cage of rib and sinew — but as a negotiable space, a soft geometry of flesh that could be persuaded, distorted, rewritten.

Aurelion wrote of anatomy the way poets wrote of love: with reverence, madness, and a hunger to break the rules of nature.

And Law devoured every line.

It haunted him.
It thrilled him.
It consumed him.

Every hour he wasn’t treating patients, he poured into deciphering Aurelion’s diagrams — spirals of muscle pathways, nodes of nerve influence, maps of organ-held memories — structures that behaved differently within a ROOM.

Aurelion believed the body was not a fixed architecture.
He believed it was malleable... Clay.

His crew forced him to eat, sleep, blink like a normal organism, and occasionally stand in sunlight so he didn’t mutate into a deep-sea goblin. But the moment their backs turned, Law was already back in his quarters, flipping pages with a hunger that looked almost feral.

He’d even begun teleporting himself back inside whenever someone tried physically dragging him to dinner.

---

The Polar Tang had docked in Brisendell, a quiet port island with crooked alleyways and a thin line of smoke permanently hovering above its old rooftops. Supplies were needed. Repairs too. Brisendell was perfect for that.

Law had no intention of stepping off the ship.

His crew could handle groceries.
He didn’t trust them with medical theory, but he trusted them with vegetables.

Mostly.

---

Jonas and Hakugan were the first to return.

Jonas kicked open the hatch at full volume, boots clanging on metal as he announced proudly:

“Captain! I caught tons of rats from the slums! They were so slow, I think I grabbed thirty!”

He held up a sagging burlap sack like an offering.

Jonas, convinced that the captain’s relentless studying meant he needed fresh ‘experimental subjects,’ had proudly decided that sewer rats were the perfect gift for a doctor obsessed with anatomy.

Law grabbed it without a word.

Inside, the rats barely twitched. Their sides rose in shallow, stuttering breaths. Their eyes gleamed sickly yellow.

Law lifted his gaze toward Jonas’s hands — bare, filthy, probably still warm from holding the dying vermin.

“You touched them?”

Jonas blinked in confusion. “How else do you catch rats? Should I have— I dunno— used tongs?”

Hakugan groaned. “I tried to stop him, Captain.”

Law inhaled deeply — the kind of inhale doctors take when choosing between murder and professionalism.

“Jonas,” Law said, voice as flat and sharp as a scalpel, “a ‘slow rat’ means an infected rat. Possibly dying. You brought diseased animals into my submarine. With your bare hands. Touching everything. Do you understand how viruses work, or is that advanced science for a baker-turned-pirate?”

Jonas grimaced. “What? They’re just rats.”

Law pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.

“Get. To. The. Clinic.”

Jonas’s face drained of color. “Why?!”

“Because you likely infected half the crew.”

Jonas bolted toward the clinic in terror.

Law turned to Bepo and Hakugan, already shifting into command mode.

“Disinfect everything. Floors, handles, railings, vents. And if a single screw isn’t scrubbed, I’ll use you both as test subjects.”

“Aye, Captain.”

He shoved the sack of rats into the isolation cage in the clinic and was about to return to the Codex when someone barreled inside.

Ikkaku. Breathless. Ash-faced.

“Captain—you need to come outside. Now.”

---

Law had barely stepped out of the submarine before the truth hit him like a blow.

Brisendell was collapsing.

People staggered through the streets, hands pressed to walls for support. Others slumped on crates, benches, doorsteps — breathing hard, sweating through their clothes, skin paling to a waxy color.

A sickness slithered under their skin.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Like rot beneath fruit.

Ikkaku led him through the marketplace, where two men were hunched against a bakery’s shuttered window.

“They were fine two days ago,” she said, breath strained. “Now half the town can barely stand.”

Law drew his mask tighter. His eyes swept the area with calm brutality.

“This is spreading fast.”

Even the steps of Brisendell’s hospital were covered with patients — sitting, lying, curling into themselves. A nurse attempted to push them back, but her knees buckled as she did so.

Inside was worse.

People lay on blankets, sacks, the bare floor. Some retched. Others moaned. Doctors stumbled from patient to patient, working not with medicine but muscle memory, hands trembling with exhaustion.

“They won’t take anyone else,” Ikkaku said. “They’re drowning. They can’t help more.”

“Then we work elsewhere,” Law said simply.

He didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t waste time.

He was a surgeon in a battlefield disguised as a town.

---

A rundown motel on the edge of Brisendell became his makeshift hospital.

Shachi and Penguin pushed aside tables, benches, shelves.
Ikkaku barked orders until the crowd formed lines.
Those who could walk arrived clutching their stomachs.
Those who couldn’t were dragged or carried.

Law stepped into the swarm of the sick like a blade cutting into flesh.

His eyes moved over each patient with a surgeon’s cruelty — precise, calculating, merciless.

Within minutes, he saw the pattern.

A mutation.

Rats carried the altered strain.
But humans had carried the original.

“This was originally human-to-human,” Law murmured. “But the mutated strain is weaker in contagion and stronger in damage… It’s targeting liver and kidneys with surgical precision.”

He examined a child’s eyes — yellowed.
A man’s side — swollen.
A woman’s breath — labored.

“Only those who had contact with infected rats fell ill,” he concluded aloud. “The mutated strain stops with the rat.”

A small mercy.
And a grim warning.

He needed the first patient.
The origin.
Someone who had carried the unmutated version.

Someone who had passed it to the rats.
Someone who started the chain of death crawling through Brisendell.

Someone very sick… or very guilty.

---

Law left Ikkaku with strict triage orders and sprinted back to the Polar Tang. ROOM flickered around him, pulling equipment closer, clearing paths, rearranging space like a silent assistant.

He prepared the mutated-virus antidote first, showing Bepo each step until the mink could repeat it flawlessly.

Then the antidote for the original strain — slower, more delicate, more dangerous.

Instinct buzzed under his skin like static.

When the first vials were ready, Law turned to Bepo.

“Give Jonas the mutated-virus antidote. He’s infected.”

Jonas, pale and sweating in the corner, burst out, “I said I didn’t touch the rats—!”

“You handled thirty dying vermin with your bare hands,” Law snapped. “You’re lucky you’re alive to whine about it.”

Jonas shrank like a deflated balloon.

Law left the submarine with the finished doses.

And Brisendell swallowed him whole.

He worked without rest.
Without blinking.
Without mercy.

Sutures.
Organ decompressions.
Antivirals.
Emergency ROOM procedures that bent anatomy into submission.

Patients vomited blood into buckets.
Children cried.
Bodies shook with fever.

Law never flinched.

---

By dawn, only a scattering of candles remained lit inside the rundown motel. Their flames trembled in the stale air like dying fireflies. Shadows stretched long across the room, clinging to walls already smudged with the prints of feverish hands.

Ikkaku’s hands shook as she worked, her arms heavy as chains.
Shachi and Penguin looked half-conscious, pale with exhaustion, leaning against the walls between patients as though even gravity had turned against them.

The room smelled of disinfectant, sweat, and the faint metallic tang of sickness.

Then the door opened.

A young woman staggered inside — pale as moonlight, trembling from head to toe, her irises stained yellow like aging parchment. Every breath she took rattled, wet and uneven, as if her lungs were filled with stones.

“My name… is Elira,” she whispered, clutching the doorframe. “My fiancé… he’s worse than me. I came to… ask if you could… see him.”

Her voice cracked.
Her knees buckled.
The hope in her eyes flickered like her failing pulse.

Law didn’t waste a heartbeat.

“Lie down,” he ordered, already stepping toward her.

She shook her head weakly. “I—I’m fine, please—my fiancé—”

“We begin treating you now,” Law cut in, voice low, cold, absolute. “Every second you talk is a second you lose.”

His presence was not comforting — it was commanding.
A scalpel, not a blanket.

He examined her swiftly:
swollen abdomen, yellowed eyes, tremors running through every muscle, slowed circulation, liver distress…

Advanced infection.
Hours away from organ failure.

A ROOM blossomed around them, humming faintly. Law worked inside it with chilling precision — correcting blood flow, easing kidney strain, suppressing inflammation, rebalancing pressure in the liver. His fingers moved like someone stitching reality itself back into place.

“Your fiancé,” Law said without pausing his work. “Symptoms?”

Elira swallowed painfully before speaking.
“He… he can’t move anymore. Vomits blood. His skin has… purple patches. He hasn’t woken up… since yesterday.”

“First-generation infection,” Law muttered.

He motioned sharply.
“Shachi. Penguin. Bring him here. Gloves, masks, full protection. And don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

They nodded and ran.

Elira’s head lifted weakly.
“Please… save him.”

Law adjusted her IV with a soft, final click.

“We’ll see,” he said. It wasn’t a promise. It was a verdict.

---

When Shachi and Penguin returned carrying Elira’s fiancé, Law felt something cold shift inside him — not fear, not dread… recognition.

The man - Roderick- looked less like a man and more like a corpse that hadn’t yet been informed of the fact. His skin was grey. Lips cracked. Breath shallow. His body sagged between Shachi and Penguin like an empty sack.

Law prepared for surgery immediately.

He opened a ROOM, lifting organs gently from the body to assess the damage.

And froze.

Roderick’s lungs were mottled with dark clusters, bleeding like crushed berries.
His liver was swollen nearly double its size.
Blood moved sluggishly, thickening in unnatural patterns.
His stomach lining showed stress tears.

Penguin leaned closer, voice unsteady.
“Captain… do you think this is natural?”

Law’s lips curved — the faintest, coldest smile.

“This has fingerprints.”

“What kind?”

“The underworld kind.”

Roderick wasn’t just sick.
He was mutilated.

One kidney gone.
Half his liver missing.
A chunk of pancreas removed.
Sections of intestine absent.

Not rotting.
Not decomposed.

Removed.
Recently.

And the scars… rough, rushed, but undeniably skilled hands had made them.

Law held the organs suspended in the air, studying the edges of each cut.

“A butcher,” he whispered. “A skilled one… but sloppy.”

He stabilized what remained of Roderick’s organs, redirecting blood flow and repairing tissue where he could. It wasn’t salvation. It was buying time.

Barely.

He lowered the organs back and released the ROOM.

---

Five hours later, Elira awoke — lucid, breathing normally — but her answers were useless.
She knew nothing of Roderick’s past.
Only that he’d grown secretive, angry, distant.

That wasn’t evidence. That was noise.

Law needed truth.

Real truth.

He gestured sharply toward the door.
“Shachi. Penguin. Find everything you can about him. Family. Work. Enemies. Habits. Do not come back without answers.”

They left immediately.

The motel sank into uneasy quiet — a chorus of groans, coughing, and the creak of beds.

Law moved among the recovering patients, changing IV lines, checking fevers, adjusting antiviral doses — but his mind was somewhere else.

Every few minutes, his eyes drifted back to the unconscious man on the bed.

Something was wrong.
Something deep.

His hands kept working, machine-like, but his thoughts sharpened:

What kind of man loses half his organs and says nothing? Who hides a wound like that? And why, despite being half-dead, does he radiate guilt more than fear?

Law hated uncertainty.
Hated gray areas.
Hated that human behavior refused to fit into the clean logic of anatomy.

That was chaos with a pulse.

Law tightened a bandage on a patient, jaw clenching.

If he’s a victim, I’m carving into an innocent man. If he’s a predator… I haven’t cut nearly deep enough.

He paused mid-motion.

And if I let him go before Shachi and Penguin return, I might lose a thread leading straight into the underworld.

Annoyance tightened in his chest — not fear, but responsibility pressing like a weight he couldn’t ignore.

He had to wait.
He had to be sure.
He had to trust his instincts — the instincts that had saved him more times than mercy ever had.

---

Roderick wakes

A soft rustle broke the silence.

Law’s head turned sharply.

Roderick groaned, eyelids fluttering before he forced himself upright — shaky, but conscious.

Elira gasped, tears filling her eyes.
“Oh, you’re awake… I was so worried… Are you feeling better? Are you alright now?”

Law paused — not because he cared, but because the warmth in her voice violently clashed with the hatred twisting across Roderick’s features.

“Where are we?” Roderick rasped.

“You were very sick,” Elira whispered. “I brought you to the doctor. He cured you.”

His face snapped into fury.

“I told you to leave me alone! Not bring me to any doctor!”

Her eyes filled with tears. “You were dying… I couldn’t just watch—”

“I was going to die from your meddling, not the disease!”

Her breath hitched like he’d struck her.

Law stepped forward, glass edge slipping into his tone.

“That’s quite a statement,” Law said, “coming from someone who infected an entire city. You would’ve died on your filthy floor, but considering your personality… perhaps that was a mercy.”

Roderick turned his glare on Law.
“And who are you, you arrogant wretch?”

Law’s lips curled.

“Oh, I’m the wretch who saved your life. And your fiancée’s.”

“You didn’t save anyone,” Roderick spat. “You’re just another con artist.”

Law laughed — low, dark, humorless.

“You came to me half-dead,” Law said, stepping closer. “Missing pieces of your internal organs. Care to explain?”

Roderick froze.

Elira’s voice broke.
“Missing… what? Did you sell them? Is that why?”

“You believe this charlatan?” he scoffed. “We’re leaving.”

He staggered toward the door.

Law blocked it with Kikoku without hesitation.

Roderick clenched his fists.
“Move, or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Law whispered.

Roderick glared, panting.
“Listen—I’m fine! Move, or you’ll get what’s coming to you!”

Law’s smile sharpened like broken glass.

“Interesting. Two threats already.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“Go on then. Show me.”

He pressed Kikoku firmly across the doorway.

“And spare me the pretense,” Law continued, voice dropping. “I’m not keeping you here because I care what happens to you. I’m keeping you here because you’re dangerous. And I have no pity for underworld parasites.”

Roderick lunged.

Law didn’t bother drawing his sword properly.
He dodged lazily, hands behind his back, letting the man exhaust himself.

“What do you want from me?!” Roderick yelled.

“Answers,” Law replied. “Who took your organs and why?”

“Why do you care? They’re my organs! My decision!”

Law’s voice cooled further.

“It stopped being your decision the moment you infected this town.”

Roderick attacked again, but Law moved with bored precision.

Finally, Law sighed.

“My patience is thinning. Either tell me the truth… or I’ll start cutting.”

“I told you—there’s nothing—nothing to tell!”

Law’s eyes narrowed into razors.

“Fine.”

ROOM flashed.

A finger dropped to the floor.

Elira screamed.

Roderick stared at the severed digit, horror widening his eyes. There was no blood. No pain. No sensation—

But his mind couldn’t understand that.

Law crouched, voice poised and cold.

“Next time, it’s your wrist. Then your hand.”

Roderick trembled violently.
“Why… why are you doing this?!”

“You have secrets,” Law said. “And I need answers.”

---

Roderick broke.

“I— I can’t speak,” he whispered. “They said they’d kill me if I talked—”

“You’ll die anyway,” Law said simply. “Pick how.”

Roderick shook, sobbing, trapped.

Law waited.
Silent.
Unmoving.
Patient as a predator watching prey unravel.

Roderick finally stammered, voice trembling like a rotten beam ready to snap.

“F-Fine… fine. I’ll tell you. I was… I was drinking at the Gallows Lantern—the bar near the docks. I’d been complaining about my debts, shouting, really. Everyone heard me. Then this stranger sits beside me. Black coat, hood low… the kind of man who doesn’t belong in a place like that. He tells me… he tells me he can make the debt disappear. Said all I had to do was sell something valuable.”

He swallowed hard. Sweat beaded on his already pale skin.

“I… I said yes. I didn’t even ask what ‘valuable’ meant. I was drunk, angry, desperate. He told me to follow him out back. We went into the alley behind the tavern. It was dark. I think I saw a wagon… or maybe it was a ship crate? I… I don’t know. Everything went blurry. My legs went weak. Felt like something hit me. Then nothing.”

His fingers twitched as if remembering pain.

“I woke up lying on the ground. Could barely move. My shirt was soaked with blood. Stitches running across my side and back. I crawled home. And the next day… I found out my debt was paid. Completely paid.”

He lifted his chin like he expected applause.

---

Law’s silence was colder than a drawn blade.

And then the chill sharpened.

There were holes everywhere.

No organ trafficker leaves a witness alive out of charity.
No professional forgets to stitch properly.
No ring that cleanly extracts organs leaves a drunken debtor in an alley like lost garbage.

Law’s lips pressed into a razor-thin line — the kind of expression that meant the air itself should be afraid.

“I’m not buying it,” he said quietly. “Try again.”

ROOM.

The space around them bent, thickened, held its breath.

Law moved Kikoku, the man’s wrist separated from his arm — clean, bloodless, silent — as if the world itself had agreed to the incision.

Roderick stared at the stump in mute disbelief before the panic hit him like a tidal wave.

Then he screamed.

He collapsed backward, clutching at the perfectly smooth, blood-free cut, eyes bulging with animal terror.

“PLEASE! Believe me! I’m not lying! I’m the victim!” he sobbed, voice cracking.

Law stepped closer, “Exactly,” he said softly, as if explaining something obvious to a child. “That’s the part I think you’re lying about.”

His tone wasn’t angry.
It was worse.
It was disappointed.

And inside — where no one could see — something twisted sharply.

What if he was wrong?

What if this pathetic creature actually had been prey and not a collaborator?
What if his instincts had finally misled him?

He hated the thought.
Hated it with a cold, brittle intensity.

Law could live with spilling blood.
He could live with cutting monsters apart.
He could live with cruelty when cruelty was earned.

But hurting someone who didn’t deserve it?

That was different.
That left a taste he couldn’t stomach.

He needed Shachi and Penguin.
He needed confirmation.
He needed the world to align with his instinct or he’d tear it apart himself.
He couldn’t let the man go.
Not until he knew.
Not until doubt stopped clawing at his spine.

Inside his mind, the conflict spiraled:

If he’s a criminal, good. If he’s a liar, even better. But if he’s innocent… then what am I becoming?

Then—

The clinic door burst open, the sound slamming through the stillness.

Shachi and Penguin stood in the doorway, eyes widening as they took in the scene:

The man on the floor, trembling.
The hand lying beside him.
The perfect, surgical cut.
Law standing calm and cold in the center of it all.

---

Shachi and Penguin froze the instant they stepped through the door.

On the floor lay a severed finger and a cleanly detached wrist, motionless and bloodless under the glow of the clinic lamps.
Roderick writhed beside them, breath hitching in panicked bursts, eyes red and wild.
And at the center of the room stood Law — immaculate, untouched, not a single strand of hair out of place, as if he had merely rearranged furniture instead of body parts.

Penguin swallowed hard, voice barely a whisper.
“Captain… what’s happening?”

Law didn’t look away from the trembling man.
“You tell me,” he said, tone flat as a scalpel on metal. “What did you two find out?”

Roderick stiffened. Fear slicked over his skin like oil—thick, shining, impossible to hide.

Shachi cleared his throat, trying not to stare at the scattered pieces on the floor.
“He, uh… has a terrible reputation, Captain. Starts fights with everyone. Most people I questioned didn’t even blink when I said he was dying in the clinic. No concern. No sympathy. Just… annoyance.”

Law slowly turned his head toward Roderick, eyes narrowing.
“Still claiming you’re the victim?”

Roderick’s voice shook.
“I—I might be short-tempered, but that doesn’t change that I’m a victim of organ theft!”

“Technically,” Law replied, “your organs weren’t stolen. They were bought... as per your story”

Roderick flinched. “Same thing!”

Penguin stepped further inside, his normally laid-back posture gone, replaced with something grim.
“No, not the same. And we aren’t finished yet.”

Roderick froze.

Penguin continued, each word landing like a nail.
“He curses people he fights with. Five people vanished the day after crossing him. No stable work. Lives off petty theft and gambling. Involved in shady business around town. And one guy said he heard him bragging — drunk — that he knows the Joker personally. Said the Joker could ‘teach a lesson’ to anyone who pisses him off.”

Roderick went pale.
Law… smiled.

Not a warm smile.
Not even a mocking one.

A slow, delighted smile — the kind he wore when every piece fell into place exactly as he suspected.

“Knowing the Joker personally,” Law mused, “is that so?”

Roderick’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper.
“Yes… and when he finds out what you’re doing to me, he’ll kill you. So let me go while you still can.”

Law clicked his tongue softly.
“Really? And where was Joker when your organs were being stolen?”

“He… he’s the one who saved me! Whoever did this is dead now!”

Law laughed. Quietly. Without humor.
His amusement sharpened into something razor-thin.

“I highly doubt Joker revealed himself to a fool like you.”
He stepped closer, Kikoku tilting upward.
“And believe me…”
His voice slid into something lethal, absolute.
“...I know the Joker very well.”

Roderick trembled violently.

Law lifted Kikoku, the blade’s shadow cutting across Roderick’s trembling form.

“Now,” Law murmured, “shall we resume the slashing? Or will you finally tell me the truth?”

“They’ll kill me,” Roderick whimpered, eyes swimming.

“I think you should worry about escaping me first.”

ROOM shifted — a thin hum — and another clean cut separated Roderick’s other wrist.
He screamed, collapsing sideways, shock trembling through every bone.

“Fine! Fine!” he sobbed. “But promise me you’ll let me go alive!”

Law leaned down, meeting his eyes with a calm so cold it burned.

“If your story convinces me,” he said, voice soft as poison, “I’ll leave the chance to finish you off to Joker.”

---

This time, Roderick shattered completely.

The lies, the bravado, the fake victimhood—
all of it collapsed under the pressure of fear and pain and the silent promise of more cuts.

His voice broke as he finally spoke.

“I’ve… I’ve been in the underworld for four years,” he choked out. “Drugs… weapons… narcotics. I built connections. Networks. I knew people who knew people. And then someone introduced me to… to organ trafficking.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, trembling.

“My job was to look for the forgotten ones. Homeless men… orphans… lonely people no one would miss. I’d send reports. A name, a description, where they slept. Then they’d be kidnapped. Their organs stolen.” His breathing cracked.
“Until—until I fell victim myself.”

For a heartbeat, the room was silent.

Law stared at him with an expression that wasn’t disgust.
Wasn’t rage.

It was disappointment.

Cold, clinical disappointment, as though Roderick had failed a test Law already knew he wouldn’t pass.

Then Law cut off the man’s hand.

ROOM shimmered.
Another perfect, bloodless slice.
Another piece of the man hitting the floor with a soft, awful thud.

Penguin swallowed hard, face tight.

Shachi inhaled slowly, forcing himself not to look away.

Law didn’t blink.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t care.

Roderick collapsed into hysterical sobs.

“They warned me!” he cried. “I—I broke the agreement four times. I reported people who bothered me, but they had families—people who’d look for them. I wanted revenge. That’s all. Revenge felt good. I wanted them gone. And the fifth time… I think they wanted to kill me for it. But I… I’m stubborn. I survived.”

A strangled laugh escaped him.

Law let out a low, cruel sound, something between amusement and disdain.

“That’s your grand theory?” Law said. “You think you ‘survived’?”
He crouched slightly, eyes gleaming.
“If they truly wanted you dead, Roderick, you’d never have crawled out of that alley. They would’ve taken everything—lungs, kidneys, liver, eyes. Left you empty.”

Roderick whimpered.

“But they didn’t,” Law continued, voice turning sharp as Kikoku’s edge. “They stitched you up just enough. Not cleanly. Not carefully. A message.”
He leaned closer.
“You are replaceable. And expendable. A spare cog. A dog they expect to limp back to work.”

Roderick trembled so badly the bed shook beneath him.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. I told you everything. Let me go.”

Law straightened.

“Not before you show me the trading post.

Roderick hesitated.
“It’s … in Valgaire,” he said finally. “Three days from here. Big place. Lots of ports.”

Law grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him upward as though he weighed nothing.

“You’re coming with us.”

Roderick panicked instantly.
“You promised—!”

“I promised,” Law said calmly, “that if your story convinced me, I’d leave the chance to finish you off to Joker.”
His eyes turned colder than the sea outside.
“Whether Joker wants you alive is none of my concern. Now move.”

Roderick stumbled as Law dragged him toward the door.

But Law didn’t set sail.

Not yet.

Because outside the clinic, dozens of patients still lay recovering.
Sick, fragile people who had come to him desperate and afraid.
He would not abandon them half-treated.
He would not leave a city infected.
He would not let Jonas panic in fever while he ran off to chase monsters.

Law released Roderick only long enough to secure him in the submarine brig — chained, monitored, watched by Shachi and Penguin.

Then Law went back to work.

He sterilized equipment.
He checked vitals.
He administered treatments.
He forced medicine down throats that resisted it.
He stabilized the children.
He replaced bandages.
He calmed terrified parents.
He monitored the last pulse of the infection until it finally, finally broke.

And when Jonas finally stopped shivering.
His fever broke.
His breathing steadied.
Law checked him three times, then a fourth, until he was certain.

Only then did he look toward the horizon.

Only then did he give the order:

“Prepare to depart.”

The crew loaded supplies while Law took one last walk through the clinic, ensuring each patient was stable, each wound tended, each family reassured.

When he returned to the submarine, he didn’t look back.

“Set sail,” Law commanded.

This time, the Polar Tang slipped beneath the waves not in haste, but with purpose —
carrying a doctor who healed the innocent with the same precision he carved into the guilty…

…and the trembling rat who would lead him to the next den of monsters.

Chapter Text

Night pooled over Valgaire like ink spilled too fast. Lanterns flickered in the streets below, fragile flames trembling against the greasy wind that swept through alleyways heavy with breathless whispers. The scent of refuse, smoke, and something metallic — something too warm to be water — drifted upward from the underbelly of the city. Law felt the pulse of it in the air, like the city itself exhaled corruption.

The safehouse was an old butcher’s loft, abandoned long before the organ traffickers claimed the district below. Its windows were boarded, its walls lined with shadow, its floorboards creaking like brittle bones beneath each returning step.

They came home in fragments.

Bepo arrived first, shoulders drooped, white fur streaked with grime. Ikkaku followed him, sharp-eyed despite exhaustion, the smell of gunpowder still clinging to her jacket. Shachi and Coren slipped in next, muttering to each other until they caught sight of Law with Roderick waiting at the center of the room — then their voices dulled into uneasy silence. Hakugan came last, coat soaked with rain and blood that wasn't his.

Only Penguin and Jonas were missing, and that absence gnawed at the corners of the room.

Law didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. One by one, they sat or leaned against the battered tables, dropping stolen documents and scribbled notes around them like a soldier’s offering to a war council.

Shachi was the first to break the silence.
His voice carried none of his usual warmth.

“We found the warehouses. There are four… but only two are front operations.” He exchanged a glance with Coren. “The other two handle the shipments. Night deliveries, no records. And… the crates aren’t for trade. They’re going somewhere underground.”

Coren’s jaw clenched. “There’s something… off about the workers there. They move like they’re following a script. No eye contact. No breaks. Like puppets.”

Law’s eyes narrowed. Puppets meant someone pulling strings. Someone careful.

He turned to Bepo and Ikkaku next.

“We traced a convoy,” Ikkaku said, crossing her arms. “Took back alleys, avoided patrols. They moved ten crates—same make, same seal. Each one guarded by six mercenaries.”

Bepo swallowed, voice small. “I could hear… noises inside. Not movement. Just… noises. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Law did. He didn’t say it aloud.

Hakugan tossed a bloodstained map onto the table. “And as Roderick said, this… is where they end up. Under the slaughterhouse district. Not the main building — below it.” He tapped a circle, the ink blotching into the paper like a bruise. “Locals say the basement hasn’t been used in decades. But guards rotate every hour. Something’s down there.”

Law’s pulse tightened. He felt the pattern forming, the way a surgeon senses the shape of a tumor before cutting into flesh.

Then the door opened again.

Penguin stepped inside with Jonas behind him, both of them pale in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. Dust clung to Penguin’s coat like ashes. Jonas’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Penguin looked around, saw everyone watching him, and exhaled a shaky breath before speaking.

“There’s… one more thing.”

Law felt the air tense around them.

Penguin rubbed the back of his neck, face twisting with something between disbelief and irritation.

“…Stay away from this rookie pirate, X Drake,” he said. “He’s in the city looking for the same damn thing, but… for some reason… he’s pointing knives at your wanted poster in the bar. Says he’ll get his revenge someday.” His eyes flicked to Law. “Do you know him?”

Law’s reply came out colder than steel left in winter.

“Never saw him. Only in the newspapers.” His voice sharpened. “What is he doing here?”

Jonas leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Turns out he came for the organ trafficking kingpin too. One of his crew got kidnapped. Organs harvested. He’s hunting the man responsible.”

The pieces began to move.

The city. The shipments. The traffickers.
And now… X Drake.

Law didn’t like shared goals. He didn’t like sharing terrain, either. And he especially didn’t like the feeling rising in his chest — a slow, coiling unease that Drake was not simply hunting the same prey, but circling him.

It wasn’t fear. Not even close.
It was awareness.
The kind that sits behind the ribs, too quiet to ignore.

Strategically dangerous.
Personally intrusive.

Someone else was cutting into his field.

The crew kept talking — theories, concerns, warnings — but Law’s mind drifted somewhere darker, deeper, sharper.

The organ trafficking network had ties to Joker.
Drake sniffing around the same rot could ruin everything.

And if Drake held a grudge…
That was a variable Law could not allow to sit unchecked.

Law stood.

The conversation stopped instantly.

His shadow stretched long behind him, splitting the dim room like a blade.

“I’m going to speak with him,” Law said, voice flat, final.

Bepo straightened. “Alone?”

Law didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

He adjusted the nodachi at his back, and walked toward the door.

The moment it shut behind him, the quiet that remained was heavy with things the others didn’t want to say aloud.

The night outside swallowed him whole.
And in that drowning darkness, Law’s resolve hardened.

If X Drake wanted a confrontation,
Law would grant it.

Tonight.

---

The bar reeked of sweat, gun oil, and the kind of silence that meant one wrong step would turn the whole place into a bloodbath. Smoke hung in the air like a low-hanging fog, clouding the lamps and turning every man's face into a half-shadow. Conversations were hushed, weapons were visible, and the atmosphere thrummed with a restless hunger for violence.

Law pushed the door open.

He entered alone — posture upright, eyes sharp enough to peel skin. The moment he stepped inside, the noise died like a strangled breath.

The tension shifted.

The room became a storm gathering around two opposing magnetic fields.
The regulars stepped back, chairs scraping slowly, boots dragging. A few men muttered something about "that surgeon bastard" and moved away from the bar entirely.

But Law’s attention snapped to the center table.

X Drake sat there, one boot propped on the wooden bench, one hand wrapped around a glass he hadn’t drunk from. A massive axe rested at his side. And pinned into the table with a hunting knife—

Law’s wanted poster.

Right between the eyes.

Drake didn’t look surprised to see him.
He looked… waiting.

Law walked straight toward him.

The bar held its breath.

“You were looking for me,” Law said, voice low, unhurried. “I came to save you the trouble.”

Drake’s jaw twitched. His hand slid off the glass, fingers curling, knuckles whitening.

“So you’re proud of that title?” Drake muttered. “The Surgeon of Death... How fitting... You carve the world apart without caring who you destroy.”

“Working very hard to impress me, aren’t you?” Law replied dryly.

A spark — sharp and cold — ignited in Drake’s eyes.

“You think this is a joke?”

“I think you’re pointing knives at paper instead of at me,” Law said. “So yes. A little.”

Someone choked on their drink.
Others fled the bar.

Drake stood abruptly, table legs screeching across the floor. For a moment, he towered over Law — all brute force, broad shoulders, and a barely contained violence.

“You took everything from me,” Drake hissed.

Law blinked, unphased. “You’ll have to be more specific. Many people claim that.”

Drake slammed his hand onto the poster. “This isn’t about a bounty. It’s about Diez Barrels.”

And there it was.

The name slid into the room like a blade across old scar tissue.

Law’s body went still — not visibly, not dramatically. Just one breath, caught mid-lunge.

Diez Barrels.
The man who tried to sell the Ope Ope no Mi.
The man from whom Cora-san stole the fruit to give it to Law.
The man whose greed spelled his own end, and Law's new beginning.

Drake leaned forward, voice darkening. “My father.”

The smoke in the air thinned, replaced by something raw, something painful.

And then Drake said it.

“That fruit you carry — cost him his life. And I watched it happen.”

Law’s expression didn’t move, but inside something cold tightened.

Drake leaned forward, his fist clenching around the hilt of his axe.

“That night… someone broke into our base. A man wearing a long black fur coat. He walked straight into the storage room where the fruit was kept. No alarms, no shouting — nothing.”

His pupils shrank as the memory clawed up his throat.

“The lights went out. All at once. We didn't hear anything … Silence... Like the whole building was holding its breath ... We couldn't even hear our gunshots.”

Law’s heartbeat stuttered — a single, fractured beat.

Drake kept going, voice rougher.

“The man then escaped through the chaos, shot, bleeding — but he ran. He ran like the devil himself was pushing him forward.”

Drake’s next words struck the match.

“That man in the black fur coat? what's your relationship with him?.”

Something in Law cracked—
not visibly, not outwardly—
but deep in the marrow of memory.

Corazon...
Corazon staggering in the dark with blood soaking his coat.
Corazon clutching the Ope Ope no Mi, breath ragged, eyes desperate.
Law saw himself—small, fragile, dying, waiting, praying for a miracle he no longer believed in.
He saw Corazon kneel before him, trembling, bleeding, putting the fruit into his mouth.
“Eat it, Law. This will save you.”
He tasted the bitterness of the fruit again.
He remembered Corazon’s shaking fingers wiping tears from his cheeks.
Then—

A treasure chest.
Dark.
Cramped.
Smelling of dust and fear.

Corazon closing the lid.
Smiling...

And then the voices outside:

“The Marines took custody of a boy.”
“We think it was Law.”

Was Drake the child they mistook for him?

He had been taken by the Marines ... what was he doing here as a rookie pirate?

Law didn’t ask.
He didn’t owe his past that kind of nostalgia.

Instead, he cut through Drake’s rage with the precision of a scalpel.

"You know I didn't kill your father, nor the man in the black coat," Law said. "He died the moment Doflamingo found out about the deal. Tell me—did you really expect him to survive?"

Drake’s eyes narrowed. The hatred didn’t fade — but something behind it flickered, flimsy as wet paper.

Uncertainty... Conflict... A role being played.

Law saw it instantly.
The fury wasn’t aimed to kill.
It wasn’t the howl of a grieving son.

It was a mask.

Drake stepped closer, lowering his voice so only Law could hear.

“You don’t get to walk away from this.”

Law met his gaze, steady, unblinking. “I never walk away. Only forward.”

Their standoff lasted a long, heavy moment — a duel of breaths, of wills, of unspoken histories.

Then Drake exhaled sharply, turning his head aside.

“…We’re both hunting the same man,” he said. “The bastard running the organ ring.”

“You want one name,” Law replied. “I want the network.”

A pause. A calculation.
Two hunters sharing the same forest.

Drake finally growled, “Temporary. Only until the kingpin dies.”

“And until I get what I need.” Law’s voice dropped to something colder. “After that, you can go back to stabbing my poster.”

A muscle in Drake’s cheek twitched — something almost like reluctant respect… or irritation.

“Fine,” Drake said. “But stay out of my way.”

“You’ll find I don’t take orders well.”

The alliance settled between them, fragile and razor-thin — the kind of pact that could break at the slightest pressure.

Law turned toward the door.

Halfway there, he paused, sensing Drake’s gaze burning into his back.

He didn’t turn around when he spoke.

“Next time you want my attention,” he said, “try confronting me directly. Paper doesn’t bleed.”

He walked out into the night, and the bar released its long, stifled breath.

Behind him, Drake tore the knife out of the table —
but didn’t replace it in Law’s poster.

The first sign
that this alliance
would be more complicated than either of them wanted.

---

The hearts met in the same butcher's loft where the night before had wound itself into whispers. Maps lay splayed across the table like opened bellies — Roderick’s inked lines, penguin’s scrawl, Shachi’s shorthand. Lantern light caught the edges of paper and turned the room into a small operating theatre.

Law stood at the head of the table, shadow falling across the maps so that only the places he chose to illuminate were visible. He folded his hands behind his back and listened to the instruments of the plan: the crack of boots, the rustle of cloaks, the soft hum of nerves.
“Hakugan,” he said. “Give me the structure beneath the slaughterhouse.”

Hakugan pushed Roderick's folded plans forward. Inked corridors, old drainage lines, a grid of tunnels carved out when the district was young. The lines were faint where the town’s bones had shifted, but Roderick knew where mortar had cracked and where the old sewer chutes widened into maintenance galleries.

Law traced a finger across the paper, eyes moving with mathematical calm. “Here,” he said, tapping a square between two converging supports. “Old meat refrigeration, now an access cavity. There’s a manhole at the alley behind the third dock that drops into this channel. From there you can swim to a collapse point where the maintenance shaft widens. Two men can stand and work.”

He looked up. “The traffickers will expect soldiers and heavies at the front entrance. They won’t expect a blade that crawls.”

Penguin’s voice was low and tight. “You expect Drake to draw them to the front.”

Law nodded. “He will. That’s the visible incision.”

He outlined it with the blunt clarity of someone sketching an amputation.

“Drake’s crew—use them as a catalyst. Let them strike the outposts and show enough force to make the traffickers redistribute their guards. Firepower at the gates, noise in the streets. Jonas, Ikkaku, Coren & Hakugan—join them and feed us intel. Do not be consumed. Pull back when you learn the bone’s shape. Take care. Observe movement patterns. Find the commander’s route and report.”

Jonas clenched his jaw but accepted the task. Ikkaku’s grin looked almost feral. Coren’s fingers drummed a nervous rhythm on the table. They were eager, dangerous, and expendable only in theory; Law didn’t think in expendables.

“And while the eyes are turned outward,” Law continued, “We will go below.”

He glanced at Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin. “From the maintenance shaft we cut into the supply corridor and take the lower service door. From there we move to the Surgical Ward.”

Penguin’s face was a study in concentration. “You want us to hit the source first.”

“No.” Law’s voice was cool. “We want to isolate it. Create a blackout, then remove the nerve center.” He folded his hands again, the motion almost ritual. “We don’t win by brute force tonight. We win by crippling them where they think most secure.”

He looked at the crew one by one, assigning roles like a master distributing scalpels.

“Bepo—lead point. Your strength gets doors open; your roar moves men. Shachi—rear security, cut off their retreat through the basement corridors. Penguin—communications. Keep a line to Jonas.”

“I’ll take the master control,” Law said. “Once the lights go, I enter the sterilization wing. If I can access the control room, I shut the filters and reroute the vents. That will expose the lab’s interior to smoke and sound, and force them into the open. That’s when you strike the slabs. That’s when we take the files.”

A murmur rippled through the room — the cruelest part of the plan: to force the traffickers into panic and expose the experiment rooms’ secrets by removing their engineered hush.

“Jonas, Ikkaku—while you ride with Drake, I want you to test how they move the crates. If you can, mark them with a tag that will burn differently. It gives us a visible fingerprint on the crates.”

Ikkaku cracked her knuckles. “So we get to play the hunters and the bait.”

“We will be the scalpel and the clamp,” Law corrected. “Not bait.”

He walked slowly around the table, each step measured.

Bepo’s eyes, wide and honest, reflected the lantern like a second moon. “If someone gets trapped—”

Law met him with an unblinking gaze. “Then the others find them. Whoever finishes first goes to help the others. No one dies here that can be carried away.”

There was no melodrama in the vow. It was a promise made with instruments and plans. It sat in the room like a bandage.

Penguin’s voice was dry but steady. “We’re quiet. We move clean. We take what proves them. We light the fires where they can’t hide.”

Law allowed a half-smile that was all blade and not warmth. “Exactly. This operation is an incision. It must be precise. Any unnecessary movement will spoil the field.”

They prepared their tools. Law folded the last edge of the map, wrapped it, and tucked it into the lining of his coat. His hand hovered over Kikoku’s hilt for a heartbeat — a tiny reassurance. He felt, as always, the hum under his skin: the promise of control, the itch of a truth that would be pried from flesh.

“Move,” he said.

They dispersed into the night with motions honed by distance and trust—some with eagerness, some with a measured solemnity. Jonas, Ikkaku, Hakugan and Coren melted into the street toward Drake’s position, ready to make noise and gather the signs of movement. Penguin, Bepo, Shachi, and Law ghosted toward the service alley.

And they left Roderick tied up in the safehouse.

---

Night split open above the slaughterhouse district.

The first explosion came from the rooftops — Drake’s crew had struck the organ traffickers’ outer posts exactly when Law predicted. Gunfire echoed like fractured lightning. Men screamed. Crates toppled. Smoke spilled into the night sky.

The world above descended into chaos.

And beneath it — in the old sewer arteries of the city — Law moved with the Hearts like the edge of a scalpel gliding into flesh.

---

Ikkaku reached the surface first, crouched behind a broken wagon wheel. Jonas and Coren flanked her, weapons drawn.

Drake’s men were beasts in motion — efficient, coordinated, using brute force and formation signals that Coren and Hakugan immediately began reading.

Coren scribbled furiously while ducking a stray bullet. “Look at Drake'a pirates ... Their discipline levels too precise for common pirates... Drake trained them.”

Hakugan added "Their formation’s Marine style. "

Ikkaku, on the other hand, was focusing on the traffickers “Watch the red armbands,” she whispered to Jonas. “They’re shield blockers. The ones without marks carry the crates.”

Jonas nodded as they slipped through the melee. “Coren, mark the patterns. Their crate carriers rotate positions every thirty seconds.”

A mercenary lunged. Jonas shot him point-blank without breaking rhythm.

Then the real work began.

Whenever a crate passed near enough, Jonas or Ikkaku brushed past it — a quick tap, a flick of their fingers — tagging the underside with a thin sliver of metal no wider than a fingernail.

Each tag was coated in a powder Law created:
A volatile, heat-reactive compound.

In normal light, invisible.
Under fire or smoke?
It burned a distinctive blue hue.

A forensic fingerprint.

Law’s idea.
Law’s method.

If these crates reached the basement, the moment he vented smoke into the underground rooms, the tags would ignite with blue flame — marking which crates had come directly from the trafficking routes.

Proof.
Evidence.
A trail.

But that was only the first part of the plan.

---

Law, Bepo, Penguin, and Shachi advanced silently through the old tunnels. The stone walls were slick with condensation; the air tasted like rust and rot.

Bepo whispered, “Captain… smoke’s already reaching down here.”

“Good,” Law murmured. “Drake’s diversion is working faster than predicted.”

They reached the old drainage grate — rusted, welded shut decades ago. Shachi held up the blueprint. “This is the access point. Behind this wall is a chute that runs straight under the slaughterhouse.”

Penguin wiped filth from his coat. “You think they really built something down there?”

Law gave him a long, cold glance.

“They don’t use slaughterhouses because they’re convenient. They use them because they hide the smell.”

A shiver ran through Penguin.

Law extended his hand.

“ROOM.”

The air warped.
They slipped inside.

---

Law located the control panel exactly where he predicted — an old sterilization room reinforced with soundproof plating. The traffickers counted on silence to mask what happened below.

Law hated silence.

“Penguin. Wires.”

Penguin knelt, tools clinking. “This is a triple-filtration system… not cheap. Definitely modified.”

“Cut the secondary line,” Law said. “When filters fail, smoke will push downward into the ducts.”

Penguin sliced.

A low hum filled the room.

The lights flickered.

And died.

A warning klaxon blared — muffled but unmistakable.

The engineered hush was gone.

Behind the walls — screams erupted.

Law stepped back.

“Good. They’re exposed.”

He crossed the room and slammed his palm onto the vent control.

“Shutting sterilization,” he said. “Bepo, latch the doors.”

Bepo punched the manual locks.

Law turned the last dial — vent reroute.

Smoke surged into the underground chambers.
Filtered silence shattered.
Voices, panicked and terrified, spilled into the hallways.

“Move,” Law ordered.

They descended deeper.

Chapter Text

Behind a peeling panel, the stairs appeared — narrow, steep, spiraling downward like the throat of a beast swallowing them whole.

Penguin hesitated. “Captain… this smell—”

Law descended without answering.

The deeper they went, the thicker the air grew — chemical fumes, rot, old blood. The steps were slick with something dark that clung to their boots.

The lights flickered sporadically — Law’s sabotage making the bulbs stutter with each pulse.

When they reached the bottom, the door was already cracked open.

The smoke vented inside, swirling faintly blue around the crates stacked against the walls.

Jonas’s tags were igniting.

Blue tongues of flame licked along the underside of specific crates.

Shachi whispered, “Captain… this means those crates came from—”

“The harvesting routes,” Law said flatly. “We know exactly what’s inside.”

He pushed the door fully open.

And the world dropped into horror.

---

The room stretched wide, carved into the stone like an industrial womb.

Every surface was a grave.

Rusted hooks hung from thick chains, each one swaying slightly from the tremor of their arrival. Some held scraps of human tissue, dried so thin they fluttered like dead leaves. Some still had fingernails wedged into the metal.

Iron cages towered against the far wall — stacked three high, six across. Each the size of a child’s coffin. Scratch marks clawed through the bars, deep groves that told the story of nails that ripped themselves off trying to escape.

The drains beneath the cages were clogged, stuffed with blackened clots of blood mixed with hair and tissue. It had dried into a crust thick enough to muffle their footsteps. When Shachi moved his lantern, the light caught a sheen — a smear that suggested some of it was still wet.

The smell…

It hit them like a living thing.

Rot.
Chemicals.
Old metal.
And fear — the kind that never fades, even after the throat that screamed it is gone.

Law felt something coil low in his stomach, a familiar storm edging toward the surface. The fury wasn’t loud. It wasn’t wild. It was cold — a razor dipped in ice water, dragged slowly through old scars.

But his movements stayed steady. Professional.

He stepped deeper.

Surgical tables lined the center of the room. Four of them. Their restraints were leather straps hardened with dried blood, some cut clean through by something desperate enough to sacrifice bone. Metal clasps still held pieces of wrists, ankles, fragments of jaw where someone had been gagged too tightly.

One table was tilted at an angle — a runnel of reddish-black liquid had pooled beneath it, forming a sticky puddle that glued itself to Law’s boots.

Jars lined the shelves beyond, tall glass cylinders filled with formalin and floating organs. Hearts, lungs, a malformed spinal column twisted like a question mark. One jar held a pair of eyes suspended in fluid, still eerily intact, as if waiting to open.

“Law…” Penguin whispered, voice cracking. “What kind of place is this…?”

“A collection of limits,” Law murmured. His face gave nothing away. “Pushed too far. By amateurs.”

He moved with that surgeon's walk — the precise gait of someone cataloguing damage, weaving fury and method into a single breath.

Then Bepo froze.

“…Captain,” he said, voice hollow. “There’s another room.”

Law followed his gaze.

A steel door stood half-open near the back, its hinges rusted, its vents stained with something yellowish that had dripped down and burned into the stone.

Law pushed the door open, and the lantern’s light spilled into the chamber beyond.

The Experiment Room.

The air here felt colder — not by temperature, but by intent.
The kind of cold that lives along the spine.

Bodies lay on slabs, each under different lighting, as if staged for inspection.

Deformed.
Half-finished.
Half-destroyed.

The first body was fused at the torso — two rib cages attempting to merge, organs in competition inside an impossible cavity. Another had bones bulging beneath the skin like rocks trying to erupt. A third had arms replaced with mismatched limbs of different sizes, stitched crudely, never meant to function.

Some lacked eyes.
Some lacked jaws.
One lacked a face entirely, just raw sinew pulled taut over skull.

Bepo looked away. Shachi swallowed a curse. Penguin stepped back until his shoulders hit the wall.

Law, though—
Law stepped forward.

He approached each slab with a horrifying steadiness, his gaze mapping details with clinical speed.

Patternless grafting… failed assimilation… forced chromatic doping… muscle reattachments without neural calibration…

He leaned over one of the bodies, fingers hovering but never touching.

“This wasn’t a surgeon,” His voice was quiet, but each word carved deeper into the room. “This was a butcher trying to imitate science he didn’t understand.”

Smoke flowed in behind them.
The blue-burning tags flared brighter — marking crates full of organs intended for sale or study.

The traffickers’ secrets lay bare.

Exactly as Law planned.

Shachi whispered, voice trembling, “You were right… we weren’t just dealing with trafficking. This is… this is something else.”

Law didn’t answer.

Bepo lifted a stack of files, jaw tightening. “Captain… you need to see this.”

Law walked deeper into the hellscape, toward the files scattered across a workspace.

The first page stopped him.

The header read:
REPLICATION ATTEMPT Nº 47 — Notes on Germa Biological Augmentation

The next:
Contraband Research: Dr. Vegapunk’s Gene-Sequencing Notes (Stolen Samples)

Then:
Property of Joker — Confidential.

The handwriting shifted from formal to wild, an erratic scrawl of someone dancing at the edge of obsession. Diagrams littered the pages — attempts at bloodline factor manipulation, nerve mapping, artificial organ synthesis, chromosomal splicing. Some notes bore the name "Caesar".

A thread.
A chain.
A path that led straight to the underworld’s darkest architect.

“This… this is all connected,” Penguin whispered.

Law exhaled slowly. His breath shook only once.

“Yes.”

His eyes narrowed into something sharp.

“They’re trying to recreate weapons. Soldiers. Experiments the world government buried.”

He turned the page.

“And failing.”

His fingers traced a diagram — an outline of a human figure split into quadrants labeled potential, mutation, discarded.

This was not experimentation.
This was industrialized suffering.

Law’s heart beat once, hard.

Not with fear.
Not with disgust.

With certainty.

He folded the files under his arm.

“I’m on the right path,” he said.

Bepo nodded shakily. “Captain… what do we do now?”

Law’s eyes fixed on the far doorway — the one leading deeper still. Beyond it lay answers. And enemies. And something else he could feel in his bones.

“We keep going,” Law said.

His voice had no hesitation, no tremor.

His fury had frozen into purpose.
His purpose had sharpened into steel.

“We’re not done cutting.”

---

It happened like a trick of the light.

A shape on the slab twitched — too small to be movement, too full of dread to be imagination.
Law froze mid-step. The others did too, the silence around them suddenly tightening like a noose.

Then it came again.

A groan.
Thin. Torn. Wet at the edges.

It crawled through the room like a dying breath trying to find lungs that no longer worked.

Law moved before anyone could speak.

He approached the slab — the third one from the left, the one whose body was angled awkwardly, like a puppet dropped mid-gesture.

Up close, the horror was absolute.

Stitching ran in jagged, unnatural patterns across the chest and abdomen — not straight lines, but desperate zigzags, broken threads pulling at swollen flesh. Some of the sutures had burst, leaking dark, syrup-thick blood that pooled in sticky trails beneath the body.

Tubes were embedded directly into the muscles.
Not veins.
Not arteries.
Muscles.

Whoever had done this tried to force fluid directly into tissue, circumventing every rule of anatomy. The tubes pulsed faintly with each ragged beat of the patient’s failing heart.

The limbs weren’t consistent sizes.
One arm was slim, pale, clearly belonging to a different donor entirely.
The other was thick, almost grotesquely muscular, skin tone mismatched by several shades.
The legs were worse — one riddled with surgical holes, the other stitched from knee to hip as if packed with grafted muscle from multiple bodies.

The man’s face — what remained of it — turned slowly toward Law.

Eyes clouded with shock but full of a pleading instinct older than memory.
Not words.
Not thought.

Just the raw, animal need not to die alone.

His chest spasmed violently. The heartbeat beneath it thrashed, uneven, too fast, then too slow — like a dying engine forced to keep running with broken parts.

Penguin whispered, “Captain… he’s… he’s already gone.”

“No,” Law said, voice flat. “Not yet.”

He lifted his hand.

“ROOM.”

The sphere snapped open — electric, silent, immense.
The light it cast wasn’t light; it was perception.
Everything inside it sharpened.

Law saw everything.

Every organ.
Every wrong stitch.
Every cruelty.
Every violation of the body’s design.

The lungs were mismatched — one human, one artificially enlarged with chemical injection.
The stomach had been moved to the wrong quadrant.
The liver had been forced to fuse with a second partial liver from another donor.
The heart — gods — the heart was beating through an incision that had never been closed.
The pericardium had been removed entirely.
It was exposed inside the body cavity, trembling like a terrified creature looking for a place to hide.

Law swallowed hard — the only sign of emotion he allowed himself.

His mind raced.
This wasn’t a surgery — it was a punishment.
A monstrous attempt to reverse-engineer life.
The corpse of science.
The grave of reason.

His lips thinned to a white, furious line.

This man had suffered beyond measure — and still clung to life with the desperation of someone whose soul refused to surrender.

Law had no tools.

No sterile environment.

No time.

But walking away?
Leaving him here to die like discarded material?

Impossible.

Something stirred inside him — not just rage, but the sharp sting of memory.
If Corazon could steal a miracle on a dying child’s behalf…
then Law could carve one out of hell.

His eyes narrowed.

Bepo hovered, trembling. “Can… can he survive…?”

Law didn’t answer.

Not because the answer was no.
But because the answer was irrelevant.

Walking away was impossible.

He looked at the man again — really looked — and felt the bedrock-deep fury tighten at the base of his throat.

“I’m going to try something,” he said quietly. “Something I shouldn’t.”

Bepo stiffened. “Captain—”

But Law didn’t hear him.

He was already lost in the operation.

---

His mind raced.

Codex of Aurelion — Section IX.
Not instructions.
Not steps.
Just a theory whispered by surgeons who had strayed too close to madness:

Full-System Separation.
Suspension of Biological Integrity.
Reconstruction within a temporal field.

Utterly insane.
Utterly impossible.

Unless you had ROOM.

The man choked, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

Law muttered, “Stay with me.”

And then he began.

---

“Scalpel,” Law breathed.

The man’s body opened — clean, bloodless — as the organs inside lifted away.

Bepo gagged. Shachi stumbled back. Penguin covered his mouth.

Dozens of organs suspended in air:
heart
lungs
kidneys
liver
malformed grafts
foreign tissues
tubes filled with serum
bone fragments
necrotic patches

A horrific constellation orbiting Law’s outstretched hand.

If the man understood what was happening, he didn’t show it. His eyes rolled back.

Law’s jaw tightened.

---

The Codex had warned:

“No organism can survive full separation unless its life-force thread is held intact by the surgeon’s will.”

Law’s fingers trembled — but he kept the vascular pathways aligned with ROOM, invisible channels feeding minimal energy between organs.

His head throbbed.
His vision blurred at the edges.
But the man didn’t flatline.

Not yet.

---

Law inhaled once, sharply, the way a man does before cutting into a corpse he cannot save — except this was worse.

This was someone still alive.

Inside ROOM, every organ hovered chaotically in midair, suspended like grotesque ornaments.
But as Law examined them, one truth settled over him with the weight of a tombstone:

There was no going back.

The damage was too extensive.
The modifications too wild.
The internal structure too fundamentally altered.

If he tried to restore the man’s original anatomy, even partially—

He would kill him instantly.

The foreign tissues grafted into his muscles had already fused deeply with his own.
Blood vessels had rerouted themselves to accommodate organs that were never meant to be there.
Bones had reshaped to support impossible additions.
Nerves had rewired — partially, incorrectly, painfully — in ways that made reversal fatal.

The surgeons who had worked on him had been butchers.
They hadn’t created life.
They had created incomplete suffering.

And the man was still fighting.

Still breathing.

Still refusing to die in this basement.

Law’s jaw tightened.

He wasn’t just operating anymore.
He was making a choice.

If life meant completing the abominations,
then that was the path he would take.

---

He steadied both hands, letting ROOM sharpen into surgical clarity.

“Alright,” he whispered, voice low. “You want to live… then we finish what they started.”

Shachi’s breath hitched.
Penguin shook his head in disbelief.

But Law was already moving.

He inspected each organ with brutal efficiency:

The left lung, half-developed from someone else’s body — incomplete.

The warped ribcage meant to protect it — crooked.

The supplemental kidney — sutured in wrong anatomical placement.

The spinal plating — half-attached, scraping the nerves.

The modified liver tissue — incompatible, but already integrated.

The foreign muscle graft — functional, but misaligned.

Every piece was a failed experiment.
But every piece was now part of the man.

Undoing them meant death.
Completing them meant survival.

Law’s lips pressed into a hard, merciless line.

“Then live like this,” he murmured. “But live.”

He began his work.

---

He adjusted the lung shape, expanding it to proper volume.
He corrected the ribcage curvature to support it.
He realigned the spinal plating so it wouldn't sever nerves.
He reattached the muscle grafts in symmetrical patterns to allow stable movement.
He finished stitching the genetically altered liver patches into a complete unit.
He bound new vessels together, letting them merge with the organ they never belonged to.

Every adjustment was a violation of medical ethics.
Every correction was an act of pragmatic cruelty.
Every motion was a refusal to let the man’s suffering end here.

Shachi whispered in horror, “Captain… you’re completing the—”

“Yes.”
Law’s tone was flat as steel.
“He won’t survive unless I make his body accept what they did.”

His hands trembled.
Not from fear — from how deeply this work cut into something inside him.

“This man endured every slice and stitch they forced onto him,” Law said through clenched teeth. “I refuse to let that endurance end in death.”

---

When he was done, the organs no longer looked like a butcher’s leftovers.

They looked like something alien, reconstructed into a living system — one with purpose, structure, and internal balance.

Not human in the way bodies are meant to be.
But alive.
Functional.
Capable.

The man himself would never look like he once did.

But he would open his eyes again.

And that mattered more than appearances.

Law exhaled shakily.

“Time to put you back together.”

With a sweep of his hand, every organ returned to the body in perfect synchronicity — not as they once were,
but as they now had to be.

---

Heartbeat

The man convulsed.
His chest rose once.
Then stopped.

Law placed his thumbs on the man'a chest.

“Countershock.”

A shock of spatial force rippled through the body.

The heart spasmed.
Twitched.

Then—

Another countershock

Until finally… it beat with a ragged, uneven rhythm.

But a living rhythm.

Law’s shoulders slumped, exhaustion dragging him down, sweat dripping down his temples.

The man’s breathing steadied.
Shallow.
Strained.
But real.

Alive.

Not returned to what he once was.
But reforged into something that could survive.

Law’s voice softened into something rough, worn, almost human beneath the steel.

“People don’t endure this kind of torment for nothing,” Law murmured. “There’s something pulling you forward. A family... A promise... A revenge...”
His gaze hardened, but with sympathy buried deep in the core.
“Whatever it is… I’m not taking that from you.”

He pulled his scalpel-shaped nodachi free, ROOM collapsing quietly around him.

“Live,” he said. “And find the reason you survived.”

He stood, shaking, staring at the man’s reconstructed form.

Not a monster.
Not a failed experiment.

A living testament to endurance.

A survivor only Law could bring back.

---

For three seconds, the basement held its breath.

Then the world detonated.

ALARMS shrieked, metal-on-metal, echoing through the stone like the scream of something dying. Red emergency lamps snapped to life, drowning the chamber in a blood-light glow that made every slab, every corpse, every jar of organs look alive.

Penguin spun around. “Captain—”

“Positions!” Law barked.

Boots thundered from the corridor.

Not one direction.
Three.

The tunnels vomited mercenaries first—scarred men with sawed-off rifles, blades glinting, eyes wide with the thrill of violence. Behind them came Marines in white uniforms, guns raised, formation tight.

The traffickers had activated every alarm.

They were surrounded.

The first mercenary lunged into the room with a roar, swinging a machete.

Bepo met him halfway.

The mink didn’t hesitate—not tonight, not after everything he’d seen in this place. He grabbed the man by the throat, lifted him clean off the ground, and slammed him into the concrete with the force of a collapsing building. Bone cracked like snapped wood.

Another man swung a pipe at Bepo’s head.

Bepo turned—and bit down.

Teeth sank into steel and flesh. The mercenary screamed, blood spraying across the slab of a dissected corpse nearby.

Shachi and Penguin moved as one.

A rifle cracked—Penguin ducked under the bullet, sliding across the slick floor on his knees. As he passed Shachi, Shachi grabbed his collar and spun him, launching him into the legs of the shooter.

Penguin crashed into the Marine, knocking him flat.

Shachi was already there, pivoting hard, boot slamming into the Marine’s wrist. The pistol skidded away. Penguin punched the man unconscious, then ripped a second man’s mask off and smashed it into his face.

Penguin panted. “Shachi—left!”

Shachi didn’t look. He just swung his blade backward, catching a mercenary in the throat. The man gurgled and fell.

More Marines surged in.

One pointed a rifle at Law. “HANDS IN THE AIR—”

“ROOM.”

The sphere swallowed the room whole.

The Marine fired—
—but the bullet halted midair, quivering inches from Law’s cheek.

Law flicked his finger.

The bullet reversed direction.
The Marine didn’t even have time to scream before it tore into his shoulder.

Two more Marines rushed him. Law stepped forward, movement seamless, a dancer walking through death. His sword slid free—Kikoku singing through the air.

“Shambles.”

The Marine nearest him vanished—replaced instantly by a slab from the experiment table. Theman reappeared strapped into the restraints he had no time to understand.

The other team followed the mercenaries, and they joined the fight.
Across the chamber, Hakugan burst in, breath sharp, eyes blazing. He held two pistols, firing point-blank with terrifying accuracy. Every movement precise.

A mercenary raised a shotgun. Hakugan shot his wrist, then his throat before his body hit the ground.

Jonas and Coren fought beside him —Jonas with a metal rod bearing nails, Coren made it for him, screaming as he swung at armored Marines; Coren using a stolen taser to drop two men twice his size.

Ikkaku yelled, “We couldn't keep them any longer... What took you so long?”

Law didn’t answer.
He saw something else.

From the stairwell above—
X Drake barreled into view.

He was a demon of scaled muscle and fury, his axe dripping with blood. He cut down traffickers with savage, unhesitating blows—blood coating the walls like paint.

But when a Marine lunged at him—

Drake hesitated.

Long enough to swing the flat of his blade.
Long enough to avoid killing him.

Law saw it instantly.

A second Marine noticed too.

“Drake! You traitor! We’ll report this to HQ!”

Drake didn’t respond.
He just snarled and shoved the Marine aside.

But Law… Law’s mind froze for half a heartbeat.

A pirate who refused to kill Marines.
A pirate who had appeared in a Marine report the night Corazon died.
A pirate who moved like a soldier.

You’re no rookie at all…

A Marine.
A double agent.

Law’s eyes narrowed.

Not now.
Not yet.

He locked the thought away, burying it deep beneath the battle, where it would wait until the moment it could be dissected.

Another wave of mercenaries stormed in.

Law sliced Kikoku through the air.

A beam of amputated space tore through three men at once. Shachi covered Penguin, Bepo tore through another Marine, Hakugan fired until his cartridges ran dry, and Jonas smashed his rod into another skull.

The fight became a blur of sweat, screams, steel, and death.

Every second was survival.
Every breath was violence.
Every motion was one step closer to collapsing under the sheer weight of bodies.

But slowly — brutally — they gained ground.

Until the final mercenary dropped.

The alarms kept wailing.
The red lights kept bleeding.

But the room…
The room was theirs.

Law exhaled once, slow and sharp.

“Everyone still breathing?” he asked.

A chorus of exhausted voices answered.

He looked toward the upper level, where Drake stood in the haze of gun smoke.

“Double agent,” Law murmured under his breath.

His pulse steadied.
His fury sharpened.

There would be questions later.

For now—

“We move,” Law commanded. “This place isn’t done fighting us.”

And they plunged deeper into the nightmare.

---

The deeper they pushed into the labyrinth, the more the air changed.
It thickened.
Warmed.
Vibrated.

Like the whole structure was a beast breathing its last.

Gunshots echoed from above, followed by a roar that shook dust from the ceiling. Drake’s roar. Law could tell by the timbre — the violent scrape of rage dressed as duty.

Then came a scream.
A man’s scream.
Wet, final.

Shachi skidded around a corner and pointed forward. “Captain — he’s here!”

The corridor opened into the final chamber: the traffickers’ nerve center. Half office, half operating theatre, the place was littered with blood-soaked ledgers, stacks of currency, scalpel trays, and strange machinery humming with unnatural light.

And there — pinned against a wall by Drake’s massive axe — was the kingpin.

The so-called ruler of this organ empire.

His throat was open in a wide, red, bubbling smile.
His eyes wide with the disbelief of a man who finally realized he was prey.

Drake stepped back, chest rising and falling with controlled fury. His axe dripped onto the floor, each drop sizzling on the overheated tiles.

“This one’s mine,” Drake growled, still staring at the corpse. “My crew… will rest.”

Law gave him the faintest nod. For all their tension, for all the uncertainty between them — one thing was clear.

Drake delivered justice with efficiency.

But Law wasn’t finished.

In the far corner of the chamber, a slab of glass shielded a smaller room — the laboratory’s inner sanctum. The door stood half open, light pulsing inside like a heartbeat.

The scientist was still alive.

A thin man with trembling hands, lab coat soaked in someone’s blood. His face contorted in terror as Law approached. He fell backward, knocking over vials and files.

“N-no—no, no—stay back! You don’t understand what’s at stake!”

Law stepped into the room, Kikoku drawn, black steel gleaming with promise.

“I understand enough.”

He kicked the scientist’s leg out from under him, pinning him against a table. Papers scattered — diagrams of splicing, attempts at giantification, bloodline factor manipulation, cloning trials, all marked with Joker’s seal.

“Tell me everything,” Law ordered. “Every name. Every base. Every shipment.”

The scientist sobbed, breath hitching. But fear loosened truth as easily as Law loosened joints.

"D-Don’t kill me! I was only following orders! The Joker—he’s the one funding everything! Whole armies want soldiers who don’t die, countries at war will pay anything for— for a modified human! Strength, endurance, pain resistance—"

He slams into a steel table, trembling.

“It was never my theories! I can’t replicate Vegapunk or Germa—no one can! We only had access to the writings of a genius named Caesar—he’s the one who worked directly with Joker! W-We were told to imitate him—test his ideas—refine them—”

Law’s eyes narrow.

Caesar.

“Where is he?” Law asks quietly.

“I don’t know. They said he moves. H-He only sends instructions—blueprints—chemical formulas—an occasional correction to our failures. I never met him, I swear. B... But — I can give you other coordinates!”

“Do that,” Law said coldly, “and I’ll make your death quick.”

The man spat out everything — locations, aliases, supply routes, names of buyers. The whole rotten web poured into Law’s waiting hands.

When he was done, he slumped forward, shaking.

“T-that’s everything… I swear… I swear—”

Law didn’t speak.

He simply raised Kikoku and ended him — cleanly, efficiently.

The silence that followed was almost merciful.

Then—

BOOOM.

A shockwave rocked the entire chamber.
Ceiling tiles cracked.
Pipes burst, spraying scalding steam.
Somewhere deeper in the complex, fire streamed up like a geyser.

Penguin shouted, “Captain — the generators! They’re rupturing!”

Drake stepped forward, eyes widening as the floor beneath them began to vibrate. “This whole place is going to collapse.”

He was right.

Flames burst through the vents.
The walls groaned under strain.
Stone cracked like old bones.

“They rigged it,” Shachi said, grabbing Law’s arm. “Fail-safe! The whole damn complex is going to implode!”

Law turned instantly to his crew. “Hearts! Move!”

Bepo hauled the injured survivor over his shoulder. Penguin kicked open the nearest corridor door. Hakugan shouted directions, firing warning shots at collapsing beams.

Drake paused at the crossroads — two exit tunnels splitting in opposite directions.

He hesitated.
Law noticed.

For a breath, the two men locked eyes.

Drake nodded once — almost a salute — before turning to lead his own men upward, away from the spiraling inferno.

Their alliance dissolved the way it was formed — sharp, wordless, temporary.

The air grew hotter.
Steel supports screamed.
Fire licked the corridor walls like hungry tongues.

The next blast is massive—fire, pressure, the sound of the world splitting open.

Law doesn’t think.
ROOM blooms in an instant, expanding to the entire collapsing sublevel.

“Shambles.”

In a heartbeat:

Bepo

Shachi

Penguin

Ikkaku

Coren

Jonas

Hakugan

The survivor

Every member of Drake’s crew

Even wounded Marines trapped near the entrance

—are all violently yanked out of the deathtrap and dropped outside the collapsing slaughterhouse, coughing in the cold night air.

Again—

BOOM.

The entire structure imploded, collapsing into its own burning skeleton.

Drake’s crew looks stunned.

The Marines look confused.

Drake himself appears from the smoke at the far end of the street, blade still wet, eyes widening for a single second as he realizes who pulled him out.

He steps closer, boots crunching on rubble.
“You saved my men,” he says again, voice low, heavy.

Law brushes ash from his sleeve, bored on purpose.
“You were too slow,” Law says calmly. “They would’ve slowed down the collapse.”

Drake’s jaw clenches.
“You could’ve left them to die. And the Marines.”

Law lifts his chin with absolute arrogance.
“I refuse to let idiocy shorten my operations. Corpses complicate the exit.”

Law’s mouth curves—not a smile, but something knife-thin and dangerous.
“I also enjoy when other pirates owe me,” he says lightly.
“It makes the world… convenient.”

Drake studies him, suspicious.
“You think I’m going to repay you?”

“No,” Law replies, tone turning razor-soft.
“You will repay me. The question is only when.”

A muscle in Drake’s jaw jumps.

Law steps past him, coat snapping in the wind.

“Consider your debt collected whenever I decide,” he murmurs.
“And pray I’m in a benevolent mood when that day comes.”

Drake watches him go, silent… because beneath the arrogance, he can feel the truth:

Law didn’t save them for leverage.

But Law will never admit that.

Not aloud.
Not to him.

Law couldn’t stomach the idea of people dying when he had the ability to stop it.

Drake reads that truth in him.

He doesn’t comment.

He only nods once—barely perceptible—before turning away.

Their alliance is over.

But something else has begun.

Something neither of them will name.

Behind them, the organ trafficking empire collapses into dust and flame.

And above them, the night crackles with the first hints of dawn—
a thin, pale line of light breaking across the sky like the world trying to breathe again.

Penguin spat blood on the pavement. “Captain… we need to move before the Marines regroup.”

Law didn’t look at the fire.
He looked at the files clutched in his hand — still intact despite the chaos.

Evidence.
Truth.
Proof of Joker’s sins, and the path forward.

“We’re done here,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They disappeared into the shadows just as the burning facility collapsed into silence.

Chapter Text

Dawn bled into Valgaire like a wound reopening.

The Heart Pirates moved in silence, their bodies still streaked with soot and blood from the night’s carnage. Law’s coat clung to him, heavy with ash and chilled air. He walked ahead, steady, cold, his breath forming pale ghosts that dissolved as quickly as they appeared.

They reached the southern cliff — the place where the news gulls circled each morning.

Law pulled a folded paper from his coat.

He didn’t write names.
He didn’t mention locations beyond last night’s graveyard of stone and flame.
He didn’t expose future moves or alliances.

He wrote only what he saw.

The facility beneath the slaughterhouse district.
The organs preserved in jars.
The surgical slabs.
The cages.
The mutated bodies designed to be sold.
The presence of Marines who entered as “protectors of civilians,” then shielded the traffickers until the truth overturned the deception.

A hint.
A shadow.
A question mark shaped like a blade:

Why were Marines guarding an underground network tied to the Joker?

He signed it anonymously and tied it to the gull’s leg with a precise knot.

“Go,” Law murmured.

The gull took off, wings slicing through the sunrise.

Behind him, Penguin approached carefully.

“Captain… what was that?”

Law’s voice came out soft, but sharp enough to cut.

“Information.”

Penguin blinked. “Information?”

Law finally turned, eyes gleaming with something colder than vengeance, something sharper than ambition.

“Truth,” he said. “And once truth spreads, even the World Government can’t chain it.”

He walked past Penguin, the dawn reflecting off Kikoku’s sheath.

“Starting today,” Law murmured, “the world hears our whispers.”

He paused, glancing at the horizon where the gull had vanished.

“Whispers of Truth.”

The campaign had begun.
Not with swords.
Not with blood.

But with revelation — a blade far deadlier when held by the right hands.

And Law knew exactly where to cut next.

---

A groan echoed from behind them.

Everyone froze.

The mutated man stepped toward Law — slow, unsteady, stitched-together limbs trembling.
His silhouette was wrong in too many places: too broad in the shoulders, muscles uneven where experimenters had carved and grafted, uneven patched skin, and different eye colors.

Jonas was the first to react.
“Captain—!”

Ikkaku froze, breath trapped in her throat.

Hakugan’s pistol clicked as he loaded a round point-blank.

Fear wasn’t common among the Hearts — but the thing standing in front of them was not shaped by nature.
It wore a man’s face, but the scars made it look half-reborn, half-cursed.

“Stay back!” Jonas barked.

A fight was seconds away.

Until Penguin slipped between them.

He simply pressed a hand against the survivor’s shoulder — gentle, grounding.

“Easy, big guy,” Penguin said, his tone soft but steady. “They didn’t see what we saw.”

The survivor blinked at him, lost.

Penguin gave him a small, reassuring nod.

Shachi stepped beside Penguin, lowering Ikkaku’s arm with a touch.
“Yeah. Relax. If he meant trouble, he wouldn’t have walked in trembling.”

Bepo padded forward, placing himself in front of the man protectively — a subtle gesture to signal he wasn’t a threat.

Slowly, painfully, the tension bled out.

The mutated man blinked slowly, taking in the faces around him.

Then his gaze landed on Law.

A stillness came over him — eerie, instinctive, almost reverent.

He pushed himself off the ground, wobbling, then fell to his knees before Law.

His voice was cracked glass.

“Captain…”

Law’s expression flickered — confusion, irritation, restraint. “I’m not your—”

“You gave back the life they took.”
The man bowed his head, trembling.
“I remember… pain. Hands cutting me open. Screams—maybe mine. Then darkness. And then you.”

He lifted his head just enough for Law to see the raw, pleading truth in his eyes.

“I don’t remember my name. My home. My past. Only that… you saved me.”
His breath hitched.
“Let me serve you. Let me repay what I owe. I have nothing else.”

Silence fell like ash around them.

Shachi stepped forward. “Captain, he—”

Law lifted one hand sharply, silencing him.

He studied the man in front of him — a soul carved apart and stitched back together by hands that worshipped cruelty. A being sculpted by the underworld, reborn by necessity, given a second existence by Law’s unwilling mercy.

A living testament to everything Law was now fighting against.

He exhaled softly.

“Fine,” Law said, voice low. “But don’t bow to me again.”

The man nodded, tears streaking down his bruised face.

“What do you want us to call you?” Penguin asked gently.

The man hesitated, then shook his head. “Anything. I don’t remember.”

Law turned away. “We’ll decide later...We leave now.”

They moved quickly.

The Marines he saved might regain their senses soon — and confusion often turned into orders.
Law would not give them the chance to follow.

They slipped down the forested path, the survivor walking behind Law with a slow, uneven gait.

They finally reach the submarine. The hatch closed, sealing the Heart Pirates beneath the sea just as the first Marine patrol reached the destroyed district. By then, the ship was already sinking into deeper waters.

No one would follow.

No one could.

 

---

By midday, the papers hit every major port in the region.

Shachi pinned one against the table as the submarine hummed beneath their feet.

The headline burned like poison:

“SURGEON OF DEATH — BLACK MARKET COLLABORATOR?.”
“ORGAN TRAFFICKING AND EXPERIMENTAL HORRORS TIED TO HEART PIRATES?”

Penguin’s jaw dropped.
“Are they serious?!”

“They always are,” Law muttered.

The article was a masterpiece of twisted truth.

They used his presence in Valgaire as proof he was involved.
They claimed the chaos was part of a pirate turf war over underground assets.
His name was painted in blood and shadow:

TRAFALGAR LAW — ALIVE ONLY — 200,000,000 BERRIES
A new bounty poster fluttered onto the table. Law’s face stared back — cold, sharp, mercilessly calm. The world believed the darkness belonged to him.

Shachi found his own name next.

Shachi — Dead or Alive — 32,000,000
Penguin — Dead or Alive — 34,000,000
Bepo — Dead or Alive — 28,000,000

Their first bounties. They were happy ... and proud.

Penguin cursed under his breath. “They’re painting you like you ran the damn operation.”

“They always will,” Law said.

He didn’t show anger.
He didn’t show surprise.

He expected this.

Shachi flipped the page.

“Captain… look.”

The next page was smaller.
A column at the bottom.
Barely noticeable.

But there it was:

“Anonymous witness raises questions about Marine involvement.”
Hints about Marines protecting the facility.
A veiled suggestion of government negligence.
Nothing concrete.
Nothing explosive.

Just a whisper.

A whisper capable of becoming a storm in time.

Law’s lips curved, faint, cold.

“Good. They printed it.”

---

Somewhere far behind them, in the remnants of Valgaire’s ruined outskirts, X Drake read the same paper.

His hand crushed the edge.

“They’re accusing him of protecting the organ trade?” he growled.

His lieutenant swallowed nervously. “Captain… the papers rarely—”

“This is garbage,” Drake snapped. “He destroyed the operation.”

He threw the paper aside, disgust darkening his eyes.

“He may be a rival,” Drake muttered, “but he’s no butcher. And he’s no merchant of organs.”

A beat.

Then something reluctant, quiet:

“He earned that much.”

Wind ripped the bounty poster from the dirt and sent it tumbling across the road.

---

The morning sun had barely cut through Baltigo’s pale haze when the news reached the Revolutionary Army.

Koala was the first to grab the paper.

Her eyes bulged.
“What?! This is—this is disgusting!”

She slapped the headline with the back of her hand:

“SURGEON OF DEATH — BLACK MARKET COLLABORATOR?.”
“ORGAN TRAFFICKING AND EXPERIMENTAL HORRORS TIED TO HEART PIRATES?”

She rattled the paper so hard it nearly tore.

“How can they write this?!”
“He saves people! He—”

Sabo took the paper gently from her hands.

His jaw tightened as he read.
Lines of restrained fury carved into his features.

“This isn’t just a smear,” he said quietly. “This is strategic. Someone wants him painted as a monster who profits from human suffering.”

Belo Betty exhaled a long stream of smoke, scowling.
“They’re setting him up. You can smell it. Like a trap lined with perfume.”

Ivankov stormed in, cape flaring dramatically.

“Where is it?! Let me see this atrocity!”
He snatched the paper, read two lines, and exploded.

“THIS IS WORLD-CLASS FILTH! LAW, AN ORGAN TRAFFICKER? EH? HE SAVES LIVES BETTER THAN HALF THE DOCTORS ON THE GRAND LINE!”

Koala threw her hands up.
“It hurts because it sticks! People will believe this!”

Anger spread through the room like wildfire.

Everyone was speaking at once—
until Dragon walked in.

Silence fell instantly.

He approached the table, lowered his hood, and calmly took the newspaper.

He didn’t react to the headline.
He didn’t react to the accusations.
He didn’t even blink at the bounty.

Dragon read slowly.
Carefully.
Thoughtfully.

Then he looked up.

“…He destroyed Valgaire.”

The room stilled.

“Not just the trafficking ring,” Dragon continued. “The entire network. One of Joker’s most profitable operations.”

Sabo swallowed. “He hit something important”

“More than important,” Dragon said. “Strategic.”

He turned another page.

There, squeezed into a thin column like an afterthought:

Anonymous witness raises questions about Marine involvement.
Hints about Marines protecting the facility.
Rumored protection of illicit activities in Valgaire.

No names...
No direct allegations...
Just a whisper...

Dragon’s eyes narrowed.

“That,” he said quietly, “is Law.”

Sabo raised an eyebrow.
“How can you tell?”

“Because it’s surgical,” Dragon replied. “Precise. Clean. No names. He gave people a Hint for speculation but no future leads.”

Dragon folded the newspaper.

“He struck Joker’s empire,” he said. “He exposed a government stain. And now the papers paint him as the villain.”

Koala clenched her fists.
“He doesn’t deserve that.”

“No,” Dragon murmured. “He deserves far worse from the world he’s fighting. And far better from the world he wants to protect.”

He looked out the window, gaze turning distant, calculating.

“Law is advancing faster than anyone realizes,” he said. “Closer to Joker with every move. But also more vulnerable. The government, the underworld, and Joker himself will tighten their grip.”

A faint, rare hint of pride stirred in his expression.

“He did well,” Dragon said. “Too well.”

Sabo let out a slow breath.
“So what do we do?”

Dragon answered without hesitation.

“We watch the sea,” he said. “Because the next time Law strikes… the world will shake louder than this slander.”

Everyone in the room sat with that thought — the eerie calm of knowing someone they cared about was walking straight into the jaws of the world’s darkest forces.

Koala whispered:

“I hope he’s not alone.”

Dragon did not answer.

He only folded the newspaper perfectly, as if preparing a blade for its sheath.

---

Three days after Valgaire, the headquarters of the Marines felt unusually still.
The newspapers had already screamed their accusations.

But Sengoku barely glanced at them.

The Fleet Admiral sat behind his desk, fingers locked together, eyes fixed on the single envelope marked:

CONFIDENTIAL

He had waited for this.

The truth did not come in headlines.

It came in quiet, sealed packages like this one.

Sengoku broke the wax seal with a slow, deliberate motion.

Drake’s report was long. Detailed. Methodical.

He read silently.

“Trafalgar Law displays physical endurance beyond standard expectations. Wounds do not slow him.”

Sengoku’s brows lowered.

“Strategic capacity: Exceptional. He analyzed Valgaire’s infrastructure within hours and constructed a precise infiltration sequence. Demonstrates predictive thinking akin to high-ranking officers.”

He paused.

Predictive thinking.
That was rare even among Marines.

“Physically agile. Highly disciplined. Never wastes movement. His crew respects him to a degree bordering on fanatic loyalty.”

A familiar voice entered the room.

“Still reading, old friend?”
Garp stepped in carrying a bag of senbei, as if the world were not cracking open beneath them.
“You look like you swallowed a nail.”

Sengoku gestured with the report.
“This is from Drake.”

“Oh?” Garp sat opposite him, crunching loudly. “How’s the boy doing? Still pretending he’s not a Marine?”

Sengoku didn’t smile.
He read on.

Then came the section that made even Garp sit up.

“Regarding the incident in Valgaire:
Despite our crews cooperating and fighting together, it became evident their attacks were measured. Not chaotic — measured... Only later did I understand why.”

Sengoku paused.

Garp muttered, “This is getting interesting.”

Sengoku kept reading.

“The Heart Pirates were clearly instructed to observe my crew:
• our movement patterns
• our reaction times
• our teamwork
• our preferred formations

Their goal was reconnaissance.”

Sengoku exhaled through his nose.

“Law exploited the chaos of my unit’s assault to gather tactical data on us. He used us as a study model.
He thinks in layers.
He plans in silence.
He uses allies the same way he uses tools — efficiently, and only for as long as they serve his objective.”

Then the section that made Sengoku lean back in his chair:

“During the collapse, Law used his ability to relocate me, my crew, and several Marines. He could have let many of us die. He did not.”

Sengoku exhaled through his nose.

Admiration was absent from the tone…
and yet it was there.
Quiet.
Unavoidable.

Drake continued:

“He does not kill unnecessarily. He is not cruel for sport. His ruthlessness is calculated.”

“Though I hold no affinity for pirates, I cannot dismiss his sense of restraint. Or his ability to think with clarity under pressure.”

Sengoku closed the file slowly.
“Law… Law…” he murmured.

Garp let out a low whistle.
“That’s… not something Drake says lightly.”

Sengoku tapped the paper.
“Drake’s tone is… interesting. He doesn’t like pirates. Never has. But his report is fair. Almost impressed.”

Garp grinned. “Maybe he just has good taste.”

“Garp.”
Sengoku sighed.
“This Law… he’s not behaving like a typical pirate.”

“Typical pirates don’t think at all,” Garp said around a mouthful. “Law clearly does.”

Sengoku ignored the crunching.

"He dismantled a criminal network singlehandedly. He infiltrated a fortified underground. He used a rogue pirate crew as bait. And he saved every life he didn’t need to kill."

Garp grinned. “Sounds like he’s doing your job.”

Sengoku glared at him.

Garp shrugged.
“That’s what makes him dangerous.”

Sengoku stared at the ceiling.
Outside, seagulls screamed across the battlements.

He placed the report in the drawer marked:

HIGH RISK – WATCH CLOSELY

“He’s different,” Sengoku murmured.
“Different from every pirate I’ve seen in a long time.”

Garp finished his snack, dusted off his hands, and stood.

“Different means interesting,” he said.
“And interesting means trouble.”

Sengoku’s eyes hardened.

“This is serious. If he’s picking a fight with Joker, the ripples could reach the Celestial Dragons.”

Garp’s expression shifted — less playful now.

“Then you better hope Drake keeps watching him,” he said.
“Because someone like Law doesn’t stay in the shadows for long.”

Sengoku closed the drawer slowly.

“No,” he whispered.
“He won’t.”

---

Five days passed...

Five days of silence inside the palace of Dressrosa — a silence so heavy it seemed to reshape the air itself.

No laughter.
No wicked strings twitching.
Not even one muttered threat from the Donquixote Family.

Just the crushing stillness of a king simmering in rage.

Soldiers whispered in the halls:

“If he snaps, we’re all dead.”
“He lost something big in Valgaire…”
“No one’s spoken to him since the collapse.”

On the third night, the throne room doors finally groaned open.

Roderick was dragged in, bleeding and barely conscious. Trebol, Diamante, and Pica entered behind him with the posture of men approaching a sleeping volcano and praying it stayed asleep.

Doflamingo sat forward on his throne, elbows on knees, fingers laced.
His sunglasses reflected nothing.
His smile was thin as a scalpel’s edge — the kind of smile carved by a man who could no longer tell rage from pleasure.

“Put him there.”

His voice was cold enough to stop hearts.

Roderick landed at the base of the throne.
Doflamingo leaned forward — a predator scenting blood.

Trebol shakily cleared his throat.
“D-Doffy… he said he’s got infor—”

“Shut up, Trebol.”

Silence snapped tight.

Doflamingo fixed his gaze on Roderick like a snake evaluating whether a mouse was worth swallowing.

“Talk.”

Roderick trembled.
“T-The operation… in Valgaire… it’s gone. Destroyed. The labs, the network— Trafalgar Law—”

Doflamingo’s smile widened in a way that did not belong on a human face.

“That,” he murmured, “I already know.”

Then, sharper:
“What I want is HOW.”

Roderick’s voice cracked as he explained:

“H-He found me in Brisendell when I was sick… h-he saw my missing limbs, I don't know how he knew instantly I was connected to the trafficking - It must have been some kind of sorcery—he threatened me, cut me apart—he would’ve killed me if I hadn’t talked—he wanted every detail—”

Doflamingo let out a soft, delighted hum.

“This isn’t sorcery,” he said.
“This is a mind that sees everything.”

Thin, twitching strings flickered at his fingertips — like nerve endings hungry for pain.

“You think I care how he threatened you? You are the one who exposed my operation.”

He leaned closer, sunglasses tilting just enough to reveal the faint gleam of predatory eyes.

“You are alive because I want to hear every detail.
How he planned it.
How he infiltrated.
How he carved apart my greatest trade.”

Roderick swallowed.

“He… he studied every shift, every patrol… he used Drake’s crew to create chaos… he used me to find the basement—”

“Of course he did,” Doflamingo whispered.

Trebol started to speak, but Doflamingo lifted a finger. Instant obedience.

He chuckled.

“Just like I taught him.”

The room froze.

Pica swallowed audibly.
Diamante’s shoulders stiffened.

And Roderick — in a feat of suicidal stupidity — continued:

“I—I can help you catch him! He left me tied up to die in that safehouse— but I’m stubborn— I survived— I can be useful to you—”

Doflamingo went still.

The palace inhaled.

Then laughter cracked out of him —
not loud,
not wild,
but fractured,
like glass under too much pressure.

“That’s your theory?”
He spoke gently, almost lovingly.
“That you survived?”

He rose from his throne with the slow grace of a man whose violence was inevitable.

He crouched before Roderick, voice soft as a razor.

“If Law wanted you dead…
you would be ash.”

A beat.

“He left you alive because he wanted you to crawl back here.
To deliver his message.
To feed me every detail.”

Roderick paled.
He’d heard something like this before — from Law.

And now he understood:
these two monsters thought in the same language.

Doflamingo tilted his head, lips stretching wider.

“He knows me.”
A delighted whisper.
“He wants my attention.”

He straightened, laughing sharply.

“He thinks like me.”

Strings burst from his fingertips and sliced grooves into the marble as if the palace itself were flinching away.

Trebol covered his ears.
Pica trembled.
Diamante stepped back.

“That brat,” Doflamingo snarled, joy bleeding into madness,
“actually wiped out my most profitable hub.”

His grin twisted into something vicious.

“Bravo, Law.
BRAVO.”

He kicked Roderick across the floor.

Trebol gulped. “D-Doffy… th-there’s more—”

Roderick wheezed:
“H-He was seen with a… thing. A deformed man. Huge. All wrong. Like an experiment that lived—”

Doflamingo froze.

Then he laughed — a spiraling, manic crescendo.

“FUFUFUFUFUFU!”

“You’re telling me Law stole my test subject…
and perfected it?”

He slashed a thread across Roderick’s chest — just enough to make him howl.

“My precious Law… what are you becoming?”

The smile vanished.

Only hunger remained.

“When I get my hands on you,” he whispered,
“I’ll tie you back to your true seat.
The Heart Seat.
Where you belong.”

He tightened a thread around Roderick’s throat.

“You said he left your fate to the Joker.”
A terrible, intimate softness crept into his tone.
“Then I’ll send him the answer.”

One flick.

Silence.

---

THE NEXT MORNING

Newspapers across the world reported:

SURVIVOR OF VALGAIRE EXECUTED BY KING DONQUIXOTE DOFLAMINGO.
TIES TO ORGAN TRAFFICKING CONFIRMED.

Only one man in the world understood the hidden message:

I heard you, Law.
And I’m coming.

---

And somewhere far from Dressrosa, a submarine cut through the sea, carrying the very boy they were speaking of...

The newspaper crumpled under his hand.
Not from anger — from recognition.

Eight years apart, and the man could still speak to him without a single word.

Some bonds were chains.
Some were scars.
Some… never stopped bleeding.

Law’s heartbeat didn’t change.

Then come.

Chapter Text

The clinic smelled of iron and old shadows. Law had scrubbed the table twice already, not because it was dirty, but because something in the room refused to feel clean. The man lying there—massive, scarred, skin marked by the kind of medical sins Law wished he could unsee—rested without a sound. No twitch. No murmur. No dream.

It was the stillness that bothered Law. Stillness without peace was its own kind of warning.

Several days had passed since they dragged this stranger from the ruins of the traffickers’ facility. Days, and not a single memory had surfaced—not a name, not a whisper of his past, not even a reflexive fear of being touched. He looked alive, but there was a hollowness beneath his skin, as if someone had burned out everything inside him and left only a body behind.

Law stood beside the bed, arms crossed. Discomfort radiated off him—not fear, not disgust, but something colder.

He hated that feeling.

Behind him, footsteps shuffled clumsily.

Shachi poked his head inside. “Captain, uh… does he still not remember anything? Not even, like… a favorite food? A pet? A single syllable?”

“No.” Law didn’t look away from the man. “His neural responses fire normally, but the memories aren’t connecting. Either they wiped them… or he’s refusing to recall.”

Penguin leaned against the doorframe, chewing gum loud enough to annoy the dead. “We could name him! Something badass. Like ‘Blade.’ Or ‘Crusher.’ Or—”

“Gum-for-brains, those are terrible names,” Shachi replied, elbowing him.

Bepo waddled in behind them, huge paws folded nervously. “Captain, should we let him choose? When he… remembers?”

Law didn’t answer.

Because the truth was simpler and more unsettling:
A person without a name felt like a corpse that hadn’t decided if it should wake up.

He stepped closer. The man’s chest moved steadily—strong lungs, steady heart. Physically, he was recovering. But something inside him remained… absent.

Law hated absences. They reminded him of graves.

“He needs a name,” Law finally said.

Penguin blinked. “Wait. You’re actually gonna name him?”

“He’s part of this crew now,” Law said, voice flat. “I’m not referring to him as ‘the mutant’ every time I speak.”

Bepo perked up. “Maybe something gentle?”

Shachi snorted. “Yeah, because he totally looks like a gentle guy.”

Law ignored all of them.

He reached for a clipboard, but stopped halfway. Naming him wasn’t a medical formality, no matter how much he wanted to pretend it was. This was… creating identity where someone had stolen it.

Something twisted inside Law’s chest—annoyance, maybe. Or pity. He refused to examine it.

“Your name,” Law said softly, as if speaking to an empty shell, “will be Kane”

He chose a single word. Short. Clean. Something detached, something that didn’t bind or claim or imply anything sentimental.

The moment the name left his lips, something shifted.

A spark. A twitch. A flicker behind the man's eyelids—like a light trapped far beneath the dark surface of a deep ocean.

His fingers curled slightly. His breathing hitched, then steadied.

It wasn’t memory.
It wasn’t awareness.
But it was something.

Law stiffened, eyes narrowing—not with surprise, but with a familiar, cold recognition.

He had awakened something.

Behind him, the crew went silent, all three holding their breath for reasons none of them understood.

Only Law understood it perfectly.
Names had weight. Names carved paths. Names could call forgotten things back to life.

And whatever this man used to be, or whatever he would become now—this name would be the first anchor in that abyss.

---

Morning light filtered weakly through the clinic windows, washing everything in a pale, sickly glow. Law stood over Kane with gloves pulled tight to his wrists, expression emptied into something clinical, something disciplined—because if he let emotion leak in, he might break something he wasn’t supposed to.

Finally, after days of chaos, he had time to study the man properly.

He drew blood first. The color alone made his jaw tighten—too dark, too thick, as if infused with something unnatural. He ran toxin panels, nerve conductivity tests, muscle response checks. He watchedKane’s body react like a machine built for war rather than a human recovering from torture.

The results came back fast, sharper than a knife to his gut.

Kane didn’t flinch at the needle. Didn’t blink. Didn’t twitch.

Not even when Law drove a diagnostic probe deep into scar tissue that should’ve made him scream.

Shachi leaned in. “Dude… he didn’t even feel that. That’s kinda cool.”

Penguin whistled. “Imagine never feeling pain! You’d be unstoppable! I bet he could eat fire or something.”

Bepo, trying to be supportive, added, “Maybe it’s a gift?”

The sound of Law’s gloves snapping off made all three of them stiffen.

“A gift?” Law’s voice cut through the room like cold steel. “Pain is what keeps you alive. Pain warns you. Pain tells you when your organs are failing, when your bones are fractured, when you’re bleeding out.”

He stepped closer to Kane, eyes narrowing as he pressed a thumb against a massive bruise forming along the man’s ribs. Kane didn’t react. Not a wince. Not even a muscle twitch.

“He could die,” Law continued, “and his body wouldn’t even know it.”

The crew lowered their heads. Even they could see how wrong this was.

“Whoever did this to him…” Law murmured, almost to himself, “wanted a weapon that couldn’t feel when it was breaking.”

He began flushing the drugs from Kane’s system—detoxification, filtration, accelerated metabolization. But the deeper Law dug, the more he realized something sickening:

Some of the alterations could never be undone.

They didn’t just poison him.
They rewired him.

Kane’s breath grew heavier as the detox intensified. Sweat poured down his temples, his muscles convulsing violently as Law forced his body to reject the toxins. Suddenly, his eyes shot open—dark, unfocused, feral.

“Hold him—!”

It didn’t matter. Kane surged upward with terrifying force, snapping thick restraints like rotten twine. Shachi tumbled backward. Penguin cursed. Bepo tried to restrain him and got thrown across the clinic like he weighed nothing.

Kane’s body wasn’t responding with awareness—only raw, animal instinct.

Law had a split second to react.

“ROOM.”

Silence swallowed the air.

He moved with surgical precision—one flick of his fingers, one sharp command.

“Shambles.”

Kane’s body collapsed as Law swapped his consciousness’s balance point, instantly knocking him out without harming him. Kane slumped back onto the bed, chest heaving, sweat staining the sheets. The clinic finally stilled.

The crew stared at their captain, wide-eyed.

Law didn’t speak.

He simply looked down at Kane—the monstrous strength, the unnatural biology, the horrifying potential—and he understood something with an unpleasant chill:

If Kane ever awakened fully…
If he remembered who he was supposed to be…
If he learned how to control the power inside him…

He could become something the world wasn’t ready for.

Something even the government might fear.

Law stripped off his gloves and whispered under his breath, as if confessing to the dead:

“What did they turn you into…? And what am I supposed to do with you now?”

The question lingered as Kane lay unconscious—breathing, alive, and undeniably dangerous.

---

Night pressed against the clinic windows like a suffocating tide. Kane’s body trembled on the cot, muscles spasming with a violence that looked almost inhuman—withdrawals dragging electricity through every nerve he still had control over.

Law sat beside him, bathed in the pale glow of a single lamp. The rest of the room stayed drowned in shadow, making it feel like he and Kane were the only two living things in the world.

He worked beside him in silence.
The kind of silence built from exhaustion… and the kind he only allowed when no one else was watching.

His gloves were stained. His breath uneven. He had opened the man’s body once before—in that filthy basement—and made the split-second decision that saving him meant finishing what the traffickers began. He had stitched organs back into place, reforged ruined pathways, made the monstrous procedure… functional.

Back then, he told himself it was survival.

Now he had time.
Time to see everything clearly.

And clarity was a curse.

Inside Kane's bloodstream churned narcotics, stimulants, neural blockers, metabolic enhancers—an entire pharmacy’s worth of compounds designed to erase the man and leave behind a weapon. Not a soldier. A tool.

And Law, with his surgeon’s hands, had prevented the project from failing.

“Idiot,” he muttered under his breath—at himself, not Kane. “I should’ve… I should’ve known.”

The ethical weight pressed down like a hand closing around his throat.

He was repairing the internal damage now—filtering toxins, stabilizing organs, adjusting hormone pathways—but every act made him feel complicit.
He wasn’t just healing.
He was finalizing someone else’s crime.

A crime against identity.

“Damn them,” Law murmured under his breath. “Damn every one of them.”

He was speaking of the traffickers.
Of the ones who injected the first needle.

And most of all—he was speaking of himself.

His hands paused, hovering above Kane’s abdomen as if caught between intention and dread.

His voice was low, almost a confession.

“You didn’t choose this body. You didn’t choose these modifications. And here I am…”
He exhaled slowly.
“Here I am making sure you survive with the changes they forced into you.”

A bitter laugh escaped him—quiet, breathless, painful.

“Is that mercy… or complicity?”

Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin lingered outside the door, pretending to sort supplies, but their eyes kept drifting toward their captain. They’d never seen Law like this—
hesitating.
Haunted.

Kane shuddered in his sleep again—more violently this time. His chest heaved, his arms twitching like they were fighting ghosts inside his nervous system. Sweat beaded at his temples.

Law touched Kane’s wrist, checking pulse, then whispered into the dim room:

“I won’t take your freedom from you.”

His voice cracked, too soft for a man who usually carved his words like scalpels.
To the crew listening outside… it was the first time Law sounded afraid.

Kane, trembling, seemed unconscious.

So Law continued.

“When I chose to complete what they started… I crossed a line I can’t uncross.”
He exhaled tightly.
“You deserve to hate me for it.”

A rustle.

Kane’s eyes opened—slow, heavy, but aware.

“…I don’t,” he rasped.

Law froze.

Kane swallowed with difficulty, but his gaze was steady.
“Whatever was done to me… it wasn’t your fault.”
His voice shook. “If you hadn’t acted… I would be dead.”

Law’s throat tightened—barely visible, but real.

Kane studied him.
“You said you wanted to preserve my free will.”

“I do,” Law answered.

“Why?” Kane whispered. “Why save someone like me?”

Law didn’t lie.
He didn’t soften anything.

“Because a man who survives what you did—”
he gestured to the scars, the missing pain responses, the violence etched into the body
“—doesn’t survive for no reason. People die for less. You didn’t. That means you have a purpose. A will. Something powerful enough to keep you alive even when you shouldn’t be.”

Kane blinked—slow, stunned.

Law leaned back, exhausted, voice raw.
“When you remember what that purpose is… you don’t owe me anything. You don’t owe this crew anything. You are free to walk away. We’ll help you if that’s what you want.”

Kane’s lips parted—something like emotion breaking through the numbness.

“And if I choose not to leave?”

Law looked at him for a long moment, shadows carving harsh lines across his face.

“Then you stay because it’s your choice. Not because someone built you to obey.”

Kane closed his eyes—this time in peace, not unconsciousness.

Outside the clinic, Shachi wiped his face with his sleeve.

Penguin whispered, “Captain’s… carrying too much alone again.”

Bepo hugged himself.
“At least Kane isn’t in pain.”

Inside, Law stared at Kane, guilt and determination twisting beneath his ribs.

Maybe this strange, cursed man—the one who couldn’t feel pain—
was about to become the one person who would force Law to feel it.

---

Days blurred into weeks.

Kane’s body was a storm trapped in skin—shaking, overheating, collapsing, rising again. The detox slowed the damage, but Law quickly realized that survival wasn’t the simple act of flushing toxins out.

Kane’s biology had been rewritten.

His organs demanded unnatural hormone levels—constant adrenaline spikes, amplified musculature cycles, rapid regeneration. The traffickers had wanted a being who could fight for days without rest, without question, without hesitation.

Removing the drugs meant removing the stability they forced onto the body.
Reducing the hormones meant organ failure.
Restoring normal balance would kill him faster than the poison.

Law sat in the clinic every night, eyes half-open, analyzing bloodwork that didn’t look human.

He muttered to himself, hands shaking with the awareness that he was stepping deeper and deeper into the same darkness that created Kane.

“To keep him alive,” he whispered, “I have to continue their work. Modify it, redirect it… but it’s still their work.”

Penguin leaned on the doorframe.
“You’re not the one who made him like this.”
Shachi nodded. “You’re fixing what they broke.”
Bepo added quietly, “Kane said he’s grateful.”

Law didn’t look away from the charts.
“Grateful doesn’t erase ethics.”

Kane, sitting on the edge of his cot, lifted his head.
“You’re giving me a life they tried to take.”

Law met his eyes then, startled by the clarity in them.

“I’ll fight beside you,” Kane said. “Once I’m stable. Once I’m strong. I want to protect this crew.”

Law had no answer for that.
Not immediately.

So he built a new drug—
a stabilizer, a careful mixture to preserve organ integrity and body's abnormal strength, but something that let Kane live while gently lowering the levels that would control him.

It was not perfect.

But it was a beginning.

---

Weeks passed and the the Polar Tang traveled quietly.
Ports. Supplies. Hidden coves.
Cards played on the main deck.
Arguments over food.
Penguin teasing Shachi.
Shachi teasing back.
Ikkaku yelling at both.
Bepo trying to mediate and failing adorably.

Kane stayed mostly below deck—his skin still patchworked, his shape still unsettling to strangers.
But slowly… slowly… he was becoming part of the ship’s rhythm.

He learned jokes.
He learned card rules.
He learned that Penguin and Jonas always cheated.
He learned that Coren snored.

And sometimes, late at night, Law would catch him smiling at the sound of laughter echoing through the submarine.

But then—

One afternoon, as mundane as all the others, everything shattered.

---

The crew was in the engine room.
Ikkaku was furious—hands on hips, wrench dripping oil, teeth bared.

“Penguin! Shachi! I told you to calibrate the power lines first! Not dismantle the cooling valve! You’re going to break the whole damn sub— I’m going to kill you two idiots!”

It was a normal outburst.
A common one.
The kind she yelled every other day.

But Kane was passing by the hallway at that exact moment.

The word “kill” hit him like an electric surge.

His pupils constricted.
His breathing stopped.
His muscles locked—then exploded into motion.

He slammed the door open with a strength that dented metal.

Shachi’s head snapped up. “Kane? What—?”

Kane lunged.

No thought.
No hesitation.
Just blind, absolute obedience to the command his altered brain interpreted literally.

“Kill.”

His fingers wrapped around Shachi’s throat with enough power to crush it like fruit. Shachi choked, eyes bulging. Penguin screamed. Ikkaku froze. Bepo launched himself forward, trying to break Kane’s grip—

And failed.
Kane didn’t feel pain.
Didn’t feel fear.
Didn’t feel anything except the command.

Shachi’s vision dimmed.

Then—

“ROOM.”

The world snapped sideways.

Kane found himself pinned against the wall, lungs shocked by sudden displacement. Law stood between them, one hand raised, eyes glowing cold and furious.

“Kane,” he said.
Not a yell.
A warning.
A command of his own.

Kane’s body trembled violently, as if two instincts were battling inside him.
His jaw clenched.
Nails scraped against metal.

“Don’t,” Law said again.

Kane collapsed to his knees.

Shachi coughed violently, clutching his throat. Penguin rushed to him. Ikkaku stared in horror. Bepo trembled with both fear and sympathy.

Law approached Kane slowly.

“You will not obey instructions blindly,” he said, voice low but sharp.
“You will not act on killing intent.
You will choose.”

Kane’s hands shook as he pressed them to the floor.

“I… didn’t… want to.”
His voice cracked.
“I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t—my body—my head—”

Law knelt before him.

“I know.”

Kane’s head dropped.
“I’m… broken.”

“No,” Law murmured.
“You were made to break. I’m going to undo that.”

Kane stared at him with a fear that didn’t belong to someone who couldn’t feel pain.

“Can you?” he whispered.

Law’s eyes were steady.

“Yes.”

---

Kane slept for the first time in weeks—truly slept, not collapsed, not unconscious, not chemically forced. Law sat beside him long after the others drifted out of the clinic, exhaustion clinging to their steps.

The submarine felt different now.
Quieter.
Heavier.

One crisis had been contained, but not erased.
Kane’s body still fought itself, still obeyed echoes of commands.
And Law, with every solution he created, bound himself a little deeper to the consequences.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, fingers shaking with fatigue.
He needed rest.
He needed time.

Neither ever came.

A Den-Den Mushi’s distant ringtone cut through the silence—a soft, pulsing trill that came from a frequency almost no one had access to.

Bepo’s voice echoed down the hall, fur bristling with urgency.

“Captain! The special line… it’s ringing!”

Law closed his eyes for one brief breath, as if bracing his spine for another weight.

Then he rose from Kane’s bedside
and walked toward the call

Not many people had his direct line. In fact, only one person had this particular frequency—one that Law kept sealed, hidden, connected to a line he pretended not to think about unless absolutely necessary.

He walked into his quarters, closing the sliding door behind him. The den den mushi sat on the desk, its face stern, the spiral on its cheeks shaped unmistakably like Dragon’s tattoo.

Law sat down slowly.

The snail’s eyes focused.
Dragon’s voice spilled out, low and steady.

“You sound exhausted.”

No greeting.
Just accuracy cutting straight through the static.

Law didn’t bother masking it. “It’s been… complicated.”

Dragon exhaled slowly, as though he already knew why.

“I saw the newspaper.”

Law’s jaw tightened.

Dragon’s tone shifted—subtle, but carrying something personal.
“I know you weren't involved You’re making noise again… the kind of noise that rattles people.”

Law scoffed under his breath. “The newspaper exaggerated.”

“Did they?” Dragon asked. “A small village burned… bodies scattered on the shore… and the Surgeon of Death pictured standing in the middle of it all.”

“I didn’t burn anything,” Law muttered. “And half the bodies were traffickers.”

“The world doesn’t care about nuance,” Dragon said. “But you already knew that.”

Law stared at the wooden surface of his desk, jaw ticking as the file of the day pressed down on him—the mutant in the clinic, the exhaustion in his hands, the ghosts of his own ethics suffocating him.

Dragon must have sensed it because his tone sharpened—less comfort, more purpose.

“Listen carefully. I’m not calling about your bounty. There’s something else. Something that requires your particular… precision.”

The room stilled.

Whenever Dragon spoke like that, it meant the world was shifting again.

“There is a Cipher Pol transport ship,” Dragon continued. “It will leave within the next two weeks and head to Mariejois. It will carry highly sensitive archives—classified, ancient… and forbidden.”

Law’s posture changed. His eyes opened. His mind clicked into focus.

Dragon went on, voice steady but grim.
“These archives… may include documents related to the Void Century. And… possibly information about erased tribes. Ones the World Government tried to bury.”

A faint chill crawled up Law’s spine, cold and electric.

“They’re transporting the archives instead of keeping them in the vaults?” Law asked.

“For reclassification,” Dragon said. “And possibly destruction. They’re reorganizing the Grand Library of Marijoa. Anything too dangerous—anything they failed to erase completely—they'll consolidate and quietly dispose of.”

“And you want me to intercept it.”

“I want you to decide whether it’s worth the risk,” Dragon corrected. “I’m giving you the ship’s route—three possible paths depending on weather patterns—and the transport’s likely departure window. Within two weeks.”

Law absorbed the information in silence, gears turning.
Books. Scrolls. Forbidden knowledge. The kind that could peel back the layers of the world’s biggest lie.

Dragon’s voice dipped with warning, as if he could already anticipate Law’s answer.

“Law. This ship won’t be lightly guarded. Cipher Pol will be involved. high ranked Marines could be in nearby sectors. They won’t allow anyone within a mile of that vessel.”

Law’s lips curved into something too sharp to be a smile.

“Good.”

There was a pause—rare, real, and strangely human.

Dragon exhaled softly. “…Reckless brat.”

He didn’t say it as a warning.

He said it almost like admiration.

Then, quietly:

“I’m proud of what you’ve become… even if the world refuses to see it.”

Law exhaled—slow, controlled, but it carried a weight finally released.

Then Dragon said something he didn’t say often, his voice lowering to something more personal, something almost paternal despite the distance between them.

“Don’t die.”

Law watched the den den mushi’s expression shift with Dragon’s words, the stern frown softening for a brief heartbeat.

He reached out, placed a finger on the receiver, and ended the call without ceremony.

The room fell back into silence, heavy and expectant.

The mission’s shadow now hung over him.
Forbidden archives.
World secrets.
Possible truths about his own damned name.

Two weeks.

Law stood from the desk, rolled his shoulders, and whispered to no one:

“Let’s see what the world has been hiding from me.”

Chapter Text

The submarine rested silently beneath the waves, engines muted, lights dimmed to a faint blue glow. From above, the ocean looked untouched—just a calm, cold stretch of water near an uninhabited coastline. But deep below, Law stood beside the main observation window, watching the faint shimmer of moonlight filtering through the surface.

They had been waiting for hours.

The CP archive ship was due to pass through this sector sometime tonight or early morning. Dragon’s intel narrowed the window but not enough to keep Law’s nerves from tightening with every tick of the internal clock.

Penguin leaned over the navigation console. “Captain, currents match one of the predicted routes. If they stay at this speed, the ship should appear within—”

The sonar started beeping.

Bepo’s ears shot up. “Something hit the surface!”

Law moved instantly. “Periscope. Now.”

Penguin spun the controls. The scope shot upward through its hidden compartment, piercing the water’s surface with a silent ripple. Law pressed his eye to the lens and scanned the dark horizon.

And saw—regrettably—the worst possible splash of color.

Red metal. Spiked armor.
A ship built like a declaration of violence.

Eustass Kid.

His crew was perched along the deck like hyenas waiting to tear into a carcass. Their voices were loud even from a distance—laughing, shouting, clanking weapons together in anticipation.

Law’s eyebrow twitched.

Of course.

Penguin groaned. “Uh… Captain? That’s definitely Kid.”

Shachi pressed his face against the glass of the observation window, even though there was nothing to see from underwater. “Why him?!”

Bepo wrung his paws anxiously. “Do you think he’s also after the archives?”

“No,” Law muttered. “Kid doesn’t seem to care about history. He only cares about things that explode or shine... or so the newspapers say... I hope that's true.”

Still, irritation coiled in his stomach like a tightening knot.

Every time Law pursued something important, someone else crashed into the moment like Drake at Valgaire.
Now Kid.

Kid was standing on the deck of his ship, arms crossed, cape whipping in the wind. His crew was making a racket behind him, but his gaze was fixed on the horizon—waiting for the CP ship as well.

But of course, to him, it wasn’t about hidden truths.
It was about treasure.
Gold. Artifacts. Weapons.
Anything he could break and call victory.

Law felt the beginnings of a headache.

Without looking away from the periscope, he ordered, “Stay hidden. We don’t move unless necessary.”

Penguin blinked. “You’re… not going to surface and warn him off?”

Law scoffed softly. “Why would I? Let him waste his time climbing over the wrong cargo. I don’t need his theatrics anywhere near what I’m after.”

Shachi whispered to Bepo, “Translation: Captain can’t stand the company of another captain.”

“I heard that,” Law said flatly.

Silence.

The submarine settled back into stillness, drifting low in the water. Above them, Kid’s ship patrolled aggressively, its metal plating reflecting the moon like a jagged blade. Kid paced across his deck, restless, impatient. He wasn’t subtle, and Law knew—any CP agent with ears would hear that damn crew bickering a mile away.

Law exhaled slowly through his nose.

“If the archive ship arrives and Kid interferes, we’ll have three enemies: CP, Marines, and a stubborn idiot with magnetism.”

“That sounds fun,” Shachi said without thinking.

Law gave him a dead stare. “No. It doesn’t.”

Bepo gulped. “What if he attacks us?”

Law adjusted his coat. “Then we fight him.”

Penguin flinched. “At the same time as CP?”

“Yes.”

The calmness in Law’s voice sent a subtle chill through the room.

Because he meant it.
Every word.
He didn’t care if Kid got in the way.
He didn’t care if the CP ship was armed with elites.
He didn’t care if an admiral appeared.

For those archives, Law was willing to carve through anything, anyone—until blood polished the sea.

He returned to the periscope, eyes narrowing.

“Hold position,” he murmured. “The moment that ship appears… this ocean becomes hell.”

The crew swallowed hard.

Above the surface, Kid lifted an arm toward the horizon, grinning.

Below the surface, Law’s eyes sharpened like the edge of a scalpel.

Two predators waiting for the same prey.

And neither had patience left to spare.

 

---

The night folded over the ocean like a deep bruise—dark, heavy, waiting to split open. Hours passed in silence until finally, the calm broke.

A distant vibration tremored through the water.

Bepo’s ears twitched. “Captain… something big is approaching.”

Law moved immediately to the periscope. Through the lens, a massive silhouette carved through the horizon—a Cipher Pol transport ship, pale flags fluttering in the wind, lanterns dimmed to minimize attention.

The archive ship.

He didn’t bother masking the tension in his voice.

“Prepare to surface.”

The engines whispered awake. The submarine rose through the heavy water until it broke the surface with the faintest ripple.

And above—like an omen—Kid’s ship roared to life at the same moment.

The spiked vessel lunged across the waves, crew yelling and cheering, cannons rolling into position. Metal plates clanged as Kid summoned magnetized weapons around him—scrap metal swirling like a rusted storm.

Law stepped onto the deck of the Polar Tang, coat billowing as his crew assembled behind him.

Bepo, Shachi, Penguin, Ikkaku, Coren, Jonas, Hakugan—all ready, all armed.
The new recruit, Kane, stayed below under strict orders. He wasn’t stable, and Law wasn’t gambling with a live weapon.

The CP ship entered the killing zone.

Time snapped.

Kid’s voice cut through the night like thunder:
“MOVE, YOU RATS! WE’RE TAKING THAT TREASURE!”

Law winced at the volume. Of course he was after gold.

Kid spun toward him across the water, glaring from his deck. “HEY—Spikey-hat! Stay away from my gold!”

Law didn’t even look at him. “I don’t care about gold.”

Kid barked a laugh. “Yeah right! Everyone cares about gold!”

Law stepped off the submarine with deliberate boredom, his ROOM expanded in a faint shimmer. “Stay away from my fight and you won’t get hurt. I am not attacking you unless you start fighting us. If you get yourself killed, that’s not my problem.”

Kid blinked, annoyed by how utterly unimpressed Law looked.

“Tch. Same for you, spikey-hat. Also—if you steal my gold, you’ll sink with this ship.”

Law’s smirk was small, sharp, dismissive.
“Deal.”

The moment shattered.

Kid’s crew leapt into battle with explosive enthusiasm—screaming, swinging, smashing anything they could reach. Their style was pure chaos, overwhelming force, and zero subtlety.

In contrast, the Heart Pirates moved like a single organism.

Shachi and Penguin flanked instantly.
Ikkaku cut through the first wave with cold precision.
Coren and Jonas handled long-range fire, calculating angles as if they were born for this.
Hakugan moved like smoke, sliding between enemies with fluid strikes.
Bepo crashed into combat with surprising grace, his body moving faster than his size should allow.

Law watched them for the first thirty seconds—analyzing, measuring, adjusting.

They were good.
Better than before.
But far from perfect.

Their timing lagged by fractions of a second. Their reactions weren’t synchronized enough. Their Haki usage was inconsistent under pressure.

It wasn’t disappointment he felt...

“We’ll need more training,” he muttered.

Because what came next wouldn’t just require talent—it would require mastery.

Then the CP agents arrived.

Black suits.
Blank faces.
Movements too sharp to belong to ordinary men.

Cipher Pol.
Some wearing CP8 badges.
A few with the cold, brutal poise of CP5.

They moved with the elegance—silent strikes, lightning kicks, bodies twisting mid-air. One vanished and reappeared behind Shachi—but Bepo intercepted him mid-strike. Another sliced the water with Rankyaku, sending razor waves across the surface.

Kid’s chaotic barrage collided with them—metal storms clashing with disciplined killers. At first, Kid held ground—laughing wildly, magnets ripping weapons from the air.

Then one CP agent bypassed his metal shield with a blinding strike—aiming straight for his throat.

Kid staggered back, suddenly on the defensive.

Another CP agent, stronger, faster, masked, lunged from behind—aiming to pierce his spine.

Kid’s eyes widened.

For the first time that night—
a flicker of real panic.

And then—
the air shifted.

A pulse rippled across the battlefield—cold, sharp, absolute.

ROOM.

Everything froze for a breath.

Kid barely had time to register the shift before a silhouette appeared behind him—silent, cloaked in moonlight and shadows.

Law.

Eyes glowing a cold, surgical blue.
Blade in hand.
Breath steady.

“Move. You’re in my way.”

Before Kid could react, Law sliced the air—
not the man—
but space itself.

The CP's attack diverted mid-strike, arm twisting violently as Law rearranged the battlefield with a flick of his fingers. Another CP agent found themselves slammed into the deck, limbs severed cleanly but bloodlessly—Law’s cuts were too precise to spill a drop.

Kid turned fully toward him, chest heaving.

Law didn’t even look at him.

He moved like a shadow wearing a scalpel’s soul—each action precise, emotionless. He cut through Cipher Pol with surgical cruelty, his ROOM expanding with each strike, controlling the battlefield like a puppeteer pulling on invisible strings.

Kid stared.

And for the first time in his life—
he felt respect for someone he instantly hated.

This wasn’t luck.
This wasn’t bluster.
This wasn’t chaos.

This was execution.
Cold.
Calculated.
Efficient.

A monster of precision standing beside a monster of destruction.

And neither of them had even started yet.

---

The interior of the archive ship felt strange—too silent for a battlefield, too orderly for a world built on blood. Lanterns flickered along iron walls lined with heavy doors. The scent of sea-salt mixed with the dry musk of old paper. It wasn’t a treasure ship. It was a floating library.

Kid stormed down the main corridor like a thunderbolt barely contained inside a human shape.

“Where the hell is the gold?” he snarled, kicking aside a broken CP agent who groaned under his boot.

Shachi and Penguin exchanged a glance.
Bepo whispered, “He seems mad…”
Law didn’t answer. His focus was razor-sharp.

They forced open the reinforced vault door together—Kid using brute force, Law using his ROOM. The metal screamed as it buckled.

Inside—

No gold.
No jewels.
No chests overflowing with coins.

Just rows upon rows of scrolls sealed in wax, ancient-looking books strapped shut with metal clasps, ledger boxes stamped with government crests, and dozens of crates labeled with codes meant to be read only by the highest-ranking scholars of Marijois.

Kid stared, face blank.

“…Where’s the damn treasure?”

The crew didn’t even pretend. Penguin snorted loudly. Shachi cracked a laugh. Bepo covered his mouth, trying not to giggle.

Kid rounded on them viciously. “Shut up! You all shut up!”

Then something glinted in the corner.

A strange artifact—a metal disc engraved with spiraling patterns, glowing faintly under the lantern light. Kid froze; the shine snapped his attention instantly.

He snatched it up with both hands.

Law almost rolled his eyes.

“There. That’s treasure enough,” Kid muttered, shoulders relaxing with relief. “At least I’m not walking away empty-handed.”

Law moved past him, stepping into the vault’s center.

His expression changed the instant his eyes scanned the shelves.
The markings—ancient, spiraling, written in a language lost to mainstream knowledge.
Symbols that matched the fragments he found in the Water manuscripts he studied before.
Ink faded by time but not erased.

The books weren’t treasure.
They were a weapon.
A truth sterilized from the world.

His voice dropped into something spine-stiffening.

“Take everything. Every page.”

Penguin blinked. “Everything-everything?”

“Yes.” Law’s tone allowed no room for debate. “Every scroll, every record, every sealed document. All of it.”

The crew moved immediately.

Jonas and Hakugan lifted crates together.
Coren and Ikkaku hauled stacks of books into waterproof packs.
Bepo carried three large boxes at once, balancing them effortlessly.
Shachi and Penguin threw whatever they could grab into a cart before dragging it toward the exit.

The urgency sharpened when Jonas shouted from the deck—

“Captain! Reinforcement ships approaching from the west! Three, no—four!”

Law’s heart didn’t speed up. It simply dropped into a colder rhythm.

“Double-time,” he ordered, voice clipped. “Load everything into the sub.”

“Yes, Captain!”

Outside, Kid was stomping up the ramp, artifact tucked under his arm.

“You’re all insane!” he yelled back at Law. “This is a waste of time! No gold, no weapons—who fights Marines over books?!”

Law walked past him with an armful of scrolls, utterly calm.

“I do.”

Kid’s jaw clenched. He hated that answer more than anything.

Above deck, Marine signal flares lit the sky—a bright red bloom of danger.

Kid’s crew scrambled to their ship, frantically pulling up the anchor.

Law’s crew descended into the submarine like a well-practiced extraction team. Boxes thudded onto metal floors. The hatch sealed with a hiss.

The Polar Tang dove beneath the surface.

Water swallowed them whole, and the ocean muted the chaos above as if the world had gone underwater just to hold its breath.

Through the small viewing glass, they could see Kid’s ship blasting away with deafening cannons, tearing through Marine sails. Kid himself stood on the bow, screaming insults at the reinforcements, sparks flying around him like angry fireflies.

Then he spotted the Polar Tang slipping underwater.

He cupped his hands and screamed:

“HEY! SPIKEY-HAT BASTARD! IF YOU STOLE ANY OF MY GOLD, I’LL RIP YOU IN HALF!”

Law didn’t bother responding.

Penguin snickered. “Should we tell him there wasn’t any gold?”

“No,” Law muttered. “Let him stay confused.”

---

As Kid’s ship vanished behind a curtain of smoke and flame, he stood on the deck of the Victoria Punk, chest heaving, blood dripping from a shallow cut across his cheek. Flames danced behind him, smoke curling into the night sky. His crew was already screaming about the narrow escape, about the reinforcements closing in.

But Kid wasn’t listening.

His glare was fixed on the sea below—where Law’s submarine had disappeared with its stolen knowledge.

“Tch… bastard.”

The word slipped out like venom.

He hated it.
Hated the feeling coiling in his gut.

Not fear.
Not admiration.

Something far more infuriating.

He felt outmatched.

Law hadn’t shouted.
Hadn’t bragged.
Hadn’t even indulged in competition.
He stole the damn archives as if Kid wasn’t worth acknowledging.

Kid’s lips curled into a snarl.

“That asshole is stronger than he looks… acting all calm and smug like he’s above everyone…”

He slammed a metal crate aside with a crack of magnetism.

“Fraud,” he spat. “Little surgeon bastard pretending he’s harmless. He’s hiding something.”

But the more he tried to deny it, the more a sharp, unwelcome truth gnawed at him:

Law hadn’t just kept up.
He had outmaneuvered Kid.
Twice.

And Kid’s body still remembered the moment Law appeared behind him — silent, precise, eyes glowing like a blade drawn in the dark.

It burned.
Pride, wounded.
Respect, forced.
Jealousy, sharp enough to taste.

Kid wiped the blood from his cheek, furious.

“That bastard’s not better than me. I’ll prove it. Next time, he’s not walking away with the prize.”

His crew watched him carefully.
They knew that tone.
Eustass Kid had found a rival.

A real one.

His jaw tightened, eyes narrowing toward the distant horizon where Law had vanished.

“Fine,” he muttered.
“If that surgeon wants to play monstrous… then I’ll show him what a real monster looks like.”

---

Deep below the surface, the Polar Tang sped away in silence, engines humming like a distant heartbeat. Law stood at the navigation table, coat draped loosely over his shoulders, water still dripping from his gloves.

He wasn’t thinking about the archives.
Not yet.

He was thinking about him.

Eustass Kid.

Loud.
Aggressive.
Brutal.

Exactly the kind of pirate Law expected to be reckless, irrational, and utterly unreliable.

But Kid had honored their agreement.
He hadn’t attacked Law’s crew.
He hadn’t tried to steal the archives—even when he wanted to.

Law exhaled through his nose, faintly amused.

“Didn’t expect him to keep his word.”

Law rested his hand on the map.
Kid was a monster, yes—
but a monster who drew lines that even he refused to cross.

A pirate with a code.
A warped one, but a code nonetheless.

Law smirked to himself, a dry, humorless curve of lips.

“So I’m not the only one the World Government twists into a story.”

Kid’s bounty poster came to mind — the way they painted him as a mindless destroyer.
And now Law had tasted the truth:

Kid wasn’t mindless.
He wasn’t a beast acting on impulse.

He was dangerous because he chose to be.

Law’s gaze drifted to the sealed crates of archives stacked along the submarine’s walls.
One crate was missing — the artifact Kid claimed.

A flicker of annoyance crossed his face.

He regretted letting Kid take it, even if fairness demanded it.
The archives were his true prize, but the artifact…
there was something unsettling about it.

Kid had grabbed it like a toddler with a shiny toy.

Law sighed softly.
“If that arrogant idiot tries to sell it…”

He stopped.

He knew the answer.

“…of course he will.”

A dry huff of laughter escaped him — the closest he came to exasperated affection.

Kid was greedy, reckless, emotional, and infuriating.
But he was also strong.
And honest enough to be predictable.

A storm wearing a coat of metal and fury.

Law allowed himself one last private thought:

“Let’s hope he doesn’t start another war because of that thing.”

But the smirk remained, small and sharp.

Because for the first time in a long time,
Law had met another pirate who wasn’t a liar.

Just a monster in his own image —
loud where Law was quiet, chaotic where Law was precise…

…and somehow, irritatingly, worthy of attention.

 

---

The Polar Tang dove deeper, gliding through black water with only the faint hum of engines breaking the silence. Inside, however, stillness was impossible.

The clinic had become a battlefield of it own.

Shachi lay against the wall, arm bound in bloody bandages.
Penguin pressed gauze to a stab wound in his side, wincing every time he inhaled.
Jonas’s shoulder was dislocated; Ikkaku worked to stabilize it.
Hakugan had deep slashes along his ribs.
Even Bepo—always the sturdy one—had a bruise spreading across his chest, dark and ugly.

But none of them were the focus.

The center of the room was Law.

He moved with the same precision he had used on the battlefield, but now it was different. Slower. Heavier. His breath held too long, exhaled too fast. Sweat dripped along his temples, soaking the collar of his coat. His gloves were red with other people’s blood and streaked with his own.

He didn’t stop.

“Shachi—hold your arm up,” he ordered, voice fraying at the edges.

Shachi obeyed without a word. Law stitched the wound cleanly, hands moving in lines as straight as compass bearings. Then he moved on.

“Penguin—press harder.”

Penguin gritted his teeth. “It’s fine, Captain. Really—”

“Harder.”

Penguin didn’t argue again.

Law’s eyes were sharp, but exhaustion gnawed at the edges of his vision. Every time he used his powers—even small ROOM adjustments, even minor teleportations—his body screamed in protest. He had drained so much earlier in the previous weeks detoxing and treating Kane, pushing his stamina far beyond its usual threshold.

He should have stopped.
He should have rested even for ten minutes.
But his crew lay bleeding.

“Jonas,” he said, voice hoarse. “Brace your back—this will hurt.”

“But you said—”

With a firm, practiced motion, Law snapped Jonas’s shoulder back into place. Jonas swallowed a scream, shaking.

Bepo leaned forward. “Captain, maybe you should let someone else—”

“No,” Law cut sharply.

He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, leaving a smear of blood on his skin. His hands were trembling now—just a little, but enough that every member of the crew noticed.

None of them dared comment.

Not after the way he fought.
Not after he saved their lives.

Law tied the last knot in Penguin’s stitches and stepped back, vision flickering. His heart thumped unevenly, like someone striking a drum out of rhythm. Sweat slid down his jaw. The sterile lights above him felt too bright, slicing into his skull.

He walked toward the sink to wash his hands—

And his knees buckled.

Just for a second.
Just enough for the world to tilt.
Just enough for his hand to catch the counter before he dropped.

Dragon’s voice—quiet, calm, annoyingly perceptive—echoed in the back of his mind:
“You’re overusing your power. You’ll collapse before you realize you’re falling.”

Law grit his teeth and forced his body upright.

He could not collapse.
Not now.
Not while they were all watching.
Not while he still smelled the salt and blood of battle on his coat, not while there were crates of secrets beneath their feet waiting to be deciphered.

“Captain…” Bepo whispered gently. “You’re tired.”

“I’m fine,” Law lied.

His hand trembled visibly as he tried to remove his gloves.

Shachi, Penguin, and the others exchanged glances but no one said a word.
They pretended not to see.

Not his shaking hands.
Not the slight sway in his stance.
Not the exhaustion carved into the lines of his face.

Because they knew he would snap if they tried to help.
Because they knew how much he had poured into Kane weeks, days and hours before the raid.
Because they knew he carried too much on his shoulders, and none of them knew how to lighten the load without breaking him.

Law finally managed to peel off the gloves, letting them fall into the biohazard bin with a wet sound.

He gripped the edge of the counter again, head bowed, breathing heavy but controlled.

He almost cursed his own limits.

Almost.

But then he looked up and met the eyes of his crew—bloody, bruised, bandaged, alive.

And that was enough.

“Get some rest,” he ordered quietly.

No one moved until he added, firmer:

“That’s an order.”

They filed out one by one.
No jokes.
No complaints.
Only relief that their captain was still standing.

When the door closed and he was finally alone, Law let his eyes drift shut.

Just for a breath.

Just long enough to hear Dragon’s warning again.
“Don’t die.”

He forced himself upright before the exhaustion could drag him down.

Sleep would come later.

Right now, he had secrets to read.

---

The morning began with the soft slap of wet paper against the metal deck.

Jonas had gone up to reset the antenna and came back holding a newspaper like it was a bomb that might explode in his hands.

“Captain… the new bounties are out.”

Law froze mid-step.

The entire crew looked up from breakfast—Shachi with his mouth full, Penguin nearly choking on tea, Bepo blinking wide-eyed.

Jonas handed the paper to Law carefully, as if afraid the ink might bite.
The front page hit harder than any Cipher Pol agent ever could.

A massive photo dominated the headline—
Law in mid-battle, coat torn, splattered head to toe in blood, the storm-lit glow of ROOM illuminating his eyes into cold surgical blue.
The kind of photo you put on a wanted poster to scare children.
The kind Marine officers would tape up in war rooms.

And above it, bold letters screamed:

“THE SURGEON OF DEATH AND CAPTAIN KID — PRECISION AND DESTRUCTION.
THE FIRST MONSTER PAIRING.”

Shachi leaned over Law’s shoulder. “Monster pairing? That’s… kind of cool.”

Penguin shoved him. “Idiot, it’s terrifying. We look like psychos!”

Bepo frowned. “But… we did fight well.”

Ikkaku snorted. “Speak for yourselves. I nearly died.”

Law ignored them. His gaze slid down the page.

His new bounty.

The number stared back at him.

280,000,000 berries

He felt something inside him tug loose—some dark thread winding even tighter.
More than Kid with 200,000,000 berries

And beneath his photo, the small red stamp he hated most:

ALIVE ONLY.

Not dead.
Never dead.
Always alive.

Because the government didn’t want him exterminated.
They wanted him contained.
Dissected.
Studied.
Used.

He swallowed the bitterness.

Shachi hollered when he saw his own face in a smaller box beneath.
“WE GOT MORE BOUNTIES TOO! Penguin—look at this! They actually think we’re dangerous!”

Penguin puffed his chest. “Well, we are.”

Hakugan laughed under his breath, a rare glint of pride breaking through.
Jonas seemed embarrassed, cheeks red.
Coren merely raised an eyebrow like it was an interesting mathematical anomaly.

Bepo flailed his paws. “Captain, mine went up too! But your bounty… it’s huge.”

Law folded the paper, jaw tight.

“It’s inaccurate.”

Penguin blinked. “The number?”

“No. The article.”

He pointed at the headline again.
Precision and destruction.
The first monster pairing.

He didn’t like being grouped with Kid—not in print, not in rumors, not in anything.
The idea that the world now viewed them as some terrifying duo sent a strange mix of irritation and inevitability through his chest.

Beneath the monstrous photo, a bold subheading screamed:

“LAW AND KID RAID CIVILIAN SHIP —
HUNDREDS ROBBED OF JEWELRY AND GOLD.
BRUTALITY FOR PLEASURE.”

“They’re hiding the archives,” Penguin said. “They can’t admit Cipher Pol got beaten.”

“And they definitely can’t admit two rookies stole forbidden history,” Shachi added.
Penguin finished for him, voice flat with disgust. “They’re hiding the truth.”

The article twisted the story into something grotesque—
claiming the ship had been a peaceful trade vessel,
that Law and Kid butchered innocent sailors,
that they laughed while stealing gold, jewels, heirlooms.
A massacre for profit.

Bepo sagged. “They… made us monsters.”

Law didn’t respond. His silence was heavier than anger.

---

Meanwhile — far across the sea, aboard the Victoria Punk…

Kid held the exact same newspaper, veins throbbing in his forehead.

“CIVILIAN SHIP?!” he roared. “Are they stupid or what?!”

Killer sighed behind him.
“They very much are.”

“And they put me with HIM?!” Kid jabbed the paper so hard it tore.
“‘Monster pairing’?! What pairing?! I don’t pair with anyone!”

Killer glanced at the bounty numbers.
“At least you got a raise.”

“SHUT U--!”

Eustass Kid froze mid-sentence as he continued Reading the newspaper.

His crew went silent.

Killer leaned slightly closer. “…Kid?”

Kid’s eye twitched.

Then—

“WHAT—THE—HELL—IS—THIS?!”

The entire ship shook with the force of his scream.

He slammed the newspaper onto the deck so hard the wood groaned.

“The Surgeon of Death — 280 million?! ALIVE ONLY?!”
He jabbed his finger at the picture so violently it ripped through the page.
“And I’M only 200 million?!”

He looked genuinely offended by the laws of the universe.

Killer, trying not to laugh, murmured, “It’s… a high bounty, Kid.”

Kid’s eye twitched violently as he reread the numbers.

“A HIGH BOUNTY?! I DESTROYED A MARINE BASE LAST MONTH!”
He kicked a crate so hard it splintered, skidding across the deck before dropping into the sea.
“I’ve been attacking Marines nonstop! My name’s in the damn newspaper every other week!”

He jabbed a finger at Law’s photo as if trying to stab through it.

“And THAT quiet, smug, scalpel-holding skeleton-in-a-coat shows up what—TWO TIMES before this?! TWO! This is his THIRD appearance EVER—AND HE’S WORTH EIGHTY MILLION MORE THAN ME?!”

His voice cracked with pure disbelief.

“HOW?! HOW DOES THAT ADD UP?!”

Heat practically radiated off him.

Killer held up the ripped page.
“They say he was ‘more dangerous,’ ‘more unpredictable,’ ‘responsible for the casualties’—”

“I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR CASUALTIES TOO!” Kid roared.
“WHY DOESN’T MY POSTER SAY ‘ALIVE ONLY’?! I’M TERRIFYING!”

Killer nodded diplomatically. “Very terrifying.”

Kid wasn’t listening.

“I SHOULD BE WORTH AT LEAST THREE HUNDRED MILLION! AT LEAST!”
He punched the mast.
The mast regretted existing.
“THAT SURGEON BASTARD DIDN’T EVEN BREAK A SWEAT! He sliced people with TELEPORTATION and then walked away like he was bored!”

He tore the paper in half. Then quarters. Then smaller.

“He’s doing it on purpose,” Kid snarled.
“Acting all calm. Acting all mysterious. Acting like some cool shadow prince of the sea.”

He threw the shredded newspaper into the air like confetti.

“He thinks he’s better than me.”
His voice cracked with outrage.
“He thinks he’s STRONGER than me.”

A beat.

Killer tilted his head. “…He did save your life.”

Kid turned scarlet with fury.

“I DIDN’T ASK HIM TO!”

He stomped away, kicking everything in his path, shouting into the night:

“Two hundred million? TWO HUNDRED?!”
“I’LL SHOW THE WORLD GOVERNMENT WHO’S A DAMN ROOKIE!”
“NEXT TIME I SEE THAT SURGEON, I’M STEALING HIS LIMBS!”
“WHY DOES HE GET THE COOL PHOTO?!”

And over the next wave of curses:

“I SWEAR I’M GOING TO DESTROY TEN MARINE BASES! TEN!”

The crew… quietly backed away.

Kid hurled the bounty poster overboard, still raging, when his foot hit the corner of a wooden crate.

The artifact’s crate.

He froze.

A slow, ugly boil of anger rose in his chest.

He yanked it open.

The artifact lay inside, dull and silent — nothing like the blinding pulse it gave off when he first grabbed it during the raid.

It was lifeless now.
Ordinary.
Useless.

Kid’s eye twitched.

“…Tch.”

He grabbed it and shook it like it personally offended him.

“WHY AREN’T YOU GLOWING ANYMORE?!”

Killer turned. “Kid… are you yelling at an object?”

Kid snarled.

“When I stole you, you lit up like crazy!” He held the artifact up to the light. Nothing. “What, you don’t like my ship? My hands? My magnificence?!”

Killer stared. “…Kid.”

Kid jabbed a finger at the artifact.

“Don’t tell me you were shining for HIM.”

Silence.

Killer blinked.

“…Him? As in Trafalgar Law—?”

Kid exploded.

“YES, HIM! What next, you piece of junk? You think HE deserves to keep you more than I do?!”

He pointed accusingly at the artifact like it had betrayed him.

“Were you GLOWING for him?! Was that it?!”

Killer finally lost it — he burst into laughter.

“Kid, for god’s sake—it’s an object. It doesn’t pick favorites.”

Kid crossed his arms, seething.

“…It did.”

Killer kept laughing…
never realizing that Kid’s tantrum — loud, childish, ridiculous —
had accidentally brushed against a truth neither of them understood.

---

Back to the Polar Tang

The crew watched their captain closely.

Law stared at the paper one last time.

Shachi whispered, “Kid’s gonna throw himself off his ship when he sees this.”

Penguin added, “He’s gonna blame you for being prettier.”

Bepo tugged on his sleeve. “Captain… you’re smiling.”

Law looked away.

A faint smirk lingered anyway.

His eyes slid toward the crates.

He exhaled.

“Hopefully he doesn’t try to sell it,” Law muttered.

Shachi nudged him gently. “Captain… you okay?”

Law gave him a look.
Not sharp.
Not cruel.
Just tired.

“It’s nothing.”

Bepo whispered, “It’s not nothing. You look… conflicted.”

He was.
More than he wanted them to know.

He folded the newspaper once more.

Acceptance settled in his chest—cold and steady.

“Good,” Law murmured.

The crew looked at him.

He lifted his chin, eyes sharp again.

“If the world wants a monster…”

He dropped the newspaper onto the table like a gauntlet thrown at fate.

“…then let them see one.”

The submarine hummed beneath their feet, engines steady and deep.

Outside, the world whispered with fear.
And inside, the Surgeon of Death simply breathed.