2/11

Faced with her own impending doom, Nami's breath hitched, and for the briefest of moments, her mind reverted to her old mindset: a voice in the back of her skull screaming bloody murder at her to run, keep running and never stop, never look back, preserve her life.

And the moment Nami located where that voice was, she wrung its neck without a second thought.

The Weather Witch bared her teeth and spread her stance, spinning her Clima-Tact into a blur at her side. Her Eisen Tempo, all of it, began to glow.

"Never. Again," she swore, as much to herself as Shiki. "Now fry, you son of a—WHU-OAH!"

A sudden rush of… of something barreled through Nami's torso, comparable to what she assumed Luffy felt when someone punched him in the gut. Something you felt, but that didn't hurt. The force broke Nami's stance and concentration, loosening her grip on the Clima-Tact. It was a lapse of mere seconds.

"You're mine."

But unfortunately, as the pirate looming over her showed, those few seconds were the difference between life and death.

"Imperial Lion Talon," Shiki declared, and a sound of rushing earth reached her ears. She brought up her arms and staff to guard, praying she'd survive to counterattack, but though she heard a massive impact, she felt no pain.

"Hooooorooooo… miiiissed meeee…"

Oh, and her own voice was drifting through the air, something that made her blink in shock. And that was before she saw what looked for all the world like a floating bedsheet with concentric gray circles for eyes hovering right where Shiki's attack had ripped into the earth.

"Toooo sloooow, toooo sloooow," the bedsheet-thing taunted before drifting away.

"What the—YOU LITTLE BITCH!" Shiki roared, shooting into the air with an orbital belt of stone spikes. "YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST RUN AWAY FROM ME!? YOU GO WHERE I SAY YOU GO! GET BACK HERE!"

And before Nami could fully shake off her shock, Shiki the Golden Lion was out of sight, gallivanting off after the entity that despite looking nothing like her—!

The pieces clicked together, and Nami sucked in a ragged gasp. 'Stole the attention on me, looked like a ghost—!'

"Perona?"

An all-too-physical force slammed into her from behind, knocking her down to the ground hard enough to stun.

In those moments of stunned confusion, Nami found herself manhandled onto her back, staring up at a visage she barely recognized. Long, unstyled pink hair hung all around a face caked with running makeup, a ragged cloak draped around her as a makeshift defense against the Daft Green. Her eyes were wide, vessels peeking in at the corners, and her lips were spread to show teeth audibly grinding together. Perhaps most worryingly, the cloak and the flesh alike were rippling with half-formed Hollow bodies, roiling and twisting over each other.

"P-Perona?" the navigator repeated, confusion warring with concern.

"Why?" the Hollow-girl gasped in a—ironically—hollow tone .

When after a few seconds the non-sequitur failed to get a follow-up, Nami swallowed uncomfortably. "Wh-What are you—?"

Suddenly and without warning, something snapped behind Perona's eyes, and Nami came to the sobering conclusion that she may have fucked up.

"WHY!?" Perona outright shrieked at banshee-levels of volume, raising her fist and trying to slam it down on Nami's head. Of course, coming from an unathletic teenager half Nami's size, it was comically easy to block, but the next blows compensated by volume. "WHY, WHY, WHY!?" she screeched, over and over again, each word punctuated by another attack.

"Wha—Perona!" Nami yelped, squirming uncomfortably under the feeble punches. "What the hell are you—!?"

"WHY!?" Another ear-rending wail, only this time Perona raised her arms into the air, a roiling, screaming ball of malformed ectoplasm materializing between her clawed fingers.

The Straw Hat's eyes shot wide open in panic, and it was only years of cat-thievery that granted Nami the dexterity she needed to squirm out from under her aggressor and slip away. And none too soon, as the Hollow-whatever literally splashed against where she'd been barely a second later.

"What the hell, Perona!?" Nami demanded, opening her mouth to lambast the ghost girl for the blatant attempt on her life. The tirade promptly died in her throat when Perona conjured three more of the Hollow-things.

"WHYYYY!?"

Nami dove for the nearest Daft Green, biting back a curse. The ecto-manace's grasping, wailing embrace fell on bare ground, while meanwhile the sheer stench of the tree, combined with her terror and confusion, shaved away the last of Nami's patience.

"Why what!?" she demanded, her voice dripping with frustration.

"WHY DOES IT HURT SO BAD?" Perona shrieked back, and with that admission everything seemed to freeze.

Slowly, fearful of another attack, Nami stepped out from behind her cover and beheld Perona standing still, eyes wide and staring at nothing and a hand clutching her collar in a white-knuckled grip.

"Why does it hurt?" Perona repeated, her voice raspy from her earlier shrieking. It was unclear if she was talking to or talking at Nami. "Why do I feel so bad? Why does it feel like I just got stabbed, like I want to throw up, like I want to scream and scream and scream and never stop?"

"Perona…"

Nami took a hesitant step towards the Hollow-girl, but Perona snapped her gaze up, locking the navigator in place. Only this time, it wasn't fear of the rage in her eyes.

This time, it was because she recognized the abject terror tearing at the Ghost Princess's soul.

"Oh, Perona…" Nami breathed, sympathy flooding her voice.

"Why, why… WHY!?" And then, out of nowhere, Perona let out an agonized shriek and collapsed to her knees, clutching her head. "WHY DID IT HURT WHEN I TOLD YOU TO GO AWAY?! WHY DOES IT HURT WHENEVER I THINK ABOUT HOW YOU LOOKED AT ME?! WHY DID IT HURT WHEN I REALIZED THAT SHIKI ONLY FOUND US BECAUSE ONE OF HIS SNAILS SAW MY HOLLOW PLAYING WITH XIAO!"

More Hollows bubbled out from Perona's body—and yes, 'bubbled' was indeed the right word. Some were happy and giggling, others sad, or angry, or wearing expressions that couldn't even be identified. And Nami knew how to read expressions.

"WHY DID I GO OUT OF MY WAY TO TELL THE VILLAGERS TO GET OUT OF THE BUNKER BEFORE SHIKI COULD KILL THEM ALL!?" the girl sobbed, terror wracking her slim frame. "WHY DID I LEAVE THE LAP OF LUXURY AND SECURITY, LEAVE EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WANTED, TO STEAL SHIKI'S ATTENTION AWAY FROM YOU?!"

The Hollows bubbling from Perona suddenly swelled and Nami had a mere second in which to yelped and dive back behind the Daft Greens before the Hollows exploded off of Perona. By some miracle, none of them passed through Nami's hiding spot.

"WHY DID IT HURT WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT HOW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE?" Perona wailed. "WHY DID I RISK MY LIFE TO COME OUT HERE AND SAVE YOU?"

Risking a peek around the vines, Nami gaped. The Hollows were now flowing out of Perona in outright streams, forming currents of ghosts that giggled and sobbed and made all sorts of other noises as they circled around her.

"WHY DO I CARE ABOUT YOU GETTING KILLED?"

It was like a bomb went off in Nami's mind. She wasn't getting Hollowed because Perona wasn't letting that happen. Even in the throes of a panic-fueled meltdown, she didn't want to hurt Nami.

Then, all of a sudden, the Hollows dispersed, Perona going from shouting down to a broken croak, her head cradled in her hands.

"Why… Why does it hurt… like when they took away Bearsy… and he stopped playing with me…?" she wept weakly. "Why do I care… about something that… that isn't me?"

This was the opportunity she'd been waiting for. Nami exited her shelter and walked up to Perona, her mind's eye reflecting a dusty road on her home island and a phantom pain in the long-healed scar on her shoulder. She didn't have her captain's hat, but she knew what to do.

"Because."

Nami sank to her knees in front of Perona and gently drew the girl into a hug, pressing the Hollow-teen's face into her shoulder.

"We're friends."

And with that, the last vestiges of Perona's composure imploded, and she wept into Nami's shoulder with abandon, clinging to her like she was her last lifeline left in the world. A comparison that was a bit too close to reality for comfort, but there it was.

After several minutes, Perona's coughing sobs subsided into wet sniffling.

"I know exactly how you feel, Perona," Nami whispered comfortingly. "I know what you're going through. I know how scary it is. And I promise, I'll help you understand it all. But… we'll do it later. For right now…" The navigator leaned back and gave Perona a conspiratorial smirk. "Think you're feeling good enough to help me blast these Daft Greens to kingdom come, and Shiki's reign of terror along with them?"

"I'm thinking…" interrupted a most unwelcome voice, accompanied by the most unwelcome occurrence of a steel collar flying out of nowhere and clamping shut on Perona's neck. She immediately collapsed with barely a panicked wheeze, once more leaving Nami standing alone against the monster.

"Not," Shiki finished, his wide grin twitching some. "Perona, baby, you lied to my face. You told me that you had no attachment to the Straw Hat Pirates."

The Hollow-girl didn't respond, too busy trembling on the ground in a fetal position.

Satisfied, Shiki turned back to Nami, savoring the trembling the navigator was unable to… suppress… wait a minute. That wasn't fear.

Shiki's sadistic, furious grin grew even more as he put the pieces together.

"You know something, girls?" he remarked, one hand already gesturing and forming constructs out of the snow. "The logical side of my mind is practically screaming that I should just kill you now myself. It would be so easy, just a quick couple of slashes and it would be done. But no… as much as I should do that, that's too fast and too merciful when you've forced me to expend this much of my energy! After all, there's quite a bit of tradition in piracy! Every crime has its punishment! And the crime here, whose punishment is very well-known…"

Cackling madly, Shiki shot his hands forward.

"IS MUTINY!"

Before either woman could react, the snow rose up, wrapped around them, and formed icy shackles around their wrists—

SNAP!

"ARGH!"/ "YEARGH!"

And then the women screamed in agony when the chains wrenched their arms out—nearly to the point of dislocating their shoulders—and bound them spread-eagled against opposite sides of the nearest Daft Green trunk.

"You two will remain in these bindings for what little remains of your lives. I'm going to leave you here and soon some of my men will be here to keep an eye on you while you succumb to the cold." Shiki removed a gasmask from his jacket and slipped it over his face. He then rammed the nearest Daft Green with his fist, causing the off-color vegetation to let loose a wispy cloud of green spores.

Spores that Nami and Perona couldn't help but inhale, that caused their hacking and wheezing to intensify as green bruises started to spread on their skin.

"And the Daft Green, whose potency you really shouldn't have underestimated." Shiki's sneer was obvious, even beneath his mask. "You will die slowly and painfully. And when the life leaves your eyes, I am going to broadcast your lifeless visages to the entire world. Your loved ones will sob… and the Navy will realize how much of a favor I am doing for them. They'll realize how much better things will be when the world is under my control."

"G-g-grghk…" Nami choked out around her panicking respiratory system, shooting a bloodthirsty and bloodshot glare at the Golden Lion. "You… won't… win."

"Ahhh, but don't you see?" Shiki the Golden Lion spread his arms, indicating the white-washed hell around them. "I already have…"

He then floated in close and shoved his gasmask right up to her face.

"Baby. Girl."

Snarling, Nami attempted to lunge at Shiki, which in practice meant she tried to bite his nose off, but Shiki merely floated away and then back to his palace, cackling all the way.

Her vision increasingly blurry, the navigator stared after him, until finally she no longer had the energy to hold up her head. "…he's dead once Luffy gets his hands on him…" she whispered to herself.

"But… what about… us?" Perona asked weakly.

To that… Nami had no response. She could only let her eyes slide shut in defeat, hoping beyond all hope that they'd come for her soon.

…no. No, not hoping, not hope.

They would come. She knew they would.

They'd come, because… because they had to.

They had to…

-o-

Near the highest point of Marineford, the Fleet Admiral sat sequestered in his office. He had sent out all of the necessary orders, and mobilization was going as fast as it could be managed. That left him only one thing to do.

"Shouldn't this be the part where you give a grand speech to inspire the Navy to defend the East Blue with their lives?" Tsuru asked quietly, sitting across from the Fleet Admiral alongside Garp.

"If I could do so without sounding hollow, I would," Sengoku replied, equal parts tired and bitter as he poured cups of sake for the three of them. "But Onigumo's words are still fresh in the world's memory. This may be the most righteous cause that the Marines have taken up in years, but there is no good way left to say 'serve Justice' or 'fulfill your duty' without sounding callous."

Tsuru's expression softened the slightest amount.

"What about, eh…" Garp swirled his cup, frowning in thought. "I 'unno, talk about how we already beat him twenty years ago—!"

"And then, less than two years into his sentence in the until-then inescapable gaol, he broke out, picked right back up where he left off and put us in the position we're in today," Sengoku smoothly finished.

Garp briefly mulled that over before wincing sympathetically. "Eesh, when you put it that way, hand me the—"

Wordlessly, Sengoku handed the Vice Admiral the bottle, which Garp began chugging.

While Garp conducted that assault on his liver, Tsuru leaned back and reflected on the orders that the Navy had executed over the past week. Briefly, briefly, she toyed with throwing it back in Sengoku's face, but just as quickly dismissed the notion. Both because she recognized how callous it would be, given the situation, and because as much as she hated to admit it, she knew that the Fleet Admiral's orders were the right ones.

The entire week after the Straw Hats had been defeated for the first time, there was little that the Navy could do. The location of Shiki's base was unknown but for the fact that it was hidden somewhere in the sky, out of the Navy's reach. And with everything that had happened to the Navy during and since the disaster at Enies Lobby, they simply didn't have the resources to spare to seek out such a place, let alone destroy it.

And since they only put the pieces of the enemy's plan together earlier that day, that meant their only option was to start evacuating civilians where they could and batten down the hatches where they couldn't. Anything else meant leaving entire islands undefended, or stringing out the entire Navy to be defeated in detail. At least this plan meant they could concentrate their forces and maybe launch a counterattack.

Another idea flitted through her mind, namely that this might be an opportunity to gently probe her friends about the possibility of joining the Masons. But that notion was dismissed as well, if only because such a tactic was guaranteed to leave an irrevocably bad taste in her mouth.

Which meant she was back to waiting for something to change. At least the wait proved brief.

"Don don—Puru—KA-LICK!"

After a moment's silence, Sengoku asked wearily, "It's time?"

"Yes sir, the snails just started ringing," the soldier on the other end confirmed, the snail mirroring his grave expression. "Your orders?"

"Put them on the screens," Sengoku groaned tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Whatever comes to pass, we will not be ignorant of the threat we face."

The snail nodded in confirmation before the other side hung up.

With one final, colossal gulp, Garp drained the last of the sake and carelessly tossed the bottle aside. "Well, let's go out and face the music," he growled.

And with that, the three stood up and moved to Marineford's highest balcony, looking down over HQ's main plaza. More specifically, they were looking down at the trio of titanic screens that had been erected on the masts of the warships in harbor, and watched along with the rest of Marineford's standing forces for the broadcast about to play for the whole.

It wasn't long before the screens lit up and the broadcast began. On screen was a swiftly moving shot that soared above the churning sea. The snail was moving fast, headed for a tower of stone that pierced the clouds, and upon reaching said pillar, the view panned around the pillar as it circled upward.

Upon the pillar, a thriving torrent of humanity, easily numbering in the thousands, was climbing the tower via a path winding around the stone. And from the generally rough appearance, the weapons they carried, and just the demeanor of strength and malice they all shared, there was only one conclusion that could be drawn.

"Pirates," Tsuru bit out, her wrinkled knuckles whitening on the balcony railing. "A traditional army, to go with the bioweapons he's already bred. That bastard… he's truly hellbent on world domination, isn't he?"

"And he's put together the perfect team for it, too," Garp groused, leaning forward. "I recognize some of these faces. 'Blueblood' Bourgeois Benjamin, worth ฿68 Million, Captain of the Esquire Pirates. Tre 'Triple-Tap' Timothy, ฿75 Million, Captain of the Dead-Eye Pirates. Avery 'Big Ben' Everie, ฿85 Million, Captain of the Nevermore Pirates." Garp growled, eyes narrowing. "And they all have their crews with them. Not a person there below ฿50 Million, and not a crew with less than a hundred members. He's gotten nearly all of Paradise's criminal underworld under his flag!"

The analysis, good as it was, missed one detail, a detail that nearly had Sengoku glowing. "The way they're wearing their coats," he ground out, the balcony slowly splintering under his fingers. "That's not coincidence, is it?"

"Considering how they're all wearing the same thing and the last time I saw Bourgeois he was wearing an actual royal cape?" Tsuru remarked. "Not a chance in hell."

The only response Sengoku had for that was a grunt of annoyance.

-o-

Apparently done taking in the rising army, the camera view suddenly ceased its circling and instead swung upward, breaking through the cloud cover and giving the world a view of the bottoms of the floating biomes that composed Merveille.

Even in this view, the looming shadow of the central fortress, upon which Shiki's palace was housed, dominated. One by one, crew by crew, the army of pirates marched up and into the central palace, entering via what appeared to be some sort of dock carved into the bottom of the island, which connected the island to the pillar.

The view flew up, around and over the edge of the island, providing the world with a head-on view of Shiki's golden palace, which was only emphasized by the camera swooping straight down the middle of the palace.

"Tsk, damn bastard," Red-Leg Zeff bit out. Though his scowling gaze was focused on the video screen, his hands didn't stop in their work. "Taunting us this much, this is insufferable… Salt!" Zeff snapped his hand up and caught the shaker that flew at him, laid out a layer of the preservative on the lunch he'd prepared, then boxed it up and passed it on to be stored with the other lunches he'd completed. "He never showed off like this before, but now that he has an audience, he's putting on a show for the whole damn world! That damn—Powder!"

Zeff held his hand out again, and he nodded when something was slapped into his palm… before glowering as he realized what he'd been handed.

"I SAID POWDER, NOT PEPPER!" Zeff roared, flinging the grinder back at the hapless cook who'd tossed it at him. Hissing irritably, he went to work cleaning out the gun he'd almost seasoned. "Morons."

The proper container came into his grasp, along with an excuse. "Sorry, Owner Zeff! We've never mixed cooking and fighting this much before!"

Zeff harrumphed but gave no more chastisement; after all, this was the first time in eight years that he'd had to work on preparing food and weapons simultaneously himself. But people needed to eat and those monster-things needed to eat lead when they inevitably came for them.