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Chapter Text

One of the first things Law taught himself to do was identify biochemical compounds and draw them out with a neat Room-Shambles combo. There were a lot of applications for that kind of technique—it was easy to adapt for poison extraction or isolating foreign entities in blood—but his motivations at the time were purely self-serving. He has the crew come around to the medical bay once a month, and he draws out the excess hormones from whoever’s got third watch, before sending them back to bed. He keeps the phials of serotonin and dopamine tucked into a pouch, and he gives that pouch to Beppo.

“Captain?” Beppo asks, wary. He takes them, though. He knows Law usually has a reason, however convoluted.

“If I look like I’m about to start screaming, or collapse or something, hand me one of those.” Law tells him, from behind his copy of Mercy’s Illustrated Medical Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, 7th Edition.

The thing is, Law wants to sleep; enjoys it, even. The problem isn’t that he puts off sleeping in lieu of researching, or anything like that. The problem is that Law’s subconscious has never moved on from that day on Minion Island, and it is desperate to remind him of the way Cora-san’s blood tinged the snow red and pink, the way his hands shook, the way Joker’s grin curled up into cruel angles.

So. Law doesn’t sleep much.

After Cora-san, on his own, it only took him a couple months to work out that he could get three hours at most before he found himself gasping into consciousness, fingers hooked like claws and the world tinged Room-blue. That’s why he sleeps in the operating theater, more often than not: less of a risk of accidentally separating someone’s limbs or compromising the sub’s systems. The crew learns very quickly to leave waking their captain to Beppo, who drapes his warm, furry hide across Law and tells him to get up off his lazy ass.

(The others aren’t quite sure why this works. If any of them every mustered up the courage to ask—and if Law ever deigned to tell—the answer would be something like this: Law’s memories are tangles and snarls of pain and fear and hurt and loathing.

Cora-san had been a blessing and an object lesson all in one—the only source of light, of good in Law’s life after Flevance—and Law will never be able to atone for his death, but nothing about that entire (clusterfuck of a) situation had been warm or safe.

Beppo sprawls across him like a living blanket, and his voice is soft and measured, and even Law’s shitty subconscious can’t mistake it for anything else.)

Sometimes, as he’s lying in bed with his hair sweat-slicked to the curve of his skull and his teeth clenched so tight that his molars ache, Law fears finally killing Joker. He’s not afraid of the man—fuck no, he hates Joker—but Law wonders what he’ll do with himself, after. Because these days Law isn’t so much a person as he is a walking mass of enmity and vengeance, and without something to aim for—without Joker to kill—he might just… fall apart. Waste away.

The Cautionary Tale of the Ope Ope no Mi, Cora-san, he thinks sardonically. Don’t feed your all-powerful Akuma no Mi to bitter, hateful little kids who are only living day to day out of sheer fucking spite.

Screaming isn’t the norm on the Polar Tang, but even as Law startles awake—one hand gripping Kikoku and the other ready to twist—it takes a moment for him to dredge up even the faintest hint of alarm.

There’s quite a good deal of shouting, Law notes as he ambles into the kitchen at a stiff-legged stagger. Penguin has hit that piercing, shrill octave that preludes an argument. Or Law putting pieces of everyone into timeout while Beppo tries to help him stave off another migraine.

Law reaches the coffee press and is pleased to find an obscenely large mug of coffee already waiting, still hot to the touch. Beppo is a saint.

Law takes a deep inhale and then starts guzzling it down without pause. He’s long since numbed his throat and lips to the sensation of being burned. God, he’s placebo’d himself right to hell. If they ever stop trading cacao beans, then the fact of Law’s true zombie-like natural disposition will come to light with an alarming swiftness.

He inhales the rich scent of coffee mid-sip, and ducks a plate that sails overhead before smashing into the wall right above the sink. The shards fall into the sink itself with neat little clinks.

“Captain!” Beppo is screaming. Still screaming. It’s just. Law actually feels human enough to acknowledge it now.

Law lowers his empty coffee mug from his mouth and then blinks. He blinks again, for good measure.

The kitchen is pitch black.

When Law first considered commissioning a submarine instead of the standard fare sea vessel, he did extensive research into the effects of light deprivation and vitamin deficiencies and anything else he could think of. And so, Law paid an ungodly sum of (stolen) money to have the artificial lighting rigged up. The techs had been really excited about it; light-refraction blah blah, sunlight emulation, blah blah. There’s a reason he usually leaves those kinds of things to Beppo.

Point is, it shouldn’t be dark. He paid for it to not be dark.

“The hell is this.” Law demands. It’s not surprising that he could navigate the kitchen by muscle memory alone, down to detecting a mug of coffee so judiciously supplied by his first mate, but goddamn it, Law would at least liked to have believed that he would’ve noticed the lights thing first.

“It came out of nowhere—” Beppo tells him.

“—all these fuckin’ teeth—” Penguin howls.

“—starin’ at me, Cap’n!” Jean Bart snarls, and Law can hear the bite to it.

Law blinks.

Aaand the lights are back.

He almost dismisses it as his crew having a major breakdown over a faulty light, but then his brain beckons him to do another head count.

Jean Bart. Penguin. Beppo. Shachi, who has apparently been unconscious on the ground this entire time.

A ten foot tall writhing mass of shadow and malice.

Law squints. The… thing stares back. Possibly. It ripples and wavers like a reflection on troubled waters. Law sees a lot of eyes, but those are also mouths. Looking at it starts to physically pain him, the kind of eye strain and nausea he gets from reading for hours on end before Beppo reminds him that eating is a thing.

It looks vaguely human-shaped. Like an abstraction of ‘human’ by something that has only ever seen ‘human’ from a distance, or under the influence of hallucinogens. It has at least two arms, and one head, but again, there are a lot more orifices than his brain can comprehend, and everything keeps shifting. There may or may not be a tail. Claws, perhaps.

“Huh.” He grunts. He stretches one arm out behind him, groping blindly. When it’s obvious that he’s not reaching for Kikoku, Beppo sighs and hands him another cup of coffee.

Beppo is a saint. Patron Saint of Coffee.

Law gulps down his second wonderfully scalding cup of coffee, and continues to stare at the whatever-it-is that’s invaded his sub.

“So, what the fuck.” He poses, not quite questioning, once he’s done with the coffee. Shachi—who was perhaps not so much unconscious as he was playing dead—and Penguin look somewhere between terrified and defensive, and Beppo’s fur is standing on end.

Jean Bart and Penguin start yelling again. Now that he’s cognizant enough to bother with paying attention, Law quickly gathers that the thing showed up, out of nowhere, and then while everyone was panicking—rightfully so, considering that they’re two and half leagues deep and moving at a steady pace—it… disseminated, or exploded or something, and cloaked the entire room in darkness, which might’ve actually been the thing itself, formless.

Right.

“I’m going back to sleep.” Law says.

“Captain.” Shachi and Penguin hiss in unison, shooting fearful looks at the thing.

Right. Right. Captain responsibilities or whatever.

Law jabs one finger out sharply, and the thing ripples-wavers to attention. He would almost call it startled, if it wasn’t standing—looming? floating?—there, radiating a dense, almost tangible aura of casual and messy violence.

“Do not eat my crew or my ship.” He tells it. Beppo makes a low, aggrieved noise that Law graciously ignores.

Then he puts his mug in the sink, grabs Kikoku and goes the fuck back to bed.

Chapter Text

When Law wakes up again, he’s pretty close to suffocating under the thick press of Beppo’s fur.

“Guh,” he spits, already knowing that the feeling of hair on his tongue is going to bother him all day, if not for the rest of the week.

“You’re a terrible captain,” Beppo informs him sagely. “That creepy thing is still in the kitchen, and Penguin has been crying for three hours.”

Law grunts; not in acknowledgment, but in strain as he tries to shift Beppo’s giant, furry arm off his bare chest.

“Jean Bart locked himself in the armory. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we don’t have any explosives. And I’m not sure what Shachi is doing, but we should probably be concerned—”

“Beppo, your fur is making me want to flay my own fucking skin off,” Law interrupts.

“Sorry.” Beppo pauses, finally lifting his gargantuan limb away. “But Captain, please do something about that thing.”

That’s what Law likes about Beppo; he takes all of Law’s weird shit—his terrible life choices, his sensory issues, his neuroses, pretty much his fucking everything—and just rolls with it. Law’s skin is still gray-mottled from the Amber Lead Syndrome, even if it didn’t kill him, and there are days when he just… can’t touch anything, not without wanting to climb out of his own epidermis. Which, that’s probably a thing he could do, but it would kill him, and he’s not allowed to die until he knows for certain that Joker is going with him.

But that’s not currently relevant, because—

“I dunno what you want me to do about it, Beppo.” This is a lie. Law knows exactly what Beppo wants him to do, and they both know it.

“Maybe ask it to go away?” Beppo suggests, because for some reason, he never calls Law out on his bullshit.

So Law does. He asks the thing to go away.

The thing laughs in his face.

Or, well. It doesn’t make any noise—which is worse, somehow—but its shoulder-like appendages shake and not-flesh peels open and away and gaping holes grow teeth and curl into open-mouthed grins.

Beppo, unwilling witness to the display, makes a strangled noise of discomfort.

Law’s temples are throbbing. It’s just the three of them—him, Beppo and the thing—in the operating theater, because Penguin is still staring into the middle distance and crying in the kitchen. Law, for the record, would desperately like to knock himself unconscious.

“Fine,” he grunts, once the thing stops not-laughing. A hand—no, wait, multiple hands—lift to cover quirked not-lips coyly. “If you’re not leaving, at least stop terrorizing the crew.”

Which is how Law and his crew acquire some demonic creature that probably crawled its way up from the center of the planet. Nobody’s happy about the arrangement, obviously. Shachi and Penguin have reached a state of catatonic terror and Jean Bart is doing something with chemicals that Law is probably better off ignoring. Beppo can’t quite frown, but the downward pull of his mouth is apparent either way.

Honestly?

Law just wants to get some fucking sleep.

Law hates Sabaody.

It’s not the noise, or the crowds, or even the presence of the Marines lingering like the odor of a sun-baked, bloated corpse.

It’s them.

“You! You there, stop!”

Law keeps walking, fingers curled tight around his belt loops. He had the forethought to give Kikoku to Beppo, but unless he leaves his own hands in a box somewhere, he’s still armed.

… Cora-san would’ve laughed at that, even if Law hadn’t meant for it to be a pun.

He would’ve laughed, and then probably fallen off of something or tripped over nothing. Caught fire. Screamed that high-pitched, over-exaggerated shriek that had always made Law’s lips twitch up into a small smile, because it was such an absurd noise to hear out of someone who was ten feet tall and smoked like a goddamn chimney—

…Fuck.

Fuck.

“Stop! I say, stop!”

“Captain…” Beppo murmurs from behind him. He’s right. Law knows he’s right.

He stops walking. He ignores the sound of feet coming up behind them, the sound of strained breathing.

“What a marvelous specimen, you’ve even got it trained!” The voice says. “How much for it?”

Law’s fingers twitch. Beppo clutches Kikoku closer like a lifeline, but says nothing.

Law turns his head, just enough to get a glimpse of the Tenryuubito piece of shit that he could dissemble into a million infinitesimal pieces and scatter across the entirety of the goddamn Grand Line—

“Captain.” Beppo whispers.

“Not for sale,” Law says, instead of letting his fingers curl and twist the way he so desperately wants them to.

The Tenryuubito’s vapid smile falters. Law wants to kill him. Law wants to destroy all of them.

“Come now,” the Tenryuubito tries again, with a hesitant chuckle. “Money’s no object. How much for the bear?”

“I don’t know,” Law bites out, lips pulled back to bare teeth in a way he’d unconsciously picked up from Beppo. “How much is your life worth?”

“Captain,” Beppo cuts in, sounding more resigned than alarmed.

The Tenryuubito is too busy stuttering and blustering to form any words. Beppo jabs Kikoku’s hilt into Law’s back, and yes, fine, he can take a heavy-handed hint.

He’s been working on this; trying to refine it, perfect it, and he can’t help the twinge of pride that he feels when the opaque blue of the Room slides over the two of them like thick liquid, and then they’re gone.

Although.

It would be a more impressive gesture, Law thinks, if he hadn’t warped them straight into the fucking Auction House.

“Captain, just sit,” Beppo commands, shoving him into a seat. When Law just slumps there, unresponsive, the bear huffs and shoves Kikoku into Law’s hand.

With a blink, Law tucks the nodachi into the crook of his arm, and folds his fingers lattice-tight under his chin, so he won’t… unexist this entire part of the archipelago, or something. He lets his vacant stare fall somewhere into middle distance and tries his best to ignore whatever is happening onstage.

Sometimes he wonders why he even bothers to leave the Polar Tang. No chance of him violently disassembling the ruling class if he never leaves his ship.

From somewhere behind him, he hears his own name. When he glances in that direction, Eustass Kidd leers at him, wide-eyed and provoking. Peering over his shoulder is the bright-eyed face of Monkey D. Luffy.

Law has had a shit day. Hardly anyone knows about the Ope Ope no Mi—it’s not like the Marines would ever admit that they lost the damn thing, and to him of all people—and Law has more or less willingly put himself on an island full of Tenryuubito and Marines, for some godsforsaken reason. Law has had a really shitty day. He idly wonders how Kidd would like to permanently switch bodies with a Den Den Mushi. That Law would then crush beneath his fucking heel.

“Captain, please don’t.” Beppo sighs from beside him, without even looking.

Fine. Only because Beppo asked.

Law bares his teeth into another threat-not-smile and puts every iota of his being into flipping Kidd off.

[Hey.]

Law groans and briefly considers smothering himself with a pillow. Sure, it sounds appealing, but in practice, he’d probably only succeed in irritating his skin and pissing himself off.

Blearily, he lifts his head and scowls. At the world, in general.

It’s the thing. Of course it’s the thing. The thing currently looks the most human it ever has: its skin is smooth and deep like the night sky, the dark brown-black only broken by the whites of its eyes—and that’s still at least three eyes too many—and the flash of white teeth from inside a mouth the color of dried, flaking blood. It’s gotten better with limbs, he notes absently. Only two arms this time, and those actually look like human legs, for once.

“What’re you all dressed up for?” He asks, dragging one hand down his face in hopes of kickstarting his brain.

The thing grins at him; Law’s general indifference seems to amuse it, and the fact that Law treats it like people even more so. It laughs, and there are suddenly far too many mouths, gleaming teeth and lurid blue tongues blazing out like a cross-stitch pattern, many throats all humming and buzzing soft, deadly noises as it pulses forward, closer to Law. Even with the right configuration of limbs to body, it still moves more like a coil of muscle, like flowing water, rather than something limited by the constraints of gravity and spacial awareness.

[We got a When to be,] it informs him.

“Shouldn’t you be bothering Shachi or Beppo then?”

The thing shrugs, a roll of its entire body in lieu of just its shoulders.

[Too much screaming.]

That’s not true.

… That’s not entirely true.

Beppo seems to have decided that discretion is the better part of valor and has resorted to just never looking at the thing. He’ll talk to it, but he refuses to look anywhere near it. Jean Bart, Shachi, and Penguin—on the other hand—are still fighting tooth and nail against the thing’s existence, and resort to threats or crying or a combination of the two, respectively.

Law isn’t any braver or any more daring than the rest of his crew, when it comes to interacting with… whatever the thing actually is. What Law is, is perpetually exhausted and deeply embittered. Despite the surreality of the situation, he just doesn’t have it in him to react with screaming or even a sense of surprise. Law honestly can’t remember the last time he felt an emotion that wasn’t some variation of weary anger.

Law pushes himself up to his elbows and sighs. The lights are currently on the night cycle simulation and everything is cast in soft, calming blue shadow. In its usual contrary fashion, the low lighting only makes the thing look even more sinister as it ripples and hovers before him.

“Okay,” Law decides, running a hand over the rough stubble of his jaw. “When are we going?”

[Marineford. In five suns,] the thing answers. Law can’t help but raise an eyebrow; up until this point, the thing had seemed content to lurk around like a haunting specter. To be honest, Law would’ve assumed the thing didn’t even know where it was, geographically speaking. That it knows about—and wants to travel to—Marineford on a specific day is… interesting.

By which he means alarming.

“What are you gonna do at Marineford of all places?” Law finds himself asking, curious despite himself.

The thing grins, bright teeth blooming into eyes with swirling pupils, flowing back and forth again, all eyes-and-teeth.

[Gonna fuck shit up.]

Marineford is a nightmare.

“Captain, why do you do this,” Beppo demands flatly, his exasperation draining the words of any inflection. He looks so aggrieved that Law almost feels bad, but going to Marineford wasn’t even his idea in the first damn place.

If he had known that they were sailing into the next War, he… probably still would’ve shown up. Shit.

Beppo is right. Why does he do this.

There are Generals and Admirals and gods know what else, along with just about every Whitebeard Pirate that’s ever earned a bounty, a bunch of escaped convicts from Impel Down, and Old Man Whitebeard himself. Hell, the situation is already far more bellicose than any other Pirate-Marine clash in recent history.

And in the middle of it all, Monkey D. Luffy and Portgas D. Ace stand back to back, united against the world.

Brothers, apparently.

“Why are we here?” Law growls, tightening his grip on Kikoku.

The sea beneath them starts to froth and shift and shit, it’s probably Aokiji, how did he get that close—?

But then the waves part and a deep black mass rolls up and Law realizes, no, it’s not Aokiji. It’s just the thing.

[Told you,] the thing chuckles. Marines are screaming. Pirates are cursing. Law sees a couple people go down, bleeding from the eyes and ears. [Gonna fuck shit up.]

The thing says this casually, as though it hasn’t grown—or spread—to some forty feet, towering over the entirety of Marineford like a bad fucking omen.

“And you needed me to get here?” Law demands skeptically. While the thing has remained aboard the Polar Tang and showed little interest in leaving, the fact that it’s now forty feet tall and billowing across the water easy as anything, Law doubts that it couldn’t have gotten to Marineford on its own. Probably faster, too.

[Nah. But you gotta be here anyway.] The thing hums, before it warps—twists, spins, moves—and then it’s right there at Law’s side, an abyss of power condensed into six and half feet. Beppo makes a small noise, something nervous and choked.

[Later, gator.] It croak-rasps, before it blurs, darting forward so quickly that Law can’t even see which way it’s headed.

“God, you’re such a bastard.” Law grumbles under his breath.

“Everyone!” Hiken no Ace cries, sallow skinned and shaking with the signs of imprisonment and fatigue. “Thank you for loving me!”

There’s a smile on his face. He’s going to die today, and he knows it, and there’s a smile on his face.

“Oh, fuck you.” Law snarls, even though the thing isn’t even around to receive his vitriol. He doesn’t need to see this. He doesn’t want to see this.

He sees it anyway. He sees it all. There’s blood and the taste of cooked flesh cloying the air, a scream of sheer anguish that rakes its claws down Law’s spine. A lot of bodies scramble, and Law finds himself with a sub full of injured people, most of whom he doesn’t even know.

But Whitebeard is likely dead, Hiken no Ace is definitely dead and Jinbe all but put the catatonic form of Mugiwara into Beppo’s arms before throwing himself back into the chaos.

Triage. Law can do that.

He and Beppo are well oiled machine of a team, and Law manages to lose himself in the repetitive actions of assessing damage and fixing the most threatening of wounds. With the Ope Ope’s ability to provide stasis, no one’s going to die but there’s very little Law can do for every single person.

Patterns are easy, thoughtless enough to give Law’s brain a chance to take a metaphorical breath. Because that was a War. The first bloody clash that came with high cost for both sides—there’s a list of dead pirates, most of whom will never be remembered, and Marineford is about to become a new feature of the ocean floor. Nobody’s won shit, but if Law is lucky (hah.), he can make sure that the Marines’ losses outweigh those of everyone else.

That’s the plan, at least.

There’s a flicker of lights, which Law ignores because he’s gotten fairly good at it. The metal of the sub around them groans, which Law also ignores, because he’s literally trying to mend blood vessels and un-rupture organs.

The temperature drops, but Law’s wearing fur and doesn’t have time to stop suturing.

One of the injured begins to shift, then groan, then scream.

Law looks up.

He knew it was the Thing, because these days it always is, but he was hoping it would still be off doing whatever it is that it dragged Law all the way to Marineford to do.

The lights are less flickering and more flashing, a strobe of bright-dark-bright-dark and in the quick slices of light, Law can see unconscious faces twisted up in discomfort, in pain, in terror.

Law scans the operating hall until he finds a swath of darkness with eyes-and-teeth.

“Shinku.” Law snaps, unthinking. The thing doesn’t have a name—or, at least, hasn’t offered one—and normally Law would be fine with going hey you, but this is important—

This is people’s lives on the line, and for all that Law is dead inside and soon to be outside, he’s still a surgeon. He has his standards.

Actively making critical patients worse is decidedly against said standards.

What Law isn’t expecting is the way his voice seems to echo in his own ears. The way the thing freezes, still as a statue. The way every other sound drains away, so much background noise.

[Oh ho?] The thin— Shinku muses, voice a hum like an oncoming swarm of locusts. Law’s temples are throbbing.

“I normally don’t give a shit,” Law says. He’s not sure why he’s explaining. He’s not sure when he opened his mouth to speak. Fuck, but his head hurts. “But we don’t fuck around during surgeries. If you can’t keep it”—here, Law gestures at the th— Shinku’s… everything—“together, then go somewhere else.”

A pause. It can’t be more than a few seconds, but to Law it feels like an eternity compressed into one breath. Spots dance in the corner of his vision, but he ignores those with an ease born of years of practice. Shinku ripples, a mirage in the heat, a flag in the breeze.

Law’s breath punches its way out of his chest, sudden and unexpected. When his blurred vision finally clears, Shinku is gone.

Ominous. Definitely a little alarming. Law gives it a second’s thought; not the priority.

What had he been doing? Skin grafts? Sounds right. Law turns back to his patient, mind already moving on. He does not see the eyes hidden in the shadows blink away.

Chapter Text

Punk Hazard is such a pain in the ass. It’s not even Caesar Clown, or the Marines, or S.M.I.L.E. or even the fact that Aokiji and Akainu have fucked the island up beyond all belief. It’s fucking Mugiwara.

Law shouldn’t be surprised. He shouldn’t. He knows how D’s get. He once watched Mugiwara literally punch a Tenryuubito in the face. He witnessed the chaos stirred by Mugiwara storming not only Impel Down but Marineford—by himself—to rescue his brother. He should not be surprised, at all.

And yet.

An Alliance, Law proposes.

Sure, Mugiwara agrees, one finger up his nose.

You probably don’t want to do that, the Navigator says. The Marksman says. The Shipwright says. The entire fucking crew says.

How was that not a sign.

Though, in Law’s defense, he pretty much ignores anything that doesn’t directly relate to him tearing Joker’s head from his pointy, feathered shoulders.

But Mugiwara… Mugiwara is apparently making it his life’s mission to fucking make Law pay attention.

'Torao', Mugiwara insists on calling him, despite all of Law’s protests. Punk Hazard explodes around them, fire and ice, and seriously, fuck Aokiji and Akainu.

Torao, look! Mugiwara cries, waving his arms frantically. The Marines are attacking and Law barely manages to pull a Room together.

Hey, hey, Torao~! Mugiwara chirps. Dragging Caesar Clown’s bruised body behind him like a cat dropping a dead bird at its human’s feet.

“Fuck’s sake.” Law growls, one hand clapped over his eyes in hopes of convincing his impending migraine to just… go away.

“I told you.” The Navigator hisses, from the Cook’s body. Which. Hmm. He should… probably fix that.

It gives him something to do for a moment, something that isn’t questioning his life choices and wishing desperately for a drink. And he doesn’t even like drinking.

It doesn’t occur to him until later, that in the face of Mugiwara’s sheer chaos, he’d lost track of Shinku.

Mugiwara took out Caesar Clown with an almost insulting ease, but they don’t leave the island right away. Law would’ve liked to, but even he knows when to take the opportunities presented to him.

The first is having Caesar explain what he’d been doing and how. The idea of Joker being able to start some kind of Devil Fruit black market is horrifying, and learning that Vegapunk is involved in some way makes that horror even heavier.

The island is still a smoldering, frozen ruin of glaciers and magma, which makes navigating an enormous pain in the ass. Law is relatively fine, but Beppo is bothered by the heat, Mugiwara might melt in the heat or shatter in the cold, and most of the others are equipped for neither freezing nor burning.

Fucking Aokiji. Fucking Akainu.

Grumbling about the hellscape of an island that Punk Hazard has become is at least a balm enough to soothe the sting of having to talk to Vergo and Monet.

Law hates Joker with enough ferocity to accomplish a great many things out of spite, and he feels the same way about the majority of the Doflamingo “Family”.

(It curdles in his throat, sour, to even think the words when he himself watched Joker shoot his last living biological relative in the head, all over a piece of fruit. Fuck. Fucking Joker.)

Monet and Vergo, though, are nearly bearable in the same way as Baby 5. Law has less patience for Vergo’s unwavering loyalty to the biggest shithead in all the seas, but everyone has their flaws. Monet has the same dry sense of humor as Law, and a similar kind of peculiarity that isolates her from others. They’d spent a lot of time together, in the earlier years, two gangly and frustrated teens.

She had been molting and re-learning how to walk on longer legs while he’d been suffering both puberty and the impotent rage of not understanding how his own powers worked. There were a lot of destroyed rooms between them, a lot of curses repeated, and a whole lot of complaining.

He’s not sorry that he fought her, or that he won, and the fact that she takes it the grace that he expects—concession, a wry grimace and cooperation—makes it… worse. Undeniably worse.

He doesn’t want to leave them on the island, considering that it’s on the brink of collapsing inwards as it is, but he can’t quite bring himself to volunteer the Polar Tang as a means of confinement. Mugiwara easily accepts the offer to take Vergo and Monet and Caesar Clown on his own vessel because he has “more room anyway, Torao!”.

He spends a day or two—days that drag on like a month—in Caesar’s lab, pouring over formulae and staring impatiently at petri dishes. Synthesizing something to help the children—who will be going with Smoker and his crew, no matter what anyone has to say about it, Law will Room them onto the boat his goddamn self if it comes down to it—shouldn’t be all that difficult.

Curing them? When Law can barely understand what was done to them in the first place?

He’s not even a chemist, honestly.

Beppo helps, and Shachi too, but even then there’s only so much that can be done and no one wants to be on this dumpster fire-icicle of an island any longer than they have to. They come up with a few stop-gaps and raid Caesar’s lab to continue working on it in the lab on the Polar Tang.

It’s the best that he can do, and the platitude tastes like rot and sickness in the back of his throat.

(He does, in fact, wind up Rooming giant children onto Smoker’s ship from a distance. He waits until they’ve already hauled anchor and cast off, and tells himself that he’s not smiling at the sheer cacophony of panicked screaming that results.)

The rest of them are (finally) about to cast off. Law is so glad at just the thought of leaving Punk Hazard behind that he agrees to meet with Mugiwara on his ship, rather than in the confines (comfort) of the Polar Tang.

Everyone is back in their own body, healed or healing, and all bearing an incessantly growing dislike for Caesar Clown’s voice.

(The man just won’t shut up, and even Vergo is starting to look annoyed.)

They’ve talked logistics—it involved a lot of wrangling and bribery on Law’s end, and he at one point muttered, “I thought I already got rid of the children,” which prompted an eerie, haunted chorus of laughter from most of the Straw Hat crew. Law and his crew will scout ahead, since they have sonar, but Mugiwara’s vesel—something about the sun, he thinks—is ultimately going to lead the voyage, since Mugiwara’s navigator is the one with an Eternal Log Pose.

Talking turns into shouting, as it usually does with Mugiwara, only interrupted by the Cook, who brings out lunch. They eat, argue a little more, Law pries Mugiwara off of Beppo’s shoulders for the third time in eight minutes, and that’s that.

Law generally prefers more structure—which is to say, some structure, any structure at all—but good food soothes many ires and getting fresh air and sun isn’t bad either.

They’re all sprawled around the deck, in the cozy post-food haze. Beppo and the doctor—Chopper, he’s pretty sure—are making conversation, and the rest of the Straw Hat crew seems to have their own routines. Mugiwara moves from place to place, but keeps orbiting back towards Law. He watches the cyborg with the ridiculous shoulder-waist ratio and bright blue hair open a cavity and pull out tools. The swordsmen is training, and Law is less impressed by the weight being lifted than with the fact that the deck hasn’t buckled. There’s ease and familiarity, and it’s not the Polar Tang, but it’s not all that different either. Law says, offhanded and barely paying attention to his own mouth, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually met your crew.”

And Mugiwara’s face just. lights. up.

He grabs Law’s wrist, and the rubberized texture of his skin is so strange—thicker than most human epidermis that Law has seen, but with that familiar organic give—that Law doesn’t even think to pull away the way he normally would, because does the composition of Mugiwara’s skin allow for it to rebuff all projectiles or just rebuff blunt force? Can it still be pierced—?

“Everybody, come meet Torao!” Mugiwara shouts, one hand cupped around his mouth—like he really needs project his voice in order to be heard—and the other twined quadruple around Law’s arm, and how does he do that, even if his bones were rubberized as well, what about the joints, does he even have joints—

“Luffy, we’ve already met him, haven’t we?” The Navigator asks, hands set on her hips and exasperation on her face.

Mugiwara isn’t even listening. The arm looped around Law’s own contracts, somehow, and Law finds himself tucked close, almost like a parcel. “This is Nami, and she’s gonna make a map of the world, and that’s Usopp and his dream is to be a brave warrior of the sea, and that’s Zoro and he’s gonna be the strongest swordsman in the world, and—”

The Navigator—Nami—throws her hands up into the air.

“Why do I even bother,” she huffs.

The small reindeer—Chopper—is going to become the kind of doctor that can cure any ailment. The chef—Sanji—is going to find All Blue. The cyborg—Franky—is going to one day build a dream ship. The skeleton—Brook—is going to reunite with his long lost nakama, who is apparently a whale.

And then:

“And this is Robin! She wants to know about the pony-cliffs!”

Law blinks. Nico Robin—her WANTED poster is still an uncanny likeness, despite being decades old—smiles and cuts in: “Poneglyphs. The Rio Poneglyph, specifically.”

“The Rio Poneglyph?” Law asks. He’s heard of people looking into poneglyphs, but mostly for things like stealing them or attempting forgeries. Nico doesn’t seem the type.

“I want to discover what happened during the Void Century.” Nico tells him, demurely. She says it almost apologetically, as though she needs to be repentant for not having a goal as lofty or obnoxious as those of her crewmates.

“.... Ah.” Law says, lowly, after a moment. He blinks, slow and so-painful looking that Mugiwara’s eyes start to water in sympathy. “Nico-ya, there’s someone you’d probably like to meet.”

Nico’s eyebrows go up.

“You know someone else studying the Void Century?” There’s a sliver of something in her voice that makes Law want to grimace and takes his words back, but…

“One moment.” He says, jabbing a finger into Mugiwara’s upper arm and dropping out of the now-slack rope of flesh, ignoring Mugiwara’s yelp and subsequent whisper of, “Torao is so cool!”. He pulls a baby Den Den Mushi from his coat’s inner pocket.

The rest of the Straw Hat crew looks on in curiosity as Law picks up the receiver and dials it. It rings for barely a moment before someone picks up the other receiver.

“Captain?”

“Penguin.”

“Are you okay?” Penguin asks, because Beppo has mother-henned Law so much that the rest of the crew has started to pick up the habit. In their defense, Law is horrendously bad at functioning like an actual human being without someone to remind him about it. “You’ve been gone a while. They fed you, right? I can send Jean Bart over—”

“Penguin, I'm fine.” Law sighs. Half the Straw Hat crew looks fondly amused—Nico and the Navigator especially—but Law is acutely hyper aware of the way that Blackleg is starting to smirk at him.

Penguin, of course, is on Law’s crew and sees him daily and is therefore knows that Law has never been ‘fine’ once in his entire fucking life, and especially not in the last sixteen years. But he lets it go, because Penguin—like Beppo, and most all the crew—is also a goddamn saint.

“Penguin.” Law twists his mouth to the side and tells himself that he doesn’t feel guilty.

“Cap’n?”

“I need you to get Shinku.”

Silence. The Den Den Mushi, looking betrayed, starts to shiver.

“… You’re a terrible captain.”

“Penguin—”

“My captain’s tryna get me killed, I can’t fuckin’ believe it—”

Law sighs, and presses the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose.

“Penguin.”

“… I’m gonna haunt you, you know that, right?”

There’s a muffled thump, and then the sound of scuffing. A chorus of voices call out from a distance, but Penguin’s response is just as unintelligible.

Or, well. Whatever Penguin says is certainly sarcastic enough to come through.

More thumping, the echo of footsteps on the metal floors. At some point, Law hears Shachi and Jean Bart; the latter calls a greeting and the former apparently decided to accompany Penguin.

A weird hum, reverberating in a way that makes Law’s eyes burn, and then—

“What are you—?” Shachi’s voice is muffled.

“Here—” Penguin says it defiantly, some movement lost under the sound of static.

Which… there shouldn’t be any interference with the reception, given how close the Polar Tang is to the Thousand Sunny.

Shachi, in a notably higher octave, screeches “WhaT ARE YOU—”

Wait. Wait, shit, Penguin isn’t—

The Den Den Mushi—a little thing, pale green color—jolts, and then it slowly starts to bleed black, like blood soaking through bandages. That ominous hum grows in intensity, harmonized with a higher, sharper sound.

He did. Fuck, he did.

“Wait—” Law tries, already knowing it’s too late.

The Den Den Mushi vibrates—erratic, less vibration and more like seizing—and when it stops, its eyes are small points of fathomless black speckled with distant white stars.

[You rang?] Shinku’s voice spills out of the poor snail’s mouth, sounding rough and scraped, and Law gets the feeling that the Den Den Mushi shouldn’t be able to speak at that timbre.

“If I have to get a new Den Den Mushi, I’m making you pay for it.” Law bites out. He almost wants to drop the damn thing—it’s burning cold against his hand, like dry ice, and he’s honestly not sure if the snail is still alive.

Shinku laughs, and Law is almost certain now that it did something to the Den Den Mushi. There’s no way the little thing has the right vocal chords to make that noise naturally.

He’s pretty sure that he can still hear hints of Penguin and Shachi, shouting and doing something that involves a lot of heavy thuds.

When Law glances over, the Straw Hats all look a little horrified. Whoops.

“What the hell.” Blackleg whispers around his cigarette.

“Torao,” Mugiwara tells him severely, and so, so earnestly. “I think your snail is broken.”

[Oh?] Shinku purrs, and Law is filled with nothing but bad feelings. [You made friends?]

“Are you doing anything?” Law asks, without even attempting to be subtle about evading the question. “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you about the Void Century.”

The Den Den Mushi falls silent, and it’s only then that Law realizes that it had still been humming.

“Did it hang up?” The sharpshooter whimpers, huddled down behind Roronoa’s legs next to the reindeer.

Law starts to put raise the snail to eye level, but then it makes a little tock noise. And then it starts seizing again, only this time it bulges and Law immediately drops it, because—

Shinku bursts out of the Den Den Mushi like noxious gas, and not even out of the snail’s mouth, but out of all of it, as though it wrung itself out through the pores of the membrane. It twists into a column of menace and most of the Straw Hats are screaming now, and Roronoa has his blades drawn and the shipwright has popped one of his wrists back to reveal a large, dangerous looking canon.

“What the fuck is going on,” Blackleg screams, voice nearly lost in the wind as Shinku flows out and then expands, buffeting the air around them and sending the ship rocking back and forth.

The noise dies down as quickly as it started when writhing black shadows swirl and then shrink, condensing into a compact, vaguely humanoid form that is becoming more and more familiar to Law. Shinku looms over his shoulder, all smooth dark skin and pointed white teeth-and-eyes, and peers at the Straw Hats. It raises a hand in lazy greeting.

[Hey.]

Law bites the inside of his cheek in irritation and sighs.

“Walk.” He says, into the ringing silence, into the wide-eyed, uncertain faces of the Mugiwara Pirates. “I called you so that you could walk over here.”

Chapter Text

Law just sort of assumed—prematurely, he now realizes—that Shinku would be fine with Mugiwara's crew. It showed up, after all, and Law is fairly certain that Named or not—and Law still doesn't understand the need for emphasis there—Shinku isn't in the habit of doing things it doesn't want to. Case in point: it still refuses to leave Law alone, no matter how acerbically Law tells it to fuck off.

And the Mugiwara crew is, to some degree, easy to like. They're all as ridiculous as their captain, else they wouldn't be following him, but they're otherwise amenable personalities.

Law thought.

He doesn't even realize there's a problem until he goes looking for Mugiwara and stumbles across Shinku in the galley.

"Have you seen—" Law starts to say, so used to Shinku's casually menacing presence that the heavy weight to the air doesn't even make him look up.

There's a choked noise.

Law glances up. It takes him a moment to understand what's going on.

The galley is mostly empty, since it's the waning time between a late breakfast and an earlier lunch. All Law can see of Shinku is the curve of its skull, the breadth of its shoulders, all smooth dark skin that reflects light in the same manner as a faceted jewel.

On the other side of the galley is Blackleg Sanji. His face is pale and dotted with sweat and even from a distance Law can see the way his arms are trembling.

"So," Law starts mildly, with an ease he doesn't feel. "What's this."

Blackleg makes another sound, this one almost angry sounding, but it dies out the moment Shinku moves.

[… Nothing,] it tries, after a moment.

"You're a shit liar," Law answers, folding his arms over his chest, Kikoku tucked in the crook of his elbow.

Shinku.... ripples, flaring inhumanly upward into a towering pillar of darkness and winking teeth, collapsing back into humanoid before Law can even start to be alarmed. It doesn't say anything else. Blackleg is starting to turn blue. The silence grows, stilted and ugly.

Law grimaces. It's not that Shinku isn't usually this willful—Shinku is nothing if not painfully obstinate, all the time—so much as it is the fact that Shinku’s motives are usually offensively opaque to Law. Sometimes it will even tell Law what it’s up to, albeit in the most unhelpful way possible. Not knowing is a strange feeling—the drop in your stomach as feet try to find purchase on ground that isn’t there—and, in a roundabout sort of way, a little hurtful. Shinku has been haunting Law and stirring up shit for what feels like æons now, and this is the first time that he honestly has no clue what the problem is.

Being just as confused and out of the loop as everyone else? 0/10 would recommend.

Law swallows a sigh—mostly because the last person to sigh exasperatedly even vaguely in Shinku’s direction disincorporated. Slowly.

Nothing for it, then.

Keeping half a watchful eye on Blackleg—Law would prefer to stop... whatever this is before someone (see: Blackleg) becomes irreparably damaged (see: dead)—Law takes a moment to get a feel for the ship. The spaces, the emptiness, and opposite of those things, the heat of moving cells and matter. He twists his wrist and curls his fingers and—

plucks.

From the main deck, there's a sudden thump. A pause.

"What the fuck—"

Another, heavier thump.

"Trafalgar—"

"In the galley," Law calls back. Quick, angry footsteps herald Roronoa's arrival. Law knows he chose correctly when Roronoa stops right behind him, and instead of immediately yelling, pauses.

"What." It's too flat to really be a question, but Law supposes that the intent is there.

Law shrugs. Curls his wrist and twists his fingers and pushes Roronoa’s heart back into place, absently shaking not-wet not-blood from his hand.

"Found 'em like this."

Roronoa frowns, rubbing absently at his newly whole chest. Law can admit that the swordsman is definitely one of the more easily-digestible member of the crew. He, like Law, carries his weapons with him wherever he may be. Point of fact, one of Roronoa's hands falls to rest across the hilts of his tachi and he takes a step forward.

"Oi," he calls.

Its name is Shinku, Law nearly says, but something stops him. Maybe it's that Law is the only one to have ever spoken Shinku's name aloud. Maybe it's that, despite being introduced, none of the Mugiwara crew will address it by name. Even Beppo still hedges around speaking its name or making eye contact. Law isn't actually sure what naming Shinku has done, aside from the obvious.

Come to think of it, Law doesn't actually know if others can speak its name. It’s a unnerving thought, one he immediately decides to ignore as long as possible.

Shinku turns its head. Law isn't sure why it bothers, given the stretch of unblinking eyes that run from the back of its neck down the length its spine.

“He pissed you off that bad, huh?” Roronoa says easily, tilting his head just the slightest in Blackleg’s direction.

Shinku’s shoulders and arms shiver, smooth false skin spiking up into angry points and then settling again, erratic. Every mouth bares a fang and every eye narrows. Roronoa’s eyebrows leap up.

“Jeez, you shitty cook, you really stepped in it this time,” he grumbles under his breath, one hand coming up to tug at an ear. His earrings clink together, the only sound in the otherwise silent galley.

[I’ll only kill him a little,] Shinku offers, to Law’s surprise. Shinku must catch sight of that surprise, because a handful of eyes melt back into not-skin and then reappear a few inches to the right right, pupils gone from an angry red to a more even purple-black. It's an apology, Law thinks. Or, at least, a sign of non-aggression.

“That’s something you’d have to take up with the captain,” Roronoa replies, after a cautious pause. It’s pleasantly surprising that he’s handling the situation so well. Though, beyond the initial reaction of flat-out alarm, Roronoa is the crew member who seems to have acclimated to Shinku’s presence aboard the most easily.

On the other side of the galley, Blackleg sucks in a desperate-sounding breath as his legs collapse beneath him and his knees slam into the floor. In the same moment—the very same second that Blackleg’s knees hit wood—Shinku disappears, slipping away through the thin cracks between the wooden planks of the floor in one smooth motion.

“I really hope it’s not actually going to take it up with Luffy,” Roronoa mutters under his breath.

Knowing Shinku, that's exactly where it's headed. On the one hand, Mugiwara seems the kind of person to take any absurdity or horror in stride. On the other hand.... Shinku.

It's not unstoppable force meets immovable object so much as it is unstoppable force meets equally unstoppable force with the same casual disregard for common sense and the laws of physics. Law makes the executive decision to not get involved until absolutely necessary.

Putting it out of mind for the moment, Law turns to Blackleg, who is still shaking on the floor, face dotted with sweat. He’s flushed and pale at the same time, and the strain definitely ruptured a few blood vessels in his eyes.

"How did you manage to do that," Law wonders, more to himself than anything. "I have literally never seen that thing get angry."

Blackleg, still gasping for air, lifts one shaky hand to flip Law off.

Roronoa scoffs, rocking back on his heels. "Guess you can talk your own way out of it next time, then.”

Law blinks, abstractly considers the idea that Roronoa just... defended him? Against his own crewmate? And then decides that no, that Did Not Just Happen. At all.

"That thing," Blackleg rasps, and Law is torn between feeling sorry for him and honestly vaguely concerned about what the man could've possibly said or done to piss Shinku off. He doesn't know for sure that that Blackleg deserved it, but considering that Shinku once laughed as a Marine Admiral was actively trying his damnedest to murder the ever-loving shit out of it, the odds are looking a little stacked. “Is banned from my fucking kitchen."

"Good luck with that.” Law deadpans.

He can understand the sentiment, an angry declaration, but Shinku literally just dematerialized and drifted through solid wood like a particularly malevolent cloud of smoke. It can probably consciously decide whether or not to be tangible. If Blackleg thinks he can ban it from a space with his word alone, then no wonder he’s the first person to garner an antagonistic reaction from what has otherwise been the most amicable Terror From The Deep that Law has ever met.

"I mean it!" Law's not terribly impressed with Blackleg's snarl, and neither is Roronoa, judging by the smirk.

"You said something stupid, didn't you?" Roronoa has mastered the art of asking a question only in the technical, very rarely actually bothering to deviate from his slothful monotone. It makes the smugness near unbearable, and Law has to admit he’s impressed.

"Fuck the both of you," Blackleg growls.

“Can’t be a worse idea than whatever you already did,” Law drawls, tilting his head.

Blackleg sputters and words seem to fail, because he grits his teeth and then staggers his way towards the cold storage. He’s still pale and flushed all at once, and Law is vaguely concerned about oxygen deprivation.

Roronoa snorts, still standing with Law in the entryway. They watch Blackleg for a moment longer, and then Law finds himself following the swordsman back onto the deck.

“It normally takes him longer than 12 hours to fuck up that bad,” Roronoa comments dryly, setting all three of his swords near the base of the main mast.

“I almost don’t want to ask,” Law admits, Kikoku still in the crook of his elbow. “Shinku was less upset about Akainu trying to drown it in molten lava.”

It’s not even an exaggeration, which is truly the most concerning thing.

“At this point, I think it’s inherent.” Roronoa pauses and then mutters, “Sure as hell pisses me off often enough to be true.”

Law thinks on it.

“Think it’s the eyebrows?”

Roronoa snorts, a smile tugging at his lips. He tips one shoulder in a shrug.

“I’ve picked fights for worse reasons.”

They’re on the way to Dressrosa and Law’s First Mate is trying to get him killed.

Law is on the grassy part of the Thousand Sunny’s deck, he and Nico Robin occupying the beach chairs and providing perfect, silent company for one another as they make their way through their respective books.

“Roronoa-san,” Law hears Beppo's voice from the other end of the deck.

“Yeah?” Roronoa grunts in response. There's a clunk, and Law expects that the man is training with those ridiculous weights of his again. How he hasn't cracked the deck is a wonder.

“I have a request,” Beppo continues, solemn. Slowly, Law starts to lower his book. He wouldn't.

“Hah?”

It’s Beppo. He would.

“Would you please start sparring with Captain and myself?” Law doesn't have to look to know that Beppo is bowing. He snaps the book shut, drawing Nico's attention, and sets it down. Kikoku is in easy reach and by the time he strides across the deck, Beppo is already straightening out of his bow under Roronoa's speculative look.

“Is this because I called you cute?” Law asks as he approaches, folding Kikoku into its habitual resting place in the crook of his arms. “Because you could've just told me to fuck off, Beppo. You didn't need to take out a hit.”

Training with Roronoa Zoro sounds a lot like getting his ass kicked up and down the Thousand Sunny's deck for little to no gain, other than the Strawhat Pirates’ collective amusement.

Roronoa's unscarred brow raises and his lips purse into the beginnings of a grin.

“Wouldn't be that bad,” he lies, not even trying to hide his smile.

Law ignores him for a moment and looks to Beppo. It's not that the request itself is strange—both he and Beppo know how to wield Kikoku—but the timing and the fact that Beppo asked...

Beppo meets his gaze and explains, “Captain, you said that you would plan more.”

Law's shoulder—fully healed, now—twinges and Law tightens his jaw. Beppo's not… wrong, not at all, but Law would honestly rather face Joker alone and without a single plan to his name rather than drag someone else into that fight. Law can predict Joker if it’s one-on-one, but the idea of Joker clapping sights on any of his crew or Mugiwara’s crew makes his stomach roll.

Beppo reads that in his face and frowns.

“Captain,” he says warningly, because Law had promised.

“I know,” Law grimaces, conceding. “I just don't like it.”

“Thanks, Trafalgar,” Roronoa says mildly, an affectation of offense.

“That’s not it,” Law tells him, because he’s taken an extra care to make sure that he doesn’t offend any of Mugiwara’s crew. He actually likes them, in a way, despite their inanity. “It’s Joker.”

It’s always fucking Joker.

“If I had any luck, he’d be as easy as getting around the Hito Hito no Mi. But Joker’s vicious and he doesn’t care who gets caught in the crossfire and I can hardly predict what he’ll do on a good day.”

Training with Roronoa sounds like hell, but it’s a hell Law’s going to have to endure—a hell he’ll endure willingly, if it’ll give him even a moment’s advantage over Joker.

“So you just need to figure out how to fight somebody who never plays by the rules?”

Well, that’s not… incorrect.

“Huh… wait here,” he says, walking away without any further word.

Law glances at Beppo, gets a shrug, and tries not to sigh. This crew. This entire alliance. This life.

Roronoa, the traitor, comes back with Mugiwara.

“If you can even vaguely prepare yourself for Luffy, this jester guy should be no problem.”

Law has his mouth open to correct Roronoa—although the idea of calling Doflamingo ‘jester’ is hilarious—but he doesn’t even have time to open his mouth before Mugiwara’s shoving his way forward.

“I get to spar with Torao?” Mugiwara’s eyes are shining, face stretched into one of the widest grins Law’s seen yet. He’s already stretching, fists clenched so tight that Law’s surprised they don’t squeak.

Law then remembers that Mugiwara’s solution to Caesar Clown was to just keep punching him across Punk Hazard until he stopped trying to fight back.

Fuck.

They’re on the way to Dressrosa and both First Mates are trying to get him killed.

Chapter Text

The ‘alliance’ doesn’t dissolve. Law doesn’t put much thought to it, because it’s better for his stress levels if he doesn’t think too long on whatever the hell Monkey D. Luffy has inevitably gotten himself into. And it makes a kind of sense, given that Joker’s still not dead.

Again—like always—the problem comes in the form of other people.

Sabaody is the same as ever, full of too many people and too much movement and too much noise. Nothing good has ever happened to Law on Sabaody. That hasn’t changed, either.

“Where is he?” Eustass Kidd growls, shoving his face into Law’s space, eyes wide and teeth bared. At his side, a crew member—probably the first mate—in a full mask mimes out an apology.

“Be more specific,” Law chides, shoving Kidd back with the hilt of Kikoku. “He who.”

“The Kage Kage user you brought along to Marineford,” Kidd hisses, with an air of annoyance, as though Law should already know what he’s talking about. Law has no idea who the user of the Kage Kage no Mi is.

Hell, Law doesn’t even know for certain that there is a Kage Kage no Mi.

That aside, Law didn’t ‘bring anyone along to Marineford’, save his crew and—

Law blinks, and then looks Kidd over. Law would like to think that Kidd’s not that kind of idiot, especially with their names being linked under the banner of the ‘Worst Generation’. But then he recalls that said generation also includes people like Mugiwara no Luffy, so on second thought, Kidd is probably exactly that kind of idiot.

“You’re looking for Shinku.” It’s not quite a question. More a statement of disbelief.

“Is that his name?” Kidd crosses his arms, still sneering. “Yeah.”

“Why.” Law still can’t quite manage any inflection. Why the hell would Kidd want to meet Shinku? Law’d told the creature—being, thing, whatever—to fuck off from the get go and his life hasn’t known peace since. Snakes have started physically manifesting on the Polar Tang.

“I wanna know why everybody is suddenly falling over themselves to get an alliance with you,” Kidd packs as much derision possible into the word, and Law can feels his brows raising of their own volition. That was almost an impressive amount of spite.

“Whatever,” is all he says. Kidd wants to meet Shinku so bad? His funeral.

Law turns away from Kidd and towards Beppo, to ask for the Den Den Mushi, but winds up biting his tongue instead.

“Don’t fucking do that,” he snaps, repressively.

Shinku—folded in on itself and masquerading as Beppo’s abstract, many-eyed shadow—laughs.

[You called.]

The hell I did, Law almost says. But he did say Shinku’s name.

“Since when do you come when called,” Law asks instead.

Shinku steps out of Beppo’s shadow and unfurls into the uncanny humanoid body that it’s been favoring lately. The black of its skin is so deep that it looks like a human-shaped crack in the fabric of reality, as though the air itself has split open in the shape of a person.

[Since I had a Name to be called,] it answers, grinning.

Law opens his mouth to say something scathing, but then he remembers that he was the one who decided to give Shinku a name, because—in the moment—he’d needed something with more force than hey, you.

Damnit.

Turning away means conceding the point, but whatever. Law turns back to Kidd, because he’s the moron who wanted to talk to Shinku in the first place.

Except.

Kidd and his presumed first mate are on the ground. The maybe, maybe-not first mate is unconscious, Law thinks, though it’s a little hard to tell with the mask. Kidd, on the other hand, is definitely conscious but also has the wide-eyed vacant stare of someone who just got concussed. One of his hands is twitching erratically.

“Did you do that?” Law asks, but that’s not really the right question. He tries again: “Why did you do that.”

Shinku flows forward to lean over Kidd, looking curious. A deep, wet noise drags itself up out of Kidd’s throat.

[You’re the weird one,] Shinku says accusingly, but without bite. If anything, it sounds fond. [This is normal for me.]

“If you think I’m gonna drop to the ground just because you show your ugly mug—” Law starts with a scowl.

Shinku laughs, a sound like a knife parting flesh, and Kidd’s entire body spasms. Law cannot believe that Shinku just… induces seizures, and yet here they are. [You’re a real peach, y’know that?]

“A real what—”

[Aah, so defensive. You really are nice for a human, though.]

And it's not like Law was unaware that Shinku isn't human—he has eyes—but the creature itself rarely called attention to its own state of being. This is new. New things about Shinku tend to bode… exasperating for Law, which probably manifests as existential terror for anyone else.

“So what,” Law starts, trying to regain his footing. “You’re so scary that you make people drop like flies?”

[Present company excluded, obviously.]

“Uh huh,” Law lets his skepticism shine through, crossing his arms. “And this is because…?”

Shinku grins, from a mouth that is located in a place mouths are generally not found, teeth resplendent.

[Mortal creatures just can’t be exposed to some things. Fragile constitutions.]

… If it’s implying that Law isn’t mortal, he might actually just destroy this half of the Grand Line.

The thought clearly translates through body language alone, because Shinku laughs and adds, [You’re mortal. That little fruit of yours goes a long way, though.]

“Fascinating,” Law says, dryly.

It actually is rather interesting, and with anyone else Law would want to continue the line of conversation, but Shinku can smell interest almost as well as it can smell fear, and the last person it tried to talk to about Void Math or whatever literally imploded.

But that’s beside the point, because—

“Can you dial it back, or something?” Not that Law cares, but Kidd is the one who wanted to talk to Shinku, which would be difficult to achieve, what with the paralysis and heart arrhythmia.

Law doesn’t hear or see or feel anything change, but after a moment Kidd jerks forward and lurches upright, breath punched out of him, face pale and drenched in sweat.

“Well,” Law prods, after Kidd spends five minutes doing nothing but staring vacantly into middle-distance. “You wanted to talk.”

Kidd flinches, wide eyes and dilated pupils passing right over Law and jumping from Shinku’s head (too many mouths) to its torso (uncomfortable amount of eyes) to various limbs (slowly starting to bud into something that’s decidedly not human and possibly invertebrate). Instead of words, he lets out a strained, dry wheeze.

Thrilling.

Law resists the urge to sigh, barely. This is going to take a while.