Chapter 57 - Strong World Pt 3 1/11

Cross-Brain AN: For anyone who was honestly upset about the cliffhanger? Come now, we all knew that that battle would be a curb-stomp, and not in the Straw Hats' favor. This… is just the logical conclusion.

"Gum-Gum Homerun!"

"Typhoon Lash!"

"WATCH YOUR HEAD!"

"Jihahaha! Is that the best you—?!"

"LIGHTNING BOLT TEMPO!"

KEE-RACK!

"—GRAH!? Urgh… ack… alright… credit where it's due. That stung a bit. And more than that, it's pissed me off. So… congratulations, Straw Hats, you've made me decide to do the one thing I haven't had to do in twenty years."

"SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU SHITTY GOLDEN BASTARD! SKY WALK! MOUTON—! GAH!? WHAT THE— LET ME GO, YOU PIECE OF—!?"

CRUNCH!

"GAAAAGH!"

"I… am going to give you the courtesy… of actually putting some effort into crushing you all down into the size of a pebble. Honestly, you all should feel honored…"

A rumble, a heave, the earth itself crying out in tortured rage and agony.

"The last time I used this technique, it was to take care of a particularly stubborn member of Linlin's brood. Lion's Threat: Earth Bind."

"What the—ohfuckme EVERYONE MOVE, NOW!"

"No! Nonono! Guys! GUYS! GET OUT OF THERE!"

"DAMN IT, IT'S TOO THICK!"

"I CAN'T BREAK OUT!"

"OH, NOOOO!"

"SHIKIIII! GET BACK HERE!"

"How about… NOT ON YOUR LIFE, BRAT! NOW DO THE WORLD A FAVOR AND LET THE EARTH SWALLOW YOU AND YOUR DREAMS WITHOUT EVEN A TRACE! JIHAHAHA! JIIIIHAHAHA!"

"No… no… this… t-this can't…"

"Face reality, Miss Navigator. It has and it is. Now… I suggest you think real hard about my proposal… and about what you really want right now."'

"You… you…"

"Think. Hard."

"…whatever I want?"

"Apart from that little stunt you pulled back in my palace? Yes."

"…alright. You leave the East Blue alone… and let my friends go."

"That's two wishes, Miss Navigator."

"Yeah, well… I'm a greedy bitch. And if my skills weren't worth that much, I wouldn't still be standing here. So now, you choose. Take it. Or. Leave it."

"…You drive a hard bargain. But your skills are not impressive enough to make me abandon twenty years of preparation. I will give you my word that I will not attack your home island, and I will even be generous and extend that promise to the rest of your former crew. But the rest of the East Blue… it burned my dreams twenty years ago, and now it burns in turn. Not even you can stop that."

Grinding teeth, pure frustration and rage. "F-Fine. Fine. You have a deal. Now let's go, a-and you'll let my crew go, right?"

"Heh. Exactly right. Buuuut, I would not have my newest crewmate think me without mercy. Or at least, completely without mercy. Here. I trust you know what to do with this?"

"I… yeah. Yeah, I do. Alright, just-just give me a second."

CLI—

SLAP! "—AKE UP, CROSS!"

"GAH!"

I shot upright, rubbing my stinging cheeks. "Ugh… Vivi, I'm not Usopp, and I'm not dying of hypothermia, what the heaaaargh?" My grumpy demand trailed off into a pained groan as the rest of me lodged their complaints all at once.

"Oi, don't remind me of that, especially not now," a nasally voice—Usopp's I think, though the ringing and doppler effect in my ears made that hard to tell—grumbled from nearby.

"Under normal circumstances, I'd want to hear that story, but right now we have bigger questions to handle," came a cooler female voice from beside me.

I blinked and looked towards the voice, the blur that was its source slowly coming into focus. "Robin…?"

"The same," Robin answer, her slightly fuzzy arm pointing over my shoulder. "Can you tell us what we just pulled you out of?"

Still dizzy as all get-out, I turned my head to follow her finger, and was confronted with the awe-inspiring sight of a titanic spiral pillar… of…

I clenched my eyes shut and clapped a hand to my throbbing forehead as it all came rushing back to me at once. "Ohdamnitalltohell…" I hissed under my breath.

When I reopened my eyes, I was finally able to see the details that had escaped me just moments before.

I could see the annihilated and still-smoldering ruins that were all that was left of the village.

Of how deep of a crater we were in the bottom of.

Of the rest of my friends being slowly, painstakingly drawn out of the pillar we'd all been entombed in.

And I became painfully, agonizingly aware of who was missing.

The last of the cobwebs faded from my mind, the last pieces of the utter clownstomping we'd been handed slotted into places, and I looked at Robin in despair.

"Shiki?" I croaked. "Nami?"

"They were long gone long before we got here," Franky's voice said from a short distance away. "We found out about his plans to level the village a second after Vivi left, and by then we couldn't catch up in time to tell her. We took the time to put a plan together with Bartolomeo, but the second we saw Shiki about to face you guys, we were gone. We met Vivi halfway, and when we actually got here…"

"What the hell happened?!" Vivi cut in, gripping my shoulder and shaking me. Her expression cycled through emotion after emotion, and dizzy as I still was, I had no chance to process them. "I-I thought you said, I thought—!"

"We weren't ready."

It said a damn lot that it was Luffy who growled out what we were all thinking.

"We underestimated him, we were all still tired, and we got our asses kicked because of it," Luffy bluntly summarized.

"It didn't help that he provoked us the way he did," Sanji literally fumed as he burned his way through his second cigarette since we'd woken up. "Objectifying Nami-swan and making himself out to be the victim… I want to explode just thinking about it. Grrrgh." Growling, he massaged his forehead. "Which, in retrospect, is exactly what he was going for."

"An-zzt-d it sure as he-kchk-ll didn't help that he went s-bzz-traight for Soundbite first," Su provided, her voice shaky and staticky. Soundbite was on her back, spiderweb cracks decorating his shell.

I did a bit of a double take at seeing Soundbite somewhere other than on my shoulder, but the fact that our non-human crew members were talking told me it wasn't serious and kept me calm.

"I'll patch him up as soon as my body lets me," Chopper sighed from nearby, no doubt having noticed all the looking about I'd done. "I knew I was pushing myself too hard… and if I try anything else now, I don't know if my body will be able to keep up as long as I need it to."

"If Soundbite isn't in any danger, then that's fine," Luffy said, his hat shadowing his eyes as he surveyed the mountain, the ruins, and the state of his crew. "But Shiki is going to pay for this. Guards."

"Sir!" the five Dugongs saluted immediately.

"Take Merry and go ahead of us to the Sunny. As soon as we're ready to fight, we're going to Coup de Burst straight up to Shiki's palace. Make sure he's ready."

"Aye-a-zzt!-ye!" four of them barked, Boss already moving to grab Merry. The elder Dugong paused, though, when Donny spoke up, his expression clearly hesitant.

"A-Actually… I, uh…" Donny slowly withdrew a seashell from behind his back, a gold and somewhat ornate one. "I-I was look-krcht!-ng around once I got out and found th-zzt!-is. I… think it's a Tone Dial, but… I don't remember us hav-eeng!-ing one like this. Do… Do you guys think…?"

The discomfort on his face slowly transmitted to the rest of us and we all stared at the shell with something approaching existential dread.

"Should… Should we listen to it?" Conis asked uncertainly.

"It could just be another attempt by Shiki to make us go out of our minds again," Vivi reasoned, slipping out one of her Cutters. "Maybe we should…?"

"Here, give it to me," Robin prompted, materializing an arm in front of Donny and gesturing invitingly. "I'll listen to it myself, and if it's not worth our time, I'll crush it immediately."

Donny glanced at Luffy. Our captain nodded, and the dugong handed off the Dial to her, new arms swiftly carrying it out of earshot.

Robin closed her eyes in concentration, and a second later, they snapped open, framed by a suddenly deathly pale face. "It's not Shiki."

"Are you—?"

"It's not Shiki," she repeated, purely desperate… I don't even know what emotion that was etched on her face. The Dial soared back out of the bushes, and she caught it and played it in one smooth motion.

"Please forgive me for not being able to say farewell to you all directly."

Our hearts all practically stopped at Nami's voice coming from the shell, sounding more defeated and downtrodden then I'd ever heard her before.

And that 'stop' went outright frozen for me as she continued to speak, her every word just making… everything so very, very much worse.

~o~

With a grimace, eyes closed, Nami allowed the Tone Dial to fall from her grasp and settle on the altered earth below.

"Very good," Shiki sneered. "Now, let us be going. The ceremony will begin soon."

Nami so wanted to pin the bastard to the nearest intact wall, be it with her glare or her Eisen Tempo or even a physical bolt of lightning, but at the moment, that wasn't an option. As such, she settled for dredging up her memories of Arlong and giving the lion-bastard the least-obviously stiff nod she could manage. "Fine, let's go."

And so Nami started to march off in the direction the Shiki indicated—

"Wait."

And then froze as a very familiar voice spoke up, and both she and Shiki both turned their heads to face the source: a grim and gaunt goth, with her head bowed low and her expression shadowed by the… well, shadow of her umbrella.

"Perona?!" Nami gasped even as Shiki tilted his head curiously.

"So, you managed to survive the onslaught, hm?" the Float-human questioned. "What, are you looking for a round two or something? Fair warning." Three stones lifted off the ground to orbit above his palm. "I won't be quite so merciful with you as I was with my navigator's old crew."

Nami was about to either protest the threat or ask Perona what the hell she was thinking, but before she could do either…

"Will you allow me to join your crew?"

The navigator's brain stalled as the incongruent words hit her ears. "…what?" she whispered numbly.

Shiki, meanwhile, took the question much better. "Join me?" He leaned back in thought, a cloud of smoke spilling out his mouth. "Hmm… well, your abilities are genuinely intriguing. But do you really expect me to believe that you too would so easily betray your crewmates? After you helped your friend… lose her way earlier at that?"

"N-No! No!" Nami hastily protested, shaking her head at her 'captain' before running to Perona's side, reaching out to her in desperation. "Perona, please, you don't have to—!"

SLAP!

Nami's words died in her throat, the cold and almost impersonal look that the Goth had showed her doing an even better job than the forceful strike that had knocked her hand away.

"'Have to'?" Perona repeated, her face and tone as expressionless as a statue. "Of course I do. I told you, remember? I am not, have never been, and never will be a part of your crew. The only reason I got on your ship was to find somewhere new I could live in luxury, and what do you know, I found it. Hell, I found my way on to the only hunk of rock that's not going to be burning in a week. Really, the only thing you should be asking is why I wouldn't want to join Shiki's crew, when the Straw Hats mean absolutely nothing to me."

"B-But…" Nami whispered numbly, her mind still playing catch-up. "Y-You're my friend…"

"Horo!" the ghost princess barked out a harsh laugh. "'Friend'?! Remind me, have I ever, even once, addressed you as my friend? Hm? Have I?"

The navigator tried to answer… but nothing came out.

"Thought not. And just to clarify things, let me tell you exactly why I hung out with you, even when I didn't think of you as a friend." Perona leaned in close, putting her scowl an inch from Nami's face. "You. Were. Convenient. A means to an end. And it would have been too much trouble to let you die while I was travelling with that crew. But now, I don't need them anymore, so now I don't need you. So, in short?"

Perona straightened up and adopted a most pleasant and innocent expression. "Thank you ever so much for helping me find a new home where I can live the rest of my days in peace and comfort." And then, just like that, all emotion fled. "Now please, leave me the hell alone."

Through it all, Shiki didn't move, not even when Perona looked him dead in the eye. He stared for several seconds, neither wavering, until finally, his face split into a grin.

"That was cold, girly," he remarked. "And I love it. Perona, was it? Welcome to my crew. You'll excuse me if I put your wish on hold until later. Now, if that's all, let's be going."

Perona nodded curtly and followed after him, making a point of bumping into Nami in the process. The navigator flinched and clutched at the struck shoulder as if it'd been hit much harder as she followed with a sad, sour expression on her face.

The action drew an inquisitive glance from Shiki, one that fell on the gauze wrapping the joint. "By the way, Miss Navigator, I noticed that you've been wearing that bandage all week. Did you contract that serious of an injury? I can have one of my doctors take a look at it."

Nami flinched again, her nails biting even harder into her shoulder. "No, it's not injured. It's just… not time yet."

Shiki cocked an eyebrow at the answer, but shrugged dismissively. "Whatever you say, Miss Navigator. Aaaanyways, you both go ahead, yeah? I'll be right behind you."

From their expressions, both women wanted to know why Shiki wanted to stay behind. But neither wanted to test their new captain's patience, and so trudged away.

Once they were past the intact section of the village and out of sight, Shiki's ever-present grin gained a particularly violent edge. "Should have thought things through a little bit longer, Miss Navigator," he whispered gleefully.

And so, with an almost dismissive flick of his hand, a veritable blast of earth erupted in front of the door to the bunker, which he'd torn open earlier.

Chuckling to himself, Shiki took to the air. "After all," he said. "Can't have a proper bloodbath without the slaughter."

A minute later, the Golden Lion landed next to his new crewmates. "Alright, all good. Let's go!"

So they went, Shiki hauling up a chunk of earth to transport them to their new home.

And as they rose to the air, Nami cast a final, mournful glance towards the monument her crew had been made into, and could only pray that everyone would understand the message she had left them.

~o~

A picture of grinding teeth, bleeding palms, and eyes reflecting every force of nature imaginable defined our crew as we listened to the tape.

Some of our reactions were more volatile than others: Chopper was twitching on his hooves, eyes flickering in and out of cyan madness; Conis had blood dripping from between her clenched fingers; and where Vivi's face was dead to the world, absent of all reaction, I could sense something swirling in the back of her mind, roiling off of her.

What that was, I didn't know. My mind was… busy.

"That's why…" Nami's voice choked out. "That's why I'm begging you to forgive me for—"

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?"

Everyone else flinched at the sudden, livid bellow Luffy let out, drowning out whatever the hell else Nami had been about to say.

And I… I didn't begrudge him. Because I… I just… I just couldn't. I-I literally couldn't.

For a few seconds Luffy just stood there, snorting and growling as he glared bloody murder at the offending Dial. Until finally, something just snapped behind his eyes and he spun on his heels, marching off.

Franky cast a worried look after Luffy, but then he shook his head and pointed at Robin. "Hey, play that again."

And that was when I snapped. "Do it without me," I hissed, fighting to keep my tone under control.

Usopp looked at me in surprise. "But, Cross, she was saying something at the end—!"

"I've heard enough," I bit out, daring anyone to dispute me.

If anybody wanted to, I didn't give them a chance. I just snatched Soundbite off of Su's back, slapped him onto my shoulder and stalked off, my teeth grinding like a chainsaw.

I just… it just… I could barely even think I was so… so…

No words. None. None.

We'd lost. Lost again. Lost so. Fucking. Badly.

And he hadn't even been trying. He ripped us apart.

Humiliated us. Laughed at us, like we were trash.

And then Nami.

Not only had he taken her…

But her voice was there. Summarizing it, emphasizing it.

Hammering. It. In.

Hammering in the fact that I had…

That we had…

That we'd…

We—!

"FUCK!"

SMASH!

I huffed and snarled as I came down from the peak of my unholy rage. My chest heaved and my throat ached from the roar I'd let loose, but I barely noticed as I yanked my foot out from the chunk of wall I'd demolished.

Soundbite eyed me warily, if still a bit dizzily. "That help? At all?"

I snorted derisively, my fingers twitching and jerking in my gauntlets. "No. And you know damn well the only thing that'll—!"

"GRAGH!"

S-SMASH!

I was cut off by a second roar of fury, one that was accompanied by two simultaneous crashes.

One source was obvious, Luffy withdrawing his arm from the rubble he'd just created, but the other was something of a surprise.

I looked at Zoro, standing in front of a mutilated track of land with all three of his swords drawn. His fists were strangling Shusui and Kitetsu, his teeth grinding into Wado, his body trembling with energy and emotions just waiting to be unleashed. Our eyes met…

And I realized that no, this wasn't a surprise. Rather, it was the only possible outcome.

And as the energy slowly drained from my body, and some of the edge on my emotions dulled, I knew there was only one way this could be done.

I huffed, taking my hat off to wipe the sweat from my brow. "…Captain."

Luffy snapped an immolating glare at me out the corner of his eye. A glare I met without flinching.

"…I'm the tactician," I stated. "My job is to make the plans. And I can do that. I can give you a hundred and one different plans, right here, right now, but only you can tell us what direction we're headed. Only you can tell us our destination. So," I spread my arms out wide, indicating… everything around us. Everything that had happened. "What's the play?"

Luffy continued to stare at me, and without looking away, he slowly raised his hand and pointed at the island looming so high above us. "…I want," he whispered, honest to God murder in his voice. "To make him pay."

"Alright, then that's what we'll do…" I nodded slowly, the motion gaining momentum as I jammed my hat back into place, right way forward. "We'll make him pay."

Zoro snorted in agreement, finishing the knot of his bandana with an almost whip-like crack!. "Then let's get it done."

We made to go back to the crew—

FWOOM!

And we all came to a dead halt at the sudden, and utterly incongruous, blast of air that hit us. A surprise, yes, but when nothing else happened we all brushed it off and continued on our way.

Nobody looked at us as we returned, because they were more concerned with the epicenter of the wave of air pressure.

With Princess Nefertari Vivi.

I gave her a once-over: hunched forward, hand clamped against her mouth, eyes screwed shut. Then suddenly they flew open, and I met the merciless steel in her gaze.

"…So," I asked as she straightened up and examined her hands in a whole new light. "How did it taste?"

Vivi clenched and unclenched her hands, as if to see if they still functioned properly. Satisfied, she snapped them into fists, giving me a determined nod.

"Delicious," she proudly declared.

Luffy's only response to that was a grave nod, following which he slowly panned his gaze over his crew, meeting their eyes one by one. He found exactly what he wanted and expected to see, and turned to face the continent that reigned over them all.

"No speeches," he stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "No waiting. No mercy. Let's go."

"Right," was our unanimous reply.

And that was all there was to be said on the matter.

-o-

Shiki the Golden Lion was on cloud nine in all but puffy white water. He had utterly devastated the crew of rookies that somehow thought that they stood a chance against him, conveniently ignoring the injuries that were loudly voicing their displeasure at existence. He had his armies together, his macabre masterpiece was complete, and in only a matter of hours, his revenge, twenty years in the works, would begin. No force in Paradise could stop him now.

His eyes scanned over the crews as they shuffled in and kneeled, grinning as he took in each of the faces. All of them were veteran Paradise pirates save for one rookie crew. That they were formidable fighters was a given, but even a New World veteran like him couldn't help but be impressed at the act of getting away with attacking a Celestial Dragon. Nobody had ever done that publicly before, and when he thought back to his equally unprecedented feat of escaping from Impel Down… well, an exception had to be made.

As the crews continued to file in, he gave a cursory scan of his monitors. His newest recruit, Perona, was lying in a four-poster bed that matched the decorations of her luxurious pink and black room, her face pulled wide in a grin as she rolled around, trying to get comfortable. The village was completely in ruins; only the visual snail watching had survived the carnage. The beasts were as savage as ever, and the ceremonial hall was filling up. Perfect.

Shiki observed as the last of the crews, the Barto Club Pirates, passed him with respectful nods that the captain somehow managed to make look crass. But he brushed it off; for allies as valuable as him, he was willing to overlook some eccentricities.

More importantly, now… now was the start of the age of his glorious—!

Shiki's grin dropped into an irritated glower as something caught his eye on another of the monitors: an incongruous lump of red on one of the Daft Green trees. The pieces put themselves together in his mind as fast as blinking.

"Damn it all," he growled to himself, striding down from his throne in an irritated huff, the underlings in the immediate area quailing away.

SQUEEK, SQUONK SQUEEK SQU-WONK!

Even the heavily bandaged Doctor Indigo stopped short, after running all the way to see him. The imposing clown shifted uncomfortably on his rubbery shoes, his eyes darting back and forth in the gap in the gauze that was all but his second face. Finally, he lifted his finger up, took a deep breath—

"Don't bother, I'm already aware," Shiki said before Indigo could get the words out, gliding past him.

The chemist blinked, eyes tracking his commander as he stalked off. Once Shiki was out of sight, and with no retaliation coming, the doctor mentally shrugged and squeaked off to finish his preparations for the main event.

Unseen to anyone, on her screen, Perona's rolling had escalated into tossing and turning, and then into an outright fit. The ghost-ruler was shaking her head and rapping her knuckles against her skull, eyes scrunched shut and teeth grinding, rocking back and forth on crossed legs. She even appeared to be speaking, snarling at first, then screaming, but the lack of audio made it impossible to tell what. Comfort, at this point, was out of the question.

Finally, Perona's body snapped ramrod straight, muscles trembling as she loosed what could only be a blood-curdling shriek. White swirled into the video, and a second later, it snapped to static.

-o-

While Nami wasn't sure she'd ever truly forgive Kalifa for what she'd done to her crew, she had to admit that she owed the assassin at least one. If it weren't for the soap-based change in demeanor the assassin had inadvertently inflicted, it would be close to impossible for her to use her iron clouds to strap bundles of dynamite to the odious Daft Green trees surrounding the palace without slowing her Waver. Such was her pace that she had less than a minute's work left before she'd be able to take out Shiki's sole defense against his own creations with just one zap of lightning.

The only impediment to her work was the rancid smell of the trees. She had brought along a makeshift gas mask in the form of a wet cloth tied around the bottom of her face, but it had long since proven utterly inadequate for the task. But she'd be done soon, and then—

CRASH!

"Aaaaghh…"

A tortured groan crawled out of Nami's throat, her mind struggling to process what the hell had just happened to her. One second she'd been speeding along on her Waver, preparing the last touches to bring Shiki's world crashing down around his head, and the next—now—she was lying face-down in the snow, her entire body screaming in pain. Obviously, something had happened in between, but damn if she knew what.

Moving slowly in an attempt to avoid aggravating her injuries any further, Nami pushed herself to her hands and knees and tried to find her Waver so that she could get back to work—!

"…ah," Nami squeaked out, her brain stalling at the utterly impossible sight before her eyes.

Her Waver, Nami's Waver, her means of transportation, of tearing free across the waves without pause or hesitation, had just been destroyed.

Well, that was probably something of an exaggeration; the body was mostly intact, but the whole front wheel and the steering mechanism were straight-up gone. Ripped out of their frame, and a good chunk of the prow of her Waver with it. It wasn't irreparable damage, but that didn't help her when she needed it right this minute.

"Wh-What the hell…?" Nami breathed, weakly reaching out to her devastated possession. "How did this—?"

"You have been insulting me without pause for seven days now, Miss Navigator."

Nami's blood, and all the rest of her, froze. It was with an almost corpse-like stiffness that she craned her head upward and stared evil in the eye.

"And the most infuriating part is these little stunts," Shiki continued, his deceptively calm tone betrayed a twitching, too-tight smile. "This is pushing my tolerance to the breaking point. I am a very patient man, Miss Navigator. And trust me…"

Trailing off, Shiki raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

SMASH!

A jaw rose from the earth and crunched down on the Waver's hull. Nami's heart twisted as the fangs did their work, grinding the craft into an unrecognizable mass of splinters. At least the glimpses she kept seeing of the bulb holding the Jet Dial gave her hope that her precious possession was salvageable.

But with Shiki still looming over her and a few twitches away from snapping and gutting Nami like a trout, that hope was small and not terribly comforting.

"Trust me, Miss Navigator," Shiki grimly repeated. "You do not want to see a very patient man lose that patience. So." The lion-man cracked his knuckles, one by one, his glare never leaving the younger woman. "Why don't you go ahead and tell me… just what the hell you think you were doing. And then, maybe, I won't break your legs, hm?"

Nami remained on her knees a little longer, letting the promise of pain and most likely death Shiki had delivered sink in. She considered what would happen to her if she did what she really, really wanted to do.

And then, she got to her feet, Clima-Tact still in hand and forming a crackling boa around her neck, and did exactly what she really, really wanted to do.

"What I was doing," Nami croaked, eyes drawn in grim determination. "And what I'm still planning on doing… is sending your twisted dreams crashing and burning to the bottom of the sea, where they belong, and then I'm going back to my crew." The final word was emphasized by a stray bolt of lightning from her Eisen Tempo charring a chunk out of a nearby Daft Green.

Shiki huffed irritably at the decidedly un-satisfactory answer and raised his hand. But before he could gesture and mutilate his 'wayward' crewmate, he noticed something. Due to the intensification of Nami's lightning, she was better illuminated in the evening gloom, and Shiki's eyes were able to discern something new about her: her shoulder was no longer bandaged. And even with anger clouding his vision, Shiki found himself curious about the newly exposed flesh. Or rather, what that flesh bore.

Shiki vaguely knew of the tattoo on her shoulder. It was prominently displayed on her wanted poster, and he thought he may have caught her mentioning the motivation behind it on the SBS once or twice. But now, the once-simple pinwheel-and-tangerine combination had been dramatically changed. While the original tattoo was still in place, the ink that formed one of the larger arms of the pinwheel now coursed down her arm, covering a mess of deep, deep scars that he only saw so quickly thanks to his experience on the seas.

And the picture that the ink formed was one of a writhing, swirling storm. Tongues of lightning, wind, and clouds swirled among a multitude of dark-blue to grey-black spiral maelstroms, tinged and outlined in electric-yellow, coursing all the way down to her elbow.

The Golden Lion slowly turned his gaze back to her eyes. Eyes filled with something he dreaded recognizing. "You seem to have fully embraced your epithet, Weather Witch," he observed.

A flicker of eyes followed his stare, and then it was back to glaring at him. "My new tattoo, you mean?"

"Yesss," he drew out. "I can understand covering up such nasty scarring as that with something more… personal, I suppose… but I can't help but feel this goes beyond that. Or am I wrong?"

Nami's head bowed slightly, her bangs casting a shadow over her eyes. "…My mother. She… She was a Marine. Wonderful, kind, loving… and the strongest, bravest woman I've ever known. And I owe everything of who I am… to her. But recently… I decided… I'm going to take a little bit more… like the greedy pirate I am."

Nami's eyes snapped up, and Shiki could no longer downplay or deny the unmitigated fury crackling in her gaze. "I'm not just satisfied with her will to live anymore…" she breathed. "I'm taking up her will to fight. This tattoo represents my decision: From here on out, I am going to live the way she lived… and die the way she died. Never back down, and never surrender…"

The Weather Witch lashed her Clima-Tact out, and a barrage of lightning charred a line of blackened earth between herself and the Golden Lion.

"Not when everything you hold dear is on the line," she whispered, as much to herself as her enemy. "And especially not to someone like you."

For a solid minute, Shiki blankly stared at Nami before his face hardened into a mask of fury, his teeth bared in a snarl. "I severely underestimated you," he growled. "I crush the rest of your crew, I hold the lives of everyone dear to you in my hands, I overpower you in every conceivable way. And yet. You still fight. You never stopped fighting. It's clear that I've wasted my time trying to sway one with such a will. One such as you will never break, will never bow. Admirable, in a way. Truly strong female pirates are a rare thing nowadays. But still, a pity… If only you were the slightest bit weaker."

The Golden Lion's arm snapped skyward, and Nami could only watch in horror as a small mountain of dirt and rock ripped itself from the firmament and gathered into a hovering ball, grinding against itself until it was shaped into a single massive cone of stone, the point aimed directly at Nami.

"If only you'd broken like a good little girl," he rumbled, regret mixing with fury. "You might have lived a little longer."