Archive of Our Own

Timeline: An unspecified number of months after Enies Lobby (this was originally written back before the timeskip happened in the manga, so definitely pre-timeskip.)

---

Hikaru woke up with a strangled cry, same as most mornings.

His lover went from fast asleep to alert in an instant. Juro's reflexes had been honed by too many years on Wanted posters, and sudden noises had that effect on him. He looked around wildly for a few seconds before he stuffed the dagger back under his pillow. "Fucking hell. You'd think I'd be used to your goddamned nightmares by now."

"I'm not used to them by now," Hikaru pointed out, voice shaking. He swung his feet off the bed and let his head sink into his hands, heart hammering way too fast.

- there'd been blood everywhere, a gory red wash from floor to ceiling and an aftertaste of copper in his mouth. He must have been dreaming of the attack where he'd been injured, but the memory was already gone, fallen down the same endless pit as all the others...Hikaru dug his palms into his eyes, trying to press the darkness behind his eyelids into a recognizable shape. Remember, damn it! However ugly, these were snatches of his past, he had to remember-...There'd been a battle...Dozens of dead bodies piled up like meat on a butcher's stall...A dangerous creature stood right behind him. It snarled low, a noise of pleasure as it enjoyed the stench of death- but that was undoubtedly a bona fide nightmare, nothing like that could happen in real life...The image was already fading, barely an impression any more. The only thing he could remember was the name he'd heard, spoken by dozens of people. Lucci. Lucci. Lucci. Sometimes the name was a scream.

Kaku told him they'd never known a Lucci, so that couldn't be a memory either. They certainly didn't know anyone of that name now, and, considering the context, Hikaru was fervently hoping he'd never meet a Lucci in the future either. Even though it'd be rather tempting to punch the bastard after all the rotten nights Hikaru had suffered through with that name ringing in his ears.

Juro yawned and let a hand fall on Hikaru's bare back. "You also woke me up around three. Mumbling in your sleep again. Said your brother's name a few times."

Hikaru sat up straighter, pressing back into Juro's hand without really noticing. "Yes, that's right, I did dream about him." He could almost never recall more than wisps of his nightmares - and that bloody name, Lucci - unless something triggered the memory. "Although-...he looked different, his hair was fair, and shorter, and he was dressed in black-"

"Kaku? You had a dream about your brother as a blond?" From Juro's mystified tone, Hikaru hadn't told him that detail before.

"Sandy, rather, and it's not the first time either. But it doesn't make sense, Kaku's hair is as black as mine, and he's told me repeatedly that he's never bleached it."

Juro gave a bark of laughter. "He'd look like a punk! Hah, I bet he was, when he was a kid, and he's never had the guts to 'fess up about it. He's probably glad you've forgotten that part."

Hikaru shifted uncomfortably on the bed, moving away from Juro's hand. The truth was, he dreamed about Kaku recurrently, which was only natural, but some of the few dreams he remembered in any detail were-...not the kind he should be having about a relative. Especially not his younger brother. Intensely erotic and rather twisted, not that he was stupid enough to tell Juro about those, or Kaku either. They didn't mean anything, he was sure everybody had dreams like that about their family from time to time.

The hand on his back was tracing the five massive scars Hikaru had picked up in a childhood accident he could now no longer remember. Kaku said his back looked like a crude game of connect-the-dots. Juro liked to play. Hikaru barely noticed what the trailing fingers were doing. He could still hear the screams.

"I dreamed of ships."

"That'd be because you're a shipwright." The tone tacked a casual 'moron' onto that comment.

"They were burning...hey."

Hikaru stood up, deliberately moving away from the hand that had slipped below the beltline of the light pants he'd worn to bed last night. There was an unpleasant grumble behind him, but he ignored it and went to open the porthole, which was being subjected to a lot of pecking.

"I can let him in now, right?" he asked and didn't wait for an answer to pop the latch and swing open the pane, letting in a cold wash of briny air. "Good morning, Hattori."

His pigeon hopped through the opening and fluttered to his wrist. Hikaru rubbed its head and got a happy coo-roooo in return.

"Say, what time is it?" he asked over his shoulder. The sky above Turtle Bay's harbor was the usual nondescript grey typical of autumn isles everywhere, but it looked a bit lighter than he'd expected. "Shit, it better not be seven already, or Kaku will-"

Hattori squawked and left tiny bloodless scratches on its master's wrist as it launched away and shot out of the cabin. At the same moment a hand landed on Hikaru's shoulder and spun him around, shoving him back against the bulkhead.

"Who told you you could get out of bed, hmm?"

Oh great, Juro was in one of those moods. They used to scare Hikaru a little, until he realized they were half a game. Then again, they half weren't...He shoved at the arm boxing him in against the uneven wall, wainscoting pressed awkwardly into his lower back. Hikaru was tall, but Juro topped him by two inches and twenty more pounds of muscle.

"Juro, stop, I don't have the time to-"

"You have the time if I say you have the time, sweetmeat. That's what you get for falling in bed with a pirate captain. I warned you from the start, I ain't nice."

No, he wasn't. Juro wasn't quite the animal his reputation made him out to be, but he enjoyed power, and he enjoyed using it. He was crude, rude, he didn't bathe half as much as he should, and he made no bones about being into Hikaru principally because the shipwright had an awesome body. There were times Hikaru just had to wonder why he put up with it. He'd considered calling it quits a couple of times over the last four months, but he'd never gone through with it. Something drew him to Juro...It was true that behind the rough features and repeatedly broken nose, the man had the animal magnetism and raw vitality of certain pirates, the ones who knew and embraced the fact that they would die young, living expansively until it happened. It was interesting, even attractive, but the pull he felt towards Juro ran deeper still, and however confounding it was, Hikaru had had to recognize that he was in love with the man.

His brother had not been amused by that confession. Kaku hadn't said anything outright - and he could be hard to read when he wanted to be - but Hikaru could tell.

He couldn’t get away from the bite to his shoulder. Kaku had painstakingly reeducated him in the basics of self-defense after the injury, as well as shipwrighting, of course; Hikaru had picked both up very quickly, his body recovering ingrained skills and gestures with ease, and he was stronger than Juro suspected. But shaking Juro off would be taken as a challenge and that could only end badly.

"Look- stop." He kept his voice steady and reasonable, since pleading just turned the pirate on. "Let go. My brother-..." he jerked at his wrist, trying to free it from the tightening grasp which had captured it.

My brother is waiting for me, was what he'd intended to say. Juro chose another interpretation. A hand gripped the back of Hikaru's neck and forced him to look into Juro's face.

"Your brother what? Your brother will kick my ass if he sees another itty bitty bruise, is that it? He's never complained before. Kaku's a damn good brawler for a shipwright, but I'm the real deal, dark-eyes, and he knows it. I'm Commodore Skullbone's third fleet commander, not some craftsman with good fists. Kaku wouldn't last a minute against me, don't you ever fucking fool yourself otherwise. Unless you really believe a no-name shipbuilder can take on a pirate with a seventy million Berry bounty and walk away?"

"He's not a no-name-" The brief flare of anger flickered out. Hikaru was not an aggressive man by nature. "I never meant-...he wouldn't take you on." Juro had absolutely no reason to harm Hikaru's brother, but, well, the man was a pirate, they weren't known for either their rationality or their restraint. He'd never kill Kaku, who'd worked so hard getting The Claw shipshape and seaworthy again, but he might give the young carpenter a few scars to put him in his place, and Kaku already had too many of those.

That established, Juro hauled his prize towards the bed by the wrist and shoved him down onto the mattress before Hikaru could formulate another protest. The gaze that crawled over his prone body was possessive. Hikaru recognized that he wasn't going anywhere until Juro got this out of his system, so he lifted his arms towards his lover in a gesture of resignation. Hopefully it wasn't quite as late as he feared...

Juro's satisfied smirk ended up crushed against Hikaru's mouth. Fingers dragged down his shoulder, over the tattoo on his upper arm, down to his wrist, pinning it to the bed. The gesture was one of ownership, of power, pretty much devoid of the warmth and respect Hikaru sometimes yearned for. But that was just Juro, and he wasn't bad in bed once he got the domineering streak out. The occasional pressure marks and bites, though embarrassing, faded quickly enough. Hikaru did not bruise easily, and it seemed his many injuries had left him with a remarkably high pain threshold.

There was no pussyfooting around; Juro jerked at the light pants with graceless impatience. A seam cracked. It was a pair Juro had lent him, so Hikaru decided he wasn't going to care. Juro didn't seem to give a damn either. He groped beneath the cloth and he broke the kiss so that he could listen out for when Hikaru started making those soft noises that-

"Captain?" The word was reluctant, the knock even more so. That was one very reluctant pirate at the door who could well guess what he was interrupting, as The Claw's inner walls weren't that thick.

"What?" Juro snapped, tearing his gaze away from Hikaru to level it, rifle-like, at the door.

"Um...the brother's here. Says he's waiting."

"Fucking hell."

Juro looked very tempted to just ignore the uninvited guest aboard his ship, but a glance at Hikaru, mortified, must have informed him that he was well and truly the only one who could do that, and as for sex, participation from now on would be minimal. He rolled his eyes and let go of his lover's wrist with a peevish gesture. Hikaru pushed him off and made a hasty grab for the clothes tossed over the bed's high footboard, sorting out which were his and which were pirate gear. Juro said something foul about both the brothers' parentage and rolled over onto his back to glare at the ceiling, a fierce hard-on looking red and somehow quite grumpy against the bronzed tone of his skin.

Kaku was waiting on the main deck of the war galleon, Hattori perched on his shoulder, both looking supremely unconcerned by the ring of pirates around them. Hikaru hastened along the forecastle gangway. The sun was a sulky smear of light behind grey clouds, and damn it, it was well past seven, but Kaku's smile was the same as usual when he looked up and spotted Hikaru coming down the starboard steps.

"There you are, alley cat."

"Sorry I'm late." Hikaru pushed his way past a couple of Juro's crew. Hattori fluttered to his shoulder and made scolding sounds in his ear.

His brother's quizzical gaze made Hikaru overly aware that his shirt was unbuttoned, the t-shirt beneath it was not perfectly tucked into his pants and his long hair was tangled (Juro did not believe in combs). Kaku was five years his junior, but he always acted and spoke like the mature one. Hikaru didn't know if this was the way his little brother had always behaved with him or if it was the result of caring for Hikaru for the past six months after the latter's injury. Kaku wouldn't tell him, because he could be infuriating like that when he wanted to be.

"Good morning, Juro." Kaku directed a polite nod directed over his brother's shoulder.

"Hey, long-nose." Hikaru's lover had stepped out onto the forecastle deck, chest bare and high-waisted pants only half buttoned. Hikaru suppressed an embarrassed groan. It was almost entirely certain that Juro did that kind of offhand provocation on purpose, a form of territorial instinct. Fortunately Kaku never responded with anything other than courtesy and good humor, underscored with perhaps the slightest hint of derision...which, just as fortunately, Juro rarely caught onto. Kaku was a good fighter, better than Juro gave him credit for, but Hikaru really didn’t want these two to come to blows.

Kaku also wasn't sensitive about his nose, which he said he'd inherited from their father, along with some hardheaded common sense; the implication being that Hikaru, who took more after their mother, had missed out on that quality. Hikaru had to take his brother's word for both statements, seeing that all their possessions had burned along with their hometown and any family photographs that might have jogged Hikaru's shattered memory.

With Juro in one of those moods, Hikaru was in a hurry to get his brother off The Claw. He waved at his lover and led Kaku towards the ramp, negotiating their way down to the quay carefully. Neither brother could swim, and Kaku had warned him repeatedly that the currents around Turtle Bay were particularly treacherous; even wading should be avoided.

The docks were full of early morning bustle: fishermen brought home the first catch of the day, stall vendors put out their wares, and drunken pirates returned to their ships for a day of sleep and hangovers before they went out boozing again. The two brothers made their way up the pier towards the shipyards, moving through the crowded streets with long-legged strides. Kaku's hands were stuffed in his pockets, the high collar of his red top covering his mouth, leaving only his nose to stick out between that and the peak of his cap. He had his toolkit slung over his shoulder and a couple of large pavers stuck through his belt. Those two particular tools of his trade might be why Juro's men had gone to fetch Hikaru this morning instead of telling Kaku to buzz off and come back when their captain was done. Pirates who dealt with the young shipwright learned to respect those pavers if they wanted to keep their noses intact.

In contrast to all the shouting and hawking going on around them, the silence between the siblings was a little on the ponderous side. "Sorry I'm late," Hikaru told his brother's profile, then remembered he'd already said that.

Kaku just shrugged. He wasn’t the kind to get himself worked up over things, and he seemed to tolerate Juro well enough...but Hikaru had the feeling his brother wasn't entirely happy to see him involved with a pirate, especially one of the notorious 'Skulls'. The brothers had spent all their lives in pirate towns in the New World, such as the one the damned Marines had raided and burned half a year ago. Kaku earned his living building and maintaining pirate ships, he hired transient pirates for labor and worked alongside them...but like most of Turtle Bay's residents, his attitude was 'pirates are okay, they pay my bills, they know I'm useful to them so they treat me fair...but I don't really want one dating my daughter'. Or brother, in this instance.

Hikaru buttoned his thick work-shirt as inconspicuously as he could. "It was my fault. I overslept. Had another one of those dreams."

That got him a flicker of interest. "Oh? Remember anything?"

"No more than usual. Blood, fighting- you sure I didn't know a Lucci before my injury? I heard you say that name again."

"Nope, never heard of him, I told you already." Kaku removed his cap and ran fingers through his hair, rifling it in all sorts of directions. A lot shorter than Hikaru's shoulder-blade length, Kaku's soft black spikes had a life of their own even when they spent most of their time scrunched beneath the ever-present cap.

"I know." Hikaru smiled apologetically, the question had been thoughtless. Kaku's memory was both intact and excellent, and he'd told Hikaru several times before that the name was unfamiliar. The dreams suggested this 'Lucci' was a pretty unpleasant character, the kind one would rather want to forget, but Kaku was fundamentally too open and honest to lie about anything, even to spare Hikaru's feelings. He'd certainly been unflinching when he'd told his older brother about their parents' deaths in the accident which had nearly claimed the thirteen-year-old Hikaru's life as well; about the succession of unhappy affairs and bad luck that had left both brothers alone in the world; and, last but not least, the vicious government bombardment and raid that had wiped out their hometown and Hikaru's memory in one fell swoop. There'd not been a 'Lucci' involved in any of those episodes. It was strange, in that case, to dream of the man every night, and hear Kaku's voice calling out- then again, considering what else Hikaru dreamed of involving his little brother..."I guess dreams just aren't that reliable. But it's all I have. I wish we could go see a better doctor."

"I don't think that will help. They said at the clinic that your memories will come back if and when, and there's nothing that can be done to speed up the process."

"I know...I dreamed of fire, of people getting killed...That must have been during the raid? I still can't remember our parents. I see a lot of faces, but I can't...." Hikaru made a frustrated gesture, fingers curling into an empty fist. "I just can't keep them, they're gone when I wake up."

Kaku made a sympathetic noise. "Anything else?"

"No. I dream all night long, I know I do, but I only remember flashes, and that bloody name- and of course that creep I already told you about, the one with the freaky glasses I dream about every single night, jabbering away. I can't make out a bloody word until he says that mumbo-jumbo nonsense that seems to kick my head in, and then I wake up in a cold sweat-"

"What mumbo-jumbo?" Kaku asked sharply. "You never told me anything about that."

"Didn't I...? I just remembered that bit a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I'd told you-..." Damn, he'd told Juro, not Kaku. That made him feel like the fickle alley cat his brother occasionally dubbed him. "Um, it's just gibberish, the words don't mean anything."

"What does he say?" Kaku insisted.

"Well..." Hikaru rubbed the back of his neck. "He says, one, two, jango. Just nonsense words, right?"

"Right," said his brother, walking faster. "Come on, we'll grab breakfast at Ma Miko's noodle stand on the way, or we'll be late for the yards."

---

Juro left for a couple of weeks to trial test The Claw's final fittings, his idea of a trial test being a raid on the World Government shipping lanes. Fortunately the ship's repairs and many improvements held up fine, though the thought that some of the patches he'd worked on might have failed gave Hikaru a new set of nightmares until his lover returned safely.

Juro came back, but only for a few days to provision The Claw for a longer journey with the rest of the Skulls' third fleet. Hikaru took time off from work to make the most of it while his lover was there. When Juro's proposition came out of the blue, Hikaru's first thought was that he had to tell Kaku...only to find that his oh-so-reliable little brother had taken some unannounced time off himself that afternoon, and nobody seemed to know where to find him.

After some reflection, the shipyard foreman said that Kaku might have gone to make estimates for the repairs to the Pretty Marie, but the information wasn't all that helpful since the foreman couldn't remember what their Jolly Roger looked like. Pirate ships flew their colors proudly, but rarely bothered with nameplates. And there were a lot of pirate ships in Turtle Bay, it was a common stopover for the Skulls among others. Hikaru could count ten corsair vessels at this end of the pier alone as he stood on a large crate and looked around.

Four in the afternoon was a time that left the docks all but deserted. Pirates on shore leave were either just beginning the liquoring-up process, or napping in their hammocks if they were out of money. Fishermen had pulled in their boats to wait for the evening tide, the market fish had all been sold or tossed out, the prostitutes were waiting for the pirates to get a little drunker...None of the stragglers Hikaru questioned knew which vessel was the Pretty Marie, and he wasn't about to wander onto ships at random to see if his brother was there. Pirates could have a cruel sense of fun, and considered anything in their territory to be fair game. Hikaru wasn't the kind to go looking for a senseless fight, though that did leave him in a bit of a bind today.

A figure sitting on a mooring post with his back towards the docks caught his eye. Thick boots, red bandana around his neck, hair tied in a long knotted ponytail down the back of his black sailor's coat...in a getup like that, he had to be one of the Bay's visitors and source of looted income rather than an ordinary citizen. He was flipping purposefully through a small notebook, and looked refreshingly sober.

"Hey, excuse-...me....?"

The man's head had shot up at Hikaru's first word and he'd surged to his feet so fast the shipwright had been left gaping. Hattori squawked in surprise and darted off his shoulder to a nearby tar barrel. Eyes bulged as the man stared at Hikaru, then he hunched his shoulders, stuffed his notebook deep in his pockets and glanced around the empty docks.

"Sorry...didn't mean to startle you..."

The man took a few extra seconds to scour their surroundings with a look of suspicion, then he turned to stare at Hikaru again. "Uh...Hi. What?"

"Is that ship over there the Pretty Marie? Do you...do we know each other?"

The man's face was unreadable now. "No, don't think so. Why?"

"...No reason."

Hikaru looked for memory, for recognition in every face, in every pair of eyes that met his own. Nobody, not Juro, not even Kaku, could understand the terrible disorientation of having forgotten all but shreds of one's past. It was like he didn't know who he was every moment of the day. Hikaru was quite aware that his mind tended to fabricate memories and flashes of déjà vu to compensate...but he'd thought for sure that flicker of recognition in the other man's eyes had been more than his imagination this time.

But if this was someone from his past, then Hikaru must have known one of the world's greatest actors, because now there was just an impatient pirate standing there, tugging his thin dangling moustache and looking at Hikaru like the latter was a bit of a nuisance. His scowl further wrinkled the jagged scar bisecting his left eye, the sort of dramatic marking that was practically a must for any self-respecting buccaneer.

"That ship over there's the one I sail on with Captain Toms." The man's eyes did not leave Hikaru's face even when he hooked a thumb over his shoulder to point out his ship. "We just came back from a free-trader run on the Redline coast. Made a killing selling Turtle Bay booze to the yokels. That what you wanted to know?"

A smuggler, then. "Is your ship the Pretty Marie?"

"With a gay name like that, I wouldn't be sailing on it," said the man with a knife-like smirk.

A simple 'no' would have been sufficient, Hikaru thought acidly, but didn't say it. Time to get out of this conversation. The man's smile was grating on his nerves in a way that was quite unusual for him. "Okay, sorry for bothering you."

"Hey."

The smuggler looked around the deserted docks one more time before he sauntered over to Hikaru. His hands were still sunk deep in the pockets of his knee-length coat, open over his bare chest as if he hadn't bothered to notice the autumn island's chilly, sea-wet breeze.

"What?"

The man stopped a little distance away, feet planted apart. "You said 'sorry'. You actually said 'sorry'."

"...Yes?"

The smuggler seemed to find that really funny. He had narrow eyes to go with that narrow smirk, cruel eyes. "That's not something I ever thought I'd hear."

You must only know very rude people, then, Hikaru almost said, but he was used to dealing with corsairs, and the best way to do that was to avoid reacting too much to anything they said, provocative or otherwise. "Huh-uh. Look, I'm in a hurry, so do you know which ship is the Pretty Marie? I'm trying to find my brother who-"

"Huh? Is there a problem?" The question had been quick like a reflex, the smirk slipping briefly.

"I need to speak with him," Hikaru hedged since it was none of this guy’s business. "Sorry, got to go."

He turned to leave- and fell back in alarm. How had the smuggler gotten around him so fast?!

His reaction seemed to fascinate the stranger. The cruel eyes narrowed further. "Wow. You should have seen the way you just jumped. Oh shit, this is too funny."

"Leave me alone," Hikaru said, falling into a defensive stance, but the other immediately held up his hands in an appeasing gesture.

"No, no, don't worry, man, I'm not messing with you. That'd be like shooting fish in a barrel right now. I'll let you get on your way, okay? I don't know where that gay ship you're looking for is, but Kaku headed back towards the shipyards about fifteen minutes ago. I better go too, I don't want to be seen here. But before I vamoose...Here. This is for...later, 'kay?"

"What-"

It was like double vision. Most of Hikaru saw nothing more than a blur- yet a small part of him followed that blur, saw the finger aiming at him, saw everything with astonishing acuity, the oddly thick and elongated nail, the muscles tense in the wrist as the stranger moved so fast-

The finger poked him in the forehead hard enough to knock him back a step. Hikaru staggered, slipped on sea-slicked cobbles and fell down.

The stranger burst into laughter that shook him head to toe. Hikaru put a hand to his forehead and surged to his feet with an irritated "What was that for?!"

The docks were empty.

Hikaru spun around on himself a few times, feeling increasingly numb. That was impossible. The man had been right here- how had he-...just how fast was the bastard?! Hikaru rubbed his stinging forehead and decided not to investigate. If the asshole could move like that, he was not someone to tangle with. At this point, Hikaru was thinking devil fruit ability, unlikely enough as it were for a mere smuggler to have any- but he didn't have time to waste puzzling out some creep's little tricks, he needed to find Kaku. He'd made up his mind, and he wanted his brother to know his decision now, even if there was bound to be a lot of arguing.

...How had that son of a bitch known Kaku was his brother?

Hikaru shook his head hard and decided to shelve the matter of crazy corsairs and their stupid behavior for now. Hattori settled onto his shoulder again as he headed towards the yards at a fast pace, leaving unexplained lunatics behind him.

---

The foreman still hadn't seen Kaku, but if that strange smuggler had been right and his brother had returned this way, then he was probably home. The brothers lived in rooms above one of the woodworking shops, in the warmth of running machinery and the pleasant smell of freshly cut timber. Kaku had been up a part of the night to help dry-dock a ship before the tides put more water into her damaged hull, so maybe he'd decided to go home early today and take a nap.

When he entered through the side-door, Hikaru heard the splash of a running faucet from the bathroom on the top floor. He climbed the stairs three at a time. "Kaku?"

His brother said something indistinct about being out soon. Hikaru didn't break stride and opened the door with one firm twist of the knob. "Hey-"

Kaku jumped and spun away from the sink with a sharp indraw of breath, hand whipping out into a parrying stance - and elbow smashing a tile.

"Whoa! Whoa, it's just me." I'm sure startling a lot of people today, Hikaru thought, about to apologize to his spluttering brother when his thoughts got sidetracked. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Hikaru, get out," Kaku snapped, his wet hair now covered with the towel he'd been wearing around his bare shoulders. The scars on his chest caught the light as he moved, his own souvenir from the Marines raid, and a good reason to dislike being surprised, as Hikaru should have remembered before bursting in like that.

"Come on, don't get mad." Hikaru craned his neck to try to see the bottle Kaku was holding, angled so it was nearly behind the latter's back. "You didn't lock the door, so-"

"I did," Kaku said glacially.

Hikaru glanced over his shoulder, then turned to inspect the lock he'd accidentally wrenched out of the wall when he'd opened the door. "Oh. Oops. Don't worry, I'll fix that."

This happened occasionally, though it was neither consistent nor voluntary. Hikaru would pick up a piece of lumber at the yard, and only when his brother hissed at him to put it down - or the other shipwrights stared - did he realize that it was longer than he'd thought, or attached to a cross-mast, and much heavier than anything he should be able to lift. And he did tend to break stuff when he wasn't paying attention. Kaku couldn't explain the phenomenon, but told Hikaru to keep it to himself and not invite trouble by bragging about it. Not the sort to brag anyway, Hikaru did as he was told. But he spent some time discreetly observing his brother practice katas, or work alone in the yards...Yeah, Hikaru wasn't the only one who could pick up heavy pieces of timber. Or smash a bathroom tile to shards with his elbow and not even notice. Since Kaku didn’t seem eager to talk about it, Hikaru had drawn his own conclusions. If the two siblings happened to be stronger than the norm due to some oddity in their heritage or a vagary of the Grand Line, then that was both their good fortune and something the rest of the world did not need to know about. Hikaru followed Kaku's cues and did his best to conceal his unexpected strength, and when he screwed up, he just told Juro or whoever had noticed that, yeah, shipwrights were stronger than they looked, what with all the timber and tools they had to carry all day long.

Fortunately shipwrights could also fix things, he thought, poking at the broken lock. He made a mental note to replace the smashed tile as well, since that was clearly also his fault.

"Out. Scram."

"Huh-huh, like I'm about to do that. What are you doing? Are you dying your hair? You are, aren't you, I've seen bottles like that in the store. Are you putting in red streaks, like that pirate we saw last week on the Dread Weaver?"

His brother had stepped back in front of the mirror, though he still had the towel over his head. "Covering grays."

Hikaru laughed. "Come on, you don't have gray hair. You're twenty-four! I'm five years older than you are, and I don't have grays."

"It comes from worrying about you all day and night, alley cat. Can you leave now?"

"Very funny. There's no need to be bashful, you know." Hikaru tried to catch Kaku's eye in the mirror, but his brother's reflection was just a nose poking out from beneath a fold of the towel. "Seriously, if you're going to dye your hair, put in red streaks. Our hair's very black, but they'd look great if they showed up and then maybe you'd finally score a date-"

He never even saw Kaku move; his brother was across the length of the bathroom and his open palm caught Hikaru mid-chest and moved him bodily with one shove. "Out!" The door slammed in his face as he fetched up against the opposite wall.

"Ouch, okay, okay, no wonder you have grays." Oh boy, Kaku was in a wonderful mood today; maybe some pirate had stiffed him on a bill. Which reminded Hikaru of why he'd been looking for his brother in the first place. Damn...He wanted Kaku to know the news right away, but maybe it'd be wiser to wait until supper.

His brother had recovered his usual unruffled temper a few hours later. He was stirring some soup over their tiny stovetop while Hikaru cut up the fish at the kitchenette table, as well as the vegetables his brother insisted they eat because Hikaru had to be living with the only young male bachelor who was also a health freak in the entire dissolute town of Turtle Bay. The machines downstairs had stopped humming, the clangs and shouts from the shipyards had ceased. Kaku had talked a little about the repairs planned for the Marie, and now a companionable silence had fallen between the brothers; another peaceful evening with just the two of them. One of the last they might have together...His decision weighed on Hikaru as if the kitchen light wasn't shining anymore.

"Kaku."

"Hmm?"

"Juro's leaving again the day after tomorrow."

"Yeah, I heard the word from the docks." His brother didn't sound all that torn up about the news, no surprise there.

"He's doing a long sweep along the Red Line coast with the Skulls third fleet, but he’ll be back in Turtle Bay in a couple of months."

"I'm sure he will, he's been coming here regularly-..." Kaku's voice trailed off.

The silence was thick. Hikaru had stopped chopping, there was only the noise of the spoon slowly stirring the contents of the saucepan, once, twice...

"You're leaving with him," Kaku said without turning around.

"Yeah." Hikaru put down the knife and picked up a shred of carrot. Hattori pecked it off his finger. "I know you don't want me to be a pirate, and there's work to be done here...But Juro asked me to go, join his crew as a shipwright, and I said I would. That is, I said I'd think about it, but I intend to go. I'm- well, you know how I feel about him. Besides, I want to go see the world," Hikaru added quickly, going for a reason his brother might actually sympathize with. "I'd like to go back to what's left of our hometown, see if I remember anything, and I want to meet more people who might have known me- and perhaps get to see a doctor who can fix my head, I don't fully trust what those clowns at the clinic said. I can't do that here."

His brother turned off the heat under the soup and went on stirring for what felt like a long time. Hikaru waited for him to say something while shoring up his resolve. He'd explained his reasons. He had to do this. But...shit...who was he kidding? Kaku was-...he was the one Hikaru trusted and depended upon; the brother who'd saved his life, his best friend and his only family, and there was no way Hikaru would be able to leave if Kaku said-

"Good idea. You should go."

Hikaru blinked a few times. "What? You're okay with this?"

"I'm not overjoyed, but if you really want to do this, then Juro is a good captain to sail with. For all he's a bit of a dick." Kaku ground some pepper into the soup and stirred some more.

Hattori pecked hopefully at Hikaru's motionless fingers. He felt the taps quite clearly, so he wasn't dreaming. Man, he'd never have thought Kaku would take it this well. Kaku hadn't discouraged him from seeing Juro, and he put up with the pirate for his big brother's sake, but that was a far cry from letting Hikaru run off to enlist with him. What would make this worse, from Kaku's point of view, was that he'd been the one to introduce Juro and Hikaru in the first place, when he'd asked his brother to help him fix The Claw; he'd been the one to get the two men working together on the figurehead project and left them alone a lot of the time...He'd been instrumental to them getting together, and Hikaru hoped Kaku wasn't regretting it too bitterly now.

If he was, he was certainly putting up a damned good front. Hikaru had figured he'd be spending most of his evening pleading and reasoning until Kaku finally came around and let him go. His brother clapping him on the shoulder and saying 'Good idea, go be a pirate' hadn't been part of the plan, and it left him feeling a bit off-balance.

"Juro will at least make an effort to keep you safe, and his first port of call will be Bone Island anyway." Kaku was speaking softly, as if to himself. He'd put aside the spoon to wipe his hands on a towel, his back still turned. "You'll be meeting Adam Skullbone shortly."

"I guess." Hikaru hadn't really thought of that.

"You will. Skullbone will want to meet the man his third fleet commander has hired and taken into his bed all these months." Hikaru blinked at the completely unemotional way Kaku had said that, voice still so soft, barely there. "He's very picky about who his officers associate with. Completely paranoid. But that's what you have to be when you're the right hand man of Monkey D Dragon..."

"Is he? Juro told me the Commodore works with the revolutionaries, but I didn't know he was that close to them."

His brother half-glanced over his shoulder and put down the towel with a quick gesture. "That's the rumor. His looting and pillaging of government vessels helps finance Dragon's operation, and his Skulls are a semi-military force the revolutionaries can rely on if they ever get into open confrontations. That's why he styles himself 'Commodore'. Or so they say. Not that we care either way, hmm? We're just shipwrights, we steer clear of the big cheeses. Let them fight amongst themselves."

"We don't like the government much, though, not after they raided our hometown-"

"Yes, yes. So, you'll be leaving the day after tomorrow?"

Kaku seemed to be taking this whole matter really well. Which was good, Hikaru supposed, still mentally reeling about in surprise. "Um, yeah. I’ll be back on shore leave in a couple of months, okay?"

"Of course you will," said his brother perfectly calmly.

---

Kaku kept that attitude up for two days, until Hikaru was starting to honestly wonder what was going on beneath that short, black and reputedly graying mop of hair. Right up until the moment Kaku walked him to the docks and they shook hands, and-

At the touch...it was as if something deep inside Hikaru had twitched and opened its eyes and looked. Oh, he’d been blind to not see that Kaku was concerned. Deeply concerned, but totally resolved, too. Hikaru stared at his cheerful, easy-going brother and wondered where this impression of steel was coming from.

"You okay?" Kaku asked, looking puzzled, and the impression faded. Hikaru shook his head and smiled.

"I'm fine...You know I'll be back."

"You keep on saying that like you're trying to convince me," Kaku said, letting go of Hikaru's hand to tug his cap down. Maybe he thought he'd get away with that goodbye, because he looked a bit startled when Hikaru pulled him into a hug. Fraternal familiarities seemed to take Kaku a little aback at times, especially in public, which Hikaru thought was at once funny and rather endearing in a disgruntled younger sibling sort of way.

"I will be back, little brother."

There was something stiff in the way Kaku returned the embrace. Yeah, he was definitely not the hugging type, but Hikaru always blamed having forgotten that on the amnesia.

...He remembered waking up in a New World clinic knowing only his name, that he was a shipbuilder who'd been in some sort of accident...and that he trusted the long-nosed man with the gentle smile and searching, watchful eyes who'd just taken his hand..."Hikaru? Don't you recognize me? Kaku. Your brother..."

"Be careful," Kaku whispered into his ear.

"I will, I promise. And maybe I'll find something out there that will trigger my memory. I want to remember our childhood. I want to remember everything."

A sharp exhale tickled his temple, then Kaku pulled away to clasp the back of Hikaru's neck, face still close, a gesture he'd never done before. One corner of his mouth was turned up in something that wasn't quite a smile. "You know what...? I think you will find your memory. Yes, I'm even sure of it. And I'll be there. Just remember that if things get confusing. I will-"

"Oi, will you two pussies cut it out? Hikaru, get your ass on board, we've got a tide to catch."

For the briefest of moments, Hikaru thought he caught a flicker of expression on Kaku's face that was in no way that of a shipwright or his good-humored brother, but then Kaku was giving Juro the usual patient look. "He's coming. Please watch out for him."

"For fuck's sake, he's older than you are, stop mothering him. We'll be back this way in a couple of months."

"Yes, that's true, we'll be seeing each other soon, Juro," Kaku said, smiling again. "Have a safe trip."

---

Bone Island was a fortress, a frightening monolith of volcanic rock bristling with cannons. And according to Juro, those intimidating defenses weren't the ones the Commodore relied on the most, though he refused to elaborate on that.

"This way," he said, leading Hikaru past dozens of moored pirate vessels towards a watchtower standing harsh and menacing over the harbor. "And leave the goddamned pigeon here. Look, I gotta warn you, the asshole you're about to see is a few spans short of a full sail. But just do what he says, and don't get too freaked. It's necessary, he needs to check you out. We won't be able to go into the citadel or the main building otherwise, and I got business with the boss."

"Is he going to ask me questions about my background?" Hikaru asked a bit worriedly. "Does he know I have amnesia?"

"He won't ask you any questions, though you'd rather he did." Juro's terse manner and hunted scowl were unlike him. "Don't mention the memory-thing. That'll just make him...weirder, probably. Don't worry," he added gruffly as he led the way up the stairs to the top of the watchtower, "it normally doesn't last long. And at least it doesn't hurt much."

After those worrying words, the bald little man in red robes reading the latest newspaper was a complete anticlimax.

"Ah, Captain Juro, I was expecting you. Is this your new...hah, crewmate?" The mocking lag was outrageously obvious. Hikaru was startled the shrimp dared talk to the Commodore's third fleet commander like that, and also that Juro simply put up with it. This small man didn't seem that intimidating. He looked like a bank clerk.

The man tidily folded up his paper and used it to point Hikaru to the chair on the other side of the small table at which he was seated. "What's your name?"

"Hikaru."

"Ah, and are you a shining one?"

"What?"

The man was looking at him in an unblinking way that was at odds with his chitchat tone. His eyes were blacker than a pit, Hikaru couldn’t make out the pupils.

"Never mind, never mind. Give me your hand, please. Hmm..."

He stared at Hikaru's palm and idly traced the deeper lines with his index as if this was the most natural thing for him to do. His skin was cold and felt...not moist, but as if it were leaving traces of something, like a snail left a trail of slime. Hikaru couldn’t see any residue, and the man's fingers looked clean and perfectly dry, so he told himself it was his imagination and resisted the urge to jerk his hand away.

"How fascinating." The man's voice was lower, utterly absorbed, his head tilted, eyes unseeing and all but closed even though he still held Hikaru's hand as if examining it. "A simple, bright soul...peaceful by nature, yet quite vital, and highly intelligent. A very unusual combination."

"Thanks," Hikaru said, wishing the man would let go of his hand. Where was this guy getting all that from anyway? If he was reading Hikaru's palm, then this had to be a joke of some sort.

"He's the shipwright who did my figurehead," Juro put in. None of what the bald man had said or done seemed to have surprised him in the least.

"Ah?" The black-on-black eyes turned briefly towards the harbor beneath the watchtower's large bay window- then the little man focused abruptly on The Claw, mouth open in surprise, a reaction that gratified the shipwright who'd worked on it.

The ship had been called the Claudia when Juro had captured it from the Marines. He'd renamed it The Claw because he liked sea-king crabs. Not just to eat; he admired them. The intimidating carapace, the vicious claws, the contemptuous way they trundled across the ocean floor, ignoring all but the most skilled of fishermen; he even liked them for their utter ugliness-

(- "Another fun fact about crabs is that they have brains the size of pinheads," Kaku would often say, though not within earshot of the man who was paying the brothers to patch up the holes in the looted ship.)

Juro wanted to make the large, sleek Navy galleon his new flagship. He'd renamed it The Claw after his favorite beastie, and asked for a new figurehead 'that goes with it', which was rather vague but understood to be crab-related.

Hikaru had been fascinated by the ship's name- and just as fascinated by the ship's captain, though he'd been trying to keep that under control, not understanding the pull he felt towards the man. He'd spent all night on the design, and then started sculpting it without the customer's approval, for which Kaku gave him an earful later. They'd only arrived in Turtle Bay two months prior, they were still establishing themselves; maybe the high-ranking pirate captain would want another, more experienced shipwright to work on such an important piece of his ship.

Juro had taken one look at the sketches and the preliminary figure Hikaru had already started to carve, working for twenty hours without sleep, and said, "This guy's got the contract. Tell me how much you want for it." Whenever Juro got a bit tiresome - which was bound to happen, living with him in close quarters for two weeks - Hikaru reminded himself of that moment.

It could be a cat, or it could be a tiger; the raw vitality of the figurehead made such details irrelevant, it was both feline and predator personified. Wooden mouth open to spit and bite, the titular claws a mere suggestion of leg until they reared up sharp and deadly to spear its prey. As the prow of a pirate ship meant to strike fear in those who beheld it, it was certainly successful...Hikaru couldn't begin to understand where the inspiration for something that monstrous and glorious had come from. There were times when his hands had moved over the wood and he'd felt a dark presence from his dreams stir and pad around in the background...

"Oh, I see. Impressive..." The red-robed man stared out the window; his thumb caressed Hikaru's palm as if his fingers had a mind of their own. "An artist…that explains it...That explains these hands, too. The calluses- and the strength, too, quite a lot of strength..."

"Yeah, you should see them at work." Juro sounded way too smug and possessive. "I could have spent days watching him carve that figurehead. And I did, too, took him long enough."

Well, whose fault was that? Hikaru thought with a touch of exasperation. Juro had indeed come and watched him work off and on for three days, and then he'd taken the younger man to his bed without further delay and more than a summary seduction. After that, Hikaru hadn't gotten as much time to work on the figurehead as he should-...and Juro had tossed that out just now on purpose to get a rise out of him.

Hikaru could feel a faint blush on his cheeks, but unexpectedly it was the red-robed man who chuckled. The sound was oily, and he was looking at Hikaru as if he'd known exactly what had gone through his mind just now. His hands on Hikaru's were getting even colder, and the feeling was spreading up the shipwright's arm to his neck and across his spine...

This was a little beyond palmistry, and getting spooky to boot. Hikaru gave Juro a beseeching look.

"You can stop pawing him now, right?" Juro brusquely asked the bald little gnome.

"Why, fleet commander, whatever are you suggesting," the other replied equably. "I'm afraid Hikaru will have to put up with it for a little while longer, I'm not finished yet."

"Finished what?" Hikaru asked, mouth dry and unexplained shudders running up his back. The cold feeling was slithering over his skull now.

"Examining you," was the brazen answer. "My two siblings and I are Master Skullbone's defenders. We personally check any new arrival entering the citadel, and we also keep an eye out for any who might approach him with violent intent. Ah, I see I've intrigued you. You have a finer mind than most pirates I meet, an inquisitive one. Since Captain Juro has vouchsafed for your discretion, I can explain part of the process. My brothers and I were born and raised on an island far from here. Certain of our people have always had an ability, which we've cultivated through the generations, to see into the mind of others."

"You can read my mind?" Hikaru tensed to pull his hand away, but Juro quickly touched his shoulder in warning.

The bald man smiled as if he and Hikaru shared a secret. "No, not exactly, and not in detail, but I can see its colors and movements, if you will. Amongst my people, it's called empathy, though it has other names in other places; tuning, mantra, or vision." Finally the man stopped touching him and leaned back. "Yours is a fascinating psyche. I would like to examine it further at a later date, if you'll allow me. But I've seen enough today to know that you harbor no ill will towards our master, and no violent intent. You are free to enter the citadel."

"Oh...thanks." Hikaru tried to rub some feeling back into his hand, which felt like he'd left it on ice for an hour. He stumbled as he stood up and Juro steadied him, obviously expecting the reaction.

"That was pretty creepy," Hikaru said after a few minutes, walking towards the drawbridge to the Citadel. He barely noticed the garrison of well-armed and vicious pirates at several staging points on the narrow access path. Hattori was sitting on his shoulder again, acting almost as cowed as its owner.

"Yeah. Those three bastards don't like us to tell people about them ahead of time, so I couldn't warn you about it; they'd know if I had. I'll be straight with you, they give me the screaming wiggins, and I've killed more men in my life than you can fit into The Claw. But they keep a mind's eye on the Commodore's surroundings, make sure nobody gets too near him with the idea of sticking a knife in his back, so we put up with them."

"That's why he said he was the Commodore's defender...?" The island was a cool spring clime, but it still felt warmer than that watchtower room. Hikaru's shivers were abating. "I can see that, but if the Marines send an overwhelming force to surround the island and take the Citadel, there's not much point to a forewarning."

"Ahh, but you see, the boss has a devil fruit ability." Juro smirked widely. "Put together with his mind-readers, it makes his defenses foolproof. Ain't a man alive who can touch him. No, not even the devil himself."

"Oh?"

"Yep, it’s called the Jump Jump Fruit. A rare one, men have paid a king's ransom for it. Dragon gave it to him. He can jump to any spot he can see instantly. On a clear day, that's well over five miles. Hah! You should see him in a fight! Puny little Marines spinning around like empty bottles while he pops in and out around them, a fuckin' wraith. They can't even hit him, until he gets tired of the sport and slits their throats."

Charming...Hikaru had never heard Juro sound so admiring of anyone before. If all the tall tales and rumors he'd been fed by The Claw's crew these past two weeks hadn't already done the job, he'd be definitely awed and a bit unnerved now.

"That's why our citadel is here, rather than further down the Grand Line." Juro's expansive gesture took in the tier upon tier of the fortress built directly into the tall cliffs, climbing upwards towards the peak with plenty of lookout points on all sides. "He's got a clear view of the mainland from almost every part of it. The Commodore has always trained his ability hard, and he can take others with him when he jumps. If there's trouble brewing, he grabs those three bald creeps and jumps over to the Red Line, and then he can go anywhere along the continent and there's fuck-all the law can do about it. He stays untouchable."

"But doesn't that leave you and the rest of his men behind and under attack while he runs away?"

That earned Hikaru a solid glare. "Don't talk bad about the boss. He's not a coward."

Hikaru wisely said nothing to that.

"We're his men. We'd fight for him, cover his retreat, and then we'd cut and run as soon as he was clear. He's important. He's part of the revolution. And as long as the Marines know he can get away easy, they don't send anyone after him anymore, because what's the point, right? He'd just make them look like fools and show people how powerless they really are to stop him."

"Oh."

Fortunately Juro didn’t notice Hikaru's lukewarm attitude, he was talking again, voice loud as they walked up the long ramp between tiers of buildings. "You're lucky to be meeting him, you know. He's the most important man you're ever gonna set eyes on, and him and Dragon are gonna change the face of the world. Our armada numbers ten thousand pirates, but maybe only one man in ten gets to meet him in person even if they sail for him their whole lives. Me being his third fleet commander, though, he wants to look you over. You make sure that when he does, you don't give him that saucy superior attitude you and your brother sometimes give to pirates - and to me," Juro added, stopping in his tracks to give Hikaru a suddenly shrewd look. "Adam Skullbone likes people who stand up for themselves, but only if they have what it takes to back it up, and trust me, Hikaru, you don't."

Juro's steely brown eyes continued to fix him, even though Hikaru was doing his best to look suitably meek and respectful, not wanting to get into an argument right in the middle of the citadel.

"I know what he'll tell me," Juro said softly, still giving Hikaru that hard scrutiny. "Unlike some, Adam's never cared that I don't go for tits. He's always respected me as a pirate ever since we first started sailing together. When he saw The Claw's figurehead last month, he was damned impressed, and he said he was looking forward to meeting the guy who carved it. But I know what he'll say when he sees you."

"What?"

Juro grabbed his chin and forced their faces close together, ignoring Hikaru's soundless protest, Hattori's angry squawk and the stares of nearby guards. "He'll say you're no good for me."

"What? Why?" Hikaru asked, trying to ease away from Juro's fingers without being obvious about it.

They only tightened. "He'll say you're too good-looking, too classy, too intelligent, and way, way too nice. And he'll probably be right. A guy like you is bad news for a simple pirate like me."

A vicious kiss silenced Hikaru as he was about to say that surely it should be the other way around?

He staggered when he was abruptly released.

"But pirates like things that are bad for them. Always have, always will. Come on, sweetmeat, the boss will want to see you so he can make fun of me." Juro smirked and clapped him on the shoulder, shoving him towards the leering guards.

But it was not to be right away, it seemed. They'd climbed to the top of the island and were twenty feet away from a formidable stone door that looked to lead somewhere important when a shout behind them stopped Juro in his tracks: "Fleet Commander! Sir!" A pirate was running towards them in a jingle of metal studs and weapons. "Sir, I have a message from outpost six."

Juro jerked a thumb at the important-looking door. "Can it wait? We're just about to see the boss."

"A warning came in from one of the patrols, sir. A ship's washed ashore on the other side of the island."

"If you have a point, get to it," Juro snarled. "Marines?"

"No, sir, looks like a free-trader ship. But it was deserted, nobody on board. Um, also, this may not be related, but Captain Skar from fourth fleet reported there've been a lot of Marines ships sighted around this latitude, sir. Um, the first and second fleet aren't back from their raids yet, so-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. C'mon, Hikaru." Juro turned on his heels and headed back the way they'd came.

"But what about-..." Hikaru looked towards the stone door.

"Later, this takes priority. The boss is rabid about security. I don't see how an empty ship can harm us, but he'll want all the details by the time I see him. Come on already."

"I'll wait here."

The words were out before Hikaru realized he was going to say them. They startled him, and they startled Juro as well. The larger man swung around and stared at him. "You what?"

"I'll wait here. You won't be long, right? I'll just get in your way." Hikaru backed away and sat down quickly in a windowsill.

"Look-" Juro scowled and glanced over his shoulder. The pirate who'd come to fetch him was already at the end of the corridor, looking back with the pleading manner of a dog trying to fetch its master while fearing the rolled-up newspaper. "Oh, bugger, have it your way, but stay here, don't go anywhere. You get into trouble, I'll knock your head off. Coming! Stop wetting your pants, you scurvy mutt, or I'll toss you into the ocean when we get there."

Juro stomped off to Hikaru's relief. He wasn't sure what had possessed him to talk to Juro like that; his lover was going to be cross with him later. Occasional moods aside, Juro was a fleet commander and Hikaru's captain, he was used to instant obedience. It wasn't that Hikaru particularly wanted to meet Adam Skullbone, either, not after everything Juro had told him about the man. The Commodore sounded like, well, he sounded like a very dangerous pirate at the head of an armada of ten thousand cutthroats. Yes, this was probably the most dangerous man Hikaru would ever meet. But...that was just it, he wanted to get it over with. Right.

Hikaru waited. And waited, fingers digging into his knees. Hattori cooed wretchedly, picking up on his tension and refusing to decide which shoulder to settle on. Hikaru ran a finger over its feathered head to soothe it, but he was feeling just as antsy. The island was several miles wide; if that ship had washed up on the far side, as that lookout had seemed to imply, it'd take Juro a couple of hours or more to get there, inspect it and get back. How long should he just hang around for?

A few pirates walked to and fro through the citadel's corridors, giving him strange looks as they passed by. Then they'd go through the stone door, letting bursts of laughter and drunken shouts escape into the silent hallway. Sounded like one of Bone Island's many wild parties was under way. This was the time Juro had wanted to introduce him to Skullbone. Why was he waiting here...?

Hikaru's shoulders were stiff with growing strain. He wanted to get it over with now.

No, he'd told Juro he'd wait. His lover would be really furious if he-

You want to meet him, whispered the little devil on his shoulder.

Hikaru shifted on the windowsill and glanced at the door.

You want to meet him now.

He stood up and walked towards the door. I'm going to get into trouble for this, he thought with an edge of panic, yet he still went right up to the guards stationed by the entrance. "Um, I'm with Captain Juro. Commodore Skullbone was expecting us."

The two guards looked down at him; the pair of them were huge, easily twice his size. They must have seen him arrive with Juro, though, because they didn't ask any questions, and one of them swung open the heavy door without a word.

"...Thanks."

Bone Island was an old volcanic formation. The door led into a room built directly out of the crater, a huge open-air chamber filled with bonfires. Cover and a roof of sorts was provided by large awnings, all trophies, sails taken from Navy ships with their symbol of Justice marred by scorch marks and crude graffiti. Hundreds of pirates, Skullbone's picked men and captains, sat at wooden tables, stood around the bonfires, ate, drank, harassed the painted, blousy women serving ale - who looked quite used to it - and dozed in hammocks hanging along the massive wall that reinforced the old crater. A fight had broken out near the far door, dozens of pirates standing around and cheering the scuffle on, while others were already passed out drunk on the floor despite it being only mid-afternoon. Even for someone who'd lived in Turtle Bay, the sight was barbaric and dissolute. For a pirate, this was paradise.

The door Hikaru had entered led directly to a raised plinth overseeing the ruckus; it was built out of marble slabs, undoubtedly looted from a sacked palace. This was where the armada's Commodore held court.

Hikaru approached diffidently. There were a lot of brutal-looking pirates hanging around, probably bodyguards, some even taller than the two sentries outside the door. A couple of them looked askance and he hesitated, out of place in this raucous din; his hair was cleaned, combed and tied back, while his white shirt and red vest weren't full of beer stains, so yes, he probably did stand out a mile. The guards didn't look terribly impressed by what they were seeing...then a small figure in a red robe trotted between the two hulking men and stopped before Hikaru.

"Ah, you're the one my brother was thinking of," the little man said. "The artist."

"The-...yes, that's me. I think." Hikaru could have sworn it was the same man as before. He looked identical, down to the bald head and the clothes. Twins...? Or triplets, since his initial acquaintance had mentioned two brothers. Hikaru refused to even speculate about the sentence 'you're the one my brother was thinking of'. "Hello. Could I-..."

The empath was staring at Hikaru as if studying a fascinating new animal, but he nodded quickly at Hikaru's half formed question. "Yes, come. The master is expecting you."

The 'master' was just twenty feet away, looking over at Hikaru. He was lounging on the cushions of a marble throne, the product of more pillaging no doubt, but despite the caricature of a regal setting, he was the consummate pirate; scarred, none too clean, dressed in rough dark leather and long red coat, with an ugly, notched axe near his hand and a bottle resting on the marble armrest. He didn't look quite as impressive as Hikaru had imagined: Adam Skullbone was in his forties, of an ordinary size compared to his guards, probably shorter than Hikaru for that matter-

- he'd seen that square, bearded face before, not in real life, but he'd seen a picture, he was sure of it. A bounty poster...?

Hikaru's tension ratcheted when Hattori suddenly launched from his shoulder and shot straight towards the far wall of the huge chamber. Hikaru didn't dare raise his voice to call back his pet.

"Who's that?" Skullbone leaned over to listen to the red-robed man who'd scuttled back to his master to whisper in his ear. "Oh, that's what Juro brought back with him, is it? Hey, you. Come here."

Hikaru took a few steps forward, wishing he'd waited for Juro now. How did one address an armada commander, someone with a hundred and eighty million Berry bounty on his head and ten thousand men at his command? Very politely, he imagined.

-that face-

Hikaru's fists were clenched. He was too tense. He walked faster.

"Um, hello sir, my name is-"

- faster-

"-Hikaru-"

Now.

Every blood-filled dream, every scream of terror -

- exploded inside his head.

When Hikaru blinked his vision back into focus, his fist was sunk deep into Skullbone's leather-clad midriff. Skullbone made a choked 'Uhnnf' sound and folded over the punch.

"Wha-"

Hikaru saw his own hand lift up- he had to be dreaming.

His fist chopped down, a short, vicious blow to the pirate's exposed neck. Skullbone collapsed like a bag of flour against the marble armrest. A bottle shattered on the floor.

"HEY!"

"Fuck! What the-"

Hikaru heard himself whimper. This had to be a dream!

A blow caught him on the side and sent him reeling away from Skullbone's limp form. Hikaru fell onto marble. Neither impact had hurt at all, so he had to be dreaming, right? Right?!

He was shaking. For a brief instant he'd been surrounded by a halo of dark, lethal energy, rising like a bonfire- and in that instant, he'd moved so fast his mind had been unable to keep up as he struck a man down.

People were shouting all around him. The empath was yammering like an alarm siren. "Danger! Danger! We’re under attack!"

"No shit!" one of the bodyguards snarled, eyes not leaving Hikaru. He'd been the one to punch the shipwright to the ground with the butt of his spear.

"No, not him! Not anymore!" The red-robed man was frantic, black pupils entirely surrounded by white...but he was staring out into the large open-aired courtyard. "Over there! In that direction! It's coming towards us! It's terrible!"

The huge bodyguards were forming a ring around Skullbone; a dozen pirates from the nearby tables had realized there was something going down, grabbed weapons and joined them. All the other corsairs in the huge enclosure were too busy getting drunk and reveling to have noticed anything amiss.

One bodyguard was trying to revive Skullbone by shaking him, which even a terminally confused Hikaru thought wasn't a good idea to do to someone who'd taken a blow to the neck-

He'd done that! He'd hit the man! Why?! Hikaru realized with sick certainty that he was going to die. Skullbone's pirates were going to kill him. Not even Juro could intercede for him now, assuming he'd want to. What had come over him? For an instant, the dark, terrible creature from every one of his nightmares had moved him. It was-...still there, it was trying to-...it was trying to take over again! Hikaru cowered on the marble flagstones, almost as frightened of himself as he was of the pirates circling him.

"Over there!" the empath screamed in sheer hysteria, and then he twisted like a cornered rat and ran away to hide behind Skullbone's marble throne. His patent terror caused a few pirates, and then a few more, to glance at a spot across the large room. When they started to shout and gesticulate, Hikaru looked as well.

Three men stood on the high wall surrounding the courtyard fifty feet away; they were dressed in black, shapes a harsh contrast against the whitish sky. Even the non-empaths in the room could feel the threat emanating from them now.

One of them was Hikaru's brother.

Hikaru stared without comprehension at the achingly familiar figure, that lanky stance, the familiar cap, Hattori perched on his shoulder - too far away to make out the features with all that much detail but Hikaru knew that was Kaku. His brother was here. And for a fraction of a second, Hikaru allowed himself to feel relieved.

But then Kaku lifted his head, looked straight at him over the distance and spoke, voice loud enough to filter past the rising shouts.

"Lucci, it's time. Snap out of it."

Deep inside, it snarled and broke free.

"Let them come," someone barked; it sounded very far away in a world drowning in furious static. Hikaru curled up on himself in confusion and horror. "Defend the boss. You guys, kill that one to start with. We'll show the captain his head when he wakes up."

Ten armed men bore down on him, weapons poised to strike.

Lucci killed the first one with his outstretched fingers, slitting the man's throat in a single swipe.

Instincts focused him past the staggering gap in his chain of events. There was blood on his hands and people were trying to kill him, as for the rest-

Enies Lobby. That young punk in the straw hat had beaten him- beaten him!

He plunged half-morphed claws into a man's chest. The impact ripped the carotid. Warm throb around his fingers. The body a temporary support as he broke the neck of another behind him with one clean kick.

Buster Call- the Admirals - Spandam-

He hurled the body into three of his gaping attackers. They went over like skittles. An enemy combatant finally reacted. Lucci moved smoothly out of the way of a sloppy spear thrust and plunged a finger through his assailant's ribcage as an afterthought. Then Soru took him behind the man lifting a rifle. He snapped the gunman's vertebra with one sharp twist and moved again before the body could start to crumple.

Spandam wanted to get back into the government's good graces. CP9 just wanted to do their damn job.

A lightning kick felled two half-giants twenty feet away. Blood burst from their bellies as they collapsed. A cutlass struck Lucci in the back, all the attacker's might behind the wild blow. It struck his Tekkai and left only a slice in the vest and shirt over his shoulder blades. Lucci didn't look around as he reached back and smashed the front of the man's skull in with a quick thrust of his palm.

A new target. Commodore Adam Skullbone, a man close to Dragon. Reputed untouchable, inapproachable by anyone with murderous intentions and so…

In the half minute that had elapsed, three others had joined him on the platform, rushing through the room full of befuddled reprobates with the speed of Soru, leaving confusion and a few dead bodies in their wake. They were somewhere behind Lucci now, near the target. They were known, they were not enemies and, just to be on the safe side, they were not coming anywhere near him, either. Good.

And so...One Two Jango!

The blood roared in his ears. Memories crawled through his mind like insects.

Lucci had voluntarily sat there and let those words strip away his bloodlust, his sense of duty, his strength; his aggression, his Zoan powers, his instincts and beliefs, even his past, and then they'd taken the pallid shadow that was left and named it Hikaru...

He had the last attacker by the throat. Lucci slowly focused on the panicked man flailing against his grip, then his eyes drifted to his own fingers, to the wrist the pirate was tearing at in a vain attempt to free himself. "Hikaru," Lucci murmured contemplatively, and squeezed until cartilage snapped and the meat stopped making soggy noises.

He dropped the twitching corpse and turned to face the large room. Several hundred Skulls surrounded them now, bristling with all sorts of weapons as they faced the four men left standing on the dais. A rustling sound at his back told Lucci that Kumadori's hair had entangled the unconscious Adam Skullbone in its grip while the huge agent slapped seastone cuffs on him. Kaku and Jyabura had dispatched the bodyguards with ruthless efficiency and were now flanking Lucci.

"Marines!" someone at the back of the crowd shouted. "Enemy fleet sighted!"

Lucci tilted his head to one side in a silent question.

"They had to stay out on the high seas until they got our den den mushi signal, but they should be here in thirty minutes with these winds," Kaku said as coolly as if he were standing on the ramparts of Enies Lobby. "Give them an hour or two to secure the island and reach us and the prisoner. We have to hold out until then."

"I really don't see a problem," Jyabura said, a vicious grin in his voice.

The blood on his hands had cooled from body temperature to a sticky congealed coating. He'd missed that feeling. Lucci wiped a tepid smear on his face with the back of his wrist and focused on the battalion of pirates edging forward.

"Come on!" one of the Skulls shouted. "We have to free the Commodore before the law gets here!"

Jyabura snickered. "The law's already here, shithead."

"There's only four of those bastards. Charge them!"

"Only one of us," Lucci corrected without looking away from the prey. "And yes. Please do."

Jyabura grumbled about spoilsports and kill-stealers, but he was always easy to ignore. A few of the pirates in that huge room took one look at Lucci, checked in with their instincts and decided to run for it, to be arrested by the invading Marines. They were arguably the lucky ones.

---

The first Marine to burst through the door took one look at the mess and heaved up his lunch. He must have gotten separated from his regular unit. The next five people to enter were those who regularly cleaned up after CP9, and they were used to it; hard-eyed government officials and a Marines Captain with a drawn pistol who nodded in appreciation when he saw the carnage and saluted Lucci as the latter turned towards him. Lucci waved him on to arrest anybody who was still alive, and walked back to the dais. Kumadori had already evacuated the target, but there was still someone left to deal with.

A corner of red robe was sticking out behind the marble throne. Lucci reached down, snagged it and hauled the cowering owner into full sight.

"Who's that whiny shit?" Jyabura, who'd been cleaning his knuckles with a happy air, wandered over to see what Lucci had caught.

"Someone with an interesting family." Lucci crouched in front of the empath who was cringing away from him in raw horror. "So, tell me...do you still think I have the mind of an artist?"

The bald man whimpered, the small animal sound of a mouse caught in a cat's jaw.

"You may even be right. It's just not stone or wood I carve ordinarily."

"He looks like he's about to puke," Jyabura said with sadistic glee. "He's the reason why we couldn't just storm the place, right? The guy who reads minds?"

"Along with his two brothers, yes."

"I can disembowel him, then."

"Certainly not." Lucci stood up.

"Why not? We have authorization on anyone we find here, they're all criminals anyway."

"He's more useful alive. In fact - you, there, Captain, get a unit and find two more of these wimps in the robes. One should be near the harbor. I don't know where the third one is, probably hiding in Skullbone's private quarters. Bring all three of them here unharmed. HQ is about to get a new central alarm system, one of the best in the world."

Jyabura groused, but none too vehemently. An attack by nearly four hundred desperate pirates had left a few spillovers even Lucci had been unable to mop up alone; there'd been enough to go around in the end, and Jyabura had blood on both hands and all the way up into his moustache. His unbridled gusto was grating. Lucci made sure the empath was being properly looked after and then stalked away to one side of the room, sorting through his thoughts, trying to fit details back into their proper place. He had all his memories back, but in one large life-encompassing lump, mixed in with Hikaru's recollections of the last six months which squirmed around his head, annoying and emotionally alien, mental white noise.

Hattori fluttered near his shoulder for the third time, but when Lucci glanced up the bird made a confused sound and circled him instead of landing. When Lucci held out a wrist, the pigeon flapped away, startled.

"Have it your way." Hattori would soon get re-habituated to the smell of blood on its master.

Muscles and tendons moved in his forearm as Lucci idly spread the fingers of the hand he'd lifted, and then made a fist. He'd lost muscle weight and strength. Six months with no training, no fighting, no killing, just a lot of shipbuilding. Whose bright idea had it been to-

A memory clawed its way out of the morass.

"Are you sure you can't hypnotize us into infiltrating Skullbone's stronghold?" he'd asked the decidedly suspect ex-pirate and Marines private, Jango, who was too terrorized at being in the same room as Lucci to lie.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I'm sure," the man had babbled, knees knocking. "It's going to be t-tricky as it is, setting up a dream sequence to re-hypnotize the subject every night, and - something this complex, this total - it'll only have a chance of working at all because the subject will want it to, which will help lower innate resistance- but cumulative complexity will still-" at that point he'd become technical.

"You're saying you can't just program us to go there as pirates," Lucci said, interrupting him.

"Yes, that's right, I'm so very sorry! I can make you forget you're an agent wanting to arrest Skullbone- and plant a simple trigger when you see him- but to make up a whole life- to implant every detail so it can stand up to scrutiny- impossible! Besides, if I do send you off to Bone Island, you'll really believe you're a pirate, right? On a certain level, you'll think you're free to do what you want, and I'm not sure the blind compulsion to meet Skullbone can stand up to that for months on end. You might eventually conquer what feels like a stupid obsession you don't understand, and then you could head off to- to- to anywhere."

The idea of setting one of them loose as a pirate was an alarming thought. With Rokushiki and their natural killer instincts, they'd undoubtedly go far, but in entirely the wrong direction. That was just what the World Government needed...

"You'd need someone to direct you," Jango added, pathetically eager to appease Lucci when the latter started to frown. "Two people could impersonate pirates, the subject and another agent who would make sure he stays headed in the right direction-"

Lucci, used to working in a two-man team, had already considered that plan and dismissed it. "That controller would tip off Skullbone's defenses as soon as he lands in their harbor. They're constantly on the lookout for infiltrators." Cipher Pol's informants had already told them about the mind-reading brothers. There might be ways around that complication, but..."According to reports, it takes years for rank and file pirates in his fleet to gain enough notoriety to meet Skullbone. The controller would have a hard task directing the subject all that time, especially if they fell out, as pirates do." And without his sense of duty or self, Lucci, for one, would be almost impossible to control. That put them back at the scenario of a highly trained CP9 agent going rogue. No.

"That's true...I guess...What I've done previously- um, in a former life- I'm reformed now- is seal away the person's innate resistance, and their aggression, strength, instincts to fight- these all go hand in hand, you see, and if those are removed, the subject becomes quite biddable. It helps re-hypnosis, and keeps them under; they don't have the will to fight it as much. If I did that, the, um, controller wouldn't have any problems, the subject would be quite tractable and docile."

"In other words, a gimp," Lucci said coldly.

Jango had blinked behind his preposterous glasses. "A what?"

He really hadn't known the meaning of the term. Lucci had enlightened him. Jango had looked ready to pass out.

"I- I n-never s-suggested th-that you sh-should-"

"You think someone 'docile' would make a good Skull? There's two ways of getting onto Bone island and into the inner circle with any certitude; I either fight my way there as a pirate or I sleep my way there as a-" and at that point, Jango had passed out. Lucci had kicked him awake, gotten the technical details and then gone to talk it over with the team.

They'd decided that Skullbone's natural paranoia could be played against him. He insisted on personally cross-examining anyone his captains got involved with in more than passing one-night stands, to root out potential spies; that'd be a way to get the plant on Bone island and into the Commodore's presence. The sort of relationship required ruled out a complete doormat and left them with the lesser evil that was Hikaru, though in Lucci's opinion, the gentle, sensitive, good-natured shipwright was only two steps up and sideways from a gimp...Hikaru had been Plan B. Plan A had been-...Lucci rummaged through his memories, then walked across the charnel house to where Jyabura was talking to a couple of Marines.

"What about Kalifa? We were going to set her up in that Redline coastal town, get her to bait the first and second fleet commanders, or any other of Skullbone's captains. The straight ones."

Jyabura waved off the soldiers and turned towards Lucci. "Yeah, I kept tabs on her too. She hooked up with Skullbone's second in command pretty fast. No surprise there; she's quite the looker once you surgically remove the shrew bits." Jyabura smirked mockingly...but one thing he'd never ridicule would be Kalifa's method of getting near the target, or Lucci's either. Jyabura might not like Lucci on a personal level, but he respected what had been required to do the job, same as any CP9 agent. Besides, if he were stupid enough to say anything crude about it, Lucci would simply ignore him, while Kalifa would have the mutt's balls, difference in Douriki levels be damned.

"We thought she'd make it here weeks ago, once it was obvious they were an item, but her man didn't seem in any hurry to introduce her to Skullbone like he was supposed to. Blueno thinks the asshole was scared the Commodore would try to steal her away if he met her. So turns out you weren't the long shot after all. We'll send someone to extract her and 'Uncle' Blueno from their little tavern. But damn..." Jyabura started to laugh. "I’m not the one who'll go snap her out of it. I'm staying far away until the fury dies down. Hey, you want to hear a funny one? Last I heard, the pirate she hooked up with was talking marriage. Marriage! And you still beat her to the kill. Marriage, shit, I'd like to see the sap's face when she rips out his guts and feeds them to- huh? Where you going?"

"I've got something to do," Lucci said, making his way towards the large stone doors. "Take care of all this, make sure the empaths are not harmed, and that all the pirates are rounded up-"

"Oi-"

"-and if you do all that, maybe I'll forget about that incident on the docks a few weeks ago."

Jyabura's snicker followed him out the door.

---

The waterfront was deserted. The Skulls had grabbed their vessels and tried to slip the noose the Marines had cast around Bone Island. From the number of burning hulls beyond the harbor, not many had succeeded. The Claw, however, was still at quay. Lucci couldn't see anyone moving on deck through the drifts of smoke. It looked like a ghost ship.

He paused for a moment to look up at the figurehead. He'd done that...? He could remember his hands moving, the tumble of gold shavings, the rasp of the plane, but no sense of his own volition. Then again, that had not come out of Hikaru's vapid little brain. Interesting how the subconscious worked...Lucci watched the wooden cat snarl for a moment, then, dismissing it from his thoughts, he leapt up to the railing. He stepped down to the foredeck to face the one person left aboard.

He was sitting on the steps to the forward castle, cap shading his expression. From both the splashes of blood on the wooden planks and the lack of bodies, he'd done the cleanup. Kaku had vanished while Lucci and Jyabura dealt with the troops in the main compound, presumably to disorganize the enemy further and facilitate the Marines' invasion. While making his way down to the docks, Lucci had noted that Skullbone's crack troops at the different tiers of the citadel had been taken down not with bullets or swords, but with clean, efficient holes through vital organs. He'd felt absolutely no surprise.

"Where's Juro?"

"Dead."

Lucci gave him a narrowed-eyed look. "That was presumptuous of you."

"I suppose it was." The flat statement was perfectly neutral. The peak of his cap was still hiding Kaku's face. "Should you be wandering around alone like that? The resistance is scattered, but there's still some high level bounties about, and they're on the run and desperate now. There've been reports of devil fruit users too."

"So?" A single, dangerous word.

"Jango warned us you'd take a little while to get your full strength back."

There was a distant bang of musket fire. Lucci glanced back towards shore. "This fodder is no problem whatever my form, and I'll be back to normal within a few hours."

"Really? I'd better get this one in now, then."

The punch took Lucci on the side of the shoulder and hammered him across the deck to slam into the back of the figurehead. Hattori, who'd barely settled there to roost, took off with a squawk of alarm.

Lucci caught himself against the wood, fingers sinking into the back of the monstrous cat to keep from falling. A touch of whiplash put dark flecks into his vision until he shook his head. Kaku hadn't hit him entirely as hard as he could have, but that lightning-quick strike had managed to punch through Lucci's shoddy Tekkai. That fucking useless waste of mental space Hikaru was still slowing him down.

He reached for his shoulder, feeling the damage beneath the blur of pain. Bruised, but not disabling. "I could have your head for that."

"I'm sure." Kaku turned away, rubbing his fingers as if he'd hurt his knuckles. At least he'd not used Shigan.

"What the hell was that for?"

"That? Hmm, let me think." Kaku's smooth tenor was edged with cold mirth and razorblades. "I believe that was for the last six months of your bloody plan."

It occurred to Lucci that he'd never seen his teammate this angry before, not with him.

Under his probing scrutiny, Kaku scowled, tugged down on his cap and looked away.

"The mission was a success," Lucci said, straightening up. "And you agreed to the plan." Kaku hadn't been happy with the randomness of the variables, but he'd never hesitated once Lucci made up his mind, the latter remembered that distinctly.

Kaku shook his head. "I had a feeling I was going to have to spell it out. Fine. Yes, I agreed. It was the only way to take down the target, and I've never backed away from anything that'd let us do that. I knew you didn't give a damn what the mission entailed, right, Lucci? I guess I am still partially flesh and blood, though. So try, if you can bend that amazing steel mind of yours that far, to imagine what my last six months were like, watching you wander around defenseless, smiling and depending on-...You weren't playing a role, you were happily living what you thought was your life. I was the one who had to act twenty-four seven. To fool our targets and to fool you, too, and you're considerably smarter than a bunch of bloody pirates, even with amnesia. We miscalculated there; our cover story was only good enough to take in Turtle Bay's denizens, we never thought it'd have to stand up to your scrutiny. I'm good at improv, Lucci, but I'm not that damn good. And you were so nice- and curious! Six months of- remember those friendly evenings where you wanted to learn everything there was to know about your baby brother? Remember when you invited Juro over for supper that one time in the hope that if he got to know me better, we might get along?"

Oh yes, he did remember. If it were possible to physically reach Hikaru right now, Lucci would have throttled the idiot. Which was unfair, he immediately realized. Hikaru hadn't known that their mission and possibly their lives depended on maintaining cover.

"Oh, let's not forget my main role in the plan, which was to pander you out to that pirate," Kaku added, abruptly shooing away Hattori who fluttered around his head, cooing distraughtly. "I had to dangle you in front of Juro without being obvious about it and make damn sure he took the bait. It was a good thing you decided not to play hard-to-get. Though at that point I got to regularly spy on the two of you to make sure the relationship was going in the right direction and that Juro wasn't getting bored. I've known more amusing ways of spending a night."

The acidity in that last comment made Lucci arch a brow. "We've had to screw others as part of our cover before. Both of us. You damn near had to marry that girl back on-"

"Yes, we've had to sleep with our marks on a few of our missions," Kaku said, giving him a dark look, "but I've never had to sit there and listen to you telling me how much you were falling in love with him before."

"That wasn't me." The cold words rasped his throat. He wasn't used to talking like that, his alter ego's speech patterns had been subtly different. "It was that addled fool Hikaru. If you ever mention that to anybody, I will flay you," Lucci added, because even the unfeeling assassin for justice that he was still had a curdle of personal dignity left.

He could see the hard edge of a smirk in the shadow of the cap's peak. "Jyabura would have a ball with that. Maybe I'll save it for his birthday."

"Is that all that's bothering you?"

Kaku spun on his heels and strode towards the side of the boat. "That and having to send you here, a time-bomb ready to go off, and I might not be there- Yes, that's about all, what a relief to have gotten that off my chest, I'm fine now." He grabbed the rigging and his boot thudded against the gunwale as he got ready to leap to shore.

"You will be."

Kaku glanced around, expression puzzled and unfriendly, but Lucci made his way towards the forecastle without elaborating or looking back.

"We should go," Kaku called after him. "I told the Marines to stay away from this ship, but- are you listening to me? Hey, Hi- damn it, Lucci, where are you going?"

His steps took him in the direction of Juro's cabin. The corridor wall past the map-room was decorated with a wide bloodstain. Lucci idly dragged fingernails through the splash mark, raking white score-marks through to the wood beneath. Wonder who that was, he thought absently. Probably not Juro, he'd have died out on deck, fighting. The door to the captain's quarters was ajar; he kicked it wide. The room hadn't been disturbed. It felt smaller than it had three hours and another lifetime ago. Lucci studied it curiously, prodding the feeling of a connection leading nowhere.

"What now, nostalgia?" Kaku asked from the hallway, sounding unconcerned, perhaps a little sardonic...back to normal after that little flare of mercurial temper. Or so it seemed, but then again, Lucci knew that infiltration and dissembling was the one area where Kaku could beat him hands down. "We need to go. Skullbone's on the Admiral ship by now, but there are still pockets of resistance from the sound of it."

"Who cares." Lucci went to open the porthole for Hattori.

"Well, presumably the Marines trying to overcome them. They could use our help."

"Then they're weak. It's nothing but pirate riffraff. We killed hundreds of them for stress relief."

"Ahhh, you're back in full form, I see."

"Yes, and we're staying here until you are too."

"Me? I'm fine, I'm fine." By the sound of it, Kaku had parked a shoulder against the doorframe. "There were two things I had to do. I had to punch you, and I had to kill that annoying 'I'm so very tough' oaf Juro."

Lucci studied him briefly from the corner of his eye. "Did you make it quick?"

"Hmm, yes. All things being relative."

Lucci wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he wasn't really a torturer; pain lost its glow very quickly once the victim got past a certain stage, and Lucci lost interest. On the other hand, he might have made an exception this time.

He inspected some small chisels on a shelf near the window without touching them. Artist's tools...feh. "Now that you've done your two things, are you feeling better?" he asked without looking around.

"Oh sure. I might have to hit you again, just for that extra feel-good factor, but then I'll be fine."

"Yes, you will be."

"You keep saying that," Kaku said, a tiny hint of a warning chill in his tone.

"Hikaru was a construct, a tool."

"He was still a part of you." Kaku didn't just mean physically. They'd both been undercover long-term before.

"Only in the way our masks always are. I suppose if you strip me of most of my personality, that's what you might end up with- though not in one particular, I can assure you. Hikaru was conditioned to fall for Juro. I spent hours staring at that bastard's picture, drilling into my subconscious that I had to hook up with him. Even then, Hikaru couldn’t figure out why he was staying with the fool, which means he did have some taste at least. He just stuck an easy label on his feelings because he couldn't explain them otherwise."

"I figured that was the case, but it was still massively disturbing to hear you say it," Kaku muttered.

Yes, it would have been...Where the others in their elite little group might hesitate, where they found infiltration getting a little too close to fact, that was where Lucci was their rock, the one who could smile and kill with equal ease and total detachment. He was the one who never lost his way, and made damn sure they didn't lose theirs. Having him, of all people, babbling about falling in love- oh, he rather admired Kaku for sitting there and taking it so serenely, whatever their cover had required. It must have been distasteful and a little alarming to listen to for months on end.

...But that wasn't the only reason why Lucci's shoulder would be sporting a nice bruise come evening. It'd been upsetting on a more personal level as well, the level Kaku should be smart enough not to have, but as he'd said, he was only flesh and blood, and they'd been teammates - and more - for, what was it now, six years...?

"Fortunately Hikaru was capable of trust." Lucci stopped by the desk and flicked open Juro's logbook briefly. "Despite the nightmares, the amnesia and a few minor inconsistencies, it never occurred to him to doubt his dear little brother."

He didn't look around, but he knew his words had gone straight for the jugular. He always found the surest way to the pain. It was a natural talent of his.

"Then Hikaru really was an idiot," Kaku said softly, "because I was there to whore him out to a pirate and ship him on a mission where he might get his throat slit without even knowing why."

That was the cut which was still bleeding; Lucci could taste it in the deadened tone. Kaku had always seen betrayal as an unfortunate necessity. He did it without a second's hesitation, but he didn’t like it. The counterpart to his uncanny ability to infiltrate any situation and become anyone's friend was his ability to empathize with his victims; a downside he'd long ago accepted, and it certainly didn't slow him down worth a damn. But this time...

Lucci had believed to the depths of what passed for his soul that, in a real life-threatening situation, his true reflexes would kick in. Jango couldn't confirm it, but nothing, not even 'Hikaru', could kill Lucci, not without the mother of all fights and hundreds of dead bodies to pave his way down to hell. Kaku, who'd had to watch Lucci wander around as helpless as a stunned kitten for the past half-year, must have lost that faith somewhere along the way. The mission had progressed inevitably despite his doubts, requiring that he stick a knife to the one person on these sorry seas whose trust he actually did care about. Oh indeed, he must have hated it.

He'd still done it.

"Yes, you were really good, as I recall," Lucci said, rifling through a set of memories as foreign as six months of opium dreams. "You covered up the inconsistencies very well and didn't give him a moment's doubt. You're better under pressure than you give yourself credit for, you always are. He was such an amicable creature, wasn't he. And you were his everything. The protective brother, the best friend, the confidante, the shoulder to cry on, and when the time came you sold him out like a true professional. He never saw it coming."

He wasn't expecting a response. There really wasn't all that much to say.

Lucci picked up some papers Hikaru had left lying around; blueprints for improvements to the Claw, a letter to his brother. "I knew you didn't like the plan," he said, twisting them into a bundle, tinder for later. "I never doubted that you'd see it through, because you know how far we need to go and you never hold back."

"No, I never do," Kaku said quietly.

"Do you remember what I told you before Jango put me under?"

"...'See you on the other side'."

"I knew you'd be there."

Kaku said nothing. The silence felt a little raw this time.

Lucci did not regret this mission, even though it had dulled his edge - temporarily. Regrets were something that happened to the weak. The only thing he and Kaku might regret was their defeat at the hands of those bloody Straw Hats, and the two agents had surely paid penance for Enies Lobby now, six damned months of atonement. Lucci would not regret the methods he'd used to succeed in hurting the enemy this time. He'd done his duty, and what was required, and the last two hours had certainly been amusing as well.

But he was not going to let anything compromise them, either. The battle for Justice was ever ongoing, and he needed all his weapons in top condition. Including the one that, yes, was a little more human than he should be at times, surprisingly so considering what Kaku had done most of his life. Counter-intuitively, that humanity was part of what made him valuable; it gave Lucci the luxury of being that little bit more inhumane, knowing at least one of them had a parcel of soul left and the perspective that went with it.

At the end of the day, Lucci had no doubts that his partner would be fine, and very shortly at that; Kaku's inner strength and steel convictions would not fail him now, and Lucci would see to it that they didn't. He might even let his teammate get in one more free punch if that's what was called for, though Kaku had better not make a habit of-...

Lucci had been absently feeling his shoulder as that last thought ran through his mind; his attention slowly focused away from the dull ache and onto the stiffness of the shirt beneath his fingers.

"What, you only noticed now?" Kaku asked, quickly rousing himself from that moment of silence and covering up the exposed parts. "Yes, you went a bit overboard back there."

"Killing men by the hundred score is a very occasional indulgence of mine," Lucci said archly, scratching at the crusted material which was starting to feel like a hair shirt over his chest.

"Oh, I know that, but you're normally too fastidious about it to let the term 'bloodbath' be anything more than a metaphor."

Lucci, who didn't particularly care whether he'd gone 'overboard' or not, fisted the vest. But then he paused...The sudden idea was way out over the edge; it would repulse the civilized sheep the agents protected, it would send gentle little Hikaru screaming into the night and of course it made Lucci smile and want it instantly. He ripped off the layers of cloth and mopped off a few of the stains on his chest, those that weren't already dried fast to his skin. He tossed the bloodied rags aside and made his way to the bedroom half of the captain's cabin. "We’ve got a few hours to kill, if they're rounding up all the pirates, correct?"

"Yes. They'll want us back on the Admiral ship by eight to catch the tide. You'll find a change of clothes in that chest over there."

"I know. I remember." Hikaru's clothes. He'd rather morph into full leopard form and go naked. He walked straight past the shipwright's sea-chest and sat down on the bed, hand on his belt. "Come over here."

Kaku took a few steps into the cabin, following what he thought was an order before he stopped abruptly. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

"Because we both know what a comedian I am." Lucci’s fingers slid into the leather loop of the buckle.

"What, is that something I need, in your opinion?" Kaku asked, his acerbic gaze on Lucci's face and not his hands. "A roll in the sheets and then I'll be 'fine' again?"

"I don't think so little of you," Lucci answered, staring straight back until his teammate looked away, a little mollified. It was a measure of how angry and off their game Kaku was if his first reflex was to think this was an attempt to manipulate him. They might taunt and play rough, but they didn't don the masks they had to wear for others, not here, not now, in these small moments of clear, cold clarity in their lives; a little space even Lucci needed when he had no other limits, and the principal reason he'd started this relationship with his teammate all those years ago. That this meant he had someone who could withstand him physically, give him a good run for his money, knew all his vicious truths and yet wasn't scared of him, were all hefty side benefits.

"You got to eliminate Juro, I don't see why I should go out of my way to make you feel any better now," he said, pulling off the belt. Conciliation was a closed book to Lucci, left on the shelf right next to the one pontificating about the qualities of Mercy. "I'm the one who needs this, I've got four tedious months of that pirate to get out of my system."

"Whose bright idea was that in the first place? I'm still a little mad at you," Kaku added, an admission that was probably a sign of progress in its way. "Why should I jump into bed just because you snap your fingers?"

"Because I've let you top maybe ten times in all the years and you won't miss this chance."

"Eleven times," said Kaku, but his eyes were now on what Lucci's hands were doing. Then he rubbed his nose, the gesture not quite hiding an unvarnished grin that Lucci knew well. "Hmm...What makes you think I'd want a dead pirate's piece of action anyway?"

Lucci's lips curled upwards in appreciation at the playful jab - by their standards - and then he got to his feet and went about proving that he might have lost a bit of his edge but he was definitely himself again. Some furniture got a bit broken, not that it mattered.

Kaku grunted as his back hit the wall near the bed - but not surrendering yet. Some small object crunched beneath Lucci's heel as he wrestled the stubborn herbivore to where they both wanted to go. Kaku didn't have his team leader's strength, but Jyabura hadn't nicknamed him 'mountain monkey' because he was a slouch at maneuvering; he managed to twist and slip out of a hold that Lucci should have been able to maintain without any difficulty. For the third time in the last two hours, Lucci reminded himself that Jango was a useful resource and that a truly dedicated, dispassionate CP9 agent would have to forego the pleasure of strangling the hypnotist with his own entrails.

They finally landed on the bed, Lucci pinning his partner by the shoulders with a grip that could break bones. Kaku's breathing was a little heightened, and it certainly wasn't from exertion alone; though Lucci did note that Kaku had lost a small measure of his physical strength as well. Ever the meticulous infiltrator, he would not have practiced properly without a teammate to keep lookout. Though it might have been one of those strange little gestures of his as well, that queer honor that kicked in between the betrayals, the lies and the knives in the back. Unable to prevent his teammate's physical deterioration over the course of this mission, it would be very like Kaku to quixotically decide to share it...Lucci couldn't follow all those inner twists and turns in which Kaku lost most of his humanity while still retaining a measure of it; neither did he care to.

Point made, game won and a partner willing to concede he also wanted to get it on, Lucci relinquished his hold. Kaku promptly rolled them over, legs shoving Lucci's apart, a little reminder that Lucci had said something about letting him do the taking this time around.

Positions pretty much reversed, Kaku glanced laconically from his lover to the sheets of the man he'd murdered a little while ago. "Okay, let's do this, but I do want to point out that this is pretty disturbed. I'd somehow forgotten what a mindjob you are."

Lucci pulled at the high collar's zipper, paying the comment no mind. He couldn't be bothered with society's do's and don'ts, it was his job to break those limits for a higher purpose, and he liked the extremes. As for Kaku, he might grumble about 'going overboard', but behind the seemingly dispassionate infiltrator was the devil-may-care killer who threw himself off buildings, fought for the fun of it and who could never resist a challenge or fail to follow to see how far Lucci would go.

Kaku's breathing hitched a little as Lucci's hands slid over his skin, slipping off the top, dropping in a caress to trace the abs beneath the black t-shirt. Lucci's partner pulled off what had to be the most amazing lie in the history of body language, to look and move like a gangly string bean when he was built like a weapon underneath.

"Plain disturbed," Kaku sighed in a much-put-upon way which didn't do all that good a job of belying the faint trace of color on his lips and cheeks, and the hardness pressing into Lucci's inner thigh.

"Don't have the stomach to do it on a dead man's bed?" Lucci quizzed, getting the black t-shirt off in one rough movement that sent Kaku's cap tumbling to the far side of the bed.

Kaku brushed down the dyed hair that the cloth had ruffled up and bent forward with a rakish grin. "No, I don't mind. Juro's got the seabed to himself now, he no longer needs this one."

"You did kill him before you tossed him in, right?" Juro could swim really well, even wounded.

"Do you take me for an amateur?" Kaku grumbled against Lucci's throat.

"No, just a bleeding heart."

The mouth was replaced by the sudden grip of fingers as Kaku straightened up. "What was that?"

Lucci didn't deign to notice the hold to his neck. "You made it quick. You always do..."

That earned him a caustic look. "Just because I don't see the point in hurting people before I kill them-"

"You were being merciful," Lucci murmured, lifting his head, ignoring the fingers which grudgingly eased up the pressure until he could lick at the downturned corner of his partner's mouth. The lips twitched.

"Hmf. If you want to call it that. In honor of the fact that his unfortunate choice in boyfriends made this whole plan possible, I suppose."

"Yes, and I wanted to inform him of that." He'd been anticipating the look in Juro's eyes when the pirate learned what was in store for Skullbone in Impel Down, and that it was all thanks to him. Killing him slowly afterwards would have been anticlimactic, really. Though still amusing. Lucci liked dealing pain, he liked the self he saw reflected in the eyes of the strong when they realized he was stronger and considerably more ruthless; the true self mirrored in the agony of a world that deserved no mercy, only absolute justice...

"I'm sure you were quite looking forward to it," Kaku, who knew Lucci's propensities, said dryly, "but he's out of even your reach now. Let the poor bastard rest in peace, and why are we still talking about the asshole?"

"You were jealous," Lucci whispered, eyes fixed on the face near his own, watching curiously as a cat watches a mouse hole for what might come out.

Kaku's lackadaisical expression twisted into disgruntled for a second, but he didn't deny the charge. Lucci knew that it was mostly six months of grinding strain, isolation and annoyance that had resulted in Kaku taking the pleasure of terminating Juro himself, but yes...there had been a little personal feeling at the back of it all. Lucci could taste it in the violence of the kiss that followed; it had in no way compromised the mission, so Lucci would allow him that. Deep inside where his savagery coiled like a noose, he liked seeing blood on his lover's hands, and he liked knowing it was partially for his sake.

The kiss broke into small bites, quick breaths peppering sensitized lips. There was a sense of expectation in the touches, from Lucci's shoulders to his hips; Kaku was waiting to see what Lucci's next move was going to be, because they weren't yet to the stage where they got serious and started working together, oh no, not yet. Lucci didn't make a bid to throw his lover off, though; he was content to lay back and run curious fingers through soft, black hair.

"What's so funny?" Kaku asked, even as he eased off Lucci's blood-gored pants, moving like he expected this compliance to be a trap, but Lucci only smirked some more and shook his head. Dark locks ruffled beneath his palm. The tiny little parasitic signal that was Hikaru's memory was watching his baby brother's hands move over his body...Lucci's smirk widened into something feral and Kaku proceeded to look a little apprehensive, but he wasn't the target here.

Hikaru. The shipwright had rendered Lucci helpless, robbed him of what he loved most, his supreme ability to fight and kill, and it offended him greatly that Hikaru had even been there at all, somewhere deep inside him. Hikaru had proven useful, and Lucci was going to bury him for it. Since he couldn't reach Hikaru physically, he was going to twist and break everything the gentle creature had believed in. It might not mean anything, but it was bound to be satisfying anyway.

Lucci gripped the short dark hair and pulled Kaku into a hard kiss with a faint after-taste of incest...Then his other hand shot out and knocked Kaku's supporting arm away just as his lover lost himself in the play of tongues and teeth. It wasn't a moment's work to roll them over and pin his partner down. Kaku's faint look of exasperation was entirely self-directed, since he really should have expected it. Sloppy...Lucci waited to see what Kaku would do now, while idly grinding down just a little, enough to frustrate and taunt and tempt and drive his lover up the wall.

Kaku tested the hold half-heartedly, and then surrendered with a sigh and reached up with his left hand, the only limb that wasn't currently locked down by someone twice his strength. The palm that ran over Lucci's cheek was non-threatening and oddly gentle. Lucci remained vigilant; it would be totally unlike this man to give up so soon. Since the best defense was offense, he caught Kaku's wandering fingers in his mouth and licked the taste of copper from index and thumb, Juro's blood perhaps, or any number of others...Kaku's eyelids fluttered, he breathed out a little shakily, but his hand moved on over Lucci's ear, a caress that ended in long, dark hair. Lucci felt a slight tug.

"Mind if I take this off?" Kaku murmured. "It's a little distracting."

Lucci turned his head to see a slim red ribbon slipping from his shoulder before his hair followed, freed from the tie. A ribbon. He remembered Hikaru tying his hair back this morning, but he'd forgotten what the shipwright had used. Not that it mattered what Lucci wore, or did, or screwed - or that he was forced to talk through a pigeon for five years of posing as an eccentric shipwright - none of it mattered, his only pride was in his duty to justice and in his ability to kill, and besides, Lucci reminded himself for the fourth time as he stared thoughtfully at the red ribbon, Jango was off-limits...

Kaku dangled the odious thing in front of his face, examining it, and then he smiled up at Lucci. "I hope you'll wear it again, though, I found it rather fetching on you."

In the split second that Lucci's weight shifted to rip the ribbon away, and possibly wrap it around Kaku's neck, his traitorous bastard of a partner managed to leverage those deadly legs and hips to knock Lucci's balance askew and roll them over on the bed. Good strike, and excellent use of a distraction, Lucci conceded grudgingly, though Kaku was nonetheless going to have to pay, with interest.

The bed creaked and shuddered, and a slat broke. Dangerous energies played along their skin, and Kaku laughed, still managing to sound a little laid-back about it, but not for long, no, not for long. Half naked, a twist of ripped sheet tangled around one arm, flashes of defiance and a total lack of surrender, even while immobilized with Lucci in a position to reach down and rip his throat out...Ahhh, Juro had really been a pathetic fool. What was the point of conquering anything if it couldn't put up a good fight? This was the real rush, when victory was fought for tooth and nail. Juro must have had some deep-seated fear moving his pathetic little attempts at dominating a piece of fluff like Hikaru, a fear which Lucci would never have the opportunity to dig up and use...a pity, but the pirate was barely a flicker of memory now, his bed the only reminder of his existence.

The friction of skin on skin warmed the smears of dried blood on Lucci's chest, leaving a distinctive scent in the air. Arousal was another rush, ignited by the power, the clash of strengths, the faint edge of danger in the game and the occasional half-mocking caress. Time to change the pace. Lucci wanted to get laid now. He tore Kaku's last steady breath away, stealing it right out of his mouth.

With a rustling flap, Hattori settled on Lucci's shoulder blade, wings outstretched for balance, cutting an angel's shadow against the evening light falling through the porthole. Lucci could feel his pet hop about his bare back, then chirrup and flap away again when Kaku gripped Lucci's shoulder. Hattori settled on the headboard with a contented coo, pleased that Juro was no longer around to shoo it out of the cabin just as things got interesting.

Breath sounded loud in Lucci's ear as he broke the kiss. He kept the body beneath his pinned still, using his weight and greater strength. "We done playing?" he murmured against the air fleeing in and out of his lover's mouth.

Kaku made a raspy noise of assent, and cleared his throat. "Sure."

"Good. Take it while you can get it," Lucci advised, sitting up, which let his lover's eyes roam over his body. "Once we're done here, we're back on the job."

Kaku chuckled, breathless and savage and blasé all together as he traced a painted swirl of dried blood with his fingertips. "Same as before, hmm? You and me, and the devil makes three."

"Leave him out of it. He couldn't keep up with us."

When they were done, they'd burn this boat and leave. Somewhere out there were people who needed killing.