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“Sir, do you think this mere cage is enough to contain these beasts?” A poor soldier asked, holding his gun tightly onto his body like the metal could provide him any comfort. “They’re not the Straw Hat but they are the Straw Hats , you know?”
General Bubble snickered, not even bothering to stare at the recruit. The fear was understandable when dealing with New World pirates, but it was definitely a habit that needed to be cut by the bud. There was no space for cowards on his fleet. Especially showing distrust towards his superior’s decisions. Not ideal.
“They might be strong physically, boy. But there’s little to no person that’s able to handle the cruel passage of time.” Bubbles explained and turned on his heels to keep on walking. They had just locked the cell, and the first day of their long experiment had just begun. “Their mates are out there too occupied with a revolution to save them now. In weeks of pure isolation, I guarantee you, they’ll be as broken as they come.”
He has seen way too many pirates falling like that, since it was an undefeatable method. Being forced to stay locked with the same people for weeks, perhaps months, unsure how long it will take to be rescued - if they are getting a rescue at all. It drives people mad eventually. And if the country situation says anything, the marine do have a lot of time to pull this off, as Monkey D. Luffy had just declared war on the current tyrants and surely was going to take his sweet time to fulfill it.
Besides, they had a lot of luck! Between all the Straw Hat Pirates, they catched the best combination possible. General Bubbles was a cultured man, he knows every little detail of this crew so worldwide famous. He knew their strengths and their weaknesses, their personalities and flaws. These people, Bubbles guarantee you, wouldn’t mash together at all. They were three opposite stars with no chance of cohesisting.
Roronoa Zoro, pirate hunter, Nico Robin, demon child and God Usopp, the sniper.
Such confictious personalities. Them being on the same ship for such a long time was already an inexplicable behavior to Bubbles.
And above everything else, he knew for a fact that pirate crews aren’t designed to endure the same people for long periods of time in confined spaces. Pirates were free spirits, dying down at closed walls and boring company.
Under his fingers, the Straw Hats crew were going to crumble.
Look, Mario could understand where his General was coming from. It did make sense, it was a flawless plan to mess with these guys' heads. However, - and he didn’t want to be the one to point it out - the Straw Hats were pretty much still kicking.
It had been two months with no exterior contact besides sporadic food and water. At this rate, Mario should open the cell and encounter three begging souls pleading for mercy or something.
He didn’t expect them to be playing UNO.
“Go fish four.” The longnose, Usopp, said, holding his cards close to his chest.
“Fuck.”
“I change to blue.” The woman, who he presumed to be Nico Robin, layed precisely a card on the ground.
“Fuck.” Roronoa stared at his deck with a frown.
It was weird to see the criminals so up close, since they were different from the still pictures of their bounty posters. Nico Robin's dark hair, that even if unwashed, dirty and untreated, still remained luscious and contrasting with her calculating eyes perfectly. She seemed relaxed, smiling softly at the situation in front of her like she wasn’t trapped inside a small cell. Like she wasn’t trapped at all.
“UNO!” Usopp exclaimed, a wide grin on his dirtied face.
“How do you do that?!” Roronoa punched the floor, his deep voice echoing through the cell was enough to make Mario tremble.
No one would want to piss the King of Hell off. Definitely not a good decision. Still, God Usopp didn’t even flinch and remained smiling smugly at Roronoa, like this man couldn’t chop him off in one swing of a sword. At the back of his mind, Mario remembered the sniper was supposed to be the cowardly one, but he wondered how this could be since he didn’t seem to fear the swordsman in one bit.
“He was the one who made the deck, Zoro. He always cheats.” Nico Robin said simply, and if Mario didn’t know her as the most dangerous person to the world government, he would say she looked almost amused.
“Hey!” The sniper protested, but his complaint fell into deaf ears.
“I know that!” Roronoa snarled in response, staring at his six cards like they were the most complex math problem ever. “But you still do better than him.”
“You need to play along. For example, I know that his last card is blue. Therefore,” She laid her last second card on the floor. “I change the color to yellow. Oh, and UNO.”
God Usopp gasped indignantly and looked behind his back, searching for Nico Robin’s extra eyes.
“Robin, you have seastone cuffs! How-” He asked exasperatedly, but upon receiving only a creepy smile as a response, Usopp groaned loudly and searched the pile to pick up more cards. “I swear to God! One day I’ll discover your strategy.”
Mario wondered how on Earth would a God swear to himself, but couldn’t go too far into that since Roronoa Zoro murmured again, sending shivers down his spine.
“Serves you right.”
“Shut up, Zoro. Go fish two.”
And even with the frown, dangerous eye staring deep into the sniper’s soul and the grumpy posture, Roronoa didn’t look really angry at all. If Mario could bet, he would even say the swordsman was enjoying the game the same way a kid would, even if drastically losing.
Behind Mario, the world was falling apart. Through his baby den-den mushi, he knew Straw Hat Luffy had entered the building in a storm, breaking everything in search for his crewmates and making skilled marines fall with only a stare. In the back of his mind, when he was called to escort the prisoners to somewhere away from their capitan, Mario wondered if that was how the Marineford poor regular marines felt.
Everyone knew it was an useless attempt to stop Straw Hat Luffy, and maybe that’s why they send one of the newers sailors to complete such a task. They knew he would fail, but there was nothing Mario could do but to comply with their orders anyway. However, he was hoping that his efforts wouldn’t be in vain, that at the very least he could make a small change by seeing the three enclosure monsters clinging into life before he died.
A sadistic dream, Mario would admit, but at the verge of death against a literal king he couldn’t bring himself to be selfless.
But staring at these people in front of him, he didn’t see deities falling apart. They weren’t the cruel, dirty, in-search-of-death-and-despair pirates Mario was led to believe. Suddenly, the bright smile of their capitan on his bounty poster made sense. Their colorful ship. Their success in so many impossible tasks. The fact that they seemed completely unfazed by the two months of isolation and hopelessness.
Because they weren’t isolated at all actually. The three of them were in the same cell, together. And they for sure weren’t hopeless, seeing that their capitan was this force of nature going completely overkill for the people that he loves. Mario saw very clearly that this plan was meant to fail.
They thought because Luffy didn’t immediately break the base for his crewmates, then it meant that he didn’t care about them at all. But Mario’s superiors were clearly wrong.
Monkey D. Luffy trusted that his friends knew that he was coming to get them eventually. And they sure did, judging by how they were laughing and inventing games with each other without a care in the world.
Mario was definitely going to die. These pirates were smiley, friendly and colorful, until one of them was hurt. Yeah, he was completely screwed.
The world was falling behind him, yes. But Mario wanted to sit there and play Uno with them. Because these three Straw Hats looked so comfortable with each other that he couldn’t help but wish he was part of that bubble too.
Pirates are sure brutal, this ones included seeing that their reputation wasn’t made out of thin air and how their base was being completely destroyed. But…
“Stop kicking me, Zoro. It won’t make you grow smarter.”
“Longnose motherfu-”
“You weren’t supposed to have cards in there.” Mario pointed out without realizing he was going to speak in the first place, calling for himself unwanted attention.
Three pairs of eyes (or rather, two pairs of eyes and one eye) stared at him, their joy immediately drifting away and leaving behind the dangerous aurea of tired pirates that really wanted to gut some skinny marines and eat a decent meal. Mario understood the thin balance between their personalities while his blood ran cold.
They looked like statues if statues were able to look as threatening as this. They didn’t move a muscle, like waiting for Mario to make a move so they could attack. It was terrifying, at least.
“Uh…” He decided to play with the ham of his shirt while he was under the gaze of the Straw Hat pirates. “How did you get Uno in here? You shouldn’t be able to.”
God Usopp was the first one to actually react, tilting his head to the side like a goddamn bird while his trained sniper eyes that never missed a shot analyzed him. It was like Mario was under an aim even if there was no way he could have a weapon with him.
Mario wasn’t a friend. Mario was an enemy. Mario was a target. And it was the most terrifying experience of his life.
“There was plenty of wood and dye laying around.” God Usopp explained and after a few threatening seconds, he fakedly smiled. “Just enough to make a good Uno deck.”
And that was slightly scary because there really wasn’t that much wood and dye at all in that cell. In fact, Mario would argue that there was none, so how-
“Wood cuffs, really?” Roronoa Zoro scuffed and crossed his arms. “You would have thought they would treat us better than that.”
Well, that explained at least something.
“There are a lot of colorful bugs on this island too.” God Usopp continued and then led a finger to his chin, thinking out loud. “Although I did have to repaint them to make a classic card deck a couple of times.”
“You also made Monopoly at some point.” Nico Robin smiled and let her chin rest on her hand.
“True.” He hummed.
Mario gulped, suddenly in a lot of pressure that he didn’t know where it came from.
“Your captain is coming.” He settled for that one, because what else could he say?
“We know.” Roronoa Zoro spoke for them all, not a drop of doubt in his voice.
“But like, right now.”
There was a second of processing, their faces unreadable. And then a loud groan of relief came from Usopp’s mouth, he let his body drop on the floor. As if the clouds had cleared out for him and the hard cold stone he just threw himself at was made out of rubber. Mario could swear he saw him bouncing a bit.
“Thank God! I missed Sanji’s food.”
“I really need a shower.” Nico Robin said and tilted her head slightly to the sky (that for Mario was dull rocky roof). “I wonder if someone might faint due to our smell.”
“Ew, Robin!” The sniper scolded, but the swordsman didn’t seem fazed.
“We aren’t fainting, though.”
The green-haired beast murmured, his eyes stoic as ever and not a drop of emotions hearing the news of his friends coming to rescue him. But Robin and Usopp clearly saw something else, something softer, because God Usopp changed his position so he could rest his head on Roronoa’s thighs and the Demon Child rested her hand on his knees. The sudden skinship changed the moment to something so intimate Mario wanted to kill himself right there.
“We’re probably already used to it.” Nico Robin explained her line of thought and God Usopp snickered.
“I don’t know what you mean, Zoro reeks like that all the tim- Ouch!”
The sniper received a flick on his nose so rought that most likely would kill a small child.
“Shut up, idiot.”
He groaned, but didn’t seem to actually mean it. In fact, when his blood-dirty hand found its way to God Usopp’s messy tangled hair, it seemed like the Pirate Hunter would love for his friend to never shut up ever. Meanwhile, Nico Robin giggled again, like she saw that scene every day for the past two months but couldn’t get tired of it. Like she could see that every day for the rest of her life and never be tired of them.
This mere cage, Mario thought, couldn’t hold them still. And it never could, no matter how much time these pirates stayed there. Because they were free in spirit like no one else could, like they were flying only by existing near each other. As if no hardship could ever tear them apart, as long as the company stayed by their side. They looked and read each other like breathing air and seek physical touch like they are the same body.
Because they saw silly games out of hard confinement. They were under Sun's warm gaze like it followed them. Their surroundings were made out of rubber because they knew they were under his protection. They looked at the sky like they met it personally and talked to each other as if they had Odyssey lengths dialogues by telepathy.
They were the Straw Hats, and they were never alone. Not really.
Even if their personalities look so distinct from afar, they were all the same. All monsters. All breathing the same dream. All were a crew worth a king. All were a crew worth Monkey D. Luffy.