Work Text:
A pirate, a boy king. A white flame riding on Death’s shoulders.
.
.
.
Two Strawhats captured, and the only ones who were happy about it were the shithead captain and his brown-nosing, paper-pushing officers.
Sure, Ensign Perry was a commissioned officer, too. But he liked to think his schooling and training added IQ points instead of sucking them away like it seemed to do with his fellow officers. No Marine with an ounce of awareness would be so pleased to have a Strawhat in the brig. Much less two.
And no Marine with any sense God gave a goose would be trying to kick the shit out of Strawhat’s crew.
But, well. Not one person could ever accuse Lieutenant Commander Montagu of being in possession of two brain cells to rub together. The only two things going for Montagu were his admittedly handsome face and the fact that he was a legacy Marine with two great captains and one vice admiral in his family line. Otherwise, Perry thought bitterly, there would be no difference between Montagu and a sea anemone.
Except sea anemones were probably less violent.
“Oh? Interesting,” Montagu teases Vinsmoke in that rough, lazy drawl he affects when he’s putting on a show. And he is putting on a show. Perry glances around the brig, at the more than two dozen Marines gathered, crammed against each other and the walls and bars and corners of the space. More than half of them—namely the Lieutenant Commander and certainly his men—aren’t even supposed to be down here operating outside of their department. The brig was under the purview of Operations, not the fucking Combat Systems, but it’s not like Perry had the say-so to kick them out. Montagu’s posse looks just as bloodthirsty as Montagu, ramping up the tension in the brig to an even higher boiling point.
Perry’s men, however, weren’t idiots. And they looked on in wide-eyed horror.
In the cell, Montagu looms over Vinsmoke. The pirate is laid out spread-eagled on the floor, each ankle shackled separately, the chains pulled taut to the metal bars. His arms are stretched out like wings, chains pulled and locked to either side of the cell. With barely any give in the chains, Vinsmoke can’t turn over or sit up. He can only lay on his back with a room full of Marines bearing down on him, unbearably vulnerable.
His jacket had been removed, his button-up torn open and irreparably damaged, revealing pale skin beneath. Revealing old bandages around his torso, the white dirty from the fight, from the brig. Perry can see that the bandages are pink with reopened wounds.
“Interesting, interesting,” Montagu repeats as his boot applies more pressure to Vinsmoke’s splayed hand. “You didn’t seem as concerned when we broke your ribs or when I dislocated your knee. Is this more painful to you, pirate? Perhaps we should test it?”
The tips of Vinsmoke’s fingers that are visible from under the boot are blood red. His face is ashen white. And yet.
And yet.
Vinsmoke looks up (and up and up) at Montagu, at all of his tormentors, with disinterest. He should be a beaten beast—cornered, exposed, defenseless.
He's a beast alright, but something more like a bird of prey staring down at them in peerless censure. Remote. Untouchable. Free.
(How can someone be free while chained to the ground?)
Perry doesn’t think the disinterest on Vinsmoke’s face is affected. There’s no real sense of bravado behind those eyes, just the casual regard of a monster’s soul. Even if that look was feigned, even if it was pride and an effort to hide the fear inside, the effect it has on Montagu and his lackeys is the same. The lieutenant commander’s indignant rage is a swift thing. He doesn’t say anything, for once doesn’t posture. He lifts his leg, bends his knee, aims the heel of his boot for Vinsmoke’s hand with the intent to ruin it, to crush it, to make Vinsmoke scream before Perry can even register his intent, much less react.
The boot comes down.
“No!”
The other Strawhat, the one who’s been unconscious since their capture a little over twelve hours ago, is suddenly there, curled over Vinsmoke’s hand, over his arm and shoulder and upper body, taking Montague’s blow with his broad back.
“God” Usopp had been chained on the other side of the cell. Not spread eagled like Vinsmoke due to the lack of space, but both his arms and his ankles had been shackled to the bars all the same. He wasn’t conscious and shouldn’t have been able to move across the cell to cover his crewmate.
His wrists were still cuffed together, but the chains lay like slumbering snakes in the corner of the cell, along with the cuffs that had been around his ankles. Perry feels like he realizes the implications moments before everyone else.
God Usopp had played them. He’d slipped entirely out of the awareness of the twenty or so Marines gathered in the brig, some currently standing in the very same cell as him, and he’d almost escaped. He’d almost shamed the Marines, shamed their captain and their divisions, with them being none the wiser.
Montagu seems to register this, finally, and redirects all of his ire onto God Usopp. He stomps again and again and again onto that broad back, under the shoulder blades, into the ribs and kidneys. And when God Usopp doesn’t do more than grunt, Montagu steps back and kicks him hard enough to make the man roll until he painfully hits the prison bars.
God Usopp cries out at that one. Vinsmoke’s lips tremble, his aloof features are finally rife with alarm. Whatever he shouts is lost to Perry in the sudden rise of voices among his fellow Marines, all stunned that they missed a Strawhat freeing themselves.
“Get him up!” Montagu roars. “Chain him back down!” He whirls on Perry, his handsome face splotched red with temper. “Your sloppy division can’t even chain up one prisoner. Someone will have to answer for this.”
“Sir!” Petty Officer Slingsby says from beside Perry, but he barely holds his salute. “Sir, the prisoner was—”
“Yes, sir,” Perry interrupts Slingsby with his own salute. “We’ll investigate the matter thoroughly.”
Slingsby audibly swallows his own voice and resumes his attention. Lieutenant Commander Montagu’s eyes narrow at Perry. “No,” he says, slowly, the blotchiness of his temper already receding and leaving behind that haughty face that Perry absolutely cannot stand. “No, I think the captain should be the one to investigate this matter.”
Montagu walks off, his retinue following after, leaving behind the dire threat in his wake. Perry’s men are equal parts incensed and intimidated.
“But, sir! We did chain him up—”
“There is no way we missed something—”
“He had to have picked a lock somewhere—”
“Did you search him? Search him again!”
“Get him chained before the captain comes!”
“There is no way he can blame us, right?”
Perry watches them scramble, rightfully wary of the captain’s imminent judgment. But Perry can’t bring himself to be concerned with it. Instead, he watches as they recuff God Usopp, watches as they double the chains that hook to the bars in the cell. God Usopp is shaking with pain and fear, a sheen of tears in his eyes. But he grits his teeth and says, “oi, th-that hurts, you bastards” and he says, “don’t you know who you’re dealing with? I’ve broken out of hell before, I could b-beat you all with my little finger, I have eight thousand men at my disposal.”
And Vinsmoke’s long white fingers clench into useless fists, his right leg jerking, yanking against the chain with minimal leverage and he’s still bending the bars. He says, “you shitty fool, I’ll kick you myself when we’re free,” and he damn near growls, “you damn bastards, let him go, don’t touch him!”
And Perry knows. He knows that God Usopp, in spite of nearly paralyzing fear and dread, had almost escaped on his own. He gave up his play, one that would have worked, all to protect his crewmate’s hand.
(He hadn’t moved when they broke Vinsmoke’s ribs, when they kicked his face, when they dislocated his knee. But God Usopp did not hesitate when Vinsmoke’s hand was about to be crushed. Distantly, Perry wonders about this.)
More men crowd around God Usopp, struggling to rechain him, elbowing and punching him when he resists. Vinsmoke’s acerbic ire grows, shouting insults at both the Marines and God Usopp as he pulls and pulls and pulls against the chains. Perry knows that Vinsmoke is about to bring the cell crashing down around them though it should be impossible, and his strength and rage is directly proportional to how many men crowd around God Usopp.
Perry knows that the imminent threat to him and his men is not Lieutenant Montagu or even the captain.
He is loyal to the Marines, and he holds not enough sympathy for the pirates in their brig, no matter Montagu’s detestable actions. But above all, he’s made an oath to lead his men to the best of his ability, and he refuses to knowingly lead them into senseless bloodshed.
There’s an oncoming storm, and Perry knows exactly what he has to do to survive.
.
.
.
When the Marines clear the cell, as Perry turns away, he hears Vinsmoke whisper, “how bad? You fool, you stupid, shitty, moron.”
He sounds like he’s about to cry.
“You’re the idiot,” God Usopp sighs, voice shaky and quiet and exhausted and so, so scared. “Of course I’ll protect your dream.”
.
.
.
Perry doesn’t even have to wait long. Three full hours pass since Montagu’s threats but still no sign of the captain or Montagu. It’s fortuitous, if suspicious, and though the higher-ups are keeping it hushed for some reason, Perry suspects that the increased speed with the ship has a great deal to do with the lack of retribution on Perry’s division. Perry doesn’t waste the unexpected time afforded to him.
It’s difficult convincing his men to prepare for an emergency evacuation without telling them why. It’s even harder to prep them to leave without him if necessary. Slingsby doesn’t seem fooled, but he also doesn’t let on that he’s understood anything beyond Perry’s orders.
At the first tremor, even though it’s small, he orders them to go. To get out to sea. Stick around long enough to pick up anyone else but get out to sea first and survive.
The second tremor is stronger, but the brig is already deserted at that point, and Perry is already stepping into the cell.
“Well, well,” Vinsmoke drawls. And there’s that feeling again. That he’s looming above Perry instead of helpless at his feet.
“You bastards back for another round?” God Usopp taunts, or maybe he tries to. There’s absolutely no mistaking the fear in his voice, the false bravado, the tremor in his hands.
He’s managed to get an ankle free again. How does he keep doing that?
“No,” Vinsmoke rumbles in his low, unflappable tones. “No, look around. They’re all gone.”
A beat while God Usopp does look around, fully noticing that there is no one but Perry in the brig with them. Their guards, their witnesses, are gone. Vinsmoke breathes out, a smirk on his swollen, bloody face.
“Our captain is here.”
This statement is punctuated by a third, stronger tremor that sends the whole ship lurching and Perry, who has always felt like he’s walked steadier on the sea than on land, is nearly thrown off balance.
“Luffy!” God Usopp says, with palpable relief. With tangible hope.
Conversely, dread settles like poison in the pit of Perry’s stomach. He swallows it back. He doesn’t have any time to lose, and he made a promise to save as many soldiers as he could on this ship.
“You here to kill us first, shitty Marine officer, sir?” Vinsmoke sneers.
Perry clenches his jaw and sees why Montagu tried to kick the sass out of the mouthy little shit. Perry kind of wants to kick him, too.
He holds up the keys and doesn’t have the moments to revel in the genuine surprise he sees on their faces.
Funny that monsters could feel surprise. Or fear. Or anything at all.
“I want to make a deal.”
.
.
.
“Come on, Long-Nose!” Vinsmoke shouts, not breaking stride to reach down where God Usopp had fallen with the lurch of the ship and haul him back to his feet. “No time for napping!”
“Screw you!” God Usopp shouts back without any real heat. “I told you I’m not leaving without Kuro Kabuto!”
“Yeah, yeah, but where is it? Oi—” he’s cut off as the floor heaves below them, robbing them of gravity and orientation, sending them stumbling into each other and then painfully into the wall of the passageway. This level, like the level below them that they just escaped, is taking on water. It’s already sloshing about their feet as they try to run.
“We cannot stop!” Perry insists for what feels like the tenth time in as many minutes. “We had a deal.”
“Look, man,” God Usopp says as he helps steady his crewmate. Vinsmoke’s face is pale in the flickering, waning lights of the corridor, the shadows elongating the dark rings under his eyes. Of the two, Vinsmoke is the worst off. Montagu did some of the work—the dislocated knee, for sure. Vinsmoke also has a fractured rib or two and a cracked cheekbone, but Perry suspects those injuries were helped along by whatever battles Vinsmoke survived in Wano rather than any of the abuse from Montagu.
(It’s how their lone warship was even able to snatch two Strawhats from a small island only a few days away from Wano. They had been separated—they had caught Vinsmoke and God Usopp while honest-to-God shopping in the town market, and they had still been visibly injured from their run-in with two Emperors of the Sea. It certainly hadn’t been through any marked prowess or skill of their ship and company, as much as Perry liked and admired both.)
“The faster you help me get to my weapon, the faster we’ll leave,” God Usopp says. “T-that’s not even, like, a threat. I would very much like to get the hell out of here, please and thank you.”
Vinsmoke chooses that time to kick in another door, throwing both him and God Usopp off balance.
“I told you it’s not on this level!” Perry says, exasperated. “It’s below us.” He kicks up the seawater that is now at their ankles to prove a point. “Just a little inaccessible at this time. We had a deal, are you going to stick to it or not, you damn pirates?”
“What are you going to do if we don’t?” Vinsmoke drawls, tilting his head so Perry catches one startling blue eye regarding him from beneath his fringe of matted hair.
Probably die. Perry has no delusions about the gap in their power or skill level. He could maybe severely injure one before he goes. He’s quick with his pistol and the passageway doesn’t lend much room to dodge.
“But seriously,” God Usopp interrupts their standoff, sounding petulant and very, very young. “We have to turn around? How far below us?”
“Can you hold your breath long enough to get it?”
“Oi! Why me?”
“My smokes are down there,” Vinsmoke says, a little morosely. God Usopp clicks his tongue in annoyed response.
“They’re way too soggy to use, moron!”
Perry could be imagining it, could be the fear tilting reality like the sea tilting the ship, but he swears that the water is now licking above their ankles. He feels a flash of dread, a looming threat to his own mortality. He didn’t think he’d really live past helping the pirates escape—he was doing this for his men, for the family and friends he’d made on this ship. But to drown in this damn hallway because the two pirates were arguing suddenly felt like a real possibility, and Perry grimaces at the fear twisting his gut.
Also, what a stupid fucking way to die.
“It’s good to see you’re both free,” a low voice says, barely heard over the water, the straining and staggering of the ship, and the bickering of the two pirates.
“Robin-chwan!” Vinsmoke simpers, swooning exaggeratedly and causing God Usopp to have to steady him again, which was getting harder and harder to do in the rising water.
Perry looks around, wide-eyed, but doesn’t see anyone—
—until, all at once, there is a woman in the wall. Literally in the wall. From the waist up, a woman’s body forms. A simple blouse, long dark hair, pale arms crossed before her chest, and Nico Robin’s sharp eyes appraising them.
“Robin!” God Usopp exclaims, relieved and happy.
The Demon Child’s answering smile is so… gentle. Kind. Beautiful. “You two better hurry along, or you’ll both be trapped and sink helplessly to your cold, watery graves.”
“Robin, no!” God Usopp despairs at the same time Vinsmoke coos, “Yes, Robin-chan!”
The awful imagery makes Perry’s own fear close up his throat. He thinks he may vomit.
“Usopp, Franky has your Kabuto,” Robin continues, her smile undeniably pleased at their reactions to her dark comments. “He encountered it on his way to the brig. When he found it empty, we weren’t sure what to think.”
“Oh, good,” Usopp says. “We can finally get out of here.”
“This guy let us out,” Vinsmoke says with a nod toward Perry.
Surprised at the acknowledgement, and at Nico Robin’s remote and terrible attention, Perry finds himself tongue-tied. “W-we… made a deal.”
“I see,” Nico Robin hums, looking over Perry once more before seemingly dismissing him to regard Vinsmoke and God Usopp. “The ship is sinking quickly, even caught in the whirlpool Jinbe and Nami have created to hold it in place. I cannot help you with the seawater. You must hurry, Luffy is coming.”
“He’s awake?” God Usopp asks, voice high and hopeful.
“He’s moving?” Vinsmoke asks, more incredulous.
The Demon Child only laughs, short and low and chilling, and is gone with a shower of petals and a faint, floral scent that disappears as soon as it unfurls across the senses.
“Devil fruits are so fucking weird,” Perry mutters, blinking at the wall where half of Nico Robin’s body had sprouted like a gloomy hell flower.
“If you’re talking about Robin-chan, you better shut your shitty mouth,” Vinsmoke says, even as he plunges forward with God Usopp, reaching back almost thoughtlessly to grab the collar of Perry’s uniform and tug him along out of his stupor.
“Tell me about it,” God Usopp groans. “Or, well, don’t. I like to think that the scariest ones out there are already on our ship. I can handle those.”
Perry thinks to himself that several of the creepier fruits were certainly on the Strawhat crew.
Vinsmoke stumbles, curses, and mutters something like, “Ivankov.”
God Usopp makes a “tch” sound mixed with a weary sigh and heaves more of Vinsmoke’s weight upon himself. “Don’t be a baby, I heard Iva-chan is a sweetheart.”
Vinsmoke grumbles discontentedly but trips ever forward, never quite letting go of Perry. But the water is deeper, midway up their shins, and it’s starting to pull against them, sweep their feet from beneath them. All three of them reel from side to side, pitching forward with the ship and sometimes toppling backward, slamming into each other, bouncing off of the walls. They’re all trying to run, but the rocking ship and the water’s buoyancy make it difficult.
He’s not sure when, but at some point, Perry finds himself holding onto the tattered edges of Vinsmoke’s shirt. It’s embarrassing. He’s a Marine officer, clinging to a pirate’s shirt like a child.
(He doesn’t want to fall behind. He doesn’t want to die.)
“What I want to know is why these warships are so damn big,” Vinsmoke says. “And who put a hole in it. What kind of rescue mission is this?”
The lights flicker and this time it takes half a minute for them to come back on.
“Come on,” God Usopp says, his voice getting increasingly high-pitched and shaky as the water reaches his knees. “We’re going to drown, Sanji. We’re going to drown in the dark. Come on, come on!”
“The stairs are close by,” Perry says, his own voice strangely reedy.
“I think it was that shitty swordsman,” Sanji decides out loud. “He’s enough of an idiot to put a hole into the damn ship they’re all about to board.”
“If Zoro is awake. Besides, you just described half the crew, including yourself,” God Usopp answers.
“Watch it, Long-Nose.”
“Or what?”
The lights flicker. God Usopp whimpers. Vinsmoke curses, a pained and wounded sound, and falls with a tremendous splash. Perry is so stunned he only belatedly tries to catch him, grasping at seawater in the dark.
“Sanji!” God Usopp exclaims and there is a great deal of splashing and scrambling and, “just shut up, you idiot! I’m trying to save your ass!”
When the lights come back on, God Usopp is stumbling underneath Vinsmoke, who is now on Usopp’s back. God Usopp is breathing heavily, shirt and hair wet where it wasn’t before. Vinsmoke looks worse for wear, like his injuries from Wano and the brig caught up to him all at once. His skin is alarmingly sallow. Cuts on his lip and hairline reopened during the fall and are now bleeding sluggishly, mixing with stinging saltwater.
They trudge on—that’s all they can do. The water is at their waists. Perry falls half a step behind and keeps a hand on the back of God Usopp’s shoulder to help push the man forward and also to help prevent another fall. The way the water is rising, they might not live through another delay.
(It’s funny how the panic seems removed from Perry, like he knows his throat is locked up, knows his breathing is erratic, can feel the surety of death creep on him inch by inch like the fucking water that’s swallowing them down, down, down. But a deal’s a deal and what else is he supposed to do?)
“This is it,” God Usopp wheezes as the lights flicker ominously again. “This is how we die.”
Vinsmoke pats God Usopp’s chest. “Cheer up, Long-Nose Horse-kun—”
“Oi! I’ll drop you!”
“—this isn’t where we die.”
It’s said with such calm conviction, such faith, that Perry swallows thickly around the hope that swells within himself.
“...I don’t know if I feel reassured when you start to sound like Luffy and Zoro, or even more scared out of my mind.”
Vinsmoke reaches up to bat blindly at God Usopp’s face, the other man shouting and squirming away from his hand. “What are you doing, you idiot? I’m going to fall! I don’t want to die!”
“Take that back!” Vinsmoke shouts, finally finding his apparent goal of God Usopp’s nose and squeezing briefly, causing the man to choke and wheeze in a high-pitched way before the water makes Vinsmoke lose his grip and he continues to slap at his own rescuer’s face. “I’m nothing like that shitty marimo! I’d rather die!”
The lights flicker off.
They don’t come back on.
The water rises to their chests, sweeps their feet from right under them.
God Usopp screams.
Perry screams, too. Just before the water rushes into his mouth and—
and
darkness and
cold and
all-consuming fire in his chest and
—hands clawing at his shirt, and he’s moving, being pulled forward (backward? Sideways? Who can tell?). He doesn’t know who’s helping him, can’t see shit in the ink-black darkness around him. He’s never been in a dark this deep before.
(He’s never been drowning before.)
His chest feels like it might burst open. He imagines his lungs filling and bending his own ribs outward. He's dying, he's dying please God, please—
His hip hits something, his hands fumble beneath him and he thinks he recognizes the shape of metal stairs beneath his palm. His hip gets hit again, his shoulder, his stomach, his knee, his head. He doesn’t understand where the assault is coming from, what it is, can’t see a damn thing, just let him breathe—
And then something else, something much, much bigger than the hand in his shirt, grabs him. There’s a rush, his chest is on fire—
Air. Air! Cold and sharp like knives. It hurts even as Perry sucks it in, even as he feels the edges of his consciousness static and fade. He’s not sure if he blacks out—impossible to tell when he’s surrounded by darkness, impossible to tell where he ends and the darkness begins, where his consciousness ends and the sea and the dark begins.
Perry has the sense of movement, the lurch of vertigo, the feel of something big and strong—not hands, though, nothing human—hauling him around. A voice, shouting. Multiple voices. Dull pain blooms across his body, his head aches in a way he’s never before experienced, the spike of agony that lances through him absolute.
There’s light, but he could be dreaming (he could be dying). Bright and burning light, moving at crazy angles like a torch, and then he spins out again, slips from awareness like water slipping through his fingers.
.
.
.
“What you’re doing could be considered treason, you know,” Vinsmoke says, his hand lingering where the cuff had been around his right wrist. God Ussop is just to the side and behind his left shoulder, half-hiding behind him, half-guarding his crew mate’s back.
Perry swallows because Vinsmoke is right. And yet.
“This mission was never going to be successful, not as we are,” Perry says, reluctantly, bitterly. “But I can make sure my men stay alive, get out of this to fight another day.” He smirks, a confidence that surprises him. “To hunt you another day and win.”
God Usopp, for some reason, relaxes out of his fighting stance. Vinsmoke, as casual and lazy as ever, absent-mindedly pats at his torn shirt, as if looking for something.
“You’re the kind of man our captain would like.”
.
.
.
“Franky, you beautiful pervert,” a voice rasps right next to Perry’s ear, making him startle and wince, his skin feels too small for his body, it feels disconnected entirely. His chest aches, his head hurts the worst out of everything. He blinks, dumbstruck when he realizes that they’re on the wooden deck of the ship, and that the wide open air is pulling at his clothes and hair.
“Thank you,” a louder voice laughs above him. “Y’all scared the hell out of me. You’re lucky I’m so super this week.”
Perry becomes aware of the rain pelting down, the howl of the wind. Above them, it sounds like the sky is a waking beast with one crack of lightning chasing another. Below, the ocean roars and churns and the old warship creaks and groans. It sounds like the whole of Perry’s world is at war.
“Oh my God,” God Usopp groans from Perry’s other side. He coughs, wheezy and raw from where he must have swallowed as much seawater as Perry. Still, he stands up when Perry’s not even sure he can feel his legs, much less move them. “Oh my God, we were going to really die that time. I could kiss you, Franky.”
“Aw, shucks,” Cyborg Franky laughs again. “Lay one on me, bro.”
“I will absolutely not kiss any of you shitheads,” Vinsmoke scoffs. “But I’ll cook you a hell of a burger.”
“With peanut butter?”
“Hell yes with peanut butter. Oi, Officer Man, stand at attention—ten-hut!” Vinsmoke coughs, almost as wheezy as God Usopp. Perry feels a hand pull at his shoulder. The same hand, he realizes, that had caught him before he had been carried away by the sea. The one that had dragged him up the sunken stairs before they all must have been found by Cyborg Franky.
Perry hadn’t even known his nose from his own ass down there, how the hell had Vinsmoke found him and then dragged them all to the stairs in the pitch black darkness? What the hell kind of monster was he?
(And why had this monster saved Perry?)
“We’re near the aft mass,” Perry numbly realizes. All the pieces had been there but his head hurts, the blood rushing distractedly in his ears, and it’s taken him this long to realize that he’s not dead.
Vinsmoke finally hauls Perry to his feet and Perry stumbles, aching head taking too long to understand the sharpening angle at which the floor beneath him lists.
He glances at Cyborg Franky and doesn’t have the wherewithal to even be stunned at how the man-robot towers over them. Perry's head hurts too badly to be intimidated by his incredibly broad shoulders or the dizzying amalgamation of skin and metal on a human. The sheer amount of bright-colored metal and clothing on one person seems so out of place in the storm-gray world around them.
“We’re still dying, though,” God Usopp sighs, beleaguered and jaded. Perry notices that a large slingshot is slung on his back and a ridiculously large satchel, slightly damp, now rests across his body. Despite his negative words, God Usopp is holding himself a little straighter now that he has his weapons. “Where are Luffy and the others?”
Cyborg Franky tilts his head to the fore. God Usopp visibly wilts.
“What do we do about you, Officer Man?” Vinsmoke mumbles, patting at his bare chest, fingers slipping inside the folds of his ruined shirt before remembering again that he doesn’t have his smokes on him.
Perry presses the heel of his hand against his temple, wincing. It hurts to think. There is blood on his fingers when he pulls them away. He looks up to find Cyborg Franky regarding him with an eyebrow raised over sharply-angled sunglasses.
“We had a deal,” Perry says, finally, the words slow and thick and heavy. “You get out, my men get out alive.”
“That’s not something we can exactly check on right now,” Vinsmoke says and, as if to underscore this statement, the massive warship lists even more sharply. Usopp wobbles, flails his hands, starts to teeter and fall. Vinsmoke reaches out to steady him and Cyborg Franky pinches Vinsmoke’s shirt between his massive metal fingers to steady him.
“Not sure what’s going on, but I think we’ll have to go forward to see anything of use,” Cyborg Franky muses. “Luffy should be arriving soon. Me, Nami, Robin, and Chopper caught up first in the Shark Submerge. Jinbe swam with us. The Sunny took a while to catch up because those guys were left to sail her, but Robin heard from Yamato just a few minutes ago. We need to meet up with the others like yesterday—you know things will get even more ridiculous once Luffy-bro shows up. We don’t need to be split up when that happens.”
“And who’s fault is that?” Vinsmoke growls, kicking out half-heartedly at Cyborg Franky. “With the idiot marimo not here, it was probably you who blew a hole in the damn ship! While we were still in it!”
“Ow! Super not cool, bro,” Franky laughs, not even phased when Vinsmoke’s weak kicks only elicit a dull, tinny sound from his body. “It all worked out, didn’t it?”
“We almost died!” God Usopp cries. “You’re too laid back!” He turns to Perry. “I get you want to see what happened to your friends, but if you want to stay in the Marines then you really can’t be seen helping us.” His eyes, golden brown and so bright, skip over the blood pouring into Perry’s face from his wound. “I have a proposal: how about you play fake hostage?”
Perry bristles. “Like hell I’ll trust you to do that—you’d take me hostage for real! I won’t be used against the Marines!”
Cyborg Franky laughs. It seems to be all he does. How can he laugh with the world cracking apart around him? “Officer-bro, I know you won’t take a pirate’s word for it, but trust me. The last thing we want is a hostage.”
“We tried that once and it was a pain in the ass,” Vinsmoke agrees. “We could split up, but we'll be coming from the same direction. It’ll still be suspicious for you.”
“Look,” God Usopp says, producing a pair of handcuffs from the large bag on his hip.
“Why do you have those—”
“Super kinky, bro! I’m surprised—”
God Usopp ignores them with practiced ease and holds up the cuffs for Perry, showing him how the cuffs pull apart easily without a key or even much force. “Totally a fake. You can bust out any time.”
The ship pops and then groans, the sound is as thunderous as the storm churning above their heads.
“Do whatever you want, I’m going to assist Robin-chan and Nami-san,” Vinsmoke decides suddenly, stumbling forward.
“You ain’t helping anyone. You look like you’re about to faint,” Cyborg Franky says, stepping with him. “How about you play hostage keeper and Usopp-bro and I will clear the way.”
“I suddenly don’t feel well enough to walk anymore,” Usopp grumbles, but holds up the cuffs anyway. “Last chance. Come with us like this or not?”
Perry can’t really see another way and all he can think about is Vinsmoke’s hand and how it had pulled him out of death’s watery grasp. Why did he save me? He didn't have to do anything..
So.
Perry holds out his wrists and trusts a pirate.
Vinsmoke does end up being the one to tug Perry along beside him.
“Sanji can be the thug holding you prisoner,” Usopp says as they plunge forward. “You can be Sanji’s crutch because he can barely stand.”
“I am fine,” Vinsmoke hisses. “More than enough to take on this entire ship.”
“Sure,” Usopp agrees easily. “Even though your knee is about as swollen as your ego.”
“Incoming,” Cyborg Franky calls as they clear the aft mass and make their way toward the deckhouse.
“For the record,” Usopp sighs as a dozen Marines spot them and advance at once. “I want to be anywhere but here.”
And then from one breath to the next he takes his slingshot, takes aim, and huge, trunk-like vines spring from the deck like demented, jungle-themed jack-in-the-boxes. The vines grab at ankles, torsos, arms, and legs. And soon all dozen or so Marines have disappeared into the tangled mess, screaming and incapacitated, but alive.
“Efficient and flashy,” Cyborg Franky says with cheerful approval.
“Nice work, Long-Nose Horse-kun,” Vinsmoke says.
“Oi.”
Perry thinks about asking them to be careful, to please not kill the Marines that attack them.
But he thinks about how they had caught the Strawhats unawares, injured and separated, doing something benign like shopping for groceries. He thinks about how they trapped God Usopp first, about how Vinsmoke came at them in a rage, managed to get his crewmate and escape before their previous injuries brought them both down.
Perry thinks about the beatings and the chains in the brig.
He thinks about God Usopp sacrificing freedom to protect his crewmate’s hand, the punishing blows to his back and ribs while he curled protectively around his friend.
And Perry knows he doesn’t have the right to ask them to spare every Marine they cross, not really. They want to survive, they want freedom. Besides, God help him, Perry does trust that they'll uphold what they can of their deal with him.
It’s not like any of the three are going out of their way to seriously hurt anyone. Usopp’s hands are a blur, sprouting more vines, sometimes a giant green wolf (seriously, what the fuck?) that blows dozens of Marines down at a time. Perry worries about how they land, worries about the ones falling in the ocean, but the attack itself doesn’t seriously maim or threaten them.
Cyborg Franky is more lethal by design, but the Marines take cover from his built-in bullets quickly and Franky doesn’t seem inclined to aim to kill. He’s more interested in scattering their enemies and opening a way forward.
The ship tilts at a sharper angle as the stern starts to sink in the water, making the whole push forward a literal uphill battle. Several Marines try to stop them, but many more ignore them completely, struggling with their footing and helping each other overboard as survival becomes their main goal as well.
They slowly struggle past the deckhouse relatively unharmed. They’ve just cleared the bridge when they walk straight into a grenade launcher aimed at their faces.
Usopp screams but that’s all anyone has time for before arms and hands sprout from the soldier’s torso and back—it’s Blackbey, one of Montagu’s men—and pushes the launcher toward the sky. The grenade explodes just above their heads with a concussive force that has Perry gripping at his painful, bloody head and unconsciously, frenziedly shouting out his agony.
Before him, the arms twist Blackbey’s body grotesquely and he falls twitching, moaning to the ground.
“You’ve made it,” Nico Robin says from behind them as Perry desperately tries to get a hold of himself, gasping. Perry looks over his shoulder to see her emerging from the shadows of the deckhouse, likely where she’s been able to do her freaky long range attacks undetected. “I was sure you would drown in the desolate, dark bowels of this doomed warship.”
“Ro-bin!”
“Robin-chan!” Vinsmoke crows in Perry’s goddamned ear. He bows, taking Perry with him and nearly toppling them both. “I am sorry to have worried you, my lady!”
Nico Robin places delicate fingers before her lips and honest-to-God giggles. “It is good to have you both back,” she declares. “Shall we meet our captain and continue our journey?” And then her blue eyes pin Perry with her regard, like a pin piercing insect wings. “You do not look well, Officer-kun.”
Perry resists the urge to bring his cuffed hands to his head again. It doesn’t alleviate the pain and it just makes him feel even weaker in the company of monsters. “It’s just my head,” he says. And it’s true. His entire being seems to be sinking into the pain in his head. The pounding dum da-dum dum da-dum of it washes away his thoughts before they can even seem to form. “Let’s move on.”
The foredeck is chaos, but not as chaotic as Perry thought. This warship bore two thousand men, but there are only maybe a few hundred on the deck now. Lightning drives into the deck in terrifying claps of thunder. Through the blood (and fear and rain and ocean spray) in Perry’s eyes, he sees hands sprout like so many flowers among his comrades, disarming and slapping and tripping. In the resultant confusion, either lightning falls down among them, incapacitating them, or some sort of—some sort of rotund beast (a reindeer? a racoon dog? some other little monster?) flies in among the stunned Marines and mows them down with agile kicks and punches and a shrill, almost comical “hi-yah!”
“What,” Perry whispers, softly. “The fuck?”
“A Strawhat battle,” Nico Robin observes from where she’s openly flanking them, arms elegantly crossed before her, glacier eyes missing nothing.
“Ain’t it beautiful?” Cyborg Franky crows before he breathes fire, the bloom of heat both unbearably frightening and also a welcome respite from the cold rain and the wind whipping through Perry’s soaked clothes.
“My men,” Perry works out through gritted teeth. “My men, our deal. If they’re not—relatively—safe then you better find a way to get them that way.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like we could do anything about them while we were drowning,” Vinsmoke replies, likely because he’s the only one who heard Perry over the rising gale of battle. He's already breaking them off from the rest of their group when he says, “you said you sent them out early, right? We’re closest to the port side, let’s head there, see what we see.”
The pain in Perry’s head throbs beyond all comprehension, beyond all pain levels. Every step, every sound, every flash of light, every shudder of the ship perforates his tenuous grip on consciousness and sanity. It feels like ages to get to the port side railing, where Perry’s legs burn with the ridiculous incline they’re fighting.
“That’s because you’re not looking so good, Officer Man,” Vinsmoke says.
“Just… just my men,” he slurs, the pain removing him so far from his body he can’t even seem to think of what to say, much less articulate it. “Please.”
“I see them—or, well, I guess it’s them,” Vinsmoke says.
Perry blinks, eyes watering out of pain, out of sheer relief.
He can’t comprehend much, can’t process much, but Perry sees at least two dozen life rafts on the sea, lurching in the storm and with the angry waves, but staying afloat. He sees men pulling Marines tossed overboard from the fight onto them.
Near the front, he’s almost sure he sees Slingsby, his friend.
They made it, and because of that, the majority of the men on this ship just might make it out alive.
Perry’s legs go weak.
“Oi!” Vinsmoke grunts painfully.
“...Sorry,” Perry rasps, and then laughs to himself. “I just apologized to a pirate.”
“I’ll drop you and leave you,” Vinsmoke swears because Vinsmoke seems to communicate in a whole complicated language of empty threats. True to form, the injured man only shoulders more of Perry's weight as he tries to turn them back towards the rest of his crew.
Perry’s tunneling vision doesn’t even see the grenade coming, but Vinsmoke does.
Vertigo takes away Perry’s orientation in the world, takes away all understanding of time and space. Pain spears through him, his side burns.
They’re on the deck, which is charred and splintered beneath them. Vinsmoke had mostly pulled them to safety. Mostly because there is fresh blood on Vinsmoke’s face, in his hair, bright against his pale collarbone. Mostly because something is very wrong with Perry’s right side.
He looks up and Lieutenant fucking Montagu stands over them, grenade launcher apparently reloaded and aimed right at them.
“Shitty bastard,” Vinsmoke snarls up at the lieutenant, trying to get his feet under himself to stand again. “Firing on your own goddamned man.”
Vinsmoke doesn’t sound too surprised. Perry isn’t, either, but that’s because he’s spent more than a day with the lieutenant.
(He’ll wonder about Vinsmoke’s lack of surprise later, when his head isn’t shattering into pieces right there on the deck. He’ll wonder if Vinsmoke has seen a Marine officer brutally sacrifice his own men in the name of justice more than once. Later, Perry will wonder what the fuck kind of justice that is.)
“Officer Peregrine was too weak and let himself be captured by pirates,” Lieutenant Montagu declares with a malicious grin that, unfortunately, does nothing to mar his handsome face. “He died in the line of duty.”
Vinsmoke is on his feet, his unflappable tones gone as he becomes a snarling thing standing in front of Perry.
My God, Perry thinks, awed. Was this pirate… was this pirate protecting Perry?
Perry’s head is pounding, a steady dum da-dum, dum da-dum in his ears. The throbbing drumbeat kicks in time with the pulse of injuries in his side. He closes his eyes, though he doesn’t mean to. He means to stay awake, to help Vinsmoke… somehow. Certainly not to let this monstrous pirate, this criminal, this man who was treated so unjustly by Perry’s comrades die for him.
When he struggles to open his eyes, only a moment has passed, he thinks. But Vinsmoke’s right leg is a burning coal, and he’s clearly ready to launch an attack just as Montagu’s finger starts to pull back on the trigger.
And then everything stops.
The howling wind stills, the rain disappears, and the sky is suddenly, eerily silent. The heavy, oppressive clouds above them split open and sunlight burns through. The shouting orders and cries of the Marines die out in confusion. The bursts of gunfire cease.
All is quiet except for the drums in Perry’s head.
dum da-dum, dum da-dum
A creeping chill falls over the deck and slithers up Perry’s spine just before a knee-level barrier of ice forms between Vinsmoke and Montagu with a sharp, resonating crack.
Vinsmoke lowers his leg, the ember glow fading. He pats his bare chest and bandages and torn shirt for a smoke that’s not there, and simply says,
“Hey, Captain.”
Blearily, Perry gets to his knees, his eyes skirting aimlessly, dully over the deck. There are long lines of ice spread out like the fingers of a giant hand, a thin fog already coming off the ice as the warming, humid air hits it.
“Luffy!” God Usopp shouts from somewhere, at least Perry thinks it’s him, everything is becoming so distant.
Except for the sound of the drums in his head.
(Maybe it’s not in his head.)
Perry sways, follows the ice just as a tall, skeletal figure (a skeleton?) walks through the low-lying fog.
On the skeleton's (Death's?) back is a boy. A king. A god.
A pirate with a straw hat hanging from a string around his throat.
The whole ship, except for the pirate crew, seems to take one shuddering breath.
And then Montagu, with a half-scream of terror, whips the launcher toward Strawhat Luffy and the Soul King.
Strawhat seems to rise taller as his eyes—dark, dark eyes—skips straight over the launcher and to Vinsmoke. There’s something there, in that exchange. Strawhat’s expression is eerily blank, but Perry can’t shake the feeling that a monster’s fury rails behind those haunting eyes. Vinsmoke, on the other hand, lets out a sigh of relief. He slumps with it, like an unseen burden has been lifted just from Strawhat’s haunting presence. He takes a step back from Montagu, some unspoken signal.
Strawhat Luffy grins. He laughs.
dum da-dum, dum da-dum
And all the while, the drums.
Perry’s fading consciousness affords him one last, searing scene.
A pirate, a boy king. A white flame riding on Death’s shoulders.
And then heavy will crashes down on the warship, red and terrible and inescapable, and Perry knows no more.
.
.
.
end.