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Law had warned his friends not to fuck with the older kids.
Swallow Island wasn’t a big place. Everyone knew each other, which meant—if they felt so inclined—everyone had beef with each other, too. Even before befriending Bepo and Law, Shachi and Penguin had been a pair of terrors who liked to get a rise out of everyone they could. It was a sin as simple as them not respecting the perceived hierarchy that earned them the ire of some of the older teens who thought they ran things on Swallow’s streets. They were like oil and water whenever they interacted, but Shachi and Penguin brazenly hitting on some girls they fancied had apparently been the last straw. The older gang had decided to teach Law’s a lesson.
The ambush had come outside of town, on their way back to Wolf’s, just the three of them without Bepo. (Surely by design. Despite how meek he was, the bear mink had a way of intimidating people.) The oldest—a real brute of a boy—erupted from the bushes and jumped on Shachi. His right hand man went after Penguin with a wooden bat. The smallest of the trio (a gap-toothed scraggly redhead) focused on Law.
Law was immediately knocked to the ground and suffered two punches to the face before he forced himself to hold out a hand—palm down, fingers splayed—and concentrate.
“Room.”
The word wasn’t strictly necessary, but Law found that it helped to have a verbal cue.
The sensation was still strange, like working out a new muscle. He didn’t know how exactly he did it, any more than he told his lungs to expand or his blood to flow, but in a similar fashion, his body simply obeyed.
A blue, transparent dome stretched around the brawl. Its sudden appearance caused all three instigators to pause and look around in bewilderment, giving Law’s friends an opening to gain the upper hand.
Shachi batted the ring leader off him with his metal pipe and grit his teeth. “Law!” he shouted. He didn’t like when the younger boy, still suffering from Amber Lead poisoning, overexerted himself. Shachi told Law it made him a liability.
But Law had to get stronger.
Shielding his face as best he could with one arm, he pulled a stone from the pocket of his jacket and tossed it away from him, inside the sphere. He turned his hand palm up, extending two fingers. “Shambles—”
“Law!” Shachi shouted again, but it was too late. Law’s devil fruit powers had switched the stone with the boy attacking Penguin. He could have taken the opportunity to run, but instead, Penguin lowered his head and charged, closing the distance between them again, flying into the boy’s middle when he was busy getting his bearings. They collapsed in the snow, the bat flung from his hands.
Law struggled to his feet, trying to keep the other boys’ fists tight in his smaller, weaker hands. The boy kicked at his knees, making Law cry out.
“Shachi! ‘Shambles’! Come on!” The older boy knew what he wanted.
Shachi was currently on his back, his pipe barely keeping the ring leader at bay. He kicked him in the gut, making him stumble back, and scrambled to his feet. “God damn it—!” he hissed, more at Law than his assailant.
Law pivoted while still tussling with the redhead, making himself available to Shachi. “Come on—!”
It would work.
It was risky, but it should work.
“Fuck!”
Law could sense the distaste and reluctance even through the ever present shades, but Shachi finally obliged. He left the one teen behind to charge…not their attackers…but straight at Law.
Law’s eyes went wide as Shachi raised the pipe up and back, the latter releasing a strangled, adrenaline-filled cry. But he committed, swinging the weapon down.
Law fought to get one arm free. “Shambles!” he cried again, index and middle finger pointing up.
In the next instant, the pipe crashed into the side of the ring leader and redhead’s faces, lined up like bowling pins, with Law safely six feet away.
He thought he saw a tooth go flying.
The ring leader got the worst of it, but both boys fell to the ground, a tangle of limbs. Their friend even paused in his scuffle with Penguin, exclaiming, “What the fuck?!”
Penguin punched him in the face.
Apparently they had had enough. The boys got to their feet, scared and bloodied.
“Fuckin’ freak!” one of them shouted, clearly terrified.
“Forget it! Run!”
The third boy disengaged with Penguin and they hauled it towards town, kicking up snow in their wake.
The sphere vanished as Law’s legs gave out from under him. He felt like he had just run a mile in heavy boots.
“Bro, that was so cool!” Penguin cheered, pumping a fist in the air, but Law didn’t have the wind to answer him. He simply reached up and tugged at the tail of Shachi’s coat. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding.
Shachi looked down at him, expression obscured by hat and shades.
“Tch. Told ya not to overdo it.”
Law inhaled, and managed to reply, “Worked.”
“We didn’t need that, man. We had ‘em.”
Law shook his head, eyes closed. “Did not.”
Shachi just sighed, but squatted with his back to the younger boy. “Come on, Cap,” he teased. “Let’s get you home.”
Law wrapped arms around his neck, and Shachi used the pipe to better support Law as he stood. Maybe he should have felt patronized, or embarrassed, but Law couldn't muster any such emotion as he clung to Shachi's shoulders. If he were being honest, being carried brought back bittersweet memories of cloying smoke and tickling feathers.
He only wished his friends didn’t have to.
---
Law wasn’t sure where the explosion had come from.
A reversal of the brawl twelve years ago, it was the Heart Pirates who got the jump on their adversaries this time. It was supposed to be a quick operation—his crew distracting the pirates while Law obtained their captain’s heart—but they were more formidable than Law had given them credit for.
And then suddenly his world was full of heat and light and pain. He tried to shambles himself closer to the shore and the submarine, but his magic fizzled out, his body edging towards shock. The sphere dropped, leaving at least a dozen pirates in conscious pieces, screaming or crying.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his head falling back to the ground.
Suddenly, a familiar silhouette appeared above him.
“Need a lift, Captain?”
Law didn’t have to say anything. He raised an arm, and Shachi wrapped one around his back, hooked the other behind his knees, and lifted him bridal style. Shachi had some blood sliding down his temple but otherwise looked unharmed.
He side-eyed the advancing party through his shades and made for shore, other Hearts providing cover.
“Like old times, huh?” he quipped, smiling despite the danger.
Law groaned and grabbed at his waist with the hand not holding Kikoku. Shrapnel had torn into his side. “Bit bigger now,” he croaked.
“Nah,” Shachi said easily, though there was some strain behind his words as he ran with his long-limbed burden. “Like a bag o’ feathers.” He smiled down at Law’s grimacing face. “Uni feeding you enough?”
Law left the question unanswered, instead letting his eyes flutter shut against the pain as Shachi once again carried him home without complaint.
---
Blackbeard was going to kill him.
Law almost didn’t care; the grieving, manic child in his heart said he had failed once again to protect what mattered.
He deserved this.
It was inevitable.
Amber Lead, Vergo, Doflamingo… He had bested them, one by one, but death was bound to call in its debt eventually. Cora had tried his best, but maybe he should have let Law die all those years ago, if it would’ve stopped him from leading his friends to ruin.
But he wasn’t gone yet.
He lifted his head off the stony ground, gritting teeth at Blackbeard and glaring past the blood in his eyes. He couldn’t use his powers, still sapped by seawater, but he wasn’t going down without a fight, even if he had to bite ankles. There might still be Hearts alive. They needed him.
He owed them every iota of strength he had left.
Suddenly, a roar deafened his spiraling thoughts. There was a whirl of white, too solid to be snow, and then big, warm arms were grasping him and hauling him towards the watery grave of the Polar Tang.
Some exhausted recess of his brain protested that it wasn’t the more precarious hold of Shachi.
Shachi… Penguin… Ikkaku… his men. Where were they?
“Go back, Bepo,” he choked out. “We can’t abandon our crew…!”
“We can’t go back,” Bepo said, in a rare showing of decisiveness, “but trust them, Captain! From the freezing ports of the North till now, we’ve always survived! None of us will let it end here!”
Then the shock of cold water hit him.